The Poor Scholar Part 12

"Undoubtedly I shall, and that very soon. But about this outrage committed against the boy himself? We had better take his informations, and punish the follow."

"Certainly; I think that is the best way. His conduct to the poor youth has been merciless and detestable. We must put him out of this part of the country."

"Call the lad in. In this case I shall draw up the informations myself, although Gregg usually does that."

Jemmy, a.s.sisted by the curate, entered the room, and the humane Colonel desired him, as he appeared ill, to sit down.

"What is your name?" asked the Colonel.

"James M'Evoy," he replied. "I'm the son, sir, of a man who was once a tenant of yours."

"Ay! and pray how did he cease to be a tenant of mine?"

"Why, sir, your agent, Yallow Sam, put him out of our farm, when my poor mother was on her sick-bed. He chated my father, sir, out of some money--part of our rent it was, that he didn't give him a receipt for.

When my father went to him afterwards for the receipt, Yallow Sam abused him, and called him a rogue, and that, sir, was what no man ever called my father either before or since. My father, sir, threatened to tell you about it, and you came to the country soon after; but Yallow Sam got very great wid my father at that time, and sent him to sell bullocks for him about fifty miles off, but when he come back again, you had left the country. Thin, sir, Yallow Sam said nothing till the next half-year's rent became due, whin he came down on my father for all--that is, what he hadn't got the receipt for, and the other gale--and, without any warning in the world, put him out. My father offered to pay all; but he said he was a rogue, and that you had ordered him off the estate. In less than a week after this he put a man that married a b.a.s.t.a.r.d daughter of his own into our house and place. That's G.o.d's truth, sir; and you'll find it so, if you inquire into it. It's a common trick of his to keep back receipts, and make the tenants pay double."*

* This is the fact. The individual here alluded to, frequently kept back receipts when receiving rents, under pretence of hurry, and afterwards compelled the tenants to pay the same gale twice!

"Sacred Heaven, O'Brien! can this be possible?"

"Your best way, Colonel, is to inquire into it."

"Was not your father able to educate you at home, my boy?"

"No, sir. We soon got into poverty after we left your farm; and another thing, sir, there was no Latin school in our neighborhood."

"For what purpose did you become a poor scholar?"

"Why, sir, I hoped one day or other to be able to raise my father and mother out of the distress that Yallow Sam brought on us."

"By Heaven! a n.o.ble aim, and a n.o.ble sentiment. And what has this d--d fellow of a schoolmaster done to you?"

"Why, sir, yesterday, when I went back to the school, he abused me, and said that he supposed that most of my relations were hanged; spoke ill of my father; and said that my mother"--Here the tears started to his eyes--he sobbed aloud.

"Go on, and be cool," said the Colonel. "What did he say of your mother?"

"He said, sir, that she was never married to my father. I know I was wrong, sir; but if it was the king on his throne that said it of my mother, I'd call him a liar. I called him a liar, and a coward, and a villain: ay, sir, and if I had been able, I would have tramped him under my feet."

The Colonel looked steadily at him, but the open clear eye which the boy turned upon him was full of truth and independence. "And you will find,"

said the soldier, "that this spirited defence of your mother will be the most fortunate action of your life. Well; he struck you then, did he?"

"He knocked me down, sir, with his fist--then kicked me in the back and sides. I think some of my ribs are broke."

"Ay!--no doubt, no doubt," said the Colonel. "And you were only after recovering from this fever which is so prevalent?"

"I wasn't a week out of it, sir."

"Well, my boy, we shall punish him for you."

"Sir, would you hear me for a word or two, if it would be pleasing to you?"

"Speak on," said the Colonel.

"I would rather change his punishment to--I would--that is--if it would be agreeable to you--It's this, sir--I wouldn't throuble you now against the master, if you'd be pleased to rightify my father, and punish Yallow Sam. Oh, sir, for G.o.d's sake, put my heart-broken father into his farm again! If you would, sir, I could shed my blood, or lay down my life for you, or for any belonging to you. I'm but a poor boy, sir, low and humble; but they say there's a greater Being than the greatest in this world, that listens to the just prayers of the poor and friendless. I was never happy, sir, since we left it--neither was any of us; and when we'd sit cowld and hungry, about our hearth, We used to be talking of the pleasant days we spent in it, till the tears would be smothered in curses against him that put us out of it. Oh, sir, if you could know all that a poor and honest family suffers, when they are thrown into distress by want of feeling in their landlords, or by the dishonesty of agents, you would consider my father's case. I'm his favorite son, sir, and good right have I to speak for him. If you could know the sorrow, the misery, the drooping down of the spirits, that lies upon the countenances and the hearts of such people, you wouldn't, as a man and a Christian, think it below you to spread happiness and contentment among them again. In the morning they rise to a day of hards.h.i.+p, no matter how bright and cheerful it may be to others--nor is there any hope of a brighter day for them: and at night they go to their hard beds to strive to sleep away their hunger in spite of cowld and want. If you could see how the father of a family, after striving to bear up, sinks down at last; if you could see the look he gives at the childhre that he would lay down his heart's blood for, when they sit naked and hungry about him; and the mother, too, wid her kind word and sorrowful smile, proud of them in all their dest.i.tution, but her heart breaking silent! All the time, her face wasting away. Her eye dim, and her strength gone--Sir, make one such family happy--for all this has been in my father's house!

Give us back our light spirits, our pleasant days, and our cheerful hearts again! We lost them through the villainy of your agent. Give them back to us, for you can do it; but you can never pay us for what we suffered. Give us, sir, our farm, our green fields, our house, and every spot and nook that we had before. We love the place, sir, for its own sake;--it is the place of our fathers, and our hearts are in it. I often think I see the smooth river that runs through it, and the meadows that I played in when I was a child;--the glen behind our house, the mountains that rose before us when we left the door, the thorn-bush at the garden, the hazels in the glen, the little beach-green beside the river--Oh, sir, don't blame me for crying, for they are all before my eyes, in my ears, and in my heart! Many a summer evening have I gone to the march-ditch of the farm that my father's now in, and looked at the place I loved, till the tears blinded me, and I asked it as a favor of G.o.d to restore us to it! Sir, we are in great poverty at home; before G.o.d we are; and my father's heart is breaking."

The Colonel drew his breath deeply, rubbed his hands, and as he looked at the fine countenance of the boy--expressing, as it did, enthusiasm and sorrow--his eye lightened with a gleam of indignation. It could not be against the poor scholar; no, gentle reader, but against his own agent.

"O'Brien," said he, "what do you think, and this n.o.ble boy is the son of a man who belongs to a cla.s.s of which I am ignorant! By Heaven, we landlords are, I fear, a guilty race."

"Not all, sir," replied the Curate. "There are n.o.ble exceptions among them; their faults are more the faults of omission than commission."

"Well, well, no matter. Come, I will draw up the informations against this man; afterwards I have something to say to you, my boy," he added, addressing Jemmy, "that will not, I trust, be unpleasant."

He then drew up the informations as strongly as he could word them, after which Jemmy deposed to their truth and accuracy, and the Colonel, rubbing his hands again, said--

"I will have the fellow secured. When you go into town, Mr. O'Brien, I'll thank you to call on Meares, and hand him these. He will lodge the miscreant in limbo this very night."

Jemmy then thanked him, and was about to withdraw, when the Colonel desired him to remain a little longer.

"Now," said he, "your father has been treated inhumanly, I believe; but no matter. That is not the question. Your sentiments, and conduct, and your affection for your parents, are n.o.ble, my boy. At present, I say, the question is not whether the history of your father's wrongs be true or false; you, at least, believe it to be true. From this forward--but by the by, I forgot; how could your becoming a poor scholar relieve your parents?"

"I intended to become a priest, sir, and then to help them."

"Ay! so I thought; and, provided your father were restored to the farm, would you be still disposed to become a priest?"

"I would, sir; next to helping my father, that is what I wish to be."

"O'Brien, what would it cost to prepare him respectably for the priesthood?--I mean to defray his expenses until he completes his preparatory education, in the first place, and afterwards during his residence in Maynooth?"

"I think two hundred pounds, sir, would do it easily and respectably."

"I do not think it would. However, do you send him--but first let me ask what progress he has already made?"

"He has read--in fact he is nearly prepared to enter Maynooth. His progress has been very rapid."

"Put him to some respectable boarding-school for a year; then let him enter Maynooth, and I will bear the expense. But remember I do not adopt this course in consequence of his father's history. Not I, by Jupiter; I do it on his own account. He is a n.o.ble boy, and full of fine qualities, if they be not nipped by neglect and poverty. I loved my father myself, and fought a duel on his account; and I honor the son who has spirit to defend his absent parent."

"This is a most surprising turn in the boy's fortunes, Colonel."

"He deserves it. A soldier, Mr. O'Brien, is not without his enthusiasm, nor can he help admiring it in others, when n.o.bly and virtuously directed. To see a boy in the midst of poverty, encountering the hards.h.i.+ps and difficulties of life, with the hope of raising up his parents from distress to independence, has a touch of sublimity in it."

"Ireland, Colonel, abounds with instances of similar virtue, brought out, probably, into fuller life and vigor by the sad changes and depressions which are weighing down the people. In her glens, on her bleak mountain sides, and in her remotest plains, such examples of pure affection, uncommon energy, and humble heroism, are to be seen; but, unfortunately, few persons of rank or observation mingle with the Irish people, and their many admirable qualities pa.s.s away without being recorded in the literature of their country. They are certainly a strange people, Colonel, almost an anomaly in the history of the human race. They are the only people who can rush out from the very virtues of private life to the perpetration of crimes at which we shudder. There is, to be sure, an outcry about their oppression; but that is wrong.

Their indigence and ignorance are rather the result of neglect;--of neglect, sir, from the government of the country--from the earl to the squireen. They have been taught little that is suitable to their stations and duties in life, either as tenants who cultivate our lands, or as members of moral or Christian society."

"Well, well: I believe what you say is too true. But touching the records of virtue in human life, pray who would record it when nothing goes down now-a-days but what is either monstrous or fas.h.i.+onable?"

"Very true, Colonel; yet in my humble opinion, a virtuous Irish peasant is far from being so low a character as a profligate man of rank."