The Bunsby papers Part 7

The delicious condiments being duly served, from which arose an appetizing odor, stimulating Dan's appet.i.te into ravenous hunger, "Won't you sit down, ma'm," said he, "and take a mouthful?"

"Indeed, and it's polite you are, all of a sudden. You never asked the like before, but was always glad enough to get me out of sight that you might gormandize to your heart's content," replied she, acrimoniously.

"But it's a sure sign that you are guilty of something wrong somewhere, with somebody, or you wouldn't be so extra accommodating."

"Sit down, and howld yer prate," cried the other, anxious to attack the tempting viands.

"I won't, you ould sinner. I know you don't want me, it's only your conscience that's giving you no rest. I'll leave you to stuff and cram, and I only wish it was pison, that I do." With this pleasant observation, hissed viperously through her closed teeth, she flounced out of the room, giving the door a parting bang that sent an electric shock of pain through poor Dan's nervous system.

"Oh! milliah murdher," groaned he, "an' this is the agreeable speciment of a walkin' vinegar-cruet, that I left my scanty but comfortable home, and the angel that made a heaven of it, for. Well, the fools ain't all gone yet--but, never mind, isn't there the money and the eatin'; so, here goes to have a feed that 'ud take the concate out of a hungry elephant."

So saying, he lifted off the cover, and plunged the ladle into the steaming tureen, when, to his enormous surprise, instead of the savory mess he antic.i.p.ated, he fished up and deposited upon his plate, the identical little jockey before described, spurs and all.

"How are you, Mr. Duff?" said he, touching his cap in true stable style, as he seated himself upon the raised edge of the soup-plate.

"You have the advantage of me, sir," replied Dan, reverentially, for he was a firm believer in "the good people," that is to say, the fairies, and dreaded the immensity of their power.

"We haven't met before, to be sure," said the little fellow, "but you see I know who you are, in spite of that fleshy stuffing you have got into."

"Bedad, there's no mistake about that, sir," replied Dan. "Would it be too great a liberty to ax what it is I'm indebted to for the honor of your company at this particular time?"

"Certainly not, Dan. The fact is, between you and me, I'm always present where there's such good cheer to be found as I see before me."

"Indeed, sir, an' would it inconvenience you much to sit somewhere else, for I'm mortial hungry at this present minit, an' I'm afeard I'd be splashin' your boots with the gravy."

"Anything to oblige," said the other, jumping over the edge of the plate, like a four-year old.

"Thank you, sir. I'll do as much for you, provided it's in my power,"

observed the hungry cobbler, drawing nearer a huge dish of curried lobster, the spice-laden steam from which would create a new appet.i.te in repletion's self. Heaping up his plate, while his mouth filled with water at the glorious sight, he was just about to shovel a vast quant.i.ty into his capacious mouth, when a sharp

"Stop, Dan!" from the little jockey, arrested his hand mid-way.

"Do you know the result of your eating that mouthful?"

"Never a bit of me, sir," said Dan, making another movement towards his head.

"Ha! wait till I tell you," cried the other.

Dan stopped again. "This is wonderful tantalizin' to an impty Christian," said he.

"Listen, Dan. I have a sort of regard for you, and so I'll give you this warning: If you swallow that stuff that's overloading your knife"--Dan wasn't genteel in his eating--"I'll have to ride a hurdle race upon your big toe, and I'll be bail that I'll make it beat all the rest of your anatomy in the way of jumping."

"You don't mean that?" cried Dan, dropping knife and all into the plate before him.

"Every word of it," said the little fellow.

"Oh, get out! you're not in airnest?"

"May-be you'd like to try?"

"Be the mortial o' war, I don't b'leeve you, anyway the hungriness is drivin' all consequences out of me reckonin', so, here goes, jump or no jump." So, with a desperate recklessness, Dan rushed greedily at the eatables, and never in his life did he eat the t.i.the part of what he demolished upon this occasion. Everything on the table disappeared before his all-devouring appet.i.te, like smoke, and as the materials were handy, he topped all up with a "screechin' hot" tumbler of whisky-punch, stiff enough to poke courage into any man's heart.

In the meantime, wholly absorbed in his prodigious banquet, he had quite lost sight of his friend, the jockey; but now, as with a sigh of intense satisfaction, he reclined back in the cushioned chair, he became sensible of a sort of fidgetiness about his foot, and on looking down, what should he see but the little chap, very busy indeed, with his whip in his mouth, saddling up his big toe, as gingerly as you please. He was just giving the girth a last pull, which he accompanied with the usual jerking expression, making Dan wince a little, from a sense of tightness in the nag.

The business-like manner of the chap, however, soon banished the uncomfortable feeling, and so excited Dan's risibilities, that the tears rolled down his cheeks with uncontrollable laughter. It is astonishing how very near the surface the leverage of a good dinner and a warm "tod," lifts up one's jolly feelings.

Dan was now in a condition to sign a treaty of perpetual amity with all mankind.

Delusive tranquillity!

"Mount," cried the little rider, jumping into his saddle. "Hurrah! off we go! heigh!"

The first slash of the whip and dig of the spur changed the nature of Dan's emotions most effectually. He roared, he raged, he twisted about like an eel on a spear. Still fiercely and unmercifully the little jockey plied the lash and the goad. Still he shouted, "Hurrah! jump, you devil, jump!"

Now, Dan swore like a rapparee; now, he called upon every saint in the calendar; but there was no cessation to his torture. In the extremity of his fury, he flung the whisky-bottle at the little rider's head; but as it struck his own foot, it only augmented the terrible agony.

From praying and swearing he fell to weeping, but the stony-hearted little tyrant was not a.s.sailable by tears or entreaties. Promises of amendment were equally useless; until, at last, happening to recollect what a horror all supernaturals have of the pure element, he seized a tumbler of water, and nearly drowned his tormentor with its contents.

This had the desired effect. The little vagabond dismounted with a shrill cry of annoyance, and rushed over towards the fire-place, to dry his soaked garments.

"Ha, ha! you thief of the world, I know what'll settle your hash now--wather!" said Dan, instantly relieved from pain; "and, wid a blessin', you shall have enough of that same, if ever you venture to come hurdle-racin' on any toes o' mine.

"Stick to that Dan, my hero," said the little fellow, as he shook the drops off his drenched jacket; "stick to that, and you may depend upon it that I'll never trouble you any more."

And so, having got rid of his enemy, Dan snuggled himself back into the comfortable easy-chair, and very soon forgot himself and all the real world, in the perplexities and comic horrors of a dyspeptic dream.

CHAPTER V.

Within the home where jealousy is found, A Upas grows that poisons all around.

It would be as unprofitable as impossible to follow the ever-varying images of a dream, which, apparently consumed the best part of a century; every half hour of which had its separate distress, although the actual period of time pa.s.sed did not reach ten minutes, to such singular and enormous expansion was the imagination swollen. The few placid moments distorted into numberless years of terror, like the drop of seemingly pure water, resolved, by microscopic power, into an ocean of repulsive monsters.

Dan had just been very properly condemned to death for the five and twentieth time, and had waited in gasping dread for the infliction of some inconceivable--except under such circ.u.mstances--mode of bodily torture, when he heard a tremendous noise, like the explosion of an immense piece of ordnance, close by his side. With a nervous start, that benumbed his frame like a powerful shock, he awoke, bathed in perspiration and half dead with fright. The sound was repeated. It was a simple, single, hesitating little knock at the chamber-door.

"Who's there?" he stammered, scarcely yet aroused to the consciousness of his ident.i.ty.

"It's me, sir," replied a gentle voice, that thrilled through him with different sensations, for delight and joy stole over him like a sun-ray. It was his wife's.

"Come in, Peg," said he, "for an angel that you are. If it wasn't for this blessed interruption I'd have died in my bed with the wear an'

tear of murdherin' bad dreams." He would fain have rushed into Peggy's arms as she entered, but the first attempt at making use of his continuations painfully reminded him that they belonged to somebody else. It also admonished him that it was necessary for him to support his new character with dignity.

"Well, ma'm," said he, "what do you mean by disturbin' me in this unprincipled way?"

"Indeed, sir," replied Peggy, timidly, "an' I'm a'most ashamed to tell you; it's that man o' mine over the way, sir; sure, I don't know what's come to him, at all, at all, within the last few hours."

"Ho! ho!" thought Dan, he's had a quare time of it as well as myself.

"What's the matter with him, Mrs. Duffy?"