Brigit

“ We have dreamed, my Brigit, through the last few months, and now we must awaken. You must marry Théo, and he will take you away for a few months, and when you come back as his—wife, I shall—I will have learned to love you in the only way I can love you without shame—as my daughter. ”

“ Brigit stood in an upper window looking down as the crowd assorted itself and settled down on the benches by the tables. In a few moments Théo would fetch her and conduct her to the arbour where twelve people were to be seated; at present he was bustling about making himself agreeable to everybody, laughing with those few children who, being over twelve, were present, helping the old or unwieldly to dispose of themselves comfortably, darting to and fro, looking strangely out of place among the good people with whom he felt so thoroughly at home. ”

“ The Drying of Brigit's Cloak One time Brennain, saint of the Gael, came from the west to Brigit, to the plain of the Life, for he wondered at the great name she had for doing miracles and wonders. And Brigit came in from her sheep to welcome him, and as she came into the house she laid her cloak that was wet on the rays of the sun, and they held it up the same as hooks. ”

“ We may conjecture that these holy fires were merely survivals of the perpetual fires which in pagan |St. Brigit’s fire perhaps fed with oak-wood.| times had burned in honour of Brigit. The view that Brigit was a fire-goddess is confirmed by the observation that in the Christian calendar her festival falls the day before Candlemas, and the customs observed at that season by Celtic peasantry seem to prove that she was a goddess of the crops as well as of fire. ”

“ Then there was a lady from the shop, Au Bonheur des chers Petits, to be greeted very cordially, and the old domino-player, who, Brigit learned, was a cousin.
There was something very charming in the simplicity of Joyselle's pleasure in seeing his boyhood's friends, and something almost ludicrous in his perfectly obvious joy in their homage.
Looking down at him in his oft-interrupted progress, Brigit told herself that things must turn out all right. "He is so good-natured and generous and strong," she reflected, with glad shifting of all responsibility, "he will surely find some way out." ”

“ Brigit stared coldly at her. "Don't make a fool of yourself, mother," she said. "You know perfectly well that there is not a word of truth in what you say."
"There is, there is! It was when you began to grow up that he ceased loving me. It is all your fault. He wrote it to you. You are to blame; you murdered him, his blood is on your head! And I scolded him when he told me about you and Joyselle. I refused to believe him. Oh, Gerald, Gerald!" ”

“ And it was angels that baptized her and that gave her the name of Brigit, that is a Fiery Arrow. She grew up to be a serving girl the same as her mother. And all the food she used was the milk of a white red-eared cow that was set apart for her by a druid. And everything she put her hand to used to increase, and it was she wove the first piece of cloth in Ireland, and she put the white threads in the loom that have a power of healing in them to this day. She bettered the sheep and she satisfied the birds and she fed the poor. ”

“ Then the door opened and Théo, beaming with a sense of duty artistically fulfilled, came in. "They are all as happy as possible," he laughed; "the pot au feu is a thing of the past, and they are beginning on the veal. Come, my Brigit, you must be hungry."
Without answering, she accompanied him downstairs, and they threaded their way to the arbour.
"You are to sit here, Brigit, between grandfather and me," explained Théo, stopping opposite his father, who was listening to something Madame Guillaume was telling him. ”

“ This means, in other words, that the Goidels formerly worshipped a Minerva called Brigit, who presided over the three chief professions known in Erinn: to her province in fact might be said to belong just what Caesar terms operum atque artificiorum initia. How largely the prestige of the goddess helped to make the fortune of the saint who took her name, St. Bridget or Bride, it would perhaps be difficult to say, and I pass on to the name Brigit, which makes in the genitive Brigte. ”

“ Brigit, all the events of his life are miraculous or symbolical. St. Brigit turned water into beer for him to drink, he fished for salmon, when visited by St. Patrick, in the puddles of a ploughed field, he prophesied the greatness of Brigit before her birth. The chronicles mention his death in 487, and he is noticed frequently in the lives of St. Patrick and St. Brigit. No early life of him is extant. ”

“ Lady Brigit shrank fastidiously into her corner. Another thing to bore her. She was of those women who always hate their fellow-travellers and resent their existence. And this man was too big, there was too much fur on his coat, too much scent on his handkerchief. "Salut demeure chaste et pure," he began singing, suddenly, apparently quite unconscious of his companion's presence. "Salut demeure——" It was a high baritone voice, sweet and round, and his r's were like Théo Joyselle's. Brigit smiled. Dear Théo! Her mother could be as nasty as she liked, but they would be happy in spite of her. ”

“ Kneeling by his violin, which luckily had fallen on a bearskin, he took it up and looked at it shamefacedly. "See what you made me do," he said to Brigit, "you and your golden dress! Mon pauvre Amati."
She continued to look at him in silence, her instinct telling her that the strange smile she had seen on the face of the woman in the glass could not be beaten for purposes of subjugation. She continued to look and smile, but she was sorry for him, even while every fibre in her thrilled with triumph.
He realised her now; if she wanted him to love her, he would.
"Will you call Théo?" ”

“ Brigit beneath it, the Son of Mary within it; let the three angels having most power in the court of grace be keeping this house and the people of this house and sheltering them until the dawn of day." For it is what Brigit had a mind for; lasting goodness that was not hidden; minding sheep and rising early; hospitality towards good men. It is she keeps everyone that is in straits and in dangers; it is she puts down sicknesses ”

“ There were times, Brigit had seen, not without amusement, when Victor had nearly felt for her the paternal solicitude his wife believed him to feel, and even though she smiled at this susceptibility to impression in him, the girl more than once caught herself semi-unconsciously playing the rôle of youthful hero-worshipper cast for her by the older woman. ”

“ When Joyselle came in at eight o'clock he went straight to his room to dress. He was still very angry, but his anger was less poignant than his sense of helpless defeat. Brigit's attitude was absolutely incomprehensible to him, and hurt him in an almost unbearable degree. That she should defy him, grow as angry as he himself, he had already learned was not impossible ”

“ The white serpent was, like the salmon, a source of wisdom and magical power. It was evidently a form of the goddess. Brigit was the goddess of the Brigantes, a tribe whose territory extended from the Firth of Forth to the midlands of England. [173] The Brigantes took possession of a part of Ireland where Brigit had three forms as the goddess of healing, the goddess of smith-work, and the goddess of poetry, and therefore of metrical magical charms. ”

“ Whom I rely on for my protection,
Mary and Saint Brigit:
Under the protection of them both be we! The life of Brigit printed by Dr Stokes from the Lebar Brecc, a manuscript of the fifteenth century, occupies about eighteen printed pages. Like Adamnan’s life of Columba it is largely taken up with legends and traditional memories of miracles. Here is a specimen of this standard Gaelic of the 15th century:
Fecht and dorothlaig araile bannscal iressach codubthach condigsead brigit lea amuig life. ”

“ The Man that had Lost his Wife's Love Brigit would give herself to no man in marriage but she took the veil and after that she did great wonders. There came to her one time a man making his complaint that his wife would not sleep with him but was leaving him, and he came asking a spell from Brigit that would bring back her love. ”

“ The priest would not feel slighted, as an Anglican curate might. He had a serious ascetic face, and seemed not to know that any was present beside his God and himself.
"I am a brute," Brigit told herself, "a perfect fiend to torture him so. Why cannot we be good to each other? And how will it all end? I will be good to him in the future."
Then she shivered, for she was not a child and realised perfectly that her "being good" to Joyselle was by no means altogether safe. ”

“ The red-headed girl and her young man had disappeared, and from where they sat Joyselle and Brigit saw no signs of life.
"To-morrow it will be crowded with odious people," Brigit sighed.
"Why odious?"
"Well, I mean vulgar, noisy people."
He shook his head in a way that ruffled his halo of silver hair, and laughed.
"You should not be a snob," he teased. "After all, you are marrying the son of peasants."
"Peasants are different," she insisted, a little sulkily.
"Peasants are picturesque only in books, my dear. ”

“ Lady Brigit leaned back in her corner and surveyed the otherwise empty compartment with a sigh of relief. She knew that her face still bore signs of the anger roused by her mother in their recent interview, and she felt the necessity of looking as savage as she felt.
And she felt very savage indeed. If an American Indian—an idealised, poeticised American Indian—could be invested with the beauty that does not belong to the red races and yet which, if perfected on the lines of beauty suggested by some of the nobler specimens of the nobler tribes, she might look like Brigit Mead. ”

“ The teller of the tale drew a blue silk sock over her hand and poked at the hole in its heel with a thoughtful needle. "He always loves them—for the time, my dear. He is of a sincerity, my man!"
Since the evening of the dragon-skin frock Brigit had done nothing to charm Joyselle; he saw her through his own eyes now, and she, knowing that the game was in her own hands, could afford to wait; when the day came when she wanted to hurt him or to further gratify her own love, she could make him love her almost in a moment. ”

“ Brigit suffered tortures as she sat watching Joyselle. It was, then, as she had feared. He was going to be strong and make everyone miserable.
If she had been asked to propose any kind of a plan for the future, her answer would have been, when denuded of side issues and fantasy, simply that she could see nothing better than simple drifting. As yet she could not anticipate, and it roused in her a kind of jealousy that Joyselle had so soon begun to think of Théo. ”

“ He told me about you and Joyselle, and I believe him. Yes I do, I believe him. You are in love with the man, and that's why you don't marry his son——"
"Look here, mother," Brigit's temper was rising fast. "Answer one question quietly, will you? Do you believe what Gerald Carron told you about me and Joyselle?"
And Lady Kingsmead, whose hysterical excitement was now well beyond control, screamed out that she did believe it.
Brigit rose. "Very well. Think as you like. And—good-bye."
She left the house without a word, and taking a hansom went straight to Golden Square. ”

“ Outside one or two carriages hurried past, and the darkness was streaked with quick recurring flashes of lightning.
Brigit looked long at Joyselle, and then, irresistibly drawn to him, laid her hand with great gentleness on his head. "You are tired, and the storm has got on your nerves." ”

“ Lady Kingsmead flushed angrily, and was about to speak, when her daughter interrupted in a perfunctory voice: "Oh, don't, Gerald, you know she loathes being teased. Besides, your praise doesn't in the least interest me."
His smile was not good to see. "I think, my dear Brigit, that you are about the handsomest woman I ever saw—that is, the handsomest dark woman; but you look so damned ill-tempered that you will be hideous in ten years' time." ”

“ Lady Kingsmead burst into tears and hurried from the room, but Brigit wrote a telegram, as dictated by the old doctor who had brought the boy into the world, to a famous physician in London, and a groom was sent galloping to the station to send it.
"Who is this person he always takes me for?" asked the doctor, polishing his glasses. "This morning he insisted on my—on my playing for him. I have never played anything except the cornet, when I was a young man. I—it very nearly upset me, Lady Brigit. I love Tommy."
Brigit flushed. "Wanted you to play the violin?" she returned. ”

“ He had played, they had drunk some Norman cider, and gone to bed early.
"Father was tired," Théo added, as the hansom stopped.
Brigit dared not speak. Could it be that Joyselle had told her, after they had gone to their room? He would have had to tell her either then or the next day—to-day. He had not feared to tell her, for his delirium was such that he feared nothing, and besides, she was always very gentle.
"She will understand," he had told Brigit, "that I cannot help it." ”

“ As has been seen, the goddesses Belisama and Sul, probably goddesses of fire, resembled Brigit in this.227 But Brigit, like Vesta, was at once a goddess of fire and of fertility, as her connection with Candlemas and certain ritual survivals also suggest. In the Hebrides on S. Bride's day (Candlemas-eve) women dressed a sheaf of oats in female clothes and set it with a club in a basket called "Briid's bed." Then they called, "Briid is come, Briid is welcome." Or a bed was made of corn and hay with candles burning beside it, and Bride was invited to come as her bed was ready. ”