The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector Part 16

"Lord bless me!" he exclaimed, as if in soliloquy; "the ignorance of the rich and wealthy, and of great people altogether, is unknown! Wine and punch! And what, will you tell me, does wine and punch come from?

Doesn't the wine come from the grapes that grow in forrin parts--sich as we have in our hot-houses--and doesn't the whiskey that you make your punch of grow from the honest barley in our own fields? So much for your knowledge of yarribs."

"Why, there you are right, my old friend. I forgot that."

"You forgot it? Tell the truth at once, and say you didn't know it. But may be you did forget it, for troth he'd be a poor crature that didn't know whiskey was made from barley."

He here turned his red satirical eye upon Woodward, with a glance that was strongly indicative of contempt for his general information.

"Well," he proceeded, "the power of yarribs is wondherful,--if it was known to many as it is to me."

"Why, from long practice, I suppose, you must be skilful in the properties ol herbs?"

"Well, indeed, you needn't only suppose it, but you may be sartin of it.

Have you a good appet.i.te?"

"A particularly good one, I a.s.sure you."

"Now, wouldn't you think it strange that I could give you a dose that 'ud keep you on half a male a day for the next three months."

"G.o.d forbid," replied Woodward, who, among his other good qualities, was an enormous trencherman,--"G.o.d forbid that ever such a dose should go down my throat."

"Would you think, now," he proceeded, with a sinister grin that sent his yellow tusk half an inch out of his mouth, "that if a man was jealous of his wife, or a wife of her husband, I couldn't give either o' them a dose that 'ud cure them?"

"Faith, I dare say you could," replied Woodward; "a dose that would free them from care of all sorts, as well as jealousy."

"I don't mane that," said the skeleton; "ha, ha! you're a funny gentleman, and maybe I--but no--I don't mane that; but widout injurin' a hair in either o' their heads."

"I am not married," said the other, "but I expect to be soon, and when I am I will pay you well for the knowledge of that herb--for my wife, I mean. Where do you live?"

"In Rathfillan, sir. I'm a well-known man there, and for many a long mile about it."

"You must be very useful to the country people hereabouts?"

"Ay," he exclaimed, "you mane to the poor, I suppose, and you're right; but maybe I'm of sarvice to the rich, too. Many a face I save from--I could save from shame, I mane--if I liked, and could get well ped for it, too. Some young, extravagant people that have rich ould fathers do be spakin' to me, too; but thin, you know, I have a sowl to be saved, and am a religious man, I hope, and do my duty as sich, and that every one that has a sowl to be saved, may! _Amin, acheernah!_

"I am glad to find that your sense of duty preserves you against such strong temptations."

"Then, there's another set of men--these outlaws that do be robbin' rich people's houses, and they, too, try to tempt me."

"Why should they tempt you?"

"Bekaise the people, now knowin' that they're abroad, keep watch-dogs, bloodhounds, and sich useful animals, that give the alarm at night, and the robbers wis.h.i.+n', you see, to get them out of the way, do be temptin'

me about wis.h.i.+n' me to pison them."

"Of course you resist them?"

"Well, I hope I do; but sometimes it's hard to get over them, especially when they plant a _skean_ or a _middogue_ to one's navel, and swear great oaths that they'll make a scabbard for it of my poor ould bulg (belly)--I say, when the thieves do the business that way, it requires a grate dale of the grace o' G.o.d to deny them. But what's any Chr'sthen 'idout the grace o' G.o.d? May we all have it! _Amin, acheernah!_"

"Well, when I marry, as I will soon, I'll call upon you; I dare say my wife will get jealous, for I love the ladies, if that's a fault."

Another grin was his first reply to this, after which he said:

"Well, sir, if she does, come to me."

"Where in Rathfillan do you live?"

"O, anybody will tell you; inquire for ould Sol Donnel, the yarrib man, and you'll soon find me out."

"But 'suppose I shouldn't wish it to be known that I called on you?"

"Eh?" said the old villain, giving him another significant grin that once more projected the fang; "well, maybe you wouldn't. If you want my sarvices then, come to the cottage that's built agin the church-yard wall, on the north side; and if you don't wish to be seen, why you can come about midnight, when every one's asleep."

"What's this you say your name is?"

"Sol Donnel."

"What do you mean by Sol?"

He turned up his red eyes in astonishment, and exclaimed:

"Well, now, to think that, a larned man as you must be shouldn't know what Sol means! Well, the ignorance of you great people is unknown.

Don't you know--but you don't--oughn't you know, then, that Sol means Solomon, who was the wisest many and the biggest blaggard that ever lived! Faith, if I had lived in his day he'd be a poor customer to me, bekaise he had no shame in him; but indeed, the doin's that goes on now in holes and corners among ourselves was no shame in his time. That's a fine bay horse you ride; would you like to have him dappled? A dappled bay, you know, is always a great beauty."

"And could you dapple him?

"Ay, as sure as you ride him."

"Well, I'll think about it and let you know; there's some silver for you, and good-by, honest Solomon."

Woodward then rode on, reflecting on the novel and extraordinary character of this hypocritical old villain, in whose withered and repulsive visage he could not discover a single trace of anything that intimated the existence of sympathy with his kind. As to that, it was a _tabula rasa_, blank of all feelings except those which characterize the hyena and the fox. After he had left him, the old fellow gave a bitter and derisive look after him.

"There you go," said he, "and well I knew you, although you didn't think so. Weren't you pointed out to me the night o' the divil's bonfire, that your mother, they say, got up for you; and didn't I see you since spakin' to that skamin' blaggard, Caterine Collins, my niece, that takes many a penny out o' my hands; and didn't I know that you couldn't be talkin' to her about anything that was good. Troth, you're not your mother's son or you'll be comin' to me as well as her. Bad luck to her!

she was near gettin' me into the stocks when I sowld her the dose of oak bark for the sarvants, to draw in their stomachs and shorten their feedin'. My faith, ould Lindsay 'ud have put me in them only for bringin' shame upon his wife."*

* Some of our readers may imagine that in the enumeration of the cures which old Sol professed to effect we have drawn too largely upon their credulity, whereas there is scarcely one of them that, is not practised, or attempted, in remote and uneducated parts of Ireland, almost down to the present day. We ourselves in early youth saw a man who professed, and was believed to be able, to cure jealousy in either man or woman by a potion; whilst charms for colics, toothaches, taking motes out of the eye, and for producing love, were common among the ignorant people within our own recollection.

CHAPTER VIII. A Healing of the Breach.

--A Proposal for Marriage Accepted.

On that evening, when the family were a.s.sembled at supper, Mrs. Lindsay, who had had a previous consultation with her son Harry, thought proper to introduce the subject of the projected marriage between him and Alice Goodwin.

"Harry has paid a visit to these neighbors of ours," said she, "these Goodwins, and I think, now that he has come home, it would be only prudent on our part to renew the intimacy that was between us. Not that I like, or ever will like, a bone in one of their bodies; but it's only right that we should foil them at their own weapons, and try to get back the property into the hands of one of the family at least, if we can, and so prevent it from going to strangers. I am determined to pay them a friendly visit tomorrow."

"A friendly visit!" exclaimed her husband, with an expression of surprise and indignation on his countenance which he could not conceal; "how can you say a friendly visit, after having just told us that you neither like them, nor ever will like them? not that it was at all necessary for you to a.s.sure us of that. It is, however, the hypocrisy of the thing on your part that startle? and disgusts me."