The Dew of Their Youth by Samuel Rutherford Crockett (ebook offline .txt) 📕

palm of Mistress Bridget Connoway's hand. She was ambidextrous in correction--"one was as good as t'other," as Jerry remarked, after he had done rubbing himself and comparing damages with his brother Phil, who had got the left. "There's not a fardin' to pick between us!" was the verdict as the boys started out to find their father, stretched on his favourite sunny mound within sight of the Haunted House of Marnhoul--now more haunted than ever.
But on this occasion Boyd Connoway was on his return, when he met the exiled Ephraim. His meditations on his own probable fate have led the historian into a sketch of the Connoway establishment, which, indeed, had to come in somewhere.
For once Boyd wasted no time. With his wife waiting for him it was well to know the worst and get it over. He opened the door quickly, and intruding his hat on the end of his walking stick, awaited results. It was only for a moment, of course, but Boyd Connoway felt satisfied. His Bridget was not waiting for him behind the door with the potato-beetle as she did on days of great irritation. His heart rose--his courage returned. Was he not a free man, a house-holder? Had he not taken a distinguished part in a gallant action? Bridget must understand this. Bridget should understand this. Boyd Connoway would be respected in his own house!
Nevertheless he entered hastily, sidling like a dog which expects a kick. He avoided the dusky places instinctively--the door of the "ben" room was shut, so Bridget could not be lying in wait there. Was it in the little closet behind the kitchen that the danger lurked? The children were in bed, save the two youngest, all quiet, all watching with the large, dreamy blue (Connoway) eyes, or the small, very bright ones (Bridget's) what his fate would be.
He glanced quaintly, with an interrogative lift of his eyebrows, at the bed to the left. Jerry of the twinkling sloe-eyes answered with a quick upturn of the thumb in the direction of the spare chamber.
Boyd Connoway frowned portentously at his eldest son. The youth shook his head. The sign was well understood, especially when helped out with a grin, broad as all County Donegal 'twixt Killibegs and Innishowen Light.
The "Misthress" was in a good temper. Reassured, on his own account, but inwardly no little alarmed for his wife's health in these unusual circumstances, Boyd began to take off his boots with the idea of gliding safely into bed and pretending to be asleep before the wind had time to change.
But Jerry's mouth was very evidently forming some words, which were meant to inform his father as to particulars. These, though unintelligible individually, being taken together and punctuated with jerks in the direction of the shut door of "doon-the-hoose," constituted a warning which Boyd Connoway could not afford to neglect.
He went forward to the left hand bed, cocked his ear in the direction of the closed door, and then rapidly lowered it almost against his son's lips.
"She's gotten a hurt man down there," said Jerry, "she has been runnin' wi' white clouts and bandages a' the forenight. And I'm thinkin' he's no very wise, either--for he keeps cryin' that the deils are comin' to tak' him!"
"What like of a man?" said Boyd Connoway.
But Jerry's quick ear caught a stirring in the room with the closed door. He shook his head and motioned his father to get away from the side of his low truckle bed.
When his wife entered, Boyd Connoway, with a sober and innocent face, was untying his boot by the side of the fire. Bridget entered with a saucepan in her hand, which, before she deigned to take any notice of her husband, she pushed upon the red ashes in the grate.
From the "ben" room, of which the door was now open, Boyd could hear the low moaning of a man in pain. He had tended too many sick people not to know the delirium of fever, the pitiful lapses of sense, then again the vague and troubled pour of words, and at the sound he started to his feet. He was not good for much in the way of providing for a family. He did a great many foolish, yet more useless things, but there was one thing which he understood better than Bridget--how to nurse the sick.
He disengaged his boot and stood in his stocking feet.
"What is it?" he said, in an undertone to Bridget.
"No business of yours!" she answered, with a sudden hissing vehemence.
"I can do _that_ better than you!" he answered, for once sure of his ground.
His wife darted at him a look of concentrated scorn.
"Get to bed!" she commanded him, declining to argue with such as he--and but for the twinkling eyes of Jerry, which looked sympathy, Boyd would have preferred to have joined the exiled Ephraim under the dark pent among the coom of the peat-house.
He looked to Jerry, but Jerry was sound asleep. So was Phil. So were all the others.
"Very well, daeaerlin'!" said Boyd Connoway to himself as his wife left the room. "But, sorrow am I for the man down there that she will not let me nurse. She's a woman among a thousand, is Bridget Connoway. But the craitur will be after makin' the poor man eat his poultices, and use his beef tay for outward application only!"


CHAPTER XVII
THE MAN "DOON-THE-HOOSE"
But Bridget Connoway, instant and authoritative as she was, could not prevent her down-trodden husband from thinking. Who was the mysterious wounded man "down-the-house"? One of the White Smugglers? Hardly. Boyd had been in the thick of that business and knew that no one had been hurt except Barnboard Tam, whose horse had run away with him and brushed him off, a red-haired Absalom in homespuns, against the branches in Marnhoul Great Wood.
One of the crew of the _Golden Hind_, American-owned privateersman with French letters of marque? Possibly one of the desperate gang they had landed called the Black Smugglers, scum of the Low Dutch ports, come to draw an ill report upon the good and wholesome fame of Galloway Free Trade.
In either case, Boyd Connoway little liked the prospect, and instead of going to bed, he remained swinging his legs before the fire in a musing attitude, listening to the moaning noises that came from the chamber he was forbidden to enter. He was resolved to have it out with his wife.
He had not long to wait. Bridget appeared in the doorway, a bundle of dark-stained cloths between her palms. She halted in astonishment at the sight which met her eyes. At first it seemed to her that she was dreaming, or that her voice must have betrayed her. She gave her husband the benefit of the doubt.
"I thought I tould ye, Boyd Connoway," she said in a voice dangerously low and caressing, "to be getting off to your bed and not disturbin' the childer'!"
"Who is the man that had need of suchlike?" demanded Boyd Connoway, suddenly regaining his lost heritage as the head of a house, "speak woman, who are ye harbouring there?"
Bridget stood still. The mere unexpectedness of the demand rendered her silent. The autocrat of all the Russias treated as though he were one of his own ministers of state could not have been more dumbfounded.
With a sudden comprehension of the crisis Bridget broke for the poker, but Boyd had gone too far now to recoil. He caught at the little three-legged stool on which he was wont to take his humble frugal meals. It was exactly what he needed. He had no idea of assaulting Bridget. He recognized all her admirable qualities, which filled in the shortcomings of his shiftlessness with admirable exactitude. He meant to act strictly on the defensive, a system of warfare that was familiar to him. For though he had never before risen up in open revolt, he had never counted mere self-preservation as an insult to his wife.
"_Whack!_" down came the poker in the lusty hand of Bridget Connoway. "_Crack!_" the targe in the lifted arm of Boyd countered it. At arm's-length he held it. The next attack was cut number two of the manual for the broad-sword. Skilfully with his shield Boyd Connoway turned it to the side, so that, gliding from the polished oak of the well-worn seat, the head of the poker caught his wife on the knee, and she dropped her weapon with a cry of pain. Jerry and the other children, in the seventh heaven of delight at the parental duel, were sitting up in their little night-shirts (which for simplicity's sake were identical with their day-shirts); their eyes, black and blue, sparkled unanimous, and they made bets in low tones from one bed to another.
"Two to one on Daddy!"
"Jerry, ye ass, I'll bet ye them three white chuckies[1] he'll lose!"
"Hould your tongue, Connie--mother'll win, sure. The Thick 'Un will get him!"
Such combats were a regular interest for them, and one, in quiet times, quite sympathized in by their father, who would guide the combat so that they might have a better view.
"Troth, and why shouldn't they, poor darlints? Sure an' it's little enough amusement they have!"
He had even been known to protract an already lost battle to lengthen out the delectation of his offspring. The Caesars gave to their people "Bread and the circus!" But they did not usually enter the arena themselves--save in the case of the incomparable bowman of Rome, and then only when he knew that no one dared stand against him. But Boyd Connoway fought many a losing fight that his small citizens might wriggle with delight on their truckles. "The Christians to the lions!" Yes, that was noble. But then they had no choice, while Boyd Connoway, a willing martyr, fought his lioness with a three-legged stool.
This time, however, the just quarrel armed the three-legged, while cut number two of Forbes's Manual fell, not on Boyd Connoway's head, for which it was intended, but on Bridget's knee-cap. Boyd of the tender heart (though stubborn stool), was instantly upon his knees, his buckler flung to the ground and rubbing with all his might, with murmurings of, "Does it hurt now, darlint?--Not baeaed, sure?--Say it is better now thin, darlint!"
Boyd was as conscience-stricken as if he had personally wielded the poker. But the mind of Bridget was quite otherwise framed. With one hand she seized his abundant curly hair, now with a strand or two of early grey among the straw-colour of it, and while she pulled handfuls of it out by the roots (so Boyd declared afterwards), she boxed his ears heartily with the other. Which, indeed, is witnessed to by the whole goggle-eyed populace in the truckle bed.
"Didn't I tell ye, Jerry, ye cuckoo," whispered Connie, "she'd beat him? He's gettin' the Thick 'Un, just as I told ye!"
"But it's noways fair rules," retorted Jerry; "father he flung down his weepon for to rub her knee when she hurt it herself wid the poker!"
Jerry had lost his bet, as indeed he usually did, but for all that he remained a consistent supporter of the losing side. Daily he acknowledged in his body the power of the arm of flesh, but the vagrant butterfly humour of the male parent with the dreamy blue eyes touched him where he lived--perhaps because his, like his mother's, were sloe-black.
Nevertheless, in spite of mishandling and a scandalous disregard of the rules of the noble art of self-defence (not yet elaborated, but only roughly understood as "Fair play to all"), Boyd Connoway carried his point.
He saw the occupant of the bed "doon-the-hoose."
He was a slim man with clean-cut features, very pale about the gills and waxen as to