My mother’s death was the first touch of mortality that came home to my apprehension. It was my first affliction, as far as childhood can be afflicted, for coarser passions, rage, envy, jealousy may shake the nerves of expanding sensibility long before the deepest of all passions whilst it lasts sinks into sorrow or fades into regret, proportionate to the energy of its anguish.
It happened that early in spring my mother met with an accident which was attended by mysterious pains, which eventually terminated in gout in her stomach, and confined her to bed in the house at Drumcondra. Her frequent intervals of ease released my father from serious anxiety, and no one had any fear of a fatal result.
Early in June, the recurrence of the popular Irish festival called the “Riding of the Fringes,” took place at the neighbouring village of Glas Nevin.
My father was in town on professional business, and the servants,
taking advantage of the relâche from all
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“Are you there, dear Sydney?” she asked faintly.
“Yes, dear mamma, and taking care of you.”
“Kneel down,” said she, “and give me your hand”—her’s was cold and clammy. “Don’t be afraid,” she said, “you will soon be without your poor mother.”
I burst into tears and sobbed bitterly.
After a pause my mother said:
“I leave you a blessing,—may you have as affectionate a child as you have been to me—you must replace me to your father, and take care of your dear sister.”
I sobbed out:
“Oh, yes, mamma—oh, yes.”
“And should your father give you another mamma,—as is most probable—you will be a good child to her, by duty and obedience.”
I sobbed out:
“No, no, mamma; indeed I won’t!”
She drew me to her, kissed my cheek, and said:
“Go, now, and receive your papa, and send Molly to me.”
But, alas! there was no Molly. I was alone with my dying mother.
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I was distracted, but I did all that circumstances suggested to me. I flew down to the road where some paviours were at work. I besought them to go and look for the servants.
They instantly complied, threw away their implements, and with looks full of sympathy, set off; but at that moment the servants and my father entered the house almost together.
His rage at their conduct was soon quenched in grief, as he hung over my mother and raised her in his arms. Two physicians were sent for to town; a messenger was also despatched for the rector of Drumcondra, but he was from home; and before any assistance, spiritual or physical, could arrive, my mother had breathed her last.
My father, unconscious of the event at the moment, was walking in restless agony up and down the drawing-room, with a child in either hand. The poor paviours were fixed in attention at the open windows. My father’s lamentations were loud and even poetical, and in the Irish style of declamatory grief. The doctors arrived,—feathers were burned and musk scattered about the bedroom; the atmosphere was that of death, but we knew it not till Molly entered and presented my father with my mother’s wedding ring,—the Irish mode of announcing the death of an Irish wife and mother.
Early the next morning, my sister and myself were sent to the house of
a kind neighbour, who had offered to take charge of us till the funeral was over. She
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I was arrested twice on the point of making my escape; but at last I found the means after we had been there nearly a week. I got up one morning very early. I had discovered a hole cut in the coach-house door, which gave upon the road from Richmond to Drumcondra, to let the dog in and out; I availed myself of the discovery, squeezed myself through it, and never rested running till I found myself at the garden gate of our house at Drumcondra.
The road was strewed with hay and straw; and there were marks of carriages. The doors were all open,—the funeral had not long passed through—I entered the house. I looked into the parlour, the remains of the funeral breakfast was there. I went into the kitchen, but there was no one. I ran up the short stairs to my mother’s bedroom, the door was open, and the smell of the musk seemed an atmosphere of death. Across the threshold old Sawney lay stretched, and scarcely noticed me.
I entered the drawing-room and there found my father lying back in a chair with his eyes closed. I sprung into his arms, and the embraces and tears that followed were a relief to us both.
He, however, chided me for coming.
“But papa,” I said, “I promised dear mamma that I would take care of you, and I must.”
A tingle at the bell at the gate called me down to attend to it, for there was no one else in the house.
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A pale face was pressed against the bars at the gate: it was Dermody.
“Is it true,” said he, “that I have lost my best friend?”
I said, “Yes, and I too, Dermody.”
I took his arm, and we walked in together.
He flung himself at my father’s feet, round whom he threw his arms, and from that moment, or at least for that moment, all was forgiven and forgotten.
Dermody returned that night to Dr. Boyd’s; he remained there for a short time, but he then disappeared, and we heard no more of him for some years, except that once he sent on to my father a letter which he had received from Lady Moira, written in a strain of high displeasure.
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