A NIGHT CALL
It must have been about two o'clock on Sunday morning, when the house
bell was pulled violently and a rapid series of fierce, sharp knocks
woke up the house. What priest does not know that tocsin of the night,
and the start from peaceful slumbers? I heard the housekeeper wake up
Father Letheby; and in a short time I heard him go down stairs. Then
there was the usual hurried colloquy at the hall door, then the
retreating noises of galloping feet. I pulled the blankets around my
shoulders, lifted the pillow, and said, "Poor fellow!" He had to say
last Mass next day, and this was some consolation, as he could sleep a
few hours in the morning. I met him at breakfast about half past one
o'clock. There he was, clean, cool, cheerful, as if nothing had
happened.
"I was sorry you had that night call," I said; "how far had you to go?"
"To some place called Knocktorisha," he replied, opening his egg; "'t
was a little remote, but I was well repaid."
"Indeed," said I; "the poor people are very grateful. And they generally
pay for whatever trouble they give."
He flushed up.
"Oh, I didn't mean any pecuniary recompense," he said, a little
nettled. "I meant that I was repaid by the extraordinary faith and
fervor of the people."
I waited.
"Why, Father," said he, turning around and flicking a few invisible
crumbs with his napkin, "I never saw anything like it. I had quite an
escort of cavalry, two horsemen, who rode side by side with me the whole
way to the mountain, and then, when we had to dismount and climb up
through the boulders of some dry torrent course, I had two linkmen or
torchbearers, leaping on the crest of the ditch on either side, and
lighting me right up to the door of the cabin. It was a picture that
Rembrandt might have painted."
He paused and blushed a little, as if he had been pedantic.
"But tell me, Father," said he, "is this the custom in the country?"
"Oh yes," said I; "we look upon it as a matter of course. Your
predecessors didn't make much of it."
"It seems to me," he said, "infinitely picturesque and beautiful. It
must have been some tradition of the Church when she was free to
practise her ceremonies. But where do they get these torches?"
"Bog-oak, steeped in petroleum," I said. "It is, now that you recall
it, very beautiful and picturesque. Our people will never allow a
priest, with the Blessed Sacrament with him, to go unescorted."
"Now that you have mentioned it," he said, "I distinctly recall the
custom that existed among the poor of Salford. They would insist always
on accompanying me home from a night sick-call. I thought it was
superfluous politeness, and often insisted on being alone, particularly
as the streets were always well lighted. But no. If the men hesitated,
the women insisted; and I had always an escort to my door. But this
little mountain ceremony here is very touching."
"Who was sick?"
"Old Conroy,--a mountain ranger, I believe. He is very poorly; and I
anointed him." "By Jove," said he after a pause, "how he did pray,--and
all in Irish. I could imagine the old Hebrew prophets talking to God
from their mountains just in that manner. But why do they expect to be
anointed on the breast?"
"I do not know," I replied, "I think it is a Gallican custom introduced
by the French refugee priests at the beginning of the century. The
people invariably expect it."
"But you don't?" he asked in surprise.
"Oh dear, no. It would be hardly orthodox. Come, and if you are not too
tired, we'll have a walk."
I took him through the village, where he met salaams and genuflections
enough; and was stared at by the men, and blessed by the women, and
received the mute adoration of the children. We passed along the bog
road, where on either side were heaps of black turf drying, and off the
road were deep pools of black water, filling the holes whence the turf
was cut. It was lonely; for to-day we had not even the pale sunshine to
light up the gloomy landscape, and to the east the bleak mountains
stood, clear-cut and uniform in shagginess and savagery, against the
cold, gray sky. The white balls of the bog cotton waved dismally in the
light breeze, which curled the surface of a few pools, and drew a curlew
or plover from his retreat, and sent him whistling dolefully, and
beating the heavy air, as he swept towards mountain or lake. After half
an hour's walking, painful to me, the ground gently rose, and down in
the hollow a nest of poplars hid from the western gales. I took Father
Letheby through a secret path in the plantation. We rested a little
while, and talked of many things. Then we followed a tiny path, strewn
with withered pine needles, and which cut upward through the hill. We
passed from the shelter of the trees, and stood on the brow of a high
declivity. I never saw such surprise in a human face before, and such
delight. Like summer clouds sweeping over, and dappling a meadow,
sensations of wonder and ecstasy rolled visibly across his fine mobile
features. Then, he turned, and said, as if not quite sure of himself:--
"_Why! 't is the sea!_"
So it was. God's own sea, and his retreat, where men come but seldom,
and then at their peril. There the great ball-room of the winds and
spirits stretched before us, to-day as smooth as if waxed and polished,
and it was tessellated with bands of blue and green and purple, at the
far horizon line, where, down through a deep mine shaft in the clouds,
the hidden sun was making a silent glory. It was a dead sea, if you
will. No gleam of sail, near or afar, lit up its loneliness. No flash of
sea bird, poised for its prey, or beating slowly over the desolate
waste, broke the heavy dulness that lay upon the breast of the deep. The
sky stooped down and blackened the still waters; and anear, beneath the
cliff on which we were standing, a faint fringe of foam alone was proof
that the sea still lived, though its face was rigid and its voice was
stilled, as of the dead.
Father Letheby continued gazing in silence over the solemn scene for
some time. Then lifting his hat he said aloud:--
"Mirabiles elationes maris;
Mirabilis in altis Dominus!"
"Not very many 'upliftings' to-day," I replied. "You see our great
friend at a disadvantage. But you know she has moods: and you will like
her."
"Like her!" he replied. "It is not liking. It is worship. Some kind of
Pantheism which I cannot explain. Nowhere are the loneliness and
grandeur of God so manifested. Mind, I don't quite sympathize with that
comparison of St. Augustine's where he detects a resemblance between yon
spectra of purple and green and the plumage of a dove. What has a dove
to do with such magnificence and grandeur? It was an anti-climax, a
bathos, of which St. Augustine is seldom guilty. 'And the Spirit of God
moved upon the face of the waters.' There's the sublime!"
"It is desolate," said I. "Not even a seamew or a gull."
"Quite so," he replied. "It is limitless and unconditioned. There is its
grandeur. If that sea were ploughed by navies, or disfigured by the
hideous black hulks of men-of-war, it would lose its magnificence. It
would become a poor limited thing, with pygmies sporting on its bosom.
It is now unlimited, free, unconditioned, as space. It is the infinite
and the eternal in it that appeals to us. When we were children, the
infinite lay beyond the next mountain, because it was the unknown. We
grew up and we got knowledge; and knowledge destroyed our dreams, and
left us only the commonplace. It is the unknown and unlimited that still
appeals to us,--the _something_ behind the dawn, and beyond the sunset,
and far away athwart the black line of that horizon, that is forever
calling, calling, and beckoning to us to go thither. Now, there is
something in that sombre glory that speaks to you and me. It will
disappear immediately; and we will feel sad. What is it? Voiceless
echoes of light from the light that streams from the Lamb?"
"I hope," I said demurely, for I began to fear this young enthusiast,
"that you don't preach in that tone to the people!"
"Oh dear, no," he said, with a little laugh, "but you must forgive my
nonsense. You gave me such a shock of surprise."
"But," he said, after a pause, "how happy your life must have been here!
I always felt in Manchester that I was living at the bottom of a black
chimney, in smoke and noise and fetor, material and spiritual. Here, you
have your holy people, and the silence and quiet of God. How happy you
must have been!"
"What would you think if we returned," I said. "It's almost our dinner
hour."
It was not so late, however, but that I was able to take a ten minutes'
stroll through the village, and bid "good day" to some of my
parishioners.
I suppose there was a note of interrogation hidden away somewhere under
my greeting, for I was told in different tones and degrees of
enthusiasm:--
"Yerra, your reverence, he's a nate man."
"Yerra, we never saw his likes before."
"He spakes almost as plain and common as yourself."
"They say, your reverence, that he's the son of a jook."
Some old cronies, who retained a lingering gratitude for Father
Laverty's snuff, diluted their enthusiasm a little.
"He is, indeed, a rale nice man. But God be with poor Father Tom
wherever he is. Sure 't was he was kind to the poor."
There was a deputation of young men waiting at my house. I have been
pestered from deputations and speeches since the Land League. A shaggy
giant stepped forward and said:--
"We have preshumed, your reverence, to call upon you to ascertain
whether you'd be agreeable to our what I may call unanimous intinsion of
asking the new cojutor to be prisident of the Gaelic association of
Kilronan, called the 'Holy Terrors.'"
I said I was agreeable to anything they wished: and Father Letheby
became president of the "Holy Terrors."
After dinner something put me into better humor. I suppose it was the
mountain mutton, for there's nothing like it in Ireland,--mutton raised
on limestone land, where the grass is as tender to the lips of the
sheep, as the sheep to the lips of men. I thought I had an excellent
opportunity of eliciting my curate's proficiency in his classics. With
a certain amount of timidity, for you never know when you are treading
on a volcano with these young men, I drew the subject around. I have a
way of talking enigmatically, which never fails, however, to reveal my
meaning. And after a few clever passes, I said, demurely, drawing out my
faded and yellow translation, made nearly thirty years ago:--
"I was once interested in other things. Here is a little weak
translation I once made of a piece of Greek poetry, with which you are
quite familiar. Ah me! I had great notions at the time, ideas of
corresponding with classical journals, and perhaps, sooner or later, of
editing a classic myself. But _Cui bono?_ paralyzed everything. That
fatal _Cui bono?_ that is the motto and watchword of every thinking and
unthinking man in Ireland. However, now that you have come, perhaps--who
knows? What do you think of this?"
I read solemnly:--
"I have argued and asked in my sorrow
What shall please me? what manner of life?
At home am I burdened with cares that borrow
Their color from a world of strife.
The fields are burdened with toil,
The seas are sown with the dead,
With never a hand of a priest to assoil
A soul that in sin hath fled.
I have gold: I dread the danger by night;
I have none: I repine and fret;
I have children: they darken the pale sunlight;
I have none: I'm in nature's debt.
The young lack wisdom; the old lack life;
I have brains; but I shake at the knees;
Alas! who could covet a scene of strife?
Give me peace in this life's surcease!"
"What do you think of this? It is a loose translation from Posidippus."
"It swings well," said Father Letheby. "But who was he?"
"One of the gnomic, or sententious poets," I replied.
"Greek or Latin?" he asked.
Then I succumbed.
"You never heard his name before?" I said.
"Never," said he emphatically.
I paused and reflected.
"The Bishop told me," said I, "that you were a great Greek scholar, and
took a medal in Greek composition?"
"The Bishop told me," said he, "that you were the best Greek scholar in
Ireland, with the exception, perhaps, of a Jesuit Father in Dublin."
We looked at each other. Then burst simultaneously into a fit of
laughter, the likes of which had not been heard in that room for many a
day.
"I am not sure," said I, "about his Lordship's classical attainments;
but he knows human nature well."
Father Letheby left next morning to see after his furniture. He had
taken a slated, one-storied cottage in the heart of the village. It was
humble enough; but it looked quite aristocratic amongst its ragged
neighbors.