Part 6

Hugh's bondage and suffering had made him neither cringing nor cruel, and his freedom had come in time to permit the full development of a large and generous heart in a robust and healthy body. In his simplicity of heart he prevailed on Alice to invite her friends to meet him. He would soon remove their dislike with regard to his religion. Under the impulse of his enthusiasm he thought he could disarm prejudice by a frank and open avowal of his absolute indifference to all religions.

Nothing, perhaps, in the whole history of the Brontes exceeded in interest that meeting. A dozen wily Ulster Catholics gathered round simple-hearted Hugh Bronte in Paddy McClory's kitchen. How the Orange champions would have trembled for the Protestant cause if they had been aware of Hugh's danger!

The preliminary salutations over, a black bottle was produced, and a glass of whiskey handed round. Hugh had never learned to drink whiskey, and, at that time, detested the very smell of it. His refusal to drink with McClory's friends was a first ground of offence, but the whiskey had not yet brought the drinkers into the quarrelsome mood.

When several bottles of McClory's whiskey had been drunk, and the temperature of the guests had risen, the religious question was approached. Bronte was urged, in peremptory tones, to abjure Protestantism. He had his answer ready. He was no more a Protestant than they were, and he had no Protestantism to abjure. "Will you then curse King William?" said a fiery little man, who had taken much liquor, and seemed to be the spokesman of the party.

There is a principle in human nature which has been taken far too little account of by both philosophers and peasants. It has been the dominant principle in many of the important decisions that have sealed the fate of nations as well as of individuals. The principle is expressed by a word which is always pronounced in one way by the cultured, and in quite a different way by the unlettered. The word in its illiterate use is "contr_air_yness," and but for the principle expressed by this word the Bronte girls would never have made their mark in literature, and this history would never have been written.

"Curse King William," shouted the fiery little man, supported by a hoarse shout from the other half-tipsy guests, all of whom had turned fierce and glaring eyes on the supposed Protestant.

"I cannot curse King William," replied Hugh, smiling. "He never did me any harm; besides, he is beyond the region of my blessings and cursings. But," added he, warming with his subject, "I should not mind cursing the Pope, if he is the author of your fierce and besotted religion."

Alice first saw the danger, and uttered a sharp cry. Suddenly the family party sprang upon Hugh, as the ambushed Philistines once flung themselves on Samson, but he shook them off, and left them sprawling on the floor. Alice drew him from the house, bleeding and disheveled, and after a tender parting in the grove beside the stream, he started on foot for Mount Pleasant.

Two immediate results followed that conflict. Hugh Bronte became a furious Protestant and a frantic lover. There was no lukewarmness or indifference as to his Protestantism. The Bronte _contrairyness_ had met the kind of opposition to give it a stubborn set, and he there and then became a Protestant, double-dyed, in the warp and in the woof. The process of his conversion, such as it was, was prompt, decisive, effectual. It was somewhat orange in hue and militant in fibre, and was a genuine product of the times.

Hugh's love for Alice was fanned into a fierce flame by the events of that night. When he first met her he had been dazzled by her rare beauty. He had seen few women, and never one like Alice. For the first time he had come under the spell of a simple but beautiful girl. They were young, shy lovers; very happy in each other's company, but each sufficiently self-possessed to be happy enough in self.

From the crucible of contradiction on that night the jewel love had leaped forth. Each was drawn out from the self-centre in which each had been concentrated in self; he to declare his love in the face of relentless foes, and she to cling to him, and protect him, when bruised and torn by her friends. Beneath the pines, that night, they pledged, with mingling tears, undying love. They parted, but their hearts were one; and persecution, poverty and bereavement only welded them more closely together in the changing years.

III. LOVE'S SUBTERFUGES.

Hugh returned to the Mount Pleasant kilns, but his heart was no longer in his work. The burning of lime requires incessant care. The limestones must be broken to a proper size, layers of coal in due proportion must be added, and there must be constant watchfulness lest the fires should die out. Farmers' sons and servants started generally from County Down about midnight, and after traveling all night arrived at the kilns for their loads about dawn. A badly burnt kiln of lime was a grave loss to the owners, as well as a serious disappointment to the customers, and likely to result in loss of custom.

There were many complaints as to the character of the lime immediately after Christmas, and the farmers on several occasions found, on slaking their loads at home, that only the surface of the stones was burnt, and that they had paid for, and imported, heaps of raw limestone.

Hugh's thoughts were not in his business. He had made several Sunday journeys to Ballynaskeagh, to have secret meetings with Alice. They met in the grove by the brook, in a spot still pointed out as the "Lovers' Arbor" or "Courting Bower," and there, under willows festooned with ivy and honeysuckle and sweetbriers, they spent lonely but happy Sundays.

They were at last betrayed by a Catholic servant who had been intrusted with a message to Alice. Then began a system of espionage and petty persecution, and all the forces of the McClory clan were united in an effort to compel Alice to marry a Catholic neighbor, called Joe Burns.

At this time Hugh began to learn to read and write, and he succeeded so far, by the light from the eye of the kiln at night, as to be able to write love letters which Alice was able to read. He also, about the same time, succeeded in spelling his way through the New Testament.

Like many other professions, a lime-kiln is a jealous mistress, and requires constant attentions. Young Bronte brought to it a divided mind, and gave it the second place in his thoughts. He was constantly leaving the kilns in the care of a companion on Saturday evenings and making long journeys to see Alice, returning on Monday morning, after a fatiguing night's journey. At first his companions did all they could to make up for his absence and absent-mindedness; but a change came, and they did their best to throw the light of exaggeration on his deficiencies.

News had reached them from the North that he was a Protestant firebrand, that he had cursed the Pope, and made a savage attack on some harmless Catholics. At the kilns his manner had changed, and he had become moody and morose. Besides, he was constantly reading a little book by the light of the burning lime at night, instead of telling stories and singing songs, as in former times. The book was said to be the Bible, but it was in fact a New Testament that he was learning to read.

A plot was immediately hatched to get rid of so dangerous a colleague. One of the Catholics undertook, as usual, to look after the kilns while he made an expedition to County Down; but he not only failed to charge the kilns properly, but he sent for the owner on Monday morning early, that he might see for himself the condition of things. The northern carts arrived by dawn, to find that there was nothing for them but unburnt lime. While the matter was being explained Hugh arrived, haggard and weary after his night's journey, and was peremptorily dismissed, without any explanation from either side being tendered or accepted.

I have no record of Hugh's proceedings immediately after his dismissal, but he must have been reduced to considerable straits, for he went to the hiring ground in Newry, and engaged himself, as a common servant-boy, to a farmer who resided in Donoughmore. As a farm laborer in those days he would receive about six pounds per annum, with board and lodging; but then he was near his Alice, and that made every burden light.

Hugh's new master, James Harshaw, was not an ordinary farmer. The Harshaws had occupied the farm from early in the fifteenth century, and James, who had received the education of a gentleman, had behind him the traditions of an old and respectable family. In the Harshaw home shrewd and steady industry was brightened by culture and refinement. The wheel of fortune had brought Hugh Bronte into a family where mental alacrity had full play.

Bronte seems to have been treated with consideration and kindness by the Harshaws, who probably recognized in him something superior to the ordinary farm servant. At any rate, in those days the walls of class distinction were not raised so high as they are now, and the Harshaw children taught him to read.

Hugh was much with the family. He drove them to Donoughmore Presbyterian Meeting House on Sundays, and sat with them in their pew, and he accompanied them to rustic singing parties, and such local gatherings. He used also to drive them in the summer time to Warrenpoint and Newcastle, and other watering-places, and remain with them as their attendant.

In such treatment of a servant there was nothing unusual, and Mr. John Harshaw, the present proprietor of the ancestral home, has no very decisive information regarding this particular servant. He says, "The probability is that Hugh Bronte hired with my grandfather, whose land touched the Lough, but I fear it is too true that he passed through my grandfather's service and left no permanent record behind him."[1]

I think it is more than probable that Bronte repaid his young masters and mistresses for their teaching, by telling them stories. Under Harshaw's roof he found not only work and shelter, but a home and comfort, and it is inconceivable that under those circumstances he allowed the gift that was in him, of charming by vivid narration, to lie dormant.

As long as he lived he spoke of the Harshaws with gratitude and affection, and I do not believe he could have been so glad and happy without contributing to the general enjoyment.

In the latter part of last century, the _raconteur_ occupied the place in Ireland now taken by the modern novelist, and I believe Hugh Bronte dropped doctrines into the minds of the young Harshaws which produced far-reaching results. Such was the fixed conviction of my old teacher, the Reverend W. McAllister.

It happened that the Martins, another ancient family, lived quite near to the Harshaws. The land of the two families enclosed Loughorne round. The Martins were rich and slightly aristocratic, but the two families were thrown much together, and Samuel Martin, the son of the one house, married Jane Harshaw, the daughter of the other.

She was a deeply religious and resolute woman, with a stern sense of duty. One of her nephews tells me she always conducted family worship after the death of her husband. She died of a fever, caught while ministering to the dying, in accordance with her high sense of Christian duty. Her life was given for others, and, at her funeral, the Reverend S. J. Moore said: "She was a woman who knew her duty and did it."

Her second son, John Martin, inherited his mother's great mental capacity and strong sense of duty. At school, in Newry, he met young John Mitchel, and inspired him with something of his own enthusiasm, and the two youths came to the conclusion that it was their duty to put right Ireland's wrongs. John Mitchel was sent to penal servitude for fifteen or twenty years, and then John Martin stepped into the place vacated by his friend, and was transported to Van Diemen's Land for ten years.

The conviction of "honest John Martin" gave a blow to the old system in Ireland from which it has never recovered. Even his enemies were shocked at the ferocity of the sentence; but then he had written a pamphlet under the text: "_Your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate._" (Isaiah, i. 7.) He had proclaimed from the housetops Hugh Bronte's tenant-right doctrines, of which more anon. He had attacked the sacred rights of landlordism, and he was sent to a safe and distant place for quite a different offence, called treason felony.

John Martin was a man of large property, but he devoted his life and all his income to what he considered the good of others.

He had taken his B.A. degree at Trinity College, Dublin, and studied medicine, and for many years he gave advice and medicine gratuitously to all who came to him. The poor were passionately attached to him.

I remember seeing him and speaking to him once, after he had received a free pardon, and become a member of parliament. No one could have looked on the great, capacious head, and the handsome, benevolent face, without questioning the system that had no better use for such a man than sending him to rot in penal servitude. Lord Palmerston beheld the ex-convict with profound admiration, and expressed deep sympathy with him as the victim of a bad system.

John Martin preached and suffered for the very doctrines that Hugh Bronte enunciated with such passionate conviction. Where did he get those doctrines? I have a profound belief, though I have no positive proofs, that John Martin's beliefs and principles grew from seeds sown by Hugh Bronte, the servant boy. In this belief the Reverend W. McAllister and the Reverend David McKee shared, or, rather, my faith has grown from their convictions.

Jane Harshaw, however she got them, carried the doctrines into the Martin family. They mingled with and strengthened her strong sense of duty, and they added passion to her lust after justice and the thing that was right. With her son John, the feeling of obligation to break the ban of Ireland's curse became irresistible. He was dowered with an inexhaustible grace of pity for all sufferers, and the impulse to redress the wrongs of the oppressed overpowered him and led him to acts of impatience and imprudence, which gave his cool-headed enemies the opportunity they were ready enough to embrace. But the revolutionary doctrines for which John Martin suffered came from the same seed that produced Charlotte Bronte's radical sentiments, and it is interesting to note that in both cases the seed produced its fruit about the same period (1847-1848).

I must now leave these historical speculations, however plausible and probable they may be, and return to the direct narration of known facts.

Hugh Bronte had disappeared forever from the Mount Pleasant kilns. Those who had plotted his dismissal exaggerated every foible of his life, and invented others, after he was gone, until, by a spiteful blending of fact and fancy, they made him into a monster.

The farmers' sons and servants who carted lime from Mount Pleasant to County Down brought with them wonderful tales of his misdeeds and disgrace. And Alice McClory's guardians believed that he had disappeared forever into the distant South, from whence he had emerged. They never suspected that he was actually living in their neighborhood, and that he and Alice had met at Warrenpoint, Newcastle, and elsewhere.

[1] As we shall see, the parish records of Hugh's marriage and Patrick's baptism are both lost, and though Patrick was schoolmaster in Glascar Presbyterian school, and in Drumgooland Episcopalian school, he has left no permanent record behind him in either place. Records in those days were ill-kept.

IV. THE ELOPEMENT.

Under restraint, Alice had drooped and pined, but now that Bronte had left the country she was permitted to ride about the neighborhood quite alone. She enjoyed horse exercise greatly, but no matter in what direction she left home her way lay always through Loughorne. Perhaps the roads were better in that direction, but she always exchanged salutations with a handsome working-man, by the expanse of water in Loughorne. When he was not about she used very humanely to take her horse down to the lake to drink, and from a hole in an old tree she used to remove a scrap of paper, leaving something instead. The tree used to be pointed out as "Bronte's post-box," but the lake has recently been drained, and the trees have, I believe, disappeared.

Everything that could be done was done, to please Miss McClory, but no opportunity was missed to further Farmer Burns's suit. He was a prosperous man. He had a good farm, a good house, plenty of horses and cows, and was a very desirable husband for Alice. He was also a Catholic. Bronte had shown that he did not care for her by going away, and never thinking of her more. The priest joined with Alice's female friends in pleading for Burns. At length, by incessant perseverance, they prevailed on her to consent to marry Burns, and forget Bronte. The incessant drip had made an impression at last, and the crafty relatives had gained their end.

There was joy in the Catholic camp when it was publicly announced that Miss McClory and Mr. Burns were soon to be married. McClory's house was thatched anew, and whitewashed and renovated throughout. The roses were nailed up around the windows; the street was strewn with fresh sand; new window-blinds and bed-curtains were provided, and pots and pans were burnished. Never before had McClory's house been subjected to such an outburst of sweeping and brushing and washing and scouring; the whole place became redolent of potash and suds. It was spring cleaning _in excelsis_.

The local dressmaker, Annie McCabe, whose granddaughter, of the same name, is now dressmaker in the same place, assisted by Miss McClory's female relatives, was busily engaged on the bridal dress. Burns used to look in daily on the incessant preparations, his countenance beaming with joy, but Alice would not permit him to destroy the pleasures of imagination by approaching near to her. She would lift her finger coyly, and warn him off, if he presumed on any familiarities, but she allowed him to sit on the other side of the fire from that graced by herself.

At length the wedding-day arrived. Such signs of feasting had never before been seen in Ballynaskeagh. New loaves had been procured from Newry, fresh beef from Rathfriland, whiskey from Banbridge. A great pudding, composed of flour and potatoes, and boiled for many hours over a slow fire, with hot coals on the lid of the oven, had been prepared. Two of the largest turkeys had been boiled, and laid out on great dishes with an abundant coating of melted butter, and a huge roll of roasted beef was served up as a burnt offering. Signs of abundance stood on table and dresser and hob, while rows of bottles peeped from behind the window-curtains; and neither envy nor spite could say that Red Paddy McClory was not providing a splendid wedding for his sister. The morning rose glorious, and, as the custom then was, Burns and his friends, mounted on their best horses, raced to the house of the bride "_for the broth_," first in being the winner. On such occasions crowds of neighbors crowned the hilltops. The cavalcade was greeted with ringing cheers, as it swept in a cloud of dust down the road from the Knock Hill. Several riders were unhorsed, but the steeds arrived in McClory's court, champing their bits and covered with foam. A covered car from Newry stood near the house, on the road, to take Alice to the chapel, but she was to ride away from the chapel mounted on the pillion, behind her husband.

There was an unexpected pause; no one knew why. Some dismounted and stood by their stirrups, ready to mount when the bride had entered her carriage. Glasses of whiskey were handed round, and then the pause became more awkward and the suspense more intense. At last it became known that Alice, who had been up nearly all night finishing her new gowns, had felt weary, and fitting on her wedding dress, had gone out on her mare for a spurt, to shake off drowsiness. Messengers were sent in different directions to search for her, but they had not returned. Some accident must have befallen her.

Burns, who rode a powerful black horse, and who had won the broth, galloped off wildly towards Loughbrickland. The other cavaliers scoured the country in different directions; but, while all kinds of surmises were being hazarded, a messenger on foot from Banbridge, with dainties for the feast, arrived, and reported that he had met Miss McClory and a tall gentleman galloping furiously toward the river Bann, near Banbridge. There was great excitement among the guests, and whiskey and strong language without measure. After a hurried consultation the mounted guests agreed to pursue the fugitives and bring Miss McClory back; but, while they were tightening their girths and getting ready for a gallop of five or six miles, a boy rode up to the house on the mare that had been ridden by Alice, bearing a letter to say she had just been married to Hugh Bronte in Magherally church. She sent her love and grateful thanks to her brother, hoped the party would enjoy the wedding dinner, and begged them to drink her health as Mrs. Bronte.

The plucky manner in which the lady had carried out her own plan, outwitting the coercionists by her own cleverness, called forth admiration in the midst of disappointment, and the cheery message touched every heart. The calamity that had befallen Burns did not weigh heavily on the hearts of the guests, in presence of the splendid dinner before them, and especially as it was now clear that the lady was being forced to marry him against her will.

At this juncture the kind and courteous old priest rose, and with great skill and good-humor talked about the events of the day. He brought into special prominence the humorous and heroic episode in a manner that appealed to the chivalry of his hearers, and then, with tender pathos, referring to the beautiful daughter of the house, called upon the guests to drink her health. The toast was responded to with a hearty ringing cheer. Burns, who has left a good reputation behind him, promptly proposed prosperity to the new-married couple, and Red Paddy, always kind and generous, promised to send the united good wishes of the whole party to the bride and bridegroom, and to assure them of a hearty welcome, in which the past would be forgotten. Paddy, as we shall see, kept his word. Thus the grandfather and grandmother of the great novelists were married in 1776, in the Protestant church of Magherally, the clergyman who officiated pronouncing the bride the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.

* * * * *

The following verses have always been known as the product of Hugh Bronte's muse. I am inclined to think they may have, in an original form, been produced by Hugh, and smoothed down by his son Patrick. And perhaps, in the refining process, they have lost in strength more than they have gained in sound.

I do not think old Hugh would have known anything, at first hand, of "the peach bloom," or of "the blood-red Mars." The poem, forty years ago, had many variations, but there is one line of special interest, as it shows that the verses were known to Charlotte Bronte. The verse, with a slight variation, is put into the mouth of Jane Eyre. Rochester says: "Jane suits me; do I suit her?" Jane answers: "To the finest fibre of my nature, sir."

ALICE AND HUGH.

The red rose paled before the blush That mantled o'er thy dimpled cheek, The peach bloom faded at the flush That tinged thy beauty ripe and meek.