“Anny student of the ancient Irish, or I might say Milesian charachter,” said O’Daly, with high, disputatious voice, “might discern in our present chief a remarkable proof of what the learned call a reversion of toypes. It’s thrue what you say, Mother Agnes, that he’s unlike and teetotally different from anny other O’Mahony of our knowledge in modhern times. But thin I ask mesilf, what’s the maning of this? Clearly, that he harks back on the ancesthral tree, and resimbles some O’Mahony we don’t know about! And this I’ve been to the labor of thracing out. Now attind to me! ’Tis in your riccords, that four ginerations afther your foundher, Diarmid of the Fine Steeds, there came an O’Mahony of Muirisc called Teige, a turbulent and timpistuous man, as his name in the chronicles, Teige Goarbh, would indicate. ’Tis well known that he viewed holy things with contimpt. ’Twas he that wint on to the very althar at Rosscarbery, in the chapel of St. Fachnau Mougah, or the hairy, and cudgeled wan of the daycons out of the place for the rayson that he stammered in his spache. ’Twas he that hung his bard, my ancestor of that period, up by the heels on a willow-tree, merely because he fell asleep over his punch, afther dinner, and let the rival O’Dugan bard stale his new harp from him, and lave a broken and disthressful old insthrumint in its place. Now there’s the rale ancestor of our O’Mahony. ’Tis as plain as the nose on your face. And—now I remimber—sure ’twas this same divil of a Teige Goarbh who was possessed to marry his own cousin wance removed, who’d taken vows here in this blessed house. ‘Marry me now,’ says he. ‘I’m wedded to the Lord,’ says she. ‘Come along out o’ that now,’ says he. ‘Not a step,’ says she. And thin, faith, what did the rebellious ruffian do but gather all the straw and weeds and wet turf round about, and pile ’em undernayth, and smoke the nuns out like a swarm o’ bees. Sure, that’s as like our O’Mahony now as two pays in a pod.”
As the little man finished, a shifty gust blew down the flue, and sent a darkling wave of smoke over the good people seated before the fire. They were too used to the sensation to do more than cough and rub their eyes. The mother-superior even smiled sternly through the smoke.
“Is your maning that O’Mahony is at present on the roof, striving to smoke us out?” she asked, with iron clad sarcasm.
“Awh, get along wid ye, Mother Agnes,” wheezed the little priest, from his carboniferous corner.
“Who would he be afther demanding in marriage here?”
O’Daly and the nuns looked at their aged and shaky spiritual director with dulled apprehension. He spoke so rarely, and had a mind so far removed from the mere vanities and trickeries of decorative. conversation, that his remark puzzled them. Then, as if through a single pair of eyes, they saw that Mrs. Fergus had straightened herself in her chair, and was simpering and preening her head weakly, like a conceited parrot.
The mother-superior spoke sharply.
“And do you flatther yoursilf, Mrs. Fergus O’Mahony, that the head of our house is blowing smoke down through the chimney for you?” she asked. “Sure, if he was, thin, ’twould be a lamint-able waste of breath. Wan puff from a short poipe would serve to captivate you!”
Cormac O’Daly made haste to bury his nose in his glass. Long acquaintance with the attitude of the convent toward the marital tendencies of Mrs. Fergus had taught him wisdom. It was safe to sympathize with either side of the long-standing dispute when the other side was unrepresented. But when the nuns and Mrs. Fergus discussed it together, he sagaciously held his peace.
“Is it sour grapes you’re tasting, Agnes O’Mahony?” put in Mrs. Fergus, briskly. In new matters, hers could not be described as an alert mind. But in this venerable quarrel she knew by heart every retort, innuendo and affront which could be used as weapons, and every weak point in the other’s armor.