the palace. His clothes were that dirty and disorthered wid travellin'
all night, and his boots that muddy, that the butler was not for littin'
him in at the first go off, so says he, very grand; "Her Majesty is
above stairs and can't be seen till she's had her breakwhist."
"Tell her the Lord Liftinant of Ireland desires an interview," says
Essex.
"Oh, beg pardon, me lord," says the butler, steppin' to one side, "I
didn't know 'twas yourself was in it; come inside, sir; the Queen's in
the dhrawin'-room."
Well, Essex leps up the stairs and into the dhrawin'-room wid him, muddy
boots and all; but not a sight of Elizabeth was to be seen.
"Where's your misses?" says he to one of the maids-of-honour that was
dustin' the chimbley-piece.
"She's not out of her bed yet," said the maid, with a toss of her head;
"but if you write your message on the slate beyant, I'll see"--but
before she had finished, Essex was up the second flight and knockin' at
the Queen's bedroom door.
"Is that the hot wather?" says the Queen.
"No, it's me,--Essex. Can you see me?"
"Faith, I can't," says the Queen. "Hould on till I draw the
bed-curtains. Come in now," says she, "and say your say, for I can't
have you stoppin' long--you young Lutharian."
"Bedad, yer Majesty," says Essex, droppin' on his knees before her (the
delutherer he was), "small blame to me if I am a Lutharian, for you have
a face on you that would charm a bird off a bush."
"Hould your tongue, you young reprobate," says the Queen, blushin' up to
her curl-papers wid delight, "and tell me what improvements you med in
Ireland."
"Faith, I taught manners to O'Neill," cries Essex.
"He had a bad masther then," says Elizabeth, lookin' at his dirty boots;
"couldn't you wipe yer feet before ye desthroyed me carpets, young man?"
"Oh, now," says Essex, "is it wastin' me time shufflin' about on a mat
you'd have me, when I might be gazin' on the loveliest faymale the world
ever saw."
"Well," says the Queen, "I'll forgive you this time, as you've been so
long away, but remimber in future that Kidderminster ain't oilcloth.
Tell me," says she, "is Westland Row Station finished yet?"
"There's a side wall or two wanted yet, I believe," says Essex.
"What about the Loop Line?" says she.
"Oh, they're gettin' on with that," says he, "only some people think the
girders a disfigurement to the city."
"Is there any talk about that esplanade from Sandycove to Dunlary?"
"There's talk about it, but that's all," says Essex; "'twould be an
odious fine improvement to house property, and I hope they'll see to it
soon."
"Sorra much you seem to have done, beyant spendin' me men and me money.
Let's have a look at that treaty I see stickin' out o' your pocket."
Well, when the Queen read the terms of Hugh O'Neill she just gev him one
look, an' jumpin' from off the bed, she put her head out of the window,
and called out to the policeman on duty--
"Is the Head below?"
"I'll tell him you want him, ma'am," says the policeman.
"Do," says the Queen. "Hello," says she, as a slip of paper dhropped out
o' the dispatches. "What's this? 'Lines to Mary.' Ho! ho! me gay fella,
that's what you've been up to, is it?"
"Mrs. Brady
Is a widow lady,
And she has a charmin' daughter I adore;
I went to court her
Across the water,
And her mother keeps a little candy-store.
She's such a darlin',
She's like a starlin',
And in love with her I'm gettin' more and more,
Her name is Mary,
She's from Dunlary;
And her mother keeps a little candy-store."
"That settles it," says the Queen. "It's the gaoler you'll serenade
next."
When Essex heard that, he thrimbled so much that the button of his
cuirass shook off and rowled under the dhressin'-table.
"Arrest that man," says the Queen, when the Head-Constable came to the
door; "arrest that thrayter," says she, "and never let me set eyes on
him again."
And, indeed, she never did, and soon after that he met with his death
from the skelp of an axe he got when he was standin' on Tower Hill.
The Boat's Share.
_From "Further Experiences of an Irish R.M."_
BY E. OE. SOMERVILLE AND MARTIN ROSS.
The affair on the strand at Hare Island ripened, with complexity of
summonses and cross-summonses, into an imposing Petty Sessions case. Two
separate deputations presented themselves at Shreelane, equipped with
black eyes and other conventional injuries, one of them armed with a
creelful of live lobsters to underline the argument. To decline the
bribe was of no avail: the deputation decanted them upon the floor of
the hall and retired, and the lobsters spread themselves at large over
the house, and to this hour remain the nightmare of the nursery.
The next Petty Sessions day was wet; the tall windows of the Court House
were grey and streaming, and the reek of wet humanity ascended to the
ceiling. As I took my seat on the bench I perceived with an inward groan
that the services of the two most eloquent solicitors in Skebawn had
been engaged. This meant that Justice would not have run its course till
heaven knew that dim hour of the afternoon, and that that course would
be devious and difficult.
All the pews and galleries (any Irish court-house might, with the
addition of a harmonium, pass presentably as a dissenting chapel) were
full, and a line of flat-capped policemen stood like church-wardens near
the door. Under the galleries, behind what might have answered to
choir-stalls, the witnesses and their friends hid in darkness, which
could, however, but partially conceal two resplendent young ladies,
barmaids, who were to appear in a subsequent Sunday drinking case. I was
a little late, and when I arrived Flurry Knox, supported by a couple of
other magistrates, was in the chair, imperturbable of countenance as was
his wont, his fair and delusive youthfulness of aspect unimpaired by his
varied experiences during the war, his roving, subtle eye untamed by
four years of matrimony.
A woman was being examined, a square and ugly country-woman, with wispy
fair hair, a slow, dignified manner, and a slight and impressive
stammer. I recognised her as one of the bodyguard of the lobsters. Mr.
Mooney, solicitor for the Brickleys, widely known, and respected as
"Roaring Jack," was in possession of that much-enduring organ, the ear
of the Court.
"Now, Kate Keohane!" he thundered, "tell me what time it was when all
this was going on?"
"About duskish, sir. Con Brickley was slashing the f-fish at me mother
the same time. He never said a word but to take the shtick and fire me
dead with it on the sthrand. He gave me plenty of blood to dhrink, too,"
said the witness, with acid decorum. She paused to permit this agreeable
fact to sink in, and added, "his wife wanted to f-fashten on me the same
time, an' she havin' the steer of the boat to sthrike me."
These were not precisely the facts that Mr. Murphy, as solicitor for the
defence, wished to elicit.
"Would you kindly explain what you mean by the steer of the boat?" he
demanded, sparring for wind in as intimidating a manner as possible. The
witness stared at him.
"Sure, 'tis the shtick, like, that they pulls here and there to go in
their choice place."
"We may presume that the lady is referring to the tiller," said Mr.
Mooney, with a facetious eye at the Bench. "Maybe now, ma'am, you can
explain to us what sort of a boat is she?"
"She's that owld that if it wasn't for the weeds that's holding her
together she'd bursht up in the deep."
"And who owns this valuable property?" pursued Mr. Mooney.
"She's between Con Brickley and me brother, an the saine[1] is between
four, an' whatever crew does be in it should get their share, and the
boat has a man's share."
I made no attempt to comprehend this, relying with well-founded
confidence on Flurry Knox's grasp of such enigmas.
"Was Con Brickley fishing the same day?"
"He was not, sir. He was at Lisheen Fair; for as clever as he is, he
couldn't kill two birds under one slat!"
Kate Keohane's voice moved unhurried from sentence to sentence, and her
slow, pale eyes turned for an instant to the lair of the witnesses under
the gallery.
"And you're asking the Bench to believe that this decent man left his
business in Lisheen in order to slash fish at your mother?" said Mr.
Mooney, truculently.
"B'lieve me, sorra much business he laves afther him wherever he'll go!"
returned the witness. "Himself and his wife had business enough on the
sthrand when the fish was dividing, and it is then themselves put every
name on me."
"Ah, what harm are names!" said Mr. Mooney, dallying elegantly with a
massive watch-chain.
"Come, now, ma'am! will you swear you got any ill-usage from Con
Brickley or his wife?" He leaned over the front of his pew, and waited
for the answer with his massive red head on one side.
"I was givin' blood like a c-cow that ye'd shtab with a knife!" said
Kate Keohane, with unshaken dignity. "If it was yourself that was in it
ye'd feel the smart as well as me. My hand and word on it, ye would! The
marks is on me head still, like the prints of dog-bites!"
She lifted a lock of hair from her forehead, and exhibited a
sufficiently repellent injury. Flurry Knox leaned forward.
"Are you sure you haven't that since the time there was that business
between yourself and the post-mistress at Munig? I'm told you had the
name of the post-office on your forehead where she struck you with the
office stamp! Try, now, sergeant, can you read Munig on her forehead?"
The Court, not excepting its line of church-wardens, dissolved into
laughter; Kate Keohane preserved an offended silence.
"I suppose you want us to believe," resumed Mr. Mooney, sarcastically,
"that a fine, hearty woman like you wasn't defending yourself!" Then,
with a turkey-cock burst of fury, "On your oath, now! What did you
strike Honora Brickley with? Answer me that now! What had you in your
hand?"
"I had nothing only the little rod I had after the ass," answered Miss
Keohane, with a child-like candour. "I done nothing to them; but as for
Con Brickley, he put his back to the cliff and he took the flannel wrop
that he had on him, and he threw it on the sthrand, and he said he would
have blood, murdher, or f-fish!"
She folded her shawl across her breast, a picture of virtue assailed,
yet unassailed.
"You may go down now," said "Roaring Jack," rather hastily, "I want to
have a few words with your brother."
Miss Keohane retired, without having moulted a feather of her dignity,
and her brother Jer came heavily up the steps and on to the platform,
his hot, wary, blue eyes gathering in the Bench and the attorneys in one
bold, comprehensive glance. He was a tall, dark man of about five and
forty, clean-shaved, save for two clerical inches of black whiskers, and
in feature of the type of a London clergyman who would probably preach
on Browning.
"Well, sir!" began Mr. Mooney, stimulatingly, "and are you the biggest
blackguard from here to America?"
"I am not," said Jer Keohane, tranquilly.
"We had you here before us not so very long ago about kicking a goat,
wasn't it? You got a little touch of a pound, I think?"
This delicate allusion to a fine that the Bench had thought fit to
impose did not distress the witness.
"I did, sir."
"And how's our friend the goat?" went on Mr. Mooney, with the furious
facetiousness reserved for hustling tough witnesses.
"Well, I suppose she's something west of the Skelligs by now," replied
Jer Keohane with great composure.
An appreciative grin ran round the Court. The fact that the goat had
died of the kick and been "given the cliff" being regarded as an
excellent jest.
Mr. Mooney consulted his notes:
"Well, now, about this fight," he said, pleasantly, "did you see your
sister catch Mrs. Brickley and pull her hair down to the ground and drag
her shawl off of her?"
"Well," said the witness, airily, "they had a bit of a scratch on
account o' the fish. Con Brickley had the shteer o' the boat in his
hand, and says he, 'is there any man here that'll take the shteer from
me?' The man was dhrunk, of course," added Jer charitably.
"Did you have any talk with his wife about the fish?"
"I couldn't tell the words that she said to me!" replied the witness,
with a reverential glance at the Bench, "and she over-right three crowds
o' men that was on the sthrand."
Mr. Mooney put his hands in his pockets and surveyed the witness.
"You're a very refined gentleman, upon my word! Were you ever in
England?"
"I was, part of three years."
"Oh, that accounts for it, I suppose!" said Mr. Mooney, accepting this
lucid statement without a stagger, and passing lightly on. "You're a
widower, I understand, with no objection to consoling yourself?"
No answer.
"Now, sir! Can you deny that you made proposals of marriage to Con
Brickley's daughter last Shraft?"
The plot thickened. Con Brickley's daughter was my kitchen maid.
Jer Keohane smiled tolerantly. "Ah! that was a thing o' nothing."
"Nothing!" said Mr. Mooney, with a roar of a tornado. "Do you call an
impudent proposal of marriage to a respectable man's daughter nothing!
That's English manners, I suppose!"
"I was goin' home one Sunday," said Jer Keohane, conversationally, to
the Bench, "and I met the gerr'l and her mother. I spoke to the gerr'l
in a friendly way, and asked her why wasn't she gettin' marrid, and she
commenced to peg stones at me and dhrew several blows of an umbrella on
me. I had only three bottles of porther taken. There now was the whole
of it."
Mrs. Brickley, from the gallery, groaned heavily and ironically.
I found it difficult to connect these coquetries with my impressions of
my late kitchenmaid, a furtive and touzled being, who, in conjunction
with a pail and scrubbing brush, had been wont to melt round corners and
into doorways at my approach.
"Are we trying a breach of promise?" interpolated Flurry; "if so, we
ought to have the plaintiff in."
"My purpose, sir," said Mr. Mooney, in a manner discouraging to levity,
"is to show that my clients have received annoyance and contempt from
this man and his sister such as no parents would submit to."
A hand came forth from under the gallery and plucked at Mr. Mooney's
coat. A red monkey face appeared out of the darkness, and there was a
hoarse whisper, whose purport I could not gather. Con Brickley, the
defendant, was giving instructions to his lawyer.
It was perhaps as a result of these that Jer Keohane's evidence closed
here. There was a brief interval enlivened by coughs, grinding of heavy
boots on the floor, and some mumbling and groaning under the gallery.
"There's great duck-shooting out on a lake on this island," commented
Flurry to me, in a whisper. "My grand-uncle went there one time with an
old duck-gun he had, that he fired with a fuse. He was three hours
stalking the ducks before he got the gun laid. He lit the fuse then, and
it set to work spluttering and hissing like a goods-engine till there
wasn't a duck within ten miles. The gun went off then."
This useful side-light on the matter in hand was interrupted by the
cumbrous ascent of the one-legged Con Brickley to the witness-table. He
sat down heavily, with his slouch hat on his sound knee, and his wooden
stump stuck out before him. His large monkey face was immovably serious;
his eye was small, light grey, and very quick.
McCaffery, the opposition attorney, a thin, restless youth, with ears
like the handles of an urn, took him in hand. To the pelting
cross-examination that beset him Con Brickley replied with sombre
deliberation, and with a manner of uninterested honesty, emphasising
what he said with slight, very effective gestures of his big, supple
hands. His voice was deep and pleasant; it betrayed no hint of so
trivial a thing as satisfaction when, in the teeth of Mr. McCaffery's
leading questions, he established the fact that the "little rod" with
which Miss Kate Keohane had beaten his wife was the handle of a
pitch-fork.
"I was counting the fish the same time," went on Con Brickley, in his
rolling basso profundissimo, "and she said, 'Let the divil clear me out
of the sthrand, for there's no one else will put me out!' says she."
"It was then she got the blow, I suppose!" said McCaffery, venomously;
"you had a stick yourself, I daresay?"
"Yes. I had a stick. I must have a stick," (deep and mellow pathos was
hinted at in the voice), "I am sorry to say. What could I do to her? A
man with a wooden leg on a sthrand could do nothing!"
Something like a laugh ran at the back of the court. Mr. McCaffery's
ears turned scarlet and became quite decorative. On or off a strand Con
Brickley was not a person to be scored off easily.
His clumsy, yet impressive, descent from the witness stand followed
almost immediately, and was not the least telling feature of his
evidence. Mr. Mooney surveyed his exit with the admiration of one artist
for another, and, rising, asked the Bench's permission to call Mrs.
Brickley.
Mrs. Brickley, as she mounted to the platform, in the dark and nun-like
severity of her long cloak, the stately blue cloth cloak that is the
privilege of the Munster peasant woman, was an example of the
rarely-blended qualities of picturesqueness and respectability. As she
took her seat in the chair, she flung the deep hood back on her
shoulders, and met the gaze of the court with her grey head erect; she
was a witness to be proud of.
"Now, Mrs. Brickley," said "Roaring Jack," urbanely, "will you describe
this interview between your daughter and Keohane."
"It was last Sunday in Shrove, your Worship, Mr. Flurry Knox, and
gentlemen," began Mrs. Brickley nimbly, "meself and me little gerr'l was
comin' from mass, and Mr. Jer Keohane came up to us and got on in a most
unmannerable way. He asked me daughter would she marry him. Me daughter
told him she would not, quite friendly like. I'll tell you no lie,
gentlemen, she was teasing him with the umbrella the same time; an' he
raised his shtick and dhrew a sthroke on her in the back, an' the little
gerr'l took up a small pebble of a stone and fired it at him. She put
the umbrella up to his mouth, but she called him no names. But as for
him, the names he put on her was to call her 'a nasty, long, slopeen of
a proud thing, and a slopeen of a proud tinker.'"
"Very lover-like expressions!" commented Mr. Mooney, doubtless
stimulated by the lady-like titters from the barmaids; "and had this
romantic gentleman made any previous proposals for your daughter?"
"Himself had two friends over from across the water one night to make
the match, a Sathurday it was, and they should land the lee side o' the
island, for the wind was a fright," replied Mrs. Brickley, launching her
tale with the power of easy narration that is bestowed with such amazing
liberality on her class. "The three o' them had dhrink taken, an' I went
to shlap out the door agin them. Me husband said then we should let them
in, if it was a Turk itself, with the rain that was in it. They were
talking in it then till near the dawning, and in the latther end all
that was between them was the boat's share."
"What do you mean by 'the boat's share'?" said I.
"'Tis the same as a man's share, me worshipful gintleman," returned Mrs.
Brickley, splendidly; "it goes with the boat always, afther the crew and
the saine has their share got."
I possibly looked as enlightened as I felt by this exposition.
"You mean that Jer wouldn't have her unless he got the boat's share with
her?" suggested Flurry.
"He said it over-right all that was in the house, and he reddening his
pipe at the fire," replied Mrs. Brickley, in full-sailed response to the
helm. "'D'ye think,' says I to him, 'that me daughter would leave a
lovely situation, with a kind and tendher masther, for a mean, hungry
blagyard like yerself,' says I, 'that's livin' always in this backwards
place!' says I."
This touching expression of preference for myself, as opposed to Mr.
Keohane, was received with expressionless respect by the Court. Flurry,
with an impassive countenance, kicked me heavily under cover of the
desk. I said that we had better get on to the assault on the strand.
Nothing could have been more to Mrs. Brickley's taste. We were minutely
instructed as to how Katie Keohane drew the shawleen forward on Mrs.
Brickley's head to stifle her; and how Norrie Keohane was fast in her
hair. Of how Mrs. Brickley had then given a stroke upwards between
herself and her face (whatever that might mean) and loosed Norrie from
her hair. Of how she then sat down and commenced to cry from the use
they had for her.
"'Twas all I done," she concluded, looking like a sacred picture, "I
gave her a stroke of a pollock on them."
"As for language," replied Mrs. Brickley, with clear eyes, a little
uplifted in the direction of the ceiling, "there was no name from heaven
or hell but she had it on me, and wishin' the divil might burn the two
heels off me, and the like of me wasn't in sivin parishes! And that was
the clane part of the discoorse, yer Worships!"
Mrs. Brickley here drew her cloak more closely about her, as though to
enshroud herself in her own refinement, and presented to the Bench a
silence as elaborate as a drop scene. It implied, amongst other things,
a generous confidence in the imaginative powers of her audience.
Whether or no this was misplaced, Mrs. Brickley was not invited further
to enlighten the Court. After her departure the case droned on in
inexhaustible rancour, and trackless complications as to the shares of
the fish. Its ethics and its arithmetic would have defied the allied
intellects of Solomon and Bishop Colenso. It was somewhere in that dead
afternoon, when it was too late for lunch and too early for tea, that
the Bench, wan with hunger, wound up the affair, by impartially binding
both parties in sheaves "to the Peace."
FOOTNOTE:
[1] A large net.
"King William."
_From "Aliens of the West."_
BY CHARLOTTE O'CONOR ECCLES.
Mrs. Macfarlane was a tall, thin, and eminently respectable woman of
fifty, possessed of many rigid virtues. She was a native of the north of
Ireland, and had come originally to Toomevara as maid to the Dowager
Lady Dunanway. On the death of her mistress, whom she served faithfully
for many years, Lord Dunanway offered to set her up in business, and at
the time our story opens she had been for two years proprietress of the
buffet, and made a decent living by it; for as Toomevara is situated on
the Great Southern and Western Railway, a fair amount of traffic passes
through it.
The stationmaster, familiarly known as "Jim" O'Brien, was Toomevara
born, and had once been a porter on that very line. He was an
intelligent, easy-going, yet quick-tempered man of pronounced Celtic
type, with a round, good-natured face, a humorous mouth, shrewd,
twinkling eyes, and immense volubility.
Between him and Mrs. Macfarlane the deadliest warfare raged. She was
cold and superior, and implacably in the right. She pointed out Jim's
deficiencies whenever she saw them, and she saw them very often. All day
long she sat in her refreshment room, spectacles on nose, her Bible open
before her, knitting, and rising only at the entrance of a customer. Jim
had an uneasy consciousness that nothing escaped her eye, and her
critical remarks had more than once been reported to him.
"The bitther ould pill!" he said to his wife. "Why, the very look ov her
'ud sour a crock o' crame. She's as cross as a bag ov weasels."
Jim was a Catholic and a Nationalist. He belonged to the "Laygue," and
spoke at public meetings as often as his duties allowed. He objected to
being referred to by Mrs. Macfarlane as a "Papish" and a "Rebel."
"Papish, indeed!" said he. "Ribbil, indeed! Tell the woman to keep a
civil tongue in her head, or 'twill be worse for her."
"How did the likes ov her iver get a husban'?" he would ask,
distractedly, after a sparring match. "Troth, an' 'tis no wondher the
poor man died."
Mrs. Macfarlane was full of fight and courage. Her proudest boast was of
being the granddaughter, daughter, sister, and widow of Orangemen.
She looked on herself in Toomevara as a child of Israel among the
Babylonians, and felt that it behoved her to uphold the standard of her
faith. To this end she sang the praises of the Battle of the Boyne with
a triumph that aggravated O'Brien to madness.