Hugh Quigley - The Cross and the Shamrock

H >> Hugh Quigley >> The Cross and the Shamrock

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All his much-prized memorials were now gone--his beads, or rosary, with
the crucifix attached, to remind him of his Redeemer; his little vase of
shamrocks, to remind him of Ireland and St. Patrick; and his "Gospel of
St. John," and "Agnus Dei," to recall to his mind his dignity and
obligations as a believer in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and his
confidence in the Lamb of God who took away his sins. These constituted
all the riches and treasure of Eugene, and of these he was plundered and
stripped ere he was confined in the old deserted house that stood a few
rods away from the dwelling house, and where soon all the persecutions
he suffered were terminated.

One evening in October, the team of Mr. Gulvert broke loose from the
post to which they were tied while he was at meeting, and, taking
fright, rushed along at full speed on a narrow by-road by the river that
ran through the village, till, coming in contact with the root of a tree
that protruded from the road, the horses and wagon were precipitated
over a fall of some twenty feet into the channel of the river beneath.
As the night was dark, and the road the animals took in their furious
course was not known, it was not till next morning that the fate of the
team was discovered, though not only Gulvert himself, but his hired
help, including his servant girl and wife even, were out all night on
the search for them.

If the most unexpected calamity had visited these _enlightened_
Christians--if two of their children, instead of two of their horses,
had met with a sudden death,--their grief could not be more heartrending
or despairing than on this occasion. The whole family was in an uproar.
There were wringing of hands, lamentable cries, and bewailings the most
bitter, of the death of the best team in the town of Greenditch. The
very children, down to the youngest of six years old, joined their tears
to those of their parents and the adult members of the family. Not a
wink was slept, not a morsel of victuals cooked, nor even a fire kindled
in Mr. Culvert's house that night, and it was more than a week before
the pious Mrs. Gulvert could be consoled or prevailed on to show herself
down stairs. She was either really sick, or affected sickness, so that
it was doubted whether or not she could survive the loss of her "darling
team." O, what a loss was there! "The team would fetch two hundred
dollars between two brothers, and it was only last month the new wagon
cost seventy or eighty dollars; and all now gone."

"What a misfortune that I went out to hear that preacher at all on the
Sabbath!" said Gulvert. "Had I remained at home, or walked down to
meeting, I would be three hundred dollars richer to-day than I am now."

"Pa, where were the two Paddies, Pete and Bill, that they did not mind
the team while you were in meeting?" said young Harry.

"Hang the cusses, Harry! They wanted to hear the preacher, too,"
answered the father.

"If I were you, pa," said little Libby, "I would keep the price of the
hosses out of Pete and Bill's wages, the ugly fellows, that did not mind
and keep the team from running away."

"That would be but sarving 'em right, Lib," said her mother, heaving a
sigh.

"Yes, wife," said Gulvert, "that I would gladly do; but you know they
are in my debt. I will be glad enough if they wait to work out the money
that I have advanced them."

"You didn't _advance_ them money, did you, Gulvert?" said his wife.

"Yes, I did that," said he, "by the advice of that old fool Parson
Waistcoat, who expected, as he succeeded in converting Pete and Bill
Kurney, that he would also convert the rest of their friends, if they
were out here from Popish Ireland."

"O Gulvert," said his better half, sobbing again anew, "you will kill
me! I cannot live with you, that is the amount of it! How dare you, sir,
lend money, or dispose, of my means, without first having consulted me!
I lay my death at your door!" she added, in a sharp, angry tone.

"Dear wife, don't blame me----"

"Away, old man!" she interrupted, "away, and leave me here to despair! I
fear I will never again leave this bed; and if I find myself able, I
shall never after spend a day in your house, but go back to my native
state, and take out a bill of divorce against a man who knows nothing
but to spend and squander the means of his family."

"O ma," said Libby, "do go away from father, the ugly fool, and I will
go with you, won't I?"

"He ain't nothing else, sis," said she, "but a poor ugly fool, a
shiftless, good-for-nothing old man. O, me! O, me! I could easily have
known that this would be the case, from the dreams I had for two
nights."

"I had a dream too, ma," said sis, who, though only going in her eighth
year, was perfectly well versed in all the arcana of the science of
interpretation. "I dreamed I saw you crying, ma," continued Lib, "and
that there was blood on the stairs, and all way up garret, and that
Shaw, my father, had spilt the blood all round."

"That's just it, sis," said her mother; "the blood signifies the death
of our 'darling team;' my crying is on account of them; and Shaw, the
fool, your father, was the cause of all this trouble, and that is why he
appeared to you to spill the blood. My dream was not so clear as yours,
but I could have guessed that something was going to be the matter."

Poor Gulvert was in great pain, in consequence, among other things, of
the oft-repeated threat of his wife to separate from him; and, to give
vent to his sorrowful reflections, he went up garret as quietly as he
could, and folding himself up in several heavy "comforters," or padded
quilts, he forgot his grief by falling into a sound sleep. Meantime Pete
and Bill Kurney, the two Irish converts of Parson Waistcoat, seeing
things in confusion, thought that now was the time for them to free
themselves forever from the hypocrisy, as well as bad board, of Mr.
Culvert; and, to add to the grief of Mrs. Gulvert, next morning they
were not to be had. These knowing fellows, hearing of Gulvert's
character, put themselves in his way, and being questioned as to the
nature of their doctrines, and finding them suitable to his taste, he
hired them, and brought them home to work on his farm. They not only
became "converts" during the first week in his house, but went to
meeting regularly, where they were complimented on their highmindedness
and independence in shaking off Popery, and got frequent chances to tell
their experience. Besides their hypocrisy, these were thorough
scoundrels; for they not only robbed their employer of the two hundred
dollars which he had advanced them to bring out their parents from the
old country, but in addition to this, and to the severity of the
punishments which their apostasy occasioned Eugene, these consummate
miscreants seduced the two sisters of Mr. Gulvert, one of them an old
maid, whom they imposed upon by their lying representations and profane
discourses. Here was a little more of the natural fruit of Mr. Gulvert's
great zeal for his sect. His two hired men were gone, without having
served one eighth of the two years they had agreed to work for the money
advanced to them; both his sisters, _pious things_, yielding to
temptation, were in a fair road to disgrace; and, to cap the climax of
the unfortunate man's guilt and remorse, Eugene O'Clery, neglected in
his prison in the old house, on the morning of All Saints' day, first of
November, was found dead on its damp floor! Yes, this spotless,
innocent, and almost infant but heroic confessor of Christ, after a
course of worse than pagan persecution continued for more than two
years, in the midst of legions of blessed spirits passed out of this
world, to add to the joy and glory of heaven by his heroic virtues. O ye
mock philanthropists, ye lovers, on the lip, of freedom of conscience,
where was your voice, where your sympathy, where your indignation, where
your meetings, speeches, and resolutions, when this Catholic child, this
destitute orphan, this noble son of Catholic Ireland, this spotless
confessor and glorious martyr of Christ, was being sacrificed, like his
divine Master, to the demon of cruel sectarianism? O, the blood of this
innocent Abel, of this infant martyr, shed by the cruel Herod of
Presbyterianism, will cry to Heaven for vengeance on your heads, and
bring a curse on your hypocrisy and dissimulation.

The news of Eugene's death, communicated by the servant maid, created a
sudden fear, but very little sympathy, in the brutal family of Mr.
Gulvert. Overwhelmed by the loss of their "darling team," and confounded
by the loss of the money which the mock converts succeeded in cheating
them of, they had neither tears nor sympathy to spare for such a trifle
as the death of a "little Papist child."

The servant girl, however, who was a Scotch lassie, called Jane McHardy,
cried bitterly over the death of the "poor orphan laddie," and, in
company with two neighboring workmen, or cotters, who _passed_ for
Protestant Irishmen, watched around the corpse all night, and on the
day of its interment in the pagan cemetery, situated in a barren corner
of Gulvert's farm, they lingered for a considerable time around the
spot, to the scandal of the religious people who assembled to take a
look at the "face of the dead," and who began to suspect that those two
pretended Protestants were Catholics in disguise. Their suspicions were
well founded, as their subsequent conduct proved; for the two cotters,
on the Sunday following Eugene's death, went to the meeting house for
the last time, where they, in giving their experience, boldly professed
themselves Catholics, asked pardon of the people for having deceived and
imposed on the public, inveighing, at the same time, against the system
of persecution and underhand proselytism that prevailed, and which
produced the death of Eugene O'Clery.

"Your ministers think they have great merit," said the Irish cotters,
whose names were Lee and Twohy, "when they succeed in causing a lax
Catholic to trample on every precept of his religion and to perjure
himself; but as God is just, and as those who counsel to evil partake of
its guilt, and will have to suffer its punishment, so will all the sins
that your minister's cruel advice led us to commit be laid to his charge
before the just tribunal of Christ."

After this speech, the two Irish Catholic cotters retired from the
meeting, and ever since these two men have proved, by their repentance,
zeal, humility, and perseverance, that, though they fell from the
external practice of their faith, they did so influenced by the evil
advice and misrepresentations of persons who took advantage of their
inexperience and poverty to lead them astray. They were gradually,
however, becoming reconciled to the hard life of hypocrisy and sin which
they were induced to enter on, and might have forever continued in the
reprobate path on which, in an evil hour, they walked, had not the cruel
martyrdom of the holy orphan child aroused them from their slumbers.
Thus, as of old, does the "blood of martyrs become the seed of new
Christians;" and thus is Erin, even in America, still true to her
Heaven-appointed destiny--which is, that of being a missionary and a
martyr in the new world as well as in the old.

CHAPTER XXI.

"Considerate, et videte si est dolor sicut dolor meus."
"Attend, and see if there be any sorrow like to my sorrow."

LAM. JER.

There was a complete suspension of the ordinary occupations on the farm
of Gulvert for near ten days, owing to the trials with which his family
was visited. The wife was still confined to her room, and continually
threatening her husband with the divorce, who, on his part, had no heart
to conduct the necessary work of his farm, he felt so dispirited at the
loss of his team and of the money out of which "his converts" had
tricked him. Add to this that there were very ugly rumors going the
round of the neighborhood in reference to the ill usage the little Irish
orphan met with. While he was living and in suffering, there was nobody
to sympathize with him or to say a word in his favor; but now, when that
sympathy could do him no good, according to the custom of modern
philanthropy, there was an abundance on hand, and the conduct of Shaw
Gulvert, as the agent of Parson Waistcoat, was censured by a thousand
tongues. This is characteristic of Protestant charity: when one is dying
of hunger, or forced to beg a crum of bread, she shuts her ears, and
points to the prison or poorhouse, as the only proper retreat for
whoever is compelled to commit the _sin_ of mendicity; but no sooner
does the victim of her own neglect or misdirected benevolence die, no
sooner is he out of the reach of all human relief, than the heralds of
Protestant charity gather round his tomb, to proffer their assistance,
aid, and liberality--like the Jews building the tombs of the prophets
put to death by their own malice.

This was the case in the instance here related. Some were for having the
body of the martyred Eugene exhumed, to see if there were any marks of
violence visible. Some proposed to raise a collection to have a monument
raised on his grave, and all unanimously condemned Gulvert's cruelty to
the "dear little child." What principally turned the current and force
of public opinion against Gulvert was, that he was impudent enough to go
and demand restitution of Parson Waistcoat, of the money that, on
account of his recommendation, he advanced to the runaway converts. And
the parson, to be revenged on Gulvert, on next meeting day called on the
congregation for their prayers, to save said Gulvert from the relapsing
gulf into which he had fallen. The parson, enraged at being held
accountable for the money lost by Gulvert, through his own "want of
godliness," as he termed it, and incensed on account of Gulvert's
declaration of deserting his church, held him up continually as a stray
sheep, and already, if not lost, far advanced on the broad way to
perdition. In the midst of this excitement, the progress of public
feeling against Gulvert was suddenly checked by the following
afflicting and sudden accidents.

The wife of Gulvert, being a Boston lady, of course was altogether in
favor of the Sons of Temperance; but, by some means or other, she
happened always to keep a little in the house for medicinal purposes. It
was well known, among the well informed, that this lady, having been
"jilted," or, in other words, deceived, by a merchant in her native
city, who promised to marry her, was subject to frequent melancholy
attacks, and on these occasions especially did she make use of
"medicinal brandy." She suffered from one of these periodical attacks
now, and, consequently, the medicinal glass was always within her reach.
On the small stand by her bed stood two tumblers, one containing the
medicinal "eau de vie," and the other was half full of vinegar.

She ordered Jane, on this fatal day, to pour a little laudanum into that
tumbler that contained the vinegar, to see if, by applying it to her
temples, it would not allay the terrible headache which she said had
tormented her. Instead of pouring the poison into the vinegar glass,
where would the Scotch Abigail empty the cruet but into the tumbler with
the brandy in it? Her mistress soon after quaffed off the liquor into
which the poisonous drug had been poured, and in an hour after she was a
lifeless corpse. This was not all; for, on the day of the funeral, young
Harry, Mr. Gulvert's son and heir, in order to show his devotion to his
beloved parent's remains, was all the morning busy in collecting flowers
with which to deck the room where she was laid in state, and,
attempting to reach a flower that grew out of the side of a deep,
deserted well, in the lower end of the garden, the little fellow fell in
and was drowned. "When the feet of them who buried" Mrs. Gulvert "were
at the door," they found out the corpse of Harry was at the bottom of
the well. It was a long time before any body could be induced to go into
that well, as well because it was very deep as on account of the
prevalent report in the neighborhood that Gulvert's father had killed a
negro and cast him into the well, with heavy weights attached to him.
After several unsuccessful attempts to raise the body, they at length
succeeded, by the aid and undaunted courage of a young man who was just
after riding up to the crowd, and who, on learning the cause of such a
gathering, generously volunteered to go into the well, notwithstanding
the hints he received from some of the bystanders that the "nigger" was
at the bottom. In a few minutes Paul O'Clery was at the bottom of the
"enchanted well," and, amid shouts of "Bravo!" and "Well done!" almost
instantly returned, with the lifeless body of little Harry in his arms.
But what's this that he finds tangled in the drowned child's hands? It
is surely the beads of his beloved mother, which she bequeathed as her
dying legacy to his youngest brother Eugene. How did it get into the
well? He trembled visibly as it struck his mind that possibly Eugene
might have fallen in too.

"Are you sure there is nobody else in?" said he to the bystanders.

"No, there ain't nobody else in," said Gulvert; "all we have left, now,
are around here."

"And how came this relic to get into the well?" said Paul. "I think I
saw this before."

"That? O, that's a toy that a young Papist orphan which we had used to
say his prayers on."

"And where is that orphan now? O, tell me, where is he? For God's sake
tell me, where is my beloved brother?" exclaimed Paul.

"He is dead."

"O, don't mock me, but tell me the truth. I assure you I am a brother of
the orphan child, Eugene O'Clery. What has become of him?"

"We do not joke, my young gentleman," said an aged man in the crowd.
"Your brother, the orphan you allude to, died suddenly on the night of
the first of this month, and was interred in yon mound on the second of
the month."

"O Lord! O Lord! grant me patience. O my brother! O Eugene! O beloved
child of our hearts! what has become of you? Did you die on your bed, or
meet with an accident? or how did these beads you loved so well come
into this horrid, pestiferous well? O, woe is me! Why did I ever let you
out of my sight? Why did I not remain in servitude and slavery, rather
than let you into the care of the cruel, false-hearted stranger? O
villanous deceiver! O infamous prevaricator! Parson Dilman, why did I
listen to your seductive promises?"

The reader may imagine, for we cannot adequately describe, the burden
of woe and grief which took possession of the soul of Paul when he found
that his darling brother, on whose account he suffered so much anxiety
and came such a distance, was gone forever from his sight. And when he
learned how he died; how, after countless tortures, by whippings, by
hunger, and by confinement, the delicate martyr of Christ was allowed to
perish on the damp floor of an old, deserted house; how he was deprived
of the memorials of his faith and country; how he was buried with as
little ceremony, and as much indifference, as if he had been an
irrational animal,--when he learned all these circumstances from the two
Irish cotters, Lee and Twohy, it took him to pray continually not to
yield to feelings of hatred and revenge.

A circumstance related to him, however, by the peasants, whose
hospitality Paul consented to avail himself of for a few days, served to
reconcile him to Eugene's fate, and to inspire him with the most exalted
sentiments of forgiveness and good will towards the murderers of his
brother. Every night since Eugene's burial a bright column of light was
seen rising from his tomb, and terminating in the heavens above, where
the column became gradually wider, till it became like a wide circle of
glory, similar to that which appears around the moon on a winter's
night, when the atmosphere is at the snowing temperature. In the centre
of the circle appeared a beautiful cross of most perfect proportions,
and so bright in the bright circle that it was perfectly dazzling, and
the sight could with difficulty be fixed on it for an instant.

This phenomenon was seen by the two Irish cotters frequently, and all
the neighbors around had observed the lower part of the column, but
concluded that it was phosphorus, which, they said, from some cause or
other, either the nature of the soil or from the bodies interred there,
ascended to the clouds, attracted by some atmospheric body there. Paul,
too, was blessed with this happy sight, but without indulging in the
gratification of a too curious or protracted observation of this vision;
and being fully convinced that it was no phosphoric combination of
natural phenomena, concluded to take off the body of his beloved
brother, and have it interred, in a Christian manner, in the same
consecrated tomb in which the remains of his father reposed. He was also
fortunate enough, by the payment of a liberal bonus, to succeed in
raising the body of his mother, whose tomb he was able to find out, by a
measurement which, on the day of her interment, he had made, and from
certain stones placed by him at the head of her coffin.

Thus, by the piety of a son and a brother, were the three bodies of
these members of this pious and renowned family united again after a
temporary separation. "Lovely and comely in their life, even in death
they were not divided." In a Catholic cemetery, in the vicinity of New
York, can now be seen a beautiful monument of Italian marble, with the
names, ages, and places of the nativity of Arthur O'Clery, and his wife
Cecilia, and their son Eugene, inscribed in a neat cruciform slab in one
of the faces of the monument. In another slab are carved, in "bold
relief," the little vase of shamrocks brought by the family from
Ireland, together with the _Rosary and Cross_, suspended from the hand
of the virgin holding the child. On the third square of the tomb is
conspicuous a figure of Erin, holding in her right hand a crucifix, and
with the left hand pointing it to her children, with the words, "_Sola
spes nostra, ubi crux ibi patria_"--"This is our only hope; wherever the
cross is honored, call that your country."

After having seen to the proper execution of all things in reference to
the tomb of his family, Paul O'Clery, with a heavy heart, returned to
acquaint his little brother Patrick and sister Bridget about the fate of
Eugene. He did not forget, however, before quitting the last
resting-place of his parents and brother, to have the grave fenced round
with a neat iron rail; and fixing all inside the fence in the form of
two pretty flower beds, he, with his own hands, carefully planted the
roots of the shamrocks which were brought from Ireland, and which he
luckily found in Mr. Gulvert's kitchen garden, where they had been
thrown, after having been taken from Eugene. And to this very day these
shamrocks flourish--neither frost, nor cold, nor parching heat, nor
inclement seasons being able to retard their growth; as if their verdure
and flourishing vegetation were supplied from the pure and genuine
Irish clay to which the bodies of the three O'Clerys have been long
since reduced.

Paul now saw his people reduced by more than one half. When they left
Ireland, they were seven in number; now they were only three. He was too
well trained in Christian resignation, however, to repine at what
evidently appeared to him the dispensation of Heaven. After the example
of holy Job, therefore, he praised the Lord, to whom, if he deprived him
of his good parents, he was also indebted for being placed under the
care of such patterns of virtue. These several trials, and the
consequent distractions in which they involved him, made him more
disgusted than ever with the world; and his desire to consecrate himself
to God in the holy priesthood became stronger and stronger every day.
The Almighty seemed to have some special mission in view for this
spotless child of St. Patrick, when his mercy had conducted him, like
the children in the fiery furnace, so early through such meritorious
trials and sufferings, as it requires the most faithful correspondence
with grace to endure, and it falls to the lot of a few to encounter.

The end of all his difficulties and trials had now arrived. From this
day forward the breeze that bore him along in his ecclesiastical voyage
became fairer and fairer, till, advancing from virtue to virtue, and
honor to honor, he became the glory of the church, and exercised such
influence on the destinies of his countrymen and of those committed to
his charge, that he might adopt the language of Joseph to his brethren:
"God hath sent me before you into Egypt, that you may be preserved on
the earth, and have _food to live_." (Gen. xlv. 7.) But this is
anticipating what naturally should have its place at the conclusion of
our narrative.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE DESERTED HOME OF THE ORPHANS.

"Now," said Murty O'Dwyer, one Sunday evening, as all the members of the
Prying family were seated around the tea table, "will any body doubt the
usefulness of confession? The very robber who, while under the influence
of drink and evil advice, plundered the widow O'Clery and her orphans of
their money, has returned from the scorching plains of the south, in
obedience to the advice of the priest to whom he confessed, to make
restitution; and he has made it."

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