The Absentee (23 page)

'All's safe!'

'Pray, my good friend, may I ask what that is you have on your
shoulder?' said Lord Colambre.

PLASE your honour, it is only a private still, which I've just caught
out yonder in the bog; and I'm carrying it in with all speed to the
gauger, to make a discovery, that the JANTLEMAN may benefit by the
reward; I expect he'll make me a compliment.'

'Get up behind, and I'll give you a lift,' said the postillion.

'Thank you kindly—but better my legs!' said the man; and turning down a
lane, off he ran again as fast as possible.

'Expect he'll make me a compliment,' repeated Lord Colambre, 'to make a
discovery!'

Ay, plase your honour; for the law is,' said Larry, 'that, if an
unlawful still, that is, a still without license for whisky, is found,
half the benefit of the fine that's put upon the parish goes to him
that made the discovery; that's what that man is after, for he's an
informer.'

'I should not have thought, from what I see of you,' said Lord Colambre,
smiling, 'that you, Larry, would have offered an informer a lift.'

'Oh, plase your honour!' said Larry, smiling archly, 'would not I give
the laws a lift, when in my power?'

Scarcely had he uttered these words, and scarcely was the informer out
of sight, when across the same bog, and over the ditch, came another
man, a half kind of gentleman, with a red silk handkerchief about his
neck, and a silver-handled whip in his hand.

'Did you see any man pass the road, friend?' said he to the postillion.

'Oh! who would I see? or why would I tell?' replied Larry, in a sulky
tone.

'Came, come, be smart!' said the man with the silver whip, offering
to put half a crown into the postillion's hand; 'point me which way he
took.'

'I'll have none a' your silver! don't touch me with it!' said Larry.
'But, if you'll take my advice, you'll strike across back, and follow
the fields, out to Killogenesawee.'

The exciseman set out again immediately, in an opposite direction to
that which the man who carried the still had taken. Lord Colambre now
perceived that the pretended informer had been running off to conceal a
still of his own.

'The gauger, plase your honour,' said Larry, looking back at Lord
Colambre; 'the gauger is a STILL-HUNTING!'

'And you put him on a wrong scent!' said Lord Colambre.

'Sure, I told him no lie; I only said, "If you'll take my advice." And
why was he such a fool as to take my advice, when I wouldn't take his
fee?'

'So this is the way, Larry, you give a lift to the laws!'

'If the laws would give a lift to me, plase your honour, maybe I'd do as
much by them. But it's only these revenue laws I mean; for I never, to
my knowledge, broke another commandment; but it's what no honest poor
man among his neighbours would scruple to take—a glass of POTSHEEN.'

'A glass of what, in the name of Heaven?' said Lord Colambre.

POTSHEEN, plase your honour;—becaase it's the little whisky that's made
in the private still or pot; and SHEEN, becaase it's a fond word for
whatsoever we'd like, and for what we have little of, and would make
much of: after taking the glass of it, no man could go and inform to
ruin the CRATURES, for they all shelter on that estate under favour of
them that go shares, and make rent of 'em—but I'd never inform again'
'em. And, after all, if the truth was known, and my Lord Clonbrony
should be informed against, and presented, for it's his neglect is the
bottom of the nuisance—'

'I find all the blame is thrown upon this poor Lord Clonbrony,' said
Lord Colambre.

'Becaase he is absent,' said Larry. 'It would not be so was he PRISINT.
But your honour was talking to me about the laws. Your honour's a
stranger in this country, and astray about them things. Sure, why would
I mind the laws about whisky, more than the quality, or the judge on the
bench?'

'What do you mean?'

'Why! was not I PRISINT in the court-house myself, when the JIDGE on the
bench judging a still, and across the court came in one with a sly jug
of POTSHEEN for the JIDGE himself, who prefarred it, when the right
thing, to claret; and when I SEEN that, by the laws! a man might talk
himself dumb to me after again' potsheen, or in favour of the revenue,
or revenue-officers. And there they may go on, with their gaugers, and
their surveyors, and their supervisors, and their WATCHING-OFFICERS, and
their coursing-officers, setting 'em one after another, or one over the
head of another, or what way they will—we can baffle and laugh at 'em.
Didn't I know, next door to our inn, last year, ten WATCHING-OFFICERS
set upon one distiller, and he was too cunning for them; and it will
always be so, while ever the people think it no sin. No, till then, not
all their dockets and permits signify a rush, or a turf. And the gauging
rod even! who fears it? They may spare that rod, for it will never mend
the child.'

How much longer Larry's dissertation on the distillery laws would have
continued, had not his ideas been interrupted, we cannot guess; but he
saw he was coming to a town, and he gathered up the reins, and plied the
whip, ambitious to make a figure in the eyes of its inhabitants.

This TOWN consisted of one row of miserable huts, sunk beneath the side
of the road, the mud walls crooked in every direction; some of them
opening in wide cracks, or zigzag fissures, from top to bottom, as
if there had just been an earthquake—all the roofs sunk in various
places—thatch off, or overgrown with grass—no chimneys, the smoke
making its way through a hole in the roof, or rising in clouds from the
top of the open door—dunghills before the doors, and green standing
puddles—squalid children, with scarcely rags to cover them, gazing at
the carriage.

'Nugent's town,' said the postillion, 'once a snug place, when my Lady
Clonbrony was at home to whitewash it, and the like.'

As they drove by, some men and women put their heads through the smoke
out of the cabins; pale women with long, black, or yellow locks—men
with countenances and figures bereft of hope and energy.

'Wretched, wretched people!' said Lord Colambre.

'Then it's not their fault neither,' said Larry; 'for my own uncle's
one of them, and as thriving and hard a working man as could be in all
Ireland, he was, AFORE he was tramped under foot, and his heart broke. I
was at his funeral, this time last year; and for it, may the agent's own
heart, if he has any, burn—'

Lord Colambre interrupted this denunciation by touching Larry's
shoulder, and asking some question, which, as Larry did not distinctly
comprehend, he pulled up the reins, and the various noises of the
vehicle stopped suddenly.

I did not hear well, plase your honour.'

'What are those people?' pointing to a man and woman, curious figures,
who had come out of a cabin, the door of which the woman, who came out
last, locked, and carefully hiding the key in the thatch, turned her
back upon the man, and they walked away in different directions: the
woman bending under a huge bundle on her back, covered by a yellow
petticoat turned over her shoulders; from the top of this bundle the
head of an infant appeared; a little boy, almost naked, followed her
with a kettle, and two girls, one of whom could but just walk, held her
hand and clung to her ragged petticoat; forming, altogether, a complete
group of beggars. The woman stopped, and looked back after the man.

The man was a Spanish-looking figure, with gray hair; a wallet hung at
the end of a stick over one shoulder, a reaping-hook in the other hand;
he walked off stoutly, without ever casting a look behind him.

'A kind harvest to you, John Dolan,' cried the postillion, 'and success
to ye, Winny, with the quality. There's a luck-penny for the child to
begin with,' added he, throwing the child a penny. 'Your honour, they're
only poor CRATURES going up the country to beg, while the man goes over
to reap the harvest in England. Nor this would not be, neither, if
the lord was in it to give 'em EMPLOY. That man, now, was a good and
a willing SLAVE in his day: I mind him working with myself in the
shrubberies at Clonbrony Castle, when I was a boy—but I'll not be
detaining your honour, now the road's better.'

The postillion drove on at a good rate for some time, till he came to
a piece of the road freshly covered with broken stones, where he was
obliged again to go slowly.

They overtook a string of cars, on which were piled up high, beds,
tables, chairs, trunks, boxes, bandboxes.

'How are you, Finnucan? you've fine loading there—from Dublin, are
you?'

'From Bray.'

'And what news?'

'GREAT news and bad, for old Nick, or some belonging to him, thanks be
to Heaven! for myself hates him.'

'What's happened him?'

'His sister's husband that's failed, the great grocer that was, the man
that had the wife that OW'D
(Owned)
the fine house near Bray, that they
got that time the Parliament FLITTED, and that I seen in her carriage
flaming—well, it's all out; they're all DONE UP.

'Tut! is that all? then they'll thrive, and set up again grander than
ever, I'll engage; have not they old Nick for an attorney at their back?
a good warrant!'

'Oh, trust him for that! he won't go security nor pay a farthing for his
SHISTER, nor wouldn't was she his father; I heard him telling her so,
which I could not have done in his place at that time, and she crying as
if her heart would break, and I standing by in the parlour.'

'The NEGER!
(NEGER, quasi negro; meo periculo, NIGGARD)
And did he speak
that way, and you by?'

'Ay did he; and said, "Mrs. Raffarty," says he, "it's all your own fault;
you're an extravagant fool, and ever was, and I wash my hands of you;"
that was the word he spoke; and she answered, and said, "And mayn't I
send the beds and blankets," said she, "and what I can, by the cars,
out of the way of the creditors, to Clonbrony Castle; and won't you
let me hide there from the shame, till the bustle's over?"—"You may do
that," says he, "for what I care; but remember," says he, "that I've the
first claim to them goods;" and that's all he would grant. So they are
coming down all o' Monday—them are her bandboxes and all to settle it;
and faith it was a pity of her! to hear her sobbing, and to see her own
brother speak and look so hard! and she a lady.'

'Sure she's not a lady born, no more than himself,' said Larry; 'but
that's no excuse for him. His heart's as hard as that stone,' said
Larry; 'and my own people knew that long ago, and now his own know it;
and what right have we to complain, since he's as bad to his own flesh
and blood as to us?'

With this consolation, and with a 'God speed you,' given to the carman,
Larry was driving off; but the carman called to him, and pointed to a
house, at the corner of which, on a high pole, was swinging an iron sign
of three horse-shoes, set in a crooked frame, and at the window hung an
empty bottle, proclaiming whisky within.

'Well, I don't care if I do,' said Larry; 'for I've no other comfort
left me in life now. I beg your honour's pardon, sir, for a minute,'
added he, throwing the reins into the carriage to Lord Colambre, as he
leaped down. All remonstrance and power of lungs to reclaim him vain!
He darted into the whisky-house with the carman—reappeared before Lord
Colambre could accomplish getting out, remounted his seat, and, taking
the reins, 'I thank your honour,' said he; 'and I'll bring you into
Clonbrony before it's pitch-dark yet, though it's nightfall, and that's
four good miles, but "a spur in the head is worth two in the heel."'

Larry, to demonstrate the truth of his favourite axiom, drove off at
such a furious rate over great stones left in the middle of the road
by carmen, who had been driving in the gudgeons of their axle-trees to
hinder them from lacing,
(Opening; perhaps from LACHER, to loosen.)
that
Lord Colambre thought life and limb in imminent danger; and feeling
that at all events the jolting and bumping was past endurance, he had
recourse to Larry's shoulder, and shook and pulled, and called to him to
go slower, but in vain; at last the wheel struck full against a heap
of stones at a turn of the road, the wooden linch-pin came off, and
the chaise was overset: Lord Colambre was a little bruised, but glad to
escape without fractured bones.

'I beg your honour's pardon,' said Larry, completely sobered; 'I'm as
glad as the best pair of boots ever I see, to see your honour nothing
the worse for it. It was the linch-pin, and them barrows of loose
stones, that ought to be fined anyway, if there was any justice in the
country.'

'The pole is broke; how are we to get on?' said Lord Colambre.

'Murder! murder!—and no smith nearer than Clonbrony; nor rope even.
It's a folly to talk, we can't get to Clonbrony, nor stir a step
backward or forward the night.'

'What, then, do you mean to leave me all night in the middle of the
road?' cried Lord Colambre, quite exasperated.

'Is it me! please your honour? I would not use any jantleman so ill,
BARRING I could do no other,' replied the postillion, coolly; then,
leaping across the ditch, or, as he called it, the GRIPE of the ditch,
he scrambled up, and while he was scrambling, said, 'If your honour will
lend me your hand till I pull you up the back of the ditch, the horses
will stand while we go. I'll find you as pretty a lodging for the night,
with a widow of a brother of my shister's husband that was, as ever you
slept in your life; for old Nick or St. Dennis has not found 'em out
yet; and your honour will be, no compare, snugger than the inn at
Clonbrony, which has no roof, the devil a stick. But where will I get
your honour's hand; for it's coming on so dark, I can't see rightly.
There, you're up now safe. Yonder candle's the house.'

'Go and ask whether they can give us a night's lodging.'