Charles Lever - The O'Donoghue - Tale of Ireland Fifty Years Ago

If the delight they experienced at such a consummation was extreme, so to the physician it savoured of ingratitude. “I saved his life yesterday,” saith he, “and see how happy he is, to dismiss me to-day.” But who is ever grateful for the pangs of a toothache? – or what heart can find pleasure in the memory of sententiousness, senna, and low diet?

Never were the blessings of restored health felt with a more suitable thankfulness than by Doctor Roach’s patients. To be free once more from his creaking shoes, his little low dry cough, his harsh accents, his harsher words, his contradictions, his sneers, and his selfishness, shed a halo around recovery, which the friends of the patient could not properly appreciate.

Such was the individual whose rumbling and rattling vehicle now entered the court-yard of Carrig-na-curra, escorted by poor Terry, who had accompanied him the entire way on foot. The distance he had come, his more than doubts about the fee, the severity of the storm, were not the accessories likely to amend the infirmities of his temper; while a still greater source of irritation than all existed in the mutual feeling of dislike between him and Sir Archibald M’Nab. An occasional meeting at a little boarding-house in Killarney, which Sir Archy was in the habit of visiting each summer for a few days – the only recreation he permitted himself – had cultivated this sentiment to such a pitch, that they never met without disagreement, or parted without an actual quarrel. The doctor was a democrat, and a Romanist of the first water; Sir Archy was a member of the Scottish Episcopal Church; and, whatever might have been his early leanings in politics, and in whatever companionship his active years were passed, experience had taught him the fallacy of many opinions, which owe any appearance of truth or stability they possess, to the fact, that they have never advanced beyond the stage of speculative notions, into the realms of actual and practical existence; – but, above all, the prudent Scotchman dreaded the prevalence of these doctrines among young and unsettled minds, ever ready to prefer the short and hazardous career of fortune, to the slow and patient drudgery of daily industry.

If the doctor anticipated but little enjoyment in the society of Sir Archy, neither did the latter hope for any pleasure to himself from Roach’s company. However, as the case of poor Herbert became each hour more threatening, the old man resolved to bury in oblivion every topic of mutual disagreement, and, so long as the doctor remained in the house, to make every possible or impossible concession to conciliate the good-will of one, on whose services so much depended.

“Do ye hear?” cried Roach in a harsh voice to Kerry, who was summoned from the kitchen-fire to take charge of his horse; “let the pony have a mash of bran – a hot mash, and don’t leave him till he’s dry.”

“Never fear, sir,” replied Kerry, as he led the jaded and way-worn beast into the stable, “I’ll take care of him as if he was a racer;” and then, as Roach disappeared, added – “I’d like to see myself strapping the likes of him – an ould mountaineer. A mash of bran, indeed! Cock him up with bran! Begorra, ‘tis thistles and docks he’s most used to;” and, with this sage reflection on the beast’s habits, he locked the stable door, and resumed his former place beside the blazing turf fire.

O’Donoghue’s reception of the doctor was most cordial. He was glad to see him on several accounts. He was glad to see any one who could tell him what was doing in the world, from which all his intercourse was cut off; he was glad, because the supper was waiting an hour and a half beyond its usual time, and he was getting uncommonly hungry; and, lastly, he really felt anxious about Herbert, whenever by any chance his thoughts took that direction.

“How are you, Roach?” cried he, advancing to meet him with an extended hand. “This is a kind thing of you – you’ve had a dreadful day, I fear.”

“D – n me, if I ever saw it otherwise in this confounded glen. I never set foot in it, that I wasn’t wet through.”

“We have our share of rain, indeed,” replied the other, with a good-humoured laugh; “but if we have storm, we have shelter.”

Intentionally misunderstanding the allusion, and applying to the ruined mansion the praise bestowed on the bold mountains, the doctor threw a despairing look around the room, and repeated the word “shelter” in a voice far from complimentary.

The O’Donoghue’s blood was up in a moment. His brow contracted and his cheek flushed, as, in a low and deep tone, he said —

“It is a crazy old concern. You are right enough – neither the walls nor the company within them, are like what they once were.”

The look with which these words were given, recalled the doctor to a sense of his own impertinence; for, like certain tethered animals, who never become conscious of restraint till the check of the rope lays them on their back, nothing short of such a home-blow could have staggered his self-conceit.

“Ay, ay,” muttered he, with a cackling apology for a laugh, “time is telling on us all. – But I’m keeping the supper waiting.”

The duties of hospitality were always enough to make O’Donoghue forget any momentary chagrin, and he seated himself at the table with all his wonted good-humour and affability.

As the meal proceeded, the doctor inquired about the sick boy, and the circumstances attending his illness; the interest he bestowed on the narrative mainly depending on the mention of Sir Marmaduke Travers’s name, whose presence in the country he was not aware of before, and from whose residence he began already to speculate on many benefits to himself.

“They told me,” continued O’Donoghue, “that the lad behaved admirably. In fact, if the old weir-rapid be any thing like what I remember it, the danger was no common one. There used to be a current there strong enough to carry away a dozen horsemen.”

“And how is the young lady? Is she nothing the worse from the cold, and the drenching, and the shock of the accident?”

“Faith, I must confess it, I have not had the grace to ask after her. Living as I have been for some years back, has left me sadly in arrear with every demand of the world. Sir Marmaduke was polite enough to say he’d call on me; but there is a still greater favour he could bestow, which is, to leave me alone.”

“There was a law-suit or dispute of some kind or other between you, was there not?”

“There is something of that kind,” said O’Donoghue, with an air of annoyance at the question; “but these are matters gentlemen leave to their lawyers, and seek not to mix themselves up with.”

“The strong purse is the sinew of war,” muttered the inexorable doctor; “and they tell me he is one of the wealthiest men in England.”

“He may be, for aught I know or care.”

“Well, well,” resumed the other, after a long deliberative pause, “there’s no knowing how this little adventure may turn out. If your son saved the girl’s life, I scarcely think he could press you so hard about – ”

“Take care, sir,” broke in O’Donoghue, and with the words he seized the doctor’s wrist in his strong grasp; “take care how you venture to speak of affairs which no wise concern you;” then, seeing the terrified look his speech called up, he added – “I have been very irritable latterly, and never desire to talk on these subjects; so, if you please, we’ll change the topic.”

The door was cautiously opened at this moment, and Kerry presented himself, with a request from Sir Archibald, that, as soon as Doctor Roach found it convenient, he would be glad to see him in the sick-room.

“I am ready now,” said the doctor, rising from his chair, and not by any means sorry at the opportunity of escaping a tête-a-tête he had contrived to render so unpalatable to both parties. As he mounted the stairs, he continued in broken phrases to inveigh against the house and the host in a half soliloquy – “A tumble-down old barrack it is – not fifty shillings worth of furniture under the roof – the ducks were as tough as soaked parchment – and where’s the fee to come from – I wish I knew that – unless I take one of these old devils instead of it;” and he touched the frame of a large, damp, discoloured portrait of some long-buried ancestor, several of which figured on the walls of the stair-case.