The boy re-read the pa.s.sage.
"Well, well, I wonder if Miss Kate will ever come back again," said she, in a pause.
"To be sure she will," said Kerry; "what would hinder her? hasn"t she a fine fortune out of the property? ten thousand, I heerd the master say."
"Ayeh! sure it"s all gone many a day ago; the sorra taste of a bra.s.s farthen"s left for her or any one else. The master sould every stick an"
stone in the place, barrin" the house that"s over us, and sure that"s all as one as sould too. Ah, then, Miss Kate was the purty child, and had the coaxing ways with her."
""Tis a pity to make her a nun," said Kerry.
"A pity! why would it be a pity, Kerry O"Leary?" said the old lady, bristling up with anger. "Isn"t the nuns happier, and dacenter, and higher nor other women, with rapscallions for husbands, and villians of all kinds for childher? Is it the likes of ye, or the crayture beside ye, that would teach a colleen the way to heaven? Musha, but they have the blessed times of it--fastin" and prayin", and doing all manner of penance, and talking over their sins with holy men."
"Whisht! what"s that? there"s the bell ringing above stairs," said Kerry, suddenly starting up and listening. "Ay, there it is again,"
and, so saying, he yawned and stretched himself, and after several interjectional grumblings over the disturbance, slowly mounted the stairs towards the parlour.
"Are ye sleepin" down there, ye lazy deevils?" cried Sir Archy from the landing of the stairs. "Did ye no hear the bell?"
""Tis now I heerd it," said Kerry composedly, for he never vouchsafed the same degree of deference to Sir Archy, he yielded to the rest of the family.
"Go see if there be any lemon"s in the house, and lose no time about it."
"Faix, I needn"t go far then to find out," whined Kerry; "the master had none for his punch these two nights; they put the little box into a damp corner, and, sure enough, they had beards on them like Jews, the same lemons, when they went to look for them."
"Go down then to the woman, M"Kelly"s, in the glen, and see if she hae na some there."
"Oh murther! murther!" muttered Kerry to himself, as the whistling storm reminded him of the dreadful weather without doors. ""Tis no use in going without the money," said he slyly, hoping that by this home-thrust he might escape the errand. "Ye maun tell her to put it in the account, man." ""Tis in bad company she"d put it then," muttered Kerry below his breath, then added aloud--"Sorrow one she"d give, if I hadn"t the sixpence in my hand."
"Canna ye say it"s no" for yoursel", it"s for the house--she wad na refuse that."
"No use in life," reiterated he solemnly; "she"s a real naygur, and would, not trust Father Luke with a week"s snuff, and he"s dealt there for sneeshin these thirty years."
"A weel, a weel," said M"Nab in a low harsh voice; "the world"s growing waur and waur. Ye maun e"en gie her a shilling, and mind ye get nae bad bawbees in change; she suld gie ye twelve for saxpence."
Kerry took the money without a word in reply; he was foiled in the plan of his own devising, and with many a self-uttered sarcasm on the old Scotchman, he descended the stairs once more.
"Is Master Herbert worse?" said the cook, as the old huntsman entered the kitchen.
"Begorra he must be bad entirely, when ould Archy would give a shilling to cure him. See here, he"s sending me for lemons down to Mary"s."
Kerry rung the coin upon the table as if to test its genuiness, and muttered to himself--
""Tis a good one, devil a lie in it."
""There"s the bell again; musha, how he rings it."
This time the voice of Sir Archy was heard in loud tones summoning Kerry to his a.s.sistance, for Herbert had become suddenly worse, and the old man was unable to prevent him rising from his bed and rushing from the room.
The wild and excited tones of the youth were mixed with the deeper utterings of the old man, who exerted all his efforts to calm and restrain him as Kerry reached the spot. By his aid the boy was conveyed back to his bed, where, exhausted by his own struggles, he lay without speaking or moving for some hours.
It was not difficult to perceive, however, that this state boded more unfavourably than the former one. The violent paroxysms of wild insanity betokened, while they lasted, a degree of vital energy and force, which now seemed totally to have given way; and although Kerry regarded the change as for the better, the more practised and skilful mind of Sir Archibald drew a far different and more dispiriting augury.
Thus pa.s.sed the weary hours, and at last the long day began to decline, but still no sign, nor sound, proclaimed the doctor"s coming, and M"Nab"s anxiety became hourly more intense.
"If he come na soon," said he, after a long and dreary silence, "he need na tak" the trouble to look at him."
""Tis what I"m thinking too." said Kerry, with a sententious gravity almost revolting--"when the fingers does be going that way, it"s a mighty bad sign. If I seen the hounds working with their toes, I never knew them recover."
CHAPTER IX. A DOCTOR"S VISIT
The night was far advanced as the doctor arrived at the O"Donoghue"s house, drenched with rain, and fatigued by the badness of the roads, where his gig was often compelled to proceed for above a mile at a foot pace. Doctor Roach was not in the most bland of tempers as he reached his destination; and, of a verity, his was a nature that stood not in any need of increased acerbity. The doctor was a type of a race at one time very general, but now, it is hard to say wherefore, nearly extinct in Ireland. But so it is; the fruits of the earth change not in course of years more strikingly, than the fashions of men"s minds. The habits, popular enough in one generation, survive as eccentricities in another, and are extinct in a third.
There was a pretty general impression in the world, some sixty or seventy years back, that a member of the medical profession, who had attained to any height in his art, had a perfect right to dispense with all the amenities and courtesies which regulate social life among less privileged persons. The concessions now only yielded to a cook, were then extended to a physician; and in accordance with the privilege by which he administered most nauseous doses to the body, he was suffered to extend his dominion, and apply scarcely more palatable remedies to the minds of his patients. As if the ill-flavoured draughts had tinctured the spirit that conceived them, the tone of his thoughts usually smacked of bitters, until at last he seemed to have realized, in his own person, the conflicting agencies of the pharmacopoeia, and was at once acrid, and pungent, and soporific together.
The College of Physicians could never have reproached Doctor Roach with conceding a single iota of their privileges. Never was there one who more stoutly maintained, in his whole practice through life, the blessed immunity of "the Doctor." The magic word "Recipe," which headed his prescriptions, suggested a tone of command to all he said, and both his drugs and dicta were swallowed without remonstrance.
It may not be a flattering confession for humanity, but it is a.s.suredly a true one, that the exercise of power, no matter how humble its sphere, or how limited its range, will eventually generate a tyrannical habit in him who wields it. Doctor Roach was certainly not the exception to this rule. The Czar himself was not more autocrat in the steppes of Russia, than was he in any house where sickness had found entrance. From that hour he planted his throne there. All the caprices of age, all the follies of childhood, the accustomed freedoms of home, the indulgences which grow up by habit in a household, had to give way before a monarch more potent than all, "the Doctor." Men bore the infliction with the same patient endurance they summoned to sustain the malady. They felt it to be grievous and miserable, but they looked forward to a period of relief, and panted for the arrival of the hour, when the disease and the doctor would take their departure together.
If the delight they experienced at such a consummation was extreme, so to the physician it savoured of ingrat.i.tude. "I saved his life yesterday," saith he, "and see how happy he is, to dismiss me to-day."
But who is ever grateful for the pangs of a toothache?--or what heart can find pleasure in the memory of sententiousness, senna, and low diet?
Never were the blessings of restored health felt with a more suitable thankfulness than by Doctor Roach"s patients. To be free once more from his creaking shoes, his little low dry cough, his harsh accents, his harsher words, his contradictions, his sneers, and his selfishness, shed a halo around recovery, which the friends of the patient could not properly appreciate.
Such was the individual whose rumbling and rattling vehicle now entered the court-yard of Carrig-na-curra, escorted by poor Terry, who had accompanied him the entire way on foot. The distance he had come, his more than doubts about the fee, the severity of the storm, were not the accessories likely to amend the infirmities of his temper; while a still greater source of irritation than all existed in the mutual feeling of dislike between him and Sir Archibald M"Nab. An occasional meeting at a little boarding-house in Killarney, which Sir Archy was in the habit of visiting each summer for a few days--the only recreation he permitted himself--had cultivated this sentiment to such a pitch, that they never met without disagreement, or parted without an actual quarrel. The doctor was a democrat, and a Romanist of the first water; Sir Archy was a member of the Scottish Episcopal Church; and, whatever might have been his early leanings in politics, and in whatever companionship his active years were pa.s.sed, experience had taught him the fallacy of many opinions, which owe any appearance of truth or stability they possess, to the fact, that they have never advanced beyond the stage of speculative notions, into the realms of actual and practical existence;--but, above all, the prudent Scotchman dreaded the prevalence of these doctrines among young and unsettled minds, ever ready to prefer the short and hazardous career of fortune, to the slow and patient drudgery of daily industry.
If the doctor antic.i.p.ated but little enjoyment in the society of Sir Archy, neither did the latter hope for any pleasure to himself from Roach"s company. However, as the case of poor Herbert became each hour more threatening, the old man resolved to bury in oblivion every topic of mutual disagreement, and, so long as the doctor remained in the house, to make every possible or impossible concession to conciliate the good-will of one, on whose services so much depended.
"Do ye hear?" cried Roach in a harsh voice to Kerry, who was summoned from the kitchen-fire to take charge of his horse; "let the pony have a mash of bran--a hot mash, and don"t leave him till he"s dry."
"Never fear, sir," replied Kerry, as he led the jaded and way-worn beast into the stable, "I"ll take care of him as if he was a racer;" and then, as Roach disappeared, added--"I"d like to see myself strapping the likes of him--an ould mountaineer. A mash of bran, indeed! c.o.c.k him up with bran! Begorra, "tis thistles and docks he"s most used to;" and, with this sage reflection on the beast"s habits, he locked the stable door, and resumed his former place beside the blazing turf fire.
O"Donoghue"s reception of the doctor was most cordial. He was glad to see him on several accounts. He was glad to see any one who could tell him what was doing in the world, from which all his intercourse was cut off; he was glad, because the supper was waiting an hour and a half beyond its usual time, and he was getting uncommonly hungry; and, lastly, he really felt anxious about Herbert, whenever by any chance his thoughts took that direction.
"How are you, Roach?" cried he, advancing to meet him with an extended hand. "This is a kind thing of you--you"ve had a dreadful day, I fear."
"D--n me, if I ever saw it otherwise in this confounded glen. I never set foot in it, that I wasn"t wet through."
"We have our share of rain, indeed," replied the other, with a good-humoured laugh; "but if we have storm, we have shelter."
Intentionally misunderstanding the allusion, and applying to the ruined mansion the praise bestowed on the bold mountains, the doctor threw a despairing look around the room, and repeated the word "shelter" in a voice far from complimentary.
The O"Donoghue"s blood was up in a moment. His brow contracted and his cheek flushed, as, in a low and deep tone, he said--
"It is a crazy old concern. You are right enough--neither the walls nor the company within them, are like what they once were."
The look with which these words were given, recalled the doctor to a sense of his own impertinence; for, like certain tethered animals, who never become conscious of restraint till the check of the rope lays them on their back, nothing short of such a home-blow could have staggered his self-conceit.