Part 22 (2/2)
”Plase your Reverence,” said Bartley, ”she came in to Mary, and she alone in the house, and for the matther o' that, I believe she laid hands upon her, and tossed and tumbled the crathur, and she but a sickly woman, through the four corners of the house. Not that Mary lets an so much, for she's afeard; but I know from her way, when she spakes about her, that it's thruth, your Reverence.”
”But didn't the _Lianhan Shee_,” said one of them, ”put a sharp-pointed knife to her breast, wid a divilish intintion of makin' her give the best of aitin' an' dhrinkin' the house afforded?”
”She got the victuals, to a sartinty,” replied Bartley, ”and 'overlooked'
my woman for her pains; for she's not the picture of herself since.”
Every one now told some magnified and terrible circ.u.mstance, ill.u.s.trating the formidable power of the _Lianhan Shee_.
When they had finished, the sarcastic lip of the priest curled into an expression of irony and contempt; his brow, which was naturally black and heavy, darkened; and a keen, but rather a ferocious-looking eye, shot forth a glance, which, while it intimated disdain for those to whom it was directed, spoke also of a dark and troubled spirit in himself.
The man seemed to brook with scorn the degrading situation of a religious quack, to which some incontrollable destiny had doomed him.
”I shall see your wife to-morrow,” said he to Bartley; ”and after hearing the plain account of what happened, I will consider what is best to be done with this dark, perhaps unhappy, perhaps guilty character; but whether dark, or unhappy, or guilty, I, for one, should not and will not avoid her. Go, and bring me word to-morrow evening, when I can see her on the following day. Begone!”
When they withdrew, Father Philip paced his room for some time in silence and anxiety.
”Ay,” said he, ”infatuated people! sunk in superst.i.tion and ignorance, yet, perhaps, happier in your degradation than those who, in the pride of knowledge, can only look back upon a life of crime and misery. What is a sceptic? What is an infidel? Men who, when they will not submit to moral restraint, harden themselves into scepticism and infidelity, until in the headlong career of guilt, that which was first adopted to lull the outcry of conscience, is supported by the pretended pride of principle. Principle in a sceptic! Hollow and devilish lie! Would I have plunged into scepticism, had I not first violated the moral sanctions of religion? Never. I became an infidel, because I first became a villain!
Writhing under a load of guilt, that which I wished might be true I soon forced myself to think true: and now”--he here clenched his hands and groaned--”now--ay--now--and hereafter--oh, that hereafter! Why can I not shake the thoughts of it from my conscience? Religion! Christianity!
With all the hardness of an infidel's heart I feel your truth; because, if every man were the villain that infidelity would make him, then indeed might every man curse G.o.d for his existence bestowed upon him--as I would, but dare not do. Yet why can I not believe?--Alas! why should G.o.d accept an unrepentant heart? Am I not a hypocrite, mocking him by a guilty pretension to his power, and leading the dark into thicker darkness? Then these hands--blood!--broken vows!--ha! ha! ha! Well, go--let misery have its laugh, like the light that breaks from the thunder-cloud. Prefer Voltaire to Christ; sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind, as I have done--ha, ha, ha! Swim, world--swim about me! I have lost the ways of Providence, and am dark! She awaits me; but I broke the chain that galled us: yet it still rankles--still rankles!”
The unhappy man threw himself into a chair in a paroxysm of frenzied agony. For more than an hour he sat in the same posture, until he became gradually hardened into a stiff, lethargic insensibility, callous and impervious to feeling, reason, or religion--an awful transition from a visitation of conscience so terrible as that which he had just suffered.
At length he arose, and by walking moodily about, relapsed into his usual gloomy and restless character.
When Bartley went home, he communicated to his wife Father Philip's intention of calling on the following day, to hear a correct account of the Lianhan Shee.
”Why, thin,” said she, ”I'm glad of it, for I intinded myself to go to him, any way, to get my new scapular consecrated. How-an'-ever, as he's to come, I'll get a set of gospels for the boys an' girls, an' he can consecrate all when his hand's in. Aroon, Bartley, they say that man's so holy that he can do anything--ay, melt a body off the face o' the earth, like snow off a ditch. Dear me, but the power they have is strange all out!”
”There's no use in gettin' him anything to ate or dhrink,” replied Bartley; ”he wouldn't take a gla.s.s o' whiskey once in seven years.
Throth, myself thinks he's a little too dry; sure he might be holy enough, an' yet take a sup of an odd time. There's Father Felix, an'
though we all know he's far from bein' so blessed a man as him, yet he has friends.h.i.+p an' neighborliness in him, an' never refuses a gla.s.s in rason.”
”But do you know what I was tould about Father Philip, Bartley?”
”I'll tell you that afther I hear it, Mary, my woman; you won't expect me to tell what I don't know?--ha, ha, ha!”
”Behave, Bartley, an' quit your jokin' now, at all evints; keep it till we're talkin' of somethin' else, an' don't let us be committin' sin, maybe, while we're spakin' of what we're spakin' about; but they say it's as thrue as the sun to the dial:--the Lent afore last itself it was,--he never tasted mate or dhrink durin' the whole seven weeks! Oh, you needn't stare! it's well known by thim that has as much sinse as you--no, not so much as you'd carry on the point o' this knittin'-needle. Well, sure the housekeeper an' the two sarvants wondhered--faix, they couldn't do less--an' took it into their heads to watch him closely; an' what do you think--blessed be all the saints above!--what do you think they seen?”
”The Goodness above knows; for me--I don't.”
”Why, thin, whin he was asleep they seen a small silk thread in his mouth, that came down through the ceilin' from heaven, an' he suckin'
it, just as a child would his mother's breast whin the crathur 'ud be asleep: so that was the way he was supported by the angels! An' I remimber myself, though he's a dark, spare, yallow man at all times, yet he never looked half so fat an' rosy as he did the same Lent!”
”Glory be to Heaven! Well, well--it is sthrange the power they have! As for him, I'd as fee meet St. Pettier, or St. Pathrick himself, as him; for one can't but fear him, somehow.”
”Fear him! Och, it 'ud be the pity o' thim that 'ud do anything to vex or anger that man. Why, his very look 'ud wither thim, till there wouldn't be the thrack* o' thim on the earth; an' as for his curse, why it 'ud scorch thim to ashes!”
* Track, foot-mark, put for life
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