OUT OF HAND

Soldiers were there to keep the peace. The redcoats and the bayonets moved in a rigid line through the crowd that blocked the two streets of the town. They guarded a small body of voters that had come across Lough Corrib, and was making its way to the polling-booths, headed by a Galway landlord, on whose arm leaned an old man, decrepit, and unnerved by the storm of opposition through which they passed.

Another Galway landlord was ranging through groups of men who turned their backs on him, and hid behind each other, his tenants, personal friends all of them, who, for the first time on record, had voted in opposition to his wishes.

"Every one of them!" he said, while the atmosphere that surrounds suffering and strong emotion made itself felt, "all but two or three. They have all gone against me."

It was a memorable election, marking the new departure in Irish politics, and it broke the hearts and practically ended the lives of two at least of the Galway landlords. Till that time the landlords took their tenants to the poll en masse; thenceforward they were to advance under the banner of the Church.

The epoch that here found its close was memorable, too, in its way. It held, far back in it, the brave days when the Galway elections lasted for a month, and the actual voting for a week, days to which the pages of Lever bear witness. As that week of delightful warfare strove on the electors became more fastidious about their drinks, and would accept nothing less aristocratic than mulled port and claret. These restoratives were brewed in fish-kettles on the big fireplaces of the ballroom in Kilroy's hotel, an agreeable incident, not, we think, commemorated by Lever.

*      *      *      *      *

Twenty years afterwards a Galway village lay mute in the sunshine, drowsy with respectability, assertive of rectitude in every slant of its slate roofs. To view it thus from the waste altitudes of the moor above it, on a Sunday morning of July, with the call of a cock straining up through the silence, was to endue it with all the stillness and strictness of the day itself, even to credit it with a Presbyterian rigour of Sabbaticism that was at variance with the traditions of the County Galway. Down on its own level, and approaching it through the aisle of shade that lay between broken demesne walls and under the lofty embrace of demesne trees, the glare of its whitewash closed the vista blatantly, and with a self-righteousness that suppressed the romantic as a thing of libertine irrelevance. Therefore, to an eye accustomed, during many Sundays, to the recognition of the barren street, with its strings of ducks in moody reverie about the unremunerative gutters, and its dogs asleep outside the closed doors, it was startling beyond the merit of the occasion to be confronted with a staring crowd of people that filled the street loosely from end to end. Every face was turned towards the new-comer, till the whole slope of the hill was flushed with them; then it darkened, as the people realised that nothing worthy of further notice was occurring, and turned their heads again towards Galway.

The crowd was a representative one. Wizened old men in swallow-tailed coats and knee-breeches, degenerate youth in check suits and pot-hats, tanned women in deep-hooded cloaks, girls with shawls over their heads, freckled and ubiquitous children—all smelling heavily of turf smoke, some modernised with the master smell of hair-oil. The anti-Parnellite candidate was expected to arrive at any moment from Galway, to address those who had come to the village for Mass; and though the people had now been out of chapel for an hour there seemed to be no wish to disperse, or any sign of impatience. They even appeared to be enjoying themselves as thoroughly as was compatible with the fact that the public-houses had not yet been opened. Anything so fascinating as a little political excitement was worth waiting for, especially while Providence was liberal of fresh arrivals on outside cars, and invention failed not of the personal allusion wherewith to greet them; so that time passed healthfully, and expectation was no more than pleasantly ripe when outposts on the hill heralded at length the approach of the candidate.

A blended roar of execration and encouragement went out to meet him—a greeting sustained on every note of the human compass in a savagely inarticulate mass of discord. He seemed to cleave his way through it as he passed, his figure moving pompously along on its car above the shoulders of the people, in black coat and white waistcoat, while a deft hand manipulated a tall hat in recognition of every crumb of welcome. He passed on down a by-road towards the chapel, followed by a few dozen people, and by the booing and hooting of the rest of the assemblage. Clearly the materials for the meeting were elsewhere.

It was not far to the chapel, four hundred yards or thereabouts of dusty road, that lay hot and quiet between loose stone walls, dropping to a hollow and rising again to the low height where stood the unmistakable building that is the heart and fountain of parish politics, its plaster and whitewash veiled a little by the kindly churchyard trees, and the stone cross on its gable standing strong and keen under the melting sky.

On nearing the churchyard the candidate's voice was audible through the trees in fluent, opening sentences, each point duly weighted with a "Hee'rr, hee'rr!" as businesslike as the "Amen" of the parish clerk. His car was waiting outside in the shade, and the carman, who was perhaps a little blasé in the matter of speeches, was smoking an unemotional pipe beside it.

"Indeed, you may say the town of Galway is in a quare way," he said, putting his hand to a cheek that was just perceptibly more purple than the other. "Look at meself, the figure I am, that wasn't spakin' a word to a Christhian, good nor bad, and lasht night a fishwoman comes down to me in the sthreet this ways"—squaring his elbows and strutting—"'Hi for Lynch!' says she, hittin' me a puck in the jaw with her skib (basket). The Lord save us! 'tis hardly I ran from her before she had the town gethered afther her. Begob, the women's the most that'd frighten ye!"

At the churchyard gate a couple of long-tailed colts were tied up, saddle-horses evidently, but bare-backed, and bridled with a halter, their bodies bloated with summer grass out of all proportion to their long legs, and their countrified ears pricking occasionally at the cheers that did not by the blink of an eyelid affect the doze of the Galway car-horse. The company inside was a small one as compared with that in the street, and had in it a much larger proportion of women and old men, to which was perhaps due the superior calm of the proceedings. The churchyard was a spacious one, depressingly roomy indeed for the present occasion, for which any suburban back garden would have sufficed. Most of the audience had mounted on the tombstones, great slabs of limestone that formed the lids of the boxes placed over the more distinguished dead, blackish grey, and ringing under the hobnailed-boots like metal. The candidate stood on the highest tombstone, and all around him leaned and clung these strange groups of men and women, looking like the wooded islands in the lake close by; while between them the quiet background of the graveyard was visible, with its bent and musing trees, and array of low head-stones gazing blindly at the concourse.

The bald top of the candidate's head formed the focus-point of the gathering, giving back the sun's glare like glass as it swung and jerked with the flow of oratory, and beside it the immense shovel-hat of the old priest moved occasionally in accord, italicising for the benefit of the flock such phrases as seemed especially edifying. The curate was nowhere to be seen; rumour said that his political theories were not formed on those of his superior. A remembrance recurred of meeting, that morning, a severely contemplative young priest, walking alone and away from the village, with the green flicker of the leaves overhead playing strangely across the gloom of his sallow face.
THE CANDIDATE
THE CANDIDATE

The candidate's speech seemed, indeed, to require a little driving home. It was, for the most part, an explanation to his constituents of the reasons that made it necessary for him to forego the happiness of acquainting himself with them in any intimate degree. He was, he said, in his temperately florid manner, closely connected with a large firm in England and, deplorable to relate, his income depended on his living in the bosom of the English firm. "Sure we know that—we know that!" yelled the half-dozen most chosen supporters, crushing precariously round the candidate on the edge of the tombstone platform, with their wild, combative faces pressing, all on fire, towards him. Perhaps he might yet be roused to say the right things about the rival candidate, the things that would wring forth a cheer in reply to those distant ones that came maddeningly at intervals from the crowd in the street.

But the speaker kept his eloquence well in hand, confining himself to such blind alleys of assertion as the remarkable success of his own career, his confidence that his constituents would re-elect him, and his desire to benefit them in some immeasurable way if they did so. A permissive cynicism curved the wrinkles on the faces of the old men who stood on the grassy graves behind him, with their hands under their coat-tails, and their grizzled chins sunk in their shirt-collars; they knew how they were going to vote, and their own powers (matured in the sale of many a heifer and rood of bog) of taking a part and sustaining it, with a perfectness that would deceive the elect, made them sceptical as to the ends of speech-making. The women were tittering and whispering under their shawls; but were certainly impressed by the candidate's Sunday attire, his well-kept grey moustache, and his affable way of saying "ladies and gentlemen" every now and then.

The speech ambled to its close, through a peroration of an uncertain conversational tone, assisted at critical points by one or other of the supporters, who would ungovernably supply the needed word out of the bursting fulness of his own repertoire. It was the sole outlet for their enthusiasm, except for the cheer that caught at the ravelled edge of the final sentence, as the candidate put on his hat and bowed himself from the tombstone.

"Be prayin' for the meetin', gerrls," said the old priest, leading the way to the vestry, with rusty skirts floating widely. The door closed on him and his protégé, the clumps on the tombstones fell apart, mingling in a laughing and talking stream towards the churchyard gate, and the prayers of the young ladies were apparently deferred to a more convenient season.

The chapel door stood open, showing the barren squareness of the interior; a zinc tub, half-full of Holy-water, stood in the porch, with the flags all round it wet from the splash of dipping hands; the altar gleamed gaudily at the further end; and a tall confession-box stood solitary in the seatless expanse of floor, fraught with the inseparable mystery and suggestiveness of its kind, and holding within its curtained rails the knowledge of what things are counted for unrighteousness in that twilight place, the conscience of the Western peasant. The air inside was warm, and still laden with the smell of frieze coats and stale turf smoke; but, except for this furnishing, the blankness was complete. Sunday and its Mass were over and done with for a week, and priest and congregation were striving factors in the carnal toils of election.

The people dispersed slowly, discussing the absorbing topic of the day, some in their native tongue, but for the most part in English, so pronounced as to be in the distance scarcely distinguishable from the liquid and guttural flow of Galway Irish.
"A MAN MUST WOTE THE WAY HIS PRIEST AND BISHOP'LL TELL HIM"
"A MAN MUST WOTE THE WAY HIS PRIEST AND BISHOP'LL TELL HIM"

"Sure, a man must wote the way his priest and bishop'll tell him," says a tall supporter, with the air of a person repeating a truism.

"Well, meself'd say," says another, whose handsome eyes shone in the shadow of his soft felt hat, while his hands helped out his words with picturesque gesture, "the man I'd have a wish for to wote for him, is the man that'd rise out o' his bed in the night and give hay and oats to yer horse, and yerself fotever ye'd ax, when any one else'd leshen (listen) in their bed if ye were battherin' there till mornin'."

This argument referred to the well-known good nature of the Parnellite candidate, a general dealer and publican in a neighbouring village.

"Well, indeed, he's no scholar, I suppose," says a young fellow, still in reference to the Parnellite. "He has no learnin' nor way of spakin' no more than meself, but becripes! he's a fine sthrong man, and he'll be well able to fight and box in Parliament."

This was said in entire good faith, and was listened to with respect.

"Come on back the road!" bawls a supporter, beckoning authoritatively from the distance, "let yees come on now, the whole o' yee, the way we'd be before the car and it going up!"

The reason for this manoeuvre was presently apparent, on returning to the village street. As the candidate's car left the chapel the Parnellite crowd thronged the corner by which it must pass; a battery of threatening faces, waiting with unknown purpose; a gauntlet to run or to run away from. The car came slowly up the hill, preceded by a party of supporters; the candidate on one side, looking anxious the old priest on the other, bare-headed, and looking still more anxious, but waving his hand as if in greeting, while the interwoven yells became a thrilling mass of sound.

It was well for the candidate that his companion was one of the oldest and most popular of the Galway priests. That prestige had shielded the churchyard meeting from disturbance, and but for its influence now the future M.P. might have returned to England with an appearance not advantageous to the firm of which he was a member. A forest of clenched fists and sticks seemed to leap up towards him, the scream of hatred never took breath, and there was entreaty in the face of the priest as his wrinkled hands waved repressively above the tumult. There was a long moment of uncertainty, but in the next the car was through in safety, and was gone in the twinkling of an eye, the supporters running in its wake till the last waving gleam of the candidate's silk hat had been garnered.

It was then that things began to look, to an Irish eye, most promising and attractive. The supporters turned, formed into a solid body of perhaps forty men and boys, and marched with inimitable swagger straight back into the crowd, all together, in a kind of chant, shouting, "To hell with ——!" (the rival candidate) at the utmost strength of their lungs. The theme was a simple one, but magnificently vocalised, and was instantly replied to in the tu quoque manner by the opposite party. Sticks went up, the women rushed outwards for safety, looking, with their floating shawls, like a flock of frightened turkeys; and at this point the four constabulary men who represented that force made themselves felt. The dangerous moment yielded easily and unresentfully to these judicious hands, and the excitement sputtered out in a little bragging and hustling, without so much as a black eye to commemorate it. In half an hour the ducks were again waddling in line along the empty street, and a muffled hum proceeding from the shuttered public houses, told that the bona fide travellers had at length reached their journey's end. It was a lamentable falling off from the days of the fish kettles and the mulled port of Kilroy's Hotel.

The episode had expired in the way that might have been expected, and was at best an indeterminate, shapeless thing, full of unripe revolt that it was too childish to express. But that moment when the little flame first flickers in the gorse, feeling its naked way among the thorns and affluent blossom, has a wonder of birth in it that is forgotten when the blazing hillside jars the noonday, and the smoke rolls monotonously from strongholds of conflagration.