Tales and Novels Volume VI Part 20

"So this is the way, Larry, you give a lift to the laws!"

"If the laws would give a lift to me, plase your honour, may be I'd do as much by them. But it's only these revenue laws I mean; for I never, to my knowledge, broke another commandment: but it's what no honest poor man among his neighbours would scruple to take--a gla.s.s of _potsheen_."

"A gla.s.s of what, in the name of Heaven?" said Lord Colambre.

"_Potsheen_, plase your honour;--beca-ase it's the little whiskey that's made in the private still or pot; and _sheen_, because it's a fond word for whatsoever we'd like, and for what we have little of, and would make much of: after taking the gla.s.s of it, no man could go and inform to ruin the _cratures_; for they all shelter on that estate under favour of them that go shares, and make rent of 'em--but I'd never inform again' 'em. And, after all, if the truth was known, and my Lord Clonbrony should be informed against, and presented, for it's his neglect is the bottom of the nuisance--"

"I find all the blame is thrown upon this poor Lord Clonbrony," said Lord Colambre.

"Because he is absent," said Larry: "it would not be so was he _prisint_. But your honour was talking to me about the laws. Your honour's a stranger in this country, and astray about them things.

Sure, why would I mind the laws about whiskey, more than the quality, or the _jidge_ on the bench?"

"What do you mean?"

"Why! was not I _prisint_ in the court-house myself, when the _jidge_ was on the bench judging a still, and across the court came in one with a sly jug of _potsheen_ for the _jidge_ himself, who _prefarred_ it, when the right thing, to claret; and when I _seen_ that, by the laws! a man might talk himself dumb to me after again' potsheen, or in favour of the revenue, or revenue officers. And there they may go on, with their gaugers, and their surveyors, and their supervisors, and their watching officers, and their coursing officers, setting 'em one after another, or one over the head of another, or what way they will--we can baffle and laugh at 'em. Didn't I know, next door to our inn, last year, ten _watching officers_ set upon one distiller, and he was too cunning for them; and it will always be so, while ever the people think it no sin. No, till then, not all their dockets and permits signify a rush, or a turf. And the gauging rod, even! who fears it? They may spare that rod, for it will never mend the child."

How much longer Larry's dissertation on the distillery laws would have continued, had not his ideas been interrupted, we cannot guess; but he saw he was coming to a town, and he gathered up the reins, and plied the whip, ambitious to make a figure in the eyes of its inhabitants.

This _town_ consisted of one row of miserable huts, sunk beneath the side of the road, the mud walls crooked in every direction; some of them opening in wide cracks, or zigzag fissures, from top to bottom, as if there had just been an earthquake--all the roofs sunk in various places--thatch off, or overgrown with gra.s.s--no chimneys, the smoke making its way through a hole in the roof, or rising in clouds from the top of the open door--dunghills before the doors, and green standing puddles--squalid children, with scarcely rags to cover them, gazing at the carriage.

"Nugent's town," said the postilion, "once a snug place, when my Lady Clonbrony was at home to white-wash it, and the like."

As they drove by, some men and women put their heads through the smoke out of the cabins; pale women, with long, black, or yellow locks--men with countenances and figures bereft of hope and energy.

"Wretched, wretched people!" said Lord Colambre.

"Then it's not their fault, neither," said Larry; "for my uncle's one of them, and as thriving and hard a working man as could be in all Ireland, he was, _afore_ he was tramped under foot, and his heart broke. I was at his funeral, this time last year; and for it, may the agent's own heart, if he has any, burn in--"

Lord Colambre interrupted this denunciation by touching Larry's shoulder, and asking some question, which, as Larry did not distinctly comprehend, he pulled up the reins, and the various noises of the vehicle stopped suddenly.

"I did not hear well, plase your honour."

"What are those people?" pointing to a man and woman, curious figures, who had come out of a cabin, the door of which the woman, who came out last, locked, and carefully hiding the key in the thatch, turned her back upon the man, and they walked away in different directions: the woman bending under a huge bundle on her back, covered by a yellow petticoat turned over her shoulders; from the top of this bundle the head of an infant appeared; a little boy, almost naked, followed her with a kettle, and two girls, one of whom could but just walk, held her hand and clung to her ragged petticoat; forming, all together, a complete group of beggars. The woman stopped, and looked after the man.

The man was a Spanish-looking figure, with gray hair; a wallet hung at the end of a stick over one shoulder, a reaping-hook in the other hand: he walked off stoutly, without ever casting a look behind him.

"A kind harvest to you, John Dolan," cried the postilion, "and success to ye, Winny, with the quality. There's a luck-penny for the child to begin with," added he, throwing the child a penny. "Your honour, they're only poor _cratures_ going up the country to beg, while the man goes over to reap the harvest in England. Nor this would not be, neither, if the lord was in it to give 'em _employ_. That man, now, was a good and willing _slave_ in his day: I mind him working with myself in the shrubberies at Clonbrony Castle, when I was a boy--but I'll not be detaining your honour, now the road's better."

The postilion drove on at a good rate for some time, till he came to a piece of the road freshly covered with broken stones, where he was obliged again to go slowly.

They overtook a string of cars, on which were piled up high, beds, tables, chairs, trunks, boxes, band-boxes.

"How are you, Finnucan? you've fine loading there--from Dublin, are you?"

"From Bray."

"And what news?"

"_Great_ news and bad for Old Nick, or some belonging to him, thanks be to Heaven! for myself hates him."

"What's happened him?"

"His sister's husband that's failed, the great grocer that was, the man that had the wife that _ow'd_[1] the fine house near Bray, that they got that time the parliament _flitted_, and that I seen in her carriage flaming--well, it's all out; they're all _done up_."

[Footnote 1: Owned.]

"Tut! is that all? then they'll thrive, and set up again grander than ever, I'll engage: have not they Old Nick for an attorney at their back? a good warrant?"

"Oh, trust him for that! he won't go _security_, nor pay a farthing, for his _s.h.i.+ster_, nor wouldn't, was she his father; I heard him telling her so, which I could not have done in his place, at that time, and she crying as if her heart would break, and I standing by in the parlour."

"The _neger_[1]! And did he speak that way, and you by?"

[Footnote 1: _Neger_, quasi negro; meo periculo, _n.i.g.g.ard_]

"Ay, did he; and said, 'Mrs. Raffarty,' says he, 'it's all your own fault; you're an extravagant fool, and ever was, and I wash my hands of you.' that was the word he spoke; and she answered, and said, 'And mayn't I send the beds and blankets?' said she, 'and what I can, by the cars, out of the way of the creditors, to Clonbrony Castle? and won't you let me hide there, from the shame, till the bustle's over?'

'You may do that,' says he, 'for what I care; but remember,' says he, 'that I've the first claim to them goods;' and that's all he would grant. So they are coming down all o' Monday--them are the band-boxes, and all--to settle it; and faith it was a pity of her! to hear her sobbing, and to see her own brother speak and look so hard! and she a lady."

"Sure, she's not a lady born, no more than himself," said Larry; "but that's no excuse for him. His heart's as hard as that stone," said Larry; "and my own people knew that long ago, and now his own know it: and what right have we to complain, since he's as bad to his own flesh and blood as to us?"

With this consolation, and with a "G.o.d speed you," given to the carman, Larry was driving off; but the carman called to him, and pointed to a house, at the corner of which, on a high pole, was swinging an iron sign of three horse-shoes, set in a crooked frame, and at the window hung an empty bottle, proclaiming whiskey within.

"Well, I don't care if I do," said Larry; "for I've no other comfort left me in life now. I beg your honour's pardon, sir, for a minute,"

added he, throwing the reins into the carriage to Lord Colambre, as he leaped down. All remonstrance and power of lungs to reclaim him were vain! He darted into the whiskey-house with the carman--re-appeared before Lord Colambre could accomplish getting out, remounted his seat, and, taking the reins, "I thank your honour," said he; "and I'll bring you into Clonbrony before it's pitch-dark, though it's nightfall, and that's four good miles, but 'a spur in the head is worth two in the heel.'"

Larry, to demonstrate the truth of his favourite axiom, drove off at such a furious rate over great stones left in the middle of the road by carmen, who had been driving in the gudgeons of their axletrees to hinder them from lacing[1], that Lord Colambre thought life and limb in imminent danger; and feeling that, at all events, the jolting and b.u.mping was past endurance, he had recourse to Larry's shoulder, and shook and pulled, and called to him to go slower, but in vain: at last the wheel struck full against a heap of stones at a turn of the road, the wooden linchpin came off, and the chaise was overset: Lord Colambre was a little bruised, but glad to escape without fractured bones.

[Footnote 1: _Opening_; perhaps, from _lacher_, to loosen.]

"I beg your honour's pardon," said Larry, completely sobered; "I'm as glad as the best pair of boots ever I see, to see your honour nothing the worse for it. It was the linchpin, and them barrows of loose stones, that ought to be fined any way, if there was any justice in the country."

"The pole is broke; how are we to get on?" said Lord Colambre.

"Murder! murder!--and no smith nearer than Clonbrony; nor rope even.

It's a folly to talk, we can't get to Clonbrony, nor stir a step backward or forward the night."

"What, then, do you mean to leave me all night in the middle of the road?" cried Lord Colambre, quite exasperated.

"Is it me? plase your honour. I would not use any jantleman so ill, _barring_ I could do no other," replied the postilion, coolly: then, leaping across the ditch, or, as he called it, the _gripe_ of the ditch, he scrambled up, and while he was scrambling, said, "If your honour will lend me your hand, till I pull you up the back of the ditch, the horses will stand while we go. I'll find you as pretty a lodging for the night, with a widow of a brother of my s.h.i.+ster's husband that was, as ever you slept in your life; for Old Nick or St.

Dennis has not found 'em out yet: and your honour will he, no compare, snugger than at the inn at Clonbrony, which has no roof, the devil a stick. But where will I get your honour's hand; for it's coming on so dark, I can't see rightly. There, you're up now safe. Yonder candle's the house."

"Go and ask whether they can give us a night's lodging."

"Is it _ask_? when I see the light!--Sure they'd be proud to give the traveller all the beds in the house, let alone one. Take care of the potatoe furrows, that's all, and follow me straight. I'll go on to meet the dog, who knows me, and might be strange to your honour."

"Kindly welcome," were the first words Lord Colambre heard when he approached the cottage; and "kindly welcome" was in the sound of the voice and in the countenance of the old woman who came out, shading her rush-candle from the wind, and holding it so as to light the path.

When he entered the cottage, he saw a cheerful fire and a neat pretty young woman making it blaze; she curtsied, put her spinning-wheel out of the way, set a stool by the fire for the stranger, and repeating, in a very low tone of voice, "Kindly welcome, sir," retired.

"Put down some eggs, dear, there's plenty in the bowl," said the old woman, calling to her; "I'll do the bacon. Was not we lucky to be up?--The boy's gone to bed, but waken him," said she, turning to the postilion; "and he'll help you with the chay, and put your horses in the bier for the night."