“I am glad,” she said, “that he got it as he did; for, indeed, if he had made himself dhrunk this day, as too many like him do on such occasions, he never again would appear the same man in my eyes, nor would my heart ever more warm to him as it did. But thanks to God that he didn't take it himself!”
She then heard, with a composure that could result only from fortitude and resignation united, a more detailed account of her son's trial, after which she added—
“As God is above me this night I find it asier to lose Connor than to forgive the man that destroyed him; but this is a bad state of heart, that I trust my Saviour will give me grace to overcome; an' I know He will if I ax it as I ought; at all events, I won't lay my side on a bed this night antil I pray to God to forgive Bartle Flanagan an' to turn his heart.”
She then pressed them, with a heart as hospitable as it was pious, to partake of food, which they declined, from a natural reluctance to give trouble where the heart is known to be pressed down by the violence of domestic calamity. These are distinctions which our humble countrymen draw with a delicacy that may well shame those who move in a higher rank of life. Respect for unmerited affliction, and sympathy for the sorrows of the just and virtuous, are never withheld by the Irish peasant when allowed by those who can guide him either for goqd or for evil to follow the impulses of his own heart. The dignity, for instance, of Honor O'Donovan's bearing under a trial so overwhelming in its nature, and the piety with which she supported it, struck them, half tipsy as they were, so forcibly, that they became sobered down—some of them into a full perception of her firmness and high religious feelings; and those who were more affected by drink into a maudlin gravity of deportment still more honorable to the admirable principles of the woman who occasioned it.
One of the latter, for instance, named Bat Hanratty, exclaimed, after they had bade her good, night, and expressed their unaffected sorrow for the severe loss she was about to sustain:
“Well, well, you may all talk; but be the powdhers o' delf, nothin' barrin' the downright grace o' God could sup—sup—port that dacent mother of ould Fardorougha—I mane of his son, poor Connor. But the truth is, you see, that there's nothin'—nothin' no, the divil saize the hap'o'rth at all, good, bad, or indifferent aquil to puttin' your trust in God; bekase, you see—Con Roach, I say—bekase you see, when a man does that as he ought to do it; for it's all faisthelagh if you go the wrong way about it; but Con—Condy, I say, you're a dacent man, an' it stands to raison—it does, boys—upon my soul it does. It wasn't for nothin' that money was lost upon myself, when I was takin' in the edjigation; and maybe, if Connor O'Donovan, that is now goin' to suffer, poor fellow—
For the villain swore away my life, an' all by perjuree;
And for that same I die wid shame upon the gallows tree.
So, as I was sayin', why didn't Connor come in an' join the boys like another, an' then we could settle Bartle for staggin' against him. For, you see, in regard o'. that, Condy, it doesn't signify a traneen whether he put a match to the haggard or not; the thing is, you know, that even if he did, Bartle daren't sweat against him widout breakin' his first oath to the boys; an' if he did it afther that, an' brought any of them into throuble conthrary to the articles, be gorra he'd be entitled to get a gusset opened undher one o' his ears, any how. But you see, Con, be the book—God pardon me for swearin'—but be the book, the mother has the thrue! ralligion in her heart, or she'd never stand it the way she does, an' that proves what I was axpoundin'; that afther all, the sorra hap'-o'rth aquil to the grace o' God.”
He then sang a comic song, and, having passed an additional eulogium on the conduct of Honor O'Donovan, concluded by exhibiting some rather unequivocal symptoms of becoming pathetic from sheer sympathy; after which the stiporific effect of his libations soon hushed him into a snore that acted as a base to the shrill tones in which his companions I addressed one another from each side of the car.
Fardorougha, ever, since the passion of avarice had established its accursed dominion in his heart, narrowed by degrees his domestic establishment, until, towards the latter years of his life, it consisted of only a laboring boy, as the term is, and a servant girl.