I CANNOT deny it,--the horrible imprecation I had heard uttered against
me seemed to fill up the cup of my misery. An outcast, without home,
without a friend, this alone was wanting to overwhelm me with very
wretchedness; and as I covered my face with both hands, I thought my
heart would break.
“Come, come. Master Tom!” said Darby, “don't be afeard; it'll never do
you harm, all she said. I made the sign of the cross on the road between
you and her with the end of my stick, and you 're safe enough this time.
Faix, she 's a quare divil when she 's roused,--to destroy an illigint
pot of praties that way! But sure she had hard provocation. Well, well!
you war n't to blame, anyhow; Tony Basset will have a sore reckoning
some day for all this.”
The mention of that name recalled me in a moment to the consideration
of my own danger if he were to succeed in overtaking me, and I eagerly
communicated my fear to Darby.
“That's thrue,” said he; “we must leave the highroad, for Basset will be
up at the house by this, and will lose no time in following you out. If
you had a bit of something to eat.”
“As to that. Darby,” said I, with a sickly effort to smile, “Peg's curse
took away my appetite, full as well as her potatoes would have done.”
“'T is a bad way to breakfast, after all,” said Darby. “Do you ever take
a shaugh of the pipe, Master Tom?”
“No,” said I, laughing, “I never learned to smoke yet.”
“Well,” replied he, a little piqued by the tone of my answer, “'t is
worse you might be doin' than that same. Tobacco's a fine thing for the
heart! Many's the time, when I 'm alone, if I had n't the pipe I 'd be
lone and sorrowful,--thinking over the hard times and the like; but when
I 've filled my dudeen, and do be watching the smoke curling up, I begin
dhraming about sitting round the fire with pleasant companions, chatting
away, and discoorsing, and telling stories. And then I invint the
stories to myself about quare devils of pipers travelling over the
country, making love here and there, and playing dhroll tunes out of
their own heads; and then I make the tunes to them. And after that,
maybe, I make words, and sometimes lay down the pipe and begin singing
to myself; and often I take up the bagpipes and play away with all my
might, till I think I see the darlingest little fairies ever you seen
dancing before me, setting to one another, and turning round, and
capering away,--down the middle and up again; small chaps, with
three-cornered hats, and wigs, and little red coats all slashed with
goold; and beautiful little craytures houlding their petticoats,
this way to show a nate leg and foot; and I do be calling out to
them,--'Hands round!' 'That 's your sowl!' 'Look at the green fellow;
'tis himself can do it!' 'Rise the jig, hoo!'--and faix 't is sorry
enough I 'm when they go, and lave me all alone by myself.”
“And how does all that come into your head. Darby?” “Troth, 'tis hard
to tell,” said Darby, with a sigh. “But my notion is, that the poor man
that has neither fine houses, nor fine clothes, nor horses, nor sarvants
to amuse him, that Providence is kind to him in another way, and fills
his mind with all manner of dhroll thoughts and quare stories and bits
of songs, and the like, and lets him into many a sacret about fairies
and the good people that the rich has no time for. And sure you must
have often remarked it, that the quality has never a bit of fun in
them at all, but does be always coming to us for something to make them
laugh. Did you never lave the parlor, when the company was sitting with
lashings of wine and fruit, and every convaniency, and go downstairs to
the kitchen, where maybe there was nothing but a salt herrin' and a jug
of punch; and if you did, where wais the most fun, I wondher? Arrah,
when they bid me play a tune for them, and I look at their sorrowful
pale faces, and their dim eyes and the stiff way they sit upon their
chairs, I never put heart in it; but when I rise 'Dirty James,' or 'The
Little Bould Fox,' or 'Kiss my Lady,' for the boys and girls, sure 't is
my whole sowl does be in the bag, and I squeeze the notes out of it with
all my might.”
In this way did Darby converse until we reached a cross road, when,
coming to a halt, he pointed with his finger to the distance, and
said,--
“Athlone is down beyond that low mountain. Now, Ned Malone's is only six
short miles from this. You keep this byroad till you reach the smith's
forge; then turn off to the lift, across the fields, till you come to an
ould ruin; lave that to your right hand, and follow the boreen straight;
'twill bring you to Ned's doore.”
“But I don't know him,” said I.
“What signifies that? Sure 'tis no need you have. Tell him you 'll stop
there till Darby the Blast comes for you. And see, now, here 's all you
have to do: put your right thumb in the palm of your lift hand,--this
way,--and then kiss the other thumb, and then you have it. But mind
you don't do that till you 're alone with him; 't is a token between
ourselves.”
“I wish you were coming with me, Darby; I'd rather not leave you!”
“'Tis myself mislikes it, too,” said Darby, with a sigh. “But I daren't
miss going to Athlone; the major would soon ferret me out; and it's
worse it would be for me.”
“And what am I to do if Mr. Basset comes after me?”
“If he has n't a throop of horse at his back, you may laugh at him in
Ned Malone's, And now good-by, acushla; and don't let your heart be
low,--you 'll be a man soon, you know.”
The words of encouragement could not have been more happily chosen to
raise my drooping spirits. The sense of opening manhood was already
stirring within me, and waited but for some direct occasion to elicit it
in full vigor.
I shook Darby's hand with a firm grasp, and assuming the easiest smile I
could accomplish, I set out on the path before me with all the alacrity
in my power.
The first thought that shot across my mind when I parted with my
companion was the utter loneliness of my condition; the next--and
it followed immediately on the other--was the bold consciousness of
personal freedom. I enjoyed at the moment the untrammelled liberty to
wander without let or control. All memory of Tony Basset was forgotten,
and I only remembered the restraint of school and the tyranny of my
master. My plan--and already I had formed a plan--was to become a
farmer's servant, to work as a daily laborer. Ned Malone would probably
accept of me, young as I was, in that capacity; and I had no other
ambition than such as secured my independence.
As I travelled along I wove within my mind a whole web of imaginary
circumstances: of days of peaceful toil; of nights of happy and
contented rest; of friendship formed with those of my own age and
condition; of the long summer evenings when I should ramble alone to
commune with myself on my humble but happy lot; on the red hearth in
winter, around which the merry faces of the cottagers were beaming, as
some pleasant tale was told;--and as I asked myself, would I exchange a
life like this for all the advantages of fortune my brother's position
afforded him, my heart replied, No! Even then the words of the piper
had worked upon me, and already had I connected the possession of wealth
with oppression and tyranny, and the lowly fortunes of the poor man as
alone securing high-souled liberty of thought and freedom of speech and
action.
I trudged along through the storm, turning from time to time to see
that I was not pursued; for as the day waned, my fear of being overtaken
increased, and in every moaning of the wind and every rustle of
the branches I thought I heard Tony Basset summoning me to stop and
surrender myself his prisoner. This dread gradually gave way, as the
loneliness of the road was unbroken by a single traveller; the wild
half-tilled fields presented no living object far or near; the thick
rain swooped along the swampy earth, and, in its misty darkness, shut
out all distant prospect; and a sadder picture eye never rested on.
At length I reached the ruined church Darby spoke of, and following the
track he indicated, soon came out upon the boreen, where for the first
time some little shelter existed.
It was only at nightfall, when fatigue and hunger had nearly obtained
the victory over me, that I saw, at some short distance in front, the
long roof of a well-thatched cabin. As I came nearer, I could perceive
that it contained several windows, and that the door was sheltered by a
small porch,--marks of comfort by no means common among the neighboring
farmers; lights moved here and there through the cabin; and the voices
of people driving in the cows, and the barking of dogs, were welcome
sounds to my ear. A half-clad urchin, of some seven years old, armed
with a huge bramble, was driving a flock of turkeys before him as I
approached; but instead of replying to my question, “If this were Ned
Malone's,” the little fellow threw down his weapon, and ran for his
life. Before I could recover from my surprise at his strange conduct,
the door opened, and a large, powerful-looking man, in a long blue
coat, appeared. He carried a musket in his hand, which, as soon as he
perceived the figure before him, he laid down within the porch, calling
out to some one inside,--
“Go back, Maurice,--it's nothing. Well, sir,” continued he, addressing
me, “do you want anybody hereabouts?”
“Is this Ned Malone's, may I ask?” said I.
“It is,” answered he; “and I am Ned Malone, at your service. And what
then?”
There was something in the cold, forbidding tone in which he spoke, as
well as in the hard severity of his look, that froze all my resolution
to ask a favor, and I would gladly have sought elsewhere for shelter for
the night had I known where to look.
The delay this indecision on my part created, caused him to repeat
his question, while he fixed his eyes on me with a dark and piercing
expression.
“Darby the Blast told me,” said I, with a great effort to seem at ease,
“that you would give me shelter to-night. To-morrow morning he 's to
come here for me.”
“And who are you,” said he, harshly, “that I am to take into my house?
In these troublesome times a man may ask the name of his lodger.”
“My name is Burke. My father's name was Burke, of Cremore; but he 's
dead now.”
“'T is you that Basset is after all day, is it?”
“I can't tell; but I fear it may be.”
“Well, some one told him that you took the Dublin road, and another sent
him up here, and the boys here sent him to Durragh. And what are you
after, young gentleman? Do you dislike Tony Basset? Is that it?”
“Yes,” said I; “I 'm resolved never to go home and live with him. He
made my father hate me, and through him I have been left a beggar.”
“There 's more than you has a score to settle with Tony. Come into the
house and get your clothes dried. But stop, I have a bit of a caution
to give you. If you see anything or anybody while you 're under my roof
that you did n't expect--”
“Trust me there!” interrupted I, eagerly, and making the sign the piper
had taught me.
“What!” cried Malone, in astonishment; “are you one of us? Is a son
of Matt Burke's going to redress the wrongs his father and grandfather
before him inflicted? Give me your hand, my brave boy; there 's nothing
in this house isn't your own from this minit.”
I grasped his strong hand in mine, and with a proud and swelling heart,
followed him into the cabin.
A whisper crept round the various persons that sat and stood about the
kitchen fire as I appeared among them; and the next moment one after
another pressed anxiously forward to shake hands with me.
“Help him off with his wet clothes, Maurice,” said Malone, to a young
man of some twenty years; and in a few seconds my wet garments were hung
on chairs before the blaze, and I myself, accompanied with a frieze
coat that would make a waistcoat for an elephant, sat basking before
the cheerful turf fire. The savory steam of a great mess of meat and
potatoes induced me to peep into the large pot over the fire. A hearty
burst of laughing from the whole party acknowledged their detection of
my ravenous hunger, and the supper was smoking on the board in a few
minutes after. Unhappily, a good number of years have rolled over my
head since that night; but I still hesitate to decide whether to my
appetite or to Mrs. Malone's cookery should attribute it, but certainly
my performance on that occasion called forth unqualified admiration.
I observed during the supper that one of the girls carried a plateful of
the savory dish into a small room at the end of the kitchen, carefully
closing the door after her as she entered; and when she came out,
exchanging with Malone a few hurried words, to which the attention of
the others was evidently directed. The caution I had already received,
and my own sense of propriety, prevented my paying any attention to
this, and I conversed with those about me, freely narrating the whole
circumstances of my departure from home, my fear of Basset, and my firm
resolve, come what might, never to become an inmate of his house and
family. Not all the interest they took in my fortunes, nor even the warm
praises of what they called my courage and manliness, could ward off the
tendency to sleep, and my eyes actually closed as I lay down in my bed,
and notwithstanding the noise of voices and the sounds of laughter near
me, sank into the heaviest slumber.