He was wake and closed his eyes. “Is there anything more I can do for yees?” asks I. “Nothing, uncle dear; the summer breeze is sweet.” He never said another rational word, for the fever set in again and he began to rave. He talked as if he were on ship again and then he would change to ould Ireland and he would be aplayin with his comrades, and his laughing was sore to hear. Then there came a long while when he was quiet, just tossing uneasy like at times as he slept. My eyes were on the river and the ships and the green fields bright beyant, when I hears him whisper, “Mother, dear, have ye been long waiting here for your boy?” and he spoke to her tender and soft as he must have done manys the time in ould Ireland. Then it was Aileen he saw, and it was true-lover talk. Oh, it was all so beautiful; the poor boy dying there of the fever on the river bank talkin so sweet and loving with the two women who had filled his heart, an its the lot of love a true Irishman’s heart can hould. I was gripping his hand, watching him, when all at once his jaw fell and I saw the soul had fled. I laid him out as I best could, and rolling the blanket round him lifted the corpse on my shoulder and carried it to the spot he told me. There were shovels and picks in plenty and I set myself to dig the grave. The smell of the fresh earth brought back to me my own family and farm that I had clean forgot that dreadful day, and I determined to be back with them at once. There were men at work near me finishing a long trench, and I saw them watching me and I watched them and listened to their talk. The sun was low before the grave was finished to my liking. There was no use trying to get a priest, they had enough to do with the dying without burying the dead, so I laid the corpse carefully in the grave, said a prayer and filled it in. I drove in a cedar picket to mark the spot, for I meant some day to put a headstone there, but I never did, for I was never able to go back. When all was done I went over to one of the men who had been digging the trench that I had seen by his talk was an Irishman. He was smoking his pipe with the lave, who were waiting for the burial. I got him by himself and told him my errand on the island and now I was done, I wanted away at once. That’s not easy, he said. There were guards to prevent any coming on or leaving the island except by the steamer and with a permit. “Sure,” I says, “if I stay here till tomorrow I may be a dead man.” “That you will,” says he, “an thin you’ll hev to go as a passenger in the steamboat that takes emigrants right on to Montreal.” “I’ll never go on an emigrant steamboat,” says I, minding the one I had seen. He spoke in French to two men near us. They lived above Beauport, he told me, and while they came, like himself, to bury the dead for big pay, they broke the rules by going home at night, when wind and tide served, in a small boat. If I’d help them to get done, they would let me go with them. The job was like to make me sick, but I wanted away, and agreed. By this time they were beginning to carry the dead from the sheds and tents, and as the men with the stretchers came up they dumped their load into the trench. We straightened the corpses to make them lie close, shovelled some lime over them, and then a few inches of earth, when we were ready for another row. Then the trench was filled and smoothed over. I had put on my coat and was cleaning my shovel when one of the Frenchmen touched my arm and I followed him. We slipped into the bushes and went to the north side of the island, meeting nobody. At the foot of a steep bank we found a boat. We got in, and casting loose the tide, which was making, carried us up until we were a good bit from the island, when a sail was hoisted and we went at a great speed, for the tide had brought with it a stiff breeze. On landing I did not follow the men, for I had something to do I had on my mind. I stripped to the skin, and spread my clothes on the bushes. Going into the water I rubbed my handkerchief and shirt and washed myself as I have never done since. I scrubbed my skin with the sand and sniffed the water up my nose until, for the first time, since morning, I got the stink out of it. It was such a warm night, I was in no hurry to put on my clothes, and didn’t till I thought they were well aired. I may tell you, from the moment I buried my nephew, the fear of the fever came upon me, though I had never thought of it afore. Well, when I was ready for the road, I felt sick, but I knew it was with hunger, for I hadn’t broken bread since morning. Coming to a habitant’s house, the door of which was open, I went to it, but when they heard my tongue, they slammed the door in my face, taking me to be an escaped fever patient. Seeing it was no use, I walked as quickly as I could to Quebec, and made for the lodging-house I had left that morning. There was a light in it, though I knew it must be long past midnight. I went in and there were some sailors drinking and playing cards. The landlord lifted his eyebrows when he saw me, and signed me to follow into a back room. He lit a candle “Were you at the island?” “I was, and am right dead wid hunger.” He brought some victuals and I told him how I had got on. When I had cleaned the plates he showed me to a bed. I rose late next day all right, and left with the steamboat that afternoon for Montreal. The second day after I was home and thankful my wife was to see me. I held my whisht, and never a one but herself knew where I had been.
Well, that is all I have to tell. For a long while after, the sights I had seen followed me, and at night I would wake trembling from my dreams. That passed away, but I never cared to speak of what I saw, and tried to keep the island and its sheds out of my mind. Did any die of the fever in Huntingdon? Yes, Dr Shirriff told me he attended 45 cases, of whom 5 died. Not many were Irish. Emigrants strayed into farmers’ houses and gave the infection. Father Kiernan was that year priest in the old church at John Finn’s. He had gone on duty to attend the emigrants at Lachine. Feeling ill one day he knew he was in for the fever. If he stayed where he was, he would die in the sheds, so he waited till the stage came along, got in, and rode home. When he got off at his lodging, he told the people Geordie Pringle did not know what kind of a customer he had. Next day he could not lift his head, but he pulled through all right. What came of the colleen? She left us that fall. Her mother’s brother in county Kent wrote for her. She married a storekeeper in Chatham, who left her well off. The little book is all I took belonging to my nephew. There were more things in the bag. I was afeared of the infection and never touched them. He must have had a chest or two, but I never asked for them. He was a good man, and I’ve been thankful ever since I went to see him die.
Driving home in the dark I thought over what the old man had told me, and felt how much more interesting his narrative made his nephew’s diary, a faithful reprint of which I now present to the reader.
THE JOURNAL OF GERALD KEEGAN.
“The famine was heavy upon all the land.” According to the chronologists more than three thousand years have passed since the event recorded in these words. Strange that, after so long a period of time has gone, the world has made so slight an advance in providing food for the mouths it contains. At school today there was not a scholar who was not hungry. When I told Mike Kelly to hold out his hand for blotting his copy, he says, “I did not mane to: it was the belly gripe did it.” I dropped the ferule and when the school was dismissed slipped a penny into his hand to buy a scone at the baker’s. The poor school I have had this winter takes the heart out of me. My best scholars dead, others unfit to walk from their homes for weakness. For men and women to want is bad enough, but to have the children starving, crying for the food their parents have not to give them, and lying awake at night from the gnawing at their little stomachs; oh, it is dreadful. God forgive those who have it, and will not share their abundance even with His little ones. I came home from school this afternoon dejected and despairing. As I looked round me before opening the door of my lodging, everything was radiantly beautiful. The sunshine rested on the glory of Ireland, its luxuriant vegetation—its emerald greenness. Hill and valley were alike brilliant in the first flush of spring and the silver river meandered through a plain that suggested the beautiful fields of paradise. Appearances are deceitful, I thought; in every one of those thatched cabins sit the twin brothers, Famine and Death. As I opened the door, Mrs Moriarty called to me that my uncle Jeremiah had been twice asking for me. Poor man, I said to myself, he will have come to borrow to buy meal for his children and I will not have a shilling in my pocket until the board pays me my quarter’s salary. I respect Jeremiah, for both he and his brother in Canada were kind to my poor mother. How I wish all the family had gone to Canada; cold in winter and hot in summer, they say, but there is plenty to eat. I took up a book and had not long to wait for my uncle. He did not need to say a word, his face told me he knew what starvation meant. I called to my landlady to roast another herring; my uncle would share my dinner. He came neither to beg nor borrow, but to ask my advice. After high mass on Sunday the proctor got up on a stone and told them their landlord had taken their case into consideration, and went on to read a letter he had got from him. In it Lord Palmerston said he had become convinced there was no hope for them so long as they remained in Ireland, and their only means of doing better was to leave the country. All in arrears, who would agree to emigrate, he would forgive what they were due and pay their passage to Canada. Are you sure, I asked, this letter was really from Lord Palmerston?
“We have just the proctor’s word for it. Well,” my uncle went on to say, “the most of us jumped wid joy when we heard the letter and we all began talkin as soon as he druv aff in his car. Tim Maloney said nothin. He’s a deep one, Tim, a pathriot, an rades the papers. What hev ye to say, Tim? I’m considerin, says he, the likes o’ this must be deliberated on. Sure, I spakes up, the besht we can do is to get away from here. In the wan letther I iver got from my brother in Canada, he tould me he had two cows and a calf and three pigs, an a pair o’ oxen and as much as they could ate. That’s not the pint, answers Tim, this affer prisints itself to me as a plot to get us to lave the land widout an equitable equivalent.”
With doubt thrown on the landlord’s good faith, the poor people went on arguing among themselves, until a majority decided to stand out and demand better terms. On hearing this, the agent sent word they must decide within a week. If they rejected the offer, it would be withdrawn and no new one would be submitted. My uncle had come to get my advice, “For sure,” he said, “you are the only scholard in the family.” I comprehended the infamous nature of the offer. The people did not own the land, but they owned the improvements they had made on it, and had a right to be compensated for them. I knew my uncle when a boy had rented a piece of worthless bog and by the labor of himself, and afterwards of his wife, and children, had converted it into a profitable field. Should I advise him to give it up for a receipt for back rent and a free passage to Canada? I tried to find out what he thought himself. Are you for accepting the offer, uncle?
“That depinds,” he answered. “Give me a crop of spuds such as we had in the ould times, an niver a step wad I muv.”
I told him potatoes had been the ruin of Ireland; that placing sole dependence upon them had made her farmers neglect the proper care of the land and the raising of other crops. When the rot came or even a hard frost, such as they had in 1837, when potatoes froze in the ground, they had nothing. My uncle was a sample of his class. The lessons of Providence had been lost upon them. They would go on planting potatoes and hoping for days that would never return, for the land had become, by years of cropping, potato sick. Now, uncle, that Tim Maloney has had time for deliberating, what has he decided on?