A cottage covered with a crisp amber thatch, and whitewashed to the color of the driven snow, held the post of honor in the village. It boasted a flower-garden in front and a vegetable patch in the rear. Moreover, it was guarded by a neatly-cropped privet hedge, while a little green gate admitted to a red-bricked pathway leading to a rustic porch adorned with roses that seemingly bloomed the whole year round, and a Virginia creeper whose leaves were now the hue of blood.
In the front garden, his head bared, the rays of the setting sun surrounding it as with an aureole, stalked a man attired in the black flowing soutane of a Catholic clergyman.
Father Maurice O’Donnell, the parish priest, was engaged in reading his office from a tattered and dog’s-eared breviary. Tall and thin almost to emaciation, there was yet a wiry swing in his gaunt frame that spoke of unfaded vigor, whilst the glowing fire in the dark blue eye told its own tale.
“Father Maurice” was loved and cherished by his little flock. His every want—and his wants were few enough—was anxiously anticipated. His patch of oats was tilled, weeded, cut, and stacked, his cottage thatched and whitewashed, his potatoes planted, his pony treated as common property in so far as fodder was concerned, while upon fast-days the “finest lump av a salmin” or the “illigantest” turbot, ever found its way to the back door of “The House,” as his humble abode was somewhat grandiloquently styled.
Maurice O’Donnell was wrapped up in his flock. In good sooth he was their shepherd. Night, noon, and morning found him ever watchful at “the gate in the vineyard wall.” He was the depositary of all their griefs, the sharer in all their joys—their guide, philosopher, and friend. In worldly matters he was simple as a child. Living, as he did, out of the world, he was perfectly contented to learn what was whirling round within it from the pages of the Nation, from the columns of which it was his practice to read aloud on Sunday afternoon to a very large muster, if not to the entire adult population, of Monamullin—in summer time seated in a coign of vantage by the sad sea-wave, in winter opposite a rousing turf fire laid on especially for the important occasion, and with a great display of ceremony by his housekeeper, “an ould widdy wumman” rejoicing in the name of Clancy, whose husband had been lost at sea in the night of “the great storm.”
Father Maurice never asked for money—he had no occasion for it. His solitary extravagance was snuff, and the most sedulous care was taken by the “boys” returning from Castlebar or Westport to fetch back a supply of “high toast,” in order that his “riverince’s box” might stand constantly replenished.
Upon this particular August evening Father Maurice was hurrying through his office with as much rapidity as the solemn nature of the duty would permit, as a drive of no less than seven honest Irish miles lay between him and his dinner.
The even tenor of his life had been broken in upon by an invitation to dine and sleep at the palatial residence of Mr. Jocelyn Jyvecote, a Yorkshire squire, who had purchased the old acres of the Blakes of Ballinacor, and who had recently expended a fabulous sum in erecting a castle upon the edge of a gloomy lake in the desolate valley of Glendhanarrahsheen. In his letter of invitation Mr. Jyvecote had said: “I am extremely desirous of introducing my youngest daughter to you, as she has taken it into her head to go over to your church; and, since you are so devoted to her interests, I beg of you to accept this invitation as you would undertake a little extra duty.”
To decline would be worse than ungracious, especially under the peculiar circumstances of the case, and it was with a heavy heart, and not without a keen debate with Mr. Lawrence Muldoon, the “warm” man of the village, in which the pros and cons were duly and gravely weighed, that the worthy priest replied in the affirmative. While Father Maurice was engaged in pacing his little garden, Mrs. Clancy, his housekeeper, was calmly preparing for a steady but copious enjoyment of her evening meal in the kitchen, which from floor to ceiling, from fireplace to dresser—shining again with crockery of the willow pattern—was, to use her own expression, “as nate as a new-biled egg.” A large brown earthenware teapot had just been promoted from the hob to a table “convaynient” to the window. A huge platter of stirabout, with a lump of butter oiling itself in the middle, stood within easy reach of her right hand, while a square of griddle-bread occupied a like position upon her left, and a wooden bowl full of jacket-bursted potatoes formed the near background.
Mrs. Clancy was strong upon tea, and in the village her opinion upon this as upon most other subjects was unwritten law. She was particularly fond of a dash of green through a full-flavored Pekoe, preparing the mixture with her own fair hands with a solemn gravity befitting so serious an undertaking. She was now about to try a sample of Souchong which had just arrived from Westport, and her condition of mind was akin to that of an analytical chemist upon the eve of some exceedingly important result.