Hero blushed as she listened to these old-fashioned compliments.
“You are exceedingly kind, Duchess. I shall be delighted. I came here in the brougham to-day, so that I shall be able to send a message to my father to let him know where I am. But what is all this about?” She turned to the excited women who were now repeating the tale of Mike Finigan’s outrages in the ears of Mr. Grimes.
The Rev. Aloysius was listening with a troubled brow. In his secret heart he had a great respect for Finigan, partly because he knew that the Irishman had no respect at all for him, and regarded him as an impostor, dressed in plumes borrowed from his own clergy, partly because of the superior example which the Finigans showed to his own flock in the matter of reverence for the priesthood. The hooligan and his family in their wildest moments treated their own priest as being invested with dreadful sanctity and tremendous powers. They firmly believed that Father Molyneux could strike any one of them dead without moving an eyelash; if one of them had been betrayed into lifting a hand against the Father’s person, they would have expected to see it wither to a stump. Yet Father Molyneux was a very insignificant-looking little man, with a jolly smile, and a brogue like the scent of an onion, who went about dressed in a shabby overcoat and a disreputable hat of the ordinary chimney-pot shape. He said “Sorr” to Mr. Grimes when that gentleman condescended to greet him in the street, and never showed by a word or look that he did not regard him as a superior by whose notice he was honoured. It was true that the little priest had a reputation for humour among his own friends; a sound as of laughter was sometimes heard issuing from the presbytery as the Rev. Aloysius passed by; a book entitled “The Secret History of the Romish Conspiracy” had been found by the priest’s housekeeper in the cupboard where his reverence kept his whisky and his slippers; but those things were mercifully hidden from the curate of St. Jermyn’s.
Mr. Grimes turned towards Hero, as she came forward, shaking his head.
“I’m afraid it’s a sad business, Miss Vanbrugh. Finigan has broken out again. I can’t understand how it is that a man so well conducted in some respects, with such genuine faith in his religion, schismatic though it may appear to us, should be guilty of outrages like this.”
Hero flushed up. She did not share the elder woman’s deep-rooted prejudice against the Catholicizing movement, which attracted her strongly on its æsthetic side, but her English common sense remained to her.
“The man is a drunken brute, who ought to have been sent to penal servitude for fourteen years, instead of being let off with a paltry fourteen days!” she exclaimed. “What are prisons for, I should like to know, except to protect peaceful folk from ruffians like that?”
The Rev. Aloysius shook his head doubtfully. He was inclined to read the text, “Thy faith hath made thee whole,” in a very broad sense, and to consider that Mike Finigan’s admirable loyalty to his creed ought to atone for any trifling disregard of his neighbours’ peace and comfort.
But the inhabitants of Beers Cooperage, whose rude minds failed to appreciate the beauty of Mr. Finigan’s theological attitude, in the face of their broken flower-pots and slaughtered pets, were quick to perceive that Hero was the champion of whom they stood in need. They deserted the curate to besiege her with their complaints; the owner of the birdcage renewed her direful malediction, and another woman, who could boast no injury on her own account, drew the sympathetic young lady to the scene of the trampled wallflowers.
The sight aroused Miss Vanbrugh’s wrath in real earnest.