Tom Burke Of "Ours", Volume I. Lever Charles James
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 abasement 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 passed 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.
“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 Basset 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 Basset 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 appetite, 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, —
“Athlone is down beyond that low mountain. Now, Ned Malone’s is only six short miles from this. You keep this byroad till you reach the smith’s forge; then turn off to the lift, across the fields, till you come to an ould ruin; lave that to your right hand, and follow the boreen straight; ‘twill bring you to Ned’s doore.”
“But I don’t know him,” said I.
“What signifies that? Sure ‘tis no need you have. Tell him you ‘ll stop there till Darby the Blast comes for you. And see, now, here ‘s all you have to do: put your right thumb in the palm of your lift hand, – this way, – and then kiss the other thumb, and then you have it. But mind you don’t do that till you ‘re alone with him; ‘t is a token between ourselves.”
“I wish you were coming with me, Darby; I’d rather not leave you!”
“‘Tis myself mislikes it, too,” said Darby, with a sigh. “But I daren’t miss going to Athlone; the major would soon ferret me out; and it’s worse it would be for me.”
“And what am I to do if Mr. Basset comes after me?”
“If he has n’t a throop of horse at his back, you may laugh at him in Ned Malone’s, And now good-by, acushla; and don’t let your heart be low, – you ‘ll be a man soon, you know.”
The words of encouragement could not have been more happily chosen to raise my drooping spirits. The sense of opening manhood was already stirring within me, and waited but for some direct occasion to elicit it in full vigor.
I shook Darby’s hand with a firm grasp, and assuming the easiest smile I could accomplish, I set out on the path before me with all the alacrity in my power.
The first thought that shot across my mind when I parted with my companion was the utter loneliness of my condition; the next – and it followed immediately on the other – was the bold consciousness of personal freedom. I enjoyed at the moment the untrammelled liberty to wander without let or control. All memory of Tony Basset was forgotten, and I only remembered the restraint of school and the tyranny of my master. My plan – and already I had formed a plan – was to become a farmer’s servant, to work as a daily laborer. Ned Malone would probably accept of me, young as I was, in that capacity; and I had no other ambition than such as secured my independence.
As I travelled along I wove within my mind a whole web of imaginary circumstances: of days of peaceful toil; of nights of happy and contented rest; of friendship formed with those of my own age and condition; of the long summer evenings when I should ramble alone to commune with myself on my humble but happy lot; on the red hearth in winter, around which