Domestic fiction; Ireland -- Fiction; Land tenure -- Fiction; Landlord and tenant -- Fiction; Landowners -- Fiction
Daly left the inn, after his interview with Anty and the Kellys, in
anything but a pleasant frame of mind. In the first place, he knew that
he had been signally unsuccessful, and that his want of success had
been mainly attributable to his having failed to see Anty alone; and,
in the next place, he felt more than ever disgusted with his client. He
began to reflect, for the first time, that he might, and probably
would, irretrievably injure his character by undertaking, as Martin
truly called it, such a very low line of business: that, if the matter
were persevered in, every one in Connaught would be sure to hear of
Anty’s persecution; and that his own name would be so mixed up with
Lynch’s in the transaction as to leave him no means of escaping the
ignominy which was so justly due to his employer. Beyond these selfish
motives of wishing to withdraw from the business, he really pitied
Anty, and felt a great repugnance at being the means of adding to her
troubles; and he was aware of the scandalous shame of subjecting her
again to the ill-treatment of such a wretch as her brother, by
threatening proceedings which he knew could never be taken.
As he got on the car to return to Tuam, he determined that whatever
plan he might settle on adopting, he would have nothing further to do
with prosecuting or persecuting either Anty or the Kellys. “I’ll give
him the best advice I can about it,” said Daly to himself; “and if he
don’t like it he may do the other thing. I wouldn’t carry on with this
game for all he’s worth, and that I believe is not much.” He had
intended to go direct to Dunmore House from the Kellys, and to have
seen Barry, but he would have had to stop for dinner if he had done so;
and though, generally speaking, not very squeamish in his society, he
did not wish to enjoy another after-dinner _tête-à-tête_ with him—“It’s
better to get him over to Tuam,” thought he, “and try and make him see
rason when he’s sober: nothing’s too hot or too bad for him, when he’s
mad dhrunk afther dinner.”
Accordingly, Lynch was again summoned to Tuam, and held a second
council in the attorney’s little parlour. Daly commenced by telling him
that his sister had seen him, and had positively refused to leave the
inn, and that the widow and her son had both listened to the threats of
a prosecution unmoved and undismayed. Barry indulged in his usual
volubility of expletives; expressed his fixed intention of
exterminating the Kellys; declared, with many asseverations, his
conviction that his sister was a lunatic; swore, by everything under,
in, and above the earth, that he would have her shut up in the Lunatic
Asylum in Ballinasloe, in the teeth of the Lord Chancellor and all the
other lawyers in Ireland; cursed the shades of his father, deeply and
copiously; assured Daly that he was only prevented from recovering his
own property by the weakness and ignorance of his legal advisers, and
ended by asking the attorney’s advice as to his future conduct.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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