I promised to return to gardens, and here I am. What a garden that was!
Not a bit uncomfortable in spite of its company of departed friars. The
monk’s old Yew Walk was there; such a one as has not its match in the
kingdom, I believe. There too were fields of “Malmaison” Carnations.
Never have I beheld such lavishness before or since. The scent of the
things! It was our hostess’s rather extravagant fancy. I don’t know that
I exactly envy it. It was almost too much, but yet it was a wonder!
* * * * *
I think it was a dream of very childish days that started my haunting
dread of graveyards; that, and the peculiar desolation of the little
burial-place through which we passed every Sunday morning to go to the
Chapel near our country home. It was what is called in Ireland a
“station,” that is a Chapel of Ease, which was only attended on Sundays
and shut up on week-days. Deprived of the flicker of the Sanctuary lamp,
the place seemed, except for that brief Sunday service, as deserted
within as it was forlorn without.
[Sidenote: GREEN GRAVES]
I dreamt that all those poor neglected green graves—there was hardly one
with even a black painted cross to mark it—had become endued with
ghastly life and started in pursuit of me down the familiar country
road. In a frightful, stealthy silence they wallowed and leaped, gaining
on me as I ran, in my dream, in a panic that I can hardly even now bear
to think back on.
For years afterwards I never walked away from that little churchyard,
even in the large and cheerful company of my sisters, clutching the
solid hand of governess or nurse, without the nightmare terror coming on
me again. Not a word did I breathe of it, of course; but I would look
back over my shoulder, at every turn of the road, horribly expecting to
see those uncanny green hounds on the trace of my miserable little
heels.
[Illustration: children walking]
It was only in my walks I feared, however. When driving backwards and
forwards to Mass I felt I could defy the graves. We always drove to the
Sunday Mass. How vivid are the impressions of those early days! As I
write I have before me the whole scene. Just before the cracked bell
ceased ringing, we would file up the little front aisle and enter the
pew reserved for us; my mother very solemn, with what we called her
church face; our two governesses and we children. In summer each of the
four little girls wore a new starched, very full-skirted print frock;
and the one little boy of the party a white duck suit equally stiff from
the wash. Our wooden pew ran on the right side of the Sanctuary rails
and was shut off by a little door from the rest of the chapel. It had
long bright red rep cushions, and the wood-work was painted a peculiarly
pale yellow, handsomely and wormily grained! Just opposite to us, the
better class farmers’ families were installed; and every new fashion
that appeared in our bench was promptly copied by the bouncing Miss
Condrens and Miss Mahons opposite.
There was, I recollect, one personage who inspired me with great
admiration. She was a Mrs. Condren and her Christian name was Eliza. The
daughter of what is called a “warm farmer,” she had been forbidden all
thoughts of matrimony by him, who held the holy estate in as much
disfavour as did Mrs. Browning’s father.
Well on in years, and presumably bored by her maiden state, she had at
length eloped with an elderly admirer; and though she had “done very
well for herself” and her spouse was quite as “warm” as her papa, the
latter maintained towards them both an undying resentment. No wonder
Mrs. Condren moved in a halo of romance in our eyes. Added to this she
was always very handsomely attired in a shining purple silk, which
filled the chapel with its rustle. She also sported a yellow bonnet with
bunches of wax grapes and—last touch of elegance—dependent from its
brim, a lace veil embroidered also with grapes, a cluster of which
completely covered one eye and part of her cheek.
Quite another type was old Judy in her little brown shawl and lilac
sun-bonnet, who knelt ostentatiously just in front of the altar rails,
apart from the rest of the congregation; and who punctuated the service
and sermon with loud clacks of her tongue, groans from and thumps upon
her attenuated chest. My mother was once highly amused by Judy’s
pantomime during a particular discourse.
[Sidenote: BLESSED ARE THE POOR]
“Blessed are the poor,” announced the young curate with his rolling
Irish emphasis.
Here was a statement quite to Judy’s taste. Loud were her groans of
approval. She turned up her eyes with great piety, and the gusto with
which she beat her breast indicated that she took the benediction
entirely to herself. “But don’t think, me brethren,” went on the
ecclesiastic warningly, “that this means that because you’re poor in
purse you’re pleasing to God. It’s the poor in spirit that I do be
meaning. There’s many a poor body with a proud heart.”
Now poor old Judy must have been conscious of the possession of this
spiritual drawback; for even as she had taken the text as a direct
compliment, so she now took the corollary to it as a personal insult.
She drew herself up with a jerk and threw a glance of furious reproach
at the speaker. No more groans should His Riverence have out of her!
No—nor tongue clacking, nor chest thumpings either!
For the rest of his sermon she remained rigid, fixing her gaze upon him
with an unwavering glare of disapproval.
* * * * *
As the priest had to come from a considerable distance, he was generally
late; and as the congregation itself straggled in from over the hills,
sometimes much before the hour, it was the pious custom at Rathenisha
for the two model damsels of the congregation each to read aloud out of
a different book of sermons for the edification of the assembly in the
delay before Mass. They had fine loud voices and read simultaneously;
the effect can be better imagined than described. One ear would be
struck by genteel accents proclaiming, “Admoire the obedience of Joseph,
me brethren. Did he repoine, did he hesitate?”—the while the other ear
was assailed by a rich brogue announcing, “The sentence is already past.
Thou must doi. How many have gone to bed at noight in apparent good
health—”
It was some such threat as this, intermittently caught from the side of
the deepest brogue, which would terrify my small mind. The whole
churchyard, with its horror of green graves, would seem to close about
me. And how much worse it was should there chance to be a new, raw mound
without!
* * * * *
One of the Mahon girls did indeed illustrate the gloomy treatise in a
manner appalling to my secret state of apprehension. She died quite
suddenly while dancing at some rural festivity. Rumour had it it was
tight-lacing which had produced the tragedy.
“Wasn’t she black all down one side, the crathur?”
“Ah, maybe—but she was always a yaller girl,” opined a wise matron.
Dimly I can recall that she had the pallor that goes with swarthy hair
and eyes. A handsome creature, but not of the type admired by her class.
The poor girl’s sudden end formed a stirring illustration for the second
curate’s sermon the Sunday after the funeral.
* * * * *
[Sidenote: A PERSUASIVE TONGUE]
“What did I say, me brethren, last time I stood preaching here at you?
Didn’t I say who could tell who would be missing before the year was
out? And look now at the wan that has been taken—a foin, sthrapping
young girl, one of the foinest, I might say, in this parish.... Not an
ail on her a few days ago, and where is she now?”
He jerked his thumb terribly through the little glass window at the
side. The congregation enjoyed it enormously. There was a sucking of
breaths, a clacking of tongues and subdued groans of approbation; and a
good deal of rocking backwards and forwards on the part of Judy, who as
usual squatted on her heels at the edge of the altar rails. But, poor
little wretch that I was, how I quaked!
The second curate was an excellent young man, of the sturdy type
familiar to many Irish districts in those days. The people called him
“rale wicked,” and loved him proportionately—“wicked,” in their
terminology, having a very different significance from the word used in
its English sense. “Wicked” to them refers but to the flame of the fire
of zeal; and they like to feel it scorch them.
When from the altar steps he threatened by name certain recalcitrant
black sheep of his congregation who were neglecting their Easter duty,
to be “afther them with a horsewhip if they didn’t present themselves
‘at the box’ so soon as he had his breakfast swallowed,” there was a
thrill of admiration through the chapel. That was being “wicked” after a
fashion they all appreciated. And when, after his breakfast had been
gulped down, he duly appeared with a horsewhip, the results were
immediate and excellent. His morning meal, in parenthesis, got ready for
him by a neighbouring farmer’s wife and served to him in the little damp
sacristy, invariably consisted of three boiled eggs, besides the usual
pot of poisonous strong tea. Three eggs is the number consecrated to the
cleric in Ireland.
At a certain Connemara hotel a curious visitor, hearing the orders
shouted out: “Bacon and eggs for a lady,” “Bacon and eggs for a
gentleman,” “Bacon and eggs for a priest,” ventured to inquire the
differentiation. The answer was prompt and simple.
“Wan egg for a lady; two for a gentleman; and three for a priest!”
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