Bernard Shaw
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Title: The Miraculous Revenge
Little Blue Book #215
Author: Bernard Shaw
Editor: E. Haldeman-Julius
Release Date: January 11, 2007 [EBook #20336]
Language: English
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Bernard Shaw
I arrived in Dublin on the evening of the fifth of August, and drove to the residence of my uncle, the Cardinal Archbishop. He is like most of my family, deficient in feeling, and consequently averse to me personally. He lives in a dingy house, with a side-long view of the portico of his cathedral from the front windows, and of a monster national school from the back. My uncle maintains no retinue. The people believe that he is waited upon by angels. When I knocked at the door, an old woman, his only servant, opened it, and informed me that her master was then officiating at the cathedral, and that he had directed her to prepare dinner for me in his absence. An unpleasant smell of salt fish made me ask her what the dinner consisted of. She assured me that she had cooked all that could be permitted in his Holiness's house on Friday. On my asking her further why on Friday, she replied that Friday was a fast day. I bade her tell His Holiness that I had hoped to have the pleasure of calling on him shortly, and drove to the hotel in Sackville-street, where I engaged apartments and dined.
After dinner I resumed my eternal search—I know not for what: it drives me to and fro like another Cain. I sought in the streets without success. I went to the theatre. The music was execrable, the scenery poor. I had seen the play a month before in London with the same beautiful artist in the chief part. Two years had passed since, seeing her for the first [Pg 6]time, I had hoped that she, perhaps, might be the long-sought mystery. It had proved otherwise. On this night I looked at her and listened to her for the sake of that bygone hope, and applauded her generously when the curtain fell. But I went out lonely still. When I had supped at a restaurant, I returned to my hotel, and tried to read. In vain. The sound of feet in the corridors as the other occupants of the hotel went to bed distracted my attention from my book. Suddenly it occurred to to me that I had never quite understood my uncle's character. He, father to a great flock of poor and ignorant Irish; an austere and saintly man, to whom livers of hopeless lives daily appealed for help heavenward; who was reputed never to have sent away a troubled peasant without relieving him of his burden by sharing it; whose knees were worn less by the altar steps than by the tears and embraces of the guilty and wretched: he refused to humor my light extravagances, or to find time to talk with me of books, flowers, and music. Had I not been mad to expect it? Now that I needed sympathy myself, I did him justice. I desired to be with a true-hearted man, and mingle my tears with his.
I looked at my watch. It was nearly an hour past midnight. In the corridor the lights were out, except one jet at the end. I threw a cloak upon my shoulders, put on a Spanish hat and left my apartment, listening to the echoes of my measured steps retreating through the deserted passages. A strange sight arrested me on the landing of the grand staircase. Through an open door I saw the moonlight shining through the windows of a saloon in which some entertainment had recently taken place. I looked at my watch again: it was but one o'clock; and yet the guests had departed. I[Pg 7] entered the room, my boots ringing loudly on the waxed boards. On a chair lay a child's cloak and a broken toy. The entertainment had been a children's party. I stood for a time looking at the shadow of my cloaked figure on the floor, and at the disordered decorations, ghostly in the white light. Then I saw there was a grand piano still open in the middle of the room. My fingers throbbed as I sat down before it and expressed all I felt in a grand hymn which seemed to thrill the cold stillness of the shadows into a deep hum of approbation, and to people the radiance of the moon with angels. Soon there was a stir without too, as if the rapture were spreading abroad. I took up the chant triumphantly with my voice, and the empty saloon resounded as though to the thunder of an orchestra.
"Hallo sir!" "Confound you, sir—" "Do you suppose that this—" "What the deuce—?"
I turned; and silence followed. Six men, partially dressed, with disheveled hair, stood regarding me angrily. They all carried candles. One of them had a bootjack, which he held like a truncheon. Another, the foremost, had a pistol. The night porter was behind trembling.
"Sir," said the man with the revolver, coarsely, "may I ask whether you are mad, that you disturb people at this hour with such unearthly noise?"
"Is it possible that you dislike it?" I replied courteously.
"Dislike it!" said he, stamping with rage. "Why—damn everything—do you suppose we were enjoying it?"
"Take care: he's mad," whispered the man with the bootjack.
I began to laugh. Evidently they did think[Pg 8] me mad. Unaccustomed to my habits, and ignorant of the music as they probably were, the mistake, however absurd, was not unnatural. I rose. They came closer to one another; and the night porter ran away.
"Gentlemen," I said, "I am sorry for you. Had you lain still and listened, we should all have been the better and happier. But what you have done, you cannot undo. Kindly inform the night porter that I am gone to visit my uncle, the Cardinal Archbishop. Adieu!"
I strode past them, and left them whispering among themselves. Some minutes later I knocked at the door of the Cardinal's house. Presently a window opened and the moonbeams fell on a grey head, with a black cap that seemed ashy pale against the unfathomable gloom of the shadow beneath the stone sill.
"Who are you?"
"I am Zeno Legge."
"What do you want at this hour?"
The question wounded me. "My dear uncle," I exclaimed, "I know you do not intend it, but you make me feel unwelcome. Come down and let me in, I beg."
"Go to your hotel," he said sternly. "I will see you in the morning. Goodnight." He disappeared and closed the window.
I felt that if I let this rebuff pass, I should not feel kindly towards my uncle in the morning, nor indeed at any future time. I therefore plied the knocker with my right hand, and kept the bell ringing with my left until I heard the door chain rattle within. The Cardinal's expression was grave nearly to moroseness as he confronted me on the threshold.
"Uncle," I cried, grasping his hand, "do not reproach me. Your door is never shut against[Pg 9] the wretched. Let us sit up all night and talk."
"You may thank my position and my charity for your admission, Zeno," he said. "For the sake of the neighbors, I had rather you played the fool in my study than upon my doorstep at this hour. Walk upstairs quietly if you please. My housekeeper is a hard-working woman: the little sleep she allows herself must not be disturbed."
"You have a noble heart, uncle. I shall creep like a mouse."
"This is my study," he said as we entered an ill-furnished den on the second floor. "The only refreshment I can offer you, if you desire any, is a bunch of raisins. The doctors have forbidden you to touch stimulants, I believe."
"By heaven——!" He raised his finger. "Pardon me: I was wrong to swear. But I had totally forgotten the doctors. At dinner I had a bottle of Grave."
"Humph! You have no business to be traveling alone. Your mother promised that Bushy should come over here with you."
"Pshaw! Bushy is not a man of feeling. Besides, he is a coward. He refused to come with me because I purchased a revolver."
"He should have taken the revolver from you, and kept to his post."
"Why will you persist in treating me like a child, uncle? I am very impressionable, I grant you; but I have gone around the world alone, and do not need to be dry-nursed through a tour in Ireland."
"What do you intend to do during your stay here?"
I had no plans and instead of answering I shrugged my shoulders and looked round the apartment. There was a statue of the Virgin[Pg 10] upon my uncle's desk. I looked at its face, as he was wont to look in the midst of his labor. I saw there eternal peace. The air became luminous with an infinite net-work of the jeweled rings of Paradise descending in roseate clouds upon us.
"Uncle," I said, bursting into the sweetest tears I had ever shed, "my wanderings are over. I will enter the Church, if you will help me. Let us read together the third part of Faust; for I understand it at last."
"Hush, man," he said, half rising with an expression of alarm. "Control yourself."
"Do not let tears mislead you. I am calm and strong. Quick, let us have Goethe:
Das Unbeschreibliche,
Hier ist gethan;
Das Ewig-Weibliche,
Zieht uns hinan."
"Come, come. Dry your eyes and be quiet. I have no library here."
"But I have—in my portmanteau at the hotel," I said, rising. "Let me go for it. I will return in fifteen minutes."
"The devil is in you, I believe. Cannot——"
I interrupted him with a shout of laughter.
"Cardinal," I said noisily, "you have become profane; and a profane priest is always the best of good fellows. Let us have some wine; and I will sing you a German beer song."
"Heaven forgive me if I do you wrong," he said; "but I believe God has laid the expiation of some sin on your unhappy head. Will you favor me with your attention for awhile? I have something to say to you, and I have also to get some sleep before my hour of rising, which is half-past five."
"My usual hour for retiring—when I retire at[Pg 11] all. But proceed. My fault is not inattention, but over-susceptibility."
"Well, then, I want you to go to Wicklow. My reasons——"
"No matter what they may be," said I, rising again. "It is enough that you desire me to go. I shall start forthwith."
"Zeno! will you sit down and listen to me?"
I sank upon my chair reluctantly. "Ardor is a crime in your eyes, even when it is shewn in your service," I said. "May I turn down the light?"
"Why?"
"To bring on my sombre mood, in which I am able to listen with tireless patience."
"I will turn it down myself. Will that do?"
I thanked him and composed myself to listen in the shadow. My eyes, I felt, glittered. I was like Poe's raven.
"Now for my reasons for sending you to Wicklow. First, for your own sake. If you stay in town, or in any place where excitement can be obtained by any means, you will be in Swift's Hospital in a week. You must live in the country, under the eye of one upon whom I can depend. And you must have something to do to keep you out of mischief and away from your music and painting and poetry, which, Sir John Richard writes to me, are dangerous for you in your present morbid state. Second, because I can entrust you with a task which, in the hands of a sensible man might bring discredit on the Church. In short, I want you to investigate a miracle."
He looked attentively at me. I sat like a statue.
"You understand me?" he said.
"Nevermore," I replied, hoarsely. "Pardon[Pg 12] me," I added, amused at the trick my imagination had played me, "I understand you perfectly. Proceed."
"I hope you do. Well, four miles distant from the town of Wicklow is a village called Four Mile Water. The resident priest is Father Hickey. You have heard of the miracles at Knock?"
I winked.
"I did not ask you what you think of them but whether you have heard of them. I see you have. I need not tell you that even a miracle may do more harm than good to the Church in this country, unless it can be proved so thoroughly that her powerful and jealous enemies are silenced by the testimony of followers of their heresy. Therefore, when I saw in a Wexford newspaper last week a description of a strange manifestation of the Divine Power which was said to have taken place at Four Mile Water, I was troubled in my mind about it. So I wrote to Father Hickey, bidding him give me an account of the matter if it were true, and, if it were not, to denounce from the altar the author of the report, and contradict it in the paper at once. This is his reply. He says, well, the first part is about Church matters: I need not trouble you with it. He goes on to say——"
"One moment. Is this his own hand-writing? It does not look like a man's."
"He suffers from rheumatism in the fingers of his right hand; and his niece, who is an orphan, and lives with him, acts as his amanuensis. Well——"
"Stay. What is her name?"
"Her name? Kate Hickey."
"How old is she?"
"Tush, man, she is only a little girl. If she[Pg 13] were old enough to concern you, I should not send you into her way. Have you any more questions to ask about her?"
"I fancy her in a white veil at the rite of confirmation, a type of innocence. Enough of her. What says Reverend Hickey of the apparitions?"
"They are not apparitions. I will read you what he says. Ahem! 'In reply to your inquiries concerning the late miraculous event in this parish, I have to inform you that I can vouch for its truth, and that I can be confirmed not only by the inhabitants of the place, who are all Catholics, but by every persons acquainted with the former situation of the graveyard referred to, including the Protestant Archdeacon of Baltinglas, who spends six weeks annually in the neighborhood. The newspaper account is incomplete and inaccurate. The following are the facts: About four years ago, a man named Wolfe Tone Fitzgerald settled in this village as a farrier. His antecedents did not transpire, and he had no family. He lived by himself; was very careless of his person; and when in his cups as he often was, regarded the honor neither of God nor man in his conversation. Indeed if it were not speaking ill of the dead, one might say that he was a dirty, drunken, blasphemous blackguard. Worse again, he was, I fear, an atheist; for he never attended Mass, and gave His Holiness worse language even than he gave the Queen. I should have mentioned that he was a bitter rebel, and boasted that his grandfather had been out in '98, and his father with Smith O'Brien. At last he went by the name of Brimstone Billy, and was held up in the village as the type of all wickedness.
"'You are aware that our graveyard, situate[Pg 14] on the north side of the water, is famous throughout the country as the burial-place of the nuns of St. Ursula, the hermit of Four Mile Water, and many other holy people. No Protestant has ever ventured to enforce his legal right of interment there, though two have died in the parish within my own recollection. Three weeks ago, this Fitzgerald died in a fit brought on by drink; and a great hullabaloo was raised in the village when it became known that he would be buried in the graveyard. The body had to be watched to prevent its being stolen and buried at the crossroads. My people were greatly disappointed when they were told I could do nothing to stop the burial, particularly as I of course refused to read any service on the occasion. However, I bade them not interfere; and the interment was effected on the 14th of July, late in the evening, and long after the legal hour. There was no disturbance. Next morning, the graveyard was found moved to the south side of the water, with the one newly-filled grave left behind on the north side; and thus they both remain. The departed saints would not lie with the reprobate. I can testify to it on the oath of a Christian priest; and if this will not satisfy those outside the Church, everyone, as I said before, who remembers where the graveyard was two months ago, can confirm me.
"'I respectfully suggest that a thorough investigation into the truth of this miracle be proposed to a committee of Protestant gentlemen. They shall not be asked to accept a single fact on hearsay from my people. The ordnance maps shew where the graveyard was; and anyone can see for himself where it is. I need not tell your Eminence what a rebuke this would be to those enemies of the holy[Pg 15] Church that have sought to put a stain on her by discrediting the late wonderful manifestations at Knock Chapel. If they come to Four Mile Water, they need cross-examine no one. They will be asked to believe nothing but their own senses.
"'Awaiting your Eminence's counsel to guide me further in the matter,
"'I am, etc.'
"Well, Zeno," said my uncle: "what do you think of Father Hickey now?"
"Uncle: do not ask me. Beneath this roof I desire to believe everything. The Reverend Hickey has appealed strongly to my love of legend. Let us admire the poetry of his narrative and ignore the balance of probability between a Christian priest telling a lie on his own oath and a graveyard swimming across a river in the middle of the night and forgetting to return."
"Tom Hickey is not telling a lie, you may take my word on that. But he may be mistaken."
"Such a mistake amounts to insanity. It is true that I myself, awakening suddenly in the depth of night have found myself convinced that the position of my bed had been reversed. But on opening my eyes the illusion ceased. I fear Mr. Hickey is mad. Your best course is this. Send down to Four Mile Water a perfectly sane investigator; an acute observer; one whose perceptive faculties, at once healthy and subtle, are absolutely unclouded by religious prejudice. In a word, send me. I will report to you the true state of affairs in a few days; and you can then make arrangements for transferring Hickey from the altar to the asylum."
"Yes I had intended to send you. You are[Pg 16] wonderfully sharp; and you would make a capital detective if you could only keep your mind to one point. But your chief qualifications for this business is that you are too crazy to excite the suspicion of those whom you have to watch. For the affair may be a trick. If so, I hope and believe that Hickey has no hand in it. Still, it is my duty to take every precaution."
"Cardinal: may I ask whether traces of insanity have ever appeared in our family?"
"Except in you and in my grandmother, no. She was a Pole; and you resemble her personally. Why do you ask?"
"Because it has often occurred to me that you are perhaps a little cracked. Excuse my candor; but a man who has devoted his life to the pursuit of a red hat; who accuses everyone else beside himself of being mad; and is disposed to listen seriously to a tale of a peripatetic graveyard, can hardly be quite sane. Depend upon it, uncle, you want rest and change. The blood of your Polish grandmother is in your veins."
"I hope I may not be committing a sin in sending a ribald on the church's affairs," he replied, fervently. "However, we must use the instruments put into our hands. Is it agreed that you go?"
"Had you not delayed me with the story, which I might as well have learned on the spot, I should have been there already."
"There is no occasion for impatience, Zeno. I must send to Hickey and find a place for you. I shall tell him you are going to recover your health, as, in fact, you are. And, Zeno, in Heaven's name be discreet. Try to act like a man of sense. Do not dispute with Hickey on[Pg 17] matters of religion. Since you are my nephew, you had better not disgrace me."
"I shall become an ardent Catholic, and do you infinite credit, uncle."
"I wish you would, although you would hardly be an acquisition to the Church. And now I must turn you out. It is nearly three o'clock; and I need some sleep. Do you know your way back to your hotel?"
"I need not stir. I can sleep in this chair. Go to bed, and never mind me."
"I shall not close my eyes until you are safely out of the house. Come, rouse yourself and say good-night."
The following is a copy of my first report to the Cardinal:—
"Four Mile Water, County Wicklow,
10th August.
"My Dear Uncle,
"The miracle is genuine. I have affected perfect credulity in order to throw the Hickeys and countryfolk off their guard with me. I have listened to their method of convincing the sceptical strangers. I have examined the ordnance maps, and cross-examined the neighboring Protestant gentlefolk. I have spent a day upon the ground on each side of the water, and have visited it at midnight. I have considered the upheaval theories, subsidence theories, volcanic theories, and tidal wave theories which the provincial savants have suggested. They are all untenable. There is only one scoffer in the district, an Orangeman; and he admits the removal of the cemetery, but says it was dug up and transplanted in the night by a body of men under the command of Father Tom. This is also out of the question. The interment of Brimstone Billy was the first which had taken[Pg 18] place for four years; and his is the only grave which bears the trace of recent digging. It is alone on the north bank; and the inhabitants shun it after night fall. As each passer-by during the day throws a stone upon it, it will soon be marked by a large cairn. The graveyard, with a ruined stone chapel still standing in its midst, is on the south side. You may send down a committee to investigate the matter as soon as you please. There can be no doubt as to the miracle having actually taken place, as recorded by Hickey. As for me, I have grown so accustomed to it that if the county Wicklow were to waltz off with me to Middlesex, I should be quite impatient of any expression of surprise from my friends in London.
"Is not the above a businesslike statement? Away, then, with this stale miracle. If you would see for yourself a miracle which can never pall, a vision of youth and health to be crowned with garlands for ever, come down and see Kate Hickey, whom you suppose to be a little girl. Illusion, my lord cardinal, illusion! She is seventeen, with a bloom and a brogue that would lay your asceticism in ashes at a flash. To her I am an object of wonder, a strange man bred in wicked cities. She is courted by six feet of farming material, chopped off a spare length of coarse humanity by the Almighty, and flung into Wicklow to plough the fields. His name is Phil Langan; and he hates me. I have to consort with him for the sake of Father Tom, whom I entertain vastly by stories of your wild oats sown at Salamanca. I exhausted my authentic anecdotes the first day; and now I invent gallant escapades with Spanish donnas, in which you figure as a youth of unstable morals. This [Pg 19]delights Father Tom infinitely. I feel that I have done you a service by thus casting on the cold sacerdotal abstraction which formerly represented you in Kate's imagination a ray of vivifying passion.
"What a country this is! A Hesperidean garden: such skies! Adieu, uncle.
"Zeno Legge."
Behold me, at Four Mile Water, in love. I had been in love frequently; but not oftener than once a year had I encountered a woman who affected me so seriously as Kate Hickey. She was so shrewd, and yet so flippant! When I spoke of art she yawned. When I deplored the sordidness of the world she laughed, and called me "poor fellow!" When I told her what a treasure of beauty and freshness she had she ridiculed me. When I reproached her with her brutality she became angry, and sneered at me for being what she called a fine gentleman. One sunny afternoon we were standing at the gate of her uncle's house, she looking down the dusty road for the detestable Langan, I watching the spotless azure sky, when she said:
"How soon are you going back to London?"
"I am not going back to London. Miss Hickey. I am not yet tired of Four Mile Water."
"I am sure that Four Mile Water ought to be proud of your approbation."
"You disapprove of my liking it, then? Or is it that you grudge me the happiness I have found here? I think Irish ladies grudge a man a moment's peace."
"I wonder you have ever prevailed on yourself to associate with Irish ladies, since they are so far beneath you."
"Did I say they were beneath me, Miss Hickey? I feel that I have made a deep impression on you."
"Indeed! Yes, you're quite right. I assure you I can't sleep at night for thinking of you, Mr. Legge. It's the best a Christian can do, seeing you think so mightly little of yourself."
"You are triply wrong, Miss Hickey: wrong to be sarcastic with me, wrong to discourage the candor with which you think of me sometimes, and wrong to discourage the candor with which I always avow that I think constantly of myself."
"Then you had better not speak to me, since I have no manners."
"Again! Did I say you had no manners? The warmest expressions of regard from my mouth seem to reach your ears transformed into insults. Were I to repeat the Litany of the Blessed Virgin, you would retort as though I had been reproaching you. This is because you hate me. You never misunderstand Langan, whom you love."
"I don't know what London manners are, Mr. Legge; but in Ireland gentlemen are expected to mind their own business. How dare you say I love Mr. Langan?"
"Then you do not love him?"
"It is nothing to you whether I love him or not."
"Nothing to me that you hate me and love another?"
"I didn't say I hated you. You're not so very clever yourself at understanding what people say, though you make such a fuss because they don't understand you." Here, as she glanced down the road she suddenly looked glad.
"Aha!" I said.
"What do you mean by 'Aha!'"
"No matter. I will now show you what a man's sympathy is. As you perceived just then, Langan—who is too tall for his age, [Pg 21]by-the-by—is coming to pay you a visit. Well, instead of staying with you, as a jealous woman would, I will withdraw."
"I don't care whether you go or stay, I'm sure. I wonder what you would give to be as fine a man as Mr. Langan?"
"All I possess: I swear it! But solely because you admire tall men more than broad views. Mr. Langan may be defined geometrically as length without breadth; altitude without position; a line on the landscape, not a point in it."
"How very clever you are!"
"You don't understand me, I see. Here comes your lover, stepping over the wall like a camel. And here go I out through the gate like a Christian. Good afternoon, Mr. Langan. I am going because Miss Hickey has something to say to you about me which she would rather not say in my presence. You will excuse me?"
"Oh, I'll excuse you," he said boorishly. I smiled, and went out. Before I was out of hearing, Kate whispered vehemently to him, "I hate that fellow."
I smiled again; but I had scarcely done so when my spirits fell. I walked hastily away with a coarse threatening sound in my ears like that of the clarionets whose sustained low notes darken the woodland in "Der Frieschutz." I found myself presently at the graveyard. It was a barren place, enclosed by a mud wall with a gate to admit funerals, and numerous gaps to admit peasantry, who made short cuts across it as they went to and fro between Four Mile Water and the market town. The graves were mounds overgrown with grass: there was no keeper; nor were there flowers, railings, or any other conventionalities that make an English graveyard repulsive. A great thornbush,[Pg 22] near what was called the grave of the holy sisters, was covered with scraps of cloth and flannel, attached by peasant women who had prayed before it. There were three kneeling there as I enterd; for the reputation of the place had been revived of late by the miracle; and a ferry had been established close by, to conduct visitors over the route taken by the graveyard. From where I stood I could see on the opposite bank the heap of stones, perceptibly increased since my last visit, marking the deserted grave of Brimstone Billy. I strained my eyes broodingly at it for some minutes, and then descended the river bank and entered the boat.
"Good evenin t'your honor," said the ferryman, and set to work to draw the boat over hand by a rope stretched across the water.
"Good evening. Is your business beginning to fall off yet?"
"Faith, it never was as good as it might a been. The people that comes from the south side can see Billy's grave—Lord have mercy on him!—across the wather; and they think bad of payin a penny to put a stone over him. It's them that lives towrst Dublin that makes the journey. Your honor is the third I've brought from the south to north this blessed day."
"When do most people come? In the afternoon, I suppose?"
"All hours, sur, except afther dusk. There isn't a sowl in the counthry ud come within sight of the grave wanst the sun goes down."
"And you! do you stay here all night by yourself?"
"The holy heavens forbid! Is it me stay here all night? No, your honor: I tether the boat at siven o'hlyock, and lave Brimstone[Pg 23] Billy—God forgimme!—to take care of it t'll mornin."
"It will be stolen some night, I'm afraid."
"Arra, who'd dar come next or near it, let alone stale it? Faith, I'd think twice before lookin at it meself in the dark. God bless your honor, an gran'che long life."
I had given him sixpence. I went on to the reprobate's grave and stood at the foot of it, looking at the sky, gorgeous with the descent of the sun. To my English eyes, accustomed to giant trees, broad lawns, and stately mansions, the landscape was wild and inhospitable. The ferryman was already tugging at the rope on his way back (I had told him that I did not intend to return that way), and presently I saw him make the painter fast to the south bank; put on his coat; and trudge homeward. I turned to the grave at my feet. Those who had interred Brimstone Billy, working hastily at an unlawful hour and in fear of molestation by the people, had hardly dug a grave. They had scooped out earth enough to hide their burden, and no more. A stray goat had kicked away the corner of the mound and exposed the coffin. It occurred to me, as I took some of the stones from the cairn, and heaped them to repair the breach, that had the miracle been the work of a body of men, they would have moved the one grave instead of the many. Even from a supernatural point of view, it seemed strange that the sinner should have banished the elect, when, by their superior numbers, they might so much more easily have banished him.
It was almost dark when I left the spot. After a walk of half a mile I recrossed the water by a bridge and returned to the farm house in which I lodged. Here, finding that I[Pg 24] had enough of solitude, I only stayed to take a cup of tea. Then I went to Father Hickey's cottage.
Kate was alone when I entered. She looked up quickly as I opened the door, and turned away disappointed when she recognized me.
"Be generous for once," I said. "I have walked about aimlessly for hours in order to avoid spoiling the beautiful afternoon for you by my presence. When the sun was up I withdrew my shadow from your path. Now that darkness has fallen, shed some light on mine. May I stay half an hour?"
"You may stay as long as you like, of course. My uncle will soon be home. He is clever enough to talk to you."
"What! More sarcasm! Come, Miss Hickey, help me to spend a pleasant evening. It will only cost you a smile. I am somewhat cast down. Four Mile Water is a paradise; but without you it would be lonely."
"It must be very lonely for you. I wonder why you came here."
"Because I heard that the women here were all Zerlinas, like you, and the men Masettos, like Mr. Phil—where are you going to?"
"Let me pass, Mr. Legge, I had intended never speaking to you again after the way you went on about Mr. Langan today; and I wouldn't either, only my uncle made me promise not to take any notice of you, because you were—no matter; but I won't listen to you any more on the subject."
"Don't go. I swear never to mention his name again. I beg your pardon for what I said: you shall have no further cause for complaint. Will you forgive me?"
She sat down evidently disappointed by my submission. I took a chair, and placed myself[Pg 25] near her. She tapped the floor impatiently with her foot. I saw that there was not a movement that I could make, not a look, not a tone of voice, which did not irritate her.
"You were remarking," I said, "that your uncle desired you take no notice of me because——"
She closed her lips and did not answer.
"I fear that I have offended you again by my curiosity. But indeed, I had no idea that he had forbidden you to tell me the reason."
"He did not forbid me. Since you are so determined to find out——"
"No; excuse me. I do not wish to know, I am sorry I asked."
"Indeed! Perhaps you would be sorrier if you were told I only made a secret of it out of consideration for you."
"Then your uncle has spoken ill of me behind my back. If that be so there is no such thing as a true man in Ireland, I would not have believed it on the word of any woman alive save yourself."
"I never said my uncle was a backbiter. Just to shew you what he thinks of you, I will tell you, whether you want to know or not, that he bid me not mind you because you were only a poor mad creature, sent down here by your family to be out of harm's way."
"Oh, Miss Hickey!"
"There now! you have got it out of me; and I wish I had bit my tongue out first. I sometimes think—that I mayn't sin!—that you have a bad angel in you."
"I am glad you told me this," I said gently. "Do not reproach yourself for having done so, I beg. Your uncle has been misled by what he has heard of my family, who are all more or less insane. Far from being mad, I am actually[Pg 26] the only rational man named Legge in the three kingdoms. I will prove this to you, and at the same time keep your indiscretion in countenance, by telling you something I ought not to tell you. It is this. I am not here as an invalid or a chance tourist. I am here to investigate the miracle. The Cardinal, a shrewd and somewhat erratic man, selected mine from all the long heads at his disposal to come down here, and find out the truth of Father Hickey's story. Would he have entrusted such a task to a madman, think you?"
"The truth of—who dared to doubt my uncle's word? And so you are a spy, a dirty informer."
I started. The adjective she had used, though probably the commonest expression of contempt in Ireland, is revolting to an Englishman.
"Miss Hickey," I said: "there is in me, as you have said, a bad angel. Do not shock my good angel—who is a person of taste—quite away from my heart, lest the other be left undisputed monarch of it. Hark! The chapel bell is ringing the angelus. Can you, with that sound softening the darkness of the village night, cherish a feeling of spite against one who admires you?"
"You come between me and my prayers" she said hysterically, and began to sob. She had scarcely done so when I heard voices without. Then Langan and the priest entered.
"Oh, Phil," she cried, running to him, "take me away from him: I cant bear——" I turned towards him, and shewed him my dog-tooth in a false smile. He felled me at one stroke, as he might have felled a poplar-tree.
"Murdher!" exclaimed the priest. "What are you doin, Phil?"
"He's an informer," sobbed Kate. "He came down here to spy on you, uncle, and to try and show that the blessed miracle was a makeshift. I knew it long before he told me, by his insulting ways. He wanted to make love to me."
I rose with difficulty from beneath the table where I had lain motionless for a moment.
"Sir," I said, "I am somewhat dazed by the recent action of Mr. Langan, whom I beg, the next time he converts himself into a fulling-mill, to do so at the expense of a man more nearly his equal in strength than I. What your niece has told you is partly true. I am indeed the Cardinal's spy; and I have already reported to him that the miracle is a genuine one. A committee of gentlemen will wait on you tomorrow to verify it, at my suggestion. I have thought that the proof might be regarded by them as more complete if you were taken by surprise. Miss Hickey: that I admire all that is admirable in you is but to say that I have a sense of the beautiful. To say that I love you would be mere profanity. Mr. Langan: I have in my pocket a loaded pistol which I carry from a silly English prejudice against your countrymen. Had I been the Hercules of the ploughtail, and you in my place, I should have been a dead man now. Do not redden: you are safe as far as I am concerned."
"Let me tell you before you leave my house for good," said Father Hickey, who seemed to have become unreasonably angry, "that you should never have crossed my threshold if I had known you were a spy: no, not if your uncle were his Holiness the Pope himself."
Here a frightful thing happened to me. I felt giddy, and put my hand on my head. Three warm drops trickled over it. I instantly became murderous. My mouth filled with[Pg 28] blood; my eyes were blinded with it. My hand went involuntarily to the pistol. It is my habit to obey my impulses instantaneously. Fortunately the impulse to kill vanished before a sudden perception of how I might miraculously humble the mad vanity in which these foolish people had turned upon me. The blood receded from my ears; and I again heard and saw distinctly.
"And let me tell you," Langan was saying, "that if you think yourself handier with cold lead than you are with your fists, I'll exchange shots with you, and welcome, whenever you please. Father Tom's credit is the same to me as my own; and if you say a word against it, you lie."
"His credit is in my hands," I said, "I am the Cardinal's witness. Do you defy me?"
"There is the door," said the priest, holding it open before me. "Until you can undo the visible work of God's hand your testimony can do no harm to me."
"Father Hickey," I replied, "before the sun rises again upon Four Mile Water, I will undo the visible work of God's hand, and bring the pointing finger of the scoffer upon your altar."
I bowed to Kate, and walked out. It was so dark that I could not at first see the garden gate. Before I found it, I heard through the window Father Hickey's voice, saying, "I wouldn't for ten pounds that this had happened, Phil. He's as mad as a march hare. The Cardinal told me so."
I returned to my lodging, and took a cold bath to cleanse the blood from my neck and shoulder. The effect of the blow I had received was so severe, that even after the bath and a light meal I felt giddy and languid. There was an alarum-clock on the mantle[Pg 29] piece: I wound it; set the alarum for half-past twelve; muffled it so that it should not disturb the people in the adjoining room; and went to bed, where I slept soundly for an hour and a quarter. Then the alarum roused me, and I sprang up before I was thoroughly awake. Had I hesitated, the desire to relapse into perfect sleep would have overpowered me. Although the muscles of my neck were painfully stiff, and my hands unsteady from my nervous disturbance, produced by the interruption of my first slumber, I dressed myself resolutely, and, after taking a draught of cold water, stole out of the house. It was exceedingly dark; and I had some difficulty in finding the cow-house, whence I borrowed a spade, and a truck with wheels, ordinarily used for moving sacks of potatoes. These I carried in my hands until I was beyond earshot of the house, when I put the spade on the truck, and wheeled it along the road to the cemetery. When I approached the water, knowing that no one would dare come thereabout at such an hour I made greater haste, no longer concerning myself about the rattling of the wheels. Looking across to the opposite bank, I could see a phosophorescent glow, marking the lonely grave of Brimstone Billy. This helped me to find the ferry station, where, after wandering a little and stumbling often, I found the boat, and embarked with my implements. Guided by the rope, I crossed the water without difficulty; landed; made fast the boat; dragged the truck up the bank; and sat down to rest on the cairn at the grave. For nearly a quarter of an hour I sat watching the patches of jack-o-lantern fire, and collecting my strength for the work before me. Then the distant bell of the chapel clock tolled one. I arose; took the[Pg 30] spade; and in about ten minutes uncovered the coffin, which smelt horribly. Keeping to windward of it, and using the spade as a lever, I contrived with great labor to place it on the truck. I wheeled it without accident to the landing place, where, by placing the shafts of the truck upon the stern of the boat and lifting the foot by main strength, I succeeded in embarking my load after twenty minutes' toil, during which I got covered with clay and perspiration, and several times all but upset the boat. At the southern bank I had less difficulty in getting the coffin ashore, dragging it up to the graveyard.
It was now past two o'clock, and the dawn had begun; so that I had no further trouble for want of light. I wheeled the coffin to a patch of loamy soil which I had noticed in the afternoon near the grave of the holy sisters. I had warmed to my work; my neck no longer pained me; and I began to dig vigorously, soon making a shallow trench, deep enough to hide the coffin with the addition of a mound. The chill pearl-coloured morning had by this time quite dissipated the darkness. I could see, and was myself visible, for miles around. This alarmed, and made me impatient to finish my task. Nevertheless, I was forced to rest for a moment before placing the coffin in the trench. I wiped my brow and wrists, and again looked about me. The tomb of the holy women, a massive slab supported on four stone spheres, was grey and wet with dew. Near it was the thornbush covered with rags, the newest of which were growing gaudy in the radiance which was stretching up from the coast on the east. It was time to finish my work. I seized the truck; laid it alongside the grave; and gradually pried the coffin off with the spade until[Pg 31] it rolled over into the trench with a hollow sound like a drunken remonstrance from the sleeper within. I shovelled the earth round and over it, working as fast as possible. In less than a quarter of an hour it was buried. Ten minutes more sufficed to make the mound symmetrical, and to clear the adjacent ward. Then I flung down the spade; threw up my arms; and vented a sigh of relief and triumph. But I recoiled as I saw that I was standing on a barren common, covered with furze. No product of man's handiwork was near me except my truck and spade and the grave of Brimstone Billy, now as lonely as before. I turned towards the water. On the opposite bank was the cemetery, with the tomb of the holy women, the thornbush with its rags stirring in the morning breeze, and the broken mud wall. The ruined chapel was there, too, not a stone shaken from its crumbling walls, not a sign to shew that it and its precinct were less rooted in their place than the eternal hills around.
I looked down at the grave with a pang of compassion for the unfortunate Wolf Tone Fitzgerald, with whom the blessed would not rest. I was even astonished, though I had worked expressly to this end. But the birds were astir, and the cocks crowing. My landlord was an early riser. I put the spade on the truck again, and hastened back to the farm, where I replaced them in the cow-house. Then I stole into the house, and took a clean pair of boots, an overcoat, and a silk hat. These with a change of linen, were sufficient to make my appearance respectable. I went out again, bathed in Four Mile Water, took a last look[Pg 32] at the cemetery, and walked to Wicklow, whence I traveled by the first train to Dublin.
Some months later, at Cairo, I received a packet of Irish newspapers, and a leading article, cut from The Times, on the subject of the miracle. Father Hickey had suffered the meed of his inhospitable conduct. The committee, arriving at Four Mile Water the day after I left, had found the graveyard exactly where it formerly stood. Father Hickey, taken by surprise, had attempted to defend himself by a confused statement, which led the committee to declare finally that the miracle was a gross imposture. The Times, commenting on this after adducing a number of examples of priestly craft, remarked, "We are glad to learn that the Rev. Mr. Hickey has been permanently relieved of his duties as the parish priest of Four Mile Water by his ecclesiastical superior. It is less gratifying to have to record that it has been found possible to obtain two hundred signatures to a memorial embodying the absurd defence offered to the committee, and expressing unabated confidence in the integrity of Mr. Hickey."
London, 1885.
Transcriber's Notes:
Pg. 8: statute changed to statue (There was a statue of the Virgin)
Pg. 10: dangenerous changed to dangerous (are dangerous for you in your present morbid state.)
All other questionable or quaint spellings have been kept as in the original book.
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