My New Curate

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As I knelt down, and turned to leave the church, I felt my cloak gently
pulled. I looked down and faintly discerned in the feeble light some one
huddled at my feet. I thought at first it was one of the little
children, for they used sometimes to wait for the coveted privilege of
holding the hand of their old pastor, and conducting him homeward in
the darkness. This was no child, however, but some one fully grown, as I
conjectured, though I saw nothing but the outline of wet and draggled
garments. I waited. Not a word came forth, but something like the echo
of a sob. Then I said:--

"Whom have I here, and what do you want?"

"Father, Father, have pity!"

"I do not know who you are," I replied, "and wherefore I should have
pity. If you stand up and speak, I'll know what to say or do."

"You know me well," said the woman's voice, "too well. Am I to be cast
out forever?"

Then I recognized Nance, who had followed and blessed Father Tom the
evening he left us. She did not bless me nor address me. I had to speak
publicly of poor Nance; perhaps, indeed, I spoke too sharply and
strongly,--it is so hard to draw the line between zeal and discretion,
it is so easy to degenerate into weakness or into excess. And Nance
feared me. Probably she was the only one of the villagers who never
dared address me.

"What do you want here?" I gently said.

"What do I want here? 'T is a quare question for a priest to be afther
asking. What did the poor crature want when she wint to a bigger man dan
you, and she wasn't turned away aither?"

"Yes, Nance; but she repented and loved Christ, and was prepared to die
rather than sin again."

"And how do you know but I'm the same? Do you know more than the God
above you?--and He is my witness here to-night before His Blessed and
Holy Son that all hell-fire won't make me fall again. Hell-fire, did I
say?" Her voice here sunk into a low whisper. "It isn't hell-fire I
dread, but His face and yours."

I stooped down and lifted her gently. The simple kindness touched the
broken vase of her heart, and she burst into an agony of passionate
tears.

"Oh, wirra! wirra! if you had only said that much to me three months
ago, what you'd have saved me. But you'd the hard word, Father, and it
drove me wild to think that, as you said, I wasn't fit to come and mix
with the people at Mass. And many and many a night in the cowld and
hunger, I slept there at the door of the chapel; and only woke up to
bate the chapel door, and ask God to let me in. But sure His hand was
agin me, like yours, and I daren't go in. And sometimes I looked
through the kayhole, to where His heart was burnin', and I thought He
would come out, when no one could see Him, and spake to me; but no! no!
Him and you were agin me; and then the chapel woman 'ud come in the
cowld of the mornin', and I would shlink away to my hole agin?"

"Speak low, Nance," I whispered, as her voice hissed through the
darkness. "The men will hear you!"

"They often heard worse from me than what I am saying to-night, God help
me! 'T isn't the men I care about, nor their doings. But whin the young
girls would crass the street, les' they should come near me, and the
dacent mothers 'ud throw their aprons over their childres' heads, les'
they should see me, ah! that was the bitter pill. And many and many a
night, whin you wor in your bed, I stood down on dem rocks below, with
the say calling for me, and the hungry waves around me and there was
nothin' betune me and hell but that--"

She fumbled in her bosom and drew out a ragged, well-worn scapular with
a tiny medal attached, and kissed it.

"And sure I know if I wint with 'em, I should have to curse the face of
the Blessed and Holy Mary forever, and I said then, 'Never! Never!' and
I faced the hard world agin."

I detected the faintest odor of spirits as she spoke.

"'T is hardly a good beginning, Nance, to come here straight from the
public house."

"'Twas only a thimbleful Mrs. Haley gave me, to give me courage to face
you."

"And what is it to be now? Are you going to change your life?"

"Yerra, what else would bring me here to-night?"

"And you are going to make up your mind to go to confession as soon as
you can?"

"As soon as I can? This very moment, wid God's blessing."

"Well, then, I'll ask Father Letheby to step out for a moment and hear
you."

"If you do, then I'll lave the chapel on the spot, and maybe you won't
see me agin." She pulled up her shawl, as if to depart.

"What harm has Father Letheby done you? Sure every one likes him."

"Maybe! But he never gave me word or look that wasn't pison since he
came to the parish. I'll go to yourself."

"But," I said, fearing that she had still some dread of me that might
interfere with the integrity of her confession, "you know I have a bad
tongue--"

"Never mind," she said, "if you have. Sure they say your bark is worse
than your bite."

And so, then and there, in the gloom of that winter's night, I heard her
tale of anguish and sorrow; and whilst I thanked God for this, His sheep
that was lost, I went deeper down than ever into the valleys of
humiliation and self-reproach: "Caritas erga homines, sicut caritas Dei
erga nos."[5] Here was my favorite text, here my sum total of
speculative philosophy. I often preached it to others, even to Father
Letheby, when he came complaining of the waywardness of this imaginative
and fickle people. "If God, from on high, tolerates the unspeakable
wickedness of the world,--if He calmly looks down upon the frightful
holocaust of iniquity that steams up before His eyes from the cities and
towns and hamlets of the world,--if He tolerates the abomination of
paganism, and the still worse, because conscious, wickedness of the
Christian world, why should we be fretful and impatient? And if Christ
was so gentle and so tender towards these foul, ill-smelling, leprous,
and ungrateful Jews, why should we not be tolerant of the venial falls
of the holy people,--the kingly nation?" And I was obliged to confess
that it was all pride,--too much sensitiveness, not to God's dishonor,
but to the stigma and reproach to our own ministrations, that made us
forget our patience and our duty. And often, on Sunday mornings in
winter, when the rain poured down in cataracts, and the village street
ran in muddy torrents, and the eaves dripped in steady sheets of water,
when I stood at my own chapel door and saw poor farmers and laborers,
old women and young girls, drenched through and through, having walked
six miles down from the farthest mountains; and when I saw, as I read
the Acts and the Prayer before Mass, a thick fog of steam rising from
their poor clothes and filling the entire church with a strange incense,
I thought how easy it ought to be for us to condone the thoughtlessness
or the inconsiderate weaknesses of such a people, and to bless God that
our lot was cast amongst them. I heard, with deeper contrition than
hers, the sins of that poor outcast; for every reproach she addressed to
me I heard echoed from the recesses of that silent tabernacle. But all
my trouble was increased when I insisted on her approaching the Holy
Table in the morning. The thought of going to Holy Communion appalled
her. "Perhaps in eight or twelve months she'd be fit; but to-morrow--"

Her dread was something intense, almost frightful:--

"Sure He'll kill me, as He killed the man who towld the lie!"

I tried to reassure her:--

"But they say he'll _bleed_ if I touch Him."

I gently reasoned and argued with her. Then her objections took a more
natural turn:--

"Sure the people will all rise up and lave the chapel."

Then it became a question of dress. And it was with the greatest
difficulty, and only by appealing to her humility, and as a penance,
that I at last induced her to consent to come up to the altar rails
after all the people had received Holy Communion. There was a slight
stir next morning when all the people had reverently retired from the
Holy Table. I waited, holding the Sacred Host over the Ciborium. The
people wondered. Then, from the farthest recess of the church, a draped
figure stole slowly up the aisle. All knew it was Nance. So far from
contempt, only pity, deep pity, filled the hearts of old and young; and
one could hear clearly the _tchk! tchk!_ that curious click of sympathy
which I believe is peculiar to our people. The tears streamed down the
face of the poor penitent as I placed the Sacred Host upon her tongue.
Then she rose strengthened, and walked meekly, but firmly, back to her
place. As she did, I noticed that she wore a thick black shawl. It was
the quick eye of my curate that had seen all. It was his gentle, kind
heart that forestalled me.

I got an awful scolding from Hannah when I came home that night in the
rain.

"Never mind, Hannah," I said, when she had exhausted her diatribe, "I
never did a better night's work in my life."

She looked at me keenly; but these poor women have some queer way of
understanding things; and she said humbly:--

"Than' God!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 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 Cumaei venit jam carminis aetas;
Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.
Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna;
Jam nova progenies caelo demittitur alto,"--

down to the two lines which I repeated as a prayer:--

"O mihi tam longae maneat pars ultima vitae
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, _Coelum, 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 anaemic 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 AEschylus 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.

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