Читать книгу Tom Burke Of "Ours", Volume I - Lever Charles James - Страница 3

If there are dreams which, by their vividness and accuracy of detail, seem altogether like reality, so are there certain actual passages in our lives which, in their indistinctness while occurring, and in the faint impression they leave behind them, seem only as mere dreams. Most of our early sorrows are of this kind. The warm current of our young hearts would appear to repel the cold touch of affliction; nor can grief at this period do more than breathe an icy chill upon the surface of our affections, where all is glowing and fervid beneath. The struggle then between the bounding heart and the depressing care renders our impressions of grief vague and ill defined.

A stunning sense of some great calamity, some sorrow without hope, mingled in my waking thoughts with a childish notion of freedom. Unloved, uncared for, my early years presented but few pleasures. My boyhood had been a long struggle to win some mark of affection from one who cared not for me, and to whom still my heart had clung, as does the drowning man to the last plank of all the wreck. The tie that bound me to him was now severed, and I was without-one in the wide world to look up to or to love.

I looked out from my window upon the bleak country. A heavy snowstorm had fallen during the night. A lowering sky of leaden hue stretched above the dreary landscape, across which no living thing was seen to move. Within doors all was silent. The doctor and the attorney had both taken their departure; the deep wheel-track in the snow marked the road they had followed. The servants, seated around the kitchen fire, conversed in low and broken whispers. The only sound that broke the stillness was the ticking of the clock upon the stair. There was something that smote heavily on my heart in the monotonous ticking of that clock: that told of time passing beside him who had gone; that seemed to speak of minutes close to one whose minutes were eternity. I crept into the room where the dead body lay, and as my tears ran fast, I bent over it. I thought sometimes the expression of those cold features changed, – now frowning heavily, now smiling blandly on me. I watched them, till in my eager gaze the lips seemed to move and the cheek to flush. How hard is it to believe in death! how difficult to think that “there is a sleep that knows no waking!” I knelt down beside the bed and prayed. I prayed that now, as all of earth was nought to him who was departed, he would give me the affection he had not bestowed in life. I besought him not to chill the heart that in its lonely desolation had neither home nor friend. My throat sobbed to bursting as in my words I seemed to realize the fulness of my affliction. The door opened behind me as with bent-down head I knelt. A heavy footstep slowly moved along the floor; and the next moment the tottering figure of old Lanty stood beside me, gazing on the dead man. There was that look of vacancy in his filmy eye that showed he knew nothing of what had happened.

“Is he asleep. Master Tommy?” said the old man, in a faint whisper.

My lips trembled, but I could not speak the word.

“I thought he wanted the ‘dogs’ up at Meelif; but I ‘m strained here about the loins, and can’t go out myself. Tell him that, when he wakes.”

“He’ll never wake now, Lanty; he’s dead!” said I, as a rush of tears half choked my utterance.

“Dead!” said he, repeating the word two or three times, – “dead! Well, well! I wonder will Master George keep the dogs now. There seldom comes a better; and ‘twas himself that liked the cry o’ them.”

He tottered from the room as he spoke, and I could hear him muttering the same words over and over, as he crept slowly down the stair.

I have said that this painful stroke of fortune was as a dream to me; and so for three days I felt it. The altered circumstances of everything about me were inexplicable to my puzzled brain. The very kindness of the servants, so unusual to me, struck me forcibly. They felt that the time was past when any sympathy for me had been the passport to disfavor, and they pitied me.

The funeral took place on the third morning. Mr. Basset having acquainted my brother that there was no necessity for his presence, even that consolation was denied me, – to meet him who alone remained of all my name and house belonging to me. How I remember every detail of that morning! The silence of the long night broken in upon by heavy footsteps ascending the stairs; strange voices, not subdued like those of all in our little household, but loud and coarse; even laughter I could hear, the noise increasing at each moment. Then the muffled sound of wheels upon the snow, and the cries of the drivers as they urged their horses forward. Then a long interval, in which nought was heard save the happy whistle of some poor postilion, who, careless of his errand, whiled away the tedious time with a lively tune. And lastly, there came the dull noise of feet moving step by step down the stair, the muttered words, the shuffling sound of feet as they descended, and the clank of the coffin as it struck against the wall.

The long, low parlor was filled with people, few of whom I had ever seen before. They were broken up into little knots, chatting cheerfully together while they made a hurried breakfast. The table and sideboard were covered with a profusion I had never witnessed previously. Decanters of wine passed freely from hand to hand; and although the voices fell somewhat as I appeared amidst them, I looked in vain for one touch of sorrow for the dead, or even respect for his memory.

As I took my place in the carriage beside the attorney, a kind of dreamy apathy settled down on me, and I scarcely knew what was passing. I only remember the horrible shrinking sense of dread with which I recoiled from his one attempt at consolation, and the abrupt way in which he desisted, and turned to converse with the doctor. How my heart sickened as we drew near the churchyard, and I beheld the open gate that stood wide awaiting us! The dusky figures, with their mournful black cloaks, moved slowly across the snow, like spirits of some gloomy world; while the death-bell echoed in my ears, and sent a shuddering through my frame.

“What is to become of the second boy?” said the clergyman, in a low whisper, but which, by some strange fatality, struck forcibly on my ear.

“It’s not much matter,” replied Basset, still lower; “for the present he goes home with me. Tom, I say, you come back with me to-day.”

“No,” said I, boldly; “I’ll go home again.”

“Home!” repeated he, with a scornful laugh, – “home I And where may that be, youngster?”

“For shame, Basset!” said the clergyman; “don’t speak that way to him. My little man, you can’t go home today. Mr. Basset will take you with him for a few days, until your late father’s will is known, and his wishes respecting you.”

“I’ll go home, sir!” said I, but in a fainter tone, and with tears in my eyes.

“Well, well! let him do so for to-day; it may relieve his poor heart. Come, Basset, I ‘ll take him back myself.”

I clasped his hand as he spoke, and kissed it over and over.

“With all my heart,” cried Basset. “I’ll come over and fetch him to-morrow;” and then he added, in a lower tone, “and before that you ‘ll have found out quite enough to be heartily sick of your charge.”

All the worthy vicar’s efforts to rouse me from my stupor or interest me failed. He brought me to his house, where, amid his own happy children, he deemed my heart would have yielded to the sympathy of my own age. But I pined to get back; I longed – why, I knew not – to be in my own little chamber, alone with my grief. In vain he tried every consolation his kind heart and his life’s experience had taught him; the very happiness I witnessed but reminded me of my own state, and I pressed the more eagerly to return.

It was late when he drew up to the door of the house, to which already the closed window shutters had given a look of gloom and desertion. We knocked several times before any one came, and at length two or three heads appeared at an upper window, in half-terror at the unlooked-for summons for admission.

“Good-by, my dear boy!” said the vicar, as he kissed me; “don’t forget what I have been telling you. It will make you bear your present sorrow better, and teach you to be happier when it is over.”

“Come down to the kitchen, alannah!” said the old cook, as the hall door closed; “come down and sit with us there. Sure it ‘s no wonder your heart ‘ud be low.”

“Yes, Master Tommy; and Darby “the Blast” is there, and a tune and the pipes will raise you.”

I suffered myself to be led along listlessly between them to the kitchen, where, around a huge fire of red turf, the servants of the house were all assembled, together with some neighboring cottagers; Darby “the Blast” occupying a prominent place in the party, his pipes laid across his knees as he employed himself in concocting a smoking tumbler of punch.

“Your most obadient!” said Darby, with a profound reverence, as I entered. “May I make so bowld as to surmise that my presence is n’t unsaysonable to your feelings? for I wouldn’t be contumacious enough to adjudicate without your honor’s permission.”

What I muttered in reply I know not; but the whole party were speedily reseated, every eye turned admiringly on Darby for the very neat and appropriate expression of his apology.

Young as I was and slight as had been the consideration heretofore accorded me, there was that in the lonely desolation of my condition which awakened all their sympathies, and directed all their interests towards me; and in no country are the differences of rank such slight barriers in excluding the feeling of one portion of the community from the sorrows of the others: the Irish peasant, however humble, seems to possess an intuitive tact on this subject, and to minister all the consolations in his power with a gentle delicacy that cannot be surpassed.

The silence caused by my appearing among them was unbroken for some time after I took my seat by the fire; and the only sounds were the clinking of a spoon against the glass, or, the deep-drawn sigh of some compassionate soul, as she wiped a stray tear from the corner of her eye with her apron.

Darby alone manifested a little impatience at the sudden change in a party where his powers of agreeability had so lately been successful, and fidgeted on his chair, unscrewed his pipes, blew into them, screwed them on again, and then slyly nodded over to the housemaid, as he raised his glass to his lips.

“Never mind me,” said I to the old cook, who, between grief and the glare of a turf fire, had her face swelled out to twice its natural size, – “never mind me, Molly, or I ‘ll go away.”

“And why would you, darlin’? Troth, no! sure there ‘s nobody feels for you like them that was always about you. Take a cup of tay, alannah; it ‘ll do you good.”

“Yes, Master Tom,” said the butler; “you never tasted anything since Tuesday night.”

“Do, sir, av ye plaze!” said the pretty housemaid, as she stood before me, cup in hand.

“Arrah! what’s tay?” said Darby, in a contemptuous tone of voice. “A few dirty laves, with a drop of water on top of them, that has neither beatification nor invigoration. Here ‘s the fons animi!” said he, patting the whisky bottle affectionately. “Did ye ever hear of the ancients indulging in tay? D’ye think Polyphamus and Jupither took tay?”

The cook looked down abashed and ashamed.

“Tay’s good enough for women, – no offence, Mrs. Cook! – but you might boil down Paykin, and it’d never be potteen. Ex quo vis ligno non fit Mercurius, – ‘You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.’ That’s the meaning of it; ligno ‘s a sow.”

Heaven knows I was in no mirthful mood at that moment; but I burst into a fit of laughing at this, in which, from a sense of politeness, the party all joined.

“That’s it, acushla!” said the old cook, as her eyes sparkled with delight; “sure it makes my heart light to see you smilin’ again. Maybe Darby would raise a tune now, and there ‘s nothing equal to it for the spirits.”

“Yes, Mr. M’Keown,” said the housemaid; “play ‘Kiss me twice!’ Master Tom likes it.”

“Devil a doubt he does!” replied Darby, so maliciously as to make poor Kitty blush a deep scarlet; “and no shame to him! But you see my fingers is cut. Master Tom, and I can’t perform the reduplicating intonations with proper effect.”

“How did that happen. Darby?” said the butler.

“Faix, easy enough. Tim Daly and myself was hunting a cat the other evening, and she was under the dhresser, and we wor poking her with a burnt stick and a raypinghook, and she somehow always escaped us, and except about an inch of her tail, that we cut off, there was no getting at her; and at last I hated a toastin’-fork and put it in, when out she flew, teeth and claws, at me. Look, there ‘s where she stuck her thieving nails into my thumb, and took the piece clean out. The onnatural baste!”

“Arrah!” said the old cook, with a most reflective gravity, “there ‘s nothing so treacherous as a cat! “ – a moral to the story which I found met general assent among the whole company.

“Nevertheless,” observed Darby, with an air of ill-dissembled condescension, “if it isn’t umbrageous to your honor, I ‘ll intonate something in the way of an ode or a canticle.”

“One of your own. Darby,” said the butler, interrupting.

“Well, I’ve no objection,” replied Darby, with an affected modesty; “for you see, master, like Homer, I accompany myself on the pipes, though – glory be to God! – I’m not blind. The little thing I ‘ll give you is imitated from the ancients – like Tibullus or Euthropeus – in the natural key.”

Mister M’Keown, after this announcement, pushed his empty tumbler towards the butler with a significant glance gave a few preparatory grunts with the pipes, followed by a long dolorous quaver, and then a still more melancholy cadence, like the expiring bray of an asthmatic jackass; all of which sounds, seeming to be the essential preliminaries to any performance on the bagpipes, were listened to with great attention by the company. At length, having assumed an imposing attitude, he lifted up both elbows, tilted his little finger affectedly up, dilated his cheeks, and began the following to the well-known air of “Una:” —

MUSIC

I have certainly since this period listened to more brilliant musical performances, but for the extent of the audience, I do not think it was possible to reap a more overwhelming harvest of applause. Indeed, the old cook kept repeating stray fragments of the words to every air that crossed her memory for the rest of the evening; and as for Kitty, I intercepted more than one soft glance intended for Mister M’Keown as a reward for his minstrelsy.

Darby, to do him justice, seemed fully sensible of his triumph, and sat back in his chair and imbibed his liquor like a man who had won his laurels, and needed no further efforts to maintain his eminent position in life.

As the wintry wind moaned dismally without, and the leafless trees shook and trembled with the cold blast, the party drew in closer to the cheerful turf fire, with that sense of selfish delight that seems to revel in the contrast of indoor comfort with the bleakness and dreariness without.

“Well, Darby,” said the butler, “you weren’t far wrong when you took my advice to stay here for the night; listen to how it ‘s blowing.”

“That ‘s hail!” said the old cook, as the big drops came pattering down the chimney, and hissed on the red embers as they fell. “It ‘s a cruel night, glory be to God!” Here the old lady blessed herself, – a ceremony which the others followed.

“For all that,” said Darby, “I ought to be up at Crocknavorrigha this blessed evening. Joe Neale was to be married to-day.”

“Joe! is it Joe?” said the butler.

“I wish her luck of him, whoever she is!” added the cook.

“Faix, and he’s a smart boy!” chimed in the housemaid, with something not far from a blush as she spoke.

“He was a raal devil for coortin’, anyhow!” said the butler.

“It’s just for peace he’s marrying now, then,” said Darby; “the women never gave him any quietness. Just so, Kitty; you need n’t be looking cross that way, – it ‘s truth I’m telling you. They were always coming about him, and teasing him, and the like, and he could n’t bear it any longer.”

“Arrah, howld your prate!” interrupted the old cook, whose indignation for the honor of the sex could not endure more. “He’s the biggest liar from this to himself; and that same ‘s not a small word. Darby M’Keown.”

There was a pointedness in the latter part of this speech which might have led to angry consequences, had I not interposed by asking Mr. M’Keown himself if he ever was in love.

“Arrah, it ‘s wishing it, I am, the same love. Sure my back and sides is sore with it; my misfortunes would fill a book. Did n’t I bind myself apprentice to a carpenter for love of Molly Scraw, a niece he had, just to be near her and be looking at her; and that ‘s the way I shaved off the top of my thumb with the plane. By the mortial, it was near killing me. I usedn’t to eat or drink; and though I was three years at the thrade, faix, at the end of it, I could n’t tell you the gimlet from the handsaw!”

“And you wor never married, Mister M’Keown?” said Kitty.

“Never, my darling, but often mighty near it. Many ‘s the quare thing happened to me,” said Darby, meditatingly; “and sure if it was n’t my guardian angel, or something of the kind, prevented it, I ‘d maybe have more wives this day than the Emperor of Roossia himself.”

“Arrah, don’t be talking!” grunted out the old cook, whose passion could scarcely be restrained at the boastful tone Mister M’Keown assumed in descanting on his successes.

“There was Biddy Finn,” continued Darby, without paying any attention to the cook’s interruption; “she might be Mrs. M’Keown this day, av it wasn’t for a remarkable thing that happened.”

“What was that?” said Kitty, with eager curiosity.

“Tell us about it. Mister M’Keown,” said the butler.

“The devil a word of truth he’ll tell you,” grumbled the cook, as she raked the ashes with a stick.

“There ‘s them here does not care for agreeable intercoorse,” said Darby, assuming a grand air.

“Come, Daxby; I ‘d like to hear the story,” said I.

After a few preparatory scruples, in which modesty, offended dignity, and conscious merit struggled, Mr. M’Keown began by informing us that he had once a most ardent attachment to a certain Biddy Finn, of Ballyclough, – a lady of considerable personal attractions, to whom for a long time he had been constant, and at last, through the intervention of Father Curtin, agreed to marry. Darby’s consent to the arrangements was not altogether the result of his reverence’s eloquence, nor indeed the justice of the case; nor was it quite owing to Biddy’s black eyes and pretty lips; but rather to the soul-persuading powers of some fourteen tumblers of strong punch which he swallowed at a séance in Biddy’s father’s house one cold evening in November, after which he betook himself to the road homewards, where – But we must give his story in his own words:

“Whether it was the prospect of happiness before me, or the potteen,” quoth Darby, “but so it was, – I never felt a step of the road home that night, though it was every foot of five mile. When I came to a stile, I used to give a whoop, and over it; then I’d run for a hundred yards or two, flourish my stick, cry out, ‘Who ‘ll say a word against Biddy Finn?’ and then over another fence, flying. Well, I reached home at last, and wet enough I was; but I did n’t care for that. I opened the door and struck a light; there was the least taste of kindling on the hearth, and I put some dry sticks into it and some turf, and knelt down and began blowing it up.

“‘Troth,’ says I to myself, ‘if I wor married, it isn’t this way I’d be, – on my knees like a nagur; but when I ‘d come home, there ‘ud be a fine fire blazin’ fornint me, and a clean table out before it, and a beautiful cup of tay waiting for me, and somebody I won’t mintion, sitting there, looking at me, smilin’.’

“‘Don’t be making a fool of yourself, Darby M’Keown,’ said a gruff voice near the chimley.

“I jumped at him, and cried out, ‘Who ‘s that?’ But there was no answer; and at last, after going round the kitchen, I began to think it was only my own voice I heard; so I knelt down again, and set to blowing away at the fire.

“‘And it’s yerself, Biddy,’ says I, ‘that would be an ornament to a dacent cabin; and a purtier leg and foot – ’

“‘Be the light that shines, you’re making me sick. Darby M’Keown,’ said the voice again.

“‘The heavens be about us!’ says I, ‘what ‘s that? and who are you at all?’ for someways I thought I knew the voice.

“‘I ‘m your father!’ says the voice.

“‘My father!’ says I. ‘Holy Joseph, is it truth you ‘re telling me?’

“‘The divil a word o’ lie in it,’ says the voice. ‘Take me down, and give me an air o’ the fire, for the night ‘s cowld.’

“‘And where are you, father,’ says I, ‘av it’s plasing to ye?’

“‘I ‘m on the dhresser,’ says he. ‘Don’t you see me?’

“‘Sorra bit o’ me. Where now?’

“‘Arrah, on the second shelf, next the rowling-pin. Don’t you see the green jug? – that’s me.’

“‘Oh, the saints in heaven be about us!’ says I; ‘and are you a green jug?’

“‘I am,’ says he; ‘and sure I might be worse. Tim Healey’s mother is only a cullender, and she died two years before me.’

“‘Oh! father, darlin’,’ says I, ‘I hoped you wor in glory; and you only a jug all this time!’

“‘Never fret about it,’ says my father; ‘it ‘s the transmogrification of sowls, and we ‘ll be right by and by. Take me down, I say, and put me near the fire.’

“So I up and took him down, and wiped him with a clean cloth, and put him on the hearth before the blaze.

“‘Darby,’ says he, ‘I’m famished with the druth. Since you took to coortin’ there ‘s nothing ever goes into my mouth; haven’t you a taste of something in the house?’

“I wasn’t long till I hated some wather, and took down the bottle of whiskey and some sugar, and made a rousing jugful, as strong as need be.

“‘Are you satisfied, father?’ says I.

“‘I am,’ says he; ‘you ‘re a dutiful child, and here ‘s your health, and don’t be thinking of Biddy Finn,’

“With that my father began to explain how there was never any rest nor quietness for a man after he married, – more be token, if his wife was fond of talking; and that he never could take his dhrop of drink in comfort afterwards.

“‘May I never,’ says he, ‘but I ‘d rather be a green jug, as I am now, than alive again wid your mother. Sure it ‘s not here you’d be sitting to-night,’ says he, ‘discoorsing with me, av you wor married; devil a bit. Fill me,’ says my father, ‘and I ‘ll tell you more.’

“And sure enough I did, and we talked away till near daylight; and then the first thing I did was to take the ould mare out of the stable, and set off to Father Curtin, and towld him all about it, and how my father would n’t give his consent by no means.

“‘We’ll not mind the marriage,’ says his rivirence; ‘but go back and bring me your father, – the jug, I mean, – and we ‘ll try and get him out of trouble; for it ‘s trouble he ‘s in, or he would n’t be that way. Give me the two pound ten,’ says the priest; ‘you had it for the wedding, and it will be better spent getting your father out of purgatory than sending you into it. ‘”

“Arrah, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” cried the cook, with a look of ineffable scorn, as he concluded.

“Look now,” said Darby, “see this; if it is n’t thruth – ”

“And what became of your father?” interrupted the butler.

“And Biddy Finn, what did she do?” said the housemaid.

Darby, however, vouchsafed no reply, but sat back in his chair with an offended look, and sipped his liquor in silence.

A fresh brew of punch under the butler’s auspices speedily, however, dispelled the cloud that hovered over the conviviality of the party; and even the cook vouchsafed to assist in the preparation of some rashers, which Darby suggested were beautiful things for the thirst at this hour of the night; but whether in allaying or exciting it, he did n’t exactly lay down. The conversation now became general; and as they seemed resolved to continue their festivities to a late hour, I took the first opportunity I could, when unobserved, to steal away and return to my own room.

No sooner alone again than all the sorrow of my lonely state came back upon me; and as I laid my head on my pillow, the full measure of my misery flowed in upon my heart, and I sobbed myself to sleep.