Spanish Gold. George A. Birmingham
by tourists. Therefore strangers are rare and objects of great curiosity to the regular inhabitants. There are, broadly speaking, just two classes of strangers to be met in West of Ireland towns which lie off the tourist track. There are gentlemen connected with the Government, the engineers, surveyors, and inspectors of our various benevolent boards; Members of Parliament on tour, and journalists despatched by editors to report on the state of Ireland, who are regarded by the people of Ballymoy as more or less connected with the Government, a sort of camp followers. This class of strangers is only moderately interesting. In Connacht we are getting quite familiar with the Government, and familiarity breeds, if not actual contempt, at all events a lack of curiosity. The second class consists of men who have come to grief somewhere else, through wine, women, or one of the other usual causes of disgrace, and are seeking seclusion till the memory of their misdeeds has faded from the minds of relatives and friends. Respectable relatives and friends, English for the most part, have apparently come to the conclusion that the pastures of the West of Ireland are peculiarly suitable to black sheep. This class is smaller than the other, but much more interesting. The stories of the exile's misdeeds, when we get to know them, as we always do in the end, are frequently most diverting.
Meldon leaped to the conclusion that Mr. Doyle's Companion belonged to the class of scandalous livers. He had not the look of benevolent intelligence which is always to be found on the faces of men connected with the Government, and he wore a fur coat, whereas officials, Members of Parliament, and journalists always wear brown tweed suits and disdain luxurious overcoats when they wander in wild places. Besides, Mr. Doyle, the owner of the principal inn in Ballymoy, was likely to have a stranger of the second class under his care, while any one connected with the Government would prefer to go round the country with a priest or a policeman. Meldon wondered whether it was love, or debt, or whisky, which had brought this prodigal to Ballymoy.
Mr. Doyle pulled up his horse and greeted the curate.
"Good-evening to you, Mr. Meldon. A warm evening for the end of May. I'd rather be driving, than riding that machine of yours to-day. On your way to see the Major, eh? You'll find him at home. We've just been out at his place."
"Oh, have you? Wanting to buy the chestnut filly? Take my advice and don't do it. She wouldn't suit your work at all. She's cut out for a polo pony, that one. You're too fat to start polo, Doyle. It wouldn't agree with you at your time of life. You may take my word for that."
Doyle grinned.
"It wasn't the filly I was after. The fact is that this gentleman, Mr. Langley——"
"Langton," said the stranger.
"That this gentleman," said Doyle, avoiding a second attempt at the name, "wants to hire a yacht, and I thought the Major might let him have the Spindrift. She's the best boat about these parts, though there's others, of course plenty of others."
"I have one myself," said Meldon.
"You have," said Doyle, "and I was intending to take the gentleman round to your place this evening. Your boat would just suit him."
"What sort of a boat does he want?" said Meldon.
"I'm looking out for a small yacht," said Langton, "anything from ten tons down to five would do. I and a friend intend to take a little cruise together, and we want something that we can work without professional assistance."
"The Major didn't see his way to hiring his," said Doyle.
Meldon eyed the stranger and thought that the Major was quite right in refusing to trust the smart, well found Spindrift to Mr. Langton. The man didn't look as if he ought to go to sea without professional assistance. He looked like a man who might make a wreck of a boat through incapacity to manage her. Meldon's own boat was neither smart nor well found. He had got her cheap because her hull was rotten and most of her rigging untrustworthy. It was one thing to hire the trim Spindrift to a chance stranger, who might knock the bottom out of her or ruin her sails; it was quite a different thing to bargain for the use of his own Aureole, which no amount of battering could make much worse than she was. Like every one else in the West of Ireland, cleric or layman, Meldon had a keen taste for making money out of a stranger. He looked at Langton and hoped that it was love or whisky, not debt, which had driven him to Ballymoy.
"There's more boats in the country than the Major's," he said.
"That's what I'm just after telling the gentleman," said Doyle, "there's yours."
"I'm wanting her for my own use."
"She's a good boat," said Doyle.
"I must be getting along," said Meldon. "Good-evening to you, Doyle. Good-evening, Mr. Langton."
"You wouldn't be wanting to hire her?" said Doyle, unimpressed by the curate's farewell. "It's not often you take her out."
"How long would your friend require her for?"
"One month," said Langton. "My friend and I want to have a cruise on your charming coast, to take a pleasure trip. To find repose from the tumult of the world on the bosom of the Atlantic."
Doyle winked at the curate. Meldon, reflecting that a man who talked in such a way in broad daylight must be a fool about money, determined to hire the Aureole to the stranger.
"I can't wait now," he said, "but I'll call round at your place to-night, Doyle. Don't go to bed till I come. We'll talk the matter over."
He mounted his bicycle and rode on towards Portsmouth Lodge.
Kent is an English name. The traveller meets it in Connacht with surprise; perhaps, if he is an amateur of local colour, with disgust. An inhabitant of Mayo or Galway ought to have a name beginning with O', a name with several apparently unnecessary letters in it. He has no business to sign himself John Kent. Still less has a house in the West of Ireland any right to a name like Portsmouth Lodge. It raises thoughts of merry England, of the concreted parade of some naval town. It is incongruous. It meets the sentimental traveller, who expects the Celtic glamour, Tir-na-noge, and fairy lore, like a slap in the face. Yet it never occurred to the Major to alter one name or the other. He was born too early to come under the spell of the Gaelic revival, and never felt the slightest inclination to write himself Seaghan Ceannt, or to translate his address into Béal an Chuain. He had inherited both names from his grandfather, an English sailor, the first of his family to settle in Ireland.
The Major himself had served for many consecutive years in a line regiment. The drill, to which he took naturally, being the kind of man who enjoys drill, had straightened his back, and it continued to be straight long after his retirement from military life. The feeling in favour of smartness of attire which prevails among men holding His Majesty's commission remained with Major Kent and distinguished him among the small landholders and professional men of the Ballymoy district. They preferred comfort to neatness. Major Kent, at great sacrifice of leisure, creased his trousers and dressed for dinner every night. He had a taste for discipline which he carried into the management of his small estate and into the business of the petty sessions court. He annoyed both his tenants and his neighbours by his fads, but was a popular man because of the real goodness of his heart. He was an excellent shot, a good amateur yachtsman, a regular subscriber to the funds of the church, and a bachelor. He had formed a friendship with the Rev. Joseph John Meldon in spite of the curate's free-and-easy manners, habitual unpunctuality, and incurable untidiness. It is said that men are attracted to those who differ from them, that like does not readily mate with like. If this is a law of nature, the friendship between Major Kent and the curate formed a fine example of its working.
Meldon entered the dining-room of Portsmouth Lodge and found the Major at the writing-table with a pile of papers and parchments beside him. Papers of any kind, except the Times, which the Major read regularly, were rare in Portsmouth Lodge. To see his friend occupied with what looked like legal documents was unprecedented in Meldon's experience. He stood amazed at the sight. The Major looked up.
"Who the devil's disturbing me now? Oh, it's you, J. J. I beg your reverence's pardon for swearing, but this is the fourth time I've been interrupted this afternoon already. First there was James Fintan, the publican from Ballyglunin, wanting