“Thank God!” he exclaimed on meeting them; “is this Mary Moan?”
“It is—it is!” she exclaimed; “how are all within?—am I in time?”
“Only poorly,” he returned; “you are, I hope.”
The midwife, when they reached the door, got herself dismounted in all haste, and was about entering the house, when Fardorougha, laying his hand upon her shoulder, said in a tone of voice full of deep feeling—
“I need say nothing to you; what you can do, you will do—but one thing I expect—if you see danger, call in assistance.”
“It's all in the hands o' God, Fardorougha, acushla; be as aisy in your mind as you can; if there's need for more help you'll hear it; so keep the man an' horse both ready.”
She then blessed herself and entered the house, repeating a short prayer, or charm, which was supposed to possess uncommon efficacy in relieving cases of the nature she was then called upon to attend.
Fardorougha Donovan was a man of great good sense, and of strong, but not obvious or flexible feeling; this is to say, on strong occasions he felt accordingly, but exhibited no remarkable symptoms of emotion. In matters of a less important character, he was either deficient in sensibility altogether, or it affected him so slightly as not to be perceptible. What his dispositions and feelings might have been, had his parental affections and domestic sympathies been cultivated by the tender intercourse which subsists between a parent and his children, it is not easy to say. On such occasions many a new and delightful sensation—many a sweet trait of affection previously unknown—and, oh! many, many a fresh impulse of rapturous emotion never before felt gushes out of the heart; all of which, were it not for the existence of ties so delightful, might have there lain sealed up forever. Where is the man who does not remember the strange impression of tumultuous delight which he experienced on finding himself a husband? And who does not recollect that nameless charm, amounting almost to a new sense, which pervaded his whole being with tenderness and transport on kissing the rose-bud lips of his first-born babe? It is, indeed, by the ties of domestic life that the purity and affection and the general character of the human heart are best tried. What is there more beautiful than to see that fountain of tenderness multiplying its affections instead of diminishing them, according as claim after claim arises to make fresh demands upon its love? Love, and especially parental love, like jealousy, increases by what it feeds on. But, oh! from what an unknown world of exquisite enjoyment are they shut out, to whom Providence has not vouchsafed those beloved beings on whom the heart lavishes the whole fulness of its rapture! No wonder that their own affections should wither in the cold gloom of disappointed hope, or their hearts harden into that moody spirit of worldly-mindedness which adopts for its offspring the miser's idol.
Whether Fardorougha felt the want of children acutely or otherwise, could not be inferred from any visible indication of regret on his part by those who knew him. His own wife, whose facilities of observation were so great and so frequent, was only able to suspect in the affirmative. For himself he neither murmured nor repined; but she could perceive that, after a few years had passed, a slight degree of gloom began to settle on him, and an anxiety about his crops, and his few cattle, and the produce of his farm. He also began to calculate the amount of what might be saved from the fruits of their united industry. Sometimes, but indeed upon rare occasions, his temper appeared inclining to be irascible or impatient; but in general it was grave, cold, and inflexible, without any outbreaks of passion, or the slightest disposition to mirth. His wife's mind, however, was by no means so firm as his, nor so free from the traces of that secret regret which preyed upon it. She both murmured and repined, and often in terms which drew from Fardorougha a cool rebuke for her want of resignation to the will of God. As years advanced, however, her disappointment became harassing even to herself, and now that hope began to die away, her heart gradually partook of the cool worldly spirit which had seized upon the disposition of her husband, Though cultivating but a small farm, which they held at a high rent, yet, by the dint of frugality and incessant diligence, they were able to add a little each year to the small stock of money which they had contrived to put together. Still would the unhappy recollection that they were childless steal painfully and heavily over them; the wife would sometimes murmur, and the husband reprove her, but in a tone so cool and indifferent that she could not avoid concluding that his own want of resignation, though not expressed, was at heart equal to her own. Each also became somewhat religious, and both remarkable for a punctual attendance upon the rites of their church, and that in proportion as the love of temporal things overcame them. In this manner they lived upwards of thirteen years, when Mrs. Donovan declared herself to be in that situation which in due time rendered the services of Mary Moan necessary.
From the moment this intimation was! given, and its truth confirmed, a faint light, not greater than the dim and trembling lustre of a single star, broke in upon the darkened affections and worldly spirit of Fardorougha Donovan. Had the announcement taken place within a reasonable period after his marriage, before he had become sick of disappointment, or had surrendered his heart from absolute despair to an incipient spirit of avarice, it would no doubt have been hailed with all the eager delight of unblighted hope and vivid affection; but now a new and subtle habit had been superinduced, after the last cherished expectation of the heart had departed; a spirit of foresight and severe calculation descended on him, and had so nearly saturated his whole being, that he could not for some time actually determine whether the knowledge of his wife's situation was more agreeable to his affection, or repugnant to the parsimonious disposition which had quickened his heart into an energy incompatible with natural benevolence, and the perception of those tender ties which spring up from the relations of domestic life. For a considerable time this struggle between the two principles went on; sometimes a new hope would spring up, attended in the background by a thousand affecting circumstances—on the other hand, some gloomy and undefinable dread of exigency, distress, and ruin, would wring his heart and sink his spirits down to positive misery. Notwithstanding this conflict between growing avarice and affection, the star of the father's love had risen, and though, as we have already said, its light was dim and unsteady, yet the moment a single opening occurred in the clouded mind, there it was to be seen serene and pure, a beautiful emblem of undying and solitary affection struggling with the cares and angry passions of life. By degrees, however, the husband's heart became touched by the hopes of his younger years, former associations revived, and remembrances of past tenderness, though blunted in a heart so much changed, came over him like the breath of fragrance that has nearly passed away. He began, therefore, to contemplate the event without foreboding, and by the time the looked-for period arrived, if the world and its debasing influences were not utterly overcome, yet nature and the quickening tenderness of a father's feeling had made a considerable progress in a heart from which they had been long banished. Far different from all this was the history of his wife since her perception of an event so delightful. In her was no bitter and obstinate principle subversive of affection to be overcome. For although she had in latter years sank into the painful apathy of a hopeless spirit, and given herself somewhat to the world, yet no sooner did the unexpected light dawn upon her, than her whole soul was filled with exultation and delight. The world and its influence passed away like a dream, and her heart melted into a habit of tenderness at once so novel and exquisite, that she often assured her husband she had never felt happiness before.
Such are the respective states of feeling in which our readers find Fardorougha Donovan and his wife, upon an occasion whose consequences run too far into futurity for us to determine at present whether they are to end in happiness or misery. For a considerable time that evening, before the arrival of Mary Moan, the males of the family had taken up their residence in an inside kiln, where, after having kindled a fire in the draught-hole, or what the Scotch call the “logie,” they sat and chatted in that kind of festive spirit which such an event uniformly produces among the servants of a family. Fardorougha himself remained for the most part with them, that is to say except while ascertaining from time to time the situation of his wife. His presence, however, was only a restraint upon their good-humor, and his