My New Curate Part 5

"I am not quite sure," I replied. "He is probably this moment staking half his property on the red at Monte Carlo, or trying to peep into a harem at Stamboul, or dining off bison steak in some canon in the Sierras."

He looked shocked.

"But his agent,--his representative?"

"Oh! he's quite available. He will be very polite, and tell you in well chosen words that he can do--nothing."

"But the Governmental Office,--the Board of Works?"

"Quite so. You'll write a polite letter. It will be answered in four weeks to the day: 'We beg to acknowledge receipt of your communication, which shall have our earliest attention.' You'll write again. Reply in four weeks: 'We beg to acknowledge receipt of your communication, which we have placed before the Board.' You'll hear no more on the matter. But don't let me depress you!"

"But is there no redress? What about Parliament?"

"Oh, to be sure! A question will be asked in the House of Commons. The Chief Secretary will reply: 'The matter is under the deliberation of the Board of Works, with whose counsels we do not wish to interfere.'"

He was silent.

"About the factory," I continued. "You know there is a large s.h.i.+rt factory in Loughboro, six miles away. If you apply to have a branch factory established here, the manager will come down, look at the store, turn up his nose, ask you where are you to find funds to put the building in proper order, and do you propose to make the store also a fish-curing establishment; and then he will probably write what a high-born lady said of the first Napoleon: 'Il salissait tout ce qu'il touchait.'"

"It's a d.a.m.ned lie," said Father Letheby, springing up, and, I regret to say, demolis.h.i.+ng sundry little j.a.panese gimcracks, "our people are the cleanest, purest, sweetest people in the world in their own personal habits, whatever be said of their wretched cabins. But you are not serious, sir?"

He bent his glowing eyes upon me. I liked his anger. And I liked very much that explosive expletive. How often, during my ministry, did I yearn to be able to utter that emphatic word! Mind, it is not a cuss-word. It is only an innocent adjective--condemned. But what eloquence and emphasis there is in it! How often I could have flung it at the head of a confirmed toper, as he knelt at my feet to take the pledge. How often I could have shot it at the virago, who was disturbing the peace of the village; and on whom my vituperation, which fell like a shot without powder, made no impression! It sounded honest. I like a good fit of anger, honest anger, and such a gleam of lightning through it.

"I am," I said, "quite serious. You want to create a Utopia. You forget your Greek."

He smiled.

"I am reserving the worst," I said.

"What is it?" he cried. "Let me know the worst."

"Well," I said slowly, "the people won't thank you even in the impossible hypothesis that you succeed."

He looked incredulous.

"What! that they won't be glad to lift themselves from all this squalor and misery, and be raised into a newer and sweeter life?"

"Precisely. They are happy. Leave them so. They have not the higher pleasures. Neither have they the higher perils. 'They sow not, neither do they spin.' But neither do they envy Solomon in all his glory. Jack Haslem and Dave Olden sleep all day in their coracles. They put down their lobster pots at night. Next day, they have caught enough of these ugly brutes to pay for a glorious drunk. Then sleep again. How can you add to such happiness? By building a schooner, and sending them out on the high seas, exposed to all the dangers of the deep; and they have to face hunger and cold and death, for what? A little more money, and a little more drink; and your sentence: Why didn't he leave us alone?

Weren't we just as well off as we were? which is the everlasting song of your respected predecessor, only he put it in Latin: _Cui bono?_"

He pondered deeply for a long time. Then he said: "It sounds sensible; but there is some vile fallacy at the bottom of it. Anyhow, I'll try.

Father, give me your blessing!"

"There again," I said, "see how innocent you are. You don't know the vernacular."

He looked surprised.

"When you know us better," I answered, in reply to his looks, "you will understand that by that formula you ask for a drink. And as I don't happen to be under my own roof just now--"

His glorious laugh stopped me. It was like the ringing of a peal of bells.

"No matter," he said. "I may go on?"

"Certainly," I replied. "You'll have a few gray hairs in your raven locks in twelve months time,--that's all."

"What a hare," I thought as I went home, "is madness, the youth, to leap over the meshes of good counsel, the cripple." Which is not mine, but that philosopher, Will Shakespeare; or is it Francis Bacon?

CHAPTER V

A SLIGHT MISUNDERSTANDING

Father Letheby commenced sooner than I had expected.

I think it was about nine or ten days after his formal instalment in his new house, just as I was reading after breakfast the _Freeman's Journal_ of two days past, the door of my parlor was suddenly flung open, a bunch of keys was thrown angrily on the table, and a voice (which I recognized as that of Mrs. Darcy, the chapel woman), strained to the highest tension of indignation, shouted:--

"There! and may there be no child to pray over my grave if ever I touch them again! Wisha! where in the world did you get him? or where did he come from, at all, at all? The son of a jook! the son of a draper over there at Kilkeel. Didn't Mrs. Morarty tell me how she sowld socks to his ould father? An' he comes here complaining of dacent people! 'Dirt,'

sez he. 'Where?' sez I. 'There,' sez he. 'Where?' sez I. I came of as dacent people as him. Wondher _you_ never complained. But you're too aisy. You always allow these galivanters of curates to crow over you.

But I tell you I won't stand it. If I had to beg my bread from house to house, I won't stand being told I'm dirty. Why, the ladies of the Great House said they could see their faces in the candlesticks; and didn't the Bishop say 't was the natest vestry in the diocese? And this new cojutor with his gran' accent, which no one can understand, and his gran' furniture, and his whipster of a servant, begor, no one can stand him. We must all clear out. And, after me eighteen years, scrubbing, and was.h.i.+ng, and ironing, wid me two little orphans, which that blackguard, Jem Darcy (the Lord have mercy on his sowl!) left me, must go to foreign countries to airn me bread, because I'm not good enough for his reverence. Well, 't is you'll be sorry. But, if you wint down on your two binded knees and said: 'Mrs. Darcy, I deplore you to take up them kays and go back to your juties,' I wouldn't! No! Get some whipster that will suit his reverence. Mary Darcy isn't good enough."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "My door was suddenly flung open, and a bunch of keys was thrown angrily on the table."]

She left the room, only to return. She spoke with forced calmness.

"De thrifle of money you owe me, yer reverence, ye can sind it down to the house before I start for America. And dere's two gla.s.ses of althar wine in the bottle, and half a pound of candles."

She went out again, but returned immediately.

"The surplus is over at Nell O'Brien's was.h.i.+ng, and the black vestment is over at Tom Carmody's since the last station. The kay of the safe is under the door of the linny[1] to de left, and the chalice is in the basket, wrapped in the handkercher. And, if you don't mind giving me a charackter, perhaps, Hannah will take it down in the evening."

She went out again; but kept her hand on the door.

"Good by, your reverence, and G.o.d bless you! Sure, thin, you never said a hard word to a poor woman." Then there was the sound of falling tears.

To all this tremendous philippic I never replied. I never do reply to a woman until I have my hand on the door handle and my finger on the key.

I looked steadily at the column of stocks and shares on the paper, though I never read a word.

"This is rather a bad mess," said I. "He is coming out too strong."

The minute particulars I had from Hannah soon after. Hannah and Mrs.

Darcy are not friends. Two such village potentates could not be friends any more than two poets, or two critics, or two philosophers. As a rule, Hannah rather looked down on the chapel woman, and generally addressed her with studied politeness. "How are you _to-day_, Mrs. Darcy?" or more frequently, "Good _morning_, Mrs. Darcy." On the other hand, Mary Darcy, as arbitress at stations, wakes, and weddings, had a wide influence in the parish, and I fear used to speak contemptuously sometimes of my housekeeper. But now there was what the newspapers call a Dual Alliance against the newcomers, and a stern determination that any attempt at superiority should be repressed with a firm hand, and to Mrs. Darcy's lot it fell to bear the martyrdom of high principle and to fire the first shot, that should be also the final one. And so it was, but not in the way Mrs. Darcy antic.i.p.ated.

It would appear, then, that Father Letheby had visited the sacristy, and taken a most minute inventory of its treasures, and had, with all the zeal of a new reformer, found matters in a very bad state. Now, he was not one to smile benignantly at such irregularities and then throw the burden of correcting them on his pastor. He was outspoken and honest. He tore open drawers, and drew out their slimy, mildewed contents, sniffed ominously at the stuffy atmosphere, flung aside with gestures of contempt some of Mrs. Darcy's dearest treasures, such as a magnificent reredos of blue paper with gold stars; held up gingerly, and with curled lip, corporals and purificators, and wound up the awful inspection with the sentence:--

"I never saw such abominable filth in my life."