Jack Hinton: The Guardsman

CHAPTER XLI. TIPPERARY JOE

I have already passingly alluded to Joe’s conversational powers; and certainly they were exercised on this occasion with a more than common ability. Either taking my silence as a suggestion for him to speak, or perhaps, and more probably, perceiving that some deep depression was over me, the kind-hearted fellow poured forth his stores of song and legend without ceasing. Now amusing me by his wild and fitful snatches of old ballads, now narrating in his simple but touching eloquence some bygone story of thrilling interest, the long hours of the night passed over, and at daybreak we found ourselves descending the mountain towards a large and cultivated valley, in which I could faintly distinguish in the misty distance the little mill where our relay was to be found.

I stopped for a few minutes to gaze upon the scene before me. It was one of those peaceful landscapes of rural beauty which beam more of soothing influence upon the sorrow-struck heart than the softest voice of consolation. Unlike the works of man, they speak directly to our souls while they appeal to our reason; and the truth comes forced upon us, that we alone must not repine. A broad and richly cultivated valley was bounded by mountains whose sides were clothed with deep wood; a stream, whose wayward course watered every portion of the plain, was seen now flowing among the grassy meadows, now peeping from the alders that lined the banks. The heavy mist of morning was rolling lazily up the mountain-side; and beneath its grey mantle the rich green of pasture and meadow land was breaking forth, dotted with cattle and sheep. As I looked, Joe knelt down and placed his ear upon the ground, and seemed for some minutes absorbed in listening. Then suddenly springing up, he cried out —

‘The mill isn’t going to-day! I wonder what’s the matter. I hope Andy isn’t sick.’

A shade of sorrow came over his wild features as he muttered between his teeth the verse of some old song, of which I could but catch the last two lines —

‘Ay,’ cried he aloud, as his eye glistened with an unnatural lustre, ‘better be poor Tipperary Joe, without house or home, father or mother, sister or friend, and when the time comes, run to earth, without a wet eye after him.’

‘Come, come, Joe, you have many a friend! and when you count them over, don’t forget me in the reckoning.’

‘Whisht, whisht!’ he whispered in a low voice, as if fearful of being overheard, ‘don’t say that; them’s dangerous words.’

I turned towards him with astonishment, and perceived that his whole countenance had undergone a striking change. The gay and laughing look was gone; the bright colour had left his cheek, and a cold, ghastly paleness was spread over his features; and as he cast a hurried and stealthy look around him, I could mark that some secret fear was working within him.

‘What is it, Joe?’ said I; ‘what’s the matter? Are you ill?’

‘No,’ said he, in a tone scarce audible – ‘no, but you frightened me just now when you called me your friend.’

‘How could that frighten you, my poor fellow?’

‘I ‘ll tell you. That’s what they called my father; they said he was friendly with the gentlemen, and sign’s on it.’ He paused, and his eye became rooted to the ground as if on some object there from which he could not turn his gaze. ‘Yes, I mind it well; we were sitting by the fire in the guard-room all alone by ourselves – the troops was away, I don’t know where – when we heard the tramp of men marching, but not regular, but coming as if they didn’t care how, and horses and carts rattling and rumbling among them.

‘“Thim’s the boys,” says my father. “Give me that ould cockade there, till I stick it in my cap; and reach me over the fiddle, till I rise a tune for them.”

‘I mind little more till we was marching at the head of them through the town, down towards the new college that was building – it’s Maynooth, I’m speaking about – and then we turned to the left, my father scraping away all the time every tune he thought they ‘d like; and if now and then by mistake he ‘d play anything that did not plaze them, they’d damn and blast him with the dreadfullest curses, and stick a pike into him, till the blood would come running down his back; and then my father would cry out —

‘“I’ll tell my friends on you for this – divil a lie in it, but I will”

‘At last we came to the duke’s wall, and then my father sat down on the roadside, and cried out that he wouldn’t go a step farther, for I was crying away with sore feet at the pace we were going, and asking every moment to be let sit down to rest myself.

‘“Look at the child,” said he, “his feet’s all bleeding.”

‘“Ye have only a little farther to go,” says one of them that had crossed belts on and a green sash about him.

‘“The divil resave another step,” says my father.

‘“Tell Billy to play us ‘The Parmer’s Daughter’ before he goes,” says one in the crowd.

‘“I ‘d rather hear ‘The Little Bowld Fox,’” says another.

‘“No, no, ‘Baltiorum! Baltiorum!’” says many more behind.

‘“Ye shall have them all,” says my father, “and that’ll plaze ye.”

‘And so he set to, and played the three tunes as beautiful as ever ye heard; and when he was done, the man with the belts ups and says to him —

‘“Ye’re a fine hand, Billy, and it’s a pity to lose you, and your friends will be sorry for you,” and he said this with a grin; “but take the spade there and dig a hole, for we must be jogging, it’s nigh day.”

‘Well, my father, though he was tired enough, took the spade, and began digging as they told him; for he thought to himself, “The boys is going to hide the pikes and the carbines before they go home.” Well, when he worked half an hour, he threw off his coat, and set to again; and at last he grew tired and sat down on the side of the big hole, and called out —

‘“Isn’t it big enough now, boys?”

‘“No,” says the captain, “nor half.”

‘So my father set to once more, and worked away with all his might; and they all stood by, talking and laughing with one another.

‘“Will it do now?” says my father; “for sure enough I’m clean beat.”

‘“Maybe it might,” says one of them; “lie down, and see if it’s the length.”

‘“Well, is it that it’s for?” says my father; “faix, I never guessed it was a grave.” And so he took off his cap and lay down his full length in the hole.

‘“That’s all right,” says the others, and began with spades and shovels to cover him up. At first he laughed away as hearty as the rest; but when the mould grew heavy on him he began to screech out to let him up; and then his voice grew weaker and fainter, and they waited a little; then they worked harder, and then came a groan, and all was still; and they patted the sods over him and heaped them up. And then they took me and put me in the middle of them, and one called out, “March!” I thought I saw the green sod moving on the top of the grave as we walked away, and heard a voice half choking calling out, “There, boys, there!” and then a laugh. But sure I often hear the same still, when there’s nobody near me, and I do be looking on the ground by myself.’

‘Great God!’ cried I, ‘is this true?’

‘True as you ‘re there,’ replied he. ‘I was ten years of age when it happened, and I never knew how time went since, nor how long it is ago; only it was in the year of the great troubles here, when the soldiers and the country-people never could be cruel enough to one another; and whatever one did to-day, the others would try to beat it out to-morrow. But it’s truth every word of it; and the place is called “Billy the fool’s grave” to this hour. I go there once a year to see it myself.’

This frightful story – told, too, with all the simple power of truth – thrilled through me with horror long after the impression seemed to have faded away from him who told it; and though he still continued to speak on, I heard nothing; nor did I mark our progress, until I found myself beside the little stream which conducted to the mill.

CHAPTER XLII. THE HIGHROAD

Joe was right; the mill was not at work, for ‘Andy’ had been summoned to Ennis, where the assizes were then going forward. The mare which had formed part of our calculations was also absent; and we sat down in the little porch to hold a council of war as to our future proceedings. After canvassing the question for some time, Joe left me for a few minutes, and returned with the information that the highroad to Ennis lay only a couple of miles distant, and that a stage-coach would pass there in about two hours, by which I could reach the town that evening. It was therefore decided that he should return with the pony to Murranakilty; while I, having procured a gossoon to carry my baggage, made the best of my way towards the Ennis road.

Joe soon found me an urchin to succeed him as my guide and companion; and with an affectionate leave-taking, and a faithful promise to meet me sometime and somewhere, we parted.

So long as I had journeyed along beside my poor, half-witted follower, the strange and fickle features of his wandering intellect had somehow interrupted the channels of my own feelings, and left me no room for reflection on my changed fortunes. Now, however, my thoughts returned to the past with all the force of some dammed-up current, and my blighted hopes threw a dark and sombre shadow over all my features. What cared I what became of me? Why did I hasten hither and thither? These were my first reflections. If life had lost its charm, so had misfortune lost its terror. There seemed something frivolous and contemptible in the return to those duties which in all the buoyant exhilaration of my former life had ever seemed unfitting and unmanly. No! rather let me seek for some employment on active service. The soldier’s career I once longed for, to taste its glorious enthusiasm – that I wished for now, to enjoy its ceaseless movement and exertion.

As I thought over all I had seen and gone through since my arrival in Ireland – its varied scenes of mirth and woe; its reckless pleasures, its wilder despair – I believed that I had acquired a far deeper insight into my own heart in proportion as I looked more into those of others. A not unfrequent error this. The outstretched page of human nature that I had been gazing on had shown me the passions and feelings of other men laid bare before me, while my own heart was dark, enshrined, and unvisited within me. I believed that life had no longer anything to tie me to it – and I was not then twenty! Had I counted double as many years, I had had more reason for the belief, and more difficulty to think so.

Sometimes I endeavoured to console myself by thinking of all the obstacles that under the happiest circumstances must have opposed themselves to my union with Louisa Bellew. My mother’s pride alone seemed an insurmountable one. But then I thought of what a noble part had lain before me, to prefer the object of my love – the prize of my own winning – to all the caresses of fortune, all the seductions of the world. Sir Simon Bellew, too – what could he mean? The secret he alluded to, what was it? Alas! what mattered it? My doom was sealed, my fate decided; I had no care how.

Such were my thoughts as I journeyed along the path that conducted towards the highroad; while my little guide – barelegged and barefooted, trotted on merrily before me – who, with none of this world’s goods, had no room in his heart for sorrow or repining.

We at last reached the road, which, dusty and deserted, skirted the side of a bleak mountain for miles – not a house to be seen; not a traveller, nor scarce a wheel-track, to mark the course of any one having passed there. I had not followed it for more than half an hour when I heard the tramp of horses and the roll which announced the approach of an equipage. A vast cloud of dust, through which a pair of leaders were alone visible, appeared at a distance. I seated myself at the roadside to await its coming, my little gossoon beside me, evidently not sorry to have reached a resting-place; and once more my thoughts returned to their well-worn channel, and my head sank on my bosom. I forgot where I was, when suddenly the prancing of a pair of horses close to me aroused me from my stupor, and a postillion called out to me in no very subdued accent —

‘Will ye hook on that trace there, avick, av ye ‘re not asleep?’

Whether it was my look of astonishment at the tone and the nature of the request, or delay in acceding to it, I know not; but a hearty curse from the fellow on the wheelers perfectly awakened me, and I replied by something not exactly calculated to appease the heat of the discussion.

‘Begorra,’ said he of the leaders, ‘it’s always the way with your shabby genteels!’ and he swung himself down from the saddle to perform the required service himself.

During this operation I took the opportunity of looking at the carriage, which was a large and handsome barouche, surrounded by all the appurtenances of travel – cap-cases, imperials, etc.; a fat-looking, lazy footman was nodding sleepily on the box, and a well-tanned lady’s-maid was reading a novel in the rumble. Within I saw the figure of a lady, whose magnificent style of dress but little accorded with the unfrequented road she was traversing and the wild inhabitants so thinly scattered through it. As I looked, she turned round suddenly; and, before I could recognise her, she called out my name. The voice in an instant reassured me: it was Mrs. Paul Rooney herself!

‘Stop!’ cried she, with a wave of her jewelled hand. ‘Michael, get down. Only think of meeting you here, Captain!’

I stammered out some explanation about a cross-cut over the mountain to catch the stage, and my desire to reach Ennis; while the unhappy termination of our intimacy, and my mother’s impertinent letter kept ever uppermost in my mind, and made me confused and uneasy. Mrs. Paul, however, had evidently no participation in such feelings, but welcomed me with her wonted cordiality, and shook my hand with a warmth that proved, if she had not forgotten, she had certainly forgiven, the whole affair.

‘And so you are going to Ennis!’ said she, as I assumed the place beside her in the barouche, while Michael was busily engaged in fastening on my luggage behind – the two movements seeming to be as naturally performed as though the amiable lady had been in the habit of taking up walking gentlemen with a portmanteau every day of her life. ‘Well, how fortunate! I’m going there too. Pole [so she now designated her excellent spouse, it being the English for Paul] has some little business with the chief-justice – two murder cases, and a forcible abduction – and I promised to take him up on my return from Milltown, where I have been spending a few weeks. After that we return to our little place near Bray, where I hope you ‘ll come and spend a few weeks with us.’

‘This great pleasure I fear I must deny myself,’ said I, ‘for I have already outstayed my leave, and have unfortunately somehow incurred the displeasure of his Excellency; and unless’ – here I dropped my voice, and stole a half-timid look at the lady under my eyelashes – ‘some one with influence over his grace shall interfere on my behalf, I begin to fear lest I may find myself in a sad scrape.’

Mrs. Paul blushing, turned away her head; and while pressing my hand softly in her own, she murmured —

‘Don’t fret about it; it won’t signify.’

I could scarce repress a smile at the success of my bit of flattery, for as such alone I intended it, when she turned towards me, and, as if desirous to change the topic, said —

‘Well, we heard of all your doings – your steeplechase and your duel and your wound, and all that; but what became of you afterwards?’

‘Oh,’ said I hesitatingly, ‘I was fortunate enough to make a most agreeable acquaintance, and with him I have been spending a few weeks on the coast – Father Tom Loftus.’

‘Father Tom!’ said Mrs. Rooney with a laugh – ‘the pleasantest crayture in Ireland! There isn’t the like of him. Did he sing you the “Priest’s Supper?”’ The lady blushed as she said these words, as if carried away by a momentary excitement to speak of matters not exactly suitable; and then drawing herself up, she continued in a more measured tone: ‘You know, Captain, one meets such strange people in this world.’

‘To be sure, Mrs. Rooney,’ said I encouragingly; ‘and to one like yourself, who can appreciate character, Father Loftus is indeed a gem.’

Mrs. Rooney, however, only smiled her assent, and again changed the course of the conversation.

‘You met the Bellews, I suppose, when down in the west?’

‘Yes,’ stammered I; ‘I saw a good deal of Sir Simon when in that country.’

‘Ah, the poor man!’ said she with real feeling, ‘what an unhappy lot his has been!’

Supposing that she alluded to his embarrassment as to fortune, the difficulties which pressed upon him from money causes, I merely muttered my assent.

‘But I suppose,’ continued she, ‘you have heard the whole story, though the unhappy event occurred when you were a mere child.’

‘I am not aware to what you allude,’ said I eagerly, while a suspicion shot across my mind that the secret of Sir Simon Bellow’s letter was at length to be cleared up.

‘Ah,’ said Mrs. Rooney with a sigh, ‘I mean poor dear Lady Bellow’s affair – when she went away with a major of dragoons; and to be sure an elegant young man he was, they said. Pole was on the inquest, and I heard him say he was the handsomest man he ever saw in his life.’