My New Curate
by Patrick Augustine Sheehan · English · Gutenberg #20295 · 623,953 chars · public domain (US)
The Project Gutenberg eBook of My New Curate
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: My New Curate
Author: Patrick Augustine Sheehan
Release date: January 6, 2007 [eBook #20295]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20295
Credits: Produced by Jane Hyland, Audrey Longhurst and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MY NEW CURATE ***
Produced by Jane Hyland, Audrey Longhurst and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
[Illustration: So there they were at last, the dream of half a life
time. (p. 475.)]
MY NEW CURATE
A STORY
_Gathered from the Stray Leaves of an Old Diary_
By the Rev. P. A. SHEEHAN, P. P.
DONERAILE (DIOCESE OF CLOYNE)
_Author of_ "Geoffrey Austin: Student," "The Triumph of Failure," &c.
BOSTON
MARLIER & COMPANY, Limited
1902
Contents
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Change 1
II. A Retrospect 14
III. A Night Call 23
IV. The Pantechnicon 34
V. A Slight Misunderstanding 48
VI. At the Station 61
VII. Scruples 74
VIII. Our Concert 83
IX. Severely Reprimanded 97
X. Over the Walnuts, and the ---- 113
XI. Beside the Singing River 129
XII. Church Improvements 140
XIII. "All Things to All Men" 154
XIV. First Fridays 170
XV. Holly and Ivy 187
XVI. Violent Contrasts 205
XVII. A Clerical Symposium 226
XVIII. The Kampaner Thal 241
XIX. Literary Attempts 255
XX. Madonna Mia 272
XXI. The Factory 297
XXII. The May Conference 316
XXIII. A Battle of Giants 332
XXIV. The Sermon 349
XXV. May Devotions 364
XXVI. At the Zenith 378
XXVII. The "Star of the Sea" 394
XXVIII. Sub Nube 410
XXIX. Stigmata? 429
XXX. All's Well 449
XXXI. Farewell! 475
Illustrations
Page
"So there they were at last, the dream of half a lifetime"
Frontispiece
"You will take something?" I said. "You have
had a long drive" facing 10
"My door was suddenly flung open, and a bunch of
keys was thrown angrily on the table" 49
"Do you call that clean?" 54
"Here I am, your Reverence!" facing 56
"Good Heavens!" was all I could say facing 94
"The orator was caught by the nape of the neck" 133
"'T is the way we wants to go to confession, Fader" 176
"And why don't you tell his reverence about the rice
puddin'?" 223
"It broke in my fingers and revealed the little dreams
and ambitions of nearly forty years ago" 262
"Was there anything wrong with the chicken?" facing 294
"I read that over three times to make quite sure of it" 321
"Ahem!--Reginald Ormsby, wilt thou take Mrs.
Darcy--" facing 390
"Come down to Mrs. Haley's; there isn't a better
dhrop betune this and Dublin" facing 450
"Come on, you ruffian!" 451
"For the love of God, Jem, is 't yourself or your
ghost?" 453
"Hallo, there!... who the ---- are ye?" facing 460
Waiting for my New Curate 479
_MY NEW CURATE_
_Gathered from Stray Leaves of an Old Diary by an Irish Parish Priest_
CHAPTER I
THE CHANGE
It is all my own fault. I was too free with my tongue. I said in a
moment of bitterness: "What can a Bishop do with a parish priest? He's
independent of him." It was not grammatical, and it was not respectful.
But the bad grammar and the impertinence were carried to his Lordship,
and he answered: "What can I _do_? I can send him a curate who will
break his heart in six weeks."
I was not too much surprised, then, when one evening my dear old friend
and curate, Father Tom Laverty, came to me, with tears in his eyes and
an open letter in his hand:--
"I am off, Father Dan. Look at this!"
It was a succinct, laconic order to present himself to a parish priest
twenty miles distant, and to be in time to discharge his duties in that
parish the following Saturday and Sunday, for his jurisdiction was
transferred, etc.
It was a hard stroke. I was genuinely attached to Father Tom. We had the
same tastes and habits,--easy, contented, conservative, with a cordial
dislike of innovations of any kind. We held the same political opinions,
preached the same sermons, administered the Sacraments in the old way,
and had a reverence for antiquities in general. It was a sad break in my
life to part with him; and it is a harmless vanity on my part to say
that he was sorry to part from me.
"I suppose there's no help for it?" said he.
"No," said I; "but if you care--"
"No use," said he; "when _he_ has made up his mind you might as well be
talking to a milestone."
"And you must be off to-morrow?" said I, consulting the bishop's letter.
"Yes," said he, "short shrift."
"And who am I getting?" I wondered.
"Hard to guess," said he. He was in no humor for conversation.
The following week, that most melancholy of processions, a curate's
furniture _en route_, filed slowly through the village, and out along
the highroad, that led through bog and fen, and by lake borders to the
town of N----. First came three loads of black turf, carefully piled and
roped; then two loads of hay; a cow with a yearling calf; and lastly,
the house furniture, mostly of rough deal. The articles, that would be
hardly good enough for one of our new laborers' cottages, were crowned
by a kitchen table, its four legs pointing steadily to the firmament,
like an untrussed fowl's, and between them, carefully roped, was the
plague and the pet of the village, Nanny the goat, with her little kid
beside her. What Nanny could not do in the way of mischief was so
insignificant, that it need not be told. But the Celtic vocabulary,
particularly rich in expletives, failed to meet the ever-growing
vituperative wants of the villagers. They had to fall back on the Saxon,
and call her a "rep," "a rip," "de ribble," etc., etc. I walked side by
side with Father Laverty, who, with head bent on his breast, scarcely
noticed the lamentations of the women, who came to their cross-doors,
and poured out a Jeremiad of lamentations that made me think my own
well-meant ministrations were but scantily appreciated.
"Wisha, God be wid you, Father, wherever you go!"
"Wisha, may your journey thry wid you. Sure 't is we'll miss you!"
"Yerra, what'll the poor do now, whin he's gone?"
"Bishop, inagh, 't is aisy for him wid his ring and his mitre, and his
grand carriage. Couldn't he let him alone?"
"Father," said a young girl, earnestly, her black hair blinding her
eyes, "may God be with you." She ran after him. "Pray for me," she
whispered. "You don't know all the good you done me." She hadn't been
very sensible.
He turned towards her.
"Yes! Nance, I'll remember you. And don't forget all that I told you."
He held out his hand. It was such an honor, such a condescension, that
she blushed scarlet: and hastily rubbing her hand in her apron, she
grasped his.
"May God Almighty bless you," she said.
But the great trial came when we were passing the school-house. It was
after three o'clock, the time for breaking up: and there at the wall
were all the little boys and the _sheilas_ with their wide eyes full of
sorrow. He passed by hastily, never looking up. His heart was with these
children. I believe the only real pleasure he ever allowed himself was
to go amongst them, teach them, amuse them, and listen to their little
songs. And now--
"Good by, Father--"
"Good by, Father--"
Then, Alice Moylan gave a big "boo-hoo!" and in a moment they were all
in tears; and I, too, began to wink, in a queer way, at the landscape.
At last, we came to the little bridge that humps itself over the trout
stream. Many a summer evening we had made this the terminus of our
evening's walk; for I was feeble enough on my limbs, though my head is
as clear as a boy's of seventeen. And here we used to lean over the
parapet, and talk of all things, politics, literature (the little we
knew of it), the old classics, college stories, tales of the mission,
etc.; and now we were to part.
"Good by, Father Tom," I said. "You know, there's always a bite and a
sup and a bed, whenever you come hither. Good by. God knows, I'm sorry
to part with you."
"Good by," he said. Not another word. I watched and waited, till I saw
the melancholy procession fade away, and until he became a speck on the
horizon. Then, with a heavy heart I turned homewards.
If I had the least doubt about the wonderful elasticity of the Irish
mind, or its talent for adaptation, it would have been dispelled as I
passed again through the village. I had no idea I was so popular, or
that my little labors were so warmly appreciated.
"Well, thank God, we have _himself_ whatever."
Gentle reader, "himself" and "herself" are two pronouns, that in our
village idioms mean the master and mistress of the situation, beyond
whom there is no appeal.
"Wisha, the Lord spare him to us. God help us, if _he_ wint."
"The heads of our Church, God spare them long! Wisha, your reverence
might have a copper about you to help a poor lone widow?"
I must say this subtle flattery did not raise my drooped spirits. I went
home, sat down by my little table, and gave myself up to gloomy
reflections.
It must have been eight o'clock, or more, for the twilight had come
down, and my books and little pictures were looking misty, when a
rat-tat-tat rang at the door. I didn't hear the car, for the road was
muddy, I suppose; but I straightened myself up in my arm-chair, and drew
my breviary towards me. I had read my Matins and Lauds for the following
day, before dinner; I always do, to keep up the old tradition amongst
the Irish priests; but I read somewhere that it is always a good thing
to edify people who come to see you. And I didn't want any one to
suspect that I had been for a few minutes asleep. In a moment, Hannah,
my old housekeeper, came in. She held a tiny piece of card between her
fingers, which were carefully covered with her check apron, lest she
should soil it. I took it--while I asked--
"Who is it?"
"I don't know, your reverence."
"Is 't a priest?"
"No, but I think he's a gintleman," she whispered. "He talks like the
people up at the great house."
She got a candle, and I read:--
Rev. Edward Letheby, B. A., C. C.
"'Tis the new curate," I said.
"Oyeh," said Hannah, whose dread and admiration for the "strange
gintleman" evaporated, when she found he was a mere curate.
I went out and welcomed with what warmth I could my new coöperator. It
was too dark for me to see what manner of man he was; but I came to some
rapid conclusions from the way he spoke. He bit off his words, as
riflemen bite their cartridges, he chiselled every consonant, and gave
full free scope to every vowel. This was all the accent he had, an
accent of precision and determination and formalism, that struck like a
knell, clear and piercing on my heart.
"I took the liberty of calling, Sir," he said, "and I hope you will
excuse my troubling you at such an unseasonable hour; but I am utterly
unacquainted with the locality, and I should be thankful to you if you
would refer me to a hotel."
"There's but one hotel in the village," I replied slowly. "It has also
the advantage of being the post-office, and the additional advantage of
being an emporium for all sorts of merchandise, from a packet of pins to
Reckitt's blue, and from pigs' crubeens to the best Limerick flitches.
There's a conglomeration of smells," I continued, "that would shame the
City on the Bosphorus; and there are some nice visitors there now in
the shape of two Amazons who are going to give selections from
'Maritana' in the school-house this evening; and a drunken acrobat, the
leavings of the last circus."
"Good heavens," he said under his breath.
I think I astonished him, as I was determined to do. Then I relented, as
I had the victory.
"If, however," said I, "you could be content with the humble
accommodation and poor fare that this poor presbytery affords, I shall
be delighted to have you as my guest, until you can secure your own
little domicile."
"I thank you very much, Sir," said he, "you are extremely kind. Would
you pardon me a moment, whilst I dismiss the driver and bring in my
portmanteau?"
He was a little humbled and I was softened. But I was determined to
maintain my dignity.
He followed me into the parlor, where the lamp was now lighting, and I
had a good opportunity of observing him. I always sit with my back to
the light, which has the double advantage of obscuring my own features
and lighting up the features of those whom I am addressing. He sat
opposite me, straight as an arrow. One hand was gloved; he was toying
gently with the other glove. But he was a fine fellow. Fairly tall,
square shouldered, not a bit stout, but clean cut from head to spur, I
thought I should not like to meet him in a wrestling bout, or try a
collision over a football. He had a mass of black hair, glossy and
curled, and parted at the left side. Large, blue-black luminous eyes,
that looked you squarely in the face, were hardly as expressive as a
clear mouth that now in repose seemed too quiet even for breathing. He
was dressed _ad_ ----. Pardon me, dear reader, I have had to brush up my
classics, and Horace is like a spring eruption. There was not a line of
white visible above his black collar; but a square of white in front,
where the edges parted. A heavy chain hung from his vest; and his boots
glistened and winked in the lamplight.
"You'll take something?" I said. "You have had a long drive."
"If not too much trouble," he said, "I'll have a cup of tea."
I rang the bell.
"Get a cup of tea, Hannah," I said.
"A cup of wha--at?" queried Hannah. She had the usual feminine contempt
for men that drink tea.
"A cup of tea," I said decisively, "and don't be long."
"Oyeh!" said Hannah. But she brought in a few minutes later the tea and
hot cakes that would make an alderman hungry, and two poached eggs on
toast. I was awfully proud of my domestic arrangements. But I was
puzzled. Hannah was not always so courteous. She explained next day.
"I didn't like him at all, at all," she said, "but whin I came out and
saw his portmanty all brass knobs, and took up his rug, whew! it was
that soft and fine it would do to wrap up the Queen, I said to myself,
'this is a gintleman, Hannah; who knows but he's the Bishop on his
tower.'"
"I hope you like your tea?" I said.
"It's simply delicious," he answered.
He ate heartily. Poor fellow, he was hungry after a long drive; but he
chewed every morsel as a cow would chew the cud on a lazy summer
afternoon, without noise or haste, and he lifted my poor old china cup
as daintily as if it were Sèvres. Then we fell to talking.
"I am afraid," I said tentatively, "that you'll find this place dull
after your last mission. But have you been on the mission before?"
"Oh yes, Father," he said, "I thought the Bishop might have written to
you."
"Well," I said, "I had reason to know you were coming; but the Bishop is
rather laconic in his epistles. He prides himself on his virtue of
reticence."
I said this, because it would never do to let him suppose that the
Bishop would send me a curate without letting me know of it. And I
thought I was using select language, an opinion which, after the nine
years and more of Horace, I have no reason to alter.
[Illustration: "You will take something?" I said. "You have had a long
drive."]
"My only mission hitherto," he said, "has been in Manchester, at St.
Chad's. It was a populous mission, and quite full of those daily trials
and contingencies that make life wearisome to a priest. I confess I was
not sorry to have been called home."
"But you had society," I interjected, "and unless you wish to spend an
hour at the constabulary barracks, you must seek your society here in an
occasional _conversazione_ with some old woman over her cross-door, or a
chat with the boys at the forge--"
"But I have got my books, Father," he said, "and I assure you I want
some time to brush up the little I have ever read. I haven't opened a
serious book for seven years."
This was candid; and it made me warm towards him.
"Then," I said, "there's no use in preaching fine English sermons, they
won't be understood. And you must be prepared for many a night call to
mountain cabins, the only access to which is through a bog or the bed of
a mountain stream; and your income will reach the princely sum of sixty
pounds per annum. But," I added hastily, "you'll have plenty of turf,
and oats and hay for your horse, an occasional pound of butter, and
you'll have to export all the turkeys you'll get at Christmas."
"You have painted the lights and shadows, Father," he said cheerily,
"and I am prepared to take them together. I am sure I'll like the poor
people. It won't be my fault."
Then my heart rose up to this bright, cheery, handsome fellow, who had
no more pride in him than a barelegged gossoon; and who was prepared to
find his pleasure amongst such untoward surroundings. But I didn't like
to let myself out as yet. I had to keep up some show of dignity.
My education commenced next morning. He had served my mass, and said his
own in my little oratory; and he came down to breakfast, clean, alert,
happy. I asked him how he had slept.
"Right well," he said, "I never woke till I heard some far off bell in
the morning."
"The six o'clock bell at the great house," I replied. "But where are you
going?"
"Nowhere, Sir," said he, "I understood I was to remain over Sunday."
"But you're shaved?" said I.
"Oh yes," he said, with the faintest ripple of a smile. "I couldn't
think of sitting down to breakfast, much less of celebrating the Holy
Sacrifice, without shaving."
"And you have a clean collar. Do you mean to say you change your collar
every morning?"
"Certainly, Sir," he said.
"Poor Father Tom!" I exclaimed mentally, "this is a change." But I said
nothing; but sent out my razors in the afternoon to be set.
There was a letter from the Bishop. It ran thus:--
My dear Father Dan:--I have thought it necessary to make a change
of curates in your parish. I have removed Father Laverty on
promotion; and I am sending you one of the most promising young
priests in my diocese. He has just returned from England, where he
won golden opinions from the people and the priests. I may mention
that he was an exhibitioner under the Intermediate System; and took
a gold medal for Greek. Perhaps you will stimulate him to renew his
studies in that department, as he says he has got quite rusty from
want of time to study. Between you both, there will be quite an
Academia at Kilronan.
Yours in Christ.
"Clever, my Lord," I soliloquized, "clever!" Then, as the "gold medal in
Greek" caught my eye again, I almost let the letter fall to the ground;
and I thought of his Lordship's words: "I can send him a curate who will
break his heart in six weeks." But as I looked over my cup at Father
Letheby, I couldn't believe that there was any lurking _diablerie_
there. He looked in the morning a frank, bright, cheery, handsome
fellow. But, will he do?
CHAPTER II
A RETROSPECT
Long ago, when I used to read an occasional novel, if the author dared
to say: "But I am anticipating; we must go back here twenty years to
understand the thread of this history," I invariably flung down the book
in disgust. The idea of taking you back to ancient history when you were
dying to know what was to become of the yellow-haired Blumine, or the
grand chivalrous Roland. Well, I am just going to commit the very same
sin; and, dear reader, be patient just a little while.
It is many years since I was appointed to the parish of Kilronan. It
happened in this wise. The Bishop, the old man, sent for me; and said,
with what I would call a tone of pity or contempt, but he was incapable
of either, for he was the essence of charity and sincerity:--
"Father Dan, you are a bit of a litterateur, I understand. Kilronan is
vacant. You'll have plenty of time for poetizing and dreaming there.
What do you say to it?"
I put on a little dignity, and, though my heart was beating with
delight, I quietly thanked his Lordship. But, when I had passed beyond
the reach of episcopal vision, which is far stretching enough, I spun
my hat in the air, and shouted like a schoolboy: "Hurrah!"
You wonder at my ecstasies! Listen. I was a dreamer, and the dream of my
life, when shut up in musty towns, where the atmosphere was redolent of
drink, and you heard nothing but scandal, and saw nothing but sin,--the
dream of my life was a home by the sea, with its purity and freedom, and
its infinite expanse, telling me of God. For, from the time when as a
child the roar of the surges set my pulse beating, and the scents of the
weed and the brine would make me turn pale with pleasure, I used to pray
that some day, when my life's work would be nearly done, and I had put
in my years of honest labor in the dusty streets, I might spend my
declining years in the peace of a seaside village, and go down to my
grave, washed free from the contaminations of life in the daily watching
and loving of those
"Moving waters at their priestlike task
Of cold ablution round earth's human shores."
My wish was realized, and I was jubilant.
Returning home by train, when my emotion had calmed down, my mind could
not help recurring to the expression used by the Bishop; and it
suggested the following reflections: How has it come to pass in Ireland
that "poet" and "saint" are terms which denote some weakness or
irregularity in their possessors? At one time in our history we know
that the bard was second only to the King in power and influence; and
are we not vaguely proud of that title the world gives us,--Island of
Saints? Yet, nowadays, through some fatal degeneracy, a poet is looked
upon as an idealist, an unpractical builder of airy castles, to whom no
one would go for advice in an important matter, or intrust with the
investment of a five-pound note. And to speak of a man or woman as a
"saint" is to hint at some secret imbecility, which it would be
charitable to pass over in silence. I was quite well aware, therefore,
on that day, when I had the secret pleasure and the sublime misfortune
of seeing my name in print over some wretched verses, that I was ruining
my prospects in life. The fact of being a litterateur, although in the
most modest and hidden manner, stamped me as a volatile, flighty
creature, who was no more to be depended upon than a feather in the
wind; or, as the Italians say, _qu' al piume al vento_. It is a curious
prejudice, and a purely insular one. And sometimes I think, or rather I
used to think, that there was something infinitely grotesque in these
narrow ideas, that shut us out from sympathy with the quick moving,
subtle world as completely as if we were fakirs by the banks of the
sacred Ganges. For what does modern literature deal with? Exactly those
questions of philosophy, ethics, and morality which form the staple
material of theological studies and discussions in our own colleges and
academies. Novels, poetry, essays, lectures, treatises on the natural
sciences,--all deal with the great central questions of man's being, his
origin, and his conduct. And surely it is folly to ignore these
discussions in the market places of the world, because they are
literature, and not couched in scholastic syllogisms. Dear me! I am
philosophizing,--I, old Daddy Dan, with the children plucking at my
coat-tails and the brown snuff staining my waistcoat, and, ah, yes! the
place already marked in my little chapel, where I shall sleep at last. I
must have been angry, or gloomy, that day, thirty years ago, when I
stepped on the platform at M----, after my interview with the Bishop,
and met my friends, who had already become aware that I was elevated out
of the junior ranks, and had become an independent officer of the Church
Militant.
"You don't mean to say that you have accepted that awful place?" said
one.
"You'll have nothing but fish to eat," said another. "The butcher's van
goes there but once a week."
"And no society but fishermen," said a third. "And they speak nothing
but Irish, and you know you cannot bless yourself in Irish."
"Well," I replied, "my Job's comforters, I have accepted Kilronan, and
am going there. If all things go well, and you are good boys, I may ask
for some of you as curate--"
"You'll be glad to get a curacy yourself in six months," they shouted in
chorus.
And so I came to Kilronan, and here have I been since. The years have
rolled by swiftly. Life is a coach, whose wheels move slowly and
painfully at the start; but, once set moving, particularly when going
down the deep decline of life, the years move so swiftly you cannot see
the spokes in the wheels, which are the days we number so sadly. What
glorious resolutions I made the first months of my residence here! How I
would read and write and burn the midnight oil, and astonish the world,
and grow from dignity to dignity into an honored old age! Alas!
circumstances are too much for us all, and here I am, in my seventieth
year, poor old Daddy Dan, with no great earthly trouble, indeed, and
some few consolations,--my breviary and the grand psalms of hope,--my
daily Mass and its hidden and unutterable sweetness,--the love of little
children and their daily smiles,--the prayers of my old women, and, I
think, the reverence of the men. But there comes a little sting
sometimes, when I see young priests, who served my Masses long ago,
standing in cathedral stalls in all the glory of purple and ermine, and
when I see great parishes passing into the hands of mere boys, and poor
old Daddy Dan passed over in silence. I know, if I were really good and
resigned, I would bless God for it all, and I do. But human nature will
revolt sometimes, and people will say, "What a shame, Father Dan; why
haven't you the red buttons as well as so and so," or, "What ails the
Bishop, passing over one of the most learned men in the diocese for a
parcel of gossoons!" I suppose it was my own fault. I remember what
magnificent ideas I had. I would build factories, I would ferr the
streets, I would establish a fishing station and make Kilronan the
favorite bathing resort on the western coast; I would write books and
be, all round, a model of push, energy, and enterprise. And I did try. I
might as well have tried to remove yonder mountain with a pitchfork, or
stop the roll of the Atlantic with a rope of sand. Nothing on earth can
cure the inertia of Ireland. It weighs down like the weeping clouds on
the damp heavy earth, and there's no lifting it, nor disburthening of
the souls of men of this intolerable weight. I was met on every side
with a stare of curiosity, as if I were propounding something immoral or
heretical. People looked at me, put their hands in their pockets,
whistled dubiously, and went slowly away. Oh, it was weary, weary work!
The blood was stagnant in the veins of the people and their feet were
shod with lead. They walked slowly, spoke with difficulty, stared all
day at leaden clouds or pale sunlight, stood at the corners of the
village for hours looking into vacuity, and the dear little children
became old the moment they left school, and lost the smiles and the
sunlight of childhood. It was a land of the lotos. The people were
narcotized. Was it the sea air? I think I read somewhere in an old
philosopher, called Berkeley, that the damp salt air of the sea has a
curious phlegmatic effect on the blood, and will coagulate it and
produce gout and sundry disorders. However that be, there was a weary
weight on everything around Kilronan. The cattle slept in the fields,
the fishermen slept in their coracles. It was a land of sleep and
dreams.
I approached the agent about a foreshore for the pier, for you cannot,
in Ireland, take the most preliminary and initial step in anything
without going, cap in hand, to the agent. I explained my intentions. He
smiled, but was polite.
"Lord L----, you know, is either in Monte Carlo or yachting in the
Levant. He must be consulted. I can do nothing."
"And when will his Lordship return?"
"Probably in two years."
"You have no power to grant a lease of the foreshore, or even give
temporary permission to erect a pier?"
"None whatever."
I went to the Presentment Sessions about a grant for paving or flagging
the wretched street. I woke a nest of hornets.
"What! More taxation! Aren't the people crushed enough already? Where
can we get money to meet rates and taxes? Flagging Kilronan! Oh, of
course! Wouldn't your reverence go in for gas or the electric light?
Begor, ye'll be wanting a water supply next," etc., etc.
I applied to a factory a few miles distant to establish a local industry
by cottage labor, which is cheap and remunerative.
"They would be delighted, but--" And so all my castles came tumbling
down from the clouds, and left them black and lowering and leaden as
before. Once or twice, later on, I made a few spasmodic efforts to
galvanize the place into life; they, too, failed, and I accepted the
inevitable. When Father Laverty came he helped me to bear the situation
with philosophical calmness. He had seen the world, and had been rubbed
badly in contact with it. He had adopted as his motto and watchword the
fatal _Cui bono?_ And he had printed in large Gothic letters over his
mantelpiece the legend:
'TWILL BE ALL THE SAME IN A HUNDRED YEARS.
And so I drifted, drifted down from high empyreans of great ideals and
lofty speculations into a humdrum life, that was only saved from
sordidness by the sacred duties of my office. After all, I find that we
are not independent of our circumstances. We are fashioned and moulded
by them as plaster of Paris is fashioned and moulded into angels or
gargoyles by the deft hand of the sculptor. "Thou shalt lower to his
level," true of the wife in Locksley Hall, is true of all who are
thrown by fate or fortune into unhappy environments. In my leisure
moments, when I took up my pen to write, some evil spirit whispered,
_Cui bono?_ and I laid down my pen and hid my manuscript. Once or twice
I took up some old Greek poets and essayed to translate them. I have
kept the paper still, frayed and yellow with age; but the fatal _Cui
bono?_ disheartened me, and I flung it aside. Even my love for the sea
had vanished, and I had begun to hate it. During the first few years of
my ministry I spent hours by the cliffs and shores, or out on the
heaving waters. Then the loneliness of the desert and barren wastes
repelled me, and I had begun to loathe it. Altogether I was soured and
discontented, and I had a dread consciousness that my life was a
failure. All its possibilities had passed without being seized and
utilized. I was the barren fig tree, fit only to be cut down. May I
escape the fire! Such were my surroundings and disposition when Father
Letheby came.
CHAPTER III
A NIGHT CALL
It must have been about two o'clock on Sunday morning, when the house
bell was pulled violently and a rapid series of fierce, sharp knocks
woke up the house. What priest does not know that tocsin of the night,
and the start from peaceful slumbers? I heard the housekeeper wake up
Father Letheby; and in a short time I heard him go down stairs. Then
there was the usual hurried colloquy at the hall door, then the
retreating noises of galloping feet. I pulled the blankets around my
shoulders, lifted the pillow, and said, "Poor fellow!" He had to say
last Mass next day, and this was some consolation, as he could sleep a
few hours in the morning. I met him at breakfast about half past one
o'clock. There he was, clean, cool, cheerful, as if nothing had
happened.
"I was sorry you had that night call," I said; "how far had you to go?"
"To some place called Knocktorisha," he replied, opening his egg; "'t
was a little remote, but I was well repaid."
"Indeed," said I; "the poor people are very grateful. And they generally
pay for whatever trouble they give."
He flushed up.
"Oh, I didn't mean any pecuniary recompense," he said, a little
nettled. "I meant that I was repaid by the extraordinary faith and
fervor of the people."
I waited.
"Why, Father," said he, turning around and flicking a few invisible
crumbs with his napkin, "I never saw anything like it. I had quite an
escort of cavalry, two horsemen, who rode side by side with me the whole
way to the mountain, and then, when we had to dismount and climb up
through the boulders of some dry torrent course, I had two linkmen or
torchbearers, leaping on the crest of the ditch on either side, and
lighting me right up to the door of the cabin. It was a picture that
Rembrandt might have painted."
He paused and blushed a little, as if he had been pedantic.
"But tell me, Father," said he, "is this the custom in the country?"
"Oh yes," said I; "we look upon it as a matter of course. Your
predecessors didn't make much of it."
"It seems to me," he said, "infinitely picturesque and beautiful. It
must have been some tradition of the Church when she was free to
practise her ceremonies. But where do they get these torches?"
"Bog-oak, steeped in petroleum," I said. "It is, now that you recall
it, very beautiful and picturesque. Our people will never allow a
priest, with the Blessed Sacrament with him, to go unescorted."
"Now that you have mentioned it," he said, "I distinctly recall the
custom that existed among the poor of Salford. They would insist always
on accompanying me home from a night sick-call. I thought it was
superfluous politeness, and often insisted on being alone, particularly
as the streets were always well lighted. But no. If the men hesitated,
the women insisted; and I had always an escort to my door. But this
little mountain ceremony here is very touching."
"Who was sick?"
"Old Conroy,--a mountain ranger, I believe. He is very poorly; and I
anointed him." "By Jove," said he after a pause, "how he did pray,--and
all in Irish. I could imagine the old Hebrew prophets talking to God
from their mountains just in that manner. But why do they expect to be
anointed on the breast?"
"I do not know," I replied, "I think it is a Gallican custom introduced
by the French refugee priests at the beginning of the century. The
people invariably expect it."
"But you don't?" he asked in surprise.
"Oh dear, no. It would be hardly orthodox. Come, and if you are not too
tired, we'll have a walk."
I took him through the village, where he met salaams and genuflections
enough; and was stared at by the men, and blessed by the women, and
received the mute adoration of the children. We passed along the bog
road, where on either side were heaps of black turf drying, and off the
road were deep pools of black water, filling the holes whence the turf
was cut. It was lonely; for to-day we had not even the pale sunshine to
light up the gloomy landscape, and to the east the bleak mountains
stood, clear-cut and uniform in shagginess and savagery, against the
cold, gray sky. The white balls of the bog cotton waved dismally in the
light breeze, which curled the surface of a few pools, and drew a curlew
or plover from his retreat, and sent him whistling dolefully, and
beating the heavy air, as he swept towards mountain or lake. After half
an hour's walking, painful to me, the ground gently rose, and down in
the hollow a nest of poplars hid from the western gales. I took Father
Letheby through a secret path in the plantation. We rested a little
while, and talked of many things. Then we followed a tiny path, strewn
with withered pine needles, and which cut upward through the hill. We
passed from the shelter of the trees, and stood on the brow of a high
declivity. I never saw such surprise in a human face before, and such
delight. Like summer clouds sweeping over, and dappling a meadow,
sensations of wonder and ecstasy rolled visibly across his fine mobile
features. Then, he turned, and said, as if not quite sure of himself:--
"_Why! 't is the sea!_"
So it was. God's own sea, and his retreat, where men come but seldom,
and then at their peril. There the great ball-room of the winds and
spirits stretched before us, to-day as smooth as if waxed and polished,
and it was tessellated with bands of blue and green and purple, at the
far horizon line, where, down through a deep mine shaft in the clouds,
the hidden sun was making a silent glory. It was a dead sea, if you
will. No gleam of sail, near or afar, lit up its loneliness. No flash of
sea bird, poised for its prey, or beating slowly over the desolate
waste, broke the heavy dulness that lay upon the breast of the deep. The
sky stooped down and blackened the still waters; and anear, beneath the
cliff on which we were standing, a faint fringe of foam alone was proof
that the sea still lived, though its face was rigid and its voice was
stilled, as of the dead.
Father Letheby continued gazing in silence over the solemn scene for
some time. Then lifting his hat he said aloud:--
"Mirabiles elationes maris;
Mirabilis in altis Dominus!"
"Not very many 'upliftings' to-day," I replied. "You see our great
friend at a disadvantage. But you know she has moods: and you will like
her."
"Like her!" he replied. "It is not liking. It is worship. Some kind of
Pantheism which I cannot explain. Nowhere are the loneliness and
grandeur of God so manifested. Mind, I don't quite sympathize with that
comparison of St. Augustine's where he detects a resemblance between yon
spectra of purple and green and the plumage of a dove. What has a dove
to do with such magnificence and grandeur? It was an anti-climax, a
bathos, of which St. Augustine is seldom guilty. 'And the Spirit of God
moved upon the face of the waters.' There's the sublime!"
"It is desolate," said I. "Not even a seamew or a gull."
"Quite so," he replied. "It is limitless and unconditioned. There is its
grandeur. If that sea were ploughed by navies, or disfigured by the
hideous black hulks of men-of-war, it would lose its magnificence. It
would become a poor limited thing, with pygmies sporting on its bosom.
It is now unlimited, free, unconditioned, as space. It is the infinite
and the eternal in it that appeals to us. When we were children, the
infinite lay beyond the next mountain, because it was the unknown. We
grew up and we got knowledge; and knowledge destroyed our dreams, and
left us only the commonplace. It is the unknown and unlimited that still
appeals to us,--the _something_ behind the dawn, and beyond the sunset,
and far away athwart the black line of that horizon, that is forever
calling, calling, and beckoning to us to go thither. Now, there is
something in that sombre glory that speaks to you and me. It will
disappear immediately; and we will feel sad. What is it? Voiceless
echoes of light from the light that streams from the Lamb?"
"I hope," I said demurely, for I began to fear this young enthusiast,
"that you don't preach in that tone to the people!"
"Oh dear, no," he said, with a little laugh, "but you must forgive my
nonsense. You gave me such a shock of surprise."
"But," he said, after a pause, "how happy your life must have been here!
I always felt in Manchester that I was living at the bottom of a black
chimney, in smoke and noise and fetor, material and spiritual. Here, you
have your holy people, and the silence and quiet of God. How happy you
must have been!"
"What would you think if we returned," I said. "It's almost our dinner
hour."
It was not so late, however, but that I was able to take a ten minutes'
stroll through the village, and bid "good day" to some of my
parishioners.
I suppose there was a note of interrogation hidden away somewhere under
my greeting, for I was told in different tones and degrees of
enthusiasm:--
"Yerra, your reverence, he's a nate man."
"Yerra, we never saw his likes before."
"He spakes almost as plain and common as yourself."
"They say, your reverence, that he's the son of a jook."
Some old cronies, who retained a lingering gratitude for Father
Laverty's snuff, diluted their enthusiasm a little.
"He is, indeed, a rale nice man. But God be with poor Father Tom
wherever he is. Sure 't was he was kind to the poor."
There was a deputation of young men waiting at my house. I have been
pestered from deputations and speeches since the Land League. A shaggy
giant stepped forward and said:--
"We have preshumed, your reverence, to call upon you to ascertain
whether you'd be agreeable to our what I may call unanimous intinsion of
asking the new cojutor to be prisident of the Gaelic association of
Kilronan, called the 'Holy Terrors.'"
I said I was agreeable to anything they wished: and Father Letheby
became president of the "Holy Terrors."
After dinner something put me into better humor. I suppose it was the
mountain mutton, for there's nothing like it in Ireland,--mutton raised
on limestone land, where the grass is as tender to the lips of the
sheep, as the sheep to the lips of men. I thought I had an excellent
opportunity of eliciting my curate's proficiency in his classics. With
a certain amount of timidity, for you never know when you are treading
on a volcano with these young men, I drew the subject around. I have a
way of talking enigmatically, which never fails, however, to reveal my
meaning. And after a few clever passes, I said, demurely, drawing out my
faded and yellow translation, made nearly thirty years ago:--
"I was once interested in other things. Here is a little weak
translation I once made of a piece of Greek poetry, with which you are
quite familiar. Ah me! I had great notions at the time, ideas of
corresponding with classical journals, and perhaps, sooner or later, of
editing a classic myself. But _Cui bono?_ paralyzed everything. That
fatal _Cui bono?_ that is the motto and watchword of every thinking and
unthinking man in Ireland. However, now that you have come, perhaps--who
knows? What do you think of this?"
I read solemnly:--
"I have argued and asked in my sorrow
What shall please me? what manner of life?
At home am I burdened with cares that borrow
Their color from a world of strife.
The fields are burdened with toil,
The seas are sown with the dead,
With never a hand of a priest to assoil
A soul that in sin hath fled.
I have gold: I dread the danger by night;
I have none: I repine and fret;
I have children: they darken the pale sunlight;
I have none: I'm in nature's debt.
The young lack wisdom; the old lack life;
I have brains; but I shake at the knees;
Alas! who could covet a scene of strife?
Give me peace in this life's surcease!"
"What do you think of this? It is a loose translation from Posidippus."
"It swings well," said Father Letheby. "But who was he?"
"One of the gnomic, or sententious poets," I replied.
"Greek or Latin?" he asked.
Then I succumbed.
"You never heard his name before?" I said.
"Never," said he emphatically.
I paused and reflected.
"The Bishop told me," said I, "that you were a great Greek scholar, and
took a medal in Greek composition?"
"The Bishop told me," said he, "that you were the best Greek scholar in
Ireland, with the exception, perhaps, of a Jesuit Father in Dublin."
We looked at each other. Then burst simultaneously into a fit of
laughter, the likes of which had not been heard in that room for many a
day.
"I am not sure," said I, "about his Lordship's classical attainments;
but he knows human nature well."
Father Letheby left next morning to see after his furniture. He had
taken a slated, one-storied cottage in the heart of the village. It was
humble enough; but it looked quite aristocratic amongst its ragged
neighbors.
CHAPTER IV
THE PANTECHNICON
The usual deadly silence of a country village in Ireland, which is never
broken but by the squeal of a pig, or the clucking of chickens, or a
high voice, heard occasionally in anger, was rudely shocked on the
following Thursday evening. The unusual commotion commenced with a
stampede of sans-culottish boys, and red-legged, wild-eyed girls, who
burst into the village streets with shouts of
"Rah! rah! the circus! the circus! the wild baste show! Rah! rah!"
In an instant every door frame was filled with a living picture. Women
of all shapes, and in all manners of _habille_ and _dishabille_, leaned
over the cross-doors and gazed curiously at the coming show. The men,
too phlegmatic even in their curiosity, simply shifted the pipe from one
side of the mouth to the other; and, as the object of all this curiosity
lumbered into the street, three loafers, who supported a blank wall
opposite my door, steered round as slowly as a vessel swings with the
tide, and leaned the right shoulder, instead of the left, against the
gable. It was a tremendous expenditure of energy; and I am quite sure
it demanded a drink. And I, feeling from these indications that
something unusual was at hand, drew back my window curtains, and stared
decorously at the passing wonder. It was a long van, drawn by two
horses, which sweated and panted under the whip of their driver. It was
painted a dark green; and in gold letters that glittered on the green, I
read the magic legend:--
PANTECHNICON.
"Pan" is Greek for "all," thought I; and "technicon" is appertaining to
art. It means an exhibition of all the arts; that is, a Gypsy wagon with
bric-à-brac, or one of these peep-shows, which exhibits to admiring
youngsters Napoleon crossing the Alps, or Marius sitting on the ruins of
Carthage. I let the curtain fall, and went back to my books; but in a
moment I heard the caravan stopping just a few doors below, and I heard
my bedroom window raised; and I knew that Hannah was half way between
heaven and earth. I have not a particle of curiosity in my composition,
but I drew back the curtain again, and looked down the street. The van
had stopped at Father Letheby's new house, and a vast crowd surged
around it. The girls kept at a respectful distance, whilst the men
unyoked their horses; but the boys stood near, in the attitude of
runners at a tournament, ready to make off the moment the first ominous
growl was heard. The adults were less excited, though quite as curious,
and I could hear the questionings over the silence of expectation that
had fallen on the village.
"Yerra, what is it?"
"How do I know? It's the place where the circus people live."
"O--yeh! what a quare place to live in? And where do they sleep?"
"In the wagon."
"An' ate?"
"In the wagon."
"Yerra, they're not Christians at all, at all."
Then the men slowly opened the door of the wagon, and took out, from a
mass of canvas and straw, a dainty satin-covered chair. A tidy, well
dressed servant, with a lace cap perched on the top of her head, and
what the village folk called "sthramers" flying behind, came out of
Father Letheby's cottage, and helped to take the furniture within. As
each pretty article appeared, there was a chorus of "oh-h-hs" from the
children. But the climax of delight was reached when a gilt mirror
appeared. Then for the first time sundry boys and girls saw their own
dear smutty faces; and huge was their delight. But I am wrong. The
climax came when the heaviest article appeared. Great was the curiosity.
"What is it? what is it?" "A bed?" "No." "A dresser?" "No." "A thing for
books?" "No."
But one enlightened individual, who had been up to the great house at a
spring cleaning, astonished the natives by declaring that it was a
piano.
"A pianney? Yeh, for what? A priest with a pianney! Yerra, his niece is
going to live wid him. Yerra, no! He'll play it himself."
Which last interpretation was received with shouts of incredulous
laughter. What a versatile people we are! And how adoration and
laughter, and reverence and sarcasm, move side by side in our character,
apparently on good terms with each other. Will the time come when the
laughter and the wit, grown rampant, will rudely jostle aside all the
reverential elements in our nature, and mount upwards to those fatal
heights which other nations have scaled like Satan,--and thence have
been flung into the abyss?
I was curious to know what Hannah thought of it all. Hannah too is
versatile; and leaps from adoration to envy with wonderful facility.
"Father Letheby's furniture, I suppose?" I said, when she brought in the
dinner.
"I believe so," she replied, in a tone of ineffable scorn,--"a parcel of
gimcracks and kimmeens."
"I thought they looked nice from here," I said.
"Don't sit on his chairs, unless you have your will made," she said.
"Did I see a looking-glass?" I asked.
"Oh yes! to curl his hair, I suppose. And a pianney to play polkas."
"It isn't as solid as ours, Hannah," I said. This opened the
flood-gates of wrath.
"No," she said, in that accent of sarcasm in which an Irish peasant is
past master, "nor purtier. Look at that sophy now. Isn't it fit for any
lady in the land? And these chairs? Only for the smith, they'd be gone
to pieces long ago. And that lovely carpet? 'T would do for a flag for
the 'lague.' You haven't one cup and saucer that isn't cracked, nor a
plate that isn't burnt, nor a napkin, nor a tablecloth, nor a
saltcellar, nor--nor a--nor a--"
"I'll tell you what, Hannah," I said. "Father Letheby is going to show
us what's what. I'll furnish the whole house from top to bottom. Was
that his housekeeper?"
"I suppose so," she said contemptuously. "Some poor girl from an
orphanage. If she wasn't, she wouldn't wear them curifixes."
I admit that Hannah's scorn for my scanty belongings was well bestowed.
The sofa, which appeared to affect her æsthetic sense most keenly, was
certainly a dilapidated article. Having but three legs, it leaned in a
loafing way against the wall, and its rags of horsehair and protruding
springs gave it a most trampish and disreputable appearance. The chairs
were solid, for the smith had bound them in iron clamps. And the
carpet?--Well, I pitied it. It was threadbare and transparent. Yet,
when I looked around, I felt no feminine scorn. They all appealed to me
and said:--
"We have been forty years in your service. We have seen good things and
evil things. Our faces are familiar to you. We have spent ourselves in
your service."
And I vowed that, even under the coming exigencies, when I should have
to put on an appearance of grace and dignity,--exigencies which I
clearly foresaw the moment my curate made his appearance, these old
veterans should never be set aside or cast as lumber, when their
aristocratic friends would make their appearance. And my books looked at
me as much as to say:--
"You're not ashamed of us?"
No, dear silent friends, I should be the meanest, most ungrateful of
mortals if I could be ashamed of you. For forty years you have been my
companions in solitude; to you I owe whatever inspirations I have ever
felt; from you have descended in copious streams the ideas that raised
my poor life above the commonplace, and the sentiments that have
animated every good thing and every holy purpose that I have
accomplished. Friends that never obtruded on my loneliness by idle
chatter and gossip, but always spoke wise, inspiriting things when most
I needed them; friends that never replied in irritation to my own
disturbed imaginings, but always uttered your calm wisdom like voices
from eternity, to soothe, to control, or to elevate; friends that never
tired and never complained; that went back to your recesses without a
murmur; and never resented by stubborn silence my neglect,--treasures of
thought and fountains of inspiration, you are the last things on earth
on which my eyes shall rest in love, and like the orphans of my flock
your future shall be my care. True, like your authors, you look
sometimes disreputable enough. Your clothes, more to my shame, hang
loose and tattered around you, and some of your faces are ink-stained or
thumb-worn from contact with the years and my own carelessness. I would
dress you in purple and fine linen if I may, yet you would reproach me
and think I was weary of your homely faces. Like the beggar-maid you
would entreat to be allowed to go back from queenly glory and pomp to
the tatters and contentment of your years. So shall it be! but between
you and me there must be no divorce, so long as time shall last for me.
Other friends will come and go, but nothing shall dissolve our union
based upon gratitude and such love as man's heart may have for the ideal
and insensible.
When there had been time for perfecting all his arrangements, I strolled
down to pay a formal visit to Father Letheby. The atmosphere of absolute
primness and neatness struck my senses when I entered. Waxed floors,
dainty rugs, shining brasses, coquettish little mirrors here and there,
a choice selection of daintily bound volumes, and on a writing desk a
large pile of virgin manuscript, spoke the scholar and the gentleman. My
heart sank, as I thought how sick of all this he will be in a few weeks,
when the days draw in, and the skies scowl, and the windows are washed,
and the house rocked under the fierce sou'westers that sweep up the
floor of the Atlantic, and throw all its dripping deluges on the little
hamlet of Kilronan. But I said:--
"You have made a cosey little nest for yourself, Father Letheby; may you
long enjoy it."
"Yes," he said, as if answering my horrible scepticism, "God has been
very good to send me here."
Now what can you do with an optimist like that?
"There is just one drawback," I said, with a faint attempt at humor, "to
all this æstheticism." I pointed to a window against which four very
dirty noses were flattened, and four pairs of delighted eyes were
wandering over this fairy-land, and a dirty finger occasionally pointed
out some particularly attractive object.
"Poor little things," he said, "it gives them pleasure, and does me no
harm."
"Then, why not bring them in?" I said.
"Oh, no," he replied, with a little laugh, "I draw the line there." He
pointed to the shining waxed floors. "Besides, it would destroy their
heaven. To touch and handle the ideal, brings it toppling down about our
ears."
We spoke long and earnestly about a lot of things. Then, looking a
little nervously at me, he made a great leap of thought.
"Would you mind my saying a serious word to you, sir?" said he.
"Certainly not," I replied, "go ahead."
"It seems to me, then," he said, deliberately, "that we are not making
all that we might out of the magnificent possibilities that lie at our
disposal. There is no doubt things are pretty backward in Ireland. Yet,
we have an intelligent people, splendid natural advantages,--an
infernally bad government, it is true,--but can we not share the blame
with the government in allowing things to remain as they are? Now, I am
not an advocate for great political designs: I go in for
decentralization, by which I mean that each of us should do his very
best exactly in that place where Providence has placed him. To be
precise, what is there to prevent us from improving the material
condition of these poor people? There is a pier to be built. I am told
shoals of fish whiten the sea in the summer, and there are no appliances
to help our fishermen to catch them and sell them at a vast profit.
There is an old mill lying idle down near the creek. Why not furnish it
up, and get work for our young girls there? We have but a poor water
supply; and, I am told, there is a periodical recurrence of fever.
Pardon me, sir," he continued, "if I seem to be finding fault with the
ministry of the priests here, but I am sure you do not misunderstand
me?"
"Certainly not," said I, "go on."
And he went on with his airy optimism, drawing wonderful castles with
the light pencils of his young fancy, and I seemed to hear my own voice
echoing back from thirty years long passed by, when the very same words
were on my lips and the same ideas throbbed through my brain. But would
it be kind to leave him undeceived? I decided not.
"Your first step," I said, "is to see the landlord, who owns the sloping
fields and the foreshore."
"Certainly," he said, "that's quite easy. What's his address?" He took
up his note-book.
"I am not quite sure," I replied. "He is probably this moment staking
half his property on the red at Monte Carlo, or trying to peep into a
harem at Stamboul, or dining off bison steak in some cañon in the
Sierras."
He looked shocked.
"But his agent,--his representative?"
"Oh! he's quite available. He will be very polite, and tell you in well
chosen words that he can do--nothing."
"But the Governmental Office,--the Board of Works?"
"Quite so. You'll write a polite letter. It will be answered in four
weeks to the day: 'We beg to acknowledge receipt of your communication,
which shall have our earliest attention.' You'll write again. Reply in
four weeks: 'We beg to acknowledge receipt of your communication, which
we have placed before the Board.' You'll hear no more on the matter. But
don't let me depress you!"
"But is there no redress? What about Parliament?"
"Oh, to be sure! A question will be asked in the House of Commons. The
Chief Secretary will reply: 'The matter is under the deliberation of the
Board of Works, with whose counsels we do not wish to interfere.'"
He was silent.
"About the factory," I continued. "You know there is a large shirt
factory in Loughboro, six miles away. If you apply to have a branch
factory established here, the manager will come down, look at the store,
turn up his nose, ask you where are you to find funds to put the
building in proper order, and do you propose to make the store also a
fish-curing establishment; and then he will probably write what a
high-born lady said of the first Napoleon: 'Il salissait tout ce qu'il
touchait.'"
"It's a damned lie," said Father Letheby, springing up, and, I regret to
say, demolishing sundry little Japanese gimcracks, "our people are the
cleanest, purest, sweetest people in the world in their own personal
habits, whatever be said of their wretched cabins. But you are not
serious, sir?"
He bent his glowing eyes upon me. I liked his anger. And I liked very
much that explosive expletive. How often, during my ministry, did I
yearn to be able to utter that emphatic word! Mind, it is not a
cuss-word. It is only an innocent adjective--condemned. But what
eloquence and emphasis there is in it! How often I could have flung it
at the head of a confirmed toper, as he knelt at my feet to take the
pledge. How often I could have shot it at the virago, who was disturbing
the peace of the village; and on whom my vituperation, which fell like a
shot without powder, made no impression! It sounded honest. I like a
good fit of anger, honest anger, and such a gleam of lightning through
it.
"I am," I said, "quite serious. You want to create a Utopia. You forget
your Greek."
He smiled.
"I am reserving the worst," I said.
"What is it?" he cried. "Let me know the worst."
"Well," I said slowly, "the people won't thank you even in the
impossible hypothesis that you succeed."
He looked incredulous.
"What! that they won't be glad to lift themselves from all this squalor
and misery, and be raised into a newer and sweeter life?"
"Precisely. They are happy. Leave them so. They have not the higher
pleasures. Neither have they the higher perils. 'They sow not, neither
do they spin.' But neither do they envy Solomon in all his glory. Jack
Haslem and Dave Olden sleep all day in their coracles. They put down
their lobster pots at night. Next day, they have caught enough of these
ugly brutes to pay for a glorious drunk. Then sleep again. How can you
add to such happiness? By building a schooner, and sending them out on
the high seas, exposed to all the dangers of the deep; and they have to
face hunger and cold and death, for what? A little more money, and a
little more drink; and your sentence: Why didn't he leave us alone?
Weren't we just as well off as we were? which is the everlasting song
of your respected predecessor, only he put it in Latin: _Cui bono?_"
He pondered deeply for a long time. Then he said: "It sounds sensible;
but there is some vile fallacy at the bottom of it. Anyhow, I'll try.
Father, give me your blessing!"
"There again," I said, "see how innocent you are. You don't know the
vernacular."
He looked surprised.
"When you know us better," I answered, in reply to his looks, "you will
understand that by that formula you ask for a drink. And as I don't
happen to be under my own roof just now--"
His glorious laugh stopped me. It was like the ringing of a peal of
bells.
"No matter," he said. "I may go on?"
"Certainly," I replied. "You'll have a few gray hairs in your raven
locks in twelve months time,--that's all."
"What a hare," I thought as I went home, "is madness, the youth, to leap
over the meshes of good counsel, the cripple." Which is not mine, but
that philosopher, Will Shakespeare; or is it Francis Bacon?
CHAPTER V
A SLIGHT MISUNDERSTANDING
Father Letheby commenced sooner than I had expected.
I think it was about nine or ten days after his formal instalment in his
new house, just as I was reading after breakfast the _Freeman's Journal_
of two days past, the door of my parlor was suddenly flung open, a bunch
of keys was thrown angrily on the table, and a voice (which I recognized
as that of Mrs. Darcy, the chapel woman), strained to the highest
tension of indignation, shouted:--
"There! and may there be no child to pray over my grave if ever I touch
them again! Wisha! where in the world did you get him? or where did he
come from, at all, at all? The son of a jook! the son of a draper over
there at Kilkeel. Didn't Mrs. Morarty tell me how she sowld socks to
his ould father? An' he comes here complaining of dacent people! 'Dirt,'
sez he. 'Where?' sez I. 'There,' sez he. 'Where?' sez I. I came of as
dacent people as him. Wondher _you_ never complained. But you're too
aisy. You always allow these galivanters of curates to crow over you.
But I tell you I won't stand it. If I had to beg my bread from house to
house, I won't stand being told I'm dirty. Why, the ladies of the
Great House said they could see their faces in the candlesticks; and
didn't the Bishop say 't was the natest vestry in the diocese? And this
new cojutor with his gran' accent, which no one can understand, and his
gran' furniture, and his whipster of a servant, begor, no one can stand
him. We must all clear out. And, after me eighteen years, scrubbing, and
washing, and ironing, wid me two little orphans, which that blackguard,
Jem Darcy (the Lord have mercy on his sowl!) left me, must go to
foreign countries to airn me bread, because I'm not good enough for his
reverence. Well, 't is you'll be sorry. But, if you wint down on your
two binded knees and said: 'Mrs. Darcy, I deplore you to take up them
kays and go back to your juties,' I wouldn't! No! Get some whipster
that will suit his reverence. Mary Darcy isn't good enough."
[Illustration: "My door was suddenly flung open, and a bunch of keys was
thrown angrily on the table."]
She left the room, only to return. She spoke with forced calmness.
"De thrifle of money you owe me, yer reverence, ye can sind it down to
the house before I start for America. And dere's two glasses of althar
wine in the bottle, and half a pound of candles."
She went out again, but returned immediately.
"The surplus is over at Nell O'Brien's washing, and the black vestment
is over at Tom Carmody's since the last station. The kay of the safe is
under the door of the linny[1] to de left, and the chalice is in the
basket, wrapped in the handkercher. And, if you don't mind giving me a
charackter, perhaps, Hannah will take it down in the evening."
She went out again; but kept her hand on the door.
"Good by, your reverence, and God bless you! Sure, thin, you never said
a hard word to a poor woman." Then there was the sound of falling
tears.
To all this tremendous philippic I never replied. I never do reply to a
woman until I have my hand on the door handle and my finger on the key.
I looked steadily at the column of stocks and shares on the paper,
though I never read a word.
"This is rather a bad mess," said I. "He is coming out too strong."
The minute particulars I had from Hannah soon after. Hannah and Mrs.
Darcy are not friends. Two such village potentates could not be friends
any more than two poets, or two critics, or two philosophers. As a rule,
Hannah rather looked down on the chapel woman, and generally addressed
her with studied politeness. "How are you _to-day_, Mrs. Darcy?" or more
frequently, "Good _morning_, Mrs. Darcy." On the other hand, Mary Darcy,
as arbitress at stations, wakes, and weddings, had a wide influence in
the parish, and I fear used to speak contemptuously sometimes of my
housekeeper. But now there was what the newspapers call a Dual Alliance
against the newcomers, and a stern determination that any attempt at
superiority should be repressed with a firm hand, and to Mrs. Darcy's
lot it fell to bear the martyrdom of high principle and to fire the
first shot, that should be also the final one. And so it was, but not in
the way Mrs. Darcy anticipated.
It would appear, then, that Father Letheby had visited the sacristy, and
taken a most minute inventory of its treasures, and had, with all the
zeal of a new reformer, found matters in a very bad state. Now, he was
not one to smile benignantly at such irregularities and then throw the
burden of correcting them on his pastor. He was outspoken and honest. He
tore open drawers, and drew out their slimy, mildewed contents, sniffed
ominously at the stuffy atmosphere, flung aside with gestures of
contempt some of Mrs. Darcy's dearest treasures, such as a magnificent
reredos of blue paper with gold stars; held up gingerly, and with curled
lip, corporals and purificators, and wound up the awful inspection with
the sentence:--
"I never saw such abominable filth in my life."
Now, you may accuse us in Ireland of anything you please from coining to
parricide, but if you don't want to see blazing eyes and hear vigorous
language don't say, Dirt. Mrs. Darcy bore the fierce scrutiny of her
menage without shrinking, but when he mentioned the ugly word, all her
fury shot forth, and it was all the more terrible, because veiled under
a show of studied politeness.
"Dirt!" she said. "I'd be plazed to see your reverence show one speck of
dirt in the place."
"Good heavens, woman!" he said, "what do you mean? There is dirt
everywhere, in the air, under my feet, in the grate, on the altar. It
would take the Atlantic to purify the place."
"You're the first gentleman that ever complained of the place," said
Mrs. Darcy. "Of coorse, there aren't carpets, and bearskins, and
cowhides, which are now the fashion, I believe. An' dere isn't a
looking-glass, nor a pianney; but would your reverence again show me the
dirt. A poor woman's charackter is all she has."
"I didn't mean to impute anything to your character," he said, mildly,
"but if you can't see that this place is frightfully dirty, I suppose I
can't prove it. Look at that!"
He pointed to a grewsome heap of cinders, half-burnt papers, brown
ashes, etc., that choked up the grate.
"Yerra. Glory be to God!" said Mrs. Darcy, appealing to an imaginary
audience, "he calls the sweepings of the altar, and the clane ashes,
dirt. Yerra, what next?"
"This next," he said, determinedly; "come here." He took her out and
pointed to the altar cloth. It was wrinkled and grimy, God forgive me!
and there were stars of all sizes and colors darkening it.
"Isn't that a disgrace to the Church?" he said, sternly.
"I see no disgrace in it," said Mrs. Darcy. "It was washed and made up
last Christmas, and is as clane to-day as the day it came from the
mangle."
"Do you call that clean?" he shouted, pointing to the drippings of the
candles.
"Yerra, what harm is that," said she, "a bit of blessed wax that fell
from the candles? Sure, 't is of that they make the Agnus Deis."
"You're perfectly incorrigible," he said. "I'll report the whole
wretched business to the parish priest, and let him deal with you."
[Illustration: "Do you call that clean?"]
"Begor you may," said she, "but I'll have my story first."
And so she had. Father Letheby gave me his version afterwards. He did so
with the utmost delicacy, for it was all an indirect indictment of my
own slovenliness and sinful carelessness. I listened with shamed face
and bent head? And determined to let him have his way. I knew that Mrs.
Darcy would not leave for America just yet.
But what was my surprise on the following Sunday, when, on entering the
sacristy to prepare for Mass, I slid along a polished floor, and but for
the wall would probably have left a vacancy at Kilronan to some
expectant curate. The floor glinted and shone with wax; and there were
dainty bits of fibre matting here and there. The grate was black-leaded,
and there was a wonderful firescreen with an Alpine landscape. The clock
was clicking steadily, as if Time had not stood still for us all for
many years: and there were my little altar boys in snowy surplices as
neat as the acolytes that proffered soap and water to the Archbishop of
Rheims, when he called for bell and book in the famous legend.
But oh! my anguish when I drew a stiff white amice over my head, instead
of the dear old limp and wrinkled one I was used to; and when I feebly
tried to push my hands through the lace meshes of an alb, that would
stand with stiffness and pride, if I placed it on the floor. I would
gladly have called for my old garment; but I knew that I too had to
undergo the process of the new reformation; and, with much agony, I
desisted. But I drew the line at a biretta which cut my temples with its
angles, and I called out:--
"Mrs. Darcy."
A young woman, with her hair all tidied up, and with a white apron,
laced at the edges, and pinned to her breast, came out from a recess.
She was smiling bashfully, and appeared as if she would like to run away
and hide somewhere.
"Mrs. Darcy," I called again.
The young woman smiled more deeply, and said with a kind of smirk:--
"Here I am, your reverence!"
It is fortunate for me that I have acquired, after long practice, the
virtue of silence; for when I recognized the voice of my old friend, I
was thunderstruck. I'm sure I would have said something very emphatic,
but my habits restrained me. But I regret to say it was all a source of
distraction to me in the celebration of the Divine Mysteries, and during
the day. What had occurred? I was dying to know; but it would not be
consistent with the dignity of my position to ask. To this day, I
congratulate myself on my reticence; for, who could help asking how?
when face to face with a miracle. It was some days before I discovered
the secret of the magical transformation.
[Illustration: "Here I am, your Reverence!" (p. 56.)]
It would appear, then, that the late lamented Jem Darcy, when he
departed to his reward, left his poor widow two charges in the shape of
children. What do I say? Charges? No. She would scornfully repudiate the
word. For was not Patsey, the baby of eighteen months, "the apple of
her eye," and Jemmy, the little hunchback of six summers, "the core of
her heart"? For them she labored and toiled, and "moiled," as she used
to say; and worked herself into oil to get them bread, and a pink ribbon
for the baby's shoulder knot, and a navy cap, with "Hero" in gold
letters for Jemmy. And across her troubled life, full of cares and
apprehensions, poor soul! was there any gleam of sunshine, except that
which was reflected in the iris of her baby's eyes; or that which
dappled the mud floor of her cabin, when Jemmy lay there and played hide
and seek with the gossamer threads that shone through the chink in the
half-door! Ah me! it is easy to lecture the poor, and complain of their
horrid ways; but the love such as no man hath gilds and enamels most of
the crooked and grimy things that disfigure their poor lives in the eyes
of the fastidious; and perhaps makes the angels of Him, before whose
Face the stars are not spotless, turn from the cold perfection of the
mansion and the castle to gaze lovingly on the squalid lowliness of the
hamlet and the cabin. Well. On the morning that Mrs. Darcy gave me
formal notice of her relinquishment of the solemn office she held, she
bent her steps homeward with a heavy heart. She had done her duty, like
all the other great people who have done disagreeable things; but it
brought no consolation. And she had flung behind her her little cabin,
and all the sweet associations connected therewith, and the pomp and
pride of power, when she officiated at the public offices of the Church,
and every one knew her to be indispensable. For who could tell the name
of a defaulter at the station, but Mrs. Darcy? And who arranged the
screaming baby in the clumsy arms of a young godmother, but Mrs. Darcy?
And who could lay out a corpse like Mrs. Darcy? And who but Mrs. Darcy
found the ring when the confused and blushing bridegroom fumbled in
every pocket at the altar, and the priest looked angry, and the bride
ashamed?
And then her pride in the Church! How wonderful were her designs in
holly and ivy at Christmas! What fantasies she wove out of a rather
limited imagination! What art fancies, that would shame William Morris,
poet and socialist, did she conceive and execute in the month of May for
the Lady Altar! Didn't Miss Campion say that she was a genius, but
undeveloped? Didn't Miss Campion's friend from Dublin declare that
there was nothing like it in Gardiner Street? And when her time would be
spent, and she was old and rheumatized, would not little Jemmy, the
hunchback, who was a born pre-Raphaelite, take her place, and have a
home, for he could not face the rough world? Ah me! and it was all gone;
cast behind her through a righteous feeling of pride and duty. She moved
through the village with a heavy heart; and her check apron went to her
eyes.
She had an amiable habit of never entering her cabin without playing
"Peek-a-boo!" through the window with the baby. For this purpose, the
cradle was always drawn so that the baby faced the window; and when it
saw the round face, which it knew so well, peeping over the speck
blossoms of the mignonette, well--there were developments. On this
particular morning, Mrs. Darcy was in no humor for playacting; but the
force of habit is strong, and she peered through the little window with
reddened eyes. And these eyes, as she afterwards described it, "sprod in
her head" at what she saw. For, on the floor, in his favorite attitude,
his head propped between his hands, was the hunchback, Jemmy, studying
with all the intense appreciation of an Edison, how to construct an airy
castle out of certain painted wood-blocks, which strewed the floor; and
there, his back turned towards the window, was her arch-enemy, Father
Letheby, his right hand raised aloft and dangling an india-rubber baby;
whilst Patsey, his eyes dilated with excitement, made frantic attempts
to seize the prize, and crowed and chuckled in the exuberance of his
delight. Mrs. Darcy drew back hastily, then peeped again. No doubt of
it. It was no phantasm of the imagination. She looked again. Then
whispered something softly to herself, and, with a great lump in her
throat, sped swiftly through the village and up to the "Great House."
The result of her interview with Miss Campion we have seen. Father
Letheby has scored again. There were heavy bets of fifteen to one in
half-gallons of porter, laid by desperate gamblers, that Father Letheby
would make Mrs. Darcy wash her face. It was supposed to be a wild plunge
in a hopeless speculation. I am told now, that the betting has gone up
at the forge, and is now fifty to one that, before a month, she'll have
a lace cap and "sthramers" like the maids at the "Great House."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: Saxon, linhay.]
CHAPTER VI
AT THE STATION
Captain Campion was one of that singular race of Catholics, with which
Ireland was familiar fifty years ago, but which is now dying rapidly
away under the new conditions and environments of our age. A strong,
rough lot they were, with whom a word meant a blow; gentlemen every inch
of them, who would die for the faith whose dogmas they knew nothing of,
and whose commands they ignored. Often in the town and country clubs of
Ireland strange things happened, of which the outer world heard nothing;
for stewards are discreet, and managers imbibe the spirit of
respectability from their superiors. But the walls could tell of wine
glasses shattered, and billiard cues broken, and hot blows exchanged for
a word about the Pope, or against the priests; it was a leap of hot
flame, which died out in a moment, and they were gentlemen again. And
the perfervid imagination of the Celt had invented some such heroism
about Captain Campion,--particularly one brilliant achievement at a
hunt, when he unhorsed with the butt of his riding whip, and then cut
and lashed an unfortunate young officer in the Lancers, who had dared
say something about Bittra,--the "lovely Papist," who was toasted at the
mess in distant Galway, and had set half the hunting men of the country
wild with her beauty and her prowess. It may be supposed then that
Captain Campion was not a practical Catholic. He came to Mass
occasionally, where he fidgeted in his pew, and twisted and writhed
under the sermon. He never went to Confession; not even to his Easter
duty,--which prevented me from accepting the hospitalities which he
freely proffered. There were other little circumstances which made me
wish not to be too intimate. Whatever political opinions I held, and
they were thin and colorless enough, were in direct antagonism to his.
He was a three-bottle Tory, who regarded the people as so many serfs,
who provided laborers for his comfort, and paid him for the privilege of
living on stony mountain or barren bog. The idea of their having any
rights struck him as positively ludicrous. There was but one thing that
had rights, and that was the fetish, property. Every attempt, therefore,
to lift the people from that condition of serfdom he regarded as
absolutely treasonable; and he was my chief opponent in any futile
attempts I made to introduce some improvements into the wretched place.
And of course he was hated. There was hardly a family to whom he had not
done an injury, for he pushed the law to savage extremes. He had
evicted, and burnt down the deserted cottages; he had driven honest lads
for some paltry act of poaching into criminal and dishonest courses; he
had harassed the widow and unhoused the orphan; and every prayer that
went up for the sweet face of his child was weighted with a curse for
the savage and merciless father. He knew it, and didn't care. For there
were plenty to fawn upon him and tell him he was quite right. Ah me! how
the iron has sunk into our souls! Seven centuries of slavery have done
their work well.
Bittra Campion sat in the large drawing-room, with the high, broad
windows, that looked over a dun, brown moorland, to where the sea-line
threw its clear curve athwart the sky. She was working quietly at some
little garment for a poor peasant girl or half-clad boy in the
mountains; but over her gentle and usually placid face stole a look of
apprehension, as if a shadow of coming evil was thrown forward by the
undefined future. Yet why should she fear, who hated no one, but poured
her love abroad upon all? Ah, why? is it not upon the gentle and the
kind that the hailstones of destiny beat oftenest, as if they felt that
here, and not upon the rugged and the stern, their pitiless strength
should succeed? From time to time, Bittra looked to the door, or paused
in her work, to listen for a footstep. At last it came,--her father's
heavy step, as he strode across the corridor, and the doors slammed
behind him.
"All alone, mignonne," he said. "A penny, nay, a pound for your
thoughts."
"Agreed, father," she said eagerly, "I want a pound rather badly just
now."
"Some new idiot discovered in the hills," he said, "or some disreputable
tramp with a good imagination. You shall have it, Bittra," he said,
coming over, and gently stroking her hair. He looked down fondly upon
her, and said, suddenly changing his voice:--
"I am hungry as a hawk, Bittra; would you get me some tea?"
She rose to meet his wishes, and as her tall, beautiful figure passed
from the room, he said to himself:--
"God, how like her mother!"
He threw himself on a sofa, and looked out over the moor. But he saw--
A long, low island, with the plumes of palms crowning the hill; and
beneath, the white waves creeping up the coral crests to mingle with the
lazy waters of the lagoon. A cottage, shaded with palms, close down by
the beach, with magnolias clustering round the windows, and orchids far
back in the moist shades, and creeping vines tangled in and out amongst
the palms, and a strong sun, going down in an orange and crimson sky,
and a cool, welcome breeze from the sea, that just lifts up the fans of
the palms, and a stray curl on the forehead of a girl--for she was
hardly more than a girl--who sat out on the tiny lawn, and at her feet
the young naval officer, who had carried off his bride at the last
season at the Castle and brought her here under southern skies, and
believed that this was the world--and heaven. His ship lay at anchor on
the eastern side; and here they were stationed for weeks, it may be for
months, away from civilization and all its nuisances, and alone with
Nature and the children of Nature, who came by degrees to love at least
the gentle lady who was so kind to them and their brown babies. Alas for
human happiness! One short year, and he was a widower, with the charge
of a little babe.
"It was a bitter fate," he said to himself, "and I called her 'Bittra'
in my rage. I must change that name."
He started, for the door opened and Bittra came in, immediately followed
by the servant with tea.
"We've got a new neighbor, mignonne," he said, as he broke up his toast,
"and must call immediately. Can you guess?"
"No, father," she said; but it fitted in with her apprehensions and made
her shudder.
"Neither can I," he said, laughing. "But I have got mysterious hints
that indicate a neighbor."
"Judith again," said Bittra. "She can never be explicit."
Then, after a long pause, she said, as if communing with herself:--
"I don't like new acquaintances. They are pretty certain to be
troublesome. Can't we live for one another, father?"
"Gladly, my child," he said, darkly, "but what can you do? Life is warp
and woof. It must be held together somehow. And the woof is what we call
society."
"Father," she said timidly, "there will be a station at the glen in the
morning. Might I ask the priests to breakfast here?"
"By all means," he replied, "it will be better than a dejeuner in a room
with two beds, and a squalling baby, with the bread taken from the
blankets, and the butter from the top of the dresser."
"Ah, no, pap, 't is never so bad as that. They do their best, poor
things--"
"All right," he cried. "Bring up their reverences. There are two or
three sole brought up from the yacht."
It was rather a remarkable station, that at Glencarn, although we did
not accept Miss Campion's invitation. I was rather apprehensive of the
effect these country stations would have on my fastidious curate; and I
narrowly watched him, as we left our car on the hills, and strode
through soft yellow mud and dripping heather to some mountain cabin. And
I think there was a little kindly malice in my thoughts when I allowed
him enter first, and plunge into the night of smoke that generally
filled these huts. Then the saying of Mass on a deal table, with a horse
collar overhead, and a huge collie dog beneath, and hens making frantic
attempts to get on the altar-cloth,--I smiled to myself, and was quite
impatient to know what effect all these primitive surroundings would
have on such refinement and daintiness. "He'll never stand it," I
thought, "he'll pitch up the whole thing, and go back to England." As
usual, I was quite wrong. Where I anticipated disgust, there were almost
tears of delight and sympathy; where I expected indignation, I found
enthusiasm.
"There's nothing like it in the world," he used say (this was a favorite
expression of his); "such faith, such reverence, such kindly courtesy!
Why, no empress could do the honors of the table like that poor woman!
Did you notice her solicitude, her eagerness, her sensitiveness lest she
should be intruding on our society. But those men in that smoky
kitchen,--it took me a long time to discern their faces in the gloom of
the smoke. And then I'd have given half that I have ever learned to be
able to paint them,--strong, brave mountaineers, their faces ruddy from
sun and wind; and such a reverential attitude! And then the idea of
their coming over to me, a young lad like themselves, and kneeling down
on the cobblestones, and whispering their little story,--there in the
presence of their comrades; and the little maidens with their sweet,
pure faces hidden under the hoods of their shawls, and the eyes of
wondering children, and the old men, bending over the fire,--why you
ought to be the happiest man on the face of the earth,--they are a
people to die for!"
Well, this morning at Glencarn we had a scene; and, as an easy,
good-tempered old man, I hate scenes, and keep away from them. The
morning was sullenly wet,--not in fierce, autumnal gusts, but there was
a steady persistent downpour of soft, sweet rain, that bathed your face
like a sponge, and trickled under your coat collar, and soaked your
frieze and waterproof, and made you feel flabby and warm and
uncomfortable. We did not see the cabin until we were quite close to it;
and when we entered, the first person we saw, kneeling on the mud floor,
but the kindness of the people had placed a bag under her knees, was
Bittra Campion. She was wrapped round about with a waterproof cloak, the
hood of which, lined with blue, covered her head, and only left her face
visible. There she knelt among the simple people; and if the saint of
the day appeared in bodily form, I am not sure that he would have
received more reverence than was poured around that gentle figure from
the full hearts that beat silently near her. I was not much surprised,
for I had seen Miss Campion at stations before; but Father Letheby
started back in astonishment, and looked inquiringly at me. I took no
notice, but passed into the little bedroom, and commenced hearing
confessions.
The tinkling of the little bell was the only indication I had of the
progress of the Holy Sacrifice; and when I knew it was ended, and was
studying some faded photographs of American friends over the rude
mantelpiece, I heard, amid the profound silence, Father Letheby's voice
suddenly raised in anger.
"Kneel down at once! Have you no respect for Him whom you have just
received, and who is before you on the altar?"
The people had arisen the moment the last prayer was said. It grated on
the feelings of the young priest, who, as I afterwards found, had the
most intense reverence and devotion towards the Most Holy Sacrament. I
waited for some minutes; then came out, and read the Station List, and
returned to the little bedroom off the kitchen. Miss Campion came in,
and proffered the hospitality of her home. We gladly declined. It would
have pained our humble hosts to have turned our backs upon them; and I
confess I was infinitely more at my ease there in that little bedroom
with its mud floor and painted chairs, than in Captain Campion's
dining-room. It is quite true, that James Casey cut the bread very
thick, and drank his tea with a good deal of expression from his saucer.
But these were slight drawbacks. The eggs were fresh and milky, the
cream delicious, the tea strong, the bread crispy, the butter sweet and
golden; and the daughters of the house and the mother waited on us with
a thoroughness and courtesy, that would have done credit to a court; and
we talked on all subjects,--the weather, the harvest, the neighbors; and
chaffed old Dan Downey--who was a great Biblical scholar--about the
"Jeroakims," and asked him where a hare might be found on the mountains;
but this was professional, so he stuffed his mouth with bread, and
insured his statutory silence. Then the little children crept in shyly
for bits of sugar; and the neighbors waited patiently till the clergy
were served; and we left the house with our blessing, and such gratitude
as only an Irish priest can feel for his flock.
The same steady, persistent downpour of rain continued as we passed over
the boulders of the torrent, and made our way through slushy mud and
dripping heather to where our horse was waiting. Father Letheby was
slightly moody.
At last, taking off his hat, and shaking down streams of water, he
said:--
"That was a shocking thing this morning. You heard me speak angrily.
Imagine those people standing up coolly, immediately after having
received Holy Communion; and I have spoken to them so repeatedly about
reverence."
"Did you notice where they were kneeling?" I said, not unkindly.
"Well, indeed it was not velvet."
"No," I said, "but rough cobblestones, rather pointed, like some
allusions in our sermons. Do you know how long they were kneeling
there?"
"During Mass," he said.
"No," I replied, "they knelt there during the confessions, and during
Mass. I am not excusing them, but did you ever hear of the ancient
penance of wearing peas in pilgrims' shoes? Some, I believe, and I think
Erasmus is the authority, had the wisdom to boil those peas. But you
cannot boil cobblestones. I never realized this part of our people's
sufferings till a poor fellow one morning, whilst I sat comfortably by
the fire, interrupted his confession to say:--
"For the love of God, your reverence, would you lave me put my cap under
my knees?"
My curate laughed good-naturedly. We got out on the highroad at last;
and as we jogged home in the soft, warm rain, I took the opportunity of
giving a little advice. It is a little luxury I am rather fond of, like
the kindred stimulant of a pinch of snuff; and as I have had but few
luxuries in my life, no one ought grudge me this.
"My dear Father Letheby," I said, as we sat comfortably together, "the
great principle of Irish life is _quieta non movere_. Because, when you
lay a finger on the most harmless and impotent things, they spring at
once into hissing and spitting things, like the Lernæan hydra; and then,
like that famous monster, you must cauterize the wound to heal, or
prevent new hideous developments. You have, as yet, no idea of how many
ways, all different and mutually antagonistic, there are, of looking at
things in Ireland. To your mind there seems but one,--one judgment, and
therefore one course of action. There are a hundred mirrors concentrated
on the same object, and each catches its own shape and color from
passion and interest. And each is quite honest in its own portraiture,
and each is prepared to fight for its own view to the bitter end."
"I beg your pardon, sir," my curate said, deferentially, "I am following
you with great attention. Do I understand you to say that each mirror is
prepared to fight for its own view to the bitter end? I have seen
something like that in a comic picture--"
"You know, you rascal, what I mean," I said, "I mean the hands that hold
the mirrors."
"Of course," he said, "my stupidity. But I am a little bit of a purist
in language."
Now, isn't this annoying? Poor Father Tom never interrupted me. He
always used say: "Yes! yes! to be sure! to be sure!" or, "Ki bono? ki
bono?" which grated horribly on my ears. I see I must be more careful;
and I shall defer this lecture.
"Might I ask you to proceed, sir?" he said. "It is very interesting,
indeed. You were talking about the pugnacity of mirrors."
There was a slight acidity here; but the poor fellow was put out.
"Never mind," I said, "you have a great deal to learn yet--with wrinkles
and gray hairs. But if you want to keep these raven locks, now wet and
dripping, intact, remember, _quieta non movere_! And if you want to keep
your face, now smooth and ruddy, but, I regret to say, glistening with
rain, free from wrinkles, remember, _quieta non movere_. Take now your
frequent altar denunciations of local superstitions,--the eggs found in
the garden, and the consequent sterility of the milk, the evil eye and
the cattle dying, etc., etc.,--it will take more than altar
denunciations, believe me,--it will take years of vigorous education to
relegate these ideas into the limbo of exploded fantasies. And the
people won't be comfortable without them. You take away the poetry,
which is an essential element in the Gaelic character, and you make the
people prosaic and critical, which is the worst thing possible for them.
Thiggin-thu? But I beg your pardon. You are beyond all that."
"It sounds plausible," he said, getting down from the gig; "but it
sounds also, pardon the expression, cowardly. However, we'll see!"
CHAPTER VII
SCRUPLES
Captain Campion gave a large dinner party on All-Hallows-Eve. It is a
ghostly time; and, in Ireland, every one, even the most advanced and
materialistic, feels that the air is full of strange beings, who cannot
be accounted for either by the microscope or the scalpel. Father Letheby
was invited and went. I was rather glad he did go, for I felt that the
village was rather dull for such a brilliant young fellow; and I had a
kind of pardonable pride in thinking that he would be fully competent to
meet on their own level any pretentious people that might stray hither
from more civilized centres. There is hardly, indeed, any great risk of
meeting too intellectual people in Ireland just now. The anatomy of a
horse is about the term and end of the acquired knowledge of the
stronger sex; and the latest ball--well, this won't do! I must suspend
this criticism, otherwise I shall wound, and that does not suit an old
priest, who is beginning to hear the murmurs of the eternal seas.
Father Letheby walked over across the moor to the "Great House." It was
growing dark when he left home, and he allowed himself a full hour, as
he had to make some calls by the way. One of these calls led him to a
house where an old woman was bedridden. Her son, a strong man of thirty
years or more, was doing something strange when the priest unexpectedly
entered. He was suffering from a scrofulous ulcer in the neck, and it
was a hideous disfigurement. He had just been standing before a broken
piece of looking-glass, stuck in the rough plaster of the wall; and he
hastily hid something as the priest entered. Father Letheby's suspicions
were instantly aroused. And he said hastily,--for he detested anything
like concealment,--
"What have you been doing?"
"Nothing, your reverence," said the peasant, nervously.
"Then, what are you hiding?" said Father Letheby.
"Nothing, your reverence," said the poor fellow.
"Tell the priest, Ned, alanna," said the old woman from her bed. "Sure,
't is only a charm which the good 'oman has set, Father. And it's cured
him already."
The young man scowled at his aged mother; and in response to an emphatic
gesture from the priest, he pulled out a little coil of rope, partly
worn at the end into a little wisp of flax.
"And are you such an utter fool," said the priest, angrily, holding the
rope gingerly between his fingers, "as to believe that that wretched
thing could cure you?"
"It _has_ cured me," said the young man. "Look here!"
Father Letheby looked; and sure enough, there was but a faint scar, as
of a burn, on the place where he knew well there had been a hideous
running ulcer a few days ago. He was struck dumb.
"I am not surprised," he said, recovering himself rapidly; "I know Satan
possesses supernatural power. But you, unhappy man, do you not know that
it is to the devil you owe your cure?"
"I told him so, your reverence," whimpered the poor mother. "I said,
better be sick forever, Ned, than break God's law. Sure, nothing good
can come from it."
"Thin why did God allow it?" said the young man, angrily.
"If you knew anything of your religion," said the priest, "you might
know that God permits evil things to happen. So much the worse for evil
doers. You have committed grave sin."
"But, sure, this is good," said the poor fellow, feebly groping after
theological lights, "and whatever is good comes from God."
"The effect may be good," said the priest, "the instrument is bad. What
is that?" and he pointed to the rope that was dangling in his hand.
The young man was silent.
"You are afraid to tell? Now what is it? There's something uncanny about
it?"
He fumbled with his vest, and looked sullenly into the darkening night.
"Then, as you won't answer, I'll take it with me," said the priest,
folding the rope into a coil, and preparing to put it in his pocket.
There was a sullen smile around the young man's mouth.
"The owner will be looking for it," said he.
"Tell the owner that Father Letheby has it, and she can come to me for
it," said the priest. He put the rope in his pocket and moved to the
door.
"Don't! don't! Father dear," said the old woman. "It isn't good. Give
it back, and Ned will give it to the good 'oman to-morrow."
"No! I shall give it myself," said the priest, "and a bit of my mind
with it."
The young man moved to the door, and stood beside the priest.
"You would not touch it if you knew what it was," he whispered.
"What?" said Father Letheby.
"Do you remember old Simmons, the pinsioner, down at Lougheagle?"
"Who destroyed himself?"
"Yes! he hanged himself to a rafter in the barn."
"I remember having heard of it."
"He hanged himself with a rope."
"I presume so."
"Your reverence has the rope in your pocket."
The priest stepped back as if stung. The thing was so horrible that he
lost his self-possession. Then a great flood of anger swept his soul;
and taking the hideous instrument from his pocket, he passed over to the
open hearth; with one or two turns of the wheel, that answers the
purpose of a bellows in Ireland, he kindled the smouldering ashes into
flame, buried the rope deep down in the glowing cinders, and watched it
curl into a white ash, that bent and writhed like a serpent in pain. The
old woman told her beads, and then blessed the priest, with, however, a
tremor of nervous fear in her voice. The young man lifted his hat, as
the priest, without a word, passed into the darkness.
"She'll be after asking for the rope, your reverence?" he said at
length, when the priest had gone a few yards.
"Refer her to me," Father Letheby said. "And look here, young man," he
cried, coming back and putting his face close to the peasant's, "I'd
advise you to go to your confession as soon as you can, lest, in the
words of Scripture, 'something worse happen to you.'"
It was a pleasant dinner party at the "Great House." Colonel Campion
presided. Bittra sat opposite her father. Captain Ormsby, Inspector of
Coast Guards, was near her. There were some bank officials from a
neighboring town; Lord L----'s agent and his wife; a military surgeon; a
widower, with two grown daughters; the new Protestant Rector and his
wife. Father Letheby was very much pleased. He was again in the society
that best suited his natural disposition. It was tolerably intelligent
and refined. The lights, the flowers, the music, told on his senses,
long numbed by the quietness and monotony of his daily life. He entered
into the quiet pleasures of the evening with zest, made all around him
happy, and even fascinated by the brilliancy with which he spoke, so
much so that Bittra Campion said to him, as he was leaving about eleven
o'clock:--
"Father, we are infinitely obliged to you."
He returned home, filled with a pleasant excitement, that was now so
unusual to him in his quiet, uneventful life. The moonlight was
streaming over sea and moorland, and he thought, as he passed over the
little bridge that spanned the fiord, and stepped out into the broad
road:--
"A delightful evening! But I must be careful. These Sybaritic banquets
unfit a man for sterner work! I shall begin to hate my books and to
loathe my little cabin. God forbid! But how pleasant it was all. And how
Campion and Ormsby jumped at that idea of mine about the fishing
schooner. I look on the matter now as accomplished. After all, perhaps,
these Irish gentry are calumniated. Nothing could equal the ardor of
these men for the welfare of the poor fishermen. Who knows? In six
months' time, the 'Star of the Sea' may be ploughing the deep, and a
fleet of sailing boats in her wake; and then the fish-curing stores,
and, at last, the poor old village will look up and be known far and
wide. Dear me! I must get that lovely song out of my brain, and the odor
of those azaleas out of my senses. 'T will never do! À Kempis would
shame me; would arraign me as a rebel and a traitor. What a lovely
night! and how the waters sleep in the moonlight! Just there at the bend
we'll build the new pier. I see already the 'Star of the Sea' putting
out, and the waters whitening in her wake."
He looked around, and saw the cottages of the peasants and the laborers
gleaming against the dark background of the moor and the mountain; and
the thought smote him: Perhaps there some little children went to bed
hungry to-night. He went home sadly, and, sitting down, he said:--
"Let me see! Soup, entrées, joints, sweets, fruits, wine, coffee. Let me
see! White roses, azaleas, chrysanthemums. Let me see! Waldteufel,
Strauss, Wagner! Let me see!"
He went over, and opened what appeared to be a rather highly decorated
cupboard. He drew back three shutters, and revealed a triptych, sunk
deep in the wall of his little parlor. It was the only thing of real
value he held. It was given to him by a Roman lady, who, for one reason
or another, chose to reside in England. It nearly filled the entire
space on the low wall. As he drew back the shutters, the lamplight fell
on the figure that occupied the whole of the central panel. It was the
Christ. The tall shape was closely wrapped around in the Jewish
kethoneth,--the first of the _vestes albæ_ of the priest, as St. John
represents in the Apocalypse. The capouche fell loosely over His head,
and was embroidered in many colors, as was also the hem of His long
white robe, which fell in folds over His sandalled feet. The hood of the
capouche shaded His eyes and threw a dark shadow on the face as far as
the lips. But the sacred figure also held its right hand to shelter the
eyes more deeply from a strong glare of sunset. The left hand fell
loosely by His side, and the first of a large flock of sheep had nestled
its head comfortably in the open palm. The large, gray eyes of Christ
were filled with an anxious light, as they gazed over the silent desert,
questing for some lost object; and the mouth, lightly fringed with
beard, was querulous with pain and solicitude. It was a beautiful
picture,--one worthy to be screened from indevout eyes, or revealed only
to those who loved and worshipped.
The young priest gazed long and lovingly at this presentment of his
Divine Master, whom he loved with the strongest personal affection.
Then he knelt down and pressed his forehead against the dust-stained
feet of Christ, and moaned:--
"Master, if I have done wrong in aught this night, let me know it! If I
have betrayed Thy interests, or brought Thy Name to shame, teach me in
the sharpest tones and flames of Thy anger, for I need a monitor; and
where shall I find so loving or so truthful a monitor as Thou? Alas! how
weak and pitiful I am, and how this poor unsubdued nature of mine craves
for things beyond Thee! I know there is no truth but in Thee,--no
sincerity, no constancy. I know what men are; how deceitful in their
words; how unkind in their judgments. Yet this lower being within my
being forever stretches out its longings to sensible things that
deceive, and will not rest in Thee, who art all Truth. But I must be
brought back to Thee through the sharp pangs of trial and tears. Spare
me not, O Master! only do not punish with the deprivation of Thy Love!"
He rose up strengthened, yet with a premonition in his heart of great
trials awaiting him. Who would dream of such tragic things under the
heavy skies and the dull environments of life in Ireland?
CHAPTER VIII
OUR CONCERT
The winter stole in quietly, heralded by the white frosts of late
October; and nothing occurred to disturb the quiet of the village,
except that Father Letheby's horse, a beautiful bay, ran suddenly lame
one evening, as he topped a hill, and a long reach of mountain lay
before him on his way to a sick-call. There were, of course, a hundred
explanations from as many amateurs as to the cause of the accident. Then
a quiet farmer, who suspected something, found a long needle driven deep
into the hoof. It had gone deeper and deeper as the action of the horse
forced it, until it touched the quick, and the horse ran dead lame. The
wound festered, and the animal had to be strung up with leather bands to
the roof of his stable for three months. Father Letheby felt the matter
acutely; but it was only to myself he murmured the one significant word,
Ahriman.
Late one evening in November a deputation waited on me. It consisted of
the doctor, the schoolmaster, and one or two young fellows, generally
distinguished by their vocal powers at the public house, when they were
asked for "their fisht and their song." The doctor opened negotiations.
I have a great regard for the doctor, and he knows it. He is a fine
young fellow, a great student, and good and kind to the poor. I often
spent a pleasant hour in his surgery over his microscope, where I saw
wonderful things; but what has haunted me most is the recollection of a
human brain, which the doctor had preserved in spirits, and on which he
has given me several lectures. I remember well my sensations when I
first held the soft, dark, pulpy mass in my hand. All that I had ever
read in psychology and metaphysics came back to me. This is the
instrument of God's masterpiece,--the human soul. Over these nodes and
fissures it floated, like the spirit of God over the face of the deep.
Here, as on a beautiful instrument, the spirit touched the keys, and
thought, like music, came forth; and here were impressed indelibly ideas
of the vast universe without, of time and eternity; yea, even of the
Infinite and Transcendent,--of God. Hushed in the silence of prayer,
here the soul brooded as a dove above its nest; and here in moments of
temptation and repentance, it argued, reasoned, prayed, implored the
inferior powers that rebelled or recanted beneath. With what sublime
majesty it ruled and swayed the subjects that owned its imperial
dominion; and how it touched heaven on the one hand for pity, and earth
on the other in power! And when the turbulent passions raged and
stormed, it soothed and quelled their rebellion; and then, in recompense
to itself, it went out and up towards the celestials, and joined its
emancipated sisters before the great white throne, and drank in peace
and the blessedness of calm from the silences and worship of Heaven.
Where is that soul now? Whither has it gone? Silent is the instrument,
just crumbling to inevitable decay. But where in the boundless ocean of
space is the deathless spirit that once ruled it in majesty, and drew
from it music whose echoes roll through eternity? And how has science
mapped and parcelled it, like a dead planet. Here is the "island of
Reil," here the "pons Varolii"; here is the "arbor vitæ"; and here is
the "subarachnoid space"; and here that wonderful contrivance of the
great Designer that regulates the arterial supplies. I lift my hat
reverentially and whisper, _Laudate_!
Well, the doctor knew how much I appreciated him. He was not nervous,
therefore, in broaching the subject.
"We have come to see you, sir, about a concert."
"A what?" I said.
"A concert," he replied, in a little huff. "They have concerts every
winter over at Labbawally, and at Balreddown, and even at Moydore; and
why shouldn't we?"
I thought a little.
"I always was under the impression," I said, "that a concert meant
singers."
"Of course," they replied.
"Well, and where are you to get singers here? Are you going to import
again those delectable harridans that illustrated the genius of Verdi
with rather raucous voices a few weeks ago?"
"Certainly not, sir," they replied in much indignation. "The boys here
can do a little in that way; and we can get up a chorus amongst the
school-children; and--and--"
"And the doctor himself will do his share," said one of the deputation,
coming to the aid of the modest doctor.
"And then," I said, "you must have a piano to accompany you, unless it
is to be all in the style of 'come-all-yeen's.'"
"Oh, 't will be something beyond that," said the doctor. "I think you'll
be surprised, sir."
"And what might the object of the concert be?" I asked.
"Of course, the poor," they all shouted in chorus. "Wait, your
reverence," said one diplomatist, "till you see all we'll give you for
the poor at Christmas."
Visions of warm blankets for Nelly Purcell, and Mag Grady; visions of
warm socks for my little children; visions of tons of coal and cartloads
of timber; visions of vast chests of tea and mountains of currant-cake
swam before my imagination; and I could only say:--
"Boys, ye have my blessing."
"Thank your reverence," said the doctor. "But what about a
subscription?"
"For what?" I said. "If we all have to subscribe, what is the meaning of
the concert?"
"Ah, but you know, sir, there are preliminary expenses,--getting music,
etc.,--and we must ask the respectable people to help us there."
This meant the usual guinea. Of course, they got it.
The evening of the concert came, and I was very reluctant to leave my
arm-chair and the fire and the slippers. And now that my curate and I
had set to work steadily at our Greek authors, to show the Bishop we
could do something, I put aside my Homer with regret, and faced the
frost of November. The concert was held in the old store down by the
creek; and I shivered at the thought of two hours in that dreary room,
with the windows open and a sea draught sweeping through. To my intense
surprise, I gave up my ticket to a well-dressed young man with a basket
of flowers in his button-hole; and I passed into a hall where the light
blinded me, and I was dazed at the multitude of faces turned towards me.
And there was a great shout of cheering; and I took off my great-coat,
and was glad I had come.
There was a stage in front, covered with plants and carpeted; and a
grand piano peeped out from a forest of shrubs and palms; and lamps
twinkled everywhere; and I began to think it was all a dream, when Miss
Campion came over, and said she was _so_ glad I had come, etc., and I
whispered:--
"I understand all now, when I see the little witch that has made the
transformation."
Father Letheby sat by me, quiet and demure, as usual. He looked as if he
had known nothing of all this wonder-working; and when I charged him
solemnly with being chief organizer, builder, framer, and designer in
all this magic, he put me off gently:--
"You know we must educate the people, sir. And you know our people are
capable of anything."
I believed him.
Presently, there was a great stir at the end of the long room, and I
looked around cautiously; for we were all so grand, I felt I should be
dignified indeed.
"Who are these gentry, coming up the centre of the hall?" I whispered;
for a grand procession was streaming in.
"Gentry?" he said. "Why, these are the performers." They were just
passing,--dainty little maidens, in satin from the bows in their wavy
and crisp locks down to their white shoes; and they carried bouquets,
and a subtle essence of a thousand odors filled the air.
"Visitors at the Great House?" I whispered.
"Not at all," he cried impatiently. "They are our own children. There's
Mollie Lennon, the smith's daughter; and there's Annie Logan, whose
father sells you the mackerel; and there's Tessie Navin, and Maudie
Kennedy, and--"
"Who's that grand young lady, with her hair done up like the Greek girls
of Tanagra?" I gasped.
"Why, that's Alice Moylan, the monitress."
"Good heavens," was all I could say. And the doctor sailed in with his
cohort, all in swallow-tails and white fronts, their hair plastered down
or curled, like the fiddlers in an orchestra; and the doctor stooped
down and saw my amazement, and whispered:--
"Didn't I tell you we'd surprise you, Father Dan?"
Just then a young lad, dressed like a doll, and with white kid gloves,
handed me a perfumed programme.
"I charge a penny all around, but not to you, Father Dan."
I thanked him politely and with reverence.
"Who's that young gentleman?" I whispered.
"Don't you know him?" said Father Letheby, smothering a laugh.
"I never saw him before," I said.
"You cuffed him last Sunday for ringing the bell at the _Agnus Dei_."
"I cuffed that young ruffian, Carl Daly," I said.
"That's he," said Father Letheby. Then I thought Father Letheby was
making fun of me, and I was getting cross, when I heard, "Hush!" and
Miss Campion rose up and passed on to the stage, and took her place at
the piano, and with one little wave of the hand, she marshalled them
into a crescent, and then there was a pause, and then--a crash of music
that sent every particle of blood in my old body dancing waltzes, and I
began to feel that I was no longer Daddy Dan, the old pastor of
Kilronan, but a young curate that thinks life all roses, for his blood
leaps up in ecstasy, and his eyes are straining afar.
One by one the singers came forward, timid, nervous, but they went
through their parts well. At last, a young lady, with bronze curls cut
short, but running riot over her head and forehead, came forward. She
must have dressed in an awful hurry, for she forgot a lot of things.
"What's the meaning of this?" I whispered angrily.
"Sh', 't is the fashion," said Father Letheby. "She's not from our
parish."
"Thank God," I said fervently. I beckoned to Mrs. Mullins, a fine
motherly woman, who sat right across the aisle. She came over.
"Have you any particular use of that shawl lying on your lap, Mrs.
Mullins?" I said.
"No," she said, "I brought it against the night air."
"Then you'd do a great act of charity," I said, "if you'd just step up
on that stage and give it to that young lady to cover her shoulders and
arms. She'll catch her death of cold."
"For all the money you have in the National Bank, Father Dan," said Mrs.
Mullins, "and they say you have a good little nest there, I wouldn't do
it. See how she's looking at us. She knows we are talking about her. And
her mother is Julia Lonergan, who lives at the Pike, in the parish of
Moydore."
Sure enough, Phœbe Lonergan, for that was her name, was looking at
us; and her eyes were glinting and sparkling blue and green lights, like
the dog-star on a frosty night in January. And I knew her mother well.
When Julia Lonergan put her hands on her hips, and threw back her head,
the air became sulphurous and blue. I determined not to mind the
scantiness of the drapery, though I should not like to see any of my own
little children in such a state. Whilst I was meditating thus, she came
to the end of her song; and then let a yell out of her that would
startle a Red Indian.
"Why did she let that screech out of her?" said I to Father Letheby.
"Was it something stuck in her?"
"Oh, not at all," said he, "that's what they call a _bravura_."
I began to feel very humble. And then a queer thing happened. I thought
I was a young curate, long before the days of Maynooth statutes, and all
these new regulations that bind us as tightly as Mrs. Darcy's new alb.
We were out at the hunt on a glorious November morning, the white frost
on the grass, and the air crisp and sunny. The smell of the fields, the
heather, and the withered bracken, came to us, and the bay coats and the
black coats of the horses shone like silk in the sunlight. There were
the usual courtesies, the morning salutes, and the ladies' smiles; and
then we moved to the cover, the dogs quivering with excitement, and we
not too composed. And then far across the ploughed field we saw the
arch-enemy, Reynard, his brush straight out from his back; and with one
shout, Hoicks! and Harkaway! we broke out into the open, and, with every
nerve and muscle strained, and the joy of the chase in our hearts, we
leaped onward to the contest. All the exhilaration and intense joy of
youth and freedom and the exercise of life were in my veins, and I
shouted Tally-ho! Harkaway, my boys! at the top of my voice.
A gentle hand was laid on mine, and I awoke from my dream. The people
were all smiling gravely, and the chorus was just finishing the last
bars of that best of all finales: Tally-ho! It was the witchery of the
music that called up the glorious past.
Then there was hunting for shawls and wraps, and such a din:--
"Wasn't it grand, Father Dan?"
"Aren't you proud of your people, Father Dan?"
"Where is Moydore now, Father Dan?"
"Didn't we do well, Father Dan?"
And then Miss Campion came over demurely and asked:--
"I hope you were pleased with our first performance, Father?"
And what could I say but that it was all beautiful and grand, and I
hoped to hear it repeated, etc.
But then, when I had exhausted my enthusiasm, a band of these young
fairies, their pretty faces flushed with excitement, and the stars in
their curls bobbing and nodding at me, came around me.
"It's now our turn, Father Dan. We want one little dance before we go."
"What?" I cried, "children like you dancing! I'd be well in my way,
indeed. Come now, sing 'Home, Sweet Home,' and away to Blanketland as
fast as you can."
"Ah, do, Father Dan!"
"Ah, do, Father Dan!"
"One little dance!"
"We'll be home in half an hour!"
"Ah do, _Daddy_ Dan!"
There was consternation. I knew that I was called by that affectionate,
if very undignified title; but this was the first time it was spoken to
my face; and there was horror on the faces of the young ones. But it
carried the day. I looked around, and saw some white waistcoats peeping
shyly behind a glass door.
"The boys are all gone home, I believe?" I said innocently.
"Oh, long and merry ago, Father. The lazy fellows wouldn't wait."
"And all the dancing will be amongst yourselves?"
Chorus: "Of course, Father!"
"And no waltzes or continental abominations?"
Chorus: "Oh dear, no!"
"And you'll all be in your beds at twelve o'clock?"
Chorus: "To the minute, Father."
"Well, God forgive me, but what can I do? Go on, you little heathens,
and--"
"Thank you, Father--"
"Thank you, Father--"
"Thank you, Father--," etc., etc.
I went home with a troubled conscience, and I read that blessed Maynooth
statute about dances. Then I had no sleep that night.
The doctor and the deputation called on me about a fortnight later to
settle accounts. I thought they were not very enthusiastic. They left
the door open, and sat near it.
"We came to settle about the concert, sir," said the doctor; "we thought
you'd would like to see our balance-sheet."
[Illustration: "Good Heavens!" was all I could say. (p. 89.)]
"Yes," I said, demurely, "and, of course, if the balance itself was
convenient--"
"It isn't as much as we thought," said the doctor, laying a small brown
parcel on the table. "The expenses were enormous. Now, look at these,"
he said, softly detaining my hand, as it moved towards the parcel.
I read the list of expenses. It was appalling. I cast a corner of my eye
farther down, and read, without pretending to see anything:--
"Total balance = 4_s_. 11-1/2_d_."
"Boys," said I, as I saw them putting their hands over their mouths with
that unmistakable Hibernian gesture, "you have done yourselves a great
injustice."
"I assure you, sir," said the schoolmaster--
"You mistake my meaning," I interrupted. "What I was about to say was
this,--when young men give their services gratuitously, and undertake
great labor in the cause of religion and charity, it would be most
unfair to expect that they would also make a pecuniary sacrifice."
They looked relieved.
"Now, I have reason to know that you all have undergone great expense in
connection with this concert."
There was a smirk of pharisaical satisfaction on their faces.
"But I cannot allow it. My conscience would not permit me. I see no
record in this balance-sheet of the three dozen of Guinness that was
ordered for the dressing-room. And there is not a word about the box of
Havanas, which William Mescal ordered specially from Dublin; nor any
mention of the soda-water and accompaniments that were hauled up in a
basket through the back window. Really, I cannot allow it, gentlemen,
your generosity is overpowering--"
The deep silence made me look around. They had vanished. I opened the
brown parcel, and counted four shillings and eleven-pence halfpenny in
coppers.
CHAPTER IX
SEVERELY REPRIMANDED
It was quite impossible that these changes or innovations could take
place without a certain amount of reclamation, to use the theological
expression, amongst the brethren. We are a conservative race, and our
conservatism has been eminently successful in that matter of supreme
moment,--the preservation of the faith and the purity of our people. It
is difficult, therefore, to see the necessity of change, to meet the
exigencies of the times, and the higher demands of the nation and the
race. Yet we have been forewarned a hundred times that we cannot put new
wine into old bottles, and that a spirit is stirring amongst our people
that must become unbridled and incontinent if not guided by new methods
and new ideas. This is not intuitive wisdom on my part. It is gathered
slowly and painfully amongst the thorns of experience.
But I cannot say I was too surprised when, one morning, an old and most
valued friend called on me, and revealed his anxiety and perturbation of
spirit by some very deep remarks about the weather. We agreed
wonderfully on that most harmonious topic, and then I said:--
"You have something on your mind?"
"To be candid with you, Father Dan," he replied, assuming a sudden
warmth, "I have. But I don't like to be intrusive."
"Oh, never mind," I replied. "I am always open to fraternal correction."
"You know," he continued nervously, "we are old friends, and I have
always had the greatest interest in you--"
"For goodness' sake, Father James," I said, "spare me all that. That is
all _subintellectum_, as the theologians say when they take a good deal
for granted."
"Well, then," said he,--for this interruption rather nettled him,--"to
be very plain with you, your parish is going to the dogs. You are
throwing up the sponge and letting this young man do what he likes. Now,
I can tell you the people don't like it, the priests don't like it, and
when he hears it, as he is sure to hear it, the Bishop won't like it
either."
"Well, Father James," I said slowly, "passing by the mixed metaphors
about the dogs and the sponge, what are exactly the specific charges
made against this young man?"
"Everything," he replied vaguely. "We don't want young English mashers
coming around here to teach old priests their business. We kept the
faith--"
"Spare me that," I said. "And don't say a word about the famine years.
That episode, and the grandeur of the Irish priests, is written in
Heaven. We want a Manzoni to tell it,--that is, if we would not prefer
to leave it unrecorded, except in the great book,--which is God's
memory."
He softened a little at this.
"Now," said I, "you are a wise man. What do you want me to do?"
"I want you to pitch into that young fellow," he said, "to cuff him and
make him keep his place."
"Very good. But be particular. Tell me, what am I to say?"
"Say? Tell him you'll stand no innovations in your parish. _Nil
innovetur, nisi quod prius traditum est._ Tell him that he must go along
with all the other priests of the diocese and conform to the general
regulations,--_Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus_. Tell him that
young men must know their place; and then take up the _Selva_, or the
Fathers, and prove it to him."
"God bless you!" said I, thankfully and humbly. "You have taken a load
off my heart. Now, let me see would this do."
I took down from the dusty shelves a favorite little volume,--a kind of
Anthology of the early Fathers, and I opened it.
"We'll try the _sortes Virgilianæ_" I said, and read slowly and with
emphasis:--
"At nunc, etiam sacerdotes Dei, omissis Evangeliis et Prophetis, vidimus
comœdias legere, amatoria Bucolicorum versuum verba cantare, tenere
Virgilium, et id quod in pueris necessitatis est, crimen in se facere
voluptatis."
"That's not bad," said my hearer, critically, whilst I held the book
open with horror and amazement. "That applies to him, I'm sure. But
what's the matter, Father Dan? You are not ill?"
"No," said I, "I'm not; but I'm slightly disconcerted. That anathema
strikes me between the two eyes. What else have I been doing for fifty
years but thumbing Horace and Virgil?"
"Oh, never mind," he said, airily. "Who wrote that? That's extreme, you
know."
"An altogether wise and holy man, called St. Jerome," I said.
"Ah, well, he was a crank. I don't mean that. That sounds disrespectful.
But he was a reformer, you know."
"A kind of innovator, like this young man of mine?" I said.
"Ah, well, try some sensible saint. Try now St. Bernard. He was a wise,
gentle adviser."
I turned to St. Bernard, and read:--
"Lingua magniloqua--manus otiosa!
Sermo multus--fructus nullus!
Vultus gravis--actus levis!
Ingens auctoritas--nutans stabilitas!"
That hit my friend between the eyes. The auguries were inauspicious. He
took up his hat.
"You are not going?" said I, reaching for the bell. "I am just sending
for Father Letheby to let you see how I can cuff him--"
"I--I--must be going," he said; "I have a sick-call--that is--an
engagement--I--er--expect a visitor--will call again. Good day."
"Stay and have a glass of wine!" I said.
"No, no, many thanks; the mare is young and rather restive. _Au
revoir!_"
"_Au revoir!_" I replied, as I took up my hat and gold-headed cane and
set out to interview and reprimand my curate. Clearly, something should
be done, and done quickly. There was a good deal of talk abroad, and I
was supposed to be sinking into a condition of senile incompetence. It
is quite true that I could not challenge my curate's conduct in a single
particular. He was in all things a perfect exemplar of a Christian
priest, and everything he had done in the parish since his arrival
contributed to the elevation of the people and the advancement of
religion. But it wouldn't do. Every one said so; and, of course, every
one in these cases is right. And yet there was some secret misgiving in
my mind that I should do violence to my own conscience were I to check
or forbid Father Letheby's splendid work; and there came a voice from my
own dead past to warn me: "See that you are not opposing the work of
the right hand of the Most High."
These were my doubts and apprehensions as I moved slowly along the road
that led in a circuitous manner around the village and skirted the path
up to the school-house. I woke from my unpleasant reverie to hear the
gentle murmur of voices, moving rhythmically as in prayer; and in a
short bend of the road I came face to face with the children leaving
school. I had been accustomed to seeing these wild, bare-legged
mountaineers breaking loose from school in a state of subdued frenzy,
leaping up and down the side ditches, screaming, yelling, panting, with
their elf-locks blinding their eyes, and their bare feet flashing amid
the green of grasses or the brown of the ditch-mould. They might
condescend to drop me a courtesy, and then--anarchy, as before. Today
they moved slowly, with eyes bent modestly on the ground, three by
three, and all chanting in a sweet, low tone--the Rosary. The centre
girl was the coryphæus with the "Our Fathers" and "Hail Marys"; the
others, the chorus. I stood still in amazement and challenged them:--
"I am happy to see my little children so well employed. How long since
you commenced to say the Rosary thus in common?"
In a twinkling the solemnity vanished and I was surrounded by a
chattering group.
"Just a week, Fader; and Fader Letheby, Fader, he tould us of a place
where they do be going to work in the morning, Fader, and dey all saying
de Rosary togeder, Fader; and den, Fader, we do be saying to ourselves,
why shouldn't we, Fader, say de Rosary coming to school, de same as
dese Germans, Fader?"
"That's excellent," I said, running my eyes over the excited group; "and
have you all got beads?"
"I have, Fader," said one of the coryphæi, "and de oders do be saying it
on their fingers."
"I must get beads for every one of you," I said; "and to commence, here,
Anstie, is my own."
I gave a little brown-eyed child my own mother-of-pearl beads, mounted
in silver, and was glad I had it to give. The children moved away,
murmuring the Rosary as before.
Now, here clearly was an innovation. Wasn't this intolerable? Who ever
heard the like? Where would all this stop? Why, the parish is already
going to the dogs! He has played right into my hands. Yes? Stop the
Rosary? Prevent the little children from singing the praises of their
Mother and Queen? I thought I saw the face of the Queen Mother looking
at me from the skies; and I heard a voice saying, prophetically: "Ex ore
infantium et lactantium perfecisti laudem propter inimicos tuos, ut
destruas inimicum et ultorem." Clearly, the fates are against me.
"Father Letheby was not at home, but would be back presently. Would I
take a chair and wait for a few moments?"
I sat down in a comfortable arm-chair lined with the soft rug that first
elicited my housekeeper's admiration. I looked around. Books were strewn
here and there, but there was no slovenliness or untidiness; and, ha!
there were the first signs of work on the white sheets of manuscript
paper. I wonder what is he writing about. It is not quite honorable, but
as I am on the war path, perhaps I could get here a pretext for scalping
him. Notes!
"November 1. Dipped into several numbers of _Cornhill Magazine_.
Specially pleased with an article on 'Wordsworth's Ethics,' in the
August number, 1876.
"November 2. Read over Sir J. Taylor's poems, principally 'Philip
van Artevelde,' 'Isaac Comnenus,' 'Edwin the Fair,' the 'Eve of the
Conquest.'
"Comnenus.--Not much the doubt
Comnenus would stand well with times to come,
Were there the hand to write his threnody,
Yet is he in sad truth a faulty man.
* * * * *
But be it said he had this honesty,
That, undesirous of a false renown,
He ever wished to pass for what he was,
One that swerved much, and oft, but being still
Deliberately bent upon the right,
Had kept it in the main; one that much loved
Whate'er in man is worthy high respect,
And in his soul devoutly did aspire
To be it all: yet felt from time to time
The littleness that clings to what is human,
And suffered from the shame of having felt it."
"Humph! This is advanced," I thought. "I wonder does he feel like
Comnenus? It is a noble portrait, and well worthy imitation."
Just then he came in. After the usual greetings he exclaimed, in a tone
of high delight:--
"Look here, Father, here's a delicious tit-bit. Confess you never read
such a piece of sublime self-conceit before."
He took up a review that was lying open on the desk, and read this:--
"As for claims, these are my opinions. If Lord Liverpool takes
simply the claims of the scholar, Copleston's are fully equal to
mine. So, too, in general knowledge the world would give it in
favor of him. If Lord Liverpool looks to professional merits, mine
are to Copleston's as _the Andes to a molehill_. There is no
comparison between us; Copleston is no theologue; I am. If, again,
Lord Liverpool looks to weight and influence in the University, I
will give Copleston a month's start and beat him easily in any
question that comes before us. As to popularity in the appointment,
mine will be popular through the whole profession; Copleston's the
contrary.... I thought, as I tell you, honestly, I should be able
to make myself a bishop in due time.... I will conclude by telling
you my own real wishes about myself. My anxious desire is to make
myself a great divine, and to be accounted the best in England. My
second wish is to become the founder of a school of theology at
Oxford. Now, no bishopric will enable me to do this but the See of
Oxford. I have now told you my most secret thoughts. What I desire
is, after a few years, to be sure of a retirement, with good
provision in some easy bishopric, or Van Mildert deanery. I want
neither London nor Canterbury: they will never suit me. But I want
money, because I am poor and have children; and I desire character,
because I cannot live without it."
"Isn't that simply delicious?" said Father Letheby, laying down the
review, and challenging my admiration.
"Poor fellow," I could not help saying; "the last little bit of pathos
about his children gilds the wretched picture. Who was he?"
"No less a person than Dr. Lloyd, Regius Professor of Divinity in
Oxford, and _the_ originator of the Tractarian Movement. But can you
conceive a Catholic priest writing such a letter?"
"No," I replied slowly, "I cannot. But I can conceive a Catholic priest
thinking it. I am not so much unlike the rest of mankind; and I remember
when I came out on the mission, and had time to look around me, like a
chicken just out of its shell, two things gave me a shock of intense
surprise. First, I could not conceive how the Catholic Church had got on
for eighteen hundred years without my cooperation and ability; and,
secondly, I could not understand what fatuity possessed the Bishop to
appoint as his vicar-general a feeble old man of seventy, who preached
with hesitation, and, it was whispered, believed the world was flat, and
that people were only joking when they spoke of it as a globe; and pass
over such a paragon of perfection, an epitome of all the talents, like
myself. It took me many years to recover from that surprise; and, alas!
a little trace of it lingers yet. Believe me, my dear young friend, a
good many of us are as alien in spirit to the _Imitation_ as Dr. Lloyd,
but we must not say it."
"By Jove!" he said, "I thought there was but one other Dr. Lloyd in the
world, and that was Father James----," mentioning the name of my morning
visitor.
It was the first chink I had seen in the armor of my young Goliath, and
I put in my rapier.
"You are not very busy?" I said.
"No, Father," he replied, surprised.
"Would you have time to listen to a little story?"
"Certainly," he said, settling back in his chair, his head on his hands.
"Well," I said slowly, "in the first years of my mission I had a fellow
curate, a good many years younger than myself. I consequently looked
down on him, especially as he was slightly pompous in his manner and too
much addicted to Latin and French quotations. In fact, he looked quite a
hollow fellow, and apparently a selfish and self-contented one. I
changed my opinion later on. He was particularly fond of horses, though
he never rode. He was a kind of specialist in horseflesh. His opinion
was regarded as infallible. He never kept any but the highest breed of
animal. He had a particularly handsome little mare, which he called
'Winnie,' because he thought he saw in her some intelligence, like what
he read of in the famous mare of a famous Robin Hood. She knew him, and
followed him like a dog. He allowed no one to feed her, or even to groom
her, but himself. He never touched her with a whip. He simply spoke to
her, or whistled, and she did all he desired. He had refused one hundred
and fifty pounds for her at a southern fair a few days before the
occurrence which I am about to relate. One day he had been at
conference, or rather we were both there, for he drove me to the
conference and back. It was thirteen miles going and the same returning.
The little mare came back somewhat fagged. He was no light-weight, nor
was I.
"'I shall not drive her there again,' he said; 'I'll get an old hack for
these journeys.'
"Before he sat down to dinner he fed and groomed her, and threw her rug
over her for the night. She whinnied with pleasure at reaching her own
stable. Just as he sat down to dinner a sick-call was announced. It was
declared 'urgent.' After a while you won't be too much alarmed at these
'urgent' calls, for they generally mean but little; but on this occasion
a short note was put into the priest's hand. It was from the doctor. It
ran: 'Come as quickly as possible. It is a most critical case.'
"There was no choice there.
"'Have you brought a horse?' the priest cried.
"'No, your reverence,' said the messenger. 'I crossed down the mountain
by the goat-path. There was no time.'
"The priest went straight to the stable and unlocked it. The mare
whinnied, for she knew his footstep. He flashed the light upon her as
she turned her big eyes towards him.
"'Come, little woman,' he said, 'we must be on the road again.'
"She understood him, and moaned.
"He led her out and put her to his trap. Then, without a word, he gave
her the rein, and they pushed on in the darkness. The road for five
miles was as level as that table, and she went rapidly forward. Then a
steep hill rose before them for about two miles, and he relaxed a
little, not wishing to drive her against the hill. Just then, on the
brow he saw lights flashing and waving to and fro in the night. He knew
the significance of it, and shook out the reins. The poor little animal
was so tired she could not breast the hill. He urged her forward. She
refused. Then, for the first time in his life, he took out his whip. He
did not strike her, and to this day he thanks God for it. But he merely
shook it over her head. Stung by the indignity, she drew herself
together and sprang against the hill. She went up and up, like a deer,
whilst the trap jolted and swung from side to side. Just as they
reached the crest of the hill and heard the shouts, 'Hurry, your
reverence, you'll never overtake her,' the little mare plunged forward
and fell heavily. The priest was flung against a boulder and struck
insensible. When he came to, the first word he heard was, 'She's dead, I
fear, your reverence.' 'Who?' said the priest; 'the woman?' 'No, your
reverence, but the mare!' 'Thank God!' said the priest; and he meant it.
Dazed, stupefied, bleeding, he stumbled across rocks of red sandstone,
heather, gorse; he slipped over some rude stepping-stones that crossed a
mountain torrent; and, at last, made his way to the rude cabin in the
rough gorges of the mountain. The doctor was washing his instruments as
the priest entered.
"'It's all right, Father James,' he said cheerily. 'The neatest case I
ever had. But it was touch and go. Hello! you're bleeding on the temple.
What's up?'
"'Oh, nothing,' said the priest. 'The mare stumbled and threw me. I may
go in?'
"'Certainly,' said the doctor; 'but just allow me to wash that ugly
wound.'
"'Wound? 't is only a scratch.'
"The priest went in and went through his ordinary ministrations. Then he
came out, and still dazed and not knowing what to think, he stumbled
back to the crest of the mountain road. There were men grouped around
the fallen animal and the broken trap. They made way for him. He knelt
down by the poor beast and rubbed her ears, as he was in the habit of
doing, and whispered, 'Winnie!' The poor animal opened her eyes full
upon him, then trembled convulsively, and died.
"'You will bury her, boys,' said the priest, 'over there under that
cairn of stones, and bring me down the trap and harness in the morning.'
"What his feelings were, as he walked home, I leave you to realize. We
did not hear of it for some days; but that 'Thank God!' changed all my
opinions of him. I looked up to him ever since, and see under all his
pomposity and dignity a good deal of the grit that makes a man a hero or
a saint."
"I retract my remark unreservedly," said my curate; "it was unjust and
unfair. It is curious that I have never yet made an unkind remark but I
met with prompt punishment."
"You may not be a great theologian nor a deep thinker," said I, "but no
man ever uttered a more profound saying. God may ignore our petty
rebellions against Himself; but when we, little mites, sit in
contemptuous judgment on one another, He cannot keep His hands from us!
And so, _festina lente! festina lente!_ It is wholesome advice, given in
many languages."
"Is the accent on the _festina_ or the _lente_, Father?" he said
demurely.
I looked at him.
"Because," he said, "I have been doing things lately that sometimes seem
inopportune,--that concert for example, and--"
"They are all right," I said, "but _lente! lente!!_"
"And that little interview with the chapel woman,--I felt I could have
done better--?"
"It is all right," I repeated, "but _lente! lente!!_"
"And I think we must stop those little children from saying the
Rosary--"
This time I looked at him quite steadily. He was imperturbable and
sphinx-like.
"Good evening," I said. "Come up after dinner and let us have a chat
about that line in the 'Odes' we were speaking about."
I went homewards slowly, and, as I went, the thought would obtrude
itself, how far I had recovered my lost authority, and succeeded in
satisfying that insatiable monster called Public Opinion. For my curate
had been reading for me a story by some American author, in which the
narrative ended in a problem whether a lady or a tiger would emerge from
a cage under certain circumstances; and hence, a conundrum was puzzling
the world,--the tiger or the lady, which? And my conundrum was, Had I
lectured my curate, or had my curate lectured me? I am trying to solve
the problem to this day.
CHAPTER X
OVER THE WALNUTS, AND THE ----
Father Letheby did come up, and we had one of those pleasant meetings on
which my memory dwells with gratitude. I hope he thinks of them
tenderly, too; for I believe he gave more pleasure and edification than
he received. We old men are garrulous, and rather laudatory of the past
than enthusiastic about the present. And this must needs chafe the
nerves of those whose eyes are always turned toward the sanguine future.
Well, this evening we had the famous epilogue of the Third Book of the
Odes of Horace for discussion, and our thoughts turned on the poet's
certainty of immortality,--the immortality of fame, in which alone he
believed. I remarked what a curious thing it was that men are forever
craving for that which, when attained, they fling aside and despise.
"I remember a good old priest," I said, "who was very angry because he
did not receive the ecclesiastical honors that sometimes accompany old
age. And when I asked, rather foolishly indeed, of what possible use
could they be to him, the answer was, he would like to die with his full
meed of honors. Well, he got them at last; and after a few months his
regret was that he had spent nine pounds on the rochet and mozetta."
"Do you think he would be satisfied to go back to the condition of a
'simplex sacerdos' again, and to be called 'Father'?" said my curate.
"I do. He had received recognition and was satisfied," I replied.
"There must be something in it. I remember now that bitter letter about
Fame, which Tennyson wrote when he had attained a world-wide reputation.
He found Fame to be hostility from his peers, indifference from his
superiors, worship from those he despised. He would barter all his Fame
for £5,000 a year; and was sorry he ever wrote a line."
"What then is it all? Of what consequence was it to Horace that a poor
old priest, in the Ultima Thule of the earth, should find a little
pleasure in his lines, some eighteen hundred years after his death?" I
said, half musingly.
"None whatever. But these passions are the minor wheels of human action,
and therefore of human progress, when the great motor, religion, is set
aside."
"And you think God permits them for that reason?"
"Possibly. By the way, Father Dan, allow me to congratulate you on your
excellent taste. Why, you have made this little parlor a nest of luxury
and refinement."
"Alas! yes. But all my comfort is gone. I blame you for it all, you
rascal. Why did you come introducing your civilization here? We were
happy enough without it. And like Fame, luxury brings its trials. Hannah
wasn't easy until she rivalled your splendid establishment; and when
taste came in, comfort went out by the window. God bless me! All I have
suffered for the last fortnight! I must wipe my boots at the door, and
hang up my hat in the hall, and walk on tiptoe on these waxed floors. I
am afraid to sit down, lest I should break these doll's chairs. I am
afraid to get up lest I should slip and break my old bones. I am afraid
to eat lest I should soil those new napkins. I am afraid to drink lest I
should break one of these new gilt cups. I have no comfort but in bed.
What in the world did I do that you should have been sent here?"
"There's something in it," he said, laughing. "It is the universal law
of compensation. But, honestly, it is all very tasteful and neat, and
you'll get used to it. You know it is one of the new and laughable
arguments against the eternity of punishment, that you can get used to
anything."
"I can't get that poor fellow, Lloyd, out of my head," I said, changing
the subject. "That was a pitiful letter. And the pity is that a strictly
private document, such as that was, should see the light and be
discussed fifty years after it was written, by two priests on the west
coast of Ireland To whom did he write it?"
"To Sir Robert Peel, then Prime Minister."
"There was a dear old friend of my youth," I said, "who was fond of
giving advice. I suppose I picked up the evil habit from him. But his
summary of all wisdom was this:--
"Never consult a doctor!
"Never go security!
"Never write a letter that may not be read in the market square!"
"I hope you have followed this sapient, but rather preternatural
advice," said Father Letheby.
"No," I replied. "It would have been well for me if I had done so."
We both lapsed into a brown study.
"It is not easy for us priests to take advice," he said at last; "I
suppose our functions are so magisterial that we cannot understand even
the suggestion of inferiority in reproof. Was it not Dean Stanley who
said that the Anglican clergy are polished into natural perfection by
domestic interchanges of those silent corrections that are so necessary,
and that it is the absence of these correctives that accounts for the so
many nodes and excrescences of our social characteristics?"
"True. But we won't take correction. Or rather, no one dare give it. The
Bishop can and will; but then a word from a bishop smites like a Nasmyth
hammer, and he is necessarily slow of reproof. A Parish priest nowadays
dare not correct a curate--"
"I beg pardon, sir," Father Letheby said; "I am sure you'll do me an
infinite favor if you kindly point out my many imprudences and
inconsistencies."
"And you'll take it well?"
"Well," he said dubiously, "I won't promise that I shall not be nettled.
But I'll take it respectfully."
"All right. We'll commence this moment. Give up that coffee-drinking,
and take an honest glass of punch."
He laughed in his own musical way. He knew the anguish that coffee had
cost Hannah. She had taken to Father Letheby wonderfully. He had found
for her a new brand of snuff, and had praised her cooking. And lo! a
miracle. Hannah, the Parish priest's housekeeper, had actually gone down
and visited his servant. It was a tremendous condescension, involving a
great deal of thought. But there was a new alliance,--dual again; it is
almost like the kaleidoscopic changes of European politicians. Then for
several days there were conferences and colloguings, the result being
that, as a reward of humility, which indeed always brings its reward
even in this world, Hannah has her house furnished _à la mode_, and has
learned the science of coffee-making,--a science little known as yet in
Ireland. Of course, there have been crosses. It is not pleasant, when a
brother priest comes in, to see him stand in amazement and appear quite
distracted whilst his politeness will not allow him to demand
explanations. And when a more demonstrative character shouts Hallo! when
he comes into your parlor, and vents his surprise in a prolonged
whistle, and looks at you curiously when your attention is engaged, it
is slightly embarrassing. Then, again, I'm told that the villagers are
making sarcastic remarks about my little _ménage_: "Begor, Hannah won't
be left a pinny"; or, "Begor, Kilronan is looking up"; or, "Begor, he'll
be expecting an incrase of the jues"; and one old woman, who gets an
occasional letter from America with an enclosure, is quite sure I have
embezzled her money, and she comes to the door three times a week
with--"that little letther, your reverence? Sure, I don't begredge it to
you. You're welcome to it over and over again; but whin 't is
convanient, sure you won't see me wantin'? But sure, Mary will think it
quare that I never wrote to thank her." I have given up protesting that
I have received no letter lately from Mary; but the "purty boys" down at
the forge have set the poor woman crazy. "Yerra, where 'ud he get de
money for all them grand tings he has?" "Yerra, Kate, you'll never see
dat post-office order." "Write to the Bishop, 'oman, and he'll see you
rightified." And then, to crown all, comes the bill, just double what I
expected. But it is wonderful how many extras there were, and how wages
and the price of material went up. Alas! my little deposit of fifty
pounds, which was to secure a few masses after my death, where is it?
And poor old Hannah? Well, she'll have it all after my death, and that
will make her doubly careful, and me--doubly miserable.
"Now," I said to Father Letheby, as he daintily balanced his spoon over
his cup, and I leisurely stirred the sugar in,--well, no matter, "I
don't like that coffee. It is not sociable. It makes you too cautious,
while we, under the potent and expanding influence of native
manufacture, are inclined to develop. Now, if you want to succeed in
life, give up that Turkish drug and do what all your predecessors did."
"I'm too Irish for that," he said, rather paradoxically, I thought. "I'm
afraid I should be talking about my ancestors, and asking some one to be
good enough to tread on the tail of my coat."
He knew well that I did not wish to interfere with his tastes.
"Well, however, think kindly of us who cling to old traditions. We too
had our day."
I was silent, thinking of old times.
"You never slept in a lime-kiln, I presume," said I, starting from a
long reverie.
"God forbid," he said with a start.
"Well, I did. It happened in this way. It was nearly ten o'clock at
night when I arrived at the door of the old pastor, to whose care I was
committed on my first mission. I knocked, and knocked, and knocked. No
answer. 'T was all the same. Father L---- had but one room and the
kitchen; and that room was parlor, library, drawing-room, bedroom, and
all. I dismissed the jarvey, left my portmanteau at the door, and
wandered out into the night. I dared not rouse up the farmers around. It
was the time of the White-boys, and I might get a charge of shot or a
thrust of a pike for my pains. The night was cold and starry. And after
wandering about for some time I came to a kiln. The men--the
lime-burners--were not long gone, and the culm was still burning. I went
in. The warmth was most grateful. I lay down quietly, took out my beads,
and whilst saying the Rosary I fell fast asleep. I awoke to hear: 'Come,
get out of this.' And, then, 'Good God! it is a priest.' Ah! well, how
times have changed! But think kindly of us old men. We too have borne
the burden and the heat,--the _pondus diei et æstus_."
A deep silence fell upon us both, broken only by the crackling of the
turf and wood fire, I busy with the past, and he sunk in his own
reflections. At length I said:--
"Would I trouble you to hand me down that 'Pars Verna' with the morocco
cover? Thanks! This little time-stained book saw some curious scenes.
It was my companion in many a rough adventure. In these old times it was
quite a common experience for myself to leave home at six o'clock in the
morning so as to be at the station-house by seven. By the way, you did
murder the names of the mountain town-lands when calling the stations
last Sunday. You must try and get the 'bloss' of the Irish on your
tongue. Well, we usually heard confessions from seven to three o'clock
in the afternoon, with just an interval for breakfast--"
"Pardon me, sir, but do you mean to say the people remained fasting and
received Holy Communion at three o'clock?"
"Yes, my dear young man, that was an every-day experience. I remember a
mission that was given in the town of N----, where I was curate in '54,
the year the first great missions were given by Fathers Bernard and
Petcherine. One evening, dead tired after a continuous day's work, I was
crossing the church toward the sacristy, when a huge shaggy countryman
stopped me. It was just half-past ten o'clock. 'I'm for Communion, your
reverence,' said he. I was a little irritable and therefore a little
sarcastic at the time. 'It is usually the habit of Catholics to receive
Holy Communion fasting,' said I, never dreaming but that the man was
after his supper. 'For the matter of that, your reverence,' said he, 'I
could have received Communion any minit these last three days; for God
is my witness, neither bite nor sup has crossed my lips, not even a
spoonful of wather.' But to come back. Dear me, how easy it is to get me
off the rail! After three o'clock I used to start out for my sick-calls;
and, will you believe me, I was often out all night, going from one
cabin to another, sometimes six or seven miles apart; and I often rode
home in the morning when the larks were singing above the sod and the
sun was high in the sky. Open that quarto."
He did. The leaves were as black as the cover, and clung together,
tattered as they were.
"The rain and the wind of Ireland," I said. "It was no easy job to read
Matins, with one hand clutching the reins and the pommel of the saddle,
and the other holding that book in a mountain hurricane. But you are not
a Manichæan, are you?"
He looked at me questioningly.
"I mean you don't see Mephistopheles rising in that gentle cloud of
steam from my glass?"
"Oh no," he said; "you have your tastes, and I mine. Both are equally
innocuous. But the fact is," he said, after a pause, "I cannot touch
wine or spirits, because I want to work at night, and I must have all my
faculties clear."
"Then you are working hard. God bless you! I saw your notes the other
day. But don't forget your Greek. French is the language of diplomacy,
Italian the language of love, German the language of philosophy,
English the language of commerce, Latin the language of the Church,
Greek the language of the scholar, and Hebrew the language of God. But I
remember it gave a new zest to my studies long ago, when I read
somewhere that our Divine Lord spoke Greek, at least amongst the
learned, for Greek in the East was what Latin has been in the West."
"Yes, but 't is pitiful," he replied, with a blush; "I did get a gold
medal from all Ireland in Greek; and yet, when I took up such an easy
book as Homer the other day, why, 't was all Greek to me."
Here Hannah broke in, opening the door.
"Won't you take another cup of coffee, sir?" Awaiting the reply, Hannah
poked up the fire and sent the blazes dancing merrily up the chimney.
Then she raised the flame of the lamp, and did a great many other
unnecessary things; but the kitchen is lonesome.
"Well, Hannah," said Father Letheby enthusiastically, "I will. You have
made me a confirmed teetotaler. I would not even think of punch when
your fragrant coffee is before me."
"Wisha, then, sir, but there's more life in the little drop of sperrits.
However, your reverence is welcome to whatever you like in this house."
This is not the first time Hannah has assumed a tone of proprietorship
in my little establishment. Well, no matter. It is our Irish
communism,--very like that of the Apostles, too.
"You must not be disheartened about that," I said. "I read some time ago
that no less a person than Lord Dufferin declared that, although he had
taken a degree in Greek, he could not read a line of it in after years
till he had learned it all over again, and in his own way."
"I am delighted to hear that," said Father Letheby.
"And when you do master your Greek," I said, "use your knowledge where
it will profit you most."
He waited.
"On the Greek Fathers. Believe me, there is more poetry, science,
philosophy, and theology there than in all modern literature, since
Shakespeare. We don't know it. The Anglican divines do. I suspect that
many a fairly sculptured sermon and learned treatise was cut from these
quarries."
I suppose the poor fellow was weary from all the lecturing. Indeed, I
think too his mind had rather a practical cast; for he began to ply me
with questions about the parish that fairly astonished me.
"Did Pat Herlihy's big boy make his First Communion? What about
establishing a First Confession class? He heard there was a night-dance
at the cross-roads, half-ways to Moydore. Why don't the Moydore priests
stop it? Did I know Winifred Lane, a semi-imbecile up in the mountains?
He did not like one of the teachers. He thought him disrespectful. What
was the cause of the coolness between the Learys and the Sheas? Was it
the way that one of the Sheas, about sixty years ago, served on a jury,
at which some disreputable Leary was convicted? What about a bridge over
that mountain torrent at Slieveogue? He had written to the surveyor. Did
I think the nuns in Galway would take a postulant? He heard that there
was a sister home from New Zealand who was taking out young girls--"
"My dear young friend," I said, when I had tried to answer imperfectly
this catechism, "I know you are a saint, and therefore endowed with the
privilege of bilocation; but I did not know that you could dictate to
six amanuenses at the same time, like Cæsar or Suarez."
"Oh, by the way," he said, putting up his note-book, "I was near
forgetting. With your permission, sir, I intend to put up a little crib
at Christmas. Now, the roof is leaking badly over St. Joseph's Chapel.
If you allow me, I shall put Jem Deady on the roof. He says you know him
well, and can recommend him, and there are a few pounds in my hands from
the Living Rosary."
It was true. I knew Jem Deady very well, as a confirmed dipsomaniac, who
took the Total Abstinence Pledge for life regularly every three months.
I also knew that that leak over St. Joseph's Chapel had been a steady
source of income to Jem for the last ten years. Somehow it was an
incurable malady, a kind of stone and mortar scrofula that was always
breaking out, and ever resisting the science of this amiable physician.
Sometimes it was "ground-damp," sometimes the "weeping wall"; and there
were dread dissertations on barge courses and string courses, but there
the evil was, ugly and ineradicable.
"I dare say, Jem told you that I had been putting cobblers from the
village every winter for the last ten years on that roof and that he
alone possesses the secret that will make that wall a 'thing of beauty
and a joy forever'?"
"Well, indeed, he said something of the kind. But I have taken a fancy
to the fellow. He sings like an angel, and since the Concert he
entertains me every night with a variety of melodies, amongst which I
think 'Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still' is his masterpiece."
"He does not sing 'Two Lovely Black Eyes'?" I asked.
"No," said Father Letheby, seriously.
"I think his wife sings that," I said, as Father Letheby rose to go.
"By the way," I said, as I helped him on with his great coat in the
hall, for he is one for whom I would make any sacrifice, "how have you
acquired such a minute knowledge of my parishioners in such a short
time?"
"Well," said he, tying a silk handkerchief around his neck, "I was once
at a military review in England, having been invited by some Catholic
officers. I stood rather near the Duke of Cambridge. And this struck me.
The Duke called out, 'Who commands that company?' 'I, sir.' 'What is the
name of the third man on the right? Married or single? Term of service?
Character? Trade?' And I was utterly amazed at the accurate information
of the officers. Now, I often thought, if our great Commander-in-Chief
questioned us in that manner, could we reply with the same precision?
And I determined to know, as soon as possible, the name, history, and
position of every man, woman, and child in this parish."
"And you have succeeded," I said admiringly. "You know them better than
I, who have spent thirty years amongst them. But"--I could not resist
the temptation of a little lecture--"if you are asked, accept no
responsibility in money matters; and if two cocks are fighting down the
street, and consequently diplomatic courtesies are suspended between the
neighbors, I would not, if I were you, trouble much to ascertain which
of the belligerents had ethical and moral right on his side; and if Mrs.
Gallagher, by pure accident, should happen to be throwing out a pail of
particularly dirty water just at the psychological moment when Mrs.
Casey is passing her door; and if the tailor-made gown of the latter is
thereby desecrated, and you see a sudden eclipse of the sun, and hear
the rumble of distant thunder, don't throw aside your Æschylus to see
the 'Furies'; and if Mrs. Deady--"
"Thank you! thank you, Father," he said, abruptly, "never fear. 'T will
be all right!"
I closed the door on his fine, manly figure, and went back to my
arm-chair, murmuring:--
"[Greek: Pathêmata--mathêmata]. So shall it be to the end, O Father of
history!"
CHAPTER XI
BESIDE THE SINGING RIVER
Father Letheby was coming home a few nights ago, a little after twelve
o'clock, from a hurried sick-call, and he came down by the cliffs; for,
as he said, he likes to see the waters when the Almighty flings his net
over their depths, and then every sea-hillock is a star, and there is a
moon in every hollow of the waves. As he skirted along the cliff that
frowns down into the valleys of the sea on the one hand, and the valleys
of the firs and poplars on the other, he thought he heard some voices
deep down in the shadows, and he listened. Very soon the harsh rasp of a
command came to his ears, and he heard: "_'Shun! 'verse arms_," etc. He
listened very attentively, and the tramp of armed men echoed down the
darkness; and he thought he saw the glint of steel here and there where
the moonbeams struck the trees.
"It was a horrible revelation," he said, "that here in this quiet place
we were nursing revolution, and had some secret society in full swing
amongst us. But then, as the little bit of history brought up the past,
I felt the tide of feeling sweeping through me, and all the dread
enthusiasm of the race woke within me:--
'There beside the singing river
That dark mass of men are seen,
Far above their shining weapons
Hung their own immortal green!'
But this is a bad business, sir, for soul and body. What's to be done?"
"A bad business, indeed," I echoed. "But worse for soul than body. These
poor fellows will amuse themselves playing at soldiers, and probably
catching pneumonia; and there 't will end. You didn't see any policemen
about?"
"No. They could be hiding unknown to me."
"Depend upon it, they were interested spectators of the midnight
evolutions. I know there are some fellows in the village in receipt of
secret service money, and all these poor boys' names are in the Castle
archives. But what is worse, this means anti-clericalism, and
consequently abstention from Sacraments, and a long train of evils
besides. It must be handled gently."
"You don't mean to say, sir," he replied, "that that Continental poison
has eaten its way in Ireland?"
"Not to a large extent; but it is there. There is no use in burying our
heads in the sands and pretending not to see. But we must act
judiciously. A good surgeon never acts hastily,--never hurries over an
operation. _Lente,--lente_."
I saw a smile faintly rippling around the corners of his mouth. But I
was afraid he might rush matters here, and it would be dangerous. But
where's the use? He understood but one way of acting,--to grapple with
an abuse and strangle it. "You drop stones," he used to say, "and they
turn up armed men."
How he learned their place of meeting I don't know. But Sunday afternoon
was a favorite time for the rebels; and the coursing match on the black
hills and the rabbit hunt in the plantations were only preliminaries to
more important and secret work. Whether by accident or design, Father
Letheby stumbled on such a meeting about four o'clock one Sunday
afternoon. A high ditch and a strong palisade of fir trees hid him from
sight, and he was able to hear a good deal, and had no scruple in
playing the listener. This is what he heard. The village tailor, lame in
one leg, and familiarly known as "Hop-and-go-one," was the orator:--
"Fellow countrymen, de time for action has come. From ind to ind of the
land, the downtrodden serfs of Ireland are rising in their millions. Too
long have dey been juped by false pretences; too long have the hirelings
of England chated and decaved them. We know now what a shimmera,[2] what
a fraud, was Home Rule. Our counthry has been dragged at the tail of
English parties, who were purshuing their own interests. But 't is all
past. No more constitutional agitation, no more paceful struggle. Lead
will do what fine speeches didn't. And if the black militia, wid dere
ordhers from Rome, attimpt this time to interfere, we know what answer
to give dem. De West's awake, and 't isn't priests will set us to sleep
agin--"
At this juncture the orator was caught by the nape of the neck, and
lifted bodily off the turf ditch, which was his forum. When he looked
around, and saw who was his captor, he shrieked for mercy; and Father
Letheby, dropping him, as one would drop a rat, he scurried off as fast
as his lame leg would permit, whilst the priest, turning round to the
stupefied boys, warned them of their folly and madness:--
"God knows, boys," he said, "I pity you. You are bent on a desperate and
foolish course, the end of which no man can foresee. I know it is
useless to reason with you on the score of danger; but I warn you that
you are violating the laws of God and the Church, and that no blessing
comes from such action. And yet," he continued, placing his hand in the
breast-pocket of his coat, and drawing out a blue official paper, "this
may convince you of your folly; at least, it may convince you of the
fact that there is a traitor and informer in your midst. Who he is I
leave yourselves to conjecture!"
He read out slowly the name of every young man that had been sworn in
that secret society in the parish. The young men listened sullenly, and
swore angrily between their teeth. But they could not deny their
betrayal. They were vexed, humbled, disgraced; but they had to make some
defence.
[Illustration: "The orator was caught by the nape of the neck."]
"The priests are always agin the people," said one keen-looking fellow,
who had been abroad.
"That's an utter falsehood," said Father Letheby, "and you know it. You
know that priests and people for seven hundred years have fought side
by side the battle of Ireland's freedom from civil and religious
disabilities. I heard your own father say how well he remembered the
time when the friar stole into the farmyard at night, disguised as a
pedlar, and he showed me the cavern down there by the sea-shore where
Mass was said, and the fishermen heard it, as they pretended to haul in
their nets."
"Thrue enough for you, your reverence," said a few others; "'t is what
our fathers, and our fathers' fathers, have tould us."
"And now," continued Father Letheby, "look at the consequences of your
present folly. Possible imprisonment in the dungeons of Portland and
Dartmoor; exile to America, enforced by the threats of prosecution; and
the sense of hostility to the Church, for you know you are breaking the
laws. You dare not go to confession, for you cannot receive absolution;
you are a constant terror to your mothers and sisters--and all at the
dictation of a few scoundrels, who are receiving secret service money
from the government, and a few newspapers that are run by Freemasons and
Jews."
"Ah, now, your reverence," said one of the boys, a litterateur, "you are
drawing the long bow. How could Irish newspapers be run by Freemasons
and Jews?"
"Would you be surprised to hear," said Father Letheby, "that all the
great Continental papers are the property of Freemasons and Jews; that
all the rancor and bitterness stirred up against the Church for the past
fifty years has been their work; that the anti-clerical feeling in
Germany and in France has been carefully originated and fostered by
them; that hatred of the Holy See is their motto; and that they have got
into Ireland. You can see the cloven foot in the virulent anti-religious
and anti-clerical articles that you read by the light of the fire at the
forge; and yet, the very prayer-books you used at Mass to-day, and the
beads that rolled through your mothers' fingers, have been manufactured
by them. But the Irish are always fools,--never more so than now."
It was a magnificent leap of imagination on Father Letheby's part,--that
which attributed to Jews and Freemasons the manufacture of beads and
prayer-books on the one hand, and anti-clericalism on the other. Yet
there was truth in what he had said. Indeed, there were many
indications, as I could point out to him to his surprise, which proved
that the anti-Catholic agencies here in Ireland were pursuing exactly
the same tactics which had led to the extinguishing of the faith in
parts of France and Italy,--namely, the dissemination of pornographic
literature. They know well that there is but one thing that can destroy
Irish faith, and that is the dissemination of ideas subversive of
Catholic morality. Break down the earthworks that guard the purity of
the nation, and the citadel of faith is taken. He was very silent all
that evening, as I notice all Irish priests grow grave when this awful
fact, which is under their very eyes, is made plain to them. It is so
easy to look at things without seeing them. Then, as the full revelation
of this new _diablerie_ dawned upon him, he grew very angry. I think
this is the most charming thing about my curate, that he is a thorough
hater of everything cunning and concealed, and breaks out into noble
philippics against whatever is foul and vicious. But I know he will be
now on the alert; and God help any unfortunate that dares to peddle
unwholesome wares under the necklaces and matches of his basket!
The tailor came duly to report Father Letheby for the drastic treatment
he had received. He was rather too emphatic in demanding his immediate
removal, and hinting at suspension. In lieu of that satisfaction, he
would immediately institute proceedings in the Court of Queen's Bench
for assault and battery, and place the damages at several thousand
pounds. I listened to him patiently, then hinted that an illiterate
fellow like him should not be making treasonable speeches. He bridled up
at the word "illiterate," and repudiated the vile insinuation. He could
read and write as well as any priest in Connaught.
"But you cannot read your own writing?" I said, tentatively.
"Couldn't he? Try him!"
I thrust under his eyes his last letter to the sub-inspector of the
district. I thought he would get a fit of apoplexy.
"Now, you scoundrel," I said, folding the letter and placing it beyond
reach, "I forgive you all your deception and treason. What Father
Letheby has got in store for you I cannot say. But I'll never forgive
you, you most unscientific and unmathematical artist, for having given
me so many shocking misfits lately, until I have looked like a scarecrow
in a cornfield; even now you are smelling like a distillery. And tell
me, you ruffian, what right had you to say at Mrs. Haley's public house
that I was 'thauto--thauto--gogical' in my preaching? If I, with all the
privileges of senility, chose to repeat myself, to drive the truths of
Christianity into the numskulls of this pre-Adamite village, what is
that to you,--you ninth part of a man? Was it not the immortal Homer
that declared that every tailor--"
"For God's sake, spare me, your reverence, and I'll never do it again."
"Do you promise to cut my garments mathematically in the future?"
"I do, your reverence." He spoke as emphatically as if he were renewing
his baptismal vows at a great mission.
"Do you promise to speak respectfully of me and my sermons for the
future?"
"I do, your reverence."
"Now, go. _Exi, erumpe, evade_, or I'll turn you into a _Sartor
Resartus_. I hand you over now, as the judge hands the culprit, to
Father Letheby. Don't be too much surprised at eventualities. Do you
know, did you ever hear, what the women of Marblehead did to a certain
Floyd Ireson? Well, go ask Father Letheby. He'll tell you. And I shall
be much surprised if the women of Kilronan are much behind their sisters
of Marblehead in dealing with such a scoundrel as you."
* * * * *
I proposed this conundrum to Father Letheby that same evening: "Why is
it considered a greater crime to denounce and correct an evil than to
commit it?" He looked at me as if he doubted my sanity. I put it in a
more euphemistic form: "Why is success always the test of merit? To come
down from the abstract to the concrete, Why is a gigantic swindler a
great financier, and a poor fellow that steals a loaf of bread a felon
and a thief? Why is a colossal liar a great diplomatist, and a petty
prevaricator a base and ignoble fraud? Why is Napoleon a hero, and that
wretched tramp an ever to be dreaded murderer? Why is Bismarck called
great, though he crushed the French into a compost of blood and rags,
ground them by taxation into paupers, jested at dying children, and lied
most foully, and his minor imitators are dubbed criminals and thieves?
Look here, now, young man! If you, by a quiet, firm, indomitable
determination succeed in crushing out and stamping out forever this
secret society here, it will redound to your infinite credit in all
men's eyes. But mark, if with all your energy and zeal you fail, or if
you pass into a leaderette in some Freemason journal, and your zeal is
held up as fanaticism and your energy as imprudence, the whole world
will regard you as a hot-headed young fool, and will ask with rage and
white lips, What is the Bishop doing in allowing these young men to take
the reins into their own hands and drive the chariot of the sun? It is
as great a crime to be a young man to-day as it was in the days of Pitt.
Nothing can redeem the stigma and the shame but success. Of course, all
this sounds very pagan, and I am not identifying myself with it. I
believe with that dear barefooted philosopher, St. Francis, who is to me
more than fifty Aristotles, as à Kempis is more than fifty Platos, that
a man is just what he is in the eyes of God, and no more. But I am only
submitting to you this speculative difficulty to keep your mind from
growing fallow these winter evenings. And don't be in a hurry to answer
it. I'll give you six months; and then you'll say, like the interlocutor
in a Christy Minstrel entertainment: 'I give it up.'"
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: Chimera.]
CHAPTER XII
CHURCH IMPROVEMENTS
I am afraid Father Letheby is getting irritable. Perhaps he is studying
too hard, and I don't spare him there, for he has the makings of a
bishop in him; or perhaps it is that wretched coffee,--but he is losing
that beautiful equanimity and enthusiasm which made him so attractive.
"I cannot understand these people," he said to me, soon after his
adventure with the "boys." "Such a compound of devotion and irreverence,
meanness and generosity, cunning and child-like openness, was never
seen. When I give Holy Communion with you, sir, on Sunday morning, my
heart melts at the seraphic tenderness with which they approach the
altar. That striking of the breast, that eager look on their faces, and
that 'Cead milé failté, O Thierna!'[3] make me bless God for such a
people; but then they appear to be waiting for the last words of the _De
Profundis_, to jump up and run from the church as if in a panic. I can
understand now how _extemplo_ came to mean _in a hurry_, for if the roof
were falling they could not rush from the building more promptly. Then
an old woman will haggle over sixpence in buying a pair of chickens, and
then come to you the following day and offer you in a stocking all she
had saved in this world. I give them up. They are unintelligible."
From which I perceive that our good schoolmaster, experience, is trying
the rod on this most hopeful and promising pupil.
"I hope you did not perceive any such abrupt and sudden contrasts in
your protégé, Jem Deady," I said. "He has realized your ideas of a
nineteenth century _Goban Saor_."[4]
He laughed loudly.
"There's no use in talking," he said. I notice he is coming down
gradually from his polished periods to our village colloquialisms.
"Thou shalt lower to their level." God forbid! 'Twas bad enough with
myself; but with this bright, accomplished fellow, 't would be too bad.
He then told me with delight and chagrin, rage and laughter, his
experiences with Jem.
It would appear that he made a solemn contract with this architect to
stop the leak and restore the wall in St. Joseph's Chapel for
twenty-five shillings. "'Twas too little," said Jem, "but what can you
do with a gintleman that doesn't know a trowel from a spade." All
materials were to be found by the contractor.
On Monday afternoon there was a knock at Father Letheby's door, and Jem
was announced.
"Well, Jem," said Father Letheby, cheerfully, "getting on with the job?"
"Yes, your reverence, getting on grand," said Jem. "But I come to you
about the laddher."
"The-e ladder?" echoed Father Letheby.
"Yes, your reverence," echoed Jem confidentially, "the laddher to get up
on the roof, you know."
"But I understood you to say that you were getting through with this
little job."
"Oh, of course, your reverence, we're getting through the preliminaries;
but I must get on the roof, you know."
"I presume so," said Father Letheby, a little nettled, "and why don't
you go there?"
"Does your reverence take me for an aigle, and want me to fly?"
"Well, not exactly," said Father Letheby, with a slight touch of
flattery and sarcasm, "I am more disposed to take you for a
nightingale!"
"Well, then, your reverence," said Jem, melting under the happy
allusion, "a gintleman of your grate expayrince in building should know
that, of all things else, a laddher is the wan thing necessary."
"Then you expect me to construct a ladder for your convenience?"
"Oh, not at all, your reverence; but if you gave me a little note up to
the 'Great House,' I'd have it down while you'd be saying
'trapsticks.'"
There were some reasons why it was not at all desirable that he should
ask favors from the "Great House"; but there was no help, and Jem got
the letter.
"Now, this is all you require," said Father Letheby, with determination.
"That is all," said Jem. "Do you think I'd be throubling your reverence
every minit. Long life to your reverence. May you be spared long in the
parish."
About four o'clock that afternoon, Father Letheby was startled by a
sudden commotion in the village. All the dogs were barking, and there
are as many dogs in Kilronan as in Constantinople, and they are just as
vicious; all the women were at the doors, rubbing their hands in their
aprons; and the village loafers were all turned towards where a solemn
procession was moving through the street. First came a gang of
youngsters, singing, "Sure, We're the Boys of Wexford," then a popular
ditty; then came two laborers, dragging along a ladder with as much show
of expended energy as if it were a piece of heavy ordnance; then the
cart on which the ladder was placed; then two more laborers behind,
making desperate efforts to second the arduous endeavors of their mates
in front; then a squadron of bare-legged girls, trying to keep the hair
out of their eyes; and finally, the captain of the expedition, Jem
Deady, leisurely walking along, with his hands in his pockets, a
wheaten straw in his mouth, whilst he looked from cabin to cabin to
receive the admiration of the villagers. It was expressed in various
ways:--
"Wisha, thin, Jem, 't is you're the divil painted."
"Where is he taking it?"
"To the chapel."
"Wisha, thin, I thought the priests had some sinse."
"Whisht, 'uman, he's come around the new cojutor and got a job."
"Th' ould job?"
"Th' ould job!"
"Wisha, God help his poor wife now. 'T is she'll suffer," etc.
The men made desperate efforts as they passed Father Letheby's windows.
He looked on hopelessly, as you look at a charade of which you have not
got the key.
At six o'clock there was a deputation at the door, consisting of four
laborers and the owner of the cart.
"We come for our day's hire, your reverence," said the foreman,
unabashed.
"Oh, indeed," said Father Letheby, "I am not aware that you are in my
employment."
"We dhrew the laddher down from the Great House to the chapel; and I may
tell your reverence 't was a tough job. I wouldn't do it again for five
shillings."
"Nor I, ayther."
"Nor I, ayther."
"Nor I, ayther, begor."
"Well, look here," said Father Letheby, "I'm not going to submit to this
infamous extortion. I didn't employ you, and I acknowledge no
responsibility whatsoever."
"That manes you won't pay us, your reverence?" said the foreman, in a
free translation.
"Precisely," said Father Letheby, closing the door abruptly.
He heard them murmuring and threatening outside, but took no notice of
them. Later in the evening he took his usual stroll. He found these
fellows loafing around the public house. They had been denouncing him
vigorously, and occasionally a Parthian shaft came after him:--
"Begor, 't is quare, sure enough."
"Begor, we thought the priests couldn't do any wrong."
But when he turned the corner he met a good deal of sympathy:--
"Wisha, begor, 't is your reverence was wanted to tache these
blackguards a lesson."
"Wisha, 't was God sent you," etc., etc.
Now, one shilling would have given these fellows lashings of porter, and
secured their everlasting fealty and an unlimited amount of popularity.
I told him so.
"Never," he said, drawing back his head, and with flashing eyes, "I
shall never lend myself to so demoralizing a practice. We must get these
people out of the mire."
The next day, he thought he was bound to see how Jem was progressing
with his contract. He went down to the little church and passed into the
sacristy, whence he had a clear view of the roof of St. Joseph's Chapel.
Jem was there, leisurely doing nothing, and on the graveyard wall were
eight men, young and old, surveying the work and offering sundry
valuable suggestions. They took this shape:--
"Wisha, Jem, take the world aisy. You're killing yerself, man."
"What a pity he's lost his wice (voice); sure 't was he was able to rise
a song."
"Dey say," interjected a young ragamuffin, "dat Fader Letheby is going
to take Simon Barry into his new choir. Simon is a tinner, and Jem is
only a bannitone."
"Hould your tongue, you spalpeen," said a grown man, "Jem can sing as
well as twinty Simons, dat is if he could only wet his whistle."
"Thry dat grand song, Jem, ''T is Years Since Last We Met.'"
"No, no," said the chorus, "give us 'Larry McGee.'"
"Wisha, byes, wouldn't wan of ye run over to Mrs. Haley's for a pint.
'T is mighty dhry up here."
"Here ye are," said the chorus, chipping in and making up the requisite
"tuppence." "Don't be long about it, ye young ruffian."
"But what about the pledge, Jem?" asked a conscientious spectator.
"Shure your time isn't up yet."
"'T is up long ago," cried another. "'Twas three months yesterday since
he took the pledge."
"Byes," said Jem, who was troubled at the possible scandal he was about
to give, "I promised not to dhrink in a public house; and shure this
isn't a public house, glory be to God!"
They took off their hats reverently; and then the pint came, was taken
up the ladder with great care and solemnity, and a few minutes after,
Father Letheby heard:--
"What is it going to be, byes? I've left me music on the pianney!"
"'Larry McGee!' 'Larry McGee!' No. No. 'T is Yares Since Last----.' No.
No. 'The Byes of Wexford.'"
"Byes, I think the majority is in favor of 'Larry McGee.'--Here's to yer
health!"
And then came floating from the roof in various quavers and semiquavers
and grace-notes the following, which is all Father Letheby can remember.
"I--in the town of Kilkinny lived Larry McGee,
Oh--oh the divil's own boy at divarshion was he;
He--he had a donkey, a pig, but he hadn't a wife,
His cabin was dreary, and wretched his life."
Then the notes came wavering and fitful, as the wind took them up, and
carried them struggling over the moorland; and all that Father Letheby
could hear was about a certain Miss Brady, who was reared up a lady, and
who was requested to accept the name of Mrs. McGee. This suit must have
been successful, because, as the wind lulled down, the words came
clearly:--
"Sure the chickens were roasted,--the praties was biled,
They were all in their jackets, for fear they'd be spiled;
And the neighbors came flockin', for to fling up the stockin',
And dance at the weddin' of Larry McGee."
It was interesting; but Father Letheby's temper was rising with the
undulations of the song. He came out into the graveyard, and there was a
stampede of the spectators. Jem was lifting the porter to his lips, and
looked down calmly and philosophically at the young priest.
"Mr. Deady," said the latter, putting on his strongest accent, "I do not
think I engaged you to entertain the village with your vocal powers,
much as I esteem them. I engaged you to work,--to do honest work for
honest wages."
"Begor," said the unabashed Jem, "if I was a Turk, or a Armaynian, I'd
be allowed to ate my dinner."
"But this is not your dinner hour!"
"Twelve to wan is the dinner hour, except when I dines at the Grate
House, whin, for my convaynience, they puts it off till aight."
It was a sly cut at Father Letheby, and he felt it.
"And your dinner, I presume, is the usual quantity of filthy porter,
such as I see represented in your hand."
"It is, your reverence, excep' whin I dines with the Captain. Den we
haves roast beef and champagne."
All this Father Letheby told me, with a look of puzzled anger, and with
many exclamations.
"I never saw such a people; I'll never understand them," etc. His
magnificent impetuosity again.
"Tell me," I said, for he had given me most cordially the privilege of
speaking freely, "do you make your meditation regularly?"
"Well, I do," he replied, "in a kind of way."
"Because," I went on to say, "apart from the spiritual advantages it
affords, that closing of our eyes daily and looking steadily into
ourselves is a wonderfully soothing process. It is solitude--and
solitude is the mother country of the strong. It is astonishing what an
amount of irritation is poured from external objects through the windows
of the soul,--on the retina, where they appear to be focused, and then
turned like a burning-glass on the naked nerves of the soul. To shut
one's eyes and turn the thoughts inward is like sleep, and, like sleep,
gives strength and peace. Now, would you accept from me a subject of
meditation?"
"Willingly, sir," he said, like a child.
"All that you want to be perfect is to curb your impetuosity. I notice
it everywhere. Probably it is natural; probably it is accentuated by
your residence in feverish cities. Now, I have a right to give an advice
on this matter, for I got it and took it myself. When I was as young as
you I said Mass in twenty minutes, and said the Office in forty minutes.
How? Because I slurred over words, spoke to the Almighty as a
ballad-singer, and for a few years went through these awful and sacred
duties without ever resting or dwelling on their sublime signification.
One day a holy old priest said to me:--
"'Father, would you kindly give me an easy translation of the first
stanza of the hymn for Terce?'
"I was completely at sea. He saw it.
"'Ah, never mind. But what means _factus sum, sicut uter in pruina?_ You
say it every day nearly.'
"I couldn't tell him.
"'_Herodii domus dux est eorum._' What is that?"
"I made a feeble attempt here, and translated boldly, 'The house of
Herod is their leader.'
"The venerable man looked smilingly at me; and then asked me to look up
my Bible. I did, and found that I had been speaking an unknown language
to Almighty God for years, and I called it prayer."
Father Letheby looked humbled. He said: "True, Father, I fear; and if
you had to say the entire Office, commencing Matins at eleven o'clock at
night; or if you had to crush Vespers and Compline, under the light of a
street lamp, into the ten minutes before twelve o'clock, you'd see the
absurdity of the whole thing more clearly. A strictly conscientious
confrère of mine in England used always commence Prime about ten o'clock
at night; but then he always lighted a candle, for consistency, before
he uttered _Jam lucis orto sidere_. It is a wonder we were never taught
the very translation of the psalms in college."
"Well, we're wandering. But set apart, _hic et nunc_, a half-hour for
Matins and Lauds; twenty minutes for the Small Hours; a quarter of an
hour for Vespers and Compline; and take up no other duty until that time
has expired. Then never say your Office from memory, even the parts you
know best. Read every line from your Breviary. It is not my advice, but
that of St. Charles Borromeo. Take half an hour for the celebration of
Mass. It will be difficult at first, but it will come all right. Lastly,
train yourself to walk slowly and speak slowly and deliberately--"
"You are clipping my wings, Father," said he, "and putting soles of lead
on my feet."
"Did you ever hear of Michael Montaigne?" I said.
"Yes. But that's all I know about him."
"Quite enough, indeed. He hardly improves on acquaintance. But his
father trained himself to wear leaden shoes in order that he might leap
the higher. That's what I want from you. But where's this we were? Oh,
yes! You must take these poor people more easily. You cannot undo in a
day the operations of three hundred years--"
"Yes, but look how these people spring into the very van of civilization
when they go to England or America. Why, they seem to assume at once all
the graces of the higher life."
"Precisely,--the eternal question of environment. But under our
circumstances we must be infinitely patient."
"What vexes me most," said Father Letheby, "is that we have here the
material of saints; and yet--look now at that wretched Deady! I don't
mind his insolence, but the shifty dishonesty of the fellow."
"Let him alone! By this time he is stung with remorse for what he said.
Then he'll make a general confession to his wife. She'll flay him with
her tongue for having dared to say a disrespectful word to God's
minister. Then he'll go on a desperate spree for a week to stifle
conscience, during which orgies he'll beat his wife black and blue;
finally, he'll come to you, sick, humbled, and repentant, to apologize
and take the pledge for life again. That's the programme."
"'T is pitiful," said the young priest.
But the following Sunday he recovered all his lost prestige and secured
immortal fame at the football match between the "Holy Terrors" of
Kilronan and the "Wolfe Tones" of Moydore. For, being asked to "kick
off" by these athletes, he sent the ball up in a straight line seventy
or eighty feet, and it struck the ground just three feet away from where
he stood. There was a shout of acclamation from the whole field, which
became a roar of unbounded enthusiasm when he sent the ball flying in a
parabola, not six feet from the ground, and right to the hurdles that
marked the opposite goal. The Kilronan men were wild about their young
curate, and under his eye they beat their opponents hollow; and one
admirer, leaning heavily on his _caman_, was heard to say:--
"My God, if he'd only lade us!"
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 3: "A hundred thousand welcomes, Lord."]
[Footnote 4: A famous Irish architect.]
CHAPTER XIII
"ALL THINGS TO ALL MEN"
In pursuing my course of lectures to my young curate--lectures which he
returned with compound interest by his splendid example of zeal and
energy--I put into his hands the following lines, addressed by that
gentle saint, Francis de Sales, to some one in whom he had a similar
interest:--
"Accustom yourself to speak softly and slowly, and to go--I mean
walk--quite composedly; to do all that you do gently and quietly,
and you will see that in three or four years you will have quite
regulated this hasty impetuosity. But carefully remember to act
thus gently and speak softly on occasions when the impetuosity is
not urging you, and when there is no appearance of danger of it,
as, for example, when sitting down, rising up, eating, when you
speak to N. N., etc.; and in fact everywhere and in everything
dispense not yourself from it. Now, I know that you will make a
thousand slips a day over all this, and that your great natural
activity will be always breaking out; but I do not trouble myself
about this provided that it is not your will, your deliberation;
and that, when you perceive these movements, you always try to calm
them. Equableness of mind and of outward demeanor is not a
particular virtue, but the interior and exterior ornament of a
friend of Jesus Christ." (Letter VII.)
Now, here's the difficulty. Undoubtedly he is impetuous, he rushes at
conclusions too rapidly, he judges hastily; and with an imperfect
knowledge of human nature, which is a mass of irregularities, he worries
himself because he cannot bring a whole parish up to his level in a few
weeks. That impetuosity shows itself everywhere. He is an anachronism, a
being from another time and world, set down in sleepy Kilronan. For the
first few weeks that he was here, whenever he slammed his hall door and
strode down the village street with long, rapid, undulating steps, all
the dogs came out and barked at him for disturbing their slumbers, and
all the neighbors came to their doors and asked wildly, "Who's dead?
What happened? Where's the fire?" etc., and the consequence was that the
wildest rumors used to be circulated; and then, when a few days'
experience disproved them, the cumulative wrath of the disappointed
villagers fell on Father Letheby's devoted head.
"Why the mischief doesn't he go aisy? Sure, you'd think he was walking
for a wager. He'll kill himself in no time if he goes on that way."
He used to laugh airily at all this commotion. And now here was the
puzzle. No doubt whatever he can do more work in one day than I or
Father Tom Laverty could do in a month. And if I clip his wings, and
put lead in his shoes, as he remarked, he may take to slippers and the
gout, and all his glorious work be summarily spoiled. That would never
do. I have no scruple about what I said regarding the Office and Mass;
but if I shall see him creeping past my window in a solemn and dignified
manner, I know I shall have qualms of conscience. And yet--
It was in the beginning of December, and one day I had occasion to go
down through the village. It was not a day to attract any one out of
doors; it was one of those dreadful days which leave an eternal landmark
behind them in the trees that are bent inwards toward the mountains from
the terrible stress of the southwest winds. Land and sea were wiped out
in the cataracts of rain that poured their deluges on sea and moor and
mountain; and the channels of the village ran fiercely with brown muddy
water; and every living thing was housed, except the ducks, which
contemptuously waded through the dirty ruts, and only quacked
melodiously when the storm lifted their feathers and flung them from
pool to pool of the deserted street. I called on Father Letheby.
"This is dismal weather," I said, "enough to give any one a fit of the
blues in this awful place."
He looked at me, as if this were an attempt to draw him. There was a
roar of wind that shook his window-sashes, as if it said, "We will get
in and spoil your pleasure, whether you like it or not"; and there was
a shower of bullets, as from a Maxim, that threatened to smash in and
devastate all the cosey comforts.
"By Jove," said he, turning round, "I never felt happier in my life. And
every roar and splash of the tempest makes me draw closer and closer to
this little nest, which I can call my own home."
It was a cosey nest, indeed. The fire burned merrily,--a little coal, a
good deal of bogwood and turf, which is the cleanest fire in the world;
there was cleanliness, neatness, tidiness, taste everywhere; the
etchings and engravings gave tone to the walls; the piano lay open, as
if saying, "C
Showing first 200,000 characters. Full text: gutenberg.org/ebooks/20295