“Lord Glencore's dangerously ill, and needs a doctor,” said the Corporal, bursting out with a piece of most uncommon communicativeness. “Is there none of you will give his horse for such an errand?”
“Arrah, musha!—it's a pity!” and such-like expressions of compassionate import, were muttered on all sides; but no more active movement seemed to flow from the condolence, while in a lower tone were added such expressions as, “Sorra mend him—if he wasn't a naygar, wouldn't he have a horse of his own? It's a droll lord he is, to be begging the loan of a baste!”
Something like a malediction arose to the Corporal's lips; but restraining it, and with a voice thick from passion, he said—
“I 'm ready to pay you—to pay you ten times over the worth of your—”
“You need n't curse the horse, anyhow,” interposed Rabbitskin, while with a significant glance at his friends around him, he slyly intimated that it would be as well to adjourn the debate—a motion as quickly obeyed as it was mooted; for in less than five minutes Craggs was standing beside the quay, with no other companion than a blind beggar-woman, who, perfectly regardless of his distress, continued energetically to draw attention to her own.
“A little fivepenny bit, my lord—the last trifle your honor's glory has in the corner of your pocket, that you 'll never miss, and that 'll sweeten ould Molly's tay to-night? There, acushla, have pity on 'the dark,' and that you may see glory—”
But Craggs did not wait for the remainder, but, deep in his own thoughts, sauntered down towards the village. Already had the others retreated within their homes; and now all was dark and cheerless along the little straggling street.
“And this is a Christian country!—this a land that people tell you abounds in kindness and good-nature!” said he, in an accent of sarcastic bitterness.
“And who'll say the reverse?” answered a voice from behind, and, turning, he beheld the little hunchbacked fellow who carried the mail on foot from Oughterard, a distance of sixteen miles, over a mountain, and who was popularly known as “Billy the Bag,” from the little leather sack which seemed to form part of his attire. “Who 'll stand up and tell me it's not a fine country in every sense—for natural beauties, for antiquities, for elegant men and lovely females, for quarries of marble and mines of gould?”
Craggs looked contemptuously at the figure who thus declaimed of Ireland's wealth and grandeur, and, in a sneering tone, said—
“And with such riches on every side, why do you go barefoot—why are you in rags, my old fellow?”
“Is n't there poor everywhere? If the world was all gould and silver, what would be the precious metals—tell me that? Is it because there's a little cripple like myself here, that them mountains yonder is n't of copper and iron and cobalt? Come over with me after I lave the bags at the office, and I 'll show you bits of every one I speak of.”
“I'd rather you'd show me a doctor, my worthy fellow,” said Craggs, sighing.
“I'm the nearest thing to that same going,” replied Billy. “I can breathe a vein against any man in the barony. I can't say, that for any articular congestion of the aortic valves, or for a sero-pulmonic diathesis—d'ye mind?—that there isn't as good as me; but for the ould school of physic, the humoral diagnostic touch, who can beat me?”
“Will you come with me across the lough, and see my lord, then?” said Craggs, who was glad even of such aid in his emergency.
“And why not, when I lave the bags?” said Billy, touching the leather sack as he spoke.
If the Corporal was not without his misgivings as to the skill and competence of his companion, there was something in the fluent volubility of the little fellow that overawed and impressed him, while his words were uttered in a rich mellow voice, that gave them a sort of solemn persuasiveness.
“Were you always on the road?” asked the Corporal, curious to learn some particulars of his history.
“No, sir; I was twenty things before I took to the bags. I was a poor scholar for four years; I kept school in Erris; I was 'on' the ferry in Dublin with my fiddle for eighteen months; and I was a bear in Liverpool for part of a winter.”
“A bear!” exclaimed Craggs. “Yes, sir. It was an Italian—one Pipo Chiassi by name—that lost his beast at Manchester, and persuaded me, as I was about the same stature, to don the sable, and perform in his place. After that I took to writin' for the papers—'The Skibbereen Celt'—and supported myself very well till it broke. But here we are at the office, so I 'll step in, and get my fiddle, too, if you 've no objection.”
The Corporal's meditations scarcely were of a kind to reassure him, as he thought over the versatile character of his new friend; but the case offered no alternative—it was Billy or nothing—since to reach Clifden on foot would be the labor of many hours, and in the interval his master should be left utterly alone. While he was thus musing, Billy reappeared, with a violin under one arm and a much-worn quarto under the other.
“This,” said he, touching the volume, “is the 'Whole Art and Mystery of Physic,' by one Fabricius, of Aquapendente; and if we don't find a cure for the case down here, take my word for it, it's among the morba ignota, as Paracelsus says.”
“Well, come along,” said Craggs, impatiently, and set off at a speed that, notwithstanding Billy's habits of foot-travel, kept him at a sharp trot. A few minutes more saw them, with canvas spread, skimming across the lough, towards Glencore.
“Glencore—Glencore!” muttered Billy once or twice to himself, as the swift boat bounded through the hissing surf. “Did you ever hear Lady Lucy's Lament?” And he struck a few chords with his fingers as he sang:—
“'I care not for your trellised vine,
I love the dark woods on the shore,
Nor all the towers along the Rhine
Are dear to me as old Glencore.
The ragged cliff, Ben Creggan high,
Re-echoing the Atlantic roar,
Are mingling with the seagull's cry
My welcome back to old Glencore.'
And then there's a chorus.”
“That's a signal to us to make haste,” said the Corporal, pointing to a bright flame which suddenly shot up on the shore of the lough. “Put out an oar to leeward there, and keep her up to the wind.”
And Billy, perceiving his minstrelsy unattended to, consoled himself by humming over, for his own amusement, the remainder of his ballad.
The wind freshened as the night grew darker, and heavy seas repeatedly broke on the bow, and swept over the boat in sprayey showers.
“It's that confounded song of yours has got the wind up,” said Craggs, angrily; “stand by the sheet, and stop your croning!”
“That's an error vulgaris, attributing to music marine disasters,” said Billy, calmly; “it arose out of a mistake about one Orpheus.”
“Slack off there!” cried Craggs, as a squall struck the boat, and laid her almost over.
Billy, however, had obeyed the mandate promptly, and she soon righted, and held on her course.
“I wish they'd show the light again on shore,” muttered the Corporal; “the night is black as pitch.”
“Keep the top of the mountain a little to windward, and you 're all right,” said Billy. “I know the lough well; I used to come here all hours, day and night, once, spearing salmon.”
“And smuggling, too!” added Craggs.
“Yes, sir; brandy, and tay, and pigtail, for Mister Sheares, in Oughterard.”
“What became of him?”