Tom Burke Of "Ours", Volume I

“Don’t cry, alannah! don’t cry,” said the old man; “it ‘s the worst way at all. Get up again and ride him at it bould. Oh vo! look at where the thief is taking now, – along the stonewall there!” Here he broke out into a low, wailing ditty: —

“And the fox set him down and looked about —
And many were feared to follow;
‘Maybe I ‘m wrong,'says he, ‘but I doubt
That you ‘ll be as gay to-morrow.
For loud as you cry, and high as you ride,
And little you feel my sorrow,
I’ll be free on the mountain-side,
While you ‘ll lie low to-morrow.
Oh, Moddideroo, aroo, aroo!’”

“Ay, just so; they ‘ll run to earth in the cold churchyard. Whisht! – hark there! Soho, soho! That’s Badger I hear.”

I turned away with a bursting heart, and felt my way up the broad oak stair, which was left in complete darkness. As I reached the corridor, off which the bedrooms lay, I heard voices talking together in a low tone; they came from my father’s room, the door of which lay ajar. I approached noiselessly and peeped in: by the fire, which was the only light now in the apartment, sat two persons at a set table, one of whom I at once recognized as the tall, solemn-looking figure of Doctor Finnerty; the other I detected, by the sharp tones of his voice, to be Mr. Anthony Basset, my father’s confidential attorney.

On the table before them lay a mass of papers, parchments, leases, deeds, together with glasses and a black bottle, whose accompaniments of hot water and sugar left no doubt as to its contents. The chimney-piece was crowded with a range of vials and medicine bottles, some of them empty, some of them half finished.

From the bed in the corner of the room came the heavy sound of snoring respiration, which either betokened deep sleep or insensibility. If I enjoyed but little favor in my father’s house, I owed much of the coldness shown to me to the evil influence of the very two persons who sat before me in conclave. Of the precise source of the doctor’s dislike I was not quite clear, except, perhaps, that I recovered from the measles when he predicted my certain death; the attorney’s was, however, no mystery.

About three years before, he had stopped to breakfast at our house on his way to Ballinasloe fair. As his pony was led round to the stable, it caught my eye. It was a most tempting bit of horseflesh, full of spirit and in top condition, for he was going to sell it. I followed him round, and appeared just as the servant was about to unsaddle him. The attorney was no favorite in the house, and I had little difficulty in persuading the man, instead of taking off the saddle, merely to shorten the stirrups to the utmost limit. The next minute I was on his back flying over the lawn at a stretching gallop. Fences abounded on all sides, and I rushed him at double ditches, stone walls, and bog-wood rails, with a mad delight that at every leap rose higher. After about three quarters of an hour thus passed, his blood, as well as my own, being by this time thoroughly roused, I determined to try him at the wall of an old pound which stood some few hundred yards from the front of the house. Its exposure to the window at any other time would have deterred me from even the thought of such an exploit, but now I was quite beyond the pale of such cold calculations; besides that, I was accompanied by a select party of all the laborers, with their wives and children, whose praises of my horsemanship would have made me take the lock of a canal if before me. A tine gallop of grass sward led to the pound, and over this I went, cheered with as merry a cry as ever stirred a light heart. One glance I threw at the house as I drew near the leap. The window of the breakfast parlor was open; my father and Mr. Basset were both at it, I saw their faces red with passion; I heard their loud shout; my very spirit sickened within me. I saw no more; I felt the pony rush at the wall, – the quick stroke of his feet, – the rise, – the plunge, – and then a crash, – and I was sent spinning over his head some half-dozen yards, ploughing up the ground on face and hands. I was carried home with a broken head; the pony’s knees were in the same condition. My father said that he ought to be shot for humanity’s sake; Tony suggested the same treatment for me, on similar grounds. The upshot, however, was, I secured an enemy for life; and worse still, one whose power to injure was equalled by his inclination.

Into the company of these two worthies I now found myself thus accidentally thrown, and would gladly have retreated at once, but that some indescribable impulse to be near my father’s sickbed was on me; and so I crept stealthily in and sat down in a large chair at the foot of the bed, where unnoticed I listened to the long-drawn heavings of his chest, and in silence wept over my own desolate condition.

For a long time the absorbing nature of my own grief prevented me hearing the muttered conversation near the lire; but at length, as the night wore on and my sorrow had found vent in tears, I began to listen to the dialogue beside me.

“He ‘ll have five hundred pounds under his grandfather’s will, in spite of us. But what ‘s that?” said the attorney.

“I ‘ll take him as an apprentice for it, I know,” said the doctor, with a grin that made me shudder.

“That’s settled already,” replied Mr. Basset. “He’s to be articled to me for five years; but I think it ‘s likely he ‘ll go to sea before the time expires. How heavily the old man is sleeping! Now, is that natural sleep?”

“No, that’s always a bad sign; that puffing with the lips is generally among the last symptoms. Well, he’ll be a loss anyhow, when he’s gone. There’s an eight-ounce mixture he never tasted yet, – infusion of gentian with soda. Put your lips to that.”

“Devil a one o’ me will ever sup the like!” said the attorney, finishing his tumbler of punch as he spoke. “Faugh! how can you drink them things that way?”

“Sure it’s the compound infusion, made with orangepeel and cardamom seeds. There is n’t one of them did n’t cost two and ninepence. He ‘ll be eight weeks in bed come Tuesday next.”

“Well, well! If he lived till the next assizes, it would be telling me four hundred pounds; not to speak of the costs of two ejectments I have in hand against Mullins and his father-in-law.”

“It’s a wonder,” said the doctor, after a pause, “that Tom didn’t come by the coach. It’s no matter now, at any rate; for since the eldest son’s away, there’s no one here to interfere with us.”

“It was a masterly stroke of yours, doctor, to tell the old man the weather was too severe to bring George over from Eton. As sure as he came he’d make up matters with Tom; and the end of it would be, I ‘d lose the agency, and you would n’t have those pleasant little bills for the tenantry, – eh. Fin?”

“Whisht! he’s waking now. Well, sir; well, Mr. Burke, how do you feel now? He ‘s off again!”

“The funeral ought to be on a Sunday,” said Basset, in a whisper; “there ‘ll be no getting the people to come any other day. He ‘s saying something, I think.”

“Fin,” said my father, in a faint, hoarse voice, – “Fin, give me a drink. It ‘s not warm!”

“Yes, sir; I had it on the fire.”

“Well, then, it ‘s myself that ‘s growing cold. How ‘s the pulse now. Fin? Is the Dublin doctor come yet?”

“No, sir; we ‘re expecting him every minute. But sure, you know, we ‘re doing everything.”

“Oh! I know it. Yes, to be sure, Fin; but they ‘ve many a new thing up in Dublin there, we don’t hear of. Whisht! what’s that?”

“It ‘s Tony, sir, – Tony Basset; he ‘s sitting up with me.”

“Come over here, Tony. Tony, I’m going fast; I feel it, and my heart is low. Could we withdraw the proceedings about Freney?”

“He ‘s the biggest blackguard – ”

“Ah! no matter now; I ‘m going to a place where we ‘ll all need mercy. What was it that Canealy said he ‘d give for the land?”

“Two pound ten an acre; and Freney never paid thirty shillings out of it.”

“It’s mighty odd George didn’t come over.”

“Sure, I told you there was two feet of snow on the ground.”

“Lord be about us, what a severe season! But why isn’t Tom here?” I started at the words, and was about to rush forward, when he added, – “I don’t want him, though.”

“Of course you don’t,” said the attorney; “it’s little comfort he ever gave you. Are you in pain there?”

“Ay, great pain over my heart. Well, well! don’t be hard to him when I ‘m gone.”

“Don’t let him talk so much,” said Basset, in a whisper, to the doctor.

“You must compose yourself, Mr. Burke,” said the doctor. “Try and take a sleep; the night isn’t half through yet.”

The sick man obeyed without a word; and soon after, the heavy respiration betokened the same lethargic slumber once more.

The voices of the speakers gradually fell into a low, monotonous sound; the long-drawn breathings from the sickbed mingled with them; the fire only sent forth an occasional gleam, as some piece of falling turf seemed to revive its wasting life, and shot up a myriad of bright sparks; and the chirping of the cricket in the chimney-corner sounded to my mournful heart like the tick of the death-watch.

As I listened, my tears fell fast, and a gulping fulness in my throat made me feel like one in suffocation. But deep sorrow somehow tends to sleep. The weariness of the long day and dreary night, exhaustion, the dull hum of the subdued voices, and the faint light, all combined to make me drowsy, and I fell into a heavy slumber.

I am writing now of the far-off past, – of the long years ago of my youth, – since which my seared heart has had many a sore and scalding lesson; yet I cannot think of that night, fixed and graven as it lies in my memory, without a touch of boyish softness. I remember every waking thought that crossed my mind: my very dream is still before me. It was of my mother. I thought of her as she lay on a sofa in the old drawing-room; the window open, and the blinds drawn, the gentle breeze of a June morning flapping them lazily to and fro as I knelt beside her to repeat my little hymn, the first I ever learned; and how at each moment my eyes would turn and my thoughts stray to that open casement, through which the odor of flowers and the sweet song of birds were pouring, and my little heart was panting for liberty, while her gentle smile and faint words bade me remember where I was. And then I was straying away through the old garden, where the very sunlight fell scantily through the thick-woven branches, loaded with perfumed blossoms; the blackbirds hopped fearlessly from twig to twig, mingling their clear notes with the breezy murmur of the leaves and the deep hum of summer bees. How happy was I then! And why cannot such happiness be lasting? Why can we not shelter ourselves from the base contamination of worldly cares, and live on amid pleasures pure as these, with hearts as holy and desires as simple as in childhood?

Suddenly a change came over my dream, and the dark clouds began to gather from all quarters, and a low, creeping wind moaned heavily along. I thought I heard ray name called. I started and awoke. For a second or two the delusion was so strong that I could not remember where I was; but as the gray light of a breaking morning fell through the half-open shutters, I beheld the two figures near the fire. They were both sound asleep, the deep-drawn breathing and nodding heads attesting the heaviness of their slumber.

I felt cold and cramped, but still afraid to stir, although a longing to approach the bedside was still upon me. A faint sigh and some muttered words here came to my ear, and I listened. It was my father; but so indistinct the sounds, they seemed more like the ramblings of a dream. I crept noiselessly on tiptoe to the bed, and drawing the curtain gently over, gazed within. He was lying on his back, his hands and arms outside the clothes. His beard had grown so much and he had wasted so far that I could scarcely have known him. His eyes were wide open, but fixed on the top of the bed; his lips moved rapidly, and by his hands, as they were closely clasped, I thought it was in prayer. I leaned over him, and placed my hand in his. For some time he did not seem to notice it; but at last he pressed it softly, and rubbing the fingers to and fro, he said, in a low, faint voice, – “Is this your hand, my boy?”

I thought my heart had split, as in a gush of tears I bent down and kissed him.

“I can’t see well, my dear; there’s something between me and the light, and a weight is on me – here – here – ”

A heavy sigh, and a shudder that shook his whole frame, followed these words.