a feather might be heard, yet none bade God bless her--no kind hand was
extended to greet her--no heart warmed in affection towards her; on
the contrary, every eye glanced at her, as a being marked with enmity
towards God. Blanched faces and knit brows, the signs of fear and
hatred, were turned upon her; her breath was considered pestilential,
and her touch paralysis. There she stood, proscribed, avoided, and
hunted like a tigress, all fearing to encounter, yet wishing to
exterminate her! Who could she be?--or what had she done, that the
finger of the Almighty marked her out for such a fearful weight of
vengeance?
Father Philip rose and advanced a few steps, until he stood confronting
her. His person was tall, his features dark, severe, and solemn: and
when the nature of the investigation about to take place is considered,
it need not be wondered at, that the moment was, to those present, one
of deep and impressive interest--such as a visible conflict between
a supposed champion of God and a supernatural being was calculated to
excite.
“Woman,” said he, in his deep stern voice, “tell me who and what you
are, and why you assume a character of such a repulsive and mysterious
nature, when it can entail only misery, shame, and persecution on
yourself? I conjure you, in the name of Him after whose image you are
created, to speak truly?”
He paused, and the tall figure stood mute before him. The silence was
dead as death--every breath was hushed and the persons assembled stood
immovable as statues! Still she spoke not; but the violent heaving of
her breast evinced the internal working of some dreadful struggle. Her
face before was pale--it was now ghastly; her lips became blue, and her
eyes vacant.
“Speak!” said he, “I conjure you in the name of the power by whom we
live!”
It is probable that the agitation under which she labored was produced
by the severe effort made to sustain the unexpected trial she had to
undergo.
For some minutes her struggle continued; but having begun at its highest
pitch, it gradually subsided until it settled in a calmness which
appeared fixed and awful as the resolution of despair. With breathless
composure she turned round, and put back that part of her dress which
concealed her face, except the band on her forehead, which she did not
remove; having done this she turned again, and walked calmly towards
Father Philip, with a deadly smile upon her thin lips. When within
a step of where he stood, she paused, and riveting her eyes upon him
exclaimed--
“Who and what am I? The victim of infidelity and you, the bearer of a
cursed existence, the scoff and scorn of the world, the monument of a
broken vow and a guilty life, a being scourged by the scorpion lash
of conscience, blasted by periodical insanity, pelted by the winter's
storm, scorched by the summer's heat, withered by starvation, hated by
man, and touched into my inmost spirit by the anticipated tortures of
future misery. I have no rest for the sole of my foot, no repose for a
head distracted by the contemplation of a guilty life; I am the unclean
spirit which walketh to seek rest and findeth none; I am--_what you have
made me!_ Behold,” she added, holding up the bottle, “this failed, and I
live to accuse you. But no, you are my husband--though our union was but
a guilty form, and I will bury that in silence. You thought me dead, and
you flew to avoid punishment--did you avoid it? No; the finger of God
has written pain and punishment upon your brow. I have been in all
characters, in all shapes, have spoken with the tongue of a peasant,
moved in my natural sphere; but my knees were smitten, my brain
stricken, and the wild malady which banishes me from society has been
upon me for years. Such I am, and such, I say, have you made me. As
for you, kind-hearted woman, there was nothing in this bottle but pure
water. The interval of reason returned this day, and having remembered
glimpses of our conversation, I came to apologize to you, and to explain
the nature of my unhappy distemper, and to beg a little bread, which I
have not tasted for two days. I at times conceive myself attended by
an evil spirit shaped out by a guilty conscience, and this is the only
familiar which attends me, and by it I have been dogged into madness
through every turning of life. Whilst it lasts I am subject to spasms
and convulsive starts which are exceedingly painful. The lump on my back
is the robe I wore when innocent in my peaceful convent.”
The intensity of general interest was now transferred to Father Philip;
every face was turned towards him, but he cared not. A solemn stillness
yet prevailed among all present. From the moment she spoke, her eye drew
his with the power of a basilisk. His pale face became like marble, not
a muscle moved; and when she ceased speaking, his blood-shot eyes were
still fixed upon her countenance with a gloomy calmness like that which
precedes a tempest. They stood before each other, dreadful counterparts
in guilt, for truly his spirit was as dark as hers.
At length he glanced angrily around him;--“Well,” said he, “what is it
now, ye poor infatuated wretches, to trust in the sanctity of man.
Learn from me to place the same confidence in God which you place in
his guilty creatures, and you will not lean on a broken reed. Father
O'Rourke, you, too, witness my disgrace, but not my punishment. It
is pleasant, no doubt, to have a topic for conversation at your
Conferences; enjoy it. As for you, Margaret, if society lessen
misery, we may be less miserable. But the band of your order, and the
remembrance of your vow is on your forehead, like the mark of Cain--tear
it off, and let it not blast a man who is the victim of prejudice
still,--nay of superstition, as well as of guilt; tear it from my
sight.” His eyes kindled fearfully, as he attempted to pull it away by
force.
She calmly took it off, and he immediately tore it into pieces, and
stamped upon the fragments as he flung them on the ground.
“Come,” said the despairing man--“come--there is a shelter for you, but
no peace!--food, and drink, and raiment, but no peace!--no peace!” As he
uttered these words, in a voice that sank to its deepest pitch, he took
her hand, and they both departed to his own residence.
The amazement and horror of those who were assembled in Bartley's house
cannot be described. Our readers may be assured that they deepened in
character as they spread through the parish. An undefined, fear of this
mysterious pair seized upon the people, for their images were associated
in their minds with darkness and crime, and supernatural communion. The
departing words of Father Philip rang in their ears: they trembled,
and devoutly crossed themselves, as fancy again repeated the awful
exclamation of the priest--“No peace! no peace!”
When Father Philip and his unhappy associate went home, he instantly
made her a surrender of his small property; but with difficulty did
he command sufficient calmness to accomplish even this. He was
distracted--his blood seemed to have been turned to fire--he clenched
his hands, and he gnashed his teeth, and exhibited the wildest symptoms
of madness. About ten o'clock he desired fuel for a large fire to be
brought into the kitchen, and got a strong cord, which he coiled and
threw carelessly on the table. The family were then ordered to bed.
About eleven they were all asleep; and at the solemn hour of twelve he
heaped additional fuel upon the living turf, until the blaze shone with
scorching light upon everything around. Dark and desolating was the
tempest within him, as he paced, with agitated steps, before the
crackling fire.
“She is risen!” he exclaimed--“the spectre of all my crimes is risen to
haunt me through life! I am a murderer--yet she lives, and my guilt
is not the less! The stamp of eternal infamy is upon me--the finger of
scorn will mark me out--the tongue of reproach will sting me like that
of a serpent--the deadly touch of shame will cover me like a leper--the
laws of society will crush the murderer, not the less that his
wickedness in blood has miscarried: after that comes the black and
terrible tribunal of the Almighty's vengeance--of his fiery indignation!
Hush!--What sounds are those? They deepen--they deepen! Is it thunder?
It cannot be the crackling of the blaze! It is thunder!--but it speaks
only to my ear! Hush!--Great God, there is a change in my voice! It is
hollow and supernatural! Could a change have come over me? Am I living?
Could I have----Hah!--Could I have departed? and am I now at length
given over to the worm that never dies? If it be at my heart, I may feel
it. God!--I am damned! Here is a viper twined about my limbs trying to
dart its fangs into my heart! Hah!--there are feet pacing in the
room, too, and I hear voices! I am surrounded by evil spirits! Who's
there?--What are you?--Speak!--They are silent!--There is no answer!
Again comes the thunder! But perchance this is not my place of
punishment, and I will try to leave these horrible spirits!”
[Illustration: PAGE 975-- Who's there?--What are you?--Speak!]
He opened the door, and passed out into a small green field that lay
behind the house. The night was calm, and the silence profound as death.
Not a cloud obscured the heavens; the light of the moon fell upon the
stillness of the scene around him, with all the touching beauty of a
moonlit midnight in summer. Here he paused a moment, felt his brow,
then his heart, the palpitations of which fell audibly upon his ear. He
became somewhat cooler; the images of madness which had swept through
his stormy brain disappeared, and were succeeded by a lethargic vacancy
of thought, which almost deprived him of the consciousness of his own
identity. From the green field he descended mechanically to a little
glen which opened beside it. It was one of those delightful spots to
which the heart clingeth. Its sloping sides were clothed with patches of
wood, on the leaves of which the moonlight glanced with a soft lustre,
rendered more beautiful by their stillness. That side on which the light
could not fall, lay in deep shadow, which occasionally gave to the rocks
and small projecting precipices an appearance of monstrous and unnatural
life. Having passed through the tangled mazes of the glen, he at length
reached its bottom, along which ran a brook, such as in the description
of the poet,--
----In the leafy month of June,
Unto the sleeping woods all night,
Singeth a quiet tune.”
Here he stood, and looked upon the green winding margin of the
streamlet--but its song he heard not. With the workings of a guilty
conscience, the beautiful in nature can have no association. He looked
up the glen, but its picturesque windings, soft vistas, and wild
underwood mingling with gray rocks and taller trees, all mellowed by the
moonbeams, had no charms for him. He maintained a profound silence--but
it was not the silence of peace or reflection. He endeavored to recall
the scenes of the past day, but could not bring them back to his memory.
Even the fiery tide of thought, which, like burning lava, seared his
brain a few moments before, was now cold and hardened.
He could remember nothing. The convulsion of his mind was over, and his
faculties were impotent and collapsed.
In this state he unconsciously retraced his steps, and had again reached
the paddock adjoining his house, where, as he thought, the figure of his
paramour stood before him. In a moment his former paroxysm returned, and
with it the gloomy images of a guilty mind, charged with the extravagant
horrors of brain-stricken madness.
“What!” he exclaimed, “the band still on your forehead! Tear it off!”
He caught at the form as he spoke, but there was no resistance to his
grasp. On looking again towards the spot it had ceased to be visible.
The storm within him arose once more; he rushed into the kitchen,
where the fire blazed out with fiercer heat; again he imagined that the
thunder came to his ears, but the thunderings which he heard were only
the voice of conscience. Again his own footsteps and his voice sounded
in his fancy as the footsteps and voices of fiends, with which his
imagination peopled the room. His state and his existence seemed to
him a confused and troubled dream; he tore his hair--threw it on the
table--and immediately started back with a hollow groan; for his locks,
which but a few hours before had been as black as a raven's wing, were
now white as snow!
On discovering this, he gave a low but frantic laugh. “Ha, ha, ha!” he
exclaimed; “here is another mark--here is food for despair. Silently,
but surely, did the hand of God work this, as proof that I am hopeless!
But I will bear it; I will bear the sight! I now feel myself a man
blasted by the eye of God Himself! Ha, ha, ha! Food for despair! Food
for despair!”
Immediately he passed into his own room, and approaching the
looking-glass beheld a sight calculated to move a statue. His hair
had become literally white, but the shades of his dark complexion, now
distorted by terror and madness, flitted, as his features worked
under the influence of his tremendous passions, into an expression so
frightful, that deep fear came over himself. He snatched one of his
razors, and fled from the glass to the kitchen. He looked upon the fire,
and saw the white ashes lying around its edge.
“Ha!” said he, “the light is come! I see the sign. I am directed, and I
will follow it. There is yet one hope. The immolation! I shall be saved,
yet so as by fire. It is for this my hair has become white;--the sublime
warning for my self-sacrifice! The color of ashes!--white--white! It is
so! I will sacrifice my body in material fire, to save my soul from that
which is eternal! But I had anticipated the sign. The self-sacrifice is
accepted!”*
* As the reader may be disposed to consider the nature
of the priest's death an unjustifiable stretch of
fiction, I have only to say in reply, that it is no
fiction at all. It is not, I believe, more than forty,
or perhaps fifty, years since a priest committed his
body to the flames, for the purpose of saving his soul
by an incrematory sacrifice. The object of the suicide
being founded on the superstitious belief, that a
priest guilty of great crimes possesses the privilege
of securing salvation by self-sacrifice. We have heard
two or three legends among the people in which this
principle predominated. The outline of one of these,
called “The Young Priest and Brian Braar,” was as
follows:--
A young priest on his way to the College of Valladolid,
in Spain, was benighted; but found a lodging in a small
inn on the roadside. Here he was tempted by a young
maiden of great beauty, who, in the moment of his
weakness, extorted from him a bond signed with his
blood, binding himself to her forever. She turned out
to be an evil spirit: and the young priest proceeded to
Valladolid with a heavy heart, confessed his crime to
the Superior, who sent him to the Pope, who sent him to
a Friar in the County of Armagh, called Brian Braar,
who sent him to the devil. The devil, on the strength
of Brian Braar's letter, gave him a warm reception,
held a cabinet council immediately, and laid the
despatch before his colleagues, who agreed that the
claimant should get back his bond from the brimstone
lady who had inveigled him. She, however, obstinately
refused to surrender it, and stood upon her bond, until
threatened with being thrown three times into Brian
Braar's furnace. This tamed her: the man got his bond,
and returned to Brian Braar on earth. Now Brian Braar
had for three years past abandoned God, and taken to
the study of magic with the devil; a circumstance which
accounts for his influence below. The young priest,
having possessed himself of his bond, went to Lough
Derg to wash away his sins; and Brian Braar, having
also become penitent, the two worthies accompanied each
other to the lake. On entering the boat, however, to
cross over to the island, such a storm arose as drove
them back. Brian assured his companion that he himself
was the cause of it.
“There is now,” said he, “but one more chance for me;
and we must have recourse to it.” He then returned
homewards, and both had reached a hill-side near
Bryan's house, when the latter desired the young priest
to remain there a few minutes, and he would return to
him; which he did with a hatchet in his hand.
“Now,” said he, “you must cut me into four quarters,
and mince my body into small bits, then cast them into
the air, and let them go with the wind.”
The priest, after much entreaty, complied with his
wishes, and returned to Lough Derg, where he afterwards
lived twelve years upon one meal of bread and water per
diem. Having thus purified himself, he returned home;
but, on passing the hill where he had minced the Friar,
he was astonished to see the same man celebrating mass,
attended by a very penitential looking congregation of
spirits.
“Ah,” said Brian Braar, when mass was over, “you are
now a happy man. With regard to my state for the
voluntary sacrifice I have made of myself, I am to be
saved; but I must remain on this mountain until the Day
of Judgment.” So saying, he disappeared.
There is little to be said about the superstition of
the _Lianhan Shee_, except that it existed as we have
drawn it, and that it is now fading fast away. There is
also something appropriate in associating the heroine
of this little story with the being called the _Lianhan
Shee_, because, setting the superstition aside, any
female who fell into her crime was called _Lianhan
Shee_. _Lianhan Shee an Sogarth_ signifies a priest's
paramour, or, as the country people say, “Miss.” Both
terms have now nearly become obsolete.
We must here draw a veil over that which ensued, as the description of
it would be both unnatural and revolting. Let it be sufficient to
say, that the next morning he was found burned to a cinder, with the
exception of his feet and legs, which remained as monuments of, perhaps,
the most dreadful suicide that ever was committed by man. His razor,
too, was found bloody, and several clots of gore were discovered about
the hearth; from which circumstances it was plain that he had reduced
his strength so much by loss of blood, that when he committed himself to
the flames, he was unable, even had he been willing, to avoid the fiery
and awful sacrifice of which he made himself the victim. If anything
could deepen the the impression of fear and awe, already so general
among the people, it was the unparalleled nature of his death. Its
circumstances are yet remembered in the parish and county wherein it
occurred--for it is no fiction, gentle reader! and the titular bishop
who then presided over the diocese, declared, that while he lived, no
person bearing the unhappy man's name should ever be admitted to the
clerical order.
The shock produced by his death struck the miserable woman into the
utter darkness of settled derangement. She survived him some years,
but wandered about through the province, still, according to the
superstitious belief of the people, tormented by the terrible enmity of
the _Lianhan Shee_.