Phelim Otoole's Courtship and Other Stories Part 48

His unhappy wife, after their conversation that evening, experienced one of those strange, unaccountable presentiments or impressions which every one, more or less, has frequently felt. Until lately, he had not often gone out at night, because it was not until lately that the clique began to rea.s.semble in Barney Scaddhan's. 'Tis true the feeling on her part was involuntary, but on that very account it was the more distressing; her princ.i.p.al apprehension of danger to him was occasioned by his intimacy with Toal Finnigan, who, in spite of all her warnings and admonitions, contrived, by the sweetness of his tongue, to hold his ground with him, and maintain his good opinion. Indeed, any one who could flatter, wheedle, and play upon his vanity successfully, was sure to do this; but n.o.body could do it with such adroitness as Toal Finnigan.

It is wonderful how impressions are caught by the young from those who are older and have more experience than themselves. Little Atty, who had heard the conversation already detailed, begged his mammy not to send him to bed that night until his father would come home, especially as Mat Mulrennan, an in-door apprentice, who had been permitted that evening to go to see his family, had not returned, and he wished, he said, to sit up and let him in. The mother was rather satisfied than otherwise, that the boy should sit up with her, especially as all the other children and the servants had gone to bed.

"Mammy," said the boy, "isn't it a great comfort for us to be as we are now, and to know that my father can never get drunk again?"

"It is indeed, Atty;" and yet she said so; with a doubting, if not an apprehensive heart.

"He'll never beat you more, mammy, now?"

"No, darlin'; nor he never did, barrin' when he didn't know what he was doin'."

"That is when he was drunk, mammy?"

"Yes, Atty dear."

"Well, isn't it a great thing that he can never get drunk any more, mammy; and never beat you any more; and isn't it curious too, how he never bate me?"

"You, darlin'? oh, no, he would rather cut his arm off than rise it to you, Atty dear; and it's well that you are so good a boy as you are--for I'm afeard, Atty, that even if you deserved to be corrected, he wouldn't do it."

"But what 'ud we all do widout my father, mammy? If anything happened to him I think I'd die. I'd like to die if he was to go."

"Why, darlin'?"

"Bekase, you know, he'd go to heaven, and I'd like to be wid him; sure he'd miss me--his own Atty--wherever he'd be."

"And so you'd lave me and your sisters, Atty, and go to heaven with your father!"

The boy seemed perplexed; he looked affectionately at his mother, and said--

"No, mammy, I wouldn't wish to lave you, for then you'd have no son at all; no, I wouldn't lave you--I don't know what I'd do--I'd like to stay wid you, and I'd like to go wid him, I'd--"

"Well, darlin', you won't be put to that trial this many a long day, I hope."

Just then voices were heard at the door, which both recognized as those of Art and Mat Mulrennan the apprentice.

"Now, darlin'," said the mother, who observed that the child was pale and drowsy-looking, "you may go to bed, I see you are sleepy, Atty, not bein' accustomed to sit up so late; kiss me, an' good-night." He then kissed her, and sought the room where he slept.

Margaret, after the boy had gone, listened a moment, and became deadly pale, but she uttered no exclamation; on the contrary, she set her teeth, and compressed her lips closely together, put her hand on the upper part of her forehead, and rose to go to the door. She was not yet certain, but a dreadful terror was over her--Could it be possible that he was drunk?--she opened it, and the next moment her husband, in a state of wild intoxication, different from any in which she had ever seen him, come in. He was furious, but his fury appeared to have been directed against the apprentice, in consequence of having returned home so late.

On witnessing with her own eyes the condition in which he returned, all her presentiments flashed on her, and her heart sank down into a state of instant hopelessness and misery.

"Savior of the world!" she exclaimed, "I and my childre are lost; now, indeed, are we hopeless--oh, never till now, never till now!" She wept bitterly.

"What are you cryin' for now?" said he; "what are you cryin' for, I say?" he repeated, stamping his feet madly as he spoke; "stop at wanst, I'll have no cry--cryin' what--at--somever."

She instantly dried her eyes.

"Wha--what kep that blasted whelp, Mul--Mulrennan, out till now, I say?"

"I don't know indeed, Art."

"You--you don't! you kno--know noth-in'; An' now I'll have a smash, by the--the holy man, I'll--I'll smash every thing in--in the house."

He then took up a chair, which, by one blow against the floor, he crashed to pieces.

"Now," said he, "tha--that's number one; whe--where's that whelp, Mul--Mulrennan, till I pay--pay him for stayin' out so--so late. Send him here, send the ska-min' sco--scoundrel here, I bid you.". Margaret, naturally dreading violence, went to get little Atty to pacify him, as well as to intercede for the apprentice; she immediately returned, and told him the latter was coming. Art, in the mean time, stood a little beyond the fireplace, with a small beach chair in his hand which he had made for Atty, when the boy was only a couple of years old, but which had been given to the other children in succession. He had been first about to break it also, but on looking at it, he paused and said--

"Not this--this is Atty's, and I won't break it."

At that moment Mulrennan entered the room, with Atty behind him, but he had scarcely done so, when Art with all his strength flung the hard beach chair at his head; the lad, naturally anxious to avoid it, started to one side out of its way, and Atty, while in the act of stretching out his arms to run to his father, received the blow which had been designed for the other. It struck him a little above the temple, and he fell, but was not cut. The mother, on witnessing the act, raised her arms and shrieked, but on hearing the heavy, but dull and terrible sound of the blow against the poor boy's head, the shriek was suspended when half uttered, and she stood, her arms still stretched out, and bent a little upwards, as if she would have supplicated heaven to avert it;--her mouth was half open--her eyes apparently enlarged, and starting as if it were out of their sockets; there she stood--for a short time so full of horror as to be incapable properly of comprehending what had taken place. At length this momentary paralysis of thought pa.s.sed away, and with all the tender terrors of affection awakened in her heart, she rushed to the insensible boy. Oh, heavy and miserable night! What pen can portray, what language describe, or what imagination conceive, the anguish, the agony of that loving mother, when, on raising her sweet, and beautiful, and most affectionate boy from the ground whereon he lay, that fair head, with its flaxen locks like silk, fell utterly helpless now to this side, and now to that!

"Art Maguire," she said, "fly, fly,"--and she gave him one look; but, great G.o.d! what an object presented itself to her at that moment. A man stood before her absolutely hideous with horror; his face but a minute ago so healthy and high-colored, now ghastly as that of a corpse, his hands held up and clenched, his eyes frightful, his lips drawn back, and his teeth locked with strong and convulsive agony. He uttered not a word, but stood with his wild and gleaming eyes riveted, as if by the force of some awful spell, upon his insensible son, his only one, if he was then even that. All at once he fell down without sense or motion, as if a bullet had gone through his heart or his brain, and there lay as insensible as the boy he had loved so well.

All this pa.s.sed so rapidly that the apprentice, who seemed also to have been paralyzed, had not presence of mind to do any thing but look from one person to another with terror and alarm.

"Go," said Margaret, at length, "wake up the girls, and then fly--oh, fly--for the doctor."

The two servant maids, however, had heard enough in her own wild shriek to bring them to this woful scene. They entered as she spoke, and, aided by the apprentice, succeeded with some difficulty in laying their master on his bed, which was in a back room off the parlor.

"In G.o.d's name, what is all this?" asked one of them, on looking at the insensible bodies of the father and son.

"Help me," Margaret replied, not heeding the question, "help me to lay the treasure of my heart--my breakin' heart--upon his own little bed within, he will not long use it--tendherly, Peggy, oh, Peggy dear, tendherly to the broken flower--broken--broken--broken, never to rise his fair head again; oh, he is dead," she said, in a calm low voice, "my heart tells me that he is dead--see how his limbs hang, how lifeless they hang. My treasure--our treasure--our sweet, lovin', and only little man--our only son sure--our only son is dead--and where, oh, where, is the mother's pride out of him now--where is my pride out of him now?"

They laid him gently and tenderly--for even the servants loved him as if he had been a relation--upon the white counterpane of his own little crib, where he had slept many a sweet and innocent sleep, and played many a lightsome and innocent play with his little sisters. His mother felt for his pulse, but she could feel no pulse, she kissed his pa.s.sive lips, and then--oh, woful alternative of affliction!--she turned to his equally insensible father.

"Oh, ma'am," said one of the girls, who had gone over to look at Art; "oh, for G.o.d's sake, ma'am, come here--here is blood comin' out of the masther's mouth."

She was at the bedside in an instant, and there, to deepen her sufferings almost beyond the power of human fort.i.tude, she saw the blood oozing slowly out of his mouth. Both the servants were now weeping and sobbing as if their hearts would break.

"Oh, mistress dear," one of them exclaimed, seizing her affectionately by both hands, and looking almost distractedly into her face, "oh, mistress dear, what did you ever do to desarve this?"

"I don't know, Peggy," she replied, "unless it was settin' my father's commands, and my mother's at defiance; I disobeyed them both, and they died without blessin' either me or mine. But oh," she said, clasping her hands, "how can one poor wake woman's heart stand all this--a double death--husband and son--son and husband--and I'm but one woman, one poor, feeble, weak woman--but sure," she added, dropping on her knees, "the Lord will support me. I am punished, and I hope forgiven, and he will now support me."

She then briefly, but distractedly, entreated the divine support, and rose once more with a heart, the fibres of which were pulled asunder, as it were, between husband and son, each of whose lips she kissed, having wiped the blood from those of her husband, with a singular blending together of tenderness, distraction and despair. She went from the one to the other, wringing her hands in dry agony, feeling for life in their hearts and pulses, and kissing their lips with an expression of hopelessness so pitiable and mournful, that the grief of the servants was occasioned more by her sufferings than by the double catastrophe that had occurred.

The doctor's house, as it happened, was not far from theirs, and in a very brief period he arrived.

"Heavens! Mrs. Maguire, what has happened?" said he, looking on the two apparently inanimate bodies with alarm.

"His father," she said, pointing to the boy, "being in a state of drink, threw a little beech chair at the apprentice here, he stepped aside, as was natural, and the blow struck my treasure there," she said, holding her hand over the spot where he was struck, but not on it; "but, doctor, look at his father, the blood is trickling out of his mouth."

The doctor, after examining into the state of both, told her not to despair--

"Your husband," said he, "who is only in a fit, has broken a blood-vessel, I think some small blood-vessel is broken; but as for the boy, I can as yet p.r.o.nounce no certain opinion upon him. It will be a satisfaction to you, however, to know that he is not dead, but only in a heavy stupor occasioned by the blow."

It was now that her tears began to flow, and copiously and bitterly they did flow; but as there was still hope, her grief, though bitter, was not that of despair. Ere many minutes, the doctor's opinion respecting one of them, at least, was verified. Art opened his eyes, looked wildly about him, and the doctor instantly signed to his wife to calm the violence of her sorrow, and she was calm.

"Margaret," said he, "where's Atty? bring him to me--bring him to me!"