The Fortunes Of Glencore Part 4

It was a rare occasion when the Corporal suffered himself to expand in this fas.h.i.+on, and great was the applause at the unexpected munificence.

Billy at the same moment took out his fiddle and began that process of preparatory s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g and sc.r.a.ping which, no matter how distressing to the surrounders, seems to afford intense delight to performers on this instrument. In the present case, it is but fair to say, there was neither comment nor impatience; on the contrary, they seemed to accept these convulsive throes of sound as an earnest of the grand flood of melody that was coming. That Billy was occupied with other thoughts than those of tuning was, however, apparent, for his lips continued to move rapidly; and at moments he was seen to beat time with his foot, as though measuring out the rhythm of a verse.

"I have it now, ladies and gentlemen," he said, making a low obeisance to the company; and so saying, he struck up a very popular tune, the same to which a reverend divine wrote his words of "The night before Larry was Stretched;" and in a voice of a deep and mellow fulness, managed with considerable taste, sang--

"'A fig for the chansons of France, Whose meaning is always a riddle; The music to sing or to dance Is an Irish tune played on the fiddle.

To your songs of the Rhine and the Rhone I 'm ready to cry out I am satis; Just give us something of our own In praise of our Land of Potatoes.

Tol lol de lol, etc.

"'What care I for sorrows of those Who speak of their heart as a cuore; How expect me to feel for the woes Of him who calls love an amore!

Let me have a few words about home, With music whose strains I 'd remember, And I 'll give you all Florence and Rome, Tho' they have a blue sky in December.

Tol lol de lol, etc.

"'With a pretty face close to your own, I 'm sore there's no rayson for sighing; Nor when walkin' beside her alone, Why the blazes be talking of dying!

That's the way tho', in France and in Spain, Where love is not real, but acted, You must always portend you 're insane, Or at laste that you 're partly distracted.

Tol lol de lol, etc.'"

It is very unlikely that the reader will estimate Billy's impromptu as did the company; in fact, it possessed the greatest of all claims to their admiration, for it was partly incomprehensible, and by the artful introduction of a word here and there, of which his hearers knew nothing, the poet was well aware that he was securing their heartiest approval. Nor was Billy insensible to such flatteries. The _irritabile genus_ has its soft side, and can enjoy to the uttermost its own successes. It is possible, if Billy had been in another sphere, with much higher gifts, and surrounded by higher a.s.sociates, that he might have accepted the homage tendered him with more graceful modesty, and seemed at least less confident of his own merits; but under no possible change of places or people could the praise have bestowed more sincere pleasure.

"You're right, there, Jim Morris," said he, turning suddenly round towards one of the company; "you never said a truer thing than that.

The poetic temperament is riches to a poor man. Wherever I go--in all weathers, wet and dreary, and maybe footsore, with the bags full, and the mountain streams all flowin' over--I can just go into my own mind, just the way you'd go into an inn, and order whatever you wanted. I don't need to be a king, to sit on a throne; I don't want s.h.i.+ps, nor coaches, nor horses, to convay me to foreign lands. I can bestow kingdoms. When I haven't tuppence to buy tobacco, and without a shoe to my foot, and my hair through my hat, I can be dancin' wid princesses, and handin' empresses in to tay."

"Musha, musha!" muttered the surrounders, as though they were listening to a magician, who in a moment of unguarded familiarity condescended to discuss his own miraculous gifts.

"And," resumed Billy, "it isn't only what ye are to yourself and your own heart, but what ye are to others, that without that sacret bond between you, wouldn't think of you at all. I remember, once on a time, I was in the north of England travelling, partly for pleasure, and partly with a view to a small speculation in Sheffield ware--cheap penknives and scissors, pencil-cases, bodkins, and the like--and I wandered about for weeks through what they call the Lake Country, a very handsome place, but nowise grand or sublime, like what we have here in Ireland--more wood, forest timber, and better-off people, but nothing beyond that!

"Well, one evening--it was in August--I came down by a narrow path to the side of a lake, where there was a stone seat, put up to see the view from, and in front was three wooden steps of stairs going down into the water, where a boat might come in. It was a lovely spot, and well chosen, for you could count as many as five promontories running out into the lake; and there was two islands, all wooded to the water's edge; and behind all, in the distance, was a great mountain, with clouds on the top; and it was just the season when the trees is beginnin' to change their colors, and there was shades of deep gold, and dark olive, and russet brown, all mingling together with the green, and glowing in the lake below under the setting sun, and all was quiet and still as midnight; and over the water the only ripple was the track of a water-hen, as she scudded past between the islands; and if ever there was peace and tranquillity in the world it was just there! Well, I put down my pack in the leaves, for I did n't like to see or think of it, and I stretched myself down at the water's edge, and I fell into a fit of musing. It's often and often I tried to remember the elegant fancies that came through my head, and the beautiful things that I thought I saw that night out on the lake fornint me! Ye see I was fresh and fastin'; I never tasted a bit the whole day, and my brain, maybe, was all the better; for somehow janius, real janius, thrives best on a little starvation. And from musing I fell off asleep; and it was the sound of voices near that first awoke me! For a minute or two I believed I was dreaming, the words came so softly to my ear, for they were spoken in a low, gentle voice, and blended in with the slight splash of oars that moved through the water carefully, as though not to lose a word of him that was speakin'.

"It's clean beyond _me_ to tell you what he said; and, maybe, if I could, ye would n't be able to follow it, for he was discoorsin' about night and the moon, and all that various poets said about them; ye'd think that he had books, and was reading out of them, so glibly came the verses from his lips. I never listened to such a voice before, so soft, so sweet, so musical, and the words came droppin' down, like the clear water filterin' over a rocky ledge, and glitterin' like little spangles over moss and wild-flowers.

"It wasn't only in English but Scotch ballads, too, and once or twice in Italian that he recited, till at last he gave out, in all the fulness of his liquid voice, them elegant lines out of Pope's Homer:--

"'As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night, O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light, When not a breath disturbs the deep serene, And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene, Around her throne the vivid planets roll, And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole: O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed, And top with silver every mountain's head; Then s.h.i.+ne the vales; the rocks in prospect rise-- A flood of glory bursts from all the skies; The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight, Eye the blue vault and bless the useful light.'

"The Lord forgive me, but when he came to the last words and said, 'useful light,' I couldn't restrain myself, but broke out, 'That's mighty like a bull, anyhow, and reminds me of the ould song,--

"'Good luck to the moon, she's a fine n.o.ble creature, And gives us the daylight all night in the dark.'

"Before I knew where I was, the boat glided in to the steps, and a tall man, a little stooped in the shoulders, stood before me.

"'Is it you,' said he, with a quiet laugh, 'that accuses Pope of a bull?'

"'It is,' says I; 'and, what's more, there isn't a poet from Horace downwards that I won't show bulls in; there's bulls in Shakspeare and in Milton; there's bulls in the ancients; I 'll point out a bull in Aristophanes.'

"'What have we here?' said he, turning to the others.

"'A poor crayture,' says I, 'like Goldsmith's chest of drawers,--

"'With brains reduced a doable debt to pay, To dream by night, sell Sheffield ware by day.'

"Well, with that he took a fit of laughing, and handing the rest out of the boat, he made me come along at his side, discoorsin' me about my thravels, and all I seen, and all I read, till we reached an elegant little cottage on a bank right over the lake; and then he brought me in and made me take tay with the family; and I spent the night there; and when I started the next morning there was n't a 'screed' of my pack that they did n't buy, penknives, and whistles, and nut-crackers, and all, just, as they said, for keepsakes. Good luck to them, and happy hearts, wherever they are, for they made mine happy that day; ay, and for many an hour afterwards, when I just think over their kind words and pleasant faces."

More than one of the company had dropped off asleep during Billy's narrative, and of the others, their complaisance as listeners appeared taxed to the utmost, while the Corporal snored loudly, like a man who had a right to indulge himself to the fullest extent.

"There's the bell again," muttered one, "that's from the 'lord's room;'"

and Craggs, starting up by the instinct of his office, hastened off to his master's chamber.

"My lord says you are to remain here," said he, as he re-entered a few minutes later; "he is satisfied with your skill, and I'm to send off a messenger to the post, to let them know he has detained you."

"I 'm obaydient," said Billy, with a low bow; "and now for a brief repose!" And so saying, he drew a long woollen nightcap from his pocket, and putting it over his eyes, resigned himself to sleep with the practised air of one who needed but very little preparation to secure slumber.

CHAPTER IV. A VISITOR

The old Castle of Glencore contained but one s.p.a.cious room, and this served all the purposes of drawing-room, dining-room, and library. It was a long and lofty chamber, with a raftered ceiling, from which a heavy chandelier hung by a ma.s.sive chain of iron. Six windows, all in the same wall, deeply set and narrow, admitted a sparing light. In the opposite wall stood two fireplaces, large, ma.s.sive, and monumental, the carved supporters of the richly-chased pediment being of colossal size, and the great s.h.i.+eld of the house crowning the pyramid of strange and uncouth objects that were grouped below. The walls were partly occupied by bookshelves, partly covered by wainscot, and here and there displayed a worn-out portrait of some bygone warrior or dame, who little dreamed how much the color of their effigies should be indebted to the sad effects of damp and mildew. The furniture consisted of every imaginable type, from the carved oak and ebony console to the white and gold of Versailles taste, and the modern compromise of comfort with ugliness which chintz and soft cus.h.i.+ons accomplish. Two great screens, thickly covered with prints and drawings, most of them political caricatures of some fifty years back, flanked each fireplace, making, as it were, in this case two different apartments.

At one of those, on a low sofa, sat, or rather lay, Lord Glencore, pale and wasted by long illness. His thin hand held a letter, to shade his eyes from the blazing wood-fire, and the other hand hung listlessly at his side. The expression of the sick man's face was that of deep melancholy--not the mere gloom of recent suffering, but the deep-cut traces of a long-carried affliction, a sorrow which had eaten into his very heart, and made its home there.

At the second fireplace sat his son, and, though a mere boy, the lineaments of his father marked the youth's face with a painful exactness. The same intensity was in the eyes, the same haughty character sat on the brow; and there was in the whole countenance the most extraordinary counterpart of the gloomy seriousness of the older face. He had been reading, but the fast-falling night obliged him to desist, and he sat now contemplating the bright embers of the wood fire in dreamy thought. Once or twice was he disturbed from his revery by the whispered voice of an old serving-man, asking for something with that submissive manner a.s.sumed by those who are continually exposed to the outbreaks of another's temper; and at last the boy, who had hitherto scarcely deigned to notice the appeals to him, flung a bunch of keys contemptuously on the ground, with a muttered malediction on his tormentor.

"What's that?" cried out the sick man, startled at the sound.

"'Tis nothing, my lord, but the keys that fell out of my hand," replied the old man, humbly. "Mr. Craggs is away to Leenane, and I was going to get out the wine for dinner."

"Where's Mr. Charles?" asked Lord Glencore.

"He's there beyant," muttered the other, in a low voice, while he pointed towards the distant fireplace; "but he looks tired and weary, and I did n't like to disturb him."

"Tired! weary!--with what? Where has he been; what has he been doing?"

cried he, hastily. "Charles, Charles, I say!"

And slowly rising from his seat, and with an air of languid indifference, the boy came towards him.

Lord Glencore's face darkened as he gazed on him.

"Where have you been?" asked he, sternly.

"Yonder," said the boy, in an accent like the echo of his own.