It was not without considerable heart-sinking and misgiving that old Kearney heard it was Miss Betty O’Shea’s desire to have some conversation with him after breakfast. He was, indeed, reassured, to a certain extent, by his daughter telling him that the old lady was excessively weak, and that her cough was almost incessant, and that she spoke with extreme difficulty. All the comfort that these assurances gave him was dashed by a settled conviction of Miss Betty’s subtlety. ‘She’s like one of the wild foxes they have in Crim Tartary; and when you think they are dead, they’re up and at you before you can look round.’ He affirmed no more than the truth when he said that ‘he’d rather walk barefoot to Kilbeggan than go up that stair to see her.’
There was a strange conflict in his mind all this time between these ignoble fears and the efforts he was making to seem considerate and gentle by Kate’s assurance that a cruel word, or even a harsh tone, would be sure to kill her. ‘You’ll have to be very careful, papa dearest,’ she said. ‘Her nerves are completely shattered, and every respiration seems as if it would be the last.’
Mistrust was, however, so strong in him, that he would have employed any subterfuge to avoid the interview; but the Rev. Luke Delany, who had arrived to give her ‘the consolations,’ as he briefly phrased it, insisted on Kearney’s attending to receive the old lady’s forgiveness before she died.
‘Upon my conscience,’ muttered Kearney, ‘I was always under the belief it was I was injured; but, as the priest says, “it’s only on one’s death-bed he sees things clearly.”’
As Kearney groped his way through the darkened room, shocked at his own creaking shoes, and painfully convinced that he was somehow deficient in delicacy, a low, faint cough guided him to the sofa where Miss O’Shea lay. ‘Is that Mathew Kearney?’ said she feebly. ‘I think I know his foot.’
‘Yes indeed, bad luck to them for shoes. Wherever Davy Morris gets the leather I don’t know, but it’s as loud as a barrel-organ.’
‘Maybe they re cheap, Mathew. One puts up with many a thing for a little cheapness.’
‘That’s the first shot!’ muttered Kearney to himself, while he gave a little cough to avoid reply.
‘Father Luke has been telling me, Mathew, that before I go this long journey I ought to take care to settle any little matter here that’s on my mind. “If there’s anybody you bear an ill will to,” says he; “if there’s any one has wronged you,” says he, “told lies of you, or done you any bodily harm, send for him,” says he, “and let him hear your forgiveness out of your own mouth. I’ll take care afterwards,” says Father Luke, “that he’ll have to settle the account with me; but you mustn’t mind that. You must be able to tell St. Joseph that you come with a clean breast and a good conscience “: and that’s’—here she sighed heavily several times—‘and that’s the reason I sent for you, Mathew Kearney!’
Poor Kearney sighed heavily over that category of misdoers with whom he found himself classed, but he said nothing.