The Christmas holidays passed pleasantly under the hospitable roof of
the McClory family. The chief amusement of the neighborhood was
drinking in the shebeen, or local public house, but Hugh declined to
accompany Paddy to the shebeen, preferring solitude with his sister.
Before the holidays had come to a close, Hugh and Alice had become
engaged, but the course of true love in their case was destined to the
proverbial fate. All Miss McClory's friends were scandalized at the
thought of her consenting to marry a Protestant.
Religion, among Catholics and Orangemen, in those days, consisted
largely of party hatred. He was a good Protestant who, sober as well
as drunk, cursed the Pope, and on the 12th of July wore orange colors,
and played with fife and drum a tune known as "The Battle of the
Boyne." And he was a good Catholic who, in whatever condition, used
equally emphatic language regarding King William. No more genuine
expression of religious feeling was looked for on either side.
There is a story told in the McClory district which illustrates the
current religious sentiment. Two brother Orangemen, good men after
their lights, had long been fast friends. They seldom missed an
opportunity, in the presence of Catholics, of consigning the Pope to
an uncomfortable place, to which he himself has been wont to consign
heretics.
It happened that one of the two Orangemen fell sick, and when he was
at the point of death his friend became greatly concerned about his
spiritual state, and visited him. He found him in an unconscious
condition, and sinking fast; and putting his lips close to the ear of
his sick friend, he asked him to give him a sign that he felt
spiritually happy. The dying man, with a last supreme effort, raised
his voice above a whisper, and in the venerable and well-known formula
cursed the Pope. His friend was comforted, believing that all was
well.
Whether this gruesome story be true or not, it goes to illustrate the
fact that blasphemous bigotry had largely usurped the place of
religion. But bitter party feeling did not end with mere words. Bloody
battles between Orangemen and Catholics were periodically fought on
the 12th of July, the anniversary of the battle of the Boyne, and on
the 17th of March, Saint Patrick's day. Within six miles of McClory's
house more than a dozen pitched battles were fought, sometimes with
scythes tied on poles, and sometimes with firearms. One of these
murderous onsets, known as the battle of Ballynafern, took place
within sight of McClory's house.
At Dolly's Brae a battle was fought in 1849, in presence of a large
body of troops, who remained neutral spectators of the conflict till
the Catholics fled, and then joined with the victors in firing on the
flying foe.
The scenes of these struggles, such as Tillyorier, Katesbridge,
Hilltown, The Diamond, etc., are classic spots now. Each has had its
poet, and ballads are sung to celebrate the prowess of the victors,
who were uniformly the Orangemen, inasmuch as they used firearms,
while the Catholics generally fought with pikes and scythes.
Hugh Bronte had not yet discovered the deep and wide gulf that yawned
between Protestants and Catholics, and so he made light of the
religious objections of which he had heard so much from Alice. But the
Catholic friends of Miss McClory, who had heard the Pope cursed by
Protestant lips almost every day of their lives, could not stand by
and see a Catholic lamb removed into the Protestant shambles. They
came to look on Bronte as a Protestant emissary, more influenced by a
fiendish desire to plunder the Catholic fold than by love for their
beautiful relative.
Hugh Bronte, in his eager simplicity, wanted to supersede all
opposition by getting married immediately, but so great a commotion
ensued that he had to return to the kilns at Mount Pleasant, leaving
his matrimonial prospects in a very unsatisfactory condition.
Troops of relatives invaded the McClory house daily, and ardent
Catholics tried in vain to argue down Alice McClory's newly kindled
love. All the Roman Catholic neighbors joined in giving copious
advice, and little was talked of in fairs and markets, and at chapel,
but the proposed marriage of Alice McClory with an unknown Protestant
heretic.
The priest, also, as family friend, was drawn into the matter. In
those days Irish priests were educated in France or Italy, and were
generally men of culture and refinement. Their horizon had been
widened. They had come in contact with the language, literature, and
social habits of other peoples, and they had become courteous men of
the world. They had to some extent got out of touch with the fierce
fanaticism of party strife.
The priest called on Miss McClory. Everybody knew that he had, and
awaited the result; but Alice's beauty and simplicity and tears made
such an impression on the kind-hearted old priest that his chivalrous
instinct was aroused, and he was almost won to the lady's side. The
centre of the agitation then shifted from McClory's cottage to the
priest's manse, and so hot was the anger of the infuriated Catholics
that the good-natured priest promised, sorely against his will, that
he would not consent to marry the pair.
Hugh Bronte was nominally a Protestant, but he had not been in a
church of any kind from the time he was five years of age. He had
received no religious instruction. He could not read the Bible for
himself, and no one had ever read it to him, and he was as innocent of
any religious bias or bigotry as a savage in Central Africa. Suddenly
he found himself the central figure in a fierce religious drama.
At first he was greatly amused, and laughed at the very suggestion of
his religion being considered a stumbling-block. From the time he left
his father's house he had seldom heard the divine name except in some
form of malediction, and religion had brought no consolation to his
hard life. He had never presumed to think that he had any relationship
to the church, its priests were so gorgeous, and its people so
well-to-do. Gallagher had made him familiar with the dread powers of
the infernal world, and with the "Blessed Virgin and the saints" in
their malevolent capacity, but the malignant hypocrisy of Gallagher
was quite as repulsive to him as the vindictive blasphemy of his
uncle. In fact, he had lived in an atmosphere untouched by the light
or warmth of religion.
Hugh's bondage and suffering had made him neither cringing nor cruel,
and his freedom had come in time to permit the full development of a
large and generous heart in a robust and healthy body. In his
simplicity of heart he prevailed on Alice to invite her friends to
meet him. He would soon remove their dislike with regard to his
religion. Under the impulse of his enthusiasm he thought he could
disarm prejudice by a frank and open avowal of his absolute
indifference to all religions.
Nothing, perhaps, in the whole history of the Brontes exceeded in
interest that meeting. A dozen wily Ulster Catholics gathered round
simple-hearted Hugh Bronte in Paddy McClory's kitchen. How the Orange
champions would have trembled for the Protestant cause if they had
been aware of Hugh's danger!
The preliminary salutations over, a black bottle was produced, and a
glass of whiskey handed round. Hugh had never learned to drink
whiskey, and, at that time, detested the very smell of it. His refusal
to drink with McClory's friends was a first ground of offence, but the
whiskey had not yet brought the drinkers into the quarrelsome mood.
When several bottles of McClory's whiskey had been drunk, and the
temperature of the guests had risen, the religious question was
approached. Bronte was urged, in peremptory tones, to abjure
Protestantism. He had his answer ready. He was no more a Protestant
than they were, and he had no Protestantism to abjure. "Will you then
curse King William?" said a fiery little man, who had taken much
liquor, and seemed to be the spokesman of the party.
There is a principle in human nature which has been taken far too
little account of by both philosophers and peasants. It has been the
dominant principle in many of the important decisions that have sealed
the fate of nations as well as of individuals. The principle is
expressed by a word which is always pronounced in one way by the
cultured, and in quite a different way by the unlettered. The word in
its illiterate use is "contr_air_yness," and but for the principle
expressed by this word the Bronte girls would never have made their
mark in literature, and this history would never have been written.
"Curse King William," shouted the fiery little man, supported by a
hoarse shout from the other half-tipsy guests, all of whom had turned
fierce and glaring eyes on the supposed Protestant.
"I cannot curse King William," replied Hugh, smiling. "He never did me
any harm; besides, he is beyond the region of my blessings and
cursings. But," added he, warming with his subject, "I should not mind
cursing the Pope, if he is the author of your fierce and besotted
religion."
Alice first saw the danger, and uttered a sharp cry. Suddenly the
family party sprang upon Hugh, as the ambushed Philistines once flung
themselves on Samson, but he shook them off, and left them sprawling
on the floor. Alice drew him from the house, bleeding and disheveled,
and after a tender parting in the grove beside the stream, he started
on foot for Mount Pleasant.
Two immediate results followed that conflict. Hugh Bronte became a
furious Protestant and a frantic lover. There was no lukewarmness or
indifference as to his Protestantism. The Bronte _contrairyness_ had
met the kind of opposition to give it a stubborn set, and he there and
then became a Protestant, double-dyed, in the warp and in the woof.
The process of his conversion, such as it was, was prompt, decisive,
effectual. It was somewhat orange in hue and militant in fibre, and
was a genuine product of the times.
Hugh's love for Alice was fanned into a fierce flame by the events of
that night. When he first met her he had been dazzled by her rare
beauty. He had seen few women, and never one like Alice. For the first
time he had come under the spell of a simple but beautiful girl. They
were young, shy lovers; very happy in each other's company, but each
sufficiently self-possessed to be happy enough in self.
From the crucible of contradiction on that night the jewel love had
leaped forth. Each was drawn out from the self-centre in which each
had been concentrated in self; he to declare his love in the face of
relentless foes, and she to cling to him, and protect him, when
bruised and torn by her friends. Beneath the pines, that night, they
pledged, with mingling tears, undying love. They parted, but their
hearts were one; and persecution, poverty and bereavement only welded
them more closely together in the changing years.