Part 17

She had no meddling parents to interfere with us; and Skelpie was, of course, absent from home five nights in the week. Many were the pranks which the dear jade played me; but I did not care;--they kept my flame alive, and her occasional kind looks and unsolicited salutes convinced me that I held a place in her heart. In the meantime, however, I carried on the war in another quarter. I had two nights in the week to spare, and these I spent at a farm-house about a mile from the village, with a slender young maiden, named Amaranth Saffem.

One Saturday evening, Skelpie overtook me as I was journeying towards Amaranth's dwelling. He accosted me civilly; and having some serious notions about his sister, I did not scruple to enter into conversation with him. He had not crossed me for above a month; and Kate had informed me, the night before, “that she should have a good bit of gold, if the old chap at the Lands' End would but take it into his head just to die a bit:” these were good reasons for my civility, and we discoursed on the most fashionable village topics with great urbanity and mildness. At length, however, we arrived at Amaranth's door; and then, for the first time, the truth flashed upon each of our minds. We were both evidently bent on a love-visit to the fair Saffern. Skelpie looked rather hurt, methought, and could not help _heaving_ a short sigh. However, we both went in, and found Amaranth alone. It was market-day; and her crippled grandfather, with whom she dwelt, as we both well knew, was gone to, and in all probability would remain at, the next market-town until a late hour, according to his usual custom; otherwise, we should almost as soon have ventured into a tiger's den, to despoil the animal of a whelp, as pay a love-visit to the old man's granddaughter. The miller was a lamb, compared with dame Caddlefurrow; and that lady a dove in deportment, to old Jagger Saffern. But more of him anon.

Amaranth, it was plain, favoured me rather than Skelpie. Without vanity be it spoken, I was, at that time, barring my obesity, which rendered me somewhat unsightly in the eyes of the lean, rather a personable man, and not quite forty. I was by no means particularly solicitous to gain the young Saffem's affections, yet she clung to me in preference to Skelpie, who did all in his power to please her. He was evidently in love, and for the first time in his life, felt the pangs of jealousy in his heart. I was his successful rival!--I, even I, Habakkuk Bullwrinkle, the devil's bird, whom he had so long despised, had succeeded in warping the affections of his Amaranth!--He bit his lip, loured and smiled by fits, and, in vain endeavoured to conceal the state of his heart. Amaranth seemed to rejoice in his torments; she had always been tolerably liberal in her tokens of affection, but, on this occasion, she almost exceeded the bounds of probability. I did not much like it at last; for I began to think she was making a fool of me. We went on in this way for above an hour, when the old cripple's poney suddenly clattered into the court-yard. Skelpie started on his legs in evident alarm. There was no way of escape, but through a back door into a little yard, which was surrounded by a villanous high wall, so smooth, and well-built too, as to defy even Skelpie's clambering capabilities.

We had not been a moment outside the door, before the cripple entered the house. Skelpie was endeavouring with all his might to get over the wall: he clung like a cat to the bare bricks; but, before he had well reached half-way up, his foot slipped, and down he came. I was standing disconsolately underneath him; he fell so suddenly, that I had not time to get out of the way, and Skelpie's ponderous and hard skull struck me full in the pit of my stomach, and sent me staggering against the back door, which naturally gave way with the shock, and I was precipitated, on the broad of my back, in the very middle of the floor. Luckily, I came in contact with the table on which the candle stood, and extinguished the light in my fall. The embers were dying on the hearth, and Skelpie had hauled me by the legs, back into the yard, before the cripple (who waited to reach his loaded blunderbuss before he looked round) could catch more than a vague glimpse of my form and features. The door swung inward, and Skelpie easily held it fast enough to prevent the cripple from pulling it open;--at the same time carefully screening his body behind the wall of the house, from the cripple's bullets, which we expected to hear rattling through the door every moment. He growled like an incensed bear, and muttered curses by wholesale on poor Amaranth, whom we heard whining most piteously. At length, he seemed to take a sudden resolution, chuckled audibly, and proceeded to barricade the door with all the furniture in the room. Here was an end to all our hopes of enfranchisement and safety. But, oh! dear me! what were my feelings, when I heard the cripple hobbling up stairs, and trying to open a little window which commanded the yard! We were in a sad situation; our only choice of avoiding the lynx eyes of Jagger was by getting into two water-butts, which stood in the yard. The windows of the house looked into every corner, so that we could not possibly hope to conceal ourselves behind them. In we went together, but my ill luck still attended me; Skelpie crouched comfortably in the belly of a dry butt, but the one, into which I floundered, was half full of water. The chilling liquid rose to within a foot and a half of the brim, the moment I got in, so that it was impossible for me to crouch, being actually standing on tip-toe, neck high in water! It was a bleak night, but my fever saved my life.

The cripple's blunderbuss, of unprecedented calibre, was thrust out of the window, before I could well moderate my quick breathing. He looked into every corner of the yard, but, happily, did not perceive my miserable sconce, which was floating in the water-butt, immediately beneath him. He descended in a few minutes, and removed the furniture from the door, searched all round the yard, and, at length, discovering the marks of Skelpie's shoes in the wall, concluded that we had escaped, and went grumbling to bed. It was a long time before I would suffer Skelpie to help me out of my hiding-place: he effected the job with infinite difficulty, and led me, dripping like a watering-pot, through the house.

About a week after this adventure, I discovered that Kate and Amaranth, who were once bosom friends, had quarrelled about me, and were now as spiteful to each other as possible. They met, one evening, at old Hetty Caddlefurrow's, and, on comparing notes, found that I was playing a double game. Ally Budd was present, but she said nothing. After lavishing the usual abusive epithets on me, they began to look coldly upon each other: from cool looks, they proceeded to vituperative insinuations; and, before they parted, naturally came to an open rupture. Occasionally, I suffered a little from their pouting and touting; but, in the main, I was happy enough between them. Each tried all her arts to win me from her rival they sometimes met, grew great friends, vowed they would both turn their backs upon me for ever, kissed, cried, quarrelled again, and grew more rancorous to each other and loving to me, than before. Skelpie became an altered man. Amaranth flouted him, abused his sister to his face, and caressed me in his presence;--although, I believe, the hussy, if she knew her own heart, loved the fellow all the time. Skelpie dressed smartly, discontinued his visits to all other girls, neglected his games, and even his daily occupations, to court Amaranth. He won the heart of the old cripple Saffern; but the lass still turned a deaf ear to his vows:--she was trying to vex Kate Skelpie. I was completely happy; I felt--but wherefore should I dwell on this love contest?--Skelpie is looking over my shoulder, and does not seem to relish the protracted detail. Suffice it to say then, that the banns of marriage were at length published, between Habakkuk Bull wrinkle, gentleman, and Kate Skelpie, spinster;--that we were united in due season;--and that Skelpie, a short time afterwards, obtained the hand of Amaranth. The angry passions of the girls soon subsided, and they loved each other better than ever. Skelpie became my bosom friend; I prospered in business; and the two families have lived together for above twenty years, in concord and happiness. The roses have faded in Amaranth's cheek, and the fire of Kate's eye is somewhat quenched; but the relation of my own mishaps, Skelpie's adventures, and our strange courtships, never fails to draw back the youthful smiles of hilarity in both their matronly faces. Heaven bless them!

*****

SECOND COURSE: THE NEIGHBOURS OF AN OLD IRISH BOY.

INTRODUCTION.

A one-armed naval Lieutenant, on half-pay, who was distantly related to my mother's family, had the good fortune to be presented, in his declining years, with a little cottage and a small portion of land situate in a village on the coast of Ireland, by one of his wealthy nephews, to whom it was unexpectedly devised by a maiden grand-aunt, who had never seen him above once in his life. I accompanied the Lieutenant, from Waterford, for no other reason than because I had nothing, either better or worse, to do, when he went to take possession of his nephew's gift; and to pay a visit, after a separation of some years, to his old shipmate--the friend of his youth, and the companion of his manhood--Jimmy Fitzgerald,--better known by the appellation of the Old Irish Boy, who dwelt in a mud cabin on the skirts of the village: the history of whose neighbours is given in the ensuing pages, as nearly as possible in the same terms as he narrated it to my worthy relative, the one-armed Lieutenant, and myself, in the course of the two or three first evenings which we passed in his company.

JIMMY FITZGERALD.

Jimmy Fitzgerald and the old Lieutenant had both entered the navy in equally humble situations, at an early age: the friends of the latter, eventually, procured his advancement; but Fitzgerald, whose relations were poor, never had the luck to be rated on any ship's books in a higher station than that of an able seaman. The difference of rank had not the effect of diminishing the respect and affection which the Lieutenant and Fitzgerald bore towards each other: in their manhood they were upon as familiar terms, so far as naval etiquette would permit, as when in their boyhood they had been equals. The Lieutenant had saved his friend's life, at the risk of his own, in the Mediterranean; and, to judge from appearances, he was, if possible, more partial to Jimmy Fitzgerald than the Old Irish Boy was to him. The preserver frequently is found to display more affection towards the preserved, than the preserved either exhibits or feels towards his preserver.

No two men could be much more unlike each other than the Lieutenant and Jimmy Fitzgerald. The former had received a tolerable education before he went to sea; he had taken every opportunity to improve himself while in the service; from the period of his retiring, he had read much on general subjects; and he was, at the time of his taking possession of his nephew's cottage, a very well informed man. Jimmy Fitzgerald, on the contrary, scarcely knew how to read when he left his native village; he had picked up but a slight smattering of such knowledge as is to be obtained from books, in his progress through life; but he possessed a finer mind and greater powers of observation than his friend; and the Old Irish Boy was, perhaps, superior to the better educated Lieutenant, in mental riches, discrimination, and eloquence, when they again met, after an interval of many years' separation, under the roof of the former. Jimmy Fitzgerald's style rose with his subject; and he occasionally found himself at such an elevation, that it was a mystery how he had been able to attain it. The Lieutenant was always level in his discourse: he neither descended so low, nor rose so high as his friend; nor did he, like Fitzgerald, ever presume to discuss any but commonplace subjects. Jimmy occasionally indulged in such daring flights, that he toppled down headlong from an altitude which he was unable to support; a disgrace to which the more sober and matter-of-fact Lieutenant never subjected himself. The one sedulously avoided the utterance of anything new; the other, if it had been in his power, would rarely have said anything that was old. The Lieutenant was circumspect, and the Old Boy ambitious: the former was stiff, constrained, and rather stately in his language; the latter free, careless, and Hibernically vernacular. Jimmy Fitzgerald was poor, almost dependant on the exertions of a niece and her two sons for support, and so afflicted in his nether extremities, that he could not move from his chair without assistance; but he was always merry, and rarely complained. The Lieutenant possessed a competency, he enjoyed a most robust state of health, his legs, and the arm which the enemies of his country had left him, were still in full vigour; but he frequently repined at his poverty, occasional slight attacks of head-ache, and at being compelled to do the work of two hands with one.

Notwithstanding the difference in their temperaments, the two friends had rarely disagreed; and Orestes and Pylades, or Damon and Pythias, could not have exhibited more affection towards each other, after a long separation, than Jimmy Fitzgerald and the Lieutenant did, when the latter entered the Old Irish Boy's cabin. My relation had, to use his own expression, been roaming about, here and there and everywhere, for a number of years; and so little positive inclination did he feel for passing the remainder of his life in one place, that he would, probably, have declined his nephew's well-meant offer, had not Jimmy Fitzgerald's cabin been within ten minutes' walk of the cottage, and the sea been visible from two of its four front windows. The village was principally occupied by fishermen; but there were two or three respectable families resident in the neighbourhood: to these the old Lieutenant had letters of introduction; so that he felt satisfied, on entering upon his tolerably neat, but humble abode, that he should not be at a loss for society, even if it were possible for him ever to grow tired of that of his friend Fitzgerald.

After a great number of mutual inquiries had been answered, and many expressions of reciprocal friendship had been uttered, Jimmy Fitzgerald drew forth a little tub of pothien from beneath the bed, with his crutch,--which was of no other use to him but to perform this and similar offices,--and protested by several saints, whose names have escaped my memory, that we should have a jovial night of it. “Many's the pitcher of good drink,” he exclaimed, “the Lieutenant and I have helped one another to empty: though, I'll say this for him, he'd always thirty-one points and a half more love for sobriety than ever Jimmy Fitzgerald could boast; and at that same time, when he'd make mouths at a third can, and draw back from a fourth, as he would from a dog that was going to snap at him, I drank, and drank,--more shame to me for it,--as though I'd declared war against spirits, and wished to exterminate them,--rum, in particular,--from the face of the earth. I think I'm a better man than I was long ago: no thanks to me, for that, though, perhaps; for I'm out of the way of temptation; and if I'd the pay of an admiral, I couldn't enjoy myself as I did long ago. It's wrong of us to brag of our virtue, when we've no appetite left in us for sin:--that's a saying I stole from the priest, because it plazed me. You'll like Father Killala mightily, Lieutenant, when you come to know him; as you soon will, won't you? And noticing him reminds me of telling you, that while you're here, I'll engage you'll never get reproached for being a Protestant.”

“Toleration, Jimmy--”

“Is it toleration?” exclaimed Fitzgerald, interrupting the Lieutenant; “why then, in toleration, Father Killalas flock are all lambkins. I'll add to that,--because, I know you'll like to hear it--we're as quiet as mice in these parts: we've no fighting, nor fairs, nor wren-feasts; and as few ghosts or goblins, Banshees, Lepreghauns, or white women on horseback, as you'd wish: for we don't give such cattle much encouragement. Don't that plaze you, Lieutenant?”

“It does,--it does; and I have no doubt but that I shall pass my days peacefully and pleasantly in your village, my good old friend. Jimmy Fitzgerald and I,” continued the Lieutenant, addressing me with unusual animation, “have fought and bled side by side; we were confined together, for four years, in a French prison, from which we escaped in company; we had but one tobacco-box between us, for fifteen months; and we accidentally fell in love with the same woman. Jimmy acted most magnanimously on that occasion: as soon as he discovered that I was his rival, he instantly resigned his pretensions in my favour.”

“And you were quite as polite to me, Lieutenant,” said Jimmy, “and I don't forget it to you to this day. You insisted, you know, as strongly as I did: so that as each was resolute in not cutting out his friend, the darling delight of our hearts got neither of us; and she's now living,--an ould maid, as I'm tould,--near upon a mile and a half this side of Thurles.”

“Is it possible?” exclaimed the Lieutenant.

“It's as true as you're born, if Corney Carolan is to be believed on his oath. I wouldn't take his word; but when a man swears to what he says, it's not dacent to discredit him, is it?”

“Certainly not,” replied the Lieutenant. “And so Peggy is living within a mile and a half of Thurles, is she?--unmarried, too, you say?”

“She is; and I don't think I'd be doing my duty if I didn't tell you. I'll just take this present opportunity of saying, too, that as you think of settling, and as you're still well-looking, and I'm broke down out-and-out, so that she wouldn't look upon me,--I'd sacrifice nothing,--that is, I wouldn't intirely brake my heart if you wint and married her.”

“James Fitzgerald,” said the Lieutenant, “you are still the noble fellow you were thirty years ago. You have forestalled me on this occasion: I assure you that I was just working myself up to say to you what you have said to me. You are still a bachelor, Jimmy, and, as far as I am concerned, Miss Margaret M'Carthy is quite at your service.”

“Thank you kindly, and good luck to you for this and all that's past,” said Jimmy; “but, to spake my mind,--I never cared much about Peg.”

“Nor I, upon my honour!” exclaimed the Lieutenant.

“I was glad of an excuse to be rid of her,” quoth Fitzgerald.

“Precisely my own case, I protest,” said the Lieutenant.

“And I never cared one half so little for her, as I do just now.”

“We coincide on this point to a tittle.”

“Then what becomes of our mutual devotion, Lieutenant? It was all moonshine, you see.”

“Not exactly,” replied the Lieutenant; “man can look back on past occurrences, and see circumstances in their true light--”

“Better than he can when they're under his nose?” interrupted Fitzgerald. “Is it that you mane?”

“It is: passion and prejudice, as philosophy teaches us--”

“Hould your tongue, Lieutenant,” said Fitzgerald; “for I think I can find a shorter way for us out of the bog, than your jack-o-lantern philosophy will light us to. The truth is, we were young and foolish that time; we thought we loved the young woman, and we didn't: so there's an end of Peg. My blessings be on her for all that, though! She never did me harm; and one of us, may be, was wrong in not marrying her.”

“She told me to my face,--truth is a jewel, Jimmy Fitzgerald,” said the Lieutenant, “she told me, calmly and resolutely, when I informed her that you were as deeply in love with her as myself, that we had mistaken innocent flirting for affection; and that, were a formal proposal made to her, she should indignantly reject it; 'for,' said she, 'I would not have either of you, if one was a Rear Admiral, and the other a Major of Marines.' That was her precise expression.”

“Oh! Time, Time!” exclaimed Jimmy; “what a fine auld fellow you are, to be sure! How you open our eyes, and bring things to light! If it wasn't for you, Truth might often go hide her head.”

“I think,” said the Lieutenant, rather gaily, “that if I wanted a wife, I might probably find one who would suit me better than Peggy, among your neighbours, friend Fitzgerald. And, by-the-by, as I am coming to live among them, I should be glad if you would afford me a little insight to their various characters, circumstances, and histories. I am well aware of your capability to do so:--when I found you on board the Janus, after we had parted company for more than seven years, you did me incalculable benefit, by giving me a descriptive portrait of every soul in the ship; from the cook's boy up to the captain. Will you oblige me?”

“I will, in that or anything else that's in the power o' me,” replied the Old Boy. “If I devoted one half o' my life to you, since I was twenty, I'd still be your debtor for the other half: for didn't you save the whole of it at the risk of your own?--You did, then; and I'll never--”

“Psha, psha, Fitzgerald! you know what strong objections I have to your dwelling on that topic.”

“Go along with you, and don't be prating so, sir,” said Jimmy; “I won't put up with your taking the liberty of doing a fine thing for me, and then bidding me not spake of it. My bits of gratitude, now and then, goes for the interest; but I'll never be able to pay off the debt. Still, though the one is out of my power to do, I'd not be aisy in my own mind if I neglected the other that _isn't_: so that, after all, may be, when we think we're doing great things, by acting as we should to others, we're just egged on to it, by the fear of not being on good terms with ourselves. You've often tould me, Lieutenant, I should be your Corporal Trim,--the man you and I read about, long ago, in Jack Flanagan's bit of a book, aboard the Bellerophon: and I would be so, but my legs took to their heels and deserted me, you know; and so I couldn't, could I? Did you ever get hould of a book, since I saw you, with the middle and both ends of that story in it?--If you did, as we'd only the middle and a bit o' the beginning in Jack Flanagan's greasy library, I'd be glad if you'd tell it me.”

“I will, with pleasure, Fitzgerald, when--”

“When I've described my neighbours to you, is it? Well, then, I'll do that, I think, before we part, if the whiskey houlds out, and it don't get much the better of us. But it sha'n't, shall it?--for we'll put ourselves upon short allowance, and drink as we ought, to the renewal of our acquaintance, when I'm done. I'll tell you, before I begin, that you couldn't pick out any nine in the whole barony, knows half so much about the people that's in it, as myself; though I'm fast moored here, like a Trinity-house buoy on a sand-bank: but though I see little, I hear much; and as I can't go to any body, why, every body comes to me.”

“I am grieved to the heart, Jimmy Fitzgerald,” said the Lieutenant, “to behold you so fettered by your infirmities; confined, if I may use the expression, like a pig in a coop--”