"Time the chile was bruk aff that habit," observed the mother, as she seated herself beside the table with some sewing.
"Let her be a child as long as she can, Mrs. O"Halloran," I remarked.
"Surely you would n"t wish any alteration in her."
"Nat without it was an altheration fur the betther," replied the worthy woman.
"An" it"s little hopes there is iv hur, consitherin" the way she"s rairt.
Did iver anybody hear o" rairin" childher" without batin" them when they want it?"
"You bate hur, an" A"ll bate you!" interposed Rory, turning to bay on the most salient of the three or four pleas which had power to rouse the Old Adam in his una.s.sertive nature.
"Well, A "m sure A was bate--ay, an" soun"ly bate--when A was lek hur; an" iv A did n"t desarve it then, A desarved it other times, when A did n"t git it."
An obvious rejoinder rose to my mind, but evidently not to Rory"s, for the look on his face told only of a dogged resolution to continue sinning against the light. He knew that his own contumacy in this respect would land his soul in perdition, and he deliberately let it go at that. Brave old Rory!
Never does erratic man appear to such advantage as when his own intuitive moral sense rigorously overbears a conscientiousness warped by some fallacy which he still accepts as truth.
Yet the mother loved the child in her own hard, puritanical way. And, in any case, you are not competent to judge her, unless you have to work for your living, instead of finding somebody eager to support you in luxury for the pleasure of your society; unless, instead of marrying some squatter, or bank clerk, or Member of Parliament, you have inadvertently coupled yourself to a Catholic boundary man, named nothing short of Rory O"Halloran.
The embittered woman retired early, and without phrases. As she did so, I casually noticed that the bed-room was bisected by a part.i.tion, with a curtained doorway.
"Ever try your hand at literature, Rory?" I presently asked, remembering Williamson"s remark.
"Well, A ken har"ly say No, an" A ken har"ly say Yis," replied Rory, with ill-feigned humility. "A"ve got a bit iv a thraytise scribbled down, furbye a wheen o" other wans on han". A thought mebbe"--and his glance rested on the angelface of the sleeping child--"well, A thought mebbe it would do hur no harrum fur people till know that hur father--well-as ye might say-- Nat but what she"ll hev money in the bank, plaze G.o.d. But A"ll lay hur down in hur wee cot now, an" A"ll bring the thrifle we wur mentionin"."
He tenderly carried the child into the first compartment of the bedroom, and, soon returning, placed before me about twenty quarto sheets of ma.n.u.script, written on both sides, in a careful, schoolboy hand. The first page was headed, A Plea for Woman .
"My word, Rory, this is great!" said I, after reading the first long paragraph.
"I should like to skim it over at once, to get the gist of the argument, and then read it leisurely, to enjoy the style. And that reminds me that I brought you an Australasian. I"ll get it out of my swag, and you can read it to kill time."
But it became evident that he could n"t fix his mind on the newspaper whilst his own literary product was under scrutiny. The latter unfolded itself as a unique example of pure deduction, aided by utter lack of discrimination in the value of evidence. It was all synthesis, and no a.n.a.lysis.
A certain hypothesis had to be established, and it was established.
The style was directly ant.i.thetical to that curt, blunt, and simple p.r.o.nouncement aimed at by innocents who deceive no one by denouncing Socialism, Trades-Unionism, &c., over the signature of "A Working Man." But the Essay.
I am debarred from transcribing it, not only because of its length, but because----
"Rory, you must let me take a copy of this."
"Well, Tammas, A"m glad it plazes ye; right glad, so A am; but A thought till--till"----
"Spring it on the public--so to speak?"
"Yis."
"Well, I"ll faithfully promise to keep the whole work sacred to your credit.
And if ever I go into print--which is most unlikely--I"ll refer to this essay in such a way as to whet public curiosity to a feather edge.
Again, if anything should happen to this copy, you"ll have mine to fall back upon."
"A"ll thrust ye, Tammas. G.o.d bless ye, take a copy any time afore ye go."
The object of the essay was to prove that, at a certain epoch in the world"s history, the character of woman had undergone an instantaneous transformation.
And it was proved in this way:
The two greatest thinkers and most infallible authorities our race has produced are Solomon and Shakespear.
Solomon"s estimate of woman is shockingly low; and there is no getting away from the truth of it. His baneful evidence has the guarantee of Holy Writ; moreover, it is fully borne out by the testimony of ancient history, sacred and profane, and by the tendency of the Greek and Roman mythologies.
Examples here quoted in profusion.
The fact of woman"s pre-eminent wickedness in ancient times is traceable to the eating of the apple, when Eve, being the more culpable, was justly burdened with the heavier penalty, namely, a preternatural bias toward sin in a general way.
On the other hand, Shakespear"s estimate of woman is high. And justly so, since his valuation is conclusively endorsed by modern history.
Examples again quoted, in convincing volume, from the women of Acts down to Mrs. Chisholm and Florence Nightingale.
Now how do you bring these two apparently conflicting facts into the harmony of context? Simply by tracing the Solomon-woman forward, and the Shakespear-woman backward, to their point of intersection, and so finding the moment of transition. It is where the Virgin says:
"My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in G.o.d my Saviour.
For He hath regarded the low estate of His handmaiden; for, behold!
from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed."
This prophecy has not only a personal and specific fulfilment, as pointing to the speaker herself, but a transitive and general application, as referring to her s.e.x at large. There you have it.
But no mere abstract can do justice to the sumptuous phraseology of the work, to its opulence of carefully selected adjective, or to the involved rhetoric which seemed to defeat and set at naught all your petty rules of syntax and prosody. Still less can I impart a notion of the exhaustive raking up of ancient examples and modern instances, mostly worn bright by familiarity with the popular mind, but all converging toward the conclusion striven for, and the shakiest of them accepted in childlike faith. Integrally, that essay conveyed the idea of two mighty glaciers of theory, each impelling its own moraine of facts toward a stated point of confluence--represented by a magnificent postulate--where one section, at least, of the Universal Plan would attain fulfilment, and the Eternal Unities would be so far satisfied.
There was something in it that was more like an elusive glimmer of genius than an evidence of understanding, or, still less, of cleverness.
Remarkable also, that, though the punctuation was deplorable, every superb polysyllable was correctly spelled. But as a monument of wasted ingenuity and industry, I have met with nothing so pathetic. A long term of self-communion in the back country will never leave a man as it found him.
Outside his daily avocation, he becomes a fool or a philosopher; and, in Rory"s case, the latter seemed to have been superimposed on the former.
At ten o"clock, I hunted him to bed. I had plenty of blank forms in my writing-case, and on these I took a preliminary copy of A Plea for Woman.
This occupied about three hours. Then not feeling sleepy, I took down one of four calico-covered books, which I had previously noticed on a corner shelf. It was my own old Shakespear, with the added interest of marginal marks, in ink of three colours, neatly ordered, and as the sand by the sea-sh.o.r.e innumerable. I put it back with the impression that no book had ever been better placed. The next volume was a Bible, presented by the Reverend Miles Barton, M.A., Rector of Tanderagee, County Armagh, Ireland, to his beloved parishioner, Deborah Johnson, on the occasion of her departure for Melbourne, South Australia, June 16, 1875. The third book was a fairly good dictionary, appendixed by a copious glossary of the Greek and Roman mythologies. The fourth was Vol. XII of Macmillan"s Magazine, May to October, 1865.
Opening the latter book at random, I fell upon a sketch of Eyre"s expedition along the sh.o.r.es of the Great Australian Bight. In another place was a contribution ent.i.tled "A Gallery of American Presidents." The next item of interest was an account of the Ma.s.sacre of Cawnpore. And toward the end of the volume was a narrative of the Atlantic Telegraph Expedition.
Of course, there were thirty or forty other articles in the book, but they were mostly strange to me, however familiar they might be to Rory.
Hopeless case! I thought, as I blew out the lamp and turned into my comfortable sofa-bed. If this morepoke"s Irish love of knowledge was backed by one spark of mental enterprise, he might have half a ton of chosen literature to come and go on. And here he is, with his pristine ignorance merely dislocated.
When I woke at sunrise, Rory was kindling the fire, with the inseparable Mary squatted beside him in her nightgown. After putting on the kettle, he dressed the little girl, and helped her to wash her face. By this time, I was about; and Mary brought me a blank form, which I had dropped and overlooked the night before.
"Keep it till you learn to write, dear," said I.
"She ken write now," remarked Rory, with subdued exultation. "Here, jewel,"
he continued, handing her a pencil from the mantelpiece--"write yer name nately on that paper, fur Misther Collins till see."
The child, tremulous with an ecstatic sense of responsibility, bent over her paper on the table for a full minute, then diffidently pushed it across to me; and I read, in strong Roman capitals, the inscription, MRAY, with the M containing an extra angle--being, so to speak, a letter and a half.
"Ye"re wake in spellin", honey," remarked her father merrily; "an" the M"s got an exthry knuckle on it."
"It"s right enough," I interposed. "Could n"t be better. Now, Mary, I"ll keep this paper, and show it to you again when you"re a great scholar and a great poetess. See if I don"t."
The entrance of Mrs. O"Halloran cut short this nonsense; and Rory went out to milk the goats, accompanied, of course, by Mary.
After breakfast, we took our bridles and went out toward where the five horses were feeding together, the inevitable child pattering along by Rory"s side.
"You have a lot to be thankful for," I remarked.