Jan Karon - In the Company of Others

‘It’s a very talkative household.’

‘You can say that again.’

‘Broughadoon is the perfect place at the perfect time, sweetheart. I love being here.’

‘Ah, Kavanagh, what don’t you love?’ It was another of their mantras.

‘The spelling of Jane Austen’s surname with an i. Cold showers. Fake orchids.’

How she came up with this stuff without a moment’s hesitation was as unfathomable to him as how to extract nickels from someone’s ear.

‘How’s your ankle?’

‘Hurts. But I took something for pain; it’ll be fine.’

He dumped stamps and pocket change on the dresser. ‘It was all that sitting for so many hours.’

She sneezed.

‘Bless you.’

While in the Rover, he’d thought of calling Robin, the Irish distant cousin who gave the tea party those years ago. He’d entered her number into his cell phone, not sure whether the number would even be current. And Dooley-he should call Dooley. His cell phone… where was it? Maybe in his blue jacket. He should probably look for the charger and the connector thing, and get some juice in it when the power came back.

She took a handkerchief from her jeans pocket and sneezed.

‘What’s with the sneezing?’

‘When you left, I was dying to go back to bed. But I couldn’t. After I sketched the view, I felt compelled to get dressed. Thought I’d visit the beech grove, and watch the chickens pecking at their kitchen scraps.’

She liked her birthday present; he relished seeing the pleasure in her.

‘But I got no further than the library, which is where I found this-beneath a stack of books in the corner. It spoke to me, somehow.’

She reached to the table beside the chair and hauled a large volume into her lap-it was a whopper. ‘Being the private journals of Cor-mac Padraigin Fintan O’Donnell, MD, Lough Arrow, County Sligo,’ she read from the fly-leaf. ‘And be warned-the dust of the ages is gathered here.’

She had a pretty volatile allergy to the dust of old books. ‘Should you be doing this?’ he asked.

‘I have to do this,’ she said.

She put on her glasses, opened the leather-bound book, and read to him.

14 March 1860

Freezing winds off the Lough

A late Spring of blistering cold yet Caitlin & I are besotted with comfort in our rude Cabin near the Lough-Thick walls, an agreeable hearth & a dirt Floor warmed by Uncle’s Turkey rugs have made it more than hospitable.

No draft can seek us out in our alcove bed-my Books line the walls on racks I joined myself & are a fine insulation into the bargain. For a Surgery, God in his mercy has given us a Turf Shed attached to the Cabin, a scantling of a room-it serves well enough though difficult to heat in frigid weather.

We have been spoiled these many years by the comfort of Uncle’s grand Residence in Philadelphia to which we repaired at his urging from our wedding sojurn in Italy. He spent such little time in his well-furnished Home that we had it nearly to ourselves & four servants into the bargain. C eventually assumed the running of his Household for which he esteemed her very highly. Uncle did not discuss where he often lodged-we assumed it was with someone rumoured to be his mistress, of whom he never spoke-at least to myself. We did not learn the surprising truth until his death.

C & I wonder yet why he declined to marry-surely it would have been socially beneficial to his many Enterprises. As well, we wondered at his refusal to attend Mass though we exhorted him on many occasions to come with us to Old St. Joseph’s. I confess that we never fully understood Uncle but had a profound affection for him as did countless others. For all the resentment of Irish in that city, he was admired & respected by Catholic & Protestant alike.

Working by Lantern to complete the Drawings-careful to restrain any impulse to vainglory though this in no way owing to Balfour’s summon to modesty. Such a consuming task could not be carried forth without Uncle’s rare & valuable books on architecture-Palladio and Inigo Jones being the masters who inspired the design of his fine house in the township of Philadelphia. Thanks to God for many felicitous hours spent with him as he labored over the drawings-often seeking my opinions and observations though they issued from rude instinct only.

Must amputate Danny Moore’s gangrenous leg on the morrow-he is but eighteen & the provider for his Mother, Grandmother, & four Sisters. Caitlin and I will travel horseback to their cabin for the surgery taking a basket of food, chloroform & a flask of Whiskey-what thin comfort can be offered at such a grievous time.

A desperate Circumstance-Heaven help this decent son of Ireland.

‘Here’s the backstory,’ she said. ‘Fintan O’Donnell was the bright, devout son of a poor tenant family who lived near Lough Arrow.’

‘Liam gave me a quick bit on O’Donnell. But keep going.’

‘Turns out he had what we’ve all dreamed of at one time or another-a rich uncle. So the uncle, who lived in Philadelphia and was busy making a fortune in shipping, said he would sponsor the brightest boy of his sister’s four. The family proposed Fintan, and off he went at age seventeen, frightened out of his wits. I was sorry for the brothers, how it must feel to be the unchosen, but they absolutely didn’t want any part of it and practically shoved him onto the boat.

‘He trained as a physician, had a very successful practice, and married a nurse whose family had immigrated from Roscommon. But he mourned the hunger years in Ireland and the evictions and the fevers and all the rest-he said he could sometimes audibly hear the tolling of the death bell and the lamentations of his people.

‘He wrote this in the frontispiece:

I hereby stand with the venerable William Stokes who said when elected President of the College of Physicians: Loving my unhappy Country with a Love so intense as to be a Pain, its miseries & downward Progress have lacerated my very heart.

‘When he was fifty years old, he came home to Lough Arrow with his wife, Caitlin, to devote himself to the poor. His uncle had died some time before and the estate passed to Dr. O’Donnell. In light of that and the money he’d earned in his practice, he had deep pockets to fund a free clinic.

‘Timothy? Are you all right or shall I stop?’

‘Don’t stop; I’m with you.’ He moved to the wing chair; he would just rest his eyes…

‘The doctor and his wife were looking for land in these parts and made the acquaintance of Lord Balfour, an Englishman who’d built a big pile up the road from Broughadoon. Good timing, or maybe not, Fintan saved the life of the lord’s ten-year-old daughter, and made some headway with the old boy’s dysentery. So Balfour gave the doctor roughly two hundred acres of his own immense property, but with the caveat-get this-that O’Donnell wouldn’t put on airs in the architecture of his house. O’Donnell thought it would be grand to accept the land.’ She sneezed. ‘Want me to stop?’

‘No, no. Go on.’

17 May

S. O’Connor came with his wife last night at a late hour-having no pony, S. walked the four miles in the traces of his cart, pulling her along-her abdomen swollen & tender, much vomiting.

Attempted to remove Appendix but too late-expired ten minutes past midnight, S. distraught, keening, alarming the dogs-Caitlin managed to hold the poor man down as I dosed him with Laudanum-he slept warm in Surgery beneath one of the Turkey rugs.

S. returns the corpse home after noon this day-the putrid smell from the rupture pervades the Surgery & cannot be kept from the Cabin though the windows be thrown open.

A cruel cold rain at seven this morning-we pray heaven would stanch it for the cart to pass home dry.