Fardorougha, The Miser Part 29

"In spite o' who, Bridget?" asked the Bodagh, wiping his eyes--"in spite o' who does she mane?"

"Why, I suppose in spite of Flanagan and thim that found him guilty,"

replied his wife.

"Well, but what else did she say, mother?"

"She axed me if marriages warn't made in heaven; and I tould her that the people said so; upon that she said she'd meet him there, and then she complained of her head. The trewth is, she has a heavy load of sickness on her back, and the sorra hour should be lost till we get a docthor."

"Yes, that is the truth, mother; I'll go this moment for Dr. H----.

There's nothing like taking these things in time. Poor Una! G.o.d knows this trial is a sore one upon a heart so, faithful and affectionate as hers."

"John, had you not betther ait something before you go?" said his father; "you want it afther the troublesome day you had."

"No, no," replied the son; "I cannot--I cannot; I will neither eat nor drink till I hear what the doctor will say about her. O, my G.o.d!" he exclaimed, whilst his eyes filled with tears, "and is it come to this with you, our darling Una?--I won't lose a moment till I return,"

he added, as he went out; "nor will I, under any circ.u.mstances, come without medical aid of some kind."

"Let these things be taken away, Bridget," said the Bodagh; "my appet.i.te is gone, too; that last news is the worst of all. May the Lord of heaven keep our child's mind right! for, oh, Bridget, wouldn't death itself be far afore that?"

"I'm going up to her," replied his wife; "and may G.o.d guard her, and spare her safe and sound to us; for what--what kind of a house would it be if she----but I can't think of it. Oh, wurrah, wurrah, this night!"

Until the return of their son, with the doctor, both O'Brien and his wife hung in a state of alarm bordering on agony over the bed of their beloved daughter. Indeed, the rapidity and vehemence with which incoherence, accompanied by severe illness, set in, were sufficient to excite the greatest alarm, and to justify their darkest apprehensions.

Her skin was hot almost to burning; her temples throbbed terribly, and such were her fits of starting and raving, that they felt as if every minute were an hour, until the physician actually made his appearance.

Long before tins gentleman reached the house, the son had made him fully acquainted with what he looked upon as the immediate cause of her illness; not that the doctor himself had been altogether ignorant of it, for, indeed, there were few persons of any cla.s.s or condition in the neighborhood to whom that circ.u.mstance was unknown.

On examining the diagnostics that presented themselves, he p.r.o.nounced her complaint to be brain fever of the most formidable cla.s.s, to wit, that which arises from extraordinary pressure upon the mind, and unusual excitement of the feelings. It was a relief to her family, however, to know that beyond the temporary mental aberrations, inseparable from the nature of her complaint, there was no evidence whatsoever of insanity.

They felt grateful to G.o.d for this, and were consequently enabled to watch her sick-bed with more composure, and to look forward to her ultimate recovery with a hope less morbid and gloomy. In this state we are now compelled to leave them and her, and to beg the reader will accompany us to another house of sorrow, where the mourning was still more deep, and the spirits that were wounded driven into all the wild and dreary darkness of affliction.

Our readers cannot forget the helpless state of intoxication, in which Fardorougha left his unhappy son on the evening of the calamitous day that saw him doomed to an ignominious death. His neighbors, as we then said, having procured a car, a.s.sisted him home, and would, for his wife's and son's sake, have afforded him all the sympathy in their power; he was, however, so completely overcome with the spirits he had drank, and an unconscious latent feeling of the dreadful sentence that had been p.r.o.nounced upon his son, that he required little else at their hands than to keep him steady on the car. During the greater part of the journey home, his language was only a continuation of the incoherencies which Connor had, with such a humiliating sense of shame and sorrow, witnessed in his prison cell. A little before they arrived within sight of his house, his companions perceived that he had fallen asleep; but to a stranger, ignorant of the occurrences of the day, the car presented the appearance of a party returning from a wedding or from some other occasion equally festive and social. Most of them were the worse for liquor, and one of them in particular had reached a condition which may be too often witnessed in this country. I mean that in which the language becomes thick; the eye knowing but vacant; the face impudent but relaxed; the limbs tottering, and the voice inveterately disposed to melody. The general conversation, therefore, of those who accompanied the old man was, as is usual with persons so circ.u.mstanced, high and windy; but as far as could be supposed by those who heard them cheerful and amiable. Over the loudness of their dialogue might be heard, from time to time, at a great distance, the song of the drunken melodist just alluded to, rising into those desperate tones which borrow their drowsy energy from intoxication alone. Such was the character of those who accompanied the miser home; and such were the indications conveyed to the ears or eyes of I those who either saw or heard them, as they approached Fardorougha's dwelling, where the unsleeping heart of the mother watched--and oh! with what a dry and burning anguish of expectation, let our readers judge--for the life or death of the only child that G.o.d had ever vouchsafed to that loving heart on which to rest all its tenderest hopes and affections.

The manner in which Honor O'Donovan spent that day was marked by an earnest and simple piety that would have excited high praise and admiration if witnessed in a person of rank or consideration in society.

She was, as the reader may remember, too ill to be able to attend the trial of her son, or as she herself expressed it in Irish, to draw strength to her heart by one look at his manly face; by one glance from her boy's eye. She resolved, however, to draw consolation from a higher source, and to rest the burden of her sorrows, as far as in her lay, upon that being in whose hands are the issues of life and death. From the moment her husband left the threshold of his childless house on that morning until his return, her prayers to G.o.d and the saints were truly incessant. And who is so well acquainted with the inscrutable ways of the Almighty, as to dare a.s.sert that the humble supplications of this pious and sorrowful mother were not heard and answered? Whether it was owing to the fervor of an imagination wrought upon by the influence of a creed which nourishes religious enthusiasm in an extraordinary degree, or whether it was by direct support from that G.o.d who compa.s.sionated her affliction, let others determine; but certain it is, that in the course of that day she gained a calmness and resignation, joined to an increasing serenity of heart, such as she had not hoped to feel under a calamity so black and terrible.

On hearing the approach of the car which bore her husband home, and on listening to the noisy mirth of those, who, had they been sober, would have sincerely respected her grief, she put up an inward prayer of thanksgiving to G.o.d for what she supposed to be the happy event of Connor's acquittal. Stunning was the blow, however, and dreadful the revulsion of feelings, occasioned by the discovery of this sad mistake.

When they reached the door she felt still farther persuaded that all had ended as she wished, for to nothing else, except the wildness of unexpected joy, could she think of ascribing her husband's intoxication.

"We must carry Fardorougha in," said one of them to the rest; "for the liquor has fairly overcome him--he's sound asleep."

"He is cleared!" exclaimed the mother; "he is cleared! My heart tells me he has come out without a stain. What else could make his father, that never tasted liquor for the last thirty years, be as he is?"

"Honor O'Donovan," said one of them, wringing her hand as he spoke, "this has been a black day to you all; you must prepare yourself for bad news."

"Thin Christ and his blessed mother support me, and support us all! but what is the worst? oh, what is the worst?"

"The _barradh dhu_," replied the man, alluding to the black cap which the judge puts on when pa.s.sing sentence of death.

"Well," said she, "may the name of the Lord that sent this upon us be praised forever! That's no rason why we shouldn't still put our trust and reliance in him. I will show them, by the help of G.o.d's grace, an'

by the a.s.sistance of His blessed mother, who suffered herself--an' oh, what is my sufferin's to her's?--I will show them I say, that I can bear, as a Christian ought, whatever hard fate it may plase the Saviour of the earth to lay upon us. I know my son is innocent, an surely, although it's hard, hard to part with such a boy, yet it's a consolation to know that he'll be better wid G.o.d, who is takin' him, than ever he'd be wid us. So the Lord's will be done this night and forever! amin!"

This n.o.ble display of glowing piety and fort.i.tude was not lost upon those who witnessed it. After littering these simple but exalted sentiments, she crossed herself devoutly, as is the custom, and bowed her head with such a vivid sense of G.o.d's presence, that it seemed as if she actually stood, as no doubt she did, under the shadow of His power.

These men, knowing the force of her love to that son, and the consequent depth of her misery at losing him by a death so shameful and violent, reverently took off their hats as she bent her head to express this obedience to the decrees of G.o.d, and in a subdued tone and manner exclaimed, almost with one voice--

"May G.o.d pity you, Honor! for who but yourself would or could act as you do this bitther, bitther night?"

"I'm only doin' what I ought to do," she replied, "what is religion good for if it doesn't keep the heart right an' support us undher thrials like this; what 'ud it be then but a name? But how, oh how, came his father to be in sich a state on this bitther, bitther night, as you say it is--aif oh! Heaven above sees it's that--how came his father, I say, into sich a state?"

They then related the circ.u.mstance as it actually happened; and she appeared much relieved to hear that his inebriety was only accidental.

"I am glad," she said, "that he got it as he did; for, indeed, if he had made himself dhrunk this day, as too many like him do on such occasions, he never again would appear the same man in my eyes, nor would my heart ever more warm to him as it did. But thanks to G.o.d that he didn't take it himself!"

She then heard, with a composure that could result only from fort.i.tude and resignation united, a more detailed account of her son's trial, after which she added--

"As G.o.d is above me this night I find it asier to lose Connor than to forgive the man that destroyed him; but this is a bad state of heart, that I trust my Saviour will give me grace to overcome; an' I know He will if I ax it as I ought; at all events, I won't lay my side on a bed this night antil I pray to G.o.d to forgive Bartle Flanagan an' to turn his heart."

She then pressed them, with a heart as hospitable as it was pious, to partake of food, which they declined, from a natural reluctance to give trouble where the heart is known to be pressed down by the violence of domestic calamity. These are distinctions which our humble countrymen draw with a delicacy that may well shame those who move in a higher rank of life. Respect for unmerited affliction, and sympathy for the sorrows of the just and virtuous, are never withheld by the Irish peasant when allowed by those who can guide him either for goqd or for evil to follow the impulses of his own heart. The dignity, for instance, of Honor O'Donovan's bearing under a trial so overwhelming in its nature, and the piety with which she supported it, struck them, half tipsy as they were, so forcibly, that they became sobered down--some of them into a full perception of her firmness and high religious feelings; and those who were more affected by drink into a maudlin gravity of deportment still more honorable to the admirable principles of the woman who occasioned it.

One of the latter, for instance, named Bat Hanratty, exclaimed, after they had bade her good, night, and expressed their unaffected sorrow for the severe loss she was about to sustain:

"Well, well, you may all talk; but be the powdhers o' delf, nothin'

barrin' the downright grace o' G.o.d could sup--sup--port that dacent mother of ould Fardorougha--I mane of his son, poor Connor. But the truth is, you see, that there's nothin'--nothin' no, the divil saize the hap'o'rth at all, good, bad, or indifferent aquil to puttin' your trust in G.o.d; bekase, you see--Con Roach, I say--bekase you see, when a man does that as he ought to do it; for it's all faisthelagh if you go the wrong way about it; but Con--Condy, I say, you're a dacent man, an' it stands to raison--it does, boys--upon my soul it does. It wasn't for nothin' that money was lost upon myself, when I was takin' in the edjigation; and maybe, if Connor O'Donovan, that is now goin' to suffer, poor fellow--

For the villain swore away my life, an' all by perjuree; And for that same I die wid shame upon the gallows tree.

So, as I was sayin', why didn't Connor come in an' join the boys like another, an' then we could settle Bartle for staggin' against him. For, you see, in regard o'. that, Condy, it doesn't signify a traneen whether he put a match to the haggard or not; the thing is, you know, that even if he did, Bartle daren't sweat against him widout breakin' his first oath to the boys; an' if he did it afther that, an' brought any of them into throuble conthrary to the articles, be gorra he'd be ent.i.tled to get a gusset opened undher one o' his ears, any how. But you see, Con, be the book--G.o.d pardon me for swearin'--but be the book, the mother has the thrue! ralligion in her heart, or she'd never stand it the way she does, an' that proves what I was axpoundin'; that afther all, the sorra hap'-o'rth aquil to the grace o' G.o.d."

He then sang a comic song, and, having pa.s.sed an additional eulogium on the conduct of Honor O'Donovan, concluded by exhibiting some rather unequivocal symptoms of becoming pathetic from sheer sympathy; after which the stiporific effect of his libations soon hushed him into a snore that acted as a base to the shrill tones in which his companions I addressed one another from each side of the car.

Fardorougha, ever, since the pa.s.sion of avarice had established its accursed dominion in his heart, narrowed by degrees his domestic establishment, until, towards the latter years of his life, it consisted of only a laboring boy, as the term is, and a servant girl.

Indeed, no miser was ever known to maintain a large household; and that for reasons too obvious to be detailed. Since Connor's incarceration, however, his father's heart had so far expanded, that he hired two men as inside servants, one of them, now the father of a large family, being the identical Nogher M'Cormick, who, as the reader remembers, was in his service at the time of Connor's birth. The other was a young man named Thaddy Star, or Reillaghan, as it is called in Irish, who was engaged upon the recommendation of Biddy Nulty, then an established favorite with her master and mistress, in consequence of her faithful devotion to! them and Connor, and her simple-hearted partic.i.p.ation in their heavy trouble. The manner in which they received the result of her son's trial was not indeed calculated to sustain his mother. In the midst of the clamor, however, she was calm and composed; but it would have been evident, to a close observer, that a deep impression of religious duty alone sustained her, and that the yearnings of the mother's heart, though stilled by resignation to the Divine Will, were yet more intensely agonized by the suppression of what she secretly felt. Such, however, is the motive of those heroic acts of self-denial, which religion only can enable us to perform. It does not harden the heart, or prevent it from feeling the full force of the calamity or sorrow which comes upon us; no, but whilst we experience it in all the rigor of distress, it teaches us to reflect that suffering is our lot, and that it is our duty to receive these severe dispensations in such a manner as to prevent others from being corrupted by our impatience, or by our open want of submission to the decrees of Providence. When the agony of the Man of Sorrow was at its highest, He retired to a solitary place, and whilst every pore exuded water and blood, he still exclaimed--"Not My will, but Thine be done." Here was resignation, indeed, but at the same time a heart exquisitely sensible of all it had to bear. And much, indeed, as yet lay before that of the pious mother of our unhappy hero, and severe was the trial which, on this very night, she was doomed to encounter.

When Fardorougha awoke, which he did not do until about three o'clock in the morning, he looked wildly about him, and, starting up in the bed, put his two hands on his temples, like a man distracted by acute pain; yet anxious to develop in his memory the proceedings of the foregoing day. The inmates, however, were startled from their sleep by a shriek, or rather a yell, so loud and unearthly that in a few minutes they stood collected about his bed. It would be impossible, indeed, to conceive, much less to describe, such a picture of utter horror as then presented itself to their observation. A look that resembled the turbid glare of insanity was riveted upon them whilst he uttered shriek after shriek, without the power of articulating a syllable. The room, too, was dim and gloomy; for the light of the candle that was left burning beside him had become ghastly for want of snuffing. There he sat--his fleshless hands pressed against his temples; his thin, gray hair standing out wildly from his head; his lips asunder; and his cheeks sucked in so far that the chasms occasioned in his jawbones, by the want of his back teeth, were plainly visible.

"Chiemah dheelish," exclaimed Honor, "what is this? as Heaven's above me, I believe he's dyin'; see how he gasps! Here, Fardorougha," she exclaimed, seizing a jug of water which had been left on a chair beside him, but which he evidently did not see, "here, here, darlin', wet your lips; the cool water will refresh you."

He immediately clutched the jug with eager and trembling hands, and at one rapid draught emptied it to the bottom.

"Now," he shouted, "I can spake, now I can spake. Where's my son?

where's my son? an' what has happened me? how did I come here? was I mad? am I mad? but tell me, tell me first, where's Connor? Is it thrue?

is it all thrue? or is it me that's mad?"

"Fardorougha, dear," said his wife, "be a man, or, rather, be a Christian. It was G.o.d gave Connor to us, and who has a better right to take him back from us? Don't go flyin' in His face, bekase He won't ordher everything as you wish. You haven't taken off of you to-night, so rise, dear, and calm yourself; then go to your knees, lift your heart to G.o.d, and beg of Him to grant you stringth and patience. Thry that coorse, avoumeen, an' you'll find it the best."

"How did I come home I say, Oh tell me Honor, was I out of my wits?"

"You fainted," she replied; they gave you whiskey to support you; an'

not bein' accustomed to it, it got into your head."

"Oh, Honor, our son, our son!" he replied; then, starting out of the bed in a fit of the wildest despair, he clasped his handy together, and shrieked out, "Oh, our son, our son, our son Connor! Merciful Saviour, how will I name it? to be hanged by the neck! Oh, Honor, Honor, don't you pity me? don't you pity me? Mother of Heaven, this night? That barradh dim, that barradh dim, put on for our boy, our innocent boy; who can undherstand it, Honor? It's not justice; there's no justice in Heaven, or my son wouldn't be murdhered, slaughtered down in the prime of his life, for no rason! But no matther; let him be taken; only hear this: if he goes, I'll never,bend my knee to a single prayer while I've life; for it's terrible, it's cruel, 'tisn't justice; nor do I care what becomes of me, either in this world or the other. All I want, Honor, is to folly him as soon as I can; my hopes, my happiness, my life, my everything, is gone wid him; an' what need I care, thin, what becomes of me? I don't, I don't."