第76章 Volume 3(4)

Well,there wasn't a second word to the bargain;so they paid him the money down,an'he sot the table doun like an althar,before the door,an'he settled it out vid all the things he had wid him;an' he lit a bit iv a holy candle,an'he scathered his holy wather right an'left;an'he took up a big book,an'he wint an readin'for half an hour,good;an'whin he kem to the end,he tuck hould iv his little bell,and he beginned to ring it for the bare life;an',by my sowl,he rung it so well,that he wakened Jim Sulivan in the cow-house,where he was sleepin',an'up he jumped,widout a minute's delay,an'med right for the house,where all the family,an'the priest,an'the little mass-boy was assimbled,layin'the ghost;an'as soon as his raverence seen him comin'in at the door,wid the fair fright,he flung the bell at his head,an'hot him sich a lick iv it in the forehead,that he sthretched him on the floor;but fain;he didn't wait to ax any questions,but he cut round the table as if the divil was afther him,an'out at the door,an'didn't stop even as much as to mount an his mare,but leathered away down the borheen as fast as his legs could carry him,though the mud was up to his knees,savin'your presence.

Well,by the time Jim kem to himself,the family persaved the mistake,an'Andy wint home,lavin'Nell to make the explanation.

An'as soon as Jim heerd it all,he said he was quite contint to lave her to Andy,entirely;but the priest would not hear iv it;an'he jist med him marry his wife over again,an'a merry weddin'it was,an'a fine collection for his raverence.

An'Andy was there along wid the rest,an'the priest put a small pinnance upon him,for bein'in too great a hurry to marry a widdy.

An'bad luck to the word he'd allow anyone to say an the business,ever after,at all,at all;so,av coorse,no one offinded his raverence,by spakin'iv the twelve pounds he got for layin'the sperit.

An'the neighbours wor all mighty well plased,to be sure,for gettin'all the divarsion of a wake,an'two weddin's for nothin'.

In the following narrative,I have endeavoured to give as nearly as possible the ipsissima verba of the valued friend from whom I received it,conscious that any aberration from HERmode of telling the tale of her own life would at once impair its accuracy and its effect.

Would that,with her words,I could also bring before you her animated gesture,her expressive countenance,the solemn and thrilling air and accent with which she related the dark passages in her strange story;and,above all,that I could communicate the impressive consciousness that the narrator had seen with her own eyes,and personally acted in the scenes which she described;these accompaniments,taken with the additional circumstance that she who told the tale was one far too deeply and sadly impressed with religious principle to misrepresent or fabricate what she repeated as fact,gave to the tale a depth of interest which the events recorded could hardly,themselves,have produced.

I became acquainted with the lady from whose lips I heard this narrative nearly twenty years since,and the story struck my fancy so much that I committed it to paper while it was still fresh in my mind;and should its perusal afford you entertainment for a listless half hour,my labour shall not have been bestowed in vain.

I find that I have taken the story down as she told it,in the first person,and perhaps this is as it should be.

She began as follows:

My maiden name was Richardson,the designation of a family of some distinction in the county of Tyrone.I was the younger of two daughters,and we were the only children.There was a difference in our ages of nearly six years,so that Idid not,in my childhood,enjoy that close companionship which sisterhood,in other circumstances,necessarily involves;and while I was still a child,my sister was married.

The person upon whom she bestowed her hand was a Mr.Carew,a gentleman of property and consideration in the north of England.

I remember well the eventful day of the wedding;the thronging carriages,the noisy menials,the loud laughter,the merry faces,and the gay dresses.Such sights were then new to me,and harmonised ill with the sorrowful feelings with which Iregarded the event which was to separate me,as it turned out,for ever from a sister whose tenderness alone had hitherto more than supplied all that I wanted in my mother's affection.

The day soon arrived which was to remove the happy couple from Ashtown House.The carriage stood at the hall-door,and my poor sister kissed me again and again,telling me that I should see her soon.

The carriage drove away,and I gazed after it until my eyes filled with tears,and,returning slowly to my chamber,I wept more bitterly and,so to speak,more desolately,than ever I had done before.

My father had never seemed to love or to take an interest in me.He had desired a son,and I think he never thoroughly forgave me my unfortunate sex.

My having come into the world at all as his child he regarded as a kind of fraudulent intrusion,and as his antipathy to me had its origin in an imperfection of mine,too radical for removal,I never even hoped to stand high in his good graces.

My mother was,I dare say,as fond of me as she was of anyone;but she was a woman of a masculine and a worldly cast of mind.She had no tenderness or sympathy for the weaknesses,or even for the affections,of woman's nature and her demeanour towards me was peremptory,and often even harsh.

It is not to be supposed,then,that I found in the society of my parents much to supply the loss of my sister.About a year after her marriage,we received letters from Mr.Carew,containing accounts of my sister's health,which,though not actually alarming,were calculated to make us seriously uneasy.The symptoms most dwelt upon were loss of appetite and cough.