My New Curate Part 49

"But they were kind when they picked you up?"

"So far as talking gibberish and pouring whiskey into us, they were; but whin they landed us, one dirty frog-eater sang out:--

"It's addiyou, not O revwar!"

Just a week after these events, that is, the Wednesday after my great sermon, which is now a respectable landmark, or datemark, at Kilronan, I got the first letter from Bittra. Here it is, brief and pitiful:--

Hotel Bristol, Paris, Sunday.

Rev. dear Father Dan:--Here we are in the world's capital. The air is so light that you should sift the heavy atmosphere of Kilronan a hundred times to make it as soft and exhilarating. We ran through London, seeing enough to make one wish to escape it; and we are boulevarding, opera-seeing, picture-gallery-visiting, church-going since. The churches are superb; but--the people! Fancy only two men at Ma.s.s at Ste. Clotilde's, and these two leaned against a pillar the whole time, even during the Elevation. I had a terrible distraction; I couldn't help saying all the time: "If Father Dan was here, he'd soon make ye kneel down;" and I fancied you standing before them, and making them kneel down by one look. But the women are pious. It's all beautiful; but I wish I were home again! Rex is all kindness; but he's a little shocked at our French customs.

"Are these Catholics?" he says, and then is silent. How is dear father? I fear he'll be lonesome without his _pet.i.te mignonne_.

Mind, you are hereby invited and commanded to dine every evening with papa, and also Father Letheby. Love to St. Dolores! Tell Mrs.

Darcy I inquired for her. What havoc she would make of the cobwebs here!

Dear Father Dan, Always your affectionate child, Bittra Ormsby.

P. S. Remember you dine with papa every day. No ceremony. He likes to be treated _en bon camarade_! Isn't that good French?

"You never know what a pitiful thing human wisdom is," said Father Letheby, one of these dismal days of suspense, "until you come to test it in sorrow. Now, here's a writer that gives me most intense pleasure when I have been happy; and I say to every sentence he writes: 'How true! How beautiful! What superb a.n.a.lysis of human emotion and feeling!'

But now, it's all words, words, words, and the oil of gladness is dried up from their bare and barren rhetoric. Listen to this:--

"'A time will come, must come, when we shall be commanded by mortality not only to cease tormenting others, but also ourselves.

A time must come, when man, even on earth, shall wipe away most of his tears, were it only from pride. Nature, indeed, draws tears out of the eyes, and sighs out of the breath so quickly, that the wise man can never wholly lay aside the garb of mourning from his body; but let his soul wear none. For if it is ever a merit to bear a small suffering with cheerfulness, so must the calm and patient endurance of the worst be a merit, and will only differ in being a greater one, as the same reason, which is valid for the forgiveness of small injuries, is equally valid for the forgiveness of the greatest.... Then let thy spirit be lifted up in pride, and let it contemn the tear, and that for which it falls, saying: "Thou art much too insignificant, thou every-day life, for the inconsolableness of an immortal,--thou tattered, misshapen, wholesale existence!" Upon this sphere, which is rounded with the ashes of thousands of years, amid the storms of earth, made up of vapors, in this lamentation of a dream, it is a disgrace that the sigh should only be dissipated together with the bosom that gives it birth, and that the tear should not perish except with the eye from which it flows.'"

"It sounds sweetly and rhythmically," I replied, "but it rests on human pride, which is a poor, sandy foundation. I would rather one verse of the 'Imitation.' But he seems to be a good man and an eloquent one."

"He apologizes for the defects of philosophy," said Father Letheby. "He says:--

"'We must not exact of philosophy that, with one stroke of the pen, it shall reverse the transformation of Rubens, who, with one stroke of his brush, changed a laughing child into a weeping one. It is enough if it change the full mourning of the soul into half-mourning; it is enough if I can say to myself, "I will be content to endure the sorrow that philosophy has left me; without it, it would be greater, and the gnat's bite would be the wasp's sting."'

"Now, this is a tremendous admission from a philosopher in love with his science. It shows that he cares for truth more than for mere wisdom--"

"Look here, young man, something has brightened you up; this is the first day for the fortnight that you have condescended to turn your thoughts away from the luxury of fretting."

"Ay, indeed," he said, and there was a faint halo around his face.

"Three things--work, Dolores, and my weekly hour. I have trampled all my bitterness under the hoofs of hard work. I have my first chapter of 'The Cappadocians' ready for the printer. I tell you work is a n.o.ble tonic.

It was the best thing Carlyle wrote,--that essay on Work. Then this afflicted child shames me. She takes her crucifixion so gloriously. And last, but not least, when I pa.s.s my hour before the Blessed Sacrament--an hour is a long time, Father Dan, and you think of a lot of things--and when all the Christian philosophy about shame, and defeat, and suffering, and ignominy comes back to me, I a.s.sure you I have been angry with myself, and almost loathe myself for being such a coward as to whimper under such a little trial."

"Very good! Now, that's common sense. Have you heard from the Board?"

"Yes; that's all right. They are going to hold an investigation to try and make that French steamer responsible, as I believe she is, for two reasons: she was going full speed in the fog; and she should have observed the rule of the road, or of the sea, that a steamer is always bound to give way to a sailing vessel. And I am becoming thoroughly convinced now, from all that I can hear, that it was no accident. I should like to know what took that steamer away from the fleet, and five miles out of her ordinary course. I'm sure the Board will mulct her heavily."

"But has the Board jurisdiction over foreign vessels ten or twelve miles from sh.o.r.e?"

"That I don't know. I wish Ormsby were home."

"So do I, except for the tragedy we'll have to witness with that poor child."

"Have you heard lately?"

"Not since she wrote from Paris."

"Alice had a letter from Florence yesterday. Such a pitiful letter, all about her father. There was a good deal that Alice did not understand,--about Dante, and Savonarola, and the Certosa,--but she said I'd explain it. Clearly she knows nothing as yet."

But the revelation was not long delayed, and it came about in this wise.

I had a letter--a long letter--from Bittra from Rome, in which she wrote enthusiastically about everything, for she had seen all the sacred places and objects that make Rome so revered that even Protestants call it home and feel lonely when leaving it. And she had seen the Holy Father, and got blessings for us all,--for her own father, for Daddy Dan, for Dolores, for Father Letheby. "And," she wrote, "I cannot tell you what I felt when I put on the black dress and mantelletta and veil, which are _de rigueur_ when a lady is granted an audience with the Pope.

I felt that this should be my costume, not my travelling bridal dress; and I would have continued to wear it but that Rex preferred to see me dressed otherwise. But it is all delightful. The dear old ruins, the awful Coliseum, where Felicitas and Perpetua suffered, as you often told us; and here Pancratius was choked by the leopard; and there were those dreadful emperors and praetors, and even Roman women, looking down at the whole horrible tragedy. I almost heard the howl of the wild beasts, and saw them spring forward, and then crouch and creep onwards towards the martyrs. Some day, Rex says, we'll all come here together again--you, and papa, and Father Letheby,--and we'll have a real long holiday, and Rex will be our guide, for he knows everything, and _he'll charge nothing_." Alas! her presentiment about the mourning dress was not far from verification. They travelled home rapidly, up through Lombardy, merely glancing at Turin and Milan and the Lakes. At Milan they caught the Swiss mail, and pa.s.sed up and through the mountains, emerging from the St. Gothard tunnel just as a trainful of pa.s.sengers burst from the refreshment rooms at Goschenen and thronged the mail to Brindisi. Here they rested; and here Bittra, anxious to hear English or Irish news, took up eagerly the "Times" of a month past, that lay on a side table, and, after a few rapid glances, read:--

"A sad accident occurred off the Galway coast, on Monday, June----.

The 'Star of the Sea,' a new fis.h.i.+ng-smack, especially built for the deep-sea fisheries, was struck on her trial trip by a French steamer and instantly submerged. Her crew were saved, except Captain Campion, the well-known yachtsman, who had taken charge of the boat for the occasion. He must have been struck insensible by the prow of the steamer, for he made no effort to save himself, but sank instantly. As the disaster occurred ten miles from land, there is no hope that his body will be recovered."

How she took the intelligence, her blank stare of horror, when Ormsby entered the dining-room, whilst she could only point in mute despair to the paper; how, the first shock over, she fell back upon the sublime teachings of religion for consolation; and how the one thing that concerned her most deeply manifested itself in her repeated exclamations of prayer and despair: "His soul! his soul! poor papa!"--all this Ormsby told us afterwards in detail. They hurried through Lucerne to Geneva, from Geneva to Paris, from Paris home, travelling night and day, his strong arm supporting her bravely, and he, in turn, strengthened in his new-born faith by the tenderness of her affection and the sublimity of her faith.

Of course, we knew nothing of all this whilst the days, the long days, of July drew drearily along with cloudless skies, but, oh! such clouded hearts! Suspense and uncertainty weighed heavily on us all. We did not know what to-morrow might bring. Occasionally a visitor came over through curiosity to see the theatre of the accident, shrug his shoulders, wonder at the folly of young men, and depart with an air of smug self-satisfaction. There were a few letters from the factory at Loughboro', complaining and then threatening, and at last came a bill for 96.0.0, due on the twelve machines, and an additional bill for 30.0.0, due on material. Then I wrote, asking the proprietor to take back machines and material, and make due allowance for both. I received a courteous reply to the effect that this was contrary to all business habits and customs. There the matter rested, except that one last letter came, after a certain interval, peremptorily demanding payment and threatening law proceedings.

One shamefaced, dreary deputation came to me from the young girls who had been employed in the factory. They expressed all kinds of regrets for what they had done, promised amendment, guaranteed steady work for the future, would only ask half pay, would work for some weeks for nothing even until the debts were paid off. I referred them briefly to Father Letheby.

"They couldn't face him. If he was mad with them and scolded them, they could bear it and be glad of it; but they couldn't bear to see his white face and his eyes. Would I go and see him for them, and bring back the key to Kate Ginivan?"

I did, and came back with a laconic _No_! Then for the first time they understood that they had knocked their foolish heads against adamant.

"There's nothing for us, then, but America, your reverence," they said.

"It would be a good thing for the country if some of you went, whatever," I said.

The following Sunday a deputation appeared in the village,--the good merchants from Kilkeel, who had subscribed the balance of two hundred pounds for the boat. They called just as Father Letheby was at breakfast, immediately after his last Ma.s.s. He received them courteously, but waited for what they had to say.

"That was an unfortunate thing about the boat, your reverence," said the spokesman.

"Very much so, indeed," said Father Letheby.

"A great misfortune, entirely," said another, looking steadily at the floor.

"We come to know, your reverence, what's going to be done," said the foreman.

"Well, the matter lies thus, gentlemen," said Father Letheby. "The Board of Trade is making careful investigations with a view to legal proceedings; and, I understand, are sanguine of success. They hope to make that steamer responsible for the entire amount."

"The law is slow and uncertain," said the foreman.

"And we understand that the crew do not even know the name of the steamer that ran them down," said another.

"You may be sure, gentlemen," said Father Letheby, "that the Board will leave nothing undone to secure their own rights and those of the proprietors. They have already intimated to me that I shall be called upon to prosecute in case the Inspector of the Board of Trade finds that there was malice prepense or culpable negligence on the part of the master of the steamer, and I am fully prepared to meet their wishes.

This means a prosecution, out of which, I am sanguine, we shall emerge victorious; and then there will be no delay in discharging our obligations to you individually."

"Live, horse, and you'll get gra.s.s," said one of the deputation insolently, presuming on the quiet tone Father Letheby had a.s.sumed.