THE PRIEST'S DINNER PARTY.
Thady, as I said, walked off to the priest's cottage, to partake of
the relics of a goose, and seek counsel of his friend; but it was not
Father John's dinner hour yet, and he found no one in but Judy McCan.
He walked into the priest's little parlour, and sat down to wait for
him, again meditating on all the evils which hung over his devoted
family, and sitting thus he at length fell fast asleep.
Here he slept for above an hour, when he was awakened by the door
opening behind him, and in jumping up to meet Father John, as he
thought, he encountered the lank and yellow features, much worn
dress, and dirty, moist hand of Father Cullen.
"Were you sleeping, then, Mr. Thady, before Father McGrath's fire?
'deed, then, I dare say you've been walking a great sight, for you
look jaded. I'm not that fresh myself, for I've been away to Loch
Sheen, to widow Byrne's. Bad luck to the cratures, there's nothing
but sick calls now, and my heart's broken with them, so it is."
Thady's only answer to this was, "How are you, Father Cullen?" He
wished him back at Maynooth.
"Well, I hope Father McGrath isn't far off thin," and he looked at a
watch nearly as big as a church clock, "for I'm very hungry, and, my!
it's only twenty minutes to six--"
This gave Thady the very unwelcome intelligence that Father Cullen
meant to dine at the cottage.
"And now the pony's lamed undher me, I had to walk all the way to
Loch Sheen, in the dirt and gutther."
Thady's mind was full of one object, and he could not interest
himself about the curate's misfortunes in the lameness of his pony
and the dirt of his walk.
"And bad manners to them Commissioners and people they sent over
bothering and altering the people! Couldn't we have our own parishes
as we like, and fix them ourselves, but they must be sending English
people to give us English parishes, altering the meerings just to
be doing something? You know, Thady, the far end of Loch Sheen up
there?"
"Yes, Father Cullen, I know where Loch Sheen is."
"Well, that used to be Cashcarrigan parish; and Father Comyns--that's
the parish priest in Cash--don't live not two miles all out from
there; and the widow Byrne's is six miles from where I live out
yonder, if it's a step, and yet they must go and put Loch Sheen into
this parish."
Father Cullen's misfortunes still did not come home to Macdermot; he
sat looking at the fire.
"There's that poor ould woman, too, up there, left to starve by
herself, the crature, now they've gone and put her two sons into
gaol. I wonder what the counthry 'll be the better for all them boys
being crammed into gaol. I wish they'd kept that Ussher down in the
north when he was there; he's fitter for that place than County
Leitrim, any how."
"What's that about Captain Ussher, Father Cullen?"
"Shure didn't you hear he put three more of the boys into gaol
Tuesday evening, and one of them off Drumleesh?"
"Heard it! of course I heard it; and more than I'll be hearing it
too. Oh, Father Cullen, wherever that Ussher came from, I wish they'd
kept him there."
Thady's earnestness in this surprised the young priest.
"Why, I thought you and he were so thick; but I'm glad it's not
so much so. Why would the like of you be making so free with a
Protestant like him? Did you break with him, then, Mr. Thady?"
Macdermot by no means desired to admit Father Cullen into the
conference about his sister; the strong expression of his dislike had
fallen from him as it were involuntarily: he therefore turned off the
question.
"Oh no; break with him! why would I break with him? But you can't
think I like to see him dhriving the boys into the gaol like sheep to
the shambles. What business had they sending Tim Reynolds into gaol?
There'll be noise enough in the counthry about that yet, Father
Cullen."
"There'll never be noise enough about that, and such like cruelties
till he and all of the sort is put down intirely in the counthry; and
that'll only be when the counthry rights herself as she should do,
and, by God's blessing, will still; and that you and I, Mr. Thady,
may live to see it--"
The further expression of Father Cullen's favourite political
opinions was here interrupted by Father John's quick, heavy step on
the little gravel walk.
"Well, boys," said he, sitting down and pulling off his dirty gaiters
and shoes before the fire, "waiting for the goose, eh? Egad, when I
found what time it was, I thought you'd be bribing Judy to divide it
between you. Cullen, you look awfully hungry; I'd better set you at
the ham first, or you'll make terrible work at the half bird--for a
half is all there is for the three of us. Well, Judy, let's have the
stew."
The dinner was now brought in, and Father John talked joyously, as
though nothing was on his mind; and yet we know the sad conversation
he had had with young Macdermot that very morning, and that Thady was
there chiefly to tell the upshot of his mission,--and Thady's face
was certainly no emblem of good news. He had also had a sad morning's
work with his curate, his parishioners were in great troubles, the
times were very bad on them; many of them were in gaol for illegal
distillation; more were engaged in the business, and were determined
so to continue in open defiance of the police; many of them were
becoming ribbonmen, or, at any rate, were joining secret and illegal
societies. Driven from their cabins and little holdings, their crops
and cattle taken from them, they were everywhere around desperate
with poverty, and discontented equally with their own landlords and
the restraints put upon them by government. All this weighed heavily
on Father John's mind, and he strongly felt the difficulty of his own
situation; but he was not the man to allow his spirits to master him
when entertaining others in his own house. Had only Cullen or only
Thady been there, he would have tuned his own mind to that of his
guest; but as their cases were so different, he tried to cheer them
both.
"Egad, Thady, here's another leg--come, my boy, we've still a leg
to stand upon--Cullen has just finished one, and I could have sworn
I ate the other yesterday. See, did Judy put one of her own in
the hash--_'ex pede Herculem'_--you'd know it so any way by the
toughness. Lend me your fork, Thady, or excuse my own. Well, when I
get the cash from Denis's marriage, I'll get a carving-knife and fork
from Garley's; not but what I ought to have one. Judy, where's the
big fork?"
"Why, didn't yer riverence smash it entirely drawing the cork from
the bottle of sherry wine ye got for Doctor Blake the day he was here
about the dispinsary business?"
This little explanation Judy bawled from the kitchen.
"It is true for you, Judy; so I did, and bad luck to the day and
Doctor Blake, too. That same day, Thady, cost me three good shillings
for a bottle of bad wine, my old fork, and a leg of mutton and all;
for I thought I'd be able to come round the doctor about his coming
down to Drumsna here once a week regular; and when he'd ate my mutton
and drank the sherry, he just told me it was not possible."
"He'd sooner be making may be twenty or thirty poor sick craturs be
walking five or six miles, than he'd ride over to see them; though
it's little he'd think of the distance av he'd a fee to touch."
"For the matter of that, Cullen, I think yourself would go quicker to
a wedding than you would to a sick call. 'Deed, and I know myself I
like the part of the business where the cash is."
"In course, Mr. McGrath, I'd go with more sperit, but not a foot
quicker, nor so quick. May be I'd grumble at the one and not at the
other; but what the church tells me, I'll do, if it plazes God to let
me."
"Oh, Cullen, you'd make one think I was admonishing you. A fine
martyr he'd make, wouldn't he, Thady?"
Cullen, who took everything in downright earnest, clasped his dirty
hands, and exclaimed,
"If the church required it, and it was God's will, I hope I would."
"Well, well, but it'll be just at present much more comfortable for
all parties you should square round a little, and take your punch.
Come, Thady, are you going to be a martyr, too? it's a heathenish
kind of penance, though, to be holding your tongue so long. Come, my
boy, you were to bring the ticket about the rent with you."
Thady opened his ears at the word rent, but before he'd time to make
any suitable reply, Judy was moving the things, Father John was
pulling back the table, and pushing Cullen into a corner by the fire.
"Now, Judy, the fire under the pump, you know; out with the
groceries,--see, but have I any sugar, then?"
"Sorrow a bit of lump, but moist and plenty, Father John."
"Well, my boys, you must make your punch with brown sugar for once in
your life; and what's the harm? what we want in sugar, we'll make up
in the whiskey, I'll be bound. Judy, bring the tumblers."
Out came the tumblers--that is, two tumblers, one with a stand, the
other with a flat bottom, and a tea-cup with a spoon in it. The
tea-cup was put opposite Father John's chair, and the reverend father
himself proceeded to pour a tolerable modicum of spirits out of the
stone jar into a good-sized milk jug, and placed it on the table.
"Isn't it queer, then, Thady, I can't get a bottle, or a decanter,
or anything of glass to remain in the house at all? I'm sure I had a
decanter, though I didn't see it these six months."
"And wouldn't it be odd if you did, Father John? wasn't it smashed
last February?"
"Smashed! why, I think everything gets smashed."
"Well now, Mr. Thady, to hear his riverence going on the like of
that," said the old woman, appealing to Macdermot; "and wasn't it
himself sent the broth down in it to Widow Green the latter end of
last winter, and didn't the foolish slip of a girl, her grand-dater,
go to hait it over the hot coals for the ould woman, jist as it was,
and in course the hait smashed the glass, and why wouldn't it, and
the broth was all spilt? But isn't the jug just as good for the
sperits, yer honers?"
"Well, well; boiling mutton broth over a turf fire, in my cut
decanter! '_optat ephippia bos piger_.' That'll do, Judy, that'll
do."
And the old woman retreated with a look of injured innocence.
Father John sniffed the whiskey. "'_Fumum bibere institutae_;' it's
the right smell of the smoke. Come, Cullen, make your punch; come,
Thady, don't be sitting there that way;"--and he proceeded to make a
most unpalatable-looking decoction of punch in his tea-cup, to which
the moist sugar gave a peculiarly nasty appearance.
But all Father John's attempted jovialities and preparations for
enjoyment could not dispel the sadness from Thady's face, or the
settled solemnity from Father Cullen's visage; he never joked, and
rarely conversed; when he did speak, it was usually to argue or
declaim; and Thady, even in his best times, was but a sorry companion
for such a man as Father John. There the three of them sat, with
their eyes fixed on the fire, all drinking their punch, it is true,
but with very little signs of enjoying it.
How long they remained thus, I am unable to say; but Father John was
getting very tired of his company, when they were all three startled
by a sharp rap at the hall door, and before they had had time to
surmise who it was, Captain Ussher walked in.
Now, though neither Father John nor his curate were very fond of
Ussher, they both were tolerably intimate with him; indeed, till
lately, when the priest began to think the gallant Captain was
playing his fair parishioner false, and the opinion was becoming
general that he was acting the tyrant among the people, Father John
had rather liked Ussher than not. He was lively;--and if not well
educated, he had some little general comprehension of which no others
of those the priest knew around him could boast. He had met him
first very frequently at Ballycloran, had since dined with him at
Mohill, and had more than once induced him to join the unpretending
festivities of the cottage. There was nothing, therefore, very
singular in Captain Ussher's visit; and yet, from what was uppermost
in the mind of each of the party, it did surprise them all.
Father John, however, was never taken aback. "Ah, my darling, and how
are you? come to see we are drinking parliament and not cheating the
king."
Although they were drinking potheen, and though Ussher might,
doubtless, have put a fine of from five to fifty pounds on the priest
for doing so, Father John knew that he was safe. It was at that time
considered that no revenue officer would notice potheen if he met it,
as a guest. People are rather more careful now on the matter.
"Oh, Father John, I never bring my government taster with me when I
am not on service; but if you've any charity, give me an air of the
fire and a drop of what's going forward, all for love. How are you,
Father Cullen?" and he shook hands with the curate. "How are you,
Thady, old boy?" and he slapped Macdermot on the back as though they
were the best friends in the world.
"How are you, Captain Ussher?" said the former, sitting down again
as though the Captain's salutation were a signal for him to do so,
and as if he did not dare do it before. Nor would he. Father Cullen
had been told that he should stand up when strangers came into a
room,--that it was a point of etiquette; and there he would have
stood, though it had been ten minutes, if Ussher had not addressed
him.
Thady did not get up at all; in fact, he did not know what to do or
to say. He had been waiting anxiously, hoping that Father Cullen
would go, and now the difficulties in his way were more than doubled.
Captain Ussher, however, took no notice of his silence; but, sitting
down by Father John, began rubbing and warming his hands at the fire.
"Well, may I be d----d--begging your reverence's pardon--if this
isn't as cold a night as I'd wish to be out in, and as dark as my
hat. I say, Thady, this'll be the night for the boys to be running
a drop of the stuff; there'd be no seeing the smoke now, anyhow. I
was dining early at Carrick, and was getting away home as quick as I
could, and my mare threw a shoe, luckily just opposite the forge down
there; so I walked up here, Father John, and I told them to bring the
mare up when she's shod."
"I'm glad the mare made herself so agreeable. Come, Judy, another
tumbler here. By the by, then, Cullen, you must take to a tea-cup
like myself--you're used to it; and Captain Ussher, you must take
brown sugar in your punch, though you are not used to it. If I could
make lump sugar for you, I'd do it myself directly."
"Oh, what's the odds! I'm so cold I shan't feel it;" and without any
apology, he took poor Father Cullen's tumbler, who emptied the rest
of his punch into a tea-cup.
"Well, Thady, and who do you think there was at Hewson's, but Keegan,
your friend, you know? and a very pleasant fellow he is in his way:
but how he does abuse you Catholics!"
"Well, Captain, and it's little good you'll hear any of us say of
him, so that's all fair," said Father John.
"Take it that way, so it is; but I thought I heard some of you at
Ballycloran say he was once a Catholic," said Ussher turning to
Thady; "your father was telling me so I think."
He seemed determined to make Thady say something, but he only
muttered an affirmative.
"Whoever said so, said wrong," began Father Cullen, rising up and
putting his hands on the table, as if he was going to make a speech,
"Whoever said so, said wrong. His father was a Catholic, and his
mother was a Catholic, but he never was a Catholic; and how could he,
for he never was a Christian,"--and as he sat down he turned round
his large obtruding eyes for approval.
"Oh, if you go on that high ground, you'll lose half your flock. We
are glad to get them whether they are Christians or not, so long as
they are good Protestants; so you see Keegan's good enough for us;
and what could he do, poor fellow? if you wouldn't have him, he must
come to us."
"Oh then, Father John, he's satisfied to say men become Protestants
when they are no longer fit to be Catholics; was that the way
yourself become a Protestant, Captain Ussher?"
"If I'm to be d----d for that, you know, it's my father's and
mother's fault. I ain't like Keegan. I didn't choose the bad road
myself."
"Oh, but isn't it for yourself to choose the good road? didn't you
say you knew ours was the ould church as it stood always down from
Christ? If you do go wrong, you don't do it from ignorance, but you
do it wilfully, and your sowl will howl in hell for it."
Captain Ussher only burst out laughing at this little outbreak, but
Father John exclaimed, "Whist! whist! Cullen, none of that here: if
you can take any steps towards sending Captain Ussher to heaven,
well and good; but don't be sending him the other way while the poor
fellow is over his punch."
"Never mind, Father John; I and Father Cullen are very good friends,
and I think he'll hear me read my recantation yet; but he can't do it
to-night, as here's my mare. I must go by Ballycloran, Thady; will
you walk as far as the avenue with me?"
"Thank you, Captain Ussher, I'll not be going out of this just yet."
"Ah, well; I see you're out with me for the tiff we had this morning.
He's angry now, Father John, just through my telling him he couldn't
count all the money he'd received this week."
Father John observed the different manners of the young men towards
each other, and from Thady's silence, was quite sure that matters had
gone amiss between them.
"I didn't know it before then, Captain Ussher," said Thady; "but if
you must know, I've business to spake to Father John about."
"Oh, well; open confession's good for the soul; I hope he'll absolve
you for your bad temper."
"It's I am to get the absolution, if I can, this time; it's the old
story. Captain, 'a thrifle of rint that's owing, nothing more.'"
"Well, it's all one to me: good night to you all," and Captain Ussher
rode away home to Mohill.
Father Cullen reseated himself by the fire, and again assumed his
gaze at the hot turf, just as he was before Ussher came in, and
looked hopelessly immovable. Thady shifted about uneasily in his
chair, then got up and walked round the room, and then sat down
again; but the curate wouldn't move. At last Father John ended the
affair by saying,
"Any more punch, Cullen?"
"Thank you, no, Sir."
"Then just go home, there's a good fellow."
Cullen rose up, not the least offended--nothing would offend
him--took his hat, and did as he was bid. At last Thady and Father
John were left alone.
"Now, my boy," said the priest, as he put on more turf, "we'll be
alone for half an hour, or it is odd. Well, you spoke to Feemy?"
"I did spake to her, Father John; but I'd better have left it alone;
for when I began she only snubbed me, and she told me she'd manage
her own business; but oh Father John, I fear it will be a bad
business! She told me she loved him, and that he had gone so far as
asking her to marry him, and all that; but as far as I could learn,
it was only just talk, that. But I could say nothing to her, for she
got the better of me, and then flew out of the room, saying, it did
not matter what I said."
And then Macdermot told the priest exactly what had passed; how
headstrong Feemy was, how infatuated she was with her lover, and how
regardless of what any one could say to her on the subject; "and now,
Father John, what on 'arth shall I do at all, for the heart's broken
in me, with all the throubles that's on me."
"I'll tell you what, Thady: don't be falling out with Captain
Ussher--any way, not yet--for he may mean honestly, you know, though
I own my heart doubts him; but take my advice, and don't be falling
out with him yet. I'll see Feemy to-morrow, and if she won't hear or
won't heed what her priest says to her, I'll tell you what we'll do.
One woman will always listen to another, and I'll ask Mrs. McKeon to
speak to Feemy, and tell her the character she'll be giving herself.
Mrs. McKeon has daughters of her own, and when I remind her that
Feemy has neither mother, nor sister, nor female friend of any kind,
she'll not be refusing me this, disagreeable though it may be to her.
And now, Thady, do you go home to bed, and pray to God to protect
your sister; and, remember, my boy, that though you may have reason
to be displeased with her, as I said, she has neither mother nor
sister; she has no one to look to but yourself, and if there is much
in her to forgive, there are many causes for forgiveness."
Thady silently shook hands with his friend, and went home; and
whether or no he obeyed the priest's injunctions to pray for
protection for his sister, that good man himself did not go to sleep
till he had long been on his knees, imploring aid for her, and the
numerous unfortunates of his flock.