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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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LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 215
Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
The Miraculous Revenge
Bernard Shaw
HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY GIRARD, KANSAS
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
THE MIRACULOUS REVENGE
[Illustration: BERNARD SHAW]
THE MIRACULOUS REVENGE
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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,
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, 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
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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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