John, as he looked round the circle, and thought of his dying uncle, was forcibly reminded of the scene at Don Quixote’s departure, where, in spite of the grief caused by the dissolution of the worthy knight, we are informed that “nevertheless the niece eat her victuals, the housekeeper drank to the repose of his soul, and even Sancho cherished his little carcase.” After returning, “as he might,” the courtesies of the party, John asked how his uncle was. “As bad as he can be;”—“Much better, and many thanks to your honor,” was uttered in such rapid and discordant unison by the party, that John turned from one to the other, not knowing which or what to believe.
“They say his honor has had a fright,” said a fellow, upwards of six feet high, approaching by way of whispering, and then bellowing the sound six inches above John’s head.
“But then his honor has had a cool since,” said a man who was quietly swallowing the spirits that John had refused.
At these words the Sybil who sat in the chimney corner slowly drew her pipe from her mouth, and turned towards the party: The oracular movements of a Pythoness on her tripod never excited more awe, or impressed for the moment a deeper silence. “It’s not here,” said she, pressing her withered finger on her wrinkled forehead, “nor here—nor here;” and she extended her hand to the foreheads of those who were near her, who all bowed as if they were receiving a benediction, but had immediate recourse to the spirits afterwards, as if to ensure its effects.—“It’s all here—it’s all about the heart;” and as she spoke she spread and pressed her fingers on her hollow bosom with a force of action that thrilled her hearers.—“It’s all here,” she added, repeating the action (probably excited by the effect she had produced), and then sunk on her seat, resumed her pipe, and spoke no more.
At this moment of involuntary awe on the part of John, and of terrified silence on that of the rest, an unusual sound was heard in the house, and the whole company started as if a musket had been discharged among them:—it was the unwonted sound of old Melmoth’s bell. His domestics were so few, and so constantly near him, that the sound of his bell startled them as much as if he had been ringing the knell for his own interment. “He used always to rap down for me,” said the old housekeeper, hurrying out of the kitchen; “he said pulling the bells wore out the ropes.”
The sound of the bell produced its full effect. The housekeeper rushed into the room, followed by a number of women (the Irish praeficae), all ready to prescribe for the dying or weep for the dead—all clapping their hard hands, or wiping their dry eyes. These hags all surrounded the bed; and to witness their loud, wild, and desperate grief, their cries of “Oh! he’s going, his honor’s going, his honor’s going,” one would have imagined their lives were bound up in his, like those of the wives in the story of Sinbad the Sailor, who were to be interred alive with their deceased husbands.
Four of them wrung their hands and howled round the bed, while one, with all the adroitness of a Mrs. Quickly, felt his honor’s feet, and “upward and upward,” and “all was cold as any stone.”
Old Melmoth withdrew his feet from the grasp of the hag—counted with his keen eye (keen amid the approaching dimness of death) the number assembled round his bed—raised himself on his sharp elbow, and pushing away the housekeeper (who attempted to settle his nightcap, that had been shoved on one side in the struggle, and gave his haggard, dying face, a kind of grotesque fierceness), bellowed out in tones that made the company start—“What the devil brought ye all here?”
The question scattered the whole party for a moment; but rallying instantly, they communed among themselves in whispers, and frequently using the sign of the cross, muttered “The devil—Christ save us, the devil in his mouth the first word he spoke.”
“Aye,” roared the invalid, “and the devil in my eye the first sight I see.”
“Where—where?” cried the terrified housekeeper, clinging close to the invalid in her terror, and half-hiding herself in the blanket, which she snatched without mercy from his struggling and exposed limbs.
“There, there,” he repeated (during the battle of the blanket), pointing to the huddled and terrified women, who stood aghast at hearing themselves arointed as the very demons they came to banish.
“Oh! Lord keep your honor’s head,” said the housekeeper in a more soothing tone, when her fright was over; “and sure your honor knows them all, is’n’t her name—and her name—and her name,”—and she pointed respectively to each of them, adding their names, which we shall spare the English reader the torture of reciting (as a proof of our lenity, adding the last only, Cotchleen O’Mulligan).
“Ye lie, ye b⸺h,” growled old Melmoth; “their name is Legion, for they are many—turn them all out of the room—turn them all out of doors—if they howl at my death, they shall howl in earnest—not for my death, for they would see me dead and damned too with dry eyes, but for want of the whiskey that they would have stolen if they could have got at it,” (and here
