While disaster and hubbub were rife below, the electors up-stairs
were holding a council whether it would not be better to send back the
“Honourable's” messenger to the town and request a supply of shoes,
which they had no other means of getting. The debate was of an odd sort;
they were all in their several beds at the time, and roared at each
other through their doors, which were purposely left open that they
might enjoy each other's conversation; number seven replied to number
three, and claimed respect to his arguments on the score of seniority;
the blue room was completely controverted by the yellow; and the
double-bedded room would, of course, have had superior weight in the
argument, only that everything it said was lost by the two honourable
members speaking together. The French king used to hold a council called
a “bed of justice,” in which neither justice nor a bed had anything to
do, so that this Irish conference better deserved the title than any
council the Bourbon ever assembled. The debate having concluded, and the
question being put and carried, the usher of the black counterpane was
desired to get out of bed, and, wrapped in the robe of office whence
he derived his title, to go down-stairs and call the “Honourable's”
messenger to the “bar of the house,” and there order him a pint of
porter, for refreshment after his ride; and forthwith to send him back
again to the town for a supply of shoes.
The house was unanimous in voting the supplies. The usher reached the
kitchen and found Andy in his shirt sleeves, scraping the dripping from
his livery with an old knife, whose hackled edge considerably assisted
Andy's own ingenuity in the tearing of his coat in many places, while
the little man made no effort towards the repair of his garment, but
held it up before him, and regarded it with a piteous look.
To the usher of the black counterpane's question, whether Andy was the
“Honourable's messenger,” Andy replied in the affirmative; but to the
desire expressed, that he would ride back to the town, Andy returned a
decided negative.
“My ordhers is not to go back without you,” said Andy.
“But we have no shoes,” said the usher; “and cannot go until we get
some.”
“My ordher is not to go back without you.”
“But if we can't go?”
“Well, then, I can't go back, that's all,” said Andy.
The usher, the landlord, and the landlady all hammered away at Andy for
a long time, in vain trying to convince him he ought to return, as he
was desired; still Andy stuck to the letter of his orders, and said he
often got into trouble for not doing _exactly_ what he was bid, and
that he was bid “not to go back without them, and he would not--so he
wouldn't--divil a fut.”
At last, however, Andy was made to understand the propriety of riding
back to the town; and was desired to go as fast as his horse could carry
him, to gallop every foot of the way; but Andy did no such thing; he had
received a good thrashing once for being caught galloping his master's
horse on the road, and he had no intention of running the risk a second
time, because “_the stranger_” told him to do so. “What does he know
about it?” said Andy to himself; “'faith, it's fair and aisy I'll go,
and not disthress the horse to plaze any one.” So he went back his
ten miles at a reasonable pace only; and when he appeared without the
electors, a storm burst on poor Andy.
“There! I knew how it would be,” said he, “and not my fault at all.”
“Weren't you told not to return without them?”
“But wait till I tell you how it was, sure;” and then Andy began an
account of the condition in which the voters lay at the inn but between
the impatience of those who heard, and the confused manner of Andy's
recital, it was some time before matters were explained; and then Andy
was desired to ride back to the inn again, to tell the electors shoes
should be forwarded after him in a post-chaise, and requesting their
utmost exertions in hastening over to the town, for that the election
was going against them. Andy returned to the inn; and this time, under
orders from head quarters, galloped in good earnest, and brought in his
horse smoking hot, and indicating lameness. The day was wearing apace,
and it was so late when the electors were enabled to start that the
polling-booths were closed before they could leave the town; and in many
of these booths the requisite number of electors had not been polled
that day to keep them open; so that the next day nearly all those
outlying electors, about whom there had been so much trouble and
expense, would be of no avail. Thus, Murphy's trick was quite
successful, and the poor pickled electors were driven back to their inn
in dudgeon.
Andy, when he went to the stable to saddle his steed, for a return to
Neck-or-Nothing Hall, found him dead lame, so that to ride him better
than twelve miles home was impossible. Andy was obliged to leave him
where he was, and trudge it to the hall; for all the horses in Kelly's
stables were knocked up with their day's work.
As it was shorter by four miles across the country than by the road,
Andy pursued the former course; and as he knew the country well, the
shades of evening, which were now closing round, did not deter him in
the least. Andy was not very fresh for the journey to be sure, for he
had ridden upwards of thirty miles that day, so the merry whistle, which
is so constantly heard from the lively Irish pedestrian, did not while
away the tedium of his walk. It was night when Andy was breasting up a
low ridge of hills, which lay between him and the end of his journey;
and when in silence and darkness he topped the ascent, he threw himself
on some heather to rest and take breath. His attention was suddenly
caught by a small blue flame, which flickered now and then on the face
of the hill, not very far from him; and Andy's fears of fairies and
goblins came crowding upon him thick and fast. He wished to rise, but
could not; his eye continued to be strained with the fascination of fear
in the direction he saw the fire, and sought to pierce the gloom through
which, at intervals, the small point of flame flashed brightly and sunk
again, making the darkness seem deeper. Andy lay in perfect stillness,
and in the silence, which was unbroken even by his own breathing, he
thought he heard voices underground. He trembled from head to foot,
for he was certain they were the voices of the fairies, whom he firmly
believed to inhabit the hills.
“Oh! murdher, what'll I do?” thought Andy to himself: “sure I heerd
often, if once you were within the sound of their voices, you could
never get out o' their power. Oh! if I could only say a _pather_ and
_ave_, but I forget my prayers with the fright. Hail, Mary! The king
o' the fairies lives in these hills, I know--and his house is undher
me this minit, and I on the roof of it--I'll never get down again--I'll
never get down again--they'll make me slater to the fairies; and sure
enough I remember me, the hill is all covered with flat stones they call
fairy slates. Oh! I am ruined--God be praised!” Here he blessed himself,
and laid his head close to the earth. “Guardian angels--I hear their
voices singin' a dhrinking song--Oh! if I had a dhrop o' water myself,
for my mouth is as dhry as a lime-burner's wig--and I on the top o'
their house--see--there's the little blaze again--I wondher is their
chimbley afire--Oh! murther, I'll die o' thirst--Oh! if I had only
one dhrop o' wather--I wish it would rain or hail--Hail, Mary, full o'
grace--whisht! what's that?” Andy crouched lower than before, as he saw
a figure rise from the earth, and attain a height which Andy computed
to be something about twenty feet; his heart shrank to the size of a
nut-shell, as he beheld the monster expand to his full dimensions; and
at the same moment, a second, equally large, emerged from the ground.
Now, as fairies are notoriously little people, Andy changed his opinion
of the parties into whose power he had fallen, and saw clearly they were
giants, not fairies, of whom he was about to become the victim. He
would have ejaculated a prayer for mercy, had not terror rendered him
speechless, as the remembrance of all the giants he had ever heard of,
from the days of Jack and the Bean-stalk down, came into his head; but
though his sense of speaking was gone, that of hearing was painfully
acute, and he heard one of the giants say--
“That pot is not big enough.”
“Oh! it howlds as much as we want,” replied the other.
“O Lord,” thought Andy; “they've got their pot ready for cooking.”
“What keeps him?” said the first giant.
“Oh! he's not far off,” said the second.
A clammy shivering came over Andy.
“I'm hungry,” said the first, and he hiccupped as he spoke.
“It's only a false appetite you have,” said the second, “you're drunk.”
This was a new light to Andy, for he thought giants were too strong to
get drunk. “I could ate a young child, without parsley and butther,”
said the drunken giant. Andy gave a faint spasmodic kick.
“And it's as hot as ---- down there,” said the giant.
Andy trembled at the horrid word he heard.
“No wonder,” said the second giant; “for I can see the flame popping out
at the top of the chimbley; that's bad: I hope no one will see it, or
it might give them warning. Bad luck to that young divil for making the
fire so sthrong.”
What a dreadful hearing this was for Andy: young devils to make their
fires; there was no doubt what place they were dwelling in. “Thunder and
turf!” said the drunken giant; “I wish I had a slice of--”
Andy did not hear what he wished a slice of, for the night wind
swept across the heath at the moment, and carried away the monster's
disgusting words on its pure breath.
“Well, I'd rather have--” said the other giant; and again Andy lost what
his atrocious desires were--“than all the other slices in the world.
What a lovely round shoulder she has, and the nice round ankle of her--”
The word “ankle” showed at once it was a woman of whom he spoke, and
Andy shuddered. “The monsters! to eat a woman.”
“What a fool you are to be in love,” said the drunken giant with several
hiccups, showing the increase of his inebriation.
“Is that what the brutes call love,” thought Andy, “to ate a woman?”
“I wish she was bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh,” said the second
giant. Of this speech Andy heard only “bone” and “flesh,” and had great
difficulty in maintaining the serenity of his diaphragm.
The conversation of the giants was now more frequently interrupted by
the wind which was rising, and only broken sentences reached Andy, whose
senses became clearer the longer he remained in a state of safety;
at last he heard the name of Squire Egan distinctly pass between the
giants.
“So they know Squire Egan,” thought Andy.
The first giant gave a drunken laugh at the mention of Squire Egan's
name, and exclaimed--
“Don't be afraid of him (_hiccup_); I have him undher my thumb
(_hiccup_). I can crush him when I plase.”
“O! my poor owld masther!” mentally ejaculated Andy.
Another break in their conversation occurred, and the next name Andy
overheard was “O'Grady.”
“The big bully!” said the second giant.
“They know the whole country,” thought Andy.
“But tell me, what was that you said to him at the election?” said the
drunken one.
The word “election” recalled Andy to the business of this earth back
again; and it struck upon his hitherto bewildered sensorium that giants
could have nothing to do with elections, and he knew he never saw
them there; and, as the thought struck him, it seemed as if the giants
diminished in size, and did not appear _quite_ so big.
“Sure you know,” said the second.
“Well, I'd like to hear it again,” said the drunken one (_hiccup_).
“The big bully says to me, 'Have you a lease?' says he; 'No,' says I;
'but I have an article!' 'What article?' says he; 'It's a fine brass
blunderbuss,' says I, 'and _I'd like to see the man would dispute the
title!_'”
The drunken listener chuckled, and the words broke the spell of
supernatural terror which had hung over Andy; he knew, by the words of
the speaker, it was the bully joker of the election was present,
who browbeat O'Grady and out-quibbled the agent about the oath of
allegiance; and the voice of the other he soon recognised for that of
Larry Hogan. So now his giants were diminished into mortal men--the pot,
which had been mentioned to the terror of his soul, was for the making
of whisky instead of human broth--and the “hell” he thought his giants
inhabited was but a private still. Andy felt as if a mountain had been
lifted from his heart when he found it was but mortals he had to deal
with; for Andy was not deficient in courage when it was but thews
and sinews like his own he had to encounter. He still lay concealed,
however, for smugglers might not wish their private haunt to be
discovered, and it was possible Andy would be voted one too many in the
company should he announce himself; and with such odds as two to one
against him he thought he had better be quiet. Besides, his curiosity
became excited when he found them speaking of his old master, Egan, and
his present one, O'Grady; and as a woman had been alluded to, and odd
words caught up here and there, he became anxious to hear more of their
conversation.
“So you're in love,” said Larry, with a hiccup, to our friend of the
blunderbuss; “ha! ha! ha! you big fool.”
“Well, you old thief, don't you like a purty girl yourself?”
“I did, when I was young and foolish.”
“'Faith, then, you're young and foolish at that rate yet, for you're a
rogue with the girls, Larry,” said the other, giving him a slap on the
back.
“Not I! not I!” said Larry, in a manner expressive of his not being
displeased with the charge of gallantry; “he! he! he!--how do you know,
eh?” (_Hiccup_.) “Sure, I know myself; but as I wos telling you, if I
could only lay howld of--” here his voice became inaudible to Andy, and
the rest of the sentence was lost.
Andy's curiosity was great. “Who could the girl be?”
“And you'd carry her off?” said Larry.
“I would,” said the other; “I'm only afraid o' Squire Egan.”
At this announcement of the intention of “carrying her off,” coupled
with the fear of “Squire Egan,” Andy's anxiety to hear the name of the
person became so intense that he crawled cautiously a little nearer to
the speakers.
“I tell you again,” said Larry, “I can settle _him_ aisy
(_hiccup_)--he's undher my thumb (_hiccup_).”
“Be aisy,” said the other, contemptuously, who thought this was a mere
drunken delusion of Larry's.
“I tell you I'm his masther!” said Larry, with a drunken flourish of his
arm; and he continued bragging of his power over the Squire in various
ejaculations, the exact meaning of which our friend of the blunderbuss
could not fathom, but Andy heard enough to show him that the discovery
of the post-office affair was what Larry alluded to.
That Larry, a close, cunning, circumventing rascal, should so far betray
the source of his power over Egan may seem strange; but be it remembered
Larry was drunk, a state of weakness which his caution generally guarded
him from falling into, but which being in, his foible was bragging of
his influence, and so running the risk of losing it.
The men continued to talk together for some time, and the tenour of the
conversation was, that Larry assured his companion he might carry off
the girl without fear of Egan, but her name Andy could not discover. His
own name he heard more than once, and voluptuous raptures poured forth
about lovely lips and hips and ankles from the herculean knight of the
blunderbuss, amidst the maudlin admiration and hiccups of Larry, who
continued to brag of his power, and profess his readiness to stand by
his friend in carrying off the girl.
“Then,” said the Hercules, with an oath, “I'll soon have you in my arms,
my lovely--”
The name was lost again.
Their colloquy was now interrupted by the approach of a man and woman,
the former being the person for whose appearance Larry made so many
inquiries when he first appeared to Andy as the hungry giant; the other
was the sister of the knight of the blunderbuss. Larry having hiccupped
his anger against the man for making them wait so long for the bacon,
the woman said he should not wait longer without his supper now,
for that she would go down and fry the rashers immediately. She then
disappeared through the ground, and the men all followed.
Andy drew his breath freely once more, and with caution raised himself
gradually from the ground with a careful circumspection, lest any of the
subterranean community might be watchers on the hill; and when he was
satisfied he was free from observation, he stole away from the spot
with stealthy steps for about twenty paces, and there, as well as the
darkness would permit, after taking such landmarks as would help him to
retrace his way to the still, if requisite, he dashed down the hill at
the top of his speed. This pace he did not moderate until he had placed
nearly a mile between him and the scene of his adventure; he then paced
slowly to regain his breath. His head was in a strange whirl; mischief
was threatened against some one of whose name he was ignorant; Squire
Egan was declared to be in the power of an old rascal; this grieved Andy
most of all, for he felt _he_ was the cause of his old master's dilemma.
“Oh! to think I should bring him into trouble,” said Andy, “the kind
and good masther he was to me ever, and I live to tell it like a
blackguard--throth I'd rather be hanged any day than the masther would
come to throuble--maybe if I gave myself up and was hanged like a man
at once, that would settle it; 'faith, if I thought it would, I'd do it
sooner than Squire Egan should come to throuble!” and poor Andy spoke
just what he felt. “Or would it do to kill that blackguard Hogan? _sure
they could do no more than hang me afther_, and that would save the
masther, and be all one to me, for they often towld me I'd be hanged.
[1] But then there's my sowl,” said Andy, and he paused at the
thought--, “if they hanged me for the letthers, it would be only for a
mistake, and sure then I'd have a chance o' glory; for sure I might go
to glory through a mistake; but if I killed a man on purpose, sure it
would be slappin' the gates of Heaven in my own face. Faix, I'll spake
to Father Blake about it.” [2]
[1][Footnote: How often has the sanguinary penal code of past years
suggested this reflection and provoked the guilt it was meant to
awe! Happily, now our laws are milder, and more protective from their
mildness.]
[2][Footnote: In the foregoing passage, Andy stumbles on uttering a
quaint pleasantry, for it is partly true as well as droll--the notion of
a man gaining Paradise through a mistake. Our intentions too seldom lead
us there, but rather tend the other way, for a certain place is said
to be paved with “good” ones, and surely “bad” ones would not lead us
upwards. Then the phrase of a man “slapping the gates of Heaven in his
own face,” is one of those wild poetic figures of speech in which
the Irish peasantry often indulge. The phrase “slapping the door” is
every-day and common; but when applied to “the gates of Heaven,” and
“in a man's own face,” the common phrase becomes fine. But how often
the commonest things become poetry by the fitness of their application,
though poetasters and people of small minds think greatness of thought
lies in big words.]