Fardorougha, The Miser Part 24

The scene we have attempted to describe spared O'Brien the trouble of much unpleasant inquiry, and enabled him to enter at once into the proposed arrangements on behalf of Connor. Of course he did not permit his sister's name to transpire, nor any trace whatsoever to appear, by which her delicacy might be compromised, or her character involved.

His interference in the matter he judiciously put upon the footing of personal regard for the young man, and his reluctance to be even the indirect means of bringing him to a violent and shameful death. Having thus fulfilled Una's instructions, he returned home, and relieved her of a heavy burthen by a full communication of all that had been done.

The struggle hitherto endured by Fardoroug--he was in its own nature sufficiently severe to render his sufferings sharp and pungent; still they resembled the influence of local disease more than that of a malady which prostrates the strength and grapples with the powers of the whole const.i.tution. The sensation he immediately felt, on hearing that his banker had absconded with the gains of his penurious life, was rather a stunning shock that occasioned for the moment a feeling of dull, and heavy, and overwhelming dismay. It filled, nay, it actually distended his narrow soul with an oppressive sense of exclusive misery that banished all consideration for every person and thing extraneous to his individual selfishness. In truth, the tumult of his mind was peculiarly wild and anomalous. The situation of his son, and the dreadful fate that hung over him, were as completely forgotten as if they did not exist.

Yet there lay, underneath his own gloomy agony, a remote consciousness of collateral affliction, such as is frequently experienced by those who may be drawn, by some temporary and present pleasure, from the contemplation of their misery. We feel, in such cases, that the darkness is upon us, even while the image of the calamity is not before the mind; nay, it sometimes requires an effort to bring it back, when anxious to account for our depression; but when it comes, the heart sinks with a shudder, and we feel, that, although it ceased to engage our thoughts, we had been sitting all the time beneath its shadow. For this reason, although Fardorougha's own loss absorbed, in one sense, all his powers of suffering, still he knew that something else pressed with additional weight upon his heart. Of its distinct character, however, he was ignorant, and only felt that a dead and heavy load of multiplied affliction bent him in burning anguish to the earth.

There is something more or less eccentric in the gait and dress of every miser. Fardorougha's pace was naturally slow, and the habit for which, in the latter point, he had all his life been remarkable, was that of wearing a great-coat thrown loosely about his shoulders. In summer it saved an inside one, and, as he said, kept him cool and comfortable.

That he seldom or never put his arms into it arose from the fact that he knew it would last a much longer period of time than if he wore it in the usual manner.

On leaving the attorney's office, he might be seen creeping along towards the County Treasurer's, at a pace quite unusual to him; his hollow, gleaming eyes were bent on the earth; his Gothamore about his shoulders; his staff held with a tight desperate grip, and his whole appearance that of a man frightfully distracted by the intelligence of some sudden calamity.

He had not proceeded far on this hopeless errand, when many bitter confirmations of the melancholy truth, by persons whom he met on their return from P----'s residence, were afforded him. Even these, however, were insufficient to satisfy him; he heard them with a vehement impatience, that could not brook the bare possibility of the report being true. His soul clung with the tenacity of a death--grip to the hope, that however others might have suffered, some chance might, notwithstanding, still remain in Ms particular favor. In the meantime, he poured out curses of unexampled malignity against the guilty defaulter, on whose head he invoked the Almighty's vengeance with a venomous fervor which appalled all who heard him. Having reached the treasurer's house, a scene presented itself that was by no means calculated to afford him consolation. Persons of every condition, from the squireen and gentleman farmer, to the humble widow and inexperienced orphan, stood in melancholy groups about the deserted mansion, interchanging details of their losses, their blasted prospects, and their immediate ruin. The cries of the widow, who mourned for the desolation brought upon her and her now dest.i.tute orphans, rose in a piteous wail to heaven, and the industrious fathers of many struggling families, with pale faces and breaking hearts, looked in silent misery upon the closed shutters and smokeless chimneys of their oppressor's house, bitterly conscious that the laws of the boasted const.i.tution under which they lived, permitted the destroyer of hundreds to enjoy, in luxury and security, the many thousands of which, at one fell and rapacious swoop, he had deprived them.

With white, quivering lips and panting breath, Fardorougha approached and joined them.

"What, what," said he, in a broken sentence, "is this true--can it, can it be true? Is the thievin' villain of h.e.l.l gone? Has he robbed us, ruined us, destroyed us?"

"Ah, too thrue it is," replied a farmer; "the dam' rip is off to that nest of robbers, the Isle of Man; ay, he's gone! an' may all our bad luck past, present, and to come, go with him, an' all he tuck!"

Fardorougha looked at his informant as if he had been P----himself; he then glared from one to another, whilst the white foam wrought up to his lips by the prodigious force of his excitement. He clasped his hands, then attempted to speak, but language had abandoned him.

"If one is to judge from your appearance, you have suffered heavily,"

observed the farmer.

The other stared at him with a kind of angry amazement for doubting it, or it might be, for speaking so coolly of his loss. "Suffered!"

said he, "ay, ay, but did yeea thry the house? we'll see--suffered!--suffered!--we'll see."

He immediately shuffled over to the hall door, which he a.s.saulted with the eagerness of a despairing soul at the gate of heaven, throwing into each knock such a character of impatience and apprehension, as one might suppose the aforesaid soul to feel from a certain knowledge that the devil's clutches were spread immediately behind, to seize and carry him to perdition. His impetuosity, however, was all in vain; not even an echo reverberated through the cold and empty walls, but, on the contrary, every peal was followed by a most unromantic and ominous silence.

"That man appears beside himself," observed another of the sufferers; "surely, it he wasn't half-mad, he'd not expect to find any one in an empty house!"

"Devil a much it signifies whether he's mad or otherwise," responded a neighbor. "I know him well; his name's Fardorougha Donovan, the miser of Lisnamona, the biggest shkew that ever skinned a flint. If P----did nothin' worse than fleece him, it would never stand between him an' the blessin' o' Heaven."

[Ill.u.s.tration: PAGE 245-- He rattled, and thumped, and screamed]

Fardorougha, in the mean time, finding that no response was given from the front, pa.s.sed hurriedly by an archway into the back court, where he made similar efforts to get in by attempting to force the kitchen door.

Every entrance, however, had been strongly secured; he rattled, and thumped, and screamed, as if P----himself had actually been within hearing, but still to no purpose; he might as well have expected to extort a reply from the grave.

When he returned to the group that stood on the lawn, the deadly conviction that all was lost affected every joint of his body with a nervous trepidation, that might have been mistaken for _delirium tremens_. His eyes were full of terror, mingled with the impotent fury of hatred and revenge; whilst over all now predominated for the first time such an expression of horror and despair, as made the spectators shudder to look upon him.

"Where was G.o.d," said he, addressing them, and his voice, naturally thin and wiry, now became lmsky and hollow, "where was G.o.d, to suffer this?

to suffer the poor to be ruined, and the rich to be made poor? Was it right for the Almighty to look on an' let the villain do it? No--no--no; I say no!"

The group around him shuddered at the daring blasphemy to which his monstrous pa.s.sion had driven him. Many females, who were in tears, lamenting audibly, started, and felt their grief suspended for a moment by this revolting charge against the justice of Providence.

"What do you all stand for here," he proceeded, "like stocks an stones?

Why don't yees kneel with me, an' let us join in one curse; one, no, but let us shower them down upon him in thousands--in millions; an' when we can no longer spake them, let us think them. To the last hour of my life my heart 'ill never be widout a curse for him; an' the last word afore I go into the presence of G.o.d, 'll be a black, heavy blessin' from h.e.l.l against him an' his, sowl an' body, while a drop o' their bad blood's upon the earth."

"Don't be blasphamin', honest man," said a bystander; "if you've lost money, that's no rason why you should fly in the face o' G.o.d for P----'s roguery. Devil a one o' myself cares if I join you in a volley against the robbin' scoundril, but I'd not take all the money the rip of h.e.l.l ran away wid, an' spake of G.o.d as you do."

"Oh, Saver!" exclaimed Fardorougha, who probably heard not a word he said; "I knew--I knew--I always felt it was before me--a dog's death behind a ditch--my tongue out wid starvation and hunger, and it was he brought me to it!"

He had already knelt, and was uncovered, his whitish hair tossed by the breeze in confusion about a face on which was painted the fearful workings of that giant spirit, under whose tremendous grasp he writhed and suffered like a serpent in the talons of a vulture. In this position, with uplifted and trembling arms, his face raised towards heaven, and his whole figure shrunk firmly together by the intense malignity with which he was about to hiss out his venomous imprecations against the defaulter, he presented at least one instance in which the low, sordid vice of avarice rose to something like wild grandeur, if not sublimity.

Having remained in this posture for some time, he clasped his withered hands together and wrung them until the bones cracked; then rising up and striking his stick bitterly upon the earth--

"I can't," he exclaimed, "I can't get out the curses against him; but my heart's full of them--they're in it--they're in it!--it's black an'

hot wid them; I feel them here--here--movin an if they war alive, an'

they'll be out."

Such was the strength and impetuosity of his hatred, and such his eagerness to discharge the whole quiver of his maledictions against the great public delinquent, that, as often happens in cases of overwhelming agitation, his faculties were paralyzed by the storm of pa.s.sion which raged within him.

Having risen to his feet, he left the group, muttering his wordless malignity as he went along, and occasionally pausing to look back with the fiery glare of a hyena at the house in which the robbery of his soul's treasure had been planned and accomplished.

It is unnecessary to say that the arrangements entered into with Ca.s.sidy, by John O'Brien, were promptly and ably carried into effect. A rapid ride soon brought the man of briefs and depositions to the prison, where the unhappy Connor lay. The young man's story, though simple, was improbable, and his version of the burning such as induced Ca.s.sidy, who knew little of impressions and feelings in the absence of facts, to believe that no other head than his ever concocted the crime. Still, from the manly sincerity with which his young client spoke, he felt inclined to impute the act to a freak of boyish malice and disappointment, rather than to a spirit of vindictive rancor. He entertained no expectation whatsoever of Connor's acquittal, and hinted to him that it was his habit in such cases to recommend his clients to be prepared for the worst, without, at the same time, altogether abolishing hope. There was, indeed, nothing to break the chain of circ.u.mstantial evidence in which Flanagan had entangled him; he had been at the haggard shortly before the conflagration broke out; he had met Phil Curtis, and begged that man to conceal the fact of his having seen him, and he had not slept in his own bed either on that or the preceding night. It was to no purpose he affirmed that Flanagan himself had borrowed from him, and worn, on the night in question, the shoes whose prints were so strongly against him, or that the steel and tinder--box, which were found in his pocket, actually belonged to his accuser, who must have put them there without his knowledge. His case, in fact, was a bad one, and he felt that the interview with his attorney left him more seriously impressed with the danger of his situation, than he had been up till that period.

"I suppose," said he, when the instructions were completed, "you have seen my father?"

"Everything is fully and liberally arranged," replied the other, with reservation; "your father has been with me to--day; in fact, I parted with him only a few minutes before I left home. So far let your mind be easy. The government prosecutes, which is something in your favor; and now, good-by to you; for my part, I neither advise you to hope or despair. If the worst comes to the worst, you must bear it like a man; and if we get an acquittal, it will prove the more agreeable for its not being expected."

The unfortunate youth felt, after Ca.s.sidy's departure, the full force of that dark and fearful presentiment which arises from the approach of the mightiest calamity that can befall an innocent man--a public and ignominious death, while in the very pride of youth, strength, and those natural hopes of happiness which existence had otherwise promised.

In him this awful apprehension proceeded neither from the terror of judgment nor of h.e.l.l, but from that dread of being withdrawn from life, and of pa.s.sing down from the light, the enjoyments and busy intercourse of a breathing and conscious world, into the silence and corruption of the unknown grave. When this ghastly picture was brought near him by the force of his imagination, he felt for a moment as if his heart had died away in him, and his blood became congealed into ice. Should this continue, he knew that human nature could not sustain it long, and he had already resolved to bear his fate with firmness, whatever that fate might be. He then reflected that he was innocent, and, remembering the practice of his simple and less political forefathers, he knelt down and fervently besought the protection of that, Being in whose hands are the issues of life and death.

On rising from this act of heartfelt devotion, he experienced that support which he required so much. The fear of death ceased to alarm him, and his natural fort.i.tude returned with more than its usual power to his support. In this state of mind he was pacing his narrow room, when the door opened, and his father, with a tottering step, entered and approached him. The son was startled, if not terrified, at the change which so short a time had wrought in the old man's appearance.

"Good G.o.d, father dear!" he exclaimed, as the latter threw his arms with a tight and clinging grasp about him; "good heavens! what has happened to change you so much for the worse? Why, if you fret this way about me, you'll soon break your heart. Why will you fret, father, when you know I am innocent? Surely, at the worst, it is better to die innocent than to live guilty."

"Connor," said the old man, still clinging tenaciously to him, and looking wildly into his face, "Connor, it's broke--my heart's broke at last. Oh, Connor, won't you pity me when you hear it--won't you, Connor--oh, when you hear it, Connor, won't you pity me? It's gone, it's gone, it's gone--he's off, off--to that nest of robbers, the Isle of Man, and has robbed me and half the county. P----has; I'm a ruined man, a beggar, an' will die a dog's death."

Connor looked down keenly into his father's face, and began to entertain a surmise so terrible that the beatings of his heart were in a moment audible to his own ear.

"Father," he inquired, "in the name of G.o.d what is wrong with you? What is it you spake of? Has P----gone off with your money? Sit down, and don't look so terrified."

"He has, Connor--robbed me an' half the county--he disappeared the evenin' of the very day I left my last lodgment wid him; he's in that nest of robbers, the Isle of Man, an' I'm ruined--ruined! Oh G.o.d!

Connor, how can I stand it? all my earnin's an' my savin's an' the fruits of my industry in his pocket, an' upon his back, an' upon his bones! My brain is reelin'--I dunna what I'm doin', nor what I'll do.

To what hand now can I turn myself? Who'll a.s.sist me! I dunna what I'm doin', nor scarcely what I'm sayin'. My head's all in confusion. Gone!

gone! gone! Oh see the luck that has come down upon me! Above all men, why was I singled out to be made a world's wondher of--why was I? What did I do? I robbed no one; yet it's gone--an' see the death that's afore me! oh G.o.d! oh G.o.d!"

"Well, father, let it go--you have still your health; you have still my poor mother to console you; and I hope you'll soon have myself, too; between us well keep you comfortable, and, if you'll allow us to take our own way, more so than ever you did--"

Pardorougha started, as if struck by some faint but sudden recollection.

All at once he looked with amazement around the room, and afterwards with a pause of inquiry, at his son. At length, a light of some forgotten memory appeared to flash at once across his brain; his countenance changed from the wild and unsettled expression which it bore, to one more stamped with the earnest humanity of our better nature.

"Oh, Connor!" he at last exclaimed, putting his two hands into those of his son: "can you pity me, an' forgive me? You see, my poor boy, how I'm sufferin', an' you see that I can't--I won't--be able to bear up against this long."

The tears here ran down his worn and hollow cheeks.

"Oh," he proceeded, "how could I forget you, my darlin' boy? But I hardly think my head's right. If I had you with me, an' before my eyes, you'd keep my heart right, an' give me strength, which I stand sorely in need of. Saints in glory! how could I forget you, acushla, an' what now can I do for you? Not a penny have I to pay lawyer, or attorney, or any one, to defind you at your trial, and it so near!"