St. Patrick's Eve

“Are you Owen Connor?” said the man, gruffly.

“That same,” replied Owen, as sturdily.

“Then this is notice for you to come up to Mr. Lucas’s office in Galway before the twenty-fifth, with your rent, or the receipt for it, which ever you like best.”

“And who is Mr. Lucas when he’s at home?” said Owen, half-sneeringly.

“You’ll know him when you see him,” rejoined the other, turning to leave the cabin, as he threw a printed paper on the dresser; and then, as if thinking he had not been formal enough in his mission, added, “Mr. Lucas is agent to your landlord, Mr. Leslie; and I’ll give you a bit of advice, keep a civil tongue in your head with him, and it will do you no harm.”

This counsel, delivered much more in a tone of menace than of friendly advice, concluded the interview, for having spoken, the fellow left the cabin, and began to descend the mountain.

Owen’s heart swelled fiercely – a flood of conflicting emotions were warring within it; and as he turned to throw the paper into the fire, his eye caught the date, 16th March. “St. Patrick’s Eve, the very day I saved his life,” said he, bitterly. “Sure I knew well enough how it would be when the landlord died! Well, well, if my poor ould father doesn’t know it, it’s no matter. – Well, Patsy, acushla, what are ye crying for? There, my boy, don’t be afeard, ‘tis Nony’s with ye.”

The accents so kindly uttered quieted the little fellow in a moment, and in a few minutes after he was again asleep in the old straw chair beside the fire. Brief as Owen’s absence had been, the old man seemed much worse as he entered the room. “God forgive me, Owen darling,” said he, “but it wasn’t my poor sowl I was thinking of that minit. I was thinking that you must get a letter wrote to the young landlord about this little place – I’m sure he’ll never say a word about rent, no more nor his father; and as the times wasn’t good lately – ”

“There, there, father,” interrupted Owen, who felt shocked at the old man’s not turning his thoughts in another direction; “never mind those things,” said he; “who knows which of us will be left? the sickness doesn’t spare the young, no more than the ould.”

“Nor the rich, no more nor the poor,” chimed in the old man, with a kind of bitter satisfaction, as he thought on the landlord’s death; for of such incongruous motives is man made up, that calamities come lighter when they involve the fall of those in station above our own. “‘Tis a fine day, seemingly,” said he, suddenly changing the current of his thoughts; “and elegant weather for the country; we’ll have to turn in the sheep over that wheat; it will be too rank: ayeh,” cried he, with a deep sigh, “I’ll not be here to see it;” and for once, the emotions, no dread of futurity could awaken, were realised by worldly considerations, and the old man wept like a child.

“What time of the month is it?” asked he, after a long interval in which neither spoke; for Owen was not really sorry that even thus painfully the old man’s thoughts should be turned towards eternity.

“‘Tis the seventeenth, father, a holy-day all over Ireland!”

“Is there many at the ‘station?’ – look out at the door and see.”

Owen ascended a little rising ground in front of the cabin, from which the whole valley was visible; but except a group that followed a funeral upon the road, he could see no human thing around. The green where the “stations” were celebrated was totally deserted. There were neither tents nor people; the panic of the plague had driven all ideas of revelry from the minds of the most reckless; and, even to observe the duties of religion, men feared to assemble in numbers. So long as the misfortune was at a distance, they could mingle their prayers in common, and entreat for mercy; but when death knocked at every door, the terror became almost despair.

“Is the ‘stations’ going on?” asked the old man eagerly, as Owen re-entered the room. “Is the people at the holy well?”

“I don’t see many stirring at all, to-day,” was the cautious answer; for Owen scrupled to inflict any avoidable pain upon his mind.

“Lift me up, then!” cried he suddenly, and with a voice stronger, from a violent effort of his will. “Lift me up to the window, till I see the blessed cross; and maybe I’d get a prayer among them. Come, be quick, Owen!”

Owen hastened to comply with his request; but already the old man’s eyes were glazed and filmy. The effort had but hastened the moment of his doom; and, with a low faint sigh, he lay back, and died.

To the Irish peasantry, who, more than any other people of Europe, are accustomed to bestow care and attention on the funerals of their friends and relatives, the Cholera, in its necessity for speedy interment, was increased in terrors tenfold. The honours which they were wont to lavish on the dead – the ceremonial of the wake – the mingled merriment and sorrow – the profusion with which they spent the hoarded gains of hard-working labour – and lastly, the long train to the churchyard, evidencing the respect entertained for the departed, should all be foregone; for had not prudence forbid their assembling in numbers, and thus incurring the chances of contagion, which, whether real or not, they firmly believed in, the work of death was too widely disseminated to make such gatherings possible. Each had some one to lament within the limits of his own family, and private sorrow left little room for public sympathy. No longer then was the road filled by people on horseback and foot, as the funeral procession moved forth. The death-wail sounded no more. To chant the requiem of the departed, a few – a very few – immediate friends followed the body to the grave, in silence unbroken. Sad hearts, indeed, they brought, and broken spirits; for in this season of pestilence few dared to hope.

By noon, Owen was seen descending the mountain to the village, to make the last preparations for the old man’s funeral. He carried little Patsy in his arms; for he could not leave the poor child alone, and in the house of death. The claims of infancy would seem never stronger than in the heart sorrowing over death. The grief that carries the sufferer in his mind’s eye over the limits of this world, is arrested by the tender ties which bind him to life in the young. There is besides a hopefulness in early life – it is, perhaps, its chief characteristic – that combats sorrow, better than all the caresses of friendship, and all the consolations of age. Owen felt this now – he never knew it before. But yesterday, and his father’s death had left him without one in the world on whom to fix a hope; and already, from his misery, there arose that one gleam, that now twinkled like a star in the sky of midnight. The little child he had taken for his own was a world to him; and as he went, he prayed fervently that poor Patsy might be spared to him through this terrible pestilence.

When Owen reached the carpenter’s, there were several people there; some, standing moodily brooding over recent bereavements; others, spoke in low whispers, as if fearful of disturbing the silence; but all were sorrow-struck and sad.

“How is the ould man, Owen?” said one of a group, as he came forward.

“He’s better off than us, I trust in God!” said Owen, with a quivering lip. “He went to rest this morning.”

A muttered prayer from all around shewed how general was the feeling of kindness entertained towards the Connors.

“When did he take it, Owen?”

“I don’t know that he tuk it at all; but when I came home last night he was lying on the bed, weak and powerless, and he slept away, with scarce a pain, till daybreak; then – ”

“He’s in glory now, I pray God!” muttered an old man with a white beard. “We were born in the same year, and I knew him since I was a child, like that in your arms; and a good man he was.”

“Whose is the child, Owen?” said another in the crowd.

“Martin Neale’s,” whispered Owen; for he feared that the little fellow might catch the words. “What’s the matter with Miles? he looks very low this morning.”

This question referred to a large powerful-looking man, who, with a smith’s apron twisted round his waist, sat without speaking in a corner of the shop.

“I’m afeard he’s in a bad way,” whispered the man to whom he spoke. “There was a process-server, or a bailiff, or something of the kind, serving notices through the townland yesterday, and he lost a shoe off his baste, and would have Miles out, to put it on, tho’ we all tould him that he buried his daughter – a fine grown girl – that mornin’. And what does the fellow do, but goes and knocks at the forge till Miles comes out. You know Miles Regan, so I needn’t say there wasn’t many words passed between them. In less nor two minutes – whatever the bailiff said – Miles tuck him by the throat, and pulled him down from the horse, and dragged him along to the lake, and flung him in. ‘Twas the Lord’s marcy he knew how to swim; but we don’t know what’ll be done to Miles yet, for he was the new agent’s man.”

“Was he a big fellow, with a bull-dog following him?” asked Owen.

“No; that’s another; sure there’s three or four of them goin’ about. We hear, that bad as ould French was, the new one is worse.”

“Well – well, it’s the will of God!” said Owen, in that tone of voice which bespoke a willingness for all endurance, so long as the consolation remained, that the ill was not unrecorded above; while he felt that all the evils of poverty were little in comparison with the loss of those nearest and dearest. “Come, Patsy, my boy!” said he at last, as he placed the coffin in the ass-cart, and turned towards the mountain; and, leading the little fellow by the hand, he set out on his way – “Come home.”

It was not until he arrived at that part of the road from which the cabin was visible, that Owen knew the whole extent of his bereavement; then, when he looked up and saw the door hasped on the outside, and the chimney from which no smoke ascended, the full measure of his lone condition came at once before him, and he bent over the coffin and wept bitterly. All the old man’s affection for him, his kind indulgence and forbearance, his happy nature, his simple-heartedness, gushed forth from his memory, and he wondered why he had not loved his father, in life, a thousand times more, so deeply was he now penetrated by his loss. If this theme did not assuage his sorrows, it at least so moulded his heart as to bear them in a better spirit; and when, having placed the body in the coffin, he knelt down beside it to pray, it was in a calmer and more submissive frame of mind than he had yet known.

It was late in the afternoon ere Owen was once more on the road down the mountain; for it was necessary – or at least believed so – that the internment should take place on the day of death.

“I never thought it would be this way you’d go to your last home, father dear,” said Owen aloud and in a voice almost stifled with sobs; for the absence of all his friends and relatives at such a moment, now smote on the poor fellow’s heart, as he walked beside the little cart on which the coffin was laid. It was indeed a sight to move a sterner nature than his: the coffin, not reverently carried by bearers, and followed by its long train of mourners, but laid slant-wise in the cart, the spade and shovel to dig the grave beside it, and Patsy seated on the back of the ass, watching with infant glee the motion of the animal, as with careful foot he descended the rugged mountain. Poor child! how your guileless laughter shook that strong man’s heart with agony!

It was a long and weary way to the old churchyard. The narrow road, too, was deeply rutted and worn by wheel-tracks; for, alas, it had been trodden by many, of late. The grey daylight was fast fading as Owen pushed wide the old gate and entered. What a change to his eyes did the aspect of the place present! The green mounds of earth which marked the resting-place of village patriarchs, were gone; and heaps of fresh-turned clay were seen on every side, no longer decorated, as of old, with little emblems of affectionate sorrow; no tree, nor stone, not even a wild flower, spoke of the regrets of those who remained. The graves were rudely fashioned, as if in haste – for so it was – few dared to linger there!

Seeking out a lone spot near the ruins, Owen began to dig the grave, while the little child, in mute astonishment at all he saw, looked on.

“Why wouldn’t you stay out in the road, Patsy, and play there, till I come to you? This is a cowld damp place for you, my boy.”

“Nony! Nony!” cried the child, looking at him with an affectionate smile, as though to say he’d rather be near him.

“Well, well, who knows but you’re right? if it’s the will of God to take me, maybe you might as well go too. It’s a sore thing to be alone in the world, like me now!” And as he muttered the last few words he ceased digging, and rested his head on the cross of the spade.

“Was that you, Patsy? I heard a voice somewhere.”

The child shook his head in token of dissent.

“Ayeh! it was only the wind through the ould walls; but sure it might be nat’ral enough for sighs and sobs to be here: there’s many a one has floated over this damp clay.”

He resumed his work once more. The night was falling fast as Owen stepped from the deep grave, and knelt down to say a prayer ere he committed the body to the earth.

“Kneel down, darlin’, here by my side,” said he, placing his arm round the little fellow’s waist; “‘tis the likes of you God loves best;” and joining the tiny hands with his own, he uttered a deep and fervent prayer for the soul of the departed. “There, father!” said he, as he arose at last, and in a voice as if addressing a living person at his side; “there, father: the Lord, he knows my heart inside me; and if walking the world barefoot would give ye peace or ease, I’d do it, for you were a kind man and a good father to me.” He kissed the coffin as he spoke, and stood silently gazing on it.

Arousing himself with a kind of struggle, he untied the cords, and lifted the coffin from the cart. For some seconds he busied himself in arranging the ropes beneath it, and then ceased suddenly, on remembering that he could not lower it into the grave unassisted.

“I’ll have to go down the road for some one,” muttered he to himself; but as he said this, he perceived at some distance off in the churchyard the figure of a man, as if kneeling over a grave. “The Lord help him, he has his grief too!” ejaculated Owen, as he moved towards him. On coming nearer he perceived that the grave was newly made, and from its size evidently that of a child.

“I ax your pardon,” said Owen, in a timid voice, after waiting for several minutes in the vain expectation that the man would look up; “I ax your pardon for disturbing you, but maybe you’ll be kind enough to help me to lay this coffin in the ground. I have nobody with me but a child.”

The man started and looked round. Their eyes met; it was Phil Joyce and Owen who now confronted each other. But how unlike were both to what they were at their last parting! Then, vindictive passion, outraged pride, and vengeance, swelled every feature and tingled in every fibre of their frames. Now, each stood pale, care-worn, and dispirited, wearied out by sorrow, and almost brokenhearted. Owen was the first to speak.

“I axed your pardon before I saw you, Phil Joyce, and I ax it again now, for disturbing you; but I didn’t know you, and I wanted to put my poor father’s body in the grave.”

“I didn’t know he was dead,” said Phil, in a hollow voice, like one speaking to himself. “This is poor little Billy here,” and he pointed to the mound at his feet.

“The heavens be his bed this night!” said Owen, piously; “Good night!” and he turned to go away; then stopping suddenly, he added, “Maybe, after all, you’ll not refuse me, and the Lord might be more merciful to us both, than if we were to part like enemies.”

“Owen Connor, I ask your forgiveness,” said Phil, stretching forth his hand, while his voice trembled like a sick child’s. “I didn’t think the day would come I’d ever do it; but my heart is humble enough now, and maybe ‘twill be lower soon. Will you take my hand?”

“Will I, Phil? will I, is it? ay, and however ye may change to me after this night, I’ll never forget this.” And he grasped the cold fingers in both hands, and pressed them ardently, and the two men fell into each other’s arms and wept.

Is it a proud or a humiliating confession for humanity – assuredly it is a true one – that the finest and best traits of our nature are elicited in our troubles, and not in our joys? that we come out purer through trials than prosperity? Does the chastisement of Heaven teach us better than the blessings lavished upon us? or are these gifts the compensation sent us for our afflictions, that when poorest before man we should be richest before God? Few hearts there are which sorrow makes not wiser – none which are not better for it. So it was here. These men, in the continuance of good fortune, had been enemies for life; mutual hatred had grown up between them, so that each yearned for vengeance on the other; and now they walked like brothers, only seeking forgiveness of each other, and asking pardon for the past.

The old man was laid in his grave, and they turned to leave the churchyard.

“Won’t ye come home with me, Owen?” said Phil, as they came to where their roads separated; “won’t ye come and eat your supper with us?”

Owen’s throat filled up: he could only mutter, “Not to-night, Phil – another time, plaze God.” He had not ventured even to ask for Mary, nor did he know whether Phil Joyce in his reconciliation might wish a renewal of any intimacy with his sister. Such was the reason of Owen’s refusal; for, however strange it may seem to some, there is a delicacy of the heart as well as of good breeding, and one advantage it possesses – it is of all lands, and the fashion never changes.

Poor Owen would have shed his best blood to be able to ask after Mary – to learn how she was, and how she bore up under the disasters of the time; but he never mentioned her name: and as for Phil Joyce, his gloomy thoughts had left no room for others, and he parted from Owen without a single allusion to her. “Good night, Owen,” said he, “and don’t forget your promise to come and see us soon.”

“Good night, Phil,” was the answer; “and I pray a blessing on you and yours.” A slight quivering of the voice at the last word was all he suffered to escape him; and they parted.

THIRD ERA

From that day, the pestilence began to abate in violence. The cases of disease became fewer and less fatal; and at last, like a spent bolt, the malady ceased to work its mischief. Men were slow enough to recognise this bettered aspect of their fortune. Calamity had weighed too heavily on them to make them rally at once. They still walked like those who felt the shadow of death upon them, and were fearful lest any imprudent act or word might bring back the plague among them.

With time, however, these features passed off: people gradually resumed their wonted habits; and, except where the work of death had been more than ordinarily destructive, the malady was now treated as “a thing that had been.”

If Owen Connor had not escaped the common misfortune of the land, he could at least date one happy event from that sad period – his reconciliation with Phil Joyce. This was no passing friendship. The dreadful scenes he had witnessed about him had made Phil an altered character. The devotion of Owen – his manly indifference to personal risk whenever his services were wanted by another – his unsparing benevolence, – all these traits, the mention of which at first only irritated and vexed his soul, were now remembered in the day of reconciliation; and none felt prouder to acknowledge his friendship than his former enemy.

Notwithstanding all this, Owen did not dare to found a hope upon his change of fortune; for Mary was even more distant and cold to him than ever, as though to shew that, whatever expectations he might conceive from her brother’s friendship, he should not reckon too confidently on her feelings. Owen knew not how far he had himself to blame for this; he was not aware that his own constrained manner, his over-acted reserve, had offended Mary to the quick; and thus, both mutually retreated in misconception and distrust. The game of love is the same, whether the players be clad in velvet or in hodden grey. Beneath the gilded ceilings of a palace, or the lowly rafters of a cabin, there are the same hopes and fears, the same jealousies, and distrusts, and despondings; the wiles and stratagems are all alike; for, after all, the stake is human happiness, whether he who risks it be a peer or a peasant! While Owen vacillated between hope and fear, now, resolving to hazard an avowal of his love and take his stand on the result, now, deeming it better to trust to time and longer intimacy, other events were happening around, which could not fail to interest him deeply. The new agent had commenced his campaign with an activity before unknown. Arrears of rent were demanded to be peremptorily paid up; leases, whose exact conditions had not been fulfilled, were declared void; tenants occupying sub-let land were noticed to quit; and all the threatening signs of that rigid management displayed, by which an estate is assumed to be “admirably regulated,” and the agent’s duty most creditably discharged.

Many of the arrears were concessions made by the landlord in seasons of hardship and distress, but were unrecorded as such in the rent-roll or the tenant’s receipt. There had been no intention of ever redemanding them; and both parties had lost sight of the transaction until the sharp glance of a “new agent” discovered their existence. So of the leases: covenants to build, or plant, or drain, were inserted rather as contingencies, which prosperity might empower, than as actual conditions essential to be fulfilled; and as for sub-letting, it was simply the act by which a son or a daughter was portioned in the world, and enabled to commence the work of self-maintenance.

This slovenly system inflicted many evils. The demand of an extravagant rent rendered an abatement not a boon, but an act of imperative necessity; and while the overhanging debt supplied the landlord with a means of tyranny, it deprived the tenant of all desire to improve his condition. “Why should I labour,” said he, “when the benefit never can be mine?” The landlord then declaimed against ingratitude, at the time that the peasant spoke against oppression. Could they both be right? The impossibility of ever becoming independent soon suggested that dogged indifference, too often confounded with indolent habits. Sustenance was enough for him, who, if he earned more, should surrender it; hence the poor man became chained to his poverty. It was a weight which grew with his strength; privations might as well be incurred with little labour as with great; and he sunk down to the condition of a mere drudge, careless and despondent. “He can only take all I have!” was the cottier’s philosophy; and the maxim suggested a corollary, that the “all” should be as little as might be.

But there were other grievances flowing from this source. The extent of these abatements usually depended on the representation of the tenants themselves, and such evidences as they could produce of their poverty and destitution. Hence a whole world of falsehood and dissimulation was fostered. Cabins were suffered to stand half-roofed; children left to shiver in rags and nakedness; age and infirmity exhibited in attitudes of afflicting privation; habits of mendicity encouraged; – all, that they might impose upon the proprietor, and make him believe that any sum wrung from such as these must be an act of cruelty. If these schemes were sometimes successful, so in their failure they fell as heavy penalties upon the really destitute, for whose privations no pity was felt. Their misery, confounded in the general mass of dissimulation, was neglected; and for one who prospered in his falsehood, many were visited in their affliction.

That men in such circumstances as these should listen with greedy ears to any representation which reflected heavily on their wealthier neighbours, is little to be wondered at. The triumph of knavery and falsehood is a bad lesson for any people; but the fruitlessness of honest industry is, if possible, a worse one. Both were well taught by this system. And these things took place, not, be it observed, when the landlord or his agent were cruel and exacting – very far from it. They were the instances so popularly expatiated on by newspapers and journals; they were the cases headed – “Example for Landlords!” “Timely Benevolence!” and paragraphed thus: – “We learn, with the greatest pleasure, that Mr. Muldrennin, of Kilbally-drennin, has, in consideration of the failure of the potato-crop, and the severe pressure of the season, kindly abated five per cent of all his rents. Let this admirable example be generally followed, and we shall once more see,” &c. &c. There was no explanatory note to state the actual condition of that tenantry, or the amount of that rent from which the deduction was made. Mr. Muldrennin was then free to run his career of active puffery throughout the kingdom, and his tenantry to starve on as before.