Читать книгу Minnie's Bishop and Other Stories - G. A. Birmingham - Страница 11

Mr. Patrick Sweeny, Esq., J.P., Chairman of the D.C.—it was thus that he liked his friends to describe him on the outside of the envelopes—was a great man in the locality. A very large number of people owed him money, and, therefore, were obliged to vote as he wished them to vote at elections. Therefore, he was Chairman of the District Council. His son was inspector of sheep-dipping, at a salary. His son-in-law was rate-collector, with a salary. He himself held the Union contracts for potatoes, turf, milk, flour, and meal, and sometimes acknowledged that he made a profit out of them. One of his nephews was the dispensary doctor; his salary was small, but he made something out of his private practice. Mr. Patrick Sweeny frequently advanced to impecunious farmers the amount necessary to pay the doctor's fees. Another nephew was Member of Parliament for the Southern Division of the County; he also drew a salary.

Once, a very long time ago, it was extremely profitable in Ireland to be connected with one of the great families. A man prospered if he was second cousin to Lord Shannon, or married to a distant relative of Mr. Ponsonby's. We live in a democratic age, and the old iniquities are swept away. The bluest blood is no use to a man now. To have an earl for a relative is nothing. The thing to be is the son of a provincial publican, or, if that is impossible, to marry his daughter or his niece.

One evening, a week before the auction of the Widow Flanagan's farm, Mr. Patrick Sweeny sat in the room behind his shop. It was not an attractive room. The carpet bore evidence of Mr. Sweeny's habit of spitting. The table, which looked at a distance something like mahogany, had no cloth, and was marked in circles by the wet bottoms of tumblers. The wall-paper hung down here and there in strips, and bulged elsewhere in huge bubbles on account of the dampness of the walls. A tarnished cruet-stand, a britannia-metal teapot, and several wine decanters, with labels hung round their necks, adorned the sideboard.

It is the function of an upper class to maintain a standard of beautiful living. Mr. Sweeny, a leading member of our new aristocracy, did his best according to his lights. He sat over his ledger with his coat off, the better to tackle the task of adding figures together. His grey shirt-sleeves were exceedingly dirty. His waistcoat, a garment of many stains and few buttons, lay open to give freedom to the heavings of a huge paunch. Four different smells surrounded him. From his clothes came a heavy reek of artificial manure. His breath exhaled the fumes of whiskey. His body charged the air with an odour of stale sweat. He once boasted—a misguided reformer had proposed the erection of a bathroom in the County Infirmary—that he had not wetted his skin for seven-and-twenty years. His pipe, which he puffed as he worked, added the fourth smell. Even a violent anti-tobacconist would have been grateful, under the circumstances, to inhale the smoke of Mr. Sweeney's pipe.

There was a tap at the door, and a sluttish girl shambled into the room.

"Please sir, the doctor's within in the shop, and says you sent for him."

It would have been difficult to guess the girl's age by looking at her. She had the face of a careworn, middle-aged woman, and the figure of an undeveloped child. Her cheeks were pallid and puffy; the rest of her body was painfully thin. Her eyes were full of watchful terror and dull cunning, like the terror and the cunning of an animal which has often been hunted and expects in the end to be killed. She was fifteen years old. At that age girls ought to want to sing and dance, to be full of joyous confidence in life. This girl shambled, cowered, and lied. She was Mrs. Flanagan's eldest daughter, and she was Mr. Sweeny's servant. She had been made over into a worse than negro slavery three years before, on the understanding that her wages should go to reduce the Widow Flanagan's debt to Mr. Sweeny. No actual cash changed hands. The matter was one of book-keeping. Mrs. Flanagan's debt was not, apparently, greatly reduced; but, perhaps, Delia Flanagan's services were not worth much, and, anyway, book-keeping is a difficult art—the most skillful men sometimes make mistakes in it.

"Please, sir," the girl repeated, "the doctor's within in the shop, and bid me tell you."

"Let him come in here, then. And bring you me a quart of whiskey from the bar, and a couple of tumblers. Is the pigs fed?"

"I'm after feeding them this half-hour."

"Well, get out of this, and be damned!"

Dr. Henaghan entered the room. He was a young man of genteel appearance. He wore a suit of yellow tweed, yellow gaiters strapped round his legs, and yellow boots. He smoked a cigarette. A thin moustache half concealed a feeble mouth. His pale-green eyes were shifty.

"Sit down," said Mr. Sweeny. "I want to talk to you."

"I hope there's nothing wrong with you," said the doctor. "You don't look very fit. You ought to take more exercise. Would you like me to make you up a bottle?"

"Be damned!" said Mr. Sweeny.

The girl tapped at the door again, entered, and deposited a tray on the table. It held a bottle of whiskey, two tumblers, and a jug of water. Neither of the men spoke till she had left the room, and shut the door.

"What's this I hear about young Mrs. Gannon dying?" said Mr. Sweeny.

"Oh, she's dead, right enough." The doctor spoke airily, but he was ill at ease.

"I hear them saying she died because you were too drunk to attend her properly. What do you say to that?"

"I got a red ticket, and I went to the house. She was dead before I got there."

Mr. Sweeny brought his fist down on the table in a way that made the bottle, the glasses, and his nephew jump.

"Answer me straight now. Were you drunk, or were you not?"

"What does it matter whether I was drunk or not? Don't I tell you the woman was dead before I got there?"

"Let me have none of your back talk, for I won't take it from you or any man. I'm Chairman of the Council, and I'm bound to take notice of the complaints that is made against the doctors. I'll have a Local Government Inspector down. I'll have a sworn inquiry. I'll—I'll run you out of this."

"Look here. What's the good of making a fuss? The woman's dead, and her baby along with her. The Local Government can't have a resurrection, can it? I don't deny that I had a drop taken, but I wasn't drunk. I could have looked after her all right if I'd been in time, but I wasn't."

"And why weren't you?"

"Oh, you know how these things go. I thought there was lots of time. I didn't want to spend half the night listening to her groaning."

"It's damned lucky for you that you are my nephew, let me tell you that. If you were any other man, you'd go. Do you hear? You'd better be mighty careful."

"If you like, I'll go to Father Tom to-morrow, and swear off the whiskey."

"You might," said Mr. Sweeny, "and you'd be none the worse if you did. But there's another thing I want to speak to you about. Get the cork out of that bottle, and fill the glasses. That's right. Now, come over here near me. I don't want to be talking loud."

Dr. Henaghan drew his chair up to his uncle's elbow, and listened attentively. Mr. Sweeny spoke at some length in a hoarse whisper. When he had finished, the doctor said:

"It's risky!"

"It'll be a deal more risky for you if I bring an Inspector down to inquire into Mrs. Gannon's death."

"I don't see what I get out of the business. Why don't you get someone else?"

"I can't trust anyone else. If the thing got out on me, I might never get the farm. I can trust you on account of the hold I have over you with all the talk there is about Mrs. Gannon."

"It'll take me three days to go to Belfast and back and get the printing done. How can I go off for three days? Somebody else will die while I am away, and then there'll be more talk."

"Let them die. Amn't I the Chairman, and can't I get you leave of absence for a night or two? I'd like to see the man that would make talk about dying when I bid him keep his mouth shut. That part's all right."

"Why can't I draw up the notices, and get them printed somewhere else besides Belfast?"

"Do you take me for a fool? Or are you a fool yourself? Any of the printers about this part of the country would talk, or, if they didn't, their men would. Then the whole thing would come out."

"It's sure to come out sooner or later. Somebody'll find out that the League never sent out the notices."

"I don't care if it does come out, so long as it doesn't come out before the auction."

"There'll be the hell of a row afterwards!"

"There will not. I'm the biggest subscriber there is to the funds of the League. They won't want to be making a row about my doings. Besides, there's hardly a man of them but is in my books."

"How am I to post them up, supposing I had them? Do you think I'm going round the country in the dead of night, with a pot of paste in one hand and a paint brush in the other?"

"If that's all that's troubling you, I'll send the girl to carry the paste. She's a half-witted creature, anyway, and she'd be afraid to speak, let alone that nobody would listen to her if she did itself."

"Give me a fiver for my exes, and I'll do it."

Mr. Patrick Sweeny extracted five greasy notes from a leather pocket-book, and handed them to his nephew.