The Miraculous Revenge Part 3
"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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d'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; m.u.f.fled 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 phosoph.o.r.escent 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 ash.o.r.e, 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 ma.s.sive 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 compa.s.sion 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 c.o.c.ks 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.