by George Moore
Not a great deal, he answered cheerfully, for he was like a man closer to the top of the hill, or one that had come very nearly to the top, and sees the ring of day breaking all around him. He was proud, to be sure, and that sort of pride is what the clergy calls the spiritual elation that comes on a man when he has beaten the devil. And well he might be proud, I say, for himself and four fine women had defeated and murdered the devil in four great battles. As he gave a twist in the bed, he remembered that his fight had been stiffer than any the monks had waged, for weren’t they and the nuns all known to each other for years past as confessors and penitents? And with that thought he got twice as proud. The fresh enemy is the stiffest to conquer, said he to himself, and now the old boy is to deliver the last assault, which will be, I am thinking, no great matter for me to overcome. She isn’t to my liking, and that’s no gain to me, but I’ve won such a load of honour as it is, that God himself will be hard set to find a reward that he can offer me without shame to himself. Here she comes, the hind end of the temptations, and he drew the blanket up to his chin and let on to be asleep.
Asleep you are, Marban, said Eorann, when her turn came, or is it only falling asleep you are without a thought for me at all? The other ones wore you out, but them ones would make anybody tired. I drew the bad number myself. Number three it is. A holy number and lets you in for all the poor jobs. Won’t you wake up now and let me into your bed? I’m nearly as tired as you are with the time I was waiting and all. Even if there’s no temptation between the pair of us, said Marban, you can get into the bed. After a while, said she: have you got no eyes for me at all, or a pair of hands on yourself? I’ve all them, Marban thought, but he didn’t say a word, for he couldn’t think of what to say, and being a polite man he didn’t like to say: lie quiet in the bed now like a good girl, and let me be. His weakness was kindness, and so he took her into his arms and kissed her and said: I’ve said that many prayers this night that the devil is driven out of the convent entirely; not a sniff of him do we get, not one is upon you nor is there one upon me. We’re wasting time, said Eorann. She commenced to cry with her head on Marban’s shoulder, and soon her tears were running down his neck, first hot and then cold, and then tickling him like a troop of fleas. He asked her what she was crying for, and she said: I did hope to get a great reward with you in heaven, but you won’t not so much as look at a girl. ’Tis a poor thing and a hard thing to be a nun in this place. Just because I happened to pull the wrong straw, bad luck to the same straw, I’m left without any way of earning a place in heaven. It would make you think that heaven itself, like earth, is all favoritism.
You must not be talking like that, Sister. ’Tis easy for you, full of glory the way you are this night, but here’s myself with nothing to do. And she bent down her head on to his shoulder and whispered: can’t you tempt me a little? and handling him freely, she said: it’s not so bad after all, for you’re beginning to be restless, and that’s a sign, and when you’re a little more so, we’ll have to begin to say our prayers, or we’re a lost pair. What is that I hear? Marban cried. ’Tis only myself talking to you. But I hear a sound from the forest. ’Tis nothing, she said. ’Tis the hunters following the wild swine at the ring of day. Don’t mind them, but mind myself.
A great and wonderful music there is, he said, in the sound of a horn heard far away in the depth of the forest. A fine sound it is for the laity to be listening to, she replied, but we should be thinking of the trumpets of heaven which the angels will be sounding to awaken us from the dead, and our Lord coming on the clouds to reward us. And let me tell you this, there won’t be as much as the ghost of a reward for me if you lie there with your ears cocked listening to the horn the way you’re doing now. The horn is nearer now than it was, Marban answered. ’Tis only the echo of the horn that you do be hearing, and on this earth there’s nothing more treacherous than the horn, and she sent a wet stream of tears down into his neck the way he thought he would have to be swimming for his life in another minute.
Let me up, he said. Let me up out of this bed. One horn, two horns, three horns, and they sounding from different sides. ’Tis a company that must be hunting after the boar. Forget the boar, she cried, and lie here, and take your ease. He was sorry for her, but he said to himself: I’ve earned a big enough reward.
The monks at Bregen — he began. But she rapped out: what good are they to us? And what good are you? I’m only wasting my time here. Good-bye, Marban, and ’tis the great talk I shall be having with the Abbess about the great power that God has given you, and the prayers you have offered up with me. We haven’t said many prayers, said Marban. If we haven’t said them out we’ve said them in, she added, and hurried away to tell the Mother Abbess about the holiness of the man she had been lying with and that they all should be thankful to the Lord for sending them such a man.
CHAPTER 21.
NEVER HAVE I lain with a man as quiet as this one, Eorann repeated, as she went upstairs. I might as well have been in bed with my mother. Will you be telling me, said the Mother Abbess, who was waiting at the head of the stairs, that he didn’t leave his bed once to dip himself in the cistern? I will so, said the nun; he lay by my side talking to me about horns that he was hearing far out in the forests. That’s a great saint, I’m thinking, said Mother Abbess. That’s a very great saint, surely. There isn’t a monk of the monks at Bregen is holier than him, not the Abbot himself, though perhaps I shouldn’t be saying it, and he earning great glory with all of you these last ten years; and with myself off and on for the last twenty. But he isn’t as big a saint as that lad, I’m thinking. True enough we’re stale to him now, and men that are seventy-five take a deal of stirring, but a little virgin like Luachet might set up a great burning in him that our Lord would be greatly gratified to see overcome. ’Tis a great thought surely that has come to you, dear Mother. Let Sister Luachet lie with Brother Marban. It would be a poor thing indeed if a holy man like him should be denied all the chances that the earth can give him of getting a good place up above. I am in the one mind with you, the Mother Abbess answered. But what about the Abbot? He’ll be missing his last chance. Why should he be missing it indeed? Won’t Luachet be the same coming from Marban’s bed as she went into it?
Blathnat asked. She will not, the Mother Abbess answered, for ’tis the thought that she has never lain by a man’s side before that I’m counting on to stir up the devil in our good Abbot, for the last time; the man’s years are three score years and ten, and for a while back he hasn’t been looking himself at all. Ah! well, I remember the time when he ——
But you needn’t be telling him, cried Sister Blathnat, butting into the middle of the Abbess’s recollections. I wouldn’t say that, the Mother Abbess answered; once you begin telling lies there’s no end to them. Won’t Luachet be getting her experience from Marban? Eorann murmured slyly. True for you, replied the Abbess. A little knowledge of mankind in her won’t be amiss when it comes to her turn to get into bed with the Abbot, if it ever does come, for it was a bad account we had of him a week ago, and the cough’s worse. But isn’t it the truth, said Sister Blathnat, that the Abbot would like a man that had resisted all of us, and we all fresh to him, to be allowed the advantage of Luachet? I wouldn’t be saying he wouldn’t, the Abbess answered. A man’s luck is his own luck, and isn’t it a great thing that he should come here and show all that holiness? It would be no good thing for us if we denied him what God wishes him to receive. Now, my dear, and she turned round to Luachet, you’ve been listening to what we said, and as the day is done, put aside the vestment that you’re making for the Abbot, and go to the oak chest yonder and take out of the orris root and lavender the finest linen garment, and remember that, lying by our brother, you will be as pleasing in God’s sight as you are here stitching a vestment for the holy Mass. A beautiful one it will be, she continued, and she held up the white satin chasuble, embroidered with gold, for the nuns to admire — the one the Abbot was to wear on his seventy-fifth b
irthday, when he would celebrate High Mass for them all. ’Tis Luachet is the fine stitcher, God be praised, our little Luachet; but a much finer offering than the vestment she will be herself beside the holy man below stairs, and on these words she took the child to her bosom and asked her if she was afraid.
Afraid, Mother? Why should I be afraid, since it is you who are sending me to this stranger, a holy man, as all the sisters here have proven him to be?
Could the child say better than that? the Mother Abbess said, turning to her nuns. And they all said she couldn’t and that no one could. She turned again to Luachet: get yourself ready now. Wash your hair the way there’ll be a gloss on it. Look at the gold that is shining through it, and isn’t she as nice and as graceful as a little kitten? A great temptation, surely, that none should venture into but the holiest. Go and get ready, Luachet, and don’t be shy, for there’s no good in that; let him win the greatest prize of all. Do you hear me now, she said; be not shy but push yourself up against him and kiss him in the nape of his neck. You may do that, for it’s your business to wake up the old man in him if you can, and we’ll be praying for you while we are getting to our beds, and till we fall asleep prayers will be on our lips. We shall be chanting the psalms at midnight, and from lauds to complin, thanking God for the honour we shall be earning, for to-morrow every nun of the nuns in this place will get from me fifty smacks of the ferule on her hand. Go, dear child, and remember all I’ve told you, for there is nothing that gives more pleasure in heaven than seeing the man denying himself the woman and they both in the one bed.
’Tis time for us to be going to our rest, she said, turning to the other nuns; but you won’t forget, my children, what I told Sister Luachet, to be praying well for her, and all the nuns said they would do that and that they would do it well until the sleep came.
CHAPTER 22.
NOR DID ONE of them break her promise, and out of bed the whole lot of them were at midnight, chanting the psalms, till at last the Mother Abbess said: now, children, here’s the day beginning in the east. The time has come for me to use the ferule onto your hands. On these words she turned to the press in which she kept the thong, and all the nuns wincing and watching, knowing well the length of the handle and the breadth and the hardness of the leather, and being faint-hearted, as all women are, they would have been glad to do without the bit of merit they would earn if they could be let off the slaps, for the morning was bitter cold.
Maybe your hands are sore, the Mother Abbess said, as the last nun retired, holding her bruised hands between her knees, but my own back is broken the way I have to leather the lot of you into heaven. ’Tis I myself should be getting whatever recompense is going, for my loins are cracked on me and I’ve a pain in my head. Now will you have finished with the moaning and the tears, and think a bit of the way the Lord suffered on the cross, and of the way Marban is suffering now and he up against our little Luachet’s thighs. She is staying with him a long while now. Too long, indeed, for there ought to be an end to everything, and great saint as the man is, he shouldn’t get it too heavy. Are they chanting psalms together? We might do well to hear them, for to see or to hear the holy is next door to being holy.
Down went the lot of them, stepping on the tips of their toes for fear they might disturb the saints in their mutual devotions. Devotions it is, said the Abbess, for we can hear their voices mingled in sweet sighs. But after listening a little while longer she turned to Blathnat and said: your ears are better than mine maybe, what I hear doesn’t sound like psalms. Let you listen now, and, giving her place to the nun, she waited. After listening, Blathnat said: Mother Abbess, it’s no psalm I’m listening to. That’s no psalm at all. Then what can they be doing to each other? And it isn’t prayers that I hear either. Them’s not prayers.
Then give your place to Brigit, who may hear better. Yes, let me listen, said Brigit, and she cocked her ear to the keyhole. Sister Blathnat is right. There isn’t a psalm in it of all the psalms. After Brigit it came to Eorann to put her ear to the keyhole, and having more courage than the rest, she turned to the Mother Abbess, saying: it’s like the doves on the roof they are. Like the doves on the roof? cried the Mother Abbess, and with a great fear in her heart she put her ear to the door, and hearing a scream that could be none else than a love scream, she cried out: ’tis profanation of our holy convent. And together with the nuns she bumped herself against the door until they got it down. Faith, sir, the pair within were in the last round before the Abbess could pull the clothes from off the bed, and tear them asunder. ’Tis all over, said she; the tallow is spilt, said she, her maidenhood is lost to the Lord. Woe is woe. Woe to the Abbot. Come out of it, daughters; come out, I say, for the devil is here, and here he may stop. Sin, sin, she said, and sin on the top of sin. It’s not the first; it won’t be the last. Come out, children. Come out with yourselves from this cell of sin. Innocents ye are. Get out, I say. Isn’t that one the divil? Ah, you’ll pay for it. You’ll pay for it. Hell’s your portion. Hell and hot water. Get out, I say. I’m ruined. I am so. I’m ruined. Will ye get out, or will ye not get out? I’ll skin you if you don’t get out. Ah, you divil! Ah, you divil!
The nuns followed her out to the terrace, and the five of them walked there, never addressing a word the one to the other in their sorrow, till the monks began to come from Bregen. I see them coming, Mother, Blathnat cried; and now they’ve stopped at the foot of the hill, for the Abbot is out of puff. How am I going to tell the holy man about that pair? God help me, said the Abbess. What am I going to say to him at all?
I think I mentioned to you, sir, that the Abbot was at this time seventy, and maybe a few years over. My grandfather wasn’t sure but it was eighty. Thin he was, and lean and shadowy, frail as a sick bird, he used to say. I liked to hear him tell Marban’s story, and he told it so often to me that there was a time when I had this part of it off by heart. But it is a long time since I’ve told this back end of the story. It not being to the liking of them that do be asking me for stories, I leave it out. Don’t leave it out on my account, Alec. Very well, sir, I’ll tell the whole of it.
My daughter, said the Abbot to the Abbess, who had just mentioned that she had a tale to tell him sadder than any he had ever heard, it must be a very sad tale indeed, for I’ve heard my share of sad stories. But before you hear the story, said she, tell me, did the medicines I sent you do you any good? You’ve got the cough on you yet. Thank you, my daughter, for the medicines; I did not take them, feeling sure that I’ll not be better than I am this side of Jordan. But won’t you come inside, she said, for there’s a wind stirring in the trees? A pleasant wind, he answered her. Get me a chair to sit in. She cried to Blathnat: find my Lord Abbot a chair, and bring a rug for him as well.
When he was seated in the chair, and the rug tucked round him, he said: there’s one thing good about a wolf, and that’s his fur. Once his fur is taken from him there’s no evil in him; and he dipped his hand into the fur as he might into the holy-water stoop itself. My Lord Abbot — the nun began, and she stopped as a horse will at a heap of stones on the road. Go on, woman, he said: there are words for everything; out with your story. Well, she said, you know about Marban. Know about Marban? said the Abbot. Why, wasn’t it myself that wrote to the Abbot in the Pyrenees to ask him to send Marban with the wolf-hounds? Is he here? and how many hounds has he with him? He has three hounds, the Abbess replied. Then all is well. What! Has he been wounded on the way; go on, woman. But instead of doing as she was bid she started asking him if he had taken his medicine, and other foolish questions, setting him coughing again. Go on, woman, he cried, as soon as he could get his breath. Go on, woman.
How long has Marban been here? Go on with your story, and be delaying no longer if you’d have me hear it. You see the state I’m in. And afraid to delay any longer, though there was nothing she liked better than dragging a story out by the heels, she told him that Marban had been with them for three or four days. But no further could she go, sayin
g that she’d rather be lying dead at his feet than that her mouth should be telling the dreadful story, and much more rubbish of the sort, angering the Abbot, setting him coughing till he might have choked as much with anger as phlegm.