My New Curate Part 21

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, G.o.d help me! 'T isn't the men I care about, nor their doings. But whin the young girls would cra.s.s the street, les' they should come near me, and the dacent mothers 'ud throw their ap.r.o.ns 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 h.e.l.l 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 G.o.d'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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 G.o.d'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 Ma.s.s, 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 G.o.d 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 rea.s.sure 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' G.o.d!"

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 5: Charity towards men, as the charity of G.o.d 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 antic.i.p.ated. 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 antic.i.p.ated; 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 a.s.sociations 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 a.s.sociations. 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 G.o.d'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 sc.r.a.p 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 n.o.ble idealism, that spurns the thought of consequences, only sees the finger of G.o.d 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 n.o.ble lines:--

"Ultima c.u.maei venit jam carminis aetas; Magnus ab integro saeclorum nascitur ordo.

Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna; Jam nova progenies caelo demitt.i.tur 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?"