In England there are traditions of Irish fortune-hunters,
and in Ireland of English. The fact is, it was
the vagrant class of each country that chiefly visited
the other in old times; and a handsome vagabond, whether
at home or abroad, I suppose, made the most of his
face, which was also his fortune.
At all events, he carried off the fair one from the
sanctuary; and for some sufficient reason, I suppose,
they took up their abode at Wauling, in Lancashire.
Here the gallant captain amused himself after his
fashion, sometimes running up, of course on business,
to London. I believe few wives have ever cried
more in a given time than did that poor, dumpy, potato-faced
heiress, who got over the nunnery garden wall, and
jumped into the handsome Captain’s arms, for
love.
He spent her income, frightened her out of her wits
with oaths and threats, and broke her heart.
Latterly she shut herself up pretty nearly altogether
in her room. She had an old, rather grim, Irish
servant-woman in attendance upon her. This domestic
was tall, lean, and religious, and the Captain knew
instinctively she hated him; and he hated her in return,
often threatened to put her out of the house, and
sometimes even to kick her out of the window.
And whenever a wet day confined him to the house,
or the stable, and he grew tired of smoking, he would
begin to swear and curse at her for a diddled
old mischief-maker, that could never be easy, and
was always troubling the house with her cursed stories,
and so forth.
But years passed away, and old Molly Doyle remained
still in her original position. Perhaps he thought
that there must be somebody there, and that he was
not, after all, very likely to change for the better.
The Blessed Candle
He tolerated another intrusion, too, and thought himself
a paragon of patience and easy good nature for so
doing. A Roman Catholic clergyman, in a long
black frock, with a low standing collar, and a little
white muslin fillet round his neck—tall,
sallow, with blue chin, and dark steady eyes—used
to glide up and down the stairs, and through the passages;
and the Captain sometimes met him in one place and
sometimes in another. But by a caprice incident
to such tempers he treated this cleric exceptionally,
and even with a surly sort of courtesy, though he
grumbled about his visits behind his back.
I do not know that he had a great deal of moral courage,
and the ecclesiastic looked severe and self-possessed;
and somehow he thought he had no good opinion of him,
and if a natural occasion were offered, might say
extremely unpleasant things, and hard to be answered.
Well the time came at last, when poor Peg O’Neill—in
an evil hour Mrs. James Walshawe—must cry,
and quake, and pray her last. The doctor came
from Penlynden, and was just as vague as usual, but
more gloomy, and for about a week came and went oftener.
The cleric in the long black frock was also daily
there. And at last came that last sacrament in
the gates of death, when the sinner is traversing those
dread steps that never can be retraced; when the face
is turned for ever from life, and we see a receding
shape, and hear a voice already irrevocably in the
land of spirits.
