Further Experiences of an Irish R.M Part 13

She folded her shawl across her breast, a picture of virtue a.s.sailed, yet una.s.sailable.

"You may go down now," said "Roaring Jack" rather hastily, "I want to have a few words with your brother."

Miss Keohane retired, without having moulted a feather of her dignity, and her brother Jer came heavily up the steps and on to the platform, his hot, wary, blue eyes gathering in the Bench and the attorneys in one bold comprehensive glance. He was a tall, dark man of about five and forty, clean-shaved, save for two clerical inches of black whiskers, and in feature of the type of a London clergyman who would probably preach on Browning.

"Well, sir!" began Mr. Mooney stimulatingly, "and are you the biggest blackguard from here to America?"

"I am not," said Jer Keohane tranquilly.

"We had you here before us not so very long ago about kicking a goat, wasn't it? You got a little touch of a pound, I think?"

This delicate allusion to a fine that the Bench had thought fit to impose did not distress the witness.

"I did, sir."

"And how's our friend the goat?" went on Mr. Mooney, with the furious facetiousness reserved for hustling tough witnesses.

"Well, I suppose she's something west of the Skelligs by now," replied Jer Keohane with great composure.

An appreciative grin ran round the court. The fact that the goat had died of the kick and been "given the cliff" being regarded as an excellent jest.

Mr. Mooney consulted his notes:

"Well, now, about this fight," he said pleasantly, "did you see your sister catch Mrs. Brickley and pull her hair down to the ground and drag the shawl off of her?"

"Well," said the witness airily, "they had a little bit of a scratch on account o' the fish. Con Brickley had the shteer o' the boat in his hand and says he, 'is there any man here that'll take the shteer from me?' The man was dhrunk, of course," added Jer charitably.

"Did you have any talk with his wife about the fish?"

"I couldn't tell the words that she said to me!" replied the witness, with a reverential glance at the Bench, "and she over-right three crowds o' men that was on the sthrand."

Mr. Mooney put his hands in his pockets and surveyed the witness.

"You're a very refined gentleman upon my word! Were you ever in England?"

"I was part of three years."

"Oh, that accounts for it, I suppose!" said Mr. Mooney, accepting this lucid statement without a stagger, and pa.s.sing lightly on. "You're a widower, I understand, with no objection to consoling yourself?"

No answer.

"Now, sir! Can you deny that you made proposals of marriage to Con Brickley's daughter last Shraft?"

The plot thickened. Con Brickley's daughter was my late kitchenmaid.

Jer Keohane smiled tolerantly.

"Ah! That was a thing o' nothing!"

"Nothing!" said Mr. Mooney, with the roar of a tornado, "do you call an impudent proposal of marriage to a respectable man's daughter nothing!

That's English manners, I suppose!"

"I was goin' home one Sunday," said Jer Keohane, conversationally to the Bench, "and I met the gerr'l and her mother. I spoke to the gerr'l in a friendly way, and asked her why wasn't she gettin' marrid, and she commenced to peg stones at me and dhrew several blows of an umbrella on me. I had only three bottles o' porther taken. There now was the whole of it."

Mrs. Brickley, from under the gallery, groaned heavily and ironically.

I found it difficult to connect these coquetries with my impressions of my late kitchenmaid, a furtive and touzled being, who, in conjunction with a pail and scrubbing brush, had been wont to melt round corners and into doorways at my approach.

"Are we trying a breach of promise case?" interpolated Flurry, "if so, we ought to have the plaintiff in."

"My purpose, sir," said Mr. Mooney, in a manner discouraging to levity, "is to show that my clients have received annoyance and contempt from this man and his sister such as no parents would submit to."

A hand came forth from under the gallery and plucked at Mr. Mooney's coat. A red monkey face appeared out of the darkness, and there was a hoa.r.s.e whisper whose purport I could not gather. Con Brickley, the defendant, was giving instructions to his lawyer.

It was perhaps as a result of these that Jer Keohane's evidence closed here. There was a brief interval, enlivened by coughs, grinding of heavy boots on the floor, and some mumbling and groaning under the gallery.

"There's great duck-shooting out on a lake on this island," commented Flurry to me, in a whisper. "My grand-uncle went there one time with an old duck-gun he had, that he fired with a fuse. He was three hours stalking the ducks before he got the gun laid. He lit the fuse then, and it set to work sputtering and hissing like a goods-engine till there wasn't a duck within ten miles. The gun went off then."

This useful side light on the matter in hand was interrupted by the c.u.mbrous ascent of the one-legged Con Brickley to the witness-table.

He sat down heavily, with his slouch hat on his sound knee, and his wooden stump stuck out before him. His large monkey-face was immovably serious; his eye was small, light grey, and very quick.

McCaffery, the opposition attorney, a thin, restless youth, with ears like the handles of an urn, took him in hand. To the pelting cross-examination that beset him Con Brickley replied with sombre deliberation, and with a manner of uninterested honesty, emphasising what he said with slight, very effective gestures of his big, supple hands. His voice was deep and pleasant; it betrayed no hint of so trivial a thing as satisfaction when, in the teeth of Mr. McCaffery's leading questions, he established the fact that the "little rod" with which Miss Kate Keohane had beaten his wife was the handle of a pitchfork.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CON BRICKLEY]

"I was counting the fish the same time," went on Con Brickley, in his rolling ba.s.so profundissimo, "and she said, 'Let the divil clear me out of the sthrand, for there's no one else will put me out!' says she."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "LET THE DIVIL CLEAR ME OUT OF THE STHRAND!"]

"It was then she got the blow, I suppose!" said McCaffery venomously; "you had a stick yourself, I daresay?"

"Yes. I had a stick. I must have a stick," deep and mellow pathos was hinted at in the voice; "I am sorry to say. What could I do to her? A man with a wooden leg on a sthrand could do nothing!"

Something like a laugh ran round the back of the court. Mr.

McCaffery's ears turned scarlet and became quite decorative. On or off a strand Con Brickley was not a person to be scored off easily.

His clumsy yet impressive descent from the witness-stand followed almost immediately, and was not the least telling feature of his evidence. Mr. Mooney surveyed his exit with the admiration of one artist for another, and rising, asked the Bench's permission to call Mrs. Brickley.

Mrs. Brickley, as she mounted to the platform, in the dark and nun-like severity of her long cloak, the stately blue cloth cloak that is the privilege of the Munster peasant woman, was an example of the rarely blended qualities of picturesqueness and respectability. As she took her seat in the chair, she flung the deep hood back on to her shoulders, and met the gaze of the Court with her grey head erect; she was a witness to be proud of.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A WITNESS TO BE PROUD OF]

"Now Mrs. Brickley," said "Roaring Jack" urbanely, "will you describe this interview between your daughter and Keohane."

"It was the last Sunday in Shrove, your Worship, Mr. Flurry Knox, and gentlemen," began Mrs. Brickley nimbly, "meself and me little gerr'l was comin' from ma.s.s, and Jer Keohane come up to us and got on in a most unmannerable way. He asked me daughter would she marry him. Me daughter told him she would not, quite friendly like. I'll tell ye no lie, gentlemen, she was teasing him with the umbrella the same time, an' he raised his shtick and dhrew a sthroke on her in the back, an'

the little gerr'l took up a small pebble of a stone and fired it at him. She put the umbrella up to his mouth, but she called him no names. But as for him, the names he put on her was to call her 'a nasty long slopeen of a proud thing, and a slopeen of a proud tinker.'"

"Very lover-like expressions!" commented Mr. Mooney, doubtless stimulated by lady-like t.i.tters from the barmaids; "and had this romantic gentleman made any previous proposals for your daughter?"