Kitabı oku: «The Fortunes Of Glencore», sayfa 2

CHAPTER II. GLENCORE CASTLE

When the Corporal, followed by Billy, entered the gloomy hall of the Castle, they found two or three country people conversing in a low but eager voice together, who speedily turned towards them, to learn if the doctor had come.

“Here ‘s all I could get in the way of a doctor,” said Craggs, pushing Billy towards them as he spoke.

“Faix, and ye might have got worse,” muttered a very old man; “Billy Traynor has the lucky hand.’”

“How is my lord, now, Nelly?” asked the Corporal of a woman who, with bare feet, and dressed in the humblest fashion of the peasantry, appeared.

“He’s getting weaker and weaker, sir; I believe he’s sinking. I’m glad it’s Billy is come; I’d rather see him than all the doctors in the country.”

“Follow me,” said Craggs, giving a signal to step lightly; and he led the way up a narrow stone stair, with a wall on either hand. Traversing a long, low corridor, they reached a door, at which having waited for a second or two to listen, Craggs turned the handle and entered. The room was very large and lofty, and, seen in the dim light of a small lamp upon the hearthstone, seemed even more spacious than it was. The oaken floor was uncarpeted, and a very few articles of furniture occupied the walls. In one corner stood a large bed, the heavy curtains of which had been gathered up on the roof, the better to admit air to the sick man.

As Billy drew nigh with cautious steps, he perceived that, although worn and wasted by long illness, the patient was a man still in the very prime of life. His dark hair and beard, which he wore long, were untinged with gray, and his forehead showed no touch of age. His dark eyes were wide open, and his lips slightly parted, his whole features exhibiting an expression of energetic action, even to wildness. Still he was sleeping; and, as Craggs whispered, he seldom slept otherwise, even when in health. With all the quietness of a trained practitioner, Billy took down the watch that was pinned to the curtain and proceeded to count the pulse.

“A hundred and thirty-eight,” muttered he, as he finished; and then, gently displacing the bedclothes, laid his hand upon the heart.

With a long-drawn sigh, like that of utter weariness, the sick man moved his head round and fixed his eyes upon him.

“The doctor!” said he, in a deep-toned but feeble voice. “Leave me, Craggs – leave me alone with him.”

And the Corporal slowly retired, turning as he went to look back towards the bed, and evidently going with reluctance.

“Is it fever?” asked the sick man, in a faint but unfaltering accent.

“It’s a kind of cerebral congestion, – a matter of them membranes that’s over the brain, with, of course, febrilis generalis.”

The accentuation of these words, marked as it was by the strongest provincialism of the peasant, attracted the sick man’s attention, and he bent upon him a look at once searching and severe.

“What are you – who are you?” cried he, angrily.

“What I am is n’t so aisy to say; but who I am is clean beyond me.”

“Are you a doctor?” asked the sick man, fiercely.

“I’m afear’d I’m not, in the sense of a gradum Universitatis, – a diplomia; but sure maybe Paracelsus himself just took to it, like me, having a vocation, as one might say.”

“Ring that bell,” said the other, peremptorily.

And Billy obeyed without speaking.

“What do you mean by this, Craggs?” said the Viscount, trembling with passion. “Who have you brought me? What beggar have you picked off the highway? Or is he the travelling fool of the district?”

But the anger that supplied strength hitherto now failed to impart energy, and he sank back wasted and exhausted. The Corporal bent over him, and spoke something in a low whisper, but whether the words were heard or not, the sick man now lay still, breathing heavily.

“Can you do nothing for him?” asked Craggs, peevishly – “nothing but anger him?”

“To be sure I can if you let me,” said Billy, producing a very ancient lancet-case of boxwood tipped with ivory. “I’ll just take a dash of blood from the temporal artery, to relieve the cerebrum, and then we’ll put cowld on his head, and keep him quiet.”

And with a promptitude that showed at least self-confidence, he proceeded to accomplish the operation, every step of which he effected skilfully and well.

“There, now,” said he, feeling the pulse, as the blood continued to flow freely, “the circulation is relieved at once; it’s the same as opening a sluice in a mill-dam. He ‘s better already.”

“He looks easier,” said Craggs.

“Ay, and he feels it,” continued Billy. “Just notice the respiratory organs, and see how easy the intercostials is doing their work now. Bring me a bowl of clean water, some vinegar, and any ould rags you have.”

Craggs obeyed, but not without a sneer at the direction.

“All over the head,” said Billy; “all over it, – back and front, – and with the blessing of the Virgin, I’ll have that hair off of him if he is n’t cooler towards evening.”

So saying, he covered the sick man with the wetted cloths, and bathed his hands in the cooling fluid.

“Now to exclude the light and save the brain from stimulation and excitation,” said Billy, with a pompous enunciation of the last syllables; “and then quies– rest – peace!”

And with this direction, imparted with a caution to enforce its benefits, he moved stealthily towards the door and passed out.

“What do you think of him?” asked the Corporal, eagerly.

“He ‘ll do – he ‘ll do,” said Billy. “He’s a sanguineous temperament, and he’ll bear the lancet. It’s just like weatherin’ a point at say. If you have a craft that will carry canvas, there’s always a chance for you.”

“He perceived that you were not a doctor,” said Craggs, when they reached the corridor.

“Did he, faix?” cried Billy, half indignantly. “He might have perceived that I did n’t come in a coach; that I had n’t my hair powdered, nor gold knee-buckles in my smallcloths; but, for all that, it would be going too far to say that I was n’t a doctor! ‘T is the same with physic and poetry – you take to it, or you don’t take to it! There’s chaps, ay, and far from stupid ones either, that could n’t compose you ten hexameters if ye’d put them on a hot griddle for it; and there’s others that would talk rhyme rather than rayson! And so with the ars medicatrix– everybody has n’t an eye for a hectic, or an ear for a cough —non contigit cuique adire Corintheum. ‘T is n’t every one can toss pancakes, as Horace says.”

“Hush – be still!” muttered Craggs, “here’s the young master.” And as he spoke, a youth of about fifteen, well grown and handsome, but poorly, even meanly clad, approached them.

“Have you seen my father? What do you think of him?” asked he, eagerly.

“‘Tis a critical state he’s in, your honor,” said Billy, bowing; “but I think he ‘ll come round —deplation, deplation, deplation – actio, actio, actio; relieve the gorged vessels, and don’t drown the grand hydraulic machine, the heart – them’s my sentiments.”

Turning from the speaker with a look of angry impatience, the boy whispered some words in the Corporal’s ear.

“What could I do, sir?” was the answer; “it was this fellow or nothing.”

“And better, a thousand times better, nothing,” said the boy, “than trust his life to the coarse ignorance of this wretched quack.” And in his passion the words were uttered loud enough for Billy to overhear them.

“Don’t be hasty, your honor,” said Billy, submissively, “and don’t be unjust. The realms of disaze is like an unknown tract of country, or a country that’s only known a little, just round the coast, as it might be; once ye’re beyond that, one man is as good a guide as another, coeteris paribus, that is, with ‘equal lights.’”

“What have you done? Have you given him anything?” broke in the boy, hurriedly.

“I took a bleeding from him, little short of sixteen ounces, from the temporial,” said Billy, proudly, “and I’ll give him now a concoction of meadow saffron with a pinch of saltpetre in it, to cause diaphoresis, d’ye mind? Meanwhile, we’re disgorging the arachnoid membranes with cowld applications, and we’re relievin’ the cerebellum by repose. I challenge the Hall,” added Billy, stoutly, “to say is n’t them the grand principles of ‘traitment.’ Ah! young gentleman,” said he, after a few seconds’ pause, “don’t be hard on me, because I ‘m poor and in rags, nor think manely of me because I spake with a brogue, and maybe bad grammar, for, you see, even a crayture of my kind can have a knowledge of disaze, just as he may have a knowledge of nature, by observation. What is sickness, after all, but just one of the phenomenons of all organic and inorganic matter – a regular sort of shindy in a man’s inside, like a thunderstorm, or a hurry-cane outside? Watch what’s coming, look out and see which way the mischief is brewin’, and make your preparations. That’s the great study of physic.”

The boy listened patiently and even attentively to this speech, and when Billy had concluded, he turned to the Corporal and said, “Look to him, Craggs, and let him have his supper, and when he has eaten it send him to my room.”

Billy bowed an acknowledgment, and followed the Corporal to the kitchen.

“That’s my lord’s son, I suppose,” said he, as he seated himself, “and a fine young crayture too —puer ingenuus, with a grand frontal development.” And with this reflection he addressed himself to the coarse but abundant fare which Craggs placed before him, and with an appetite that showed how much he relished it.

“This is elegant living ye have here, Mr. Craggs,” said Billy, as he drained his tankard of beer, and placed it with a sigh on the table; “many happy years of it to ye – I could n’t wish ye anything better.”

“The life is not so bad,” said Craggs, “but it’s lonely sometimes.”

“Life need never be lonely so long as a man has health and his faculties,” said Billy; “give me nature to admire, a bit of baycon for dinner, and my fiddle to amuse me, and I would n’t change with the King of Sugar ‘Candy.’”

“I was there,” said Craggs, “it’s a fine island.”

“My lord wants to see the doctor,” said a woman, entering hastily.

“And the doctor is ready for him,” said Billy, rising and leaving the kitchen with all the dignity he could assume.

CHAPTER III. BILLY TRAYNOR – POET, PEDLAR, AND PHYSICIAN

“Didn’t I tell you how it would be?” said Billy, as he re-entered the kitchen, now crowded by the workpeople, anxious for tidings of the sick man. “The head is re-leaved, the congestive symptoms is allayed, and when the artarial excitement subsides, he ‘ll be out of danger.”

“Musha, but I ‘m glad,” muttered one; “he ‘d be a great loss to us.”

“True for you, Patsey; there’s eight or nine of us here would miss him if he was gone.”

“Troth, he doesn’t give much employment, but we couldn’t spare him,” croaked out a third, when the entrance of the Corporal cut short further commentary; and the party gathered around the cheerful turf fire with that instinctive sense of comfort impressed by the swooping wind and rain that beat against the windows.

“It’s a dreadful night outside; I would n’t like to cross the lough in it,” said one.

“Then that’s just what I’m thinking of this minit,” said Billy. “I’ll have to be up at the office for the bags at six o’clock.”

“Faix, you ‘ll not see Leenane at six o’clock to-morrow.”

“Sorra taste of it,” muttered another; “there’s a sea runnin’ outside now that would swamp a life-boat.”

“I’ll not lose an illigant situation of six pounds ten a year, and a pair of shoes at Christmas, for want of a bit of courage,” said Billy; “I’d have my dismissal if I wasn’t there as sure as my name is Billy Traynor.”

“And better for you than lose your life, Billy,” said one.

“And it’s not alone myself I’d be thinking of,” said Billy; “but every man in this world, high and low, has his duties. My duty,” added he, somewhat pretentiously, “is to carry the King’s mail; and if anything was to obstruckt, or impade, or delay the correspondience, it’s on me the blame would lie.”

“The letters wouldn’t go the faster because you were drowned,” broke in the Corporal.

“No, sir,” said Billy, rather staggered by the grin of approval that met this remark – “no, sir, what you ob-sarve is true; but nobody reflects on the sintry that dies at his post.”

“If you must and will go, I’ll give you the yawl,” said Craggs; “and I ‘ll go with you myself.”

“Spoke like a British Grenadier,” cried Billy, with enthusiasm.

“Carbineer, if the same to you, master,” said the other, quietly; “I never served in the infantry.”

“Tros Tyriusve mihi,” cried Billy; “which is as much as to say, —

 
“‘To storm the skies, or lay siege to the moon,
Give me one of the line, or a heavy dragoon,’
 

it’s the same to me, as the poet says.”

And a low murmur of the company seemed to accord approval to the sentiment.

“I wish you ‘d give us a tune, Billy,” said one, coaxingly.

“Or a song would be better,” observed another.

“Faix,” cried a third, “‘tis himself could do it, and in Frinch or Latin if ye wanted it.”

“The Germans was the best I ever knew for music,” broke in Craggs. “I was brigaded with Arentschild’s Hanoverians in Spain; and they used to sit outside the tents every evening, and sing. By Jove! how they did sing – all together, like the swell of a church organ.”

“Yes, you’re right,” said Billy, but evidently yielding an unwilling assent to this doctrine. “The Germans has a fine national music, and they ‘re great for harmony. But harmony and melody is two different things.”

“And which is best, Billy?” asked one of the company.

“Musha, but I pity your ignorance,” said Billy, with a degree of confusion that raised a hearty laugh at his expense.

“Well, but where’s the song?” exclaimed another.

“Ay,” said Craggs, “we are forgetting the song. Now for it, Billy. Since all is going on so well above stairs, I’ll draw you a gallon of ale, boys, and we ‘ll drink to the master’s speedy recovery.”

It was a rare occasion when the Corporal suffered himself to expand in this fashion, and great was the applause at the unexpected munificence.

Billy at the same moment took out his fiddle and began that process of preparatory screwing and scraping which, no matter how distressing to the surrounders, seems to afford intense delight to performers on this instrument. In the present case, it is but fair to say, there was neither comment nor impatience; on the contrary, they seemed to accept these convulsive throes of sound as an earnest of the grand flood of melody that was coming. That Billy was occupied with other thoughts than those of tuning was, however, apparent, for his lips continued to move rapidly; and at moments he was seen to beat time with his foot, as though measuring out the rhythm of a verse.

“I have it now, ladies and gentlemen,” he said, making a low obeisance to the company; and so saying, he struck up a very popular tune, the same to which a reverend divine wrote his words of “The night before Larry was Stretched;” and in a voice of a deep and mellow fulness, managed with considerable taste, sang —

 
“‘A fig for the chansons of France,
Whose meaning is always a riddle;
The music to sing or to dance
Is an Irish tune played on the fiddle.
 
 
To your songs of the Rhine and the Rhone
I ‘m ready to cry out  I am satis;
Just give us something of our own
In praise of our Land of Potatoes.
 
 
Tol lol de lol, etc.
“‘What care I for sorrows of those
Who speak of their heart as a cuore;
How expect me to feel for the woes
Of him who calls love an amore!
 
 
Let me have a few words about home,
With music whose strains I ‘d remember,
And I ‘ll give you all Florence and Rome,
Tho’ they have a blue sky in December.
 
 
Tol lol de lol, etc.
“‘With a pretty face close to your own,
I ‘m sore there’s no rayson for sighing;
Nor when walkin’ beside her alone,
Why the blazes be talking of dying!
 
 
That’s the way tho’, in France and in Spain,
Where love is not real, but acted,
You must always portend you ‘re insane,
Or at laste that you ‘re partly distracted.
 
 
Tol lol de lol, etc.’”
 

It is very unlikely that the reader will estimate Billy’s impromptu as did the company; in fact, it possessed the greatest of all claims to their admiration, for it was partly incomprehensible, and by the artful introduction of a word here and there, of which his hearers knew nothing, the poet was well aware that he was securing their heartiest approval. Nor was Billy insensible to such flatteries. The irritabile genus has its soft side, and can enjoy to the uttermost its own successes. It is possible, if Billy had been in another sphere, with much higher gifts, and surrounded by higher associates, that he might have accepted the homage tendered him with more graceful modesty, and seemed at least less confident of his own merits; but under no possible change of places or people could the praise have bestowed more sincere pleasure.

“You’re right, there, Jim Morris,” said he, turning suddenly round towards one of the company; “you never said a truer thing than that. The poetic temperament is riches to a poor man. Wherever I go – in all weathers, wet and dreary, and maybe footsore, with the bags full, and the mountain streams all flowin’ over – I can just go into my own mind, just the way you’d go into an inn, and order whatever you wanted. I don’t need to be a king, to sit on a throne; I don’t want ships, nor coaches, nor horses, to convay me to foreign lands. I can bestow kingdoms. When I haven’t tuppence to buy tobacco, and without a shoe to my foot, and my hair through my hat, I can be dancin’ wid princesses, and handin’ empresses in to tay.”

“Musha, musha!” muttered the surrounders, as though they were listening to a magician, who in a moment of unguarded familiarity condescended to discuss his own miraculous gifts.

“And,” resumed Billy, “it isn’t only what ye are to yourself and your own heart, but what ye are to others, that without that sacret bond between you, wouldn’t think of you at all. I remember, once on a time, I was in the north of England travelling, partly for pleasure, and partly with a view to a small speculation in Sheffield ware – cheap penknives and scissors, pencil-cases, bodkins, and the like – and I wandered about for weeks through what they call the Lake Country, a very handsome place, but nowise grand or sublime, like what we have here in Ireland – more wood, forest timber, and better-off people, but nothing beyond that!

“Well, one evening – it was in August – I came down by a narrow path to the side of a lake, where there was a stone seat, put up to see the view from, and in front was three wooden steps of stairs going down into the water, where a boat might come in. It was a lovely spot, and well chosen, for you could count as many as five promontories running out into the lake; and there was two islands, all wooded to the water’s edge; and behind all, in the distance, was a great mountain, with clouds on the top; and it was just the season when the trees is beginnin’ to change their colors, and there was shades of deep gold, and dark olive, and russet brown, all mingling together with the green, and glowing in the lake below under the setting sun, and all was quiet and still as midnight; and over the water the only ripple was the track of a water-hen, as she scudded past between the islands; and if ever there was peace and tranquillity in the world it was just there! Well, I put down my pack in the leaves, for I did n’t like to see or think of it, and I stretched myself down at the water’s edge, and I fell into a fit of musing. It’s often and often I tried to remember the elegant fancies that came through my head, and the beautiful things that I thought I saw that night out on the lake fornint me! Ye see I was fresh and fastin’; I never tasted a bit the whole day, and my brain, maybe, was all the better; for somehow janius, real janius, thrives best on a little starvation. And from musing I fell off asleep; and it was the sound of voices near that first awoke me! For a minute or two I believed I was dreaming, the words came so softly to my ear, for they were spoken in a low, gentle voice, and blended in with the slight splash of oars that moved through the water carefully, as though not to lose a word of him that was speakin’.

“It’s clean beyond me to tell you what he said; and, maybe, if I could, ye would n’t be able to follow it, for he was discoorsin’ about night and the moon, and all that various poets said about them; ye’d think that he had books, and was reading out of them, so glibly came the verses from his lips. I never listened to such a voice before, so soft, so sweet, so musical, and the words came droppin’ down, like the clear water filterin’ over a rocky ledge, and glitterin’ like little spangles over moss and wild-flowers.

“It wasn’t only in English but Scotch ballads, too, and once or twice in Italian that he recited, till at last he gave out, in all the fulness of his liquid voice, them elegant lines out of Pope’s Homer: —

 
“‘As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night,
O’er heaven’s clear azure spreads her sacred light,
When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,
And not a cloud o’ercasts the solemn scene,
Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole:
O’er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,
And top with silver every mountain’s head;
Then shine the vales; the rocks in prospect rise —
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies;
The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight,
Eye the blue vault and bless the useful light.’
 

“The Lord forgive me, but when he came to the last words and said, ‘useful light,’ I couldn’t restrain myself, but broke out, ‘That’s mighty like a bull, anyhow, and reminds me of the ould song, —

 
“‘Good luck to the moon, she’s a fine noble creature,
And gives us the daylight all night in the dark.’
 

“Before I knew where I was, the boat glided in to the steps, and a tall man, a little stooped in the shoulders, stood before me.

“‘Is it you,’ said he, with a quiet laugh, ‘that accuses Pope of a bull?’

“‘It is,’ says I; ‘and, what’s more, there isn’t a poet from Horace downwards that I won’t show bulls in; there’s bulls in Shakspeare and in Milton; there’s bulls in the ancients; I ‘ll point out a bull in Aristophanes.’

“‘What have we here?’ said he, turning to the others.

“‘A poor crayture,’ says I, ‘like Goldsmith’s chest of drawers, —

“‘With brains reduced a doable debt to pay, To dream by night, sell Sheffield ware by day.’

“Well, with that he took a fit of laughing, and handing the rest out of the boat, he made me come along at his side, discoorsin’ me about my thravels, and all I seen, and all I read, till we reached an elegant little cottage on a bank right over the lake; and then he brought me in and made me take tay with the family; and I spent the night there; and when I started the next morning there was n’t a ‘screed’ of my pack that they did n’t buy, penknives, and whistles, and nut-crackers, and all, just, as they said, for keepsakes. Good luck to them, and happy hearts, wherever they are, for they made mine happy that day; ay, and for many an hour afterwards, when I just think over their kind words and pleasant faces.”

More than one of the company had dropped off asleep during Billy’s narrative, and of the others, their complaisance as listeners appeared taxed to the utmost, while the Corporal snored loudly, like a man who had a right to indulge himself to the fullest extent.

“There’s the bell again,” muttered one, “that’s from the ‘lord’s room;’” and Craggs, starting up by the instinct of his office, hastened off to his master’s chamber.

“My lord says you are to remain here,” said he, as he re-entered a few minutes later; “he is satisfied with your skill, and I’m to send off a messenger to the post, to let them know he has detained you.”

“I ‘m obaydient,” said Billy, with a low bow; “and now for a brief repose!” And so saying, he drew a long woollen nightcap from his pocket, and putting it over his eyes, resigned himself to sleep with the practised air of one who needed but very little preparation to secure slumber.