Here again comes a second group. Keep your eye on that good-humored, ruddy-faced young man, compact and vigorous, who is evidently the wag of his party. Observe his tight-titling, comfortable frize, neat brogues, and breeches, on the knees of which are two double knots of silk ribbon. See with what a smart, decisive air he wears his hat—“jauntily,” as Leigh Hunt would say—upon one side of his head. That fellow has a high character for gallantry, and is allowed to be “the very sorrow among the girls”—“a Brinoge,” “wid an eye that 'ud steal cold praties off a dresser.” He is now leading in a girl, handsome no doubt, but who, nevertheless, does not possess sixpence, or sixpence worth for her portion. Not so the sword-fish we have pointed out to you a while ago, the tail of whose short coat lay as closely to him as that of a crab. The cassoway has secured a girl who, in point of wealth and dower, will be the making of him. However, you know the secret, Solomon says that a soft answer turneth away wrath; but what will not a soft question do, when put to a pretty girl, where there is no wrath?
Here comes another party, fewer in point of number than those we have shown you; a young man, a middle-aged woman, and her two daughters—one grown,the other only about fifteen. Who is—ah!—it is not necessary to inquire. Alley Bawn Murray! Gentle reader bow with heartfelt respect to humble beauty and virtue! She is that widow's daughter, the pride of the parish, and the beloved of all who can appreciate goodness, affection, and filial piety. The child accompanying them is her sister, and that fine, manly, well-built, handsome youth is even now pledged to the modest and beautiful girl. He is the son of a wealthy farmer, some time dead; but in purity, in truth, and an humble sense of religion, their hearts are each rich and each equal.
Alas! alas! that it should be so! but we cannot control the inscrutable designs of Heaven. The spirit of our narrative must change, and our tale can henceforth breathe nothing but what is as mournful as it is true. There they pass into that public-house, true-hearted and attached; unconscious, too, poor things, of the almost present calamity that is soon to wither that noble boy and his beautiful betrothed. Their history, up to the period of their entering the public-house, is very brief and simple. Felix O'Donnell was the son of a farmer, as we have said, sufficiently extensive and industrious to be wealthy, without possessing any of the vulgar pride which rude independence frequently engrafts upon the ignorant and narrow-hearted. His family consisted of two sons and a daughter—Maura, the last-named, being the eldest, and Felix by several years the junior of his brother Hugh. Between the two brothers there was in many things a marked contrast of character, whilst in others there might be said to exist a striking similarity. Hugh was a dark-brown, fiery man when opposed, though in general quiet and inoffensive. His passions blazed out with fury for a moment, and only for a moment; for no sooner had he been borne by their vehemence into the commission of an error, that he became quickly alive to the promptings of a heart naturally affectionate and kind. In money transactions he had the character of being a hard man; yet were there many in the parish who could declare that they found him liberal and considerate. The truth was, that he estimated money at more than its just value, without absolutely giving up his heart to its influence. When a young man, though in good circumstances, he looked cautiously about him, less for the best or the handsomest wife than the largest dower. In the speculation, so far as it was pecuniary, he succeeded; but his domestic peace was overshadowed by the gloom of his own character, and not unfrequently disturbed by the violent temper of a wife who united herself to him with an indifferent heart. He was, in short, a man more respected than loved; one of whom it was often said, “Well, well, he's a decent man, nabours—a little hard or so about money, but for all that there's worse. Sure we all have our failin's. There's one thing in him any how, that if he offinds a man he's sorry for it: ay, an' when he does chance to do a good turn, sorra a word ever any one hears about it from his own lips. To be sure there's a great deal of the nager in him no doubt, an' in troth he didn't take afther his own father for that. Devil a dacenter man than ould Felix O'Donnell ever broke bread.”
His brother Felix, in all that was amiable and affectionate, strongly resembled him; but there the resemblance terminated Felix was subject to none of his gloomy moods or violent outbursts of temper. He was manly, liberal, and cheerful—valued money at its proper estimate, and frequently declared, that in the choice of a wife he would never sacrifice his happiness to acquire it.
“I have enough of my own,” he would say; “and when I meet the woman that my heart chooses, whether she has fortune or not, that's the girl that I will bring to share it, if she can love me.”
Felix and his sister both, resided together; for after his father's death he succeeded to the inheritance that had been designed for him. Maura O'Donnell was in that state of life in which we feel it extremely difficult to determine whether a female is hopeless or not upon the subject of marriage. Her humors had begun to ferment and to clear off into that thin vinegar serum which engenders the exquisite perception of human error, and the equally keen touch with which it is reproved. Time, in fact, had begun to crimp her face, and the vinegar to sparkle in her eye with that fiery gleam which is so easily lit up at five and thirty. Still she loved Felix, whose good-humor constituted him a butt for the irascible sallies of a temper more nearly allied to his brother Hugh's than his own. He was her younger brother, too, of whom she was justly proud; and she knew that Felix, in spite of the pungency of her frequent reproofs, loved her deeply, as was evident by the many instances of his considerate attention in bringing her home presents of dress, and in contributing, as far as lay in his power, to her comfort.
The world, indeed, is too much in the habit of drawing distorted inferences from the transient feuds that occasionally appear in domestic life. It would be hard to find a family in which they do not sometimes occur; and when noticed by strangers, it is both uncharitable and unjust to conclude that there is an absence of domestic affection in the hearts of those who, after all, prove no more than that they are subject to the errors and passions of human nature, like their fellow creatures. No sister, for instance, ever loved another with stronger affection than poor Maura did her brother Felix, notwithstanding the repeated scoldings which, for very trivial causes, he experienced at her tongue. Woe, keen and scathing, be to those who dared, in her presence to utter an insinuation against him.
“If she abused him, she only did it for his good, and because she loved him; an' good right she had to love him, for a better brother never breathed the breath of life. Wasn't he a mere boy, only one-and-twenty years come next Lammas; and surely it stood to reason that he wanted sometimes to be checked and scolded too. He had neither father or mother to guide him, poor boy; and who would guide him, and advise him too, if his own sister wouldn't do it? Only one-and-twenty, and six feet in his shoes; but no punhial, no cabbage upon two pot-sticks, like some she knew, that were ready enough to give boy a harsh word when they ought to look nearer home, and—may-be—but she said nothing—as God forbid that she'd make or meddle with any neighbor's character; but still, may-be, they'd find enough to blame at home, if they'd open their eyes to their own failings, as well as they do to the failings of their neighbors.”
Another circumstance also strongly characteristic of the woman's heart, was evinced in the high and vigorous tone she assumed towards Hugh, whenever, in any of his dark moods, he happened to take Felix to task. These fierce encounters, however, never occurred in Felix's presence; for she thought that to take his part then, would remove, in a great degree, the 'vantage ground on which she stood with reference to himself. Difficult, indeed, was the part she found herself compelled to play on those delicate occasions. She could not, as a moralist and disciplinarian, proverbially strict, seem in any degree to countenance the charges brought by Hugh against Felix; nor, on the other hand, was it without a command of temper and heroic self-denial, rarely attained, that she was able to keep, her indignation against Hugh pent up within decorous and plausible limits. During the remonstrance of the latter, she usually pushed the charges against Felix into the notorious failings of Hugh himself, and this she did in a tone of irony so dry and cutting, that Hugh was almost in every case, as willing to abandon the attack as he had been to begin it.
“Ay, indeed,” she would proceed—“troth an' conscience, Hugh, avourneen”—avourneen being pronounced with a civil bitterness that was perfectly withering—“troth an' conscience, Hugh, avourneen, it's truth you're speaking, and not only that, Hugh darling, but he's as dark as the old dioul betimes, so he is, and runs into such fits of blackness and anger, for no reason—Hugh, dheelish, for no reason in life, man alive. Are, you listening, Hugh? for it's to you I'm speaking, dear—for no reason in life, acushla, only because he's a dirty, black bodagh, that his whole soul and body's not worth the scrapings of a pot in a hard summer. Did you hear me, Hugh jewel? Felix, go out, avourneen, ye onbiddable creature, and look after them ditchers, and see that they don't play upon us to-day, as they did on Saturday.”