Handy Andy Volume I Part 24

"What a wequest!--dwive on, sir!"

"Sure I can't lave my brother on the road, sir."

"_Your_ bwother!--and you pwesume to put your bwother to wide with me?

You'll put me in the debdest wage if you don't dwive on."

"'Faith, then, I won't dhrive on and lave my brother here on the road."

"You rascally wappawee!" exclaimed Furlong.

"See, Andy," said Micky Doolan; "will you get up and dhrive him, while I stay with Pether?"

"To be sure I will," said Andy; "where is he goin'?"

"To the Squire's," said Mick; "and when you lave him there, make haste back, and I'll dhrive Pether home."

Andy mounted into Mick's saddle; and although the traveller "pwotested"

against it, and threatened "pwoceedings" and "magistrates," Mick was unmoved in his brotherly love. As a last remonstrance, Furlong exclaimed, "And pewhaps this fellow can't wide, and don't know the woad."

"Is it not know the road to the Squire's?--wow! wow!" said Andy. "It's I that'll rattle you there in no time, your honour."

"Well, wattle away then!" said the enraged traveller, as he threw himself back in the chaise, cursing all the postilions in Ireland.

Now, it was to Squire O'Grady's that Mr. Furlong wanted to go; but in the confusion of the moment the name of O'Grady never once was mentioned; and with the t.i.tle of "Squire," Andy never a.s.sociated another idea than that of his late master, Mr. Egan.

Mr. Furlong, it has been stated, was an official of Dublin Castle, and had been despatched on electioneering business to the country. He was related to a gentleman of the same name who held a lucrative post under government, and was well known as an active agent in all affairs requiring what in Ireland was called "Castle influence;" and this, his relative, was now despatched, for the first time, on a similar employment. By the way, while his name is before one, a little anecdote may be appropriately introduced, ill.u.s.trative of the wild waggery prevailing in the streets of Dublin in those days.

Those days were the good old days of true virtue! When a bishop who had daughters to marry, would advance a deserving young curate to a good living, and, not content with _that_ manifestation of his regard, would give him _one of his own children_ for a wife! Those were the days when, the country being in danger, fathers were willing to sacrifice, not only their sons, but their daughters on the altar of patriotism! Do you doubt it?--unbelieving and selfish creatures of these degenerate times! Listen! A certain father waited upon the Irish Secretary, one fine morning, and in that peculiar strain which secretaries of state must be pretty well used to, descanted at some length on the devotion he had always shown to the government, and yet they had given him no _proof of their confidence_. The Secretary declared they had the highest sense of his merits, and that they had given him their entire confidence.

"But you have given me nothing else, my lord," was the answer.

"My dear sir, of late we have not had any proof of sufficient weight in our gift to convince you."

"Oh, I beg your pardon, my lord; there's a majority of the ---- dragoons vacant."

"Very true, my dear sir; and if you _had_ a child to devote to the service of your country, no one should have the majority sooner."

"Thank you, my lord," said the worthy man with a low bow; "then I _have_ a child."

"Bless me, sir! I never heard you had a son."

"No, my lord, but I have a daughter."

"A daughter!" said my Lord Secretary, with a look of surprise; "but you forget, sir--this is a regiment--a _dragoon_ regiment."

"Oh, she rides elegant," said her father.

"But, my dear sir--a woman?"

"Why shouldn't a woman do her duty, my lord, as well as a man, when the country is in danger? I'm ready to sacrifice my daughter," said the heroic man, with an air worthy of Virginius.

"My dear sir, this is really impossible; you _know_ it's impossible."

"I know no such thing, my lord. But I'll tell you what I know: there's a bill coming on next week--and there are _ten friends of mine_ who have not made up their minds yet."

"My dear sir," said the Lord Secretary, squeezing his hand with vehement friends.h.i.+p, "why place us in this dreadful difficulty? It would be impossible even to draw up the commission;--fancy, 'Major _Maria_,' or 'Major _Margery_'!"

"Oh, my lord," said my father quickly, "I have fancied all that long ago, and got a cure ready for it. My wife not having been blessed with boys, we thought it wise to make the girls ready for any chance that might turn up, and so we christened the eldest George, the second Jack, and the third Tom; which enables us to call them Georgina, Jacqueline, and Thomasine, in company, while the secret of their real names rests between ourselves and the parish register. Now, my lord, what do you say? I have George, Jack, and Tom--think of your _bill_!" The argument was conclusive, and the patriotic man got the majority of a cavalry corps, with perpetual leave of absence, for his daughter Jack, who would much rather have joined the regiment.

Such were the days in which our Furlong flourished; and in such days it will not be wondered at that a Secretary, when he had no place to give away, invented one. The old saying has it, that "Necessity is the mother of invention;" but an Irish Secretary can beat necessity hollow.

For example--

A commission was issued, with a handsome salary to the commissioner, to make a measurement through all the streets of Dublin, ascertaining the exact distances from the Castle, from a furlong upwards: and for many a year did the commission work, inserting handsome stone slabs into walls of most ignorant houses, till then unconscious of their precise proximity or remoteness from the seat of government. Ever after that, if you saw some portly building, blus.h.i.+ng in the pride of red brick, and perfumed with fresh paint, and saw the tablet recording the interesting fact thus--

+------------------+ FROM THE CASTLE, ONE FURLONG. +------------------+

Fancy might suggest that the house rejoiced, as it were, in its honoured position, and did

--"look so fine, and smell so sweet,"

because it was under the nose of viceroyalty, while the suburbs revealed poor tatterdemalion tenements, dropping their slates like tears, and uttering their hollow sighs through empty cas.e.m.e.nts, merely because they were "one mile two furlongs from the Castle." But the new stone tablet which told you so seemed to mock their misery, and looked like a fresh stab into their poor old sides; as if the rapier of a king had killed a beggar.

This very original measure of measurement was provocative of ridicule or indignation, as the impatient might happen to be infected; but while the affair was in full blow, Mr. Furlong, who was the commissioner, while walking in Sackville-street, one day, had a goodly sheet of paper pinned to his back by some--

--"sweet Roman hand,"

bearing, in large letters, the inversion of one of his own tablets,

+------------------+ ONE FURLONG FROM THE CASTLE. +------------------+

and as he swaggered along in conscious dignity, he wondered at the shouts of laughter ringing behind him, and turned round occasionally to see the cause; but ever as he turned, faces were screwed up into seriousness, while the laughter rang again in his rear. Furlong was bewildered, and much as he was used to the mirthfulness of an Irish populace, he certainly _did_ wonder what fiend of fun possessed them that day, until the hall porter of the secretary's office solved the enigma by respectfully asking would he not take the placard from his back before he presented himself. The Mister Furlong who is engaged in our story was the nephew of the man of measurement memory; and his mother, a vulgar woman, sent her son to England to be educated, that he might "pick up the ax'nt; 't was so jinteel, the Inglish ax'nt!" And, accordingly, the youth endeavoured all he could to become _un_-Irish in everything, and was taught to believe that all the virtue and wisdom in Ireland was vested in the Castle and hangers-on thereof, and that the mere people were worse than savages.

With such feelings it was that this English Irishman, employed to open negotiations between the government and Squire O'Grady, visited the wilds of Ireland; and the circ.u.mstances attendant on the stopping of the chaise afforded the peculiar genius of Handy Andy an opportunity of making a glorious confusion, by driving the political enemy of the sitting member into his house, where, by a curious coincidence, a strange gentleman was expected every day on a short visit. After Andy had driven some time, he turned round and spoke to Mr. Furlong, through the pane of gla.s.s with which the front window-frame of the chaise was _not_ furnished.

"Faix, you wor nigh shootin' me, your honour," said Andy.

"I should not wepwoach myself, if I had," said Mr. Furlong, "when you quied stop on the woad: wobbers always qui stop, and I took you for a wobber."

"Faix, the robbers here, your honour, never axes you to stop at all, but they stop you without axin', or by your lave, or wid your lave.

Sure, I was only afeerd you'd dhrive over the man in the road."

"What was that man in the woad doing?"

"Nothin' at all, 'faith, for he wasn't able; he was dhrunk, sir."

"The postilion said he was his bwother."

"Yis, your honour, and he's a postilion himself--only he lost his horses and the shay--he got dhrunk, and fell off."