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 old Melmoth
grasped a key which lay under his pillow, and shook it in vain triumph
at the old housekeeper, who had long possessed the means of getting
at the spirits unknown to his “honor”), “and for want of the victuals
you have pampered them with.” “_Pampered_, oh Ch--st!” ejaculated the
housekeeper. “Aye, and what are there so many candles for, all _fours_,
and the same below I warrant. Ah! you--you--worthless, wasteful old
devil.” “Indeed, your honor, they are all _sixes_.” “Sixes,--and
what the devil are you burning sixes for, d’ye think it’s _the wake_
already? Ha?” “Oh! not yet, your honor, not yet,” chorussed the
beldams; “but in God’s good time, your honor knows,” in a tone that
spoke ill suppressed impatience for the event. “Oh! that your honor
would think of making your soul.” “That’s the first sensible word you
have said,” said the dying man, “fetch me the prayer-book,--you’ll
find it there under that old boot-jack,--blow off the cobwebs;--it has
not been opened this many a year.” It was handed to him by the old
governante, on whom he turned a reproaching eye. “What made you burn
sixes in the kitchen, you extravagant jade? How many years have you
lived in this house?” “I don’t know, your honor.” “Did you ever see
any extravagance or waste in it?” “Oh never, never, your honor.” “Was
any thing but a farthing candle ever burned in the kitchen?” “Never,
never, your honor.” “Were not you kept as tight as hand and head and
heart could keep you, were you not? answer me that.” “Oh yes, sure,
your honor; every _sowl_ about us knows that,--every one does your
honor justice, that you kept the closest house and closest hand in
the country,--your honor was always a good warrant for it.” “And how
dare you unlock my hold before death has unlocked it,” said the dying
miser, shaking his meagre hand at her. “I smelt meat in the house,--I
heard voices in the house,--I heard the key turn in the door over and
over. Oh that I was up,” he added, rolling in impatient agony in his
bed, “Oh that I was up, to see the waste and ruin that is going on. But
it would kill me,” he continued, sinking back on the bolster, for he
never allowed himself a pillow; “it would kill me,--the very thought
of it is killing me now.” The women, discomfited and defeated, after
sundry winks and whispers, were huddling out of the room, till recalled
by the sharp eager tones of old Melmoth.--“Where are ye trooping to
now? back to the kitchen to gormandize and guzzle? Won’t one of ye
stay and listen while there’s a prayer read for me? Ye may want it one
day for yourselves, ye hags.” Awed by this expostulation and menace,
the train silently returned, and placed themselves round the bed,
while the housekeeper, though a Catholic, asked if his honor would not
have a clergyman to give him _the rights_, (rites) of his church. The
eyes of the dying man sparkled with vexation at the proposal. “What
for,--just to have him expect a scarf and hat-band at the funeral. Read the prayers yourself, you old ------; that will save something.”
The housekeeper made the attempt, but soon declined it, alleging, as
her reason, that her eyes had been watery ever since his honor took
ill. “That’s because you had always a drop in them,” said the invalid,
with a spiteful sneer, which the contraction of approaching death
stiffened into a hideous grin.--“Here,--is not there one of you that’s
gnashing and howling there, that can get up a prayer to keep me from
it?” So adjured, one of the women offered her services; and of her it
might truly be said, as of the “most desartless man of the watch” in
Dogberry’s time, that “her reading and writing came by nature;” for
she never had been at school, and had never before seen or opened a
Protestant prayer book in her life; nevertheless, on she went, and with
more emphasis than good discretion, read nearly through the service for
the “churching of women;” which in our prayer-books following that of
the burial of the dead, she perhaps imagined was someway connected with
the state of the invalid. She read with great solemnity,--it was a pity that two interruptions
occurred during the performance, one from old Melmoth, who, shortly
after the commencement of the prayers, turned towards the old
housekeeper, and said, in a tone scandalously audible, “Go down and draw
the niggers of the kitchen fire closer, and lock the door, and let me
_hear it locked_. I can’t mind any thing till that’s done.” The other
was from John Melmoth gliding into the room, hearing the inappropriate
words uttered by the ignorant woman, taking quietly as he knelt beside
her the prayer-book from her hands, and reading in a suppressed voice
part of that solemn service which, by the forms of the Church of
England, is intended for the consolation of the departing.