The O'Donoghue: Tale of Ireland Fifty Years Ago. Lever Charles James

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СКАЧАТЬ who had attained to any height in his art, had a perfect right to dispense with all the amenities and courtesies which regulate social life among less privileged persons. The concessions now only yielded to a cook, were then extended to a physician; and in accordance with the privilege by which he administered most nauseous doses to the body, he was suffered to extend his dominion, and apply scarcely more palatable remedies to the minds of his patients. As if the ill-flavoured draughts had tinctured the spirit that conceived them, the tone of his thoughts usually smacked of bitters, until at last he seemed to have realized, in his own person, the conflicting agencies of the pharmacopoeia, and was at once acrid, and pungent, and soporific together.

      The College of Physicians could never have reproached Doctor Roach with conceding a single iota of their privileges. Never was there one who more stoutly maintained, in his whole practice through life, the blessed immunity of “the Doctor.” The magic word “Recipe,” which headed his prescriptions, suggested a tone of command to all he said, and both his drugs and dicta were swallowed without remonstrance.

      It may not be a flattering confession for humanity, but it is assuredly a true one, that the exercise of power, no matter how humble its sphere, or how limited its range, will eventually generate a tyrannical habit in him who wields it. Doctor Roach was certainly not the exception to this rule. The Czar himself was not more autocrat in the steppes of Russia, than was he in any house where sickness had found entrance. From that hour he planted his throne there. All the caprices of age, all the follies of childhood, the accustomed freedoms of home, the indulgences which grow up by habit in a household, had to give way before a monarch more potent than all, “the Doctor.” Men bore the infliction with the same patient endurance they summoned to sustain the malady. They felt it to be grievous and miserable, but they looked forward to a period of relief, and panted for the arrival of the hour, when the disease and the doctor would take their departure together.

      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 СКАЧАТЬ