Life in the Clearings Versus the Bush Page 22

  Here the mother again interposed.

  “My good woman,” I said gently putting her back, “you hear your son’s earnest request. If you really love him, you will offer no opposition to his wishes. It is not a question of creeds that is here to be determined, as to which is the best – yours or mine. I trust that all the faithful followers of Christ, however named, hold the same faith, and will be saved by the same means. I shall make no comment on what I read to your son. The Bible is its own interpreter. The Spirit of God, by whom it was dictated, will make it clear to his comprehension. Michael, shall I commence now? ”

  “Yes,” he replied, “with the blessing of God!”

  After putting up a short prayer I commenced reading, and continued to do so until night, taking care to select those portions of Scripture most applicable to his case. Never did human creature listen with more earnestness to the words of truth. Often he repeated whole texts after me, clasping his hands together in a sort of ecstasy, while tears streamed from his eyes. The old woman glared upon me from a far corner, and muttered over her beads, as if they were a spell to secure her against some diabolical art. When I could no longer see to read, Michael took my hand, and said with great earnestness –

  “May God bless you, Madam! You have made me very happy. It is all clear to me now. In Christ alone I shall obtain mercy and forgiveness for my sins. It is his righteousness, and not any good works of my own, that will save me. Death no longer appears so dreadful to me. I can now die in peace.”

  “You believe that God will pardon you, Michael, for Christ’s sake; but have you forgiven all your enemies?”

  I said this in order to try his sincerity, for I had heard that he entertained hard thoughts against his uncle.

  He covered his face with his thin, wasted hands, and did not answer for some minutes; at length he looked up with a calm smile upon his lips, and said –

  “Yes, I have forgiven all – even him! –”

  Oh, how much was contained in the stress laid so strongly and sadly upon that little word Him! How I longed to hear the story of his wrongs from his own lips! but he was too weak and exhausted for me to urge such a request. Just then Dr. Morton came in, and after standing for some minutes at the bed-side, regarding his patient with fixed attention, he felt his pulse, spoke a few kind words, gave some trifling order to his mother and Mrs. C—, and left the room. Struck by the solemnity of his manner, I followed him into the outer apartment.

  “Excuse the liberty I am taking Dr. Morton; but I feel deeply interested in your patient. Is he better or worse?”

  “He is dying. I did not wish to disturb him in his last moments. I can be of no further use to him. Poor lad, it’s a pity! he is really a fine young fellow.”

  I had judged from Michael’s appearance that he had not long to live, but I felt inexpressibly shocked to find his end so near. On returning to the sick room, Michael eagerly asked what the doctor thought of him?

  I did not answer – I could not.

  “I see,” he said, “that I must die. I will prepare myself for it. If I live until the morning, will you, Madam, come and read to me again?”

  I promised him that I would – or during the night, if he wished it.

  “I feel very sleepy,” he said. “I have not slept for many nights, but for a few minutes at a time. Thank God, I am entirely free from pain: it is very good of Him to grant me this respite.”

  His mother and I adjusted his pillows, and in a few seconds he was slumbering as peacefully as a little child.

  The feelings of the poor woman seemed softened towards me, and for the first time since I entered the room she shed tears. I asked the age of her son? She told me that he was two-and-twenty. She wrung my hand hard as I left the room, and thanked me for my kindness to her poor bhoy.

  It was late that night when my husband returned from the country, and we sat for several hours talking over our affairs, and discussing the soil and situation of the various farms he had visited during the day. It was past twelve when we retired to rest, but my sleep was soon disturbed by some one coughing violently, and my thoughts instantly reverted to Michael Macbride, as the hoarse sepulchral sounds echoed through the large empty room beyond which he slept. The coughing continued for some minutes, and I was so much overcome by fatigue and the excitement of the evening that I fell asleep, and did not awake until six o’clock the following morning.

  Anxious to hear how the poor invalid had passed the night, I dressed myself and hurried to his chamber.

  On entering the ball-room I found the doors and windows all open, as well as the one that led to the sick man’s chamber. My foot was arrested on the threshold – for death was there. Yes! that fit of coughing had terminated his life – Michael had expired without a struggle in the arms of his mother.

  The gay broad beams of the sun were not admitted into that silent room. The window was open, but the green blinds were carefully closed, admitting a free circulation of air, and just light enough to render the objects within distinctly visible. The body was laid out upon the bed enveloped in a white sheet; the head and hands alone were bare. All traces of sorrow and disease had passed away from the majestic face, that, interesting in life, now looked beautiful and holy in death and happy, for the seal of heaven seemed visibly impressed upon the pure pale brow. He was at peace, and though tears of human sympathy for a moment dimmed my sight, I could not regret that it was so.

  While I still stood in the door-way, Mrs. Macbride, whom I had not observed until then, rose from her knees beside the bed. She seemed hardly in her right mind, and began talking and muttering to herself.

  “Och hone! he is dead – my fine bhoy is dead widout a praste to pray wid him, or bless him in the last hour – wid none of his frinds and relations to lamint iver him, or wake him, but his poor heartbroken mother – Och hone! och hone! that I should ever live to see this day. Get up, my fine bhoy – get up wid ye! Why do you lie there? – owlder folk nor you are abroad in the sunshine. – Get up, and show them how supple you are!”

  Then laying her cheek down to the cold cheek of the dead, she exclaimed, amid broken sobs and groans –

  “Oh, spake to me – spake to me, Mike – my own Mike –’tis the mother that axes ye.”

  There was a deep pause, when the bereaved parent again broke forth –

  “Mike, Mike – why did your uncle rare you like a jintle-man to bring you to this. Och hone! och hone! – oh, never did I think to see your head lie so low. – My bhoy! my bhoy! – why did you die? – Why did you lave your frinds, and your money, and your good clothes, and your poor owld mother?”

  Convulsive sobs again choked her utterance. She flung herself upon the neck of the corpse, and bathed the face and hands of him, who had once been her own, with burning tears.

  I now came forward, and offered a few words of consolation. Vain – all in vain. The ear of sorrow is deaf to all save its own agonised moans. Grief is as natural to the human mind as joy, and in their own appointed hour both will have their way.

  The grief of this unhappy Irish mother, like the down-pouring of a thunder shower, could not be restrained. But her tears soon flowed in less violent gushes – exhaustion rendered her more calm. She sat upon the bed, and looked cautiously round –“Hist! – did not you hear a voice? It was him who spake – yes – it was his own swate voice. I knew he was not dead. See, he moves!” This was the fond vain delusion of maternal love. She took his cold hand, and clasped it to her heart.

  “Och hone! – he is gone, and left me for ever and ever. Oh, that my cruel brother was here – that I might point to my murthered child, and curse him to his face!”

  “Is Mr. C—your brother?” said I, taking this opportunity to divert her grief into another channel.

  “Yes – yes – he is my brother, bad cess to him! and uncle to the bhoy. Listen to me, and I will tell you some of my mind. It will ease my sorrow, for my poor heart is breaking entirely, and he is there,” pointing to the corpse, “and he
knows that what I am afther telling you is thrue.

  “I came of poor but dacent parints. There was but the two of us, Pat C—and I. My father rinted a good farm, and he sint Pat to school, and gave him the eddication of a jintle-man. Our landlord took a liking for the bhoy, and gave him the manes to emigrate to Canady. This vexed my father intirely, for he had no one barring myself to help him on the farm. Well, by and by, I joined myself to one whom my father did not approve – a bhoy he had hired to work wid him in the fields – an’ he wrote to my brother (for my mother had been dead ever since I was a wee thing) to ax him in what manner he had best punish my disobedience; and he jist advises him to turn us off the place. I suffered, wid my husband, the extremes of poverty: we had seven childer, but they all died of the faver, and hard times, save Mike and the two weeny ones. In the midst of our disthress, it plased the Lord to remove my father, wid out softenin’ his heart towards me. But he left my Mike three hunder pounds, to be his whin he came to a right age; and he appointed my brother Pat guardian to the bhoy.

  “My brother returned to Ireland when he got the news of my father’s death, in order to get his share of the property, for my father left him the same as he did my son. He took away my bhoy wid him to Canady, in order to make a landed jintleman of him. Och hone! I thought my heart would broken thin, whin he took away my swate bhoy; but I was to live to see a darker day yet.”

  Here a long burst of passionate weeping interrupted her story.

  “Many long years came an’ wint, and we niver got the scrape of a pen from my brother to tell us of the bhoy at all at all. He might jist as well have been dead, for aught we knew to the conthrary; but we consowled oursilves wid the thought, that he would niver go about to harm his own flesh and blood.

  “At last a letther came, written in Mike’s own hand; and a beautiful hand it was that same, – the good God bless him for the throuble he took in makin’ it so nate an’ aisy for us poor folk to rade. It was full of love and respict to his poor parents, an’ he longin’ to see them in ‘Meriky; but he said he had written by stealth, for he was very unhappy intirely, – that his uncle thrated him hardly, becaze he would not be a praste, – an’ wanted to lave him, to work for himsel’; an’ he refused to buy him a farm wid the money his grandfather left him, which he was bound by the will to do, as Mike was now of age, an’ his own masther.

  “Whin we got the word from the lad, we gathered our little all together, an’ took passage for Canady, first writin’ to Mike whin we should start, an’ the name of the vessel; an’ that we should wait at Cobourg until sich time as he came to fetch us himsel’ to his uncle’s place.

  “But oh, Ma’am, our throubles had only begun. My poor husband and my youngest bhoy died of the cholera comin’ out; an’ I saw their prechious bodies cast into the salt, salt saa. Still the hope of seeing Mike consowled me for all my disthress. Poor Pat an’ I were worn out entirely whin we got to Kingston, an’ I left the child wid a frind, an’ came on alone, – I was so eager to see Mike, an’ tell him all my throubles; an’ there he lies, och hone! my heart, my poor heart, it will break entirely.”

  “And what caused your son’s separation from his uncle?” said I.

  The woman shook her head. “The thratement he got from him was too bad. But shure he would not disthress me by saying aught agin my mother’s son. Did he not break his heart, and turn him dying an’ pinniless on the wide world? An’ could he have done worse had he stuck a knife into his heart?”

  “Ah!” she continued, with bitterness, “it was the gowld, the dhirty gowld, that kilt my poor bhoy. His uncle knew that if Mike were dead, it would come to Pat as the ne’est in degree, an’ he could keep it all to himsel’ for the ne’est ten years.”

  This statement appeared only too probable. Still there was a mystery about the whole affair that required a solution, and it was several years before I accidentally learned the sequel of this sad history.

  In the meanwhile the messenger, despatched by the kind Mr. S—to Peterboro’ to inform Michael’s uncle of the dying state of his nephew, returned without that worthy, and with this unfeeling message – that Michael Macbride had left him without any just cause, and should receive no consolation from him in his last moments.

  Mr. S—did not inform the poor bereaved widow of her brother’s cruel message; but finding that she was unable to defray the expenses attendant on her son’s funeral, like a true Samaritan, he supplied them out of his own pocket, and followed the remains of the unhappy stranger that Providence had cast upon his charity to the grave. In accordance with Michael’s last request, he was buried in the cemetry of the English church.

  Six years after these events took place, Mr. W—called upon me at our place in Douro, and among other things told me of the death of Michael’s uncle, Mr. C—. Many things were mentioned by Mr. W—, who happened to know him, to his disadvantage. “But of all his evil acts,” he said, “the worst thing I knew of him was his conduct to his nephew.”

  “How was that?” said I, as the death-bed of Michael Macbride rose distinctly before me.

  “It was a bad business. My housekeeper lived with the old man at the time, and from her I heard all about it. It seems that he had been left guardian to this boy, whom he brought out with him some years ago to this country, together with a little girl about two years younger, who was the child of a daughter of his mother by a former marriage, so that the children were half-cousins to each other. Elizabeth was a modest, clever little creature, and grew up a very pretty girl. Michael was strikingly handsome, had a fine talent for music, and in person and manners was far above his condition. There was some property, to the amount of several hundred pounds, coming to the lad when he reached the age of twenty-one. This legacy had been left him by his grandfather, and Mr. C—was to invest it in land for the boy’s use. This, for reasons best known to himself, he neglected to do, and brought the lad up to the service of the altar, and continually urged him to become a priest. This did not at all accord with Michael’s views and wishes, and he obstinately refused to study for the holy office, and told his uncle that he meant to become a farmer as soon as he obtained his majority.

  “Living constantly in the same house, and possessing a congeniality of tastes and pursuits, a strong affection had grown up between Michael and his cousin, which circumstance proved the ostensible reason given by Mr. C—for his ill conduct to the young people, as by the laws of his church they were too near of kin to marry. Finding that their attachment was too strong to be wrenched asunder by threats, and that they had actually formed a design to leave him, and embrace the Protestant faith, he confined the girl to her chamber, without allowing her a fire during a very severe winter. Her constitution, naturally weak, sunk under these trials, and she died early in the spring of 1832, without being allowed the melancholy satisfaction of seeing her lover before she closed her brief life.

  “Her death decided Michael’s fate. Rendered desperate by grief, he reproached his bigoted uncle as the author of his misery, and demanded of him a settlement of his property, as it was his intention to quit his roof for ever. Mr. C—laughed at his reproaches, and treated his threats with scorn, and finally cast him friendless upon the world.

  “The poor fellow played very well upon the flute, and possessed an excellent tenor voice; and, by the means of these accomplishments, he contrived for a few weeks to obtain a precarious living.

  “Broken-hearted and alone in the world, he soon fell a victim to hereditary disease of the lungs, and died, I have been told, at an hotel in Cobourg; and was buried at the expense of Mr. S—, the tavern-keeper, out of charity.”

  “The latter part of your statement I know to be correct; and the whole of it forcibly corroborates the account given to me by the poor lad’s mother. I was at Michael’s death-bed; and if his life was replete with sorrow and injustice, his last hours were peaceful and happy.”

  I could now fully comprehend the meaning of the sad stress laid upon the one word, which had struc
k me so forcibly at the time, when I asked him if he had forgiven all his enemies, and he replied, after that lengthened pause, “Yes; I have forgiven them all – even him!”

  It did, indeed, require some exertion of Christian forbearance to forgive such injuries.

  SONG.

  “There’s hope for those who sleep

  In the cold and silent grave,

  For those who smile, for those who weep,

  For the freeman and the slave!

  “There’s hope on the battle plain,

  ’Mid the shock of charging foes;

  On the dark and troubled main,

  When the gale in thunder blows.

  “He who dispenses hope to all,

  Withholds it not from thee;

  He breaks the woe-worn captive’s thrall,

  And sets the prisoner free!”

  * Michael Macbride was not the real name of this poor young man, but is one substituted by the author.

  JEANIE BURNS

  “Ah, human hearts are strangely cast,

  Time softens grief and pain;

  Like reeds that shiver in the blast,

  They bend to rise again.

  But she in silence bowed her head,

  To none her sorrow would impart:

  Earth’s faithful arms enclose the dead,

  And hide for aye her broken heart.”

  S.M.

  While the steamboat is leaving Cobourg in the distance, and, through the hours of night and darkness, holds on her course to Toronto, I will relate another true but mournful history from the romance of real life, that was told to me during my residence in this part of the country. One morning our man-servant, James N—, came to me to request the loan of one of the horses to attend a funeral. M—was absent on business at Toronto, and the horses and the man’s time were both greatly needed to prepare the land for the full crop of wheat. I demurred; James looked anxious and disappointed; and the loan of the horse was at length granted, but not without a strict injunction that he should return to his work directly the funeral was over. He did not come back until late that evening.