“Now, Hector,” said the fosterer, “maybe you’ll call me drunk after this? What’s to be done? ‘Pon my conscience, I think Mister Pablos is anything but neighbourly, with his tea-party every evening, and not say to people who have done him the honour to take up their quarters in his house, Mr. O’Halloran, will you, and that young gentleman along with you, meaning myself, step over, in the family way, and take share of what we have?”
“Why, then, upon my soul, I think it is, Mark!” was my reply.
“Then I may as well take the loose bars out?” said the fosterer, suiting the action to the word—and before I could put in a feeble remonstrance, he established an aperture in the casement, through which any one of slighter dimensions than a common-councilman could easily slip out. “Hush!—the guitar again!”
“Ay—and by Saint Patrick! some company to listen to it!—Oh! the divil a one of me will remain longer without hwing a peep at the party, if I can.”—And as he spoke, the fosterer popped through the casement, and—I lament to make the confession—next moment I was after him.
We found ourselves in a small garden thickly planted with shrubs and fruit-trees, and encompassed by a lofty wall; several narrow walks intersected it, and the termination of one was bounded by a wing of the Spaniard’s domicile. Through a chink in the shutters, a stream of light escaped; and thither the fosterer moved silently, I bringing up the rear.
There was no doubt that from this apartment the voices and the music had proceeded which we heard in the fosterer’s dormitory. I peeped in. A party was grouped about a table covered with game, fruit, and wine—and a lamp, suspended from the centre of the ceiling, enabled us to examine the company.
Five men were seated round the board, which was also graced by the presence of two personages of the softer sex. I never saw a party collected at a supper table whose appearances and pursuits were evidently so opposite. A burly monk sat directly in front of the treacherous fissure in the window-shutter. He was of no ascetic order; but a Christian man, on whom good fare was not thrown away; and, even if the lamp went out by accident, one on whose honour you could place reliance, and drink with in the dark. Two others of the party wore the costume, and had the general air, of Spanish traders. The fourth was a man of wild and formidable exterior; his arms, his dress, his bearing, all betrayed that his was no peaceable profession—and Mark Antony hinted, in a whisper, “that if the Empecinado had a brother in the world the dark gentleman with the pistols was the person, and no mistake.” The fifth was an English seaman—at least his costume and carriage would infer it. He seemed a fine athletic man, and, though his back was turned to the casement, the fosterer observed in an under-tone, that the sailor would thrash the company collectively.
In years and appearance the females were still more dissimilar than the men. One well advanced in life was tall, slight, deeply pockmarked, and generally forbidding. The other—she sate beside the priest—had scarcely numbered twenty summers, and on a lovelier face, a finer form, the eyes of two interloping Irishmen never peeped through a split in a window-shutter. “Och! murder!” ejaculated Mark Antony, sotto voce—“That’s the Ghost—and is’nt she a darling?”
One seat was unoccupied. To whom did it appertain? Our host, no doubt, and wherefore was he absent?
“What an ould troublesome thief he is!” whispered Mark Antony, pointing to the vacant chair. “Where the divil do ye think he’s scouting to? when every body’s asleep or better employed, as they are within. I only wish that we were of the company—Isn’t it a comfort to see his reverence set such an elegant example? How beautifully he raises his elbow—that’s what I call honour bright! No skylights, and he fills to the top every time the bottle passes him.”