Where the Atlantic meets the land

by H. Caldwell Lipsett

A DIVIDED FAITH

Maggie Paterson stood on the edge of the frozen surface of Lough Legaltian and looked about her with a dreary sense of loneliness. Round her were several groups of chattering girls; they glanced at her furtively from time to time, and she felt that they were talking of her; she wished to speak to them, but the reputation of her father's sternness, the life apart that she had led, and the barriers of custom, which are so strong in country life, stood between them. Some of them she knew by name, nearly all by sight; but though they were of her own age and station, she had never played with them; she had never gone to school like other children; she had always lived at home with her silent, gloomy father, who thought of nothing but his religion.

Now, as she stood there, a spectator of the life in which she should have shared, and the joyous shouts of her compeers rang in her ears, blended with the metallic whir of the skates upon the ice, a bitter feeling of rebellion welled slowly up in her young heart. All the joys of childhood and of youth, which she had never known, all the repressed instincts of her vigorous young life, called aloud in her for outlet, and a slowly gathering wave of restlessness, of resentment against all the forms of her narrowed life, swept over her.

Her eyes, bent inward upon herself, no longer saw anything of what was happening around her. A young man, clashing his skates together, came up and sat down near her to put them on; he was one of many now hurrying from their work in the winter twilight, to make use of a spell of frost which comes but seldom in the moist climate of Donegal. He looked at her hesitatingly, got up, and sat down again nervously; but she noted nothing. She saw a vision of herself learning to know the inward meaning of life; she felt a craving for some being outside herself to whom she might be necessary, for whom she might experience some feeling other than the merely dutiful affection which she bore to her father as a matter of habit. And with that vision before her fixed gaze, she moved out slowly over the lake.

When she came to herself she found herself standing in the middle of the ice, while a figure on skates was hovering distractedly about her. She looked at him, and as soon as he caught her eye, he dashed boldly up and said,—

'Good-evening, Miss; can I help you on with your skates?'

She remembered him now; she had seen his face on the rare occasions when she passed through her father's shop; he was the manager of the drapery department. His name was Johnny Daly.

'I can't skate,' she said pathetically, feeling that this was the last drop in her cup of bitterness.

'I can teach you, if you like,' he replied diffidently.

'Father doesn't like me to be out alone. I oughtn't to be here now. He would be right mad if he knew it,' she answered, with an exaggerated gratitude that she had at last found some one who appeared to take an interest in her.

'Perhaps you would like me to see you home then?'

'Thanks, I should like it very much later on. But I am not going home just yet. Now I am here, I intend to enjoy myself.'

The defiance of her tone was so very much out of proportion to the mild manner in which she was taking her enjoyment, that the young man felt inclined to laugh. To cover his embarrassment, and at the same time to display his skill, he began gravely to execute figures round her. Unaccustomed to outdoor exercises, the girl looked with wide eyes of admiration at his process of 'showing off.' But by this time they had worked out into the centre of the lough, where the spring which fed it bubbled up in a clear open space. In doing a backward roll he approached dangerously near the edge; she opened her mouth to cry out; at that moment his skate caught in a roughness of the ice; he fell backwards with a crash, and broke through the thin ice into the black water beyond.

Maggie screamed for help, and dark figures came flitting along the ice towards her. But they were a long way off, and she saw she must depend upon herself if the young man's life was to be saved. He came up and clutched at the edge of the ice, which broke off in his fingers, and he disappeared again; it was evident that he could not swim.

Rapidly the girl unwound her long knitted scarf from about her neck, knotted her purse in the end of it, and flung it to him as he rose the second time.

He seized it eagerly, and gasping from the chill of his sudden immersion, said,—

'Shure you're an angel, Miss Maggie; hold on a bit, don't pull till I tell you.'

Then he gradually broke his way through the thin ice till he came to a thickness sufficient to bear his weight.

'Now pull,' he said, and when the rescuers arrived on the spot they found their work already done, and Daly trying to persuade his master's daughter that she oughtn't to shake hands with him while he was so wet.

Before the others arrived within earshot, she said to him with a motherly air, 'Now run away home and get your wet things changed, or you'll catch cold. To-morrow is Sunday, and I'll see you at church.'

At the church porch the next morning, at twelve o'clock, Maggie found the usual assemblage of young men sitting upon tombstones and lounging against the headstones of graves, as they watched the congregation enter. This particular morning they were massed together like a herd of bullocks eying a strange dog, and all gazed steadfastly at Johnny Daly, who was sitting on a large tombstone by himself swinging his legs disconsolately. Behind them the bare barnlike church was squatly silhouetted against the sky. When he saw her his face brightened, and he came up to her with an air of relief.

'Good-morning,' she said; 'are you coming into church with me?'

'If I may,' he replied, looking at her curiously.

'Of course,' she said promptly, and they passed into church and entered a pew together.

All through the service she noticed that he watched her closely, and copied her every movement. The rest of the congregation stared at the pew in a manner that made her feel very uncomfortable, and seemed greatly in excess of the occasion.

As they were going out together, she said to him,—

'How is it I've never seen you in church before?'

'Don't you know I'm a Roman?' he replied wonderingly.

Then the demeanor of her neighbors was made plain to her, and she blushed to think of what she had done.

'No, I didn't know; why didn't you tell me?' she stammered. 'Why did you come in if you didn't like it?'

'But I did like it,' he replied in a vibrant voice. 'I'd do more than that to sit along of you. Didn't you save my life last night?'

Maggie blushed and kept silence, but a gentle glow of satisfaction thrilled through her.

Presently they came to the cross roads, one arm of which led homeward, the other to the shore.

'I'm going this way,' she said, motioning towards the beach.

'May I come too?'

'Of course you may,' she laughed, with a coquettish glance at him from under her long eyelashes; 'do you think I'd have mentioned it, if I hadn't meant you to come?

'Does father know you're a Roman?' she inquired suddenly, after a pause.

'Of course.'

'Then how is it he keeps you in the shop? I thought he was so bitter against your folks.'

'So he is; but there's no one else in the town as can hold a candle to me at the feel of the stuff. And old Paterson—I mean, Mr. Paterson, Miss—doesn't mix up his business with his religion, or he wouldn't be the smartest trader in the town, as he is now.'

Every Sunday after that they went to church together, and for their half-hour's stroll afterwards. She looked forward to the meeting as the one bright spot in her dull existence. Her starved heart was ripe for love; and soon her whole life became centred round the glow in this one young man's eyes. Her father knew nothing of what was happening. He attended the Wesleyan Chapel, where the service was half an hour longer, and always found his daughter at home when he arrived.

Old Paterson was a queer character in his way. His hard-featured face showed the Scotch blood that is so prevalent among the middle classes in the North of Ireland. His was a nature that had been warped by adversity. Somewhat late in life he married a wife whom he tenderly loved. After one short year of wedded happiness, she died in giving birth to Maggie. Up to the date of that crowning sorrow of his life, Paterson had been an ordinary church-goer, somewhat Low Church like the rest of his class. But from that moment onward his religion flowed in an ever bitterer and narrower stream. The emotional side of his nature, thwarted in one direction, expended itself fiercely in another. He became noted in the parish for his intolerance and rabid sectarianism. In him all the forces of Orangism, its opposition in race, class, and religion to the surrounding Papists, reached their fullest development.

Gradually his bigotry became too intense for the orthodox Church to hold him. He got himself elected a churchwarden for the mere purpose of thwarting the vicar at every turn. At last, when the harassed clergyman was nearly persecuted to death, that lack of humor which was an inherent element of Paterson's severely practical mind, delivered him from his enemy. Paterson's eye fell upon the church notice-board, and perceived that it was held in an Oxford frame, which was in the form of a cross. This was rank Popery, and not to be borne in a Protestant establishment. In all haste he summoned a vestry meeting, and proposed that the Oxford frame should have its ends sawn off and all resemblance to the accursed symbol removed. The vestry-meeting, composed chiefly of his friends, and Scotch like himself, gravely carried his proposal into effect. But the ridicule of the town descended upon the idea, and the mutilated notice-board remained for a testimony against him.

Paterson shook the dust of an ungrateful sect from off his feet, and joined the Wesleyans; he built them a tin church, and raised them into prominence. His position of patron gratified his lust for power, and for ten years now he had set the tone to the narrowest clique of the community.

All this time, however, he kept his business apart from his religion, and prospered greatly. His shop was the one place where he made no difference between a Catholic and a Protestant. But all his energies flowed in these two main streams—his business life and his religious life—and left no particle of the rich emotion, which was their source, for the unfortunate daughter, who was growing up with a heart starved by the lack of nourishment.

Lisnamore is a hotbed of gossip—that vice of small towns and small minds—and soon everybody in the place was discussing Maggie's affair with Johnny Daly. Old Paterson himself alone remained in ignorance of it; he inspired too healthy a respect in the breasts of his neighbors for any one to approach him on the subject.

The priest, Father O'Flaherty, was one of the first to hear of the grievous lapse of Johnny Daly into church-going, and immediately seized an opportunity of speaking to that unruly member of his flock.

'You're quite a stranger, Johnny,' he began, the first time he met him in the street; 'how is it I haven't seen yous at midday mass these last three or four Sundays?'

'I go to church,' said Johnny shortly.

'An' what call have yous to go to church, when you shud be at chapel like your forebears before you, John Daly?' inquired the priest sternly.

But Daly was at that restive stage of a young man's passion, which takes no account of authority, human or divine. He glowered at the priest darkly, and replied,—

'That's my business; an' I'll do as I like. Just you show me the man as'll cross me.'

Father O'Flaherty, alarmed at such unaccustomed violence, saw that this was a case for diplomacy, that the bonds could not be strained too tightly for fear that they might burst, and replied soothingly,—

'Oh, ay, to be sure, I mind now, they did be tellin' me there was a girl in the case. An' young blood must have its road. But don't be doin' anything foolish, Johnny, my son. I'll be expectin' yous at chapel wan of these days.'

The priest hurried off, glad to be well rid of his ticklish mission. And where he had failed, no one else felt inclined to interfere. The months rolled on, and Johnny Daly's weekly appearance in church became too much a part of the established order of things to any longer attract notice. Scandal appeared likely to die a natural death of sheer inanition, when suddenly a breath coming, no one knew whence, fanned it into more than its original brightness, as the embers of a dying fire often spring into a fresh glow from some unknown cause.

A council of matrons was held, and it was decided that when Maggie's good name came to be 'spoke about,' it was time her father, 'poor innocent,' was told.

This delicate duty was finally undertaken by Mrs. M'Connell, a butcher's wife, and the 'mother of eleven,' one of those women who delight in arranging other people's affairs, and do it by discussing those affairs with everybody that they can get to listen. But even she stood rather in awe of old Paterson.

The next evening at teatime she attired herself in her Sunday finery, and walked across the road and knocked at Paterson's door. Maggie was not in the room when she arrived, and Mrs. M'Connell opened fire at once before her courage had time to evaporate.

'I've come to spake to yous about yer dahter, poor innocent lamb, an' I ought to know, as is the mother of eleven, an' has brought up an' married foor dahters already, an' thim not so much as sayin' "Thank ye" wanst they are safely settled, an' me afther toilin' an' moilin' an' wearin' me fingers to the bone for their sakes. Ah, it's an ongrateful wurrld, Misther Paterson, an ongrateful wurrld, that's just what it is.'

Paterson perceived beneath this flood of words that there was some unpleasant news about his daughter; and with the instinct of a highly secretive nature, he set his face as a mask and stood upon his guard.

'But maybe ye've heerd tell of what they're sayin' about Maggie?' pursued the matron, as he made no reply.

'Maybe,' he answered vaguely. It was not his cue to give unnecessary information or encouragement.

'They do be sayin' that she's enthirely too thick with that young Daly.'

'Ay, do they?'

'He goes to church wid her every Sunday these six months, an' him a Roman. I wonder the praste doesn't hinder him. Did ye know that?'

'Ye've told it me now.'

'An' I did hear they've been walkin' about the lanes together in the dusk, so we thought it was time some wan tould ye the road that things was goin'!'

'That 'ud be no harm, if they was goin' to be married,' said Paterson suddenly, prompted by an utterly unexpected instinct—an instinct of protection on behalf of his daughter and of antagonism against the vulgar gossip of the town.

'Ay,' ejaculated the visitor, entirely dumfounded at this unexpected attitude in a man of his proverbial intolerance.

'I'm thinking,' continued the old man reflectively, 'that I'm getting past my work over and above a bit, and Daly's a likely young chap to take into partnership.'

'But he's a Roman.'

'A Roman may make a good business man and a good husband.'

'Ay, sure enough,' gasped the lady, too astounded to say all she thought.

'And now, Mrs. M'Connell, is there anything else you have to say?'

'No.'

'It's a pity, then, that you took the trouble to dress yourself up to come over here and try to make trouble between a father and his daughter. If I might make bold to give you a bit of advice, it would be to mind your own business more. If you looked after other folks' affairs less and your own better, your husband mightn't be owin' me that twenty-five pound this minute.'

At this personal turn in the conversation Mrs. M'Connell hastily left.

But though the enemy was thus put to flight in confusion, she left no less consternation behind her. Now that his visitor was gone, the old man was quite at a loss to explain to himself the impulse which had led him to make a suggestion at which yesterday he would have held up his hands in horror. It had sprung suddenly full-armed from nowhere. Even now the idea did not possess that impossibility for him that he expected. He examined it—Daly was one of the inferior race, a Celt, a peasant by blood, and a Roman Catholic by religion, but now all those things were as nothing in his eyes. He could only remember him as the faithful servant and as the possible lover of his daughter.

That last was the idea that swallowed up all others. He thought of his own religious strictness, and it had suddenly retired very far away. The thought of his wife, and through her of her daughter, was nearer him to-night than it had been any time these twenty years. What was it that had roused these old memories, this sudden tenderness? He asked himself this question, and found the solution in the mysterious manner of his visitor; he had not permitted her to say all that she had come prepared to say. What was this evil that threatened him?

In the ordinary course of affairs the old man would have spoken to his daughter at once; but this uneasiness determined him to see for himself, first of all, how matters lay.

That night was Saturday, and he avoided Maggie all the evening. In the morning he followed her when she went to church, and found himself, for the first time for many years, sitting behind the pew where the two lovers were sitting together, where he and his wife had once sat in the days that now came back so freshly to his memory.

Maggie's profile, with the sun shining on it, was the very image of his wife; and his heart grew yet softer as he noticed the confident droop of her little head towards her lover. Nor did the devotion with which Daly watched her every motion escape him. He stole softly from the church, feeling as though he had suddenly grown very old, and that he had lost something out of his life which he had never troubled to make his own, but which he had nevertheless expected to be always there when he stretched out his hand to gather it. Now that the first place in his daughter's affections was lost to him forever, he suddenly discovered its value. But he was a strictly just man, and recognized that he was himself entirely to blame for the loss that he had sustained.

He felt very tired, and sat idly in his chair, his hands resting upon the arms, waiting for his daughter's return. When she came in and found him there, she started; it was the first time for the last six months that he had been home before her, and she knew that the Wesleyan service could not be over yet. What brought him there?

For some time the old man sat in silence, and his eyes followed her eagerly about the room; sharpened by anxiety, they noted what she was only just beginning to become conscious of herself. Suddenly he spoke,—

'Where have you been since church?'

'For a walk with Johnny Daly.'

He nodded. The directness of the answer pleased him.

'And what is there between you and Johnny Daly?' This time there was a sharper note of anxiety in his voice.

'We were afeard to tell you before, father, but I married him—three months ago—before the registrar.'

'Thank God!' said the old man solemnly. In his relief that it was no worse, and in his freshly awakened love for his daughter, he found it in his heart even to forgive his son-in-law for being a Catholic.

THE END.