The Bunsby papers Part 8

"That's what I want to know, sir, av anybody'd only tell me; I never knew him to kick up such tanthrums ever since we come together; musha!

sure, an' the devil's in him if ever he enthered a mortal body, this blessed day--an' _dhrink!_ murdher alive, sir, av he wouldn't dhrink the _say_ dhry av he only had the swally, I'm not here."

"That's bad, very bad, indeed," said the other, oracularly. "People should never indulge in such terrible propensities," he went on, with a bold attempt at Bulworthy's phraseology.

"Sure, sir, doesn't it depend upon what dhrives them to it?" replied Peggy. "Throuble's mighty dhrouthy, sir, intirely; it dhrys up a poor man's throat as if there was a fire in his mouth, and, indeed, me poor Dan's poorer nor the poorest this holy day."

"That's no rayson, ma'm," said the other, with mock sternness, although his frame was in a glow of joy at hearing how Peggy managed to find excuses for his favorite failing. "That's no rayson, ma'm; the more fool him for addin' flame to the fire."

"Thrue for you, sir, but then doesn't it dhrownd the blaze for the time?"

"I'll answer ye that, Mrs. Duff, if you please, allygorically; did ye ever see a few dhrops of sperrets flung into a blazin' fire? a murdherin' lot of dhrowndin' there is about it; bedad, the fire only burns with greater strength."

"Then, of coorse, your honor, it stands to good sense that it's foolish to take _only_ a few dhrops," she replied, with a sly look at the Squire, that made the laugh bubble all over his ruddy face.

"One would a'most suppose that you loved this Dan of yours," said he.

"Love him, sir! do the spring flowers love the sun? does the young mother love her new-born babby?"

"Oh! murdher, murdher! listen to this," cried Dan; "an' me shut up inside of this prison of a carca.s.s; it was a mortial sin to leave her, an' I'm sufferin' for it as I ought, an' it sarves me right." The thought made him savage, so turning to poor Peggy with a look of anger, he continued, fiercely:

"What brought you here, ma'm? may-be you'll condescind to inform me at oncet."

"Oh! sir, don't be angry wid him, but its outrageous intirely that he is; sure, he wants somethin' that I'm afeared to ax."

"What is it? don't keep me waitin' all day."

"I hope yer honor will take into considheration the way he's in just now, for he sthole out onbeknown to me, an' how he got the sup, I can't tell; but it's on him dhreadful, or he'd never think of the likes."

"The likes of what? what's throublin' him now? speak out, woman, or you'll drive the little bit of patience that I have clean out of me."

"Then, sir, the long an' the short of it is, an' I dunno what put such foolishness in his head, he towld me to ax yer honor, if yer honor had a thrifle of that soup left; he'd take it as a mighty great favor if yer honor would let him have the least taste in life of it," said Peggy, with an extreme misgiving as to how so presumptuous a request would be received.

"Is that all?" said Dan, calmly, to her intense relief. "Take it, an'

welcome, Mrs. Duff, an' if it does him as much good as it did me you won't be throubled wid such a message again, I'll be bound; there's the vagabone stuff in that big bowl over on the sideboard fornenst you; an'

tell him, by the same token, from me, that av he feels at all uncomfortable in his present quarthers, it wouldn't kill me right out to swap again."

"Swap what, sir?" inquired Peggy, rather mystified.

"Oh! he'll know what I mean."

"And so do I," screamed the irate Mrs. Bulworthy rushing into the room, at the door of which, she had been listening during the entire conversation, the spirit of which had inflamed her jealous temperament up to fever heat.

"I know what you want to swap, you ill-conditioned profligate," she went on, in true Zantippe style. "You want to swap wives, don't you?"

"Faix, an' you never said a thruer word," coolly replied Dan.

This was too much for the excited dame; with a yell of fury she rushed at Peggy, and would a.s.suredly have indented the marks of all her finger-nails in her comely countenance, but that the other, finding the door conveniently open, s.n.a.t.c.hed up the tureen of soup and fled down stairs like a phantom.

Her prey thus escaping, the shock of her terrible rage was concentrated upon the head of the devoted Dan; to what grievous extremity it would carry her he had not an idea, but he felt that something awful was about to take place.

"Considher my misfortunes," he cried, "and be merciful, Mrs.

Bulworthy."

Implacable as the embodied Parcae, she advanced towards him.

"You're not goin' to murdher me, woman," he roared.

Silently, she approached still nearer, desperation was in her aspect.

"Help, murdher, help!" cried Dan, inevitable fate seeming to be on the point of overwhelming him in some way or another.

"What the divil is the ould monsther goin' to do?" thought he, as a frightful suspicion raised his flesh into little hillocks, and made his hair sting his head like needle-points, when he saw her deliberately take a singular-looking phial and pour out a few drops of a fiery red liquor, filling the rest of the gla.s.s with water, through which the former hissed and eddied for a few moments, and then subsided into a horrible blackness.

"Drink this," she e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, solemnly, "and pay the penalty of your infamous conduct."

"What is it?" he inquired, in a voice of alarm.

"Poison! you profligate," replied the other, regarding him with a Borgian expression.

"Holy Vargin! an' me screwed into the floor wid this _threfalian_ gout," gasped Dan, his face bedewed with the effect of his mental agony. "Stop! you murdherin' ould witch! Stop! you have no right to sarve me this way. I don't belong to you at all," cried Dan, as a last resource.

"What do you mean by that, you miserable sinner?"

"I mean that you're no wife o' mine, the Lord be praised for it."

"Would you deny your honest wife, you cannibal?"

"I would--I do," cried he, desperately.

"You're not my husband?"

"I'll be upon my Bible oath I'm not."

"What--not Bulworthy?"

"The divil a toe, ma'm, savin' yer presence. I'm Dan Duff, the cobbler, from over the way."

"Oh, the man's mad--mad as a coot," said Mrs. Bulworthy, with appalling calmness, "and it would only be a mercy to put him out of his misery, soon an' suddent."

"_Tear an aigers_, av I only had the use of these blaggard legs of mine, wouldn't I make an example of ye, you ould witch of Endher,"

muttered Dan. "I won't be slaughtered without an offer to save myself, any way." With that, he started to his feet, and to his great surprise and delight discovered that his powers of locomotion were unimpeded.

With a wild hurroo! he jumped, as only a Munster man can jump, and dancing over to the now thoroughly alarmed Squiress, who could see nothing in such extravagance but a confirmation of his utter insanity, he lifted her in his arms as though she were a rag doll.

"Now, ma'm," said he, "I'll see if I can't cure your propensity for pison. Into that closet you'll go, and out of it you sha'n't budge until you come to your senses, or I come to myself; and I'm afeard that one's as far off as the other--worse luck for both of us;" and so, without the slightest attempt at resistance on her part, not knowing to what extremity this outburst of madness would lead him, he snugly deposited her ladyship in a corner cupboard, which he locked, and put the key in his pocket, accompanying the whole movement with a paroxysm of laughter, so long and loud that she congratulated herself upon the slight shelter thus afforded her, and only feared that the next phase in his malady would be of more sanguinary a nature.

This great feat accomplished, Dan threw himself back in the easy-chair, and began seriously to ruminate upon his present condition and his future prospects.

"This, then, is what I left my blessed Peg and the blesseder babby for; to live a life of gout and conthrariness, never to have any confidence in my muscles, but always thremblin' for feard that sharp-spurred jockey would take a fancy for a canther, or, what's worse even than that, to be in dhread of the penethratin' tongue of ould mother Gab, yondher, whinever I'm laid by the leg; oh! if iver there was a poor sinner that repinted, it's myself that's last on the list, an'