The Miraculous Revenge Part 1

The Miraculous Revenge.

by Bernard Shaw.

I arrived in Dublin on the evening of the fifth of August, and drove to the residence of my uncle, the Cardinal Archbishop. He is like most of my family, deficient in feeling, and consequently averse to me personally. He lives in a dingy house, with a side-long view of the portico of his cathedral from the front windows, and of a monster national school from the back. My uncle maintains no retinue. The people believe that he is waited upon by angels. When I knocked at the door, an old woman, his only servant, opened it, and informed me that her master was then officiating at the cathedral, and that he had directed her to prepare dinner for me in his absence. An unpleasant smell of salt fish made me ask her what the dinner consisted of. She a.s.sured me that she had cooked all that could be permitted in his Holiness's house on Friday. On my asking her further why on Friday, she replied that Friday was a fast day. I bade her tell His Holiness that I had hoped to have the pleasure of calling on him shortly, and drove to the hotel in Sackville-street, where I engaged apartments and dined.

After dinner I resumed my eternal search--I know not for what: it drives me to and fro like another Cain. I sought in the streets without success. I went to the theatre. The music was execrable, the scenery poor. I had seen the play a month before in London with the same beautiful artist in the chief part. Two years had pa.s.sed since, seeing her for the first time, I had hoped that she, perhaps, might be the long-sought mystery. It had proved otherwise. On this night I looked at her and listened to her for the sake of that bygone hope, and applauded her generously when the curtain fell. But I went out lonely still. When I had supped at a restaurant, I returned to my hotel, and tried to read. In vain. The sound of feet in the corridors as the other occupants of the hotel went to bed distracted my attention from my book. Suddenly it occurred to to me that I had never quite understood my uncle's character. He, father to a great flock of poor and ignorant Irish; an austere and saintly man, to whom livers of hopeless lives daily appealed for help heavenward; who was reputed never to have sent away a troubled peasant without relieving him of his burden by sharing it; whose knees were worn less by the altar steps than by the tears and embraces of the guilty and wretched: he refused to humor my light extravagances, or to find time to talk with me of books, flowers, and music. Had I not been mad to expect it? Now that I needed sympathy myself, I did him justice. I desired to be with a true-hearted man, and mingle my tears with his.

I looked at my watch. It was nearly an hour past midnight. In the corridor the lights were out, except one jet at the end. I threw a cloak upon my shoulders, put on a Spanish hat and left my apartment, listening to the echoes of my measured steps retreating through the deserted pa.s.sages. A strange sight arrested me on the landing of the grand staircase. Through an open door I saw the moonlight s.h.i.+ning through the windows of a saloon in which some entertainment had recently taken place. I looked at my watch again: it was but one o'clock; and yet the guests had departed. I entered the room, my boots ringing loudly on the waxed boards. On a chair lay a child's cloak and a broken toy. The entertainment had been a children's party.

I stood for a time looking at the shadow of my cloaked figure on the floor, and at the disordered decorations, ghostly in the white light.

Then I saw there was a grand piano still open in the middle of the room. My fingers throbbed as I sat down before it and expressed all I felt in a grand hymn which seemed to thrill the cold stillness of the shadows into a deep hum of approbation, and to people the radiance of the moon with angels. Soon there was a stir without too, as if the rapture were spreading abroad. I took up the chant triumphantly with my voice, and the empty saloon resounded as though to the thunder of an orchestra.

"Hallo sir!" "Confound you, sir--" "Do you suppose that this--" "What the deuce--?"

I turned; and silence followed. Six men, partially dressed, with disheveled hair, stood regarding me angrily. They all carried candles.

One of them had a bootjack, which he held like a truncheon. Another, the foremost, had a pistol. The night porter was behind trembling.

"Sir," said the man with the revolver, coa.r.s.ely, "may I ask whether you are mad, that you disturb people at this hour with such unearthly noise?"

"Is it possible that you dislike it?" I replied courteously.

"Dislike it!" said he, stamping with rage. "Why--d.a.m.n everything--do you suppose we were enjoying it?"

"Take care: he's mad," whispered the man with the bootjack.

I began to laugh. Evidently they did think me mad. Unaccustomed to my habits, and ignorant of the music as they probably were, the mistake, however absurd, was not unnatural. I rose. They came closer to one another; and the night porter ran away.

"Gentlemen," I said, "I am sorry for you. Had you lain still and listened, we should all have been the better and happier. But what you have done, you cannot undo. Kindly inform the night porter that I am gone to visit my uncle, the Cardinal Archbishop. Adieu!"

I strode past them, and left them whispering among themselves. Some minutes later I knocked at the door of the Cardinal's house. Presently a window opened and the moonbeams fell on a grey head, with a black cap that seemed ashy pale against the unfathomable gloom of the shadow beneath the stone sill.

"Who are you?"

"I am Zeno Legge."

"What do you want at this hour?"

The question wounded me. "My dear uncle," I exclaimed, "I know you do not intend it, but you make me feel unwelcome. Come down and let me in, I beg."

"Go to your hotel," he said sternly. "I will see you in the morning.

Goodnight." He disappeared and closed the window.

I felt that if I let this rebuff pa.s.s, I should not feel kindly towards my uncle in the morning, nor indeed at any future time. I therefore plied the knocker with my right hand, and kept the bell ringing with my left until I heard the door chain rattle within. The Cardinal's expression was grave nearly to moroseness as he confronted me on the threshold.

"Uncle," I cried, grasping his hand, "do not reproach me. Your door is never shut against the wretched. Let us sit up all night and talk."

"You may thank my position and my charity for your admission, Zeno,"

he said. "For the sake of the neighbors, I had rather you played the fool in my study than upon my doorstep at this hour. Walk upstairs quietly if you please. My housekeeper is a hard-working woman: the little sleep she allows herself must not be disturbed."

"You have a n.o.ble heart, uncle. I shall creep like a mouse."

"This is my study," he said as we entered an ill-furnished den on the second floor. "The only refreshment I can offer you, if you desire any, is a bunch of raisins. The doctors have forbidden you to touch stimulants, I believe."

"By heaven----!" He raised his finger. "Pardon me: I was wrong to swear. But I had totally forgotten the doctors. At dinner I had a bottle of Grave."

"Humph! You have no business to be traveling alone. Your mother promised that Bushy should come over here with you."

"Pshaw! Bushy is not a man of feeling. Besides, he is a coward. He refused to come with me because I purchased a revolver."

"He should have taken the revolver from you, and kept to his post."

"Why will you persist in treating me like a child, uncle? I am very impressionable, I grant you; but I have gone around the world alone, and do not need to be dry-nursed through a tour in Ireland."

"What do you intend to do during your stay here?"

I had no plans and instead of answering I shrugged my shoulders and looked round the apartment. There was a statue of the Virgin upon my uncle's desk. I looked at its face, as he was wont to look in the midst of his labor. I saw there eternal peace. The air became luminous with an infinite net-work of the jeweled rings of Paradise descending in roseate clouds upon us.

"Uncle," I said, bursting into the sweetest tears I had ever shed, "my wanderings are over. I will enter the Church, if you will help me. Let us read together the third part of Faust; for I understand it at last."

"Hush, man," he said, half rising with an expression of alarm.

"Control yourself."

"Do not let tears mislead you. I am calm and strong. Quick, let us have Goethe:

Das Unbeschreibliche, Hier ist gethan; Das Ewig-Weibliche, Zieht uns hinan."

"Come, come. Dry your eyes and be quiet. I have no library here."

"But I have--in my portmanteau at the hotel," I said, rising. "Let me go for it. I will return in fifteen minutes."

"The devil is in you, I believe. Cannot----"

I interrupted him with a shout of laughter.

"Cardinal," I said noisily, "you have become profane; and a profane priest is always the best of good fellows. Let us have some wine; and I will sing you a German beer song."

"Heaven forgive me if I do you wrong," he said; "but I believe G.o.d has laid the expiation of some sin on your unhappy head. Will you favor me with your attention for awhile? I have something to say to you, and I have also to get some sleep before my hour of rising, which is half-past five."

"My usual hour for retiring--when I retire at all. But proceed. My fault is not inattention, but over-susceptibility."

"Well, then, I want you to go to Wicklow. My reasons----"

"No matter what they may be," said I, rising again. "It is enough that you desire me to go. I shall start forthwith."

"Zeno! will you sit down and listen to me?"

I sank upon my chair reluctantly. "Ardor is a crime in your eyes, even when it is shewn in your service," I said. "May I turn down the light?"