CHAPTER XIV.
A Great brown bog stretched at the foot of the hills in one place. Perhaps a forest had brooded over the flat ages ago, for giant oaks were sometimes dug up, black with long seething in the reeking soil. It was a great blessing to the cotters and farmers for miles about, as insuring them abundance of the cheapest fuel. Many people were assembled here at different seasons of the year, either cutting turf with a long tool called a slane, or “footing” turf, which consists of setting the sods end upward in triads, so that the air has free access to every part, or banking turf and drawing it home, which was the autumn work. Often had Donat Clare given a lesson in Irish reading on the bog; but when he came for the purpose, one day shortly after the “station” at Denis Purcell’s, he found matters considerably changed.
“Troth, an’ I wont have anything to say to yer books,” said one former pupil. “If you heard Father Peter expounding the curse he’ll lay on us you’d know the differ.”
“What for should he curse? Sure we done nothing.”
“Look here, Manuscript Man, I’d give it up, if I was you, or worse might come of it.”
“Give up what?”
“O how innocent you are! whatever’s angering the priest. Of course it’s the book.”
“Why don’t he ask me to give up me ould papers an’ Irish collections? I’m sure there isn’t half the good in them all put together, that there is on one page of the other.”
“O, sure I know ye’d coax the bird off the bush wid yer arguments; but I’ve the dread of the clergy too much on me mind; so here’s yer primer back, an’ good-bye to ye.”
The man walked off to another part of his bank of turf.
“I suppose you’ll be afther doing the like,” said Donat, turning to the next labourer, who had listened to the colloquy. It happened to be Pat Colman the fisherman; every little holding in the bog districts of Ireland has a slip of turbary annexed, to supply this necessary of life without money.
“Well,” said he, thoughtfully, “may be ‘tis that I face too many blustery winds an’ waters, to be easily made afeared by a mouthful of big words. I’m used to lookin’ right out at storms, an’ sometimes they do be worse when they’re comin’ than when they’re come. I heered Father Peter as well as the rest, an only for the vestments on him, I’d just ha’ said he was a man in a passion; but of coorse one daurn’t say a word against the blessed vestments.”
For the peasantry really believe that these sarcedotal garments make the wearers holy, sinless for the time being; nay, that whoever dies in the dress, passes into paradise.
“So as I’m not one bit afeared, we’ll go on, Manuscript Man. An’ I’ll tell you a bit of a secret; since you gev up readin’ for us the beautiful things that are in yer big book, I’ve been thinkin’ how I could get one for myself against I was out of the primer; for ‘twould be grand company in the winter evenins by the bog-deal light, an’ if Father Peter was to die for it he couldn’t persuade me there’s harm in a real Irish Testament that the blessed saints wrote an’ the blessed saints read.”
“Harm!” repeated Clare, kindling. “Look ye here, Pat Colman; I tould you Father Euseby gev me a dispensation to read the book my own self. Well, I’m at it pretty much ever since, an’ it’s like a new world! All them oul’ volumes of mine, full of battles, an’ voyages, an’ cowspoils, an’ histories of chiefs an’ bards, don’t put the light into one’s heart this does.”
“Sure it must be out of measure good, or the priests wouldn’t want to keep all up entirely to theirselves,” rejoined the fisherman, with a twinkle in his gray eye. “Well, as I was sayin’ Mrs. Medley, that keeps the groceries in Roonard, promised she’d send for one from Dublin, an’ I was to pay her in ling an’ herrins’ accordin’ as I had ‘em. She bein’ a Protestan’ I guessed she wouldn’t tell on me. But what does she do, but gets it and gives it to me a present. ‘Wid a heart an’ a half, Pat,’ says she, ‘only don’t mintion a word about it; for if you do, me trade will be ruined—they’d raise the cry on me for a souper.’ So you must keep it dark, Manuscript Man.”
“Never fear.”
But a thought had entered his mind which possessed it all the way home an hour afterward. Low in the yellow west hung a silver crescent moon as he reached his own door, while a black bank of cloud was slowly climbing from the north, extinguishing the twilight.
“’Twill be a dead dark night,” he said to himself as the latch clinked. “Thank God for plenty of fire an’ light.”
After supper he went to the rough old wooden desk, the refuse of some office, where he kept his antiquarian treasures, and wrote the headlines of the copy-books; and he was very much engrossed with some writing for a long time. Maureen worked away at her wheel, finishing a hank of yarn Mrs. Purcell had given her to spin; her mother smoked, and wound up her evening with her usual rosary on her beads. This meant the Creed repeated on the pendant cross, thirteen Hail Mary’s and three Paternosters on sixteen beads, and a fourth Paternoster on a large ball which they call “the dixeth.”
“It’s time for you to go to bed, Maureen,” said Mrs. Clare in the midst of it, keeping her finger between the beads so as not to lose count. “Bolt the door, an’ put by yer wheel.”
“I’ve just only a few threads to do more,” replied the girl; but she rose and shot the wooden bolt to both doors. “An’ the candle is goin’ down to the very last snuff; father, will ye want another?”
He was peering at what he had written with a dissatisfied face.
“Yes,” he said, rather wearily, tearing another page from the blue-ruled copy-paper, and, folding it like a letter. “I’ll have to do this over again.”
“Father, I’d help you if I was able.”
“I b’lieve you, asthore;” and he looked tenderly at her. “But nobody could have any thin’ to say to this only myself.”
The candlestick was primitive, being nothing more artificial than a sod of turf with a stick inserted slantwise in a hole; the cleft end of the stick (a slip of bog deal) held the dip candle efficiently.
“’Deed, then, you might burn daylight at yer oul’ writins,” observed Mrs. Clare contemptuously, but without raising her eyes from the beads. “Them dips are fippence a pound.”
There was a silence after that for a while, except the whirring of the wheel. Maureen’s thread was nearly spun, when all were startled by the latch being tried gently. No foregoing steps had been audible, but they fancied a murmur of voices in the pause that followed; then a gentle tap. The very quietness of it was the alarming thing; any of the neighbours would have knocked an unmistakable knock. Fear took hold of Maureen’s heart as her father hesitated a moment, and then called out, “Who’s there?”
“A friend,” uttered in an voice unknown.
“Yer rather late, whoever ye are,” said the Manuscript Man, rising to withdraw the bolt. His daughter sprang to his arm.
“No, no, father; this is something not right—wait a minit—ask ‘em what they’ve come for—“
“What d’ye want at this hour o’night?”
“We’ll soon show you—“
And a terrific blow from a bludgeon shivered the frail door from its hinges. Five or six men filled the entry; they had white shirts over their clothes, and blackened faces.
“That’s not a very polite way of gettin’ in,” observed the Manuscript Man, retaining his composure, though Maureen clung to his arm in terror. He had seen blackened faces before, and could not be scared by them. “Now perhaps ye’ll say what ye want?”
“Boys,” said a man, who seemed to be leader, “touch notin’ but what ye came for. And, Donat Clare, that’s yer Protestan’ books—yer Bible above ‘em all.”
It was wrenched from him after a struggle, in which he was at last forced on the ground, and held down by three or four men. The sacred book, with many expressions of loathing and cursing, was cut to pieces with a sharp knife, and the fragments burned.
“Now put down plenty o’ turf for the covers—they’re tough,” laughed the leader, “while I thry in this box for any more of the same sort.” And he pulled the Testament out of the desk.
“You’d better hould yer tongue while yer about such a work, Mickey Malt,” said Clare, imprudently, and attempting to rise. “An’ if it’s to please the priest that ye’re burning the book of God—“
“O don’t kill him—don’t kill him!” cried Maureen, casting herself down on his body to ward off the rain of blows.
“Then do you keep him quiet,” was the rejoinder. “An’ if ever he informs, or tries to inform, or thinks in his heart to do it, I’ll tell you what—a coal in the thatch of a windy night is nothin’ to the revenge we’ll take!”
The old woman came quietly out of the inner room after they had gone. “Put down a sup o’ water for your father’s bruises,” she said. “An’ now I hope ye’ve had enough of Protestan’ books. Sure well I guessed they’d bring some misfortin’ down on us before long.”
But though the Manuscript Man did not recover from the effect of that domiciliary visit for many a day, yet the very next afternoon found him trying again at the composition in which he had been so rudely interrupted.
“The more need to do it, the more need to do it,” he murmured when Maureen entreated him not to make his head more pained than it was.
What cost him so much trouble? Shaping a few sentences addressed to Father Eusebius, very respectfully referring to the leave he had given him to read the Bible in private; but saying that he felt he could no longer obey his reverence in not bringing the book to any of the cabins where people would listen to it. No, he must read the book wherever he found hearers; and he hoped Father Eusebius would not be angry.
“Did you give the letter into his own hand, as I bade you?” he asked when his messenger returned.
“Yes,” said Maureen.
“An’ what remark did he make?”
“He read it, an’ said there was no answer.”