Valentine M'Clutchy, The Irish Agent. William Carleton

effect.

      “Low born tyrant,” she shouted, kneeling rapidly down and holding up her clasped hands, but not in supplication—“low born, tyrant,” she shouted, “stop;—spawn of blasphemin' Deaker, stop—bastard of the notorious Kate Clank, hould your hand? You see we know you and yours well. You were a bad son to a bad mother, and the curse of God will pursue you and yours, for that and your other villanies. Go back and hould your hand, I say—and don't dare to bring the vengeance of God upon you, for the plot of hell you are about to work out this day. I know that plot. Be warned. Look about you here, and think of what you're going to do. Have you no feeling for ould and helpless age—for the weakness of women, the innocence of children? Are you not afraid on such a day to come near the bed of sickness, or the bed of death, with such an intention? Here's widows and orphans, the sick and the dyin', ould age half dead, Mid infancy half starved; and is it upon these, that you and blasphemin' Deaker's bloody Dashers are goin' to work your will? Hould your hand, I say, or if you don't, although I needn't curse you myself, for I am too wicked for that—yet in the name of all these harmless and helpless creatures before you, I call their curses on your head. In the name of all the care, and pain, and sorrow, and starvation, and affliction, that's now before your eyes, be you cursed in soul and body—in all you touch—in all you love—cursed here, and cursed hereafter forever, if you proceed in your wicked intentions this woeful day!”

      “Who is that mad-woman?” said M'Clutchy. “Let her be removed. All I can say is, that she has taken a very unsuccessful method of staying the proceedings.”

      “Who am I?” said she; “I will tell you that. Look at this,” she replied, exposing her bosom; “these are the breasts that suckled you—between them did you lie, you ungrateful viper! Yes, you may stare—it's many a long year since the name of Kate Clank reached your ears, and now that you have heard it, it is not to bless you. Well, you remember when you heard it last—on the day you hunted your dogs at me, and threatened to have me horse-whipped—ay, to horse-whip me with your own hands, should I ever come near your cursed house. Now, you know who I am, and now I have kept my word, which was never to die till I gave you a shamed face. Kate Clank, your mother, is before you!”

      M'Clutchy took the matter very coolly certainly—laughed at her, and, in a voice of thunder, desired the ejectments to proceed.

      But how shall we dwell upon this miserable work? The wailings and screams, the solicitations for mercy, their prayers, their imprecations and promises, were all sternly disregarded; and on went the justice of law, accompanied by the tumult of misery. The old were dragged out—the bedriden grand-mother had her couch of straw taken from under her. From the house of death, the corpse of an aged female was carried out amidst the shrieks and imprecations of both men and women! The sick child that clung with faintness to the bosom of its distracted mother, was put out under the freezing blast of the north; and on, on, onward, from house to house, went the steps of law, accompanied still by the increasing tumult of misery. This was upon Christmas eve—a day of “joy and festivity!”

      At length they reached O'Regan's,and it is not our intention to describe the occurrence at any length. It could not be done. O'Regan clasped his hands, so did his wife; they knelt—they wept—they supplicated. They stated the nature of his malady—decline—from having ruptured a blood-vessel. They ran to M'Clutchy, to M'Slime, to the squat figure on horseback. They prayed to Darby, and especially entreated a ruffian follower who had been remarkable for, and wanton in, his inhumanity, but with no effect. Darby shook his head.

      “It couldn't be done,” said he.

      “No,” replied the other, whose name was Grimes, “we can't make any differ between one and another—so out he goes.”

      “Father,” observed the meek boy, “let them. I will only be the sooner in heaven.”

      He was placed sitting up in bed by the bailiff's, trembling in the cold rush of the blast; but the moment the father saw their polluted and sacrilegious hands upon him—he rushed forward accompanied by his mother.

      “Stay,” he said, in a loud, hoarse voice, “since you will have him out, let our hands, not yours, be upon him.”

      The ruffian told him they could not stand there all day, and without any farther respect for their feelings, they rudely wrapped the bed-clothes about him, and, carrying him out, he was placed upon a chair before the door. His parents were immediately beside him, and took him now into then own care; but it was too late—he smiled as he looked into their faces, then looked at his little brother, and giving one long drawn sigh, he passed, without pain or suffering, saving a slight shudder, into happiness. O'Regan, when he saw that his noble and beloved boy was gone, surrendered him into the keeping of his wife and other friends, who prevented his body from falling off the chair. He then bent his eye sternly upon the group of bailiffs, especially upon the rude ruffian, Grimes, whose conduct was so atrocious.

      “Now listen,” said he, kneeling down beside his dead son—“listen all of you that has wrought this murder of my dying boy! He is yet warm,” he added, grinding his teeth and looking up to heaven, “and here beside him, I pray, that the gates of mercy may be closed upon my soul through sill eternity, if I die without vengeance for your death, my son!”

      His mother, who was now in a state between stupor and distraction, exclaimed—

      “To be sure, darling, and I'll assist you, and so will Torley.”

      The death of this boy, under circumstances of such incredible cruelty, occasioned even M'Clutchy to relax something of his original intentions. He persisted, however, in accomplishing all the ejectments without exception, but when this was over, he allowed them to re-occupy their miserable cabins, until the weather should get milder, and until such of them as could, might be able to procure some other shelter for themselves and families.

      When all was over, M'Slime, who had brought with him a sheaf of tracts for their spiritual sustenance, saw, from the deeply tragic character of the proceedings, that he might spare himself the trouble of such Christian sympathy as he wished to manifest for their salvation. He and M'Clutchy, to whom, by the way, he presented the truly spiritual sustenance of some good brandy out of a flask, with which he balanced the tracts in his other pocket, then took their way in the very centre of the Dashers, leaving behind them all those sorrows of life, for which, however, they might well be glad to exchange their consciences and their wealth.

      The circumstances which we have just described, were too striking not to excite considerable indignation among all reasonable minds at the time. An account of that day's proceedings got into the papers, but was so promptly and fully contradicted by the united testimony of M'Clutchy and M'Slime, that the matter was made to appear very highly complimentary to the benevolence and humanity of both. “So far from the proceedings in question,” the contradiction went on to say, “being marked by the wanton cruelty and inhumanity imputed to them, they were, on the contrary, as remarkable for the kindness and forbearance evinced by Messrs. M'Clutchy and M'Slime. The whole thing was a mere legal form, conducted in a most benevolent and Christian spirit. The people were all restored to their tenements the moment the business of the day was concluded, and we cannot readily forget the admirable advice and exhortation offered to them, and so appropriately offered by Solomon M'Slime, Esq., the truly Christian and benevolent law agent of the property in question.”

      By these proceedings, however, M'Clutchy had gained Ms. point, which was, under the guise of a zealous course of public duty, to create a basis on which to ground his private representations of the state of the country to government. He accordingly lost no time in communicating on the subject with Lord Cumber, who at once supported him in the project of raising a body of cavalry for the better security of the public peace; as, indeed, it was his interest to do, inasmuch, as it advanced his own importance in the eye of government quite as much as it did M'Clutchy's. A strong case was therefore made out by this plausible intriguer. In a few days after the affair of Drum Dhu, honest Val contrived to receive secret information of the existence of certain illegal papers which clearly showed that there existed a wide and still spreading conspiracy in the country. As yet, he said, he could not ground any proceeding of a definite character upon them.

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