"Ah, let the dead repose!" she said.
James Clarence Mangan: Anthology.
It is a sunshine Sabbath morning. The sea quivers under an armor of silver scales, and laps, laps with a laugh as it runs into the creek. The sails of the ships glisten whiter than any snow. The sun distils the scent from the clove carnations and the sweetbrier leaves, and coaxes the pungent resin through the cracks in the bark, until the air is heavy with a smell that would cease to be perfume, were it not filtered through the salt ooze of the incoming sea-breeze that flutters the flags on the tall white poles, and tempers the ardor of the young year's sun.
The kariol bearing the specialist whose skill is of no avail in the face of a pressing call from the great god Death, has just wound round the pine-wood in a whirl of dust. The dogs, unbound, lie on the back veranda, with their black snouts resting on their forepaws, and they watch him depart without a growl; they have not barked for days past, nor chased the plucky badger, nor yapped impatiently as the cheeky squirrels flirted through the branches. Even beggars have come and gone without a snarling protest; but all last night they howled and bayed and cowered together as if they could see the passage of invisible guests. A peculiar stillness seems to brood over the great place. The maids are sitting in their gowns of Sunday black, with open psalm-books on their laps; they are listening and whispering with the disturbance of expectancy.
The housekeeper is talking to the leech woman, quaint survival of older days, whose business in life is to keep the slimy suckers lively and apply them. She looks as if she fed them between times on herself, so bony and colorless a creature is she. They are negotiating the last ghastly offices that may soon be needed, speculating as to the changes and their effect on the village. The vicar, she tells, is about to make the departing life the text of his sermon; every one in the district is coming to hear it. Why not? A sermon of warning, with a smack of the Pharisee in it; a "Lord, I thank Thee I am not like unto this man" note, especially if you know the publican in question, cannot fail to be attractive; it has an up-to-date interest that the parable of the far-away-time sinner necessarily lacks.
Upstairs the cow-girl is crouching like a faithful dog outside his bedroom door; she is listening to the murmured Latin service of the mass that comes from inside. The windows of the room are wide open, and the sea stretches away and melts into the horizon in an infinity of blue and silver. He is lying still on the ebb of his last tide, and when his eyes open they wander from the little priest before the extemporized altar, to the bowed head of the woman kneeling beside him.
"Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum!" intones the priest.
"Et cum spiritu tuo!" she utters in response, in dead, dull tones; and when she chimes the little silver bell she does it in a mechanical way, and all the time he holds her one hand to his breast. When the mass is read and the extreme unction administered, the little priest reads the prayers for the dying. He listens attentively, and she listens too, with eyes dry as horn, and tightened lips. She scarcely hears what he reads:—
"My feet have gone astray in the paths of vanity and sin, now let me walk in the way of Thy commandments.... Forgive me, O Lord, all the sins which I have committed by my disordered steps—"
"'Steps!' that means feet; 'eyes seen vanities,' that means sight; 'tongue hath in many ways offended,' speech. Why, he is going through all the seven senses, or is it seven, or five?" She must give him the envelope with the check in it before he leaves. She hasn't a black frock, not one; he liked her in colors, light girlish colors, with a silken waist-band to match. Must she wire for a coffin? What a beast she is to think like this! But how can she help it? Her tear-bags—what is their right name, lachrymal glands?—are exhausted, even her lashes have thinned; yet she never shed a tear, at least only inwardly, with a choke.