Domestic fiction; Ireland -- Fiction; Land tenure -- Fiction; Landlord and tenant -- Fiction; Landowners -- Fiction
“That’s it, dear Martin; it wouldn’t bless you if you had it; it can
bless no one who looks to it alone for a blessing. It wouldn’t make you
happy—it would make you miserable, av people said you had that which
you ought not to have. Besides, I love my poor brother; he is my
brother, my only real relation; we’ve lived all our lives together; and
though he isn’t what he should be, the fault is not all his own, I
should not sleep in my grave, av I died with his curse upon me; as I
should, av he found, when I am gone, that I’d willed the property all
away. I’ve told him he’d have it all—nearly all; and I’ve begged him,
prayed to him, from my dying bed, to mend his ways; to try and be
something betther in the world than what I fear he’s like to be. I
think he minded what I said when he was here, for death-bed words have
a solemn sound to the most worldly; but when I’m gone he’ll be all
alone, there’ll be no one to look afther him. Nobody loves him—no one
even likes him; no one will live with him but those who mane to rob
him; and he will be robbed, and plundered, and desaved, when he thinks
he’s robbing and desaving others.” Anty paused, more for breath than
for a reply, but Martin felt that he must say something.
“Indeed, Anty, I fear he’ll hardly come to good. He dhrinks too much,
by all accounts; besides, he’s idle, and the honest feeling isn’t in
him.”
“It’s thrue, dear Martin; it’s too thrue. Will you do me a great great
favour, Martin”—and she rose up a little and turned her moist clear eye
full upon him—“will you show your thrue love to your poor Anty, by a
rale lasting kindness, but one that’ll be giving you much much throuble
and pain? Afther I’m dead and gone—long long after I’m in my cold
grave, will you do that for me, Martin?”.
“Indeed I will, Anty,” said Martin, rather astonished, but with a look
of solemn assurance; “anything that I can do, I will: you needn’t dread
my not remembering, but I fear it isn’t much that I can do for you.”
“Will you always think and spake of Barry—will you always act to him
and by him, and for him, not as a man whom you know and dislike, but as
my brother—your own Anty’s only brother?—Whatever he does, will you
thry to make him do betther? Whatever troubles he’s in, will you lend
him your hand? Come what come may to him, will you be his frind? He has
no frind now. When I’m gone, will you be a frind to him?”
Martin was much confounded. “He won’t let me be his frind,” he said;
“he looks down on us and despises us; he thinks himself too high to be
befrinded by us. Besides, of all Dunmore he hates us most.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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