Tom Burke Of "Ours", Volume I. Lever Charles James
teasing him, and the like, and he could n’t bear it any longer.”
“Arrah, howld your prate!” interrupted the old cook, whose indignation for the honor of the sex could not endure more. “He’s the biggest liar from this to himself; and that same ‘s not a small word. Darby M’Keown.”
There was a pointedness in the latter part of this speech which might have led to angry consequences, had I not interposed by asking Mr. M’Keown himself if he ever was in love.
“Arrah, it ‘s wishing it, I am, the same love. Sure my back and sides is sore with it; my misfortunes would fill a book. Did n’t I bind myself apprentice to a carpenter for love of Molly Scraw, a niece he had, just to be near her and be looking at her; and that ‘s the way I shaved off the top of my thumb with the plane. By the mortial, it was near killing me. I usedn’t to eat or drink; and though I was three years at the thrade, faix, at the end of it, I could n’t tell you the gimlet from the handsaw!”
“And you wor never married, Mister M’Keown?” said Kitty.
“Never, my darling, but often mighty near it. Many ‘s the quare thing happened to me,” said Darby, meditatingly; “and sure if it was n’t my guardian angel, or something of the kind, prevented it, I ‘d maybe have more wives this day than the Emperor of Roossia himself.”
“Arrah, don’t be talking!” grunted out the old cook, whose passion could scarcely be restrained at the boastful tone Mister M’Keown assumed in descanting on his successes.
“There was Biddy Finn,” continued Darby, without paying any attention to the cook’s interruption; “she might be Mrs. M’Keown this day, av it wasn’t for a remarkable thing that happened.”
“What was that?” said Kitty, with eager curiosity.
“Tell us about it. Mister M’Keown,” said the butler.
“The devil a word of truth he’ll tell you,” grumbled the cook, as she raked the ashes with a stick.
“There ‘s them here does not care for agreeable intercoorse,” said Darby, assuming a grand air.
“Come, Daxby; I ‘d like to hear the story,” said I.
After a few preparatory scruples, in which modesty, offended dignity, and conscious merit struggled, Mr. M’Keown began by informing us that he had once a most ardent attachment to a certain Biddy Finn, of Ballyclough, – a lady of considerable personal attractions, to whom for a long time he had been constant, and at last, through the intervention of Father Curtin, agreed to marry. Darby’s consent to the arrangements was not altogether the result of his reverence’s eloquence, nor indeed the justice of the case; nor was it quite owing to Biddy’s black eyes and pretty lips; but rather to the soul-persuading powers of some fourteen tumblers of strong punch which he swallowed at a séance in Biddy’s father’s house one cold evening in November, after which he betook himself to the road homewards, where – But we must give his story in his own words:
“Whether it was the prospect of happiness before me, or the potteen,” quoth Darby, “but so it was, – I never felt a step of the road home that night, though it was every foot of five mile. When I came to a stile, I used to give a whoop, and over it; then I’d run for a hundred yards or two, flourish my stick, cry out, ‘Who ‘ll say a word against Biddy Finn?’ and then over another fence, flying. Well, I reached home at last, and wet enough I was; but I did n’t care for that. I opened the door and struck a light; there was the least taste of kindling on the hearth, and I put some dry sticks into it and some turf, and knelt down and began blowing it up.
“‘Troth,’ says I to myself, ‘if I wor married, it isn’t this way I’d be, – on my knees like a nagur; but when I ‘d come home, there ‘ud be a fine fire blazin’ fornint me, and a clean table out before it, and a beautiful cup of tay waiting for me, and somebody I won’t mintion, sitting there, looking at me, smilin’.’
“‘Don’t be making a fool of yourself, Darby M’Keown,’ said a gruff voice near the chimley.
“I jumped at him, and cried out, ‘Who ‘s that?’ But there was no answer; and at last, after going round the kitchen, I began to think it was only my own voice I heard; so I knelt down again, and set to blowing away at the fire.
“‘And it’s yerself, Biddy,’ says I, ‘that would be an ornament to a dacent cabin; and a purtier leg and foot – ’
“‘Be the light that shines, you’re making me sick. Darby M’Keown,’ said the voice again.
“‘The heavens be about us!’ says I, ‘what ‘s that? and who are you at all?’ for someways I thought I knew the voice.
“‘I ‘m your father!’ says the voice.
“‘My father!’ says I. ‘Holy Joseph, is it truth you ‘re telling me?’
“‘The divil a word o’ lie in it,’ says the voice. ‘Take me down, and give me an air o’ the fire, for the night ‘s cowld.’
“‘And where are you, father,’ says I, ‘av it’s plasing to ye?’
“‘I ‘m on the dhresser,’ says he. ‘Don’t you see me?’
“‘Sorra bit o’ me. Where now?’
“‘Arrah, on the second shelf, next the rowling-pin. Don’t you see the green jug? – that’s me.’
“‘Oh, the saints in heaven be about us!’ says I; ‘and are you a green jug?’
“‘I am,’ says he; ‘and sure I might be worse. Tim Healey’s mother is only a cullender, and she died two years before me.’
“‘Oh! father, darlin’,’ says I, ‘I hoped you wor in glory; and you only a jug all this time!’
“‘Never fret about it,’ says my father; ‘it ‘s the transmogrification of sowls, and we ‘ll be right by and by. Take me down, I say, and put me near the fire.’
“So I up and took him down, and wiped him with a clean cloth, and put him on the hearth before the blaze.
“‘Darby,’ says he, ‘I’m famished with the druth. Since you took to coortin’ there ‘s nothing ever goes into my mouth; haven’t you a taste of something in the house?’
“I wasn’t long till I hated some wather, and took down the bottle of whiskey and some sugar, and made a rousing jugful, as strong as need be.
“‘Are you satisfied, father?’ says I.
“‘I am,’ says he; ‘you ‘re a dutiful child, and here ‘s your health, and don’t be thinking of Biddy Finn,’
“With that my father began to explain how there was never any rest nor quietness for a man after he married, – more be token, if his wife was fond of talking; and that he never could take his dhrop of drink in comfort afterwards.
“‘May I never,’ says he, ‘but I ‘d rather be a green jug, as I am now, than alive again wid your mother. Sure it ‘s not here you’d be sitting to-night,’ says he, ‘discoorsing with me, av you wor married; devil a bit. Fill me,’ says my father, ‘and I ‘ll tell you more.’
“And sure enough I did, and we talked away till near daylight; and then the first thing I did was to take the ould mare out of the stable, and set off to Father Curtin, and towld him all about it, and how my father would n’t give his consent by no means.
“‘We’ll not mind the marriage,’ says his rivirence; ‘but go back and bring me your father, – the jug, I mean, – and we ‘ll try and get him out of trouble; for it ‘s trouble he ‘s in, or he would n’t be that way. Give me the two pound ten,’ says the priest; ‘you had it for the wedding, and it will be better spent getting your father out of purgatory than sending you into it. ‘”
“Arrah, aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” cried the cook, with a look of ineffable scorn, as he concluded.
“Look now,”