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Updated: June 21, 2025
It pains me even now to recall the cruelly complete defeat of every effort which I made on that disastrous evening. I passed the night in one of the cottages; and I returned to London the next day, broken by disappointment, careless what I did, or where I went next. Still, we were not wholly parted. I saw Mary as Dame Dermody said I should see her in dreams.
The night had grown wilder as the moon sank low, and the snow went past the door like rapid wafts of ghostly smoke. This newcomer stumbled into the room without ceremony, as if half blinded, and said breathlessly "Did any of yous be chance see an ould man goin' this road to-day? An ould ancient man, somethin' lame; be the name of Christie Dermody?"
Dame Dermody was sitting in the light of the window, as usual, with one of the mystic books of Emanuel Swedenborg open on her lap. She solemnly lifted her hand on our appearance, signing to us to occupy our customary corner without speaking to her. It was an act of domestic high treason to interrupt the Sibyl at her books. We crept quietly into our places.
"Take your choice," he said, "between coming away of your own accord, or obliging me to take you away by force. I mean to part you and Dermody's girl." "Neither you nor any man can part them," interposed a voice, speaking behind us. "Rid your mind of that notion, master, before it is too late." My father looked round quickly, and discovered Dame Dermody facing him in the full light of the window.
Let her appear, and speak for herself the wild and weird grandmother of gentle little Mary; the Sibyl of modern times, known, far and wide, in our part of Suffolk, as Dame Dermody. I see her again, as I write, sitting in her son's pretty cottage parlor, hard by the window, so that the light fell over her shoulder while she knitted or read.
Dame Dermody got slowly on her feet, and looked at him with a stern scrutiny. "It has come," she said to herself. "It looks with the eyes it will speak with the voice of that man." My father broke the silence that followed, addressing himself to the bailiff. "You see, Dermody," he said, "here is my son in your cottage when he ought to be in my house."
On leaving my father's service, he had made his way, partly by land and partly by sea, to Glasgow in which city his friends resided. With his character and his experience, Dermody was a man in a thousand to any master who was lucky enough to discover him. His friends bestirred themselves.
Judging by my own sensations, I had developed into a man at a moment's notice. "Papa," I said, "I am glad to see you home again. This is Mary Dermody. I am in love with her, and she is in love with me. I wish to marry her as soon as it is convenient to my mother and you." My father burst out laughing. Before I could speak again, his humor changed.
"I tell you this: you will never darken these doors again! You have been taught to disobey me here. You have had things put into your head, here, which no boy of your age ought to know I'll say more, which no decent people would have let you know." "I beg your pardon, sir," Dermody interposed, very respectfully and very firmly at the same time.
The child sends you a kiss; and the mother signs herself your grateful and affectionate When I first read those lines, they once more recalled to my memory very strangely, as I then thought the predictions of Dame Dermody in the days of my boyhood.
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