“There must be. It’s one of the most important and useful words in any language. How could the ancient Greeks possibly have got on without it?”
“There isn’t. I’m perfectly sure there isn’t.”
“That’s awkward. But never mind, you’ll be able to get round it with some kind of paraphrase. After all, we can’t leave the poor fellow without the consolations of religion in some form. Good-bye.”
“And—and—Catholic in ancient Greek will mean something quite different, not in the least what it means now.”
The doctor was gone. Mr. Jackson went back to his study and spent two hours wrestling with the contents of a lexicon. He arrived at the workhouse in the evening with a number of cryptic notes, the words lavishly accented, written down on small slips of paper.
Father Henaghan was the next person whom Dr. Whitty visited. At first he absolutely declined to help.
“The only language I could make any shift at speaking,” he said “is Latin. And that would be no use to you. There isn’t one sailor out of every thousand, outside of the officers of the Royal Navy, that would know six words of Latin.”
“They tell me,” said the doctor, “that there’s no great difference between Latin and Spanish or Italian. Anyone that knows the one will make a pretty good push at understanding the others.”
“Whoever told you that told you a lie,” said the priest; “and, anyway, I’m not going near that man until I’m sure he’s a Catholic.”
“Don’t be hard-hearted, Father. Think of the poor fellow lying there and not being able to tell any of us what religion he belongs to.”