My New Curate Part 28

"Now, put it aside," I said gently, "and let us talk."

"One sentence more, Father, just to get over this weakness."

"'Ah, Carlson (Carlson stands for myself), upon what a beautiful world do you throw your immeasurable gravestone, that no time can lift. Your difficulties, which are founded on the _necessary_ uncertainties of men, if solved, would only have the effect to destroy our _faith_; which is the solution of a thousand other difficulties; without which our existence is without aim, our pains without solution, and the G.o.dlike Trinity within our b.r.e.a.s.t.s three avenging angels. From the formless earthworm up to the beaming human countenance; from the chaos of the first day up to the present age of the world; from the first faint motion of the heart to its full, bold throbbing in the breast of manhood, the invisible hand of G.o.d leads, protects, and nourishes the inward being; the _nursling of the outward_ educates and polishes and makes it beautiful--and wherefore? That when it stands as a demiG.o.d in the midst of the ruins of the temple of the body, the blow of death may prostrate it forever, that nothing shall remain from the corpse-veiled, the mourning and mantled immeasurable universe, but the eternally sowing, never harvesting, solitary spirit of the world! One eternity looking despairingly at the other; and in the whole spiritual universe no end, no aim! And all these contradictions and riddles, whereby not merely the harmony, but the very _strings_ of creation are tangled, must we take, merely on account of the difficulties, that, indeed, our annihilation cannot solve? Beloved Carlson! into this harmony of the spheres, that is not _over_, but ever _around_ us, will you bring your shrieking discord? See how gently and touchingly the day departs, and how holily the night comes! Oh, can you not believe that even thus our spirits shall arise from the dust, as you once saw the full moon arise over the crater of Vesuvius?'

"Gione took his hand and said:--

"'Amongst us all, will you alone be tormented with this despairing faith?'

"Two hot drops fell from his blinded eyes; he looked at the mountains, and said:--

"'I can bear no annihilation but my own. My _heart_ is of your opinion; my _head_ will slowly follow.'"

"And that, sir," said Ormsby, closing the book and putting it into his side pocket, "is just where I am. My heart is with you; if only my head would follow. Put Bittra for Gione, and you will understand my emotion."

"Even that won't do," I said; "the head might follow, and you might be as far from us as ever."

"I don't understand," he said in a bewildered way. "Surely all that's wanting now is a conviction of the truth of your teaching?"

"There's your grave mistake," I replied; "conviction is not faith. There are thousands of your countrymen filled with conviction of the truths of Catholicity; but they are as far outside the Church as a Confucian or a Buddhist. Faith is not a matter to be acquired by reading or knowledge.

It is a gift, like the natural talent of a great painter or musician--a sixth sense, and the pure gratuity of the All-Wise and the All-Good."

This appeared to him to be a revelation which he could not comprehend; it seemed to be such an inevitable logical sequence--conviction and profession.

"I am attracted by everything," he said, "in your Church. The whole thing appears to be such a well-connected scheme, so unlike the religion in which I was born and educated, where you had to be forever searching after a missing link. And then your Church seems to be founded on love--love of a supernal kind, of course, and almost unintelligible; but it is the golden chain in the string of pearls. You will have noticed how rapidly sometimes the mind makes comparisons. Well, often, at our station over there, I have thought, as I searched the sea, that we Protestants look at G.o.d through the large end of a telescope and throw Him afar off, and make Him very small and insignificant; whilst you look at Him through the narrower end, and magnify Him and bring Him near. Our G.o.d--that is, the G.o.d in whom I was taught to believe--is the G.o.d of Sinai, and our Christ is the historic Christ; but that won't do for a humanity that is ever querulous for G.o.d, and you have found the secret."

I was quite astonished at the solemn, thoughtful manner in which this young fellow spoke, and his words were so full of feeling and self-sympathy for his great privation. He was silent for a long time, smoking freely, whilst I was pondering many things, mostly in humility for our slow appreciation of the great gift of divine faith. At last, he said:--

"I do not quite follow you, sir, in your remark about a sixth sense; for this is not a question of sense, but of the soul."

We were now getting into deep water, and when an old gentleman hasn't opened a book of philosophy for nearly thirty years, he may be well excused for a certain timidity in approaching these deep questions. But, "keep to the metaphorical" has always been a great rule of mine, which never failed me.

"Let me explain," I said. "Have you ever been to an ophthalmic hospital or a blind asylum?"

"Yes," he replied, "princ.i.p.ally abroad."

"Well," I continued, "you might have noticed various forms of the dread disease of blindness. Some are cases of cataract; in some the entire ball is removed; some have partial sight behind the ugly film. But the most pathetic case to my mind is that of the young boy or girl who comes toward you, looking steadily at you with large, luminous eyes, the iris perfectly clear, the pupil normally distended, and even the white of the eye tinged with that delicate blue that denotes perfect health in the organ; but in one moment the truth flashes upon you--that poor patient is stone-blind. Now, where's the disease?"

"The optic nerve is destroyed," he answered promptly.

"Precisely. And now, if you were to pour in through the dark ca.n.a.l of the pupil the strongest sunlight, or even the flash of your electric searchlight, would it make any difference, do you think?"

"None," he said, "so far as sight was concerned; but it might possibly paralyze the brain."

"Precisely. And if you, my dear young friend, were pouring, till the crack of doom, every kind of human light--philosophical, dogmatic, controversial--upon the retina of the soul without the optic nerve of faith, you will be blind, and go blind to your grave."

Somehow this appeared to be a relief, though it looked like discouragement.

"It is something to know," he said, "that the fault is not altogether my own. But," after a pause, "this demands a miracle."

"Quite so. A pure light from G.o.d. And that is the reason that my excellent curate is storming the citadels of heaven for you by that terrible artillery--the prayers of little children. And if you want to capture this grace of G.o.d by one tremendous _coup_, search out the most stricken and afflicted of my flock (Bittra has a pretty good catalogue of them), and get him or her to pray for you, and very soon the sense of faith will awaken within you, and you will wonder that you were ever blind."

"Ten thousand thanks," he said, rising; "I had no antic.i.p.ations of so pleasant and instructive an evening."

"You were told to expect to meet a funny old fellow," I said, "with as many quips, and cranks, and jests, as old Jack Falstaff?"

"Well," he said, pulling his mustache nervously, "I should not like to put it so brusquely."

"Of course not. But there lies a big mistake, my dear boy. Democritus was as much a philosopher as Herac.l.i.tus, and he lived fifty years longer. There is a good deal of philosophy behind a laugh, and we put our gargoyles on the outside of our churches."

"Indeed, I must say, from a long experience," he replied, "and a grateful experience, that your men are the most cheerful cla.s.s I have met,--if I except our own sailors,--although the comparison sounds grotesque. And," he said hesitatingly, "that just reminds me; if I may take the freedom of showing my grat.i.tude in a small way, permit me to say to you as pastor, what I have already hinted to himself, that your most excellent curate will involve himself in a great deal of trouble and possible expense if he perseveres in that matter of the fis.h.i.+ng-boat. Indeed, I have been working the matter for him, because his heart is set on it; but I have misgivings. I'm not sure that I am quite right in mentioning the matter to you, sir; but I am really anxious, and I speak from long experience."

He lighted another cigar at the door, and I returned to think somewhat anxiously whether I had done credit to Catholic philosophy. But my thoughts would revert to these last words of Ormsby's. What if Father Letheby should get into a bad mess, and everything so promising? How little these young men reflect what a trouble they are to their old pastors!

CHAPTER XIX

LITERARY ATTEMPTS

I broke Captain Ormsby's advice to Father Letheby as gently as I could; and I flatter myself I have the talent of putting things in as roundabout a way as any professional diplomat. He took it badly. He is clearly overworking himself, for he now becomes irritable on the slightest provocation.

"Blocked everywhere!" he said, walking up and down his little room.

"Father Dan, you are right; and I am a fool. There is no use attempting to do any good in Ireland."

Now, this was not exactly the conclusion I wanted him to come to; but we have a national failing of generalizing from rather minute particulars.

"I'm not so sure of that," I said. "I think you have a fair share of work to do here, and that you have done it and are doing it remarkably well."

Absurd! There was not half enough to do to satisfy his Napoleonic ambition. Nothing but the Vicariate of the whole of the Dark Continent for this young man.

"Look here, Father Dan. My parochial work is over every day at four o'clock; and you have taught me to finish the Office, even by antic.i.p.ation, before dinner. Now, what on earth is a young fellow to do between four o'clock of a winter's evening and ten o'clock, when he retires? Once in a month I dine at Campion's; but the rest of the time, except when I run up to you--"

"And you don't come half enough, you, sir," I said. "I never saw anything like the--pride of young fellows nowadays."

"That's all right, Father Dan," he replied, somewhat more calmly; "but even with all your kindness, what in the world am I to do with my leisure time?"

"Read, and read, and read," I said. "Have you not the whole ocean of human knowledge to dip into?"

"Ah! _cui bono?_" he replied.

"_Cui bono?_ from you! I never thought I'd hear that fatal word again.

_Cui bono?_ from you! _Cui bono?_ from you!"

I was never so startled in my life. It was a dread revelation of dissatisfaction and ennui, that might lead no one knew whither.