Tom Burke Of "Ours" Volume I Part 6

I readily a.s.sented to this arrangement; and only asked what distance it might yet be to Ned Malone's, for already I began to feel fatigue.

"A good ten miles," said Darby,--"no less; but we 'll stop here above, and get something to eat, and then we 'll take a rest for an hour or two, and you 'll think nothing of the road after."

I stepped out with increased energy at the cheering prospect; and although the violence of the weather was nothing abated, I consoled myself with thinking of the rest and refreshment before me, and resolved not to bestow a thought upon the present. Darby, on the other hand, seemed more depressed than before, and betrayed in many ways a state of doubt and uncertainty as to his movements,--sometimes pushing on rapidly for half a mile or so; then relapsing into a slow and plodding pace; often looking back too, and more than once coming to a perfect stand-still, talking the whole time to himself in a low muttering voice.

In this way we proceeded for above two miles, when at last I descried through the beating rain the dusky gable of a small cabin in the distance, and eagerly asked if that were to be our halting place.

"Yes," said Darby, "that 's Peg's cabin; and though it 's not very remarkable in the way of cookery or the like, it 's the only house within seven miles of us."

As we came nearer, the aspect of the building became even less enticing.

It was a low mud hovel, with a miserable roof of sods, or scraws, as they are technically called; a wretched attempt at a chimney occupying the gable; and the front to the road containing a small square aperture, with a single pane of gla.s.s as a window, and a wicker contrivance in the shape of a door, which, notwithstanding the severity of the day, lay wide open to permit the exit of the smoke, which rolled more freely through this than through the chimney. A filthy pool of stagnant, green-covered water stood before the door, through which a little causeway of earth led. Upon this a thin, lank-sided sow was standing to be rained, on, her long, pointed snout turned meditatively towards the luscious mud beside her. Displacing this Important member of the family with an unceremonious kick. Darby stooped to enter the low doorway, uttering as he did so the customary "G.o.d save all here!" As I followed him in, I did not catch the usual response to the greeting, and from the thick smoke which filled the cabin, could see nothing whatever around me.

"Well, Peg," said Darby, "how is it with you the day?"

A low grunting noise issued from the foot of a little mud wall beside the fireplace. I turned and beheld the figure of a woman of some seventy years of age, seated beside the turf embers; her dark eyes, bleared with smoke and dimmed with age, were still sharp and piercing; and her nose, thin and aquiline, indicated a cla.s.s of features by no means common among the people. Her dress was the blue frieze coat of a laboring man, over the woollen gown usually worn by women. Her feet and legs were bare; and her head was covered with an old straw bonnet, whose faded ribbon and tarnished finery betokened its having once belonged to some richer owner. There was no vestige of any furniture,--neither table nor chair, nor dresser, nor even a bed, unless some straw laid against the wall in one corner could be thus called; a pot suspended over the wet and sodden turf by a piece of hay rope, and an earthen pipkin with water stood beside her. The floor of the hovel, lower in many places than the road without, was cut up into sloppy mud by the tread of the sow, who ranged at will through the premises. In a word, more dire and wretched poverty it was impossible to conceive.

Darby's first movement was to take off the lid and peer into the pot, when the bubbling sound of the boiling potatoes a.s.sured him that we should have at least something to eat; his next, was to turn a little basket upside down for a seat, to which he motioned me with his hand; then, approaching the old woman, he placed his hand to his mouth and shouted in her ear,--

"What 's the major after this morning, Peg?"

She shook her head gloomily a couple of times, but gave no answer.

"I 'm thinking there 's bad work going on at the town there," cried he, in the same loud tone as before.

Peg muttered something in Irish, but far too low to be audible.

"Is she mad, poor thing?" said I, in a whisper.

The words were not well uttered when she darted on me her black and piercing eyes, with a look so steadfast as to make me quail beneath them.

"Who 's that there?" said the hag, in a croaking, harsh voice.

"He 's a young boy from beyond Loughrea."

"No!" shouted she, in a tone of pa.s.sionate energy; "don't tell me a lie.

I 'd know his brows among a thousand,--he 's a son of Matt Burke's, of Cronmore."

"Begorra, she is a witch; devil a doubt of it!" muttered Darby between his teeth. "You 're right, Peg," continued he, after a moment. "His father's dead, and the poor child's left nothing in the world."

"And so ould Matt's dead?" interrupted she. "When did he die?"

"On Tuesday morning, before day."

"I was driaming of him that morning, and I thought he kem up here to the cabin door on his knees, and said, 'Peggy, Peggy M'Casky! I'm come to ax your pardon for all I done to you.' And I sat up in my bed, and cried out, 'Who 's that?' and he said, ''T is me,--'t is Mister Burke; I 'm come to give you back your lease.' 'I 'll tell you what you 'll give me back,' says I; 'give me the man whose heart you bruck with bad treatment; give me the two fine boys you transported for life; give me back twenty years of my own, that I spent in sorrow and misery.'"

"Peg, acushla! don't speak of it any more. The poor child here, that 's fasting from daybreak, he is n't to blame for what his father did. I think the praties is done by this time."

So saying, he lifted the pot from the fire, and carried it to the door to strain off the water. The action seemed to rouse the old woman, who rose rapidly to her legs, and, hastening to the door, s.n.a.t.c.hed the pot from his hand and pushed him to one side.

"'Tis two days since I tasted bit or sup; 'tis G.o.d himself knows when and where I may have it again; but if I never broke my fast, I'll not do it with the son of him that left me a lone woman this day, that brought the man that loved me to the grave, and my children to shame forever."

As she spoke, she dashed the pot into the road with such force as to break it into fifty pieces; and then, sitting down on the outside of the cabin, she wrung her hands and moaned piteously, in the very excess of her sorrow.

"Let us be going," said Darby, in a whisper. "There 'a no spaking to her when she 's one of them fits on her."

We moved silently from the hovel, and gained the road. My heart was full to bursting; shame and abas.e.m.e.nt overwhelmed me, and I dated not look up.

"Good-by, Peg. I hope we 'll be better friends when we meet again," said Darby, as he pa.s.sed out.

She made no reply, but entered the cabin, from which, in an instant after, she emerged, carrying a lighted sod of turf in a rude wooden tongs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Curse 42]

"Come along quick!" said Darby, with a look of terror; "she's going to curse you."

I turned round, transfixed and motionless. If my life depended on it, I could not have stirred a limb. The old woman by this time had knelt down on the road, and was muttering rapidly to herself.

"Gome along, I say I," said Darby, pulling me by the arm.

"And now," cried the hag aloud, "may bad luck be your shadow wherever you walk, with sorrow behind and bad hopes before you! May you never taste happiness nor ease; and, like this turf, may your heart be always burning here, and--"

I heard no more, for Darby, tearing me away by main force, dragged me along the road, just as the hissing turf embers had fallen at my feet where the hag had thrown them.

CHAPTER IV. MY WANDERINGS.

I CANNOT deny it,--the horrible imprecation I had heard uttered against me seemed to fill up the cup of my misery. An outcast, without home, without a friend, this alone was wanting to overwhelm me with very wretchedness; and as I covered my face with both hands, I thought my heart would break.

"Come, come. Master Tom!" said Darby, "don't be afeard; it'll never do you harm, all she said. I made the sign of the cross on the road between you and her with the end of my stick, and you 're safe enough this time.

Faix, she 's a quare divil when she 's roused,--to destroy an illigint pot of praties that way! But sure she had hard provocation. Well, well!

you war n't to blame, anyhow; Tony Ba.s.set will have a sore reckoning some day for all this."

The mention of that name recalled me in a moment to the consideration of my own danger if he were to succeed in overtaking me, and I eagerly communicated my fear to Darby.

"That's thrue," said he; "we must leave the highroad, for Ba.s.set will be up at the house by this, and will lose no time in following you out. If you had a bit of something to eat."

"As to that. Darby," said I, with a sickly effort to smile, "Peg's curse took away my appet.i.te, full as well as her potatoes would have done."

"'T is a bad way to breakfast, after all," said Darby. "Do you ever take a shaugh of the pipe, Master Tom?"

"No," said I, laughing, "I never learned to smoke yet."

"Well," replied he, a little piqued by the tone of my answer, "'t is worse you might be doin' than that same. Tobacco's a fine thing for the heart! Many's the time, when I 'm alone, if I had n't the pipe I 'd be lone and sorrowful,--thinking over the hard times and the like; but when I 've filled my dudeen, and do be watching the smoke curling up, I begin dhraming about sitting round the fire with pleasant companions, chatting away, and discoorsing, and telling stories. And then I invint the stories to myself about quare devils of pipers travelling over the country, making love here and there, and playing dhroll tunes out of their own heads; and then I make the tunes to them. And after that, maybe, I make words, and sometimes lay down the pipe and begin singing to myself; and often I take up the bagpipes and play away with all my might, till I think I see the darlingest little fairies ever you seen dancing before me, setting to one another, and turning round, and capering away,--down the middle and up again; small chaps, with three-cornered hats, and wigs, and little red coats all slashed with goold; and beautiful little craytures houlding their petticoats, this way to show a nate leg and foot; and I do be calling out to them,--'Hands round!' 'That 's your sowl!' 'Look at the green fellow; 'tis himself can do it!' 'Rise the jig, hoo!'--and faix 't is sorry enough I 'm when they go, and lave me all alone by myself."

"And how does all that come into your head. Darby?" "Troth, 'tis hard to tell," said Darby, with a sigh. "But my notion is, that the poor man that has neither fine houses, nor fine clothes, nor horses, nor sarvants to amuse him, that Providence is kind to him in another way, and fills his mind with all manner of dhroll thoughts and quare stories and bits of songs, and the like, and lets him into many a sacret about fairies and the good people that the rich has no time for. And sure you must have often remarked it, that the quality has never a bit of fun in them at all, but does be always coming to us for something to make them laugh. Did you never lave the parlor, when the company was sitting with lashings of wine and fruit, and every convaniency, and go downstairs to the kitchen, where maybe there was nothing but a salt herrin' and a jug of punch; and if you did, where wais the most fun, I wondher? Arrah, when they bid me play a tune for them, and I look at their sorrowful pale faces, and their dim eyes and the stiff way they sit upon their chairs, I never put heart in it; but when I rise 'Dirty James,' or 'The Little Bould Fox,' or 'Kiss my Lady,' for the boys and girls, sure 't is my whole sowl does be in the bag, and I squeeze the notes out of it with all my might."

In this way did Darby converse until we reached a cross road, when, coming to a halt, he pointed with his finger to the distance, and said,--