St. Patrick's Eve

“Why wouldn’t you stay out in the road, Patsy, and play there, till I come to you? This is a cowld damp place for you, my boy.”

“Nony! Nony!” cried the child, looking at him with an affectionate smile, as though to say he’d rather be near him.

“Well, well, who knows but you’re right? if it’s the will of God to take me, maybe you might as well go too. It’s a sore thing to be alone in the world, like me now!” And as he muttered the last few words he ceased digging, and rested his head on the cross of the spade.

“Was that you, Patsy? I heard a voice somewhere.”

The child shook his head in token of dissent.

“Ayeh! it was only the wind through the ould walls; but sure it might be nat’ral enough for sighs and sobs to be here: there’s many a one has floated over this damp clay.”

He resumed his work once more. The night was falling fast as Owen stepped from the deep grave, and knelt down to say a prayer ere he committed the body to the earth.

“Kneel down, darlin’, here by my side,” said he, placing his arm round the little fellow’s waist; “‘tis the likes of you God loves best;” and joining the tiny hands with his own, he uttered a deep and fervent prayer for the soul of the departed. “There, father!” said he, as he arose at last, and in a voice as if addressing a living person at his side; “there, father: the Lord, he knows my heart inside me; and if walking the world barefoot would give ye peace or ease, I’d do it, for you were a kind man and a good father to me.” He kissed the coffin as he spoke, and stood silently gazing on it.

Arousing himself with a kind of struggle, he untied the cords, and lifted the coffin from the cart. For some seconds he busied himself in arranging the ropes beneath it, and then ceased suddenly, on remembering that he could not lower it into the grave unassisted.

“I’ll have to go down the road for some one,” muttered he to himself; but as he said this, he perceived at some distance off in the churchyard the figure of a man, as if kneeling over a grave. “The Lord help him, he has his grief too!” ejaculated Owen, as he moved towards him. On coming nearer he perceived that the grave was newly made, and from its size evidently that of a child.

“I ax your pardon,” said Owen, in a timid voice, after waiting for several minutes in the vain expectation that the man would look up; “I ax your pardon for disturbing you, but maybe you’ll be kind enough to help me to lay this coffin in the ground. I have nobody with me but a child.”

The man started and looked round. Their eyes met; it was Phil Joyce and Owen who now confronted each other. But how unlike were both to what they were at their last parting! Then, vindictive passion, outraged pride, and vengeance, swelled every feature and tingled in every fibre of their frames. Now, each stood pale, care-worn, and dispirited, wearied out by sorrow, and almost brokenhearted. Owen was the first to speak.

“I axed your pardon before I saw you, Phil Joyce, and I ax it again now, for disturbing you; but I didn’t know you, and I wanted to put my poor father’s body in the grave.”

“I didn’t know he was dead,” said Phil, in a hollow voice, like one speaking to himself. “This is poor little Billy here,” and he pointed to the mound at his feet.

“The heavens be his bed this night!” said Owen, piously; “Good night!” and he turned to go away; then stopping suddenly, he added, “Maybe, after all, you’ll not refuse me, and the Lord might be more merciful to us both, than if we were to part like enemies.”

“Owen Connor, I ask your forgiveness,” said Phil, stretching forth his hand, while his voice trembled like a sick child’s. “I didn’t think the day would come I’d ever do it; but my heart is humble enough now, and maybe ‘twill be lower soon. Will you take my hand?”

“Will I, Phil? will I, is it? ay, and however ye may change to me after this night, I’ll never forget this.” And he grasped the cold fingers in both hands, and pressed them ardently, and the two men fell into each other’s arms and wept.

Is it a proud or a humiliating confession for humanity – assuredly it is a true one – that the finest and best traits of our nature are elicited in our troubles, and not in our joys? that we come out purer through trials than prosperity? Does the chastisement of Heaven teach us better than the blessings lavished upon us? or are these gifts the compensation sent us for our afflictions, that when poorest before man we should be richest before God? Few hearts there are which sorrow makes not wiser – none which are not better for it. So it was here. These men, in the continuance of good fortune, had been enemies for life; mutual hatred had grown up between them, so that each yearned for vengeance on the other; and now they walked like brothers, only seeking forgiveness of each other, and asking pardon for the past.

The old man was laid in his grave, and they turned to leave the churchyard.

“Won’t ye come home with me, Owen?” said Phil, as they came to where their roads separated; “won’t ye come and eat your supper with us?”

Owen’s throat filled up: he could only mutter, “Not to-night, Phil – another time, plaze God.” He had not ventured even to ask for Mary, nor did he know whether Phil Joyce in his reconciliation might wish a renewal of any intimacy with his sister. Such was the reason of Owen’s refusal; for, however strange it may seem to some, there is a delicacy of the heart as well as of good breeding, and one advantage it possesses – it is of all lands, and the fashion never changes.

Poor Owen would have shed his best blood to be able to ask after Mary – to learn how she was, and how she bore up under the disasters of the time; but he never mentioned her name: and as for Phil Joyce, his gloomy thoughts had left no room for others, and he parted from Owen without a single allusion to her. “Good night, Owen,” said he, “and don’t forget your promise to come and see us soon.”

“Good night, Phil,” was the answer; “and I pray a blessing on you and yours.” A slight quivering of the voice at the last word was all he suffered to escape him; and they parted.

THIRD ERA

From that day, the pestilence began to abate in violence. The cases of disease became fewer and less fatal; and at last, like a spent bolt, the malady ceased to work its mischief. Men were slow enough to recognise this bettered aspect of their fortune. Calamity had weighed too heavily on them to make them rally at once. They still walked like those who felt the shadow of death upon them, and were fearful lest any imprudent act or word might bring back the plague among them.

With time, however, these features passed off: people gradually resumed their wonted habits; and, except where the work of death had been more than ordinarily destructive, the malady was now treated as “a thing that had been.”

If Owen Connor had not escaped the common misfortune of the land, he could at least date one happy event from that sad period – his reconciliation with Phil Joyce. This was no passing friendship. The dreadful scenes he had witnessed about him had made Phil an altered character. The devotion of Owen – his manly indifference to personal risk whenever his services were wanted by another – his unsparing benevolence, – all these traits, the mention of which at first only irritated and vexed his soul, were now remembered in the day of reconciliation; and none felt prouder to acknowledge his friendship than his former enemy.

Notwithstanding all this, Owen did not dare to found a hope upon his change of fortune; for Mary was even more distant and cold to him than ever, as though to shew that, whatever expectations he might conceive from her brother’s friendship, he should not reckon too confidently on her feelings. Owen knew not how far he had himself to blame for this; he was not aware that his own constrained manner, his over-acted reserve, had offended Mary to the quick; and thus, both mutually retreated in misconception and distrust. The game of love is the same, whether the players be clad in velvet or in hodden grey. Beneath the gilded ceilings of a palace, or the lowly rafters of a cabin, there are the same hopes and fears, the same jealousies, and distrusts, and despondings; the wiles and stratagems are all alike; for, after all, the stake is human happiness, whether he who risks it be a peer or a peasant! While Owen vacillated between hope and fear, now, resolving to hazard an avowal of his love and take his stand on the result, now, deeming it better to trust to time and longer intimacy, other events were happening around, which could not fail to interest him deeply. The new agent had commenced his campaign with an activity before unknown. Arrears of rent were demanded to be peremptorily paid up; leases, whose exact conditions had not been fulfilled, were declared void; tenants occupying sub-let land were noticed to quit; and all the threatening signs of that rigid management displayed, by which an estate is assumed to be “admirably regulated,” and the agent’s duty most creditably discharged.

Many of the arrears were concessions made by the landlord in seasons of hardship and distress, but were unrecorded as such in the rent-roll or the tenant’s receipt. There had been no intention of ever redemanding them; and both parties had lost sight of the transaction until the sharp glance of a “new agent” discovered their existence. So of the leases: covenants to build, or plant, or drain, were inserted rather as contingencies, which prosperity might empower, than as actual conditions essential to be fulfilled; and as for sub-letting, it was simply the act by which a son or a daughter was portioned in the world, and enabled to commence the work of self-maintenance.

This slovenly system inflicted many evils. The demand of an extravagant rent rendered an abatement not a boon, but an act of imperative necessity; and while the overhanging debt supplied the landlord with a means of tyranny, it deprived the tenant of all desire to improve his condition. “Why should I labour,” said he, “when the benefit never can be mine?” The landlord then declaimed against ingratitude, at the time that the peasant spoke against oppression. Could they both be right? The impossibility of ever becoming independent soon suggested that dogged indifference, too often confounded with indolent habits. Sustenance was enough for him, who, if he earned more, should surrender it; hence the poor man became chained to his poverty. It was a weight which grew with his strength; privations might as well be incurred with little labour as with great; and he sunk down to the condition of a mere drudge, careless and despondent. “He can only take all I have!” was the cottier’s philosophy; and the maxim suggested a corollary, that the “all” should be as little as might be.

But there were other grievances flowing from this source. The extent of these abatements usually depended on the representation of the tenants themselves, and such evidences as they could produce of their poverty and destitution. Hence a whole world of falsehood and dissimulation was fostered. Cabins were suffered to stand half-roofed; children left to shiver in rags and nakedness; age and infirmity exhibited in attitudes of afflicting privation; habits of mendicity encouraged; – all, that they might impose upon the proprietor, and make him believe that any sum wrung from such as these must be an act of cruelty. If these schemes were sometimes successful, so in their failure they fell as heavy penalties upon the really destitute, for whose privations no pity was felt. Their misery, confounded in the general mass of dissimulation, was neglected; and for one who prospered in his falsehood, many were visited in their affliction.

That men in such circumstances as these should listen with greedy ears to any representation which reflected heavily on their wealthier neighbours, is little to be wondered at. The triumph of knavery and falsehood is a bad lesson for any people; but the fruitlessness of honest industry is, if possible, a worse one. Both were well taught by this system. And these things took place, not, be it observed, when the landlord or his agent were cruel and exacting – very far from it. They were the instances so popularly expatiated on by newspapers and journals; they were the cases headed – “Example for Landlords!” “Timely Benevolence!” and paragraphed thus: – “We learn, with the greatest pleasure, that Mr. Muldrennin, of Kilbally-drennin, has, in consideration of the failure of the potato-crop, and the severe pressure of the season, kindly abated five per cent of all his rents. Let this admirable example be generally followed, and we shall once more see,” &c. &c. There was no explanatory note to state the actual condition of that tenantry, or the amount of that rent from which the deduction was made. Mr. Muldrennin was then free to run his career of active puffery throughout the kingdom, and his tenantry to starve on as before.

Of all worldly judgments there is one that never fails. No man was ever instrumental, either actively or through neglect, to another’s demoralisation, that he was not made to feel the recoil of his conduct on himself. Such had been palpably the result here. The confidence of the people lost, they had taken to themselves the only advisers in their power, and taught themselves to suppose that relief can only be effected by legislative enactments, or their own efforts. This lesson once learned, and they were politicians for life. The consequence has been, isolation from him to whom once all respect and attachment were rendered; distrust and dislike follow – would that the catalogue went no further!

And again to our story. Owen was at last reminded, by the conversation of those about, that he too had received a summons from the new agent to attend at his office in Galway – a visit which, somehow or other, he had at first totally neglected; and, as the summons was not repeated, he finally supposed had been withdrawn by the agent, on learning the condition of his holding. As September drew to a close, however, he accompanied Phil Joyce on his way to Galway, prepared, if need be, to pay the half-year’s rent, but ardently hoping the while it might never be demanded. It was a happy morning for poor Owen – the happiest of his whole life. He had gone over early to breakfast at Joyce’s, and on reaching the house found Mary alone, getting ready the meal. Their usual distance in manner continued for some time; each talked of what their thoughts were least occupied on; and at last, after many a look from the window to see if Phil was coming, and wondering why he did not arrive, Owen drew a heavy sigh and said, “It’s no use, Mary; divil a longer I can be suffering this way; take me or refuse me you must this morning! I know well enough you don’t care for me; but if ye don’t like any one else better, who knows but in time, and with God’s blessin’, but ye’ll be as fond of me, as I am of you?”

“And who told ye I didn’t like some one else?” said Mary, with a sly glance; and her handsome features brightened up with a more than common brilliancy.

“The heavens make him good enough to desarve ye, I pray this day!” said Owen, with a trembling lip. “I’ll go now! that’s enough!”

“Won’t ye wait for yer breakfast, Owen Connor? Won’t ye stay a bit for my brother?”

“No, thank ye, ma’am. I’ll not go into Galway to-day.”

“Well, but don’t go without your breakfast. Take a cup of tay anyhow, Owen dear!”

“Owen dear! O Mary, jewel! don’t say them words, and I laving you for ever.”

The young girl blushed deeply and turned away her head, but her crimsoned neck shewed that her shame was not departed. At the moment, Phil burst into the room, and standing for a second with his eyes fixed on each in turn, he said, “Bad scran to ye, for women; but there’s nothing but decate and wickedness in ye; divil a peace or ease I ever got when I quarrelled with Owen, and now that we’re friends, ye’re as cross and discontented as ever. Try what you can do with her yourself, Owen, my boy; for I give her up.”

“‘Tis not for me to thry it,” said Owen, despondingly; “‘tis another has the betther luck.”

“That’s not true, anyhow,” cried Phil; “for she told me so herself.”

“What! Mary, did ye say that?” said Owen, with a spring across the room; “did ye tell him that, darling?”

“Sure if I did, ye wouldn’t believe me,” said Mary, with a side-look; “women is nothing but deceit and wickedness.”

“Sorra else,” cried Owen, throwing his arm round her neck and kissing her; “and I’ll never believe ye again, when ye say ye don’t love me.”

“‘Tis a nice way to boil the eggs hard,” said Phil, testily; “arrah, come over here and eat your breakfast, man; you’ll have time enough for courting when we come back.”

There needed not many words to a bargain which was already ratified; and before they left the house, the day of the wedding was actually fixed.

It was not without reason, then, that I said it was a happy day for Owen. Never did the long miles of the road seem so short as now; while, with many a plan for the future, and many a day-dream of happiness to come, he went at Phil’s side scarce crediting his good fortune to be real.

When they arrived at the agent’s office in the square at Galway, they found a great many of their neighbours and friends already there; some, moody and depressed, yet lingered about the door, though they had apparently finished the business which brought them; others, anxious-looking and troubled, were waiting for their turn to enter. They were all gathered into little groups and parties, conversing eagerly together in Irish; and as each came out of the office, he was speedily surrounded by several others, questioning him as to how he had fared, and what success he met with.