Читать книгу Tom Burke Of "Ours", Volume I - Lever Charles James - Страница 4

The violent beating of the rain against the glass, and the loud crash of the storm as it shook the window-frames or snapped the sturdy branches of the old trees, awoke me. I got up, and opening the shutters, endeavored to look out; but the darkness was impenetrable, and I could see nothing but the gnarled and grotesque forms of the leafless trees dimly marked against the sky, as they moved to and fro like the arms of some mighty giant. Masses of heavy snow melted by the rain fell at intervals from the steep roof, and struck the ground beneath with a low sumph like thunder. A grayish, leaden tinge that marked the horizon showed it was near daybreak; but there was nought of promise in this harbinger of morning. Like my own career, it opened gloomily and in sadness: so felt I at least; and as I sat beside the window, and strained my eyes to pierce the darkening storm, I thought that even watching the wild hurricane without was better than brooding over the sorrows within my own bosom.

How long I remained thus I know not; but already the faint streak that announces sunrise marked the dull-colored sky, when the cheerful sounds of a voice singing in the room underneath attracted me. I listened, and in a moment recognized the piper. Darby M’Keown. He moved quickly about, and by his motions I could collect that he was making preparations for his journey.

If I could venture to pronounce, from the merry tones of his voice and the light elastic step with which he trod the floor, I certainly would not suppose that the dreary weather had any terror for him. He spoke so loud that I could catch a great deal of the dialogue he maintained with himself, and some odd verses of the song with which from time to time he garnished his reflections.

“Marry, indeed! Catch me at it – nabocklish – with the countryside before me, and the hoith of good eating and drinking for a blast of the chantre. Well, well! women ‘s quare craytures anyway.

Very well, ma’am. Mister M’Keown is your most obedient, – never say it twice, honey; and isn’t there as good fish, eh? – whoop!

Whew! thttt ‘s rain, anyhow. I would n’t mind it, bad as it is, if I hadn’t the side of a mountain before me; but sure it comes to the same in the end. Catty Delany is a good warrant for a pleasant evening; and, please God, I ‘ll be playing ‘Baltiorum’ beside the fire there before this time to-night.

After all, aix, the priest bates us out. There ‘s eight o’clock now, and I’m not off; devil a one’s stirring in the house either. Well, I believe I may take my leave of it; sorrow many tunes of the pipes it’s likely to hear, with Tony Basset over it. And my heart ‘s low when I think of that child there. Poor Tom! and it was you liked fun when you could have it.”

I wanted but the compassionate tone in which these few words were spoken to decide me in a resolution that I had been for some time pondering over. I knew that ere many hours Basset would come in search of me; I felt that, once in his power, I had nothing to expect but the long-promised payment of his old debt of hatred to me. In a few seconds I ran over with myself the prospect of misery before me, and determined at once, at every hazard, to make my escape. Darby seemed to afford me the best possible opportunity for this purpose; and I dressed myself, therefore, in the greatest haste, and throwing whatever I could find of my wardrobe into my carpet-bag, I pocketed my little purse, with all my worldly wealth, – some twelve or thirteen shillings, – and noiselessly slipped downstairs to the room beneath. I reached the door at the very moment Darby opened it to issue forth. He started back with fear, and crossed himself twice.

“Don’t be afraid. Darby,” said I, uneasy lest he should make any noise that would alarm the others; “I want to know which road you are travelling this morning.”

“The saints be about us, but you frightened me. Master Tommy; though, intermediately, I may obsarve, I ‘m by no ways timorous. I ‘m going within two miles of Athlone.”

“That’s exactly where I want to go. Darby; will you take me with you?” for at the instant Captain Bubbleton’s address flashed on my mind, and I resolved to seek him out and ask his advice in my difficulties.

“I see it all,” replied Darby, as he placed the tip of his finger on his nose. “I conceive your embarrassments, – you’re afraid of Basset; and small blame to you. But don’t do it. Master Tommy, – don’t do it, alannah! that ‘s the hardest life at all.”

“What?” said I, in amazement.

“To ‘list! Sure I know what you’re after. Faix, it would sarve you better to larn the pipes.”

I hastened to assure Darby of his error; and in a few words informed him of what I had overheard of Basset’s intentions respecting me.

“Make you an attorney!” said Darby, interrupting me abruptly; “an attorney! There’s nothing so mean as an attorney. The police is gentlemen compared to them, – they fight it out fair like men; but the other chaps sit in a house planning and contriving mischief all day long, inventing every kind of wickedness, and then getting people to do it. See, now, I believe in my conscience the devil was the first attorney, and it was just to serve his own ends that he bred a ruction between Adam and Eve. But whisht! there’s somebody stirring. Are you for the road?”

“Yes, Darby; my mind’s made up.”

Indeed, his own elegant eulogium on legal pursuits assisted my resolution, and filled my heart with renewed disgust at the thought of such a guardian as Tony Basset.

We walked stealthily along the gloomy passages, traversed the old hall, and noiselessly withdrew the heavy bolts and the great chain that fastened the door. The rain was sweeping along the ground in torrents, and the wind dashed it against the window panes in fitful gusts. It needed all our strength to close the door after us against the storm, and it was only after several trials that we succeeded in doing so. The hollow sound of the oak door smote upon my heart as it closed behind me; in an instant the sense of banishment, of utter destitution, was present to my mind. I turned my eyes to gaze upon the old house, – to take my last farewell of it forever! Gloomy as my prospect was, my sorrow was less for the sad future than for the misery of the moment.

“No, Master Tom! no, you must go back,” said Darby, who watched with a tender interest the sickly paleness of my cheek, and the tottering uncertainty of my walk.

“No, Darby,” said I, with an effort at firmness; “I’ll not look round any more.” And bending my head against the storm, I stepped out boldly beside my companion. We walked on without speaking, and soon left the neglected avenue and ruined gate lodge behind us, as we reached the highroad that led to Athlone.

Darby, who only waited to let my first burst of sorrow find its natural vent, no sooner perceived from my step and the renewed color of my cheek that I had rallied my courage once more, than he opened all his stores of agreeability, which, to my inexperience in such matters, were by no means inconsiderable. Abandoning at once all high-flown phraseology, – which Mr. M’Keown, I afterwards remarked, only retained as a kind of gala suit for great occasions, – he spoke freely and naturally. Lightening the way with many a story, – now grave, now gay, – he seemed to care little for the inclemency of the weather, and looked pleasantly forward to a happy evening as an ample reward for the present hardship.

“And the captain, Master Tom; you say he’s an agreeable man?” said Darby, alluding to my late companion on the coach, whose merits I was never tired of recapitulating.

“Oh, delightful! He has travelled everywhere, and seems to know everybody and everything. He ‘s very rich, too; I forget how many houses he has in England, and elephants without number in India.”

“Faix, you were in luck to fall in with him!” observed Darby.

“Yes, that I was I I ‘m sure he ‘ll do something for me; and for you too, Darby, when he knows you have been so kind to me.”

“Me! What did I do, darling? and what could I do, a poor piper like me? Wouldn’t it be honor enough for me if a gentleman’s son would travel the road with me? Darby M’Keown’s a proud man this day to have you beside him.”

A ruined cabin in the road, whose blackened walls and charred timbers denoted its fate, here attracted my companion’s attention. He stopped for a second or two to look on it; and then, kneeling down, he muttered a short prayer for the eternal rest of some one departed, and taking up a stone, he threw it on a heap of similar ones which lay near the doorside.

“What happened there, Darby?” said I, as he resumed his way.

“They wor out in the thrubles!” was his only reply, as he cast a glance behind, to perceive if any one had remarked him.

Though he made no further allusion to the fate of those who once inhabited the cabin, he spoke freely of his own share in the eventful year of ‘Ninety-eight’ justifying, as it then seemed to me, every step of the patriotic party, and explaining the causes of their unsuccess so naturally and so clearly that I could not help following with interest every detail of his narrative, and joining in his regrets for the unexpected and adverse strokes fortune dealt upon them. As he warmed with his subject, he spoke of France with an enthusiasm that I soon found contagious. He told me of the glorious career of the French armies in Italy and Austria; and of that wonderful man, of whom I then heard for the first time, as spreading a halo of victory over his nation, – contrasting, as he went on, the rewards which awaited heroism and bravery in that service with the purchased promotion in ours, artfully illustrating his position by a reference to myself, and what my fortunes would have been if born under that happier sky. “No elder brother there,” said he, “to live in affluence, while the younger ones are turned out to wander on the wide world, houseless and penniless. And all these things we might have done, had we been but true to ourselves.” I drank in all he said with avidity. The bearing of his arguments on my own fortunes gave them an interest and an apparent truth my young mind eagerly devoured; and when he ceased to speak, I pondered over all he told me in a spirit that left its impress on my whole future life.

It was a new notion to me to connect my own fortunes with anything in the political condition of the country; and while it gave my young heart a kind of martyred courage, it set my brain a-thinking on a class of subjects which never before possessed any interest for me. There was a flattery, too, in the thought that I owed my straitened circumstances less to any demerits of my own, than to political disabilities. The time was well chosen by my companion to instil his doctrines into my heart. I was young, ardent, enthusiastic; my own wrongs had taught me to hate injustice and oppression; my condition had made me feel, and feel bitterly, the humiliation of dependence; and if I listened with eager curiosity to every story and every incident of the bygone Rebellion, it was because the contest was represented to me as one between tyranny on one side and struggling liberty on the other. I heard the names of those who sided with the insurgent party extolled as the great and good men of their country; their ancient families and hereditary claims furnishing a contrast to many of the opposite party, whose recent settlement in the island and new-born aristocracy were held up in scoff and derision. In a word, I learned to believe that the one side was characterized by cruelty, oppression, and injustice; the other, conspicuous only for endurance, courage, patriotism, and truth. What a picture was this to a mind like mine! and at a moment, too, when I seemed to realize in my own desolation an example of the very sufferings I heard of!

If the portrait McKeown drew of Ireland was sad and gloomy, he painted France in colors the brightest and most seductive. Dwelling less on the political advantages which the Revolution had won for the popular party, he directed my entire attention to the brilliant career of glory the French army had followed; the triumphant success of the Italian campaign; the war in Germany; and the splendor of Paris, which he represented as a very paradise on earth; but above all, he dwelt on the character and achievements of the First Consul, recounting many anecdotes of his early life, from the period when he was a schoolboy at Brienne to the hour when he dictated the conditions of peace to the oldest monarchies of Europe, and proclaimed war with the voice of one who came as an avenger.

I drank in every word he spoke with avidity. The very enthusiasm of his manner was contagious; I felt my heart bound with rapturous delight at some hardy deed of soldierlike daring, and conceived a kind of wild idolatry for the man who seemed to have infused his own glorious temperament into the mighty thousands around him, and converted a whole nation into heroes.

Darby’s information on all these matters – which seemed to me something miraculous – had been obtained at different periods from French emissaries who were scattered through Ireland; many of them old soldiers who had served in the campaigns of Egypt and Italy.

“But sure, if you ‘d come with me, Master Tom, I could bring you where you’ll see them yourself; and you could talk to them of the battles and skirmishes, for I suppose you spake French.”

“Very little. Darby. How sorry I am now that I don’t know it well.”

“No matter; they’ll soon teach you, and many a thing besides. There ‘s a captain I know of, not far from where we are this minute, could learn you the small sword, – in style, he could. I wish you saw him in his green uniform with white facings, and three elegant crosses upon it that General Bonaparte gave him with his own hands; he had them on one Sunday, and I never see’d anything equal to it.”

“And are there many French officers hereabouts?”

“Not now; no, they’re almost all gone. After the rising they went back to France, except a few. Well, there’ll be call for them again, please God.”

“Will there be another Rebellion, then, Darby?”

As I put this question fearlessly, and in a voice loud enough to be heard at some distance, a horseman, wrapped up in a loose cloth cloak, was passing. He suddenly pulled up short, and turning his horse round, stood exactly opposite to the piper. Darby saluted the stranger respectfully, and seemed desirous to pass on; but the other, turning round in his saddle, fixed a stern look on him, and he cried out, —

“What! at the old trade, M’Keown. Is there no curing you, eh?”

“Just so, major,” said Darby, assuming a tone of voice he had not made use of the entire morning; “I ‘m conveying a little instrumental recreation.”

“None of your damned gibberish with me. Who ‘s that with you?”

“He ‘s the son of a neighbor of mine, your honor,” said Darby, with an imploring look at me not to betray him. “His father ‘s a schoolmaster, – a philomath, as one might say.”

I was about to contradict this statement bluntly, when the stranger called out to me, —

“Mark me, young sir, you ‘re not in the best of company this morning, and I recommend you to part with your friend as soon as may be. And you,” said he, turning to Darby, “let me see you in Athlone at ten o’clock to-morrow. D’ ye hear me?”

The piper grew pale as death as he heard this command, to which he only responded by touching his hat in silence; while the horseman, drawing his cloak around, dashed his spurs into his beast’s flanks, and was soon out of sight. Darby stood for a moment or two looking down the road, where the stranger had disappeared; a livid hue colored his cheek, and a tremulous quivering of his under-lip gave him the appearance of one in ague.

“I’ll be even with ye yet,” muttered he between his clenched teeth; “and when the hour comes – ”

Here he repeated some words in Irish with a vehemence of manner that actually made my blood tingle; then suddenly recovering himself, he assumed a kind of sickly smile. “That’s a hard man, the major.”

“I’m thinking,” said Darby, after a pause of some minutes, – “I ‘m thinking it ‘s better for you not to go into Athlone with me; for if Basset wishes to track you out, that ‘ll be the first place he ‘ll try. Besides, now that the major has seen you, he’ll never forget you.”

Having pledged myself to adopt any course my companion recommended, he resumed, —

“Ay, that ‘s the best way. I ‘ll lave you at Ned Malone’s in the Glen; and when I ‘ve done with the major in the morning, I ‘ll look after your friend the captain, and tell him where you are.”

I readily assented to this arrangement; and only asked what distance it might yet be to Ned Malone’s, for already I began to feel fatigue.

“A good ten miles,” said Darby, – “no less; but we ‘ll stop here above, and get something to eat, and then we ‘ll take a rest for an hour or two, and you ‘ll think nothing of the road after.”

I stepped out with increased energy at the cheering prospect; and although the violence of the weather was nothing abated, I consoled myself with thinking of the rest and refreshment before me, and resolved not to bestow a thought upon the present. Darby, on the other hand, seemed more depressed than before, and betrayed in many ways a state of doubt and uncertainty as to his movements, – sometimes pushing on rapidly for half a mile or so; then relapsing into a slow and plodding pace; often looking back too, and more than once coming to a perfect stand-still, talking the whole time to himself in a low muttering voice.

In this way we proceeded for above two miles, when at last I descried through the beating rain the dusky gable of a small cabin in the distance, and eagerly asked if that were to be our halting place.

“Yes,” said Darby, “that ‘s Peg’s cabin; and though it ‘s not very remarkable in the way of cookery or the like, it ‘s the only house within seven miles of us.”

As we came nearer, the aspect of the building became even less enticing. It was a low mud hovel, with a miserable roof of sods, or scraws, as they are technically called; a wretched attempt at a chimney occupying the gable; and the front to the road containing a small square aperture, with a single pane of glass as a window, and a wicker contrivance in the shape of a door, which, notwithstanding the severity of the day, lay wide open to permit the exit of the smoke, which rolled more freely through this than through the chimney. A filthy pool of stagnant, green-covered water stood before the door, through which a little causeway of earth led. Upon this a thin, lank-sided sow was standing to be rained, on, her long, pointed snout turned meditatively towards the luscious mud beside her. Displacing this Important member of the family with an unceremonious kick. Darby stooped to enter the low doorway, uttering as he did so the customary “God save all here!” As I followed him in, I did not catch the usual response to the greeting, and from the thick smoke which filled the cabin, could see nothing whatever around me.

“Well, Peg,” said Darby, “how is it with you the day?”

A low grunting noise issued from the foot of a little mud wall beside the fireplace. I turned and beheld the figure of a woman of some seventy years of age, seated beside the turf embers; her dark eyes, bleared with smoke and dimmed with age, were still sharp and piercing; and her nose, thin and aquiline, indicated a class of features by no means common among the people. Her dress was the blue frieze coat of a laboring man, over the woollen gown usually worn by women. Her feet and legs were bare; and her head was covered with an old straw bonnet, whose faded ribbon and tarnished finery betokened its having once belonged to some richer owner. There was no vestige of any furniture, – neither table nor chair, nor dresser, nor even a bed, unless some straw laid against the wall in one corner could be thus called; a pot suspended over the wet and sodden turf by a piece of hay rope, and an earthen pipkin with water stood beside her. The floor of the hovel, lower in many places than the road without, was cut up into sloppy mud by the tread of the sow, who ranged at will through the premises. In a word, more dire and wretched poverty it was impossible to conceive.

Darby’s first movement was to take off the lid and peer into the pot, when the bubbling sound of the boiling potatoes assured him that we should have at least something to eat; his next, was to turn a little basket upside down for a seat, to which he motioned me with his hand; then, approaching the old woman, he placed his hand to his mouth and shouted in her ear, —

“What ‘s the major after this morning, Peg?”

She shook her head gloomily a couple of times, but gave no answer.

“I ‘m thinking there ‘s bad work going on at the town there,” cried he, in the same loud tone as before.

Peg muttered something in Irish, but far too low to be audible.

“Is she mad, poor thing?” said I, in a whisper.

The words were not well uttered when she darted on me her black and piercing eyes, with a look so steadfast as to make me quail beneath them.

“Who ‘s that there?” said the hag, in a croaking, harsh voice.

“He ‘s a young boy from beyond Loughrea.”

“No!” shouted she, in a tone of passionate energy; “don’t tell me a lie. I ‘d know his brows among a thousand, – he ‘s a son of Matt Burke’s, of Cronmore.”

“Begorra, she is a witch; devil a doubt of it!” muttered Darby between his teeth. “You ‘re right, Peg,” continued he, after a moment. “His father’s dead, and the poor child’s left nothing in the world.”

“And so ould Matt’s dead?” interrupted she. “When did he die?”

“On Tuesday morning, before day.”

“I was driaming of him that morning, and I thought he kem up here to the cabin door on his knees, and said, ‘Peggy, Peggy M’Casky! I’m come to ax your pardon for all I done to you.’ And I sat up in my bed, and cried out, ‘Who ‘s that?’ and he said, ‘'T is me, – ‘t is Mister Burke; I ‘m come to give you back your lease.’ ‘I ‘ll tell you what you ‘ll give me back,’ says I; ‘give me the man whose heart you bruck with bad treatment; give me the two fine boys you transported for life; give me back twenty years of my own, that I spent in sorrow and misery.’”

“Peg, acushla! don’t speak of it any more. The poor child here, that ‘s fasting from daybreak, he is n’t to blame for what his father did. I think the praties is done by this time.”

So saying, he lifted the pot from the fire, and carried it to the door to strain off the water. The action seemed to rouse the old woman, who rose rapidly to her legs, and, hastening to the door, snatched the pot from his hand and pushed him to one side.

“‘Tis two days since I tasted bit or sup; ‘tis God himself knows when and where I may have it again; but if I never broke my fast, I’ll not do it with the son of him that left me a lone woman this day, that brought the man that loved me to the grave, and my children to shame forever.”

As she spoke, she dashed the pot into the road with such force as to break it into fifty pieces; and then, sitting down on the outside of the cabin, she wrung her hands and moaned piteously, in the very excess of her sorrow.

“Let us be going,” said Darby, in a whisper. “There ‘a no spaking to her when she ‘s one of them fits on her.”

We moved silently from the hovel, and gained the road. My heart was full to bursting; shame and abasement overwhelmed me, and I dated not look up.

“Good-by, Peg. I hope we ‘ll be better friends when we meet again,” said Darby, as he passed out.

She made no reply, but entered the cabin, from which, in an instant after, she emerged, carrying a lighted sod of turf in a rude wooden tongs.

“Come along quick!” said Darby, with a look of terror; “she’s going to curse you.”

I turned round, transfixed and motionless. If my life depended on it, I could not have stirred a limb. The old woman by this time had knelt down on the road, and was muttering rapidly to herself.

“Gome along, I say I,” said Darby, pulling me by the arm.

“And now,” cried the hag aloud, “may bad luck be your shadow wherever you walk, with sorrow behind and bad hopes before you! May you never taste happiness nor ease; and, like this turf, may your heart be always burning here, and – ”

I heard no more, for Darby, tearing me away by main force, dragged me along the road, just as the hissing turf embers had fallen at my feet where the hag had thrown them.