Читать книгу Confessions Of Con Cregan, the Irish Gil Blas - Charles James Lever - Страница 9

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It is among the strange and singular anomalies of our nature that however pleased men may be at the conviction of a noted offender, few of those instrumental to his punishment are held in honor and esteem. If all Kilbeggan rejoiced, as they did, at my father's downfall, a very considerable share of obloquy rested on me—a species of judgment, I honestly confess, that I was not the least prepared for.

“There goes the little informer,” said they, as I passed; “what did ye get for hanging—” a very admirable piece of Irish exaggeration—“for hanging yer father, Con?” said one.

“Could n't ye help yer stepmother to a say voyage?” shouted another.

“And then we 'd be rid of yez all,” chimed in a third.

“He's rich now,” whined out an old beggar-man that often had eaten his potatoes at our fireside. “He's rich now, the chap is; he 'll marry a lady!”

This was the hardest to bear of all the slights, for not alone had I lost all pretension to my father's property, but the raggedness of my clothes and the general misery of my appearance might have saved me from the reproach of what is so forcibly termed “blood-money.”

“Come over to me this evening,” said Father Rush; and they were the only words of comfort I heard from any side. “Come over to me about six o'clock, Con, for I want to speak to you.”

They were long hours that intervened between that and six. I could not stay in the town, where every one I met had some sneer or scoff against me; I could not go home, I had none! and so I wandered out into the open country, taking my course towards a bleak common, about two miles off, where few, if any one, was like to be but myself.

This wild and dreary tract lay alongside of the main road to Athlone, and was traversed by several footpaths, by which the country people were accustomed to make “short cuts” to market, from one part of the road to another; for the way, passing through a bog, took many a winding turn as the ground necessitated.

There is a feeling of lonely desolation in wide far-stretching wastes that accords well with the purposeless vacuity of hopelessness; but, somehow or other, the very similitude between the scene without and the sense of desolation within, establishes a kind of companionship. Lear was speaking like a true philosopher when he uttered the words, “I like this rocking of the battlements.”

I had wandered some hours “here and there” upon the common; and it was now the decline of day when I saw at a little distance from me the figure of a young man whose dress and appearance bespoke condition, running along at a brisk pace, but evidently laboring under great fatigue.

The instant he saw me he halted, and cried out, “I say, my boy, is that Kilbeggan yonder, where I see the spire?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And where is the high-road to Athlone?”

“Yonder, sir, where the two trees are standing.”

“Have you seen the coach pass—the mail for Athlone?”

“Yes, sir, she went through the town about half an hour ago.”

“Are ye certain, boy? are ye quite sure of this?” cried he, in a voice of great agitation.

“I am quite sure, sir; they always change horses at Moone's public-house; and I saw them 'draw up' there more than half an hour since.”

“Is there no other coach passes this road for Dublin?”

“The night mail, sir, but she does not go to-night; this is Saturday.”

“What is to be done?” said the youth, in deep sorrow; and he seated himself on a stone as he spoke, and hid his face between his hands.

As he sat thus, I had time to mark him well, and scan every detail of his appearance.

Although tall and stoutly knit, he could not have been above sixteen, or at most seventeen, years of age; his dress, a kind of shooting-jacket, was made in a cut that affected fashion; and I observed on one finger of his very white hand a ring which, even to my uneducated eyes, bespoke considerable value.

He looked up at last, and his eyes were very red, and a certain trembling of the lips showed that he was much affected. “I suppose, my lad, I can find a chaise or a carriage of some kind in Kilbeggan?” said he; “for I have lost the mail. I had got out for a walk, and by the advice of a countryman taken this path over the bog, expecting, as he told me, it would cut off several miles of way. I suppose I must have mistaken him, for I have been running for above an hour, and am too late after all; but still, if I can find a chaise, I shall be in time yet.”

“They 're all gone, sir,” said I; “and sorry am I to have such tidings to tell. The Sessions broke up to-day, and they're away with the lawyers to Kinnegad.”

“And how far is that from us?”

“Sixteen miles or more, by the road.”

“And how am I to get there?”

“Unless ye walk it—”

“Walk! impossible. I am dead beat already; besides, the time it would take would lose me all chance of reaching Dublin as I want.”

“Andy Smith has a horse, if he'd lend it; and there's a short road by Hogan's boreen.”

“Where does this Smith live?” said he, stopping me impatiently.

“Not a half mile from here; you can see the house from this.”

“Come along, then, and show me the way, my boy,” said he; and the gleam of hope seemed to lend alacrity to his movements.

Away we set together, and as we went, it was arranged between us that if Andy would hire out his mare, I should accompany the rider as guide, and bring back the animal to its owner, while the traveller proceeded on his journey to town.

The negotiation was tedious enough; for, at first, Andy would n't appear at all; he thought it was a process-server was after him—a suspicion probably suggested by my presence, as it was generally believed that a rag of my father's mantle had descended to me. It was only after a very cautious and careful scrutiny of the young traveller through a small glass eye—it wasn't a window—in the mud wall that he would consent to come out. When he did so, he treated the proposal most indignantly. “Is it he hire out his baste? as if she was a dirty garraun of Betty Nowlan's of the head inn; he wondered who 'd ask the like!” and so on.

The youth, deterred by this reception, would have abandoned the scheme at once; but I, better acquainted with such characters as Andy, and knowing that his difficulties were only items in the intended charge, higgled, and bargained, and bullied, and blarneyed by turns; and, after some five and forty minutes of alternate joking and abusing each other, it was at last agreed on that the “baste” was to be ceded for the sum of fifteen shillings—“two and sixpence more if his honor was pleased with the way she carried him;” the turnpike and a feed of oats being also at the charge of the rider, as well as all repairs of shoes incurred by loss or otherwise. Then there came a supplemental clause as to the peculiar care of the animal. How “she was n't to be let drink too much at once, for she 'd get the colic;” and if she needed shoeing, she was to have a “twitch” on her nose, or she'd kick the forge to “smithereens.” The same precaution to be taken if the saddle required fresh girthing; a hint was given, besides, not to touch her with the left heel, or she 'd certainly kick the rider with the hind leg of the same side; and, as a last caution given, to be on our guard at the cross-roads at Toomes-bridge, or she'd run away towards Croghan, where she once was turned out in foal. “Barring” these peculiarities, and certain smaller difficulties about mounting, “she was a lamb, and the sweetest-tempered crayture ever was haltered.”

In the very midst of this panegyric upon the animal's good and noble qualities he flung open the door of a little shed, and exhibited her to our view. I verily believe, whatever the urgency of the youth's reason for proceeding, that his heart failed him at the sight of the steed; a second's reconsideration seemed to rally his courage, and he said, “No matter, it can't be helped; saddle her at once, and let us be off.”

“That's easier said nor done,” muttered Andy to himself, as he stood at the door, without venturing a step farther. “Con,” said he, at last, in a species of coaxing tone I well knew boded peril, “Con, a cushla! get a hould of her by the head, that's a fine chap; make a spring at the forelock.”

“Maybe she 'd kick—”

“Sorra kick! get up there, now, and I'll be talking to you all the while.”

This proposition, though doubtless meant as most encouraging, by no means reassured me.

“Come, come! I'll bridle the infernal beast,” said the youth, losing all patience with both of us, and he sprung forward into the stable; but barely had he time to jump back, as the animal let fly with both hind legs together. Andy, well aware of what was coming, pulled us both back and shut to the door, against which the hoofs kept up one rattling din of kicks that shook the crazy edifice from roof to ground.

“Ye see what comes of startlin' her; the crayture's timid as a kid,” said Andy, whose blanched cheek badly corroborated his assumed composure. “Ye may do what ye plaze, barrin' putting a bridle on her; she never took kindly to that!”

“But do ye intend me to ride her without one?” said the youth.

“By no manner of means, sir,” said Andy, with a plausible slowness on each word that gave him time to think of an expedient. “I would n't be guilty of the like; none that knows me would ever say it to me: I 'm a poor man—”

“You're a devilish tiresome one,” broke in the youth, suddenly; “here we have been above half an hour standing at the door, and none the nearer our departure than when we arrived.”

“Christy Moore could bridle her, if he was here,” said Andy; “but he's gone to Moate, and won't be back till evening; may be that would do?”

A very impatient, and not very pious exclamation consigned Christy to an untimely fate. “Well, don't be angry, anyhow, sir,” said Andy; “there's many a thing a body might think of, if they were n't startled. See, now, I have a way this minute; an elegant fine way, too.”

“Well, what is it? Confound your long-winded speeches!”

“There, now, you're angry again! sure it's enough to give one quite a through-otherness, and not leave them time to reflect.”

“Your plan, your plan!” said the young man, his lips trembling with anger and impatience.

“Here it is, then; let the 'gossoon,'” meaning me, “get up on the roof and take off two or three of the scraws, the sods of grass, till he can get through, and then steal down on the mare's back; when he 's once on her, she 'll never stir head nor foot, and he can slip the bridle over her quite asy.”

“The boy might be killed; no, no, I 'll not suffer that—”

“Wait, sir,” cried I, interrupting, “it's not so hard, after all; once on her back, I defy her to throw me.”

“Sure I know that well; sorra better rider in the Meath hunt than little Con,” broke in Andy; backing me with a ready flattery he thought would deceive me.

It was not without reluctance that the youth consented to this forlorn hope, but he yielded at last; and so, with a bridle fastened round me like a scarf, I was hoisted on the roof by Andy, and, under a volley of encouraging expressions, exhorted to “go in and win.”

“There! there, a cushla!” cried Andy, as he saw me performing the first act of the piece with a vigor he had never calculated on; “'tis n't a coach and six ye want to drive through. Tear and ages! ye'll take the whole roof off.” The truth was, I worked away with a malicious pleasure in the destruction of the old miser's roof; nor is it quite certain how far my zeal might have carried me, when suddenly one of the rafters—mere light poles of ash—gave way, and down I went, at first slowly, and then quicker, into a kind of funnel formed by the smashed timbers and the earthen sods. The crash, the din, and the dust appeared to have terrified the wicked beast below, for she stood trembling in one corner of the stable, and never moved a limb as I walked boldly up and passed the bridle over her head. This done, I had barely time to spring on her back, when the door was forced open by the young gentleman, whose fears for my fate had absorbed every other thought.

“Are you safe, my boy, quite safe?” he cried, making his way over the fallen rubbish.

“Oh! the devil fear him,” cried Andy, in a perfect rage of passion; “I wish it was his bones was smashed, instead of the roof-sticks—see!—Och, murther, only look at this.” And Andy stood amid the ruins, a most comical picture of affliction, in part real and in part assumed. Meanwhile the youth had advanced to my side, and, with many a kind and encouraging word, more than repaid me for all my danger.

“'T is n't five pound will pay the damage,” cried Andy, running up on his fingers a sum of imaginary arithmetic.

“Where's the saddle, you old—” What the young man was about to add, I know not; but at a look from me he stopped short.

“Is it abusin' me you're for now, afther wrecking my house and destroying my premises?” cried Andy, whose temper was far from sweetened by the late catastrophe. “Sure what marcy my poor beast would get from the likes of ye! sorry step she 'll go in yer company; pay the damages ye done, and be off.”

Here was a new turn of affairs, and, judging from the irascibility of both parties, a most disastrous one; it demanded, indeed, all my skill—all the practised dexterity of a mind trained, as mine had been been by many a subtlety, to effect a compromise, which I did thus: my patron being cast in the costs of all the damages to the amount of twenty shillings, and the original contract to be maintained in all its integrity.

The young man paid the money without speaking; but I had time to mark that the purse from which he drew it was far from weighty. “Are we free to go at last?” cried he, in a voice of suppressed wrath.

“Yes, yer honor; all's right,” answered Andy, whose heart was mollified at the sight of money. “A pleasant journey, and safe to ye; take good care of the beast, don't ride her over the stones, and—”

The remainder of the exhortation was lost to us, as we set forth in a short jog-trot, I running alongside.

“When we are once below the hill, yonder,” said I to my companion, “give her the whip, and make up for lose time.”

“And how are you to keep up, my lad?” asked he, in some surprise.

I could scarcely avoid a laugh at the simplicity of the question; as if an Irish gossoon, with his foot on his native bog, would n't be an overmatch in a day's journey for the best hack that ever ambled! Away we went, sometimes joking over, sometimes abusing, the old miser Andy, of whom, for my fellow-traveller's amusement, I told various little traits and stories, at which he laughed with a zest quite new to me to witness. My desire to be entertaining then led me on to speak of my father and his many curious adventures—the skill with which he could foment litigation, and the wily stratagems by which he sustained it afterwards. All the cunning devices of the process-server I narrated with a gusto that smacked of my early training: how, sometimes, my crafty parent would append a summons to the collar of a dog, and lie in wait till he saw the owner take it off and read it, and then, emerging from his concealment, cry out “sarved,” and take to his heels; and again how he once succeeded in “serving” old Andy himself, by appearing as a beggar woman, and begging him to light a bit of paper to kindle her pipe. The moment, however, he took the bit of twisted paper, the assumed beggar-woman screamed out, “Andy, yer sarved: that's a process, my man!” The shock almost took Andy's life; and there's not a beggar in the barony dares to come near him since.

“Your father must be well off, then, I suppose,” said my companion.

“He was a few weeks ago, sir; but misfortune has come on us since that.” I was ashamed to go on, and yet I felt that strange impulse so strong in the Irish peasant to narrate anything of a character which can interest by harrowing and exciting the feelings.

Very little pressing was needed to make me recount the whole story, down to the departure of my father with the other prisoners sentenced to transportation.

“And whither were you going when I met you this morning on the common?” said my fellow-traveller, in a voice of some interest.

“To seek my fortune, sir,” was my brief answer; and either the words or the way they were uttered seemed to strike my companion, for he drew up short, and stared at me, repeating the phrase, “Seek your fortune!” “Just so,” said I, warmed by an enthusiasm which then was beginning to kindle within me, and which for many a long year since, and in many a trying emergency, has cheered and sustained me. “Just so; the world is wide, and there 's a path for every one, if they 'd only look for it.”

“But you saw what came of my taking a short cut, this morning,” said my companion, laughing.

“And you'd have been time enough too, if you had been always thinking of what you were about, sir; but as you told me, you began a thinking and a dreaming of twenty things far away. Besides, who knows what good turn luck may take, just at the very moment when we seem to have least of it?”

“You 're quite a philosopher, Con,” said he, smiling.

“So Father Mahon used to say, sir,” said I, proudly, and in reality highly flattered at the reiteration of the epithet.

Thus chatting, we journeyed along, lightening the way with talk, and making the hours seem to me the very pleasantest I had ever passed. At last we came in sight of the steeple of Kinnegad, which lay in the plain before us, about a mile distant.

The little town of Kinnegad was all astir as we entered it The “up mail” had just come down, in the main street, sending all its passengers flying in various directions—through shop-windows; into cow-houses and piggeries; some being proudly perched on the roof of a cabin, and others most ignobly seated on a dunghill; the most lamentable figure of all being an elderly gentleman, who, having cut a summerset through an apothecary's window, came forth cut by a hundred small vials, and bearing on his person unmistakable evidence of every odor, from tar-water to assafotida. The conveyance itself lay, like the Ark after the Deluge, quietly reposing on one side; while animals male and female, “after their kind,” issued from within. Limping and disconsolate figures were being assisted into the inn; and black eyes and smashed faces were as rife as in a country fair.

I was not slow in appropriating the calamity to a good purpose. “See, sir,” I whispered to my companion, “you said, a while ago, that nobody had such bad luck as yourself; think what might have happened you, now, if you had n't missed the coach.”

“True enough, Con,” said he, “there is such a thing as being too late for bad as well as for good fortune; and I experience it now. But the next question is, how to get forward; for, of course, with a broken axle, the mail cannot proceed further.”

The difficulty was soon got over. The halt and the maimed passengers, after loudly inveighing against all coach-proprietors—the man that made, and the man that horsed, he that drove, and he that greased the wheels of all public conveyances—demanded loudly to be forwarded to the end of their journey by various chaises and other vehicles of the town; I at the same time making use of my legal knowledge to suggest that while doing so, they acted under protest; that it was “without prejudice” to any future proceedings they might deem fit to adopt for compensatory damages. If some laughed heartily at the source from which the hint came, others said I was a “devilish shrewd chap,” and insinuated something about a joint-stock subscription of sixpences for my benefit; but the motion was apparently unseconded, and so, like many benefactors of my species, I had to apply to my conscience for my reward; or, safer still, had to wait till I could pay myself.

My young companion, who now, in a few words, told me that he was a student at Trinity College and a “reader for honors,” pulled out his purse to pay me. “Remember, my boy, the name of Henry Lyndsay; I 'm easily found, if you chance to come to Dublin—not that I can be of much service to any one, but I shall not forget the service you rendered me this day. Here, take this, pay for the mare's feeding, and when she has rested—”

I would not suffer him to proceed further, but broke in:

“I'm not going back, sir! I'll never turn my footsteps that way again! Leave the mare in the inn; Andy comes every Saturday here for the market, and will find her safe. As for me, I must 'seek my fortune;' and when one has to search for anything, there's nothing like beginning early.”

“You 're a strange fellow, Con,” said he, looking at me; and I was shrewd enough to see that his features exhibited no small astonishment at my words. “And where do you intend to look for this same fortune you speak of?”

“No one place in particular, sir! I read in an old book once, that good luck is like sunshine, and is not found in all climates at the same time; so I intend to ramble about; and when I breakfast on the sunny side of the apple, never stay to dine off the green one.”

“And you are the kind of fellow to succeed!” said he, half to himself, and rather as though reflecting on my words than addressing me.

“So I intend, sir,” replied I, confidently.

“Have you ever read 'Gil Blas,' Con?”

“I have it almost by heart, sir.”

“That's it!” said he, laughing; “I see whence you've got your taste for adventure. But remember, Con, Gil Blas lived in different times from ours, and in a very different land. He was, besides, a well-educated fellow, with no small share of good looks and good manners.”

“As for age and country, sir,” said I, boldly, “men and women are pretty much alike at all times, and in all places; in the old book I told you of a while ago, I read that human passions, like the features of the face, are only infinite varieties of the same few ingredients. Then, as to education and the rest—what one man can pick up, so can another. The will is the great thing, and I feel it very strong in me. And now, to give a proof of it, I am determined to go up to Dublin, and with your honor too, and you'll see if I won't have my way.”

“So you shall, Con!” replied he, laughing; “I'll take you on the top of the chaise; and although I cannot afford to keep a servant, you shall stay with me in College until chance, in which you have such implicit faith, shall provide better for you. Come, now, lead the mare into the stable, for I see my companions are packing up to be gone.”

I was not slow in obeying the orders, and soon returned to assist my new master with his luggage. All was quickly settled; and a few minutes after saw me seated on a portmanteau on the roof on my way to Dublin.