Handy Andy Volume I Part 43

"Faix, sir, an' it is dhry work, I'm sure, playing the thing."

"Dhry!" said the trumpeter, "'pon my ruffles and tuckers--and that's a cambric oath--it's worse nor lime-burnin', so it is--it makes a man's throat as parched as pays."

"Who dar says pays?" cried the drummer.

"Howld your prate!" said the trumpeter, elegantly, and silenced all reply by playing a tune. As soon as it was ended, he turned to Andy and asked for a cork.

Andy gave it to him.

The man of jokes affected to put it into the trumpet.

"What's that for, sir?" asked Andy.

"To bottle up the music," said the trumpeter--"sure all the music would run about the place if I didn't do that."

Andy gave a vague sort of "ha, ha!" as if he were not quite sure whether the trumpeter was in jest or earnest, and thought at the moment that to play the trumpet and practical jokes must be the happiest life in the world. Filled with this idea, Andy was on the watch how he could possess himself of the trumpet, for could he get one blast on it, he would be happy: a chance at last opened to him; after some time, the lively owner of the treasure laid down his instrument to handle a handsome blackthorn which one of the retainers was displaying, and he made some flourishes with the weapon to show that music was not his only accomplishment. Andy seized the opportunity and the trumpet, and made off to one of the sheds where they had been regaling; and, shutting the door to secure himself from observation, he put the trumpet to his mouth and distended his cheeks near to bursting with the violence of his efforts to produce a sound; but all his puffing was unavailing for some minutes. At last a faint cracked squeak answered a more desperate blast than before, and Andy was delighted. "Everything must have a beginning," thought Andy, "and maybe I'll get a tune out of it yet." He tried again, and increased in power; for a sort of strangled screech was the result. Andy was in ecstasy, and began to indulge visions of being one day a trumpeter; he strutted up and down the shed like the original he so envied, and repeated some of the drolleries he heard him utter. He also imitated his actions of giving a drink to the trumpet, and was more generous to the instrument than the owner, for he really poured about half a pint of beer down its throat: he then drank its health, and finished by "bottling up the music," absolutely cramming a cork into the trumpet.

Now Andy, having no idea the trumpeter made a sham of the action, made a vigorous plunge of a goodly cork into the throat of the instrument, and, in so doing, the cork went further than he intended: he tried to withdraw it, but his clumsy fingers, instead of extracting, only drove it in deeper--he became alarmed--and, seizing a fork, strove with its a.s.sistance to remedy the mischief he had done, but the more he poked, the worse; and, in his fright, he thought the safest thing he could do was to cram the cork out of sight altogether, and having soon done that, he returned to the yard, and laid down the trumpet un.o.bserved.

Immediately after, the procession to the town started. O'Grady gave orders that the party should not be throwing away their powder and shot, as he called it, in untimely huzzas and premature music. "Wait till you come to the town, boys," said he, "and then you may smash away as hard as you can; blow your heads off, and split the sky."

The party of Merryvale was in motion for the place of action about the same time, and a merrier pack of rascals never was on the march.

Murphy, in accordance with his preconceived notion of a "fine effect,"

had literally "a cart full of fiddlers;" but the fiddlers hadn't it all to themselves, for there was another cart full of pipers; and, by way of mockery to the grandeur of Scatterbrain's band, he had four or five boys with gridirons, which they played upon with pokers, and half a dozen strapping fellows carrying large iron tea-trays, which they whopped after the manner of a Chinese gong.

It so happened that the two roads from Merryvale and Neck-or-Nothing Hall met at an acute angle, at the same end of the town, and it chanced that the rival candidates and their retinues arrived at this point about the same time.

"There they are!" said Murphy, who presided in the cart full of fiddlers like a leader in an orchestra, with a s.h.i.+llelah for his _baton_, which he flourished over his head as he shouted, "Now give it to them, your sowls!--rasp and lilt away, boys!--slate the gridirons, Mike!--smaddher the tay-tray, Tom!"

The uproar of strange sounds that followed, shouting included, may be easier imagined than described; and O'Grady, answering the war-cry, sung out to his band--"What are you at, you lazy rascals?--don't you hear _them_ blackguards beginning?--fire away, and be hanged to you!" His rascals shouted, bang went the drum, and clang went the cymbals, the clarionet squeaked, and the fife tootled, but the trumpet--ah!--the trumpet--their great reliance--where was the trumpet? O'Grady inquired in the precise words, with a diabolical addition of his own. "Where the d---- is the trumpet?" said he; he looked over the side of the carriage as he spoke, and saw the trumpeter spitting out a mouthful of beer which had run from the instrument as he lifted it to his mouth.

"Bad luck to you, what are you wasting your time there for?" thundered O'Grady in a rage; "why didn't you spit out when you were young, and you'd be a clean old man? Blow and be d---- to you!"

The trumpeter filled his lungs for a great blast, and put the trumpet to his lips--but in vain; Andy had bottled his music for him. O'Grady, seeing the inflated cheeks and protruding eyes of the musician, whose visage was crimson with exertion, and yet no sound produced, thought the fellow was practising one of his jokes upon him, and became excessively indignant; he thundered anathemas at him, but his voice was drowned in the din of the drum and cymbals, which were plied so vigorously, that the clarionet and fife shared the same fate as O'Grady's voice. The trumpeter could judge of O'Grady's rage from the fierceness of his actions only, and answered him in pantomimic expression, holding up his trumpet and pointing into the bell, with a grin of vexation on his phiz, meant to express something was wrong; but this was all mistaken by the fierce O'Grady, who only saw in the trumpeter's grins the insolent intention of jibing him.

"Blow, you blackguard, blow!" shouted the Squire. Bang went the drum.

"Blow--or I'll break your neck!" Crash went the cymbals.

"Stop your banging there, you ruffians, and let me be heard!" roared the excited man; but as he was standing up on the seat of the carriage, and flung his arms about wildly as he spoke, the drummer thought his action was meant to stimulate him to further exertion, and he banged away louder than before.

"By the hokey, I'll murder some o' ye!" shouted the Squire, who, ordering the carriage to pull up, flung open the door and jumped out, made a rush at the drummer, seized his princ.i.p.al drumstick, and giving him a bang over the head with it, cursed him for a rascal for not stopping when he told him; this silenced all the instruments together, and O'Grady, seizing the trumpeter by the back of the neck, shook him violently, while he denounced with fierce imprecations his insolence in daring to practise a joke on him. The trumpeter protested his innocence, and O'Grady called him a lying rascal, finis.h.i.+ng his abuse by clenching his fist in a menacing att.i.tude, and telling him to play.

"I can't, yer honour!"

"You lie, you scoundrel."

"There's something in the trumpet, sir."

"Yes, there's music in it; and if you don't blow it out of it----"

"I can't blow it out of it, sir."

"Hold your prate, you ruffian; blow this minute."

"Arrah, thry it yourself, sir," said the frightened man, handing the instrument to the Squire.

"D----n your impudence, you rascal; do you think I'd blow anything that was in your dirty mouth? Blow, I tell you, or it will be worse for you."

"By the vartue o' my oath, your honour----"

"Blow, I tell you!"

"By the seven blessed candles----"

"Blow, I tell you!"

"The trumpet is choked, sir."

"There will be a trumpeter choked, soon," said O'Grady, gripping him by the neck-handkerchief, with his knuckles ready to twist into his throat.

"By this and that I'll strangle you, if you don't play this minute, you humb.u.g.g.e.r."

"By the Blessed Virgin, I'm not humbiggin' your honour," stammered the trumpeter with the little breath O'Grady left him.

Scatterbrain, seeing O'Grady's fury, and fearful of its consequences, had alighted from the carriage and came to the rescue, suggesting to the infuriated Squire that what the man said might be true. O'Grady said he knew better, that the blackguard was a notorious joker, and having indulged in a jest in the first instance, was now only lying to save himself from punishment; furthermore, swearing that if he did not play that minute he'd throw him into the ditch.

With great difficulty O'Grady was prevailed upon to give up the gripe of the trumpeter's throat; and the poor breathless wretch, handing the instrument to the clarionet-player, appealed to him if it were possible to play on it. The clarionet-player said he could not tell, for he did not understand the trumpet.

"You see there!" cried O'Grady. "You see he's humbugging, and the clarionet-player is an honest man."

"An honest man!" exclaimed the trumpeter, turning fiercely on the clarionet-player. "He's the biggest _villain_ unhanged for sthrivin' to get me murthered, and refusin' the evidence for me!" The man's eyes flashed fury as he spoke, and throwing his trumpet down, "Mooney!--by jakers, you're no man!" Clenching his fist as he spoke, he made a rush on the clarionet-player, and planted a hit on his mouth with such vigour, that he rolled in the dust; and when he rose, it was with such an upper lip that his clarionet-playing was evidently finished for the next week certainly.

Now the fifer was the clarionet-player's brother; and he, turning on the trumpeter, roared--

"Bad luck to you!--you did not sthrek him fair!"

But while in the very act of reprobating the foul blow, he let fly under the ear of the trumpeter, who was quite unprepared for it,--and he, too, measured his length on the road. On recovering his legs he rushed on the fifer for revenge, and a regular scuffle ensued among "the musicianers," to the great delight of the crowd of retainers, who were so well primed with whisky that a fight was just the thing to their taste.

In vain O'Grady swore at them, and went amongst them, striving to restore order, but they would not be quiet till several black eyes and damaged noses bore evidence of a busy five minutes having pa.s.sed. In the course of "the scrimmage," Fate was unkind to the fifer, whose mouth-piece was considerably impaired; and "the boys" remarked, that the worst stick you could have in a crowd was a "whistling stick," by which name they designated the fifer's instrument.

At last, however, peace was restored, and the trumpeter again ordered to play by O'Grady.

He protested, again, it was impossible.

The fifer, in revenge, declared he was only humbugging the Squire.

Hereupon O'Grady, seizing the unfortunate trumpeter, gave him a more sublime kicking than ever fell to the lot of even piper or fiddler, whose pay[21] is proverbially oftener in that article than the coin of the realm.

[21] Fiddlers' fare, or pipers' pay--more kicks than halfpence.