Published posthumously in Temple Bar, 1884
IN the course of my life I have met with more accidents and assaults than twenty other men, and they never cost me any trouble to speak of — cats, prods, and gunshot, all came quite natural, and healed like enchantment. It was a murdering pity I was not a general. I could have stood any amount of hacking, and slashing, and riddling, and been never the worse man, nor a week on the sick-list. A shoemaker mistook me one day for a county Cork man that was paying attentions to his wife, and gave me a slice with his half-moon knife — bad luck to that ugly instrument — as I was walking down Petticoat Lane, no more thinking of his wife, I give you my solemn honour, than Saint Joseph of Arimathea was of Potiphar’s. The next thing was, Baron Dromdouski — a Polish refugee of distinction, and a perfect gentleman, I will day, and played the guitar like an angel, though liable occasionally to be carried away by his feelings — stuck me with an oyster-knife, while we were differing on politics, in the “Good Samaritan” in Exchange Street. I could count up fifty such unlucky catastrophes; but I think the worst was, what happened to me as I was whistling in the hall of my lodgings, where I was waiting to take Miss Doolan out for a walk.
I must tell you there’s nothing on earth I hate equal to a cat, and it is the only thing that walks on feet I was ever thoroughly affeard to look in the face. It’s a dread that was born with me, and it will never leave me; and I’d run into Nebuchadnezzar’s fiery furnace away from one, and I think I’d have jumped after Quintus Curtins into the bottomless abyss if there was a cat behind me.
Well the cause of this accident I’m going to mention, was our cook, poor thing, that was flighty and out of her mind for love of a private grenadier in the Buffs, and she drove a three-pronged iron toasting-fork, between the kitchen banisters, up to the hilt in the calf of my leg. I thought it was the cat that I saw there, looking like mischief, only a minute before, and I gave a screech and a jump, and I went flying into the hall with the toasting-fork stuck in my leg.
“La! Mr. Toole, what’s that stuck in your leg?” cries Miss Doolan, who was that minute coming down the stairs.
“It’s the cat,” I roared, almost out of my senses, and away with me out of the hall-door, that chanced to be open, and down the street I pegged like a madman, knocking my hat off on an old gentleman’s face, that was looking out of his study-window, and never waiting to pick it up. I thought the beast would never let go, and my hair was standing up on my head, and I wish you saw the capers I cut, trying to shake it off.
“For the Lord’s sake,” I implored, dancing mad in the middle of the street, “will some of you pull it off my leg? I’ll give yon a shilling, whoever does.”
“I’ll take it off,” says a good-natured scavenger, that thought I was mad — and bedad I wasn’t far from it — and he strove to catch hold of the handle of the fork; and I was so wild with fright I made a cut at the animal with my stick behind, and struck the scavenger right across the knuckles, and on I ran feeling the cat’s teeth and claws, as I thought, fast in me still.
“Bad luck to you, ye Turk!” says the scavenger, shying a stone at me, as big as a lemon, and knocking a carman out of his dicky with it, pipe, whip, caubeen, and all.
“Look what’s stuck in his leg, boys!” called out the blackguard little children, running after me. “See there, look, look, look what’s stuck in his leg!”
“Will some of you hit it, lick it, wallop it? It’s mad!” I holloaed. By this time I was running up Grafton Street, and every one looking after me, some wondering, some laughing, and some frightened.
“It’s fastened in my leg!” I roared. “Will none of you pull it off?”
“I will,” says one.
“Shoot it,” says I.
“I will,” says another.
“It’s mad!” said I.
“Stop your capers, man, and I’ll pull it out,” says another.
“Give it a lick,” said I,” break its back, stick a knife in it.”
“Arra! Bother ye. How much ironmongery do you want?” says another. “Stop aisy, and I’ll coax it out in a jiffy.”
“Do,” said I, “coax it; its name’s Mufti.”
“It was a little thief that snatched it out at last, as it trailed along the ground, and a devil of a hard pluck it took, and ran away with it and pawned it for a penny.
Well, I need go no further; I mentioned these, and might mention fifty other wounds, to show you that they were no trifles, and I can take my davy there was not one of the series that took a week to heal.
I’m happy to tell you that I was quite sufficiently well to avail myself of Mrs. Molloy’s invitation to drink tea, go to the play, and return to supper with her agreeable party. I need not tell you that if I had had as many holes in my body as a colander, and was bleeding at every pore, I would have contrived, cost what it might, to drag myself to the side of the beautiful Theodora, although it was only to expire at her feet.
The hour named for assembling at the hospitable lodgings of the Molloys was half-past five. I dressed myself with uncommon care. We sported wonderful high and voluminous white cravats in those days, which had a good deal the effect of modem poultices. We wore besides under-waistcoats of coloured satin, pantaloons and pumps, and blue coats with brass buttons gilt.
I was glad as I looked at myself in the glass, and brushed up my hair above my forehead into a “topping,” as Mr. Bassegio called that conical triumph of the decorative art, to think that I looked a little pale.
Mundy had called on me the day after this extraction, not knowing a word of the matter, and wondering why I did not look in at the billiard-rooms. I made a rather painful effort, for I was lying on my face, to get into a more natural position, which I did with a slight groan. “Wounded!” says he.
“Slightly,” said I, “that is, they say it won’t be dangerous.”
“Oh! oh!” says he, smiling faintly down at me as I lay on my bed, with a look at once stem and knowing. “Gunshot, eh?”
I had told him on purpose, for I knew that he was intimately acquainted with the Molloys, and I wished Theodora to hear that I was wounded; for a man hurt in an affair of honour (and what but that could she suppose?) is the most interesting patient that can come under the steel of the faculty or the cognisance of the fair.
“Gunshot,” I acquiesced; for a carbine’s as good a “gun” as a pistol any day; and about the “shot” at any rate, there could be no mistake.
“Shivering an’ a daisy, as you say?” he inquired. “Looking into a barrel? Ten paces, eh?”
“I’ll not deny the distance was about that,” said I. “We were both slightly wounded, and — that’s all. I won’t talk about it; we are under terms not to tell on one another; and ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies. Are you asked to the Molloys’ tea-party to go to the playhouse on — next, and back again to supper?”
“Yes,” says Mundy, “and I mean to go; that’s as fine a blackeyed, piquey-cheeked, bouncing grenadier of a— “
“Stop!” said I, making a bounce to sit up, for my blood was boiling; but I was not equal to that change of posture yet. “If you mean Miss Theodora Molloy— “ I began.
“Oh! oh! So it is there the wind sits,” says he, and he laughed, “I meant old Mother Molloy, of course; don’t be uneasy, my dear fellow.”
We parted, notwithstanding, very good friends, and I was glad to hear that he was just going to pay them a visit in their apartments on Ormond Quay, and I knew he could not keep my little secret long from that agreeable family.
The better part of the week had passed, as you are aware, since this visit of Mundy’s, and I was now on the point of setting oat to enjoy the delightful evening I had been dreaming of for so long.
When my toilet was completed, I practised sitting down and standing up, which I did, perhaps, a little stiffly; still the movement was quite feasible, and I trusted to the inspiration of Theodora’s presence to make it graceful.
When all was ready I took my opera-hat and got into the hackney-coach, with a great coat-of-arms, as big as a signboard, emblazoned on each door. Some judge or Lord Mayor, or other magnifico, seemed to have owned every one of them, fifty years before, and turned them adrift to batter about the town ever since. I sat down alone in my glory. It was a roomy place. Three could easily sit at a side. I wish you felt the jolting, and bobbing, and bumping. I was in no condition to enjoy it just then, and on second thought, I readjusted my pose. I kneeled down; such, for sufficient reasons, was the attitude I preferred, with my elbows on the cushion. There was room enough for changes of the sort: it was as big as a pew, a very uneasy one, you may suppose: the noise of it was enough to deafen a cannoneer for an hour after. If all the old iron and broken glass in Dublin was being tossed by madmen in frying-pans like pancakes, it could not exceed the ring and clatter and batter of that musical enclosure. They were all alike; there was no use in fretting; I wanted to be at Ormond Quay to the minute, not to lose one moment of Theodora’s company, possibly to arrive first of the lot and have her all to myself before any one else should come in to bother us.
Unfortunately, my coachman was something the worse for liquor, and delayed me considerably by tumbling out of the box, which he did three times: once on his back, once on his face, and last on his knees and elbows. He had to be helped up on to the box every time, and his hat, whip, and other appurtenances collected and restored by some charitable blackguards of his acquaintance, while I, compelled to change my attitude of devotion, was stamping in my pumps and silk stockings, in my roomy prison, and swearing till I almost burst my cravat, with my “topping,” my expressive face, and my fist out of the window. At length, after many hairbreadth escapes and a long and heartrending oscillation between the house ten doors above and the house ten doors below, the particular door I wanted to stop at, I was actually liberated, and ascended the narrow stairs, preceded by the maid, with my heart thumping, I verily believe, audibly. I heard people talking, and the voice of Theodora quite distinguishable from the rest. The woman did not announce my name, and I soon discovered that she was not aware that I had followed her upstairs, for she said:
“There’s a little hop-o’-my-thumb of a man in the hall, if ye plase, ma’am, that says you asked him to tay; but I think it’s what he’s a bit of a shop-boy that’s come with a bill, and, if you like, I’ll put him out by the lug.”
. I was so confused and embarrassed, and above all so anxious to put an end to the discussion, before anything past all endurance should be said, that I bolted into the room, putting on the best smile I could and stretching out my hand to Mrs. Molloy, who was next me. But the maid at the door, with arms as thick as Donnelly’s, the boxer, caught me by the collar at the nape of my neck with such a sudden jerk that I fell sitting on the floor, smack, as if I was shot, and she never let go her grip, but held me half-choked, sitting bolt upright, with my legs out, pumps and pantaloons, like a pair of compasses.
“How dare ye!” says the powerful maid, giving me a shake that made my teeth chatter. “How dare ye, dare ye, dare ye!”
I think she’d have pulled me down the stairs backwards, sitting as I was, only that Mrs. Molloy recovered her speech, and with a stamp on the floor that made the tea-spoons jump in their saucers, she bawls out, “My curse on you, Juggy Hanlon, what are you doing to Mr. Dooley, my most sinsare friend? Up with ye, Mr. Dooley, and I hope you’re nothing the worse, and down with yon, Juggy Hanlon, and my curse go along wid ye, to the kitchen. Take a chair and an air of the fire, Mr. Dooley, the evening’s a trifle could, I think; and settle your cravat at the glass there between the windows, and we won’t look at ye — bad luck to her impudence. Here’s my daughter Theodora, waiting to shake hands wid ye; but she won’t look at ye no more than myself till ye settle your waistcoat and cravat; it’s a wonder of the world she didn’t make smithereens of your watch. She’s cruel strong, that same Juggy Hanlon!”
I did as I was bid; I was so confounded I could hardly see my own reflection in the dingy little pier-glass. I saw in the background the images of other people indistinctly, and I heard a sound of voices, but I could not say at the time whether they were laughing at me or what they were doing.
In another minute I was shaking hands with everyone that would shake hands with me, and with some of them, I dare say, twice over t at least. I was beginning to feel more like myself. It was not a very large party: Mundy was there, and Lieutenant Kramm — Sidebotham was on duty, but expected to get off in time to come to supper — there was an impudent little Galway chap, no bigger than myself, with a smirk on his red face, and a pair of calves, I give you my honour, AS round as a hat, paying attentions, if you please, to Miss Theodora Molloy. I don’t think he was a day under forty! With half an eye I saw what he was at. If you caught a stranger driving your only horse and new gig to the Howth races, or walking down Dame Street in your best hat, with your umbrella in his hand, you might conceive, in a small way, the feelings with which I witnessed the usurpation in question. I had no idea until that moment how entirely I had come to regard Theodora as my own. I think I could have cut his ugly little head off his shoulders, and kicked it through the window into the Liffey.
“I must introjuice you to my sinsare friend— “
“The O’Kelly of Ballynamuck,” whispered the gentleman from Galway, who knew his weakness.
“Mr. Dooley— “
“Toole” I whispered.
“Well, ain’t it all one? Mr. Toole, I beg leave to introjuice yon both. Mr. Toole, this is The O’Kelly of Ballynamuck. The O’Kelly of Ballynamuck, this is Mr. Toole.”
“Proud to make your acquaintance,” said The O’Kelly, with a fierce sort of curtsey, that made me think that he, also, instinctively smelt a rat.
“Your most obedient, sir,” said I, making him an awful low bow, and, raising my head higher than usual, I treated him at the end of it to a short, fierce stare; with another short bow at the end of that again.
“Fine weather, sir! uncommon fine, Mr. Toole. Everything promises amazing; though, of course, it don’t agree with everything alike. If this weather houlds a little longer I wouldn’t wonder if we had piteeties at three-halfpence!”
“Indeed, sir!” said I, expressing more wonder than I altogether felt, for I wasn’t quite sure whether the sum he named was wonderfully high or wonderfully low. “Do you play billiards, sir?”
“No, sir; cards and cock-fightin’ serves my turn. But what is cards and what is cock-fightin’ compared with the delightful societee of neeture’s noblest work, the objeck of our aspirations, our homage, and our life’s devotion — the fair sex?”
And with this he made a flourish with his hat, and a bow to Miss Theodora, the like of which I could hardly hope to execute in half a life, with such a smile of conceit and assurance, and, I may say; of defiance, as almost drove me out of my senses, and down he went, with a whisk, into the chair next hers, and began to talk love and nonsense into her ear, under my very nose! Every now and then, I could see from the comers of his eye he gave me a look as much as to say, “I have her, and I mean to keep her; and don’t you wish you may get her?”
“That fellow’s disposed to put a quarrel on me,” said I to myself; “let him; if he don’t, maybe I’ll put one upon him.”
I dare say I looked a little bit surly, for Mrs. Molloy plucked me by the coat, and said: “Sit down at the table, here, beside me and take a hot cup of tay, and a cut o’ that pittaytee-cake; and may I never! but ye look as if ye saw your tailor’s ghost with a bill in his fingers. Sit down now, I tell you,” and the imperious old lady pulled me down on the chair with a souse. “And here’s for you; that’s stingo; drink it, my child; and cream in it that will make you as fat as a pig.”
I think in her youth Mrs. Molloy must have been very nearly as strong as Juggy Hanlon: I felt perfectly helpless in the hands of either. In deep dudgeon I swallowed lumps of potato-cake and gulped down tea, talking rather vaguely with old Mrs. Molloy, and watching Theodora and The O’Kelly of Ballynamuck with the corner of my eye.
“I see how it is, my poor little fellow,” says Mrs. Molloy, with a kind wink at me, “but don’t bother you head about him. “Mickey Kelly there,” and she winked at me again, and jogged her elbow in the direction of The O’Kelly, “can’t come to the playhouse to-night; he’s going to Killcock to sell a mare, and he’s the boy that can do it. So Theodora ‘ll have no one to look after her but yourself and them officers, and I leave her among you, and I think I know who’ll be foremost. We leave that dear girl, me and Molloy there, just to do whatever she likes best herself. What time of day is it, Molloy?”
Old Molloy obediently grasped the seals of his huge silver watch, and hauled it, with several tugs, from the recesses of his fob.
“Why then, it’s time the coaches was at the door,” says Mrs. Molloy, in a tone of brisk alarm, having heard his report. “Bing the bell, some o’ yez, like darlin’s. Where’s that Juggy Hanlon? Don’t be affeard, Mr. Dooley,” she interpolated to me, with a momentary playfulness, “she shan’t lay a finger on you. Call two coaches, Juggy, and don’t be while ye’d be lookin’ about ye — mind. Bun in and get ready, Theo, my child.” And she added more vehemently to her helpmate, “Shake them crumbs off your smallclothes, Mr. Molloy, and, for dacency’s sake, will ye wipe that butter off your chin.”
So issuing her orders in hot haste, Mrs. Molloy fussed, and wheezed, and bustled about. Mundy was arranging his curls, and smiling blandly at his handsome features in the looking-glass; and Lieutenant Kramm was entertaining old Molloy with terrific anecdotes of his sporting and military life; and The O’Kelly was taking his leave with all the fascination and gallantry that belonged to his courtly manners. From the window I saw him get into a battered gig, and drive off at a hideous pace, pretty much at the mercy of a mad-looking horse, in a westerly direction. That redfaced thief made me very uneasy; and you may be sure it wasn’t altogether about his neck I was anxious.
Well, he was gone; that was one comfort. I shook myself up, and strutted from one window to another, and Mrs. Molloy’s words and looks of encouragement came back, and I began to think if a little beast like that chooses to pin himself to a girl’s apron-string, what is she to do? I dare say she hated the old whisky-faced rascal as much as I did; and didn’t she give me a smile over her shoulder as she left the room!
My spirits rose. I was glad to observe that Mundy, who was six feet high and wore a red coat — decisive odds — was not in the running; and Kramm was directing his attentions chiefly to the old people. The opportunity would, after all, prove as fortunate as my wildest hopes had painted it.
In a few minutes more we were rolling and rattling away to the theatre. Mrs. Molloy distinguished Kramm and Mundy by placing herself under their escort, and starting first, with a tipsy coachman and a horse that had a morbid jerk in one of its legs, and seemed at every fifth step to be on the point of pitching, with a curtsey, on its head. Away they went in full fig, merrily, in this conveyance; Mrs. Molloy, as proud as a peacock to take her seat in the box next his Excellency, the Lord Lift’nant! I, old Molloy, and the lovely Theodora, whom I keep to the last, as children do their best bit, followed in our jingling, thundering, rolling coach, and in a few minutes down slammed the steps in front of the box-entrance, and I had the happiness of giving my arm to the beautiful girl I had never ceased thinking of since I saw her for the first time, in the barouche, outside the pickle-shop on Stephen’s Green. Can I ever forget it!
Here we are now, all in our glory, under the blaze of the lamps. Mrs. Molloy’s turban, or, as she persisted in calling that sort of coiffure, to her dying day, her “turbot,” was the finest thing in green, yellow, and pink that night in the playhouse, with a big pin — I suppose they were precious stones — stuck in the front of it; her dress was of corresponding magnificence. At that time ladies wore next to no waists at all, and their clothes were made almost as tight as bolster-cases, if you just suppose a bit of string all round tied tight, and as close under the arm-pits as anatomy would permit. Whatever advantages this style of dress had, I think it was rather trying to persons of Mrs. Molloy’s figure, and was calculated, with uncommon candour, to display every pound of flesh she boasted. She had three necklaces on, and a roll of fat for every one, and a pair of Roman-pearl pendants, that were as big as duck-eggs, and kept swinging and knocking on her inflamed shoulders whenever she turned her head. I will say this for Mrs. Molloy, that for her time of life she was as showy and plentiful a figure, and as roomy a woman as you could wish to fill a window with on a Lord Mayor’s Day; and this night, in the front row of the box, next his Excellency, she was looking her very best, and, I dare say, a more striking figure than the Lord Lieutenant himself.
Mrs. Molloy was so anxious to get next the Lord Lieutenant, and her daughter to get as far as possible from Mrs. Molloy that Mundy and I were put side by side in the middle, Miss Theodora on my right, and the old lady on Mundy’s left next the viceregal box. I remember the arrangement well, because we were hardly in our places, and I saying something engaging to Miss Theodora Molloy, sitting as I was side by side with my friend the lieutenant, when a fellow in the gallery calls out, “Three cheers for Mundy and his man Friday,” and three cheers followed that made the lustres tremble.
This you may be sure made me feel rather fidgetty, more especially as who should I see but that blackguard young Figges, and all his malevolent family, grinning and sniggering away in a front row, only a box or two off. He was watching me, and laughing, you’d say, for a wager, and bursting with spite.
I was as sure as could be, of a thing I did not actually see, that the sneaking rascal had sent a lot of his shop-boys into the upper gallery to make fun of me before the people. Of course he saw my name down and who I was with when he went to take his places.
It was a terrible unlucky thing. It was putting me out. I could not hear half she said; and two or three times I was very near talking nonsense.
In a minute more another chap calls out from the gallery: “A cheer for the big soger with the little hyacinth in his button-hole,” and off goes another cheer.
Well, this blew over like the last, leaving me feeling rather small and blushing all over. But I did not pretend to think they meant me, and went on talking all the same, thinking the overture would never begin, and the curtain go up to put me out of pain.
Then there comes a thundering cheer for Mr. Toole, in the box next his Excellency, and I saw the Figgesses tittering.
No matter, I was determined to keep never-minding, and to talk on to that beautiful girl as if nothing in the world was going the least bit wrong.
“May I make bold,” says I, “to ask you, Miss Molloy, how long it is since you and Mr. O’Kelly were first acquainted?”
“And why should you care a brass farthing, Mr. Toole, to know? “ says she, looking as innocent and startled-like as a little frightened bird. “Sure there’s no harm in poor little Micky O’Kelly!”
“No harm, I dare say, and not much good,” said I; “but whatever he is I envy him, Miss Molloy, and lament all the precious time I have lost.”
I said this, you may be sure, as tenderly as I could.
“I hope you’re gettin’ on with her, Mr. Toole,” calls out a fellow affectionately from the gallery.
“Never mind,” says another, “he’s the boy that’ll melt her soon.” I felt my very cheeks tingling with shame. There was another cheer, and those accursed Figgesses grinning. Well, it could not last for ever, I thought. “Will those beastly fiddlers never begin?” I thought. “Is there no one else in the house to make fun of hut me? Will I ever be out o’ this, dead or alive?”
The house was now filling fast; the box-doors were opening and clapping; a human flood was oozing and tumbling into the pit from every entrance. The gallery was becoming more noisy every minute; the orchestra were assembling, were chatting together, turning over music, and tuning violins, double-basses, and all sorts of instruments. There was a cheer for “Nosey,” which was the nickname of the “leader” of those days. There was the usual “groan for the man in the white hat,” and call for “music,” and two or three fruits, small and hard, of that popular kind which were displayed by the vendors at the corner of Carlisle Bridge, in old japanned snuffer-dishes, and offered from 11 o’clock, A.M., to sun-setting, with inviting monotony, in the words, “Fourteen scarlet craftons for a halfpenny,” hit a hat or two in the pit, and one sounded the big drum with a spirit that made the accomplished drummer start, and drew upon him a glance of indignation from “Nosey,” now upon his throne. These “fine scarlet craftons,” as I knew from experience, were as cheap and convenient an ammunition as a man could take with him to the upper gallery, when he wished to take half-an-hour’s innocent diversion with bald heads in the pit. Only two or three came down now; but they were “like the first of a thunder-shower,” as Lord Byron says, and I knew they were signs of the coming storm.
And now, on a sudden, every one in the house stood up, the orchestra struck up “God save the King.” The Lord Lieutenant was taking his place in state, in the box next ours, and such a storm of clapping, cheering, hooting, groaning, hissing, whacking of sticks on the front of the gallery, whistling, cat-calls, and other sounds rose all at once, as made the music totally inaudible, and deafened the entire audience for a time. During the whole of this period, while we could see by the elbows and fiddle-sticks of the orchestra that the national anthem was still being played, much to my chagrin, I saw Mrs. Molloy, in whom I felt an interest, reflected from her lovely daughter, and a responsibility though not quite so near as Mundy’s, behaving herself in a manner that, I confess, scandalised me a good deal; for, with her side and shoulder on the cushion of our box, she contrived to get her face round the partition of his Excellency’s, and indeed, I may say, pretty well into it. One of her objects had been to get a good look at that dignified personage. I could soon perceive that she was engaged in a violent altercation with some one in the viceregal box, in which her face was, I may say, established.
I thought I could distinguish in her powerful voice an allusion to the well-known privilege that cats enjoy, of looking at kings; but, except the constant and vehement nodding of her turban, I could see nothing of what was going on in the state box.
Tom Barnacle was in the pit, a little way out, and told me next day all he saw; and from that and Mrs. Molloy’s narrative, I can relate that when her face presented itself considerable surprise and even consternation appeared in the countenances of those members of the household that were stationed in the rear of “his Excellency,” who looked straight before him, as if unconscious of the appearance of the disk that had risen so unexpectedly on his horizon.
Mrs. Molloy nodded repeatedly to “his Excellency,” and smiled affably, assuring him that she was proud to see him there, and that Molloy himself and her daughter being in the next box she did not think it would be manners if some one of the family did not wish his Excellency health, wealth, long life, and prosperity, which she did with a cead mille failthe from the heart of a Connaught woman, and the boosom of Ireland.
His Excellency, she complained afterwards, did not appear to hear what she was saying— “them ignorant blackguards were making such a noise” — but as the speech exhibited no symptoms of drawing towards its close, one of the gentlemen, in Castle uniform, stepped forward, and said with very marked distinctness: “Unless you withdraw your face, a constable shall take you from the next box, and convey you to the watch-house.”
It was upon this that Mrs. Molloy, who had a “spent” befitting her ancient lineage, had retorted in high and scornful terms upon the “gentleman-at-large,” who looked as if he would have liked to take by the throat that turbaned Turk; and it was not until she saw him, as she thought, make a sign to some one, in the rear of the box, that her prudence overcame her indignation, and, with a face of flame and many a sniff and snort, she resumed her original pose, and stared fiercely across at the side-scene opposite, and her gills palpitated for half an hour afterwards.
The frightful discord with which the representative of majesty was received, foreboded the political storm that was brewing.
‘Macbeth’ was the play, and my troubles, to return from great things to small, were not over yet, for when the witches came on, and the cauldron appeared, a chap calls out from the gallery: “The boiling-pot, Mr. Toole.”
I felt it the more that there was a dead silence in the house at the moment. And when the smoke began to come up, and the witches said:
“Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire, burn; and, cauldron, bubble.”
“Melting-day, Toole,” says another. And when Macbeth said:
“Out, out, brief candle.”
There was a roar of “Short sixes.”
I give you my sacred honour, I felt as if I was melting myself. I’d have liked to stand up that minute and tell the whole world I was a chandler. There’s nothing on earth so torturing as a mystery, with a lot of fellows, that know all about it, poking it under your nose every minute in the presence of a great assembly.
Between the acts, it was one succession of groans, and hisses, and political sentiments, and it was plain that the Lord Lieutenant and the government big-wigs were in ill odour with the gallery. It was just when Macbeth was on the point of murdering King Duncan, a chap among the gods called out, by way of a joke: “God save the King,” and with that another calls for “Patrick’s Day,” and then the whole gallery round set up one roar for “Patrick’s Day,” and nothing could you hear but “Patrick’s Day — Patrick’s Day,” in one thunder; you’d think the ceiling would come down. And out comes the manager, and stood bowing in front of the footlights, turning up his eyes to the gods, and Nosey waiting for a signal from him to strike up the tune they wanted. He made no sign; the clamour rose awfully; he smiled, he shrugged, he bowed very low, he expanded his white gloves imploringly, as he slowly looked from one side to the other of the gallery. All would not do; they would not give him a hearing. The manager went off, bowing and smiling regretfully, and he sent on Lady Macbeth to proceed, if she could; but the storm was rising steadily, and even that royal virago was forced to submit: Lady Macbeth curtseyed low, and in turn withdrew. Again the manager came forward. He gesticulated before the gentlemen in the gallery, conveying as well as he could that their demands were complied with; he stepped forward to the footlights, signed to Nosey, who rapped on his desk with his fiddle-stick, and waved that wand of power over his musical familiars, and it was to be supposed the tune, so tumultuously demanded, was at last being executed by the full strength of Nosey’s band; but, of course, not a note could any one hear in the house. The magic of “Patrick’s Day” was powerless to abate the storm. That quarrel was but a pretext: there was something deeper in it. The manager bowed very low, and a sucked orange hit him on the head. At the same moment a whisky-bottle, from the upper gallery, hit the front of the Lord Lieutenant’s box, and a shower of glass splinters flew in all directions. Now there were gentlemen standing up in the boxes, and gesticulating fiercely at the gallery; box-doors were opened and peaceable people were drawing back and some getting out on the corridors; the same agitation was visible in the pit. Smash goes another bottle on the side of the viceregal box.
The Viceroy, being a plucky man, continued to sit serenely with his eyes on the stage. Old Molloy popped his bald head out to see what was going on, and instantly, not a scarlet “crafton,” but one of those big, yellow apples that were called cannon-balls — never did they better deserve their name — burst with a thump on his shining bald head, a bit of it, as big as a walnut, hit me in the eye, exactly as I was saying, with a look of unutterable love in the unfortunate eye that I had fixed on her: “Dear Miss Theodora, fear nothing; am not I beside you?” Some pulp marked the spot where it had hit her papa, and a “noggin” of cider was streaming over his massive forehead and intelligent eyes, and I dare say old Molloy thought, for a minute, he was back again on the fair green of Ballynawhop.
If we had known that the Lord Lieutenant’s box was likely to become the mark for all this artillery, I doubt if Mrs. Molloy would have been in such a hurry to secure the place of honour.
“Papa dear, are ye hurted?” Miss Theodora exclaimed with much trepidation; and “Oh, la! There’s mamma!” And sure enough a cat had at that moment alighted with great directness on the head of Mrs. Molloy, whirling her tasteful turban and wig over her left cheek, and displaying instead a head as bald as her husband’s. A live cat, bedad! If it had dropped into the box among us, Saint Peter would not have kept me in it an instant! Luckily it tumbled off Mrs. Molloy’s turban, head over heels among the groundlings in the pit. Grasping her wig and turban with both hands she rose exclaiming, “Take me out of this hell upon earth some of ye.”
At the same instant the Lord Lieutenant, having made up his mind to retire, rose with much dignity, and received a large lemon on his back; and I myself saw a mutton kidney in the eye of the Attorney-General, in the box opposite to ours.
It was indeed high time for all who had ladies to look after to beat a retreat, and we were soon in the corridor, and making our way down the stairs. Theodora was on my arm. I was afraid she might faint before we got her into the coach.
“Are you ill?” I whispered, squeezing her arm gently to the lapel of my coat with my elbow. “I hope you were not very much frightened?”
Upon this the channing girl treated me to a dazzling stare of her fine black eyes, and burst out laughing.
“Ah! Then, is it what you’re jokin’ me, you are, Mr. Toole?” says she. “Affeard, indeed! I wish you saw the stones and claealpins hoppin’ on and off the boys’ polls at the Fair of Killbattery. Ha, ha! Papa’s nothing the worse, ye see; and, indeed, the smack of it took a start out of me, for I only saw it with the corner of my eye, and I could not tell but it was a paving-stone was in it, and the pulp flying out alarmed me for a moment for the dear man’s brains. And mamma got it, too; that was a cat, or my name’s not Theodora. Mamma! Who’s she with? Oh, Mundy, I see. Mamma, dear, how’s your head?”
“Bad enough, joole,” rejoined Mrs. Molloy. My beautiful turbot’s rooned and smathered on my head!”
The people who looked round to see who the speaker was who had suffered in so unusual a way, beheld Mrs. Molloy with old Molloy’s red and yellow silk pocket-handkerchief tied under her chin, holding her wig and turban down in their place, and looking, certainly, not unlike that class of ladies who used to carry flat-fish on their heads, and certainly I did feel a little bashful about her, for one side of her wig was dangling from under Molloy’s handkerchief between her shoulders, and the Figgesses, who were coming down the stairs behind us, were laughing like hyænas. I don’t think there was an unlucky thing happened to us that night but the eyes of that same beastly family were upon us.
I was thankful when Mrs. Molloy was shut up in her hack coach, and her daughter, her husband, and myself in ours.
We had all recovered our spirits by the time we had reached our destination on Ormond Quay. Up the stairs we stumbled, talking all together, and into the front drawing-room, where Juggy Hanlon had already lighted candles. Mrs. Molloy slipped quietly upstairs to restore her distracted head to order, while we talked on in the room where we had first mustered, and we could hear the servants tramping up and down the back drawing-room, clinking plates, and jingling spoons and knives and forks, and squabbling in loud and voluble accents over the arrangement of the supper.
“Mr. Lieutenant Kramm has just been telling me, Miss Theodora, that your music is all that I should have anticipated,” said I, “would it be asking too great a favour from a nightingale to sing us a song from the perch of that music-stool, and to accompany itself with a few harmonious touches of that forte-piano?”
I give you this pretty speech in full, to show you how much pains I was taking to gain the beautiful creature’s heart.
“Lieutenant Kramm says more than his prayers, I’m afraid,” says she, sitting down carelessly before the instrument. “Not that I sing like a nightingale, for I know very well that I don’t.”
But she looked all the time as if she thought that she did.
“You don’t sing like the nightingale in this one respect,” said I, “that you excel it beyond all calculation.”
“I don’t mind a word you’re saying, Mr. Toole; I think it’s what you want to make a fool of me,” said the young lady.
“Miss Molloy does not sing like the nightingale for all listeners,” says Kramm, “only for her particular friends.
“That’s it, I hope,” said I, “and I devoutly entreat that I may be included among the number.”
“Sing that glorious thing you astonished me with the other morning,” said Mundy, joining the chorus of supplication. “If you don’t, I’ll beg of Mr. Molloy to use his influence as a father.”
“Well, then, I suppose I may as well,” says she. I’ll sing you one of Tommy Moore’s melodies.”
And, by the powers, so she did! She struck up on the piano, and I was delighted and, I do assure you, half-frightened by the power of her voice. Since I heard old “Whisky Tay” in the black-hole I had never listened to anything in the way of music half so loud! She had a way of throwing her voice into the words and swelling them out, that I never heard equalled; and when she came to the part:
“The mo-hoon hid her li-hight,
In the heavens that ni-hi-hight,
And wept behind a clou-houd,
O’er the maiden’s shee-aim.”
I was perfectly ravished.
“More power! My blessing! May I never, but that teas singing!” said I, in a state of extraordinary enthusiasm; and I do assure yon I hardly knew whether I was on my head or my heels. “Thank yon! thank you!! THANK YOU!!!” I cried with growing fervour. “God bless yon, my darling Miss Theodora, that was astonishing!”
Mundy was laughing all this time with a “Ha! ha! ha!” and no more disguise than he would at a clown in a circus.
“What are you laughing at, Mundy?” said J, turning on him as if I’d eat him up, with a stamp on the floor, for which I afterwards apologised to Miss Molloy, for it raised such a dust between me and Mundy I could scarcely see him, and I heard the young lady blowing and phewing, and slapping her hair with her pocket-handkerchief; and old Molloy was taken with a fit of coughing.
“Laughing!” says Mundy. “Ha! ha! ha! phew! I say, where’s the good of smothering us? Ha! ha! ha! why, man, I tell you it is — ha! ha! ha! — hys-sis-sis-sisterical — ha! ha! ha! I can’t help it, I tell you, I — ha! ha! ha! — have a sort of trembling inside whenever I’m very much moved. Miss Molloy knows all about it. Don’t be a fool; I told her long ago. I’ve had it on parade, and at funerals, and at divine service, by Jove, and I’ll not be cross-questioned, nor bamboozled, nor made more nervous by any man living. You believe me, Miss Molloy, and that’s all I care about.”
“Ah! Be quiet, Toole, will ye?” It was the first time she called me by my surname, and I felt so happy I could have forgiven Mundy if he had pulled me by the nose. “It’s true for him; he does really — he laughs whenever he’s near cryin’. It happened to myself once, when I was getting well o’ the swine-pock. Sure didn’t I — see the way he was over the beautiful verses my poor Uncle Barney wrote, when he was leaving Ireland in a decline, and he called the pome a ‘Farewell to Allyballycarick-o-dooley,’ which was the name of his place, and there’s hardly one in the world could read it without crying; and I give you my word, it was from one split of laughing with him into another! Not but what I think it would be better manners if he ran his head in a pittaytie-pot, and clapped it out o’ the windy, sooner than offend people by his weakness, when he felt the fit cornin’ on him,” she concluded, with a little severity.
The discussion was ended at this point by the return of Mrs. Molloy, with her second best wig and “turbot” on her head; and just as we were going into supper in came Sidebotham. His eye was little more than sky-blue and yellow now, and a small slip of black plaister, instead of the bit of basilicon, as big as a turnpike-ticket, that was stuck across the bridge of his nose. He was not by any means so stand-off with me as when I last met him, and seemed disposed to be conciliatory, and indeed he went the length of borrowing five pounds from me as we went away.
I don’t know how we bundled in to supper. I only know that I found myself beside Theodora. It was really an elegant supper. I remember it well, and I may as well tell you that old Molloy had a loin of roast pork before him; there was a big square of bacon, with greens, before Sidebotham — we were running, you see, a good deal on the pigs; before Mrs. Molloy, and as fat as herself, there was a grand roast goose, that came all the way from Connaught, and more fool it, considering all the good it got by the journey! And there was cow-heel and tripe, a dish that old Molloy fondly lost himself in, whenever he could get at it. There was enough cold-cannon to load a hod with; potatoes with and without the skins; there was a mountain of pancakes you might put a child to bed on; and such a good smell of stuffing, and onions, and gravy over all, that I declare to you I don’t think the Prince Regent had a finer supper that night.
We were mortal hungry, and for a time conversation was a little dull; but I had the pleasure of hearing Theodora’s beautiful voice every now and then, between the sounds of chumping, and munching, and gulping all round, calling on me for those little refined attentions that constitute, I may say, all the chivalry of the supper-table. Now it was:
“Mr. Toole, may I be troublesome to you for the gherkins?” And again —
“Another help o’ the stuffin’, ask mamma, Mr. Toole.” Or —
“Show me the mustard, if you please?” Or —
“Will ye give me a dust of that pepper, Mr. Toole?
I do assure you it was one delightful round of similar requests and attentions all through the supper-time, and as the glorious girl had a fine appetite, she worked me, in that way, to my heart’s content.
But this was only child’s play compared with what followed, when the old lady called out “ Come, Molloy, where’s the punch? What are you foosthering about? We’re all choking with the drooth, and lookin’ at ye like so many dying fishes out o’ water. There’s Mr. Upside— “
“Sidebotham,” said the lieutenant.
“Upsidedownbotham — well, whatever it is, the young captain there, that we knew in Athlone, is makin’ signs to me this half hour for drink. Come, man, stir. Juggy, good girl, bring the kittle; there’s two bottle of the right sort at your elbow, and half a dozen elegant lemons. Putt down the bowl before him, Juggy, that’s a darlint, and don’t be sousing the wather in as if you were drownding so many rats. Do you know what, Mr. Upside, Mr. Downbotham, that’s it; just look at that bowl — it houlds seven pints and about a wine-glass; that’s the very bowl Molloy was baptized in!” And she nodded impressively at Sidebotham, just as Molloy squeezed a lemon into the sacred vessel. “As sore as you sit there, Mr. Back — what your name? — no matter, I wish there was no such things as names, barrin’ Christian names, of course, for the sake of religion; but what was I saying? Yes; he was baptized in that very bowl!”
“Not ducked in it?” says Sidebotham.
“No; but sprinkled out of it by the Reverend Father Haddock.”
“He drank like a fish, I dare say, ma’am,” said Sidebotham, who didn’t care a fig what he said to any one.
“I don’t know, my dear, but he baptized like a Christian; and he met his death, most unfortunately, by being drownded in a bog-hole. He being a portly man, standing too near the edge, the bank gave way, and himself, and a child, and an ass and cart was all drownded together. I remember seeing him myself.”
“Not in the bog-hole?” said the lieutenant.
“No, honey! It was in the high street of Athlone, when I was only a little slip of a colleen.”
“We must drink to his memory, ma’am,” said Sidebotham.
“With all my heart, joole,” said Mrs. Molloy, who, barring a few political toasts, did not object to drink to anything.
By this time the punch, one of the few good things we unquestionably owe to England, was brewed; and infinite credit it did its “composer.”
Our Philomel was the only one of the party who partook of that wonderful elixir with extreme moderation. That nightingale only touched it lightly, as it were, with her musical beak, once or twice, and, content with this little sip, listened to our agreeable conversation, our toasts, and sentiments, and to a great deal of fiery and confidential nonsense from your humble servant.
After this, I can recall nothing distinctly, except the general consciousness that I never was so happy in the course of my life; only I once or twice observed that Kramm, who sat at Theodora’s other side, and did not seem to hear a word I said, kept interrupting the girl with his long-winded stories; and then I remember Sidebotham seeing me home, and talking to him a great deal about Theodora, and something very touching was said that affected me, for I remember crying while he held my hand, and I held the railings, and I lent him some money, and how I got to my bed I don’t know.
[This amusing story, by the gifted author of ‘Uncle Silas’ and ‘In a Glass Darkly,’ was left at the time of the author’s death unfinished as it is here, but the Editor ventures nevertheless to give it in this state to the readers of ‘TEMPLE Bar.’ Humour is not a product of this furiously earnest age, and we cannot afford to lose any contribution to our mirth which comes in our way. — EDITOR.]