we turn over now a score of those fateful pages on which father time keeps his monthly accounts with mankind, passing from sunlit june, with its hazy radiance lying softly upon smooth waters, to bleak and shrill february—the memorable february of 1867.
a gale had been blowing outside beyond the headlands all day, and by nightfall the minor waters of dunmanus bay had suffered such prolonged pulling and hauling and buffeting from their big atlantic neighbors that they were up in full revolt, hurling themselves with thunderous roars of rage against the cliffs of their coast line, and drenching the darkness with scattered spray. the little hamlet of muirisc, which hung to its low, nestling nook under the rocks in the very teeth of this blast, shivered, soaked to the skin, and crossed itself prayerfully as the wind shrieked like a banshee about its roofless gables and tower-walls and tore at the thatches of its clustered cabins.
the three nuns of the hostage’s tears, listening to the storm without, felt that it afforded an additional justification for the infraction of their rules which they were for this evening, by no means for the first time, permitting themselves. religion itself rebelled against solitude on such a night.
time had been when this convent, enlarged though it was by the piety of successive generations of early lords of muirisc, still needed more room than it had to accommodate in comfort its host of inmates. but that time, alas! was now a musty tradition of bygone ages. even before the great sectarian upheaval of the mid-tudor period, the ancient family order of the hostage’s tears had begun to decline. i can’t pretend to give the reason. perhaps the supply of the o’mahony’s daughters fell off; possibly some obscure shift of fashion rendered marriage more attractive in their eyes. only this i know, that when the commissioners of elizabeth, gleaning in the monastic stubble which the scythe of henry had laid bare, came upon the nuns at muirisc, whom the first sweep of the blade had missed, they found them no longer so numerous as they once had been. ever since then the order had dwindled visibly. the three remaining ladies had, in their own extended cloistral career, seen the last habitable section of the convent fall into disuse and decay, until now only their own gaunt, stone-walled trio of cells, the school-room, the tiny chapel, and a chamber still known by the dignified title of the “reception hall,” were available for use.
here it was that a great mound of peat sparkled and glowed on the hearth, under a capricious draught which now sucked upward with a whistling swoop whole clods of blazing turf—now, by a contradictory freak, half-filled the room with choking bog-smoke. still, even when eyes were tingling and nostrils aflame, it was better to be here than outside, and better to have company than be alone.
both propositions were shiningly clear to the mind of corinac o’daly, as he mixed a second round of punch, and, peering through the steam from his glass at the audience gathered by the hearth, began talking again. the three aged nuns, who had heard him talk ever since he was born, sat decorously together on a bench and watched him, and listened as attentively as if his presence were a complete novelty. their chaplain, a snuffy, half-palsied little old man, father harrington to wit, dozed and blinked and coughed at the smoke in his chair by the fire as harmlessly as a house-cat on the rug. mrs. fergus o’mahony, a plump and buxom widow in the late twenties, with a comely, stupid face, framed in little waves of black, crimped hair pasted flat to the skin, sat opposite the priest, glass in hand. whenever the temptation to yawn became too strong, she repressed it by sipping at the punch.
“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.
“sour grapes! me!” exclaimed the mother-superior, with as lively an effect of indignation as if this rejoinder had not been flung in her face every month or so for the past dozen years. “d’ye harken to that, sister blanaid and sister ann! it’s me, after me wan-and-fifty years of life in religion, that has this ojus imputation put on me! whisht now! don’t demane yourselves by replyin’! we’ll lave her to the condimnation of her own conscience.”
the two nuns had made no sign of breaking their silence before this admonition came, and they gazed now at the peat fire placidly. but the angered mother-superior ostentatiously took up her beads, and began whispering to herself, as if her thoughts were already millions of miles away from her antagonist with the crimped hair and the vacuous smile.
“it’s persecuting me she’s been these long years back,” mrs. fergus said to the company at large, but never taking her eyes from the mother-superior’s flushed face; “and all because i married me poor desaysed husband, instead of taking me vows under her.”
“ah, that poor desaysed husband!” mother agnes put in, with an ironical drawl in the words. “sure, whin he was aloive, me ears were just worn out with listening to complaints about him! ah, thin! ’tis whin we’re dead that we’re appreciated!”
“all because i married,” pursued mrs. fergus, doggedly, “and wouldn’t come and lock mesilf up here, like a toad in the turf, and lave me brothers free to spind the money in riot and luxurious livin’. may be, if god’s will had putt a squint on me, or given me shoulders a twist like danny at the fair, or otherwise disfigured me faytures, i’d have been glad to take vows. mortial plainness is a great injucement to religion.”
the two nuns scuffled their feet on the stone floor and scowled at the fire. mother agnes put down her beads, and threw a martyr-like glance upward at the blackened oak roof.
“praise be to the saints,” she said, solemnly, “that denied us the snare of mere beauty without sinse, or piety, or respect for old age, or humility, or politeness, or gratitude, or—”
“very well, thin, agnes o’mahony,” broke in mrs. fergus, promptly. “if ye’ve that opinion of me, it’s not becomin’ that i should lave me daughter wid ye anny longer. i’ll take her meself to kenmare next week—the ride over the mountains will do me nervous system a power o’ good—and there she’ll learn to be a lady.”
cormac o’daly lifted his head and set down his glass. he knew perfectly well that with this familiar threat the dispute always came to an end. indeed, all the parties to the recent contention now of their own accord looked at him, and resettled themselves in their seats, as if to notify him that his turn had come round again.
“i’m far from denying,” he said, as if there had been no interruption at all, “that our o’mahony is possessed of qualities which commind him to the vulgar multichude. it’s thrue that he rejewced rints all over the estate, and made turbary rights and the carrigeens as free as wather, and yet more than recouped himself by opening the copper mines beyant ardmahon, and laysing thim to a company for a foine royalty. it’s thrue he’s the first o’mahony for manny a gineration who’s paid expinses, let alone putting money by in the bank.”
“and what more would ye ask?” said mrs. fergus. “sure, whin he’s done all this, and made fast frinds with every man, women and child roundabout into the bargain, what more would ye want?”
“ah, what’s money, mrs. fergus o’mahony,” remonstrated o’daly, “and what’s popularity wid the mere thoughtless peasanthry, if ye’ve no ancesthral proide, no love and reverence for ancient family thraditions, no devout desoire to walk in the paths your forefathers trod?”
“faith, thim same forefathers trod thim with a highly unsteady step, thin, bechune oursilves,” commented mrs. fergus.
“but their souls were filled with blessid piety,” said mother agnes, gravely. “if they gave small thought to the matter of money, and loike carnal disthractions, they had open hands always for the needs of the church, and of the convint here, and they made holy indings, every soul of ’em.”
“and they respected the hereditary functions of their bards,” put in o’daly, with a conclusive air.
at the moment, as there came a sudden lull in the tumult of the storm outside, those within the reception-room heard a distinct noise of knocking, which proceeded from beneath the stone-flags at their feet. three blows were struck, with a deadened thud as upon wet wood, and then the astounded listeners heard a low, muffled sound, strangely like a human voice, from the same depths.
the tempest’s furious screaming rose again without, even as they listened. all six crossed themselves mechanically, and gazed at one another with blanched faces.
“it is the hostage,” whispered the mother-superior, glancing impressively around, and striving to dissemble the tremor which forced itself upon her lips. “for wan-and-fifty years i’ve been waiting to hear the sound of him. my praydecessor, mother ellen, rest her sowl, heard him wance, and nixt day the roof of the church fell in. be the same token, some new disasther is on fut for us, now.”
cormac o’daly was as frightened as the rest, but, as an antiquarian, he could not combat the temptation to talk.
“’tis now just six hundred and seventy years,” he began, in a husky voice, “since diarmid of the fine steeds founded this convint, in expiation of his wrong to young donal, prince of connaught. ’twas the custom thin for the kings and great princes in ireland to sind their sons as hostages to the palaces of their rivals, to live there as security, so to spake, for their fathers’ good behavior and peaceable intintions. ’twas in this capacity that young donal o’connor came here, but diarmid thrated him badly—not like his father’s son at all—and immured him in a dungeon convanient in the rocks. his mother’s milk was in the lad, and he wept for being parted from her till his tears filled the earth, and a living well sprung from thim the day he died. so thin diarmid repinted and built a convint; and the well bubbled forth healing wathers so that all the people roundabout made pilgrimages to it, and with their offerings the o’mahonys built new edifices till ’twas wan of the grandest convints in desmond; and none but fay-males of the o’mahony blood saying prayers for the sowl of the hostage.”
the nuns were busy with their beads, and even mrs. fergus bent her head. at last it was mother agnes who spoke, letting her rosary drop.
“’twas whin they allowed the holy well to be choked up and lost sight of among fallen stones that throuble first come to the o’mahonys,” she said solemnly. “’tis mesilf will beg the o’mahony, on binded knees, to dig it open again. worse luck, he’s away to cork or waterford with his boat, and this storm’ll keep him from returning, till, perhaps, the final disasther falls on us and our house, and he still absinting himsilf. wirra! what’s that?”
the mother-superior had been forced to lift her voice, in concluding, to make it distinct above the hoarse roar of the elements outside. even as she spoke, a loud crackling noise was heard, followed by a crash of masonry which deafened the listeners’ ears and shook the walls of the room they sat in.
with a despairing groan, the three nuns fell to their knees and bowed their vailed heads over their beads.
