I'll swear to the day,--it was a Tuesday; by token, that it happened
the day after Luna mon moch,--the good woman's Monday,--Pat's wife was
looking out for him coming home from market; and as he rode down the
hill, she saw one of the panniers on the poney weighed down as if it had
a load, and the other up in the air. Pat, I must tell you, was the first
who brought panniers into this part of the country; the likes o' them
was never seen here before, and few with any but himself since. “What
ails you, Pat?” said the wife, as soon as Pat came within reach of her
voice; it's a little voice when you're near, but it goes a good way for
all that:--“what ails you?” says she; “couldn't you sell your turkies?”
“May be, I couldn't; what then?” says he.
“Then why not load the garron partly o' both sides?”
“May be, I couldn't,” says Pat again.
“And why couldn't you?”
“Mistress Doolan, would you like to be struck in a heap?”
“Is it by you, Pat?--what news, then?--any how why not spake it out?”
“Don't bother me now; isn't it to The Beg I'm going?”
“Wid a load you picked up on the road, Pat, is it?”
“Aha!” says he, “can't I keep a thing from you?”
“What is it, Pat?” said she; and he'd now just met the wife; for,
finding the conversation grow interesting, she had left the door,
and walked away up the hill to meet him, quickening her pace at each
question. “What is it, Pat?” says she, trying to peep into the pannier;
but Pat wouldn't let her.
“Sally,” says he,--for that's her name;--“would you think it, that
there's mighty bad people about?”
“Why not?” says she; “there's bad people all over the world.”
“But not bad enough to put their babies on big stones by the road-side,
and lave them there by thimselves, wid a bit of a switch stuck up, and a
shred of a souldier's red jacket on the top of it, the way people might
notice thim;--there's not such people as that all over the world I
hope,--is there, Sally?”
“Murther, man! is it a child you've picked up, then?”
“Look at that!” says Fat, taking a baby out of the place, and houlding
it up to the full view of his wife; “look at that, and tell me if it
isn't enough like a child for a man to swear by, Mistress Doolan!”
“Won't you let me see it closer, Pat?” said Mistress D. And as she took
the child out of Pat's clumsy paw, where he sat on the poney, the little
crature smiled up in her face, and half stole the very heart of her,
before she had once hugged it to her side. It was the most beautiful
baby, they say, that was seen for many's the day; and Paddy Doolan's
wife took it into the cabin, sat down by the fire, warmed it on her lap,
and fed it with new milk, while Pat remained on his panniers, waiting
for her to come out again.
“Is it all day you're going to be staying there, Paddy?” says she at
last; “ar'n't you coming in?”
“Ar'n't I waiting for the gorloch, to take up to The Beg? I won't be
sint back wid it, I'll engage.”
“Ah! Pat, why trouble yourself?--Couldn't we keep it ourselves?--Good
luck would follow us,--and we've no child of our own, Pat.”
Well, where's the use of making a long story of it?--the wife persuaded
Pat, with much ado, and a dale of begging and beseeching, to let her
keep the little crature herself; but he insisted upon first taking it
off to the lady who bought The Beg.
“I'll take the little thing up to her at once,” says Pat; “and may be,
well get something for our charity.” And sure enough so they did, for
my lady kissed the little crature betuxt the two eyes, and gave Pat a
trifle in hand, and promised to allow him so much a week, for keeping
the child, until she grew--did I tell you she was a girl?--until she
grew up intirely. And a fine young woman she's grown, and all the boys
about are dying for her as, to say nothing of her good-looking face, Pat
has promised her a fortune of fifteen pounds; and I don't know but it
might be a match with her and my niece's son Paudrigg, wasn't it for one
thing;--she won't have him.
Now, after this, though Paddy Doolan did well by the little one, and had
the allowance, and over and above it often, from my lady, things didn't
go right with him. He wint on swimmingly for two or three years or so;
but from that time, Pat's appearance grew poorer, and the wife's bit of
finery wasn't brought home so often, when Pat wint to market. And where
he used to crack a joke with a friend, living by the road-side, as he
came along, he'd sigh, and say uncivil things of this world, and make
wry faces. You'll think Pat was right, for a good deed ought not to go
unrewarded; and you'll like to know how it was. I'll tell you that in a
few words,--more or less;--it's foolish to promise.
At the place where Pat carried his property to market, there was a
half-rogue of a fellow,--Larry Morris by name,--something in Pat's
way of business; but he also bought and sould badgers, and foxes, and
poisoned rats for people; and wouldn't mind, may be, tying up a dog
that followed him home, and lying by till a reward was given out for
the brute. What I mane to say is this,--Larry hadn't the very best of
characters. One day, after coming from somewhere, where he'd been, it
so fell out, that Larry passed by Pat Doolan's cabin, and who should be
playing in front of it, but the child Pat picked up that time two years,
or thereabouts.
“Whose child have you there?” says he to Mrs. Doolan, who was plucking a
duck or a goose at the door.
“Why do you ask, sir?” says she.
“May be, I know the mother of it,” says he.
When they got inside the cabin,--for Mistress Doolan was a woman, and
hearing what she did, of course, invited him in, to know the middle and
both ends of the matter,--she began questioning him: but he was too deep
for her, and got the whole pedigree and history of Pat's finding the
baby, and the lady's giving him money to keep it dacent, and what else
I don't know. Says Larry, when she'd done, “I know the child as if I'd
never lost sight of it. The features are oulder than when I last saw it,
but not changed: and here's the four little round spots on its temple,
like shot-marks, or the picks of a domino. Her mother lodged in a back
room of mine, and ran away one day, no small trifle in arrear with me,
and I never set eyes on her or the child since, before to-day. So much
for the mother;--and”--continued he, in the same breath, turning to Pat
Doolan, who just then walked into the cabin,--“may I be moon-struck,”
says he, pointing to Pat, “but here comes the father!”
What to do, any way, Pat didn't know. You'll agree with me, perhaps,
he'd a right to look astonished. There was Mistress Doolan, who had
lifted her eye-brows up under her hair with the surprise, standing as
mute and as motionless as Pat himself, whose tongue stuck to the roof
of his mouth nearly; while the child was innocently giggling below, and
trying to undo Pat's gaiters. After a while, Mistress Doolan found her
speech. “Is this you, Pat?” says she, quite quietly, for she was too
thunderstruck to be in a passion.
“Faith! and why not, Mistress Doolan?” says he, “worse luck!”--for it
was true, and he couldn't deny it. And Larry Morris went on to tell the
wife, that the child's mother said she was married, and made an excuse
for her husband coming to see her now and then only; and who should the
husband be, but Pat? Moreover, since she had walked off, the way I
tould you, Larry had never seen Pat; and, sure enough, Mistress Doolan
remembered that Pat convinced her, about that time, it would be well for
him to carry his poultry to another market; and he did so.
Doolan put as good a face as he could upon all this. Larry said he was
sorry to be a maker of mischief; but the rogue took advantage of it,
for he drew Pat aside, and, from what passed privately between them, Pat
carried his poultry afterwards to the town where Larry lived.
From that day, poor Paddy Doolan pined;--wouldn't any one in such a
way?--Larry stood between Pat and the market, making Pat sell all his
poultry to him at an under-price, and then going to the great buyers
that sould them again to the consumers; so making a profit beyond
Christian credence out of Pat. And what would you have Doolan do? Wasn't
he afraid of Larry's telling upon him? And if he haggled to get any way
near a fair price, didn't Larry tell him--“Paddy, boy, ar'n't you under
my thumb?” He did: and Doolan was as much afraid of the disgrace of
being exposed, as the loss of my lady's allowance. So he struggled and
struggled, and every day got worse in the world; and bitterly did he
suffer and repent for what he had done. His wife didn't quarrel with the
child this while, but loved and nourished it as if it was her own; so
did Pat--and he had a right, you'll say:--but I wouldn't swear to that;
for who knows but Pat himself might have been cheated, as well as he
cheated Sally his wife?
Now I'm coming near the end of my story--no bad news that, you'll
say:--Pat was tortured for a long time by Larry, “like a toad under
the harrow,” as the story goes, till he could scarcely scrape enough
together to get on with from week's end to week's end. At last and in
the long run, what does Larry do,--like others like him, who, trying to
make the most of their villany, ruin all outright,--what does he do, but
insist upon Pat's paying him half the allowance he got from my lady,
to hould his peace?--Doolan knocked him down with a goose he had in his
hand at the time; jumped on his garron; and if you want to know the
rate he came home at, ask the people by the road-side. Grogy, his
little garron, wondered whether Ireland was sinking, or what was the
matter,--and no blame to him.
When Doolan got home, he tould the wife how he had ruined himself by
knocking down Larry. “You've done well,” says she, “and it was high time
you did.”--Didn't you ever remark, that when a man gets at his wits'
end, and don't know which way to turn, how well a woman will carry him
through? I'm sure you have; and seen the courage of the poor creatures
too, when men are cowed, and can't look the danger that threatens them
full in the face. “You shall be under the thumb no longer, Pat,” says
she:--“you've done that by me I don't like, but it's forgiven, if not
forgot; and let the worst come to the worst, we'll be as well as we
are:--so, come with me at once.”
“Where'll I go?” says Doolan, staring at her, and drawing back, for he
half suspected what she intinded. But Sally was resolute; she took the
child in her hand, and half persuaded, half dragged Pat away, up to my
lady at The Beg. Doolan went down on his knees, while his wife tould her
ladyship the whole story; and when it was done, Pat got such a lecture
as he never had before; no--not even from his wife after Larry's first
visit.
“Look at the fruits,” said my lady; “look at the consequences, Patrick
Doolan, of your misdoings:--didn't you know that sin is always followed
by sorrow?--that deceit can never long plaster up iniquity? You have
richly merited your sufferings, Pat. I shall, of course, stop the
allowance, and take away the child from you. When I find you are so far
deserving, you shall have my protection, and the little girl again; till
then, I withdraw both.”
Terribly downcast was Pat, to be sure, as you may guess but he was no
longer under the thumb. Besides, he'd a hope left, of getting into grace
again by good conduct so to work he went like a Trojan. Larry came down
as hard as he could after Pat, determined to ruin him or make him knock
under again: but when he got to the village, Pat was back from The Beg,
and had tould all his neighbours what he'd been doing; so that they
hadn't much the laugh of him; and as Pat wasn't disliked, the boys and
girls made such a mudlark of Larry, nobody could tell the colour of his
coat.
Pat began to prosper, and, by-and-by, got on well enough: in a year or
two after, the little girl walked into his cabin one day, with a goulden
guinea in her hand, and has lived under Pat's roof ever since. Among us,
she is, as I tould you, much admired for her beauty,--to say nothing of
her being an heiress.
People generally trate a fable as the boys do a dog sometimes,--tie a
moral tay-kittle to its tail; and so would I, if my story was a fable:
but it's neither a story nor a fable, but the downright truth, and if I
made a moral to it, you'd suspect 'twas a fable; as the boys suspect the
dog, if they meet him with a kittle in his train, to be a suspicious and
a stray dog,--don't you see?--and so despise and pelt him. However, for
all that, there can't be much harm in just mentioning that a man will do
well to take warning by Paddy Doolan, and do nothing in the wide world
that may bring him under the thumb.
[Illustration: 260]
OUR TOMMY.
We'd often be frightened out of our lives a'most, did we know, while
we were about them, what mighty events, to ourselves or somebody else,
would spring from some of our every-day doings. But it's right we
shouldn't. If it wasn't so, Paddy Doolan might be breaking his heart,
for the sow that's going to be choaked next Monday, by a bone he'll
throw into her trough to-night. There's none of our actions, big or
little, in my mind, goes off, without leaving a family: something I
did three days,--or, may be, three years ago, was the grandmother of
something I'm doing, or that may befall me, to-day. Peg Dwyer's husband
threw his can at the head of a cow, that wouldn't give out her milk as
she ought, and one of her horns made a hole in its side. That happened
him on a Wednesday;--very well;--he wetted his floor, through carrying
water in the can with the hole in it, on Thursday; it froze in the
night; and early on Friday he got such a bruise, through slipping up
on the floor, which he'd wetted by carrying water in the can that he'd
thrown on the horn of the cow, because she wouldn't give milk, that it
laid him up for a month, and killed him outright in the long run. A boy
quarrels with his home and quits it, because he fancies he don't get
as much buttermilk to his peeathees, or peeathees to his buttermilk, as
some of his brothers; he walks off with himself to the next town; and, a
year after, to the next to that, may be: by-and-by he gets taken by
the tar, as birds are by birdlime; and, after being aboard ship awhile,
casts anchor in foreign parts. Before he can whistle, he's pushed
another move further: and something or other continues to poke him
from place to place, and from post to pillar, till he reaches the
wild Indians at last, and marries Hullamullaloo, the king's youngest
daughter, or gets roasted and devoured--just as it may happen--by that
lady and her iligant maids of honour. And, supposing he'd a good memory,
and could look back, while he stood tied to the stake, or about to be
tied to Hullamullaloo at the altar, as the case might be, he'd find
each of the moves he made through life was owing, one way or another,
to something as simple as his quarrelling, when a boy with his peeathees
and buttermilk, at his mother's mud cabin here at home in ould Ireland.
Poor Tommy Maloe got his liking for martial music, through thumping a
drum, which he'd stolen from young Veogh, when they were both little
boys, and didn't know right from wrong; or if they did, wouldn't make a
shew of what they knew, by doing as they ought. Though Pierce's parents
were rich, and Tommy's were poor, Tommy was Pierce's playmate:
they spent most of their time together, and were always at war, and
frequently fighting. Tommy was the sole and only boy far or near, that
would dare stand up before Master Pierce, when he clenched his little
fist; and there was few that Tommy would demean himself to thump or play
tricks with but Pierce.
Tommy, as I said, stole a drum from little Pierce, or may be carried it
off as booty after a fray; and it was from the delight he got by bating
it with the drumstick of an ould goose, that years after, he bartered
a new hat for a bad fife from which time, for six months and more,
morning, noon, and night, the fife was at Tommy's lips, and he trying to
coax marches out of it, but couldn't. At last he threw it away in a pet;
and took to trapesing after Mick Maguire when he'd be going out to fire
at, and sometimes shoot, the water-birds. Tommy, who was now grown a man
a'most, never felt happier than when Mick would allow him to carry
the gun; and one day, while Mick's back was turned, something or other
tempted him to fire it off. By chance, I suppose, he shot a little
bird--a tern, or a petrel it was--and from that time, Tommy talked of
nothing but shouldering a musket, and getting a pelt at a Frenchman. He
walked thirty miles over mountains and bogs, without a shoe to his foot,
(for his father had hid them that he mightn't go,) to see a review of
two companies of the North Cork, and three dozen of beggarly volunteers.
Our Tommy--for that's the name he is best known by--from his father's
always calling him so--though it was only to himself, a poor doating
ould widower, he belonged;--our Tommy, I say, at last determined to
enlist. He wouldn't be satisfied, he said, until, as every one ought,
he'd killed at least two or three of the enemies of his king and
country. His father begged of him not to go for a souldier and leave him
alone, when he could get good bread at home: but, though Tommy in other
things was as dutiful as most sons, he wouldn't mind his father in this.
At one time, however, it was thought he would forget the Frenchmen, and
behave himself; for he fell in love with one of the prettiest
little girls in these parts, and offered to give up all thoughts of
campaigning, and killing his share of the foreigners, if she'd have him.
But the little girl gave him a downright denial; and a week after that
he got picked up by a recruiting-party at a fair.
Tommy was all on fire to go abroad; and it wasn't long before he got
his wish granted of being sent on foreign service. You'll think of the
little drum, and the goose's leg, and the bad fife, and Mick Maguire's
gun, and the review of the North Cork with the volunteers, and feel sad,
for a moment, may be, when I tell you, that the very first Frenchman he
saw, run his baggonet right through poor Tommy, in a skirmish, before he
could even pull his trigger, and killed him on the spot.
When I say that Tommy was killed on the spot, I mane that he never
stirred from the place where he fell; though he lived long enough to see
the enemy driven back; and then,--as we heard from a disabled dragoon,
who passed through this place on his way home a year after,--poor Tommy
Maloe, though he'd been disappointed so sorely,--like a good boy as he
was in the main,--departed this life with a smiling eye and a prayer on
his lips. And I trust I may do no worse;--though, I must confess, I'd
rather die on a bad bed, than on the finest field of battle,--for I'm
not heroic; and in my own mud cabin, than a grand hospital,--for I'm not
ambitious. And yet I don't know, upon giving the thing a thought dying
is dying all the world over, and it don't matter much where we do it.
I was going to say too, that I'd prefer a natural death in ould age,
to the honour of being cut off by a dragoon's sabre in my prime: but
there's a riddle about death no one can solve; and it isn't often we see
even the ould people go off and melt away like a mist. We may prate
and preach as much as we plaze about hard deaths and aisy deaths;--the
horror and agony of going off one way, compared with another:--but there
isn't a living soul on the face of the earth knows any thing about dying
at last. Drowning is spoken of as being the least disagreeable by some;
others prefer a bullet; one says one thing, and another says another;
even hanging isn't without advocates but _I_ say, there's no knowing
which is best, and which is worst; and we never _shall_ know, that's
certain, until some of us is dead, and gets brought to life again;--and
that you know never can be: for it's nothing but blarney an honest
man tells you about the feelings of death, who has been relieved from
suffocation by a lancet; or, to go further, it's foolish to listen to
what one that has been some time under water, and gets picked up, and
restored, as they call it,--to hear such a one tell what little or what
much he suffered, with an idea of your gathering enough from his story
to know what death by drowning is. If you do that, it's mighty mistaken
you are; and I'll tell you why:--them people that gets restored that way
or any other, no matter how, know but little about the thing, not much
more than-myself or you and why don't they?--because _they never have
died._ You never met with a man in your life, that had died, out and
out. You couldn't; for them that dies completely never breathes mortal
breath again. My father--rest his soul!--thought as I do; and he'd say,
when the fire of existence is once extinguished, it's gone for ever and
ever. When death has entirely done his work, the body is clay; then the
spirit departs, and nothing human can ever bring it back. A man may lie
motionless, breathless, and, what's more, senseless, at the bottom of a
well, for an hour, or, may be, more,--who can tell?--and yet not die. In
that case, by clever means and much work, the dying embers of life may
be brought to a flame again; but once fairly dead, we're dead for
ever. And so, I say, that the man who gets taken out of the water and
recovers, can't say that he was dead. It's true, he has gone to the
door; but has he passed over the threshold?--answer me that! If he had,
he wouldn't have come back to us again, I'll engage! Don't you see,
that we can't take a pair of compasses or a piece of tape, and measure
exactly where life ends and death begins? And how do we know, when we
take leave of a friend, because he don't move, and there's none o' the
dew of life on the glass we put to his lips,--that he's dead?--Tossing
the arms, or gnashing the teeth, shews pain, but there may be greater
agony without it; for if we're violent, it shews we're strong; and it's
suffer we may, much worse perhaps, when we're so weak that we can't wag
a finger. Well, then,--and this is what I've been coming to all through
my rigmarole, but I couldn't before,--how do we know that,--after the
breath goes, and the limbs lose their power, and all is still,--the
dying man, without breathing or moving, or his heart beating, don't feel
the true grapple of death--the parting of soul and body?--Therefore, I
say, as nobody ever came back, as I think, in body,--I don't spake of
ghosts,--from the clutch of our enemy, we don't know anything much about
him; and it's well we don't:--God be praised! all things in this world
is ordered for the best!
It's little or nothing that's left me to add to my story:--poor Tommy
Maloe's father, when he heard of the death of his son, got quite
childish at once, and unable to help himself any way: so that he'd have
had little to look to, but his poor neighbours, if my lady hadn't put
him down on her little list of pensioners, and paid Peg Dwyer to mind
the poor soul, and make him as comfortable, considering all things,
as he well could be. You may still see ould Darby--that's his
name--strolling about, from house to house, as he did on the morning
after the disabled dragoon brought us news of his son's death, and
telling every one who'll listen to him, how his beautiful boy was struck
through and through by a baggonet, like a souldier's loaf,--or a tommy,
as it's called in the army,--when he wint to fight the French, in
foreign parts.
[Illustration: 265]
THE DENTIST.
Malachi Hoe is known, for twenty miles round his house, as a cow-doctor,
and a rat-catcher, and a man of tip-top talent in two or three dozen
useful arts and sciences,--as he himself calls tooth-drawing, and
dog-cropping, and all the things he's famous for. He has the finest
terriers and traps in the whole country; and if there isn't a fox to
be found by the subscription pack, that Squire Lawless, and the rest of
them has, nine miles off, at the brook of Ballyfaddin, they've only to
send a dog-boy to Malachi, before sun-set, and he'll have one in a bag,
ready to turn out before them, by the morning. He's very sparing of
talk, and when he spakes, it's in short bits; and he'll look all the
while as if he'd a right to be paid for his words: and it's well paid
he is for them too, sure enough, by them that can do it. There isn't a
hair's-breadth of a horse, from the crown down to the coronet, or below
that again, to the head of the nail in his shoe, but Malachi knows: he's
as much at home in the inside of a cow as that of his own cabin, and can
tell where any thing is, as well in one as the other,---just as if he'd
put it there himself. But Malachi prides himself most on his skill in
tooth-drawing; and if you ask him what he is, he'll tell you--a dentist.