CHAPTER IX.
I must now describe a portion of the garden which stretched out from the back of old Ned Cavana's premises. A large well-enclosed farmyard, almost immediately at the rear of the house, gave evidence of the comfort and plenty belonging not only to the old man himself, but to everything living and dead about the place; and as we shall be obliged to pass through this farm-yard to get into the garden, we may as well describe it first. Stacks of corn, wheat, oats, and barley, in great variety of size, pointed the pinnacles of their finishing touch to the sky. Sticking up from some of these were sham weather-cocks, made of straw, in the shape of fish, fowl, dogs, and cats, the handiwork of Jamesy Doyle, the servant boy,—the same black-headed urchin who lifted the tenpenny-bit out of the tub at old Murdock's party. They were fastened upon sticks, which did not turn round, and were therefore put up more to frighten away the sparrows than for the purpose of indicating which way the wind blew, or, more likely still, as mere specimens of Jamesy Doyle's ingenuity. The whole yard was covered a foot deep with loose straw, for the double purpose of giving comfort to two or three litters of young pigs, and that of being used up, by the constant tramping, into manure for the farm; for cows, heifers, and calves strayed about it without interruption. A grand flock of geese, as white as snow and as large nearly as swans, marched in from the fields, headed by their gander, every evening about the same hour, to spend their night gaggling and watching and sleeping by turns under the stacks of corn, which were raised upon stone pillars with mushroom metal-caps, to keep out the rats and mice. A big black cock, with a hanging red comb and white jowls, and innumerable hens belonging to him, something on the Brigham Young system, marched triumphantly about, calling his favorites [{663}] every now and then with a quick melancholy little chuckle as often as he found a tit-bit amongst the straw. Ducks, half as large as the geese, coming home without a feather raffled, in a mottled string of all colors, from the stream below the hill, diving, for variety, into the clean straw, emerging now and then, and smattering with their flat bills in any little puddle of water that lay between the pavement in the bare part of the yard. "Bullydhu," the watch-dog, as evening closed, taking possession of a small wooden house upon wheels,—Jamesy Doyle's handiwork too,—that it might be turned to the shelter, whichever way the wind blew. It was a miracle to see Bully getting into it, the door was so low; another piece of consideration of Jamesy's for the dog's comfort. You could only know when he was in it by seeing his large soft paws under the arch of the low door.
Beyond this farm-yard—farm in all its appearance and realities—was the garden. A thick, high, furze hedge, about sixty yards long, ran down one side of it, from the corner of the farmyard wall; and at the further end of this hedge, which was the square of the garden, and facing the sun, was certainly the most complete and beautiful summer-house in the parish of Rathcash, or Jamesy Doyle was very much mistaken. It also was his handiwork. In fact, there was nothing Jamesy could not turn his hands to, and his heart was as ready as his hands, so that he was always successful, but here he had outstripped all his former ingenuity. The bower was now of four years' standing, and every summer Jamesy was proud to see that nature had approved of his plan by endorsing it with a hundred different signatures. With the other portions of the garden or its several crops, we have nothing to do; we will therefore linger for a while about the furze hedge and in "Jamesy's bower" to see what may turn up. But I must describe another item in the locality.
Immediately outside the hedge there was a lane, common to a certain extent to both farms. It might be said to divide them. It lay quite close to the furze hedge, which ran in a straight line a long distance beyond where "Jamesy's bower" formed one of the angles of the garden. There was a gate across the lane precisely outside the corner where the bower had been made, and this was the extent of Murdock's right or title to the commonalty of the lane. Passing through this gate, Murdock branched off to the left with the produce of his farm. It is a long lane, they say, that has no turning, and although the portion of this one with which we are concerned was only sixty yards long, I have not, perhaps, brought the reader to the spot so quickly as I might. I certainly could have brought him through the yard without putting even the word "farm" before it, or without saying a word about the stacks of corn and the weather-cocks, the pigs, cows, heifers, and calves, the geese, ducks, cock, and hens, "Bullydhu" and his house, etc., and with a hop, step, and a leap I might have placed him in "Jamesy's bower" if he had been the person to occupy it—but he was not. With every twig, however, of the hedge and the bower it is necessary that my readers should be well acquainted; and I hope I have succeeded in making them so.
Winny Cavana was a thoughtful, thrifty girl, an experienced housekeeper, never allowing one job to overtake another where it could be avoided. Of course incidental difficulties would sometimes arise; but in general she managed everything so nicely and systematically that matters fell into their own time and place as regularly as possible.
When Winny got the invitation for Mick Murdock's party, which was only in the forenoon of the day before it came off, her first thought was, that she would be very tired and ill-fitted for business the day after it was over. She therefore called Jamesy Doyle to her assistance, and on that day and [{664}] the next, she got through whatever household jobs would bear performance in advance, and instructed Jamesy as to some little matters which she used to oversee herself, but which on this occasion she would entrust solely to his own intelligence and judgment for the day after the party. She could not have committed them to a more competent or conscientious lad. Anything Jamesy undertook to do, he did it well, as we have already seen both in the haggard, the garden, and the tub—for it was he who brought up the fippenny-bit at Murdock's, and he would lay down his life to serve or even to oblige Winny Cavana.
Having thus purchased an idle day after the party, Winny was determined to enjoy it, and after a very late breakfast, for her father, poor soul, was dead tired, she called Jamesy, and examined him as to what he had done or left undone. Finding that, notwithstanding he had been up as late as she had been herself the night before, he had been faithful to the trust reposed in him, and that everything was in trim order, she then complimented him upon his snapping and diving abilities.
"How much did you take up out of the tub, Jamesy?" she asked.
"Be gorra, Miss Winny, I took up two tenpenny-bits an' a fippenny."
"And what will you do with all that money, Jamesy? it is nearly a month's wages."
"Be gorra, my mother has it afore this, Miss Winny."
"That is a good boy, Jamesy, but you shouldn't curse."
"Be gorra, I won't, miss; but I didn't think that was cursing, at all, at all."
"Well, it is swearing, Jamesy, and that is just as bad."
"Well, Miss Winny, you'll never hear me say it agen."
"That's right, James. Is the garden open?
"It is, miss; I'm afther bringing out an armful of leaves to bile for the pigs."
Winny passed on through the yard into the garden. It was a fine, mild day for the time of year, and she was soon sitting in the bower with an unopened story-book in her lap. It was a piece of idle folly her bringing the book there at all. In the first place, she had it by heart—for books were scarce in that locality, and were often read—and in the next, she was more in a humor to think than to read. It was no strange thing, under the circumstances, if, like some heroines of a higher stamp, "she fell into a reverie." "How long she remained thus," to use the patent phrase in such a case, must be a mere matter of surmise; but a step at the gate outside the hedge, and her own name distinctly pronounced, caused her to start. Eaves-dropping has been universally condemned, and "listeners," they say, "never hear good of themselves." But where is the young girl, or indeed any person, hearing their own name pronounced, and being in a position to listen unobserved, who would not do so? Our heroine, at all events, was not "above that sort of thing," and instead of hemming, or coughing, or shuffling her feet in the gravel, she cocked her ears and held her breath. We would be a little indulgent to a person so sorely tempted, whatever our readers may think.
"If Winny Cavana," she heard, "was twice as proud, an' twice as great a lady, you may believe me, Tom, she wouldn't refuse you. She'll have six hundred pounds as round as the crown of your hat; an' that fine farm we're afther walkin' over; like her, or not like her, take my advice an' don't lose the fortune an' the farm."
"Not if I can help it, father. There's more reason than you know of why I should secure the ready money of her fortune at any rate; as to herself, if it wasn't for that, she might marry Tom Naddy th' aumadhawn if she had a mind."
"Had you any chat with her last night, Tom? Oh then, wasn't she lookin' elegant!"
"As elegant as you please, father, but as proud as a peacock. No, I had no chat with her, except what the whole room could hear; she was determined on that, and I'm still of opinion that you did more harm than good."
"Not if you were worth a thrawncen, Tom. Arrah avic machree, you don't undherstand her; that was all put on, man alive. I'm afeerd she'll think you haven't the pluck in you; she's a sperited girl herself, and depend upon it she expects you to spake, an' its what she's vexed at, your dilly-dallyin'. Why did you let that fellow take her out for the first dance? I heerd Mrs. Moran remark it to Kitty Mulvey's mother."
"That was a mistake, father; he had her out before I got in from the kitchen."
"They don't like them mistakes, Tom, an' that's the very thing I blame you for; you should have stuck to her like a leech the whole night; they like a man that's in earnest. Take my advice, Tom avic, an put the question plump to her at wanst fore Shraftide. Tell her I'll lay down a pound for you for every pound her father gives her, and I'll make over this place to you out an out. Old Ned an I will live together while we last, an that can't be long, Tom avic. I know he'll settle Rathcash upon Winny, and he'll have the interest of her fortune beside—"
"Interest be d—d!" interrupted Tom; "won't he pay the money down?"
"He might do that same, but I think not; he's afeerd it might be dribbled away, but with Rathcash, an Rathcashmore joined, the devil's in it and she can't live like a lady; at all events, Tom, you can live like a gentleman; ould Ned's for you entirely, Tom, I can tell you that."
"That is all very well, father, and I wish that you could make me think that your words would come true, but I'm not come to four-and-twenty years of age without knowing something of the way girls get on; and if that one is not set on young Lennon, my name is not Tom Murdock; and I'll tell you what's more, that if it wasn't for her fortune and that farm, he might have her and welcome. There are many girls in the parish as handsome, and handsomer for that matter, than what she is, that would just jump at me."
"I know that, Tom agra, but maybe it's what you'll only fix her on that whelp, as you call him, the stronger, if you be houldin' back the way you do. They like pluck, Tom; they like pluck, I tell you, and in my opinion she's only makin' b'lief, to dhraw you out. Try her, Tom, try her."
"I will, father, and if I fail, and I find that that spalpeen Lennon is at the bottom of it, let them both look out, that's all. For his part, I have a way of dealing with him that he knows nothing about, and as for her—"
Here Jamesy Doyle came out into the lane from the farm-yard, and father and son immediately branched off in the direction of their own house, leaving Tom Murdock's second part of the threat unfinished.
But Winny had heard enough. Her heart, which had been beating with indignation the whole time, had nearly betrayed itself when she heard Emon-a-knock called a spalpeen.
One thing she was now certain of, and the certainty gave her whole soul relief,—that if ever Tom Murdock could have had any chance of success through her father's influence, and her love for him, it was now entirely at an end for ever. Should her father urge the match upon her, she had, as a last remedy, but to reveal this conversation, to gain him over indignantly to her side.
Winny was seldom very wrong in her likings or dislikings, although perhaps both were formed in some instances rather hastily, and she often knew not why. In Tom Murdock's case, she was glad, and now rather "proud out of herself," that she had never liked him.
"I knew the dirt was in him," she said to herself as she returned to the house. "I wish he did not live so near us, for I foresee nothing but trouble and vexation before me on his account. I'm sorry Jamesy Doyle came out so soon. I'd like to have heard what he was going to say of myself, but sure he said enough. Em-on-a-knock may despise himself and his threat." And she went into the house to prepare the dinner.
Tom Murdock, notwithstanding his shortcomings, and they were neither few nor far between, was a shrewd, clever fellow in most matters. It was owing to this shrewdness that he resolved to watch for some favorable opportunity, rather than seek a formal meeting with Winny Cavana "at wanst" as had been 'advised by his father.
[TO BE CONTINUED. [Page 785]]
From Once a Week.
SAINT DOROTHEA.
The sun blazed fiercely out of cloudless blue,
And the deep sea flung back the glare again,
As though there were indeed another sun
Within the mimic sky reflected there;
Not steadily and straight, as from above,
But all athwart the little rippling waves
The broken daybeams sparkling leapt aloft
In glittering ruin; scarce a breath of air
To stir the waters or to wave the trees;
The flowers hung drooping, and the leaves lay close
Against their branches, as if sick and faint
With the dull heat and needing strong support.
The city walls, the stones of every street,
The houses glow'd, you would have thought that none
Would venture forth, till that the gracious night
Should come with sable robe and wrap the earth
In softest folds, and shade men from the day.
But see, from every street the seething crowds
Pour out, and all along the way they stand,
And ribald jest and song resound aloud,
And light accost and careless revelry:
What means this, wherefore flock the people forth?
Ceases the hum, a sudden silence falls
On all around, the tramp of armed men
Rings through the air; and hark, what further sound?
A girl's fresh voice, a sad sweet song is heard
Above the clank of arms, men hold their breath;
Yet not all sadness is that wondrous chant,
That hushes the wild crowd with sudden awe.
As when the nightingale's mellifluous tones
Rise in the woodland, ere the other birds [{667}] Have ceased their vesper hymn, that moment drops
Each fluttering songster's wild thanksgiving lay,
So for awhile did silence fall on all
Within the seething crowd at that sweet voice.
She comes, they bring her forth to die, for she
This day must win the martyr's palm, this day
Must witness for her faith, this day must reap
The fruit of all her pains, long rest in heaven!
Long had they spared her, for the governor
Was loth that she should suffer, and her race
Was noble, so they hoped to make her yield,
And waited still and waited; but at length
They grew enraged at her calm steadfastness,
They knew not whence a resolution such
As made a young maid baffle aged men,
So she must die.
Now as she went along
'Midst all her guards, again burst forth the mob
Into such bitter taunts, such foul wild words,
As sent the hot blood mantling to her cheek
For shame that she, a maid, must hear such things;
And yet was no remorse within their hearts,
No light of pity in their savage eyes,
Like hungry wolves that scent the blood from far
They howled with joy, expectant of their prey.
There was one there, he in old days had loved
Her fair young face, but he too now, with scorn
Written in his dark eyes and on his brow,
And in the curl of his short lip, stood by;
It 'seemed not such a face, that bitter smile,
For he was passing fair, in youth's heyday;
But if contemptuous was his mien, his words
Were worse for her to bear, for he cried out—
He, whom her heart yet own'd its only love!
He, whom she held first of all living men!
He, whom she honor'd yet, though left by him
In her distress and danger!—this man cried,
"Ho, Dorothea! doth the bridegroom wait?
And goest thou to his arms? Joy go with thee!
But yet when in his palace courts above,
Whereof thou tellest, fair one, think on us
Who toil in this sad world below; on me
Think thou before all others, thine old love,
And send me somewhat for a token, send
Of that same heavenly fruit and of those flowers
That fade not!"
Then she turn'd and answer'd him,
"As thou hast said, so be it, thy request
Is granted!" and she pass'd on to her death.
She died: her soul was rapt into the skies.
The vulgar horde who watch'd her torture, knew
Nought of the great unfathomable bliss [{668}] Which waited her, and when her spirit fled
None saw the angel bands receive her, none
Heard the long jubilant sweet sound that burst
Through heaven's high gates, swept from ten thousand harps
By seraph choirs, for she had died on earth
Only to enter on the life above.
Night fell upon the earth, the city lay
Slumb'ring in cool repose, the restless sea,
Weary with dancing all day 'neath the sun,
Was hushed to sleep by the faint whisp'ring breeze
That, wanting force to sport, but rose and fell
With soothing murmur, like to pine boughs stirr'd
By the north wind: sleep held men's eyelids close.
And he, that youth, slept, aye, slept peacefully,
Nor reck'd of the vile insult he had pour'd
Upon the head of one whom once he swore
To love beyond all others. As he lay,
Wrapt in the dreamless slumber of young health,
Sudden a light unearthly clear hath fill'd
The chamber, and he starts up from his couch,
Gazing in troubled wonder: by his side
What sees he?
A young boy he deems him first,
But when had mortal such a calm pure smile
Since our first father lost his purity?
A radiant angel, rather, should he be,
Who stands all glorious, bearing in his hands
Such fruit and flowers as surely never grew
On this dull earth; their fragrance fill'd the air,
And smote the senses of Theophilus,
That a sad yearning rose within his heart,
Such as at times a strain of song will raise,
Or some chance word will bring (we know not why),
Flooding the inmost soul with that strange sense,
Half pain, half pleasure, of some bygone time—
Some far off and forgotten happiness,
We know not where nor what.
The stranger spoke,
And thus he said, "Rise up, Theophilus!
And take these gifts which I from heaven bring.
Fair Dorothea, mindful of her words,
Hath sent thee these, and bids thee that henceforth
Thou scoff not, but believe!"
With those same words
Vanish'd the cherub, and the room was dark,
Save where the moonbeams made uncertain light,
And where remain'd those blossoms and that fruit,
For from each leaf and stem there stream'd a ray
As of the morning.
Down upon his couch
Theophilus sank prone, with awe oppress'd; [{669}] But for a moment. Starting wildly up,
He cried, "My love, my Dorothea, list!
If thou canst hear me in those starry halls
Where now thou dwellest, I accept thy gift.
Do thou take mine, for I do give myself
Up to the service of thy Lord; thy faith
Shall from this hour be mine, for I believe!"
Translated from Der Katholik.
THE TWO SIDES OF CATHOLICISM.
[Second Article.]
I. THE PROBLEM.
"Neither," says Jesus Christ, "do they put new wine into old bottles; otherwise the bottles break, and the wine runneth out." The parable teaches that the new spirit of Christianity requires a new form, corresponding to its essence. The essence and the form of Christianity are, therefore, intimately connected.
What is thus generally enunciated in regard to the essential connection of the spirit of Christianity with the forms of its expression, is equally true of the mutual relations subsisting between the substance and the manifestation of the Church. Christianity and the Church are virtually identical. The former, considered as a source of union and brotherhood, constitutes the Church, In a former article we have recognized Catholicism as the type of the Church Founded by Christ. Hence the interdependence of the essence with the form of Christianity in general is not more thorough than that of the spirit of the Church with the historical development of Catholicism.
These remarks will be found to designate the object of the present essay. An inquiry into the fundamental principle of Catholicism must address itself to the elucidation of the cause of the necessary connection between the spirit and the outer shape of the Church just mentioned. The direction in which the light is to be sought appears by the parable cited above.
The new wine requires new bottles, because they only correspond with its nature. By the same induction it is affirmed that if the true Church is realized only in the form of Catholicism, the reason is to be found in the inmost nature of the Church, in the catholicity of her spirit.
This idea of the inherent catholicity of the Church, as well as the foregoing assertion of a necessary inter-dependence of the essence with the image of Catholicism, is to be established on scriptural authority by the following disquisition.