The Kellys and the O'Kellys Part 30

Anty's letter was sent off early on the Monday morning--at least, as early as Barry now ever managed to do anything--to the attorney at Tuam, with strong injunctions that no time was to be lost in taking further steps, and with a request that Daly would again come out to Dunmore. This, however, he did not at present think it expedient to do.

So he wrote to Barry, begging him to come into Tuam on the Wednesday, to meet Moylan, whom he, Daly, would, if possible, contrive to see on the intervening day.

"Obstinate puppy!" said Barry to himself--"if he'd had the least pluck in life he'd have broken the will, or at least made the girl out a lunatic. But a Connaught lawyer hasn't half the wit or courage now that he used to have." However, he wrote a note to Daly, agreeing to his proposal, and promising to be in Tuam at two o'clock on the Wednesday.

On the following day Daly saw Moylan, and had a long conversation with him. The old man held out for a long time, expressing much indignation at being supposed capable of joining in any underhand agreement for transferring Miss Lynch's property to his relatives the Kellys, and declaring that he would make public to every one in Dunmore and Tuam the base manner in which Barry Lynch was treating his sister. Indeed, Moylan kept to his story so long and so firmly that the young attorney was nearly giving him up; but at last he found his weak side.

"Well, Mr Moylan," he said, "then I can only say your own conduct is very disinterested;--and I might even go so far as to say that you appear to me foolishly indifferent to your own concerns. Here's the agency of the whole property going a-begging: the rents, I believe, are about a thousand a-year: you might be recaving them all by jist a word of your mouth, and that only telling the blessed truth; and here, you're going to put the whole thing into the hands of young Kelly; throwing up even the half of the business you have got!"

"Who says I'm afther doing any sich thing, Mr Daly?"

"Why, Martin Kelly says so. Didn't as many as four or five persons hear him say, down at Dunmore, that divil a one of the tenants'd iver pay a haporth [30] of the November rents to anyone only jist to himself?

There was father Geoghegan heard him, an Doctor Ned Blake."

[FOOTNOTE 30: haporth--half-penny's worth]

"Maybe he'll find his mistake, Mr Daly."

"Maybe he will, Mr Moylan. Maybe we'll put the whole affair into the courts, and have a regular recaver over the property, under the Chancellor. People, though they're ever so respectable in their way,--and I don't mane to say a word against the Kellys, Mr Moylan, for they were always friends of mine--but people can't be allowed to make a dead set at a property like this, and have it all their own way, like the bull in the china-shop. I know there has been an agreement made, and that, in the eye of the law, is a conspiracy. I positively know that an agreement has been made to induce Miss Lynch to become Martin Kelly's wife; and I know the parties to it, too; and I also know that an active young fellow like him wouldn't be paying an agent to get in his rents; and I thought, if Mr Lynch was willing to appoint you his agent, as well as his sister's, it might be worth your while to lend us a hand to settle this affair, without forcing us to stick people into a witness-box whom neither I nor Mr Lynch--"

"But what the d----l can I--"

"Jist hear me out, Mr Moylan; you see, if they once knew--the Kellys I mane--that you wouldn't lend a hand to this piece of iniquity--"

"Which piece of iniquity, Mr Daly?--for I'm entirely bothered."

"Ah, now, Mr Moylan, none of your fun: this piece of iniquity of theirs, I say; for I can call it no less. If they once knew that you wouldn't help 'em, they'd be obliged to drop it all; the matter'd never have to go into court at all, and you'd jist step into the agency fair and aisy; and, into the bargain, you'd do nothing but an honest man's work."

The old man broke down, and consented to "go agin the Kellys," as he somewhat ambiguously styled his apostasy, provided the agency was absolutely promised to him; and he went away with the understanding that he was to come on the following day and meet Mr Lynch.

At two o'clock, punctual to the time of his appointment, Moylan was there, and was kept waiting an hour in Daly's little parlour. At the end of this time Barry came in, having invigorated his courage and spirits with a couple of gla.s.ses of brandy. Daly had been for some time on the look-out for him, for he wished to say a few words to him in private, and give him his cue before he took him into the room where Moylan was sitting. This could not well be done in the office, for it was crowded. It would, I think, astonish a London attorney in respectable practice, to see the manner in which his brethren towards the west of Ireland get through their work. Daly's office was open to all the world; the front door of the house, of which he rented the ground floor, was never closed, except at night; nor was the door of the office, which opened immediately into the hail.

During the hour that Moylan was waiting in the parlour, Daly was sitting, with his hat on, upon a high stool, with his feet resting on a small counter which ran across the room, smoking a pipe: a boy, about seventeen years of age, Daly's clerk, was filling up numbers of those abominable formulas of legal persecution in which attorneys deal, and was plying his trade as steadily as though no February blasts were blowing in on him through the open door, no sounds of loud and boisterous conversation were rattling in his ears. The dashing manager of one of the branch banks in the town was sitting close to the little stove, and raking out the turf ashes with the office rule, while describing a drinking-bout that had taken place on the previous Sunday at Blake's of Blakemount; he had a cigar in his mouth, and was searching for a piece of well-kindled turf, wherewith to light it. A little fat oily shopkeeper in the town, who called himself a woollen merchant, was standing with the raised leaf of the counter in his hand, roaring with laughter at the manager's story. Two frieze coated farmers, outside the counter, were stretching across it, and whispering very audibly to Daly some details of litigation which did not appear very much to interest him; and a couple of idle blackguards were leaning against the wall, ready to obey any behest of the attorney's which might enable them to earn a sixpence without labour, and listening with all their ears to the different interesting topics of conversation which might be broached in the inner office.

"Here's the very man I'm waiting for, at last," said Daly, when, from his position on the stool, he saw, through the two open doors, the bloated red face of Barry Lynch approaching; and, giving an impulse to his body by a shove against the wall behind him, he raised himself on to the counter, and, a.s.sisting himself by a pull at the collar of the frieze coat of the farmer who was in the middle of his story, jumped to the ground, and met his client at the front door.

"I beg your pardon, Mr Lynch," said he as soon as he had shaken hands with him, "but will you just step up to my room a minute, for I want to spake to you;" and he took him up into his bed-room, for he hadn't a second sitting-room. "You'll excuse my bringing you up here, for the office was full, you see, and Moylan's in the parlour."

"The d----l he is! He came round then, did he, eh, Daly?"

"Oh, I've had a terrible hard game to play with him. I'd no idea he'd be so tough a customer, or make such a good fight; but I think I've managed him."

"There was a regular plan then, eh, Daly? Just as I said. It was a regular planned scheme among them?"

"Wait a moment, and you'll know all about it, at least as much as I know myself; and, to tell the truth, that's devilish little. But, if we manage to break off the match, and get your sister clane out of the inn there, you must give Moylan your agency, at any rate for two or three years."

"You haven't promised that?"

"But I have, though. We can do nothing without it: it was only when I hinted that, that the old sinner came round."

"But what the deuce is it he's to do for us, after all?"

"He's to allow us to put him forward as a bugbear, to frighten the Kellys with: that's all, and, if we can manage that, that's enough. But come down now. I only wanted to warn you that, if you think the agency is too high a price to pay for the man's services, whatever they may be, you must make up your mind to dispense with them."

"Well," answered Barry, as he followed the attorney downstairs, "I can't understand what you're about; but I suppose you must be right;"

and they went into the little parlour where Moylan was sitting.

Moylan and Barry Lynch had only met once, since the former had been entrusted to receive Anty's rents, on which occasion Moylan had been grossly insulted by her brother. Barry, remembering the meeting, felt very awkward at the idea of entering into amicable conversation with him, and crept in at the door like a whipped dog. Moylan was too old to feel any such compunctions, and consequently made what he intended to be taken as a very complaisant bow to his future patron. He was an ill-made, ugly, stumpy man, about fifty; with a blotched face, straggling sandy hair, and grey s.h.a.ggy whiskers. He wore a long brown great coat, b.u.t.toned up to his chin, and this was the only article of wearing apparel visible upon him: in his hands he twirled a shining new four-and-fourpenny hat.

As soon as their mutual salutations were over, Daly commenced his business.

"There is no doubt in the world, Mr Lynch," said he, addressing Barry, "that a most unfair attempt has been made by this family to get possession of your sister's property--a most shameful attempt, which the law will no doubt recognise as a misdemeanour. But I think we shall be able to stop their game without any law at all, which will save us the annoyance of putting Mr Moylan here, and other respectable witnesses, on the table. Mr Moylan says that very soon afther your father's will was made known--"

"Now, Mr Daly--shure I niver said a word in life at all about the will," said Moylan, interrupting him.

"No, you did not: I mane, very soon afther you got the agency--"

"Divil a word I said about the agency, either."

"Well, well; some time ago--he says that, some time ago, he and Martin Kelly were talking over your sister's affairs; I believe the widow was there, too."

"Ah, now, Mr Daly--why'd you be putting them words into my mouth?

sorrow a word of the kind I iver utthered at all."

"What the deuce was it you did say, then?"

"Faix, I don't know that I said much, at all."

"Didn't you say, Mr Moylan, that Martin Kelly was talking to you about marrying Anty, some six weeks ago?"

"Maybe I did; he was spaking about it."

"And, if you were in the chair now, before a jury, wouldn't you swear that there was a schame among them to get Anty Lynch married to Martin Kelly? Come, Mr Moylan, that's all we want to know: if you can't say as much as that for us now, just that we may let the Kellys know what sort of evidence we could bring against them, if they push us, we must only have you and others summoned, and see what you'll have to say then."

"Oh, I'd say the truth, Mr Daly--divil a less--and I'd do as much as that now; but I thought Mr Lynch was wanting to say something about the property?"

"Not a word then I've to say about it," said Barry, "except that I won't let that robber, young Kelly, walk off with it, as long as there's law in the land."

"Mr Moylan probably meant about the agency," observed Daly.

Barry looked considerably puzzled, and turned to the attorney for a.s.sistance. "He manes," continued Daly, "that he and the Kellys are good friends, and it wouldn't be any convenience to him just to say anything that wouldn't be pleasing to them, unless we could make him independent of them:--isn't that about the long and the short of it, Mr Moylan?"

"Indepindent of the Kellys, is it, Mr Daly?--Faix, thin, I'm teetotally indepindent of them this minute, and mane to continue so, glory be to G.o.d. Oh, I'm not afeard to tell the thruth agin ere a Kelly in Galway or Roscommon--and, av' that was all, I don't see why I need have come here this day. When I'm called upon in the rigular way, and has a rigular question put me before the Jury, either at Sessions or 'Sizes, you'll find I'll not be bothered for an answer, and, av' that's all, I b'lieve I may be going,"--and he made a movement towards the door.

"Just as you please, Mr Moylan," said Daly; "and you may be sure that you'll not be long without an opportunity of showing how free you are with your answers. But, as a friend, I tell you you'll be wrong to lave this room till you've had a little more talk with Mr Lynch and myself.

I believe I mentioned to you Mr Lynch was looking out for someone to act as agent over his portion of the Dunmore property?"

Barry looked as black as thunder, but he said nothing.

"You war, Mr Daly. Av' I could accommodate Mr Lynch, I'm shure I'd be happy to undhertake the business."