Ireland -- Emigration and Immigration -- Fiction; Ireland -- Social life and customs -- Fiction
Next day was Sunday, and she was in the church at sunrise listening for
the music. But she heard and saw nothing until the priest had reached
the middle of the Mass. The acolyte had rung the bell to prepare the
people for the Elevation, and it was then that she heard a faint low
sound that the light wire emitted when the saint touched her harp, and
she noticed that it was the same saint that had played yesterday, the
tall saint with the long fair hair who stood apart from the others,
looking more intently at Our Blessed Lord than the others. She touched
her harp again and the note vibrated for a long while, and when the
last vibrations died she touched the string again. The note was sweet
and languid and intense, and it pierced to the very core of Biddy. The
saint's hand passed over the strings, producing faint exquisite sounds,
so faint that Biddy felt no surprise they were not heard by anyone
else; it was only by listening intently that she could hear them.
Yesterday's little tune appeared again, a little tune of six notes, and
it seemed to Biddy even more exquisite than it had seemed when she
first heard it. The only difference between to-day and yesterday was,
that to-day all the saints struck their harps, and after playing for
some time the music grew white like snow and remote as star-fire, and
yet Biddy heard it more clearly than she had heard anything before, and
she saw Our Lord more clearly than she had ever seen anybody else. She
saw Him look up when He had placed the crown on His Mother's head; she
heard Him sing a few notes, and then the saints began to sing. The
window filled up with song and colour, and all along the window there
was a continual transmutation of colour and song. The figures grew
taller, and they breathed extraordinary life. It sang like a song
within them, and it flowed about them and out of them in a sort of
pearl-coloured mist. The vision clove the church along and across, and
through it she could see the priest saying his Mass, and when he raised
the Host above his head, Biddy saw Our Lord look at her, and His eyes
brightened as if with love of her. He seemed to have forgotten the
saints that sang His praises so beautifully, and when He bent towards
her and she felt His presence about her, she cried out:--
"He is coming to take me in His arms!"
And it was then that Biddy fell out of her place and lay at length on
the floor of the church, pale as a dead woman. The clerk went to her,
but he could not carry her out; she lay rigid as one who had been dead
a long while and she muttered, "He is coming to put the gold crown on
my head." The clerk moved away, and she swooned again.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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