My New Curate Part 27

"My G.o.d!" he cried, quite shocked. "What a scandal!"

"Not a bit of it," I said; "you've gone up a hundred per cent in the estimation of the villagers. There was a real fight for the window-sill.

But your friend, Jem Deady, captured it."

He looked dreadfully annoyed.

"Jem says that he kept awake all night trying to remember the notes; and if you'd give him the words of the song and whistle it--"

"What!" said Father Letheby, like a pistol-shot.

"And if you'd give him two or three audiences--I suppose he means rehearsals on the piano--he is quite sure--"

Dear me! how some people despise popularity!

CHAPTER XVIII

THE KAMPANER THAL

Events are thickening around me these winter days; and much oftener than in past years am I compelled to lay aside my pet authors, when my lamp is lighted, and my fire is sparkling merrily, whilst the earth is waking up from its winter's sleep, and stretching out its hands in the feeble lengthening of the evenings towards the approaching spring. This evening I had an unexpected visitor,--no less a person than Reginald Ormsby, the betrothed of Bittra. He came in modestly and apologetically, with all that gentlemanly deference that is so characteristic of the British officer. He made a nice little speech, explaining his reasons for visiting me so late, and mildly deprecating the anger of such a potentate as the parish priest of Kilronan. I had pulled the bell in the mean time, and Hannah had brought in the "materials"; and in reply to his pretty eloquence, I merely pushed the decanter towards him, and said:--

"Go ahead!"

He filled his wine-gla.s.s with a firm hand, until the blessed liquor made an arc of a circle on the summit; then tilted it over into the tumbler, without spilling a drop, then filled the tumbler to the top with hot water, and I said in my own mind, "He'll do."

"Of course," I said, after this little ceremony had been proceeded with, "you smoke?"

"I shouldn't venture to think of smoking in your pretty parlor, sir,"

said he. "You know cigar smoke hangs around the curtains for days, and--"

"Never mind the curtains," I replied. "I don't keep Havanas here, though I suppose we must soon, as that appears to be a const.i.tuent in the new education to which we old fossils are being subjected. But if you have a cigar-case about you, light up, like a good fellow. You have to say something of importance, I think, and they say a cigar promotes easy and consecutive thought."

"Very many thanks, sir," he said. "Then, with your permission, I will."

He smoked quietly for a few seconds, and it was a good cigar, I can tell you. The fragrance filled the whole house. Then I broke the ice:--

"Now, my curate has had several conferences with you about religion, and he told me he was going to try the _Kampaner Thal_."

"Oh, yes! so he did, indeed. He has been very kind."

I should say here that my theological friend and neighbor had written me: "I have hunted up all my cyclopaedias, and can find no trace whatever of that thing about which you were inquiring. From the word _Kampaner_, I suspect it has something to do with bells. Perhaps your curate wants a chime for your cathedral at Kilronan. When you get them, select C sharp, or B flat, and put it around his neck, that we may know where to find him. Yours truly--"

"Now," I said to Mr. Ormsby, "I do not know whether that _Kampaner Thal_ is bird, beast, fish, or insect; whether it is a powerful drug or a new system of hypnotism."

"Oh, 't is none of these dreadful things," he said, laughing; "'t is only a little book. Here it is! I always carry it about with me. It is really very beautiful."

I handled the little duodecimo with suspicion; then gave it back.

"It has done you a lot of good, I suppose?" I said, I am afraid, with a certain amount of contempt.

"I can't say it has," he replied sadly; then lapsed into moody reflection.

Now, gloom is the one thing I cannot tolerate; so to rouse him from his reverie, and possibly from a slight, venial prompting of curiosity, I asked him to read some pa.s.sages for me.

"My old sight cannot bear much of a strain," I said, "and the print is mighty small. Now, like a good fellow, pick out some good things, and read them slowly, for perhaps I may require to punctuate them."

So he read in a calm even monotone, without inflection, but with many pauses, whilst I watched every syllable and measured it.

"I have a strong objection to a _voyage pittoresque_ through the planets; we bear in our own b.r.e.a.s.t.s a heaven full of constellations. There is in our hearts an inward, spiritual world, that breaks like a sun upon the clouds of the outward world. I mean that inward universe of goodness, beauty, and truth,--three worlds that are neither part, nor shoot, nor copy of the outward. We are less astonished at the incomprehensible existence of these transcendental heavens because they are always there, and we foolishly imagine that we create, when we merely perceive them.

After _what model_, with what _plastic power_, and _from what_, could we create these same spiritual worlds? The atheist should ask himself how he received the giant idea of G.o.d, that he has neither opposed nor embodied. An idea that has not grown up by comparing different degrees of greatness, as it is the opposite of every measure and degree. In fact, the atheist speaks as others of _prototype_ and _original_."

"Stop there," I cried; "why that is the ontological argument of St.

Anselm, adopted afterwards by a soldier philosopher like yourself, called Descartes. There's nothing new under the sun. It is wonderful how modern artists can refurbish our old Masters and make wonderful pictures from them!"

"Quite so," he replied, "in lieu of yourselves. There, now, I am always too precipitate; pardon me, sir, if I am too bold; but you Catholics have a wonderful talent for burying your treasures in napkins. Have you any treatise on the immortality of the soul in English, and in such a style as this?"

"I am afraid," I replied, as I looked askance at the volume, "that just now I cannot mention one. But go on, if it does not tire you. Time is the cheapest thing we have in Ireland."

He continued:--

"'The inward world, that is indeed more splendid and admirable than the outward, needs another heaven than the one above us, and a higher world than that the sun warms; therefore, we say justly, not a second _earth_, or globe, but a second world beyond this universe.'

"Gione interrupted me: 'And every virtuous and wise man is a proof of another world.'

"'And,' continued Nadine quickly, 'every one who undeservedly suffers.'

"'Yes,' I answered; 'that is what draws our thread of life through a long eternity. The threefold echo of virtue, truth, and beauty, created by the music of the spheres, calls us from this hollow earth to the neighborhood of the music. Why and wherefore were these desires given us? Merely that, like a swallowed diamond, they should slowly cut through our earthly covering. Wherefore were we placed upon this ball of earth, creatures with light wings, if instead of soaring with our wings of ether, we are to fall back into the earth-clods of our birth?... Is an angel to be imprisoned in the body to be its dumb servant, its stove-warmer and butler, its _cuisinier_ and porter at the door of the stomach? Shall the ethereal flame merely serve to fill the circular stove with life's warmth, obediently burn and warm, then become cold and extinguished?'"

"Very good, indeed," I interrupted. "He knows how to put things in a virile way.'

"'The discrepancy between our wishes and our relations, between the _soul_ and the _earth_, remains a _riddle_ if we continue; and if we cease to live, a _blasphemy_. Strangers, born upon mountains, we consume in lowly places, with unhealthy _heimweh_ (home-sickness).

We belong to higher regions, and an eternal longing grows in our hearts at music, which is the _Kuhreigen_ of our native Alps....'

"'From hence what follows?' asked the chaplain (a Kantian).

"'Not that we are unhappy, but that we are immortal; and this world _within_ us demands and manifests a _second_ without us.... I cannot tell how painful, how monstrous and horrible the thought of an annihilating death, of an eternal grave, now appeared to me. Men often bear their errors, as their truths, about in words, and not in feeling; but let the believer in annihilation place before him, instead of a life of sixty years, one of sixty minutes; then let him look on the face of a beloved being, or upon a n.o.ble or wise man, as upon an aimless hour-long appearance; as a thin shadow that melts into light and leaves no trace; can he bear the thought? No!

the supposition of imperishableness is always with him; else there would hang always before his soul, as before Mahomet's in the fairest sky, a dark cloud; and, as Cain upon the earth, an eternal fear would pursue him. Yes, if all the woods upon this earth were groves of pleasure; if all the valleys were Kampaner valleys; if all the islands were blessed, and all the fields Elysian; if all eyes were cheerful and all the hearts joyful,--yes, then--no! even then, had G.o.d, through this very blessedness, made to our spirits the _promise_, the _oath_ of eternal duration! But, now, O G.o.d!

when so many houses are houses of mourning, so many fields battlefields, so many cheeks pale, when we pa.s.s before so many eyes red with weeping or closed in death: Oh! can the grave, that haven of salvation, be the last swallowing, unyielding whirlpool? No, the trampled worm dares raise itself towards its Creator, and say, "Thou durst not create me only to suffer!"'"

I was listening with closed eyes to the reading, the quiet rhythm of the sentences, and the calm, deep music of his voice, sounding ineffably soothing, when a quaver, then a break in his voice, just as he repeated the last words, made me look toward him. The calm, strong man was weeping silently; and just then he broke into a paroxysm of sobs that shook his strong frame as by a palsy. Dear Lord! what hidden grief there is in the world! Who would ever dream that the calm exterior of this reasoning, cultivated atheist concealed such hidden fires? It was no time to talk; I let the poor fellow alone. After a few moments he dried his eyes, and said:--

"I am quite ashamed of this snivelling, Father. I shouldn't have attempted to read this. It always upsets me."

"Never mind, my poor boy," I said. "It is good for men sometimes to weep." I thought in my own mind, My little child will be in safe hands.