Part 24 (1/2)
At length a mild-looking, pale-faced man, with a clear, benignant eye, approached him, and laying his hand in a gentle manner upon his arm, said, ”Pray, my dear lord, let me entreat your lords.h.i.+p to remember the precepts of our great Master: 'Love your enemies; bless them that curse you; do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you, and persecute you.' And surely, my lord, no one knows better than you do that this is the spirit of our religion, and that whenever it is violated the fault is not that of the creed, but the man.”
”Under any circ.u.mstances,” said the bishop, declining to reply to this, and placing his open hand across his forehead, as if he felt confusion or pain--”under any circ.u.mstances, this person must take the oath of secrecy with respect to the existence of this cave. Call him up.”
Reilly, as we have said, saw at once that an angry discussion had taken place, and felt all but certain that he was himself involved in it. The priest, in obedience to the wish expressed by the bishop, went down to where he stood, and whispering to him, said:
”Salvation to me, but I had a hard battle for you. I fought, however, like a trump. The strange, and--ahem--kind of man you are called upon to meet now is one of our bishops--but don't you pretend to know that--he has heard of your love for the _Cooleen Bawn_, and of her love for you--be easy now--not a thing it will be but the meeting of two thunderbolts between you--and he's afraid you'll be deluded by her charms--turn apostate on our hands--and that the first thing you're likely to do, when you get out of this subterranean palace of ours, will be to betray its existence to the heretics. I have now put you on your guard, so keep a sharp lookout; be mild as mother's milk. But if you 'my lord' him, I'm dished as a traitor beyond redemption.”
Now, if the simple-hearted priest had been tempted by the enemy himself to place these two men in a position where a battle-royal between them was most likely to ensue, he could not have taken a more successful course for that object. Reilly, the firm, the high-minded, the honorable, and, though last not least, the most indignant at any imputation against his integrity, now accompanied the priest in a state of indignation that was nearly a match for that of the bishop.
”This is Mr. Reilly, gentlemen; a firm and an honest Catholic, who, like ourselves, is suffering for his religion.”
”Mr. Reilly,” said the bishop, ”it is good to suffer for our religion.”
”It is our duty,” replied Reilly, ”when we are called upon to do so; but for my part, I must confess, I have no relish whatsoever for the honors of martyrdom. I would rather aid it and a.s.sist it than suffer for it.”
The bishop gave a stem look at his friends, as much as to say: ”You hear! incipient heresy and treachery at the first step.”
”He's more mad than the bishop,” thought Father Maguire; ”in G.o.d's name what will come next, I wonder? Reilly's blood, somehow, is up; and there they are looking at each other, like a pair o' game c.o.c.ks, with their necks stretched out in a c.o.c.kpit--when I was a boy I used to go to see them--ready to dash upon one another.”
”Are you not now suffering for your religion?” asked the prelate.
”No,” replied Reilly, ”it is not for the sake of my religion that I have suffered any thing. Religion is made only a pretext for it; but it is not, in truth, on that account that I have been persecuted.”
”Pray, then, sir, may I inquire the cause of your persecution?”
”You may,” replied Reilly, ”but I shall decline to answer you. It comes not within your jurisdiction, but is a matter altogether personal to myself, and with which you can have no concern.”
Here a groan from the priest, which he could not suppress, was s.h.i.+vered off, by a tremendous effort, into a series of broken coughs, got up in order to conceal his alarm at the fatal progress which Reilly, he thought, was unconsciously making to his own ruin.
”Troth,” thought he, ”the soldiers were nothing at all to what this will be. There his friends would have found the body and given him a decent burial; but here neither friend nor fellow will know where to look for him. I was almost the first man that took the oath to keep the existence of this place secret from all unless those that were suffering for their religion; and now, by denying that, he has me in the trap along with himself.”
A second groan, shaken out of its continuity into another comical shower of fragmental coughs, closed this dreary but silent soliloquy.
The bishop proceeded: ”You have been inveigled, young man, by the charms of a deceitful and heretical syren, for the purpose of alienating you from the creed of your forefathers.”
”It is false,” replied Reilly; ”false, if it proceeded from the lips of the Pope himself; and if his lips uttered to me what you now have done, I would fling the falsehood in his teeth, as I do now in yours--yes, if my life should pay the forfeit of it. What have you to do with my private concerns?”
Reilly's indignant and impetuous reply to the prelate struck all who heard it with dismay, and also with horror, when they bethought themselves of the consequences.
”You are a heretic at heart,” said the other, knitting his brows; ”from your own language you stand confessed--a heretic.”
”I know not,” replied Reilly, ”by what right or authority you adopt this ungentlemanly and illiberal conduct towards me; but so long as your language applies only to myself and my religion, I shall answer you in a different spirit. In the first place, then, you are grievously mistaken in supposing me to be a heretic. I am true and faithful to nay creed, and will live and die in it.”
Father Maguire felt relieved, and breathed more freely; a groan was coming, but it ended in a ”hem.”
”Before we proceed any farther, sir,” said this strange man, ”you must take an oath.”
”For what purpose, sir?” inquired Reilly.
”An oath of secrecy as to the existence of this place of our retreat.
There are at present here some of the--” he checked himself, as if afraid to proceed farther. ”In fact, every man who is admitted amongst us must take the oath.”