My New Curate

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"You'll be glad to get a curacy yourself in six months," they shouted in
chorus.

And so I came to Kilronan, and here have I been since. The years have
rolled by swiftly. Life is a coach, whose wheels move slowly and
painfully at the start; but, once set moving, particularly when going
down the deep decline of life, the years move so swiftly you cannot see
the spokes in the wheels, which are the days we number so sadly. What
glorious resolutions I made the first months of my residence here! How I
would read and write and burn the midnight oil, and astonish the world,
and grow from dignity to dignity into an honored old age! Alas!
circumstances are too much for us all, and here I am, in my seventieth
year, poor old Daddy Dan, with no great earthly trouble, indeed, and
some few consolations,--my breviary and the grand psalms of hope,--my
daily Mass and its hidden and unutterable sweetness,--the love of little
children and their daily smiles,--the prayers of my old women, and, I
think, the reverence of the men. But there comes a little sting
sometimes, when I see young priests, who served my Masses long ago,
standing in cathedral stalls in all the glory of purple and ermine, and
when I see great parishes passing into the hands of mere boys, and poor
old Daddy Dan passed over in silence. I know, if I were really good and
resigned, I would bless God for it all, and I do. But human nature will
revolt sometimes, and people will say, "What a shame, Father Dan; why
haven't you the red buttons as well as so and so," or, "What ails the
Bishop, passing over one of the most learned men in the diocese for a
parcel of gossoons!" I suppose it was my own fault. I remember what
magnificent ideas I had. I would build factories, I would ferr the
streets, I would establish a fishing station and make Kilronan the
favorite bathing resort on the western coast; I would write books and
be, all round, a model of push, energy, and enterprise. And I did try. I
might as well have tried to remove yonder mountain with a pitchfork, or
stop the roll of the Atlantic with a rope of sand. Nothing on earth can
cure the inertia of Ireland. It weighs down like the weeping clouds on
the damp heavy earth, and there's no lifting it, nor disburthening of
the souls of men of this intolerable weight. I was met on every side
with a stare of curiosity, as if I were propounding something immoral or
heretical. People looked at me, put their hands in their pockets,
whistled dubiously, and went slowly away. Oh, it was weary, weary work!
The blood was stagnant in the veins of the people and their feet were
shod with lead. They walked slowly, spoke with difficulty, stared all
day at leaden clouds or pale sunlight, stood at the corners of the
village for hours looking into vacuity, and the dear little children
became old the moment they left school, and lost the smiles and the
sunlight of childhood. It was a land of the lotos. The people were
narcotized. Was it the sea air? I think I read somewhere in an old
philosopher, called Berkeley, that the damp salt air of the sea has a
curious phlegmatic effect on the blood, and will coagulate it and
produce gout and sundry disorders. However that be, there was a weary
weight on everything around Kilronan. The cattle slept in the fields,
the fishermen slept in their coracles. It was a land of sleep and
dreams.

I approached the agent about a foreshore for the pier, for you cannot,
in Ireland, take the most preliminary and initial step in anything
without going, cap in hand, to the agent. I explained my intentions. He
smiled, but was polite.

"Lord L----, you know, is either in Monte Carlo or yachting in the
Levant. He must be consulted. I can do nothing."

"And when will his Lordship return?"

"Probably in two years."

"You have no power to grant a lease of the foreshore, or even give
temporary permission to erect a pier?"

"None whatever."

I went to the Presentment Sessions about a grant for paving or flagging
the wretched street. I woke a nest of hornets.

"What! More taxation! Aren't the people crushed enough already? Where
can we get money to meet rates and taxes? Flagging Kilronan! Oh, of
course! Wouldn't your reverence go in for gas or the electric light?
Begor, ye'll be wanting a water supply next," etc., etc.

I applied to a factory a few miles distant to establish a local industry
by cottage labor, which is cheap and remunerative.

"They would be delighted, but--" And so all my castles came tumbling
down from the clouds, and left them black and lowering and leaden as
before. Once or twice, later on, I made a few spasmodic efforts to
galvanize the place into life; they, too, failed, and I accepted the
inevitable. When Father Laverty came he helped me to bear the situation
with philosophical calmness. He had seen the world, and had been rubbed
badly in contact with it. He had adopted as his motto and watchword the
fatal _Cui bono?_ And he had printed in large Gothic letters over his
mantelpiece the legend:

'TWILL BE ALL THE SAME IN A HUNDRED YEARS.

And so I drifted, drifted down from high empyreans of great ideals and
lofty speculations into a humdrum life, that was only saved from
sordidness by the sacred duties of my office. After all, I find that we
are not independent of our circumstances. We are fashioned and moulded
by them as plaster of Paris is fashioned and moulded into angels or
gargoyles by the deft hand of the sculptor. "Thou shalt lower to his
level," true of the wife in Locksley Hall, is true of all who are
thrown by fate or fortune into unhappy environments. In my leisure
moments, when I took up my pen to write, some evil spirit whispered,
_Cui bono?_ and I laid down my pen and hid my manuscript. Once or twice
I took up some old Greek poets and essayed to translate them. I have
kept the paper still, frayed and yellow with age; but the fatal _Cui
bono?_ disheartened me, and I flung it aside. Even my love for the sea
had vanished, and I had begun to hate it. During the first few years of
my ministry I spent hours by the cliffs and shores, or out on the
heaving waters. Then the loneliness of the desert and barren wastes
repelled me, and I had begun to loathe it. Altogether I was soured and
discontented, and I had a dread consciousness that my life was a
failure. All its possibilities had passed without being seized and
utilized. I was the barren fig tree, fit only to be cut down. May I
escape the fire! Such were my surroundings and disposition when Father
Letheby came.

CHAPTER III

A NIGHT CALL

It must have been about two o'clock on Sunday morning, when the house
bell was pulled violently and a rapid series of fierce, sharp knocks
woke up the house. What priest does not know that tocsin of the night,
and the start from peaceful slumbers? I heard the housekeeper wake up
Father Letheby; and in a short time I heard him go down stairs. Then
there was the usual hurried colloquy at the hall door, then the
retreating noises of galloping feet. I pulled the blankets around my
shoulders, lifted the pillow, and said, "Poor fellow!" He had to say
last Mass next day, and this was some consolation, as he could sleep a
few hours in the morning. I met him at breakfast about half past one
o'clock. There he was, clean, cool, cheerful, as if nothing had
happened.

"I was sorry you had that night call," I said; "how far had you to go?"

"To some place called Knocktorisha," he replied, opening his egg; "'t
was a little remote, but I was well repaid."

"Indeed," said I; "the poor people are very grateful. And they generally
pay for whatever trouble they give."

He flushed up.

"Oh, I didn't mean any pecuniary recompense," he said, a little
nettled. "I meant that I was repaid by the extraordinary faith and
fervor of the people."

I waited.

"Why, Father," said he, turning around and flicking a few invisible
crumbs with his napkin, "I never saw anything like it. I had quite an
escort of cavalry, two horsemen, who rode side by side with me the whole
way to the mountain, and then, when we had to dismount and climb up
through the boulders of some dry torrent course, I had two linkmen or
torchbearers, leaping on the crest of the ditch on either side, and
lighting me right up to the door of the cabin. It was a picture that
Rembrandt might have painted."

He paused and blushed a little, as if he had been pedantic.

"But tell me, Father," said he, "is this the custom in the country?"

"Oh yes," said I; "we look upon it as a matter of course. Your
predecessors didn't make much of it."

"It seems to me," he said, "infinitely picturesque and beautiful. It
must have been some tradition of the Church when she was free to
practise her ceremonies. But where do they get these torches?"

"Bog-oak, steeped in petroleum," I said. "It is, now that you recall
it, very beautiful and picturesque. Our people will never allow a
priest, with the Blessed Sacrament with him, to go unescorted."

"Now that you have mentioned it," he said, "I distinctly recall the
custom that existed among the poor of Salford. They would insist always
on accompanying me home from a night sick-call. I thought it was
superfluous politeness, and often insisted on being alone, particularly
as the streets were always well lighted. But no. If the men hesitated,
the women insisted; and I had always an escort to my door. But this
little mountain ceremony here is very touching."

"Who was sick?"

"Old Conroy,--a mountain ranger, I believe. He is very poorly; and I
anointed him." "By Jove," said he after a pause, "how he did pray,--and
all in Irish. I could imagine the old Hebrew prophets talking to God
from their mountains just in that manner. But why do they expect to be
anointed on the breast?"

"I do not know," I replied, "I think it is a Gallican custom introduced
by the French refugee priests at the beginning of the century. The
people invariably expect it."

"But you don't?" he asked in surprise.

"Oh dear, no. It would be hardly orthodox. Come, and if you are not too
tired, we'll have a walk."

I took him through the village, where he met salaams and genuflections
enough; and was stared at by the men, and blessed by the women, and
received the mute adoration of the children. We passed along the bog
road, where on either side were heaps of black turf drying, and off the
road were deep pools of black water, filling the holes whence the turf
was cut. It was lonely; for to-day we had not even the pale sunshine to
light up the gloomy landscape, and to the east the bleak mountains
stood, clear-cut and uniform in shagginess and savagery, against the
cold, gray sky. The white balls of the bog cotton waved dismally in the
light breeze, which curled the surface of a few pools, and drew a curlew
or plover from his retreat, and sent him whistling dolefully, and
beating the heavy air, as he swept towards mountain or lake. After half
an hour's walking, painful to me, the ground gently rose, and down in
the hollow a nest of poplars hid from the western gales. I took Father
Letheby through a secret path in the plantation. We rested a little
while, and talked of many things. Then we followed a tiny path, strewn
with withered pine needles, and which cut upward through the hill. We
passed from the shelter of the trees, and stood on the brow of a high
declivity. I never saw such surprise in a human face before, and such
delight. Like summer clouds sweeping over, and dappling a meadow,
sensations of wonder and ecstasy rolled visibly across his fine mobile
features. Then, he turned, and said, as if not quite sure of himself:--

"_Why! 't is the sea!_"

So it was. God's own sea, and his retreat, where men come but seldom,
and then at their peril. There the great ball-room of the winds and
spirits stretched before us, to-day as smooth as if waxed and polished,
and it was tessellated with bands of blue and green and purple, at the
far horizon line, where, down through a deep mine shaft in the clouds,
the hidden sun was making a silent glory. It was a dead sea, if you
will. No gleam of sail, near or afar, lit up its loneliness. No flash of
sea bird, poised for its prey, or beating slowly over the desolate
waste, broke the heavy dulness that lay upon the breast of the deep. The
sky stooped down and blackened the still waters; and anear, beneath the
cliff on which we were standing, a faint fringe of foam alone was proof
that the sea still lived, though its face was rigid and its voice was
stilled, as of the dead.

Father Letheby continued gazing in silence over the solemn scene for
some time. Then lifting his hat he said aloud:--

"Mirabiles elationes maris;
Mirabilis in altis Dominus!"

"Not very many 'upliftings' to-day," I replied. "You see our great
friend at a disadvantage. But you know she has moods: and you will like
her."

"Like her!" he replied. "It is not liking. It is worship. Some kind of
Pantheism which I cannot explain. Nowhere are the loneliness and
grandeur of God so manifested. Mind, I don't quite sympathize with that
comparison of St. Augustine's where he detects a resemblance between yon
spectra of purple and green and the plumage of a dove. What has a dove
to do with such magnificence and grandeur? It was an anti-climax, a
bathos, of which St. Augustine is seldom guilty. 'And the Spirit of God
moved upon the face of the waters.' There's the sublime!"

"It is desolate," said I. "Not even a seamew or a gull."

"Quite so," he replied. "It is limitless and unconditioned. There is its
grandeur. If that sea were ploughed by navies, or disfigured by the
hideous black hulks of men-of-war, it would lose its magnificence. It
would become a poor limited thing, with pygmies sporting on its bosom.
It is now unlimited, free, unconditioned, as space. It is the infinite
and the eternal in it that appeals to us. When we were children, the
infinite lay beyond the next mountain, because it was the unknown. We
grew up and we got knowledge; and knowledge destroyed our dreams, and
left us only the commonplace. It is the unknown and unlimited that still
appeals to us,--the _something_ behind the dawn, and beyond the sunset,
and far away athwart the black line of that horizon, that is forever
calling, calling, and beckoning to us to go thither. Now, there is
something in that sombre glory that speaks to you and me. It will
disappear immediately; and we will feel sad. What is it? Voiceless
echoes of light from the light that streams from the Lamb?"

"I hope," I said demurely, for I began to fear this young enthusiast,
"that you don't preach in that tone to the people!"

"Oh dear, no," he said, with a little laugh, "but you must forgive my
nonsense. You gave me such a shock of surprise."

"But," he said, after a pause, "how happy your life must have been here!
I always felt in Manchester that I was living at the bottom of a black
chimney, in smoke and noise and fetor, material and spiritual. Here, you
have your holy people, and the silence and quiet of God. How happy you
must have been!"

"What would you think if we returned," I said. "It's almost our dinner
hour."

It was not so late, however, but that I was able to take a ten minutes'
stroll through the village, and bid "good day" to some of my
parishioners.

I suppose there was a note of interrogation hidden away somewhere under
my greeting, for I was told in different tones and degrees of
enthusiasm:--

"Yerra, your reverence, he's a nate man."

"Yerra, we never saw his likes before."

"He spakes almost as plain and common as yourself."

"They say, your reverence, that he's the son of a jook."

Some old cronies, who retained a lingering gratitude for Father
Laverty's snuff, diluted their enthusiasm a little.

"He is, indeed, a rale nice man. But God be with poor Father Tom
wherever he is. Sure 't was he was kind to the poor."

There was a deputation of young men waiting at my house. I have been
pestered from deputations and speeches since the Land League. A shaggy
giant stepped forward and said:--

"We have preshumed, your reverence, to call upon you to ascertain
whether you'd be agreeable to our what I may call unanimous intinsion of
asking the new cojutor to be prisident of the Gaelic association of
Kilronan, called the 'Holy Terrors.'"

I said I was agreeable to anything they wished: and Father Letheby
became president of the "Holy Terrors."

After dinner something put me into better humor. I suppose it was the
mountain mutton, for there's nothing like it in Ireland,--mutton raised
on limestone land, where the grass is as tender to the lips of the
sheep, as the sheep to the lips of men. I thought I had an excellent
opportunity of eliciting my curate's proficiency in his classics. With
a certain amount of timidity, for you never know when you are treading
on a volcano with these young men, I drew the subject around. I have a
way of talking enigmatically, which never fails, however, to reveal my
meaning. And after a few clever passes, I said, demurely, drawing out my
faded and yellow translation, made nearly thirty years ago:--

"I was once interested in other things. Here is a little weak
translation I once made of a piece of Greek poetry, with which you are
quite familiar. Ah me! I had great notions at the time, ideas of
corresponding with classical journals, and perhaps, sooner or later, of
editing a classic myself. But _Cui bono?_ paralyzed everything. That
fatal _Cui bono?_ that is the motto and watchword of every thinking and
unthinking man in Ireland. However, now that you have come, perhaps--who
knows? What do you think of this?"

I read solemnly:--

"I have argued and asked in my sorrow
What shall please me? what manner of life?
At home am I burdened with cares that borrow
Their color from a world of strife.
The fields are burdened with toil,
The seas are sown with the dead,
With never a hand of a priest to assoil
A soul that in sin hath fled.
I have gold: I dread the danger by night;
I have none: I repine and fret;
I have children: they darken the pale sunlight;
I have none: I'm in nature's debt.
The young lack wisdom; the old lack life;
I have brains; but I shake at the knees;
Alas! who could covet a scene of strife?
Give me peace in this life's surcease!"

"What do you think of this? It is a loose translation from Posidippus."

"It swings well," said Father Letheby. "But who was he?"

"One of the gnomic, or sententious poets," I replied.

"Greek or Latin?" he asked.

Then I succumbed.

"You never heard his name before?" I said.

"Never," said he emphatically.

I paused and reflected.

"The Bishop told me," said I, "that you were a great Greek scholar, and
took a medal in Greek composition?"

"The Bishop told me," said he, "that you were the best Greek scholar in
Ireland, with the exception, perhaps, of a Jesuit Father in Dublin."

We looked at each other. Then burst simultaneously into a fit of
laughter, the likes of which had not been heard in that room for many a
day.

"I am not sure," said I, "about his Lordship's classical attainments;
but he knows human nature well."

Father Letheby left next morning to see after his furniture. He had
taken a slated, one-storied cottage in the heart of the village. It was
humble enough; but it looked quite aristocratic amongst its ragged
neighbors.

CHAPTER IV

THE PANTECHNICON

The usual deadly silence of a country village in Ireland, which is never
broken but by the squeal of a pig, or the clucking of chickens, or a
high voice, heard occasionally in anger, was rudely shocked on the
following Thursday evening. The unusual commotion commenced with a
stampede of sans-culottish boys, and red-legged, wild-eyed girls, who
burst into the village streets with shouts of

"Rah! rah! the circus! the circus! the wild baste show! Rah! rah!"

In an instant every door frame was filled with a living picture. Women
of all shapes, and in all manners of _habille_ and _dishabille_, leaned
over the cross-doors and gazed curiously at the coming show. The men,
too phlegmatic even in their curiosity, simply shifted the pipe from one
side of the mouth to the other; and, as the object of all this curiosity
lumbered into the street, three loafers, who supported a blank wall
opposite my door, steered round as slowly as a vessel swings with the
tide, and leaned the right shoulder, instead of the left, against the
gable. It was a tremendous expenditure of energy; and I am quite sure
it demanded a drink. And I, feeling from these indications that
something unusual was at hand, drew back my window curtains, and stared
decorously at the passing wonder. It was a long van, drawn by two
horses, which sweated and panted under the whip of their driver. It was
painted a dark green; and in gold letters that glittered on the green, I
read the magic legend:--

PANTECHNICON.

"Pan" is Greek for "all," thought I; and "technicon" is appertaining to
art. It means an exhibition of all the arts; that is, a Gypsy wagon with
bric-a-brac, or one of these peep-shows, which exhibits to admiring
youngsters Napoleon crossing the Alps, or Marius sitting on the ruins of
Carthage. I let the curtain fall, and went back to my books; but in a
moment I heard the caravan stopping just a few doors below, and I heard
my bedroom window raised; and I knew that Hannah was half way between
heaven and earth. I have not a particle of curiosity in my composition,
but I drew back the curtain again, and looked down the street. The van
had stopped at Father Letheby's new house, and a vast crowd surged
around it. The girls kept at a respectful distance, whilst the men
unyoked their horses; but the boys stood near, in the attitude of
runners at a tournament, ready to make off the moment the first ominous
growl was heard. The adults were less excited, though quite as curious,
and I could hear the questionings over the silence of expectation that
had fallen on the village.

"Yerra, what is it?"

"How do I know? It's the place where the circus people live."

"O--yeh! what a quare place to live in? And where do they sleep?"

"In the wagon."

"An' ate?"

"In the wagon."

"Yerra, they're not Christians at all, at all."

Then the men slowly opened the door of the wagon, and took out, from a
mass of canvas and straw, a dainty satin-covered chair. A tidy, well
dressed servant, with a lace cap perched on the top of her head, and
what the village folk called "sthramers" flying behind, came out of
Father Letheby's cottage, and helped to take the furniture within. As
each pretty article appeared, there was a chorus of "oh-h-hs" from the
children. But the climax of delight was reached when a gilt mirror
appeared. Then for the first time sundry boys and girls saw their own
dear smutty faces; and huge was their delight. But I am wrong. The
climax came when the heaviest article appeared. Great was the curiosity.

"What is it? what is it?" "A bed?" "No." "A dresser?" "No." "A thing for
books?" "No."

But one enlightened individual, who had been up to the great house at a
spring cleaning, astonished the natives by declaring that it was a
piano.

"A pianney? Yeh, for what? A priest with a pianney! Yerra, his niece is
going to live wid him. Yerra, no! He'll play it himself."

Which last interpretation was received with shouts of incredulous
laughter. What a versatile people we are! And how adoration and
laughter, and reverence and sarcasm, move side by side in our character,
apparently on good terms with each other. Will the time come when the
laughter and the wit, grown rampant, will rudely jostle aside all the
reverential elements in our nature, and mount upwards to those fatal
heights which other nations have scaled like Satan,--and thence have
been flung into the abyss?

I was curious to know what Hannah thought of it all. Hannah too is
versatile; and leaps from adoration to envy with wonderful facility.

"Father Letheby's furniture, I suppose?" I said, when she brought in the
dinner.

"I believe so," she replied, in a tone of ineffable scorn,--"a parcel of
gimcracks and kimmeens."

"I thought they looked nice from here," I said.

"Don't sit on his chairs, unless you have your will made," she said.

"Did I see a looking-glass?" I asked.

"Oh yes! to curl his hair, I suppose. And a pianney to play polkas."

"It isn't as solid as ours, Hannah," I said. This opened the
flood-gates of wrath.

"No," she said, in that accent of sarcasm in which an Irish peasant is
past master, "nor purtier. Look at that sophy now. Isn't it fit for any
lady in the land? And these chairs? Only for the smith, they'd be gone
to pieces long ago. And that lovely carpet? 'T would do for a flag for
the 'lague.' You haven't one cup and saucer that isn't cracked, nor a
plate that isn't burnt, nor a napkin, nor a tablecloth, nor a
saltcellar, nor--nor a--nor a--"

"I'll tell you what, Hannah," I said. "Father Letheby is going to show
us what's what. I'll furnish the whole house from top to bottom. Was
that his housekeeper?"

"I suppose so," she said contemptuously. "Some poor girl from an
orphanage. If she wasn't, she wouldn't wear them curifixes."

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