My New Curate

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[Illustration: So there they were at last, the dream of half a life
time. (p. 475.)]

MY NEW CURATE

A STORY

_Gathered from the Stray Leaves of an Old Diary_

By the Rev. P. A. SHEEHAN, P. P.
DONERAILE (DIOCESE OF CLOYNE)

_Author of_ "Geoffrey Austin: Student," "The Triumph of Failure," &c.

BOSTON
MARLIER & COMPANY, Limited
1902

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Change 1

II. A Retrospect 14

III. A Night Call 23

IV. The Pantechnicon 34

V. A Slight Misunderstanding 48

VI. At the Station 61

VII. Scruples 74

VIII. Our Concert 83

IX. Severely Reprimanded 97

X. Over the Walnuts, and the ---- 113

XI. Beside the Singing River 129

XII. Church Improvements 140

XIII. "All Things to All Men" 154

XIV. First Fridays 170

XV. Holly and Ivy 187

XVI. Violent Contrasts 205

XVII. A Clerical Symposium 226

XVIII. The Kampaner Thal 241

XIX. Literary Attempts 255

XX. Madonna Mia 272

XXI. The Factory 297

XXII. The May Conference 316

XXIII. A Battle of Giants 332

XXIV. The Sermon 349

XXV. May Devotions 364

XXVI. At the Zenith 378

XXVII. The "Star of the Sea" 394

XXVIII. Sub Nube 410

XXIX. Stigmata? 429

XXX. All's Well 449

XXXI. Farewell! 475

Illustrations

Page

"So there they were at last, the dream of half a lifetime"
Frontispiece

"You will take something?" I said. "You have
had a long drive" facing 10

"My door was suddenly flung open, and a bunch of
keys was thrown angrily on the table" 49

"Do you call that clean?" 54

"Here I am, your Reverence!" facing 56

"Good Heavens!" was all I could say facing 94

"The orator was caught by the nape of the neck" 133

"'T is the way we wants to go to confession, Fader" 176

"And why don't you tell his reverence about the rice
puddin'?" 223

"It broke in my fingers and revealed the little dreams
and ambitions of nearly forty years ago" 262

"Was there anything wrong with the chicken?" facing 294

"I read that over three times to make quite sure of it" 321

"Ahem!--Reginald Ormsby, wilt thou take Mrs.
Darcy--" facing 390

"Come down to Mrs. Haley's; there isn't a better
dhrop betune this and Dublin" facing 450

"Come on, you ruffian!" 451

"For the love of God, Jem, is 't yourself or your
ghost?" 453

"Hallo, there!... who the ---- are ye?" facing 460

Waiting for my New Curate 479

_MY NEW CURATE_

_Gathered from Stray Leaves of an Old Diary by an Irish Parish Priest_

CHAPTER I

THE CHANGE

It is all my own fault. I was too free with my tongue. I said in a
moment of bitterness: "What can a Bishop do with a parish priest? He's
independent of him." It was not grammatical, and it was not respectful.
But the bad grammar and the impertinence were carried to his Lordship,
and he answered: "What can I _do_? I can send him a curate who will
break his heart in six weeks."

I was not too much surprised, then, when one evening my dear old friend
and curate, Father Tom Laverty, came to me, with tears in his eyes and
an open letter in his hand:--

"I am off, Father Dan. Look at this!"

It was a succinct, laconic order to present himself to a parish priest
twenty miles distant, and to be in time to discharge his duties in that
parish the following Saturday and Sunday, for his jurisdiction was
transferred, etc.

It was a hard stroke. I was genuinely attached to Father Tom. We had the
same tastes and habits,--easy, contented, conservative, with a cordial
dislike of innovations of any kind. We held the same political opinions,
preached the same sermons, administered the Sacraments in the old way,
and had a reverence for antiquities in general. It was a sad break in my
life to part with him; and it is a harmless vanity on my part to say
that he was sorry to part from me.

"I suppose there's no help for it?" said he.

"No," said I; "but if you care--"

"No use," said he; "when _he_ has made up his mind you might as well be
talking to a milestone."

"And you must be off to-morrow?" said I, consulting the bishop's letter.

"Yes," said he, "short shrift."

"And who am I getting?" I wondered.

"Hard to guess," said he. He was in no humor for conversation.

The following week, that most melancholy of processions, a curate's
furniture _en route_, filed slowly through the village, and out along
the highroad, that led through bog and fen, and by lake borders to the
town of N----. First came three loads of black turf, carefully piled and
roped; then two loads of hay; a cow with a yearling calf; and lastly,
the house furniture, mostly of rough deal. The articles, that would be
hardly good enough for one of our new laborers' cottages, were crowned
by a kitchen table, its four legs pointing steadily to the firmament,
like an untrussed fowl's, and between them, carefully roped, was the
plague and the pet of the village, Nanny the goat, with her little kid
beside her. What Nanny could not do in the way of mischief was so
insignificant, that it need not be told. But the Celtic vocabulary,
particularly rich in expletives, failed to meet the ever-growing
vituperative wants of the villagers. They had to fall back on the Saxon,
and call her a "rep," "a rip," "de ribble," etc., etc. I walked side by
side with Father Laverty, who, with head bent on his breast, scarcely
noticed the lamentations of the women, who came to their cross-doors,
and poured out a Jeremiad of lamentations that made me think my own
well-meant ministrations were but scantily appreciated.

"Wisha, God be wid you, Father, wherever you go!"

"Wisha, may your journey thry wid you. Sure 't is we'll miss you!"

"Yerra, what'll the poor do now, whin he's gone?"

"Bishop, inagh, 't is aisy for him wid his ring and his mitre, and his
grand carriage. Couldn't he let him alone?"

"Father," said a young girl, earnestly, her black hair blinding her
eyes, "may God be with you." She ran after him. "Pray for me," she
whispered. "You don't know all the good you done me." She hadn't been
very sensible.

He turned towards her.

"Yes! Nance, I'll remember you. And don't forget all that I told you."

He held out his hand. It was such an honor, such a condescension, that
she blushed scarlet: and hastily rubbing her hand in her apron, she
grasped his.

"May God Almighty bless you," she said.

But the great trial came when we were passing the school-house. It was
after three o'clock, the time for breaking up: and there at the wall
were all the little boys and the _sheilas_ with their wide eyes full of
sorrow. He passed by hastily, never looking up. His heart was with these
children. I believe the only real pleasure he ever allowed himself was
to go amongst them, teach them, amuse them, and listen to their little
songs. And now--

"Good by, Father--"

"Good by, Father--"

Then, Alice Moylan gave a big "boo-hoo!" and in a moment they were all
in tears; and I, too, began to wink, in a queer way, at the landscape.

At last, we came to the little bridge that humps itself over the trout
stream. Many a summer evening we had made this the terminus of our
evening's walk; for I was feeble enough on my limbs, though my head is
as clear as a boy's of seventeen. And here we used to lean over the
parapet, and talk of all things, politics, literature (the little we
knew of it), the old classics, college stories, tales of the mission,
etc.; and now we were to part.

"Good by, Father Tom," I said. "You know, there's always a bite and a
sup and a bed, whenever you come hither. Good by. God knows, I'm sorry
to part with you."

"Good by," he said. Not another word. I watched and waited, till I saw
the melancholy procession fade away, and until he became a speck on the
horizon. Then, with a heavy heart I turned homewards.

If I had the least doubt about the wonderful elasticity of the Irish
mind, or its talent for adaptation, it would have been dispelled as I
passed again through the village. I had no idea I was so popular, or
that my little labors were so warmly appreciated.

"Well, thank God, we have _himself_ whatever."

Gentle reader, "himself" and "herself" are two pronouns, that in our
village idioms mean the master and mistress of the situation, beyond
whom there is no appeal.

"Wisha, the Lord spare him to us. God help us, if _he_ wint."

"The heads of our Church, God spare them long! Wisha, your reverence
might have a copper about you to help a poor lone widow?"

I must say this subtle flattery did not raise my drooped spirits. I went
home, sat down by my little table, and gave myself up to gloomy
reflections.

It must have been eight o'clock, or more, for the twilight had come
down, and my books and little pictures were looking misty, when a
rat-tat-tat rang at the door. I didn't hear the car, for the road was
muddy, I suppose; but I straightened myself up in my arm-chair, and drew
my breviary towards me. I had read my Matins and Lauds for the following
day, before dinner; I always do, to keep up the old tradition amongst
the Irish priests; but I read somewhere that it is always a good thing
to edify people who come to see you. And I didn't want any one to
suspect that I had been for a few minutes asleep. In a moment, Hannah,
my old housekeeper, came in. She held a tiny piece of card between her
fingers, which were carefully covered with her check apron, lest she
should soil it. I took it--while I asked--

"Who is it?"

"I don't know, your reverence."

"Is 't a priest?"

"No, but I think he's a gintleman," she whispered. "He talks like the
people up at the great house."

She got a candle, and I read:--

Rev. Edward Letheby, B. A., C. C.

"'Tis the new curate," I said.

"Oyeh," said Hannah, whose dread and admiration for the "strange
gintleman" evaporated, when she found he was a mere curate.

I went out and welcomed with what warmth I could my new cooeperator. It
was too dark for me to see what manner of man he was; but I came to some
rapid conclusions from the way he spoke. He bit off his words, as
riflemen bite their cartridges, he chiselled every consonant, and gave
full free scope to every vowel. This was all the accent he had, an
accent of precision and determination and formalism, that struck like a
knell, clear and piercing on my heart.

"I took the liberty of calling, Sir," he said, "and I hope you will
excuse my troubling you at such an unseasonable hour; but I am utterly
unacquainted with the locality, and I should be thankful to you if you
would refer me to a hotel."

"There's but one hotel in the village," I replied slowly. "It has also
the advantage of being the post-office, and the additional advantage of
being an emporium for all sorts of merchandise, from a packet of pins to
Reckitt's blue, and from pigs' crubeens to the best Limerick flitches.
There's a conglomeration of smells," I continued, "that would shame the
City on the Bosphorus; and there are some nice visitors there now in
the shape of two Amazons who are going to give selections from
'Maritana' in the school-house this evening; and a drunken acrobat, the
leavings of the last circus."

"Good heavens," he said under his breath.

I think I astonished him, as I was determined to do. Then I relented, as
I had the victory.

"If, however," said I, "you could be content with the humble
accommodation and poor fare that this poor presbytery affords, I shall
be delighted to have you as my guest, until you can secure your own
little domicile."

"I thank you very much, Sir," said he, "you are extremely kind. Would
you pardon me a moment, whilst I dismiss the driver and bring in my
portmanteau?"

He was a little humbled and I was softened. But I was determined to
maintain my dignity.

He followed me into the parlor, where the lamp was now lighting, and I
had a good opportunity of observing him. I always sit with my back to
the light, which has the double advantage of obscuring my own features
and lighting up the features of those whom I am addressing. He sat
opposite me, straight as an arrow. One hand was gloved; he was toying
gently with the other glove. But he was a fine fellow. Fairly tall,
square shouldered, not a bit stout, but clean cut from head to spur, I
thought I should not like to meet him in a wrestling bout, or try a
collision over a football. He had a mass of black hair, glossy and
curled, and parted at the left side. Large, blue-black luminous eyes,
that looked you squarely in the face, were hardly as expressive as a
clear mouth that now in repose seemed too quiet even for breathing. He
was dressed _ad_ ----. Pardon me, dear reader, I have had to brush up my
classics, and Horace is like a spring eruption. There was not a line of
white visible above his black collar; but a square of white in front,
where the edges parted. A heavy chain hung from his vest; and his boots
glistened and winked in the lamplight.

"You'll take something?" I said. "You have had a long drive."

"If not too much trouble," he said, "I'll have a cup of tea."

I rang the bell.

"Get a cup of tea, Hannah," I said.

"A cup of wha--at?" queried Hannah. She had the usual feminine contempt
for men that drink tea.

"A cup of tea," I said decisively, "and don't be long."

"Oyeh!" said Hannah. But she brought in a few minutes later the tea and
hot cakes that would make an alderman hungry, and two poached eggs on
toast. I was awfully proud of my domestic arrangements. But I was
puzzled. Hannah was not always so courteous. She explained next day.

"I didn't like him at all, at all," she said, "but whin I came out and
saw his portmanty all brass knobs, and took up his rug, whew! it was
that soft and fine it would do to wrap up the Queen, I said to myself,
'this is a gintleman, Hannah; who knows but he's the Bishop on his
tower.'"

"I hope you like your tea?" I said.

"It's simply delicious," he answered.

He ate heartily. Poor fellow, he was hungry after a long drive; but he
chewed every morsel as a cow would chew the cud on a lazy summer
afternoon, without noise or haste, and he lifted my poor old china cup
as daintily as if it were Sevres. Then we fell to talking.

"I am afraid," I said tentatively, "that you'll find this place dull
after your last mission. But have you been on the mission before?"

"Oh yes, Father," he said, "I thought the Bishop might have written to
you."

"Well," I said, "I had reason to know you were coming; but the Bishop is
rather laconic in his epistles. He prides himself on his virtue of
reticence."

I said this, because it would never do to let him suppose that the
Bishop would send me a curate without letting me know of it. And I
thought I was using select language, an opinion which, after the nine
years and more of Horace, I have no reason to alter.

[Illustration: "You will take something?" I said. "You have had a long
drive."]

"My only mission hitherto," he said, "has been in Manchester, at St.
Chad's. It was a populous mission, and quite full of those daily trials
and contingencies that make life wearisome to a priest. I confess I was
not sorry to have been called home."

"But you had society," I interjected, "and unless you wish to spend an
hour at the constabulary barracks, you must seek your society here in an
occasional _conversazione_ with some old woman over her cross-door, or a
chat with the boys at the forge--"

"But I have got my books, Father," he said, "and I assure you I want
some time to brush up the little I have ever read. I haven't opened a
serious book for seven years."

This was candid; and it made me warm towards him.

"Then," I said, "there's no use in preaching fine English sermons, they
won't be understood. And you must be prepared for many a night call to
mountain cabins, the only access to which is through a bog or the bed of
a mountain stream; and your income will reach the princely sum of sixty
pounds per annum. But," I added hastily, "you'll have plenty of turf,
and oats and hay for your horse, an occasional pound of butter, and
you'll have to export all the turkeys you'll get at Christmas."

"You have painted the lights and shadows, Father," he said cheerily,
"and I am prepared to take them together. I am sure I'll like the poor
people. It won't be my fault."

Then my heart rose up to this bright, cheery, handsome fellow, who had
no more pride in him than a barelegged gossoon; and who was prepared to
find his pleasure amongst such untoward surroundings. But I didn't like
to let myself out as yet. I had to keep up some show of dignity.

My education commenced next morning. He had served my mass, and said his
own in my little oratory; and he came down to breakfast, clean, alert,
happy. I asked him how he had slept.

"Right well," he said, "I never woke till I heard some far off bell in
the morning."

"The six o'clock bell at the great house," I replied. "But where are you
going?"

"Nowhere, Sir," said he, "I understood I was to remain over Sunday."

"But you're shaved?" said I.

"Oh yes," he said, with the faintest ripple of a smile. "I couldn't
think of sitting down to breakfast, much less of celebrating the Holy
Sacrifice, without shaving."

"And you have a clean collar. Do you mean to say you change your collar
every morning?"

"Certainly, Sir," he said.

"Poor Father Tom!" I exclaimed mentally, "this is a change." But I said
nothing; but sent out my razors in the afternoon to be set.

There was a letter from the Bishop. It ran thus:--

My dear Father Dan:--I have thought it necessary to make a change
of curates in your parish. I have removed Father Laverty on
promotion; and I am sending you one of the most promising young
priests in my diocese. He has just returned from England, where he
won golden opinions from the people and the priests. I may mention
that he was an exhibitioner under the Intermediate System; and took
a gold medal for Greek. Perhaps you will stimulate him to renew his
studies in that department, as he says he has got quite rusty from
want of time to study. Between you both, there will be quite an
Academia at Kilronan.

Yours in Christ.

"Clever, my Lord," I soliloquized, "clever!" Then, as the "gold medal in
Greek" caught my eye again, I almost let the letter fall to the ground;
and I thought of his Lordship's words: "I can send him a curate who will
break his heart in six weeks." But as I looked over my cup at Father
Letheby, I couldn't believe that there was any lurking _diablerie_
there. He looked in the morning a frank, bright, cheery, handsome
fellow. But, will he do?

CHAPTER II

A RETROSPECT

Long ago, when I used to read an occasional novel, if the author dared
to say: "But I am anticipating; we must go back here twenty years to
understand the thread of this history," I invariably flung down the book
in disgust. The idea of taking you back to ancient history when you were
dying to know what was to become of the yellow-haired Blumine, or the
grand chivalrous Roland. Well, I am just going to commit the very same
sin; and, dear reader, be patient just a little while.

It is many years since I was appointed to the parish of Kilronan. It
happened in this wise. The Bishop, the old man, sent for me; and said,
with what I would call a tone of pity or contempt, but he was incapable
of either, for he was the essence of charity and sincerity:--

"Father Dan, you are a bit of a litterateur, I understand. Kilronan is
vacant. You'll have plenty of time for poetizing and dreaming there.
What do you say to it?"

I put on a little dignity, and, though my heart was beating with
delight, I quietly thanked his Lordship. But, when I had passed beyond
the reach of episcopal vision, which is far stretching enough, I spun
my hat in the air, and shouted like a schoolboy: "Hurrah!"

You wonder at my ecstasies! Listen. I was a dreamer, and the dream of my
life, when shut up in musty towns, where the atmosphere was redolent of
drink, and you heard nothing but scandal, and saw nothing but sin,--the
dream of my life was a home by the sea, with its purity and freedom, and
its infinite expanse, telling me of God. For, from the time when as a
child the roar of the surges set my pulse beating, and the scents of the
weed and the brine would make me turn pale with pleasure, I used to pray
that some day, when my life's work would be nearly done, and I had put
in my years of honest labor in the dusty streets, I might spend my
declining years in the peace of a seaside village, and go down to my
grave, washed free from the contaminations of life in the daily watching
and loving of those

"Moving waters at their priestlike task
Of cold ablution round earth's human shores."

My wish was realized, and I was jubilant.

Returning home by train, when my emotion had calmed down, my mind could
not help recurring to the expression used by the Bishop; and it
suggested the following reflections: How has it come to pass in Ireland
that "poet" and "saint" are terms which denote some weakness or
irregularity in their possessors? At one time in our history we know
that the bard was second only to the King in power and influence; and
are we not vaguely proud of that title the world gives us,--Island of
Saints? Yet, nowadays, through some fatal degeneracy, a poet is looked
upon as an idealist, an unpractical builder of airy castles, to whom no
one would go for advice in an important matter, or intrust with the
investment of a five-pound note. And to speak of a man or woman as a
"saint" is to hint at some secret imbecility, which it would be
charitable to pass over in silence. I was quite well aware, therefore,
on that day, when I had the secret pleasure and the sublime misfortune
of seeing my name in print over some wretched verses, that I was ruining
my prospects in life. The fact of being a litterateur, although in the
most modest and hidden manner, stamped me as a volatile, flighty
creature, who was no more to be depended upon than a feather in the
wind; or, as the Italians say, _qu' al piume al vento_. It is a curious
prejudice, and a purely insular one. And sometimes I think, or rather I
used to think, that there was something infinitely grotesque in these
narrow ideas, that shut us out from sympathy with the quick moving,
subtle world as completely as if we were fakirs by the banks of the
sacred Ganges. For what does modern literature deal with? Exactly those
questions of philosophy, ethics, and morality which form the staple
material of theological studies and discussions in our own colleges and
academies. Novels, poetry, essays, lectures, treatises on the natural
sciences,--all deal with the great central questions of man's being, his
origin, and his conduct. And surely it is folly to ignore these
discussions in the market places of the world, because they are
literature, and not couched in scholastic syllogisms. Dear me! I am
philosophizing,--I, old Daddy Dan, with the children plucking at my
coat-tails and the brown snuff staining my waistcoat, and, ah, yes! the
place already marked in my little chapel, where I shall sleep at last. I
must have been angry, or gloomy, that day, thirty years ago, when I
stepped on the platform at M----, after my interview with the Bishop,
and met my friends, who had already become aware that I was elevated out
of the junior ranks, and had become an independent officer of the Church
Militant.

"You don't mean to say that you have accepted that awful place?" said
one.

"You'll have nothing but fish to eat," said another. "The butcher's van
goes there but once a week."

"And no society but fishermen," said a third. "And they speak nothing
but Irish, and you know you cannot bless yourself in Irish."

"Well," I replied, "my Job's comforters, I have accepted Kilronan, and
am going there. If all things go well, and you are good boys, I may ask
for some of you as curate--"

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