At about this time, that imposing spectacle, once described by Mrs.
Twomey as "The Big Doctor and little Danny Aherne walking the streets
of Cluhir like two paycocks," was vouchsafed to the town rather more
frequently than was usually the case. Dr. Aherne had sent a patient,
who was no less a person than the priest of the parish of Pribawn, to
the private ward of the Infirmary in Cluhir, where he would, among
other advantages, receive daily visits from Dr. Mangan. Father Sweeny
was suffering from a broken leg, and other damages; a midnight drive
to a dying parishioner had ended, disastrously, in an unguarded
road-side ditch, and Dr. Aherne had thought it best to consign a
patient of such importance to the care of hands less occupied, as well
as of higher renown, than his own.
Thus it was that the Big Doctor and his kinsman saw more of each other
than is often possible for men whose work is as widespread and
incessant as is that of Irish Dispensary Doctors. On this windy June
morning they had met in the dreary yard of the Workhouse, to which the
Infirmary was attached, and together they paced the long, whitewashed,
slate-paven passages that led to the Infirmary, pausing at intervals
to talk of matters quite unconnected with their patients, but, if the
frequency of the pauses, filled by the sibilant whispers of the little
doctor, and the deep growls of the big one, was any criterion, none
the less absorbing.
"His name's been accepted," ended the Big Doctor, after the lengthiest
of these, "and it would be no harm for you to be slipping in a word,
now and again, with the people through the country, according as you'd
get the chance, Danny."
"I will, I will," replied the little doctor, as he opened the door of
Father Sweeny's room.
"You're doing very well, Father," said Dr. Mangan, his inspection of
the patient ended. "I consider you couldn't be progressing more
satisfactorily." He seated himself by Father Tim Sweeny's bedside,
while the Nursing Sister-in-Charge rolled up bandages, and conferred
in lowered tones with Dr. Aherne, on the subject of what he called the
patient's "dite."
"You'll be going as strong as ever you did in a few weeks' time,"
continued Dr. Mangan, encouragingly.
Father Sweeny returned the Doctor's look morosely.
"I'm sick and tired of being here as it is," he said, gloomily, "and
you talk to me of weeks!"
"Ah, they'll pass, never fear they'll pass!" said the Big Doctor,
cheerfully. "I never saw the weeks yet that didn't pass if you waited
long enough! And I wouldn't say but that you mightn't go home before
you're out of our hands entirely."
Father Sweeny received these consolations with an unpropitiated grunt.
His large face, with its broad cheeks and heavy double-chins, that was
usually of a sanguine and all pervasive beefy-red, now hung in pallid
purple folds, on which dark bristles, that were as stiff as those on
the barrel of a musical box, told that the luxury of shaving had
hitherto been withheld. There are some professions that tend more than
others to grade the men that follow them into distinct types. The Sea
is one of these, the Church, and pre-eminently the Church of Rome, is
another. The ecclesiastical types vary no less than the nautical ones,
and neither need here be enumerated. It is sufficient to say that
Father Sweeny, when in his usual robust health, in voice, in
appearance, and in manner, provoked, uncontrollably, a comparison with
a heavy and truculent black bull.
"'Tis highly inconvenient to me to be boxed up in bed this way, at
this time," said Father Sweeny, with a small hot eye upon his
attendant nun that would have said instantly to any one less entirely
kind, religious, and painstaking, that he had no immediate need of her
services; "Sister Maria Joseph, I wonder would you be so kind as to
bring me the paper? I didn't see it to-day at all."
Sister Maria Joseph turned her amiable, unruffled face, with that pure
complexion that would seem to be one of the compensations for the
renunciation of the world, towards her patient, and said,
obsequiously:
"I beg your pordon, Fawther?"
The little eyes had a hotter sparkle as Father Sweeny repeated his
request.
"It's a wonder to me," he growled to Dr. Mangan, after Sister Maria
Joseph had left the room, having taken, in her anxiety to show
respect, quite half a minute in closing the door with suitable
noiselessness, "why people can't attend to what's said to them! If
there's a thing I hate, it's being bothered repeating an entirely
trivial matter, which--"--here Father Tim's voice began to take on
the angry, high tenor of one of his prototypes--"she had a right to
have heard at the first offer! I declare I'm beside meself sometimes
with the annoyance I get!"
Dr. Mangan laid his spatulate fingers upon the sufferer's hairy wrist.
"We'll have to give his Reverence a sedative, Danny," he said, winking
at his colleague. "I'd be sorry to see you that way, Father; the bed's
narrow enough for you as it is, without having you beside yourself in
it!"
Father Sweeny's mood was one to which chaff did not commend itself. He
snatched his hand from beneath the Doctor's fingers, and picked up
some letters that lay beside him.
"Look at this, I ask you! From Mary Murphy, saying her husband is
quite well, and that he took the turn for good from the minute he was
anointed! And me lying here crippled!"
"'The dog it was that died!'" quoted Dr. Mangan, smoothly.
"What dog?" demanded Father Sweeny, with indignation, "I d'no what
you're talking about!"
"Ah, nothing, nothing," said the Big Doctor, with a lift of the spirit
at the thought of his superior culture, "but surely it wasn't to show
me Mary Murphy's letter that you sent poor Sister Maria Joseph on a
fool's errand?"
"Why a fool's errand?" demanded the now incensed Father Sweeny. "What
d'ye mean?"
"Look at the newspaper on the floor here," returned the Doctor.
"You'll have her back in a minute, begging your pardon again, to tell
you so."
Father Sweeny glared, speechless, at his tormentor for an instant;
then, rinding the Big Doctor unmoved "in the furnace of his look," he
fell back on his pillows.
"Lock the door!" he commanded angrily. He pushed a letter into the
Doctor's hand. "Read that!"
"Hullo! The Major! What's _he_ got to say to you, Father Tim?"
"Read it, I tell you!"
Dr. Mangan did so, with attention, and read it a second time before he
replaced it in its envelope and handed it back to the priest.
"That's a nice letter!" said Father Sweeny, with a snort that he
believed to be a laugh. "What d'ye think of that now, you that are so
fond of Protestants!"
"I think the man is justified," said the Doctor, stoutly. "There's no
such great hurry, and anyhow, his authority is at an end. He couldn't
give you as much as'd sod a lark now--"
"Nor he wouldn't if he could!" broke in Father Sweeny. "And there
_is_ hurry, and great hurry! How will I build my chapel without
the land to put it on? Will you tell me that?"
"Ah, you haven't the money gathered yet. The delay isn't worth
exciting yourself about!" said the Doctor, soothingly. Father Tim
amused him, and he liked him, being well aware that if his temper was
hot, his heart was correspondingly warm. "You'll see the young chap
will give you the site as soon as look at you."
"And how do I know the young chap will be any easier than the old one?
Isn't he there at Mount Music all day and every day, at their
tea-parties and their dinner-parties? Won't they have him married up
to one of the daughters before you can look around? He may call
himself a Catholic, but them English Catholics--COME IN!"
Sister Maria Joseph's faint tap at the door had as instant an effect
as a squib, planted in the mane of the monarch of the bull-ring, might
produce.
"I cannt--the door's locked, Fawther!" came Sister Maria Joseph's
gentle voice, in mild protest. "I couldn't find the--"
"Never mind it! I have it myself--_I have it_, I tell you!"
shouted Father Tim; in his voice the appeal to a merciful Heaven to
grant patience was unmistakable.
Sister Maria Joseph, recognising with trembling her superfluousness,
withdrew.
"It's Barty will have that job we were speaking of just now, before
you were coaxing Sister Maria Joseph to go away from you," resumed Dr.
Mangan. "Maybe you didn't hear he's got the Coppinger's Court Agency?
Young Coppinger offered it to him yesterday."
"It's a good thing it's out of Talbot-Lowry's hands anyhow," growled
Father Sweeny.
"Larry's up at my house every day now, about a concert they're to
have," went on the Doctor, tranquilly. "Tishy's helping him. He's very
fond of music. I think you're mistaken in thinking he'll be married to
one of the Major's daughters in such a hurry!"
"The first thing he'll want to do is to tidy up his property and
pacify the tenants," said Dr. Aherne, in his small, piping voice.
"They're not too pleased with the way they are now. The Major was
rather short with some of them, now and again. There was Herlihy, and
two of the Briens, was talking to me and saying what would they do at
all with Father Tim here, away. They were thinking would Father
Hogan--"
"Br-r-r-r-r-h!"
As a bull shakes his head, with a reverberating roar at the foes he
cannot reach, so did Father Tim Sweeny, crippled and furious, roll his
big head, growling, on his pillows. His dark hair lay in tight rings
on his broad and bulging forehead, and curled in strength over his
head back to the tonsure. His eyes were congested with the unavailing
rage that possessed him, as he thought of his parish left leaderless.
Had the "Ballad of the Bull" then been written, and had Dr. Mangan
been acquainted with it (which seems unlikely) he might have again
proved his culture by remembering the injunction to pity "this fallen
chief," as he saw the impotent wrath in Father Tim's bovine
countenance.
"Don't worry yourself now, Father," he said, consolingly, "I'll
undertake to say it will be all right about the site for the chapel,
and what's more, I'll undertake to say there'll be nothing done about
it, or the tenants, or anything else, till you're well. The people
will do nothing without you!"
He looked at his huge, old-fashioned gold watch.
"Oh, b' Jove, I must be off! Tell me, did you hear they have Larry
Coppinger chosen to be the candidate, when Prendergast retires, as he
says he will, before the next election? There won't be much talk of
tea-parties for Larry at Mount Music then! Any tea-party there that
he'd go to once he was a Nationalist M.P., I think he'd be apt to get
'his tay in a mug!'"
The Doctor got up and moved towards the door.
"I'll support him, so!" Father Sweeny called after him.