The O'Donoghue: Tale of Ireland Fifty Years Ago

“You must hae found the travelling somewhat rude in these parts,” said M’Nab, who thus endeavoured to draw from the stranger some hint either as to the object or the road of his journey.

“We were not over particular on that score,” said Talbot, laughing. “A few young college men seeking some days’ amusement in the wild mountains of this picturesque district, could well afford to rough it for the enjoyment of the ramble.”

“You should visit us in the autumn,” said O’Donoghue, “when our heaths and arbutus blossoms are in beauty; then, they who have travelled far, tell me that there is nothing to be seen in Switzerland finer than this valley. Draw your chair over here, and let me have the pleasure of a glass of wine with you.”

The party had scarcely taken their places at the table, when Mark re-entered the room, heated and excited with the chase of the fugitives.

“They’re off,” muttered he, angrily, “down the glen, and I only hope they may lose their way in it, and spend the night upon the heather.”

As he spoke, he turned his eyes to the corner of the room, where Kerry, in a state of the most abject fear, was endeavouring to extract a cork from a bottle by means of a very impracticable screw.

“Ah! you there,” cried he, as his eyes flashed fire. “Hold the bottle up – hold it steady, you old fool,” and with a savage grin he drew a pistol from his breast pocket and levelled it at the mark.

Kerry was on his knees, one hand on the floor and in the other the bottle, which, despite all his efforts, he swayed backwards and forwards.

“O master, darlin’ – O Sir Archy, dear – O Joseph and Mary!”

“I’ve drank too much wine to hit it flying,” said Mark, with a half drunken laugh, “and the fool won’t be steady. There;” and as he spoke, the crash of the report resounded through the room, and the neck of the bottle was snapped off about half an inch below the cork.

“Neatly done, Mark – not a doubt of it,” said the O’Donoghue, as he took the bottle from Kerry’s hand, who, with a pace a kangaroo might have envied, approached the table, actually dreading to stand up straight in Mark’s presence.

“At the risk of being thought an epicure,” said M’Nab, “I maun say I’d like my wine handled more tenderly.”

“It was cleverly done though,” said Talbot, helping himself to a bumper from the broken flask. “I remember a trick we used to have at St. Cyr, which was, to place a bullet on a cork, and then, at fifteen paces cut away the cork and drop the bullet into the bottle.”

“No man ever did that twice,” cried Mark, rudely.

“I’ll wager a hundred guineas I do it twice, within five shots,” said Talbot, with the most perfect coolness.

“Done, for a hundred – I say done,” said Mark, slapping him familiarly on the shoulder.

“I’ll not win your money on such unfair terms,” said Talbot, laughing, “and if I can refrain from taking too much of this excellent Bourdeaux, I’ll do the trick to-morrow without a wager.”

Mark, like most persons who place great store by feats of skill and address, felt vexed at the superiority claimed by another, answered carelessly, “that, after all, perhaps the thing were easier than it seemed.”

“Very true,” chimed in Talbot, mildly; “what we have neither done ourselves nor seen done by another, has always the appearance of difficulty. What is called wisdom is little other than the power of calculating success or failure on grounds of mere probability.

“Your definition has the advantage of being sufficient for the occasion,” said Sir Archy, smiling. “I am happy to find our glen has not disappointed you; but if you have not seen the Lake and the Bay of Glengariff, I anticipate even a higher praise from you.”

“We spent the day on the water,” replied Talbot; “and if it were not a heresy, I should affirm, that these bold mountains are grander and more sublime in the desolation of winter, than even when clothed in the purple and gold of summer. There was a fine sea, too, rolling into that great Bay, bounding upon the rocks, and swelling proudly against the tall cliffs, which, to my eye, is more pleasurable than the glassy surface of calm water. Motion is the life of inanimate objects, and life has always its own powers of excitement.”

While they conversed thus, M’Nab, endeavouring, by adroit allusions to the place, to divine the real reason of the visit, and Talbot, by encomiums on the scenery, or, occasionally, by the expression of some abstract proposition, seeking to avoid any direct interrogatory – Mark, who had grown weary of a dialogue which, even in his clearer moments, would not have interested him, drank deeply from the wine before him, filling and re-filling a large glass unceasingly, while the O’Donoghue merely paid that degree of attention which politeness demanded.

It was thus that, while Sir Archy believed he was pushing Talbot closely on the objects of his coming, Talbot was, in reality, obtaining from him much information about the country generally, the habits of the people, and their modes of life, which he effected in the easy, unconstrained manner of one perfectly calm and unconcerned. “The life of a fisherman,” said he, in reply to a remark of Sir Archy’s – “the life of a fisherman is, however, a poor one; for though his gains are great, at certain seasons, there are days – ay, whole months, he cannot venture out to sea. Now it strikes me, that in that very Bay of Bantry the swell must be terrific, when the wind blows from the west, or the nor’-west.”

“You are right – quite right,” answered M’Nab, who at once entered freely into a discussion of the condition of the Bay, under the various changing circumstances of wind and tide. “Many of our poor fellows have been lost within my own memory, and, indeed, save when we have an easterly wind – ”

“An easterly wind?” re-echoed Mark, lifting his head suddenly from between his hands, and staring in half-drunken astonishment around him. “Is that the toast – did you say that?”

“With all my heart,” said Sir Archy, smiling. “There are few sentiments deserve a bumper better, by any who live in these parts. Won’t you join us, Mr. Talbot?”

“Of course I will,” said Talbot, laughing, but with all his efforts to seem at ease, a quick observer might have remarked the look of warning he threw towards the young O’Donoghue.

“Here, then,” cried Mark, rising, while the wine trickled over his hand from a brimming goblet – “I’ll give it – are you ready?”

“All ready, Mark,” said the O’Donoghue, laughing heartily at the serious gravity of Mark’s countenance.

“Confound it,” cried the youth, passionately; “I forget the jingle.”

“Never mind – never mind,” interposed Talbot, slily; “we’ll pledge it with as good a mind.”

“That’s – that’s it,” shouted Mark, as the last word clinked upon his memory. “I have it now,” and his eyes sparkled, and his brows were met, as he called out —

“A stout heart and mind,
And an easterly wind,
And the devil behind The Saxon.”

Sir Archy laid down his glass untasted, while Talbot, bursting forth into a well-acted laugh, cried out, “You must excuse me from repeating your amiable sentiment, which, for aught I can guess, may be a sarcasm on my own country.”

“I’d like to hear the same toast explained,” said Sir Archy, cautiously, while his looks wandered alternately from Mark to Talbot.

“So you shall, then,” replied Mark, sternly, “and this very moment too.”

“Come, that’s fair,” chimed in Talbot, while he fixed his eyes on the youth, with such a steady gaze as seemed actually to have pierced the dull vapour of his clouded intellect, and flashed light upon his addled brain. “Let us hear your explanation.”

Mark, for a second or two, looked like one suddenly awakened from a deep sleep, and trying to collect his wandering faculties, while, as if instinctively seeking the clue to his bewilderment from Talbot, he never turned his eyes from him. As he sat thus, he looked the very ideal of half-drunken stupidity.

“I’m afraid we have no right to ask the explanation,” whispered Talbot into M’Nab’s ear. “We ought to be satisfied, if he give us the rhyme, even though he forgot the reason.”

“I’m thinking you’re right, sir,” replied M’Nab; “but I suspect we hae na the poet before us, ony mair than the interpreter.”

Mark’s faculties, in slow pursuit of Talbot’s meaning, had just at this instant overtaken their object, and he burst forth into a boisterous fit of laughter, which, whatever sentiment it might have excited in the others, relieved Talbot, at least, from all his former embarrassment: he saw that Mark had, though late, recognised his warning, and was at once relieved from any uneasiness on the score of his imprudence.

Sir Archy was, however, very far from feeling satisfied. What he had heard, brief and broken as it was, but served to excite his suspicions, and make him regard this guest as at least a very doubtful character. Too shrewd a diplomatist to push his inquiries any further, he adroitly turned the conversation upon matters of comparative indifference, reserving to himself the part of acutely watching Talbot’s manner, and narrowly scrutinizing the extent of his acquaintance with Mark O’Donoghue. In whatever school Talbot had been taught, his skill was more than a match for Sir Archy’s. Not only did he at once detect the meaning of the old man’s policy; but he contrived to make it subservient to his own views, by the opportunity it afforded him of estimating the influence he was capable of exerting over his nephew; and how far, if need were, Mark should become dependent on his will, rather than on that of any member of his own family. The frankness of his manner, the seeming openness of his nature, rendered his task a matter of apparent amusement; and none at the table looked in every respect more at ease than Harry Talbot.

While Sir Archy was thus endeavouring, with such skill as he possessed, to worm out the secret reason – and such, he well knew, there must be – of Talbot’s visit to that unfrequented region, Kerry O’Leary was speculating, with all his imaginative ability, how best to account for that event. The occasion was one of more than ordinary difficulty. Talbot looked neither like a bailiff nor a sheriffs officer; neither had he outward signs of a lawyer or an attorney. Kerry was conversant with the traits of each of these. If he were a suitor for Miss Kate, his last guess, he was a day too late.

“But sure he couldn’t be that: he’d never come with a throop of noisy vagabonds, in the dead of the night, av he was after the young lady. Well, well, he bates me out – sorra lie in it,” said he, drawing a heavy sigh, and crossing his hands before him in sad resignation.

“On my conscience, then, it was a charity to cut your hair for you, anyhow!” said Mrs. Branagan, who had been calmly meditating on the pistol-shot, which, in grazing Kerry’s hair, had somewhat damaged his locks.

“See, then – by the holy mass! av he went half an inch lower, it’s my life he’d be after taking; and if he was fifty O’Donoghues, I’d have my vingince. Bad cess to me, but they think the likes of me isn’t fit to live at all.”

“They do,” responded Mrs. Branagan, with a mild puff of smoke from the corner of her mouth – “they do; and if they never did worse than extarminate such varmin, their sowls would have an easier time of it.”

Kerry’s brow lowered, and his lips muttered; but no distinct reply was audible.

“Sorra bit of good I see in ye at all,” said she, with inexorable severity. “I mind the time ye used to tell a body what was doing above stairs; and, though half what ye said was lies, it was better than nothing: but now yer as stupid and lazy as the ould beast there fornint the fire – not a word out of yer head from morning to night. Ayeh, is it your hearin’s failin’ ye?”