The Miraculous Revenge | Page 9

informer."
I started. The adjective she had used, though probably the commonest
expression of contempt in Ireland, is revolting to an Englishman.
"Miss Hickey," I said: "there is in me, as you have said, a bad angel.
Do not shock my good angel--who is a person of taste--quite away
from my heart, lest the other be left undisputed monarch of it. Hark!
The chapel bell is ringing the angelus. Can you, with that sound
softening the darkness of the village night, cherish a feeling of spite
against one who admires you?"

"You come between me and my prayers" she said hysterically, and
began to sob. She had scarcely done so when I heard voices without.
Then Langan and the priest entered.
"Oh, Phil," she cried, running to him, "take me away from him: I cant
bear----" I turned towards him, and shewed him my dog-tooth in a false
smile. He felled me at one stroke, as he might have felled a poplar-tree.
"Murdher!" exclaimed the priest. "What are you doin, Phil?"
"He's an informer," sobbed Kate. "He came down here to spy on you,
uncle, and to try and show that the blessed miracle was a makeshift. I
knew it long before he told me, by his insulting ways. He wanted to
make love to me."
I rose with difficulty from beneath the table where I had lain motionless
for a moment.
"Sir," I said, "I am somewhat dazed by the recent action of Mr. Langan,
whom I beg, the next time he converts himself into a fulling-mill, to do
so at the expense of a man more nearly his equal in strength than I.
What your niece has told you is partly true. I am indeed the Cardinal's
spy; and I have already reported to him that the miracle is a genuine
one. A committee of gentlemen will wait on you tomorrow to verify it,
at my suggestion. I have thought that the proof might be regarded by
them as more complete if you were taken by surprise. Miss Hickey:
that I admire all that is admirable in you is but to say that I have a sense
of the beautiful. To say that I love you would be mere profanity. Mr.
Langan: I have in my pocket a loaded pistol which I carry from a silly
English prejudice against your countrymen. Had I been the Hercules of
the ploughtail, and you in my place, I should have been a dead man
now. Do not redden: you are safe as far as I am concerned."
"Let me tell you before you leave my house for good," said Father
Hickey, who seemed to have become unreasonably angry, "that you
should never have crossed my threshold if I had known you were a spy:
no, not if your uncle were his Holiness the Pope himself."

Here a frightful thing happened to me. I felt giddy, and put my hand on
my head. Three warm drops trickled over it. I instantly became
murderous. My mouth filled with blood; my eyes were blinded with it.
My hand went involuntarily to the pistol. It is my habit to obey my
impulses instantaneously. Fortunately the impulse to kill vanished
before a sudden perception of how I might miraculously humble the
mad vanity in which these foolish people had turned upon me. The
blood receded from my ears; and I again heard and saw distinctly.
"And let me tell you," Langan was saying, "that if you think yourself
handier with cold lead than you are with your fists, I'll exchange shots
with you, and welcome, whenever you please. Father Tom's credit is
the same to me as my own; and if you say a word against it, you lie."
"His credit is in my hands," I said, "I am the Cardinal's witness. Do you
defy me?"
"There is the door," said the priest, holding it open before me. "Until
you can undo the visible work of God's hand your testimony can do no
harm to me."
"Father Hickey," I replied, "before the sun rises again upon Four Mile
Water, I will undo the visible work of God's hand, and bring the
pointing finger of the scoffer upon your altar."
I bowed to Kate, and walked out. It was so dark that I could not at first
see the garden gate. Before I found it, I heard through the window
Father Hickey's voice, saying, "I wouldn't for ten pounds that this had
happened, Phil. He's as mad as a march hare. The Cardinal told me so."
I returned to my lodging, and took a cold bath to cleanse the blood
from my neck and shoulder. The effect of the blow I had received was
so severe, that even after the bath and a light meal I felt giddy and