CHAPTER IX.
“Well, Clare, is all this true I hear about you?” asked Father Eusebius, stopping the easy swing of his gray cob, as he met the Manuscript Man on the high road.
“Why, thin, yer reverence, that’s more than I can say till I hear what it is,” said he, raising his hand to his hat.
A pair of kindly eyes, in which was amusement rather than censure, looked down upon his own. “Resolved not to criminate yourself,” said the old priest. “One would think you were reared an attorney. Well, my man, I wouldn’t be cross with you for a crown-piece; but I’d advise you have nothing to do with new-fangled notions, or you’ll bring Father Peter down upon you sharp—and I can’t interfere with him on questions of discipline.”
Father Eusebius did his best to look stern, and succeeded but indifferently, as he flicked a fly from the gray cob’s ear. And the clericalobjurgation ended with, “Come now, Donat, tell your old parish priest the truth. Wasn’t it I that married you, and christened yer children, both them that’s here and them that’s gone? And was I ever hard on you about the dues? Come now, out with it, like a decent, honest parishioner, as you always were.”
The “oiled feather” succeeded.
“Look here, yer reverence: I’ll show ye the occassion of all the stories, the book itself.” He drew forth quite another volume, even a sheep-skin treatise on arithmetic, popularly called a “Vosther,” (from its compiler,) and about the same size as the Testament. It was the very morning of Mrs. Clare’s opportunity. Her husband looked unaffectedly puzzled and annoyed.
“B’lieve me, sir, but I thought I had it safe here. I donno how I made the mistake of puttin’ it any where else. But sure, yer reverence, a book about the blessed Lord an’ his apostles in the Irish can’t be any manner of harm? If it was in the English now—“
“Donat Clare,” interposed the priest, impressively, “there’s reasons why the Church must be the interpreter of the Scripture, and it’s neitherfor you nor me to ask wherefore. Now just tell me if that book of yours isn’t the Testament itself?”
“May be so, and may be not, yer reverence, not maning to make yer honor a short answer,” replied the Manuscript Man, suddenly becoming cautious. The absence of the debatable book gave him an unpleasant sensation. “An’ sure if it was, they say the Pope himself, not to mintion yer reverence and Father Devenish, reads that same reg’lar.”
“And we tell you what is good for the laity to know,” said the priest. “Well, Donat, you can’t show me what you haven’t, that’s clear as daylight; but I’ll ride over to the house some morning.”
So the cob ambled away; and the Manuscript Man, uneasily thinking what he could have done with his book, how he could have been so stupid as to pocket the substitute, hesitated whither he should not go back. But he was too near the place of his destination, a nook on the shore where one of his pupils lived. This was a fisherman and labourer, named Pat Colman, who had dug up the Manuscript Man’s potato ground last week, because the lattercould now afford (owing to his own new industry in teaching Irish) to pay hire, instead of himself working with the spade. And while Pat was resting on the midday hour, the Manuscript Man produced his primer, and taught him a portion of the alphabet, to follow up which lesson he was going in the present afternoon.
The cabin stood in a sheltered “dip” of the cliffs, with its gable to the stormy west, and its door and solitary window to the sunny south. But before reaching the abode he found in another sunlit nook—an undulation of the mossy turf forming a cup-like recess or dimple, embedded with violet masses of fragrant wild thyme, and gemmed with golden crowsfoot—a lad fast asleep under the warm sunshine, unheeding the gambols of one or two fat little children, who rolled about, and rooted up the soft turf, and tumbled over his feet, according to their own erratic will. The Manuscript Man knew him well—“poor Owneen, the natural”—and knew that he was housed at the fisherman’s cabin as long as he chose to stay, because he cost “only the bite an’ sup;” which kindness he requited by playing with the children in the chimney-corner, or carrying them about like a nurse for a day together, while the fancy lasted, during which their mother might be quite at ease with their safety. Then the wandering instinct would seem to come over him again, and he would disappear, to roam aimlessly for weeks among the mountains, sure of food and shelter in any house he visited; for who could refuse the poor “innocent?” The utilitarian who hinted at sending him to the almshouse would have been regarded as a public enemy.
Children every-where loved him; and there in the thymy hollow, at sight of the strange man looming over the horizon of swelling green turf, nestled close to their playfellow and guardian. He woke up at the pressure, and looked very fierce as he collected his few faculties; but on recognizing a friend, by the Manuscript man’s salutation, he laughed and uttered his pass-word, “Poor Owneen, poor Owneen!”
“Ay, poor natural,” said the Manuscript Man, nodding kindly as he passed on; “but may be yer not worse off in the long run than them that has their senses, an’ don’t use ‘em aright.” The truths of the book had begun to stir in his soul, as leaven moves the dead mass in which it lies covered up.
Mrs. Colman was improving her leisure from nursery cares by preparing and spreading out to dry the little brown fishes her husband had caught last night. There had been a shoal, not of mackerel, as was hoped when the first signs were noticed, but of a less profitable fish allied to them, and called “goats;” these would store capitally for winter, when dried in the sun on the thatched roof of the cabin; which was already weighted with stones, and tied securely with ropes, according to the fashion of that windy locality; and a small barelegged urchin, perched atop, spread out the spoil.
“Himself was at the Black-man’s-path on the shore, tryin’ to mend the net them bastes of seals—never welcome them!—had broken all in bits.”
The headland had been split in two at some remote period by this fissure, called the Black-man’s-path; and about half way down to the cove the rocks were piled into the rude image of a giant, chiefly striking as a likeness of the human form when one saw it in the dusk orthrough a fog. A canoe was lying on the ledge of rock above tidal reach; and a sound of some wild Irish ditty ascended from the lips of Pat Colman as he worked away with his rude double-eyed needle at repairing the gashes in his net.
“Baal o’yerib,” said the Manuscript Man, (which salutation has a curious etymology of its own, as containing a trace of the old Phonecian divinity, and sun-worshipping times in Ireland,) “I’m glad to hear from the wife that ye had a good haul last night.”
“’Deed an’ ‘twas tolerable middlin’, considerin’ the porpuses was huntin’ the crathurs like mad’, an’ allopin’ through the nets as if they were made of spiders’ threads; signs by look at the holes, big enough to pass the canoe itself, mostly.”
Never mind the hole for awhile—they’ll keep; but come to yer primer, like a good boy.”
The hirsute* Colman laughed as he threw down his cord and needle. “The idee of makin’ a scholard out of me, at my time o’ life!”
Nevertheless he bent himself labouriously to his lesson, and was very proud of the lettersthat he conquered. But the tutor could not reward him with a story from the book today.
In the meantime Mrs. Clare was sitting in the flagged kitchen of the priest’s residence, enjoying a comfortable gossip by the fire with the housekeeper, an elderly female of thin and sour aspect, whose great pursuit in life, though it seemed to yield her but small satisfaction, was news. However, she could extract from the Manuscript Man’s wife every body’s business except her own; and when Father Devenish entered in his long black coat, breviary in hand, and bade Mrs. Clare follow to his own parlor, where he immediately shut close the door, her curiosity was roused.
Now, he had fully resolved that if the book was what he suspected it should remain in his own custody. A small matter became an insuperable obstacle to this convenient arrangement—even the name of “Francis Bryan,” inscribed in clear, bold handwriting on the title-page. His reverence could scarcely confiscate a book belonging to the Major.
So that autograph brought him to a pause, while also it enlightened him. The old womanwas sharp enough to see there was some hitch in the business, as he turned over the leaves irresolutely.
“You can’t read, Mrs. Clare?”
“No, yer reverence; but sure Donat can; an’ where’s the good?—only bringin’ him into throuble.”
“I don’t like to be hard on the family of a woman so exact an’ pious as yourself, Mrs. Clare; so you may take back the book to your husband this time. It’s many a day since he’s been to his duty; tell him I said so, and exhort him to mind his clergy better.”
“Sure I do be always exhortin’ him, if ‘twas of any use.” But the priest’s hand waved her away, and she had to go home without further ghostly advice, and with a tolerable certainty that the Manuscript Man would have by this time discovered the deceit she had practiced on him in purloining the book; and though it was not in her way to count a few “white lies” as much of sin, especially when told for a good purpose, as she believed this to be, she was not able to hide from her husband what had happened.
“He set my old woman spy on me,” was theManuscript Man’s summary of it afterward, “an’ I wasn’t goin’ to give in to that, you know. Moreover, ‘tisn’t what Father Euseby would ever have done; but the coadjuther was only a youngster like, fresh from Maynute, and hadn’t much sense over an’ above. So I kept a firm grip of the book all through.”