CHAPTER X.
“Tell Mrs. Major Bryan that the Rev. Father Devenish wants to speak to her,” said the coadjutor, alighting from his horse in front of Rienvella Lodge, where he was recieved with that low obeisance dear to his soul from every servant who saw him.
The lady was in her drawing-room, with the little Edith beside her, sitting on a stool, practicing how to make cross-stitches on a slip of coarse canvass. this imporatant handiwork engrossed her so much that when she raised her head, and shook aside its cloud of golden curls at the sound of a new voice, she was quite surprised to see a strange gentleman in a curiously high black coat sitting down on the sofa opposite to her mother, and did not relish being sent to shake hands with him. After this it occured to her that the strange gentleman seemed as if he did not know what to say, for he kept twirling his hat in his hand.
The weather aforded him relief for a minute or two, and then the crops. Mr. Devenish thought they would be early this year. A farmer in the parish (people called him Protestant Phil, if Mrs. Bryan wouldn’t be offended at the mention of it; and the speaker laughed heartily, and changed from sallow to scarlet) intended to open his first ridges of ash-leaved gold-finders on John’s day. But it was not to say this, or items of intelligence of like cast, that Father Peter had called on Major Bryan.
“I am sorry that the Major should not be at home,” said Mrs. Bryan for the second time, to fill up a dead pause.
“O no matter, ma’am; perhaps yourself will do just as well;” and he cleared his voice with his hand over his lips. “The fact is, Mrs. Bryan, as I was thinking, that same Protestant Phil is a fine pattern to all of his religion in this country; and if we had more of his kind, there would be an end to heartburnings and jealousies that bother us entirely.”
Mrs. Bryan was glad to hear so good an account of the farmer.
“You see, ma’am, the way of it is, he married a Catholic wife, and let her bring up their whole family, sons and daughters, as Catholics too. That’s what I call a liberal-minded Protestant; that’s the style of conduct that suits us in Ireland, instead of trying to pillage from the poor the only comfort they have in their most holy faith.”
“I suppose he cannot have much religion of his own,” said Mrs. Bryan, not willing to notice the last allusion.
“Never sets foot in the church-door, ma’am,” was the satisfied reply.
“I can scarcely see the excellence of his example, Mr. Devenish.”
“Look ye here, ma’am.” The curate’s courage had rather evapourated when first he found himself in that unwonted scene, a lady’s drawing-room, with all its elegances, and face to face with that utter novelty, a refined and highly cultivated gentlewoman. He was the son of a small farmer, and had never been from among his fellow-peasants except to the college at Maynooth, consequently was quite without experience of society in other grades. However, his courage returned to him with a rush, and he even raised his voice somewhat as, with one finger of one hand in the palm of the other, he laid down the law.
“Look ye here, ma’am. We are not used to English ways of going on; but the priest of the parish and his coadjutor are supposed to be quite enough for the dying beds of the poor without reading heretical books by them, to upset their minds, and without paying people to read Bibles at wakes, which is forbidden by the Church. And another thing, ma’am. I’m informed the Major is giving about Irish Testaments, which we, the priests of the parish, and its lawful spiritual authorities, are dead against, let me tell you, Mrs. Bryan.”
The little Edith had risen from her footstool, and nestling closer besider her mother, slipped her small hand into hers, for she fancied the strange gentleman spoke loud as if he was angry, and she wished he would go away. Mrs. Bryan’s colour heightened slightly.
“Part of what you have said I don’t understand,” she answered, truly, for she had never heard of the reading at Eily Connor’s wake. “As for Major Bryan, he is able to explain anything he may have done, I am sure, though you cannot expect us to feel accountable to you, Mr. Devenish!”
The coadjutor began to think he had gone too far in his dictatorial manner; perhaps the glint of fear in the eyes of the fair child intimated it as much as the lady’s words. He lowered his tone, and rested his hands on his knees.
“It isn’t but we’re exceedingly obliged to you, ma’am, for your kindness to our parishioners, and we would be glad to be the medium of your charities at any time, as of course we are the natural parties to give relief, and then there can be no fear of heresy. O, we’d like your money well enough, ma’am, I assure you!” and he laughed his discordant solitary laugh again. “Plenty of Protestants are now seeing it their duty to let us, the Catholic clergy, have the handling of their charity-money.”
“I’m afraid I could not,” observed Mrs. Bryan, with an expression on her face which he was unable to fathom.
“Well, ma’am, I don’t despair of seeing you come round yet; for I am sure you are a kind-hearted, right-minded lady as ever lived, and nothing but an ornament to your country, wherever you are. And, as the Scripture tells us, ‘Charity doth cover a multitude of sins!”
The priest paused for a minute; but there was no rejoinder, not even a glance from the lowered eyes. His flattery was not usually thus recieved.
“Another thing that brought me this morning to the Major—and perhaps you’ll tell it to him for me, ma’am—was that we hear he’s thinking of opening a school for his tenantry, under the person they call ‘the Manuscript Man,’ Donat Clare. Now if the Major will give it over into the hands of the parish priests as visitors and regulators it’ll be all right; and though, may be, we can’t approve that particular schoolmaster, still another’s easy to find,’
“I shall give your message to Major Bryan.”
“Your own sense will show you,” added Mr. Devenish, rising to his feet, “that it’s the only course for him to pursue if he wants the school to succeed. Otherwise we must oppose it with all our power. Good morning to you, ma’am.”
So, giving a florish with his riding-whip, he stalked to the door.
“Mamma, I don’t like that gentleman,” said Edith, “for he scolded you. Had he any right to scold you, my own mamma?”
Mrs. Bryan went to her husband in the study, when she heard him come in. “There has been something like a declaration of war,” she said, telling him what had passed. “But it was news to me that you had any intention of opening a school under the Manuscript Man.”
“Ay, and to me also. It is some mystified report about the Irish teaching. I sha’nt set him right, and perhaps we may have reason to thank him for the hint yet.”
“Do you know, Francis, I don’t think the old priest would have been so harsh and unreasonable?”
“It was just an excess of zeal. Mr. O’Donell was educated in a Flemish college, and spent much of his early life abroad; hence he has had far more experience of society than his curate, and more knowledge of the world. Devenish is the narrowest Ultramontane in hisviews—perhaps would be a Dominie if opportunity afforded; believes in driving men, not leading them; possibly had some little faith in the efficacy of frightening you.”
She passed har arm within her husband’s as he stood by the window, and smiled up into his face.
“Edith did not like the scolding gentleman,” she said.
“Well, we wont put her in the front of the battle yet,” the Major rejoined. “She will step forwrd as a volunteer in the cause of the Bible when her time comes. And truly, the more I see of these people, with their warm heart and bright active intellects, the more I long that the Divine Book which has done such wonders for our own England, should have free course among them, and be glorified!”
“We will pray for it,” she said, with the dew in her eyes.
This pair were helpers together in the grace of life. She had been visiting the cabins around, and desiring to do good to the people; among her projects was a mother’s meeting, to teach some of the poor women in Rienvella hamlet how to work and contrive clothes, as well asread to them about the Lord Jesus “who died for our sins.” Another plan was to have a Bible-woman—or not that exactly, but rather a mission-woman, a helpful, motherly body, who would nurse the sick, and instruct the healthy in useful common things. And now the ecclesiastical displeasure was to blight all.