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The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine, a novel by William Carleton |
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Chapter 25. Sarah Without Hope |
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_ CHAPTER XXV. Sarah Without Hope How Sarah returned to Dalton's cabin she herself knew not. Such was the tumult which the communication then made to her by Mave, had occasioned in her mind, that, the scene which had just taken place, altogether appeared to her excited spirit like a troubled dream, whose impressions were too unreal and deceptive to be depended on for a moment. The reaction from the passive state in which Mave had left her, was, to a temperament like her's, perfectly overwhelming. Her pulse beat high, her cheek burned, and her eye flashed with more than its usual fire and overpowering brilliancy, and, with the exception of one impression alone, all her thoughts were so rapid and indistinct as to resemble the careering clouds which fly in tumult and confusion along the troubled sky, with nothing stationary but the sun far above, and which, in this case, might be said to resemble the bright conviction of Dalton's love for her, that Mave's assurance had left behind it. On re-entering the cabin, without being properly conscious of what she either did or said, she once more knelt by the side of Dalton's bed, and hastily taking his unresisting hand, was about to speak; but a difficulty how to shape her language held her in a painful and troubled suspense for some moments, during which Dalton could plainly perceive the excitement, or rather rapture, by which she was actuated. At length a gush of hot and burning tears enabled her to speak, and she said: "Con Dalton--dear Con, is it true? can it be true?--oh, no--no--but, then, she says it--is it true that you like me--like me!--no, no--that word is too wake--is it true that you love me? but no--it can't be--there never was so much happiness intended for me; and then, if it should be true--oh, if it was possible, how will I bear it? what will I do? what--is to be the consequence? for my love for you is beyond all belief--beyond all that tongue can tell. I can't stand this struggle--my head is giddy--I scarcely know what I'm sayin', or is it a dhrame that I'll waken from, and find it false--false?" Dalton pressed her hand, and looking tenderly upon her face, replied: "Dear Sarah, forgive me; your dhrame is both thrue and false. It is true that I like you--that I pity you; but you forbid me to say that--well it is true, I say, that I like you; but I can't say more. The only girl I love in the sense you mane, is Mave Sullivan. I could not tell you an untruth, Sarah; nor don't desave yourself. I like you, but I love her." She started up, and in an instant dashed the tears from her cheeks; after which she said: "I am glad to know it; you have said the truth--the bitther truth; ay, bitther it will prove, Condy Dalton, to more than me. My happiness in this world is now over forever. I never was happy; an' its clear that the doom is against me; I never will be happy. I am now free to act as I like. No matther what I do, it can't make me feel more than I feel now. I might take a life; ay, twenty, an' I couldn't feel more miserable than I am. Then, what is there to prevent me from workin' out my own will, an' doin' what my father wishes? I may make myself worse an' guiltier; but unhappier I cannot be. That poor, weak hope was all I had in this world; but that is gone; and I have no other hope now." "Compose yourself, dear Sarah; calm yourself," said Dalton. "Don't call me dear Sarah," she replied; "you were wrong ever to do so. Oh, why was I born! an' what has this world an' this life been to me but hardship an' sorrow? But still," she added, drawing herself up, "I will let you all see what pride can do. I now know my fate, an' what I must suffer: an' if one tear would gain your love, I wouldn't shed it--never, never." "Sarah," said Mary, in a soothing voice, "I hope you won't blame poor Con. You don't know maybe that himself an' Mave Sullivan has loved one another ever since they were--" "No more about Mave Sullivan," she replied, almost fiercely; "lave her to me. As for me, I'll not brake my word, either for good or evil; I was never the one to do an ungenerous--an ungenerous--no--" She paused, however, as if struck by some latent conviction, and, in a panting voice, she added, "I must lave you for a while, but I will be back in an hour or two; oh, yes I will; an' in the mane time, Mary, anything that is to be done, you can do it for me till I come agin. Mave Sullivan! Mave Sullivan! lave Mave Sullivan to me!" She then threw an humble garment about her, and in a few minutes was on her way to have an interview with her father. On reaching home, she found that he had arrived only a few minutes before her; and to her surprise he expressed something like; good humor, or, perhaps, gratification at her presence there. On looking into her face more closely, however, he had little trouble in perceiving that something extraordinary had disturbed her. He then glanced at Nelly, who, as usual, sat gloomily by the fire, knitting her brows and groaning with suppressed ill-temper as she had been in the habit of doing, ever since she suspected that Donnel had made a certain disclosure, connecting with her, to Sarah. "Well," said he, "has there been another battle? have you been ding dust at it as usual? What's wrong, Sally? eh? Did it go to blows wid you, for you looked raised?" "You're all out of it," replied Nelly; "her blood's up, now, an' I'm not prepared for a sudden death. She's dangerous this minute, an' I'll take care of her. Blessed man, look at her eyes." She repeated these words with that kind of low, dogged ridicule and scorn which so frequently accompany stupid and wanton brutality; and which are, besides, provoking, almost beyond endurance, when the mind is chafed by a consideration of an exciting nature. Sarah flew like lightning to the old knife, which we have already mentioned, and, snatching it from the shelf of the dresser, on which it lay, exclaimed: "I have now no earthly thought, nor any hope of good in this world, to keep my hand from evil; an' for all ever you made me suffer, take this--" Her father had not yet sat down, and it was, indeed, well that he had not--for it required all his activity and strength united, to intercept the meditated blow, by seizing his daughter's arm.' "Sarah," said he, "what is this? are you mad, you murdhering jade, to attempt the vagabond's life? for she is a vagabond, and an ill-tongued vagabond. Why do you provoke the girl by sich language, you double-distilled ould sthrap? you do nothin' but growl an' snarl, an' curse, an' pray--ay, pray, from mornin' to night, in sich a way, that the very devil himself could not bear you, or live wid you. Begone out o' this, or I'll let her at you, an' I'll engage she'll give you what'll settle you." Nelly rose, and putting on her cloak went out. "I'm goin'," she replied, looking at, and addressing the Prophet; "an' plaise God, before long I'll have the best wish o' my heart fulfilled, by seein' you hanged; but, until then, may my curse, an' the curse o' God light on you and pursue you. I know you have tould her everything, or she wouldn't act towards me as she has done of late." Sarah stood like the Pythoness, in a kind of savage beauty, with the knife firmly grasped in her hand. "I'm glad she's gone," she said; "but it's not her, father, that I ought to raise my hand against." "Who then, Sarah?" he asked, with something like surprise. "You asked me," she proceeded, "to assist in a plan to have Mave Sullivan carried off by young Dick o' the Grange--I'm now ready for anything, and I'll do it. This world, father, has nothing good or happy in it for me--now I'll be aquil to it; if it gives me nothing good, it'll get nothing out of me. I'll give it blow for blow; kindness, good fortune, if it was to happen--but it can't now--would soften me; but I know, I feel that ill-treatment, crosses, disappointments, an' want of all hope in this life, has made, an' will make me a devil--ay, an' oh! what a different girl I might be this day!" "What has vexed you?" asked the father "for I see that something has." "Isn't it a cruel thing," she proceeded, without seeming to have attended to him; "isn't it a cruel thing to think that every one you see about you has some happiness except yourself; an' that your heart is burstin', an' your brain burnin', an' no relief for you; no one point to turn to, for consolation--but everything dark and dismal, and fiery about you?" "I feel all this myself," said the Prophet; "so, don't be disheartened, Sarah; in the coorse o' time your heart will get so hardened that you'll laugh at the world--ay, at all that's either bad or good in it, as I do." "I never wish to come to that state," she replied; "an' you never felt what I feel--you never had that much of what was good in your heart. No," she proceeded, "sooner than come to that state--that is, to your state--I'd put this knife into my heart. You, father, never loved one of your own kind yet." "Didn't I?" he replied, while his eyes lightened into a glare like those of a provoked tiger; "ay, I loved one of our kind--of your kind; loved her--ay, an' was happy wid her--oh, how happy. Ah, Sarah M'Gowan, an' I loved my fellow-creatures then, too, like a fool as I was: loved, ay, loved; an' she that I so loved proved false to me--proved an adulteress; an' I tell you now, that it may harden your heart against the world, that that woman--my wife--that I so loved, an' that so disgraced me, was your mother." "It's a lie--it's as false as the devil himself," she replied, turning round quickly, and looking him with frantic vehemence of manner in the face. "My mother never did what you say. She's now in her grave, an' can't speak for or defend herself; but if I were to stand here till judgment day, I'd say it was false. You were misled or mistaken, or your own bad, suspicious nature made you do her wrong; an' even if it was thrue--which it is not, but false as hell--why would you crash and wring her daughter's heart by a knowledge of it? Couldn't you let me get through the short but bitther passage of life that's before me, without addin' this to the other thoughts that's distractin' me?" "I did it, as I said," he replied, "to make you harden your heart, an' to prevent you from puttin' any trust in the world, or expectin' anything either of thruth or goodness from it." She started, as if some new light had broken in upon her, and turning to him, said-- "Maybe I undherstand you, father--I hope I do. Oh, could it be that you wor wanst--a--a--a betther man--a man that had a heart for fellow-creatures, and cared for them? I'm lookin' into my own heart now, and I don't doubt but I might be brought to the same state yet. Ha, that's terrible to think of; but again, I can't believe it. Father, you can stoop to lies an' falsity--that I could not do; but no matther; you wor wanst a good man, maybe. Am I right?" The Prophet turned round, and fixing his eyes upon his daughter, they stood each gazing upon the other for some time. He then looked for a moment into the ground, after which he sat down upon a stool, and covering his face with both his hands, remained in that position for two or three minutes. "Am I right, father?" she repeated. He raised his eyes, and looking upon her with his usual composure, replied-- "No--you are wrong--you are very wrong. When I was a light-hearted, affectionate boy, playing with my brothers and sisters, I was a villain. When I grew into youth, Sarah, an' thought every one full of honesty an' truth, an' the world all kindness, an' nothin' about me but goodness, an' generosity, an' affection, I was, of coorse, a villain. When I loved the risin' sun--when I looked upon the stars of heaven with a wonderin' and happy heart--when the dawn of mornin' and the last light of the summer evening filled me with joy, and made me love every one and everything about me--the trees, the runnin' rivers, the green fields, and all that God--ha, what am I sayin'?--I was a villain. When I loved an' married your mother, an' when she--but no matther--when all these things happened, I was, I say, a villain; but now that things is changed for the betther, I am an honest man!" "Father, there is good in you yet," she said, as her eyes sparkled in the very depth of her excitement, with a hopeful animation that had its source in a noble and exalted benevolence, "you're not lost." "Don't I say," he replied, with a cold and bitter sneer, "that I am an honest man." "Ah," she replied, "that's gone too, then--look where I will, everything's dark--no hope--no hope of any kind; but no matther now; since I can't do betther, I'll make them think o' me: aye, an' feel me too. Come, then, what have you to say to me?" "Let us have a walk, then," replied her father. "There is a weeny glimpse of sunshine, for a wondher. You look heated--your face is flushed too, very much, an' the walk will cool you a little." "I know my face is flushed," she replied; "for I feel it burnin', an' so is my head; I have a pain in it, and a pain in the small o' my back too." "Well, come," he continued, "and a walk will be of sarvice to you." They then went out in the direction of the Rabbit Bank, the Prophet, during their walk, availing himself of her evident excitement to draw from her the history of its origin. Such a task, indeed, was easily accomplished, for this singular creature, in whom love of truth, as well as a detestation of all falsehood and subterfuge, seemed to have been a moral instinct, at once disclosed to him the state of her affections, and, indeed, all that the reader already knows of her love for Dalton, and her rivalry with Mave Sullivan. These circumstances were such precisely as he could have wished for, and our readers need scarcely be told that he failed not to aggravate her jealousy of Mave, nor to suggest to her the necessity on her part, if she possessed either pride or spirit, to prevent her union with Dalton by every means in her power. "I'll do it," she replied, "I'll do it; to be sure I feel it's not right, an' if I had one single hope in this world, I'd scorn it; but I'm now desperate; I tried to be good, but I'm only a cobweb before the wind--everything is against me, an' I think I'm like some one that never had a guardian angel to take care of them." The Prophet then gave her a detailed account of their plan for carrying away Mave Sullivan, and of his own subsequent intentions in life. "We have more than one iron in the fire," he proceeded, "an' as soon as everything comes off right, and to our wishes, we'll not lose a single hour in going to America." "I didn't think," said Sarah, "that Dalton ever murdered Sullivan till I heard him confess it; but I can well understand it now. He was hasty, father, and did it in a passion, but it's himself that has a good heart. Father, don't blame me for what I say, but I'd rather be that pious, affectionate ould man, wid his murdher on his head, than you in the state you're in. An' that's thrue, I must turn back and go to them--I'm too long away: still, something ails me--I'm all sickish, my head and back especially." "Go home to your own place," he replied; "maybe it's the sickness you're takin." "Oh, no," she replied, "I felt this way once or twice before, an' I know it'll go off me--good-bye." "Good-bye, Sarah, an' remember, honor bright and saicresy." "Saicresy, father, I grant you, but never honor bright for me again. It's the world that makes me do it--the wicked, dark, cruel world, that has me as I am, widout a livin' heart to love me--that's what makes me do it." They then separated, he pursuing his way to Dick o' the Grange's, and she to the miserable cabin of the Daltons. They had not gone far, however, when she returned, and calling after him, said-- "I have thought it over again, and won't promise altogether till I see you again." "Are you goin' back o' your word so soon!" he asked, with a kind of sarcastic sneer. "I thought you never broke your word, Sarah." She paused, and after looking about her as if in perplexity, she turned on her heel, and proceeded in silence. _ |
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