"I go back to-morrow, I hope. Business brought me up, and as soon as
it's settled I pack."
"Too quick despairer--but I take it ye'll be bound just now for the
Cheese. Right y'are; and I'll do meself the honour to lunch wid ye, at
your expense."
Everyone knows and loves the Bashaw, _alias_ the O'Driscoll, that
genial failure. Generations of Fleet Street youths have taken advice
and help from him: have prospered, grown reputable, rich, and even
famous: and have left him where he stood. Nobody can remember the time
when O'Driscoll was not; though, to judge from his appearance, he must
have stepped upon the town from between the covers of an illustrated
keepsake, such as our grandmothers loved--so closely he resembles the
Corsair of that period, with his ripe cheeks, melting eyes, and black
curls that twist like the young tendrils of a vine. The curls are
dyed now-a-days, and his waist is not what it used to be in the
picture-books; but time has worn nothing off his temper. He is
perennially enthusiastic, and can still beat any journalist in London
in describing a Lord Mayor's Show.
"You behould in me," he went on, with a large hand on my shoulder,
"the victum av a recent eviction--a penniless outcast. 'Tis no
beggar's petition that I'll be profferin', however, but a bargun. Give
me a salad, a pint av hock, an' fill me pipe wid the Only Mixture,
an' I'll repay ye across the board wid a narrative--the sort av
God-forsaken, ord'nary thrifle that you youngsters turn into copy--may
ye find forgiveness! 'Tis no use to me whatever. Ted O'Driscoll's
instrument was iver the big drum, and he knows his limuts."
"Yes, me boy," he resumed, five minutes later, as he sat in the
Cheshire Cheese, beneath Dr. Johnson's portrait, balancing a
black-handled knife between his first and second fingers, and nodding
good-fellowship to every journalist in the room, "the apartment in
Bloomsbury is desolut; the furnichur'--what was lift av ut--disparsed;
the leopard an' the lizard keep the courts where O'Driscoll gloried
an' drank deep; an' the wild ass--meanin' by that the midical student
on the fourth floor--stamps overhead, but cannot break his sleep. I've
been evicted: that's the long and short av ut. Lord help me!--I'd have
fared no worse in the ould country--here's to her! Think what immortal
copy I'd have made out av the regrettable incident over there!" His
voice broke, but not for self-pity. It always broke when he mentioned
Ireland.
"Is it comfort ye'd be speakin'?" he began again, filling his glass.
"Me dear fellow, divvle a doubt I'll fetch round tight an' safe. Ould
Mick Sullivan--he that built the _Wild Girl_, the fastest vessel that
iver put out av Limerick--ould Mick Sullivan used to swear he'd make
any ship seaworthy that didn' leak worse than a five-barred gate. An'
that's me, more or less. I'm an ould campaigner. But listen to this.
Me feelin's have been wrung this day, and that sorely. I promised ye
the story, an' I must out wid ut, whether or no."
It was the hour when the benches of the Cheese begin to empty. My work
was over for the day, and I disposed myself to listen.
"The first half I spent at the acadimy where they flagellated the
rudiments av polite learnin' into me small carcuss, I made a friend.
He was the first I iver made, though not the last, glory be to God!
But first friendship is like first love for the sweet taste it puts in
the mouth. Niver but once in his life will a man's heart dance to that
chune. 'Twas a small slip of a Saxon lad that it danced for then: a
son av a cursed agint, that I should say it. But sorra a thought had I
for the small boccawn's nationality nor for his own father's trade.
I only knew the friendship in his pretty eyes an' the sweetness that
knit our two sowls togither, like David's an' Jonathan's. Pretty it
was to walk togither, an' discourse, an' get the strap togither for
heaven knows what mischief, an' consowl each other for our broken
skins. He'd a wonderful gift at his books, for which I reverenced um,
and at the single-stick, for which I loved um. Niver to this day did
I call up the ould play-ground widout behowldin' that one boy, though
all the rest av the faces (the master's included) were vague as
wather--wather in which that one pair av eyes was reflected.
"The school was a great four-square stone buildin' beside a windy
road, and niver a tree in sight; but pastures where the grass would
cut your boot, an' stone walls, an' brown hills around, like the rim
av a saucer. All belonged to the estate that Jemmy Nichol's father
managed--a bankrupt property, or next door to that. It's done better
since he gave up the place; but when I've taken a glance at the
landscape since (as I have, once or twice) I see no difference. To me
'tis the naked land I looked upon the last day av the summer half,
when I said good-bye to Jemmy; for he was lavin' the school that same
afternoon for Dublin, to cross over to England wid his father.
"Sick at heart was I, an' filled already wid the heavy sense of
solitariness, as we stood by the great iron gate wishin' one another
fare-ye-well.
"'Jemmy avick,' says I, 'dull, dull will it be widout ye here. And,
Jemmy--send some av my heart back to me when ye write, as ye promise
to do.'
"'Wheniver I lay me down, Ned,' he answered me (though by nature a
close-hearted English boy), 'I'll think o' ye; an' wheniver I rise up
I'll think o' ye. May the Lord do so to me, an' more also, if I cease
from lovin' ye till my life's end.'
"So we kissed like a pair av girls, and off he was driven, leavin' a
great hollow inside the rim av the hills. An' I ran up to the windy
dormitory, stumblin' at ivery third step for the blindin' tears, and
watched um from the window there growin' small along the road. 'Ye
Mountains av Gilboa,' said I, shakin' my fist at the hills, 'let there
be no dew, neither let there be rain upon ye;' for I hated the place
now that Jemmy was gone.
"Well, 'twas the ould story--letters at first in plenty, then fewer,
then none at all. Long before I came over to try my luck I'd lost all
news of Jem: didn't know his address, even. Nor till to-day have I set
eyes on um. He's bald-headed, me boy, and crooked-faytured, to-day;
but I knew him for Jemmy in the first kick av surprise.
"I was evicted this mornin', as I've towld ye. Six years I've hung me
hat up in those same apartments in Bloomsbury; and, till last year,
aisy enough I found me landlord over a quarter's rent or two overjue.
But last midsummer year the house changed hands; and bedad it began to
be 'pay or quit.' This day it was 'quit.' The new landlord came up the
stairs at the head av the ejectin' army: I got up from breakfast to
open the door to um. I'd never set eyes on um since I'd been his
tenant. Bedad, it was Jemmy!"
O'Driscoll paused, and poured himself another glass of hock.
"So I suppose," I said, "you ran into each other's arms, and kissed
again with tears?"
"Then you suppose wrong," said he, and sat for a moment or two silent,
fingering the stem of his glass. Then he added, more gently--
"I looked in the face av um, and said to meself, 'Jemmy doesn't
remember me. If I introduce meself, I wonder what'll he do? Will he
love me still, or will he turn me out?' An' by the Lord I didn't care
to risk ut! I couldn't dare to lose that last illusion; an' so I put
on me hat an' walked out, tellin' him nothing at all."