Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  This prank that he was going to play on the devil made him as happy as a lark, until at last he began to say to himself: the year wastes after July, and I wish God would give me my chance before the year is out. He hadn’t forgotten that the devil came to him looking like a woman; and he was real vexed to think he had gone after her, for he wasn’t sure by any means that he had the rosary in mind at the time. It was just curiosity, that’s what it was, he muttered to himself, on his way to his favourite seat under the oak. Still, and all the same he was bothered and vexed, for his thoughts were like a swarm of bees in his head the way he couldn’t tell himself what he was thinking about, one thought flying away and another one coming into his head at the same moment, so that there was never such a going and a coming in this world before. At one moment it was the great reward he would be gaining in heaven, and the minute after it was the great punishment he would be getting in purgatory, or singeing and grizzling on the hob of hell, for mind you, Scothine was not sure at all that if the devil had come along with horns and hooves, and a nose like a chimney, all smoke and smuts, and his tail hanging out, that he would have been so anxious to get up and go after him the way he went after the woman. I might have let my liver drop out of me with the fright, he said to himself, and I wasn’t frightened a bit. How was that now? Why was it, said he, that I stood all up and down like a poplar-tree to look at a woman with her clothes off? He used to keep his eyes sideways and baw-ways when he was talking to a woman, the way he wouldn’t see her, even if it was his own mother.... Yet the memory of this woman’s larky eye, and the two breasts lifting out of her, could not be rooted out of his mind anyhow, nor the memory of her backside, that was like a great white mushroom, as she vanished away through the willows. But the breasts were better in his memory than all the rest of her, and maybe it’s the breasts is the part a man has to struggle against if he wants to get the old soul safe for an eternity of happiness: God above the lot; Jesus on the right-hand side, his blessed mother on the left, and all the angels parading around, and they having the great time.

  While he was thinking these things he heard a splash in the water, and there he saw a girl with a pair of the finest tits a man could wish to be looking at. Scothine, thinking the devil had come back to him, felt in his girdle for the holy water and the rosary, which was to make the devil get into his own shape. He got hold of both these weapons against the Evil One, and he stole down to the edge of the river and made ready. Faith and troth, said he, that’s not the devil, bad luck to it, but it’s the eldest daughter of the female that lives in the cottage at the bend of the river. Up he lepped again on the bank and away with him to the ford, stepping gingerly over the stones, as a man must on his way to salvation, fearing he would be drowned before he was saved. Now, says he, to the woman who was feeding her pigs, leave feeding the pigs, let the pigs be, for I’ve come to talk to you about a thing that’s more important than pigs. Sure, I can be listening to you while I’m throwing the food to the animals, and they ready to eat their own ourbeens off with the hunger, she said. Well, said Scothine, for there was nothing in his head but the idea of how to get a soft seat in heaven, a red and golden chair, with a doeskin pad filled with goose feathers: is there another redheaded girl in the parish beyond your own daughter? There is not, she answered, not one with a head of hair like that head. She’s in the river, said Scothine. She is so, said the woman, since the dawn of day, leaving me to do the work; she and her sister, as big an idler as herself, the pair of straps; up and down, and in and out of the same river they do be going, splashing about all the summer-time as if it was ducks they was, and not Christian females. It’s a great loss to me, the bathing. Did they go and interrupt your Reverence, and they splashing, for if that’s what you’ve come about, I’ll give them a leathering when they come home, and it won’t happen the second time. It isn’t that, Scothine answered, that I’ve come to talk to you about, but to tell you this, that your daughter has a pair of breasts on her would raise great temptation in a man. That’s the truth itself, the woman said; they’re the fullest I’ve ever known on a girl of her age, as I’m always telling the clergy that comes here seeking a temptation. Is that the way it is? said Scothine. There’s them have been after her before me. But which of them has that right to lie with her as I have earned myself by such terrible fastings and prayers in more woods and wildernesses than you could reckon on your fingers and toes? Who has a better right? Will you tell me that now? That much I’ll say for myself, so you may send her to me, and to no one else. Why should I send her to you, more than to another? Distracted I am and moidhered with people asking for the loan of my daughters to be a temptation to the flesh, and it all comes from the sporting and tumbling they do be going on with in the river. I’ll put a stop to it. I will so. They won’t see water again as long as they live; they will not. My good woman, Scothine answered, don’t be forgetting that it was God put the breasts on the women. Are you telling me that? said she. And what do you think he planted them there for? For she was one of them who wasn’t backward in coming forward, even to the priests. For the suckling of babes, I always thought, but to listen to yourself —

  It was for that surely, Scothine interrupted, and for more than that; for, let you deny it if you dare, that God in his wisdom knew about the temptation they might be before the children came, and what I’ve come for is to ask you to let me have the loan of your daughter to lie with me, for, from the peep that I had through the bushes, her breasts are just the ones that might awaken the devil in me, if there’s any devil left in me.

  Woman is the temptation of the temptations, so I’ve heard, not from knowledge, mind you, having been busy till now with the conquest of my belly; all temptations rise out of the belly, the woman as well as the victual and the drink. The pleasure of food and drink I’ve passed and done with, for I live on water-grass from the spring and oak balls from the oaks, as well as you do yourself with the meat and the mead. Plain water I drink without as much as a wish rising in me for a slug of ale. Nor are the scourgings and weltings I give myself any use; my flesh doesn’t heed them, and the man who would scourge yells out of me one time has left the country; gone he is, and here am I without a temptation to my name unless you let your daughter lie with me; you won’t get out of it yourself, my good woman, unless you send her to me, mind you that; for it is on me you’ve got to reckon to be readying your place in heaven for you. And, said he, if I get lazy and lob around with my burn on a warm stone, I’ll be in purgatory for my sins after you are dead yourself, and what’s going to intercede for you or to bother their brains about you at all. Get me to heaven as quick as it can be managed, or maybe you’ll howl in hell like a dog with hot water on his tail.

  You’re a great saint, Father Scothine, said the woman; you are so, and high enough will you be perched up in the kingdom of heaven without making a step-ladder of my daughter’s two breasts. ’Tis on my shoulders you and your daughters will be hoisted up, that’s the way it is, each one helping the other and the priests helping the most. You’re wiser, I’m thinking, about the way to get a crown on your head than I could be, that have never known anything but a handerchief tied under my chin, but I’ll not be giving my daughter to lie with you. I will not; and there I leave it. God knows what might happen to her in a sudden weakness such as we’re all liable to, and it in the blood. Now, my good woman, I’m not sure if you’re thinking about me or about your daughter. I think the thoughts are in my own head, and this I say, Father Scothine, that the sin is the same to the one that is atop as to the one that is below. You might be in the right of it, Scothine answered humbly, for he was one of those men who think the next one to him is wiser than himself, and to escape from the persecution of his thoughts, which were about him again like a swarm of bees, he turned away. Don’t be in that much of a hurry, the woman cried after him. My curse on the bathing in the river, but I’ll give you your chance the way we’ll all get to heaven. Wouldn’t it do you as well to lie between my two daughters
? They would be keeping each other company in the temptations and helping each other to make it hot for you, and to keep out of it themselves. Ah, said Scothine, you’re cutting my danger in two halves, and I the sort that likes to feel the bones and the brunt of the business, but since it cannot be, send me the pair of them to-night, and I’ll have them again on Saturday week, and every Saturday from this on, if I feel the strength in me to stand temptation. Not a sparrow is hatched in the nest but the Lord provides food for it, and he will provide me with strength once a week to resist and hold out and get over the temptation. Send the pair of them to me at the close of day. Well, said the woman, when the priest was out of sight, heaven must be a great place, since a man has to go through all the fastings and prayers that Father Scothine has been through, and now he’s putting his head into a noose.

  I must be telling Dare and Lalloc not to pull that noose too tight, or by this and by that, with breasts like Dare’s even him that feeds upon water-grass and nuts, like a pet lamb, might be learning the tricks of a buck goat, and who knows that my girl might not fall in with him just at the right time, and then there would be the devil to pay surely. But whichever way we look, danger there is, and the saint must have his temptations; he must indeed; he refused a shoulder of kid last week; he’d refuse anything, that man would.

  As soon as her girls came up from their dipping she instructed them: they were to lie with the saint on Saturday night for the good of his soul, and as we are walking to Mass, says she, you’ll be telling me what happened to you, without forgetting anything, or I’ll break both your backs. Without forgetting as much as a nod or a wink, they answered her, and the story they told of the great fight the saint put up against temptation was so wonderful that she sent them up every Saturday night to him. And in this way Scothine rose every Sunday morning from his bed greater in the eyes of the Lord than the night before.

  But you know, sir, there are bad tongues wagging everywhere, and when the news of the saint’s martyrdom, and of miracles performed by him and the girls themselves, who came in to him with red coals in their bibs, the coals not scorching them at all, reached the Bishop, he began to scratch his head and to think he must try and put a stop to the talking. He sent his chaplain, one Brenainn.

  Can you tell me, Alec, what sort of man the chaplain was? I’d like to have the two priests before my eyes. Sure I can, Alec answered blithely. He was a spongy little man, with eyes like sloes, and great red lips that he kept licking with a big coarse tongue all the while. You could hear him licking, for he licked with a click, setting Scothine against him at first. But he was a friendly fellow, and the friendliness in his heart couldn’t be held back. And he was a merry chap too, so these qualities made up for the looks which were against him, and it wasn’t long before Scothine began to feel that life was lying easier upon him. The sun was shining into the room, and the sweet air, going and coming in and out of the half-door and Brenainn was telling so pleasantly that the Bishop didn’t believe the report, but would like to have it from Scothine direct that he didn’t lie every night between two girls with pointed breasts.

  Not every night surely, for the man isn’t alive in Ireland that could be without his night’s rest all through the week, and he in pain, in restlessness, and in such discomfort that I cannot put words on it, Brenainn. It is only the Mass I say on Sunday gives me the courage to bear up at all. So that is the story I’m to carry home to the Bishop? Brenainn said. That’s the tale, and the story, and the truth. The truth is sometimes hard to believe, Brenainn answered; but, my dear Scothine, I do not doubt a word of it, and getting it from yourself, but those that get it from me — What will they be saying? Scothine answered. But what matters it what they will be saying if I’m winning a place in heaven for myself? And let you be doing the same, Brenainn, this night of all nights, and God giving you the chance. Not a sparrow falls without his will, well you know it. It was for this you were sent here, to lie between two girls with pointed breasts. Why not, he continued, if thereby you please God? Aren’t we here for that? Brenainn turned his eyes from Scothine. You’re not saying anything, Scothine said. And Brenainn, who did not wish to be behindhand, or to show himself a coward before Scothine, replied: well, since you say there are two, I’ll try it, and with the help of God I’ll come out on the right side of the bed. Brave words are these, Scothine answered, but mind you, Brenainn, her breasts are round and white, for all the world like little mushrooms come up in the night at the ring of day, and her backside like a big one; and he kept on telling of her temptations, not to make himself out a great man for having overcome them but to frighten Brenainn, for though Scothine was the gentlest of human beings there was malice at the bottom of the box, and he enjoyed the fear that he was reading all the time on Brenainn’s face while he kept the talk going, asking Brenainn if there was any word in his parish about Brian Boni, who had come out of the forest with a remnant of his followers to redeem Ireland from the Danes. But it doesn’t much matter to the story I’m telling what their talk was about. As likely as not it was stray talk, that people drop into when they have something else on their minds, and it went on until each felt he wouldn’t be able to bear it much longer.

  So it was a relief to both when the girls poked their heads through the half-door. But when they saw Father Brenainn up went their eyebrows, and round they popped, and away with themselves. Scothine called after them, but they were half-way across the field, and he had to pick up his cassock and go after them. You would run away, would you? You would leave a holy man without his temptation, you would do that? he was saying, as he brought them in. Sure we didn’t know, Father, the girls cried out; and let go our ears, or we’ll never give you a tempt again. Now sit you down, will you, and I’ll give you a news will surprise the pair of you. How would you like to hear that the talk going round is that the three of us are living together in sin? Would they say the like? the girls yelped out together. Aren’t there the wicked people to say the like of that, and we giving up all fun and diversion and breaking our backs to get here every Saturday night, and getting pains in our heads trying to torment yourself the way God may be pleased, and you holding yourself in? It’s no work for a girl, or a pair of girls; it is not, and God knows it. That sounds like the truth, don’t it? Scothine asked Brenainn. It does so, said Brenainn. That has the ring. I’m satisfied with that. And my little sister too, said Dare. Let you Lalloc here be telling the truth to the Bishop’s legate, about the temptations we’ve been giving to Father Scothine, and how hard put we were to keep them up and we wanting to go asleep. There’s no need for her to tell him, said Scothine, for you’ll be lying with him this night instead of with myself, and I’ll back you to give him as good as you give me, and good you gave it. We’ll do that surely, the girls replied. Isn’t it plain to you now, Brenainn, that they are talking out of their own mouths and not out of mine? It’s plain, Brenainn answered; it is plain. And he said he wished he was as sure of heaven as Scothine, but that he wasn’t a bit sure, and he would have been out of the house and away on the minute if Scothine hadn’t got a grip of his arm. The Bishop mightn’t believe you, said Scothine; he might say, or there’s them might say it for him, that we’d been fooling you up to the two eyes. Lie with the girls tonight; do the deed the way I did it, for only in that way can we keep our characters in this world of the tongues, and be straight with the Bishop. Out of your own sight and hearing, said Dare; and, wiping her eyes, Lalloc repeated: the only fair way, your Reverence. If you don’t our characters will be lost for ever, and a girl without her character has no chance in life.