The widow now stood up, throwing from her the nets, which had hitherto been on her knees. She stepped back a pace or two, and stretched out her hands.
“Father O’Rourke,” she exclaimed, “it is not the truth you are speaking to me! My boy never learned anything but what was good when he went to the Vicarage: and more than that, though you say he has gone from this world, there is something deep down in my heart which tells me he is still alive. If he were dead, my heart would feel very different to what it does now. I tell you, Father O’Rourke, I believe my son is alive, and will come back some day to see me. I know he will. Do you think I doubt his love? Do I doubt my love for him? No. Father O’Rourke, you are a childless man yourself, and you do not know what the love of a mother is for her child, and I do not think you know what the love of a child is for its mother—a fond, loving mother, as I have been,—not such a child as mine. The day will come when Dermot will stand here, as you are standing here; but he will not be blaming his old mother as you are blaming her. He will come to speak words of comfort and consolation into my ear. Instead of that, Father O’Rourke, you have brought nothing but cursing. You tell me I am in the downward road to destruction. Is that the way you should speak to a lone widow, because she loves her son, and likes those to speak who knew him, and who would talk about him to her and praise him, and who tell her what a noble, clever youth he was?”
“Widow O’Neil!” exclaimed Father O’Rourke, an angry frown gathering on his brow, “year after year I have spoken to you as I am now speaking. I have warned you before, I have warned your boy Dermot. I tell you, he would not take the warning, and he would have suffered the consequences of his disobedience, but I do care for your soul, and it is on account of that soul that I want you to put faith in the holy mother Church. If you do, all will be right, but if you go and listen to the words of that Protestant minister, all will be wrong, and you, Widow O’Neil, will have to go and live for ever with the accursed; ay, for ever and ever in fire and torment.” With such force and energy did the priest speak, and so fierce did he look, that for the moment he made the poor old woman tremble and turn pale with fear. She quickly, however, recovered herself.
“You may go, Father O’Rourke,” she exclaimed. “Once I was your slave, but I am your slave no longer. I am a poor ignorant woman, but I have had the truth told me, and that truth has made me free of you; say what you will, I do not fear you.”
The priest on hearing these words positively stamped on the ground, and gnashed his teeth with anger. He was not one of the polished fathers of the Church, who have been taught from their youth to conceal their feelings. He was certainly not a trained disciple of Ignatius Loyola. Again and again he stamped, and then uttering a fearful anathema on the occupant of the hut, he turned round, and slamming the door, left her as he had often before done, and hastened upwards towards the cliffs.
While this scene was enacting below, a young naval officer, who had landed from a boat which had come from the corvette, lately brought up in the bay, had climbed to the summit of the downs, and was taking his way across them towards the gorge, up which the priest was hastening. He had, however, not got very far, when he heard a voice singing a wild and plaintive Irish air. He stopped to listen, and as he did so, a figure, dressed in fantastic fashion, appeared from behind some broken ground in the neighbourhood of the downs. She advanced towards him, and then suddenly stopped, looking eagerly in his face.
“Who are you, stranger—who are you who come to these shores? It is not good for you to be alone here; if you come, come with armed men, with muskets on their shoulders and swords by their sides, for that slight weapon that you carry would avail you nothing against the enemies you are likely to meet here. Go back, I tell you, the way you came. I may seem silly and mad, and mad and silly I am, but I can sing; few can sing like me. Now listen stranger, listen to my song.” She burst forth again in the same wild strains which at first attracted the young officer’s attention.
“But what reason could you give me why I should follow your advice? I like your song, however; can you not sing me another?”
“Yes,” she answered, “mad Kathleen has many a song in her head, but it does not always come when called for, it is only as the fit seizes her that she can bring it forth. Never mind listening to my song, however, but follow my advice. There is your boat even now out in the bay; go, make a signal to it to come back to you, or evil will befall you.”
“I can scarcely suppose that, provided I do not leave the shore,” answered the officer. “I thank you, however, for your advice, but I do not purpose wandering far from where I now am.”