As I issued from a dark copse of beech-trees, the indistinct outline of the old house met my eye. I could trace the high-pitched roof, the tall and pointed gables against the sky; and with a strange sense of undefinable fear,' beheld a solitary light that twinkled from the window of an upper room, where my father lay. The remainder of the building was in deep shadow. I mounted the long flight of stone steps that led to what once had been a terrace; but the balustrades were broken many a year ago; and even the heavy granite stone had been smashed in several places. The hall door lay wide open, and the hall itself had no other light save such as the flickering of a wood fire afforded, as its uncertain flashes fell upon the dark wainscot and the floor.
I had just recognized the grim, old-fashioned portraits that covered the walls, when my eye was attracted by a figure near the fire. I approached, and beheld an old man doubled with age. His bleared eyes were bent upon the wood embers, which he was trying to rake together with a stick; his clothes bespoke the most miserable poverty, and afforded no protection against the cold and cutting blast. He was croning some old song to himself as I drew near, and paid no attention to me. I moved round so as to let the light fall on his face, and then perceived it was old Lanty, as he was called. Poor fellow! Age and neglect had changed him sadly since I had seen him last. He had been the huntsman of the family for two generations; but having somehow displeased my father one day at the cover, he rode at him and struck him on the head with his loaded whip. The man fell senseless from his horse, and was carried home. A few days, however, enabled him to rally and be about again; but his senses had left him forever. All recollection of the unlucky circumstance had faded from his mind, and his rambling thoughts dwelt on his old pursuits; so that he passed his days about the stables, looking after the horses and giving directions about them. Latterly he had become too infirm for this, and never left his own cabin; but now, from some strange cause, he had come up to “the house,” and was sitting by the fire as I found him.
They who know Ireland will acknowledge the strange impulse which, at the approach of death, seems to excite the people to congregate about the house of mourning. The passion for deep and powerful excitement—the most remarkable feature in their complex nature—seems to revel in the details of sorrow and suffering. Not content even with the tragedy before them, they call in the aid of superstition to heighten the awfulness of the scene; and every story of ghost and banshee' is conned over in tones that need not the occasion to make them thrill upon the heart. At such a time the deepest workings of their wild spirits are revealed. Their grief is low and sorrow-struck, or it is loud and passionate; now breaking into some plaintive wail over the virtues of the departed, now bursting into a frenzied appeal to the Father of Mercies as to the justice of recalling those from earth who were its blessing: while, stranger than all, a dash of reckless merriment will break in upon the gloom; but it is like the red lightning through the storm, that as it rends the cloud only displays the havoc and desolation around, and at its parting leaves even a blacker darkness behind it.
From my infancy I had been familiar with scenes of this kind; and my habit of stealing away unobserved from home to witness a country wake had endeared me much to the country-people, who felt this no small kindness from “the master's son.” Somehow the ready welcome and attention I always met with had worked on my young heart, and I learned to feel all the interest of these scenes fully as much as those about me. It was, then, with a sense of desolation that I looked upon the one solitary mourner who now sat at the hearth,—that poor old idiot man who gazed on vacancy, or muttered with parched lip some few words to himself. That he alone should be found to join his sorrows to ours, seemed to me like utter destitution, and as I leaned against the chimney I burst into tears.
“Don't cry, alannah! don't cry,” said the old man; “it 's the worst way at all. Get up again and ride him at it bould. Oh vo! look at where the thief is taking now,—along the stonewall there!” Here he broke out into a low, wailing ditty:—
“And the fox set him down and looked about—
And many were feared to follow;
'Maybe I 'm wrong,'says he, 'but I doubt
That you 'll be as gay to-morrow.
For loud as you cry, and high as you ride,
And little you feel my sorrow,
I'll be free on the mountain-side,
While you 'll lie low to-morrow.
Oh, Moddideroo, aroo, aroo!'”
“Ay, just so; they 'll run to earth in the cold churchyard. Whisht!—hark there! Soho, soho! That's Badger I hear.”
I turned away with a bursting heart, and felt my way up the broad oak stair, which was left in complete darkness. As I reached the corridor, off which the bedrooms lay, I heard voices talking together in a low tone; they came from my father's room, the door of which lay ajar. I approached noiselessly and peeped in: by the fire, which was the only light now in the apartment, sat two persons at a set table, one of whom I at once recognized as the tall, solemn-looking figure of Doctor Finnerty; the other I detected, by the sharp tones of his voice, to be Mr. Anthony Basset, my father's confidential attorney.
On the table before them lay a mass of papers, parchments, leases, deeds, together with glasses and a black bottle, whose accompaniments of hot water and sugar left no doubt as to its contents. The chimney-piece was crowded with a range of vials and medicine bottles, some of them empty, some of them half finished.