Tom Burke Of "Ours" Volume I Part 3

"Do, sir, av ye plaze!" said the pretty housemaid, as she stood before me, cup in hand.

"Arrah! what's tay?" said Darby, in a contemptuous tone of voice. "A few dirty laves, with a drop of water on top of them, that has neither beatification nor invigoration. Here 's the _fons animi_!" said he, patting the whisky bottle affectionately. "Did ye ever hear of the ancients indulging in tay? D'ye think Polyphamus and Jupither took tay?"

The cook looked down abashed and ashamed.

"Tay's good enough for women,--no offence, Mrs. Cook!--but you might boil down Paykin, and it'd never be potteen. _Ex quo vis ligno non fit Mercurius_,--'You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.' That's the meaning of it; ligno 's a sow."

Heaven knows I was in no mirthful mood at that moment; but I burst into a fit of laughing at this, in which, from a sense of politeness, the party all joined.

"That's it, acushla!" said the old cook, as her eyes sparkled with delight; "sure it makes my heart light to see you smilin' again. Maybe Darby would raise a tune now, and there 's nothing equal to it for the spirits."

"Yes, Mr. M'Keown," said the housemaid; "play 'Kiss me twice!' Master Tom likes it."

"Devil a doubt he does!" replied Darby, so maliciously as to make poor Kitty blush a deep scarlet; "and no shame to him! But you see my fingers is cut. Master Tom, and I can't perform the reduplicating intonations with proper effect."

"How did that happen. Darby?" said the butler.

"Faix, easy enough. Tim Daly and myself was hunting a cat the other evening, and she was under the dhresser, and we wor poking her with a burnt stick and a raypinghook, and she somehow always escaped us, and except about an inch of her tail, that we cut off, there was no getting at her; and at last I hated a toastin'-fork and put it in, when out she flew, teeth and claws, at me. Look, there 's where she stuck her thieving nails into my thumb, and took the piece clean out. The onnatural baste!"

"Arrah!" said the old cook, with a most reflective gravity, "there 's nothing so treacherous as a cat! "--a moral to the story which I found met general a.s.sent among the whole company.

"Nevertheless," observed Darby, with an air of ill-dissembled condescension, "if it isn't umbrageous to your honor, I 'll intonate something in the way of an ode or a canticle."

"One of your own. Darby," said the butler, interrupting.

"Well, I've no objection," replied Darby, with an affected modesty; "for you see, master, like Homer, I accompany myself on the pipes, though--glory be to G.o.d!--I'm not blind. The little thing I 'll give you is imitated from the ancients--like Tibullus or Euthropeus--in the natural key."

Mister M'Keown, after this announcement, pushed his empty tumbler towards the butler with a significant glance gave a few preparatory grunts with the pipes, followed by a long dolorous quaver, and then a still more melancholy cadence, like the expiring bray of an asthmatic jacka.s.s; all of which sounds, seeming to be the essential preliminaries to any performance on the bagpipes, were listened to with great attention by the company. At length, having a.s.sumed an imposing att.i.tude, he lifted up both elbows, tilted his little finger affectedly up, dilated his cheeks, and began the following to the well-known air of "Una:"--

MUSIC.

Of all the arts and sciences, 'T is music surely takes the sway; It has its own appliances To melt the heart or make it gay.

To raise us, Or plaze us, There 's nothing with it can compare; To make us bowld, Or hot or cowld, Just as suits the kind of air.

There 's not a woman, man, or child.

That has n't felt its powers too; Don't deny it!--when you smiled Your eyes confess'd, that so did you.

The very winds that sigh or roar; The leaves that rustle, dry and sear; The waves that beat upon the sh.o.r.e,-- They all are music to your ear.

It was of use To Orpheus,-- He charmed the fishes in the say; So everything Alive can sing,-- The kettle even sings for tay!

There's not a woman, man, or child.

That hau n't felt its power too; Don't deny it!--when you smiled Your eyes confess'd, that so did you.

I have certainly since this period listened to more brilliant musical performances, but for the extent of the audience, I do not think it was possible to reap a more overwhelming harvest of applause. Indeed, the old cook kept repeating stray fragments of the words to every air that crossed her memory for the rest of the evening; and as for Kitty, I intercepted more than one soft glance intended for Mister M'Keown as a reward for his minstrelsy.

Darby, to do him justice, seemed fully sensible of his triumph, and sat back in his chair and imbibed his liquor like a man who had won his laurels, and needed no further efforts to maintain his eminent position in life.

As the wintry wind moaned dismally without, and the leafless trees shook and trembled with the cold blast, the party drew in closer to the cheerful turf fire, with that sense of selfish delight that seems to revel in the contrast of indoor comfort with the bleakness and dreariness without.

"Well, Darby," said the butler, "you weren't far wrong when you took my advice to stay here for the night; listen to how it 's blowing."

"That 's hail!" said the old cook, as the big drops came pattering down the chimney, and hissed on the red embers as they fell. "It 's a cruel night, glory be to G.o.d!" Here the old lady blessed herself,--a ceremony which the others followed.

"For all that," said Darby, "I ought to be up at Crocknavorrigha this blessed evening. Joe Neale was to be married to-day."

"Joe! is it Joe?" said the butler.

"I wish her luck of him, whoever she is!" added the cook.

"Faix, and he's a smart boy!" chimed in the housemaid, with something not far from a blush as she spoke.

"He was a raal devil for coortin', anyhow!" said the butler.

"It's just for peace he's marrying now, then," said Darby; "the women never gave him any quietness. Just so, Kitty; you need n't be looking cross that way,--it 's truth I'm telling you. They were always coming about him, and teasing him, and the like, and he could n't bear it any longer."

"Arrah, howld your prate!" interrupted the old cook, whose indignation for the honor of the s.e.x could not endure more. "He's the biggest liar from this to himself; and that same 's not a small word. Darby M'Keown."

There was a pointedness in the latter part of this speech which might have led to angry consequences, had I not interposed by asking Mr.

M'Keown himself if he ever was in love.

"Arrah, it 's wis.h.i.+ng it, I am, the same love. Sure my back and sides is sore with it; my misfortunes would fill a book. Did n't I bind myself apprentice to a carpenter for love of Molly Scraw, a niece he had, just to be near her and be looking at her; and that 's the way I shaved off the top of my thumb with the plane. By the mortial, it was near killing me. I usedn't to eat or drink; and though I was three years at the thrade, faix, at the end of it, I could n't tell you the gimlet from the handsaw!"

"And you wor never married, Mister M'Keown?" said Kitty.

"Never, my darling, but often mighty near it. Many 's the quare thing happened to me," said Darby, meditatingly; "and sure if it was n't my guardian angel, or something of the kind, prevented it, I 'd maybe have more wives this day than the Emperor of Roossia himself."

"Arrah, don't be talking!" grunted out the old cook, whose pa.s.sion could scarcely be restrained at the boastful tone Mister M'Keown a.s.sumed in descanting on his successes.

"There was Biddy Finn," continued Darby, without paying any attention to the cook's interruption; "she might be Mrs. M'Keown this day, av it wasn't for a remarkable thing that happened."

"What was that?" said Kitty, with eager curiosity.

"Tell us about it. Mister M'Keown," said the butler.

"The devil a word of truth he'll tell you," grumbled the cook, as she raked the ashes with a stick.

"There 's them here does not care for agreeable intercoorse," said Darby, a.s.suming a grand air.

"Come, Daxby; I 'd like to hear the story," said I.

After a few preparatory scruples, in which modesty, offended dignity, and conscious merit struggled, Mr. M'Keown began by informing us that he had once a most ardent attachment to a certain Biddy Finn, of Ballyclough,--a lady of considerable personal attractions, to whom for a long time he had been constant, and at last, through the intervention of Father Curtin, agreed to marry. Darby's consent to the arrangements was not altogether the result of his reverence's eloquence, nor indeed the justice of the case; nor was it quite owing to Biddy's black eyes and pretty lips; but rather to the soul-persuading powers of some fourteen tumblers of strong punch which he swallowed at a _sance_ in Biddy's father's house one cold evening in November, after which he betook himself to the road homewards, where--But we must give his story in his own words:

"Whether it was the prospect of happiness before me, or the potteen,"

quoth Darby, "but so it was,--I never felt a step of the road home that night, though it was every foot of five mile. When I came to a stile, I used to give a whoop, and over it; then I'd run for a hundred yards or two, flourish my stick, cry out, 'Who 'll say a word against Biddy Finn?' and then over another fence, flying. Well, I reached home at last, and wet enough I was; but I did n't care for that. I opened the door and struck a light; there was the least taste of kindling on the hearth, and I put some dry sticks into it and some turf, and knelt down and began blowing it up.

"'Troth,' says I to myself, 'if I wor married, it isn't this way I'd be,--on my knees like a nagur; but when I 'd come home, there 'ud be a fine fire blazin' fornint me, and a clean table out before it, and a beautiful cup of tay waiting for me, and somebody I won't mintion, sitting there, looking at me, smilin'.'