"I see you are,"' said Phil, "but what is the matter, I say again? why are you sick?"
"Vengeance, Phil; I am sick with vengeance! The moment is now near, and at last I have it within my clutch;" and here he extended his hand, and literally made a clutch at some imaginary object in the air.
"Upon my honor," said Philip, "I envy you; you are a fine, consistent old villain."
"The sick woman, Phil! By the great heavens, and by all that they contain--if they do contain anything--I swear, that if every individual of them, men and women, were at the last gasp, and within one single moment of death--ha! hold," said he, checking himself, "that would never do. Death! why death would end all their sufferings."
"Oh, not all, I hope," said Phil, winking again.
"No matter," resumed Val, "their sufferings in this life it would end, and so I should no longer be either eye-witness or ear-witness of their destitution and miseries. I would see them, Phil, without house or home--without a friend on earth--without raiment, without food--ragged, starved--starved out of their very virtues--despised, spat upon, and trampled on by all! To these, Phil, I thought to have added shame--shame; but we failed--we have failed."
"No," replied Phil, "I give you my word, we did not."
"We did, sir," said the father; "Harman and she are now reconciled, and this is enough for the people, who loved her. Yes, by heavens, we have failed." Val sat, or almost dropped on a chair as he spoke, for he had been pacing through the parlor until now; and putting his two hands over his face, he sobbed out--groaned even with agony--until the tears literally gushed in torrents through his fingers. "I thought to have added shame to all I shall make them suffer," he exclaimed; "but in that I am frustrated." He here naturally clenched his hands and gnashed his teeth, like a man in the last stage of madness.
On removing his hands, too, his face, now terribly distorted out of its lineaments by the convulsive workings of this tremendous passion, presented an appearance which one might rather suppose to have been shaped in hell, so unnaturally savage and diabolical were all its outlines.
Phil, who had sat down at the same time, with his face to the back of the chair, on which his two hands were placed, supporting his chin, kept his beautiful eyes, seated as he was in that graceful attitude, fixed upon his father with a good deal of surprise. Indeed it would be a difficult thing, considering their character and situation, to find two countenances more beautifully expressive of their respective dispositions. If one could conceive the existence of any such thing as a moral looking-glass placed between them, it might naturally be supposed that Val, in looking at Phil, saw himself; and that Phil in his virtuous father's face also saw his own. The son's face and character, however, had considerably the advantage over his father's. Val's presented merely what you felt you must hate, even to abhorrence; but the son's, that which you felt to be despicable besides, and yet more detestable still.
"Well," said Phil, "all I can say is, that upon my honor, my worthy father, I don't think you shine at the pathetic. Damn it, be a man, and don't snivel in that manner, just like a furious drunken woman, when she can't get at another drunken woman who is her enemy. Surely if we failed, it wasn't our faults; but I think I can console you so far as to say we did not fail. It's not such an easy thing to suppress scandal, especially if it happens to be a lie, as it is in the present case."
"Ah," said the father with bitterness, "it was all your fault, you ill-looking Bubber-lien. (*An ignorant, awkward booby.) At your age, your grandfather would not have had to complain of want of success."
"Come, M'Clutchy--I'll not bear this--it's cursed ungenerous in you, when you know devilish well how successful I have been on the property."
"Ay," said Val, "and what was the cause of that? Was it not merely among those who were under our thumb--the poor and the struggling, who fell in consequence of your threats, and therefore through fear of us only; but when higher game and vengeful purposes were in view, see what a miserable hand you made of it. I tell you, Phil, if I were to live through a whole eternity, I could never forgive M'Loughlin the triumph that his eye had over me in Castle Cumber Fair. I felt that he looked through me--that he saw as clearly into my very heart, as you would of a summer day into a glass beehive. My eye quailed before him--my brow fell; but then--well--no matter; I have him now--ho, ho, I have him now!"
"I wonder the cars and carts are not coming before now," observed Phil, "to take away the furniture, and other valuables."
"I am surprised myself," replied Val; "they ought certainly to have been here before now. Darby got clear instructions to summon them."
"Perhaps they won't come," observed the other, "until--Gad, there's his rascally knock, at all events. Perhaps he has sent them up."
"No," said Val; "I gave him positive instructions to order them here in the first instance."
Darby now entered.
"Well, Darby," said Val, who, on account of certain misgivings, treated the embryo gaoler with more civility than usual; "what news? How many cars and carts have von got?"
Darby sat down and compressed his lips, blew out his cheeks, and after looking about the apartment for a considerable time, let out his breath gradually until the puff died away.
"What's the matter with you, Darby?" again inquired Val.
Darby went over to him, and looking seriously into his face--then suddenly laying down his hat--said, as he almost wrung his hands--
"There's a Spy, sir, on the Estate; a Popish Spy, as sure as Idolathry is rank in this benighted land."
"A Spy!" exclaimed Phil, "we know there is."
"Be quiet, Phil--who is he, Darby?"
"Why, sir, a fellow--of the name of Weasand--may Satan open a gusset in his own for him this day! Sure, one Counsellor Browbeater, at the Castle, sir--they say he's the Lord o' the Black Trot--Lord save us-- whatever that is--"
"The Back Trot, Darby--go on."
"Well, sir, the Back Trot; but does that mean that he trots backwards, sir?"
"Never mind, Darby, he'll trot anyway that will serve his own purposes--go on, I tell you."
"Well, sir, sure some one has wrote to this Counsellor Browbeater about him, and what do you think, but Counsellor Browbeater has wrote to Mr.
Lucre, and Mr. Lucre spoke to me, so that it's all the same as if the Castle had wrote to myself---and axed me if I knewn anything about him."
"Well, what did you say?"
"Why, I said I did not, and neither did I then; but may I never die in sin, but I think I have a clue to him now."
"Well, and how is that?"
"Why, sir, as I was ordhering the tenantry in wid the cars and carts to remove M'Loughlin's furniture, I seen this Weasand along wid Father Roche, and there they were--the two o' them--goin' from house to house; whatever they said to the people I'm sure I don't know, but, anyhow, hell resave--hem."
"Take care, Darby," said Val, "no swearing--I fear you're but a bad convert."
"Why, blood alive, sir," replied Darby, "sure turnin' Protestant, I hope, isn't to prevent me from swearin'--don't themselves swear through thick and thin? and, verily, some of the Parsons too, are as handy at it, as if they had sarved an apprenticeship to it."
"Well, but about this fellow, the Spy?"
"Why, sir, when I ordhered the cars the people laughed at me, and said they had betther autority for keepin' them, than you had for sendin'
for them; and when I axed them who it was, they laughed till you'd think they'd split. I know very well it's a _Risin_ that's to be; and our throats will be cut by this blackguard spy, Weasand."
"And so you have got no cars," said Val.
"I got one," he replied, "and meetin' Lanty Gorman goin' home wid Square Deaker's ass--King James--or Sheemus a Cocka, as he calls him--that is, 'Jemmy the Cock,' in regard of the great courage he showed at the Boyne--I made him promise to bring him up. Lanty, sir, says the Square's a'most gone."
"Why, is he worse?" asked Val, very coolly.
"Begad, sir, sure he thinks it's the twelfth o' July; and he was always accustomed to get a keg of the Boyne Wather, whenever that day came round, to drink the loyal toasts in; and nothing would satisfy him but that Lanty would put the cart on Sheemus a Cocka, and bring him a keg of it all the way from the Boyne. Lanty to plaise him, sets off wid himself to St. Patrick's Well, where they make the Stations, and filled his keg there; and the Square, I suppose, is this moment drinkin', if he's able to drink, the Glorious Memory in blessed wather, may God forgive him, or blessed punch, for it's well known that the wather of St. Patrick's Well is able to consecrate the whiskey any day, glory be to God!"
"Damn my honor, Darby," said Phil, "but that's queer talk from a Protestant, if you are one."
"Och, sure aren't we all Protestant together, now?" replied Darby; "and sure, knowing that, where's the use of carryin' the matter too far?
Sure, blood alive, you wouldn't have me betther than yourselves? I hope I know my station, gintlemen."
"Ah, Darby," said Phil, "you're a neat boy, I think."
"What's to be done?" asked Val; "their refusal to send their horses and cars must be owing to the influence of this priest Roche."
"Of course it is," replied the son; "I wish to God I had the hanging of him; but why did you send to those blasted papists at all? sure the blood-hounds were your men."
"Why did I, Phil? ah, my good shallow Son--ha, why did I?" he spoke in a low condensed whisper, "why, to sharpen my vengeance. It was my design to have made one papist aid in the oppression of another. Go off, Darby, to Castle Cumber, and let twelve or fourteen of my own corps come to M'Loughlin's with their horses and carts immediately;--call also to M'Slime's, and desire him to meet me there forthwith; and bid Hanlon and the other two fellows to wait outside until they shall be wanted. The sheriff will be at M'Loughlin's about two o'clock."