Part 15

"Sure, 'tis the shtick, like, that they pulls here and there to go in their choice place."

"We may presume that the lady is referring to the tiller," said Mr. Mooney, with a facetious eye at the Bench. "Maybe now, ma'am, you can explain to us what sort of a boat is she?"

"She's that owld that if it wasn't for the weeds that's holding her together she'd bursht up in the deep."

"And who owns this valuable property?" pursued Mr. Mooney.

"She's between Con Brickley and me brother, an the saine[1] is between four, an' whatever crew does be in it should get their share, and the boat has a man's share."

I made no attempt to comprehend this, relying with well-founded confidence on Flurry Knox's grasp of such enigmas.

"Was Con Brickley fishing the same day?"

"He was not, sir. He was at Lisheen Fair; for as clever as he is, he couldn't kill two birds under one slat!"

Kate Keohane's voice moved unhurried from sentence to sentence, and her slow, pale eyes turned for an instant to the lair of the witnesses under the gallery.

"And you're asking the Bench to believe that this decent man left his business in Lisheen in order to slash fish at your mother?" said Mr. Mooney, truculently.

"B'lieve me, sorra much business he laves afther him wherever he'll go!" returned the witness. "Himself and his wife had business enough on the sthrand when the fish was dividing, and it is then themselves put every name on me."

"Ah, what harm are names!" said Mr. Mooney, dallying elegantly with a massive watch-chain.

"Come, now, ma'am! will you swear you got any ill-usage from Con Brickley or his wife?" He leaned over the front of his pew, and waited for the answer with his massive red head on one side.

"I was givin' blood like a c-cow that ye'd shtab with a knife!" said Kate Keohane, with unshaken dignity. "If it was yourself that was in it ye'd feel the smart as well as me. My hand and word on it, ye would! The marks is on me head still, like the prints of dog-bites!"

She lifted a lock of hair from her forehead, and exhibited a sufficiently repellent injury. Flurry Knox leaned forward.

"Are you sure you haven't that since the time there was that business between yourself and the post-mistress at Munig? I'm told you had the name of the post-office on your forehead where she struck you with the office stamp! Try, now, sergeant, can you read Munig on her forehead?"

The Court, not excepting its line of church-wardens, dissolved into laughter; Kate Keohane preserved an offended silence.

"I suppose you want us to believe," resumed Mr. Mooney, sarcastically, "that a fine, hearty woman like you wasn't defending yourself!" Then, with a turkey-cock burst of fury, "On your oath, now! What did you strike Honora Brickley with? Answer me that now! What had you in your hand?"

"I had nothing only the little rod I had after the ass," answered Miss Keohane, with a child-like candour. "I done nothing to them; but as for Con Brickley, he put his back to the cliff and he took the flannel wrop that he had on him, and he threw it on the sthrand, and he said he would have blood, murdher, or f-fish!"

She folded her shawl across her breast, a picture of virtue assailed, yet unassailed.

"You may go down now," said "Roaring Jack," rather hastily, "I want to have a few words with your brother."

Miss Keohane retired, without having moulted a feather of her dignity, and her brother Jer came heavily up the steps and on to the platform, his hot, wary, blue eyes gathering in the Bench and the attorneys in one bold, comprehensive glance. He was a tall, dark man of about five and forty, clean-shaved, save for two clerical inches of black whiskers, and in feature of the type of a London clergyman who would probably preach on Browning.

"Well, sir!" began Mr. Mooney, stimulatingly, "and are you the biggest blackguard from here to America?"

"I am not," said Jer Keohane, tranquilly.

"We had you here before us not so very long ago about kicking a goat, wasn't it? You got a little touch of a pound, I think?"

This delicate allusion to a fine that the Bench had thought fit to impose did not distress the witness.

"I did, sir."

"And how's our friend the goat?" went on Mr. Mooney, with the furious facetiousness reserved for hustling tough witnesses.

"Well, I suppose she's something west of the Skelligs by now," replied Jer Keohane with great composure.

An appreciative grin ran round the Court. The fact that the goat had died of the kick and been "given the cliff" being regarded as an excellent jest.

Mr. Mooney consulted his notes:

"Well, now, about this fight," he said, pleasantly, "did you see your sister catch Mrs. Brickley and pull her hair down to the ground and drag her shawl off of her?"

"Well," said the witness, airily, "they had a bit of a scratch on account o' the fish. Con Brickley had the shteer o' the boat in his hand, and says he, 'is there any man here that'll take the shteer from me?' The man was dhrunk, of course," added Jer charitably.

"Did you have any talk with his wife about the fish?"

"I couldn't tell the words that she said to me!" replied the witness, with a reverential glance at the Bench, "and she over-right three crowds o' men that was on the sthrand."

Mr. Mooney put his hands in his pockets and surveyed the witness.

"You're a very refined gentleman, upon my word! Were you ever in England?"

"I was, part of three years."

"Oh, that accounts for it, I suppose!" said Mr. Mooney, accepting this lucid statement without a stagger, and passing lightly on. "You're a widower, I understand, with no objection to consoling yourself?"

No answer.

"Now, sir! Can you deny that you made proposals of marriage to Con Brickley's daughter last Shraft?"

The plot thickened. Con Brickley's daughter was my kitchen maid.

Jer Keohane smiled tolerantly. "Ah! that was a thing o' nothing."

"Nothing!" said Mr. Mooney, with a roar of a tornado. "Do you call an impudent proposal of marriage to a respectable man's daughter nothing! That's English manners, I suppose!"

"I was goin' home one Sunday," said Jer Keohane, conversationally, to the Bench, "and I met the gerr'l and her mother. I spoke to the gerr'l in a friendly way, and asked her why wasn't she gettin' marrid, and she commenced to peg stones at me and dhrew several blows of an umbrella on me. I had only three bottles of porther taken. There now was the whole of it."

Mrs. Brickley, from the gallery, groaned heavily and ironically.

I found it difficult to connect these coquetries with my impressions of my late kitchenmaid, a furtive and touzled being, who, in conjunction with a pail and scrubbing brush, had been wont to melt round corners and into doorways at my approach.

"Are we trying a breach of promise?" interpolated Flurry; "if so, we ought to have the plaintiff in."

"My purpose, sir," said Mr. Mooney, in a manner discouraging to levity, "is to show that my clients have received annoyance and contempt from this man and his sister such as no parents would submit to."

A hand came forth from under the gallery and plucked at Mr. Mooney's coat. A red monkey face appeared out of the darkness, and there was a hoarse whisper, whose purport I could not gather. Con Brickley, the defendant, was giving instructions to his lawyer.

It was perhaps as a result of these that Jer Keohane's evidence closed here. There was a brief interval enlivened by coughs, grinding of heavy boots on the floor, and some mumbling and groaning under the gallery.

"There's great duck-shooting out on a lake on this island," commented Flurry to me, in a whisper. "My grand-uncle went there one time with an old duck-gun he had, that he fired with a fuse. He was three hours stalking the ducks before he got the gun laid. He lit the fuse then, and it set to work spluttering and hissing like a goods-engine till there wasn't a duck within ten miles. The gun went off then."

This useful side-light on the matter in hand was interrupted by the cumbrous ascent of the one-legged Con Brickley to the witness-table. He sat down heavily, with his slouch hat on his sound knee, and his wooden stump stuck out before him. His large monkey face was immovably serious; his eye was small, light grey, and very quick.

McCaffery, the opposition attorney, a thin, restless youth, with ears like the handles of an urn, took him in hand. To the pelting cross-examination that beset him Con Brickley replied with sombre deliberation, and with a manner of uninterested honesty, emphasising what he said with slight, very effective gestures of his big, supple hands. His voice was deep and pleasant; it betrayed no hint of so trivial a thing as satisfaction when, in the teeth of Mr. McCaffery's leading questions, he established the fact that the "little rod" with which Miss Kate Keohane had beaten his wife was the handle of a pitch-fork.

"I was counting the fish the same time," went on Con Brickley, in his rolling basso profundissimo, "and she said, 'Let the divil clear me out of the sthrand, for there's no one else will put me out!' says she."

"It was then she got the blow, I suppose!" said McCaffery, venomously; "you had a stick yourself, I daresay?"

"Yes. I had a stick. I must have a stick," (deep and mellow pathos was hinted at in the voice), "I am sorry to say. What could I do to her? A man with a wooden leg on a sthrand could do nothing!"

Something like a laugh ran at the back of the court. Mr. McCaffery's ears turned scarlet and became quite decorative. On or off a strand Con Brickley was not a person to be scored off easily.

His clumsy, yet impressive, descent from the witness stand followed almost immediately, and was not the least telling feature of his evidence. Mr. Mooney surveyed his exit with the admiration of one artist for another, and, rising, asked the Bench's permission to call Mrs. Brickley.

Mrs. Brickley, as she mounted to the platform, in the dark and nun-like severity of her long cloak, the stately blue cloth cloak that is the privilege of the Munster peasant woman, was an example of the rarely-blended qualities of picturesqueness and respectability. As she took her seat in the chair, she flung the deep hood back on her shoulders, and met the gaze of the court with her grey head erect; she was a witness to be proud of.

"Now, Mrs. Brickley," said "Roaring Jack," urbanely, "will you describe this interview between your daughter and Keohane."

"It was last Sunday in Shrove, your Worship, Mr. Flurry Knox, and gentlemen," began Mrs. Brickley nimbly, "meself and me little gerr'l was comin' from mass, and Mr. Jer Keohane came up to us and got on in a most unmannerable way. He asked me daughter would she marry him. Me daughter told him she would not, quite friendly like. I'll tell you no lie, gentlemen, she was teasing him with the umbrella the same time; an' he raised his shtick and dhrew a sthroke on her in the back, an' the little gerr'l took up a small pebble of a stone and fired it at him. She put the umbrella up to his mouth, but she called him no names. But as for him, the names he put on her was to call her 'a nasty, long, slopeen of a proud thing, and a slopeen of a proud tinker.'"

"Very lover-like expressions!" commented Mr. Mooney, doubtless stimulated by the lady-like titters from the barmaids; "and had this romantic gentleman made any previous proposals for your daughter?"

"Himself had two friends over from across the water one night to make the match, a Sathurday it was, and they should land the lee side o' the island, for the wind was a fright," replied Mrs. Brickley, launching her tale with the power of easy narration that is bestowed with such amazing liberality on her class. "The three o' them had dhrink taken, an' I went to shlap out the door agin them. Me husband said then we should let them in, if it was a Turk itself, with the rain that was in it. They were talking in it then till near the dawning, and in the latther end all that was between them was the boat's share."

"What do you mean by 'the boat's share'?" said I.

"'Tis the same as a man's share, me worshipful gintleman," returned Mrs. Brickley, splendidly; "it goes with the boat always, afther the crew and the saine has their share got."

I possibly looked as enlightened as I felt by this exposition.

"You mean that Jer wouldn't have her unless he got the boat's share with her?" suggested Flurry.

"He said it over-right all that was in the house, and he reddening his pipe at the fire," replied Mrs. Brickley, in full-sailed response to the helm. "'D'ye think,' says I to him, 'that me daughter would leave a lovely situation, with a kind and tendher masther, for a mean, hungry blagyard like yerself,' says I, 'that's livin' always in this backwards place!' says I."

This touching expression of preference for myself, as opposed to Mr. Keohane, was received with expressionless respect by the Court. Flurry, with an impassive countenance, kicked me heavily under cover of the desk. I said that we had better get on to the assault on the strand. Nothing could have been more to Mrs. Brickley's taste. We were minutely instructed as to how Katie Keohane drew the shawleen forward on Mrs. Brickley's head to stifle her; and how Norrie Keohane was fast in her hair. Of how Mrs. Brickley had then given a stroke upwards between herself and her face (whatever that might mean) and loosed Norrie from her hair. Of how she then sat down and commenced to cry from the use they had for her.

"'Twas all I done," she concluded, looking like a sacred picture, "I gave her a stroke of a pollock on them."

"As for language," replied Mrs. Brickley, with clear eyes, a little uplifted in the direction of the ceiling, "there was no name from heaven or hell but she had it on me, and wishin' the divil might burn the two heels off me, and the like of me wasn't in sivin parishes! And that was the clane part of the discoorse, yer Worships!"

Mrs. Brickley here drew her cloak more closely about her, as though to enshroud herself in her own refinement, and presented to the Bench a silence as elaborate as a drop scene. It implied, amongst other things, a generous confidence in the imaginative powers of her audience.

Whether or no this was misplaced, Mrs. Brickley was not invited further to enlighten the Court. After her departure the case droned on in inexhaustible rancour, and trackless complications as to the shares of the fish. Its ethics and its arithmetic would have defied the allied intellects of Solomon and Bishop Colenso. It was somewhere in that dead afternoon, when it was too late for lunch and too early for tea, that the Bench, wan with hunger, wound up the affair, by impartially binding both parties in sheaves "to the Peace."

FOOTNOTE:

[1] A large net.

"King William."

_From "Aliens of the West."_

BY CHARLOTTE O'CONOR ECCLES.

Mrs. Macfarlane was a tall, thin, and eminently respectable woman of fifty, possessed of many rigid virtues. She was a native of the north of Ireland, and had come originally to Toomevara as maid to the Dowager Lady Dunanway. On the death of her mistress, whom she served faithfully for many years, Lord Dunanway offered to set her up in business, and at the time our story opens she had been for two years proprietress of the buffet, and made a decent living by it; for as Toomevara is situated on the Great Southern and Western Railway, a fair amount of traffic passes through it.

The stationmaster, familiarly known as "Jim" O'Brien, was Toomevara born, and had once been a porter on that very line. He was an intelligent, easy-going, yet quick-tempered man of pronounced Celtic type, with a round, good-natured face, a humorous mouth, shrewd, twinkling eyes, and immense volubility.

Between him and Mrs. Macfarlane the deadliest warfare raged. She was cold and superior, and implacably in the right. She pointed out Jim's deficiencies whenever she saw them, and she saw them very often. All day long she sat in her refreshment room, spectacles on nose, her Bible open before her, knitting, and rising only at the entrance of a customer. Jim had an uneasy consciousness that nothing escaped her eye, and her critical remarks had more than once been reported to him.

"The bitther ould pill!" he said to his wife. "Why, the very look ov her 'ud sour a crock o' crame. She's as cross as a bag ov weasels."

Jim was a Catholic and a Nationalist. He belonged to the "Laygue," and spoke at public meetings as often as his duties allowed. He objected to being referred to by Mrs. Macfarlane as a "Papish" and a "Rebel."

"Papish, indeed!" said he. "Ribbil, indeed! Tell the woman to keep a civil tongue in her head, or 'twill be worse for her."

"How did the likes ov her iver get a husban'?" he would ask, distractedly, after a sparring match. "Troth, an' 'tis no wondher the poor man died."

Mrs. Macfarlane was full of fight and courage. Her proudest boast was of being the granddaughter, daughter, sister, and widow of Orangemen.

She looked on herself in Toomevara as a child of Israel among the Babylonians, and felt that it behoved her to uphold the standard of her faith. To this end she sang the praises of the Battle of the Boyne with a triumph that aggravated O'Brien to madness.

"God Almighty help the woman! Is it Irish at all she is--or what? To see her makin' merry because a parcel o' rascally Dutchmen----! Sure, doesn't she know 'twas Irish blood they spilt at the Boyne? An' to see her takin' pride in it turns me sick, so it does. If she was English, now, I could stand it, but she callin' herself an Irishwoman--faith, she has the bad dhrop in her, so she has, to be glad at her counthry's misforchins."

Jim's rage was the greater because Mrs. Macfarlane, whatever she said, said little or nothing to him. She passed him by with lofty scorn and indifference affecting not to see him; and while she did many things that O'Brien found supremely annoying, they were things strictly within her rights.

Matters had not arrived at this pass all at once. The feud dated from Mrs. Macfarlane's having adopted a little black dog--a mongrel--on which she lavished a wealth of affection, and which, as the most endearing title she knew, she named "King William." This, of course, was nobody's concern save Mrs. Macfarlane's own, and in a world of philosophers she would have been allowed to amuse herself unheeded, but Jim O'Brien was not a philosopher.

Unlike most Irishmen, he had a great love for flowers. His garden was beautifully kept, and he was prouder of his roses than of anything on earth save his eldest daughter, Kitty, who was nearly sixteen. Picture, then, his rage and dismay when he one day found his beds scratched into holes and his roses uprooted by "King William," who had developed a mania for hiding away bones under Jim's flowers. O'Brien made loud and angry complaints to the dog's owner, which she received with unconcern and disbelief.

"Please, Mr. O'Brien," she said, with dignity, "don't try to put it on the puir wee dog. Even if yu _du_ dislike his name, that's no reason for saying he was in your garden. He knows betther, so he does, than to go where he's not wanted."

After this it was open war between the stationmaster and the widow.

Under the windows of the refreshment room were two narrow flower-beds. These Jim took care never to touch, affecting to consider them the exclusive property of Mrs. Macfarlane. They were long left uncultivated, an eyesore to the stationmaster; but one day Kelly, the porter, came to him with an air of mystery, to say that "th ould wan"--for by this term was Mrs. Macfarlane generally indicated--"was settin' somethin' in the beds beyant."

Jim came out of his office and walked up and down the platform with an air of elaborate unconsciousness. Sure enough, there was Mrs. Macfarlane gardening. She had donned old gloves and a clean checked apron, and, trowel in hand, was breaking up the caked earth, preparatory, it would seem, to setting plants.

"What the dickens is she doin'?" asked Jim, when he got back.

"Not a wan ov me knows," said Kelly. "She's been grubbin' there since nine o'clock."

From this time Mrs. Macfarlane was assiduous in the care of her two flower-beds. Every day she might be seen weeding or watering, and though Jim steadily averted his gaze, he was devoured by curiosity as to the probable results. What on earth did she want to grow? The weeks passed. Tiny green seedlings at last pushed their way through the soil, and in due course the nature of the plants became evident. Jim was highly excited, and rushed home to tell his wife.

"Be the hokey, Mary," he said, "'tis lilies she has there, an may I never sin, but it's my belief they're orange lilies, an' if they are, I'll root ev'ry wan ov thim out, if I die for it."

"Be quiet, now," said Mary. "How d'ye know they're lilies at all? For the love o' God keep her tongue off ov ye, an' don't be puttin' yersel' in her way."

"Whist, woman, d'ye think I'm a fool? 'Tis lilies th' are annyways, an' time'll tell if they're orange or not, but faith, if th'are, I won't shtand it.' I'll complain to the Boord."

"Sure the Boord'll be on her side, man. Don't yeh know the backin' she has? They'll say 'Why shouldn't she have orange lilies if she likes?'"

"Ah, Mary, 'tis too sinsible y'are inthirely. Have ye no sperrit, woman alive, to let her ride rough-shod over uz this way? 'Make a mouse o' yerself an' the cat'll ate ye,' 's a thrue saying. Sure, Saint Pether himself cuddn't shtand it, an' be the piper that played before Moses, I won't!"

"Ye misfortunit man, don't be dhrawin' down ructions on yer head. Haven't yeh childer to think about? An' don't be throublin' yerself over what she does. 'Tis plazin' her y'are whin she sees y're mad. Take no notice, man, an' p'raps she'll shtop."

"The divil fly away wid her for a bitther ould sarpint. The vinom's in her, sure enough. Why should I put up wid her, I'd like to know?"

"Ah, keep yer tongue between yer teeth, Jim. 'Tis too onprudent y'are. Not a worrd ye dhrop but is brought back to her be some wan. Have sinse, man. You'll go sayin' that to Joe Kelly, an' he'll have it over the town in no time, an' some wan'll carry it to her."

"An' do ye think I care a thrawneen[1] for the likes ov her? Faith, not a pin. If you got yer way, Mary, ye'd have me like the man that was hanged for sayin' nothin'. Sure, I never did a hand's turn agin her, an' 'tis a low, mane thrick ov her to go settin' orange lilies over foreninst me, an' she knowin' me opinions."

"Faith, I'll not say it wasn't, Jim, if they _are_ orange lilies; but sure, ye don't know rightly yet what th'are, an' in God's name keep quite till you do."

The days went by. The lilies grew taller and taller. They budded, they bloomed, and, sure enough, Jim had been in the right--orange lilies they proved to be.

"They'll mek a fine show for the twelfth of July, I'm thinkin'," said Mrs. Macfarlane, complacently, as she walked by her beds, swinging a dripping watering-pot.

At the time of the blossoming of the orange lilies, James O'Brien was not at home, having had to go some twenty miles down the line on official business. The obnoxious flowers took advantage of his absence to make a gay show. When he returned, as luck would have it Mrs. Macfarlane was away, and had shut up the refreshment room, but had not locked it. No one locks doors in Toomevara unless their absence is to be lengthy. She had left "King William" behind, and told Joe Kelly to take care of the dog, in case he should be lonely, for she had been invited to the wedding of an old fellow servant, the late butler at Lord Dunanway's, who was to be married that day to the steward's daughter.

All this Joe Kelly told the stationmaster on his return, but he did not say a word about the orange lilies, being afraid of an explosion, and, as he said, "detarmined not to meddle or make, but just to let him find it out himself."