Charles Lever - Tom Burke Of Ours, Volume I

“It’s not much matter,” replied Basset, still lower; “for the present he goes home with me. Tom, I say, you come back with me to-day.”

“No,” said I, boldly; “I’ll go home again.”

“Home!” repeated he, with a scornful laugh, – “home I And where may that be, youngster?”

“For shame, Basset!” said the clergyman; “don’t speak that way to him. My little man, you can’t go home today. Mr. Basset will take you with him for a few days, until your late father’s will is known, and his wishes respecting you.”

“I’ll go home, sir!” said I, but in a fainter tone, and with tears in my eyes.

“Well, well! let him do so for to-day; it may relieve his poor heart. Come, Basset, I ‘ll take him back myself.”

I clasped his hand as he spoke, and kissed it over and over.

“With all my heart,” cried Basset. “I’ll come over and fetch him to-morrow;” and then he added, in a lower tone, “and before that you ‘ll have found out quite enough to be heartily sick of your charge.”

All the worthy vicar’s efforts to rouse me from my stupor or interest me failed. He brought me to his house, where, amid his own happy children, he deemed my heart would have yielded to the sympathy of my own age. But I pined to get back; I longed – why, I knew not – to be in my own little chamber, alone with my grief. In vain he tried every consolation his kind heart and his life’s experience had taught him; the very happiness I witnessed but reminded me of my own state, and I pressed the more eagerly to return.

It was late when he drew up to the door of the house, to which already the closed window shutters had given a look of gloom and desertion. We knocked several times before any one came, and at length two or three heads appeared at an upper window, in half-terror at the unlooked-for summons for admission.

“Good-by, my dear boy!” said the vicar, as he kissed me; “don’t forget what I have been telling you. It will make you bear your present sorrow better, and teach you to be happier when it is over.”

“Come down to the kitchen, alannah!” said the old cook, as the hall door closed; “come down and sit with us there. Sure it ‘s no wonder your heart ‘ud be low.”

“Yes, Master Tommy; and Darby “the Blast” is there, and a tune and the pipes will raise you.”

I suffered myself to be led along listlessly between them to the kitchen, where, around a huge fire of red turf, the servants of the house were all assembled, together with some neighboring cottagers; Darby “the Blast” occupying a prominent place in the party, his pipes laid across his knees as he employed himself in concocting a smoking tumbler of punch.

“Your most obadient!” said Darby, with a profound reverence, as I entered. “May I make so bowld as to surmise that my presence is n’t unsaysonable to your feelings? for I wouldn’t be contumacious enough to adjudicate without your honor’s permission.”

What I muttered in reply I know not; but the whole party were speedily reseated, every eye turned admiringly on Darby for the very neat and appropriate expression of his apology.

Young as I was and slight as had been the consideration heretofore accorded me, there was that in the lonely desolation of my condition which awakened all their sympathies, and directed all their interests towards me; and in no country are the differences of rank such slight barriers in excluding the feeling of one portion of the community from the sorrows of the others: the Irish peasant, however humble, seems to possess an intuitive tact on this subject, and to minister all the consolations in his power with a gentle delicacy that cannot be surpassed.

The silence caused by my appearing among them was unbroken for some time after I took my seat by the fire; and the only sounds were the clinking of a spoon against the glass, or, the deep-drawn sigh of some compassionate soul, as she wiped a stray tear from the corner of her eye with her apron.

Darby alone manifested a little impatience at the sudden change in a party where his powers of agreeability had so lately been successful, and fidgeted on his chair, unscrewed his pipes, blew into them, screwed them on again, and then slyly nodded over to the housemaid, as he raised his glass to his lips.

“Never mind me,” said I to the old cook, who, between grief and the glare of a turf fire, had her face swelled out to twice its natural size, – “never mind me, Molly, or I ‘ll go away.”

“And why would you, darlin’? Troth, no! sure there ‘s nobody feels for you like them that was always about you. Take a cup of tay, alannah; it ‘ll do you good.”

“Yes, Master Tom,” said the butler; “you never tasted anything since Tuesday night.”

“Do, sir, av ye plaze!” said the pretty housemaid, as she stood before me, cup in hand.

“Arrah! what’s tay?” said Darby, in a contemptuous tone of voice. “A few dirty laves, with a drop of water on top of them, that has neither beatification nor invigoration. Here ‘s the fons animi !” said he, patting the whisky bottle affectionately. “Did ye ever hear of the ancients indulging in tay? D’ye think Polyphamus and Jupither took tay?”

The cook looked down abashed and ashamed.

“Tay’s good enough for women, – no offence, Mrs. Cook! – but you might boil down Paykin, and it’d never be potteen. Ex quo vis ligno non fit Mercurius , – ‘You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.’ That’s the meaning of it; ligno ‘s a sow.”

Heaven knows I was in no mirthful mood at that moment; but I burst into a fit of laughing at this, in which, from a sense of politeness, the party all joined.

“That’s it, acushla!” said the old cook, as her eyes sparkled with delight; “sure it makes my heart light to see you smilin’ again. Maybe Darby would raise a tune now, and there ‘s nothing equal to it for the spirits.”

“Yes, Mr. M’Keown,” said the housemaid; “play ‘Kiss me twice!’ Master Tom likes it.”

“Devil a doubt he does!” replied Darby, so maliciously as to make poor Kitty blush a deep scarlet; “and no shame to him! But you see my fingers is cut. Master Tom, and I can’t perform the reduplicating intonations with proper effect.”

“How did that happen. Darby?” said the butler.

“Faix, easy enough. Tim Daly and myself was hunting a cat the other evening, and she was under the dhresser, and we wor poking her with a burnt stick and a raypinghook, and she somehow always escaped us, and except about an inch of her tail, that we cut off, there was no getting at her; and at last I hated a toastin’-fork and put it in, when out she flew, teeth and claws, at me. Look, there ‘s where she stuck her thieving nails into my thumb, and took the piece clean out. The onnatural baste!”

“Arrah!” said the old cook, with a most reflective gravity, “there ‘s nothing so treacherous as a cat! “ – a moral to the story which I found met general assent among the whole company.

“Nevertheless,” observed Darby, with an air of ill-dissembled condescension, “if it isn’t umbrageous to your honor, I ‘ll intonate something in the way of an ode or a canticle.”

“One of your own. Darby,” said the butler, interrupting.

“Well, I’ve no objection,” replied Darby, with an affected modesty; “for you see, master, like Homer, I accompany myself on the pipes, though – glory be to God! – I’m not blind. The little thing I ‘ll give you is imitated from the ancients – like Tibullus or Euthropeus – in the natural key.”

Mister M’Keown, after this announcement, pushed his empty tumbler towards the butler with a significant glance gave a few preparatory grunts with the pipes, followed by a long dolorous quaver, and then a still more melancholy cadence, like the expiring bray of an asthmatic jackass; all of which sounds, seeming to be the essential preliminaries to any performance on the bagpipes, were listened to with great attention by the company. At length, having assumed an imposing attitude, he lifted up both elbows, tilted his little finger affectedly up, dilated his cheeks, and began the following to the well-known air of “Una:” —