Ireland -- Emigration and Immigration -- Fiction; Ireland -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
And from that day she was hardly ever out of the church; the charwoman
began to complain that she could not get on with her work, and she was
telling the priest that Biddy was always at her elbow, asking her to
come to her window, saying she would show her things she had not seen
before, when their conversation was interrupted by Biddy. She seemed a
little astray, a little exalted, and Father Maguire watched her as she
knelt with uplifted face, telling her beads. He noticed that her
fingers very soon ceased to move; and that she held the same bead a
long time between her fingers. Minutes passed, but her lips did not
move; her eyes were fixed on the panes and her look was so enraptured
that he began to wonder if Paradise were being revealed to her.
And while the priest wondered, Biddy listened to music inconceivably
tender. She had been awakened from her prayers by the sound of a harp
string touched very gently; and the note had floated down like a
flower, and all the vibrations were not dead when the same note floated
down the aisles once more. Biddy listened, anxious to hear it a third
time. Once more she heard it, and the third time she saw the saint's
fingers moving over the strings; and she played a little tune of six
notes. And it was at the end of the second playing of the tune that the
priest touched Biddy on the shoulder. She looked up and it was a long
while before she saw him, and she was greatly grieved that she had been
awakened from her dream. She said it was a dream because her happiness
had been so great; and she stood looking at the priest, fain, but
unable, to tell how she had been borne beyond her usual life, that her
whole being had answered to the music the saint played, and looking at
him, she wondered what would have happened if he had not awakened her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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