Great Irish Short Stories (2 page)

There are trials of temper in all conditions; and no lady, in high or low life, could endure them with a better grace than Phœbe.

Whilst Mr. and Mrs. Hill were busied abroad, there came to see Phœbe one of the widow Smith’s children. With artless expressions of gratitude to Phœbe, this little girl mixed the praises of O’Neill, who, she said, had been the constant friend of her mother, and had given her money every week since the fire happened. “Mammy loves him dearly, for being so good-natured,” continued the child; “and he has been good to other people as well as to us.”

“To whom?” said Phœbe.

“To a poor man, who has lodged for these few days past next door to us,” replied the child; “I don’t know his name rightly, but he is an Irishman; and he goes out a-haymaking in the daytime, along with a number of others. He knew Mr. O’Neill in his own country, and he told mammy a great deal about his goodness.”

As the child finished these words, Phœbe took out of a drawer some clothes, which she had made for the poor woman’s children, and gave them to the little girl. It happened that the Limerick gloves had been thrown into this drawer; and Phœbe’s favourable sentiments of the giver of those gloves were revived by what she had just heard, and by the confession Mrs. Hill had made, that she had no reasons, and but vague suspicions, for thinking ill of him. She laid the gloves perfectly smooth, and strewed over them, whilst the little girl went on talking of Mr. O’Neill, the leaves of a rose which she had worn on Sunday.

Mr. Hill was all this time in deep conference with those prudent men of Hereford who were of his own opinion about the perilous hole under the cathedral. The ominous circumstance of this ball was also considered, the great expense at which the Irish glover lived, and his giving away gloves; which was a sure sign he was not under any necessity to sell them, and consequently a proof that, though he pretended to be a glover, he was something wrong in disguise. Upon putting all these things together, it was resolved, by these overwise politicians, that the best thing that could be done for Hereford, and the only possible means of preventing the immediate destruction of its cathedral, would be to take Mr. O’Neill into custody. Upon recollection, however, it was perceived that there were no legal grounds on which he could be attacked. At length, after consulting an attorney, they devised what they thought an admirable mode of proceeding.

Our Irish hero had not that punctuality which English tradesmen usually observe in the payment of bills: he had, the preceding year, run up a long bill with a grocer in Hereford; and, as he had not at Christmas cash in hand to pay it, he had given a note, payable six months after date. The grocer, at Mr. Hill’s request, made over the note to him; and it was determined that the money should be demanded, as it was now due, and that, if it was not paid directly, O’Neill should be that night arrested. How Mr. Hill made the discovery of this debt to the grocer agree with his former notion, that the Irish glover had always money at command, we cannot well conceive; but anger and prejudice will swallow down the grossest contradictions without difficulty.

When Mr. Hill’s clerk went to demand payment of the note, O’Neill’s head was full of the ball which he was to give that evening. He was much surprised at the unexpected appearance of the note: he had not ready money by him to pay it; and, after swearing a good deal at the clerk, and complaining of this ungenerous and ungentleman-like behaviour in the grocer and the tanner, he told the clerk to be gone, and not to be bothering him at such an unseasonable time; that he could not have the money then, and did not deserve to have it all.

This language and conduct were rather new to the English clerk’s mercantile ears. We cannot wonder that it should seem to him, as he said to his master, more the language of a madman than a man of business. This want of punctuality in money transactions, and this mode of treating contracts as matters of favour and affection, might not have damned the fame of our hero in his own country, where such conduct is, alas! too common; but he was now in a kingdom where the manners and customs are so directly opposite, that he could meet with no allowance for his national faults. It would be well for his countrymen if they were made, even by a few mortifications, somewhat sensible of this important difference in the habits of Irish and English traders, before they come to settle in England.

But, to proceed with our story. On the night of Mr. O’Neill’s grand ball, as he was seeing his fair partner, the perfumer’s daughter, safely home, he felt himself tapped on the shoulder by no friendly hand. When he was told that he was the king’s prisoner, he vociferated, with sundry strange oaths which we forbear to repeat, “No, I am not the king’s prisoner! I am the prisoner of that shabby rascally tanner, Jonathan Hill. None but he would arrest a gentleman in this way, for a trifle not worth mentioning.”

Miss Jenny Brown screamed when she found herself under the protection of a man who was arrested; and what between her screams and his oaths, there was such a disturbance that a mob soon collected.

Among this mob there was a party of Irish haymakers, who, after returning late from a harvest-home, had been drinking in a neighbouring alehouse. With one accord they took part with their countryman, and would have rescued him from the civil officers, with all the pleasure imaginable, if he had not fortunately possessed sufficient sense and command of himself to restrain their party-spirit, and to forbid them, as they valued his life and reputation, to interfere, by word or deed, in his defence.

He then despatched one of the haymakers home to his mother, to inform her of what had happened, and to request that she would get somebody to be bail for him as soon as possible, as the officers said they could not let him out of their sight till he was bailed by substantial people, or till the debt was discharged.

The widow O’Neill was just putting out the candles in the ball-room when this news of her son’s arrest was brought to her. We pass over Hibernian exclamations. She consoled her pride by reflecting that it would certainly be the most easy thing imaginable to procure bail for Mr. O’Neill in Hereford, where he had so many friends who had just been dancing at his house; but to dance at his house she found was one thing, and to be bail for him quite another. Each guest sent excuses; and the widow O’Neill was astonished at what never fails to astonish everybody when it happens to themselves.

“Rather than let my son be detained in this manner for a paltry debt,” cried the widow, “I’d sell all I have, within half an hour, to a pawnbroker.”

It was well no pawnbroker heard this declaration: she was too warm to consider economy. She sent for a pawnbroker, who lived in the same street; and after pledging goods to treble the amount of the debt, she obtained ready money for her son’s release.

O’Neill, after being in custody for about an hour and a half, was set at liberty upon the payment of his debt. As he passed by the cathedral, in his way home, he heard the clock strike; and he called to a man, who was walking backwards and forwards in the churchyard, to ask whether it was two or three that the clock struck. “Three,” answered the man; “and as yet all is safe.”

O’Neill, whose head was full of other things, did not stop to inquire the meaning of these last words. He little suspected that this man was a watchman, whom the over-vigilant verger had stationed there to guard the Hereford cathedral from his attacks. O’Neill little guessed that he had been arrested merely to keep him from blowing up the cathedral this night. The arrest had an excellent effect upon his mind, for he was a young man of good sense: it made him resolve to retrench his expenses in time,—to live more like a glover, and less like a gentleman,—and to aim more at establishing credit, and less at gaining popularity. He found from experience that good friends will not pay bad debts.

On Thursday morning our verger rose in unusually good spirits, congratulating himself upon the eminent service he had done to the city of Hereford by his sagacity in discovering the foreign plot to blow up the cathedral, and by his dexterity in having the enemy held in custody at the very hour when the dreadful deed was to have been perpetrated. Mr. Hill’s knowing friends further agreed it would be necessary to have a guard that should sit up every night in the churchyard, and that as soon as they could, by constantly watching the enemy’s motions, procure any information which the attorney should deem sufficient grounds for a legal proceeding, they should lay the whole business before the mayor.

After arranging all this most judiciously and mysteriously with the friends who were exactly of his own opinion, Mr. Hill laid aside his dignity of verger, and assuming his other character of a tanner, proceeded to his tan-yard. What was his surprise and consternation when he beheld his great rick of oak bark levelled to the ground! The pieces of bark were scattered far and wide,—some over the close, some over the fields, and some were seen swimming upon the water. No tongue, no pen, no muse can describe the feelings of our tanner at this spectacle!—feelings which became the more violent from the absolute silence which he imposed on himself upon this occasion. He instantly decided in his own mind that this injury was perpetrated by O’Neill, in revenge for his arrest, and went privately to the attorney to inquire what was to be done on his part to secure legal vengeance.

The attorney, unluckily,—or at least as Mr. Hill thought unluckily,—had been sent for, half an hour before, by a gentleman, at some distance from Hereford, to draw up a will, so that our tanner was obliged to postpone his legal operations.

We forbear to recount his return, and how many times he walked up and down the close to view his scattered bark, and to estimate the damage that had been done to him. At length that hour came which usually suspends all passions by the more imperious power of appetite,—the hour of dinner,—an hour of which it was never needful to remind Mr. Hill by watch, clock, or dial; for he was blessed with a punctual appetite, and powerful as punctual; so powerful, indeed, that it often excited the spleen of his more genteel or less hungry wife.

“Bless my stars, Mr. Hill,” she would oftentimes say, “I am really downright ashamed to see you eat so much; and when company is to dine with us, I do wish you would take a snack, by way of a damper, before dinner, that you may not look so prodigious famishing and ungenteel.”

Upon this hint, Mr. Hill commenced a practice, to which he ever afterwards religiously adhered, of going, whether there was to be company or no company, into the kitchen regularly every day, half an hour before dinner, to take a slice from the roast or the boiled before it went up to table. As he was this day, according to his custom, in the kitchen, taking his snack, by way of a damper, he heard the housemaid and the cook talking about some wonderful fortune-teller, whom the housemaid had been consulting. This fortune-teller was no less a personage than the successor to Bampfylde Moore Carew, king of the gipsies, whose life and adventures are probably in many, too many, of our readers’ hands. Bampfylde the Second, king of the gipsies, assumed this title in hopes of becoming as famous, or as infamous, as his predecessor. He was now holding his court in a wood, near the town of Hereford; and numbers of servant-maids and apprentices went to consult him; nay, it was whispered that he was resorted to, secretly, by some whose education might have taught them better sense.

Numberless were the instances which our verger heard in his kitchen of the supernatural skill of this cunning man; and whilst Mr. Hill ate his snack with his wonted gravity, he revolved great designs in his secret soul. Mrs. Hill was surprised several times during dinner to see her consort put down his knife and fork and meditate.

“Gracious me, Mr. Hill, what can have happened to you this day? What can you be thinking of, Mr. Hill, that can make you forget what you have upon your plate?”

“Mrs. Hill,” replied the thoughtful verger, “our grandmother Eve had too much curiosity; and we all know it did not lead to any good. What I am thinking of will be known to you in due time, but not now, Mrs. Hill; therefore, pray, no questions, or teazing, or pumping. What I think, I think; what I say, I say; what I know, I know; and that is enough for you to know at present: only this, Phœbe,—you did very well not to put on the Limerick gloves, child. What I know, I know. Things will turn out just as I said from the first. What I say, I say; and what I think, I think; and this is enough for you to know at present.”

Having finished dinner with this solemn speech, Mr. Hill settled himself in his arm-chair, to take his after-dinner’s nap; and he dreamed of blowing up cathedrals, and of oak bark floating upon the waters; and the cathedral was, he thought, blown up by a man dressed in a pair of woman’s Limerick gloves; and the oak bark turned into mutton-steaks, after which his great dog Jowler was swimming; when, all on a sudden, as he was going to beat Jowler for eating the bark transformed into mutton-steaks, Jowler became Bampfylde the Second, king of the gipsies; and putting a horsewhip with a silver handle into Hill’s hand, commanded him, three times, in a voice as loud as the towncrier’s, to have O’Neill whipped through the market-place of Hereford; but, just as he was going to the window to see this whipping, his wig fell off and he awoke.

It was difficult, even for Mr. Hill’s sagacity, to make sense of this dream; but he had the wise art of always finding in his dreams something that confirmed his waking determinations. Before he went to sleep, he had half resolved to consult the king of the gipsies in the absence of the attorney; and his dream made him now wholly determine upon this prudent step. From Bampfylde the Second, thought he, I shall learn for certain who made the hole under the cathedral, who pulled down my rick of bark, and who made away with my dog Jowler; and then I shall swear examinations against O’Neill, without waiting for attorneys. I will follow my own way in this business: I have always found my own way best.

So, when the dusk of the evening increased, our wise man set out towards the wood to consult the cunning man. Bampfylde the Second, king of the gipsies, resided in a sort of hut made of the branches of trees. The verger stooped, but did not stoop low enough, as he entered this temporary palace; and whilst his body was almost bent double, his peruke was caught upon a twig. From this awkward situation he was relieved by the consort of the king; and he now beheld, by the light of some embers, the person of his gipsy majesty, to whose sublime appearance this dim light was so favourable, that it struck a secret awe into our wise man’s soul; and, forgetting Hereford cathedral, and oak bark, and Limerick gloves, he stood for some seconds speechless. During this time the queen very dexterously disencumbered his pocket of all superfluous articles. When he recovered his recollection, he put, with great solemnity, the following queries to the king of the gipsies, and received the following answers:—

“Do you know a dangerous Irishman, of the name of O’Neill, who has come, for purposes best known to himself, to settle at Hereford?”

“Yes, we know him well.”

“Indeed! And what do you know of him?”

“That he is a dangerous Irishman.”

“Right! And it was he, was it not, that made away with my dog Jowler, that used to guard the tan-yard?”

“It was.”

“And who was it that pulled down, or caused to be pulled down, my rick of oak-bark?”

“It was the person that you suspect.”

“And was it the person whom I suspect that made the hole under the foundation of our Cathedral?”

“The same, and no other.”

“And for what purpose did he make that hole?”

“For a purpose that must not be named,” replied the king of the gipsies, nodding his head in a mysterious manner.

“But it may be named to me,” cried the verger, “for I have found it out, and I am one of the vergers, and is it not fit that a plot to blow up the Hereford cathedral should be known
to
me and
through
me?”

These oracular verses, pronounced by Bampfylde with all the enthusiasm of one who was inspired, had the desired effect upon our wise man, and he left the presence of the king of the gipsies with a prodigiously high opinion of his majesty’s judgment, and of his own, fully resolved to impart the next morning to the mayor of Hereford his important discoveries.