“Oh, Kathleen, I'll die,” he replied, mournfully, “I'll die if I don't get something to ait. Is there no food? Didn't Peggy go to thry Darby Skinadre, an' she hoped, she said, that she'd bring us relief; an' so she went upon our promise to forgive her when she'd come back wid it.”
“I wish, indeed, I had a drop o' gruel or something myself,” replied his wife, now reminded of her famished state by his words.
At this moment, however, relief, so far as food was concerned, did come. The compassionate neighbors began, one by one, to return each with whatever could be spared from their own necessities, so that in the course of a little time this desolate old couple were supplied with provisions sufficient to meet the demands of a week or fortnight.
It is not our intention to describe, or rather to attempt to describe, the sorrow of Brian Murtagh and his wife, as soon as a moderate meal of food had awakened them, as it were, from the heavy and stupid frenzy into which the shock of their unhappy daughter's death, joined to the pangs of famine, had thrown them. It may be sufficient to say, that their grief was wild, disconsolate, and hopeless. She was the only daughter they had ever had: and when they looked back upon the gentle and unfortunate girl's many virtues, and reflected that they had, up to her death, despite her earnest entreaties, withheld from her their pardon for her transgression, they felt, mingled with their affliction at her loss, such an oppressive agony of remorse as no language could describe.
Many of the neighbors now proposed the performance of a ceremony, which is frequently deemed necessary in cases of frailty similar to that of poor Peggy Murtagh:—a ceremony which, in the instance before us, was one of equal pathos and beauty. It consisted of a number of these humble, but pious and well-disposed people joining in what is termed the Litany of the Blessed Virgin, which was an earnest solicitation of mercy, through her intercession with her Son, for the errors, frailties, and sins of the departed; and, indeed, when her youth and beauty, and her artlessness and freedom from guile, were taken into consideration, in connection with her unexpected death, it must be admitted that this act of devotion was as affecting as it was mournful and solemn. When they came to the words, “Mother most pure, Mother most chaste, Mother undefiled, Mother most loving, pray for her!”—and again to those, “Morning Star, Health of the Weak, Refuge of Sinners, Comfortress of the Afflicted, pray for her!”—their voices faltered, became broken, and, with scarcely a single exception, they melted into tears. And it was a beautiful thing to witness these miserable and half-famished creatures, shrunk and pinched with hunger and want, laboring, many of them, with incipient illness, and several only just recovered from it, forgetting their own distress and afflictions, and rendering all the aid and consolation in their power to those who stood in more need of it than themselves. When these affecting prayers for the dead had been concluded, a noise was heard at the door, and a voice which in a moment hushed them into silence and awe. The voice was that of him whom the departed girl had loved with such fatal tenderness.
“In the name of God,” exclaimed one of them, “let some of you keep that unfortunate boy out; the sight of him will kill the ould couple.” The woman who spoke, however, had hardly concluded, when Thomas Dalton entered the room, panting, pale, tottering through weakness, and almost frantic with sorrow and remorse. On looking at the unhappy sight before him, he paused and wiped his brow, which was moistened by excitement and over-exertion.
There was now the silence of death in the room so deep, that the shooting of a spark from one of the death-candles was heard by every one present, an incident which, small as it was, deepened the melancholy interest of the moment.
“An' that's it,” he at last exclaimed, in a voice which, though weak, quivered with excess of agony—“that's it, Peggy dear—that's what your love for me has brought you to! An' now it's too late, I can't help you now, Peggy dear. I can't bid you hould your, modest face up, as the darlin' wife of him who loved you betther than all this world besides, but that left you, for all that a stained name an' a broken heart! Ay! an' there's what your love for me brought you to! What can I do now for you, Peggy dear? All my little plans for us both—all that I dreamt of an' hoped to come to pass, where are they now, Peggy dear? And it wasn't I, Peggy, it was poverty—oh you know how I loved you!—it was the downcome we got—it was Dick-o'-the-Grange, that oppressed us—that ruined us—that put us out without house or home—it was he, and it was my father—my father that they say has blood on his hand, an' I don't doubt it, or he wouldn't act the part he did—it was he, too that prevented me from doin' what my heart encouraged me to do for you! O blessed God,” he exclaimed, “what will become of me! when I think of the long, sorrowful, implorin' look she used to give me. I'll go mad!—I'll go mad!—I've killed her—I've murdhered her, an' there's no one to take me up an' punish me for it! An' when I was ill, Peggy dear, when I had time to think on my sick bed of all your love and all your sorrow and distress and shame on my account, I thought I'd never see you in time to tell you what I was to do, an' to give consolation to your breakin' heart; but all that's now over; you are gone from me, an' like the lovin' crathur you ever wor, you brought your baby along wid you! An' when I think of it—oh God, when I think of it, before your shame, my heart's delight, how your eye felt proud out of me, an' how it smiled when it rested on me. Oh, little you thought I'd hould back to do you justice—me that you doted on—an' yet it was I that sullied you—I! me! Here,” he shouted—“here, is there no one to saize a murdherer!—no one to bring him to justice!”
Those present now gathered about him, and attempted as best they might, to soothe and pacify him; but in vain.
“Oh,” he proceeded, “if she was only able to upbraid me—but what am I sayin'—upbraid! Oh, never, never was her harsh word heard—oh, nothing ever to me but that long look of sorrow—that long look of sorrow, that will either drive me mad, or lave me a broken heart! That's the look that'll always, always be before me, an' that, 'till death's day, will keep me from ever bein' a happy man.”