My New Curate Part 33

Here the poor child sobbed again, and picked the coverlet mournfully as she tried to choke down her emotion. I looked over at that statue of the Blessed Virgin and shook my head reproachfully.

"Oh! Father, why does G.o.d punish us so terribly for such small sins?"

the poor girl went on. "And what must purgatory be, and what must h.e.l.l be when He punishes us so dreadfully here! I thought 't was all over and my fear was vanishing, when one Sunday morning, dressing for Ma.s.s, I noticed a tiny pimple here on my cheek. It wasn't as big as the head of a pin; but it gave me great trouble. Not that I suspected anything; but when our poor heads are turned with vanity, you don't know, Father, what a worry these little blemishes are. I just touched it with my finger and it bled. That night 't was an angry spot. I used everything I could think of--lard, and b.u.t.ter, and ointment. No use. Every day it grew and grew and grew into an ugly sore. Then I wrote, as Miss Levis advised me, to a London doctor, recommended in the journals; he sent me a prescription--"

"For nothing?" I interjected.

"No, indeed, Father. Before I was done with him it cost me a pound. But I applied his cosmetics and became daily worse. Then my mother spoke of making rounds. But I wouldn't leave her. I went to the school every day, but I saw the girls watching me. I heard them whisper to each other, and sometimes I caught their words. They weren't kind. Then I stopped away. One day, while I was sitting at the door knitting, suddenly the sun was darkened, and there was the dreadful face of that woman over me.

"'I'm asking charity for G.o.d's sake,' she said.

"I got up humbly and gave her bread and twopence. She looked at me keenly and said: 'G.o.d save you, alanna, and purtect you from misfortune.

Sure, 't was only a hasty word you said. G.o.d save you and purtect you, alanna!'

"Then the frightful anger of G.o.d coming down upon me suddenly flashed upon me, and I flung aside my knitting and rushed into this room, and cried and screamed, and bit the counterpane until I tore it in threads, and shrieked:--

"'Don't! don't, O Lord; Oh, don't! don't!'

"And then I turned to the Blessed Virgin and said the little prayer 'Remember' that you taught us, Father; 'Remember;' and then I said:--

"'You won't let Him, Mother! you won't let Him! Didn't you say you wouldn't let Him?'

"But the face stared down at me pitilessly, pitilessly. There was no hope."

The poor child stopped again, and to relieve her from the pain of memory I said:--

"But wasn't the doctor called in all this time? The doctor is very clever, you know."

"Oh, he was, Father! And he was very kind. But he was very angry; and I think, Father, he cursed when I told him about these London cosmetics.

And one day he asked mother a lot of queer questions about father and grandfather; and then he said something about 'strumous' and 'hereditary;' and he has done me no good."

"Did Father Letheby call?" I asked.

"Oh, dear, yes, that was my only consolation. He calls twice a week, sometimes three times; and he brought Miss Campion, and she comes every day and reads for hours with me; and look at those violets and lilies of the valley--'t was she brought them; and sometimes a strange gentleman comes with her, and he sits down and talks and puts queer questions to me--all about G.o.d, and what I do be doing, and what I do be thinking.

But since Father Letheby told me that there is something behind it all that I don't understand, and that some day I will understand it, and see it is all G.o.d's love and not His anger, I am quite resigned, Father, and I do be saying all day: 'Thy Will be done! Thy Will be done.' But I break down when I think of all I've gone through."

"Let me see," I said, as a light began to dawn upon me; "you are now perfectly resigned, my poor child, are you not?"

"Oh! yes, Father; and really happy. Only for mother, who frets about me so much, I wouldn't care to be well again. Sure, as Father Letheby says, I don't know but that something dreadful was in store for me; and that G.o.d, in His mercy, has just saved me."

"Quite right! quite right! my child. And tell me now,--this strange gentleman,--has he ever asked you to pray for him?"

"He did, Father. And I didn't like it at first; but Father Letheby said I should. And I have been saying a Rosary for him every day since. And the last day he was here he asked me: 'Now, Alice, tell me the plain truth. Are you glad this has happened you?' I hesitated for a moment, then I looked at the Wounds of our Lord, and I said firmly: 'I am.' And he said: 'Do you believe G.o.d will give you back your beauty, and make it a hundred times greater in heaven for all you have suffered here?' And I said confidently: 'I do.' 'Alice, my child, will you pray and pray strongly for me?' I said: 'I will, sir.' And he went away looking happy.

But, you know, Father, these are my good times, when I feel resigned and think G.o.d is using me for His own wise purposes; welcome be His Holy Will! But I am sometimes bad, and I get unhappy and miserable, and I ask myself: 'Why did G.o.d do it? Why did G.o.d do it?' And once I said to our Blessed Lady, when she looked so cold and stern,--I said--"

"What did you say, dear?"

"I said: 'If Daddy Dan was here, he wouldn't let you do it.'"

And the poor child smiled at her own childishness and simplicity.

"But that's not all, Father. I have told no one but mother and you; but I'm all one running sore down to my feet, and the doctor said something about an operation the other day. Sure, you won't allow that, Daddy Dan, will you?"

She was rolling one of the b.u.t.tons in my sleeve round and round in her thin fingers, and looking wistfully at me.

"No, my child, no operation! You have gone through too much for that.

But now cheer up, Alice, it will all come right. Some of these days you will see how our dear Lord and His Holy Mother love you. Why, don't you know, you little goose, that these are signs of your predestination?

Don't you remember all that you have learned about the saints, and how they prayed to be afflicted?"

"I do, Daddy Dan."

"And don't you remember all about those holy women that were marked with the wounds of our Divine Lord?"

"I do, Daddy Dan."

"Very well! Now you're one of them. The Lord has made you His own. Now, good by. I'll come to see you every day in future. But pray! pray! pray!

won't you?"

"I will, Daddy Dan! Will you come to-morrow?"

This was all very well; but I was as cross as a bear with a sore head, notwithstanding.

"Wisha, then, Mrs. Moylan," I said, as I was leaving the house, "aren't you the mighty proud woman entirely, never to call in your parish priest, nor send him word about your poor child! What are we coming to, I wonder, when poor people are getting so much above themselves?"

"Well, then, I didn't like to be troubling your reverence. And sure, I thought you knew all about it, and that Father Letheby told you."

"He didn't, then. You and he have kept it a great secret,--a great secret entirely. Never mind. But tell me, is the poor child really resigned?"

"Well, indeed she is, your reverence, excep' now and then, when the whole thing comes back to her. In fact, she's less trouble than when she was well. Then nothing could please her. She was always grumblin' about her clothes, an' her food; and she was short and peevish. Now she is pleased with everythin'. 'T is 'whatever you like, mother;' or ''t is too good for me, mother;' or 'thank you kindly, mother,' until sometimes I do be wishing that she had some of the old sperrit, and take me short in her answers. But, sure, 't is all G.o.d's Blessed and Holy Will. Glory be to His Holy Name!"

I went back through the village again and called upon Father Letheby. He was just sitting down to dinner.

"I don't want to take away your appet.i.te," I said, refusing the chair which he proffered; "but I am for the first time genuinely angry with you. I suppose you had your reasons for it; but you ought to know that a parish priest has, by every law, natural and canonical, the right to know about his sick or distressed poor people, and that a curate has no right to be keeping these things a secret from him. Reticence and secretiveness are excellent things in their way; but this too may be overdone. I have just been down to Mrs. Moylan's to learn for the first time that her child has been sick for nearly two months. You knew it and you never told me. Now, I'll insist for the future that a sick-call book shall be kept in the sacristy, and that the name of every patient, in the parish shall be entered there. Good evening."

He flushed up, but said nothing.

I pa.s.sed the chapel door and went in straight up to the altar of the Blessed Virgin.

"Now," I said, "you've carried this entirely too far. Is this the return I've got for all I've done for you for the past fifty years? Think of all the Rosaries I said for you, all the Ma.s.ses I offered for you, all the May devotions I established for you, all the Brown Scapulars I gave for you--all--all--and this is your return; and she your own child, that I thought was so like you. 'Pon my word, I think I'll blow out that lamp and never light it again."

The mild, brown eyes looked down on me calmly, and then that queer thing called Conscience, that jumps up like a jack-in-the-box when you least expect it, started at me and began:--

"What folly is this, Father Dan? Do you think you know more than G.o.d and His Blessed Mother? Do you? Your head is so turned with heathen vanity that you think you ought to get the reins of the universe into your hands. Here's your cla.s.sics, and your Spinoza, and your Cappadocians, and your book-writing, and all your castles in the air, and your little children lying on their sick-beds and you knowing nothing about it. Look sharp, old man, your time is at hand, and think what the Judge may do with you when His hand presses so tightly on His little children."

I sat down to my dinner, but couldn't touch a bit. It was a nice little dinner, too,--a little roast chicken and a sc.r.a.p of bacon and some nice floury potatoes. No use. The thought of that child would come before me, and her piteous cry: "Oh, don't, dear Lord, don't!" and, "Sure you won't let Him, Mother; you said you wouldn't;" and with a great big lump in my throat I pushed aside the plate and went over to the darkening window.

After a time Hannah came in, looked at the dishes, and looked at me.