Who owns the smart tandem that trips along so flippantly over the
slightly frosted road from the Bagni towards Lucca? What genius, cunning
in horseflesh, put that spicy pair together, perfect matches as they are
in all but color, for the wheeler is a blood chestnut, and the leader a
bright gray, with bone and substance enough for hunters? They have a
sort of lithe and wiry action that reminds one of the Hungarian breed,
and so, indeed, a certain jaunty carriage of the head, and half wild-
looking expression of eye, bespeak them. The high dog-cart, however, is
unmistakably English, as well as the harness, with its massive mountings
and broad straps. What an air of mingled elegance and solidity pervades
the entire! It is, as it were, all that such an equipage can pretend to
compass,--lightness, speed, and a dash of sporting significance being
its chief characteristics.
It is not necessary to present you to the portly gentleman who holds the
ribbons, all encased as he is in box-coats and railway wrappers; you can
still distinguish Mr. O'Shea, and as unmistakably recognize his man Joe
beside him. The morning is sharp, clear, and frosty, but so perfectly
still that the blue smoke of Mr. O'Shea's cigar hangs floating in the
air behind him, as the nimble nags spin along at something slightly
above thirteen miles an hour. Joe, too, solaces himself with the bland
weed, but in more primitive fashion, from a short “dudeen” of native
origin: his hat is pressed down firmly over his brows, and his hands,
even to the wrists, deeply encased in his pockets, for Joe, be it owned,
is less amply supplied with woollen comforts than his master, and feels
the morning sharp.
“Now, I call this a very neat turn-out; the sort of thing a man might
not be ashamed to tool along through any town in Europe,” said O'Shea.
“You might show it in Sackville Street!” said Joe, proudly.
“Sackville Street?” rejoined O'Shea, in an accent of contemptuous
derision. “Is there any use, I wonder, in bringing you all over the
world?”
“There is not,” said the other, in his most dogged manner.
“If there was,” continued O'Shea, “you'd know that Dublin had no place
amongst the great cities of Europe,--that nobody went there,--none so
much as spoke of it. I 'd just as soon talk of Macroom in good society.”
“And why would n't you talk of Macroom? What's the shame in it?” asked
the inexorable Joe.
“There would be just the same shame as if I was to bring you along with
me when I was asked out to dinner!”
“You might do worse,” was the dry reply.
“I 'm curious to hear how.”
“Troth, you might; and easy too,” said Joe, sententiously.
These slight passages did not seem to invite conversation, and so, for
above a mile or two, nothing was spoken on either side. At last Mr.
O'Shea said,--
“I think that gray horse has picked up a stone; he goes tenderly near
side.”
“He does not; he goes as well as you do,” was Joe's answer.
“You're as blind as a bat, or you'd see he goes lame,” said O'Shea,
drawing up.
“There, he's thrown it now; it was only a bit of a pebble,” said Joe, as
though the victory was still on his side.
“Upon my life, I wonder why I keep you at all,” burst out O'Shea,
angrily.
“So do I; and I wonder more why I stay.”
“Does it ever occur to you to guess why?”
“No; never.”
“It has nothing to say to being well fed, well lodged, well paid, and
well cared for?”
“No; it has not,” said Joe, gravely. “The bit I ate, I get how I can;
these is my own clothes, and sorrow sixpence I seen o' your money since
last Christmas.”
“Get down,--get down on the road this instant. You shall never sit
another mile beside me.”
“I will not get down. Why would I, in a strange counthry, and not a
farthin' in my pocket!”
“Have a civil tongue, then, and don't provoke me to turn you adrift on
the world.”
“I don't want to provoke you.”
“What beastly stuff is that you are smoking?” said O'Shea, as a whole
cloud from Joe's pipe came wafted across him.
“'Tis n't bastely at all. I took it out of your own bag this morning.”
“Not out of the antelope's skin?” asked O'Shea, eagerly.
“Yes; out of the hairy bag with the little hoofs on it.”
A loud burst of laughter was O'Shea's reply, and for several seconds he
could not control his mirth.
“Do you know what you're smoking! It's Russian camomile!”
“Maybe it is.”
“I got it to make a bitter mixture.”
“It's bitther, sure enough, but it has a notion of tobacco too.”
O'Shea again laughed out, and longer than before.
“It's just a chance that you were n't poisoned,” said he, at last.
“Here--here's a cigar for you, and a real Cuban, too, one that young
Heathcote never fancied would grace your lips.”
Joe accepted the boon without acknowledgment; indeed, he scrutinized the
gift with an air of half-depreciation.
“You don't seem to think much of a cigar,” said O'Shea, testily.
“When I can get no betther,” said Joe, biting off the end.
O'Shea frowned and turned away. It was evident that he had some
difficulty in controlling himself, but he succeeded, and was silent. The
effort, however, could not be sustained very long, and at last he said,
but in a slow and measured tone,--
“Shall I tell you a home-truth, Master Joe?”
“Yes, if you like.”
“It is this, then: it is that same ungracious and ungrateful way with
which you, and every one like you in Ireland, receive benefits, disgusts
every stranger.”
“Benefits!”
“Yes, benefits,--I said benefits.”
“Sure, what's our own isn't benefits,” rejoined Joe, calmly.
“Your own? May I ask if the contents of that bag were your own?”
“'T is at the devil I 'm wishin' it now,” said Joe, putting his hand on
his stomach. “Tis tearing me to pieces, it is, bad luck to it!”
O'Shea was angry, but such was the rueful expression of Joe's face that
he laughed out again.
“Now he's goin' lame if you like!” cried Joe, with a tone of triumph
that said, “All the mishaps are not on _my_ side.”
O'Shea pulled up, and knowing, probably, the utter inutility of
employing Joe at such a moment, got down himself to see what was amiss.
“No, it's the off leg,” cried Joe, as his master was carefully examining
the near one.
“I suppose he must have touched the frog on a sharp stone,” said O'Shea,
after a long and fruitless exploration.
“I don't think so,” said Joe; “'t is more like to be a dizaze of the
bone,--one of thim dizazes of the fetlock that's never cured.”
A deeply uttered malediction was O'Shea's answer to the pleasant
prediction.
“I never see one of them recover,” resumed Joe, who saw his advantage;
“but the baste will do many a day's slow work--in a cart.”
“Hold your prate, and be hanged to you!” muttered O'Shea, as between
anger and stooping, he was threatened with a small apoplexy. “Move them
on gently for a few yards, till I get a look at him.”
Joe leisurely moved into his master's place, and bestowed the rug very
comfortably around his legs. This done, with a degree of detail and
delay that seemed almost intended to irritate, he next slowly arranged
the reins in his fingers, and then, with a jerk of his whip-hand,
sending out the lash in a variety of curves, he brought the whipcord
down on the leader with a “nip” that made him plunge, while the wheeler,
understanding the hint, started off at full swing. So sudden and
unexpected was the start, that O'Shea had barely time to spring out of
the way to escape the wheel. Before, indeed, he had thoroughly recovered
his footing, Joe had swept past a short turning of the road, leaving
nothing but a light train of dust to mark his course.
“Stop! pull up! stop! confound you!” cried O'Shea, with other little
expletives that print is not called on to repeat, and then, boiling with
passion, he set off in pursuit. When he had gained the angle of the
road, it was only to catch one look at his equipage as it disappeared in
the distance; the road, dipping suddenly, showed him little more than a
torso of the “faithful Joe,” diminishing rapidly to a head, and then
vanishing entirely.
“What a scoundrel! what a rascal!” cried O'Shea, as he wiped his
forehead; and then, with his fist clenched and upraised, “registered a
vow,” as Mr. O'Connell used to say, of unlimited vengeance. If this true
history does not record the full measure of the heart-devouring anger of
O'Shea, it is not from any sense of its being undeserved or
unreasonable, for, after all, worthy reader, it might have pushed even
_your_ patience to have been left standing, of a sharp November morning,
on a lonely road, while your carriage was driven off by an insolent
“flunkey.”
As he was about midway between the Bagni and the town of Lucca, to which
he was bound, he half hesitated whether to go on or to return. There was
shame in either course,--shame in going back to recount his
misadventure; shame in having to call Joe to a reckoning in Lucca before
a crowd of strangers, and that vile population of the stable-yard, with
which, doubtless, Joe would have achieved popularity before his master
could arrive.
Of a verity the situation was embarrassing, and in his muttered comments
upon it might be read how thoroughly his mind took in every phase of its
difficulty. “How they 'll laugh at me up at the Villa! It will last Sir
William for the winter; he 'll soon hear how I won the trap from his
son, and he 'll be ready with the old saw, 'Ah! ill got, ill gone!' How
young Heathcote will enjoy it; and the widow,--if she be a widow,--won't
she caricature me, as I stand halloaing out after the runaway rascal?
Very hard to get out of all this ridicule without something serious to
cover it. That's the only way to get out of a laughable adventure; so,
Master Layton, it's all the worse for _you_ this morning.” In this train
of thought was he deeply immersed as a peasant drove past in his light
“calesina.” O'Shea quickly hailed the man, and bargained with him for a
seat to Lucca.
Six weary miles of a jolting vehicle did not contribute much to restore
his calm of mind, and it was in a perfect frenzy of anger he walked into
the inn-yard, where he saw his carriage now standing. In the stables his
horses stood, sheeted up, but still dirty and travel-stained. Joe was
absent. “He had been there five minutes ago; he was not an instant gone;
he had never left his horses till now; taken such care of them,--
watered, fed, groomed, and clothed them; he was a treasure,--there was
not his like to be found.” These, and suchlike, were the eulogies
universally bestowed by the stable constituency upon one whom O'Shea was
at the same time consigning in every form to the infernal gods! The
grooms and helpers wore a half grin on their faces as he passed out, and
again he muttered, “All the worse for _you_, Layton; you'll have to pay
the reckoning.”
He was not long in finding the Barsotti Palace, where Layton lodged; an
old tumble-down place it was, with a grass-grown, mildewed court, and
some fractured statues, green with damp, around it. The porter,
indicating with a gesture of his thumb where the stranger lived, left
O'Shea to plod up the stairs alone.
It was strange enough that it should then have occurred to him, for the
first time, that he had no definite idea about what he was coming for.
Layton and he had, it is true, some words, and Layton had given him time
and place to continue the theme; but in what way? To make Layton
reiterate in cold blood something he might have uttered in anger, and
would probably retract, if called upon courteously,--this would be very
poor policy. While, on the other hand, to permit him to insinuate
anything on the score of his success at play might be even worse again.
It was a case for very nice management, and so O'Shea thought, as, after
arriving at a door bearing Layton's name on a visiting-card, he took a
turn in the lobby to consider his course of proceeding. The more he
thought over it, the more difficult he found it; in fact, at last he saw
it to be one of those cases in which the eventuality alone can decide
the line to take, and so he gave a vigorous pull at the bell, determined
to begin the campaign at once.
The door was not opened immediately, and he repeated his summons still
louder. Scarcely had the rope quitted his hand, however, when a heavy
bolt was drawn back, the door was thrown wide, and a tall athletic man,
in shirt and trousers, stood before him.
“Well, stranger, you arn't much distressed with patience, that's a
fact,” said a strongly nasal accent, while the speaker gave a look of
very fierce defiance at the visitor.
“Am I speaking to Colonel Quackinboss?” asked O'Shea, in some surprise.
“Well, sir, if it ain't him, it's some one in _his_ skin, I'm thinkin'.”
“My visit was to Mr. Layton,” said the other, stiffly. “Is he at home?”
“Yes, sir; but he 's not a-goin' to see you.”
“I came here by his appointment.”
“That don't change matters a red cent, stranger; and as I said a'ready,
he ain't a-goin' to see you.”
“Oh, then I 'm to understand that he has placed himself in _your_ hands?
You assume to act for him?” said O'Shea, stiffly.
“Well, if you like to take it from that platform, I 'll offer no
objection,” said Quackinboss, gravely.
“Am I, or am I not, to regard you as a friend on this occasion?” said
O'Shea, authoritatively.
“I 'll tell you a secret, stranger; you 'll not be your own friend if
you don't speak to me in another tone of voice. I ain't used to be
halloaed at, I ain't.”
“One thing at a time, sir,” said O'Shea. “When I have finished the
business which brought me here, I shall be perfectly at your service.”
“Now I call that talkin' reasonable. Step inside, sir, and take a seat,”
said Quackinboss, whose manner was now as calm as possible.
Whatever irritation O'Shea really felt, he contrived to subdue it in
appearance, as he followed the other into the room.
O'Shea was not so deficient in tact that he could not see his best mode
of dealing with the American was to proceed with every courtesy and
deference, and so, as he seated himself opposite him, he mentioned the
reason of his coming there without anything like temper, and stated that
from a slight altercation such a difference arose as required either an
explanation or a meeting.
“He can't go a-shooting with you, stranger; he 's struck down this
morning,” said Quackinboss, gravely, as the other finished.
“Do you mean he 's ill?”
“I s'pose I do, when I said he was down, sir.”
“This is most unfortunate,” broke in O'Shea. “My duties as a public man
require my being in England next week. I hoped to have settled this
little matter before my departure. I see nothing for it but to beg you
will in writing--a few lines will suffice--corroborate the fact of my
having presented myself here, according to appointment, and mention the
sad circumstances by which our intentions, for I believe I may speak of
Mr. Layton's as my own, have been frustrated.”
“Well, now, stranger, we are speakin' in confidence here, and I may just
as well observe to you that of all the weapons that fit a man's hands,
the pen is the one I 'm least ready with. I 'm indifferent good with
firearms or a bowie, but a pen, you see, cuts the fingers that hold it
just as often as it hurts the enemy, and I don't like it.”
“But surely, where the object is merely to testify to a plain matter-of-
fact--”
“There ain't no such things on the 'arth as plain matters of fact, sir,”
broke in Quackinboss, eagerly. “I've come to the middle period of life,
and I never met one of 'em!”
O'Shea made a slight, very slight movement of impatience at these words;
but the other remarked it, and said,--
“We 'll come to that presently, sir. Let us just post up this account of
Mr. Layton's, first of all.”
“I don't think there is anything further to detain me here,” said
O'Shea, rising with an air of stiff politeness.
“Won't you take something, sir,--won't you liquor?” asked Quackinboss,
calmly.
“Excuse me; I never do of a morning.”
“I 'm sorry for it. I was a-thinkin', maybe you 'd warm up a bit with a
glass of something strong. I was hopin' it's the cold of the day chilled
you!”
“Do you mean this for insult, sir?” said O'Shea. “I ask you, because,
really, your use of the English language is of a kind to warrant the
question.”
“That 's where I wanted to see you, sir. You 're coming up to a good
boilin'-point now, stranger,” said Quackinboss, with a pleased look.
“Is he mad, is he deranged?” muttered O'Shea, half aloud.
“No, sir. We Western men are little liable to insanity; our lives are
too much abroad and open-air lives for that. It's your thoughtful,
reflective, deep men, as wears a rut in their mind with thinkin'; them
's the fellows goes mad.”
O'Shea's stare of astonishment at this speech scarcely seemed to convey
a concurrence in the assertion, and he made a step towards the door.
“If you're a-goin', I've nothing more to say, sir,” said Quackinboss.
“I cannot see what there is to detain me here!” said the other, sternly.
“There ain't much, that's a fact,” was the cool reply. “There's nothing
remarkable in them bottles; it's new brandy and British gin; and as for
myself, sir, I can only say I must give you a bill payable at sight,--
whenever we may meet again, I mean; for just now this young man here
can't spare me. I 'm his nurse, you see. I hope you understand me?”
“I believe I do.”
“Well, that's all right, stranger, and here's my hand on 't.” And even
before O'Shea was well aware, the other had taken his hand in his strong
grasp and was shaking it heartily. O'Shea found it very hard not to
laugh outright, but there was a meaning-like determination in the
American's manner that showed it was no moment for mirth.
It was, however, necessary to say something to relieve a very awkward
pause, and so he observed,--
“I hope Mr. Layton's illness is not a serious one. I saw him, as I
thought, perfectly well two days back.”
“He's main bad, sir; very sick,--very sick, indeed.”
“You have a doctor, I suppose?”
“No, sir. I have some experience myself, and I 'm just a-treatin' him by
what I picked up among people that have very few apothecaries,--the
Mandan Indians.”
“Without being particular, I must own I 'd prefer a more civilized
course of physic,” said O'Shea, with a faint smile.
“Very likely, stranger; and if you had a dispute, you 'd rather, mayhap,
throw it into a law court, and leave it to three noisy fellows to
quarrel over; while _I_'d look out for two plain fellows, with horny
hands and honest hearts, and say, 'What's the rights o' this,
gentlemen?'”
“I wish you every success, I'm sure,” said O'Shea, bowing.
“The same to you, sir,” said the other, in a sing-song tone. “Good-bye.”
When O'Shea had reached the first landing, he stopped, and, leaning
against the wall, laughed heartily. “I hope I 'll be able to remember
all he said,” muttered he, as he fancied himself amusing some choice
company by a personation of the Yankee. “The whole thing was as good as
a play! But,” added he, after a pause, “I 'm not sorry it's over, and
that I have done with him!” Very true and heartfelt was this last
reflection of the Member for Inch,--a far more honest recognition than
even the hearty laugh he had just enjoyed,--and then there came an
uneasy afterthought, that asked, “What could he mean by talking of a
long bill, payable at some future opportunity? Surely he can't imagine
that we 're to renew all this if we ever meet again. No, no, Colonel,
your manners and your medicine may be learned amongst the Mandans, but
they won't do here with us!” And so he issued into the street, not quite
reassured, but somewhat more comforted.
So occupied was his mind with the late scene, that he had walked fully
half-way back to his inn ere he bestowed a thought upon Joe. Wise men
were they who suggested that the sentence of a prisoner should not
immediately follow the conclusion of his trial, but ensue after the
interval of some two or three days. In the impulse of a mind fully
charged with a long narrative of guilt there is a force that seeks its
expansion in severity; whereas, in the brief respite of even some hours,
there come doubts and hesitations and regrets and palliations. In a
word, a variety of considerations unadmitted before find entrance now to
the mind, and are suffered to influence it.
Now, though Mr. O' Shea's first and not very unnatural impulse was to
give Joe a sound thrashing and then discharge him, the interval we have
just described moderated considerably the severity of this resolve. In
the first place, although the reader may be astonished at the assertion,
Joe was one very difficult to replace, since, independently of his
aptitude to serve as groom, valet, or cook, he was deeply versed in all
the personal belongings of his master. He had been with him through long
years of difficulty, and aided him in various ways, from corrupting the
virtuous freeholders of Inchabogue to raising an occasional supply on
the rose-amethyst ring. Joe had fought for him and lied for him, with a
zealous devotion not to be forgotten. Not, indeed, that he loved his
master more, but that he liked the world less, and Joe found a sincere
amount of pleasure in seeing how triumphantly their miserable
pretensions swayed and dominated over mankind. And, lastly, he had
another attribute, not to be undervalued in an age like ours,--he had no
wages! It is not to be understood that he served O'Shea out of some
sense of heroic devotion or attachment: no; Joe lived, as they say in
India, on “loot”. When times were prosperous,--that is, when billiards
and blind-hookey smiled, and to his master's pockets came home small
Californias of half-crowns and even sovereigns,--Joe prospered also. He
drank boldly and freely from the cup when brimful, but the half-empty
goblet he only sipped at. When seasons of pressure set in, Joe's
existence was maintained by some inscrutable secret of his own; for, be
it known that on O'Shea's arrival at an hotel, his almost first care was
to announce, “You will observe my servant is on board wages; he pays for
himself;” and Joe would corroborate the myth with a bow. Bethink
yourself, good reader, had you been the Member for Inch, it might have
been a question whether to separate from such a follower.
By the fluctuations of O'Shea's fortunes, Joe's whole conduct seemed
moulded. When the world went well with his master, his manner grew
somewhat almost respectful; let the times grow worse, Joe became
indifferent; a shade lower, and he was familiar and insolent; and, by
long habit, O'Shea had come to recognize these changes as part of the
condition of a varying fortune.
Little wonder was it that Joe grew to speak of his master and himself as
one, complaining, as he would, “We never got sixpence out of our
property. 'T is the ruin of us paying that annuity to our mother;” and
so on.
Now, these considerations, and many others like them, weighed deeply on
O'Shea's mind, as he entered the room of the hotel, angry and irritated,
doubtless, but far from decided as to how he should manifest it. Indeed,
the deliberation was cut short, for there stood Joe before him.
“I thought I was never to see your face again,” said O'Shea, scowling at
him. “How dare you have the insolence to appear before me?”
“Is n't it well for you that I 'm alive? Ain't you lucky that you 're
not answering for my death this minute?” said the other, boldly. “And if
I did n't drive like blazes, would I be here now? Appear before you,
indeed! I'd like to know who you 'd be appearin' before, if I was
murthered with them bitthers you gave me?”
“Lying scoundrel! you think to turn it all off in this manner. You
commit a theft first, and if the offence had killed you, it's no more
than you deserved. Who told you to steal the contents of that bag, sir?”
“The devil, I suppose, for I never felt pain like it,--twistin' and
tearin' and torturin' me as if you had a pinchers in my inside, and were
nippin' me to pieces!”
“I 'm glad of it,--heartily glad of it.”
“I know you are,--I know you well. 'T is a corpse you 'd like to see me
this minute.”
“So that I never set eyes on you, I don't care what becomes of you.”
“That 's enough,--enough said. I 'm goin'.”
“Go, and be------!”
“No, I won't. I 'll go and earn my livin'; and I 'll have my carakter,
too,--eleven years last Lady-day; and I 'll be paid back to my own
counthry; and I'll have my wages up to Saturday next; and the docther's
bill, here, for all the stuff I tuk since I came in; and when you are
ready with all this, you can ring for me.” And with his hands clasped
over his stomach, and in a half-bent position, Joe shuffled out and left
his master to his own reflections.
The world is full of its strange vicissitudes, and in nothing more
remarkably than the way people are reconciled, ignore the past, and
start afresh in life to incur more disagreements, and set to bickering
again. Great kings and kaisers indulge in this pastime; profound
statesmen and politicians do very little else. What wonder, then, if the
declining sun saw the smart tandem slipping along towards the Bagni,
with the O'Shea and his man sitting side by side in pleasant converse!
They were both smoking, and seemed like men who enjoyed their
picturesque drive, and the inspiriting pace they travelled at.
“When I 'll singe these 'cat hairs' off, and trim him a little about the
head, he 'll look twice as well,” said Joe, with his eye on the leader.
“It's a pity to see a collar on him.”
“We 'll take him down to Rome, and show him off over the hurdles,” said
his master, joyfully.
“I was just thinkin' of that this minute; wasn't that strange now?”
“We 'll have to go, for they 're going to break up house here, and go
off to Rome for the winter.”
“How will we settle with Pan?” said Joe, thoughtfully.
“A bill, I suppose.”
Joe shook his head doubtingly. “I 'm afraid not.”
“Go I will, and go I must,” said O'Shea, resolutely. “I 'm not going to
lose the best chance I ever had in life for the sake of a beggarly
innkeeper.”
“Why would you? Sure, no one would ask you! For, after all, 't is only
drivin' away, if we 're put to it I don't think he 'd overtake us.”
“Not if we went the same pace you did this morning, Joe,” said O'Shea,
laughing; and Joe joined pleasantly in the laugh, and the event ceased
to be a grievance from that instant.