CHAPTER XXIV. A GLANCE AT “THE FULL MOON.”
To rescue our friend Bagenal Daly from any imputation the circumstance might suggest, it is as well to observe here, that when he issued the order to his servant to seek out the boy who brought the intelligence of Gleeson's flight, he was merely relying on that knowledge of the obscure recesses of Old Dublin which Sandy possessed, and not by any means upon a distinct acquaintance with gentlemen of the same rank and station as Jemmy.
When Daly first took up his residence in the capital, many, many years before, he was an object of mob worship. He had every quality necessary for such. He was immensely rich, profusely spendthrift, and eccentric to an extent that some characterized as insanity. His dress, his equipage, his liveries, his whole retinue and style of living were strange and unlike other men's, while his habits of life bid utter defiance to every ordinance of society.
In the course of several years' foreign travel he had made acquaintances the most extraordinary and dissimilar, and many of these were led to visit him in his own country. Dublin being less resorted to by strangers than most cities, the surprise of its inhabitants was proportionably great as they beheld, not only Hungarians and Russian nobles, with gorgeous equipages and splendid retinues, driving through the streets, but Turks, Armenians, and Greeks, in full costume; and, on one occasion, Daly's companion on a public promenade was no less remarkable a person than a North American chief, in all the barbaric magnificence of his native dress. To obviate the inconvenience of that mob accompaniment such spectacles would naturally attract, Daly entered into a compact with the leaders of the varions sets or parties of low Dublin, by which, on payment of a certain sum, he was guaranteed in the enjoyment of appearing in public without a following of several hundred ragged wretches in full cry after him. Nothing could be more honorable and fair than the conduct of both parties in this singular treaty; the subsidy was regularly paid through the hands of Sandy M'Grane, while the subsidized literally observed every article of the contract, and not only avoided any molestation on their own parts, but were a formidable protective force in the event of any annoyance from others of a superior rank in society.
The hawkers of the various newspapers were the deputies with whom Sandy negotiated this treaty, they being recognized as the legitimate interpreters of mob opinion through the capital; men who combined an insight into local grievances with a corresponding knowledge of general politics; and certain it is, their sway must have been both respected and well protected, for a single transgression of the compact with Daly never occurred.
Bagenal Daly troubled his head very little in the matter, it is true; for his own sake he would never have thought of such a bargain, but he detested the thought of foreigners carrying away with them from Ireland any unpleasant memories of mob outrage or insult; and desired that the only remembrance they should preserve of his native country should be of its cordial and hospitable reception. A great many years had now elapsed since these pleasant times, and Daly's name was scarcely more than a tradition among those who now lounged in rags and idleness through the capital,—a fact of which he could have had little doubt himself, if he had reflected on that crowd which followed his own steps but a few days before. Of this circumstance, however, he took little or no notice, and gave his orders to Sandy with the same conscious power he had wielded nearly fifty years back.
A small public-house, called the Moon, in Duck Alley, a narrow lane off the Cross Poddle, was the resort of this Rump Parliament, and thither Sandy betook himself on a Saturday evening, the usual night of meeting, as, there being no issue of newspapers the next morning, nothing interfered with a prolonged conviviality. Often and often had he taken the same journey at the same hour; but now, such is the effect of a long interval of years, the way seemed narrower and more crooked than ever, while as he went not one familiar face welcomed him as he passed; nor could he recognize, as of yore, his acquaintances amid the various disguises of black eyes and smashed noses, which were frequent on every side. It was the hour when crime and guilt, drunken rage and grief, mingled together their fearful agencies; and every street and alley was crowded by half-naked wretches quarrelling and singing: some screaming in accents of heartbroken anguish; others shouting their blasphemies with voices hoarse from passion; age and infancy, manhood in its prime, the mother and the young girl, were all there, reeling from drunkenness, or faint from famine; some struggling in deadly conflict, others bathing the lips and temples of ebbing life.
Through this human hell Sandy wended his way, occasionally followed by the taunting ribaldry of such as remarked him: such testimonies were very unlike his former welcomes in these regions; but for this honest Sandy cared little; his real regret was to see so much more evidence of depravity and misery than before. Drunkenness and its attendant vices were no new evils, it is true; but he thought all these were fearfully aggravated by what he now witnessed: loud and violent denunciations against every rank above their own, imprecations on the Parliament and the gentry that “sowld Ireland:” as if any political perfidy could be the origin of their own degraded and revolting condition! Such is, however, the very essence of that spirit that germinates amid destitution and crime, and it is a dangerous social crisis when the masses begin to attribute their own demoralization to the vices of their betters. It well behooves those in high places to make their actions and opinions conform to their great destinies.
Sandy's Northern blood revolted at these brutal excesses, and the savage menaces he heard on every side; but perhaps his susceptibilities were more outraged by one trail of popular injustice than all the rest, and that was to hear Hickman O'Reilly extolled by the mob for his patriotic rejection of bribery, while the Knight of Gwynne was held up to execration by every epithet of infamy; ribald jests and low ballads conveying the theme of attack upon his spotless character.
The street lyrics of the day were divided in interest between the late rebellion and the act of Union; the former being, however, the favorite theme, from a species of irony peculiar to this class of poetry, in which certain living characters were held up to derision or execration. The chief chorist appeared to be a fiend-like old woman, with one eye, and a voice like a cracked bassoon: she was dressed in a cast-off soldier's coat and a man's hat, and neither from face nor costume had few feminine traits. This fair personage, known by the name of Rhoudlum, was, on her appearing, closely followed by a mob of admiring amateurs, who seemed to form both her body-guard and her chorus. When Sandy found himself fast wedged up in this procession, the enthusiasm was at its height, in honor of an elegant new ballad called “The Two Majors.” The air, should our reader be musically given, was the well-known one, “There was a Miller had Three Sons:”—
“Says Major Sirr to Major Swan,
You have two rebels, give me one;
They pay the same for one as two,
I 'll get five pounds, and I 'll share with you.
Toi! loi! loi! lay.”
“That's the way the blackguards sowld yer blood, boys!” said the hag, in recitative; “pitch caps, the ridin' house, and the gallows was iligant tratement for wearin' the green.”
“Go on, Rhoudlum, go on wid the song,” chimed in her followers, who cared more for the original text than prose vulgate.
“Arn't I goin' on wid it?” said the hag, as fire flashed in her eye; “is it the likes of you is to tache me how to modulate a strain?” And she resumed:—
“Says Major Swan to Major Sirr,
One man's a woman! ye may take her.
'T is little we gets for them at all—
Oh! the curse of Cromwell be an ye all!
Toi! loi! loll lay.”
The grand Demosthenic abruptness of the last line was the signal for an applauding burst of voices, whose sincerity it would be unfair to question.
“Where are you pushin' to! bad scran to ye! ye ugly varmint!” said the lady, as Sandy endeavored to force his passage through the crowd.
“Hurroo! by the mortial, it's Daly's man!” screamed she, in transport, as the accidental light of a window showed Sandy's features.
Few, if any, of those around had ever seen him; but his name and his master's were among the favored traditions of the place, and however unwilling to acknowledge the acquaintance, Sandy had no help for it but to exchange greetings and ask the way to “the Moon,” which he found he had forgotten.
“There it is fornint ye, Mr. M'Granes,” said the lady, in the most dulcet tones; “and if it's thinking of trating me ye are, 't is a 'crapper' in a pint of porter I 'd take; nothing stronger would sit on my heart now.”
“Ye shall hae it,” said Sandy; “but come into the house.”
“I darn't do it, sir; the committee is sittin'—don't ye see, besides, the moon lookin' at you?” And she pointed to a rude representation of a crescent moon, formed by a kind of transparency in the middle of a large window, a signal which Sandy well knew portended that the council were assembled within.
“Wha's the man, noo?” said Sandy, with one foot on the threshold.
“The ould stock still, darlint,” said Rhoudlum,—“don't ye know his voice?”
“That's Paul Donellan,—I ken him noo.”
“Be my conscience! there's no mistake. Ye can hear his screech from the Poddle to the Pigeon House when the wind's fair.”
Sandy put a shilling into the hag's hand, and, without waiting for further parley, entered the little dark hall, and turning a corner he well remembered, pressed a button and opened the door into the room where the party were assembled.
“Who the blazes are you? What brings you here?” burst from a score of rude voices together, while every hand grasped some projectile to hurl at the devoted intruder.
“Ask Paul Donellan who I am, and he'll tell ye,” said Sandy, sternly, while, with a bold contempt for the hostile demonstrations, he walked straight up to the head of the room.
The recognition on which he reckoned so confidently was not forthcoming, for the old decrepit creature who, cowering beneath the wig of some defunct chancellor, presided, stared at him with eyes bleared with age and intemperance, but seemed unable to detect him as an acquaintance.
“Holy Paul does n't know him!” said half-a-dozen together, as, in passionate indignation, they arose to resent the intrusion.
“He may remember this better,” said Sandy, as, seizing a full bumper of whiskey from the board, he threw it into the lamp beneath the transparency, and in a moment the moon flashed forth, and displayed its face at the full. The spell was magical, and a burst of savage welcome broke from every mouth, while Donellan, as if recalled to consciousness, put his hand trumpet-fashion to his lips, and gave a shout that made the very glasses ring upon the board. Place was now made for Sandy at the table, and a wooden vessel called “a noggin” set before him, whose contents he speedily tested by a long draught.
“I may as weel tell you,” said Sandy, “that I am Bagenal Daly's man. I mind the time it wad na hae been needful to say so much,—my master's picture used to hang upon that wall.”
Had Sandy proclaimed himself the Prince of Wales the announcement could not have met with more honor, and many a coarse and rugged grasp of the hand attested the pleasure his presence there afforded.
“We have the picture still,” said a young fellow, whose frank, good-humored face contrasted strongly with many of those around him; “but that old divil, Paul, always told us it was a likeness of himself when he was young.”
“Confound the scoundrel!” said Sandy, indignantly; “he was no mair like my maister than a Dutch skipper is like a chief of the Delawares. Has the creature lost his senses a'togither?”
“By no manner of manes. He wakes up every now and then wid a speech, or a bit of poethry, or a sentiment.”
“Ay,” said another, “or if a couple came in to be married, see how the old chap's eyes would brighten, and how he would turn the other side of his wig round before you could say 'Jack Robinson.'”
This was literally correct, and was the simple manouvre by which Holy Paul converted himself into a clerical character, the back of his wig being cut in horse-shoe fashion, in rude imitation of that worn by several of the bishops.
“Watch him now—watch him now!” said one in Sandy's ears; and the old fellow passed his hand across his eyes as if to dispel some painful thought, while his careworn features were lit up with a momentary flash of sardonic drollery.
“Your health, sir,” said he to Sandy; “or, as Terence has it, 'Hic tibi, Dave'—here 's to you, Davy.”
“A toast, Paul! a toast! Something agin the Union,—something agin old Darcy.”
“Fill up, gentlemen,” said Paul, in a clear and distinct voice. “I beg to propose a sentiment which you will drink with a bumper. Are you ready?”
“Ready!” screamed all together.
“Here, then,—repeat after me:—
“Whether he's out, or whether he's in,
It does n't signify one pin;
Here's every curse of every sin
On Maurice Darcy, Knight of Gwynne.”
“Hold!” shouted Sandy, as he drew a double-barrelled pistol from his bosom. “By the saul o' my body the man that drinks that toast shall hae mair in his waim than hot water and whiskey. Maurice Darcy is my maister's friend, and a better gentleman never stepped in leather: who dar say no?”
“Are we to drink it, Paul?”
“As I live by drink,” cried Paul, stretching out both hands, “this is my alter ego, my duplicate self, Sanders M'Grane's, 'revisiting the glimpses of the moon,' post totidem annos!” And a cordial embrace now followed, which at once dispelled the threatened storm.
“Mr. M'Grane's health in three times three, gentlemen;” and, rising, Paul gave the signal for each cheer as he alone could give it.
Sandy had now time to throw a glance around the table, where, however, not one familiar face met his own; that they were of the same calling and order as his quondam associates in the same place he could have little doubt, even had that fact not been proclaimed by the names of various popular journals affixed to their hats, and by whose titles they were themselves addressed. The conversation, too, had the same sprinkling of politics, town gossip, and late calamities he well remembered of yore, interspersed with lively commentaries on public men which, if printed, would have been suggestive of libel.
The new guest soon made himself free of the guild by a proposal to treat the company, on the condition that he might be permitted to have five minutes' conversation with their president in an adjoining room. He might have asked much more in requital for his liberality, and without a moment's delay, or even apprising Paul of what was intended, the “Dublin Journal” and the “Free Press” took him boldly between them and carried him into a closet off the room where the carouse was held.
“I know what you are at,” said Paul, as soon as the door closed. “Daly wants a rising of the Liberty boys for the next debate,—don't deny it, it's no use. Well, now, listen, and don't interrupt me. Tom Conolly came down from the Castle yesterday and offered me five pounds for a good mob to rack a house, and two-ten if they'd draw Lord Clare home; but I refused,—I did, on the virtue of my oath. There's patriotism for ye!—yer soul, where 's the man wid only one shirt and a supplement to his back would do the same?”
“You 're wrang,—we dinna want them devils at a'; it 's a sma' matter of inquiry I cam about. Ye ken Freney?”
“Is it the Captain? Whew!” said Paul, with a long whistle.
“It's no him,” resumed Sandy, “but a wee bit of a callant they ca' Jamie.”
“Jemmy the diver,—the divil's own grandson, that he is.”
“Where can I find him?” said Sandy, impatiently.
“Wait a bit, and you'll be sure to see him at home in his lodgings in Newgate.”
“I must find him out at once; put me on his track, and I 'll gie a goold guinea in yer hand, mon. I mean the young rascal no harm; it's a question I want him to answer me, that's all.”
“Well, I'll do my best to find him for you, but I must send down to the country. I'll have to get a man to go beyond Kilcullen.”
“We 'll pay any expense.”
“Sure I know that.” And here Paul began a calculation to himself of distances and charges only audible to Sandy's ears at intervals: “Two and four, and six, with a glass of punch at Naas—half an hour at Tims'—the coach at Athy—ay, that will do it. Have ye the likes of a pair of ould boots or shoes? I 've nothing but them, and the soles is made out of two pamphlets of Roger Connor's, and them's the driest things I could get.”
“I'll gie ye a new pair.”
“You 're the son of Fingal of the Hills, divil a less. And now if ye had a cast-off waistcoat—I don't care for the color—orange or green, blue or yellow, Tros Tyriusve mihiy as we said in Trinity.”
“Ye shall hae a coat to cover your old bones. But let us hae nae mair o' this—when may I expect to see the boy?”
“The evening after next, at eight o'clock, at the corner of Essex Bridge, Capel Street—'on the Rialto'—eh? that's the cue. And now let us join the revellers—per Jove, but I'm dry.” And so saying, the miserable old creature broke from Sandy, and, assisted by the wall, tottered back to the room to his drunken companions, where his voice was soon heard high above the discord and din around him.
And yet this man, so debased and degraded, had been once a scholar of the University, and carried off its prizes from men whose names stood high among the great and valued of the land.