MR. POLYMATHERS
It was to an accidental circumstance that Lisconnel owed the prolonged
sojourn there of perhaps the most distinguished scholar who has ever
visited us. For when he arrived at O'Beirne's forge one misty June
evening, the night's lodging only was all he asked or desired. But in
those times, now some fifty years since, we had "a terrible dale of
sickness about in the country," and next morning the stranger was down
with the fever, which, although so mild a case that even Bridget
O'Beirne never gave him over more than twice in the same day, brought
his journey perforce to a halt. At the beginning he was very loth to
believe that he must relinquish his intention of reaching Dublin by a
certain date--the first Monday in July; however, having once recognised
the impossibility of doing so, he showed no haste to quit his quarters,
and his stay with the O'Beirnes lengthened into months as the summer
slipped away. At this time the forge was owned by Felix O'Beirne,
blacksmith, shebeener, and ex-whiteboy, and with him lived his orphan
grandsons, Daniel and Nicholas, his very old, ancient mother, who still
drew enjoyment in whiffs through the stem of her black dudeen, and his
elderly sister, Bridget, who had taken little pleasure in anything since
the redcoats shot her sweetheart in the War. The missing third
generation was represented occasionally when Mrs. Dooley, Felix's
married daughter, came on a visit. It was conjectured among them that
"the fancy the ould gintleman had for larnin' all manner to young
Nicholas continted him to stop." And this may have had something to do
with it, though less, probably, than the vaguer fact that he from the
first "took kindly" to the O'Beirnes, and they to him. His appearance
puzzled them a little. He was of a massive, large-boned frame, such as
nature seems to design for rough uses; but, as Felix remarked, "you
could aisy tell be ivery finger and thumb on him that hard work wasn't
the handle he'd took a hould of the world by." He wore a very long, grey
frieze coat, and a chimney-pot hat so old and tall that it looked as if
it must have grown slowly to its great height. When he took it off he
uncovered a shock of soft white hair, like the wig of a seeded
groundsel, about a face which was furrowed and wrinkled ruggedly enough,
in a different pattern somehow from what is commonly seen at Lisconnel,
where sun and wind have a large share in the process. His baggage
consisted of two bundles, very unequal in size and weight. The contents
of the smaller one were mainly a shirt and three socks, knotted loosely
in a blue cotton handkerchief; the other was done up carefully in
sacking, and he liked to have it under his eye.
Of course the O'Beirnes' visitor was often talked about among the groups
gathered of an evening, much as they are nowadays, for gossip and poteen
within the broad-leaved forge doors, through which on dark nights the
fire still blinks as far across the bog as the amber of the sunset, or
the rising glow of the golden harvest moon. Even from Felix's first
report it appeared that the stranger was no ordinary person.
"Won'erful fine discoorse he has out of him, anyway," he told the
neighbours a few nights after the arrival; "ivery now and agin he'll out
wid a word as grand like and big as his Riverence at Mass--goodness
forgive me for sayin' so. Sometimes we've been hardset to tell what he's
drivin' at. But that's the way it is wid thim words that has a power of
manin' in thim. They're apt to bother you a bit when you're used to
spakin plain."
"Belike it's the fever in his head sets him talkin' oddly," said young
Barney Corcoran. "I mind me brother Joe when he was bad wid it would be
ravin' wild. Sorra the sinsible word there was out of him for the best
part of a week."
This way of accounting for his guest's fine language rather affronted
Felix, and he consequently said, "Musha now, was there not? And how long
might yourself be under that descripshin of fever?"
"Ah sure, what 'ud we do at all if poor Barney was took that way?" said
Peter Keogh, "and nobody able to tell was it ravin' he was, or settin'
up to be talkin' raisonable for any differ they could see."
Barney cleared his throat disconcertedly, and the old man, recalling his
responsibilities as a host, and perhaps not admiring his sarcasm thus
elaborated, said conciliatingly, "Och, he'll do right enough if he niver
raves any worse than Mr. Polymathers. All that ails him is that we want
to git a bit used to his manner of spakin'."
"Polymathers?" said Peter.
"To be sure, Polymathers. Did you say it any better than I?"
"Well, I nivir heard tell of anybody called that way before. It's a
quare she-he soundin' sort of name," said Peter.
"Faix, then, there may be plinty quarer in it, we niver heard tell of,
if that was all," said Felix. "Anyhow, it's his name, and his people's
afore him. Himself tould me his father was the ouldest of all the
Polymatherses there was in the counthry he came out of--somewheres down
south, I think he said--and the head of the whole of thim forby."
"Ay, he did so," said Dan. "Sez you to him, there was a dale of water
run down hill since the time there was O'Beirnes blacksmiths in this
part of the counthry; and your father was a one, sez you. And sez he to
you, he couldn't be any manner of manes purtind to be the aquil to what
_his_ father was. And sez you to him, what was he? And sez he, it was
one of the Polymatherses he was, and well known for his larnin' through
the len'th and breadth of the county Sligo. And a name it was, he sez,
any man might be proud of ownin'."
"Be jabers, himself has the great consait of it, at all ivents," said
Peter. "But he might find people could be tellin' him there's Keoghs as
good as any Polymatherses iver was in it--ivery hair."
The stranger's patronymic having thus been ascertained, it was desirable
to fix his calling, and, despite his disclaimer of inherited erudition,
several circumstances bespoke him a schoolmaster, even before the
question seemed settled by the first act of his convalescence being an
inquiry into the amount of book-learning which Dan and Nicholas had
amassed during their sixteen and fourteen years. This was not large,
though as much as could be expected, considering that in all Lisconnel
there were not just then, I believe, more than four volumes, one of
which being merely the index to a non-existent _Encyclopædia_, can
scarcely rank as literature. The boys themselves, and their grandfather,
were deeply interested in the examination, and very anxious that it
should have a creditable result. For learning and the learned have at
all times been held in profound respect among us away on our bogland,
where the devotion to something afar springs perhaps the more abundantly
because so many things are remote. On this occasion Mr. Polymathers
opened his most sizable bundle, and it was seen to be filled with books,
not fewer, doubtless, than a score, in leather bindings, ragged and
battered, and brownly time-stained all over their margins, as if the
river of years had for them run no metaphor, but a russet bog-stream.
They comprised _Homer_, _Virgil_, _Livy_, and other ancients; likewise
two Latin lexicons, which looked extravagant until you observed how each
did but supplement the other's deficiencies, and this so imperfectly
that their owner was still liable to search in vain for words between MO
and NA.
These, however, were evidently not the most prized portion of Mr.
Polymathers's library, though he displayed them with some complacency,
reading out here and there a sonorous "furrin" phrase, at which his
audience said, "More power," and "Your sowl to glory," and the like. It
was when he handled the shabbiest of the volumes, with broken backs and
edges all curling tatters, that his touch grew caressing. The
lookers-on, contrariwise, thought but poorly of them because they set
up, seemingly, to be illustrated works, and their pictures, mostly of
uninteresting round and three-cornered objects, struck Lisconnel art
critics as very feeble efforts. To be sure Mr. Polymathers called them
_dygrims_, but that was no help to the overtaxed imagination. Only young
Nicholas O'Beirne listened intently to the explanation which he gave of
one of them. Nicholas was a long, thin lad, with melancholy grey eyes
and a square forehead, whose capacity his grandfather had held in some
esteem, since it had been discovered, years ago, that "the spalpeen
could make out an account for four sets of shoes, and half a stone of
three-inch holdfasts, and a dozen of staples, and two gallon of the
crathur, and allow for a hundredweight of ould iron, all in his head,
and right to a farthin'." Now the melancholy eyes darkened and
brightened with excitement as Mr. Polymathers discoursed of right lines
and angles and circles, and expounded the mysterious signification of
certain Ah Bay Says. And he had thenceforward an unweariable pupil in
Nicholas, companied, albeit with less ardent zeal, and at a slower rate
of progress, by his elder brother, Dan.
More general interest, however, continued to be taken in the stranger's
classical attainments. Everybody--the O'Beirnes themselves, their
neighbours in the cabin-row close by, now long since an untraceable
ruin, and the people of Lisconnel proper, a couple of miles further
on--felt uplifted by the residence among them of a man, who they boasted
would talk Latin to you as soon as look at you. But as we never enjoy
our own happiness fully until it has been looked at through other men's
envious eyes, they could not here remain content with simply possessing
this privilege, or even with dilating upon it to their less favoured
friends down below and down beyant. They longed to make a parade of it,
to give a demonstration of it. And the method of doing so which they
came to consider most desirable was the bringing about of a conversation
in Latin between Mr. Polymathers and Father Rooney, the Parish Priest.
For if that took place they could easily imagine his Reverence riding
home to report in the Town what a wonderful great scholar entirely they
had stopping above at Lisconnel. Moreover, the conversation itself would
be a rael fine thing to have the hearing of. Terence Kilfoyle, for
instance, said that it would be as good as a Play, which, as he had
never seen one, was to entertain unbounded expectations. And at last,
after they had wished the wish for some weeks, a prospect of its
fulfilment came into sight together with Father Rooney's cream-coloured
pony jogging along through the light of a fiery-zoned July sunset, in
which Mr. Polymathers was basking by the O'Beirnes' door. In those days
his Reverence was a youngish man, ruddy, and of a cheerful countenance,
a substantial load for his sturdy nag, and altogether, in his glossy
black cloth, a figure very different from their gaunt, sad-visaged,
shaggily-garbed old guest. He was at the time of Father Rooney's
approach seated on a two-legged, three-legged stool, propped
precariously against the ray-rosed cabin wall, and was teaching Dan and
Nicholas the twelfth proposition of the second book of Euclid. Dan had
not yet grasped it, but it all lay as clear as a sunbeam athwart
Nicholas's brain, and he was fidgeting like an impatient horse at the
slowness of his fellow.
Several of the neighbours chanced to be about, for the forge saw a good
deal of company in those long empty days before the potato-digging could
begin. They all drew together into a small crowd, and closed in step by
step to watch the first meeting between these two notable persons, much
admiring the deftness with which old O'Beirne secured it by pronouncing
one of the pony's shoes in need of tightening, and the felicitous
opening he made by assuring his Reverence that "divil a bit need he be
mindin' the delay, because Mr. Polymathers there had enough _furrin
languages_ to keep thim all divarted, if the baste owned as many feet as
a forty-legs, wid the shoes droppin' off ivery pair of thim. That was to
say, in coorse, supposin' he got the chance of convarsin' a bit wid
somebody aquil to answerin' him back iligant, the way there wasn't e'er
a one of thim could make an offer at doin' no more than thim little
weevils of chirpin' chuckens."
Yet the interview turned out disappointingly after all. If such a thing
had not been, of course, exceedingly improbable, one might have fancied
that each scholar stood in awe of the other's reputation, they steered
so clear of all recondite subjects; keeping to the merest commonplaces
about rain and potatoes and turf--which anybody else could have
discussed quite as knowledgably. In vain, whenever there was a promising
pause would the bystanders nudge one another, whispering, hopefully,
"Whist, boys--they'll be sayin' somethin' now." Only the plainest
English followed, and at last, when Father Rooney rode on, his parting
joke, which referred to the difficulty his pony would now find in the
way of becoming a barefooted pilgrim, left for a wonder solemnly
irresponsive faces behind it.
Michael Ryan said, with a touch of resentment, "Ah, well, one couldn't
maybe expec' it of thim to be throublin' thimselves talkin' fine for the
pack of us, as ignorant as dirt, in the middle of th'ould bog."
And his wife said, "'Deed, now, I wouldn't won'er meself if the raison
was his Riverence 'ud think bad of usin' his Latin words for anythin'
else on'y prayers and such. It might be somethin' the same as if he went
and took his grand vistments to go dig pitaties in; and that 'ud be a
great sin, God knows."
But old Felix, who was, as we have seen, a rather touchy person,
construed this suggestion into an implied censure on his own wishes in
the matter, and he said, huffily--
"Sorra the talk of sin I see in it at all, ma'am. 'Tis a dale liker they
just couldn't get out wid it convanient offhand. The same way that I'd
aisy enough bate out a shoe on me anvil there, when it's bothered I'd be
if you axed me to make a one promiscuous here of a suddint on the
roadside."
Mr. Polymathers himself meanwhile was perhaps dimly conscious that he
had disappointed hopes, and failed to rise duly to the occasion; and
this may have been why he slipped indoors, and fetched out a small book
he had never produced before, bound in a dingy greenish blue, with a
white paper label.
"D'you know what that is, sir?" he questioned, rhetorically, handing it
to Felix O'Beirne. "It's the Calendar, let me tell you, of the College
of the Holy and Undivided Trinity, _juxta_ Dublin. There's a print of
the Front of the Buildings attached to the fly-leaf. I'm after pickin'
it up this spring at Moynalone. 'Twas new the year before last, and
comprises a dale of information relative to terms, examinations, fees,
and so forth."
"Begor, then, it looks to be a wide house," said Felix, confining
himself to the picture as a comprehensible point. "It's apt to be an
oncommon fine place, sir, I should suppose."
"You may say that, me man," said Mr. Polymathers, emphatically. "Not its
match in the kingdom of Ireland. The home of literature and the haunt
of science. And it's there I'll be, plase God, next October."
"Musha, and will you be thravellin' that far--to Dublin?" said Felix.
"Ay will I, and would have gone last month on'y for the fever delayin'
me till after the midsummer entrance. Me savin's amount to somethin'
over thirty pound, so I may venture on the step, and prisint meself at
the Michaelmas term. In short," said Mr. Polymathers, re-poising himself
upon his rickety stool, "I might describe myself as an unmatriculated
candidate undergraduate of the University of Dublin."
"And what at all now would that be, sir, if I might be axin'?" said
Felix, humbly, after the awe-stricken pause which followed Mr.
Polymathers's proclamation of his style and title.
"It's a necessary preliminary," said Mr. Polymathers, "to proceeding to
the Degree of _Baccalaureatus in Artibus_, or _In Artibus
Baccalaureatus_--the _ordo verborum_ is, I take it, immaterial, to judge
by the transposition of initials in the case of ----."
"Faix, but it's the fine Latin you can be discoorsin' now, and his
Riverence half-ways home," said Felix reproachfully.
Mr. Polymathers, glancing round a circle of deeply impressed faces, felt
that his prestige was restored, and even began to enjoy a foretaste of
the triumph, which had been one part of his dream through the long
laborious years. But he was puzzled how to bring the full grandeur of
his design clearly before this uninstructed audience, and after
reflecting for a while in quest of concise yet adequate definitions, he
launched out into an eloquent description of the ceremonial observed in
conferring degrees at Dublin University. It may be surmised that many of
the details were due to his own fondly brooding fancy. For not only did
the highest learning in the land crowd the Hall in their academic robes,
but the Lord Lieutenant himself took a prominent part in the
proceedings, which were enlivened by military music and thunderous
salutes. Mr. Polymathers nearly toppled off his tricky stool more than
once without noticing it in his excitement as he rehearsed these
splendid scenes, declaiming with great unction the formulas long since
learned by all his heart, especially _Ego, auctoritate mihi concessa_,
and the rest, until he came to his peroration: "And all this pomp and
ceremony, mind yous, to the honour and glory of science and fine
scholarship. It's a grand occasion, lads; it's an object any man might
be proud to give----" Here he pulled himself up, warned by an unusually
violent lurch that his theme was running away with him. But having by no
means worked off his enthusiasm, he expended some of it, as a schoolboy
might have done, in throwing a small bit of turf at a stately white hen,
who just then sailed across the dark doorway, like a little frigate
under the most crowded canvas. She immediately took flight with
floundering screeches, which drowned what the old man was muttering to
himself. However, it was only "_Admitto te--admitto te_."
After these revelations Mr. Polymathers was looked up to more than ever,
as one not only endowed with rare gifts, but destined by their means to
scale heights of hardly realisable exaltation. "Be all accounts there
was no knowin' what he mightn't rise to be at Dublin College," the
neighbours said. They also often remarked that it was "a surprisin'
thing to see a great scholar like him spendin' his time over taichin'
thim two young O'Beirnes." If the speaker happened to be afflicted with
a twinge of envy about those educational advantages, he was apt to say
"thim two young bosthoons" or "gomerals." But Dan and Nicholas were
not, in fact, any such thing. Nicholas, indeed, quickly proved himself
possessed of what Mr. Polymathers called "a downright astonishin'
facility at the mathematics," far out-stripping Dan, not quite to Dan's
satisfaction, as he had always enjoyed the pre-eminence conferred by
superior physical strength and a practical turn of mind. So well pleased
was the old man with his eager pupil that he would have liked to do his
teaching, "nothing for reward," but his host's hospitality, and his own
ambition, would not permit this. Now and then he rather puzzled Nicholas
by an apologetic tone in answering questions about his University
career. And once at the end of a lesson he said, as if to himself: "May
goodness forgive me if I'm takin' what he'd have done better with. But
sure he's young--he's plenty of chances yet." However, as the time for
his departure drew on, all his misgivings, if such he had, seemed to
vanish away, and his thoughts became very apt to journey off blissfully
to Dublin in the middle of the most interesting problems. Nicholas had
to wait till they came back.
Mr. Polymathers left Lisconnel on a fine autumn morning, when the air
was so still that the flashing and twinkling of the many dewdrops seemed
to make quite a stir in it. The sky was as clear as any one of them, and
in the golden light the wavering columns of blue smoke rose with curves
softly transparent. He started with a buoyant step, as well he might,
since he was setting out on the enterprise into which he had put all the
spirit of his youth. He felt some regret at parting from his Lisconnel
friends, but his plans and prospects were naturally very pre-occupying,
whereas they had the ampler leisure of the left-behind to deplore his
flitting, which seemed likely enough to be for good. Nearly four years,
he had explained, must elapse before the crowning height of the B. A.
Degree could be won, and it was only just possible that he might manage
to tramp back on a visit meanwhile, during some Long Vacation. This
doubtful chance was cold comfort for that ardent scholar Nicholas
O'Beirne, who grieved more than anybody else. Most ruefully did he help
Dan to carry the candidate undergraduate's library as far as the Town;
nor could he take more than a downcast pleasure in Mr. Polymathers's
farewell gift to him of the raggedest _Euclid_. And as he stood
watching the car out of sight, his eyes were as wistful as if a door
briefly opened on glimpses of radiant vistas had been inexorably barred
in his face.
Yet after all Mr. Polymathers's absence was not to be measured by years
or months. One evening on the threshold of December, Lisconnel was lying
roofed over by a massy livid-black cloud, which came lumbering up and up
interminably, and which the weatherwise estimated to contain as much
snow as would smother the width of the world. The north wind moaned and
keened dismally under the toil of wafting on this portentous load, and
its breath was bitingly sharp, so that when the lads came in from the
forge, their grandfather said, "Ah, Dan, shut over the door, for there's
a blast sweepin' through it 'ud freeze ten rigiments as stiff as
staties." We usually take a large view of things at Lisconnel. Dan went
to carry out this order, but instead of doing so he suddenly shouted:
"Murdher alive! Here's Mr. Polymathers."
Through the grey gloaming came a Mr. Polymathers, very different from
what he had been on that brilliant, hopeful morning only a few weeks
ago, when he had stepped lightly, and held his head up as if he were
looking a friendly fortune in the face. Now his feet stumbled and
dragged as he fared slowly against the wind's blustering, with his eyes
on the ground, and his movements seemingly guided more by the weight of
the bundle he carried than by his own will. Before he came within even
loud shouting distance, everybody felt a presentiment of disaster; but
he had not spoken a word to justify or discredit it by the time he got
indoors.
"Musha, and so it's yourself, sir," old Felix then repeated, in a
congratulatory tone. "Ah, but it's a hardy evenin', and it's perished
you are, sir. Come in be the fire."
"Ay, I'm back," Mr. Polymathers said slowly, after a hesitating pause,
as if the remark had been interpreted to him by some second person, "I
was bringin' the books, thinkin' the lad might use them--he's young
enough. But I'm not come to stop on you," he added, speaking faster,
"on'y just for this night. Early to-morra I must be off to Ardnacreagh,
and try for the taichin' there again. 'Twas on'y on account of bringin'
the books I came this way. I'll be on the road quite early."
His insistence on this point made, somehow, a very melancholy
impression on Felix; but he replied jovially: "Is it to-morra? Bedad
then, sir, don't you wish you may slip off on us that soon, and we after
gettin' a hould of you agin? What fools we are. Not if you was as
slithery, ivery inch of you, as a wather-eel."
The wraith of a relieved smile at this came over Mr. Polymathers's face;
still it looked so grey and withered, and his eyes were so sunken, and
his large, bony hands so shaky, that all with one consent refrained from
questions which they were agog to ask; and when Mrs. Keogh by and by
dropped in, and being an inquisitive and not very quick-witted person,
said, "Saints among us--it's Mr. Polymathers. And how's yourself, sir?
And are you bringing home the grand Degree?" though they all listened
eagerly for the reply, they wished she had held her tongue.
"The divil a Degree, ma'am," said Mr. Polymathers, "and niver will."
There was a short silence, and then he turned round on his stool--it was
the same from which he had made his boast in the summer sunset, but Dan
had meanwhile mended its broken leg with the handle of a worn-bladed
spade. "I've given up," he said to them. "I no longer entertain the
project of becomin' a graduate, or for the matter of that an
undergraduate of Dublin University; and if I'd done right, I'd niver
have taken up such an idea. I've put it out of me head. But it's been in
me mind a great while--a terrible long while."
"Look you here, Mr. Polymathers, sir, are you after gittin' any bad
thratment from any people up in thim places?" said Felix, who always
liked better to lay a grievance on some human and possibly breakable
head than to believe it the work of the vengeance-baffling demon
bad-luck.
"Not at all, not at all," said Mr. Polymathers, when the question
reached him. "I've nothin' to complain of. They're very respectable
people in Dublin, and it's a fine city. But me head's a bit giddy yet
wid the drivin' they have in the streets, that makes one stupid. I mind
there was a car tatterin' along, and I crossin' over the College Green,
had me down on the stones, on'y a dacint lad gript a hould of me, and
whirled me inside the College gates. There I was before I rightly knew
anythin' had happened me, and I after spendin' the best part of me life
gettin' to it. 'Twasn't the way I thought it 'ud be.... But the College
is as grand as any notion I had of it; on'y since I've seen it, 'tis
like a drame to me that ever I set fut in it, just a sort of drame....
Great ancient places the squares are; I walked round the whole of them
before I found the Hall. A couple of chaps in uniform like came axin' me
me business, but I tould them fast enough that I was a candidate--ah,
goodness help me.... And the Hall's a spacious and splendid apartment.
On'y it was strange, now, to see it full of nothin' but young fellows,
scarce oulder than the two lads there. I might, sure enough, have known
the way it 'ud be, if I'd come to considher, but somehow it seemed to
put me out, as if I'd no call to be there at all. There was one of them
began pricin' me ould hat, and another of them tripped him up against a
black marble construction with a pair of angels atop of it, that there
is on the wall--sure they were just spalpeens. But I'll give you me
word, when they called me up to the examiner's table, there was a young
gintleman sittin' at it in his black gown and his cap wid the
tassel--bound to be one of the College Fellows, and ivery sort of a fine
scholar--and for all the age there was on him he might ha' been me son
or me grandson.
"So he handed me over a little black _Virgil_ wid the page opened where
I was to exhibit me acquaintance wid the text. It was merely a bit of
an oration of Queen Dido's that I've known ivery line of these forty
years as well as I know me own name, and better. And what came over me
is more than I can tell, but the minute I took the book in me hand, it
seemed to me as if ivery atom of sinse and manin' slipped out of the
words, or out of me head--I couldn't say which, and I just stood starin'
at them and starin', till iverythin' else got whirlin' round about me,
fit to shake the panes out of the big windows, and the pictures off the
walls.... Belike himself persaived I was flusthered, for, 'Take your
time,' sez he; and after a while they stood steady enough. But, the Lord
be good to me--sorra a syllable of the sinse come back. And be that I
well knew it was all up wid me; and I was thinkin' me father's son had
no business to be standin' there makin' a show of meself in the middle
of Trinity College. So the lad in the cap said again, 'Take your time,
sir, take your time.' But I said to him, 'God help me, sir, I've taken
very nigh all I'll get, for I declare to you, lad, I'm over seventy
years of age. But as for your time, sir,' I said, 'I'll be wastin' no
more of it.' And wid that I put down the book, and out I wint. I mind
the sun in the square nearly dazzled the eyes out of me fool's head. I
niver seen it blazin' brighter--and there was a big bell somewhere
boomin' away, as if they'd set the heart of the world tollin'; it's
ringin' in me ears yet.... And a couple of days after that I quit out of
Dublin, and I've been trampin' back to this counthry, takin' me time, as
he said--there's no hurry now about anythin'. So that was the ind of me
University Degree."
"I just wish I could git discoorsin' wid that young feller," said old
Felix, vindictively, "himself and his tassel in his cap."
"Sure, man, 'twas no fault of his," said Mr. Polymathers, "and I can
live widout a Degree, if that's all. Me betters did before me. To tell
you the truth, I've thought often enough as I was comin' along now, that
I dunno how at all I'd have had the face to meet me poor father one of
these days, and I cocked up with a _Baccalaureatus in Artibus_, and he
wid not so much as a dacint stone over his grave to commemorate his
name, that was the most illusthrious Polymath in the county Sligo, wid
more larnin' in the tip of his ear than ever I got into me ould skull.
Never a hap'orth of good was I at anythin' except the trifle of
mathematics, but he was as great at the Classics.... I used to humbug
meself somewhiles lettin' on I hankered after it because it would ha'
gratified him maybe to hear of the event. But little I ever done to
plase him, God forgive me. Let alone goin' and makin' an ould fool of
meself up at Trinity College.... 'Twas a terrible upset to him when I
turned again the Priesthood, after he had the money saved up for the
seminary and all. Words about it we had, and the ind of it was he put it
all into me brother Ned's little farm. Ned had no more fancy for larnin'
than the bastes of the field. A trifle of it would ha' come in very
handy sometimes for buyin' me books; howane'er it was not to be.... And
the books there--I on'y brought them along to lave wid you for the
youngest lad--ay, Nicholas. He has a head on his shoulders for the
mathematics, I can tell you; he might do something yet, if he got his
chances. They're no use to me now, and I'd as lief be shut of the sight
of them. And to-morra I'll be off to Ardnacreagh."
So the gaunt old man talked on, groping his way out of hesitating
pauses, and straying into dreamy meditations, as if he sometimes forgot
his story, and sometimes its hearers. They did not know what a
life-wreck it outlined, but they saw and surmised enough to make them
think of him as "the crathur," and speak to him with more deference
than if he had returned in a radiant glow of success, symbolised as some
of them had anticipated, by scarlet robes as splendid, at least, as
Father Rooney's at High Mass. And Felix O'Beirne took occasion of a
madly skirling gust to say, "Listen now to that, sir, and don't be
talkin' wild of thravellin' off to-morra. If I might be sayin' so, you'd
a dale better stay quiet where you are this minyit. And as for taichin',
sure it's proud and thankful the two boyos 'ud be for e'er a bit more.
There's Nicholas mopin' about like an ould hin that's lost her chuckens
iver since you quit."
Mr. Polymathers did stop quiet--very quiet--but he taught the boys no
more. In fact, he did nothing except sit all day staring into the fire,
as if he had lost something in it. Once after Nicholas had sat looking
very hard at him for a long time with the ragged _Euclid_ ostentatiously
open at a crux, he seemed to rouse up, and putting out a hand for the
book, began an explanation. But it died away unfinished in an aimless
muttering, which both shocked and saddened Nicholas, and the experiment
was not repeated. Then towards Christmas time all the neighbours were
saying that Mr. Polymathers was greatly failed to what he had been. And
Bridget O'Beirne reported that you might as well be argufyin' wid a
scutty wren to swally down the full of the ducks' dish as persuadin' him
to take a raisonable bite and sup. Dr. Hamilton from the Dispensary, who
was consulted on the case, "consaited," Bridget told inquirers, "that he
might be after gettin' a sort of stroke like unbeknownst;" but her own
opinion was that "he had, so to spake, lost the knot off his thread, and
'twould be much if he didn't slip away out of it on them, afore they
seen e'er another green laif on the bushes."
It was, at any rate, more than happened. One snowy afternoon, when he
had been busy for some time "scrawmin' a manner of letter," which
related, he said, to the disposition of his property, Mr. Polymathers
grew so much worse that Dan and Nicholas ran off for the Doctor and the
Priest, and before their arrival could possibly be expected, it became
evident that he could not wait to receive them. Bridget O'Beirne,
deploring the hap by his bed in the small room off the kitchen, thought
a few minutes before he went that she heard him murmuring something
coherent, and she called to little Rosy Corcoran, "Child alive--me
head's bothered--come in here and listen, can you make out at all what
he's sayin'?"
Rosy came reluctantly and listened. "I think," she whispered, "it's some
sort of prayers like what his Riverence sez."
"Ah, then, glory be to God for that itself," said Bridget, "there might
be a good chance for him after all."
But she had been misinformed. The words Mr. Polymathers was muttering
over and over to himself were: _Admitto te--admitto te_.