The Macdermots of Ballycloran Part 25

He had carried on his official duties in the same manner for a considerable time without molestation, and custom had begotten the feeling of security. Moreover, he thought the poor were cowed and frightened. He despised them too much to think they would have the spirit to rise up against him. In fact, he made up his mind that Thady's intention was to frighten him out of the country, if possible, and he resolved that he would not allow anything he had heard on the subject either to disturb his comfort, or actuate his conduct.

"Well, Macdermot, that's fair and above board--and what I expected, though it's neither friendly nor flattering; and I am not vexed with you for that; for if you don't feel friendly to me you shouldn't speak as if you did, and therefore I'm obliged to you. And I will say that if I am to be shot down, like a dog, whilst performing my duty to the best of my ability, at any rate, I won't let the fear of such a thing frighten me out of my comfort before it happens. And now if you'll let me say a word or two to you about yourself--"

"I'm much obliged to you, Captain Ussher, but if you can take care of yourself, so can I of myself."

"Why how cranky you are, man! If you hate me, hate me in G.o.d's name, but don't be so absurd as to forget you're a man, and to act like a child. I listened to you--and why can't you listen to me?"

"Well, spake on, I'll listen."

"Mind, I don't pretend to know more of your affairs than you would wish me; but, as I am intimate with your father, I cannot but see that you, in managing your father's concerns, put great confidence in the man within there."

"What! Pat Brady?"

"Yes, Brady! Now if you only employed him as any other farm servant, he would not, probably, have much power to injure you; but I believe he does more than that--that he collects your rents, and knows the affairs of all your tenants."

"Well?"

"I have very strong reason to think that he is also in the employment, or at any rate in the pay, of Mr. Keegan, the attorney at Carrick."

"What makes you think that, Captain Ussher?"

"I could hardly explain the different things which make me think so; but I'm sure of it; and it is for you to judge whether, if such be the case, your confidence will not enable him, under the present state of affairs at Ballycloran, to do you and your father much injury. He is also, to my certain knowledge, joined in whatever societies--all of them illegal--are being formed in the country; and he is a man, therefore, not to be trusted. I may add also that if you listen too much to his advice and counsels, you will be likely to find yourself in worse troubles than even those which your father's property brings on you."

"Don't alarm yourself about me; I don't be in the habit of taking a servant's advice about things, Captain Ussher."

"There's your back up again; I don't mean to offend you, I tell you; however, if you remember what I have said to you, it may prevent much trouble to you:"--and Ussher walked into the house.

"Prevent throubles," soliloquised Thady; "there is no way with me to prevent all manner of throuble--I believe I'll go in and get a tumbler of punch;"--and determined to adopt this mode of quieting troubles, if he could not prevent them, he followed Ussher.

Ussher was now dancing with Feemy, and the fun had become universal and incessant; there were ten or twelve couple dancing on the earthen floor of Mrs. Mehan's shop. The piper was playing those provocative Irish tunes, which, like the fiddle in the German tale, compel the hearers to dance whether they wish it or no; and they did dance with a rapidity and energy which showed itself in the streams of perspiration running down from the performers' faces. Not much to their immediate comfort a huge fire was kept up on the hearth; but the unnecessary heat thus produced was atoned for by the numerous gla.s.ses of punch with which they were thereby enabled to regale themselves, when for a moment they relaxed their labours.

This pleasant recreation began also to show its agreeable effects in the increased intimacy of the partners and the spirit of the party.

All diffidence in standing up had ceased--and now the only difficulty was for the aspirants to get room on which to make their complicated steps; and oh, the precision, regularity, and energy of those motions! Although the piper played with a rapidity which would have convinced the uninitiated of the impossibility of dancing to the time, every foot in the room fell to the notes of the music as surely as though the movements of the whole set had been regulated by a steam machine. And such movements as they were! Not only did the feet keep time, but every limb and every muscle had each its own work, and twisted, shook and twirled itself in perfect unison and measure, the arms performed their figure with as much accuracy as the legs.

"Take a sup of punch now, Miss Tierney; shure you're fainting away entirely for the want of a dhrop." The lady addressed was wiping, with the tail of her gown, a face which showed the labour that had been necessary to perform the feat of dancing down the whole company to the tune of the "wind that shakes the barley," and was now leaning against the wall, whilst her last partner was offering her punch made on the half and half system: "Take a sup, Miss Tierney, then; shure you're wanting it."

"Thank ye, Mr. Kelly, but I am afther taking a little jist now, and the head's not sthrong with me afther dancing;" she took the tumbler, however. "Faix, Mr. Kelly, but it's yourself can make a tumbler of punch with any man."

"'Deed then there's no sperrits in it at all--only a thrifle to take the wakeness off the water. Come, Miss Tierney, you didn't take what'd baptize a babby."

"It'd be a big babby then; one like yerself may be."

"Here's long life to the first you have yerself, any way, Miss Tierney!" and he finished the gla.s.s, of which the blus.h.i.+ng beauty had drunk half. "Might a boy make a guess who'd be the father of it?"

"Go asy now, masther Morty,"--the swain rejoiced in the name of Mortimer Kelley. "It'll be some quiet, dacent fellow, that an't given to chaffing nor too fond of sperrits."

"By dad, my darling, and an't that me to a hair's breadth?"

"Is it you a dacent, asy boy?"

"Shure if it an't me, where's sich a one in the counthry at all? And it's I'd be fond of the child--and the child's mother more especial,"

and he gave her a loving squeeze, which in a less energetic society might have formed good ground for an action for violent a.s.sault.

"Ah don't! Go asy I tell you, Morty. But come, an't you going to dance instead of wasting your time here all night?" and the pair, re-invigorated by their intellectual and animal refreshment, again commenced their dancing.

Whilst the fun was going on fast and furious among the dancers, those in the inner room were not less busily engaged. Brady was still sitting in the chair which he had occupied during the supper, at the bottom of the table, though he had turned round a little towards the fire. At the further end of it Thady was seated, with a lighted pipe in his mouth, and a tumbler of punch on the shelf over the fireplace.

Joe Reynolds was seated a little behind, but between Thady and Pat Brady; and a lot of others were standing around, or squatting on the end of the table--leaning against the fireplace, or sitting two on a chair, wherever two had been lucky enough to secure one between them.

They were all drinking, most of them raw spirits--and all of them smoking. At the other end of the room, three or four boys and girls were standing in the door-way, looking at the dancing, and getting cool after their own performances; and Denis McGovery was sitting in the chair which Father John had occupied, with his head on the table, apparently asleep, but more probably intent on listening to what was going on among them at the other end of the room, whom he so strongly suspected of some proposed iniquity. The noise, however, of the music and the dancing, the low tones in which the suspected parties spoke, and the distance at which they sat, must have made Denis's occupation of eaves-dropping difficult, if not impracticable.

Thady had just been speaking, and it was evident from the thickness of his voice that the whiskey he had drunk was beginning to have its effects on him. Instead of eating his dinner, he had been drinking raw spirits in the morning, to which he was not accustomed; for though when cold, or when pressed by others, he could swallow a gla.s.s of raw whiskey with that facility which seems to indicate an iron throttle, he had been too little accustomed to give way to any temptation to become habitually a drunkard. Now, however, he was certainly becoming tipsy, and, therefore, more likely to agree to whatever those around him might propose.

"Asy, Mr. Thady!" said Pat; "there's that long-eared ruffian, McGovery, listening to every word he can catch. Be spaking now as if you war axing the boys about the rint."

"And isn't it about that he is axing?" said Joe. "But how can he get the rint, or we be paying it, unless he gives us his hand to rid the counthry of thim as robs us of our manes, and desthroys him and us, and all thim as should be frinds to him and the owld Masther, and to Ballycloran?"

"You know, all of ye, that I never was hard on you," continued Thady, "when, G.o.d knows, the money was wanted bad enough at Ballycloran. You know I've waited longer for what was owed than many a one has done who has never felt what it was to want a pound. Did I ever pull the roof off any of you? And though queer tenants you've most of you been, an't the same set on the land now mostly that there was four years ago? There's none of you can call me a hard man, I think; and when I've stuck to you so long, it isn't now I'll break away from you."

"Long life to you, Mr. Thady!" "Long life to yer honer--and may ye live to see the esthate your own yet, and not owe a s.h.i.+lling!" "It's thrue for the masther what he says; why should he turn agin his own now? G.o.d bless him!" Such were the exclamations with which Thady's last speech was received.

"And I'll tell you what it is," and he now spoke in a low thick whisper, "I'll tell you what's on my mind. Those that you hate, I don't love a bit too well. You all know Hyacinth Keegan, I think?"

"'Deed we do--may the big devil fetch him home!"

"Well, then, would you like him for your landlord, out and out? such a fine gentleman as he is!"

"Blast him for a gintleman!" said Joe; "I'd sooner have his father; he war an honest man, more by token he war no Protestant; he sarved processes for Richard Peyton, up by Loch Allen."

"Well then," continued Thady, "if you don't like him, boys, I can tell you he don't like you a bit better; and if he can contrive to call himself masther at Ballycloran, as I can tell you he manes to try, it's not one of you he'll lave on the land."

"Did he tell you that himself, Mr. Thady?" whispered Brady. Now though young Macdermot was nearly drunk--quite drunk enough to have lost what little good sense was left to him, after being fool enough to come at all among those with whom he was at present drinking--still what Ussher had said about his follower was not forgotten, and though he did not absolutely believe that Brady was a creature of Keegan's, what he had heard prevented his having the same inclination to listen to Pat, or the same confidence in what he said.

"Faith then, he told me so with his own mouth; and it isn't only the others 'd be going, but you'd have to walk yourself, masther Pat."

"And why wouldn't I? D'ye think I'd be staying at Ballycloran afther you war gone, Mr. Thady?"

"Don't be making any vows, Pat; maybe you wouldn't be axed, and maybe, av you war, you wouldn't refuse to ate yer bread, though it war Keegan paid for it."

"That the first mouthful may choke me that I ever ate of his paying for!"

"Well, however, boys, Hyacinth Keegan will sthrip the roof off every mother's son of you if he ever conthrives to put his foot in Ballycloran; but, by G.o.d, he never shall! Mind, boys, he can never do that till he can lay his hands on the owld man; and where'll you all be, I wonder, to let him or any one he sends do that, or take a sod of turf, or a grain of oats off the land either?"

"By dad, you're right, Mr. Thady," said one of them. "Shure wouldn't we have him in a bog-hole, or as many as he'd send; and then they might take away what they could carry in their mouths."

"I'll tell you what, Sir," said Joe Reynolds, and he laid his hand on Thady's knee, and leant forward till his mouth was near the young man's ear--so near, that not only could not McGovery overhear his words, but of the whole party round the fire, only Brady and Byrne, besides Thady himself, could catch what he said; "I'll tell you what, Sir, Keegan shall never harum you or yours, if you'll be one of us--one of us heart and sowl; and I know you will, and I know it's not in you to put up with what they're putting on you; an' dearly he'll pay for the blow he strik you, an' the word he said--surely, Mr. Thady!" And he whispered still lower into his ear, "Let alone the esthate, an' the house, an' all that, you'd niver put up with what he has been about this day, paceable an' in quiet?"

"You're thrue in that, Joe, by G----d!"

"Well then, won't we see you righted? Let the b.l.o.o.d.y ruffian come to Ballycloran, an' then see the way he'll go back again to Carrick.

Will you say the word, Mr. Thady? Will you join us agin thim that is as much, an' a deal more, agin you than they are agin us?"