Tom Burke Of "Ours", Volume I. Lever Charles James

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СКАЧАТЬ said Darby, “that ‘s Peg’s cabin; and though it ‘s not very remarkable in the way of cookery or the like, it ‘s the only house within seven miles of us.”

      As we came nearer, the aspect of the building became even less enticing. It was a low mud hovel, with a miserable roof of sods, or scraws, as they are technically called; a wretched attempt at a chimney occupying the gable; and the front to the road containing a small square aperture, with a single pane of glass as a window, and a wicker contrivance in the shape of a door, which, notwithstanding the severity of the day, lay wide open to permit the exit of the smoke, which rolled more freely through this than through the chimney. A filthy pool of stagnant, green-covered water stood before the door, through which a little causeway of earth led. Upon this a thin, lank-sided sow was standing to be rained, on, her long, pointed snout turned meditatively towards the luscious mud beside her. Displacing this Important member of the family with an unceremonious kick. Darby stooped to enter the low doorway, uttering as he did so the customary “God save all here!” As I followed him in, I did not catch the usual response to the greeting, and from the thick smoke which filled the cabin, could see nothing whatever around me.

      “Well, Peg,” said Darby, “how is it with you the day?”

      A low grunting noise issued from the foot of a little mud wall beside the fireplace. I turned and beheld the figure of a woman of some seventy years of age, seated beside the turf embers; her dark eyes, bleared with smoke and dimmed with age, were still sharp and piercing; and her nose, thin and aquiline, indicated a class of features by no means common among the people. Her dress was the blue frieze coat of a laboring man, over the woollen gown usually worn by women. Her feet and legs were bare; and her head was covered with an old straw bonnet, whose faded ribbon and tarnished finery betokened its having once belonged to some richer owner. There was no vestige of any furniture, – neither table nor chair, nor dresser, nor even a bed, unless some straw laid against the wall in one corner could be thus called; a pot suspended over the wet and sodden turf by a piece of hay rope, and an earthen pipkin with water stood beside her. The floor of the hovel, lower in many places than the road without, was cut up into sloppy mud by the tread of the sow, who ranged at will through the premises. In a word, more dire and wretched poverty it was impossible to conceive.

      Darby’s first movement was to take off the lid and peer into the pot, when the bubbling sound of the boiling potatoes assured him that we should have at least something to eat; his next, was to turn a little basket upside down for a seat, to which he motioned me with his hand; then, approaching the old woman, he placed his hand to his mouth and shouted in her ear, —

      “What ‘s the major after this morning, Peg?”

      She shook her head gloomily a couple of times, but gave no answer.

      “I ‘m thinking there ‘s bad work going on at the town there,” cried he, in the same loud tone as before.

      Peg muttered something in Irish, but far too low to be audible.

      “Is she mad, poor thing?” said I, in a whisper.

      The words were not well uttered when she darted on me her black and piercing eyes, with a look so steadfast as to make me quail beneath them.

      “Who ‘s that there?” said the hag, in a croaking, harsh voice.

      “He ‘s a young boy from beyond Loughrea.”

      “No!” shouted she, in a tone of passionate energy; “don’t tell me a lie. I ‘d know his brows among a thousand, – he ‘s a son of Matt Burke’s, of Cronmore.”

      “Begorra, she is a witch; devil a doubt of it!” muttered Darby between his teeth. “You ‘re right, Peg,” continued he, after a moment. “His father’s dead, and the poor child’s left nothing in the world.”

      “And so ould Matt’s dead?” interrupted she. “When did he die?”

      “On Tuesday morning, before day.”

      “I was driaming of him that morning, and I thought he kem up here to the cabin door on his knees, and said, ‘Peggy, Peggy M’Casky! I’m come to ax your pardon for all I done to you.’ And I sat up in my bed, and cried out, ‘Who ‘s that?’ and he said, ‘'T is me, – ‘t is Mister Burke; I ‘m come to give you back your lease.’ ‘I ‘ll tell you what you ‘ll give me back,’ says I; ‘give me the man whose heart you bruck with bad treatment; give me the two fine boys you transported for life; give me back twenty years of my own, that I spent in sorrow and misery.’”

      “Peg, acushla! don’t speak of it any more. The poor child here, that ‘s fasting from daybreak, he is n’t to blame for what his father did. I think the praties is done by this time.”

      So saying, he lifted the pot from the fire, and carried it to the door to strain off the water. The action seemed to rouse the old woman, who rose rapidly to her legs, and, hastening to the door, snatched the pot from his hand and pushed him to one side.

      “‘Tis two days since I tasted bit or sup; ‘tis God himself knows when and where I may have it again; but if I never broke my fast, I’ll not do it with the son of him that left me a lone woman this day, that brought the man that loved me to the grave, and my children to shame forever.”

      As she spoke, she dashed the pot into the road with such force as to break it into fifty pieces; and then, sitting down on the outside of the cabin, she wrung her hands and moaned piteously, in the very excess of her sorrow.

      “Let us be going,” said Darby, in a whisper. “There ‘a no spaking to her when she ‘s one of them fits on her.”

      We moved silently from the hovel, and gained the road. My heart was full to bursting; shame and abasement overwhelmed me, and I dated not look up.

      “Good-by, Peg. I hope we ‘ll be better friends when we meet again,” said Darby, as he passed out.

      She made no reply, but entered the cabin, from which, in an instant after, she emerged, carrying a lighted sod of turf in a rude wooden tongs.

      “Come along quick!” said Darby, with a look of terror; “she’s going to curse you.”

      I turned round, transfixed and motionless. If my life depended on it, I could not have stirred a limb. The old woman by this time had knelt down on the road, and was muttering rapidly to herself.

      “Gome along, I say I,” said Darby, pulling me by the arm.

      “And now,” cried the hag aloud, “may bad luck be your shadow wherever you walk, with sorrow behind and bad hopes before you! May you never taste happiness nor ease; and, like this turf, may your heart be always burning here, and – ”

      I heard no more, for Darby, tearing me away by main force, dragged me along the road, just as the hissing turf embers had fallen at my feet where the hag had thrown them.

      CHAPTER IV. MY WANDERINGS

      I CANNOT deny it, – the horrible imprecation I had heard uttered against me seemed to fill up the cup of my misery. An outcast, without home, without a friend, this alone was wanting to overwhelm me with very wretchedness; and as I covered my face with both hands, I thought my heart would break.

      “Come, come. Master Tom!” said Darby, “don’t be afeard; it’ll never do you harm, all she said. I made the sign of the cross on the road between you and her with the end of my stick, and you ‘re safe enough this time. Faix, she ‘s a quare divil when she ‘s roused, – to destroy an СКАЧАТЬ