“Didn't I tell you how it would be?” said Billy, as he re-entered the
kitchen, now crowded by the workpeople, anxious for tidings of the sick
man. “The head is re-leaved, the congestive symptoms is allayed, and
when the artarial excitement subsides, he 'll be out of danger.”
“Musha, but I 'm glad,” muttered one; “he 'd be a great loss to us.”
“True for you, Patsey; there's eight or nine of us here would miss him
if he was gone.”
“Troth, he doesn't give much employment, but we couldn't spare him,”
croaked out a third, when the entrance of the Corporal cut short further
commentary; and the party gathered around the cheerful turf fire with
that instinctive sense of comfort impressed by the swooping wind and
rain that beat against the windows.
“It's a dreadful night outside; I would n't like to cross the lough in
it,” said one.
“Then that's just what I'm thinking of this minit,” said Billy. “I'll
have to be up at the office for the bags at six o'clock.”
“Faix, you 'll not see Leenane at six o'clock to-morrow.”
“Sorra taste of it,” muttered another; “there's a sea runnin' outside
now that would swamp a life-boat.”
“I'll not lose an illigant situation of six pounds ten a year, and a
pair of shoes at Christmas, for want of a bit of courage,” said Billy;
“I'd have my dismissal if I wasn't there as sure as my name is Billy
Traynor.”
“And better for you than lose your life, Billy,” said one.
“And it's not alone myself I'd be thinking of,” said Billy; “but every
man in this world, high and low, has his duties. _My_ duty,” added he,
somewhat pretentiously, “is to carry the King's mail; and if anything
was to obstruckt, or impade, or delay the correspondience, it's on me
the blame would lie.”
“The letters wouldn't go the faster because you were drowned,” broke in
the Corporal.
“No, sir,” said Billy, rather staggered by the grin of approval that met
this remark--“no, sir, what you ob-sarve is true; but nobody reflects on
the sintry that dies at his post.”
“If you must and will go, I'll give you the yawl,” said Craggs; “and I
'll go with you myself.”
“Spoke like a British Grenadier,” cried Billy, with enthusiasm.
“Carbineer, if the same to you, master,” said the other, quietly; “I
never served in the infantry.”
“_Tros Tyriusve mihi_,” cried Billy; “which is as much as to say,--
“'To storm the skies, or lay siege to the moon,
Give me one of the line, or a heavy dragoon,'
it's the same to me, as the poet says.”
And a low murmur of the company seemed to accord approval to the
sentiment.
“I wish you 'd give us a tune, Billy,” said one, coaxingly.
“Or a song would be better,” observed another.
“Faix,” cried a third, “'tis himself could do it, and in Frinch or Latin
if ye wanted it.”
“The Germans was the best I ever knew for music,” broke in Craggs. “I
was brigaded with Arentschild's Hanoverians in Spain; and they used to
sit outside the tents every evening, and sing. By Jove! how they did
sing--all together, like the swell of a church organ.”
“Yes, you're right,” said Billy, but evidently yielding an unwilling
assent to this doctrine. “The Germans has a fine national music, and
they 're great for harmony. But harmony and melody is two different
things.”
“And which is best, Billy?” asked one of the company.
“Musha, but I pity your ignorance,” said Billy, with a degree of
confusion that raised a hearty laugh at his expense.
“Well, but where's the song?” exclaimed another.
“Ay,” said Craggs, “we are forgetting the song. Now for it, Billy. Since
all is going on so well above stairs, I'll draw you a gallon of ale,
boys, and we 'll drink to the master's speedy recovery.”
It was a rare occasion when the Corporal suffered himself to expand in
this fashion, and great was the applause at the unexpected munificence.
Billy at the same moment took out his fiddle and began that process of
preparatory screwing and scraping which, no matter how distressing to
the surrounders, seems to afford intense delight to performers on
this instrument. In the present case, it is but fair to say, there was
neither comment nor impatience; on the contrary, they seemed to accept
these convulsive throes of sound as an earnest of the grand flood of
melody that was coming. That Billy was occupied with other thoughts than
those of tuning was, however, apparent, for his lips continued to move
rapidly; and at moments he was seen to beat time with his foot, as
though measuring out the rhythm of a verse.
“I have it now, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, making a low obeisance
to the company; and so saying, he struck up a very popular tune, the
same to which a reverend divine wrote his words of “The night before
Larry was Stretched;” and in a voice of a deep and mellow fulness,
managed with considerable taste, sang--
“'A fig for the chansons of France,
Whose meaning is always a riddle;
The music to sing or to dance
Is an Irish tune played on the fiddle.
To your songs of the Rhine and the Rhone
I 'm ready to cry out I am satis;
Just give us something of our own
In praise of our Land of Potatoes.
Tol lol de lol, etc.
“'What care I for sorrows of those
Who speak of their heart as a cuore;
How expect me to feel for the woes
Of him who calls love an amore!
Let me have a few words about home,
With music whose strains I 'd remember,
And I 'll give you all Florence and Rome,
Tho' they have a blue sky in December.
Tol lol de lol, etc.
“'With a pretty face close to your own,
I 'm sore there's no rayson for sighing;
Nor when walkin' beside her alone,
Why the blazes be talking of dying!
That's the way tho', in France and in Spain,
Where love is not real, but acted,
You must always portend you 're insane,
Or at laste that you 're partly distracted.
Tol lol de lol, etc.'”
It is very unlikely that the reader will estimate Billy's impromptu as
did the company; in fact, it possessed the greatest of all claims to
their admiration, for it was partly incomprehensible, and by the
artful introduction of a word here and there, of which his hearers knew
nothing, the poet was well aware that he was securing their heartiest
approval. Nor was Billy insensible to such flatteries. The _irritabile
genus_ has its soft side, and can enjoy to the uttermost its own
successes. It is possible, if Billy had been in another sphere, with
much higher gifts, and surrounded by higher associates, that he might
have accepted the homage tendered him with more graceful modesty, and
seemed at least less confident of his own merits; but under no possible
change of places or people could the praise have bestowed more sincere
pleasure.
“You're right, there, Jim Morris,” said he, turning suddenly round
towards one of the company; “you never said a truer thing than that.
The poetic temperament is riches to a poor man. Wherever I go--in all
weathers, wet and dreary, and maybe footsore, with the bags full, and
the mountain streams all flowin' over--I can just go into my own mind,
just the way you'd go into an inn, and order whatever you wanted. I
don't need to be a king, to sit on a throne; I don't want ships,
nor coaches, nor horses, to convay me to foreign lands. I can bestow
kingdoms. When I haven't tuppence to buy tobacco, and without a shoe to
my foot, and my hair through my hat, I can be dancin' wid princesses,
and handin' empresses in to tay.”
“Musha, musha!” muttered the surrounders, as though they were listening
to a magician, who in a moment of unguarded familiarity condescended to
discuss his own miraculous gifts.
“And,” resumed Billy, “it isn't only what ye are to yourself and your
own heart, but what ye are to others, that without that sacret bond
between you, wouldn't think of you at all. I remember, once on a time, I
was in the north of England travelling, partly for pleasure, and partly
with a view to a small speculation in Sheffield ware--cheap penknives
and scissors, pencil-cases, bodkins, and the like--and I wandered about
for weeks through what they call the Lake Country, a very handsome
place, but nowise grand or sublime, like what we have here in
Ireland--more wood, forest timber, and better-off people, but nothing
beyond that!
“Well, one evening--it was in August--I came down by a narrow path to
the side of a lake, where there was a stone seat, put up to see the view
from, and in front was three wooden steps of stairs going down into
the water, where a boat might come in. It was a lovely spot, and well
chosen, for you could count as many as five promontories running out
into the lake; and there was two islands, all wooded to the water's
edge; and behind all, in the distance, was a great mountain, with clouds
on the top; and it was just the season when the trees is beginnin' to
change their colors, and there was shades of deep gold, and dark olive,
and russet brown, all mingling together with the green, and glowing in
the lake below under the setting sun, and all was quiet and still
as midnight; and over the water the only ripple was the track of a
water-hen, as she scudded past between the islands; and if ever there
was peace and tranquillity in the world it was just there! Well, I put
down my pack in the leaves, for I did n't like to see or think of it,
and I stretched myself down at the water's edge, and I fell into a fit
of musing. It's often and often I tried to remember the elegant fancies
that came through my head, and the beautiful things that I thought I saw
that night out on the lake fornint me! Ye see I was fresh and fastin';
I never tasted a bit the whole day, and my brain, maybe, was all the
better; for somehow janius, real janius, thrives best on a little
starvation. And from musing I fell off asleep; and it was the sound of
voices near that first awoke me! For a minute or two I believed I was
dreaming, the words came so softly to my ear, for they were spoken in
a low, gentle voice, and blended in with the slight splash of oars that
moved through the water carefully, as though not to lose a word of him
that was speakin'.
“It's clean beyond _me_ to tell you what he said; and, maybe, if I
could, ye would n't be able to follow it, for he was discoorsin' about
night and the moon, and all that various poets said about them; ye'd
think that he had books, and was reading out of them, so glibly came the
verses from his lips. I never listened to such a voice before, so soft,
so sweet, so musical, and the words came droppin' down, like the clear
water filterin' over a rocky ledge, and glitterin' like little spangles
over moss and wild-flowers.
“It wasn't only in English but Scotch ballads, too, and once or twice in
Italian that he recited, till at last he gave out, in all the fulness of
his liquid voice, them elegant lines out of Pope's Homer:--
“'As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,
O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light,
When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,
And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene,
Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole:
O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,
And top with silver every mountain's head;
Then shine the vales; the rocks in prospect rise--
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies;
The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight,
Eye the blue vault and bless the useful light.'
“The Lord forgive me, but when he came to the last words and said,
'useful light,' I couldn't restrain myself, but broke out, 'That's
mighty like a bull, anyhow, and reminds me of the ould song,--
“'Good luck to the moon, she's a fine noble creature,
And gives us the daylight all night in the dark.'
“Before I knew where I was, the boat glided in to the steps, and a tall
man, a little stooped in the shoulders, stood before me.
“'Is it you,' said he, with a quiet laugh, 'that accuses Pope of a
bull?'
“'It is,' says I; 'and, what's more, there isn't a poet from Horace
downwards that I won't show bulls in; there's bulls in Shakspeare and
in Milton; there's bulls in the ancients; I 'll point out a bull in
Aristophanes.'
“'What have we here?' said he, turning to the others.
“'A poor crayture,' says I, 'like Goldsmith's chest of drawers,--
“'With brains reduced a doable debt to pay, To dream by night, sell
Sheffield ware by day.'
“Well, with that he took a fit of laughing, and handing the rest out
of the boat, he made me come along at his side, discoorsin' me about
my thravels, and all I seen, and all I read, till we reached an elegant
little cottage on a bank right over the lake; and then he brought me in
and made me take tay with the family; and I spent the night there; and
when I started the next morning there was n't a 'screed' of my pack that
they did n't buy, penknives, and whistles, and nut-crackers, and all,
just, as they said, for keepsakes. Good luck to them, and happy hearts,
wherever they are, for they made mine happy that day; ay, and for many
an hour afterwards, when I just think over their kind words and pleasant
faces.”
More than one of the company had dropped off asleep during Billy's
narrative, and of the others, their complaisance as listeners appeared
taxed to the utmost, while the Corporal snored loudly, like a man who
had a right to indulge himself to the fullest extent.
“There's the bell again,” muttered one, “that's from the 'lord's room;'”
and Craggs, starting up by the instinct of his office, hastened off to
his master's chamber.
“My lord says you are to remain here,” said he, as he re-entered a few
minutes later; “he is satisfied with your skill, and I'm to send off a
messenger to the post, to let them know he has detained you.”
“I 'm obaydient,” said Billy, with a low bow; “and now for a brief
repose!” And so saying, he drew a long woollen nightcap from his
pocket, and putting it over his eyes, resigned himself to sleep with the
practised air of one who needed but very little preparation to secure
slumber.