India -- Social life and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, English
"That ould fool who's sorry he didn't stick the pig Mullins." His head
dropped again. When he raised it he shivered and put his hands on the
shoulders of his two companions.
"Ye've walked the Divil out av me, bhoys," said he.
Ortheris shot out the red-hot dottel of his pipe on the back of the hairy
fist. "They say 'Ell's 'otter than that," said he, as Mulvaney swore
aloud. "You be warned so. Look yonder!"--he pointed across the river to a
ruined temple--"Me an' you an' _'im_"-he indicated me by a jerk of his
head--"was there one day when Hi made a bloomin' show o' myself. You an'
'im stopped me doin' such--an' Hi was on'y wishful for to desert. You are
makin' a bigger bloomin' show o' yourself now."
"Don't mind him, Mulvaney," I said; "Dinah Shadd won't let you hang
yourself yet awhile, and you don't intend to try it either. Let's hear
about the Tyrone and O'Hara. Rafferty shot him for fooling with his wife.
What happened before that?"
"There's no fool like an ould fool. You know you can do anythin' wid me
whin I'm talkin'. Did I say I wud like to cut Mullins's liver out? I deny
the imputashin, for fear that Orth'ris here wud report me--Ah! You wud tip
me into the river, wud you? Sit quiet, little man. Anyways, Mullins is not
worth the trouble av an extry p'rade, an' I will trate him wid outrajis
contimpt. The Tyrone an' O'Hara! O'Hara an' the Tyrone, begad! Ould days
are hard to bring back into the mouth, but they're always inside the
head."
Followed a long pause.
"O'Hara was a Divil. Though I saved him, for the honor av the rig'mint,
from his death that time, I say it now. He was a Divil--a long, bould,
black-haired Divil."
"Which way?" asked Ortheris,
"Women."
"Then I know another."
"Not more than in reason, if you mane me, ye warped walkin'-shtick. I have
been young, an' for why should I not have tuk what I cud? Did I iver, whin
I was Corp'ril, use the rise av my rank--wan step an' that taken away,
more's the sorrow an' the fault av me!--to prosecute a nefarious
inthrigue, as O'Hara did? Did I, whin I was Corp'ril, lay my spite upon a
man an' make his life a dog's life from day to day? Did I lie, as O'Hara
lied, till the young wans in the Tyrone turned white wid the fear av the
Judgment av God killin' thim all in a lump, as ut killed the woman at
Devizes? I did not! I have sinned my sins an' I have made my confesshin,
an' Father Victor knows the worst av me. O'Hara was tuk, before he cud
spake, on Rafferty's doorstep, an' no man knows the worst av him. But this
much I know!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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