“Oh, don’t talk to me—don’t talk to me. I’ll never hould up my head again, so I won’t!” continued the widow that was to be, in a tone that quickly brought all the house about her, and finally all the neighbours. Great was the uproar that ensued, and noisy the explanations, which, however, afforded no small relief to the minds of all persons not immediately concerned in the welfare of the doomed Brian. Peggy was inconsolable at the prospect of such a bereavement. Meny clung in despair to the poor tottering old man, her grief too deep for lamentation, while he hobbled over his prayers as fast and as correctly as his utter dismay would permit him. Next morning he was unable to rise, refused all nourishment, and called vehemently for the priest. Every hour he became worse; he was out of one faint into another; announced symptoms of every complaint that ever vexed mankind, and declared himself affected by a pain in every member, from his toe to his cranium. No wonder it was a case to puzzle the doctor. The man of science could make nothing of it—swore it was the oddest complication of diseases that ever he had heard of—and strongly recommended that the patient be tossed in a blanket, and his wife treated to a taste of the horse-pond. Father Coffey was equally nonplussed.
“What ails you, Brian?”
“An all-overness of some kind or other, your reverence,” groaned the sufferer in reply, and the priest had to own himself a bothered man. Nothing would induce him to rise—“where’s the use in a man’s gettin’ up, an’ he goin’ to die?” was his answer to those who endeavoured to rouse him—“isn’t it a dale dacinter to die in bed like a Christian?”
“God’s good!—maybe you won’t die this time, Brian.”
“Arrah, don’t be talking—doesn’t Peggy know best?” And with this undeniable assertion he closed all his arguments, receiving consolation from none, not even his heart-broken Meny. Despite of all his entreaties to be let die in peace, the doctor, who guessed how matters stood, was determined to try the effects of a blister, and accordingly applied one of more than ordinary strength, stoutly affirming that it would have the effect of the patient being up and walking on the morrow. A good many people had gathered into his cabin to witness the cure, as they always do when their presence could be best dispensed with; and to these Peggy, with tears and moans, was declaring her despair in all remedies whatever, and her firm conviction that a widow she’d be before Sunday, when Brian, roused a little by the uneasy stimulant from the lethargy into which they all believed him to be sunk, faintly expressed his wish to be heard.
“Peggy, agra,” said he, “there’s no denyin’ but you’re a wonderful woman entirely; an’ since I’m goin’, it would be a grate consolation to me if you’d tell us all now you found out the sickness was on me afore I knew it myself. It’s just curiosity, agra—I wouldn’t like to die, you see, without knowin’ for why an’ for what—it ’ud have a foolish look if any body axed me what I died of, an’ me not able to tell them.”
Peggy declared her willingness to do him this last favour, and, interrupted by an occasional sob, thus proceeded:—
“It was Thursday night week—troth I’ll never forget that night, Brian asthore, if I live to be as ould as Noah—an’ it was just after my first sleep that I fell draiming. I thought I went down to Dan Keefe’s to buy a taste ov mate, for ye all know he killed a bullsheen that day for the market ov Moneen; an’ I thought when I went into his house, what did I see hangin’ up but an ugly lane carcase, an’ not a bit too fresh neither, an’ a strange man dividin’ it with a hatchet; an’ says he to me with a mighty grum look,
“‘Well, honest woman, what do you want?—is it to buy bullsheen?’
“‘Yes,’ says I, ‘but not the likes of that—it’s not what we’re used to.’