The Tithe-Proctor Part 34

"I grant that, Alick, I know I am; but then it is in my nature. I was born with it--I was born with it. Any news?"

"Why not much, sir. That scoundrel, Buck English, has written to my father, notwithstanding all that happened, to know if he will consent to let Julia marry him. He says in his letter that, although he may be put off with a refusal now, he will take good care that he shan't be unsuccessful the next time he asks her."

"Does n.o.body, or can n.o.body find out how that scoundrel--" here the valorous magistrate's voice sank as if instinctively, and he gave a cautious glance about him at the same time, but seeing none but themselves, present he resumed his courage--"how that, rascal finds manes to cut the figure he-does?"

"I believe not," replied the other; "but for my part, I am often disposed to look upon the man as mad; yet still the puzzle is to think how he lives in such buck style--the vagabond. He certainly is involved in some-mystery, for every one you meet or talk to is afraid of him."

"No, not every one, Alick; come, come, my boy, every general rule has an exception; whisper--I could name you one who is not afraid of him"--and this he said in a jocular tone--"I only wish," he added, raising his voice with more confidence, "that I could get my thumb upon him, I would--"

He was here interrupted by a loud but mellow voice, which rang cheerfully with the following words:--

"I'm the rantin' Cannie Soogah."

"Ha! the Jolly Pedlar! Throw open the window, Fergus, till we have a chat with him. Well, my rantin' Cannie Soogah, how are you?"

"Faith, your honor, I'm jist betwixt and between, as they say--naither betther nor worse, but mixed middlin', like the praties in harvest.

However, it's good to be any way at all in these times; so thank G.o.d my head's on my body still."

"Cannie," said Fergus, "we were just-talking of Buck English. Mr. Purcel here-says that there's some mystery about him; for n.o.body knows how he lives, and every one almost is afraid of him. My Father, however, denies that every one is afraid of him."

"Buck English!" exclaimed the pedlar. "Mr. O'Driscol, darlin', what did your honor say about him?"

"Why, I--I--a-hem--I wished to have the pleasure, Cannie, of--of--shaking hands, with the honest fellow; was not that it, Alick?"

"Hands, or thumbs, or something that way," replied Alick; "threatening him, as it were."

"Shaking hands, upon honor, Alick--thumb to thumb, you know."

"Well, Mr. O'Driscol, you're well known! to have more o' the divil than the man in you--beggin' your pardon, sir, for the freedoms, I'm takin'--but it's all for your own good I'm doin' it. Have you e're a mouse-hole about your place, sir?"

"A-hem! Why, Cannie," asked O'Driscol, with an expression of strong alarm in his face--"why do you ask so--so--singular a question as that?"

"Bekaise, sir, sooner than you should breathe--mind, breathe's the word--one syllable against Buck English, I'd recommend you to go into the mouse-hole I spoke of, and never show your face out of it agin.

I--an' everybody knows me, an' likes me, too, I hope--I meek--hem!

throth I do make it a point never to name him at all, barrin' when I can't help it. n.o.body knows anything about him, they say. By all accounts, he never sleeps a week, or at any rate more than a week, in the same place; an' whatever dress he has on comin' to any particular part of the counthry, he never changes; but they say that if you find him in any other part of the counthry, he has a different dress on him: he has a dress, they say, for every part."

"He has honored my father," said Alick, "by sending him a written proposal for my sister Julia--ha! ha! ha!"

"Well, now, did he, Mr. Alick?"

"Yes; and he says that he may be refused now, but won't the next time he asks her."

"Well, then, Mr. Alick, I'll tell you what I'd advise you to do: go home, and tell your father to send for him, if he knows where to find him, and let him not lose a day in marryin' her to him; for if everything is thrue that's said of him, he was never known to break a promise, whether it was for good or ill."

"Ha! ha! ha! thank you, Cannie,--excellent!" replied Alick.

"Who can he be, Cannie?" asked Miss O'Driscol, "this person of such wonderful mystery? I have never seen him, but I wish I could."

"Ay, have you, often--I'll engage, Miss."

"And so do I," added her father; "I wish to see him also, and to have everything mysterious cleared up."

"Well," continued the pedlar, "I know nothing myself about him, only as I hear; but if all's thrue that's said, he could give your father, and you, Mr. Alick, lave to walk through the whole counthry in the hour of noonday or midnight, widout a finger ever bein' raised against one o'

you; and as for you, Mr. O'Driscol, he could have the house pulled about your ears in an hour's time, if he wished--ay, and he would, too, if he heard that you spoke a harsh word of him."

"As for me, Cannie," replied the magistrate, "I trust I'm a Christian man, and not in the habit of abusing the absent. Indeed, I don't see what right any one has to make impertinent inquiries into the life or way of living of any respectable person--I do not see it, Cannie; and, I a.s.sure you, I always set my face against such prying inquiries."

"I know, myself," continued the pedlar, "that there's a great many things said about him, an' people wishes to know who he is. Now I was tould a thing wanst by a sartain parson--I won't say who, but I believe it's not a thousand miles from the truth I'm spakin' about who he is."

"And who is he?" asked Fergus; "out with it Cannie."

"Well, then," he proceeded, in a cautious and confidential whisper, "it's said by them that ought to know, that he's an illaygal brother to the Great Counsellor. There now, you have it."

"Is it to Counsellor O'Connell?"

"Ay, to Counsellor O'Connell--divil a one else. He's as like him as two pays, barrin' the color o' the hair. Sure the Counsellor puts every one down that crosses him, and so does Buck English. Miss Katherine, darlin,' won't you buy something? Here's the best of everything; don't be afeard of high prices. My maxim always is--to buy dear and sell chape, for the sake o' the fair sect. Come, gintlemen, Cannie Soogah's pack is a faist for the leedies--hem--I mane a feest for the ladies--hillo--ha! ha! ha! there's a touch of Buck English himself for you. Well, of coorse, what's a faist for the ladies must surely be a thrate to the gintlemen."

Alick here availed himself of M'Carthy's experience, and presented Miss O'Driscol with a beautiful bracelet; O'Driscol and Fergus purchased some pocket-handkerchiefs and other matters, and our Jolly Pedlar went on his way rejoicing.

Fergus O'Driscol who was a shrewd and keen observer, could perceive, during the foregoing interview, that there was on the pedlar's countenance an expression of grave, hard, solemn irony, which it was difficult to notice, or having noticed it, to penetrate, or in any way a.n.a.lyse or understand. To him it was a complete enigma, the solution of which seized very strongly on his imagination, and set all his powers of reasoning and investigation to work. All admitted there was a mystery about Buck English; but Fergus felt a strong impression that there was one equally impenetrable about the pedlar himself. Having little else, however, than a pa.s.sing thought, a fancy, on which to ground this surmise, he prudently concealed it, from an apprehension of being mistaken, and, consequently, of subjecting himself to ridicule.

Fergus now brought Alick out to the garden, where they seemed to enjoy a very merry dialogue if several fits of hearty laughter may be said to const.i.tute mirth; after this Alick went home; not, however, we should say until he first contrived to enjoy a short _tete-a-tete_ with Miss O'Driscol.

When the hour for the departure of the magistrate to test the resolution of the "men in buckram," who had resolved upon his a.s.sa.s.sination, had arrived, he most magnanimously got a double case of pistols, and in spite of all remonstrance from both son and daughter, he mounted his horse--Duke Schomberg--and in a most pompous and heroic spirit rode forth to quell the latent foe.

We have already stated that O'Driscol's real character was thoroughly known by the country-folks around him, as the character of every such person usually is. Whilst he proceeds, then, upon his daring and heroic enterprise, we beg leave to state very briefly, that Fergus and Alick Purcel, having laid their heads together, procured, each, two of their father's laborers, whom they furnished material wherewith to blacken their faces; not omitting four large cabbage-stalks, with the heads attached, and kept under the right arm of each. These had been trimmed and blackened also, in order to have more the appearance of fire-arms.

Thus armed, and with appropriate instructions, they planted themselves inside the hedges which inclosed the narrow turn of the road at Philpot's cornet, and awaited their "unsuspecting victim," as the phrase unhappily, and with too much truth, goes.

O'Driscol, on approaching the fatal spot, regretted that there were no eyes upon this extraordinary manifestation of courage. He stretched up his neck and looked about him in all directions, with a hope that some one might observe the firmness and utter absence of all fear with which he came up to the place where the a.s.sa.s.sins were to lie in wait for him. He had now come within ten or twelve yards of it when, such was the force of his own cowardly imagination, that it had worked him up from a fict.i.tious into a real terror; and on approaching the spot, he could not prevent himself from coughing pretty loudly, in order to ascertain that there really was no such thing as ah a.s.sa.s.sin behind the hedges. He coughed, we say, with a double case of pistols in his hand, when, heaven and earth! was the cough responded to--and in a jarring style--from behind the hedge to the right? He paused, pulled up his horse, and coughed again, when it also was responded to from that on the left; and at the same time four faces, dreadfully blackened, peeped, two on each side of him, and levelling their black and dreadful-looking blunderbusses--for they could be nothing else--were about to rid the world of a loyal magistrate, and deprive the Castle of its best friend and correspondent, when the latter gentleman, wheeling Duke Schomberg round, put him to most inglorious flight, and scampered off at the top of his speed.

The jest was admirably managed; and nothing could exceed the unction with which he related his encounter with the villains. In fact, upon Falstaff's principle, he had discharged his pistols on the way home, as a proof of the desperate contest he had had with the blood-thirsty scoundrels. Like all his other exploits, however, it was added to the catalogue of his daring conflicts with the Whiteboys, and, ere the lapse of twenty-four hours, was in possession of "his friend the Castle."

CHARTER XV.--Scene in a Parsonage--An Anti-t.i.the Ringleader.

Hitherto we have described the t.i.the-agitation as one which was externally general as well as deep-rooted; and so far we were perfectly correct. Our readers, however, are not to understand by this that there did not exist among the people--ay, and the priesthood too--a strong under-current of sympathy for the sufferings of the protestant clergy.

The latter had indeed been now reduced to such privation as it is pitiable even to look back upon. One-half the glebe-houses presented such symptoms of cold nakedness and dest.i.tution, such a wrecked and gutted appearance, as could scarcely be conceived at present. Hundreds of their occupants had been obliged to part by degrees with all that was valuable or could be turned into money. The elegant and accomplished young female, hitherto accustomed to all the comforts and luxuries of life, was now to be taught a lesson of suffering and endurance as severe as it was unexpected. Many--many such lessons were taught, and we may add--well and n.o.bly, and with true Christian fort.i.tude, were they borne.

We have already said that Purcel had the collection of t.i.the for four Parishes, and now that the distress among the clergy and their families had a.s.sumed such a dreadful and appalling aspect, he had an opportunity of ascertaining the extraordinary respect and affection for them which existed after all in the minds of the people. His own house and premises were now so strongly secured, and his apprehension of nocturnal attacks so strongly justified by the threats he had already received, and the disorganized state of the country around him, that he was forced to decline receiving the t.i.the at unseasonable hours; it being impossible for him to know whether the offer of payment might not have been a plan of the people to get into his dwelling, and wreak their vengeance upon him and his sons. Under these circ.u.mstances, his advice to them, communicated with due regard to his own safety, was to pay the money directly to the clergyman himself, or at least to some of his family; and this, indeed, when they lived near the clergyman, they always preferred doing. To be sure, the step was a hazardous one, but, as they say, where there is a will there is a way; and so it was in many instances on this occasion. The dead hour of the night was necessarily selected for the performance of this kind office, and in this way many an unexpected act of relief was experienced by the starving and dest.i.tute clergy, at the hands of the very persons who were sworn to abolish t.i.thes, and to refuse paying them in any shape.

Sometimes, to be sure, when Purcel or his sons happened to be abroad on business, attended as they now generally were by policemen for their protection, a countryman, for instance, would hastily approach him or them, as the case might be, and thrusting a sum of money rolled up in paper, into his hand, exclaim, "It's the thrifle o' the last gale o'

rint, sir, that I was short in--you'll find a bit o' murnmyrandim in the paper, that'll show you it's all right." This, uttered with a dry, significant expression of countenance, was a sufficient indication of the object intended. On examining the paper, it was generally found to contain some such direction as the following--

"MR. PURCEL, SIR--The enclosed is for the Rev. Misther Harvey. For G.o.d's sake, give it to him as soon as you can; as I undherstand himself and family is starvin' outright--I daren't give it to him myself, or be seen goin' near his house. Sure when we think of the good he done, himself an' his family, whin they had the manes, it's enough to make one pity them, especially when we know what they're sufferin' so quietly, an'

without makin' any hubbub about it; but sure, G.o.d help us, there's humbug enough in the counthry. Don't lose time, i' you plase, Mr.

Purcel, as I'm tould that they're brought to the dry praitie at last, G.o.d help them."