THE TEMPTER AT THE WOMAN.
It was arranged among the Pryings and their advisers, one day in August,
that, as Amanda said Paul was an incorrigible young man, he should be
sent off to the State fair of Vermont, and, in the meantime, a certain
"true blue" Presbyterian minister, named Grinoble, should try his hand
at converting Paul's little sister Bridget. It was, some thought, wrong
to begin with Paul, as all experience, but especially scriptural
testimony, taught that temptation was more likely to succeed when woman
was the subject or the instrument. So thought Parson Grinoble; and, with
true serpent wisdom, he concluded that it was through the woman, the
weaker sex, that, in this instance, Popery was to be conquered. Besides,
this old hand at proselytism read somewhat of the epistles of St. Paul,
and read there of the success of his predecessors in unbelief in
seducing "silly women," and ensnaring their confiding souls within the
meshes of their wily nets. So thought Mr. Grinoble, and he began to act
on it on the day in question, by going into the kitchen and addressing
himself to Bridget, as she was peeling apples for cooking, in the
following manner:
"Come here, my dear, and shake hands," said his dominieship to the girl.
She walked over shyly, holding the knife in one hand, and stretching
forward for the other.
"Sit down here beside me, on the settle, my dear."
"I must do what 'Mandy ordered me, sir," she said, excusingly.
"Oh, don't you fear Amanda," he said; "I will be your security, my
little woman, that she won't be displeased. Dear me, what nice hair and
purty curls you have! and such beautiful teeth! Don't you think Miss
Amanda is jealous of your charms? eh? Why do you turn away your head, my
pet?"
"I don't like such talk, sir," she answered. "My Prayer Book, in the
'Table of Sins,' says it is a sin to listen to praise or flattery."
"Well said, my little lady," said the tempter. "You are right, Bridget;
I was only trying you. I do not wish you to sin. You know I am the
minister. I love you, and wish to see you a good Christian," said he,
caressing her.
"I thank you, sir," was her answer.
"Now, my little good one, I want to tell you some news. I have a message
for you,--a letter from a friend."
"Please show it, sir," she said, impatiently; "perhaps it is from my
uncle, in Ireland, to whom Paul often wrote, but never got an answer
back."
"No, my dear, it is from your father," said the tempter.
"My father is dead, sir," she quickly rejoined. "It can't be from him,
anyhow, God rest his soul."
"It is from your Father in heaven,--behold it!" said he, in a dramatic
accent, and pulling out of his breast-pocket a small octodecimo Bible.
"Queer letter carrier, and purty heavy letter," grinned a young fellow,
who was sitting by, waiting for the return of the boss to employ him.
"Christ sent you this by me," said the dominie, presenting the Bible.
"It will teach you the knowledge of the Lord, and the true spirit of his
gospel."
"Never knew before that the Lord kept a post-office," said the young
Celt; "but I'm sure he never sent the like of you to be
letter-carrier,--too slow, too stupid, entirely, entirely; and not very
honest, maybe."
"I am not addressing you, sir," said the parson, gruffly. "How do you
like that, Bridget?" said he, plying his arts.
"It is very nicely bound, sir," said she; "but I dare not take it
without acquainting my brother Paul."
"Now, my little favorite," said the representative of the serpent, "if
your uncle at home left you all his property, would you not like to be
able to read the _will_, or would you wait for Paul's leave to read a
document by which you inherited so much wealth?"
"Perhaps not, sir," she answered, "particularly if he did not forbid me
to do so."
"Very well, this is the will, the testament of God to all men, to me,
to you. Now, Bridget, learn this will, read it, study its contents,
without consent of priest or brother. Don't you see how proper this
advice is?" said he, thinking he had her little reasoning powers
conquered.
"Yes, old fellow," said the young man at the table; "but if that will
was disputed, which would you do,--submit it to an able lawyer, or go
into court yourself without advice or counsel? You surely would fee a
lawyer, if money or property was at stake. Well, you '_omadawn_,'" said
our young stranger, "don't you see that, though that Bible is the will,
the devil, and his small heretical attorneys--Luther, Calvin,
Wesley--dispute the will, and the Church is the able advocate, and
judge, too, that will conquer the devil, and put to shame his agents,
and secure the stake, which is heaven, and the salvation of the soul?
Let the child alone," said he, boldly, "as you see she doesn't want your
biblical pills, or, 'be the tinker that mended _Fion-vic Couls' pot_,' I
will turn you out of doors, if I were to hang for it after. Let the
child alone this minute," said he, firmly.
"Who are you, sir?" said the indignant parson, turning to view his
antagonist. "How dare you interrupt me when I am not addressing you?"
"I am an Irishman and a Catholic," said he; "and furthermore, if you
wish to know my name, it is, sir, Murty O'Dwyer, Tipperary man and all."
The reader will recollect the rollicking young attendant who drove
Father O'Shane in the snowdrifts from Vermont, a specimen of whose
oratory we have given in a preceding chapter. The antagonist of Parson
Grinoble was no other than the same young man. He had rambled up to this
neighborhood in search of work, and hearing that Mr. Prying was in need
of a hay hand, he waited his return from the Vermont State fair.
The minister Grinoble returned to the parlor to report progress to
Amanda, and to represent the controversial rencontre which he had with
O'Dwyer, while Murty learned with wonder and indignation from Bridget,
that they were the children which cost Father O'Shane so much vain
search, and that they were kept in continual annoyance by all sorts of
male and female religious quacks and mountebanks, all bent on the work
of perversion. "Oh, thunder and age!" said he; "and ye are widow
O'Clery's children, God rest her soul! What a murthur Father O'Shane
could not find ye out before he died! The Lord have mercy on him."
"We have heard he died," said Bridget. "Is it long since, sir?"
"Almost two years. He published ye in the Boston _Pilot_, and all the
newspapers. He even offered a reward for yer discovery. Oh, _mille
murther_! what a pity I did not know ye were so near home!"
"I suppose uncle wrote to him, and sent us money to take us home again?"
added pensive Bridget.
"Money!" said the disinterested young man; "what money? I would give all
I earned since I came to this queer country myself to have ye found
out. We all thought ye were lost, drowned, or killed on the railroad
cars. I am glad I have found ye out; ye will have to leave right off. I
will take ye away myself to-morrow."
"Oh, no, sir!" said Bridget; "we can't leave this till our time is
served out or our board paid,--two dollars a week for nearly three
years. The priest, not long since, came here to see if he could get my
brother and me off, but they told him they would not let us go. And
besides that, they insulted his reverence by telling him, if he dared to
come to try to kidnap us, they would tar and feather, or shoot him, the
Lord save us."
"I wish to God I was present," said Murty; "I would settle bread on some
of them; that I would, and no mistake," said he, bringing his clenched
fist down on the table, "if I heard them insult the minister of Christ
in any shape or form. Oh, America! America!" said he, in an undervoice,
"I am deceived in you. I thought you were a second paradise, where all
was peace, and comfort, and justice, and prosperity, and true liberty.
But alas! I find all my ideas of your character erroneous and false. All
the crimes of the old world are not only here, where we thought the very
soil was virgin pure and unstained, but here in the most odious forms.
The poor at home were naked, and hungry, and ground; but most of them
were _innocent_, and _an innocent man is not entirely miserable_. The
poor here, besides their poverty and wretched slavery, working eighteen
out of the twenty-four hours, are almost all wicked in addition. The
crimes in the old country, that aristocratic institutions kept up in
the inaccessible palaces of the rich,--like the panther's den on the
summit of yonder mountain,--here are familiar to the lowest and
vulgarest of the populace. In the old country, the few and the rich were
unjust, cruel, wicked; it was so in Ireland. Here the vices of the few
are ingrafted on the many, and, like the small-pox, they do not become
weaker, but stronger, by universal propagation. I wish I never saw you,
America," said he, musing, his head resting against the wall; "I wish I
was in the grave with my two sisters and mother, rather than here to
witness the slavery, corruption, and vice of America." The remainder of
his musings were lost in the sighs and emotions that proceeded from his
manly bosom.