CHAPTER XIX.
The Manuscript Man was returning to his home, musing much on the interview which had so touched the springs of his heart, when at a bend of the road he came in sight of the chapel. He had avoided this way in going to the priest’s house, because he knew there would be a crowd about the building, possibly imbued with no favourable feeling toward himself. But in his meditation of the altered demeanor and unexpected words of Father Eusebius he forgot precaution, and now it would be a considerable distance to go back to the by-road. After a minute’s hesitation he concluded to go on, quickly and quietly.
About the stone cross in the middle of the chapel-yard were many women and some men kneeling, with beads or prayer-books; the Redemptionist Fathers, or Passionates, (the preaching fathers of modern Ireland,) had, in a visit two years since, announced special indulgence for devotions performed here. At the open door and windows of the chapel the crowd within frothed over, all listening to the stentorian voice of a preacher, which echoed even to the spot outside the low wall where stood the Manuscript Man.
Clare was siezed with a strong desire to hear what was said. By stepping inside the yard a few paces he thought he could do so unobserved; there did not seem a chance of molestation from the engrossed kneelers about the cross strangers to him. Gently he walked in, and paused hearken; but the voice was lowered, and he imprudently drew nearer. Almost immediately there was a stir among the congregation; they began to come forth, and the Manuscript Man moved away.
He had gone a hundred yards from the gate, when his tall gray-crowned figure was recognized, and a shout raised—just such a shout as is cast after some hateful animal, some creature classed with vermin, and deemed worthy of extirpation; it actually scared the Manuscript Man. He stopped and turned round, scarcely believing that yell of hate could be directed against his harmless self. Foremost among the people coming toward him with excited faces, were men and women he would have counted friends; man and women who had lived their lives in the same townland, and knew no ill of him—at least nothing that they would call ill, even in the hot days of his youth, when agrarian outrage was rife.
“Ah, ah! the souper—the swaddler, darin’ to show himself here! The turn-coat, the base apostate”—such were the names flung at our Manuscript Man, mixed with undeniable curses, and presently with clods and stones. In vain he stood still to remonstrate, and ask what they had against him; he was struck more than once before he turned into the fields for refuge.
Poor Donat Clare! he used to be quite proud of his popularity among his neighbours; not a house in all the country (which meant within twenty miles of his cabin on every side) where he, and his stories and ballads of Irish lore, were not heartily welcome. Nay, and he had been quite welcome with the new book and its beautiful histories, until latterly. And now, he had seen even Mike Rafferty, his pupil at Denis Purcell’s farm-house, among those who hooted after him as if he were an outlaw. Poor Manuscript Man! those shouts of opprobrium rang in his ears even through his dreams.
Next evening, as he was going up to Colman’s, he saw this very delinquent crossing the cliffs. “I’ll pass him by haughty and stiff if he comes across me,” thought Clare. But would that be the conduct of a man who wanted to imitate Christ? “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you,” rose betimes in his memory, now well saturated with the Bible. He commanded himself so far as to nod in a friendly way to Mike, who looked unutterably sheepish and shuffling.
“Misther Clare, I—I—that is, I wanted to spake a word wid you, sir.”
“Troth, an’ you weren’t anxious to be seen in my company yesterday, then,” was the reply. “But go on, my lad.”
“It’s hopin’ you wont think the worse o’ me for that, sir. Sure a weeshy bit of a shout couldn’t do you any harm, or I wouldn’t ha’ uttered it—an’ I didn’t raise a stone at all. I only shouted to let the curse past me, in a manner.”
“The curse past you? What does that mean?”
“Every one was to have a curse that didn’t shout afther the souper, an’ they say you is a souper, Misther Clare.”
“Ay, ay! is that the way? Well now, Mike, do you know what I’ll do for you an’ the rest of ‘em in return? I’ll pray for the good of every one of ye, as our blessed Saviour told us: there ‘tis in the Irish for you. You read well enough now to make it out easy.”
“I’m afeard o’ the book,” said Mike, eyeing it with his hands behind his back; “an’ sure if the priest takes all my sins on him, an’ has a care of my soul, it’s he will be blamed if we go wrong.”
“That’ll be poor comfort to you in the day of judgment, Mike. You commit your own sins; an’ b’lieve me, you’ll suffer your own punishment, unless you put yerself upon Him that died on the cross—the only priest that’s in earnest able to take yer sins.”
“I daurn’t be listenin’ to that book,” said Mike, shrinking apprehensively; “but anyhow, if I shouts after you agin in any place, (there’s people that might tell on me if, I didn’t,) don’t you go for to think it’s ill-will; nor many another of the neighbours neither: it’s only to let the curse past us;” and Mike trudged on.
Colman was down in the cove to which led the steep path of the Black-man. “Isn’t she a beauty!” he called out, as soon as he saw his visitor. This was the new canoe, all jetty outside and white inside, in the thwarts of which he sat, with his biggest child and Owen “the natural,” pulling about the small bay with a pair of oars, in all the pride of fresh ownership.
“Jump out, Owneen, an’ let in Mr. Clare.” The light boat was grounded on the sand by a swelling breaker, and the Manuscript Man, not so agile as he once was, scrambled in. Colman backed the oars, pushed another against the shore for purchase, and shoved off into deep water.
“I brought her around from Roonard this morning,” said he. Not a man of my people would come to bear a hand, afther the warnin’s they got yesterday. So the builder sind down a man to pull another pair of oars, or I wouldn’t be home till dark night.”
“But how’ll you ever manage about the fishery? Sure it’s three pair of hands this would want.”
“Well, you know, Manuscript Man, I b’lieve the Lord sent me the canoe, as true as ever he sent any miracle, puttin’ it in the hearts of them kind gentlemen not to see me wronged; an’ I think he wont let it lie idle now. Sure if I can’t go out to the banks,” (fishing-grounds lying some miles off the coast,) “I can put out the nets nearer home, an’ the lobster-pots, meself and Owneen, if there’s nobody else.”
“Is it the natural? I didn’t think he had a grain o’ sense.”
“’Twould surprise you what sense is comin’ in his poor head since he began to listen, attentive-like, to the Testament. Before he saw the canoe broke he never paid no heed; but that set him thinkin’-like, an’ tryin’ to compass the meaning.”
Have we never seen the Divine word fulfilling its own glory, by giving a spiritual understanding to the simple?
“An’ he’s that fond o’ me as I couldn’t tell you, since the day he fought for me. He’d do any tin’ for me, from the pure love. Sure he was like a faithful dog when I was sick, lyin’ on the floor be the settle constant, wi’ the wife an’ the babes in th’ inside room. But did you hear the news, Manuscript Man?” Colman rested on his oars amid the glassy water, which reflected an exact image—inverted—of boat and men.
“We’re all to be read out from the altar next Sunday, with bell an’ book.”
“I hope not. Who told you?”
“My brother Tom an’ his wife; they were up here at first light from Rienvella, she cryin’ an’ wringin’ her hands for the disgrace to the family.” He began to row again with great strokes. “Women’s tears—I tell you, Manuscript Man, it’s the hardest to stand of all!”
The other nodded, looking down abstractedly into the clear water. “My missus wasn’t home last night: she stops with her sister near the chapel, these days.”
“Ay,” said Colman, who knew well what a bitter time of it his friend had with the same bigoted old woman.
“Maureen’s on my side, heart an’ soul.” Each was thinking of his own difficulties: our Manuscript Man that of an evening lately he had come home to find his daughter weeping bitterly amid a gang of her mother’s gossips, all “keening” over him as a lost being; Colman of how his own sister had fallen on her knees before him, to entreat that he would not further anger the priest.
“Who knows if we stand out against the curse, an’ they see no harm come of it, but that will shake them more than any thing,” he observed. “Manuscript Man! only for the book, there’s one or two times I’d think I’d ha’ liked to die of sorrow, when they wor all at me in my sickness!”
“Didn’t you remember how the Lord cares for the sparrows an’ the wild birds?” said Clare, pointing with his hand.
The canoe had passed from the inlet to a broad bay, marked at each extremity by mighty black headlands as straight as a sea-wall: needful to sustain the impact of hundreds of tons of brine hurled against them in ocean’s play. About a gunshot from shore rose a rock perpendicularly from the water to a great height, over which hung quite a cloud of sea-fowl. The strata, disposed in horizontal ledges, gave place for row over row of birds sitting with eggs or young, as close well-nigh as they could be packed: the restless surge afoot was full of them diving for prey, the air was full of them circling, screaming, wheeling in wild enjoyment of life. Their voices made a clangor which suited well the sullen boom of the sea; a clangor which almost deafened the men when at their nearest.
Colman rowed round to the farther side of the inlet, where it sloped in terraces to the water’s edge. “We’ll try if we can’t get a few eggs to bring to the missus for supper;” and two great black cormorants, which had been sitting on a weedy rock, spread their jetty wings, and flew out to sea with the straightforward intentness of flight which is so peculiar to them. “Ye needn’t ha’ been in such a hurry,” he added, apostrophizing the deserters; “I wouldn’t touch yer eggs for a thrifle.”
But it was different with the royal gulls, who nested at the top of the islet, and gave it a name. Here was sparse and scant vegetation; tufts of sea-thrift the chief: samphire grew in the crevices, with other plants that love spray and storms. The birds (only a few in number, for enterprises like this had frightened them to more lonely nurseries) saw the spoiler coming, and rose not; but watched him with a sharp, black eye as he stooped to such nests as were unguarded, and took an egg from each till he had half a dozen, larger than those of a hen. He could not find it in his heart to do battle with the devoted parents, but knew that the absent would not miss what he had taken. Coming to the edge of a rift, again he saw the gray, dove-like kittihawks in thousands, range over range on the face of the descending precipice, their little black feet nestling in dried grass, brought tuft by tuft to the ledges in their beaks, and below them the puffins, with black velvet backs and snowy breast and wee wings, perched upright as sentinels, or, rather, as the rank and file of a regiment, slipping off every now and then for a refreshing run either over or under water.
Colman watched the scene of busy and happy life for a minute. “Well, if the Lord takes care of all of them, surely he will care for me an’ the little children. Storehouses nor barn have neither they nor we.” And he returned to his friend, with the shadow of the coming curse lightened.