“Yes, that is the truth, mother; I'll go this moment for Dr. H——. There's nothing like taking these things in time. Poor Una! God knows this trial is a sore one upon a heart so, faithful and affectionate as hers.”
“John, had you not betther ait something before you go?” said his father; “you want it afther the troublesome day you had.”
“No, no,” replied the son; “I cannot—I cannot; I will neither eat nor drink till I hear what the doctor will say about her. O, my God!” he exclaimed, whilst his eyes filled with tears, “and is it come to this with you, our darling Una?—I won't lose a moment till I return,” he added, as he went out; “nor will I, under any circumstances, come without medical aid of some kind.”
“Let these things be taken away, Bridget,” said the Bodagh; “my appetite is gone, too; that last news is the worst of all. May the Lord of heaven keep our child's mind right! for, oh, Bridget, wouldn't death itself be far afore that?”
“I'm going up to her,” replied his wife; “and may God guard her, and spare her safe and sound to us; for what—what kind of a house would it be if she——but I can't think of it. Oh, wurrah, wurrah, this night!”
Until the return of their son, with the doctor, both O'Brien and his wife hung in a state of alarm bordering on agony over the bed of their beloved daughter. Indeed, the rapidity and vehemence with which incoherence, accompanied by severe illness, set in, were sufficient to excite the greatest alarm, and to justify their darkest apprehensions. Her skin was hot almost to burning; her temples throbbed terribly, and such were her fits of starting and raving, that they felt as if every minute were an hour, until the physician actually made his appearance. Long before tins gentleman reached the house, the son had made him fully acquainted with what he looked upon as the immediate cause of her illness; not that the doctor himself had been altogether ignorant of it, for, indeed, there were few persons of any class or condition in the neighborhood to whom that circumstance was unknown.
On examining the diagnostics that presented themselves, he pronounced her complaint to be brain fever of the most formidable class, to wit, that which arises from extraordinary pressure upon the mind, and unusual excitement of the feelings. It was a relief to her family, however, to know that beyond the temporary mental aberrations, inseparable from the nature of her complaint, there was no evidence whatsoever of insanity. They felt grateful to God for this, and were consequently enabled to watch her sick-bed with more composure, and to look forward to her ultimate recovery with a hope less morbid and gloomy. In this state we are now compelled to leave them and her, and to beg the reader will accompany us to another house of sorrow, where the mourning was still more deep, and the spirits that were wounded driven into all the wild and dreary darkness of affliction.
Our readers cannot forget the helpless state of intoxication, in which Fardorougha left his unhappy son on the evening of the calamitous day that saw him doomed to an ignominious death. His neighbors, as we then said, having procured a car, assisted him home, and would, for his wife's and son's sake, have afforded him all the sympathy in their power; he was, however, so completely overcome with the spirits he had drank, and an unconscious latent feeling of the dreadful sentence that had been pronounced upon his son, that he required little else at their hands than to keep him steady on the car. During the greater part of the journey home, his language was only a continuation of the incoherencies which Connor had, with such a humiliating sense of shame and sorrow, witnessed in his prison cell. A little before they arrived within sight of his house, his companions perceived that he had fallen asleep; but to a stranger, ignorant of the occurrences of the day, the car presented the appearance of a party returning from a wedding or from some other occasion equally festive and social. Most of them were the worse for liquor, and one of them in particular had reached a condition which may be too often witnessed in this country. I mean that in which the language becomes thick; the eye knowing but vacant; the face impudent but relaxed; the limbs tottering, and the voice inveterately disposed to melody. The general conversation, therefore, of those who accompanied the old man was, as is usual with persons so circumstanced, high and windy; but as far as could be supposed by those who heard them cheerful and amiable. Over the loudness of their dialogue might be heard, from time to time, at a great distance, the song of the drunken melodist just alluded to, rising into those desperate tones which borrow their drowsy energy from intoxication alone. Such was the character of those who accompanied the miser home; and such were the indications conveyed to the ears or eyes of I those who either saw or heard them, as they approached Fardorougha's dwelling, where the unsleeping heart of the mother watched—and oh! with what a dry and burning anguish of expectation, let our readers judge—for the life or death of the only child that God had ever vouchsafed to that loving heart on which to rest all its tenderest hopes and affections.
The manner in which Honor O'Donovan spent that day was marked by an earnest and simple piety that would have excited high praise and admiration if witnessed in a person of rank or consideration in society. She was, as the reader may remember, too ill to be able to attend the trial of her son, or as she herself expressed it in Irish, to draw strength to her heart by one look at his manly face; by one glance from her boy's eye. She resolved, however, to draw consolation from a higher source, and to rest the burden of her sorrows, as far as in her lay, upon that being in whose hands are the issues of life and death. From the moment her husband left the threshold of his childless house on that morning until his return, her prayers to God and the saints were truly incessant. And who is so well acquainted with the inscrutable ways of the Almighty, as to dare assert that the humble supplications of this pious and sorrowful mother were not heard and answered? Whether it was owing to the fervor of an imagination wrought upon by the influence of a creed which nourishes religious enthusiasm in an extraordinary degree, or whether it was by direct support from that God who compassionated her affliction, let others determine; but certain it is, that in the course of that day she gained a calmness and resignation, joined to an increasing serenity of heart, such as she had not hoped to feel under a calamity so black and terrible.
On hearing the approach of the car which bore her husband home, and on listening to the noisy mirth of those, who, had they been sober, would have sincerely respected her grief, she put up an inward prayer of thanksgiving to God for what she supposed to be the happy event of Connor's acquittal. Stunning was the blow, however, and dreadful the revulsion of feelings, occasioned by the discovery of this sad mistake. When they reached the door she felt still farther persuaded that all had ended as she wished, for to nothing else, except the wildness of unexpected joy, could she think of ascribing her husband's intoxication.