CHAPTER XII.
Was Father Eusebius quite satisfied with that decision himself, as he drove along from the shore into the skirts of the gray mountains?
The pass at the entrance was very wild; over-hung with perpendicular masses of rock, the bare ribs of the everlasting hills. Farther in, vegetation became luxuriant; wild ivy made a net-work over the stones, stunted yew and arbitus, and broom, sprang from the crevices; blue eye-bright, and purple loose-stripe tinged the torrent-beds. The path was barely broad enough for the priest’s stout-built jaunting-car to win along; often it seemed shut up by closing crags.
“Hollo, Mike Rafferty: you reading a book!”
The shock-headed boy of Denis Purcell’s farm-house was siezing some odd moments by the way-side for a glance at his Irish primer, and blushed much more deeply than the hue of his own hair at being caught in the fact. Father Eusebius looked into the well-thumbed pages.
“Are many more of you learning from the Manuscript Man?”
“Masther an’ all of us at the farm-house above, yer reverence,” was the reply, with a pull of his front locks for obeisance. “An’ Mickey Malt comes in of odd turn.” Evidently the shock-headed boy was ready to tell everything.
“Drive on,” said the priest to his man.
If the Bible were not read in these gatherings, he believed the harm would be eliminated. And he had put an end to that.
“Stop at Denis Purcell’s farm-house.”
Great was the commotion to give his reverence a worthy reception when the car was seen turning up the narrow road which had no further ending than the front door. The fowl peacefully picking the remnants of potatos on the earthen floor were sent precipitately flying out the back door, greatly to their astonishment, as testified by a clamorous chuckling; and at the other extremity of the scale the young ladies, disheveled by dairy work, retreated to smooth their hair and in vain cultivate the appearance of genteel idleness; while Mrs. Purcell herself let down her sleeves and donned a brilliant white apron in a trice.
“Why, then, yer reverence is as welcome as the flowers of May, an’ sorry I am himself is out; an’ what will I be gettin’ yer honor as refreshment agin the road? Kathleen asthore, Father Euseby used to relish a glass of syllabub; run out, may be they aren’t done milking in the bawn yet.”
But the visitor would take no refreshment; he had heard that Denis’s old mother lay ill, and as he was passing by turned in to know the truth.
“Well, you see, yer reverence, she’s failin’ away wid the pure weakness, an’ sometimes she don’t know any body; an’ it’s to lie in the bed all day she likes; an’ indeed I’m thinkin’ yer reverence’s hand will be wantin’ over her some day soon.”
“I’d like to see her,” said the priest. From long experience he was as well versed in the symptoms of approaching dissolution as any physician.
The bright black eyes in the shriveled face gleamed with a fancied recognition as she saw him.
“Ah, you’re come again, Donat Clare,” she exclaimed in Irish, her own language. “And where’s the story of peace? Donat, I’ve been thinking over my blessed Saviour, and how he cured all the sick people—“a bewilderment came across the poor old face as her daughter-in-law whispered, “It’s a sort of wanderin’ she do be, sometimes, yer reverence.”
Presently she knew him, and talked no more about the story of peace, but answered his few questions like a tired child. Father Eusebius held up his hand with that peculiar attitude of the fingers which indicates benediction, and pronounced over her a short Latin blessing.
There’s no sign of near death about her that I can see,” said he, emerging into the broad kitchen again. “She may live many months in this way, sleeping most of her time, and dreaming, whether she’s awake or asleep. Good evening to you. I hope Denis finds the hay heavy this year.”
But Denis’s wife had evidently a request to make, and stood before him with a deep courtesy.
“Yer honor’s reverence. I’ve been gettin’ a new set of Gospels for the boys an’ girls, for the ould ones is wore to pieces from hanging round their necks, an’ little Jem lost his entirely out bathing; an’ sure I gev him a bateing first for his being so careless, but whin I I remimbered meself I took off my own blessed scapular and tied it on him, for I do be in dread of his gettin’ hurt somehow, he’s so wild in himself. An’ I thought may be you wouldn’t mind consecratin’ ‘em now, sir, since yer on the spot.”
“I’ll get it done by Father Devenish,” replied the old priest, whith a certain inward repugnance to the false and superstitious office. “Put them into the well of the car, or give them to Lanty.”
They did not occupy much space, being tiny calico bags with long tape strings, each containing a folded slip of paper bearing some two or three verses of Scripture and prayers; a charm to exorcise all evils from the young people.
“Did the Manuscript Man write them for you?” asked Father Eusebius, stopping short.
“’Deed, then! I had great coaxing entirely to make him do it, an’ he as good as tould me they’d be no manner of use,” said Mrs. Denis. “So I’d take a power o’ kindly if Father Devenish would look into the inside while he’s about it.”
“Yes, yes, I understand. I’m sure ‘twill be all right, Mrs. Purcell.”
And the car drove away, while the farmer’s wife made deep obeisances as long as it was in sight on the narrow road. Mr. O’Donnell had thought that he would not give the Irish lessons undue importance by naming them, since he could not very well put his veto on them; but he had had a second sample of how Bible reading can take hold of the heart, in the case of the poor old grandmother. And a feeling very like that of being reassured of the orthodoxy of the family came into his mind, when he saw the unchanged superstitions which he despised, and yet must regard with an official approval in the interests of his Church.
Again were such brought under his notice, when, on he met a cart containing various women: Mrs. Clare and her daughter, with Mrs. Nelson, who had been trying the efficacy of the Roonard well upon her “dark” boy. There was no immediate result, but she hugged a big greenish bottle of the blessed water to be used as a wash for his eyes; and was now holding forth on a favourite topic, the pains she had taken for his sake in visiting holy places. The day’s work had been much harder, and therefore more meritorious, at the “pattern” of Kilmacow, where the three holy wells were within high-water mark on the edge of the sea, and each had to be encircled ten times on the knees, together with a dozen of the outer round enclosing the wells. Tents were erected behind the sand-hills, whence the sound of fiddlers and pipers could be heard, for much hilarity prevailed among the mixed multitude that escorted the pilgrims; and also a considerable share of business was done in the way of buying and selling. But the blind boy had come back as dark as he went.
“Look there, now,” said Mrs. Clare, “if this isn’t father Euseby comin’ along, an’ you couldn’t have a better sign than to meet the priest of the parish face to face, Mary Nelson. Sure if we never got a cure, we have the good actions forenent us, to lighten our load hereafther.”
“Donat Clare’s Bible has not done much harm in his own family,” thought the priest, when a question elicited where the party had been. But he did not read aright the saddened face of the girl Maureen, who had gone to Roonard to please her mother, and perform some rounds on behalf of her friend, poor dead Eily. Doubts of their efficacy would intrude, and her scruples had been strengthend by the openly expressed sarcasms of an acquaintance—a neighbour’s son, who had been in training for a National schoolmaster, and was now an assistant in the school at Roonard.
“See that—isn’t it enough to make a fellow abjure any religion?” he said, as they watched the numerous devotees trailing themselves through the dust about the appointed stations, and all reciting prayers diligently from “padereens” or beads. “To think that Almighty God, the Creator of this splendid world, could be pleased at that sort of thing!”
Maureen was very glad that her share in the observances was over ere he came on the ground.
“There’s a story in the Bible about worshippers of Baal cutting themselves, and shouting for hours, ‘O Baal, hear us!’” he continued; “and ‘tis just the same principle as these people bruising their knees and bare feet, and repeating the same words over and over. I tell you, Maureen, it makes a man doubt—“
“I’m afeard you haven’t been in the best company, Cormac, to talk that way about religion.”
“Education does it, Maureen,” said the youth, strong in the pride of his partial attainments. “One comes to see how much priestcraft is in it—how superior natural religion is to all this!”
“An’ what’s natural religion, Cormac?”
The limpid eyes of the girl appeared to confuse the budding infedel; who had leaped, by a not unnatural transition, from a childhood of extreme ignorance and superstition, through the gate of knowledge, into a youth of skepticism. Perhaps the answer to her simple question was not quite clear to his own mind.
“O, just to adore God as the beneficent Creator, free from the trammels of Churches, and creeds, and superstitions, you know. But you must not mind my nonsense, Maureen; it’s just a way of talking I have.”
“I don’t like it, then,” said she. “But I’ll ask father to show me the story in the Bible about the people cutting theirselves.”
Which led to an explanation of how the Manuscript Man came by the forbidden book; and Cormac was very near saying, “That’s more of their priestcraft,” but he refrained, and merely talked learnedly about various matters, and aired his knowledge in her sight as a peacock preens his plumes, till she thought nobody could possibly have more learning than the young assistant-master.
Her father gave her no encouragement to search for the story in the Bible; and when she elicited from him the reason, the priest’s prohibition, she was not undaunted.
“Give it to me, father;” and she drew the volume gently from his hands. “You can’t help me taking it, you know; an’ it’s time enough when he forbids meself. An’ sure if it is the book of God, as you say, has Father Euseby any right to purvent us reading it at all?”
The Manuscript Man patted her cheek. “Yer a daring girl, Maureen; an’ if your mother hears you—“
But she had only given voice, with the rashness of youth, to a slumbering doubt of his own.
About the same hour, at the settling of darkness upon the long summer twilight, the old priest himself took down from his shelves his handsome copy of the Latin Vulgate—that version by Jerome which the Church of Rome has declared equal in authority to the originals. The Manuscript Man’s pertinacity in defense of his Bible had greatly struck Father Eusebius. The Vulgate lay on his reading-table henceforth, along with various other volumes of classical and patristic literature, and the inevitable breviary.