--A Bit of Controversy--A New Light Begins to Appear.
Very fortunately for the priest he was not subjected to an examination
before these worthies. Sir Thomas Gourlay, having heard of his arrest
and the cause of it, sent a note with his compliments, to request that
he might be conducted directly to his residence, together with his
pocket-book and pistols, assuring them, at the same time, that their
officers had committed a gross mistake as to his person.
This was quite sufficient, and ere the lapse of twenty minutes Father
M'Mahon, accompanied by Skipton and another officer, found himself at
the baronet's hall-door. On entering the hall, Sir Thomas himself was in
the act of passing from the breakfast parlor to his study above stairs,
leaning upon the arm of Gibson, the footman, looking at the same time
pale, nervous, and unsteady upon his limbs. The moment Skipton saw him,
he started, and exclaimed, as if to himself, but loud enough for the
priest to hear him:
“'Gad! I've seen him before, once upon a time; and well I remember the
face, for it is not one to be forgotten.”
The baronet, on looking round, saw the priest, and desired him to follow
them to his study.
“I beg your pardon, Sir Thomas,” said the officer, “we now place his
reverence safely in your hands; here, too, is your pocket-book and
pistols.”
“Hand them to him, sir,” replied the baronet, nodding toward the priest;
“and that is enough.”
“But, Sir Thomas--”
“What is it, sir? Have you not done your duty?”
“I hope so, sir; but if it would not be troublesome, sir, perhaps you
would give us a receipt; an acknowledgment, sir.”
“For what?”
“For the priest's body, sir, in the first place, and then for the
pocket-book and pistols.”
“If I were a little stronger,” replied the baronet, in an angry voice,
“I would write the receipt upon your own body with a strong horsewhip;
begone, you impudent scoundrel!”
Skipton turned upon him a bitter and vindictive look, and replied, “Oh,
very well, sir--come, Tom, you are witness that I did my duty.”
Sir Thomas on entering the study threw himself listlessly on a sofa, and
desired Gibson to retire.
“Take a seat, sir,” said he, addressing Father M'Mahon. “I am far from
well, and must rest a little before I speak to you; I know not what is
the matter with me, but I feel all out of sorts.”
He then drew a long breath, and laid his head upon his hand, as if to
recover more clearly the powers of his mind and intellect. His eyes,
full of thought not unmingled with anxiety, were fixed upon the carpet,
and he seemed for a time wrapped in deep and painful abstraction. At
length he raised himself up, and drawing his breath apparently with more
freedom began the conversation.
“Well, sir,” said he, in a tone that implied more of authority and
haughtiness than of courtesy or gentlemanly feeling; “it seems the
property of which I have been robbed has come into your possession.”
“It is true, sir; and allow me to place it in your own hands exactly as
I got it. I took the precaution to seal the pocket-book the moment it
was returned to me, and although it was for a short time in possession
of the officers of justice, yet it is untouched, and the seal I placed
on it unbroken.”
The baronet's hand, as he took the pocket-book, trembled with an
agitation which he could not repress, although he did everything in his
power to subdue it: his eye glittered with animation, or rather with
delight, as he broke the seal.
“It was very prudently and correctly done of you, sir, to seal up the
pocket-book; very well done, indeed: and I am much obliged to you
so far, although we must have some conversation upon the matter
immediately--”
“I only did what, as a Catholic clergyman, Sir Thomas, and an honest
man, I conceived to be my duty.”
“What--what--what's this?” exclaimed the baronet, his eye blazing with
rage and disappointment. “In the name of hell's fire, sir, what is
this? My money is not all here! There is a note, sir, a one pound note
wanting; a peculiar note, sir; a marked note; for I always put a marked
note among my money, to provide against the contingency of such a
robbery as I sustained. Pray, sir, what has become of that note? I say,
priest, the whole pocket-book ten times multiplied, was not worth a fig
compared with the value I placed upon that note.”
“How much did you lose, Sir Thomas?” asked the priest calmly.
“I lost sixty-nine pounds, sir.”
“Well, then,” continued the other, “would it not be well to see whether
that sum is in the pocket-book. You have not yet reckoned the money.”
“The note I speak of was in a separate compartment; in a different fold
of the book; apart from the rest.”
“But perhaps it has got among them? Had you not better try, sir?”
“True,” replied the other; and with eager and trembling hands he
examined them note by note; but not finding that for which he sought, he
stamped with rage, and dashing the pocket-book, notes and all, against
the floor, he ground his teeth, and approaching the priest with the
white froth of passion rising to his lips, exclaimed, “Hark you, priest,
if you do not produce the missing note, I shall make you bitterly
repent it! You know where it is, sir! You could understand from the
note itself--” He paused, however, for he felt at once that he might be
treading dangerous ground in entering into particulars. “I say, sir,” he
proceeded, with a look of menace and fury, “if you refuse to produce the
note I speak of, or to procure it for me, I shall let you know to your
cost what the power of British law can effect.”
The priest rose up with dignity, his cheek heightened with that slight
tinge, which a sense of unmerited insult and a consciousness of his own
integrity render natural to man--so long as he is a man.
“Sir Thomas Gourlay,” he proceeded, “upon your conduct and want of
gentlemanly temper since I have entered this apartment it is not my
intention to make any comment; but I need not tell you that the minister
of God is received in Christian society with the respect due to his
sacred office.”
“Minister of the devil, sir,” thundered the baronet; “do you think that
I shall be influenced by this slavish cant? Where is the note I speak
of? If you do not produce it, I shall consider you an accomplice after
the fact, and will hold you responsible as such. Remember, you are but a
Popish priest.”
“That is a fact, sir, which I shall always recollect with an humble
sense of my own unworthiness; but so long as I discharge its duties
conscientiously and truly, I shall also recollect it with honor. Of the
note you allude to in such unbecoming words, I know nothing; and as to
your threats, I value them not.”
“If you know nothing of the note, sir, you do certainly of the robber.”
“I do, Sir Thomas; I know who the man is that robbed you.”
“Well, sir,” replied the other, triumphantly, “I am glad you have
acknowledged so much. I shall force you to produce him. At least I shall
take care that the law will make you do so.”
“Sir Thomas Gourlay, I beg you to understand that there is a law beyond
and above your law--the law of God--the law of Christian duty; and that
you shall never force me to transgress. The man who robbed you in
a moment of despair and madness, repented him of the crime; and the
knowledge of that crime, and its consequent repentance were disclosed to
me in one of the most holy ordinances of our religion.”
“Is it one of the privileges of your religion to throw its veil over the
commission of crime? If so, the sooner your religion is extirpated out
of the land the better for society.”
“No, sir, our religion does not throw its veil over the criminal, but
over the penitent. We leave the laws of the land to their own resources,
and aid them when we can; but in the case before us, and in all similar
cases, we are the administrators of the laws of God to those who are
truly penitent, and to none others. The test of repentance consists in
reformation of life, and in making restitution to those who have been
injured. The knowledge of this comes to us in administering the sacred
ordinance of penance in the tribunal of confession; and sooner than
violate this solemn compact between the mercy of God and a penitent
heart, we would willingly lay down our lives. It is the most sacred of
all trusts.”
“Such an ordinance, sir, is a bounty and provocative to crime.”
“It is a bounty and provocative to repentance, sir; and society has
gained much and lost nothing by its operation. Remember, sir, that those
who do not repent, never come to us to avow their crimes, in which case
we are ignorant both of the crime and criminal. Here there is neither
repentance, on the one hand, nor restitution, on the other, and society,
of course, loses everything and gains nothing. In the other case, the
person sustaining the injury gains that which he had lost, and society
a penitent and reformed member. If, then, this sacred refuge for the
penitent--not for the criminal, remember--had no existence, those
restitutions of property which take place in thousands of cases, could
never be made.”
“Still, sir, you shield the criminal from his just punishment.”
“No, sir; we never shield the criminal from his just punishment. God has
promised mercy to him who repents, and we merely administer it without
any reference to the operation of the law. It often happens, Sir Thomas
Gourlay, that a person who has repented and made restitution, is taken
hold of by the law and punished. This ordinance, therefore, does not
stand between the law and its victim; it only deals between him and his
God, leaving him, like any other offender, to the law he has violated.”
“I am no theologian, sir; but without any reference to your priestly
cant, I simply say, that the man who is cognizant of another's crime
against the law, either of God or man, and who will shield him from
justice, is _particeps criminis_, and I don't care a fig what your
obsolete sacerdotal dogmas may assert to the contrary. You say you know
the man who unjustly deprived me of my property; if then, acknowledging
this, you refuse to deliver him up to justice, I hold you guilty of his
crime. Suppose he had taken my life, as he was near doing, how, pray,
would you have made restitution? Bring me to life again, I suppose, by a
miracle. Away, sir, with this cant, which is only fit for the barbarity
of the dark ages, when your church was a mass of crime, cruelty, and
ignorance; and when a cunning and rapacious priesthood usurped an
authority over both soul and body, ay, and property too, that oppressed
and degraded human nature.”
“I will reason no longer with you, sir,” replied the priest; “because
you talk in ignorance of the subject we are discussing--but having now
discharged an important duty, I will take my leave.”
“You may of me,” replied the other; “but you will not so readily shift
yourself out of the law.”
“Any charge, sir, which either law or Justice may bring against me, I
shall be ready to meet; and I now, for your information, beg to let you
know that the law you threaten me with affords its protection to me and
the class to which I belong, in the discharge of this most sacred and
important trust. Your threats, Sir Thomas, consequently, I disregard.”
“The more shame for it if it does,” replied the baronet; “but, hark you,
sir, I do not wish, after all, that you and I should part on unfriendly
terms. You refuse to give up the robber?”
“I would give up my life sooner.”
“But could you not procure me the missing note?”
“Of the missing note, Sir Thomas Gourlay, I know nothing. I consequently
neither can nor will make any promise to restore it.”
“You may tell the robber from me,” pursued the baronet, “that I will
give him the full amount of his burglary, provided he restores me that
note. The other sixty-nine pounds shall be his on that condition, and no
questions asked.”
“I have already told you, sir, that it was under the seal of confession
the knowledge of the crime came to me. Out of that seal I cannot revert
to the subject without betraying my trust; for, if he acknowledged his
guilt to me under any other circumstances, it would become my duty to
hand him over to the law.”
“Curse upon all priests!” said the other indignantly; “they are all
the same; a crew of cunning scoundrels, who attempt to subjugate the
ignorant and the credulous to their sway; a pack of spiritual swindlers,
who get possession of the consciences of the people through pious
fraud, and then make slavish instruments of them for their own selfish
purposes. In the meantime I shall keep my eye upon you, Mr. M'Mahon,
and, believe me, if I can get a hole in your coat I shall make a rent of
it.”
“It is a poor privilege, sir, that of insulting the defenceless. You
know I am doubly so--defenceless from age, defenceless in virtue of my
sacred profession; but if I am defenceless against your insults, Sir
Thomas Gourlay, I am not against your threats, which I despise and
defy. The integrity of my life is beyond your power, the serenity of my
conscience beyond your vengeance. You are not of my flock, but if you
were, I would say, Sir Thomas, I fear you are a bold, bad man, and have
much to repent of in connection with your past and present life--much
reparation to make to your fellow-creatures. Yes; I would say, Sir
Thomas Gourlay, the deep tempest of strong passions within you has
shaken your powerful frame until it totters to its fall. I would say,
beware; repent while it is time, and be not unprepared for the last
great event. That event, Sir Thomas, is not far distant, if I read
aright the foreshadowing of death and dissolution that is evident
in your countenance and frame. I speak these words in, I trust, a
charitable and forgiving spirit. May they sink into your heart, and work
it to a sense of Christian feeling and duty!
“This I would say were you mine--this I do say, knowing that you are
not; for my charity goes beyond my church, and embraces my enemy as well
as my friend;” and as he spoke he prepared co go.
“You may go, sir,” replied the baronet, with a sneer of contempt, “only
you have mistaken your man. I am no subject for your craft--not to be
deceived by your hypocrisy--and laugh to scorn your ominous but impotent
croaking. Only before you go, remember the conditions I have offered
the scoundrel who robbed me; and if the theological intricacies of your
crooked creed will permit you, try and get him to accept them. It will
be better for him, and better for you too. Do this, and you may cease to
look upon Sir Thomas Gourlay as an enemy.”
The priest bowed, and without returning any reply left the apartment and
took his immediate departure.
Sir Thomas, after he had gone, went to the glass and surveyed himself
steadily. The words of the priest were uttered with much solemnity and
earnestness; but withal in such a tone of kind regret and good feeling,
that their import and impressiveness were much heightened by this very
fact.
“There is certainly a change upon me, and not one for the better,” he
said to himself; “but at the same time the priest, cunning as he is, has
been taken in by appearances. I am just sufficiently changed in my looks
to justify and give verisimilitude to the game I am playing. When Lucy
hears of my illness, which must be a serious one, nothing on earth will
keep her from me; and if I cannot gain any trace to her residence, a
short paragraph in the papers, intimating and regretting the dangerous
state of my health, will most probably reach her, and have the desired
effect. If she were once back, I know that, under the circumstances
of my illness, and the impression that it has been occasioned by her
refusal to marry Dunroe, she will yield; especially as I shall put the
sole chances of my recovery upon her compliance. Yet why is it that I
urge her to an act which will probably make her unhappy during life?
But it will not. She is not the fool her mother was; and yet I am not
certain that her mother was a fool either. We did not agree; we could
not. She always refused to coincide with me almost in everything; and
when I wished to teach Lucy the useful lessons of worldly policy, out
came her silly maxims of conscience, religion, and such stuff. But yet
religious people are the best. I have always found it so. That wretched
priest, for instance, would give up his life sooner than violate what
he calls--that is, what he thinks--his duty. There must be some fiction,
however, to regulate the multitude; and that fiction must be formed by,
and founded on, the necessities of society. That, unquestionably, is the
origin of all law and all religion. Only religion uses the stronger and
the wiser argument, by threatening us with another world. Well done,
religion! You acted upon a fixed principle of nature. The force of the
enemy we see not may be magnified and exaggerated; the enemy we see not
we fear, especially when described in the most terrible colors by men
who are paid for their misrepresentations, although these same impostors
have never seen the enemy they speak of themselves. But the enemy we see
we can understand and grapple with; ergo, the influence of religion over
law; ergo, the influence of the priest, who deals in the imaginary and
ideal, over the legislator and the magistrate, who deal only in the
tangible and real. Yes, this indeed, is the principle. How we do fear a
ghost! What a shiver, what a horror runs through the frame when we think
we see one; and how different is this from our terror of a living enemy.
Away, then, with this imposture, I will none of it. Yet hold: what was
that I saw looking into the window of the carriage that contained my
brother's son? What was it? Why a form created by my own fears. That
credulous nurse, old mother Corbet, stuffed me so completely with
superstition when I was young and cowardly, that I cannot, in many
instances, shake myself free from it yet. Even the words of that priest
alarmed me for a moment. This, however, is merely the weakness of human
nature--the effect of unreal phantasms that influence the reason while
we are awake, just as that of dreams does the imagination while we are
asleep. Away, then, ye idle brood! I will none of you.”
He then sat himself down on the sofa, and rang for Gibson, but still the
train of thought pursued him.
“As to Lucy, I think it is still possible to force her into the position
for which I destined her--quite possible. She reasons like a girl, of
course, as I told her. She reasons like a girl who looks upon that
silly nonsense called love as the great business of life; and acts
accordingly. Little she thinks, however, that love--her love--his
love--both their loves--will never meet twelve months after what is
termed the honey-moon. No, they will part north and south. And yet the
honey-moon has her sharp ends, as well as every other moon. When love
passes away, she will find that the great business of life is, to make
as many as she can feel that she is above them in the estimation of the
world; to impress herself upon her equals, until they shall be forced to
acknowledge her superiority. And although this may be sometimes done by
intellect and principle, yet, in the society in which she must move,
it is always done by rank, by high position, and by pride, that jealous
vindictive pride which is based upon the hatred of our kind, and at once
smiles and scorns. What would I be if I were not a baronet? Sir Thomas
Gourlay passes where Mr. Gourlay would be spurned. This is the game
of life, and we shall play it with the right weapons. Many a cringing
scoundrel bows to the baronet who despises the man; and for this reason
it is that I have always made myself to be felt to some purpose, and so
shall Lucy, if I should die for it. I hate society, because I know that
society hates me; and for that reason I shall so far exalt her, that she
will have the base compound at her feet, and I shall teach her to scorn
and trample upon it. If I thought there were happiness in any particular
rank of life, I would not press her; but I know there is not, and for
that reason she loses nothing, and gains the privilege--the power--of
extorting homage from the proud, the insolent, and the worthless. This
is the triumph she shall and must enjoy.”
Gibson then entered, and the baronet, on hearing his foot, threw himself
into a languid and invalid attitude.
“Gibson,” said he, “I am very unwell; I apprehend a serious attack of
illness.”
“I trust not, sir.”
“If any person should call, I am ill, observe, and not in a condition to
see them.”
“Very well, sir.”
“Unless you should suspect, or ascertain, that it is some person on
behalf of Miss Gourlay; and even then, mark, I am very ill indeed, and
you do not think me able to speak to any one; but will come in and see.”
“Yes, sir; certainly sir.”
“There, then, that will do.”
The priest, on leaving the baronet's residence, was turning his steps
toward the hotel in which the stranger had put up, when his messenger to
Constitution Hill approaching put his hand to his hat, and respectfully
saluted him.
“I beg your pardon, sir,” said he, “and I am sorry, now that I know who
you are, for the trouble you got into.”
“Thank you, my friend,” said the priest; “I felt it wouldn't signify,
knowing in my conscience that I was no robber. In the meantime, I got
one glimpse of your metropolitan life, as they call it, and the Lord
knows I never wish to get another. Troth, I was once or twice so
confounded with the noise and racket, that I thought I had got into
purgatory by mistake.”
“Tut, sir, that's nothing,” replied Skipton; “we were very calm and
peaceable this morning; but with respect to that baronet, he's a
niggardly fellow. Only think of him, never once offering us the
slightest compensation for bringing him home his property! There's not
another man in Ireland would send us off empty-handed as he did. The
thing's always usual on recovering property.”
“Speak for yourself, in the singular number, if you plaise; you don't
imagine that I wanted compensation.”
“No, sir, certainly not; but I'm just thinking,” he added, after
curiously examining Father M'Mahon's face for some time, “that you and I
met before somewhere.”
“Is that the memory you have?” said the priest, “when you ought to
recollect that we met this morning, much against my will, I must say.”
“I don't mean that,” said the man; “but I think I saw you once in a
lunatic asylum.”
“Me, in a lunatic asylum?” exclaimed the good priest, somewhat
indignantly. “The thing's a bounce, my good man, before you go farther.
The little sense I've had has been sufficient, thank goodness, to keep
me free from such establishments.”
“I don't mean that, sir,” replied the other, smiling, “but if I don't
mistake, you once brought a clergyman of our persuasion to the lunatic
asylum in ------.”
“Ay, indeed,” returned the priest; “poor Quin. His was a case of
monomania; he imagined himself a gridiron, on which all heretics were to
be roasted. That young man was one of the finest scholars in the three
kingdoms. But how do you remember that?”
“Why for good reasons; because I was a servant in the establishment at
the time. Well,” he added, pausing, “it is curious enough that I should
have seen this very morning three persons I saw in that asylum.”
“If I had been much longer in that watch-house,” replied the other, “I'm
not quite certain but I'd soon be qualified to pay a permanent visit
to some of them. Who were the three persons you saw there, in the mane
time?”
“That messenger of yours was one of them, and that niggardly baronet was
the other; yourself, as I said, making the third.”
The priest looked at him seriously; “you mane Corbet,” said he, “or
Dunphy as he is called?”
“I do. He and the baron brought a slip of a boy there; and, upon my
conscience, I think there was bad work between them. At all events, poor
Mr. Quin and he were inseparable. The lad promised that he would
allow himself to be roasted, the very first man, upon the reverend
gridiron;--and! for that reason Quin took him into hand; and gave him an
excellent education.”
“And no one,” replied the priest, “was better qualified to do it. But
what bad work do you suspect between Corbet and the baronet?”
“Why, I have my suspicions,” replied the man. “It's not a month since I
heard that the son of that very baronet's brother, who was heir to the
estate and titles, disappeared, and has never been heard of since. Now,
all the water in the sea wouldn't wash the pair of them clear of what
I suspect, which is--that both had a hand in removing that boy. The
baronet was a young man at the time, but he has a face that no one could
ever forget. As for Corbet, I remember him well, as why shouldn't I? he
came there often. I'll take my oath it would be a charity to bring the
affair to light.”
“Do you think the boy is there still?” asked the priest, suppressing all
appearance of the interest which he felt.
“No,” replied the other, “he escaped about two or three years ago; but,
poor lad, when it was discovered that he led too easy a life, and had
got educated, his treatment was changed; a straight waistcoat was put on
him, and he was placed in solitary confinement. At first he was no more
mad than I am; but he did get occasionally mad afterwards. I know he
attempted suicide, and nearly cut his throat with a piece of glass one
day that his hands got loose while they were changing his linen. Old
Rivet died, and the establishment was purchased by Tickleback, who, to
my own knowledge, had him regularly scourged.”
“And how did he escape, do you know?” inquired the priest.
“I could tell you that, too, maybe,” replied Skipton; “but I think, sir,
I have told you enough for the present. If that young man is living, I
would swear that he ought to stand in Sir Thomas Gourlay's shoes. And
now do you think, sir,” he inquired, coming at last to the real object
of his communication, “that if his right could be made clear, any one
who'd help him to his own mightn't expect to be made comfortable for
life?”
“I don't think there's a doubt about it,” replied the priest. “The
property is large, and he could well afford to be both generous and
grateful.”
“I know,” returned the man, “that he is both one and the other, if he
had it in his power.”
“Well,” said the priest, seriously; “mark my words--this may be the most
fortunate day you ever saw. In the mane time, keep a close mouth. The
friends of that identical boy are on the search for him this moment.
They had given him up for dead; but it is not long since they discovered
that he was living. I will see you again on this subject.”
“I am now a constable,” said the man, “attached to the office you were
in to-day, and I can be heard of any time.”
“Very well,” replied the priest, “you shall hear either from me or from
some person interested in the recovery of the boy that's lost.”