The Tithe-Proctor Part 4

"How does he live?" asked John, "for he has no visible means of support--he neither works nor is engaged in any profession, and yet he dresses well."

"Well! John;" exclaimed Julia.

"Perhaps I ought not to say--_well_, Julia; but at all events, he is very fond of being considered a buck, and he certainly dresses up to that character."

"He admits that he was eight years in England," said his father; "although, for my part, it's just as likely that he spent seven years of that time in Botany Bay; if not, I should have no objection that something should occur to make him spend the remainder of his life there."

"Why should you wish the man so ill, papa'?" asked Mary.

"Why, Mary--faith for a very good reason, my dear child; because I don't wish to see your sister annoyed and persecuted by the scoundrel. The fellow is so impudent that he will take no rebuff."

"By the way, father, where does M'Carthy stop, now that he is in the country?" asked Alick, with some hesitation, and a brow a little heightened in color.

"For the present," replied the other, "he stops with our friend, O'Driscol, the new magistrate. Faith, it's a shove-up for O'Driscol to get on the Bench. Halloo! there's M'Carthy's knock--I'm sure I know it."

The proctor was right; but notwithstanding his quickness and sagacity, there was another individual in the room at that moment who recognized it sooner than he did. Julia arose, and withdrew under some pretence which we cannot now remember, but I really because she felt that had she remained until M'Carthy's entrance, her blushes would have betrayed her.

"M'Carthy is a very handsome young-fellow," observed John--"would he think of entering any pretensions to Katherine O'Driscol?"

"What d--d stuff you often talk, John--begging your pardon," replied his brother; "he has hard reading, and his profession to think of--both of which he will find enough for him, setting Katherine O'Driscol and love out of the question."

"Very good, Alick," said John. "Ha! ha ha! I thought I would touch you there. The bait took, my boy; jealousy, jealousy, father."

Alick, on finding that he was detected, forced himself into a confused laugh, and, in the meantime, M'Carthy entered.

Nothing could surpa.s.s the cordiality of his reception. A holiday spirit was obvious among the family--at least among all who were then visible.

Secretly, however, did his eye glance about in search of one, on whose reception of him more depended than a thousand welcomes from all the rest. In about twenty minutes Julia made her appearance, but to any person in the secret, it was obvious that she was combating with much inward, if not with some appearance of external confusion and restraint.

After the first greetings were over, however, she gradually recovered her self-possession, and was able to join in the conversation without embarra.s.sment or difficulty.

CHAPTER III.--Mountain Legislation, and its Executive of Blood.

After dinner that day, and while the gentlemen were yet at table, Mary and Julia, who, as we have said, had relieved their mother of those benevolent attentions which she had been in the habit of paying to the neighboring sick and poor, proceeded on their way to the cottage of a dest.i.tute woman in the next village, who was then lying in what was considered to be a hopeless state. The proctor himself, while he exacted with a heartless and rapacious hand the last penny due to him, was yet too good a tactician to discountenance these spontaneous effusions of benevolence on the part of his wife and daughters. With a good deal of ostentation, and that peculiar swagger for which many shrewd and hard-hearted men of the world are remarkable, he actually got the medicine himself for the helpless invalid in question, not forgetting at the same time to make the bystanders in the apothecary's shop acquainted with the extent of his own private charity and that of his family besides. The girls had proceeded a part of the way on their charitable errand, when it occurred to them that the medicine, which their father had procured on the preceding day, had been forgotten, and as the sick woman was to commence taking it at a certain hour that evening, it was necessary that either one or both should return for it.

"You needn't come back, Julia," said Mary; "I will myself run home and fetch it. And accordingly her sister went back at a quick step towards her father's house. The spot where Julia stood to await the return, of her sister was within a few yards of a large white-thorn double ditch, on each side of which grew a close hedge of thorns, that could easily afford room for two or three men to walk abreast between them. Here she had not remained more than a minute or two, when, issuing from the cover of the thorns, and approaching her with something of a stage strut, our friend, Buck English, made his appearance.

"Miss Joolia," he exclaimed, with what was intended for a polite bow, "I hope you will pardon me for this third liberty I teek in offering to spake to you. I see," he proceeded, observing her rising indignation, "that you are not inclined to hear me, but I kim here to give you a bit of advice as a friend--listen to my proposals, if you're wise--and don't make me the enemy of yourself or your family, for so sure as you reject me, so certainly will you bring ruin upon both yourself and them. I say this as a friend, and merk me, the day may come when you will oll remember my words too late."

There was a vehemence in his language, which could admit of no mistake as to the fixed determination of his purpose; his lips were compressed, his eyebrows severely knit, and his unfeeling, hyena eye scintillated with a fire that proceeded as much from an inclination to revenge as affection. Julia Purcel, however, though a women, possessed no whit of her s.e.x's cowardice; on the contrary, her bosom heaved with indignant scorn, and her eye gave him back glance for glance, in a spirit that disdained to quail before his violence.

"Do you dare to threaten me or my family, sir?" she replied; "I think you should know us better than to imagine that the threats of a ruffian, for such I now perceive you to be, could for a moment intimidate either them or me. Begone, sir, I despise and detest you--until this moment, I looked upon and treated you as a fool, but I now find you are a villain--begone, I say; I scorn and defy you."

"You defy me, do you?"

"Yes, I have said it, I defy you."

"Well, then, so be it," he replied, "you must take the consequences, that's all, and let your favorite, M'Carthy, look to himself too."

Having uttered these significant words, ha reentered the double ditch, along which a common pathway went, and in a minute or two was out of sight.

Mary, on her return, at once perceived, by the flushed cheek and kindled eye of her sister, that something had discomposed her. "Why, goodness me, dear Julia, you look disturbed or frightened; what is the matter?"

"Disturbed I am," she replied, "but not at all frightened. This worthy lover of mine, whom nothing can abash, has honored me with another interview."

"Is it after the scene between him and my brother to-day?"

"Certainly," she replied, with a smile, for she now began once more to look upon the matter in a ludicrous point of view, "and has threatened not only myself, but the whole family with destruction, unless I favor his addresses--ha! ha! ha! He has one good quality in a lover, at all events--perseverance."

"Say rather effrontery and impudence," replied Mary.

"Yes, I admit that," said her sister; "but at any rate, they very often go together, I believe."

She then related the dialogue that took place, at which her sister, who was equally remarkable for courage, only laughed.

"The fellow after all is only a fool," she observed. "If he were anything else, or if he had any serious intention of carrying such threats into effect, he most a.s.suredly would not give expression to them, or put you on your guard against them. No, he is only a fool and not worth thinking about: let him go."

They then proceeded to the cabin of poor Widow Cleary, to whom they administered the medicine with their own hands, and to whose children they brought their mother's orders to attend the house, that they might be relieved with that comfortable food which their dest.i.tute circ.u.mstances so much required.

On their return home, the relation of the incident which we have just narrated very much amused the family, with the exception of M'Carthy, who expressed himself not quite at ease after having heard English's threats. "There is an extraordinary mystery about that man," he observed; "no one knows or can tell who he is; you can call him a fool, too, but take my word that there never hung mystery about a fool yet; I fear he will be found to be something much worse than a fool."

"Nonsense," replied the proctor. "The fellow is only ridiculous and contemptible; he and his clipped English are not worth thinking of--let him go to the deuce."

M'Carthy still shook his head, as if of opinion that they underrated the Buck's power of injuring them, but the truth was that neither Purcel nor his sons were at all capable of apprehending either fear or danger; they, therefore, very naturally looked upon the denunciations of English with a recklessness that was little less than foolhardy.

During the last few years they had been accustomed to receive threats and written notices of vengeance, which had all ended in nothing, and, in consequence of this impunity, they had become so completely inured to them as to treat them only with laughter and scorn.

It has been already intimated to the reader that M'Carthy was residing, during a short visit to the country, at the house of O'Driscol, the newly-made magistrate. It was pretty late that evening when he took leave of the Purcels, but as the distance was not far he felt no anxiety at all upon the subject of his journey. The night, however, was so pitchy dark, that even although well acquainted as he was with the road, he found some difficulty in avoiding the drains and ditches that enclosed it. At length he had arrived within a couple of hundred yards of O'Driscol's house, when as he was proceeding along suddenly found himself come unexpectedly against some individual, who was coming from an opposite direction.

"Hillo! who is here?" said the voice, in a kind of whisper.

"A friend," replied M'Carthy; "who are you?"

"What's your name?" inquired the strange voice, "and be quick."

"My name is M'Carthy," replied our friend; "why do you ask?"

"Come this way," said the stranger; "you are Francis M'Carthy, I think?"

"Yes, that is my name--what is yours?"

"That doesn't matther," replied the voice, "stand aside here, and be quiet as you value your life."

M'Carthy thought at the moment that he heard the noise of many feet, as it were in the distance.

"You will not be safe," said the voice, "if you refuse to take my advice;" and as he spoke he partly forced M'Carthy over to the side of the road where they both stood invisible from the darkness of the night, as well as from the shelter of a large whitethorn branch, which would, even in daylight, almost have concealed them from view. In a few minutes, a large body of people pa.s.sed them with that tread which always characterizes the motions of undisciplined men. There was scarcely a word among them, but M'Carthy felt that, knowing them as he did to be peasants, there was something dreadful in the silence which they maintained so strictly. He could not avoid a.s.sociating their movements and designs with some act of violence and bloodshed, that was about to add horror to the impenetrable gloom of night, whose darkness, perhaps, they were about to light up with the roof-tree of some unsuspecting household, ignorant of the fiery fate that was then so near them.