CHAPTER XXIII.
Getting inside the Manuscript Man’s cabin was no such mysterious process after all; Redmond had merely loosened and worked out the hasp that held the padlock, with a stone for his tool.
At the celebrated pilgrimage-place of Derg* he had met his brother’s wife, busy with her self-imposed “will-worship,” and heard from her what had come to pass in the parish of Rienvella; the cursing and the persecution, all on account of her husband’s obstinacy in refusing to give up the Irish Bible. With weeping and “keening” sho told of what she had herself “gone through,” as she expressed it, in trying to convert Donat back again. Maureen was just as bad, she said; perverted “entirely” by her father.
The grey and haggard pilgrim listened, leaning on his staff. “I’ve only a short time to live,” he observed: a doctor in Sligo told me I was going, surely, with this weary cough that’s at me night an’ day. I can’t last much past the new year, if so long.” And the cough broke in upon his speaking.
“Indeed, an’ I can’t say but yer looking poorly enough,” said his sister-in-law, clearing her eyes to take a good view of him. “Did you ever try brook-lime, the little green ‘eerib that grows in the sthrames, eaten fastin’ of a mornin’?”
“Ah,” and he shook his head indifferently—the grey head which never wore hat-gear, according to his vow—“I tried many a thing; but what good is the world of cures to a man that has neither house nor home? But I was thinkin’, when I heered that sentence, that I’d like to lay my bones with the ould father an’ mother near St. Brendan’s grave, behind yer house, in Rienvella; only I doubted how ye’d like to see me after what’s past. But now my way is plain. I’ll get dispensation from some blessed friar against the curse, an’ go to see my brother Donat before I die; may be I’d bring him back to the true Church; an’ that would be a work of merit more than all the pilgrimages in Ireland?”
“And,” added Redmond, when afterward narrating the conversation to his brother, “she’ll be down herself in a couple of weeks; she makes a fine livin’ up there, doin’ people’s devotions for them, so you nor Maureen needn’t be uneasy about her. ‘You’ll convert ‘em quicker without me,’ she says, ‘for I’m hot in meself, an’ feels as if I’d like to take up the tongs.’ An’ now, Donat, my brother, I guess it was a foot into danger that night I came in here, a year an’ a half ago, an’ found you readin’ an Irish Bible for the women, all unbeknown.”
“No, but a step to eternal life,” was the reply, which commenced an earnest discussion, lasting for hours, late as it was. To get Redmond to listen to the Bible itself was Donat’s great object. He had full faith in the inspired declaration, “The entrance of thy word giveth light.”
“I read a spell of the Testament once, that night I was in your house, for the beautiful Irish drew me through it like music; an’ indeed I can’t say but I got no harm by it, only pleasant histories about our blessed Saviour, that stayed in my mind many a day when I was lonesome. But what’s the use of our own opinions? sure we’re bound to obey the Church an’ its ministers.”
It was painfully interesting to see the old broken man eagerly supporting his false creed with reasoning the most miserable, and the blindest adhesion to the superstitions of his life. Interrupted continually by that cough and want of breath, he feverishly continued to urge upon Donat that his soul would certainly be lost if he did not return to the Roman Church, quoting a catechism in large, popular use:
“What do you mean by the true Church? The Roman Catholic. Are all obliged to be of it? Yes; because none can be saved out of it.”
“I heered Maureen teaching it to the childer,” observed her father; “but she knows better now. She knows that the blessed Apostles, Peter an’ Paul an’ John, held a different discourse, an’ said, ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, an’ thou shalt be saved,’” With much persuasion Redmond listened to the account of the jailer at Philippi; but most impression of all was made on him when he heard that Father Eusebius himself had affirmed there was no fault to be found with this Protestant edition of the Irish Bible.
Next afternoon Farmer Denis Purcell looked in, shortly after the pilgrim had gone up to Saint Brendan’s grave to perform certain devotions.
“I suppose I’m pretty near the only one in the parish dare cross yer threshold, Manuscript Man,” said he, with his hearty laugh. “Since poor Colman’s canoe hasn’t come home, they’re all pretty certain Father Devenish is to have everything his own way, an’ I dare say we’ll hear enough about it on Sunday; but I’m not one of them that thinks so badly of the Almighty as that he would send a storm to drown a well-conducted man, just to humour a priest.”
“Farmer, I’ll read for you what the Book says: ‘The Lord, merciful and gracious, long suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty.; There’s his character from his own voice, farmer;” and clare related the circumstances of the declaration—the prayer of Moses on the wild mountain, the descent in the cloud.
“No wonder for you to like the book better than yer ould papers of leginds; an’ if I could read myself any way comfortable, I’d stick to it the same as you’re doin’. I get fairly vexed wid all the nonsense Devlin talks, more especially to the women. He was up at Glashen glora yesterday, an’ the wife was showin’ him where a big piece of the thatch was stript by the storm. ‘I sprinkled holy water against it,’ says she, ‘an’ it was no manner of use.’ ‘Ah,’ says he, ‘the wind blew away the blessed drops an’ none of ‘em touched it.’ And me knowin’ it’s himself mixes the salt an’ water for Father Devenish to say the Latin words over! So I declared I’d rather ave ropes an’ pegs any day to fix my thatch, than the most powerful holy water ever bottled;” and he laughed again in his ponderous fashion.
“But what brought me here was to give you this letter for poor Mrs. Colman. I suppose it’s from Pat’s sister in the States, an’ sure I hope there’s money in it for the crathures. When I was in Roonard this mornin’ I heered the lady at the post office axin’ would any of the neighbours tell ‘em to come for the letter; an’ I persuaded her, wid bowin’ an’ smilin’, to trust it to me.”
How the widow wept to see it! for her husband had been expecting this letter. He had asked the Manuscript Man to write to his sister some time previously, stating that he wished greatly to go to America, and promising to repay any advance of money she might be able to make. When the big envelope was opened, (which had on the exterior a very ornamental decoration in blue engraving, representing a wide-spread eagle grasping the banner of stars and stripes, with the address in the corner as quite supplemental,) in the midst was found a passage-warrant for Colman’s own transit to New York and Chicago.
“Ah, my poor Pat! how glad he’d ha’ been to see it! Often he said there was no priests to curse a man over there, an’ no people to mind thim if they did. An’ now he’s down in the cold dark sea—miles deep, an’ the childer have no father to look to, an’ I’m a lone woman on the face of the hard earth!” A torrent of those strong Irish expressions flowed from her lips which seemed to embody the very soul of grief.
The Manuscript Man, after awhile, tried to bring her back to things practical, and to engage her thoughts about the future of herself and the children. She could see nothing but starvation or the almshouse, now that their only bread-winner was gone.
“Mrs. Colman, I’m thinkin’ how could this passage-warrant be turned to some use, seeing the poor fellow isn’t here to go himself. I’ll bring it to the Major, to try does he think it any way likely the emigrant-agent, whose name is down here, would change it into a paper for yerself and the wee ones,”
The idea roused her a little. “Yes; we’ve no call to stay here, without even his grave to look at, an’ in the midst of them that wouldn’t give him as much as a kind word. But O, Donat!” and she clasped her hands—wi’ proper watchin’, we might have his grave—who knows but we might have his grave!”
Clare understood her. “I’m sure if any thing was washed ashore we’d hear of it,” he replied. “Nobody would go agin nater like that.” He said nothing to her of a scarcely defined hope in his own mind, but waited some days before seeking to have the passage-warrant changed, till he should see the light-house people from the island of Arranbeg outside. And then he was glad the poor widow had builded no expectation on such a mere chance.
Fragments of wood, “that was a tidy boat once,” came ashore as usual; those hints of forgotten wrecks that are of ordinary occurrence, and scarcely wake a thought of the tragedy at their breaking up. One day the Manuscript Man walked miles to the north to see a drowned corpse among the sand-hills. The poor woman heard of it, and followed after him with her children. But identification was not possible. There it lay, just dragged beyond high-water mark, and so disfigured by the beating surf and sharp rocks that not the dearest friend could know it from any other deceased. Still, on the chance that it was Colman, she wished it buried in a humble grave-yard not far off; but a storm of opposition arose from the few and wild people who lived in the vicinage. No souper should be among their dead!
“The earth is the Lord’s,” said the Manuscript Man, as he leaned on the spade he had borrowed from a neighbouring coast-guard station, in order to dig the grave. “May be, every place is as holy as every other place when the Lord is our Father. I don’t think, myself, the poor fellow will be worse off for lyin’ in the sand, since ye’re so uncharitable as to forbid him a grave among Christian people.”
So among the sand-hills that grave was dug, where the bent grass adds a perpetual sough to the salt winds sweeping over the restless tides.