“Husband is it!” echoes Patrick Driscoll, witheringly, “What have I but a soort of an old man of a husband, that’s no use only to stay in his bed!”
Other women press in through the doorway, despite the efforts of the underlings, each eloquent of her superior sufferings. Another husband is inquired for.
“He’s dead, Ma’am, the Lord ha’ mercy upon him, he’s in his coffin this minute; and Fegs, he was in the want of it!”
Yet another has a blind husband.
“Dark as a stone, asthore,” she says to Gold Stick, “only for he being healthy and qu’ite, I’d be dead altogether! Well, welcome the Will o’ God! I might be worse, as bad as I am!”
Philosophy, resignation, piety, humour, one finds them all in these bewildering, infuriating, enchanting people. And then, perhaps, a cry from the heart of the crowd,
“Sure ye’ll not forget yer own darlin’ Mary Leary!”
A heartrending appeal that elicits from the Mistress a peremptory command not to attempt to come out of her turn.
Nothing could be more admirable than my mother’s manner with the people. Entirely simple, dictatorial, sympathetic, sensible. She believed herself to be an infallible judge of character, but “for all and for all,” as we say in Carbery, her soft heart was often her undoing, and her sterner progeny found her benevolence difficult to control. She was, in fact, as a man said of a spendthrift and drunken brother, “too lion-hearted for her manes” (means).
“No wonder,” said one of her supplicants, “Faith, no wonder at all for the Colonel to be proud of her! She’d delight a Black!”