Our Irish hero had not that punctuality which English tradesmen usually observe in the payment of bills: he had, the preceding year, run up a long bill with a grocer in Hereford; and, as he had not at Christmas cash in hand to pay it, he had given a note, payable six months after date. The grocer, at Mr. Hill’s request, made over the note to him; and it was determined that the money should be demanded, as it was now due, and that, if it was not paid directly, O’Neill should be that night arrested. How Mr. Hill made the discovery of this debt to the grocer agree with his former notion that the Irish glover had always money at command, we cannot well conceive; but anger and prejudice will swallow down the grossest contradictions without difficulty.
When Mr. Hill’s clerk went to demand payment of the note, O’Neill’s head was full of the ball which he was to give that evening. He was much surprised at the unexpected appearance of the note: he had not ready money by him to pay it; and, after swearing a good deal at the clerk, and complaining of this ungenerous and ungentleman-like behaviour in the grocer and the tanner, he told the clerk to be gone, and not to be bothering him at such an unseasonable time; that he could not have the money then, and did not deserve to have it at all.
This language and conduct were rather new to the English clerk’s mercantile ears: we cannot wonder that it should seem to him, as he said to his master, more the language of a madman than a man of business. This want of punctuality in money transactions, and this mode of treating contracts as matters of favour and affection, might not have damned the fame of our hero in his own country, where such conduct is, alas! too common; but he was now in a kingdom where the manners and customs are so directly opposite, that he could meet with no allowance for his national faults. It would be well for his countrymen if they were made, even by a few mortifications, somewhat sensible of this important difference in the habits of Irish and English traders, before they come to settle in England.
But, to proceed with our story. On the night of Mr. O’Neill’s grand ball, as he was seeing his fair partner, the perfumer’s daughter, safe home, he felt himself tapped on the shoulder by no friendly hand. When he was told that he was the king’s prisoner, he vociferated with sundry strange oaths, which we forbear to repeat, “No, I am not the king’s prisoner! I am the prisoner of that shabby rascally tanner, Jonathan Hill. None but he would arrest a gentleman, in this way, for a trifle not worth mentioning.”
Miss Jenny Brown screamed when she found herself under the protection of a man who was arrested; and, what between her screams and his oaths, there was such a disturbance that a mob gathered.
Among this mob there was a party of Irish haymakers, who, after returning late from a hard day’s work, had been drinking in a neighbouring ale-house. With one accord they took part with their countryman, and would have rescued him from the civil officers with all the pleasure in life, if he had not fortunately possessed just sufficient sense and command of himself, to restrain their party spirit, and to forbid them, as they valued his life and reputation, to interfere, by word or deed, in his defence.
He then despatched one of the haymakers home to his mother, to inform her of what had happened; and to request that she would get somebody to be bail for him as soon as possible, as the officers said they could not let him out of their sight till he was bailed by substantial people, or till the debt was discharged.
The widow O’Neill was just putting out the candles in the ball-room when this news of her son’s arrest was brought to her. We pass over Hibernian exclamations: she consoled her pride by reflecting that it would certainly be the most easy thing imaginable to procure bail for Mr. O’Neill in Hereford, where he had so many friends who had just been dancing at his house, but to dance at his house she found was one thing, and to be bail for him quite another. Each guest sent excuses; and the widow O’Neill was astonished at what never fails to astonish every body when it happens to themselves. “Rather than let my son be detained in this manner for a paltry debt,” cried she, “I’d sell all I have within half an hour to a pawnbroker.” It was well no pawnbroker heard this declaration: she was too warm to consider economy. She sent for a pawnbroker, who lived in the same street, and, after pledging goods to treble the amount of the debt, she obtained ready money for her son’s release.
O’Neill, after being in custody for about an hour and a half, was set at liberty upon the payment of his debt. As he passed by the cathedral in his way home, he heard the clock strike; and he called to a man, who was walking backwards and forwards in the churchyard, to ask whether it was two or three that the clock struck. “Three,” answered the man; “and, as yet, all is safe.”
O’Neill, whose head was full of other things, did not stop to inquire the meaning of these last words. He little suspected that this man was a watchman, whom the over-vigilant verger had stationed there to guard the Hereford cathedral from his attacks. O’Neill little guessed that he had been arrested merely to keep him from blowing up the cathedral this night. The arrest had an excellent effect upon his mind, for he was a young man of good sense: it made him resolve to retrench his expenses in time, to live more like a glover and less like a gentleman; and to aim more at establishing credit, and less at gaining popularity. He found, from experience, that good friends will not pay bad debts.
CHAPTER II.
On Thursday morning, our verger rose in unusually good spirits, congratulating himself upon the eminent service he had done to the city of Hereford, by his sagacity in discovering the foreign plot to blow up the cathedral, and by his dexterity in having the enemy held in custody, at the very hour when the dreadful deed was to have been perpetrated. Mr. Hill’s knowing friends farther agreed it would be necessary to have a guard that should sit up every night in the churchyard; and that as soon as they could, by constantly watching the enemy’s motions, procure any information which the attorney should deem sufficient grounds for a legal proceeding, they should lay the whole business before the mayor.
After arranging all this most judiciously and mysteriously with friends who were exactly of his own opinion, Mr. Hill laid aside his dignity of verger; and assuming his other character of a tanner proceeded to his tan-yard. What was his surprise and consternation, when he beheld his great rick of oak bark levelled to the ground; the pieces of bark were scattered far and wide, some over the close, some over the fields, and some were seen swimming upon the water! No tongue, no pen, no muse can describe the feelings of our tanner at this spectacle! feelings which became the more violent from the absolute silence which he imposed on himself upon this occasion. He instantly decided in his own mind, that this injury was perpetrated by O’Neill, in revenge for his arrest; and went privately to the attorney to inquire what was to be done, on his part, to secure legal vengeance.
The attorney unluckily, or at least as Mr. Hill thought, unluckily, had been sent for, half an hour before, by a gentleman at some distance from Hereford, to draw up a will; so that our tanner was obliged to postpone his legal operations.
We forbear to recount his return, and how many times he walked up and down the close to view his scattered bark, and to estimate the damage that had been done to him. At length that hour came which usually suspends all passions by the more imperious power of appetite — the hour of dinner; an hour of which it was never needful to remind Mr. Hill by watch, clock, or dial; for he was blessed with a punctual appetite, and powerful as punctual: so powerful, indeed, that it often excited the spleen of his more genteel, or less hungry wife.—”Bless my stars, Mr. Hill,” she would oftentimes say, “I am really downright ashamed to see you eat so much; and when company is to dine with us, I do wish you would take a snack by way of a damper before dinner, that you may not look so prodigious famishing and ungenteel.”
Upon this hint, Mr. Hill commenced a practice, to which he ever afterwards religiously adhered, of going, whether there was to be company or no company, into the kitchen regularly every day, half an hour before dinner, to take a slice from the roast or the boiled before i
t went up to table. As he was this day, according to his custom, in the kitchen, taking his snack by way of a damper, he heard the housemaid and the cook talking about some wonderful fortune-teller, whom the housemaid had been consulting. This fortune-teller was no less a personage than the successor to Bampfylde Moore Carew, king of the gipsies, whose life and adventures are probably in many, too many, of our readers’ hands. Bampfylde, the second king of the gipsies, assumed this title, in hopes of becoming as famous, or as infamous, as his predecessor: he was now holding his court in a wood near the town of Hereford, and numbers of servant-maids and ‘prentices went to consult him — nay, it was whispered that he was resorted to, secretly, by some whose education might have taught them better sense.
Numberless were the instances which our verger heard in his kitchen of the supernatural skill of this cunning man; and whilst Mr. Hill ate his snack with his wonted gravity, he revolved great designs in his secret soul. Mrs. Hill was surprised, several times during dinner, to see her consort put down his knife and fork, and meditate. “Gracious me, Mr. Hill, what can have happened to you this day? What can you be thinking of, Mr. Hill, that can make you forget what you have upon your plate?”
“Mrs. Hill,” replied the thoughtful verger, “our grand-mother Eve had too much curiosity; and we all know it did not lead to good. What I am thinking of will be known to you in due time, but not now, Mrs. Hill; therefore, pray, no questions, or teasing, or pumping. What I think, I think; what I say, I say; what I know, I know; and that is enough for you to know at present: only this, Phoebe, you did very well not to put on the Limerick gloves, child. What I know, I know. Things will turn out just as I said from the first. What I say, I say; and what I think, I think; and this is enough for you to know at present.”
Having finished dinner with this solemn speech, Mr. Hill settled himself in his arm-chair, to take his after-dinner’s nap; and he dreamed of blowing up cathedrals, and of oak bark floating upon the waters; and the cathedral was, he thought, blown up by a man dressed in a pair of woman’s Limerick gloves, and the oak bark turned into mutton steaks, after which his great dog Jowler was swimming; when, all on a sudden, as he was going to beat Jowler for eating the bark transformed into mutton steaks, Jowler became Bampfylde the second, king of the gipsies; and putting a horsewhip with a silver handle into Hill’s hand, commanded him three times, in a voice as loud as the town crier’s, to have O’Neill whipped through the market-place of Hereford: but, just as he was going to the window to see this whipping, his wig fell off, and he awoke.
It was difficult, even for Mr. Hill’s sagacity, to make sense of this dream: but he had the wise art of always finding in his dreams something that confirmed his waking determinations. Before he went to sleep, he had half resolved to consult the king of the gipsies, in the absence of the attorney; and his dream made him now wholly determined upon this prudent step. From Bampfylde the second, thought he, I shall learn for certain who made the hole under the cathedral, who pulled down my rick of bark, and who made away with my dog Jowler; and then I shall swear examinations against O’Neill without waiting for attorneys. I will follow my own way in this business: I have always found my own way best.
So, when the dusk of the evening increased, our wise man set out towards the wood to consult the cunning man. Bampfylde the second, king of the gipsies, resided in a sort of hut made of the branches of trees: the verger stooped, but did not stoop low enough, as he entered this temporary palace; and, whilst his body was almost bent double, his peruke was caught upon a twig. From this awkward situation he was relieved by the consort of the king; and he now beheld, by the light of some embers, the person of his gipsy majesty, to whose sublime appearance this dim light was so favourable that it struck a secret awe into our wise man’s soul; and, forgetting Hereford cathedral, and oak bark, and Limerick gloves, he stood for some seconds speechless. During this time, the queen very dexterously disencumbered his pocket of all superfluous articles. When he recovered his recollection, he put with great solemnity the following queries to the king of the gipsies, and received the following answers:
“Do you know a dangerous Irishman, of the name of O’Neill, who has come, for purposes best known to himself, to settle at Hereford?”
“Yes, we know him well.”
“Indeed! And what do you know of him?”
“That he is a dangerous Irishman.”
“Right! And it was he, was it not, that pulled down, or caused to be pulled down, my rick of oak bark?”
“It was.”
“And who was it that made away with my dog Jowler, that used to guard the tan-yard?”
“It was the person that you suspect.”
“And was it the person whom I suspect that made the hole under the foundation of our cathedral?”
“The same, and no other.”
“And for what purpose did he make that hole?”
“For a purpose that must not be named,” replied the king of the gipsies; nodding his head in a mysterious manner.
“But it may be named to me,” cried the verger, “for I have found it out, and I am one of the vergers; and is it not fit that a plot to blow up the Hereford cathedral should be known to me, and through me?”
“Now, take my word,
Wise men of Hereford,
None in safety may be,
Till the bad man doth flee.”
These oracular verses, pronounced by Bampfylde with all the enthusiasm of one who was inspired, had the desired effect upon our wise man; and he left the presence of the king of the gipsies with a prodigiously high opinion of his majesty’s judgment and of his own, fully resolved to impart, the next morning, to the mayor of Hereford, his important discoveries.
Now it happened that, during the time Mr. Hill was putting the foregoing queries to Bampfylde the second, there came to the door or entrance of the audience chamber, an Irish haymaker, who wanted to consult the cunning man about a little leathern purse which he had lost, whilst he was making hay, in a field near Hereford. This haymaker was the same person who, as we have related, spoke so advantageously of our hero, O’Neill, to the widow Smith. As this man, whose name was Paddy M’Cormack, stood at the entrance of the gipsies’ hut, his attention was caught by the name of O’Neill; and he lost not a word of all that passed. He had reason to be somewhat surprised at hearing Bampfylde assert it was O’Neill who had pulled down the rick of bark. “By the holy poker,” said he to himself, “the old fellow now is out there. I know more o’ that matter than he does — no offence to his majesty: he knows no more of my purse, I’ll engage now, than he does of this man’s rick of bark and his dog: so I’ll keep my tester in my pocket, and not be giving it to this king o’ the gipsies, as they call him; who, as near as I can guess, is no better than a cheat. But there is one secret which I can be telling this conjuror himself; he shall not find it such an easy matter to do all what he thinks; he shall not be after ruining an innocent countryman of my own, whilst Paddy M’Cormack has a tongue and brains.”
Now Paddy M’Cormack had the best reason possible for knowing that Mr. O’Neill did not pull down Mr. Hill’s rick of bark; it was M’Cormack himself, who, in the heat of his resentment for the insulting arrest of his countryman in the streets of Hereford, had instigated his fellow haymakers to this mischief; he headed them, and thought he was doing a clever, spirited action.
There is a strange mixture of virtue and vice in the minds of the lower class of Irish; or rather a strange confusion in their ideas of right and wrong, from want of proper education. As soon as poor Paddy found out that his spirited action of pulling down the rick of bark was likely to be the ruin of his countryman, he resolved to make all the amends in his power for his folly: he went to collect his fellow haymakers and persuaded them to assist him this night in rebuilding what they had pulled down.
They went to this work when every body except themselves, as they thought, was asleep in Hereford. They had just completed the stack, and were all going away except Pa
ddy, who was seated at the very top, finishing the pile, when they heard a loud voice cry out, “Here they are, Watch! Watch!”
Immediately, all the haymakers, who could, ran off as fast as possible. It was the watch who had been sitting up at the cathedral who gave the alarm. Paddy was taken from the top of the rick, and lodged in the watchhouse till morning. “Since I’m to be rewarded this way for doing a good action, sorrow take me,” said he, “if they catch me doing another the longest day ever I live.”
Happy they who have in their neighbourhood such a magistrate as Mr. Marshal! He was a man who, to an exact knowledge of the duties of his office, joined the power of discovering truth from the midst of contradictory evidence; and the happy art of soothing, or laughing, the angry passions into good-humour. It was a common saying in Hereford — that no one ever came out of Justice Marshal’s house as angry as he went into it.
Mr. Marshal had scarcely breakfasted when he was informed that Mr. Hill, the verger, wanted to speak to him on business of the utmost importance. Mr. Hill, the verger, was ushered in; and, with gloomy solemnity, took a seat opposite to Mr. Marshal.
“Sad doings in Hereford, Mr. Marshal! Sad doings, sir.”
“Sad doings? Why, I was told we had merry doings in Hereford. A ball the night before last, as I heard.”
“So much the worse, Mr. Marshal; so much the worse; as those think with reason that see as far into things as I do.”
“So much the better, Mr. Hill,” said Mr. Marshal, laughing; “so much the better; as those think with reason that see no farther into things than I do.”
“But, sir,” said the verger, still more solemnly, “this is no laughing matter, nor time for laughing; begging your pardon. Why, sir, the night of that there diabolical ball, our Hereford cathedral, sir, would have been blown up — blown up from the foundation, if it had not been for me, sir!”
Complete Novels of Maria Edgeworth Page 418
