The candidate's speech seemed, indeed, to require a little driving home. It was, for the most part, an explanation to his constituents of the reasons that made it necessary for him to forego the happiness of acquainting himself with them in any intimate degree. He was, he said, in his temperately florid manner, closely connected with a large firm in England and, deplorable to relate, his income depended on his living in the bosom of the English firm. "Sure we know that—we know that!" yelled the half-dozen most chosen supporters, crushing precariously round the candidate on the edge of the tombstone platform, with their wild, combative faces pressing, all on fire, towards him. Perhaps he might yet be roused to say the right things about the rival candidate, the things that would wring forth a cheer in reply to those distant ones that came maddeningly at intervals from the crowd in the street.
But the speaker kept his eloquence well in hand, confining himself to such blind alleys of assertion as the remarkable success of his own career, his confidence that his constituents would re-elect him, and his desire to benefit them in some immeasurable way if they did so. A permissive cynicism curved the wrinkles on the faces of the old men who stood on the grassy graves behind him, with their hands under their coat-tails, and their grizzled chins sunk in their shirt-collars; they knew how they were going to vote, and their own powers (matured in the sale of many a heifer and rood of bog) of taking a part and sustaining it, with a perfectness that would deceive the elect, made them sceptical as to the ends of speech-making. The women were tittering and whispering under their shawls; but were certainly impressed by the candidate's Sunday attire, his well-kept grey moustache, and his affable way of saying "ladies and gentlemen" every now and then.
The speech ambled to its close, through a peroration of an uncertain conversational tone, assisted at critical points by one or other of the supporters, who would ungovernably supply the needed word out of the bursting fulness of his own repertoire. It was the sole outlet for their enthusiasm, except for the cheer that caught at the ravelled edge of the final sentence, as the candidate put on his hat and bowed himself from the tombstone.
"Be prayin' for the meetin', gerrls," said the old priest, leading the way to the vestry, with rusty skirts floating widely. The door closed on him and his protégé, the clumps on the tombstones fell apart, mingling in a laughing and talking stream towards the churchyard gate, and the prayers of the young ladies were apparently deferred to a more convenient season.
The chapel door stood open, showing the barren squareness of the interior; a zinc tub, half-full of Holy-water, stood in the porch, with the flags all round it wet from the splash of dipping hands; the altar gleamed gaudily at the further end; and a tall confession-box stood solitary in the seatless expanse of floor, fraught with the inseparable mystery and suggestiveness of its kind, and holding within its curtained rails the knowledge of what things are counted for unrighteousness in that twilight place, the conscience of the Western peasant. The air inside was warm, and still laden with the smell of frieze coats and stale turf smoke; but, except for this furnishing, the blankness was complete. Sunday and its Mass were over and done with for a week, and priest and congregation were striving factors in the carnal toils of election.
The people dispersed slowly, discussing the absorbing topic of the day, some in their native tongue, but for the most part in English, so pronounced as to be in the distance scarcely distinguishable from the liquid and guttural flow of Galway Irish.
"A MAN MUST WOTE THE WAY HIS PRIEST AND BISHOP'LL TELL HIM"
"Sure, a man must wote the way his priest and bishop'll tell him," says a tall supporter, with the air of a person repeating a truism.
"Well, meself'd say," says another, whose handsome eyes shone in the shadow of his soft felt hat, while his hands helped out his words with picturesque gesture, "the man I'd have a wish for to wote for him, is the man that'd rise out o' his bed in the night and give hay and oats to yer horse, and yerself fotever ye'd ax, when any one else'd leshen (listen) in their bed if ye were battherin' there till mornin'."