This was clearly the peroration of the pastor’s speech.
The speech of Mr. Phineas O’Flaherty, who was a sort of unceremonious master of the ceremonies, had been previously delivered, fortunately when the guests were out of hearing.
At first the entertainment seemed to be a very mournful one. It was too like examination day at a village school to convey an idea of spontaneous mirth. The “quality” sat severely on the incongruous chairs—no one was brave enough to try the sofa—and some of the “quality” used double eye-glasses with handles, for the better inspection of the performers. This was chilling to the performers.
In spite of the efforts of Father Conn and his stage manager, Mr. O’Flaherty, the members of the cast for the entertainment assumed a huddled appearance that did themselves great injustice. They declined to group themselves effectively, but suggested to Mr. Durdan—who was not silent on the subject—one of the illustrations to Foxe’s Book of Martyrs—a scene in which about a score of persons about to be martyred are shown to be awaiting, with an aspect of cheerful resignation that deceived no one, their “turn” at the hands of the executioner.
The merry Irish jig had a depressing effect at first. The priest was well-meaning, but he had not the soul of an artist. When a man has devoted all his spare moments for several years to the repression of unseemly mirth, he is unwise to undertake, at a moment’s notice, the duties of stimulating such mirth. Under the priest’s eye the jig was robbed of its jiguity, so to speak. It was the jig of the dancing class.
Mr. O’Flaherty threatened to scandalize Father Conn by a few exclamations about the display of fetlocks—the priest had so little experience of the “quality” that he fancied a suggestion of slang would be offensive to their ears. He did not know that the hero of the “quality” in England is the costermonger, and that a few years ago the hero was the cowboy. But Edmund Airey, perceiving with his accustomed shrewdness, how matters stood, managed to draw the priest away from the halfhearted exponents of the dance, and so questioned him on the statistics of the parish—for Father Conn was as hospitable with his statistics as he was with his whiskey punch upon occasions—that half an hour had passed before they returned together to the scene of the dance, the priest with a five-pound note of Mr. Airey’s pressed against his heart.
“Murder alive! what’s this at all at all?” cried Father Conn, becoming aware of the utterance of whoop after whoop by the dancers.
“It’s the jig they’re dancin’ at last, an’ more power to thim!” cried Phineas O’Flaherty, clapping his hands and giving an encouraging whoop or two.
He was right. The half dozen couples artistically dishevelled, and rapidly losing the baleful recollections of having been recently tidied up to meet the “quality”—rapidly losing every recollection of the critical gaze of the “quality”—of the power of speech possessed by the priest—of everything, clerical and lay, except the strains of the fiddle which occupied an intermediate position between things lay and clerical, being wholly demoniac—these half dozen couples were dancing the jig with a breadth and feeling that suggested the youth of the world and the reign of Bacchus.
Black hair flowing in heavy flakes over shoulders unevenly bare—shapely arms flung over heads in an attitude of supreme self-abandonment—a passionate advance, a fervent retreat, then an exchange of musical cries like wild gasps for breath, and ever, ever, ever the demoniac music of the fiddle, and ever, ever, ever the flashing and flying from the ground like the feet of the winged Hermes—flashing and flashing with the moonlight over all, and the fantastic arms of the hill-side pines stretched out like the fringed arms of a grotesque Pierrot—this was the scene to which the priest returned with Edmund Airey.