FOOTNOTES:
[5] Charity towards men, as the charity of God towards us.
CHAPTER XV
HOLLY AND IVY
The progress of my curate and myself in our study of the Greek authors is not so steady or so successful as we had anticipated. Somehow or other we drift away from the subject-matter of our evening lessons, and I am beginning to perceive that his tastes are more modern, or, to speak more correctly, they tend to less archaic and more interesting studies. Then again I have read somewhere that the Hebrew characters, with their minute vowel-points, have driven blind many an enthusiastic scholar, and I fear these black Greek letters are becoming too much for my old sight. There now, dear reader, don't rush to the conclusion that this is just what you anticipated; you knew, of course, how it would be. You never had much faith in these transcendental enterprises of reviving Greek at the age of seventy-five, and you shook your incredulous head at the thought of an Academia of two honorary members at Kilronan. Now we have done a little. If you could only see the "Dream of Atossa" done into English pentameters by my curate, and my own "Prometheus"—well, there, this won't do—Vanity of vanities, said the Preacher.
But this much I shall be pardoned. I cannot help feeling very solemn and almost sad at the approach of Christmas time. Whether it is the long, gloomy tunnel that runs through the year from November to April,—these dark, sad days are ever weeping,—or whether it is the tender associations that are linked with the hallowed time and the remembrance of the departed I know not; but some indescribable melancholy seems to hover around and hang down on my spirits at this holy season; and it is emphasized by a foreboding that somewhere in the future this great Christian festival will degenerate into a mere bank holiday, and lose its sacred and tender and thrice-sanctified associations. By the way, is it not curious that our governments are steadily increasing the number of secular holidays, whilst the hands of Pharisees are still uplifted in horror at the idleness and demoralization produced amongst Catholics by the eight or ten days that are given in the year to the honor of God's elect?
Well, we shall stand by the old traditions to the end. And one of my oldest habits has been to read up at Christmas time every scrap of literature that had any bearing whatever on the most touching and the most important event in all human history. And so, on the Sunday evening preceding the celebration of Father Letheby's first Christmas in Kilronan, I spoke to him at length on my ideas and principles in connection with this great day; and we went back, in that rambling, desultory way that conversation drifts into,—back to ancient prophecies and forecastings, down to modern times,—tales of travellers about Bethlehem, the sacrilegious possession of holy places by Moslems, etc., etc., until the eyes of my curate began to kindle, and I saw a possible Bernard or Peter in his fine, clear-cut face, and a "Deus vult" in the trembling of his lips. Ah me! what a glorious thing is this enthusiasm of the young,—this noble idealism, that spurns the thought of consequences, only sees the finger of God beckoning and cares not whither!
"Hand me down that Virgil," I said, to avert an explosion, for when he does break out on modern degeneracy he is not pleasant to hear.
"Now spare my old eyes, and read for me, with deliberation, those lines of the Fourth Eclogue which forecast the coming of our Lord!"
He read in his fine sonorous voice, and he did full justice to the noble lines:—
"Ultima Cumæi venit jam carminis ætas;
Magnus ab integro sæclorum nascitur ordo.
Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna;
Jam nova progenies cælo demittitur alto,"—
down to the two lines which I repeated as a prayer:—
"O mihi tam longæ maneat pars ultima vitæ
Spiritus et, quantum sat erit tua dicere facta."
"No wonder," he said, at length, "that the world of the Middle Ages, which, by the way, were the ages of enlightenment, should have regarded Virgil as a magician and even as a saint."
"But," he said, after a pause, "the 'Dream of the Dead Christ' would be almost more appropriate nowadays. It is terrible to think how men are drifting away from Him. There's Ormsby now, a calm, professed infidel; and absolutely nothing in the way to prevent his marriage with Miss Campion but his faith, or want of faith."
"Ormsby!" I cried. "Infidel! Marriage with Miss Campion!—want of faith!!! What in the world is this sudden discharge of fireworks and Catherine-wheels upon your pastor? Or where has all this gunpowder been hitherto stored?"
"I thought I had told you, sir," he said, timidly, "but I have so many irons in the fire. You know that Ormsby's marriage is only a question of weeks but for one thing."
"And, if I am not trespassing too much on the secrecy of your confidential intercourse with these young people," I said (I suppose I was a little huffed), "may I ask how long is all this matrimonial enterprise in progress, and how does Campion regard it?"
"I am afraid you are offended, sir," he said, "and indeed quite naturally, because I have not spoken about this matter to you before; but really it appears so hopeless, and I hate speaking of things that are only conjectural. I suppose you had set your heart on Miss Campion's becoming a nun?"
"God forbid!" I said fervently. "We don't want to see all our best girls running into convents. I had set my heart on her being married to some good, excellent Catholic Irishman, like the Chief over at Kilkeel."
"Neil Cullen? Campion wouldn't listen to it. His name is a red rag to a bull. He never forgave Cullen for not firing on the people at that eviction over at Labbawally, some two or three years ago."
"And what does the person most interested think of the matter?" I asked.
"Well, I think she is quite in favor of it," he said. "Her father likes him, he will live in the old house, and she likes him,—at least, she asked me to do all in my power to bring him into the Church."
"The little puss," I could not help saying. "Who would ever have thought it? And yet, would it not be best? I pity her living with that old sea-dog,—that Viking in everything but his black mane of hair. But now, look here; this matter is important; let us talk it over quietly. Who or what is Ormsby? You have met him?"
"Several times. He is a young Trinity man, good-looking, gentlemanly, correct, moral. He has a pension of two hundred a year, his salary as Inspector of Coast Guards, and great expectations. But he has no faith."
"And never had any, I suppose. That's the way with all these fellows—"
"On the contrary, he was brought up a strict Evangelical, almost a Calvinist. Then he began to read, and like so many others he has drifted into unfaith."
"Well, lend him some books. He knows nothing, of course, about us. Let him see the faith, and he'll embrace it."
"Unfortunately, there's the rub. He has read everything. He has travelled the world; and reversing the venerable maxim, Cœlum, non animum mutant, he has taken his faith from his climate. He has been a Theosophist in London, a 'New Light' in 'Frisco, as he calls it, a Moslem in Cairo (by the way, he thinks a lot of these Mussulmans,—fine, manly, dignified fellows, he says, whose eloquence would bring a blush almost to the cheek of a member of Parliament). Then he has been hand in glove with Buddhist priests in the forests of Ceylon, and has been awfully impressed with their secret power, and still more with their calm philosophy. I believe," said my curate, sinking his voice to a whisper of awe and mystery, "I believe—he has kissed—the—tooth—of—Buddha!"
"Indeed," I replied, "and what good did that operation do him?"
"Not much, I suppose, except to confirm him in that gospel of the sceptic: 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in our philosophy!'"
"Humph! Here, then, stands the case. Our most interesting little parishioner has set her heart on this globe-trotter. There is a big wall in the way, and it won't do to repeat the tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe. Now, what is to be done to make the young fellow a Catholic? Has he any prejudices against us?"
"Not one? On the contrary, he rather likes us. He has received all kinds of hospitality from Catholic priests the wide world over, and he thinks us a right honest, jolly lot of fellows."
"H'm! I am not sure that that is exactly what St. Liguori or Charles Borromeo would fancy. But never mind! Now does he know what we hold and believe?"
"Accurately. He has read our best books."
"Has he had any intercourse with Catholics?"
"A good deal. They have not impressed him. Look at Campion now. Would any man become a Catholic with his example before him?"
"Hardly indeed, though we must speak kindly of him now, since you converted him. Had you any chat with him about his difficulties?"
"Yes, several. I walked home with him a few evenings from Campion's. You know that path over the cliff and down to the coast-guard station?"
"Well. And what is his special trouble? Does he think he has an immortal soul?"
"There you struck it. That's his trouble; and how to convince him of that beats me. I asked him again and again whether he was not self-conscious, that is, perfectly cognizant of the fact that there was a something, an Ego, outside and beyond the brain and inferior powers that commanded both? Was there not some intellectual entity that called up memory, and bade it unseal its tablets? And did he not feel and know that he could command and control the action of his brain, and even of every part of it? Now, I said, if the brain is only dumb matter, which you admit, and cannot create thought, where is this volition, or what is it? It is not cerebral, for then matter would create thought; that is, be the creator and the created at the same time."
"Well?"
"He listened attentively and then said quietly: 'Quite true. But if the Ego is different from the brain and is self-conscious, where does the self-consciousness go when the brain becomes anæmic and sleeps, or when the faculties are chloroformed?' 'Oh,' I said, 'the organ is shut down, the stops are closed.' 'Yes,' he said, 'but where goes the performer?' By Jove, I was stranded. I tell you what it is, Father Dan, though you'll call it treason, I'll pitch Æschylus to the mischief, and study what is of human and vital interest to us priests."
"That little objection needn't alarm you," I said, "you'll find the answer in every handbook of Catholic philosophy."
"What manual of Catholic philosophy in English could I get for Ormsby?" asked my curate.
"Alas! my dear young friend, I don't know. There is the great hiatus. You cannot put a folio calf-bound volume of Suarez in his hands,—he may not understand Latin. I know absolutely no book that you can put into the hands of an educated non-Catholic except Balmez's 'Letters to a Sceptic.'"
"He has read it," said my curate.
We were both silent.
"Now, you know," he continued, after a long pause, "I don't attach the least importance to these objections and arguments. I lived long enough in England to know that faith is a pure, absolutely pure gift of the Almighty, not to be acquired by learning or study, but possibly by prayer. I see, therefore, only one hope, and that is, in our Lord and His Blessed Mother."
"A profound and true remark," I replied, as he rose up to depart. "Get these mites of children to pray, and to say the Rosary for that particular purpose. I can't understand how God can refuse them anything."
"By the way," he said, as he put on his great coat, "it is a curious fact that, with all his incredulity, he is exceedingly superstitious. You can hardly believe how troubled he is about some gibberish of that old hag that sets charms for lame horses, etc. I'm not at all sure but that she set charms in the other way for my little mare."
"Well, what has she told Ormsby?"
"Her language was slightly oracular. Out of a joke, he crossed her palm with a sixpence. She looked him all over, though she knew well what he had in his mind, examined the lines of his hand minutely, and then delivered three Sibylline sentences:—
'Set a stout heart to a steep brae.'
That did not disconcert him. Then she said:—
'He that tholes, overcomes.'
He quite agreed with her. It was a naval simile, and it pleased him.
'But a white cloth and a stain never agree.'
He was struck as if by a blow. 'Mind you,' he said,'I am very candid. I have had my own faults and human weaknesses; but I never did anything immoral or dishonorable. What did she mean?' 'She meant,' I said, to reassure him, 'that you have kept her carefully out of the coast-guard station; that you have not allowed her to interfere with the men, or their wives, or their servants; that therefore you have put many a sixpence out of her pocket; and that she must have her revenge. Dismiss her jargon from your mind as soon as you can.' 'More easily said than done, Father,' he replied, and he then began to mutter: 'A white cloth and a stain never agree.' What does she mean?"
"The old story of Voltaire," I said, when my curate had finished. "Don't forget the children's prayers."
On Christmas eve he called at noonday, just as we were going out to the midday confessional. He had nothing new to tell. He was rather gloomy.
"You'll meet Miss Campion in the church," he said; "she'll tell you all."
"I don't think," I said, to cheer him—for where is the use of fretting in this queer world?—"there was so much need for Ormsby to go as far as Ceylon to find Buddha and the Nirvana. Look there."
Leaning against the blank wall opposite my house were three silent figures. They were a little distance apart, and they leaned against their support with the composure of three cabinet ministers on their green benches on the night of a great debate. Their feet were slightly parted, and they gazed on the road with a solemn, placid expression, as of men to whom the Atlantean weight of this weary world was as the down on a feather. Calmly and judicially, as if seeing nothing, yet weighing all things, they looked on pebble and broken limestone, never raising their heads, never removing their hands from their pockets. They had been there since breakfast time that morning, and it was now past noon.
"My God," said Father Letheby, when I told him, "'t is awful!"
"'T is the sublime," I said.
"And do you mean to tell me that they have never stirred from that posture for two long hours?"
"You have my word for it," I replied; "and you know the opinion entertained about my veracity,—'he'd no more tell a lie than the parish priest.'"
"I notice it everywhere," he said, in his impetuous way. "If I drive along the roads, my mare's head is right over the car or butt, before the fellow wakes up to see me; and then the exasperating coolness and deliberation with which he draws the reins to pull aside. My boy, too, when waiting on the road for a few minutes whilst I am attending a patient, falls fast asleep, like the fat boy in Pickwick; down there, under the cliffs, the men sleep all day in, or under, their boats. Why does not Charcot send all his nervous patients to Ireland? The air is not only a sedative, but a soporific. 'T is the calm of the eternal gods,—the sleep of the immortals."
"'T is the sleep of Enceladus in Etna," I replied. "When they wake up and turn, 't is hot lava and ashes."
"That's true, too," he said, musingly; "we are a strange people."
My own voice again echoing out of the dead past.
Miss Campion and "her friend from Dublin," Miss Leslie, were very busy about the Christmas decorations. Mrs. Darcy helped in her own way. I am afraid she did not approve of all that was being done. Miss Campion's and Mrs. Darcy's ideas of "the beautiful" were not exactly alike. Miss Campion's art is reticent and economical. Mrs. Darcy's is loud and pronounced. Miss Campion affects mosaics and miniatures. Mrs. Darcy wants a circus-poster, or the canvas of a diorama. Where Mrs. Darcy, on former occasions, put huge limbs of holly and a tangled wilderness of ivy, Miss Campion puts three or four dainty glistening leaves with a heart of red coral berries in the centre. Mrs. Darcy does not like it, and she thinks it her duty to art and religion to remonstrate.
"Wisha, Miss, I wouldn't be sparin' the holly if I was you. Sure 't is chape."
"Ah, well, now, Mrs. Darcy, don't you think this looks neat and pretty?"
"As nate and purty as yourself, Miss; but sure the parish priest won't mind the expinse. 'T is Christmas times, and his heart is open."
This wasn't too kind of Mrs. Darcy; but it does not matter. She looked ruefully at the fallen forest of greenery that strewed the chapel floor.
Miss Campion saw her distress, and said, kindly:—
"Now, Mrs. Darcy, is there any improvement you would kindly suggest before we conclude?"
"Wisha, Miss, there isn't much, indeed. You have made it lovely. But I'd like to see a little bit of holly in the Blessed Virgin's crown, and just a weeshy little bit in her Child's fingers. Sure, whatever is going these Christmas times, them have the best right to it."
Miss Campion smiled, and yielded to the pious wishes of the chapel woman, and then said:—
"Now, Mrs. Darcy, we'll put a few noble branches around the front porch, and whatever is left you must take it home, and let Jemmy decorate the dresser."
The first suggestion met Mrs. Darcy's tastes to perfection; the second went straight to her mother's heart.
"May God bless you, Miss; and may it be many a long day till throuble or sorrow crass the thrishol' of your dure."
The neighbors flocked in on Christmas eve to see Mrs. Darcy's cabin. Jemmy had risen to the occasion. The polished pewter vessels and the brass candlesticks shone resplendent from the background of black holly and veined ivy, and the red pearls of the berries. The comments, like all human criticisms, varied according to the subjectivity and prejudices of the visitors.
"Wisha, 't is purty, indeed. God bless those that gave it to the poor widow."
"Wisha, Jemmy, agra, there's no knowing what you'll be when you grows up."
"Wisha, thin, Mrs. Darcy, you wor always the good nabor. Would it be asking too much, ma'am, to give us thim few kippeens on the floor? Sure Abby says she'd like to have a little bit of holly to stick round the Infant Jesus this holy and blessed night."
"'T is aisy for some people to be proud. Aisy got, aisy gone. But 't is quare to be taking what ought to go to the house of God to make a babby-show for ourselves."
"Yerra, whisht, 'uman, we must hould our heads as high as we can while we have it. It may go soon, and Mary Darcy may wish to be no betther thin her nabors."
Ah me! Here is the great world in miniature.
"There is not a word of news going?" I said to Miss Campion, as we walked up and down the moss-covered walk that lay to the south side of the little church.
"Nothing, Father," she said, "except, indeed, that father makes his Christmas Communion in the morning; and oh! I am so thankful to God and to Father Letheby."
"It is really good news, Beata," I replied. I sometimes called her Beata, for Bittra sounds horrid. I intend to compromise on her wedding morn by calling her Beatrix. "Really good news. It will add considerably to the happiness of one, whose only object in life appears to be to make every one around her happy. But there is no other news that may be supposed to interest in a far-off way the old pastor, who gave Beata her First Communion, and—?"
She blushed crimson, and held down her head.
"Now," I said, "give your old parish priest your arm, for I am getting more and more feeble every day, and tell him all. Perhaps he could help you too."
"Oh, Father, if you could; but it is almost too much to expect from God. Perhaps I'd forget Him."
"Not much fear of that," I exclaimed fervently; "but now let us calculate the chances."
"But oh, Father, if you only knew Rex,—he is so good, so gentle, he takes so kindly to the poor, ("the clever rascal," I ejaculated under my breath,) and he likes us so much, I'm sure it needs but little to make him an excellent Catholic."
Well, now, what is a poor old man to do? Here am I, prepared to calculate and balance chances of this young man's conversion,—the pros and cons of a serious matter; and here this young lady branches off into a magnificent apotheosis of her young demigod! What has the cold yellow candle light of reason to do in the camera obscura of the human heart? Let us fling open the shutters, and let in the golden sunshine.
"So I've heard," I said. "And I also know this, Beata, that is, I've read something like it in good books, written by holy and thoughtful men, that the gift of faith is given freely by the Holy Spirit to those who, like your fiancé, have led pure and unsullied lives."
She started at the word fiancé, and the smile on her face was a study. Poor old Dante! no wonder you walked on air, and lightly spurned the stars, when your lady beckoned.
"Beatrice in suso, ed io in lei guardava."
So shall it be to the end.
Well, we talked the whole thing over; debated all possibilities, laughed at difficulties, cut through obstacles, leaped over obstructions, and, at last, saw in imagination, written on the cold, frosty air of December, the mystic legend, I Will, surrounded by a gorgeous corona of orange blossoms.
Then, of course, the superb unreason of women. Beata began to cry as I handed her over to Miss Leslie, who looked daggers at me, and I am quite sure called me, in her own mind, "A horrid old thing!"
Father Letheby, after his unusually heavy confessional, was jubilant. Nothing exhilarates him like work. Given a scanty confessional, and he is as gloomy as Sisyphus; given a hard, laborious day, and he is as bright as Ariel. He was in uncommonly good spirits to-day.
"By Jove, Father Dan," he said, as we walked home together to our little bit of fish, "I have it. I'll try him with the Kampaner Thal!"
"The very thing," I replied.
"Don't you think it would do? You know he regards all our arguments as so much special pleading, and he discounts them accordingly."
"Of course," I said. "Wonder you never thought of it before!"
"That is curious now. But you always find things in unexpected quarters. But you're sure 't will do?"
"Quite sure. By the way, what is the Kampaner Thal?"
He looked squarely at me.
"'Pon my word, Father Dan, I confess I sometimes think you are rather fond of a joke."
"Come along, never mind," I replied. "After air and water, the power of a pleasant and kind word is the best and cheapest thing God gives us, His children."
CHAPTER XVI
VIOLENT CONTRASTS
Christmas Day was a day of undiluted triumph for Father Letheby. There were great surprises in store for me. That is one of my curate's few faults—is it a fault?—that he is inclined to be dramatic. As he says, he hates to speak of a thing until it is beyond the reach of failure. Of all criticisms, the one he most dreads is, "I told you so." And so, on this Christmas morning, I had a series of mild, pleasant shocks, that made the bright, crisp, frosty, sunny morning all the more pleasant. It was a slight, because expected, surprise to see Captain Campion at the altar rails. He appeared at eight o'clock Mass. Thanks be to God! I manage still to use the sublime privilege given by the Church that morning, of being allowed to celebrate three times. I have not omitted it for fifty years. When I shall fail to say my three Christmas Masses, then you may take up your Exequiæ, and practise the Requiem æternam for poor Daddy Dan.
Well, I had said the first two Masses, commencing at seven o'clock. It is a curious experience, that of seven o'clock Mass on Christmas morning. The groping through the dark, with just the faintest aurora on the horizon, the smell of the frost in the air, the crunching of icicles under one's feet, the shadowy figures, making their way with some difficulty to the church, the salutations of the people: "Is that you, Mick?" "'Tis, Mrs. Grady; a happy Christmas to you, ma'am." "The same to you, Mick, and manny of them." "Good morning, Mrs. Mulcahy; 't is a fine Christmas morning, glory be to God." "'T is indeed, ma'am, glory be to His Holy Name." "Hurry up, Bess, you'll never catch the priest at the altar." "Yerra, sure, haven't we three Masses to-day." The more polite people said: "The compliments of the saison to you, ma'am." "The same to you, sir; may we be all alive and happy this time twelvemonth."
Well, just as I commenced the hymn of the angels at my first Mass, there was a crash of music and singing from the gallery over the door, that made my old heart leap with joy and pride. I never expected it; and the soft tones of the harmonium, and the blending of the children's voices, floating out there in the dark of the little chapel, made tears of delight stream down the wrinkles of my cheeks. And what was the Gloria, do you think? From Mozart's "Twelfth Mass," if you please. Nothing else would do. The pride of Kilronan is gone so high since that famous concert, that I am almost sure they would challenge the seraphim to a fair contest, that is, if the latter would put aside their golden viols and sambucæ, and compete only with their voices against the "new choir of Kilronan." I violated egregiously one strict rubric at the Dominus vobiscum. I raised my eyes and took a good long look at choir and people. I couldn't help it. If Martinucci and Baruffaldi, Gavantus and Merati, Gardellini and Bauldry, and the whole Congregation of Sacred Rites were there in the front bench, I couldn't help myself. I kept my hands open for at least a quarter of a minute, whilst I surveyed my little congregation. It was a pathetic sight. The lights from the altar shone on the faces of Captain Campion and Bittra, and one or two of the better-class parishioners on the front bench; but all behind were buried in a deep well of darkness. I could barely distinguish the pale faces of the confused mass that stretched in the deep gloom towards the door; but overhead, about a dozen dark figures were outlined against the light of the two wax candles on the harmonium, over which, on this eventful morning, Father Letheby presided. And this was the object of the concert at last. I should have known that there was some supernatural object behind it. This young man does not care much to develop or elicit the dormant energies of the people, unless he can turn therewith the mills of God. But what trouble it must have given him! How many a cold night did he leave his room, and there, on that gallery, contend with the rough and irregular voices, until he brought them into that stream of perfect unison. I can imagine what patience he exercised, what subtle flatteries he administered, what gentle sarcasm he applied, before he succeeded in modulating the hoarse thunders of Dave Olden's voice, that rose like a fog-horn over the winds and waves whenever he ventured upon the high seas; and how he cut off remorselessly the grace-notes of Abby Lyden, who has begun to think herself an Albani; and how he overcame the shyness of the fisher lads, and brought clear to the front the sweet tenors of the schoolboys, on whom, he said, all his hopes depended. And how his own rich baritone ascended strongly and softly over all, blending into perfect harmony all discordance, and gently smothering the vagrant and rebellious tones that would sometimes break ambitiously through discipline, and try to assert their own individuality. He sang an Offertory solo, accompanying himself on the harmonium. Who will say it was not sweet? Who will say it was not appropriate?
"O Vergine bella!
Del ciel Regina,
A cui s'inchina
La terra ed el mar.
"O Tu che sei stella
Del mare si bella,
Ci guido nal porta
Col tuo splendor."
And then when Bethlehem was repeated, with all its lowliness and humility, there in that humble chapel; and the Divine Babe lay white and spotless on the corporal, the glorious Adeste broke forth. Ah me! what a new experience for myself and people. Ah me! what a sting of compunction in all the honeyed delights of that glorious morning, to think that for all these years I had been pastor there. Well, never mind; meâ maximâ culpâ! Ignosce, Domine!
I placed the Sacred Host on Captain Campion's tongue, and most heartily forgave him his unflattering epithets. Tears of joy streamed down Bittra's face as she knelt beside him at the altar rails. I was wearied and tired from the large number of Communions I administered that morning. The last communicant was poor Nance. She was hidden away in the deep gloom; but I am not at all sure that the Child Jesus did not nestle as comfortably in the arms of the poor penitent as in those of His virgins and spotless ones. And there were many such, thank God, amongst my Christmas congregation that morning.
But the great surprise of all was in store. For, after Mass was over, there was a great rush to St. Joseph's Chapel; and I am afraid I cut my own thanksgiving short, to move with silent dignity in the same direction. I heard gasps of surprise and delight, exclamations of wonder, suppressed hallelujahs of joy; I saw adoration and tenderness, awe and love on the dimly lighted faces of the people. No wonder! For there, under a rough, rustic roof of pines and shingles, was the Bethlehem of our imaginations in miniature. Rough rocks lined the interior, wet green mosses and lichens covering them here and there; in front of the cave a light hoar-frost lay on the ground, and straw and stubble littered the palace floor of Him who walks on the jasper and chalcedony parquetting of the floors of heaven. And there was the gentle Joseph, with a reverent, wondering look on his worn features; and there the conscious, self-possessed, but adoring expression on the sweet face of the Child-Mother; and there the helpless form and pleading hands of Him whose omnipotence stretches through infinity, and in whose fingers colossal suns and their systems are but the playthings of this moment in His eternal existence, which we call Time. Three shepherds stood around, dazed at some sudden light that shone from the face of the Infant; one, a boy, leaned forward as if to raise in his arms that sweet, helpless Babe; his hands were stretched towards the manger, and a string held the broad hat that fell between his shoulders. And aloft an angel held in his hand a starry scroll, on which was inscribed Gloria in excelsis Deo. I stood amongst my awestruck congregation for a few minutes. Some were kneeling, and uttering half-frantic ejaculations of adoration, pity, and love; some leaned against a pillar, silent, but with tearful eyes; little children pointed out to each other the different features of this new wonder-world; but all around, the fervid Celtic imagination translated these terracotta figures into living and breathing personalities. It was as if God had carried them back over the gulf of nineteen centuries, and brought them to the stable door of Bethlehem that ever memorable night. I think it is this realization of the Incarnation that constitutes the distinguishing feature of Catholicity. It is the Sacred Humanity of our Lord that brings Him so nigh to us, and makes us so familiar with Him; that makes the Blessed Eucharist a necessity, and makes the hierarchy of Bethlehem, Jerusalem, and Calvary so beloved,—beloved above all by the poor, and the humble, and the lowly. Listen to this!
"Oh, dear, dear, and to think of our Lord with the straw under Him, and His feet covered with the frost of that cowld night—"
"And the poor child! Look at her; why, she's only a little girl, like Norah; and not a woman near to help her in her throuble."
"Look at His little hands stretched out, like any ordinary child. Glory be to His Holy Name. Sure, only for Him where 'ud we be?"
"And poor St. Joseph! No wondher he's fretting. To think of thim two cratures in his hands, and he not having house or home to shelter thim!"
"Wisha, Mary, 't was a pity we worn't there that blessed night. Sure, 't is we'd give 'em the best we had in the world, an' our hearts' blood."
I shared to the full this feeling about St. Joseph. And when, after Father Letheby's Mass, I came down, and brought over my old arm-chair, and placed it in front of the crib, and put down my snuff-box, and my breviary, and my spectacles, and gave myself up to the contemplation of that wonderful and pathetic drama, St. Joseph would insist on claiming the largest share of my pity and sympathy. Somehow I felt that mother and child understood each other perfectly,—that she saw everything through the eyes of God, and that therefore there was not much room for wonderment; but that to St. Joseph the whole thing was an unspeakable mystery of humiliation and love, infinite abasement and infinite dignity; and I thought I saw him looking from the child-face of his spouse to the child-face of the Infant, and somehow asking himself, "What is it all?" even though he explicitly understood the meaning and magnitude of the mighty mystery.
Father Letheby has a new series of pictures of the Life of our Lord, painted by a French artist, whose name I can never recall except when I sneeze,—Tissot. I do not like them at all. They are too realistic,—and, after all, the ideal is the real. I have a special, undiluted dislike of one picture,—the Magnificat. I'd have torn it up, and put the fragments in the fire, but that it was not mine. But how in the world any Catholic could paint my beautiful child-prophetess of Hebron as Tissot has done baffles comprehension. But he has one lovely picture, "Because there was no Room." The narrow lane of the Jewish city,—the steep stairs to the rooms,—the blank walls perforated by a solitary, narrow window,—the rough stones, and the gentle animal that bore Mary, treading carefully over them,—the Jewish women, regretfully refusing admission,—the sweet, gentle face of the maiden mother,—and the pathetic, anxious, despairing look on the features of St. Joseph,—make this a touching and beautiful picture. Poor St. Joseph! "Come, take the reins of the patient animal, and lead him and his sacred burden out into the night! There is no room in the City of David for the children of David. Out under the stars, shining brilliantly through the frosty atmosphere, over the white, rugged road, into an unknown country, and 'Whither, O my God?' on thy lips, as the child at thy side shuddered, and no finger from heaven nor voice from earth directed thee; unless, indeed, that faint flashes of light athwart the net of stars told thee that the angels were cutting their way down through the darkness, and into the spheres of men, and that all heaven was in a tumult of expectation, whilst in yonder city men slept, as they always sleep unconscious when God is near. And then, when the feeble plaint broke from Mary's lips, I cannot go further, and the gentle beast turned aside into the rocks and whins, and called to his companions of the stable, and the meek-eyed ox looked calmly at the intruders, and there—there—dear God! to think of it all—In mundo erat, et mundus eum non cognovit."
I sat quietly there until Benediction at three o'clock, and then I remained rolling my beads through my fingers, and singing in my heart the grand majestic O's of the preceding day's offices, at the end of every decade, until five o'clock struck. From time to time my little children would come, and leaning on my knee, would gaze with wonder and affection at the Child of Bethlehem; and then, looking up into my face, put wonderful questions about deep mysteries to their old Father. For all day long, a stream of visitors passed before the crib; and the next day, and the next, crowds trooped over from Moydore and the neighboring parishes, for the fame of it had gone abroad over the land; and men and women came, jealous of their own pastors, and wondering at the sudden uprise of Kilronan. Then the climax was reached on the twelfth day, when the Kings appeared, and the group in the stable was complete. The "black man" from Nubia came in for more than his share of honors; and it was admitted all round that Kilronan was immortalized and the other parishes were forever in the background.
"May God bless the man that gave us such a sight," said an old woman fervently, as I left the wondering crowd and went home to dinner.
"May God bless all our priests," said another, fearing that I might be offended.
"Wisha, thin, Father Dan," said a third, "what a wondher you never tould us what you had in store for us. Wisha, thin, it wasn't worth while keeping it such a grate sacret."
There is no end to the ingenious charity of these people. On my plate at the dinner table, amidst a pile of Christmas cards, was a dainty little duodecimo. I took it up. It was from Father Letheby. And what was it? The Imitation in Greek, by a certain George Mayr, S. J. Wasn't this nice? My pet book done into my favorite language! It was the happiest Christmas I ever spent. Quam bonus Israel Deus! So too said Father Letheby. But I had some dim presentiment that all his well-merited pleasure would not be quite unalloyed,—that some secret hand, perhaps a merciful one, would pluck a laurel leaf or two from his crown. We had a pleasant academic discussion after dinner about the honorable retention of ancient Irish customs,—he quite enthusiastic about them, I rather disposed to think that the abuses which invariably accompanied them made their final extinction altogether advisable. We put our respective theories in practice next morning with the most perfect consistency; for Hannah drove indignantly from the door the wren-boys, just as they were commencing:
"A thrate, a thrate, if of the best,
We hope in heaven your sowl will rest;
But if you give it of the small
It won't agree with our boys at all."
And, on his part, Father Letheby listened with intense delight to this dithyrambic, which ushers in St. Stephen's day all over Ireland; and he dispensed sundry sixpences to the boys with the injunction to be always good Irishmen and to buy sweets.
That night, just as I was thinking of retiring, for I am an early riser, I heard a gentle tap at the hall door, then a hurried colloguing in the hall; and Hannah put in her head and whispered:—
"Lizzie is afraid, sir, that the priest is sick. Would you mind coming down to see him?"
"God bless me! no," I said, quite alarmed. I followed the servant rapidly and was ushered into Father Letheby's parlor, unexpected and almost unannounced.
"What's the matter, sir?" he cried; "what's the matter?"
"Nothing particular," I replied. "'T is a rather fine night, is it not?"
"Lizzie must have sent for you?" he answered.
"Yes," I said, "she did. She thought you were unwell. Are you?"
He looked ill enough, poor fellow, and at these words he sank wearily into a chair.
"I am afraid you're unwell," I repeated.
"I'm not unwell," he said, blubbering like a child, "but—but—my heart is broken."
"Oh," I cried, "if that's all, it's easily mended. Come now, let's hear all, and see if we can't put the pieces together."
"I wouldn't mind," he cried, standing up and striding along the little room, his hands tightly clasped behind his back, "but the poor little altar boys—the poor little beggars—they looked so nice yesterday, and oh to think of it! Good God!"
"Very dramatic, very dramatic," I said, "but not the quiet narrative and consecutive style that I affect. Now, supposing you told me the story. There's balm in Gilead yet."
And this was the story, told with much impressiveness, a fair amount of gesticulation, and one or two little profane expressions, which made the Recording Angel cough and look away to see how was the weather.
It appears that about seven o'clock Father Letheby had a sick-call outside the village. There are generally a fair share of sick-calls on the day succeeding the great festivity, for obvious reasons. He was returning home through the village, when the sound of singing arrested his steps just outside Mrs. Haley's public house. His heart gave a bound of delight as he heard the familiar lines and notes of the Adeste. "Thank God!" he said, "at last, the people are beginning to bring our Catholic hymns into their own homes." As he listened intently there was a slight reaction as he recognized the sweet liquid notes, with all the curls and quavers that are the copyright and strictly legal and exclusive possession of Jem Deady.
"Good heavens!" said the young priest, in a frenzy of indignation, "has that ruffian dared to introduce into the taproom our Christmas melodies, and to degrade them into a public-house chorus?"
He stepped into the shop. There was no one there. He turned softly the handle of the door, and was in the taproom for several minutes before he was recognized. What he witnessed was this. Leaning in a tipsy, maudlin way against the wall were the holly bushes, which, decorated with pink ribbons, and supposed to conceal in their dim recesses the "wren, the wren, the king of all birds," had been the great attraction of the morning. Leaning on the deal table, with glasses and pints of porter before them, as they sat and lounged or fell in various stages of intoxication, were the wren-boys; and near the fire, with his back turned to the door, and his fingers beating time to the music in pools of dirty porter, was Jem Deady. As Father Letheby entered he was singing:—
"Deum de Deo, Lumen de Lumine,
Gestant puellæ viscera—"
the most awful and tender lines of the glorious hymn.
He was unconscious of the priest's presence, and quite unconscious of his horrible sacrilege. Father Letheby continued gazing on the sad scene for a few minutes, with mingled feelings of anger, horror, and disgust. Then, closing the door softly after him, he strode through the street, and knocking peremptorily at all the doors, he soon had a procession of the fathers and mothers of the children following him to the public house. What occurred then has passed into the historical annals of Kilronan. It is enough to say here that its good people heard that night certain things which made their ears tingle for many a day. Mrs. Haley came up to my house the following morning to give up her license; and there was a general feeling abroad that every man, woman, and child in Kilronan should become total abstainers for life.
"But that's all," said Father Letheby; "and now I am really sick of the entire business; and to-morrow I shall write to the Bishop for my exeat, and return to England or go to Australia, where I have been promised a mission."
It was rather late, and I should have been long ago in my comfortable bed; but the text was too good to miss.
"My dear Father Letheby," I said, "it is clear to me that you are working not for God's honor, but for your own kudos."
He started at these strong words, and stared at me.
"Because," I continued calmly, "if it was the honor of God you had at heart, this calamity, the intensity of which I have no idea of minimizing, would have stimulated you to fresh efforts instead of plunging you into despair. But your pride is touched and your honor is tarnished, and you dread the criticism of men. Tell me honestly, are you grieved because God has been offended, or because all your fine plans have ganged aglee? There! Dear St. Bonaventure, what a burden you laid on the shoulders of poor humanity when you said, Ama nesciri, et pro nihilo reputari. You did not know, in the depths of your humility, that each of us has a pretty little gilded idol which is labelled Self! And that each of us is a fanatic in seeking to make conversions to our own little god. And I am not at all sure but that education only helps us to put on a little more gilding and a little more tawdry finery on our hidden deity; and that even when we sit in judgment upon him, as we do when preparing for Confession, it is often as a gentle and doting mother, not as an inflexible and impartial judge. Here are you now (turning to Father Letheby), a good, estimable, zealous, and successful priest; and because you have been touched in a sore point, lo! the voice from the inner shrine demanding compensation and future immunity. Everything has prospered with you. Religion has progressed, with leaps and bounds, since you came to the parish; the people adore you, and you have the satisfaction of knowing that you are that most difficult of heroic successes, a conqueror because a reformer; and because you have met one reverse, you are going to turn your back on your work, and seek the curse of those who put pillows under their armpits and garlands of roses in their hair. Did you imagine that Satan, a living, personal, and highly intelligent force, was going to allow you to have everything your own way here,—to fold his arms while you were driving back his forces in utter rout and confusion? If you did, you were greatly mistaken. You have met a slight reverse, and it has become a panic. Sauve qui peut! And the commander—the successful general—is the first to turn his back, throw down his sword, and flee."
"Say no more, Father Dan, for God's sake. I am heartily ashamed of myself."
A good scolding is almost equal to a cold bath as a tonic for disordered nerves.
I went home with a satisfied conscience, murmuring, Per la impacciata via, retro al suo duce. I think I know whither he is tending.
A demoralized, woe-begone, wilted, helpless figure was before me in the hall. If he had been under Niagara for the last few hours he could not be more hopelessly washed out. It was Jem Deady in the custody of his wife, who was now in the ascendant.
"Here he is, your reverence,—a misfortunate angashore! For the love of God make him now a patthern to the parish! Cling him to the ground, or turn him into somethin'; make him an example forever, for my heart is broke with him."
Whilst I was turning over in my mind into which of the lower animals it would be advisable to cause the immortal soul of Jem to transmigrate and take up a temporary residence, I thought I saw a glance upwards from his eye, visibly pleading for mercy.
"It is quite clear, Jem," I said, "that your Christmas dinner disagreed with you."
"Begor, thin, your reverence," broke in Mrs. Deady, setting herself in a rather defiant attitude, "he had as good a dinner as any poor man in your parish. He had a roast goose, stuffed by thim two hands with praties and inguns, until the tears ran down my face; and he had a pig's cheek, and lashins of cabbage."
"And why don't you tell his reverence about the rice puddin'?" said Jem, in a tone of honest indignation. "'T is a shame for you, Bess! She made a rice puddin', your reverence, that was fit for the Grate House; and begor, your reverence might sit down to worse yourself. Sich raisons and currans!"
"Begor, I'm thinking you're thrying to put the comedher on me, you blagard, with your blarney," said Mrs. Deady with angry suspicion, drawing back and scrutinizing his face.
"And why don't you tell his reverence about the rice puddin'?"
"Thrying to put the comedher on you, Bess? Begor, I'd like to see the man that could do it. But I'll say this, in the presence of his reverence, and wid yerself to the fore, that there isn't in this parish, nor in the nex', nor in the nex' again, nor widin the four walls of Ireland, a betther wife nor a betther housekeeper den you, Bess Clancy." And to emphasize this panegyric, Jem threw his battered hat on the floor and brushed away a tear.
It was a pity not to come to the aid of such a superb diplomatist. No wonder the British diplomatic service is manned by Irishmen from Singapore to Halifax. What would Melikoff, and Von Schaffterhausen, and De Laborie be in the hands of Jem Deady? He'd twist them around his little finger. I saw the angry wrinkles smoothing themselves on the brow of Mrs. Deady, as she melted under the gentle rain of flattery.
"I'd forgive you a good deal, Deady," I said; "your repeated violations of solemn pledges, your sacrilege in bringing down to a public house the most sacred melodies of the Church—"
"They were at me," said Jem. "They said as how I couldn't get my tongue around the Latin, and that Father Letheby—"
"I understand," I interrupted; "but even that I'd forgive. But to take the innocent lambs of my flock, my choir boys and altar boys, the children of sober and religious parents, whose hearts are broken by your misconduct—"
"Childre' of sober and religious parents,—whose hearts are broken," chimed in Mrs. Deady. "Wisha, thin, without manin' any disrespect to your riverence, would you be plazed to mintion these dacent people? An' if these religious parents wor mindin' their childre', insted of colloguing and placin' their nabors, their religious childre' wouldn't be lying drunk in Mrs. Haley's public house. But of coorse 't is Jim Deady here and Jim Deady there; and if the thruth wos towld, he's as good as any of 'em, though I shouldn't say it to his face. Come along, you poor fool."
"I must do what I came for," said Jem, solemnly. Then, with an air of awful determination, as if he were binding iron bars and padlocks on his thirsty lips, Jem took the pledge. Mrs. Deady, in high dudgeon, had gone down the street. Jem and I were alone.
"Tell me, yer reverence," he whispered, "did that mane scut of a tailor insult ye the other night?"
"Oh, not at all, Jem," I cried, fearing the consequences to the tailor.
"I have an eye on him this long time," said Jem, "and faith, he'll come to grief soon."
"Now, Jem," I warned emphatically, "no violence, mind. The unfortunate fellow is sorry."
"All right, your reverence; we are not going to waste violence on the likes of him. But—"
Here Jem fell into a profound reverie.
"Begor, your reverence, ye did that little job nately," he cried, waking up. "That woman's tongue didn't lave me worth tuppence. God bless yer reverence, and spare ye long to us."
He took my hand, and kissed it till it was blistered by the sharp bristles of his unshaven lips. Poor fellows! how they warm to us! and how, with all their faults, we fling around them something more than maternal love!
CHAPTER XVII
A CLERICAL SYMPOSIUM
There is no law, supernatural or natural, forbidding us (who, if we have not many of the crosses, neither have we many of the pleasures of this life) from meeting sometimes, and carrying out St. Paul's prescriptions in the matter of hospitality. I believe, indeed, his words—and he was a wise, kind saint—apply principally to bishops; but why should not we imitate our superiors afar off, and practise the kindly virtue? It is good to meet sometimes and exchange opinions; it softens the asperities of daily life, makes the young think reverently of the old, and the old charitably of the young. At least, these are my views, and acting upon them there is always an open door and a Cead Milé Failté for a brother; and a few times in the year I try to gather around me my dear friends, and thus to cement those bonds of friendship that make life a little more pleasant, and, perhaps, may keep our memories green. Sometimes, indeed, my dear old friends object to face a drive of eight or ten miles on a cold night in winter; but the young fellows always come. Nothing but extreme urgency would keep them away from an evening with Daddy Dan. Now, we have no nonsense,—no soups, nor entrées, which some of my more fashionable confrères are at present affecting, if you please; but a plain turkey and ham, and a roast leg of mutton, and a few little trimmings to fill up vacant spaces. There is an old tradition, too, in Ireland, which I keep to pretty closely,—never to invite more than the Muses, nor less than the Graces; but on this occasion—it was during the Octave of the Epiphany—I departed from the custom, and, owing to a few disappointments, the ominous number of thirteen sat down to dinner. I must say, however, it had not a paralyzing effect on the appetites of my guests, nor did they appear to have any apprehensions of a sudden call to the places where turkeys and good mutton are not appreciated. There were a few jokes about the intolerable longevity of certain parish priests; and when my curate, who occupied the vice-chair with infinite grace and dignity, remarked in his own grand style that "really Da Vinci's 'Last Supper' was responsible for that unhallowed superstition, and there really was nothing in it," some few wags professed themselves greatly relieved, and showed it by new-born zeal in the avocations of the evening. My duties as host engrossed all my attention, until the table was cleared for action; and the call for coffee from eight out of thirteen guests recalled me to my favorite meditation on the mighty yet silent revolution that is progressing in the Irish Church.
I have been now in touch with three generations of Irish priests, each as distinct from the other, and marked by as distinctive characteristics, as those which differentiate an Anglican parson from a mediæval monk. My early education was colored by contact with the polished, studious, timid priests, who, educated in Continental seminaries, introduced into Ireland all the grace and dignity and holiness, and all the dread of secular authority with the slight tendency to compromise, that seemed to have marked the French clergy, at least in the years immediately succeeding the revolutions and the Napoleonic wars. These were the good men who fraternized with landlords, and lent their congregations to a neighboring parson on the occasion of some governmental visitation; who were slightly tinged with Gallican ideas, and hated progress and the troubles that always accompany it. They were holy, good, kindly men, but they could hardly be called officers of the Church Militant. Then came Maynooth, which, founded on governmental subsidies, poured from its gates the strongest, fiercest, most fearless army of priests that ever fought for the spiritual and temporal interests of the people,—men of large physique and iron constitutions, who spent ten hours a day on horseback, despised French claret, loved their people and chastised them like fathers, but were prepared to defend them with their lives and the outpouring of their blood against their hereditary enemies. Intense in their faith, of stainless lives and spotless reputations, their words cut like razors, and their hands smote like lightning; but they had the hearts of mothers for the little ones of their flocks. They had the classics at their fingers' ends, could roll out lines from Virgil or Horace at an after-dinner speech, and had a profound contempt for English literature. In theology they were rigorists, too much disposed to defer absolution and to give long penances. They had a cordial dislike for new devotions, believing that Christmas and Easter Communion was quite enough for ordinary sancity. Later on they became more generous, but they clung with tenacity to the Brown Scapular and the First Sunday of the month. I am quite sure they have turned somersaults in their graves since the introduction of the myriad devotions that are now distracting and edifying the faithful. But they could make, and, alas! too often perhaps for Christian modesty, they did make, the proud boast that they kept alive the people's faith, imbued them with a sense of the loftiest morality, and instilled a sense of intense horror for such violations of Church precepts as a communicatio cum hereticis in divinis, or the touching of flesh meat on a day of abstinence. I believe I belong to that school, though my sympathies are wide enough for all. And as in theology, I am quite prepared to embrace Thomists, and Scotists, and Molinists, Nominalists and Realists in fraternal charity, so, too, am I prepared to recognize and appreciate the traits and characteristics of the different generations of clerics in the Irish Church. Sometimes, perhaps, through the vanity that clings to us all to the end, I play the part of "laudator temporis acti," and then the young fellows shout:—
"Ah, but, Father Dan, they were giants in those days."
And the tags and shreds of poor human nature wave in the wind of flattery; and I feel grateful for the modest appreciation of a generation that has no sympathy with our own.
Then, down there, below the water-line of gray heads is the coming generation of Irish priests, who, like the λαμπαδηφοροι of old in the Athenian games, will take the torch of faith from our hands and carry it to the Acropolis of Heaven,—clean-cut, small of stature, keen-faced, bicycle-riding, coffee-drinking, encyclopædic young fellows, who will give a good account of themselves, I think, in the battles of the near future. It is highly amusing to a disinterested spectator, like myself, to watch the tolerant contempt with which the older generation regards the younger. They have as much contempt for coffee as for ceremonies, and I think their mistakes in the latter would form a handsome volume of errata, or add another appendix to our valuable compendiums. To ask one of these old men to pass a cup of coffee is equivalent to asking a Hebrew of the strict observance to carve a ham, or a Hindoo to eat from the same dish with a Christian. And many other objects that the passing generation held in high esteem are "gods of the Gentiles" to the younger. They laugh profanely at that aureole of distinction that used hang around the heads of successful students, declaring that a man's education only commences when he leaves college, and that his academical training was but the sword exercise of the gymnasium; and they speak dreadful things about evolution and modern interpretation, and the new methods of hermeneutics, and polychrome Bibles; and they laugh at the idea of the world's creation in six days; and altogether, they disturb and disquiet the dreams of the staid and stately veterans of the Famine years, and make them forecast a dismal future for Ireland when German metaphysics and coffee will first impair, and then destroy, the sacred traditions of Irish faith. And yet, these young priests inherit the best elements of the grand inheritance that has come down to them. Their passionate devotion to their faith is only rivalled by their passionate devotion to the Motherland. Every one of them belongs to that great world-wide organization of Priests Adorers, which, cradled in the dying years of our century, will grow to a gigantic stature in the next; for at last it has dawned upon the world that around this sacred doctrine and devotion, as around an oriflamme, the great battles of the twentieth century will rage. And they have as tender and passionate a love for the solitary isle in the wintry western seas as ever brought a film to the eyes of exile, or lighted the battle fires in the hearts of her heroes and kings. And with all my ancient prejudices in favor of my own caste, I see clearly that the equipments of the new generation are best suited to modern needs. The bugle-call of the future will sound the retreat for the ancient cavalry and the Old Guard, and sing out, Forward the Light Brigade!
This evening, as usual, the conversation was discursive. It ranged over the whole area of human knowledge and experience, from the price of a horse to Lehmkuhl's Latinity, and from the last political speech to the everlasting question, ever discussed and never decided, What is meant by the month's residence as a condition for the acquisition of a domicile? That horrible drug was irritating the nerves of the younger men, until I heard, as in a dream, a Babel of voices:—"The two Ballerini,"—"They'll never arrest him,"—"He'll certainly fire on the people,"—"Daniel never wrote that book, I tell you,"—"'T is only a ringbone,"—"Fifty times worse than a sprain,"—"He got it in the Gregorian University,"—"Paddy Murray, George Crolly,"—"I admire Balfour for his profound knowledge of metaphysics,"—"Did you see the article in the Record about the Spanish dispensation?"—"He's got a first-class mission in Ballarat,"—"No, the lessons were from the Scripture occurring,"—"I don't think we're bound to these Masses,"—"'Twas a fine sermon, but too flowery for my tastes,"—"Yes, we expect a good Shrove this year,"—"His Data of Ethics won't stand examination,"—"Our fellows will lick yours well next time,"—"Picking the grapes and lemons at Tivoli,"—"Poor old Kirby, what an age he is,"—"'Twilight and evening bell, and after that the dark, And may there be no sadness of farewell, when I embark,' that's the way it runs,"—"He cut in his physic year, and is running a paper in Boston,"—"It is up now to thirty-five shillings a ton, and will go higher," etc., etc. The older men, under the more kindly influence, were calm as sophomores. Amidst the whirlpool of words, they clung to two sheet-anchors,—O'Connell in politics, and St. Alphonsus in theology.
At last, the conversation simmered down into an academic debate, whether the centripetal system, which concentrates all Irish students in Maynooth, or the centrifugal, which sends them scampering over the Continent to the ancient universities, was the better. This was a calm, judicious tournament, except now and again, when I had to touch the gong, and say:—
"Gentlemen, only three at a time, if you please."
It was a curious thing to notice that those who had studied in Maynooth were very much in favor of a Continental education; and those who had been in foreign universities were rather inclined to give the verdict for Maynooth.
"You see," said one, "it is an education in itself to go abroad. It means expansion, and expansion is education. Then you have the immense advantage of being able to learn and master the foreign languages and literature, and nowadays a man that can't speak French at least is a very helpless creature."
"You take it for granted," replied another, "that residence abroad insures a knowledge of French. I spent six years in the seminary at N——, and except cela va sans dire, tant pis, and a few other colloquialisms, which you will find on the last page of an English dictionary, I might as well have been in Timbuctoo."
"Well," said my curate,—and though he is not very popular, somehow or other his words appear to carry great weight,—"I must confess that the regret of my life is that I had not an opportunity of studying in Rome, just as the hope of my life is that I shall see Rome before I die. I consider that the greatest Irish college in the world, in numbers and in the influence that arises from intellectual superiority, should be somewhere within the shadows of the Seven Hills."
"Why not transfer the Dunboyne, with all its endowments and emoluments, to Rome?" asked a young, eager fellow, who says he can read the Office, going ten miles an hour on the bicycle.
"'T wouldn't ever do," said a Roman student; "you must be brought up in Rome to understand its spirit. Transplanted shoots never thrive there."
"Psha!" said an old Maynooth man, who had been listening impatiently to these suggestions; "we forgot more theology in Maynooth than you ever learned."
"I don't want to disparage your knowledge of theology, Father," said my curate, sweetly, "but you know there are other elements in priestly education besides the mere propositions, and the solvuntur objecta of theology. And it is in Rome these subtle and almost intangible accomplishments are acquired."
Now, this was getting a little warm; so I winked at a young fellow down along the table, and he took the hint promptly, and cried out: "Look here, Father Dan, this is tiresome. Tell us how you managed the Irish Brigade in France in the fifties. Weren't they going to throw Marseilles into the sea?"
"Now, now," said I, "that won't do. I'm not going to be trotting out that old chestnut at every dinner party. Let us have a song!"
And we had, and a good many of them,—dear, old Irish melodies that would melt an icicle and put blood into a marble statue. No nonsense at my table, I assure you. No operatic rubbish, but genuine Irish music, with the right lilt and the right sentiment. I did let a young fellow once sing, "I Dreamt that I Dwelt in Marble Halls"; but I told him never to repeat it. But it was worth while going miles to hear my curate singing, in his own fine voice, that superb ballad of that true and gentle patriot, Thomas Davis, "The Mess-tent is Full, and the Glasses are Set."
Dear me! what a mercurial race we are; and how the mercury runs up and down in the barometer of our human hearts! I could see the young priests' faces whitening at the words:
"God prosper old Ireland! You'd think them afraid,
So pale grew the chiefs of the Irish Brigade!"
and softening out in lines of tenderness when the end came:
"For, on far foreign fields, from Dunkirk to Belgrade,
Lie the soldiers and chiefs of the Irish Brigade."
Then we had "The West's Awake," and "Dear Land," and then we all arose and sang together, "God bless the Pope, the great, the good." I was going to say "sang in unison," but I am afraid I should be trespassing on the sacred precincts of truth; yet if that grand old man in Rome, that electric spark in the vase of alabaster, sitting in that lonely chamber, behind the long, empty, gas-lit state apartments, could hear those voices there above the western seas, he would surely realize more keenly what he understands already, that he can always call upon his Irish reserves to ring, as with a fence of steel, the chair and the prerogatives of Peter.
Then came the "Good nights." I pulled aside an old friend, a great theologian, who has all kinds of musty, dusty, leather-bound, water-stained volumes on his shelves.
"Did you ever hear," I whispered, "of a mysterious thing, called the Kampaner Thal?"
"Never," he said, emphatically.
"You couldn't conjecture what it is?"
"No," he said, with deliberation; "but I can aver it is neither Greek, Latin, nor Irish."
"Would you mind looking up your cyclopædias," I pleaded, "and letting me know immediately that you find it?"
"Of course," he replied. Then, jerking his thumb over his shoulder: "I suppose it is this chap?"
"It is," I said. "He reads a good deal—"
"Look here, Father Dan, I don't know what we're coming to. Did you ever see such a sight as that table to-night?"
"Never," I replied, resignedly.
"Would any one believe, when we came on the mission, that we'd live to see such things? Why, these fellows talk up to us as if we were their equals. Don't you remember when a curate daren't open his mouth at table?"
"Of course," I replied, demurely.
"And it is only now I am beginning to discover the vagaries of this chap of mine. Do you know what he wants? A shrine, if you please,—some kind of picture, with candles lighting before it all day. 'Can't you say your Rosary,' I said, 'like your betters?' No, he should have the shrine. And now he wants to force on Benediction every Sunday,—not every first Sunday of the month, but every Sunday, if you please. And he has a big red lamp, burning in what he calls his oratory. You can see it miles away. I say to the boys, 'Don't be afraid to put to sea at night now, boys. Begor, ye 've got a lighthouse at last.' Well, good by! What's this thing you want?"
And he jotted down the name, I presume phonetically, in his note-book. Now, mind, that man has not had a scandal in his parish for fourteen years; and he is up to his neck in securities for half the farmers of the district.
All this time, shrinking into an obscure corner of the hall, was my Curé d'Ars, as I call him. He now came forward to say good night, his thin face wreathed in smiles, and his two hands stretched out in thankfulness.
"Good night, Father Dan, and a thousand thanks. I never spent a pleasanter evening. What fine young fellows! So clever, so jolly, and so edifying! Won't it be a satisfaction for us when we are going to leave behind us such splendid safeguards of the faith?"
His curate was waiting respectfully. He now got the little man into his great-coat, and buttoned it from collar to boot, the latter murmuring his thanks all the time:—
"Dear me! dear me! what a trouble I am! Many thanks! Many thanks! There, now I am all right!"
Then his muffler was wrapped carefully around his neck by this big grenadier, and his gloves were drawn over his hands.
"Dear me! dear me! how good! how kind! I'm a regular mummy! a real Egyptian mummy, Father Dan! Good night! good night! Dear me, what a pleasant gathering!"
And the stalwart curate lifted him on his car, as if he were an infant.
A few days later we had a long chat over many things, I and my curate.
When he was going he said:—
"That was a real jolly evening, Father Dan! I never enjoyed anything so much!"
"Yes," I said, "and you had a splendid audience for that noble song!"
"Yes, indeed; they were very kind."
"Oh, I don't mean in foro interno," I said, "but in foro externo. There was a good crowd outside the window!"
"My God!" he cried, quite shocked. "What a scandal!"
"Not a bit of it," I said; "you've gone up a hundred per cent in the estimation of the villagers. There was a real fight for the window-sill. But your friend, Jem Deady, captured it."
He looked dreadfully annoyed.
"Jem says that he kept awake all night trying to remember the notes; and if you'd give him the words of the song and whistle it—"
"What!" said Father Letheby, like a pistol-shot.
"And if you'd give him two or three audiences—I suppose he means rehearsals on the piano—he is quite sure—"
Dear me! how some people despise popularity!
CHAPTER XVIII
THE KAMPANER THAL
Events are thickening around me these winter days; and much oftener than in past years am I compelled to lay aside my pet authors, when my lamp is lighted, and my fire is sparkling merrily, whilst the earth is waking up from its winter's sleep, and stretching out its hands in the feeble lengthening of the evenings towards the approaching spring. This evening I had an unexpected visitor,—no less a person than Reginald Ormsby, the betrothed of Bittra. He came in modestly and apologetically, with all that gentlemanly deference that is so characteristic of the British officer. He made a nice little speech, explaining his reasons for visiting me so late, and mildly deprecating the anger of such a potentate as the parish priest of Kilronan. I had pulled the bell in the mean time, and Hannah had brought in the "materials"; and in reply to his pretty eloquence, I merely pushed the decanter towards him, and said:—
"Go ahead!"
He filled his wine-glass with a firm hand, until the blessed liquor made an arc of a circle on the summit; then tilted it over into the tumbler, without spilling a drop, then filled the tumbler to the top with hot water, and I said in my own mind, "He'll do."
"Of course," I said, after this little ceremony had been proceeded with, "you smoke?"
"I shouldn't venture to think of smoking in your pretty parlor, sir," said he. "You know cigar smoke hangs around the curtains for days, and—"
"Never mind the curtains," I replied. "I don't keep Havanas here, though I suppose we must soon, as that appears to be a constituent in the new education to which we old fossils are being subjected. But if you have a cigar-case about you, light up, like a good fellow. You have to say something of importance, I think, and they say a cigar promotes easy and consecutive thought."
"Very many thanks, sir," he said. "Then, with your permission, I will."
He smoked quietly for a few seconds, and it was a good cigar, I can tell you. The fragrance filled the whole house. Then I broke the ice:—
"Now, my curate has had several conferences with you about religion, and he told me he was going to try the Kampaner Thal."
"Oh, yes! so he did, indeed. He has been very kind."
I should say here that my theological friend and neighbor had written me: "I have hunted up all my cyclopædias, and can find no trace whatever of that thing about which you were inquiring. From the word Kampaner, I suspect it has something to do with bells. Perhaps your curate wants a chime for your cathedral at Kilronan. When you get them, select C sharp, or B flat, and put it around his neck, that we may know where to find him. Yours truly—"
"Now," I said to Mr. Ormsby, "I do not know whether that Kampaner Thal is bird, beast, fish, or insect; whether it is a powerful drug or a new system of hypnotism."
"Oh, 't is none of these dreadful things," he said, laughing; "'t is only a little book. Here it is! I always carry it about with me. It is really very beautiful."
I handled the little duodecimo with suspicion; then gave it back.
"It has done you a lot of good, I suppose?" I said, I am afraid, with a certain amount of contempt.
"I can't say it has," he replied sadly; then lapsed into moody reflection.
Now, gloom is the one thing I cannot tolerate; so to rouse him from his reverie, and possibly from a slight, venial prompting of curiosity, I asked him to read some passages for me.
"My old sight cannot bear much of a strain," I said, "and the print is mighty small. Now, like a good fellow, pick out some good things, and read them slowly, for perhaps I may require to punctuate them."
So he read in a calm even monotone, without inflection, but with many pauses, whilst I watched every syllable and measured it.
"I have a strong objection to a voyage pittoresque through the planets; we bear in our own breasts a heaven full of constellations. There is in our hearts an inward, spiritual world, that breaks like a sun upon the clouds of the outward world. I mean that inward universe of goodness, beauty, and truth,—three worlds that are neither part, nor shoot, nor copy of the outward. We are less astonished at the incomprehensible existence of these transcendental heavens because they are always there, and we foolishly imagine that we create, when we merely perceive them. After what model, with what plastic power, and from what, could we create these same spiritual worlds? The atheist should ask himself how he received the giant idea of God, that he has neither opposed nor embodied. An idea that has not grown up by comparing different degrees of greatness, as it is the opposite of every measure and degree. In fact, the atheist speaks as others of prototype and original."
"Stop there," I cried; "why that is the ontological argument of St. Anselm, adopted afterwards by a soldier philosopher like yourself, called Descartes. There's nothing new under the sun. It is wonderful how modern artists can refurbish our old Masters and make wonderful pictures from them!"
"Quite so," he replied, "in lieu of yourselves. There, now, I am always too precipitate; pardon me, sir, if I am too bold; but you Catholics have a wonderful talent for burying your treasures in napkins. Have you any treatise on the immortality of the soul in English, and in such a style as this?"
"I am afraid," I replied, as I looked askance at the volume, "that just now I cannot mention one. But go on, if it does not tire you. Time is the cheapest thing we have in Ireland."
He continued:—
"'The inward world, that is indeed more splendid and admirable than the outward, needs another heaven than the one above us, and a higher world than that the sun warms; therefore, we say justly, not a second earth, or globe, but a second world beyond this universe.'
"Gione interrupted me: 'And every virtuous and wise man is a proof of another world.'
"'And,' continued Nadine quickly, 'every one who undeservedly suffers.'
"'Yes,' I answered; 'that is what draws our thread of life through a long eternity. The threefold echo of virtue, truth, and beauty, created by the music of the spheres, calls us from this hollow earth to the neighborhood of the music. Why and wherefore were these desires given us? Merely that, like a swallowed diamond, they should slowly cut through our earthly covering. Wherefore were we placed upon this ball of earth, creatures with light wings, if instead of soaring with our wings of ether, we are to fall back into the earth-clods of our birth?... Is an angel to be imprisoned in the body to be its dumb servant, its stove-warmer and butler, its cuisinier and porter at the door of the stomach? Shall the ethereal flame merely serve to fill the circular stove with life's warmth, obediently burn and warm, then become cold and extinguished?'"
"Very good, indeed," I interrupted. "He knows how to put things in a virile way.'
"'The discrepancy between our wishes and our relations, between the soul and the earth, remains a riddle if we continue; and if we cease to live, a blasphemy. Strangers, born upon mountains, we consume in lowly places, with unhealthy heimweh (home-sickness). We belong to higher regions, and an eternal longing grows in our hearts at music, which is the Kuhreigen of our native Alps....'
"'From hence what follows?' asked the chaplain (a Kantian).
"'Not that we are unhappy, but that we are immortal; and this world within us demands and manifests a second without us.... I cannot tell how painful, how monstrous and horrible the thought of an annihilating death, of an eternal grave, now appeared to me. Men often bear their errors, as their truths, about in words, and not in feeling; but let the believer in annihilation place before him, instead of a life of sixty years, one of sixty minutes; then let him look on the face of a beloved being, or upon a noble or wise man, as upon an aimless hour-long appearance; as a thin shadow that melts into light and leaves no trace; can he bear the thought? No! the supposition of imperishableness is always with him; else there would hang always before his soul, as before Mahomet's in the fairest sky, a dark cloud; and, as Cain upon the earth, an eternal fear would pursue him. Yes, if all the woods upon this earth were groves of pleasure; if all the valleys were Kampaner valleys; if all the islands were blessed, and all the fields Elysian; if all eyes were cheerful and all the hearts joyful,—yes, then—no! even then, had God, through this very blessedness, made to our spirits the promise, the oath of eternal duration! But, now, O God! when so many houses are houses of mourning, so many fields battlefields, so many cheeks pale, when we pass before so many eyes red with weeping or closed in death: Oh! can the grave, that haven of salvation, be the last swallowing, unyielding whirlpool? No, the trampled worm dares raise itself towards its Creator, and say, "Thou durst not create me only to suffer!"'"
I was listening with closed eyes to the reading, the quiet rhythm of the sentences, and the calm, deep music of his voice, sounding ineffably soothing, when a quaver, then a break in his voice, just as he repeated the last words, made me look toward him. The calm, strong man was weeping silently; and just then he broke into a paroxysm of sobs that shook his strong frame as by a palsy. Dear Lord! what hidden grief there is in the world! Who would ever dream that the calm exterior of this reasoning, cultivated atheist concealed such hidden fires? It was no time to talk; I let the poor fellow alone. After a few moments he dried his eyes, and said:—
"I am quite ashamed of this snivelling, Father. I shouldn't have attempted to read this. It always upsets me."
"Never mind, my poor boy," I said. "It is good for men sometimes to weep." I thought in my own mind, My little child will be in safe hands.
"Now, put it aside," I said gently, "and let us talk."
"One sentence more, Father, just to get over this weakness."
"'Ah, Carlson (Carlson stands for myself), upon what a beautiful world do you throw your immeasurable gravestone, that no time can lift. Your difficulties, which are founded on the necessary uncertainties of men, if solved, would only have the effect to destroy our faith; which is the solution of a thousand other difficulties; without which our existence is without aim, our pains without solution, and the Godlike Trinity within our breasts three avenging angels. From the formless earthworm up to the beaming human countenance; from the chaos of the first day up to the present age of the world; from the first faint motion of the heart to its full, bold throbbing in the breast of manhood, the invisible hand of God leads, protects, and nourishes the inward being; the nursling of the outward educates and polishes and makes it beautiful—and wherefore? That when it stands as a demigod in the midst of the ruins of the temple of the body, the blow of death may prostrate it forever, that nothing shall remain from the corpse-veiled, the mourning and mantled immeasurable universe, but the eternally sowing, never harvesting, solitary spirit of the world! One eternity looking despairingly at the other; and in the whole spiritual universe no end, no aim! And all these contradictions and riddles, whereby not merely the harmony, but the very strings of creation are tangled, must we take, merely on account of the difficulties, that, indeed, our annihilation cannot solve? Beloved Carlson! into this harmony of the spheres, that is not over, but ever around us, will you bring your shrieking discord? See how gently and touchingly the day departs, and how holily the night comes! Oh, can you not believe that even thus our spirits shall arise from the dust, as you once saw the full moon arise over the crater of Vesuvius?'
"Gione took his hand and said:—
"'Amongst us all, will you alone be tormented with this despairing faith?'
"Two hot drops fell from his blinded eyes; he looked at the mountains, and said:—
"'I can bear no annihilation but my own. My heart is of your opinion; my head will slowly follow.'"
"And that, sir," said Ormsby, closing the book and putting it into his side pocket, "is just where I am. My heart is with you; if only my head would follow. Put Bittra for Gione, and you will understand my emotion."
"Even that won't do," I said; "the head might follow, and you might be as far from us as ever."
"I don't understand," he said in a bewildered way. "Surely all that's wanting now is a conviction of the truth of your teaching?"
"There's your grave mistake," I replied; "conviction is not faith. There are thousands of your countrymen filled with conviction of the truths of Catholicity; but they are as far outside the Church as a Confucian or a Buddhist. Faith is not a matter to be acquired by reading or knowledge. It is a gift, like the natural talent of a great painter or musician—a sixth sense, and the pure gratuity of the All-Wise and the All-Good."
This appeared to him to be a revelation which he could not comprehend; it seemed to be such an inevitable logical sequence—conviction and profession.
"I am attracted by everything," he said, "in your Church. The whole thing appears to be such a well-connected scheme, so unlike the religion in which I was born and educated, where you had to be forever searching after a missing link. And then your Church seems to be founded on love—love of a supernal kind, of course, and almost unintelligible; but it is the golden chain in the string of pearls. You will have noticed how rapidly sometimes the mind makes comparisons. Well, often, at our station over there, I have thought, as I searched the sea, that we Protestants look at God through the large end of a telescope and throw Him afar off, and make Him very small and insignificant; whilst you look at Him through the narrower end, and magnify Him and bring Him near. Our God—that is, the God in whom I was taught to believe—is the God of Sinai, and our Christ is the historic Christ; but that won't do for a humanity that is ever querulous for God, and you have found the secret."
I was quite astonished at the solemn, thoughtful manner in which this young fellow spoke, and his words were so full of feeling and self-sympathy for his great privation. He was silent for a long time, smoking freely, whilst I was pondering many things, mostly in humility for our slow appreciation of the great gift of divine faith. At last, he said:—
"I do not quite follow you, sir, in your remark about a sixth sense; for this is not a question of sense, but of the soul."
We were now getting into deep water, and when an old gentleman hasn't opened a book of philosophy for nearly thirty years, he may be well excused for a certain timidity in approaching these deep questions. But, "keep to the metaphorical" has always been a great rule of mine, which never failed me.
"Let me explain," I said. "Have you ever been to an ophthalmic hospital or a blind asylum?"
"Yes," he replied, "principally abroad."
"Well," I continued, "you might have noticed various forms of the dread disease of blindness. Some are cases of cataract; in some the entire ball is removed; some have partial sight behind the ugly film. But the most pathetic case to my mind is that of the young boy or girl who comes toward you, looking steadily at you with large, luminous eyes, the iris perfectly clear, the pupil normally distended, and even the white of the eye tinged with that delicate blue that denotes perfect health in the organ; but in one moment the truth flashes upon you—that poor patient is stone-blind. Now, where's the disease?"
"The optic nerve is destroyed," he answered promptly.
"Precisely. And now, if you were to pour in through the dark canal of the pupil the strongest sunlight, or even the flash of your electric searchlight, would it make any difference, do you think?"
"None," he said, "so far as sight was concerned; but it might possibly paralyze the brain."
"Precisely. And if you, my dear young friend, were pouring, till the crack of doom, every kind of human light—philosophical, dogmatic, controversial—upon the retina of the soul without the optic nerve of faith, you will be blind, and go blind to your grave."
Somehow this appeared to be a relief, though it looked like discouragement.
"It is something to know," he said, "that the fault is not altogether my own. But," after a pause, "this demands a miracle."
"Quite so. A pure light from God. And that is the reason that my excellent curate is storming the citadels of heaven for you by that terrible artillery—the prayers of little children. And if you want to capture this grace of God by one tremendous coup, search out the most stricken and afflicted of my flock (Bittra has a pretty good catalogue of them), and get him or her to pray for you, and very soon the sense of faith will awaken within you, and you will wonder that you were ever blind."
"Ten thousand thanks," he said, rising; "I had no anticipations of so pleasant and instructive an evening."
"You were told to expect to meet a funny old fellow," I said, "with as many quips, and cranks, and jests, as old Jack Falstaff?"
"Well," he said, pulling his mustache nervously, "I should not like to put it so brusquely."
"Of course not. But there lies a big mistake, my dear boy. Democritus was as much a philosopher as Heraclitus, and he lived fifty years longer. There is a good deal of philosophy behind a laugh, and we put our gargoyles on the outside of our churches."
"Indeed, I must say, from a long experience," he replied, "and a grateful experience, that your men are the most cheerful class I have met,—if I except our own sailors,—although the comparison sounds grotesque. And," he said hesitatingly, "that just reminds me; if I may take the freedom of showing my gratitude in a small way, permit me to say to you as pastor, what I have already hinted to himself, that your most excellent curate will involve himself in a great deal of trouble and possible expense if he perseveres in that matter of the fishing-boat. Indeed, I have been working the matter for him, because his heart is set on it; but I have misgivings. I'm not sure that I am quite right in mentioning the matter to you, sir; but I am really anxious, and I speak from long experience."
He lighted another cigar at the door, and I returned to think somewhat anxiously whether I had done credit to Catholic philosophy. But my thoughts would revert to these last words of Ormsby's. What if Father Letheby should get into a bad mess, and everything so promising? How little these young men reflect what a trouble they are to their old pastors!
CHAPTER XIX
LITERARY ATTEMPTS
I broke Captain Ormsby's advice to Father Letheby as gently as I could; and I flatter myself I have the talent of putting things in as roundabout a way as any professional diplomat. He took it badly. He is clearly overworking himself, for he now becomes irritable on the slightest provocation.
"Blocked everywhere!" he said, walking up and down his little room. "Father Dan, you are right; and I am a fool. There is no use attempting to do any good in Ireland."
Now, this was not exactly the conclusion I wanted him to come to; but we have a national failing of generalizing from rather minute particulars.
"I'm not so sure of that," I said. "I think you have a fair share of work to do here, and that you have done it and are doing it remarkably well."
Absurd! There was not half enough to do to satisfy his Napoleonic ambition. Nothing but the Vicariate of the whole of the Dark Continent for this young man.
"Look here, Father Dan. My parochial work is over every day at four o'clock; and you have taught me to finish the Office, even by anticipation, before dinner. Now, what on earth is a young fellow to do between four o'clock of a winter's evening and ten o'clock, when he retires? Once in a month I dine at Campion's; but the rest of the time, except when I run up to you—"
"And you don't come half enough, you, sir," I said. "I never saw anything like the—pride of young fellows nowadays."
"That's all right, Father Dan," he replied, somewhat more calmly; "but even with all your kindness, what in the world am I to do with my leisure time?"
"Read, and read, and read," I said. "Have you not the whole ocean of human knowledge to dip into?"
"Ah! cui bono?" he replied.
"Cui bono? from you! I never thought I'd hear that fatal word again. Cui bono? from you! Cui bono? from you!"
I was never so startled in my life. It was a dread revelation of dissatisfaction and ennui, that might lead no one knew whither.
"Cui bono?" I said. "Is there any pleasure on this earth comparable to the pleasure of acquiring knowledge? Is there any satisfaction equal to the continuous pursuit of ideas—always coming up to them, and passing them in the insatiable thirst and pursuit? Now, I see clearly that my tastes are not your tastes, and I was wrong in forcing the studies of the classics upon you. But take up philosophy, arrange a horarium for the evenings—so much time for reading, so much for thinking, so much for writing—"
"Ah! there you've struck it," he broke in. "If I could only write, I should always have an incentive, and a strong incentive for reading and studying what I read."
"And why don't you write?" I repeated. "Paper is cheap; pens and ink don't cost much—"
"Write for what, and for whom?" he cried.
"Write for the magazines," I said. "Write brisk, crisp, lively articles for our reviews and periodicals; get paid for them; and then the ineffable pleasure of seeing your own work in print!"
"And what if they were rejected contumeliously?"
"Impossible," I replied; "there is room and to spare for good writers. Why, we are always crying out about the barrenness of our literature!"
He had gone over to a portfolio, and had taken out a few rolls of manuscript, to each of which a letter was tagged. He handed them to me without a word. It needed only a glance to see that if the editors had used up all the polite words of the language, nevertheless, "Rejected!" was written in capital letters on every page. I knew well what it meant to a proud, sensitive spirit; and although it was only the usual probation for literary novices, it might have a different effect from successful training in the case of a thoughtful if irritable mind. I pretended to read carefully the two essays, the three short stories, and the half-dozen poems that had come back to the author's hands without proofs, whilst I was rapidly turning over in my mind what I should say or do; for the recollection of my own experience at his age led me to believe that this was a critical moment for him. Happy the stupid souls that can gaze, without the constant fretting of thought, into the fire for hours together! Happy we, who, going down the decline of life, have the brake put on by a merciful Providence, and the wheels move slowly, and day blends with night, and night dawns to day, almost imperceptibly! But thrice unhappy they in whose souls the mills of thought whirl round and round without ceasing the wheelstones that grind together, if the grist is not between! How often to dreaming poet and idealist has the eternal fretting of the wheels become intolerable, and then—
"I shouldn't mind," he interjected on my reverie, "but these papers issue such lamentable stuff! Such vapid essays, such aimless stories, such bread-and-butter school-girl poetry,—'sing' and 'spring,' 'bird' and 'heard,'—not an elevating idea or thought through the whole thing from beginning to end; and then look at these: 'We consider your story too long;' 'We regret that the style of your article is unsuited to our pages;' 'We see some promise in your poem, but it is not quite up to the level of our requirements;' 'Try blank verse.... We shall be glad to hear from you again.' Did you ever hear such mockery, and these very men printing such intolerable rubbish!"
Of course, he never thought of the poor editor, leaning over his chair in a brown study, biting the pen-handle, and wondering how he can please "A Constant Subscriber," who objects to the rather light nature of the articles he is now giving to the public; or, "Sacerdos," who does not like poetry; or, "Senex," who asks sarcastically: Is he putting himself in rivalry with the "Edinburgh" or "Quarterly," or who the mischief cares one brass pin about "Aristotle's Constitution of Athens;" and wouldn't he give them something light and agreeable to help to digest their dinners? Oh no! he only thought then and there that there should be an auto da fe,—a summary crematory process of all the editors under the sun.
"Look here, young man," said I, at last, "there is only one thing for you to do. You must write a book."
"Look here, Father Dan," said he, "I'm not in much humor for joking. Any priest that would attempt to write a book nowadays should have the spirit of the martyrs, who stepped onto the sands in the Coliseum and saw the brutal Romans in the auditorium and wild beasts in the cages beneath!"
"Well, my dear boy," I replied, "you will write the book; but for goodness' sake write it in your present humor, before the fires die down."
He laughed.
"Write a book? What in the world should I write about? The world is deluged and drowned by books. And if I wrote it, who could or would publish it? Imagine me hawking around a wretched manuscript from publisher to publisher, until it was tattered, yellow, and undecipherable. Why, the big London fellows accept only ten MSS. out of five hundred on the average, and you know I cannot publish at my own risk."
"Who the mischief spoke about publishing?" I replied, trying to keep up the flame; "I only asked you to write. Write, write, write, and leave the publishing to God."
"And what am I to write about? Every subject under the sun is threshed out and threadbare, from the origin of ideas down to the microbe of typhoid fever. Not at all; the world is grown too wise for books; we must devise something else."
"It is not many days ago," I replied, "since I heard you lament the awful and culpable defects in our popular Catholic literature. Hadn't you to fall back upon that barbarous book to enlighten Ormsby on the existence of his immortal soul?"
"Barbarous? I wish to heaven that I could write anything half as good. But, as you see, there are whole fields of literature yet untrodden by us, but where heretics and others are reaping rich harvests. Yet, who would dare make the attempt? Don't you know that the ablest professors in your own time in Maynooth never ventured into print? They dreaded the chance shots from behind the hedge from the barrels of those masked banditti, called 'critics.'"
"Dear me, how you do run on! One would think you had the MS. cut and dry in your pocket, you talk so glibly about publishers and critics. Can't you write the book first and then take circumstances as they occur?"
"Well, go on, suggest a subject, sir."
"Now, this is rather sudden, young man. Give me one day, and I'll give you a list of subjects that would bewilder you! Only promise me you'll take one up."
"All right!" said he; "I promise. Hallo! where are you taking those papers?"
"I'm taking them home for the present. They are confiscated to the Crown."
He looked at them wistfully, as if they were going to the holocaust, as we might imagine the great mother of the Maccabees watched half with pain, half with pride, wholly with resignation, her sons mount the funeral pyre.
"It broke in my fingers and revealed the little dreams and ambitions of nearly forty years ago."
"Never fear," I replied, "they won't go up the chimney. At least, I'll answer for the prose. I'm not so sure about the poetry. Now, good day! I'll keep you to your promise."
And I did, but with what cost to myself. I had to search in the cemeteries of the past for the skeletons of designs, once gladly adopted, then as gladly laid to rest. At last, I found, hidden away amongst episcopal documents, dispensations, etc., a yellow, frayed paper, tied up in string that once was red, but now was white and fragile. It broke in my fingers and revealed the little dreams and ambitions of nearly forty years ago. Need I say they never ripened, or came within even measurable distance of perfection. They were three large quarto sheets, and they were darkened thus:—
A. M. D. G.
Subjects for Articles and Papers to be written, wholly or partially, during the Coming Years.
I. Mental Philosophy.
I. The Influence of Plato on the Early Christian Church.
II. The Influence of Aristotle on the Mediæval Church.
III. The Neo-Platonists.
IV. The Argument in St. Augustine on the Immortality of the Soul. (Is it Tenable?)
V. The Atomic Theory of Democritus, and the Modern Discoveries in Astronomy.
VI. The Influence of the Inductive Philosophy on Modern Disbelief.
VII. Was Spinoza an Atheist?
VIII. Is Descartes the Father of Modern Rationalism?
IX. St. Anselm's Proof of the Existence of God.
X. The Cosmological Argument of St. John Damascene.
XI. The Argument from Intuition.
XII. Aspects of Modern Pantheism.
XIII. Christian Idealism.
XIV. Malebranche and Fénelon.
XV. Boëthius.
XVI. Catholic Philosophers of the Nineteenth Century.
XVII. The Connection between Soul and Body (Tertullian).
XVIII. The Chaldæan Doctrine of the Soul (εσσαμενοσ πυριρυρ).
XIX. The Idea of Personality.
XX. The Identification of Life and Motion.
XXI. Maine de Biran.
XXII. The Popularization of Catholic Philosophy.
II. Ecclesiastical History.
I. The Alexandrian School.
II. The Writings of Clement.
III. Origen, and his Works.
IV. Ephrem the Syrian, and his Works.
V. The Apologists.
VI. The Three Cappadocians.
VII. Julian and his Contemporaries.
VIII. The Council of Nicæa.
IX. St. Augustine and the Donatists.
X. The Saints of the Catacombs.
XI. The Discipline of the Secret.
XII. The Libyan and Nitrean Anchorites
XIII. The Stylites.
XIV. Communion in the Early Church.
XV. Mediævalism.
XVI. The Case of Honorius.
XVII. Hildebrand.
XVIII. Alexander VI. and Savonarola.
XIX. Origin and Spread of Monasticism.
XX. The Influence of the Irish Monks on the Continent of Europe.
XXI. Schools of Philosophy.
XXII. Port-Royal, Pascal, Nicole, Arnauld.
XXIII. The Rise and Progress of Jansenism.
XXIV. Gallicanism and National Churches.
Rather a large order, I thought, as I looked with pitying eyes on the far vision of a curly-headed young priest of forty years ago, and thought of the day-dreams of youth; and what a very slender precipitate of work fell from the vast effervescence of the idealism of inexperience. There remained another page of projected inspiration on the scope and meaning of Holy Scripture; but this I put aside. I found my knowledge, little as it was, was derived from such obsolete and antique commentators as á Lapide, Maldonatus, Estius, and the Triplex; and I was ashamed to produce such fossilized literature to the advanced thinkers of the present day. I did not like to face this ordeal:—
"Then you haven't heard of the new schools of interpretation? You know that the great thinkers of Germany, Bahrdt, and Semler, and Eichhorn, have upset all our preconceived ideas about the Bible. The Wolfian ideas have been expanded and developed; and advanced Catholic apologists have set themselves to the task of reconciling our ancient traditions with the discoveries of modern science. The tremendous advances made by philological scientists and experts during these last years—"
I don't say, indeed, that my curate would indulge in this affectation, for he is rather disposed to take the old, unlearned modes of saving souls and going with them to Heaven, than the new, brilliant mimetism of a world that knows not God. But still I know he would think it waste of time to pursue such studies, until the modern Luciferi tell us exactly what they have placed beyond the borderland of conjecture, and into the certain and unshaken fields of mathematical demonstration. So I left my Scriptural syllabus at home.
He looked slightly appalled at the large schedule of science I showed him. I reassured him by telling him I insisted positively on his taking only one subject in each department.
"The grand mistake," I declared, "made by us, Catholics, is in taking too wide, too bird's-eye a view of human history and philosophy, instead of mapping them into sections, as the astronomical photographers are mapping the skies from the Papal Observatory in Rome to the Lick Observatory in California. What we want most is sectional treatises on single subjects. Now, what you are to give us is not a vast diorama from Thales to Rosmini, and from the persecutions of Julian to the Kulturkampf of Bismarck, but a neat etching of some particular persons and events, and a clear photograph of some practical point of Catholic philosophy. If you throw in a few side-lights from the errors of non-Catholic thinkers, so much the better. Now, look it over carefully; as the strolling player declares—'You pays your money, and you takes your choice.'"
He thought that question of inductive philosophy very nice. He had read something about it in Macaulay. He liked that Platonic question very much. It bordered upon poetry and mysticism Then St. Augustine! That would be charming. He had always such a love for St. Augustine! But Fénelon? The "dove of Cambrai" versus the "eagle of Meaux!" What a delightful idea! No good housekeeper, at a cheap sale, was ever so puzzled. Finally, we decided that, in philosophy, he was to take up the question of "Modern Aspects of Pantheism;" and in Ecclesiastical History he selected "The Cappadocians."
"But what about books?" he asked in dismay. "I haven't a single book on these blessed subjects."
"Buy them," I said. "Every good workman buys his tools and materials."
"I have a strong suspicion, Father Dan," he said, "that this is all a practical joke. Why, that means a whole library. And if I had money, which I have not, I do not know the name of a single blessed Catholic author on these subjects."
"Why, my dear fellow, there are hundreds. Let me see! On the Fathers, Basil and the two Gregories. Let me see! Haven't you—my memory is failing—haven't you Cardinal Newman's essays on these Fathers?"
"Well? You don't want me to give a verbatim version of Cardinal Newman, surely, do you?"
"Let me see! Why, we have hundreds of English Catholic writers on these subjects. What in the world is becoming of my memory? Why, we have whole libraries in the English language on these subjects! Isn't there Alzog and—and—Darras?—"
"I have Darras," he cried triumphantly.
"Well, look it up, and see all you can get about St. Basil."
"But their writings! Wouldn't it be nice to give Greek extracts from their sermons and homilies?"
"'T would indeed. Well, I'll look up all the old catalogues I have kept, and let you know about books of reference. Meanwhile, commence somewhere by way of preface. Now, what are you going to do about that fishing-boat? Ormsby says it is certainly a troublesome and may be a perilous enterprise!"
"It's gone too far now to draw back," said Father Letheby. "The Board has yielded at last, thanks to Ormsby himself."
"They'll advance all the money?"
"No; two thirds; four hundred pounds."
"That's very kind of them; and no interest, no security. I did not think Boards could be so generous."
"No, indeed. They have full security to be paid back, principal and five per cent interest, in less than five years."
"By Jove! You are a clever fellow. And where have you got all this Midas wealth?"
He asked me to be good enough to move with him to the window. True enough, even under the cold light, the broad sea stretched sparkling before us, with all its magic and glamour, but unruffled and unploughed by even one Nautilus-sail of busy man.
"There," he cried, "there lie the gold mines of Ireland, unworked and neglected. In these depths is wealth enough to make Kilronan a busy emporium of merchandise for half the world!"
"I see. And the other two hundred? Where do they come from?"
"Subscribed by twenty merchants, who have taken shares in the boat."
"And you never asked your old pastor to invest in this patriotic bank. Shame! Shame! And I wanted a little return as well as the rest of the world."
He laughed.
"The mackerel fishery alone," he continued, in a calculating way, "is worth a hundred pounds each for each boat in the Manx and French fishing-fleets that anchor off our shores every year, and take our wealth back to their thriving villages. I calculate another cool hundred on cod, haak, etc. I think we shall pay back the Board's loan in three years, besides paying handsome dividends to our shareholders. The boat is in the hands of a Belfast firm. She will be ready by the first of May. On that day she will be christened the 'Star of the Sea,' and will make her first run to the fishing-fleet."
"And what about the shirt-factory?"
"That's all right, too," he said, though his face grew a little clouded. "I shall have twenty sewing-machines in full swing by the middle of April. The manager was here and dined with me last Thursday; he's a fine fellow. He assures me that, after the initial expenses are over, the girls can earn from eight to ten shillings a week easily."
"By Jove! That's good. That will be a great help to the poor people."
"Yes; he sends the shirts here, ready and cut for sewing, by the new system of scientific shirt-making. Then all they have to do is to tack them together with the machines."
"God bless you!" I said fervently. "You're a wonderful fellow."
I was sorry that I gave him Ormsby's message of warning.
CHAPTER XX
MADONNA MIA
The winter had nearly rolled by, and the sky was opening out its eyelids wider and wider, and letting in light to man and all his wondrous train of servitors. It was a cold, steely light indeed, particularly on those March evenings; and the sunsetting was a dreary, lonesome thing, as the copper-colored rays rested on hamlet or mountain, or tinged the cold face of the sea. But it was light, and light is something man craves for, be it never so pale. Will not one of heaven's delights be to see the "inaccessible light" in which God—our God—is shrouded, and to behold one another's faces in the light that streams from the Lamb? And so, very tempting as my fire is—and I am as much a fire-worshipper as an Irish Druid or a Peruvian Inca—I always like to go out as the days are lengthening and the sun is stretching out his compasses to measure in wider arcs the sky.
This evening, too, I had a little business with Father Letheby. As I entered his parlor, I carried a tiny slip of printed paper in my hand.
"You'd hardly guess what it is?" I said, holding it from the light.
"A check for a hundred pounds, or my removal!" he exclaimed.
"Neither. Read it!"
I am quite sure it was infinitely more gratifying than the check, to say nothing of the removal; and I am quite sure the kindly editor, who had sent me that proof of Father Letheby's first poem, would have been amply repaid for his charity if he had seen the shades and flushes of delight and half-alarm that swept like clouds across the face of the young priest. And it was not all charity, either. The good editor spoke truly when he declared that the poem was quite original and out of the beaten track, and would probably attract some attention. I think, next to the day of his ordination, this was the supreme day in Father Letheby's life hitherto.
"It was very kind," he said, "very kind indeed. And how am I to thank you, Father Dan?"
"By keeping steadily at the work I pointed out for you," I replied. "Now, let me see what you have done."
"Do you mean about the books?" he asked.
"Yes," I said determinedly, "and about the horarium I marked out and arranged for you. Have you conscientiously studied during the two hours each evening, and written from 11 a.m. to noon every day, as I appointed?"
"To be candid," he said at once, "I have not. First came the lack of books. Except Butler's 'Lives of the Saints,' I cannot come across a single indication of what Basil and the Gregories did or wrote; and my edition of Butler is expurgated of all the valuable literary notes which, I understand, were in the first editions. Then the moment I take the pen into my hand, in comes Mrs. Luby to know wouldn't I write to the colonel of the Connaught Rangers to get her little boy discharged and sent home. He enlisted in a fit of drink. Then comes Mrs. Moriarty with the modest request to write to the pastor of Santa Barbara about her little girl who emigrated to America sixteen years ago. Then comes—"
"Never mind," I said, "I have been there. But I won't accept these excuses at all. You must work, whether you like or no. Now, I am going to take away all excuses. I have been searching a lot of old catalogues, and I have discovered that these are the books for you. On the subject of 'Modern Pantheism' we will get:—
"(1) Lewes' 'History of Philosophy,' 4 vols.
"(2) Brucker's 'Historia Critica Philosophiæ,' 6 vols.
"(3) Tenneman's 'History of Philosophy' (Cousin).
"(4) Émile Saisset's 'Modern Pantheism,' 2 vols.
"(5) 'History of Pantheism' (Plumtre).
"(6) 'An Essay on Pantheism,' by J. Hunt, D.D.
"(7) 'Spinoza,' by Principal Caird, LL. D.
"(8) 'Spinoza,' by D. J. Martineau.
"(9) 'Spinoza, his Ethics and Correspondence,' by R. Willis, M.D.
"(10) 'Spinoza,' by Nourrisson.
"Now, on the subject of Ecclesiastical History we will get, read, and consult:—
"(1) 'Historia Literaria Ecclesiæ,' by Cave.
"(2) Farrar's 'Lives of the Fathers,' 2 vols.
"(3) Cave's 'Lives of the Fathers,' 3 vols.
"(4) 'Lives of the Fathers,' by the S. P. C. K.
"(5) The Bishop of Lincoln (Kaye) on 'The Fathers and Early Councils.'
"(6) 'Lives of the Fathers,' by the author of 'A Dominican Artist,' 3 vols.
"(7) Neander's 'Church History,' 8 vols.
"(8) Neale's 'Oriental Church.'"
Here Father Letheby stopped me, as he broke from a suppressed chuckle into uncontrollable laughter.
"Why, Father Dan, what in the world are you reading? Don't you know that you are calling out a list of the most rampant heretics and disbelievers, every one of whom is probably on the Index? Is it possible that you cannot discover any English Catholic authorities on these subjects?"
"I have not seen them," I said mournfully. "And do you mean to say that all these Protestants, and many of them, you say, infidels, have not been interested in these subjects?"
"Well, I presume they would not have gone to the vast trouble of accumulating material, and writing ponderous volumes otherwise."
"And what are we doing? And if ever these grave subjects become of importance or interest to our youth, say in the higher systems of education, what books can we put into their hands?"
We were both in a brown study. These things make men thoughtful. At last Father Letheby said:—
"How do they manage in the German and French universities, I wonder?"
"Depend upon it," I replied, "there is no lack of Catholic authors on every subject there. And I'm told the Italian priests take an extraordinary interest in these higher studies. And in France every French priest thinks he is bound to write at least one book."
"I never understood the importance of this matter till I met Ormsby," said Father Letheby. "He opened my eyes. By the way, Father Dan, I must congratulate you on the impression you have made there. Some things you said have made a vivid impression on him. He keeps on saying: 'A sixth sense! A sixth sense. Perhaps he is right, after all.' And that dependence on the prayers of little children and the afflicted touched him deeply. Do you know, I think he'll come 'round."
"God grant it," I said, rising. "But I suppose this little project of ours is knocked on the head."
"You mean the books?"
"Yes."
"I fear so. The fact is, Father Dan, I find I have no time. Between my two hours with the choir on Tuesdays and Fridays, the Saturday and Sunday evenings in the church, the occasional evening out, and my correspondence, I don't know where to get time to fit in everything. And now that you have been so good as to secure the sympathy of the editor of the——for me, I think I may do something for him at intervals."
"I have regretted a few things during my life, young man," I said; "but I never regretted anything so much as to have sent on that poem of yours instead of sending it up the chimney."
"My dear Father Dan," said he, "what are you saying? Don't you know that the Pope himself writes poetry, and writes it well?"
"May God forgive him!" I said fervently. Then I got sorry, as this was not reverent, and a bright thought struck me.
"What kind of poetry does His Holiness write?"
"Why, the most beautiful Latin elegiacs and hexameters."
"I thought so," I said triumphantly. "I knew that the Holy Father would write nothing but in the style of the divine Mantuan. If you do anything that way, my boy, I'll forgive you. Keep to your classics, keep to your classics, and you're all right."
It was delightful to find us, the last remnant of the great generation of the classical priests of Ireland, backed up by the first authority in the world.
It was twilight when I left, and I made my usual detour around our hamlet. Outside the village and just beyond the school-house, in a little cottage whose diamond windows are almost hidden under green creepers, lived Alice Moylan, the head monitress in our little school. I rather liked Alice, for when she was a little child of seven years, she gave me an idea of something for which I had been long seeking. It was a few years back, when I had not laid up my pen finally, but still retained the belief, with a certain author, that "there is no greater mental excitement, and scarcely a sweeter one, than when a young man strides up and down his room, and boldly resolves to take a quire of writing paper and turn it into a manuscript." And in these latter days of life I still sought for a vision of our Lady, which I could keep before my imagination when writing certain things in her honor. Now (perhaps I have already said it), I had a peculiar devotion to the Child-Virgin of the Temple and of the House of Nazareth, where in the noontide the Archangel entered and spoke his solemn words. And I never said the Magnificat but on my knees and with a full heart, as I thought on the Child-Prophetess of Hebron and the wondering aged saints. But I sought her face everywhere in vain—in pictures, in the faces of my little children; but not one came up to my ideal of what the little maiden of the Temple and Nazareth was like. At last, one day, little Alice came, and in her sweet oval face, and calm, entreating eyes and raven hair, subdued beneath such a dainty frilled headdress, I saw our Blessed Lady and wondered and was glad. And in those days of her simple childhood, before the awful dawn of self-consciousness, I used dream and dream, and put into form my dreams; and the face that haunted all my sacred and poetic conceptions of our dear Queen was the face of little Alice. But the child grew, and waxed in strength, but waned in beauty,—at least the beauty I regarded when the white soul looked out of the beautiful childish face. But Alice grew to be the village beauty, and she knew it. Every one told her of it; but her chief admirer was the little milliner, who lived down near the post-office, and whose simple life was a mixture of very plain, prosaic poverty, and very high and lofty romance. From this Miss Levis, who was a confirmed novel-reader, Alice learned that "she had the face and form of an angel"; that "her eyes had a velvety softness that drew you like an enchanted lake"; that these same eyes were "starry in their lustrous beauty"; that she had "the complexion of a creole, or rather the healthy pallor of the high-born aristocracy of England"; that "her figure was willowy and swayed like a reed in the wind"; and all the other curious jargon of the novelette—the deadly enemy of simplicity and innocence. Then Alice grew proud and vain, and her vanity culminated on the night of our concert in November, when she drew up for the first time her luxuriant black hair and tied it in a knot and bound it in a fillet, which was said to be the mode à la Grecque. But she was a very pure, innocent girl withal, and exceedingly clever in her work at school.
I had missed her recently, but had been occupied with other thoughts until the time came for the quarterly salaries of the teachers; and I noticed in the returns from the principal teacher that Alice had been absent the greater part of the time. This evening, after leaving Father Letheby, I determined to call, unprepared to witness the little tragedy that was before me—one of those little side-scenes in the great drama of existence, which God turns suddenly to the front lest we should ever mistake the fact that our little world is a stage, and that we have all the denizens of the veiled eternities for our audience. Mrs. Moylan was one of those beautiful Irish mothers, who, having passed through the stress and storm of life, was moving calmly into the great sea of Death and Eternity. She had one of those Irish faces that were so typical of our race some years ago, and the intense resignation and patience of which rivalled the sweet innocence of our little Irish children for the admiration of such a keen and sympathetic observer as Dr. Newman. There were a few wrinkles in the pallid cheeks, and one or two lines across the white forehead, crowned with the clean white cap which our Irish mothers wear. She looked, I thought, a little reproachfully at me as I entered, but only welcomed me with that courteous reverence which makes us priests so often humbled and ashamed. After a few words I inquired for Alice.
"My poor child hasn't been well, your reverence. We were jealous that you never asked for her."
I protested my utter ignorance of her illness, and inquired what was the ailment.
"You can see yourself, your reverence," the poor mother said, silently wiping away a tear. "But," she whispered, "don't pretend to see anything. She feels it very much."
I passed into the little chamber and was making my apologies to the poor child, when, in spite of her mother's warning, I started back, shocked and horror-stricken.
"Good God," I could not help crying out, "what has happened to you, my poor child?"
She smiled faintly, and then a tear rolled down the leprous cheek. Ay! indeed! my poor little Madonna, my little child, whose beauty was such a dream of Paradise, was changed. The large, lustrous eyes were untouched; but the fair cheek was one hideous, leprous sore. The black, glossy hair was now a few dirty wisps. The child, whose face and figure every one turned around to look at a second time, was now a revolting mummy, seamed and scarred by some terrible disease. I had presence of mind enough to take up the thin, white hand; she picked the coverlet and said nothing. Her heart was too full of her misery to utter a word. I could only say:—
"My poor child! my poor child!"
I turned to the mother.
"This is too dreadful! What has happened?"
"Dreadful enough, your reverence," she cried; "but welcome be the will of God!"
"But what has happened?" I cried.
Then I thought it would be a relief to the poor child's feelings to tell me her own sad tale, so I said:—
"Never mind! Alice will tell me all herself. Now, my child, tell me all."
She did, with all the humility and such gentle submission to God's decree that I wept freely. It would appear that on the afternoon of that November concert, Alice, like so many other girls, was very much engrossed in her preparations for the evening. She had studied the "Young Lady's Journal" and several other works of interest and usefulness, and all day long was highly excited over her appearance. Once, when she was particularly engaged at the looking-glass, she heard some one fumbling at the half-door, as if anxious to come into the kitchen. Angry at being disturbed, she burst from her room, and saw in the framework of the door an awful sight. It was a poor woman, whose face was completely eaten away by a dread disease called nasal polypus. The nose was completely gone and the upper lip. The eyes stared out as if from a death's-head. The poor creature begged for alms; but Alice, flushed at the thought of her own beauty, and in a rage from being called away from her glass, clapped her hands and shouted:—
"Well, you are a beauty."
"Not so handsome as you, alanna," said the afflicted one. "There was wance when, perhaps, I was. But your time may come. Mockin' is catchin'. Mockin' is catchin'."
And with these words the woman strode away.
"I could not get the thought of my sin out of my head all that day," continued Alice; "her face was always coming before me, until at last I gave up looking at the glass. But when the night came and we were all in the concert-room, my vanity came back again, for I heard people whisper as I was passing, and my foolish head was turned. Then, when it was all over, and the girls broke into groups, and the people were all around, I tried to attract more attention. And I had been reading of a trick in the novels for making one's self more interesting by standing on tiptoe and opening the eyes widely; and, God help me! I was practising this foolishness, thinking that some of the young men were admiring me for it, when suddenly Father Letheby saw me, and he gave me a look that struck me like a flash of lightning. I felt dazed and blinded, and asked one of the girls to take me from the room and lead me home. But all that night I never slept, the woman's face and the awful look that Father Letheby gave me were staring at me out of the curtains and out of the dark, until late in the morning I fell into a sleep, only to dream the same dreadful things."
Here the poor girl broke down and sobbed in an agony of remorse.
"Well, then, Father, I got up sick and sorrowful, and before my breakfast I went over there to the Blessed Virgin's altar and said a Rosary, and begged and prayed her not to punish me for what I had done. Sure, I said, 't was only a girl's foolishness and I was young; and I promised then and there to give up novel-reading and to be good, and to let my hair fall down, and to drop all my foolish notions; but 't was no use. I saw something in the face of the Blessed Virgin that frightened me, and I knew I was in for something. I didn't think my punishment would be so dreadful."
Here the poor child sobbed again, and picked the coverlet mournfully as she tried to choke down her emotion. I looked over at that statue of the Blessed Virgin and shook my head reproachfully.
"Oh! Father, why does God punish us so terribly for such small sins?" the poor girl went on. "And what must purgatory be, and what must hell be when He punishes us so dreadfully here! I thought 't was all over and my fear was vanishing, when one Sunday morning, dressing for Mass, I noticed a tiny pimple here on my cheek. It wasn't as big as the head of a pin; but it gave me great trouble. Not that I suspected anything; but when our poor heads are turned with vanity, you don't know, Father, what a worry these little blemishes are. I just touched it with my finger and it bled. That night 't was an angry spot. I used everything I could think of—lard, and butter, and ointment. No use. Every day it grew and grew and grew into an ugly sore. Then I wrote, as Miss Levis advised me, to a London doctor, recommended in the journals; he sent me a prescription—"
"For nothing?" I interjected.
"No, indeed, Father. Before I was done with him it cost me a pound. But I applied his cosmetics and became daily worse. Then my mother spoke of making rounds. But I wouldn't leave her. I went to the school every day, but I saw the girls watching me. I heard them whisper to each other, and sometimes I caught their words. They weren't kind. Then I stopped away. One day, while I was sitting at the door knitting, suddenly the sun was darkened, and there was the dreadful face of that woman over me.
"'I'm asking charity for God's sake,' she said.
"I got up humbly and gave her bread and twopence. She looked at me keenly and said: 'God save you, alanna, and purtect you from misfortune. Sure, 't was only a hasty word you said. God save you and purtect you, alanna!'
"Then the frightful anger of God coming down upon me suddenly flashed upon me, and I flung aside my knitting and rushed into this room, and cried and screamed, and bit the counterpane until I tore it in threads, and shrieked:—
"'Don't! don't, O Lord; Oh, don't! don't!'
"And then I turned to the Blessed Virgin and said the little prayer 'Remember' that you taught us, Father; 'Remember;' and then I said:—
"'You won't let Him, Mother! you won't let Him! Didn't you say you wouldn't let Him?'
"But the face stared down at me pitilessly, pitilessly. There was no hope."
The poor child stopped again, and to relieve her from the pain of memory I said:—
"But wasn't the doctor called in all this time? The doctor is very clever, you know."
"Oh, he was, Father! And he was very kind. But he was very angry; and I think, Father, he cursed when I told him about these London cosmetics. And one day he asked mother a lot of queer questions about father and grandfather; and then he said something about 'strumous' and 'hereditary;' and he has done me no good."
"Did Father Letheby call?" I asked.
"Oh, dear, yes, that was my only consolation. He calls twice a week, sometimes three times; and he brought Miss Campion, and she comes every day and reads for hours with me; and look at those violets and lilies of the valley—'t was she brought them; and sometimes a strange gentleman comes with her, and he sits down and talks and puts queer questions to me—all about God, and what I do be doing, and what I do be thinking. But since Father Letheby told me that there is something behind it all that I don't understand, and that some day I will understand it, and see it is all God's love and not His anger, I am quite resigned, Father, and I do be saying all day: 'Thy Will be done! Thy Will be done.' But I break down when I think of all I've gone through."
"Let me see," I said, as a light began to dawn upon me; "you are now perfectly resigned, my poor child, are you not?"
"Oh! yes, Father; and really happy. Only for mother, who frets about me so much, I wouldn't care to be well again. Sure, as Father Letheby says, I don't know but that something dreadful was in store for me; and that God, in His mercy, has just saved me."
"Quite right! quite right! my child. And tell me now,—this strange gentleman,—has he ever asked you to pray for him?"
"He did, Father. And I didn't like it at first; but Father Letheby said I should. And I have been saying a Rosary for him every day since. And the last day he was here he asked me: 'Now, Alice, tell me the plain truth. Are you glad this has happened you?' I hesitated for a moment, then I looked at the Wounds of our Lord, and I said firmly: 'I am.' And he said: 'Do you believe God will give you back your beauty, and make it a hundred times greater in heaven for all you have suffered here?' And I said confidently: 'I do.' 'Alice, my child, will you pray and pray strongly for me?' I said: 'I will, sir.' And he went away looking happy. But, you know, Father, these are my good times, when I feel resigned and think God is using me for His own wise purposes; welcome be His Holy Will! But I am sometimes bad, and I get unhappy and miserable, and I ask myself: 'Why did God do it? Why did God do it?' And once I said to our Blessed Lady, when she looked so cold and stern,—I said—"
"What did you say, dear?"
"I said: 'If Daddy Dan was here, he wouldn't let you do it.'"
And the poor child smiled at her own childishness and simplicity.
"But that's not all, Father. I have told no one but mother and you; but I'm all one running sore down to my feet, and the doctor said something about an operation the other day. Sure, you won't allow that, Daddy Dan, will you?"
She was rolling one of the buttons in my sleeve round and round in her thin fingers, and looking wistfully at me.
"No, my child, no operation! You have gone through too much for that. But now cheer up, Alice, it will all come right. Some of these days you will see how our dear Lord and His Holy Mother love you. Why, don't you know, you little goose, that these are signs of your predestination? Don't you remember all that you have learned about the saints, and how they prayed to be afflicted?"
"And don't you remember all about those holy women that were marked with the wounds of our Divine Lord?"
"I do, Daddy Dan."
"Very well! Now you're one of them. The Lord has made you His own. Now, good by. I'll come to see you every day in future. But pray! pray! pray! won't you?"
"I will, Daddy Dan! Will you come to-morrow?"
This was all very well; but I was as cross as a bear with a sore head, notwithstanding.
"Wisha, then, Mrs. Moylan," I said, as I was leaving the house, "aren't you the mighty proud woman entirely, never to call in your parish priest, nor send him word about your poor child! What are we coming to, I wonder, when poor people are getting so much above themselves?"
"Well, then, I didn't like to be troubling your reverence. And sure, I thought you knew all about it, and that Father Letheby told you."
"He didn't, then. You and he have kept it a great secret,—a great secret entirely. Never mind. But tell me, is the poor child really resigned?"
"Well, indeed she is, your reverence, excep' now and then, when the whole thing comes back to her. In fact, she's less trouble than when she was well. Then nothing could please her. She was always grumblin' about her clothes, an' her food; and she was short and peevish. Now she is pleased with everythin'. 'T is 'whatever you like, mother;' or ''t is too good for me, mother;' or 'thank you kindly, mother,' until sometimes I do be wishing that she had some of the old sperrit, and take me short in her answers. But, sure, 't is all God's Blessed and Holy Will. Glory be to His Holy Name!"
I went back through the village again and called upon Father Letheby. He was just sitting down to dinner.
"I don't want to take away your appetite," I said, refusing the chair which he proffered; "but I am for the first time genuinely angry with you. I suppose you had your reasons for it; but you ought to know that a parish priest has, by every law, natural and canonical, the right to know about his sick or distressed poor people, and that a curate has no right to be keeping these things a secret from him. Reticence and secretiveness are excellent things in their way; but this too may be overdone. I have just been down to Mrs. Moylan's to learn for the first time that her child has been sick for nearly two months. You knew it and you never told me. Now, I'll insist for the future that a sick-call book shall be kept in the sacristy, and that the name of every patient, in the parish shall be entered there. Good evening."
He flushed up, but said nothing.
I passed the chapel door and went in straight up to the altar of the Blessed Virgin.
"Now," I said, "you've carried this entirely too far. Is this the return I've got for all I've done for you for the past fifty years? Think of all the Rosaries I said for you, all the Masses I offered for you, all the May devotions I established for you, all the Brown Scapulars I gave for you—all—all—and this is your return; and she your own child, that I thought was so like you. 'Pon my word, I think I'll blow out that lamp and never light it again."
The mild, brown eyes looked down on me calmly, and then that queer thing called Conscience, that jumps up like a jack-in-the-box when you least expect it, started at me and began:—
"What folly is this, Father Dan? Do you think you know more than God and His Blessed Mother? Do you? Your head is so turned with heathen vanity that you think you ought to get the reins of the universe into your hands. Here's your classics, and your Spinoza, and your Cappadocians, and your book-writing, and all your castles in the air, and your little children lying on their sick-beds and you knowing nothing about it. Look sharp, old man, your time is at hand, and think what the Judge may do with you when His hand presses so tightly on His little children."
I sat down to my dinner, but couldn't touch a bit. It was a nice little dinner, too,—a little roast chicken and a scrap of bacon and some nice floury potatoes. No use. The thought of that child would come before me, and her piteous cry: "Oh, don't, dear Lord, don't!" and, "Sure you won't let Him, Mother; you said you wouldn't;" and with a great big lump in my throat I pushed aside the plate and went over to the darkening window.
After a time Hannah came in, looked at the dishes, and looked at me.
"Was there anything wrong with the chicken?" she said, thinking I was reflecting on her cookery.
"No, Hannah, 't was all right; but I'm not in a humor for eating."
She was surprised. So was I. It was the first time for many years that I bolted. Thank God, a good appetite and His Divine Grace have never deserted me.
"I'm thinkin' you're in for somethin'," she said. "And no wondher! I niver knew a man to timpt Providence like you. Will you have the hot wather, as you ate nothin'?"
"Don't mind, Hannah. I'll have a cup of tea by and by."
I sat down to the fire, looking into all its glowing crevices and crannies, thinking, thinking of many things. By and by, in came Father Letheby. He was subdued and deferential, but evidently very much hurt at my unaccustomed rudeness. He stood with his back to the fire, looking down on me, and he said, in his best Sunday accent, smoothed and ironed:—
"I confess, sir, I am still quite at a loss to understand your rather—well—forcible remarks this evening. I can see, certainly, a great deal of reason in your irritation; and I am not at all disposed to contravene the principle that you have an indefeasible right to be acquainted with the sorrows and trials of your parishioners; but pardon me for saying it, I was only carrying out, perhaps too logically, your own reiterated teaching."
"Look here," said I, "have you had your dinner?"
"Yes, sir," said he.
"Well, then, sit down, and have your coffee here. Touch that bell."
He sat down, and somehow this took a lot of the starch out of him.
"You were saying something," said I, "about my teaching. When did I ever teach you to keep the most vital interests of these poor people a secret from me?"
"Well," said he, balancing the sugar in his spoon over the cup, "if there was one lesson more than another that was continually dinned into my ears, it was: 'When a young man comes
into a strange parish, he must be all eyes and ears, but no tongue,' and I think you quoted some grave authorities for that aphorism."
"Was there anything wrong with the chicken?"
"Quite so," I replied. "I think it is a most wholesome advice. For there never yet was a young man that was not disposed to think that he could run a parish better than all the pastors that lived for generations there. But did you understand me to say that we were never to talk over and discuss parochial affairs?"
"Well, I confess," said he, "I did not. But you see, sir, your thoughts were running in quite another channel. You were interested in the classics and in literary matters."
"My conscience, my dear boy, has already made me aware of that, and in somewhat more forcible and less polite language than you have used. Now, I admit that I have been a surly old curmudgeon this afternoon, and I am sorry for it; but hereafter, don't leave me in the dark any longer about my parishioners. It seems to me that, if we dropped our occasional uncharitableness about each other and our more occasional criticisms on our superiors, and addressed ourselves to the work God gives us to do in that limited circle He has drawn about us, it would be all the better."
"Well, sir, I quite agree with you. But I must say that for the few months I have been here, I do not remember to have heard much uncharitableness about our brethren from you."
There now! How can you be angry with a fellow like that? The black cloud turned softly into gray, and the gray turned slowly round, and showed only the silver lining.
CHAPTER XXI
THE FACTORY
Notwithstanding my gloomy forebodings, I find that Father Letheby has eagerly grasped the idea of writing on the historical and philosophical subjects I had suggested. Where he got books of reference I know not, nor can I conjecture; but he has a silent way of accomplishing things that would seem to a slow-moving mind like my own little short of a miracle. When, therefore, one fine day in early April I strolled in to see him (for that little tiff about the sick child has only cemented our friendship), I gasped to see a huge pile of quarto manuscript paper in a fair way to be soon well blackened, and by the side of his writing-table several heavy, leather-lined folios, which a certain visitor described as "just the kind of book you would take with you for a stroll by the seashore, or your annual holiday at Lisdoonvarna."
"Hallo!" I cried; "so you're at it. I thought you had given it up."
"I'm in for it," he replied modestly, "for good or ill. You see, I recognized some truth in what you said, and I determined to do a little to take away our reproach."
"I must say you are a singularly acute and deep thinker to recognize my far-seeing, almost Promethean wisdom; but to tell you the truth, I haven't the faintest idea of what I said to you, except to recommend you to do something for the spread of Catholic literature."
"Never mind, Father Dan," he replied, "the seed is sown; the die is cast. I intend to scribble away now and to submit my manuscript to the editor of some ecclesiastical journal. If he accepts it, well and good; if he doesn't, no harm done. By the way, you must help me, by looking over this translation of the funeral oration of St. Gregory Nazianzen on St. Basil. I depend on your knowledge of Greek a great deal more than on these garbled versions of Scotch or Oxford translators."
Isn't that a nice young man? What could I do but go over, then and there, that famous panegyric, that has made the author as great as his subject. At the end of his papers on the "Three Cappadocians," Father Letheby intends to give in Greek, with English translation, passages from their sermons and poems. A happy idea!
"Now, so far so good!" said Father Letheby, after this little conference. "The metaphysical subject is more difficult to tackle,—a fellow can be tripped up so easily; but we'll postpone that for the present. Now here are three matters that concern us. I think Ormsby is on the point of coming over. The prayers of the little children and of that poor Dolores, Alice, have nearly pushed open the gates of the Kingdom. At least, they're creaking on their hinges. Secondly, I'm beginning to get afraid of that young girl. Under her awful cross she's developing such sanctity as makes me nervous about guiding her any longer. She is going up the eternal hills, and my spiritual sight cannot follow. Thirdly, we open the shirt-factory on the 20th. I give you timely warning, Father Dan, for you are to be chairman, and your speech is to be the event of the occasion."
"Quite an anti-climax from the eternal hills," I said, noticing his tendency to practical issues rather than to supernatural evolutions; "but now, let us see. Are you sure of Ormsby?"
"Nearly so. I have left him severely alone—told him the matter concerned himself altogether. He has given up reading and argumentation of every kind. He says the Veni Creator every day. But I think, under Heaven, it is the patience and divine serenity of this poor child that affect him most deeply."
"Then he isn't shocked at her appearance?"
"Oh, dear, yes! He cannot bear to look at her. He says it is more like Oriental leprosy than anything he has seen in these countries. But her gentleness and patience and her realization of the unseen startle him—"
"It has startled me more than once," I replied.
"And me. I begin to feel almost nervous about directing so high a soul. I am glad you have noticed it, because you can give me lights."
"H'm. You are becoming sarcastic, young man. But I feel we are treading on holy ground. Let us look to ourselves. How often do you give the child Holy Communion?"
"Every Sunday and holiday."
"Has she asked for more frequent Communion?"
"Yes, indeed; but I hesitated."
"Hesitate no longer. Digitus Dei est hic."
Of course, I had seen all this myself; for in a quiet, unconscious way this poor child had manifested even to my purblind eyes the dealings of God's munificence with her. By degrees all the old vain regrets after her beauty had yielded to perfect resignation; and resignation had grown into peace, and peace had been transformed into rapture.
"I used be thinking, Daddy Dan, a good deal of what you said to me—how these poor bodies of ours were but a little lime, and phosphorus, and water; and that we must all go through the terrible changes of death; and what you told me of that great saint in Spain and the dead queen; but it was only when Father Letheby read to me about our Lord, 'a worm and no man,' 'a leper and accursed by God and afflicted'; 'and one huge sore from the crown of his head to the sole of his feet'—that I began to think He had made me like Himself, welcome be His Will, and Holy be His Name!"
Then I got her a fine big brass Crucifix from the Passionist Fathers at Mount Argus, and left her to her wonder-working and merciful Master. But she has impressed Ormsby profoundly. "The weak things of the world hast Thou chosen to confound the strong." "Thy ways are upon the sea, and Thy pathway on the mighty waters, and Thy footsteps are unknown."
"Well, now," I said to Father Letheby, getting out of my reverie, "to come down from the Holy Mountain, what's this you are saying about the shirt-factory? You don't mean to aver it is a fait-accompli?"
"Certainly," he replied, "everything is arranged; and on the 20th a dozen sewing-machines will be clicking merrily in the old mill."
"You have the lamp of Aladdin," I said admiringly. "Now, who's to be there?"
"All the gentry and the élite of the neighborhood," he said.
"Rather a limited audience for a great occasion," I couldn't help saying.
"No matter," he cried, rising up; "it is a good work, however. But you'll take the chair, Father Dan, won't you?"
"All right," I replied, but with a little misgiving, for no one knows what necromancy this fellow is capable of, and I had already conjured up visions of the Lord Lieutenant and the Dowager This and the Countess That—"but mind you, my speech is to come in at the end; and I promise you they won't have to look long at their watches."
"Very good, sir," he replied, "all is now arranged."
I went down to see my little martyr, for she is pleased to say that I do her good by my visits. There she lay meekly, the big crucifix in her hands, and her lips always moving in silent prayer. The children often come in to see her, she told me, and read by her bedside; for now there is no jealousy, nor triumph, but all have begun to think that there is a saint in the parish. The little milliner used come at the beginning, and bring her little novelettes and journals, and talk about the fashions, which only made the sufferer unhappy. All that is now stopped; and the "Clock of the Passion" and the "Visions of Catherine Emmerich" are now her only reading.
"Mr. Ormsby was here again to-day," she said.
"Indeed. And was he as inquisitive as usual?"
"Nearly," she said, with a smile. "But do you know, Daddy Dan, I think he'll become a Catholic. Isn't it an awful thing not to be a Catholic, Daddy Dan?"
"'Tis, my child. It's worse than being born blind."
"Now, what would I do if I had not our dear Lord"—kissing the crucifix—"and His holy Mother? I'd rather a thousand times be as I am than Queen of England."
"Of course. Who brought these flowers?"
"Miss Campion. She calls them lilies of the valley. Is it a sin to smell them, Daddy Dan?"
"No, child, it is no sin. Nay, 't is a prayer if you glorify God for the wonders He has wrought in these tiny leaves."
"But they'll fade away and die in a day or two, Daddy Dan!"
"So shall all beautiful things, my child, only to be transplanted where there is no rust or fading."
"Thank you, Daddy Dan. That's just what I said to Mr. Ormsby. 'Do you really believe,' he said, 'that it is the love of God that has smitten you?' 'Yes,' I said firmly. 'Do you believe that you are all the dearer to Him for that He has smitten you?' 'Yes,' I said, 'I'm sure of it.' 'And do you believe that God will take you out of the grave and build you up far fairer than you have been?' 'I believe it most certainly,' I replied. 'It's the sublime and the impossible,' he cried. And then he said,—but I shouldn't repeat this, Daddy Dan,—'Mind, little one, if I become a Catholic, it's you have made me one.' But it would be so nice, if only to repay Miss Campion for all her goodness."
Then I began to think of some holy man that said: There should be an invalid and an incurable one in every religious community, if only to bring God nearer to them in His great love.
As I was leaving, Mrs. Moylan pulled me aside.
"Is there any chance at all, your reverence, of her recovery?"
She looked with a mother's wistfulness at me.
"For I do be praying to the Lord morning, noon, and night, that if it be His Blessed and Holy Will, He would take her out of suffering, or restore her to me."
I made no answer.
"You could do it, your reverence, if you liked. Sure, I don't want you to do any harm to yourself, God forbid; but you could cure her and restore her to me, if you plazed."
"I couldn't, Mrs. Moylan," I replied; "and what is more, I wouldn't now take her away from God if I could. I was as bitter as you about it; but now I see that God has His own designs upon your child, and who am I that I should thwart Him?"
"Perhaps your reverence is right," she replied; "but the mother's heart will spake up sometimes whin it ought to be silent."
I passed by my little chapel as I went home, and knelt down for a prayer. I thought the Blessed Virgin looked queer at me, as if to say:—
"Well, are you satisfied now? Who was right—you or my Son?" And I went home very humbled.
The great day at last arrived. And if I was surprised the evening of the concert at the transformation effected in the old mill, I was still more surprised when, entering its precincts on the opening day of the Kilronan Shirt-Factory, I came face to face with quite a distinguished gathering. There were carriages drawn up at the door, the liveried coachmen hardly able to hold the prancing horses' heads; and the owners were in the great room upstairs, chatting in groups or examining the machines, that, clean and bright and polished, only awaited the soft touch of human fingers to work wonders. And there, on the large table filling up the whole centre of the room, was displayed an assortment of linen and flannels cut up into as many sections as you could take out of all the diagrams of Euclid. And there, of course, was the stage, undisturbed since the evening of the concert; and there were the same flowers and palms, and the same little girls dressed in satin, and the same piano, and Miss Campion, only waiting the signal to commence.
I moved up through the long hall, making my bows to right and left. Father Letheby was chatting gayly with some very grand people, and pointing out his little improvements here and there. He was in his best optimistic humor, and was quite at his ease in the groups that surrounded him. It is curious how we differ. I did not feel at all comfortable, for I'd rather be talking over the cross-door to any old woman about her chickens, or settling the price of a bonham, or lecturing about the measles and the croup, than conversing with the grandest people of the land. But every one to his tastes; and sure, I ought to be proud that my good curate—
"I move that the parish priest take the chair."
"I beg to second the proposal," said a dapper young fellow, who looked as if he had stepped out of a bandbox. And before I knew where I was, I was on the stage ensconced in a comfortable chair; and then there was a burst of music around me, which gave me leisure to look about and take stock. It was all very nice. There was a great group of fine ladies in front, and they were all staring at me as if I were a dime-museum prodigy. I was "Gorgonized from head to foot with a stony, British stare"; a cool, unblushing, calculating stare, that made me feel as if I were turning into stone. I did not know what to do. I tried to cross my legs coolly, but the arm-chair was too low, and I fell back in a most undignified manner. Then I placed my hands on my knees, thinking that this was the correct thing; but it struck me immediately that this was the attitude at High Mass, and I gave it up as out of place. Then I assumed an air of frigid composure, and toyed with my watch-chain. But a little girl screwed her eyes into me, and said, evidently, in her mind: "That old gentleman is a fidget." Then I leaned back gracefully, but something whispered: "That's all right at home, Father Dan, but please remember that the convenances of society require a different posture;" and I sat bolt upright in a moment. My eye caught in a blissful moment my new handsome umbrella that lay against my chair. I took it up and leaned with dignity upon it; but that aforesaid little girl looked at me, and looked at her mamma, and said—I know she said in her own mind—"That old gentleman thinks it is going to rain, and he wants to open his umbrella. Mamma, tell him that there is no danger of rain here." I put down my umbrella. Then Miss Campion—God bless her! she always comes to my relief—tore her little fingers along the keys in a grand finale, and then tripped over to her old pastor, and said gayly:—
"Hurrah! Now, Father Dan, for the grand speech. Won't you astonish these heretics?"
I believe I did astonish them. For, after a few preliminaries, I settled down coolly into a quiet, deliberate talk; and I saw by degrees the stony stare melt away into sunny smiles, and the sunny smiles broadened into genteel laughter, and there was great clapping of hands, and suppressed cheers, and altogether I felt that I held them all in the palms of my hands. But that wicked little girl in the front seats held out a long time. She did not know whether to laugh or to cry. She blinked her eyes at me, as if to be sure it was not a spectral vision; then looked dreadfully alarmed; then consulted her mother's face, now wreathed in smiles; and then, when her brother was falling off the seat laughing, and poking her with his stick, she condescended to relax her awful stare, to smile, to look surprised at herself for smiling—at last, to laugh. I knew then I had the victory, and I sang, lo Triumphe! in my own mind.
It is curious and interesting to notice how thoroughly these Protestant folk warm to a priest the moment they discover he is not quite an ogre. All these great people gathered round me; they were so delighted, etc.
"What's your name, my dear?" I said to the wicked little girl.
"By Jove!" I exclaimed, "St. Gregory's mother!"
"Naw," she said, "it's grandmaw's name."
"It's a pretty name all the same," I replied; "may you wear it as long as grandma."
The girls were all sitting at the machines waiting. Down near the end of the hall were two individuals in close conversation. They looked prosaic and dull amid all the excitement. When I got near them I saw the man, who was looking at me steadily, with one eye closed, whilst I was speaking. He was an infidel, a Giaour, an incredulous, questioning, calculating unbeliever in all my rosy forecastings. He was the manager over from Loughboro'. The lady was manageress, and had come over to superintend the initial proceedings at Kilronan. Somehow I didn't like them. They chilled the atmosphere. There was that cool, business-like air about them, that L. S. D. expression that shears off the rays of imagination, and measures and weighs everything by the same low standard. I saw Father Letheby buoyant, enthusiastic, not merely hopeful, but certain of the success of his enterprise. I saw these two business people chatting and consulting together, and I knew by their looks that they were not quite so sanguine. It was "the little rift within the lute."
As I went home, pondering and thinking,—for I didn't wait for the tea and cake that are supposed to be essential to all these gatherings,—I heard the patter of a light foot behind me, and in a minute Bittra was by my side.
"Dear me!" she panted, "you are so young and active, Father Dan, it is hard to keep up with you."
By which kind sarcasm I knew that Bittra had something good to tell me.
"Shall I call you Bittra or Beata?" I replied, looking down at her flushed face.
"Beata! Beata! Beatissima!" she said, in a kind of ecstasy; "it is all right; and God is so good!"
"I always object to the fireworks style of elocution on the part of my curate," I said, "and if you could shed a calm, lambent light on this ecstatic episode, it would suit my slow intellect."
"Slow," she said, stopping,—"do you know, Father Dan, that is, you do know, that you have just made one of the nimblest, wittiest, drollest, most eloquent speeches that ever was made. I heard Mrs. S—— say that she never could have believed—"
"Beata," I interrupted seriously, "my purgatory will be long enough, I believe. Indeed, if I get out in the general exodus on the Day of Judgment I shall consider myself happy. Where's the use in your adding to it, and making an old vain man so much vainer? Tell me about what is nearest to your heart to-day."
Thus soberized, she gave me a fairly consecutive account of what had happened. I say "fairly," because, of course, there were many exclamations, and notes of interrogation, and "asides," which I let pass without comment.
Ormsby had paid the suffering child a visit that morning, and had put his final theses and difficulties before her. Disbeliever in miracles, he was face to face with a miracle. That such an awful affliction as befell Alice should be accepted, not only with resignation, but with joy; that she would consider it a positive misfortune to be restored to her old beauty, and that she was forever thanking God that He had elected her to suffering, was either of two things—insanity or inspiration. And her faith in the supernatural—her intense realization of the existence and the daily, hourly influence of our Lord and His Blessed Mother, and her profound conviction that one day her physical shame and torment would intensify her glory in Heaven—all this struck him as a revelation, before which the antics of spiritualists, and the foreknowledge of Brahmins, and the blank agnosticism of science paled into contemptible insignificance.
Bittra, as usual, had been speaking to Mrs. Moylan in the kitchen. Sitting on the straw chair, she spoke for the hundredth time her words of consolation to the poor mother. The murmur of voices came clear, but indistinct, from the little chamber of the sick girl. Then, after a long conference, Ormsby came out, grave and collected as usual, and Bittra having said good by to the mother, and kissed the leprous face of the sick girl, they both walked on in silence, until they came to the bridge that spanned the fiord near the "great house." Ormsby leaned on the parapet of the bridge looking out over the tumbling waters for a long time. Then, turning, he said:—
"Bittra, I must become a Catholic."
Then Bittra put her hand in his gloved palm, and that was all.
"And was that all?" I exclaimed incredulously.
"That's all," said Bittra, "and wasn't it enough?"
"That's not the way a novelist would wind up such a delightful romance," I said. "There would have been at least twenty or thirty pages of lurid description."
"Ah! but this is not a romance," said Bittra; "this is stern reality."
And she tried ineffectually to frown.
"It only remains now," she continued, "that Rex shall be instructed, and that won't take long; and then received, and make his First Communion, and that won't take long; and then—and then—"
She paused. I was studying attentively a seagull that was poised motionless over the heaving waters.
"Father Dan, you're becoming very unkind."
"Indeed? I was only waiting for the date and circumstances of the 'then.'"
"Well, you see, it can't be May; because the people have a foolish superstition about May; though I should so like to be—to be—married under our Lady's auspices. But the first day in June. Won't that be delightful? And it must be right under the statue of the Sacred Heart; and I shall put there such a mass of roses that day; and we shall both go to Holy Communion, and you'll say the nuptial Mass, Father Dan—"
"I?"
"Yes, of course. Who else, I should like to know?"
"I thought you would be bringing down an Archbishop or even a Cardinal—"
"Now, you're jesting as usual. I'll have no one but you—you—you—to marry me; and perhaps, if I were not asking too much, the choir might sing—"
"Certainly! They must. But I won't promise you that wedding-march by that German fellow—"
"Mendelssohn?"
"Yes. That's his name, I believe. Nor that other march of that other fellow, whom we see on the papers."
"I know. You mean the grand march in 'Lohengrin.' Why, Father Dan, what a musician you are! Who would ever think it?"
"Ah, my dear, I'm not understood at all. But I'll promise you one thing, my little child, such an ovation from the poor of Kilronan as will make the angels cry with envy."
Here Bittra was silent.
"One word more, Father Dan," she said, wiping away a happy tear, "I must be running back. Rex is waiting. But he doesn't speak enthusiastically about this sewing business. You know he has great experience of the world—"
I nodded "Of course."
"And he has seen all kinds of things, and he is awfully shrewd and clever, and he knows people so well, and he understands business matters so thoroughly—"
"Go on," I said, admiringly.
"Well," she continued, with a laugh, "he does not like this affair at all, nor the boat business at all. He's afraid that Father Letheby, for whom he has the greatest admiration, will become embarrassed in money matters, and that there will be trouble—"
"Don't let this imaginary shadow darken your sunshine, Bittra. It will be all right. Trust Father Letheby. He is very far-seeing."
"Well, good-by, Father Dan. Pray for me. And won't you go see our little saint, and tell her? I have no time to-day."
"Good-by, and God bless you!" I said fervently.
It is these white souls that brighten the gray landscapes of life, and make death desirable; for shall we not meet their sisters and compeers in Heaven?
CHAPTER XXII
THE MAY CONFERENCE
My mail is not generally a heavy one, thank God! and when I do see a sheaf of letters on my table, I feel pretty certain that there is something unpleasant amongst them. I make it a rule, therefore, never to read a letter until breakfast is over; for I think we ought take our food, as the Lord intended, with a calm mind. And I am not one of those ascetics whom every mouthful they swallow seems to choke. I take what God sends with a thankful heart, and bless Him for it. And sure it was well I followed this wholesome practice the following morning; for I do not think I ever lost my equanimity so thoroughly as when, on opening a circular, I saw a formal and extended and appalling syllabus of our Conferences for that year. Up to this, our Conferences had been conferences—informal conventions, where we met, talked over our little troubles, discussed a rubrical or theological question in an academic fashion, and listened with patience and edification to some young man, who nervously read for an hour or so some carefully prepared paper on a given subject. Then, if the Master of Conferences wanted to show how well read he was, he put a few questions here and there around the table. But if he was very persistent, and the chase became too hot, it was easy to draw a red herring across the track, the aforesaid red herring generally taking the shape of one of those venerable questions, which, like the trisection of an angle, or the quadrature of a circle, or the secret of perpetual motion, shall never be finally solved. The red herring that did us most service, and was now, after the lapse of forty years' discussion, a battered skeleton, was "whether invincible ignorance on the part of the penitent as to the reservation of a particular sin excused from the reservation, or whether faculties in every case were withdrawn from the confessor." I believe the question has been warmly debated in the schools; but there it remains, suspended, like the Prophet's coffin (I am afraid my metaphors are getting mixed), between heaven and earth.
But altogether these conferences were nice, pleasant occasions for meeting the brethren and exchanging ideas. What was my consternation this morning to read a series of new rules, as dogmatic as an Act of Parliament, which put an end forever to the old order of things, and reduced our delightful meetings to a number of monthly examinations on Rubrics, Sacred Hermeneutics, Theology, and Ecclesiastical History. Our names were all to go into a hat, and the unfortunate prizeman was to be heckled and cross-examined by the chairman for ten minutes, like any ordinary Maynooth student at the Christmas and Easter examinations. Then came the Conference, after three or four poor fellows had been turned inside out. This was a paper to be read for three-quarters of an hour. Then came another cross-examination of that unhappy man; then a series of cross-questions, after we had all gone into the hat again. "And then," I said to myself with chagrin and disgust, "they will gather up all that remains of us from the floor and send us home for decent interment." Here is one little trifle, that would easily fill up a half-year's study in a theological seminary:—
PRO MENSE AUGUSTO.
(Die I^ma Mensis.)
1. Excerpta ex Statutis Dioecesanis et Nationalibus.
2. De Inspiratione Canonicorum Librorum.
3. Tractatus de Contractibus (Crolly).
"Good heavens," I exclaimed, as Father Letheby came in and read down the awful list in the second copy which I handed him, "imagine that! What in the world do bishops think? It is easy for them to be twirling their rings around their little fingers and studying the stones in their mitres. They have nothing else to do, as we all know, except the occasional day's amusement of knocking curates around, as you would pot balls on a billiard-table. But what consideration have they for us, poor hard-working missionary priests? What do they know about our heavy confessionals, our sick-calls, our catechising in the schools, our preparing for our sermons, our correspondence for our people, with Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and Oceanica, our—our—our—look at this! 'Excerpta ex Statutis!' That means reading over every blessed diocesan and national statute, that is, two ponderous volumes. Again, 'De Inspiratione'—the whole question of the Higher Criticism, volume after volume, Bull after Bull, articles in all the magazines, and the whole course of German exegetics. That's not enough! But here, as dessert, after junks of Rubrics, and indigestible slabs of controverted hermeneutics, come the light truffles and pâté de foie gras of Crolly's 'Contracts.' Begor, the next thing will be they'll want us to preach our sermons before them; and then this Master of Conferences,—he's a good fellow and an old classmate of my own; but of course he must exhibit his learning, and bring in all his Christy minstrel conundrums, as if any fool couldn't ask questions that twenty wise men couldn't answer;—and then he'll cock his head, like a duck under a shower, and look out of the window, and leave me stuck dead—"
There was a quiet smile around Father Letheby's mouth during this philippic. Then he said, smoothing out the paper:—
"There is a little clause here at the end, which I think, Father Dan, just affects you."
"Affects me? If there is, it didn't catch my eye. Show it to me."
I took the paper, and there, sure enough, was a little paragraph:—
"6° The privilege, in virtue of which parish priests of a certain standing on the mission are exempted from the obligations of the Conference, will be continued."
I read that over three times to make quite sure of it, my curate looking down smilingly at me.
"If you are not of a certain standing, Father Dan, I'd like to know who is."
"True for you," I replied musingly. "I believe I am called the Patriarch of the Conference."
Visions of an old man, leaning back in his chair, whilst he was proof-protected against theological bullets, swam before me; and I began to feel like a man on a safe eminence, overlooking the battlefield, or a Spanish lady at a bullfight.
"'Pon my word," I said, at length, "I'm beginning to think there is something in it, after all. The Holy Ghost has something to say to our good and holy prelates. There is no doubt there was a great waste of time at these Conferences, and young men got into idle habits and neglected their theology; and, you know, that's a serious matter. In fact, it reaches sometimes to a mortal sin. We must all study now. And you see how practical the bishop is. There's Rubrics. Now, there's no doubt at all that a good many of us don't respect the ceremonies of the Mass. Go to Lisdoonvarna, and every fellow appears to have his own idea of—"
"I read that over three times to make quite sure of it."
"Pardon me, sir," said Father Letheby, "I cannot quite follow you there. I must say I never saw the Rubrics half so well carried out in England as here at home. In fact, this complaint appears to be one of these satires on racial characteristics that are only half true, and take all their force from traditional misrepresentations."
Isn't that fine language? You see, he's taking a leaf or two out of my book.
"Well, but you can't deny that this question of Scriptural exegesis is one of these dominant questions that must arrest the attention of all who are interested in ecclesiastical or hieratical studies," said I, trying to keep pace with him.
"Quite true," he said; "and yet I should like to see these new-fangled theories about Scriptural inspiration, plenary or otherwise, lifted from the shaking quagmires of conjecture onto the solid ground of demonstration."
"You cannot deny whatever," I replied, just before giving in, "that Crolly's 'Contracts' is solid and well-reasoned and coherent argument; and look at its vast importance. It touches every question of social and civil life—"
"It is an excellent heliograph in sunny weather," he said; "but what about a muggy and misty day?"
"Well, God bless the bishop, whatever," I replied, throwing up the sponge; "if we haven't the ablest theologians, the smartest Master of Ceremonies, and the best Orientalists in Ireland, it won't be his fault. Dear me, how far-seeing and practical he is!"
"But about his ring and his mitre, sir?" said my curate. "You were pleased to make some observations a few minutes ago—"
"That'll do now," I replied. "My mare will be ready the morning of the Conference. You'll drive, and we must be in time."
That was a pleasant drive. May in Ireland! What does it mean? It means coming out of a dark tunnel into blinding sunshine; it means casting off the slough of winter, and gliding with crest erect and fresh habiliments under leafy trees and by the borders of shining seas, the crab-apple blossoms, pink and white, scenting the air over your head, and primroses and violets dappling the turf beneath your feet; it means lambs frisking around their tranquil mothers in the meadows, and children returning at evening with hands and pinafores full of the scented cowslip and the voluptuous woodbine; it means the pouring of wine-blood into empty veins, and the awakening of torpid faculties, and the deeper, stronger pulsations of the heart, and the fresh buoyancy of drooping and submerged spirits, and white clouds full of bird-music, as the larks call to their young and shake out the raptures of their full hearts, and the cheery salutations of the ploughmen, as the coulter turns over the rich, brown soil, and the rooks follow each furrow for food.
"A grand day, Mick!"
"Grand, your reverence, glory be to God!"
"Good weather for the spring work."
"Couldn't be better, your reverence."
We're out of hearing in a flash, for the little mare feels the springtime in her veins, and she covers the road at a spanking pace.
"You've thrown off twenty years of age, to-day, Father Dan," said Father Letheby, as he looked admiringly at his old pastor, then turned swiftly to his duty, and shook out the ribbons, and then drew them together firmly, and the little animal knew that a firm hand held her, and there was no fear.
"No wonder, my boy," I cried; "look at that!" And I pointed to the ανηριθμον gamma;ελασμα of old Æschylus; but what was his Ægean or even his Mare Magnum to the free and unfettered Atlantic? Oh! it was grand, grand! What do I care about your Riviera, and your feeble, languid Mediterranean? Give me our lofty cliffs, sun-scorched, storm-beaten, scarred and seamed by a thousand years of gloom and battle; and at their feet, firm-planted, the boundless infinity of the Atlantic!
We were in time, and I was snugly ensconced in my old corner up near the bishop's chair before the priests began to throng in. Now, I'd like to know this. If an old gentleman, not hitherto very remarkable for dandyism, chooses to brush his white, silvered hair over his coat-collar, and has put on a spotless suit of black cloth, and sports his gold chain and seals conspicuously, and wears his spectacles easily, and drops them in a genteel manner on the silk ribbon that is suspended around his neck; and if he is altogether neat and spruce, as becomes an ecclesiastic of some standing in his diocese, is that a reason why he should be stared at, and why men should put their hands in their pockets and whistle, and why rather perky young fellows should cry "Hallo!" and whisper, "Who's the stranger?" And even why the bishop, when he came in, and we all stood up, should smile with a lot of meaning when I kissed his sapphire ring and told him how well he looked?
"And I can reciprocate the compliment, Father Dan," his Lordship said; "I never saw you look better. All these vast changes and improvements that you are making at Kilronan seem to have quite rejuvenated you."
Father Letheby, at the end of the table, looked as demure as a nun.
"I must congratulate your Lordship also," I said, "on these radical changes your Lordship has made in the constitution of our Conference. It is quite clear that your Lordship means to give full scope to the budding talent of the diocese."
A groan of dissent ran round the table.
"I'm afraid you must give up your Greek studies, Father Dan," said the bishop; "you'll have barely time now to master the subject-matter of the Conference."
"That's true, my Lord, indeed," I replied, "it would take twenty hours out of the twenty-four, and seven days out of every week to meet all these demands, at least for a valetudinarian ('Oh! Oh!' from the table). But your Lordship, with your usual consideration, has taken into account the nimble intellects of these clever young men, and exempted the slow-moving, incomprehensive minds of poor old parish priests like myself." ("No! No!! No!!!" from the table.)
"Now, now," said the Master of Conferences, a thin, tall, high cheek-boned, deep-browed, eagle-eyed priest, whom I have already introduced as "a great theologian," "this won't do at all. We're drifting into the old ways again. I mustn't have any desultory conversation, but proceed at once to business. Now, my Lord, would you kindly draw a name?"
"Put in Father Dan! Put in Father Dan!" came from the table.
The bishop smilingly drew up number four; and the chairman called upon Father Michael Delany.
Father Michael squirmed and twisted in his seat. He was a very holy man, but a little peppery.
"Now, Father Michael," said the chairman blandly, "we'll take the Rubrics first. Let me see. Well, what do you do with your hands during the celebration of the Holy Sacrifice?"
"What do I do with my hands?" said Father Michael sullenly.
"Yes; what do you—do—with your hands?"
"That's a queer question," said Father Michael. "I suppose I keep them on me."
"Of course. But I mean what motions—or shall we call them gestures?—do you use?"
"What motions?"
"Yes. Well, I'll put it this way. There's an admirable book by an American priest, Father Wapelhorst, on the Ceremonies. Now, he wisely tells us in the end of the book what things to avoid. Could you tell me what to avoid—what not to do in this matter?"
"Don't you know, Father Michael?" said a sympathetic friend; "go on. Elevans et extendens—"
"Young man," said Father Michael, "thank you for your information, but I can manage my own business. What's this you were saying?" he cried, turning to the Master of Conferences.
"What mistakes might a priest make with his hands during celebration?"
"What mistakes? Well, he might put them in his pocket or behind his back, or—"
"Never mind, never mind. One question more. If you wore a pileolus, zucchetto, you know, at what part of the Mass would you remove it?"
"I wouldn't wear anything of the kind," said Father Michael; "the five vestments are enough for me, without any new-fangled things from Valladolid or Salamanca."
The chairman had graduated at Salamanca.
"My Lord," I interposed charitably, "I don't want to interfere with this interesting examination, but my sense of classical perfection and propriety is offended by this word in the syllabus of to-day's Conference. There is no such word in the Latin language as 'Primigeniis,'—'De Primigeniis textibus Sacræ Scripturæ—'"
"Now, Father Dan, this won't do," shouted the chairman. "I see what you're up to. There must be no interruptions here. Very good, Father Michael, very good indeed! Now, we'll take another. Father Dan, if you interrupt again, I'll put you into the hat. Well, number eighteen! Let me see. Ah, yes. Father Irwin!"
Poor Father Michael looked unhappy and discomfited. It is a funny paradox that that good and holy priest, who, his parishioners declared, "said Mass like an angel," so that not one of his congregation could read a line of their prayer-books, so absorbed were they in watching him, couldn't explain in totidem verbis the Rubrics he was daily and accurately practising.
Which, perhaps, exemplifies a maxim of the Chinese philosopher:—
"One who talks does not know.
One who knows does not talk.
Therefore the sage keeps his mouth shut,
And his sense-gates closed."
Before Father Irwin was questioned, however, there was a delightful interlude.
Some one asked whether it was lawful for any one, not a bishop, to wear a zucchetto during the celebration of Mass. As usual, there was a pleasant diversity of opinion, some contending that the privilege was reserved to the episcopate, inasmuch as the great rubricists only contemplated bishops in laying down the rules for the removal and assumption of the zucchetto; others again maintained that any priest might wear one; and others limited the honor to regulars, who habitually wore the tonsure. The chairman, however, stopped the discussion peremptorily, and again asked (this time a very aged priest) the question he had put to Father Delany. The old man answered promptly:—
"The zucchetto, or pileolus, is removed at the end of the last secret prayer, and resumed after the ablutions."
"Quite right," said the chairman.
"By the way," said the old man, "you pronounce that word pileōlus. The word is pileŏlus."
"The word is pileōlus," said the chairman, whose throne wasn't exactly lined with velvet this day.
"Pardon me. The word is pileŏlus. You find it as such in the scansions of Horace."
"This is your province, Father Dan," said the bishop. "There's no one in the diocese so well qualified to adjudicate here—"
"'Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona
Multi—'
my Lord!" said I. I was drawing the bishop out. "There were ironical cheers at 'Agamemnona.'"
"'Mutato nomine, de te
Fabula narratur,'"
said the bishop, smiling. "Of course, we have many a rich depositary of classical lore here,
"'At suave est ex magno tollere acervo.'"
"My Lord," said I, pointing around the table,
"'Omnes hi metuunt versus, odere poetas,'"—
("Oh! Oh! Oh!" from the Conference.)
"'Nec recito cuiquam nisi amicis, idque coactus
Non ubivis coramve quibuslibet.'"
Here the Master of Conference, seeing that the bishop was getting the worst of it, though his Lordship is a profound scholar, broke in:—
"'Ohe!
Jam satis est! Dum æs exigitur, dum mula ligatut;
Tota abit hora.'"
He looked at me significantly when he said, "dum mula ligatur," but I had the victory, and I didn't mind.
"Now, look here, Father Dan, you're simply intolerable. The Conference can't get along so long as you are here. You are forever intruding your classics when we want theology."
"I call his Lordship and the Conference to witness," I said, "that I did not originate this discussion. In fact, I passed over in charitable silence the chairman's gross mispronunciation of an ordinary classical word, although I suffered the tortures of Nessus by my forbearance—"
"There will be no end to this, my Lord," said the chairman. "That'll do, Father Dan. Now, Father Irwin."
I was silent, but I winked softly at myself.
CHAPTER XXIII
A BATTLE OF GIANTS
"Now, Father Irwin," said the chairman, addressing a smart, keen-looking young priest who sat at the end of the table, "you have just come back to us from Australia; of course, everything is perfect there. What do you think—are the particles in a ciborium, left by inadvertence, outside the corporal during consecration consecrated? Now, just reflect for a moment, for it is an important matter."
"Unquestionably they are," said the young priest confidently.
"They are not," replied the chairman. "The whole consensus of theologians is against you."
"For example?" said Father Irwin coolly.
"Wha-at?" said the chairman, taken quite aback.
"I doubt if all theologians are on your side," said Father Irwin. "Would you be pleased to name a few?"
"Certainly," said the chairman, with a pitying smile at this young man's presumption. "What do you think of Benedict XIV., Suarez, and St. Alphonsus?"
The young man didn't seem to be much crushed under the avalanche.
"They held that there should be reconsecration?"
"Certainly."
"Let me see. Do I understand you aright? The celebrant intends from the beginning to consecrate those particles?"
"Yes."
"The intention perseveres to the moment of consecration?"
"Yes!"
"And, the materia being quite right, he intends to consecrate that objective, that just lies inadvertently outside the corporal?"
"Quite so."
"And you say that Benedict XIV., Suarez, and St. Alphonsus maintain the necessity of reconsecration?"
"Yes."
"Then I pity Benedict XIV., Suarez, and St. Alphonsus."
There was consternation. The bishop looked grave. The old men gaped in surprise and horror. The young men held down their heads and smiled.
"I consider that a highly improper remark, as applied to the very leading lights of theological science," said the chairman, with a frown. And when the chairman frowned it was not pleasant. The bishop's face, too, was growing tight and stern.
"Perhaps I should modify it," said the young priest airily. "Perhaps I should have rather said that modern theologians and right reason are dead against such an opinion."
"Quote one modern theologian that is opposed to the common and universal teaching of theologians on the matter!"
"Well, Ballerini, for example, and the Salmanticenses—"
"Psha! Ballerini. Ballerini is to upset everything, I suppose?"
"Ballerini has the Missal and common sense on his side."
"The Missal?"
"Yes. Read this—or shall I read it?
"'Quidquid horum deficit, scilicet materia debita, forma cum intentione, et ordo sacerdotalis, non conficitur Sacramentum; et his existentibus, quibuscunque aliis deficientibus, veritas adest Sacramenti.'"
"Quite so. The whole point turns on the words cum intentione. The Church forbids, under pain of mortal sin, to consecrate outside the corporal; consequently, the priest cannot be presumed to have the intention of committing a grave just at the moment of consecration; and, therefore, he cannot be supposed to have the intention of consecrating."
"Pardon me, if I say, sir," replied the young priest, "that that is the weakest and most fallacious argument I ever heard advanced. That reasoning supposes the totally inadmissible principle that there never is a valid consecration when, inadvertently, the priest forgets some Rubric that is binding under pain of mortal sin. If, for example, the priest used fermented bread, if the corporal weren't blessed, in which case the chalice and paten would be outside the corporal, as well as the ciborium; if the chalice itself weren't consecrated, there would be no sacrifice and no consecration. Besides, if you once commence interpreting intention in this manner, you should hold that if the ciborium were covered on the corporal, there would be no consecration—"
"That's only a venial sin," said the chairman.
"A priest, when celebrating," said Father Irwin sweetly, "is no more supposed to commit a venial than a mortal sin. Besides—"
"I'm afraid our time is running short," said the bishop; "I'll remember your arguments, which are very ingenious, Father Irwin. But, as the chairman says, the consensus is against you. Now, for the main Conference, de textibus Sacræ Scripturæ."
"Father Duff will read his paper, my Lord, and then we'll discuss it."
"Very good. Now, Father Duff!"
Father Duff was another representation of the new dispensation, with a clear-cut, smooth-shaven face, large blue-black eyes, which, however, were not able to fulfil their duties, for, as he took out a large roll of manuscript from his pocket, he placed a gold-rimmed pince-nez to his eyes, and looking calmly around, he began to read in a slow, rhythmic voice. It was a wonderful voice, too, for its soft, purring, murmurous intonation began to have a curious effect on the brethren. One by one they began to be seized by its hypnotic influence, and to yield to its soft, soporific magic, until, to my horror and disgust, they bowed their heads on their breasts, and calmly slept. Even the Master of Conference, and the bishop himself, gently yielded, after a severe struggle. "I shall have it all to myself," I said, "and if I don't profit much by its historical aspects, I shall at least get a few big rocks of words, unusual or obsolete, to fling at my curate." And so I did. Codex Alexandrinus, and Codex Sinaiticus, and Codex Bezæ, and Codex Vaticanus rang through my bewildered brain. Then I have a vague recollection that he actually laughed at the idea of six literal days of creation, which made an old priest, out of his dreams, turn over to me and whisper: "He's an infidel"; then, again, he ridiculed the idea of the recognized authorship of the Pentateuch; spoke of Chaldean and Babylonian interpolations; knocked on the head the Davidical origin of the Psalms; made the Book of Daniel half-apocryphal; introduced the Book of Job, as a piece of Arabian poetry, like the songs of some man called Hafiz; talked about Johannine Gospels and Pauline Epistles; and, altogether, left us to think that, by something called Ritschlian interpretations, the whole Bible was knocked into a cocked hat. Then he began to build up what he had thrown down; and on he went, in his rhythmical, musical way, when just as he declared that "the basal document on which everything is founded is the ur-evangelium, which is the underlying cryptic element of the Synoptic Gospels,"—just as he reached that point, and was going on about Tatian's "Diatessaron," a deep stertorous sound, like the trumpeting of an elephant, reverberated through the conference room. They all woke up, smiling at me, and as they did not seem inclined to apologize to Father Duff for their misbehavior, I said gravely and most angrily:—
"My Lord, I think the Conference should be a little less unconscious of the grave discourtesy done to one of the most able and erudite papers that I have ever heard here—"
There was a shout of irreverent laughter, in which, I am sorry to say, the bishop joined. At least, I saw his Lordship taking out a silk handkerchief and wiping his eyes.
"I propose now, my Lord, as an amende to the most cultured and distinguished young priest, that that valuable paper be sent, with your Lordship's approbation, to some ecclesiastical journal in Ireland or America. Its appearance in permanent print may give these young men some idea of the contents of the document, the main features of which they have lost by yielding, I think too easily, to the seductions of ill-timed sleep—"
Here there was another yell of laughter, that sounded to my ears ill-placed and discourteous; but the chairman again interposed:—
"Now, Father Duff, if you are not too highly flattered by the encomiums of Father Dan, who was your most attentive and admiring listener, I should like to ask you a few questions on the subject-matter of your paper."
"Surely," I declared, "you are not going to attack such a stronghold? Besides, the time is up."
"There is a full hour yet, Father Dan," said the bishop, consulting his watch; "but you won't mind it, you are able to pass your time so agreeably."
I did not grasp his Lordship's meaning; but I never do try to penetrate into mysteries. What's that the Scripture says? "The searcher after majesty will be overwhelmed with glory."
But the little skirmishes that had taken place before the paper was read were nothing to the artillery-duel that was now in progress.
"With regard to the Septuagint," said the chairman, "I think you made a statement about the history of its compilation that will hardly bear a test. You are aware, of course, that Justin, Martyr and Apologist, declares that he saw, with his own eyes, the cells where the Seventy were interned by order, or at the request, of Ptolemy Philadelphus. How, then, can the letter of Aristeas be regarded as apocryphal?"
"Well, it does not follow that the whole letter is authentic merely because a clause is verified. Secondly, that statement imputed to Justin may be also apocryphal."
"Do you consider the names of the seventy-two elders also unauthentic?"
"Quite so."
"And altogether you would regard the Septuagint as a rather doubtful version of the Ancient Law?"
"I'd only accept it so far as it agrees with the Vulgate and the Codices."
"But you're aware it was in common use amongst cultivated Jews years before the coming of our Lord; in fact, it may be regarded as a providential means of preparing the way of the Lord for the Jews of Greece and Alexandria."
"That proves nothing."
"It proves this. It is well known that the Hebrews were scrupulously exact about every title and letter, and even vowel-point—"
"I beg your pardon, sir; the Hebrews before Christ didn't use vowel-points."
"That's a strong assertion," said the chairman, reddening.
"It is true. I appeal to his Lordship," said Father Duff.
"Well," said the bishop diplomatically, "that appears to be the received opinion; but the whole thing is wrapped up in the mists and the twilight of history."
I thought that admirable.
"To pass away from that subject," said the chairman, now somewhat nervous and alarmed, "I think you made statements, or rather laid down a principle, that Catholics can hardly accept."
Father Duff waited.
"It was to the effect that in studying the history of the Bible, as well as in interpreting its meaning, we must take into account the discoveries and the deductions of modern science."
"Quite so."
"In other words, we are to adopt the conclusions of German rationalistic schools, and set aside completely the supernatural elements in the Bible."
"Pardon me; I hardly think that deduction quite legitimate. There are two schools of thought in the Church on this question: the one maintains with Dr. Kaulen, of Bonn, that the conclusions of modern criticism are so certainly erroneous that young students should not notice them at all. The other holds that we must read our Bibles by the light of modern interpretation. The official Encyclical of the present Pope Leo XIII. ('Providentissimus Deus') should have closed the controversy; but men are tenacious of their opinions, and both schools in Germany utilize the Encyclical for their own ends. Professor Aurelian Schöpfer, of the Brixen, at once published his book ('Bible and Science'), in which he maintained that the teaching of the natural sciences may be used by Catholics not only to confirm Biblical statements, but to interpret them. As I have said, he was opposed by Kaulen, of Bonn. There was a second duel between Schantz of Tübingen, and Scholz of Würzburg. The former insisted that no new principle of Biblical interpretation has been introduced by the Encyclical; the latter that the principle of scientific investigation was recognized, and was to be applied. Now, a Protestant, König of Rostock, was interested in this Catholic controversy, and collected seventy reviews of Schöpfer's work by leading scholars in Germany, Austria, France, Ireland, America; and he found that five sixths endorse the position of the author—"
"You might add, Father Duff," said my curate, who was an interested listener to the whole argument, and who had been hitherto silent, "that these reviewers found fault with Schöpfer for ignoring the consensus patrum, and for decidedly naturalistic tendencies."
The whole Conference woke up at this new interlude. The chairman looked grateful; the bishop leaned forward.
"But the 'Civiltà Cattolica,'" said Father Duff, "which we may regard as official, says, in its review of the same book: 'Biblical history cannot be any longer stated except in agreement with the true and correct teaching of the Bible and the reasonable conclusions of the natural sciences.'"
"Quite so," said Father Letheby, "that applies to the certain discoveries of geology and astronomy. But surely you don't maintain that philology, which only affects us just now, is an exact science."
"Just as exact as the other sciences you have mentioned."
"That is, as exact as a mathematical demonstration?"
"Quite so."
"Come now," said my curate, like a fellow that was sure of himself, "that's going too far."
"Not at all," said Father Duff; "I maintain that the evidence of history on the one hand, and the external evidence of monuments on the other, combined with the internal evidence of Scriptural idiomatisms of time and place, are equivalent to a mathematical demonstration."
"You'll admit, I suppose," said Father Letheby, "that languages change their structures and meanings very often?"
"Certainly."
"The English of Shakespeare is not ours."
"Quite so."
"Even words have come to have exactly antithetical meanings, even in a lapse of three hundred years."
"Very good."
"And it is said that, owing to accretions, the language we speak will be unintelligible in a hundred years' time."
"Possibly."
"Now, would you not say that a contemporary of Shakespeare's would be a better judge of his poetry and its allusive and natural meaning than ever so learned a linguist, after an interval of change?"
"Well, I should say so. I don't know where you are drifting."
"What is the reason that we never heard of these 'internal evidences,' these 'historical coincidences,' these 'exclusive idioms,' from Origen or Dionysius, or from Jerome or Augustine, from any one of the Fathers, who held what we hold, and what the Church has always taught, about the authorship of the Sacred Books, and to whom Hebrew and Greek were vernacular?"
"But, my dear sir, there are evident interpolations even in the Gospels. Do you really mean to tell me that that canticle of the Magnificat was uttered by a young Hebrew girl on Hebron, and was not rather the deliberate poetical conception of the author of St. Luke's Gospel?"
I jumped from my seat; but I needn't have done so. I saw by the whitening under my curate's eyes, and the compression of his lips, and his eyes glowing like coal, that our dear little Queen's honor was safe in his hands. Father Duff couldn't have stumbled on a more unhappy example for himself. Father Letheby placed his elbows on the table and, leaning forward, he said in a low, tremulous voice:
"You may be very learned, Father, and I believe you are; but for all the learning stored up in those German universities, which you so much admire, I would not think as you appear to think on this sacred subject. If anything could show the tendency of modern interpretations of the Holy Scriptures, it would be the painful and almost blasphemous opinion to which you have just given expression. It is the complete elimination of the supernatural, the absolute denial of Inspiration. If the Magnificat is not an inspired utterance, I should like to know what is."
There was a painful silence for a few seconds, during which I could hear the ticking of my watch. Then the Master of Conference arose, and, kneeling, said the Actiones nostras. We were all gathering up our books and papers to disperse, when the Bishop said:—
"Gentlemen, the annual procession in honor of our Blessed Lady will be held in the Cathedral and College grounds on the evening of May the 31st. I shall be glad to see there as many of you as can attend. Dinner at four; rosary and sermon at seven o'clock. Father Letheby, would you do me the favor of preaching for us on that occasion?"
Father Letheby blushed an affirmative; and then the bishop, with delightful tact, turned to the humbled and almost effaced Father Duff, and said:—
"Father Duff, leave me that paper; I think I'll adopt the admirable suggestion of our friend, Father Dan."
Some of the young fellows, wits and wags as they were, circulated through the diocese the report that I tried to kiss the bishop. Now, there is not a word of truth in that—and for excellent reasons. First, because like Zacchæus, I am short of stature; and the bishop—God bless him!—is a fine, portly man. Secondly, because I have an innate and congenital dread of that little square of purple under his Lordship's chin. I'm sure I don't know why, but it always gives me the shivers. I'm told that they are allowing some new class of people called "Monsignori," and even some little canons, to assume the distinctive color of the episcopate. 'T is a great mistake. Our Fathers in God should have their own peculiar colors, as they have their own peculiar and tremendous responsibilities. But I'll tell you what I did. I kissed the bishop's ring, and I think I left a deep indentation on his Lordship's little finger.
The Master of Conference detained me.
"I'm beginning to like that young fellow of yours," he said. "He appears to have more piety than learning."
"He has both," I replied.
"So he has; so he has, indeed. What are we coming to? What are we coming to, at all?"
"Then I suppose," I said, "I needn't mind that bell?"
"What bell?"
"The bell that I was to tie around his neck."
"Father Dan, you have too long a memory; good by! I'm glad you've not that infidel, Duff, as curate."
We went home at a rapid pace, my curate and I, both too filled with thought to speak much. At last, I said, shaking up:—
"I'm beginning to think that I, too, took forty winks during the reading of that paper."
"I think about forty minutes of winks, Father Dan," he replied. "You slept steadily for forty minutes out of the forty-five."
"That's a calumnious exaggeration," I said; "don't I remember all about Job, and Daniel, and the synoptic Gospels."
"These were a few preliminaries," replied my curate.
"But who was that undignified and ungentlemanly fellow that woke us all with such a snore? I suppose it was Delaney?"
"No; it was not Delaney. He was too agitated after his rencontre with the chairman to fall asleep."
"Indeed? Perhaps it would be as well for me not to pursue the subject further. This will be a great sermon of yours."
"I'm very nervous about it," he said, shaking the reins. "It is not the sermon I mind, but all the dislike and jealousy and rancor it will cause."
"You can avoid all that," I replied.
"How?"
"Break down hopelessly and they'll all love you. That is the only road to popularity—to make a fool of yourself."
"I did that to-day," he said. "I made a most determined cast-iron resolution not to open my lips unless I was interrogated, but I could not stand that perkiness and self-sufficiency of Duff, especially when it developed into irreverence."
"If you had not spoken I should have challenged him; and I am not sure I would have been so polite as you were. The thing was unpardonable."
We dined at Father Letheby's. Just after dinner there was a timid knock at the door. He went out, and returned in a few minutes looking despondent and angry. I had heard the words from the hall:—
"She must give it up, your reverence. Her little chest is all falling in, and she's as white as a corpse."
"One of the girls giving up work at the machines," he replied. "She's suffering from chest trouble, it appears, from bending over this work."
"Who is she?" I queried.
"Minnie Carmody—that tall girl who sat near the door."
"H'm," I said. "I think it would be nearer the truth to say that Minnie Carmody's delicacy comes from the vinegar bottle and white paper. She was ashamed of her red face, and this is the latest recommendation of the novelette to banish roses, and leave the lilies of anæmia and consumption."
"It augurs badly, however," he replied. "The factory is not open quite a month yet."
CHAPTER XXIV
THE SERMON
I am quite sure that sermon cost me more anxiety and trouble than Father Letheby suffered. I was deeply interested in its success, of course. But that was not the point. I am probably the feeblest and worst preacher in my diocese. This gives me the indefeasible right to dogmatize about preaching. Just as failures in literary attempts are the credentials of a great critic, so writers on sermons can claim the high authority and ambassadorship to dictate to the world, on the grounds that they are incapable of producing even a catechetical discourse. But they fall back upon that universal and indisputable privilege of our race—the belief in their own infallibility. It often surprised me that the definition of Papal Infallibility, which concentrated in the Vicegerent of the Most High the reputed privilege of our race, did not create a greater outcry. It was the final onslaught of the Holy Spirit on the unspeakable vanity of the race. It was the death-blow to private judgment. At least, it ought to have been. But, alas! human vanity and presumption are eternal and indestructible. From the corner-boy here at my window, who asks indignantly, "Why the deuce did not Gladstone push his Bill through the House of Lords, and then force the Commons to accept it?" to the flushed statesman, whose dream is Imperialism; from the little manikin critic, who swells out his chest, and demands summary vengeance on that idiot of an author who has had the daring presumption to write a book on the Greek accent, or binary stars, up to the Jupiter Tonans of the world-wide circulating journal, which dictates to the universe, it is all the same. Each from his own little pedestal—it may be the shuffling stilts of three feet high, or it may be the lofty security of the Vendôme column—shrieks out his little opinion, and demands the silence or assent of the universe. Would that our modern Stylites, like to those of old, might, from their eminences, preach their own nothingness! Would that, like the Muezzins of Islam, they might climb the minarets of publicity and fame, only to call the world to praise and prayer!
But I, sharing the weaknesses, and, therefore, the privileges of a common humanity, claim the right to the luxury of preaching, which comes nearest to that of criticising, and is only in the third degree of inferiority from that supreme pleasure that is involved in I told you so.
And so, here by the western seas, where the homeless Atlantic finds a home, do I, a simple, rural priest, venture to homilize and philosophize on that great human gift of talk. Imagine me, then, on one of those soft May evenings, after our devotions in my little chapel, and with the children's hymns ringing in my ears, and having taken one pinch of snuff, and with another poised in my fingers, philosophizing thus:—
"I think—that is, I am sure—that the worst advices I ever heard given in my life were these:—
"On Preaching.—Try to be simple; and never aim at eloquence.
"On Meditation.—Keep your fingers in your Breviary, and think over the lessons of the Second Nocturn.
"And they are evil counsels, not per se, but per accidens; and for precisely similar reasons. They took no account of the tendency of human nature to relax and seek its ease. When the gray-haired counsellor said, 'Be simple,' he said, 'Be bald and vulgar.' For the young men who listened aimed at simplicity, and therefore naturally argued, the simpler the better; in fact, the conversational style is best of all. Where, then, the need for elaborate preparation? We shall only vex and confuse the people, consequently preparation is superfluous. We know the results. 'A few words' on the schools; an obiter dictum on the stations; a good, energetic, Demosthenic philippic against some scandal. But instruction,—oh, no! edification,—oh, no! That means preparation; and if we prepare, we talk over the people's heads, and we are 'sounding brasses and tinkling cymbals.'"
"But surely, sir, you wouldn't advise young men to study the eloquence of Massillon, or Bourdaloue, or Lacordaire? That would be talking over their heads with a vengeance."
"Do you think so?" I said. "Now, listen, young man. Which is, you or I, the elder? I am. All right. Now, my experience is that it is not the language, however eloquent, the people fail to follow, but the ideas, and they fail to follow the ideas because they are ill-instructed in their religion. Of course, I'm involved in the censure myself as well as others. But I proved this satisfactorily to myself long ago. We were in the habit of 'reading a book' at the Lenten exercises in the last town wherein I officiated as curate. Now, the people hate that above all things else. They'd rather hear one word from a stuttering idiot than the highest ascetical teaching out of a book. Nevertheless, we tried it; and we tried the simplest and easiest books we could find. No use. They couldn't follow one paragraph with intelligence. One evening I read for them—it was in Passion week—the last discourse of our Lord to His disciples—words that I could never read without breaking down. I assure you, they failed to grasp the meaning, not to speak of the pathos and divine beauty, of those awful words. They told me so."
"Do you mean then to conclude that we, young priests, should go in for high, flowery diction, long phrases, etc.? I could hardly imagine any man, least of all you, sir, holding such a theory!"
"You're running away with the question, my boy. The eloquence that I recommend is the eloquence of fine taste, which positively excludes all the ornaments which you speak of."
"By Jove, we don't know where to turn," said my curate. "I never ventured, during my late English experience of seven years, to stand in the pulpit and address the congregation, without writing every word and committing it to memory. I daren't do otherwise; for if I made a mistake, fifty chances to one, some Methodist or Socinian would call at the presbytery next morning and challenge me to deadly combat."
"And why should you give up that excellent habit here," I said, "and go on the dabitur vobis?"
"Because you may conjecture easily that I shall be talking over their heads."
"Better talk over their heads, young man, than under their feet. And under their feet, believe me, metaphorically, they trample the priest who does not uphold the dignity of his sacred office of preacher. 'Come down to the level of the people!' May God forgive the fools who utter this banality! Instead of saying to the people: 'Come up to the level of your priests, and be educated and refined,' they say: 'Go down to the people's level.' As if any priest ever went down in language or habit to the people's level who didn't go considerably below it."
"'Pon my word, Father Dan," said Father Letheby, "if I did not know you so well, I would think you were talking nonsense."
"Hear a little more nonsense!" I said. "I say now that our people like fine, sonorous language from the altar; and they comprehend it! Try them next Sunday with a passage from Lacordaire, and you'll see what I mean. Try that noble passage, 'Il y a un homme, dont l'amour garde la tombe,'—'There is a man whose tomb is guarded by love,'—and see if they'll understand you. Why, my dear fellow, fifty years ago, when the people were a classical people, taught only their Homers and Virgils by the side of the ditch, they could roll out passage after passage from their favorite preachers, and enjoy them and appreciate them. It was only a few days since, I was speaking on the subject to a dear old friend, who, after the lapse of fifty years, quoted a passage on Hell that he had heard almost as a child: 'If we allowed our imagination, my dear brethren, to dwell persistently on this terrific truth, Reason itself would totter on its throne.' But the people of to-day cannot quote, because they cannot get the opportunity. The race of preachers is dead."
I shut him up, and gave myself time to breathe.
"Would you say then, sir," he said meekly, "that I should continue my habit of writing out verbatim my sermons, and then commit them to memory?"
"Certainly not," I replied, "unless you find it necessary to maintain the high level on which all our utterances should be placed. And if now, after the practice of seven years, you cannot command your language, you never will. But here is my advice to you, and, as you are a friend, I shall charge nothing for it, but I make it copyright throughout the universe:—
I. Study.
II. Preach not Yourself, but God.
III. Live up to your Preaching.
That's all."
He appeared thoughtful and dissatisfied. I had to explain.
"A well-filled mind never wants words. Read, and read, and read; but read, above all, the Holy Scriptures. Never put down your Breviary, but to take up your Bible. Saturate yourself with its words and its spirit. All the best things that are to be found in modern literature are simple paraphrases of Holy Writ. And interweave all your sentences with the Sacred Text. All the temporal prosperity of England comes from the use of the Bible, all its spiritual raggedness and nakedness from its misuse. They made it a fetish. And their commentators are proving, or rather trying to prove, that it is only a little wax and pasteboard—only the literature of an obscure and subjugated race. But, even as literature, it has had a tremendous influence in forming the masculinity of the British character. They are now giving up the Bible and the Sabbath. And the débâcle is at hand. But I often thought we would have a more robust piety, a tenderer devotion, a deeper reverence, if we used the Sacred Scriptures more freely. And our people love the Sacred Writing. A text will hang around them, like a perfume, when all the rest of our preaching is forgotten. Why, look at myself. Forty years ago I attended a certain Retreat. I forget the very name of the Jesuit who conducted it; but I remember his texts, and they were well chosen:—
'I have seen a terrible thing upon the earth: a slave upon horseback, and kings walking in the mire.'
'You have taken my gold and silver, and made idols unto yourselves.'
'If I am a father, where is my honor?'
'If I am a master, where is my fear?'
I have made hundreds of meditations on these words, and preached them many a time. Then, again, our people are naturally poetic; the poetry has been crushed out of their natures by modern education. Yet they relish a fine line or expression. And again, their own language is full of aphorisms, bitter and stinging enough, we know, but sometimes exquisite as befits a nation whose forefathers lived in tents of skins. Now give them a few of the thousand proverbs of Solomon, and they will chew them as a cow chews the cud. But I should go on with this subject forever."
"But what about the use of sarcasm, sir? Your allusions to the Gaelic sarcasms reminded me of it. I often heard people say that our congregations dread nothing so much as sarcasm."
"I'm glad you reminded me of it. I can speak on the matter like a professor, for I was past-master in the science. I had a bitter tongue. How deeply I regret it, God only knows. I have often made an awful fool of myself at conferences, at public meetings, etc.; I have often done silly and puerile things, what the French call bêtises; I think of them without shame. But the sharp, acrid things I have said, and the few harsh things I have done, fill me with confusion. There's the benefit of a diary. It is an examination of conscience. I remember once at a station, a rather mean fellow flung a florin on a heap of silver before me. He should have paid a half-crown. I called his attention to it. He denied it. It was the second or third time he had tried that little game. I thought the time had come for a gentle remonstrance. I said nothing till the people were about to disperse. Then I said I had a story to tell them. It was about three mean men. One was an employer of labor in America, who was so hard on his men that when his factory blew up he docked them, or rather their widows, of the time they spent foolishly up in the sky. There was a titter. The second was a fellow here at home, who stole the pennies out of the eyes of a corpse. There was a roar. 'The third, the meanest of the three, I leave yourselves to discover. He isn't far away.' The bolt went home, and he and his family suffered. He never went to a fair or market that it was not thrown in his face; and even his little children in the schools had to bear his shame. I never think of it without a blush. Who wrote these lines?—
'He who only rules by terror
Doeth grievous wrong;
Deep as Hell I count his error,
Listen to my song.'"
"I'm not sure," said Father Letheby. "I think it was Tennyson."
"Thank God, the people love us. But for that, I should despair of our Irish faith in the near future."
"You said, 'Preach not yourself, but God'?"
"Aren't you tired?"
"No!" he said; "I think you are speaking wisely." Which was a direct implication that this was not in my usual style. But never mind!
"Let me carry out my own suggestion," I said. "Take down that Bible. Now, turn to the prophecy of Ezekiel—that lurid, thunder-and-lightning, seismic, magnetic sermon. Now find the thirty-third chapter. Now find the thirtieth verse and read."
He read:—
"And thou, son of man: the children of thy people, that talk of thee by the walls and in the doors of the houses, and speak, one to another, each man to his neighbor, saying: Come and let us hear what is the word that cometh forth from the Lord. And they come to thee, as if a people were coming in, and my people sit before thee; and hear thy words, and do them not; for they turn them into a song of their mouth, and their heart goeth after their covetousness. And thou art to them as a musical song that is sung with a sweet and agreeable voice; and they hear thy words and do them not."
"Very good. Now, there is the highest ambition of many a preacher: 'to be spoken of by the walls, and in the doors of the houses.' And, when judgment came, the people did not know there was a prophet amongst them."
"It isn't easy to get rid of ourselves in the pulpit," said Father Letheby.
"No, my dear boy, it is not. Nowhere does the εγω cling more closely to us. We are never so sensitive as when we are on ceremonies, never so vain as in the pulpit. Hence the barrenness of our ministry. The mighty waters are poured upon the land, to wither, not to fertilize."
"You said, thirdly, 'Live up to your preaching' That's not easy, either."
"No; the most difficult of the three. Yet here, too, your words are barren, if they come not supported by the example of your life. A simple homily from a holy man, even though it were halting, lame, and ungrammatical, will carry more weight than the most learned and eloquent discourse preached by a worldly priest. I know nothing more significant in all human history than what is recorded in the Life of Père Lacordaire. In the very zenith of his fame, his pulpit in Toulouse was deserted, whilst the white trains of France were bringing tens of thousands of professional men, barristers, statesmen, officers, professors, to a wretched village church only a few miles away. What was the loadstone? A poor country parish priest, informed, illiterate, uncouth,—but a saint. And I know nothing more beautiful or touching in all human history than the spectacle of the great and inspired Dominican, coming to that village chapel, and kneeling for the blessing of M. Vianney, and listening, like a child, to the evening catechetical lecture, delivered in a weak voice, and probably with many a halt for a word, by the saint of Ars."
Here I could proceed no further. These episodes in the lives of our holy ones fill me up to the throat, for my heart swells for their beauty. And I am a soft old fool. I can never read that office of St. Agatha or St. Agnes without blubbering; and St. Perpetua, with her little babe, kills me outright.
We had a great debate, however, the following evening about the subject-matter of the sermon. He wanted to preach on the Magnificat. I put down my foot there, and said, No!
"That poor Duff will be there; and you'll be like the victor rooster crowing over a fallen antagonist."
"But Duff and I are the best friends in the world."
"No matter. I suppose he has nerves and blood, like the rest of us. Try something else!"
"Well, what about the Ave Maria, or Tu gloria Jerusalem, tu lætitia Israel, etc.?"
"The very thing."
"Or, the place of the Blessed Virgin in Scripture?"
"You've hit the nail on the head. That's it!"
"Well, now," said he, taking out a note-book, "how long shall it be?"
"Exactly forty-five minutes."
"And I must write every word?"
"Every word!"
"How many pages will that make?"
"Twenty pages—ordinary copy-book. The first fifteen will be expository; the last five will be the peroration, into which you must throw all the pathos, love, fire, and enthusiasm of which you are capable."
"All right. Many thanks, Father Dan. But I shall be very nervous."
"Never mind. That will wear off."
I said to myself, you have heavier troubles in store; but why should I anticipate? The worst troubles are those that never arise. And where's the use of preaching to a man with the toothache about the perils of typhoid fever?
I went down to see my little saint.
She was "happy, happy, oh! so happy! But, Daddy Dan, I fear't won't last long!"
"You are not going to heaven so soon, and leaving us all desolate, are you?"
"No, Daddy Dan. But Mr. Ormsby, who thinks that I have made him a Catholic, says he will bring down a great, great doctor from Dublin to cure me. And I don't want to be cured at all."
"If it were God's Holy Will, dear, we should be all glad. But I fear that God alone can cure the hurt He has made."
"Oh, thank you! thank you! Daddy Dan. You have always the kind word. And sure you know more than all the doctors. And sure, if God wished me to be cured, you'd have done it long ago."
"I'm not so sure of that, my child," I said; "but who is the great doctor?"
"He's a doctor that was in the navy—like my poor father—and he has seen a lot of queer diseases in India, and got a lot of cures."
"Well, we're bound to try every natural specific, my child. But if all fails, we must leave you in the hands of the great Physician."
"That's what I should like best, Daddy Dan!"
"You must pray now for Father Letheby. He is going to preach a great sermon."
"On what?"
"On our Blessed Lady."
"I should like to be there. The children tell me he preaches lovely. They think he sees the Blessed Virgin when he is talking of her. I shouldn't be surprised."
"I think he'll have crosses, too, like you, my dear. No, no, I don't mean illness; but crosses of his own."
"I should be sorry," she said, her eyes filling with tears.
"Of course, you want heaven all to yourself. Aren't you a selfish saint?"
"I'm not a saint at all, Daddy Dan; but Father Letheby is, and why should he be punished?"
"Why, indeed? Except to verify that line of Dante's of the soul in Paradise:
"'E dal martirio venni a questa pace.'"
CHAPTER XXV
MAY DEVOTIONS
I often wonder if the May devotions in other countries are as sweet and memory-haunting and redolent of peace as here in holy Ireland. Indeed, I suppose they are; for there are good, holy Catholics everywhere. But somehow the fragrance and beauty of these May evenings hang around us in Ireland as incense hangs around a dimly lighted church, and often cling around a soul where faith and holiness have been banished. I cannot boast too much of the picturesqueness and harmony of our evening prayers at Kilronan, at least until Father Letheby came. We had, indeed, the Rosary and a little weak homily. Nevertheless, the people loved to come and gather around the beautiful statue of our Mother. But when Father Letheby came, he threw music and sunshine around everything; but I believe he exhausted all his art in making the May devotions attractive and edifying. He said, indeed, that they were imperfect, and would always remain imperfect, until we could close them with Benediction of the Most Blessed Sacrament; and he urged me again and again to apply for permission, but, to tell the truth, I was afraid. And my dear old maxim, which had done me good service during life—my little pill of all philosophy—lente! lente! came again to my aid. But I'll tell you what we had. The Lady altar had all its pretentious ugliness hid under a mass of flowers—great flaunting peonies burning in the background, beautiful white Nile lilies in the front, bunches of yellow primroses between the candles, great tulips stained in flame colors, like the fires of Purgatory around the holy souls in our hamlet pictures. And hidden here and there, symbolical of the Lily of Israel, and filling the whole church with their delicate perfumes, were nestled lilies of the valley, sweetest and humblest of all those "most beautiful things that God has made and forgot to put a soul in." Then such hymns and litanies! I do not know, I am sure, what people feel in grand city churches, when the organ stops are loosed and the tide of music wells forth, and great voices are lifted up; but I think, if the Lord would allow me, I would be satisfied to have my heaven one long May devotion, with the children singing around me and the incense of flowers in the air, and our dear Mother looking down on us; only I should like that there were life in those wondrous eyes of Mother and Child, and I should like that that Divine Child, who holds us all in the palms of His little hands, would get a little tired sometimes of contemplating His Mother's beauty and turn in pity towards us.
Our order of service was: Rosary, Hymn, Lecture, Hymn, Litany of Loretto. Did you ever hear:
"Oh, my Mother, still remember
What the sainted Bernard hath said,—
None hath ever, ever found thee wanting
Who hath called upon thine aid."
or:
"Rose of the Cross! thou mystic flower!"
or Father Faber's splendid hymn:
"Hark, hark, O my soul! angelic songs are swelling."
Well, if you didn't, God help you!
I used to read a book sometimes—sometimes Father Gratry's "Month of May," sometimes that good little book by the Abbé Berlioux. But when the people began to yawn I flung the book aside, and said a few simple words to the congregation. And I spoke out of a full heart, a very full heart, and the waters flowed over, and flooded all the valleys.
The 31st of May fell on Sunday; and it was on this Sunday evening Father Letheby was to preach in the cathedral. I told the people all about it; and we offered the evening devotions for his success. Somehow I thought there was a note of emphasis in the "Holy Marys" that evening; and a little additional pathos in the children's voices. Miss Campion presided at the harmonium that evening in place of Father Letheby. I think, indeed, that the people considered that prayers for their young curate were a little superfluous; because, as we came out, I was able to hear a few comments and predictions:—
"Faith, you may make your mind aisy about him. They never heard anything like it before, I promise you."
"I heard they used to say over there in England that Father Burke himself couldn't hould a candle to him."
"If he'd spake a little aisier," said a village critic, who had a great opinion of himself, since he was called upon to propose a resolution at a Land-League meeting, "and rise his wice, he'd bate thim all."
"Did you ever hear Father Mac?" said an old laborer, dressed in the ancient Irish fashion, but old Father Time had been snipping at his garments as he couldn't touch himself. "That was the pracher! He hadn't his aiqual in Ireland. I rimimber wance a Good Friday sermon he prached in Loughboro'. Begor, you couldn't stick a pin between the people, they were so packed together. He kem out on the althar, and you could hear a pin dhrop. He had a crucifix in his hand, and he looked sorrowful like. 'In the Name av the Father,' sez he; thin he shtopped and looked round; 'and av the Holy Ghost,' sez he, and he shtopped ag'in; 'but where's the Son?' sez he, rising his wice; and begor, 't was like the day of gineral jedgment. Thin he tore off a black veil that was on the crucifix, and he threw it on the althar, and he held up the crucifix in the air, and he let a screech out of him that you could hear at Moydore; and—"
"Was that all the sarmon?" said a woman who was an interested listener.
"Was that all?" cried the narrator indignantly. "It wasn't all. He prached that night two mortial hours, and"—he looked around to command attention and admiration—"he never fetched a sup of wather the whole time, though it was tender his hands."
"Glory be to God," said the listeners; "sure 't was wandherful. And is he dead, Jer?"
"Dead?" cried Jer, rather contemptuously, for he was on the lofty heights of success; "did ye never hear it?"
"Wisha, how could we, and 't is so far back?"
"Some other time," said Jer, with a little pitying contempt.
"Ye may as well tell it now," said an old woman; "I hard the people shpake av him long ago; but sure we forget everything, even God sometimes."
"Well," said Jer, sitting on a long, level tombstone, "maybe ye don't know how the divil watches priests when they are on a sick-call. He does, thin. Fram the time they laves the house till they returns he is on their thrack, thrying to circumwent them, ontil he gets the poor sowl into his own dirty claws. Sometimes he makes the mare stumble and fall; sometimes he pulls down a big branch of a three, and hits the priest across the face; sometimes he hangs out a lanthern to lade him into a bog. All he wants is to keep him away, and WHAT he has wid him, and thin he gobbles up that poor sowl, as a fox would sling a chicken over his showlder, and takes him off to his din. Well, this night Father Mac was called out late. It was as dark as the caves down there by the say av a winter's night. As he wint along the road, he began praying softly to himself, for he knew the divil was watching him. All of a suddint he was taken out av his saddle and pitched head foremost in a brake of briars. When he recovered himself he looked around him and saw at a distance—"
"I thought it was dark, Jer," said a young mason, who knew that Jer was drawing the long bow.
"Av coorse it was, but couldn't ye see a light shining even on a dark night, my fine young man?" said Jer, in a temper.
"Oh, was it a light?" said the mason.
"Ye ought to think twice before intherrupting yer elders," said Jer. "Well, as I was saying, when he come to himself, he looked around, and he asked, in a loud wice, 'Is there anny wan there who could sarve Mass for a priest?' There was no answer. Thin he said a second time, 'For the love av God, is there anny wan there who could sarve Mass for a priest?'"
"Begor, I always thought that was the shtory about the priest that forgot to say the Masses for the dead, and kem out av of his grave on Christmas night," said an old woman.
"Thrue for ye, so it is," said another. "Many and many's the time we heard it."
"Begor, Jer," said a young man, "ye 're getting mixed."
"There's a hole in the ballad and the song fell out," said another.
"Jer could tell that story betther, if he had a couple of glasses in, I'm thinking," said the young mason, as they strolled away and left Jer sitting on the monument.
"Yes; or if he had the clay in his mouth, and the pint on the dresser," said his companion.
So was this great actor hissed off the stage. It was a bad breakdown, and there was no mercy. It turned the women's conversation back to their curate.
"May the Lord stringthen and help him in his endeavor, our darlin' man," said one.
"Amin, thin, and may the Blessed Vargin put the words into his mouth that he has to shpake," cried another. The children listened gravely. All that they could conjecture was that Father Letheby was engaged on a great and dangerous enterprise.
I never had a moment's doubt but that their prayers were heard and their predictions verified, although when Father Letheby called the next day he looked depressed and gloomy enough.
"Well," I said, "a great success, of course?"
"I'm afraid not," he said moodily.
"You broke down badly just in the middle?"
"Well, no, indeed; there was certainly no breakdown, but the whole thing was evidently a failure."
"Let me see," I cried. "There are certain infallible indications of the success or failure of a sermon. Were there any priests present?"
"About twenty, I think," he replied. "That was the worst of it. You don't mind the people at all."
"And weren't they very enthusiastic," I asked, "when you returned to the sacristy?"
"No, indeed. Rather the contrary, which makes me think that I said something either perilous or ill-advised."
"Humph! Didn't any fellow come up to you and knock the breath out of your body by slapping you on the back?"
"No!" he replied sadly.
"Didn't any fellow say: Prospere procede, et regna?"
"No!" he said. "It was just the other way."
"Didn't any fellow shake you by the hand even, and say: Prosit! prosit!! prosit!!!"
"I'm afraid not," he said gloomily.
"That's bad. Nor even, macte virtute esto, Titus Manlius?"
"No," he said. "There was no indication of sympathy whatsoever."
"Didn't any fellow drop into the vernacular, and say: 'Put the hand there. Sure I never doubted you,' and wring your hand as if he wanted to dislocate it?"
"No, no, no! There was simply dead silence."
"And perhaps they looked at you over their shoulders, and whispered together, as they put their surplices into their bags, and stared at you as if you were a sea-monster?"
"Something that way, indeed," said my poor curate.
"Did the bishop make any remark?"
"Yes. The bishop came over and said he was very grateful, indeed, for that beautiful sermon. But that, of course, was purely conventional."
"And the people? How did they take it?"
"They were very quiet and attentive, indeed: apparently an intelligent congregation."
"You don't think you were talking over their heads?"
"No, indeed. Even the poor women who were gathered under the pulpit stared at me unmercifully; and I think a few persons in front were much affected."
I waited for a few minutes to draw my deductions. But they were logical enough.
"My dear boy," I said at length, "from a long and profound experience of that wilful thing called human nature, allow me to tell you that every indication you have mentioned points to the fact that you have preached not only an edifying and useful, but a remarkable sermon—"
"Oh, that's only your usual goodness, Father Dan," he broke in. "I'm quite certain it was a failure. Look at the attitude of the priests!"
"That is just my strongest foundation," I replied. "If their enthusiasm had taken the other shapes I suggested, I should have despaired."
"Well, 't is over, for better, for worse," said he; "I did my best for our Lady, and she won't blame me if I failed."
"That is sound Christian philosophy," I replied; "leave it there. But don't be too flushed if my predictions come true."
"I suppose we may have a procession of the children on Corpus Christi?" he said abruptly.
"Hallo! another innovation! Where are you going to stop, I wonder?"
"Why not have it?" he said. "It will be a sermon to the people!"
"Around the church, you mean," I conjectured, "and back again to the High Altar?"
"No! but through the village, and out there along the path that cuts the turf over the cliffs, and then back to the mill, where we can have Benediction (I'll extemporize an altar), and down the main road, and to the church."
"Go on! go on!" I said in a resigned manner; "perhaps you'll invite our pious friend, Campion, down to Benediction—"
"He'll be carrying the canopy."
I looked at this young prestidigitateur in a bewildered manner. He was not noticing me.
"You know," he said, "I'll put Campion and Ormsby and the doctor, and the old Tertiary, Clohessy, under the canopy. It's time that these men should be made to understand that they are Catholics in reality as well as in name."
I was dumfounded at his audacity.
"I have got faculties from the bishop," he continued, "to receive Ormsby, and to use the short form. He'll be a noble Catholic. He is intelligent, and deeply in earnest."
"And who is this great man he is bringing from Dublin?" I asked.
"Oh! the doctor? An old chum. They have seen some rough and smooth weather together. This fellow is gone mad about his profession, and he studies eighteen hours out of the twenty-four—"
"He ought to be a Master of Conference," I interrupted. "But won't our own man be jealous?"
"Not at all. He says he has done his best for Alice; and if any one else can help her on, he'll be delighted. But he is not sanguine, nor am I."
"Nor I. It appears a deep-rooted affair. But what a visitation—God's angel, cloaked from head to foot in blackness, and with a flaming sword."
We were both silent, thinking of many things.
"Then the procession will be all right, sir?" he said at last, waking up.
"I hope so," I said resignedly. "Everything else that you have touched you have adorned. This will follow suit."
"Thank you, sir," he said. "It will be a glorious day for the children."
"By the way," I said, as he was going, "was Duff at the sermon?"
"He was, poor fellow; and I am afraid he got a wigging from the bishop. At least they were walking up and down there near the sacristy for at least half an hour before dinner. You know Duff is an awfully clever fellow. He has written some articles in the leading English magazines, in which, curiously enough, he quite agrees with Professor Sayce, the eminent Assyriologist, who has tried to disprove the theories about the Pentateuch originated by Graf and Wellhausen—"
"My dear fellow, this is not a conference. Spare my old nerves all that nonsense. The Bible is God's own Word—that is enough for me. But what about Duff?"
"Well, at table, the bishop was specially and expressly kind to him, and drew him out about all these matters, and made him shine; and you know how well Duff can talk—"
"I wouldn't doubt the bishop," I said; "he always does the kind and the right thing."
"By the way, I forgot a moment ago to say that Duff met me this morning at the station, and said, I am sure with perfect sincerity: 'Letheby, I must congratulate you. You taught me a sharp lesson the other day; you taught me a gentler lesson last evening. Pray for me that I may keep farther away from human will-o'-the-wisps, and nearer the Eternal Light than I have been.' I shook his hand warmly. Sedes sapientiæ, ora pro nobis."
"Amen!" I said humbly.
"I've asked him over to dine on the day our fishing-boat will be launched," said Father Letheby, after a pause. "Some of the brethren are coming; and you'll come, sir? Duff is very anxious to meet you."
"Of course," I replied. "I never refuse so delightful an invitation. But why should Duff be anxious to meet me?"
"I really don't know, except that you are, as you know yourself, sir, a celebrity. He thinks a great deal of you."
"Probably a great deal more than I am disposed to think of myself. Did he say so?"
"Oh, dear, yes! He said: 'I must make the acquaintance of that pastor of yours, Letheby, he's an immortal genius!'"
"An immortal genius! Well, you must know, my innocent young man, that that expression is susceptible of a double interpretation—it may mean an immortal fame like William Shakespeare's, or an immortal fame like Jack Falstaff's; it may mean a Cervantes, or a Don Quixote, a fool who has eclipsed the name of his Creator. But, as I am charitably inclined, I shall give your learned friend the benefit of the doubt, and meet him as one of my many admirers, rather than as one of my few critics. Perhaps he may change his opinion of me, for better, for worse, on a closer acquaintance."
"I'm quite sure, sir, that there will be a mutual appreciation. That's arranged, then—the procession on Corpus Christi, and dinner the day of our launch."
CHAPTER XXVI
AT THE ZENITH
For one reason or another, the great events to which our little history is tending were deferred again and again, until at last the Monday within the Octave of Corpus Christi was chosen for the marriage of Bittra Campion and the launch of the great fishing-boat, that was to bring untold wealth to Kilronan. Meanwhile our faculties were not permitted to rust, for we had a glorious procession on the great Fête-Dieu, organized, of course, and carried on to complete success by the zeal and inventive piety of my young curate. My own timidity, and dread of offending Protestant susceptibilities—a timidity, I suppose, inherited from the penal days—would have limited that procession to the narrow confines of the chapel yard; but the larger and more trusting faith of Father Letheby leaped over such restrictions, and the procession wound through the little village, down to the sheer cliffs that overhang the sea, along the narrow footpath that cuts the turf on the summit of the rocks, around the old mill, now the new factory, and back by the main road skirting the bog and meadowland, to the village church again. It would be quite useless to inquire how or where Father Letheby managed to get those silken banners, and that glittering processional cross, or the gorgeous canopy. I, who share with the majority of my countrymen the national contempt for minutiæ and mere details, would have at once dogmatically declared the impossibility of securing such beautiful things in such a pre-Adamite, out-of-the-way village as Kilronan. But Father Letheby, who knows no such word as impossibility, in some quiet way—the legerdemain of a strong character—contrives to bring these unimaginable things out of the region of conjecture into the realms of fact; and I can only stare and wonder. But the whole thing was a great and unexampled success; and, whilst my own heart was swelling under the influence of the sweet hymns of the children, and the golden radiance of June sunlight, and the sparkling of the sea, and the thought that I held the Lord and Master of all between my hands, my fancy would go back to that wondrous lake on whose waters the Lord did walk, and from whose shores He selected the future teachers of the world. The lake calm in the sunlight, the fish gleaming in the nets, the half-naked Apostles bending over the gunwales of their boats to drag in the nets, the stately, grave figure of our Lord, the wondering women who gazed on Him afar off with fear and love—all came up before my fancy, that only came back to reality when I touched the shoulders of Reginald Ormsby and the doctor, who, with two rough fishermen, belonging to the Third Order of St. Francis, held the gilded poles of the canopy. They manifested great piety and love and reverence all the way. Ormsby had brought over all his coast-guards except the two that were on duty at the station, and they formed a noble guard of honor around the canopy; and it was difficult to say which was the more beautiful and picturesque—the demonstrative love of the peasant women, who flung up their hands in a paroxysm of devotion, whilst they murmured in the soft Gaelic: "Ten thousand, thousand thanks to you, O white and ruddy Saviour!" or the calm, deep, silent tenderness of these rough men, whose faces were red and tanned and bronzed from the action of sun and sea. And the little children, who were not in the procession, peeped out shyly from beneath their mothers' cloaks, and their round, wondering eyes rested on the white Host, who in His undying words had once said: "Suffer little children to come unto me!" Let no one say that our poor Irish do not grasp the meaning of this central mystery of our faith! It is true that their senses are touched by more visible things; but whoever understands our people will agree with me that no great theologian in his study, no philosopher in his rostrum, no sacred nun in her choir, realizes more distinctly the awful meaning of that continued miracle of love and mercy that is enshrined on our altars, and named Emmanuel.
But all things come around, sooner or later, in their destined courses, and Monday dawned, fair and sunny and beautiful, as befitted the events that were to take place. There was a light summer haze on sea and land; and just a ripple of a breeze blown down as a message from the inhospitable hills. Father Letheby said early Mass at eight o'clock; and at half-past nine, the hour for the nuptial Mass, there was no standing or sitting-room in the little chapel. Of course, the front seats were reserved for the gentry, who, in spite of an academical dislike to Ormsby's conversion, gathered to witness this Catholic marriage, as a rare thing in Ireland, at least amongst their own class. But behind them, and I should say in unpleasant proximity (for the peasantry do not carry handkerchiefs scented with White Rose or Jockey Club,—only the odor of the peat and the bogwood), surged a vast crowd of men and women, on whose lips and in whose hearts was a prayer for her who was entering on the momentous change in her sweet and tranquil life. And young Patsies and Willies and Jameses were locked by their legs around their brothers' necks, and trying to keep down and economize for further use that Irish cheer or yell, that from Dargai to Mandalay is well known as the war-whoop of the race invincible. I presume that I was an object of curiosity myself, as I awaited in alb and stole the coming of the bridal party. Then the curiosity passed on to Ormsby, who, accompanied by Dr. Armstrong, stood erect and stately before the altar-rails; then, of course, to the bride, who, accompanied by her father, and followed by a bevy of fair children, drew down a rose-shower of benedictions from the enthusiastic congregation. Did it rest there? Alas, no! Bridegroom and bride, parish priest and curate, were blotted out of the interested vision of the spectators; and, concentrated with absorbing fascination, the hundreds of eyes rested on the snowy cap and the spotless streamers of Mrs. Darcy. It was the great event of the day—the culmination of civilization in Kilronan! Wagers had been won and lost over it; one or two pitched battles had been fought with pewter weapons at Mrs. Haley's; ballads had been written on it in the style, but not quite in the polished lines, of "Henry of Navarre"; and now, there it was, the "white plume" of victory, the cynosure of hundreds of wondering eyes. I dare say the "upper ten" did not mind it; they were used to such things; but everything else paled into insignificance to the critical and censorious audience behind them.
"Didn't I tell you she'd do it?"
"Begor, you did. I suppose I must stand the thrate."
"Father Letheby cud do anything whin he cud do that."
"Begor, I suppose she'll be thinkin' of marryin' herself now, and Jem hardly cowld in the clay."
"Yerra, look at her! She thinks she's wan of the gintry. Oh my! she's blushin'. 'T wasn't so long ago that you could sow praties in her face."
"I suppose thim cost a lot of money. But, shure, it was the priests give 'em to her."
"Wisha, thin, there's many a poor creature that would want the money more."
Now, all this was not only sarcastic, but calumnious. The cap and streamers were Mrs. Darcy's own, bought out of her hard earnings, and donned to-day to honor the nuptials of her idol and benefactress. She knew the mighty ordeal that was in store for her; but she faced it, and thanked God she was "not behoulden to wan of thim for what she put into her mout' and upon her back." And she stood there at the altar-rails, erect and defiant, and there was not a tremor in the hand that held the holy-water vase, nor in the hand that held the aspergill.
But it was very embarrassing to myself. I am not disposed to be nervous, for I have always conscientiously avoided tea and too much study, and I have lived in the open air, and always managed to secure eight hours of dreamless, honest sleep; but I was "discomposed," as some one charitably explained it that morning; and Mrs. Darcy's cap was the cause. I couldn't take my eyes away from it. There it was, dancing like a will-o'-the-wisp before my dazzled vision. I turned my back deliberately upon it, and lo! there it was in miniature in the convex arc of my spectacles; and if I looked up, there was my grinning congregation, and their half-audible remarks upon this dread and unwonted apparition. At last I commenced:
"Reginald Darcy, wilt thou take Bittra Ormsby here present—"
A forcible reminder from Father Letheby brought me to my senses; but away they scattered again, as I heard Campion muttering something uncomplimentary under his black mustache.
"Ahem!—Reginald Ormsby, wilt thou take Mrs. Darcy—"
Here Father Letheby nudged me again, and looked at me suspiciously. I got a sudden and violent paroxysm of coughing, a remnant of an old bronchial attack to which I am very subject. But I managed to say:—
"For the love of God, send that woman into the sacristy."
She covered her retreat nobly, made a curtsey to the priests, genuflected calmly, laid down the aspergill, and, under pretence of having been sent for something which these careless priests had forgotten, retired with honors; and then I suppose had a good long cry. But poor Bittra was blushing furiously; Ormsby was calm as on the quarterdeck; but Dr. Armstrong was pulling at his mustache, as if determined to show the world that there was no use any more for razors or depilatories; and Miss Leslie had bitten right through her under lip, and was threatened with apoplexy. We got through the rest of the ceremony with flying colors: and the moment I said, In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, the hush of death fell on the congregation. Then the nuptial blessing was given, the choir threw all their vocal strength into the grand finale; the registers were signed; Campion kissed his beloved child, and shook hands with Ormsby; and then commenced the triumphal march. I forgot to say that for the glorious procession on the Thursday before the village was en fête. Great arcades of laurel were stretched from chimney to chimney, because there were no upper rooms in the cabins; the posts and lintels of the humble doors were covered with foliage and flowers; and the windows were decorated with all the pious images that had been accumulating in the cabins for generations. Little ëikons of the Sacred Heart, gorgeous statues of our Lady of Lourdes, colored prints of Leo XIII., and crucifixes without number dappled the dark background of the windows,—and all the splendor was allowed to remain untouched during the octave. And glad they were, poor people, to show their love for their young idol and mistress, even with the decorations of their Lord and King. But what a shout tore open the heavens as Bittra appeared, leaning on her husband's arm; and what prayers echoed round and round them, as Ormsby handed Bittra into the victoria that was waiting! No genteel showers of rice, no casting of slippers nor waving of jealous handkerchiefs here, but—
"Come down out o' dat, you grinning monkey," and the gorgeous coachman was hauled down ignominiously, and a score of strong arms replaced the panting horses under the bridal carriage. And so it moved on, this bridal procession, amidst a strange epithalamium of cheering and blessings, whilst rough hands from time to time grasped the strong fingers of the smiling bridegroom or the tiny gloved hand of the bride. Ay, move down the valley of life together, you two, linked hand-in-hand, having said your farewells to the world, for you are entering on a new and altogether consecrated life. No wonder that the Church insists on the sacramental nature of this stupendous compact between two human souls; no wonder that the world, anxious to break its indissolubility, denies its awful sacredness; no wonder that the Catholic girl enters beneath the archway of the priest's stole[6] with the fear of great joy, and that the Catholic bridegroom is unnerved with dread at undertaking the responsibilities of a little universe.
We had a little chat over this matter, my curate and I, the evening before Bittra's marriage. It came around quite naturally, for we had been debating all kinds of possibilities as to the future; and he had been inveighing, in his own tumultuous manner, against the new and sacrilegious ideas that are just now being preached by the modern apostles of free thought in novel and journal. We agreed in thinking that the Christian ideal of marriage was nowhere so happily realized as in Ireland, where, at least up to recent times, there was no lurid and volcanic company-keeping before marriage, and no bitter ashes of disappointment after; but the good mother quietly said to her child: "Mary, go to confession to-morrow, and get out your Sunday dress. You are to be married on Thursday evening." And Mary said: "Very well, mother," not even asserting a faintest right to know the name of her future spouse. But, then, by virtue of the great sacramental union, she stepped from the position of a child and a dependent into the regal position of queen and mistress on her own hearth. The entire authority of the household passed thereby into her hands, as she slung the keys at her girdle; she became bursar and econome of the establishment; and in no instance was her right to rule supreme ever questioned by husband or child, unless drink came in to destroy this paradise, as the serpent fouled with his slime the flowers of the garden of Eden. Married life in Ireland has been, up to now, the most splendid refutation of all that the world and its gospel, the novel, preach about marriage, and the most splendid and complete justification of the supernaturalism of the Church's dogmas and practices. But, reverting to the new phases in the ever-shifting emotionalism of a godless world, with which marriage has become a question of barter—a mere lot-drawing of lambs for the shambles—he compared the happy queenly life of our Irish mother with that of the victim of fashion, or that of uncatholic lands, where a poor girl passes from one state of slavery to another.
"I hope," he said, "that we never shall be able to compare Bittra, like so many other brides, to the sleeping child that Carafola has painted, with an angel holding over it a crown of thorns, and whom marriage, like the angel, would awake by pressing the thorns on her brow."
"God forbid!" I said fervently. How little I dreamed of the troubles that were looming up out of the immediate future to shroud her marriage sunshine in awful gloom!
As the marriage procession passed the door where Alice lived, Bittra gave a little timid, imperious command to her admirers to stop. She and Ormsby alighted and passed into the cottage. The orange blossoms touched the crown of thorns on the head of the sick girl; but, somehow, both felt that there was need of a sisterhood of suffering on the one part to knit their souls together. Ormsby remained in the kitchen, talking to Mrs. Moylan; and from that day forward she was secured, at least, from all dread of dependence or poverty forevermore.
At the breakfast table it was, of course, my privilege to propose the health of the bride and bridegroom, which I most gladly did; and, let me say, so successfully as to bring back unwonted smiles to Campion's face, who now freely forgave me for the gaucheries at the marriage service. Then the guests strolled around, looking at the marriage presents—the usual filigree and useless things that are flung at the poor bride. Bittra took me into a little boudoir of her own to show me her real presents.
"Father," she said, "who is a great artist, wanted me to give back all this rubbish, as he calls it; but I would much rather sacrifice all that bijouterie outside." And she exhibited with glistening eyes the bridal offerings of the poor fisherwomen and country folk of Kilronan. They were fearfully and wonderfully made. Here was a magnificent three-decker battleship, complete from pennant to bowsprit, every rope in its place, and the brass muzzles of its gun protruded for action. Here was a pretty portrait of Bittra herself, painted by a Japanese artist from a photograph, surreptitiously obtained, and which had been sent 15,000 miles across the ocean for an enlarged replica. Here were shells of all sizes and fantastic forms, gathered during generations, from the vast museums of the deep. Here was a massive gold ring, with a superb ruby, picked up, the Lord knows how, by a young sailor in the East Indian Islands. Here, screaming like a fury, was a paroquet, gorgeous as a rainbow, but ill-conducted as a monkey; and here was a gauze shawl, so fine that Bittra hid it in her little palm, and whispered that it was of untold price.
"But, of course, I cannot keep all these treasures," she said; "I shall hold them as a loan for a while; and then, under one pretext or another, return them. It is what they indicate that I value."
"And I think, my little child," I said, "that if you had them reduplicated until they would fill one wing of the British Museum, they would hardly be an exponent of all that these poor people think and feel."
"It should make me very happy," said Bittra.
And then we passed into the yard and dairies, where the same benevolent worship had congregated fowl of strange and unheard-of breeds; and there was a little bonham; and above all, staring around, wonder-stricken and frightened, and with a gorgeous blue ribbon about her neck, was the prettiest little fawn in the world, its soft brown fur lifted by the warm wind and its eyes opened up in fear and wonder at its surroundings. Bittra patted its head, and the pretty animal laid its wet
nozzle in her open hand. Then she felt a little shiver, and I said:—
"That bridal dress is too light. Go in and change." But she said, looking up at me wistfully:—
"It is not the chill of cold, but of dread, that is haunting me all the morning. I feel as if some one were walking over my grave, as the people say."
"Ahem!—Reginald Ormsby, wilt thou take Mrs. Darcy—"
"Nonsense!" I cried. "You are unnerved, child; the events of the morning have been too much for you."
Here we heard her father's voice, shouting: "Bittra! Bittra! where are you?"
"Here, father," she said, as Ormsby came into the yard with Campion, "showing all my treasures to Father Dan."
She linked her arm in her husband's, and Campion looked from one to the other admiringly. And no wonder. They were a noble, handsome pair, as they stood there, and the June sunlight streamed and swam around them.
"Go in," he said at last. "The guests expect you."
He and I walked around the farmyard, noting, observing, admiring. He called my attention to this animal and to that, marked out all his projected improvements, and what he would do to make this a model country residence for his child; but I could see that he had something else to say. At last he turned to me, and there was a soft haze in his gleaming black eyes as he tried to steady his voice:—
"I have been a hard man," he said, "but the events of this morning have quite upset me. I didn't know that my child was so worshipped by the people, and it has touched me deeply. You know, brought up in the school where I graduated, I have never been able to shake off a feeling of contempt for these poor, uneducated serfs; and their little cunning ways and want of manliness have always disgusted me. I am beginning to see that I have been wrong. And then I have been a bad Catholic. Ormsby, lately an unbeliever, has shown me this, not by his words, for he is a thorough gentleman, but by his quiet example. You know I did not care one brass pin whether he was Turk, Jew, or atheist, so long as he married Bittra. Now I see that the Church is right, and that her espousal would have been incomplete if she had not married a Catholic, and a true one. All this has disturbed me, and I intend to turn over a new leaf. I am running into years; and although I have, probably, thirty years of life before me, I must brush up as if the end were near. I am awfully sorry I was not at the rails with Bittra and Ormsby this morning; but we shall all be together at Holy Communion the Sunday after they return from the Continent. By Jove! there goes the Angelus; and twelve is the hour to start the boat!"
He took off his hat, and we said the Angelus in silence together. I noticed the silver gathering over his ears, and the black hair was visibly thinning on the top. I watched him keenly for those few seconds. I did not know that those musical strains of the midday Angelus were his death-knell—the ringing up of the great stage-manager, Death, for his volté subito—his leap through the ring to eternity.