of our freeholders were knocked off, having never a freehold that they could safely swear to, and Sir Condy was not willing to have any man perjure himself for his sake, as was done on the other side, God knows, but no matter for that. Some of our friends were dumbfounded by the lawyers asking them: Had they ever been upon the ground where their freeholds lay? Now, Sir Condy being tender of the consciences of them that had not been on the ground, and so could not swear to a freehold when cross-examined by them lawyers, sent out for a couple of cleaves-full of the sods of his farm of Gulteeshinnagh;36 and as soon as the sods came into town, he set each man upon his sod, and so then, ever after, you know, they could fairly swear they had been upon the ground.37 We gained the day by this piece of honesty.38 I thought I should have died in the streets for joy when I seed my poor master chaired, and he bareheaded, and it raining as hard as it could pour; but all the crowds following him up and down, and he bowing and shaking hands with the whole town. “Is that Sir Condy Rackrent in the chair?” says a stranger man in the crowd. “The same,” says I. “Who else should it be? God bless him!” “And I take it, then, you belong to him?” says he. “Not at all,” says I; “but I live under him, and have done so these two hundred years and upwards, me and mine.” “It’s lucky for you, then,” rejoins he, “that he is where he is; for was he anywhere else but in the chair, this minute he’d be in a worse place; for I was sent down on purpose to put him up,39 and here’s my order for so doing in my pocket.” It was a writ that villain the wine merchant had marked against my poor master for some hundreds of an old debt, which it was a shame to be talking of at such a time as this. “Put it in your pocket again, and think no more of it anyways for seven years to come, my honest friend,” says I; “he’s a member of parliament now, praised be God, and such as you can’t touch him: and if you’ll take a fool’s advice, I’d have you keep out of the way this day, or you’ll run a good chance of getting your deserts amongst my master’s friends, unless you choose to drink his health like everybody else.” “I’ve no objection to that in life,” said he. So we went into one of the public houses kept open for my master; and we had a great deal of talk about this thing and that. “And how is it,” says he, “your master keeps on so well upon his legs? I heard say he was off Hollantide twelvemonth past.” “Never was better or heartier in his life,” said I. “It’s not that I’m after speaking of,” said he; “but there was a great report of his being ruined.” “No matter,” says I, “the sheriffs two years running were his particular friends, and the sub-sheriffs were both of them gentlemen, and were properly spoken to; and so the writs lay snug with them, and they, as I understand by my son Jason the custom in them cases is, returned the writs as they came to them to those that sent ’em; much good may it do them! with a word in Latin, that no such person as Sir Condy Rackrent, bart., was to be found in those parts.” “Oh, I understand all those ways better—no offence—than you,” says he, laughing, and at the same time filling his glass to my master’s good health, which convinced me he was a warm friend in his heart after all, though appearances were a little suspicious or so at first. “To be sure,” says he, still cutting his joke, “when a man’s over head and shoulders in debt, he may live the faster for it, and the better if he goes the right way about it; or else how is it so many live on so well, as we see every day, after they are ruined?” “How is it,” says I, being a little merry at the time—“how is it but just as you see the ducks in the chicken-yard, just after their heads are cut off by the cook, running round and round faster than when alive?” At which conceit he fell a-laughing, and remarked he had never had the happiness yet to see the chicken-yard at Castle Rackrent. “It won’t be long so, I hope,” says I; “you’ll be kindly welcome there, as everybody is made by my master: there is not a freer-spoken gentleman, or a better beloved, high or low, in all Ireland.” And of what passed after this I’m not sensible, for we drank Sir Condy’s good health and the downfall of his enemies till we could stand no longer ourselves. And little did I think at the time, or till long after, how I was harbouring my poor master’s greatest of enemies myself. This fellow had the impudence, after coming to see the chicken-yard, to get me to introduce him to my son Jason; little more than the man that never was born did I guess at his meaning by this visit: he gets him a correct list fairly drawn out from my son Jason of all my master’s debts, and goes straight round to the creditors and buys them all up, which he did easy enough, seeing the half of them never expected to see their money out of Sir Condy’s hands. Then, when this base-minded limb of the law, as I afterwards detected him in being, grew to be sole creditor over all, he takes him out a
Вы читаете Castle Rackrent
