ANDY.
Are there any words in the language to describe the scene which took
place at O'Shanaghgan when Mrs. O'Shanaghgan discovered what Nora had
done? She called her brother to her aid; and, visiting the barn in her
own august person, her company dress held neatly up so as to display her
trim ankles and pretty shoes, solemnly announced that her daughter
Nora was guilty of the murder of her own father, and that she, Mrs.
O'Shanaghgan, washed her hands of her in the future.
“Yes, Nora,” said the irate lady, “you can go your own way from this
time. I have done all that a mother could do for you; but your wildness
and insubordination are past bearing. This last and final act crowns
all. The servants shall come into the barn, and bring your poor father
back to his bedroom, and you shall see nothing of him again until the
doctor gives leave. Pray, George,” continued Mrs. O'Shanaghgan, “send
one of the grooms at once for Doctor Talbot. I doubt if my poor husband
has a chance of recovery after this mad deed; but we must take what
steps we can.”
“Now, look here, Ellen,” said the Squire; “if you can't be aisy, be
as aisy as you can. There's no sort of use in your putting on these
high-falutin airs. I was born an Irishman. I opened my eyes on this
world in a good, sharp draught, and, if I am to die, it's in a draught
I'll leave the world; but, once for all, no more smotherations for me.
I've had too much of 'em. You say this child is likely to be the death
of me. Why, then, Ellen--God forgive yer ignorance, my poor wife--but
it's the life of me she'll be, not the death. Isn't it in comfort I'm
lying for the first time since that spalpeen behind the hedge tried to
fell me to the earth? Isn't it a good meal I've just had?--potatoes in
their jackets, and a taste of fat bacon; and if I can wash it down, as
I mean to later on, with a drop of mountain-dew, why, it's well I'll
slumber to-night. You're a very fine woman, me lady, and I'm proud as
Punch of you, but you don't know how to manage a wild Irishman when he
is ill. Now, Nora, bless her pretty heart, saw right through and through
me--the way I was being killed by inches; the hot room and the horrid
carpets and curtains; and the fire, not even made of decent turf, but
those ugly black coals, and never a draught through the chamber, except
when I took it unbeknownst to you. Ah, Nora guessed that her father was
dying, and there was no way of saving him but doing it on the sly. Well,
I'm here, the girleen has managed it, and here I'll stay. Not all the
doctors in the land, nor all the fine English grooms, shall take me back
again. I'll walk back when I'm fit to walk, and I'll do my best to bear
all that awful furniture; but in future this is my bedroom, and now you
know the worst.”
The Squire had a great color in his face as he spoke; his eyes were
shining as they had not shone since his accident, and his voice was
quite strong. Squire Murphy, who was standing near, clapped him on the
shoulder.
“Why, Patrick,” he said, “it's proud of you I am; you're like your old
self again--blest if you're not.”
Nora, who was kneeling by her father's bed, kept her face slightly
turned away from her mother; the tears were in her eyes, but there was
a well of thanksgiving in her heart. In spite of her mother's angry
reproaches, she knew she had done the right thing. Her father would get
well now. After all, his Irish daughter knew what he wanted, and she
must bear her English mother's anger.
In an incredibly short space of time two or three of the men-servants
appeared, accompanied by Dr. Talbot. They stood in the entrance to the
barn, prepared to carry out orders; but now there stole past them the
Irish groom, Angus, and Hannah Croneen. These two came and stood near
Nora at the head of the bed. Dr. Talbot examined the patient, looked
round the cheerless barn, and said, with a smile, glancing from Mrs.
O'Shanaghgan to O'Shanaghgan's own face:
“This will never do; you must get back to your own comfortable room, my
dear sir--that is, if I am to continue to attend you.”
“Then, for God's sake, leave off attending me, Talbot,” said the Squire.
“You must be a rare ignoramus not to see that your treatment is killing
me out and out. It's fresh air I want, and plenty of it, and no more
fal-lals. Is it in my grave you'd have me in a fortnight's time? You get
out of this, and leave me to Mother Nature and the nursing of my Irish
colleen.”
This was the final straw. Mrs. O'Shanaghgan left the barn, looking more
erect and more stately even than when she had entered it. Mr. Hartrick
followed her, so did the enraged Dr. Talbot, and lastly the English
servants. Squire Murphy uttered the one word, “Routed!” and clapped his
hand on his thigh.
The Squire, however, spoke sadly.
“I am sorry to vex your lady mother, Nora,” he said; “and upon my soul,
child, you must get me well as quick as possible. We must prove to her
that we are in the right--that we must.”
“Have a dhrop of the crayther, your honor,” said Hannah, now coming
forward. “It's truth I'm telling, but this is me very last bottle of
potheen, which I was keeping for me funeral; but there, his honor's
wilcome to every drain of it.”
“Pour me out a little,” said the Squire.
He drank off the spirit, which was absolutely pure and unadulterated,
and smacked his lips.
“It's fine I'll be to-night,” he said; “it's you that have the 'cute
ways, Nora. You have saved me. But, indeed, I thank you all, my friends,
for coming to my deliverance.”
That night, in her smoke-begrimed cabin, Hannah Croneen described with
much unction the way madam and the English doctor had been made to know
their place, as she expressed it.
“'Twas himself that put them down,” said Hannah. “Ah, but he is a grand
man, is O'Shanaghgan.”
Mrs. O'Shanaghgan spent a very unhappy night. No comfort could she
derive even from Mr. Hartrick's words. Nora was an out-and-out rebel,
and must be treated accordingly; and as to the Squire--well, when Nora
attended his funeral her eyes might be opened. The good lady was quite
certain that the Squire would have developed pneumonia by the morning;
but when the reports reached her that he looked heartier and better than
he had since his illness, she could scarcely believe her ears. This,
however, was a fact, for Mother Nature did step in to cure the Squire;
and the draughty barn, with its lack of every ordinary comfort, was so
soothing to his soul that it began to have an equally good effect upon
his body.
Notwithstanding that it poured rain outside, and that great eddies of
wind came from under the badly-fitting doors and in at the cracks of
the small windows, the Squire ate his food with appetite, and began once
again to enjoy life. In the first place, he was no longer lonely. It
was impossible for his old friends and retainers to visit him in the
solitude of his grand bedroom; but it was perfectly easy, not only for
Squire Murphy and Squire Fitzgerald, and half the other squireens of
the neighborhood, to slip into the barn and have a “collogue,” as they
expressed it; but also the little gossoons in their ragged trousers
and bare feet, and the girleens, with their curly hair, and roguish
dark-blue eyes, to scuttle in also. For could they not dart under the
bed like so many rabbits if madam's step was heard, and didn't the
Squire, bless him! like to have them with him when madam was busy with
her English friends? Then Nora herself, the darling of his heart, was
scarcely ever away from him now. Didn't she sit perched like a bird
on the foot of the hard bed and cause him to roar with laughter as
she described the English and their ways? Molly, too, became a prime
favorite with the Squire. It is sad to relate that he encouraged her in
her naughty words, and she began to say “Jehoshaphat!” and “Elephants!”
and “Holy Moses!” more frequently than ever.
The grand fact of all, however, was this: the Squire was getting well
again.
About a week after his removal to the barn Nora was out rather late by
herself. She had been visiting her favorite haunts by the seashore, and
was returning laden with seaweeds and shells, when she was startled by
hearing her name spoken in a low tone just behind her. The sound issued
from a plantation of thick underwood. The girl paused, and her heart
beat a little faster.
“Yes. What is it?” she said.
The next moment a long and skinny hand and arm were protruded, Nora's
own arm was forcibly taken possession of, and she was dragged, against
her will, into the underwood. Her first impulse was to cry out; but
being as brave a girl as ever walked, she quickly suppressed this
inclination, and turned and faced the ragged and starved-looking man
whom she expected to meet.
“Yes, Andy, I knew it was you,” said Nora. “What do you want with me
now? How dare you speak to me?”
“How dare I! What do you mane by that, Miss Nora?”
“You know what I mean,” answered the girl. “Oh, I have been patient
and have not said a word; but do you think I did not know? When all the
country, Andy Neil, were looking for my father's would-be murderer, I
knew where I could put my hand on him. But I did not say a word. If my
father had died I must--I must have spoken; but if he recovered, I felt
that in me which I cannot describe as pity, but which yet prevented my
giving you up to the justice you deserve. But to meet me here, to dare
to waylay me--it is too much.”
“Ah, when you speak like that you near madden me,” replied Andy. “Look
at me, Miss Nora; look well; look hard. Here's the skin tight on me
arums, and stretched fit to burst over me cheek-bones; and it's empty
I am, Miss Nora, for not a bite nor sup have I tasted for twenty-four
hours. The neighbors, they 'as took agen me. It has got whispering
abroad that it's meself handled the gun that laid the Squire on what
might have been his deathbed, and they have turned agen me, and not even
a pitaty can I get from 'em, and I can't get work nowhere; and the roof
is took off the little bit of a cabin in which I was born, and two of
the childers have died from cowld and hunger. That's my portion, Miss
Nora; that's my bitter portion; and yet you ashk me, miss, why I spake
to ye.”
“You know why I said it,” answered Nora. “There was a time when I pitied
you, but not now. You have gone too far; you have done that which no
daughter can overlook. Let me go--let me go; don't attempt to touch
me, or I shall scream out. There are neighbors near who will come to my
help.”
“No, there are not,” said Andy. “I 'as took good care of that. You may
scream as loud as you please, but no one will hear; and if we go farther
into the underwood no one will see. Come, my purty miss; it's my turn
now. It's my turn at last. Come along.”
Nora was strong and fearless, but she had not Andy's brute strength.
With a clutch, now so fierce and desperate that she wondered her arm was
not broken, the man, who was half a madman, dragged her deeper into the
shade of the underwood.
“There now,” said Andy, with a chuckle of triumph; “you has got to
listen. You're the light o' his eyes and the darlin' o' his heart. But
what o' that? Didn't my childer die of the cowld and the hunger, and the
want of a roof over them, and didn't I love them? Ah! that I did. Do you
remember the night I said I'd drown ye in the Banshee's pool, and didn't
we make a compact that if I let ye go you'd get the Squire to lave me my
bit of a cabin, and not to evict me? And how did ye kape your word? Ah,
my purty, how did ye kape your word?”
“I did my best for you,” said Nora.
“Yer bhest. A poor bhest when I've had to go. But now, Miss Nora, I aint
waylaid you for nothin'. The masther has escaped this time, and you
has escaped; but as shure as there is a God in heav'n, if you don't get
Squire to consint to let me go back, there'll be mischief. There now,
Miss Nora, I've spoken. You're purty, and you're swate, and 'tis you
has got a tinder heart; but that won't do you no good, for I'm mad with
misery. It's me bit of a cabin I want to die in, and nothing less will
contint me. You may go back now, for I've said what I come to say; but
it's to-morrow night I'll be here waiting for ye, and I warn ye to bring
me the consint that I crave, for if you don't come, be the powers! ye'll
find that you've played with fire when you neglected Andy Neil.”
Having uttered these words, the miserable man dropped Nora's arm and
vanished into the depths of the plantation. Nora stood still for a
moment, then returned thoughtfully and slowly to the house.