My New Curate Part 50

"'T is hunting for a needle in a bundle of straw," said another.

Father Letheby flushed up, but said nothing. The foreman a.s.sumed a calm, magisterial air.

"You will remember, Reverend sir," he said, "that this subscription to what some considered a Uropean[7] idea was not, I may say, advanced on our part. It was only at your repeated solicitations, Reverend sir, that we consented to advance this sum out of our hard earnings--"

"Hard enough, begor," said a member; "'t isn't by booklarnin', but by honest labor, we got it."

"If you would kindly allow me, Mr. ----," said the foreman, in a commiserating tone, "perhaps I could explain to the Reverend gentleman our views in a more--in a more--in a more--satisfactory manner."

"There's simply nothing to be explained," said Father Letheby. "The boat is at the bottom of the sea; I am responsible to you for two hundred pounds. That's all."

"Pardon me, sir," said the eloquent foreman, who was nettled at the idea that his oratory was not acceptable--and he had once proposed a Member for Parliament--"pardon me, that is not all. We--a--are accustomed to repose in our clergymen the highest, and indeed, I may add, the deepest confidence. When that good lady--I quite forget her name, it is so long since I read my cla.s.sics--perhaps, sir, you could help me--ahem!"

"I am quite at a loss to know to what excellent lady you refer," said Father Letheby.

"I'm very sorry to hear such a statement from the lips of a clergyman,"

said the foreman, with much severity; "for the lady to whom I refer is the representative, and, indeed, the personification of Justice--"

"Oh, you mean 'Astraea,'" said Father Letheby.

"Quite so, sir," said the merchant, pompously. "When Astery left the earth she took refuge in the Church."

"Indeed!" said Father Letheby, "I was not aware of that interesting fact."

"Well, sir," said the merchant, nettled at this sarcastic coolness, "at least we, laymen, are accustomed to think so. We have been taught to repose unbounded confidence in our clergy--"

"And how have I forfeited that confidence?" said Father Letheby, who began to see a certain deliberate insult under all this silliness.

"Well, you see, sir," he continued, "we relied on your word of honor, and did not demand the usual securities for the advance of our money.

And now we find ourselves in a curious predicament--our money gone, and no redress."

"You doubt my word of honor now?" said Father Letheby, who, to his own seeming, had been a miracle of patience.

"We have been deceived, sir," said the merchant, grandly.

"Pray, how?" said Father Letheby. "You may not be aware of the meaning of your language, nor of the usual amenities of civilized society, but you should at least know that your language approaches very closely to insult."

"We _have_ been deceived, sir," said the other, severely.

"Might I repeat my question, and ask you how?" said Father Letheby.

"We got the most repeated a.s.surance, sir," said the merchant, "that this boat would be a mine of wealth. Instead of that, it is, if I may so speak, a tornado of ruin and misfortune. It lies, if I may use the expression, at the bottom of the briny sea."

"To cut a long story short," said another of the deputation, "that boat was a swindle from beginning to end, and I know it--"

"Pardon me, gentlemen," said Father Letheby, rising, "but I must now cut short the interview, and ask you to retire--"

"Ask us to retire with our money in your pocket!"

"Turn us out, and we--"

"Now, gentlemen, there is no use in prolonging this unpleasantness. Be good enough to leave my house. Lizzie, show these gentlemen the door."

He had touched the bell.

"We retire, sir, but we shall come again. We retreat, but we return.

Like Marius,"--the foreman was now in the street, and there was a pretty fair crowd around the door,--"like Marius, like Marius--"

"Who the d----l would marry the likes of you, you miserable omadhaun,"

said Jem Deady, who knew by instinct that this was a hostile expedition.

"Give us de word, your reverence, and we'll chuck the whole bloomin' lot into the say. It was many a long day since they had a bat', if we're to judge by dere dirty mugs."

This was the signal for a fierce demonstration. In a moment the village was in arms, men rushed for stones, women, hastily leaving the dinner-tables, gathered up every kind of village refuse; and amidst the din of execration and abuse the shopkeepers of Kilkeel climbed on their cars and fled; not, however, without taking with them specimens, more or less decayed, of the _fauna_ and _flora_ of Kilronan, in the shape of eggs redolent of sulphuretted hydrogen, a few dead cats, and such potatoes and other vegetables as could be spared from the Sunday dinner.

The people of Kilronan had, of course, a perfect right to annoy and worry their own priests, especially in the cause of Trades-Unionism; but the idea of a lot of well-dressed malcontents coming over from Kilkeel to insult their beloved curate was simply intolerable.

Nevertheless, that lonely walk by the sea-cliffs that Sunday afternoon was about the most miserable experience in Father Letheby's life. He did not know whither to turn. Every taunt and insult of these ignorant men came back to sting him. What would it be if the whole thing came to publicity in the courts, and he was made the b.u.t.t of unjust insinuations by some unscrupulous barrister, or the object of the lofty, moral indignation of the bench! Yet he felt bound, by every law of honor, to pay these men two hundred pounds. He might as well be asked to clear off the national debt. Now and again he paused in his walk, and, leaning on his umbrella, scrutinized the ground in anxious reverie; then he lifted up his eyes to the far horizon, beneath whose thin and misty line boat and captain were sleeping. Then he went on, trying in vain to choke down his emotion. "Star of the Sea! Star of the Sea!" he muttered.

Then, half unconsciously: "Stella maris! Stella maris!! Porta manes, et stella maris, succurre cadenti surgere qui curat populo!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 7: "Utopian," I suppose, the poor man meant.]

CHAPTER XXIX

STIGMATA?

I do not think it was personal humiliation, or the sense of personal shame, or dread of further exposure, that really agitated Father Letheby during these dreary days, so much as the ever-recurring thought that his own ignominy would reflect discredit on the great body to which he belonged. He knew how rampant and how unscrupulous was the spirit of criticism in our days; and with what fatal facility the weaknesses and misfortunes of one priest would be supposed, in the distorted mirrors of popular beliefs, to be reflected upon and besmirch the entire sacred profession. And it was an intolerable thought that, perhaps in far distant years, his example would be quoted as evidence of folly or something worse on the part of the Irish priesthood. "When Letheby wasted hundreds of pounds belonging to the shopkeepers of Kilkeel," or, "Don't you remember Letheby of Galway, and the boat that was sunk?"

"What was his bishop doing?" "Oh, he compelled him to leave the diocese!" These were the phrases, coined from the brazen future, that were flung by a too fervid or too anxious imagination at his devoted head; and if the consolations of religion healed the wounds rapidly, there were ugly cicatrices left behind, which showed themselves in little patches of silver here and there in his hair, and the tiny fretwork of wrinkles in his forehead and around his mouth. Then, whilst speaking, he grew frequently abstracted, and would start and murmur: "I beg pardon! I didn't quite catch what you were saying." Then I understood that he had sleepless nights as well as troublous days; and all the time I was powerless to help him, though I yearned to be able to do so. What was most aggravating was the complete silence of Father Duff and his contemporaries during these days of trial, and the contemptuous and uncharitable criticisms that reached me, but did not reach Father Letheby, from quondam admirers and friends.

"Sure, we knew well how it would all turn out! These Utopian schemes generally do end in failure."

"If he had only followed the beaten track, there was every prospect of success before him; for, mind you, he had a fair share of ability."

"I wonder what will the bishop do?"

"I dare say he'll withdraw faculties and ask him to seek a mission abroad."

"Well, it is a warning to the other young fellows, who were tempted to follow him."

I was hoping that the return of Bittra and Ormsby would wean him away from his anxiety. But this, too, was pitiful and sad beyond words. I ventured to go see her the morning after their arrival. Ormsby came into the drawing-room first, and told me all particulars of their journey, and prepared me to see a great change in his young wife. Nevertheless, I was startled to see what a transformation a few days' agony had caused.

Bittra had a curious habit of holding her face upwards, like a child, when she spoke; and this innocent, ingenuous habit, so typical of her candor and openness of mind, was now accentuated by the look of blank and utter despair that had crept over her. If she had wept freely, or been hysterical, it would have been a relief; but no! she appeared dazed, and as if stricken into stone by the magnitude of her sorrow; and all the little accidents of home life,--the furniture, the gardens, her father's room and his wardrobe, his few books, his fishing-rods and fowling-pieces,--all were souvenirs of one whose place could not be filled in her soul, and whose tragic end, unsupported by the ministrations of religion, made the tender and reverent spirit of his child think of possibilities which no one can contemplate without a shudder. How different the Catholic from the non-Catholic soul! What an intense realization of eternity and the future of its immortal spirits in the one! How utterly callous and indifferent to that immortality is the other! What an awful idea of G.o.d's justice in the one! What cool contempt for G.o.d's dispensations in the other! And how the one realizes the bursting of bonds and the setting free of the immortal spirit unto the vast environments and accidents of life, whilst the other sees but dead clay with some dim ideas of a shadowy and problematical eternity!

"His soul! his soul!" Here was the burden of Bittra's grief. Ormsby could not understand it; he was frightened and bewildered. I tried every word of solace, every principle of hope, that are our inheritance, only to realize that--

"Not all the preaching since Adam Can make Death other than Death!"