Читать книгу The O'Donoghue: Tale of Ireland Fifty Years Ago - Charles James Lever - Страница 14

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The night was far advanced as the doctor arrived at the O'Donoghue's house, drenched with rain, and fatigued by the badness of the roads, where his gig was often compelled to proceed for above a mile at a foot pace. Doctor Roach was not in the most bland of tempers as he reached his destination; and, of a verity, his was a nature that stood not in any need of increased acerbity. The doctor was a type of a race at one time very general, but now, it is hard to say wherefore, nearly extinct in Ireland. But so it is; the fruits of the earth change not in course of years more strikingly, than the fashions of men's minds. The habits, popular enough in one generation, survive as eccentricities in another, and are extinct in a third.

There was a pretty general impression in the world, some sixty or seventy years back, that a member of the medical profession, who had attained to any height in his art, had a perfect right to dispense with all the amenities and courtesies which regulate social life among less privileged persons. The concessions now only yielded to a cook, were then extended to a physician; and in accordance with the privilege by which he administered most nauseous doses to the body, he was suffered to extend his dominion, and apply scarcely more palatable remedies to the minds of his patients. As if the ill-flavoured draughts had tinctured the spirit that conceived them, the tone of his thoughts usually smacked of bitters, until at last he seemed to have realized, in his own person, the conflicting agencies of the pharmacopoeia, and was at once acrid, and pungent, and soporific together.

The College of Physicians could never have reproached Doctor Roach with conceding a single iota of their privileges. Never was there one who more stoutly maintained, in his whole practice through life, the blessed immunity of “the Doctor.” The magic word “Recipe,” which headed his prescriptions, suggested a tone of command to all he said, and both his drugs and dicta were swallowed without remonstrance.

It may not be a flattering confession for humanity, but it is assuredly a true one, that the exercise of power, no matter how humble its sphere, or how limited its range, will eventually generate a tyrannical habit in him who wields it. Doctor Roach was certainly not the exception to this rule. The Czar himself was not more autocrat in the steppes of Russia, than was he in any house where sickness had found entrance. From that hour he planted his throne there. All the caprices of age, all the follies of childhood, the accustomed freedoms of home, the indulgences which grow up by habit in a household, had to give way before a monarch more potent than all, “the Doctor.” Men bore the infliction with the same patient endurance they summoned to sustain the malady. They felt it to be grievous and miserable, but they looked forward to a period of relief, and panted for the arrival of the hour, when the disease and the doctor would take their departure together.

If the delight they experienced at such a consummation was extreme, so to the physician it savoured of ingratitude. “I saved his life yesterday,” saith he, “and see how happy he is, to dismiss me to-day.” But who is ever grateful for the pangs of a toothache?—or what heart can find pleasure in the memory of sententiousness, senna, and low diet?

Never were the blessings of restored health felt with a more suitable thankfulness than by Doctor Roach's patients. To be free once more from his creaking shoes, his little low dry cough, his harsh accents, his harsher words, his contradictions, his sneers, and his selfishness, shed a halo around recovery, which the friends of the patient could not properly appreciate.

Such was the individual whose rumbling and rattling vehicle now entered the court-yard of Carrig-na-curra, escorted by poor Terry, who had accompanied him the entire way on foot. The distance he had come, his more than doubts about the fee, the severity of the storm, were not the accessories likely to amend the infirmities of his temper; while a still greater source of irritation than all existed in the mutual feeling of dislike between him and Sir Archibald M'Nab. An occasional meeting at a little boarding-house in Killarney, which Sir Archy was in the habit of visiting each summer for a few days—the only recreation he permitted himself—had cultivated this sentiment to such a pitch, that they never met without disagreement, or parted without an actual quarrel. The doctor was a democrat, and a Romanist of the first water; Sir Archy was a member of the Scottish Episcopal Church; and, whatever might have been his early leanings in politics, and in whatever companionship his active years were passed, experience had taught him the fallacy of many opinions, which owe any appearance of truth or stability they possess, to the fact, that they have never advanced beyond the stage of speculative notions, into the realms of actual and practical existence;—but, above all, the prudent Scotchman dreaded the prevalence of these doctrines among young and unsettled minds, ever ready to prefer the short and hazardous career of fortune, to the slow and patient drudgery of daily industry.

If the doctor anticipated but little enjoyment in the society of Sir Archy, neither did the latter hope for any pleasure to himself from Roach's company. However, as the case of poor Herbert became each hour more threatening, the old man resolved to bury in oblivion every topic of mutual disagreement, and, so long as the doctor remained in the house, to make every possible or impossible concession to conciliate the good-will of one, on whose services so much depended.

“Do ye hear?” cried Roach in a harsh voice to Kerry, who was summoned from the kitchen-fire to take charge of his horse; “let the pony have a mash of bran—a hot mash, and don't leave him till he's dry.”

“Never fear, sir,” replied Kerry, as he led the jaded and way-worn beast into the stable, “I'll take care of him as if he was a racer;” and then, as Roach disappeared, added—“I'd like to see myself strapping the likes of him—an ould mountaineer. A mash of bran, indeed! Cock him up with bran! Begorra, 'tis thistles and docks he's most used to;” and, with this sage reflection on the beast's habits, he locked the stable door, and resumed his former place beside the blazing turf fire.

O'Donoghue's reception of the doctor was most cordial. He was glad to see him on several accounts. He was glad to see any one who could tell him what was doing in the world, from which all his intercourse was cut off; he was glad, because the supper was waiting an hour and a half beyond its usual time, and he was getting uncommonly hungry; and, lastly, he really felt anxious about Herbert, whenever by any chance his thoughts took that direction.

“How are you, Roach?” cried he, advancing to meet him with an extended hand. “This is a kind thing of you—you've had a dreadful day, I fear.”

“D—n me, if I ever saw it otherwise in this confounded glen. I never set foot in it, that I wasn't wet through.”

“We have our share of rain, indeed,” replied the other, with a good-humoured laugh; “but if we have storm, we have shelter.”

Intentionally misunderstanding the allusion, and applying to the ruined mansion the praise bestowed on the bold mountains, the doctor threw a despairing look around the room, and repeated the word “shelter” in a voice far from complimentary.

The O'Donoghue's blood was up in a moment. His brow contracted and his cheek flushed, as, in a low and deep tone, he said—

“It is a crazy old concern. You are right enough—neither the walls nor the company within them, are like what they once were.”

The look with which these words were given, recalled the doctor to a sense of his own impertinence; for, like certain tethered animals, who never become conscious of restraint till the check of the rope lays them on their back, nothing short of such a home-blow could have staggered his self-conceit.

“Ay, ay,” muttered he, with a cackling apology for a laugh, “time is telling on us all.—But I'm keeping the supper waiting.”

The duties of hospitality were always enough to make O'Donoghue forget any momentary chagrin, and he seated himself at the table with all his wonted good-humour and affability.

As the meal proceeded, the doctor inquired about the sick boy, and the circumstances attending his illness; the interest he bestowed on the narrative mainly depending on the mention of Sir Marmaduke Travers's name, whose presence in the country he was not aware of before, and from whose residence he began already to speculate on many benefits to himself.

“They told me,” continued O'Donoghue, “that the lad behaved admirably. In fact, if the old weir-rapid be any thing like what I remember it, the danger was no common one. There used to be a current there strong enough to carry away a dozen horsemen.”

“And how is the young lady? Is she nothing the worse from the cold, and the drenching, and the shock of the accident?”

“Faith, I must confess it, I have not had the grace to ask after her. Living as I have been for some years back, has left me sadly in arrear with every demand of the world. Sir Marmaduke was polite enough to say he'd call on me; but there is a still greater favour he could bestow, which is, to leave me alone.”

“There was a law-suit or dispute of some kind or other between you, was there not?”

“There is something of that kind,” said O'Donoghue, with an air of annoyance at the question; “but these are matters gentlemen leave to their lawyers, and seek not to mix themselves up with.”

“The strong purse is the sinew of war,” muttered the inexorable doctor; “and they tell me he is one of the wealthiest men in England.”

“He may be, for aught I know or care.”

“Well, well,” resumed the other, after a long deliberative pause, “there's no knowing how this little adventure may turn out. If your son saved the girl's life, I scarcely think he could press you so hard about—”

“Take care, sir,” broke in O'Donoghue, and with the words he seized the doctor's wrist in his strong grasp; “take care how you venture to speak of affairs which no wise concern you;” then, seeing the terrified look his speech called up, he added—“I have been very irritable latterly, and never desire to talk on these subjects; so, if you please, we'll change the topic.”

The door was cautiously opened at this moment, and Kerry presented himself, with a request from Sir Archibald, that, as soon as Doctor Roach found it convenient, he would be glad to see him in the sick-room.

“I am ready now,” said the doctor, rising from his chair, and not by any means sorry at the opportunity of escaping a tête-a-tête he had contrived to render so unpalatable to both parties. As he mounted the stairs, he continued in broken phrases to inveigh against the house and the host in a half soliloquy—“A tumble-down old barrack it is—not fifty shillings worth of furniture under the roof—the ducks were as tough as soaked parchment—and where's the fee to come from—I wish I knew that—unless I take one of these old devils instead of it;” and he touched the frame of a large, damp, discoloured portrait of some long-buried ancestor, several of which figured on the walls of the stair-case.

“The boy is worse—far worse,” whispered a low, but distinct voice beside him. “His head is now all astray—he knows no one.”

Doctor Roach seemed vexed at the ceremony of salutation being forgotten in Sir Archibald's eagerness about the youth, and drily answered—

“I have the honour to see you well, sir, I hope.”

“There is one here very far from well,” resumed Sir Archy, neither caring for, nor considering the speech. “We have lost too much time already—I trust ye may na be too late now.”

The doctor made no reply, but rudely taking the candle from his hand, walked towards the bed—

“Ay, ay,” muttered he, as he beheld the lustrous eyes and widespread pupils—the rose-red cheek, and dry, cracked lips of the youth; “he has it sure enough.”

“Has what?—what is it?”

“The fever—brain fever, and the worst kind of it too.”

“And there is danger then?” whispered M'Nab.

“Danger, indeed! I wonder how many come through it. Pshaw! there's no use trying to count his pulse;” and he threw the hand rudely back upon the bed. “That's going as fast as ever his father went with the property.” A harsh, low, cackling laugh followed this brutal speech, which demanded all Sir Archy's predetermined endurance to suffer unchecked.

“Do you know me?” said the doctor, in the loud voice used to awaken the dormant faculty of hearing. “Do you know me?”

“Yes,” replied the boy, staring steadfastly at him.

“Well, who am I, then? Am I your father?”

A vacant gaze was all the answer.

“Tell me, am I your father?”

No reply followed.

“Am I your uncle, then?” said the doctor, still louder.

The word, “uncle,” seemed to strike upon some new chord of his awakened sense: a faint smile played upon his parched lips, and his eyes wandered from the speaker, as if in search of some object, till they fell upon Sir Archy, as he stood at the foot of the bed, when suddenly his whole countenance was lighted up, and he repeated the word, “uncle,” to himself in a voice indescribably sweet and touching.

“He has na forgotten me,” murmured M'Nab, in a tone of deep emotion. “My ain dear boy—he knows me yet.”

“You agitate him too much,” said Roach, whose nature had little sympathy with the feelings of either. “You must leave me alone here to examine him myself.”

M'Nab said not a word, but, with noiseless step, stole from the room. The doctor looked after him as he went, and then followed to see that the door was closed behind. This done, he beckoned to Kerry, who still remained, to approach, and deliberately seated himself in a chair near the window.

“Tell me, my good fellow,” said he, affecting an air of confidence as he spoke, “an't they all broke here? Isn't the whole thing smashed?”

“Broke—smashed!” repeated Kerry, as he held up both hands in feigned astonishment; “'tis a droll smash: begorra, I never see money as plenty this many a year. Sure av there wasn't lashings of it, would he be looking out for carriage-horses, and buying hunters, not to say putting the kennel in order.”

“Is it truth you are telling?” said Roach, in astonishment.

“True as my name is Kerry O'Leary. We offered Lanty Lawler a hundred and twenty guineas on Friday last for a match wheeler, and we're not off of him yet; he's a big brown horse, with a star on his face; and the cob for the master cost forty pounds. He'll be here tomorrow, or next day, sure ye'll see him yourself.”

“The place is falling to ruin—the roof will never last the winter,” broke in the doctor.

“Well, and whose fault is it, but that spalpeen Murphy's, that won't set the men to work till he gets oak timber from the Black Say—'tis the finest wood in the world, they tell me, and lasts for ever and ever.”

“But, don't they owe money every where in the country? There isn't a little shop in Killarney without an account of their's in it.”

“Of course they do, and the same in Cork—ay, and in Tralee, for the matter of that. Would you have them not give encouragement to more places nor one? There's not one of those crayturs would send in their bill—no, though we do be asking for it, week after week. They're afraid of losing the custom; and I'll engage now, they do be telling you they can't get their money by hook or by crook; that's it—I knew it well.”

The doctor meditated long on these strange revelations, so very opposite to all he had heard of the circumstances of the O'Donoghues; and while his own convictions were strongly against Kerry's narrative, that worthy man's look of simplicity and earnest truth puzzled him considerably, and made him hesitate which side to credit.

After a long pause, from which the incoherent ravings of the sick boy aroused him, he looked up at Kerry, and then, with a motion of his thumb towards the bed, he muttered—

“He's going fast.”

“Going fast!” echoed Kerry, in a voice very different from his former accent. “Oh, wirra! there's nothing so bad as death! Distress and poverty is hard enough, but that's the raal misfortune.”

A dry sarcastic grin from the doctor seemed to say that poor Kerry's secret was discovered. The allusion to want of means came too naturally not to be suggested by present circumstances; and the readiness of Doctor Roach's apprehension clinched the discovery at once.

“We'll go down now,” said the doctor; “I believe I know the whole state of the case;” and, with these words of ambiguous meaning he returned to the drawing-room.