CHAPTER XVII. A FRIEND'S TRIALS
The day of my beloved father's funeral was that of my birth! It is not improbable that he had often looked forward to that day as the crowning event of his whole life, destining great rejoicings, and planning every species of festivity; and now the summer clouds were floating over the churchyard, and the gay birds were carolling over the cold grave where he lay.
What an emblem of human anticipation, and what an illustration of his own peculiar destiny! Few men ever entered upon life with more brilliant prospects. With nearly every gift of fortune, and not one single adverse circumstance to struggle against, he was scarcely launched upon the ocean of life ere he was shipwrecked! Is it not ever thus? Is it not that the storms and seas of adverse fortune are our best preservatives in this world, by calling into activity our powers of energy and of endurance? Are we not better when our lot demands effort, and exacts sacrifice, than when prosperity neither evokes an ungratified wish, nor suggests a difficult ambition?
The real circumstances of his death were, I believe, never known to my mother, but the shock of the event almost killed her. Her cousin, Emile de Gabriac, had just arrived at Castle Carew, and they were sitting talking over France and all its pleasant associations, when a servant entered hastily with a letter for MacNaghten. It was in Fagan's handwriting, and marked “Most private, and with haste.”
“See,” cried Dan, laughing,—“look what devices a dun is reduced to, to obtain an audience! Tony Fagan, so secret and so urgent on the outside, will be candid enough within, and beg respectfully to remind Mr. MacNaghten that his indorsement for two hundred and something pounds will fall due on Wednesday next, when he hopes—”
“Let us see what he hopes,” cried my mother, snatching the letter from him, “for it surely cannot be that he hopes you will pay it.”
The terrific cry she uttered, as her eyes read the dreadful lines, rang through that vast building. Shriek followed shriek in quick succession for some seconds; and then, as if exhausted nature could no more, she sank into a death-like trance, cold, motionless, and unconscious.
Poor MacNaghten! I have heard him more than once say that if he were to live five hundred years, he never could forget the misery of that day, so graven upon his memory was every frightful and harrowing incident of it. He left Castle Carew for Dublin, and hastened to the courthouse, where, in one of the judge's robing-rooms, the corpse of his poor friend now lay. A hurried inquest had been held upon the body, and pronounced that “Death had ensued from natural causes;” and now the room was crowded with curious and idle loungers, talking over the strange event, and commenting upon the fate of him who, but a few hours back, so many would have envied.
Having excluded the throng, he sat down alone beside the body, and, with the cold hand clasped between his own, wept heartily.