"Who else could I be referring to?"
Ferlie, with a final gulp of relief, rushed to the rescue. "It's all right, Padre. We were stupid. Please tell us more."
Encouraged again, he confessed that he was having great trouble with two actual communicants in the Mission—Naomi and Kingfisher.
Naomi was, virtually, the wife of Young Brown. She had played her star part in the most complete Wedding Mass, decked out in the scarlet robes of the Mission calico, two years ago, amid the general rejoicings of a family much enriched by Young Brown's substantial dowry of pigs and pandanas. The pair had no children, and, a twelve-month later, Kingfisher, who had been showing marked interest in the Bible Class regularly attended by the young wife, was brought forward by her for enrolment in the True Fold.
The toiling priest had thanked Heaven before the paper swathed night-light for this unexpected windfall in addition to the slow fruits of his labours.
Some months after the baptism Naomi produced a son whom Young Brown's common-sense did not permit him to regard as an answer to prayer, and, on his refusal to lay claim to the child, Naomi and Kingfisher had boldly taken unto themselves a hut on the outskirts of the Settlement, whence neither consistent appeals to their better nature nor the threat of excommunication could dislodge them.
"This is my man," was all Naomi had to say about it. And confronted with the Woman's Credo her Father-in-God found himself helpless.
"The villagers consider that I ought to be able to put a curse on them," he complained worriedly. "The Mission is losing prestige by my very patience and I fear a great deal of harm may be done to the Cause. I am wondering whether I should appeal to the Chief Commissioner at Port Blair, since the Nicobars, being under his jurisdiction as well as the Andamans, he would be able to have the couple tried and sentenced for bigamy."
Cyprian took his head in his hands.
"Oh, my hat!" he groaned. "If I were the Chief Commissioner, Padre, I would have you locked up for a dangerous lunatic. Living in sin! Had they ever heard the word before you taught it them? By what authority do you keep a healthy young female animal tied, for sentimental reasons of your own introduction here, to a man who is incapable of giving her a child? Anyone sane would tell you that the Law was made for man and not man for the Law. Let the poor unfortunates alone, for God's sake."