While Mr. Ware stood thus on the doorstep, through a minute of
formless musing, the priest and the girl came out, and, somewhat to his
confusion, made him one of their party. He felt himself flushing under
the idea that they would think he had waited for them--was thrusting
himself upon them. The notion prompted him to bow frigidly in response
to Father Forbes' pleasant “I am glad to meet you, sir,” and his
outstretched hand.
“I dropped in by the--the merest accident,” Theron said. “I met them
bringing the poor man home, and--and quite without thinking, I obeyed
the impulse to follow them in, and didn't realize--”
He stopped short, annoyed by the reflection that this was his second
apology. The girl smiled placidly at him, the while she put up her
parasol.
“It did me good to see you there,” she said, quite as if she had known
him all her life. “And so it did the rest of us.”
Father Forbes permitted himself a soft little chuckle, approving rather
than mirthful, and patted her on the shoulder with the air of being
fifty years her senior instead of fifteen. To the minister's relief, he
changed the subject as the three started together toward the road.
“Then, again, no doctor was sent for!” he exclaimed, as if resuming a
familiar subject with the girl. Then he turned to Theron. “I dare-say
you have no such trouble; but with our poorer people it is very
vexing. They will not call in a physician, but hurry off first for the
clergyman. I don't know that it is altogether to avoid doctor's bills,
but it amounts to that in effect. Of course in this case it made no
difference; but I have had to make it a rule not to go out at night
unless they bring me a physician's card with his assurance that it is a
genuine affair. Why, only last winter, I was routed up after midnight,
and brought off in the mud and pelting rain up one of the new streets
on the hillside there, simply because a factory girl who was laced too
tight had fainted at a dance. I slipped and fell into a puddle in the
darkness, ruined a new overcoat, and got drenched to the skin; and when
I arrived the girl had recovered and was dancing away again, thirteen
to the dozen. It was then that I made the rule. I hope, Mr. Ware, that
Octavius is producing a pleasant impression upon you so far?”
“I scarcely know yet,” answered Theron. The genial talk of the priest,
with its whimsical anecdote, had in truth passed over his head. His
mind still had room for nothing but that novel death-bed scene, with
the winged captain of the angelic host, the Baptist, the glorified
Fisherman and the Preacher, all being summoned down in the pomp of
liturgical Latin to help MacEvoy to die. “If you don't mind my saying
so,” he added hesitatingly, “what I have just seen in there DID make a
very powerful impression upon me.”
“It is a very ancient ceremony,” said the priest; “probably Persian,
like the baptismal form, although, for that matter, we can never dig
deep enough for the roots of these things. They all turn up Turanian if
we probe far enough. Our ways separate here, I'm afraid. I am delighted
to have made your acquaintance, Mr. Ware. Pray look in upon me, if you
can as well as not. We are near neighbors, you know.”
Father Forbes had shaken hands, and moved off up another street some
distance, before the voice of the girl recalled Theron to himself.
“Of course you knew HIM by name,” she was saying, “and he knew you
by sight, and had talked of you; but MY poor inferior sex has to be
introduced. I am Celia Madden. My father has the wagon-shops, and I--I
play the organ at the church.”
“I--I am delighted to make your acquaintance,” said Theron, conscious
as he spoke that he had slavishly echoed the formula of the priest. He
could think of nothing better to add than, “Unfortunately, we have no
organ in our church.”
The girl laughed, as they resumed their walk down the street. “I'm
afraid I couldn't undertake two,” she said, and laughed again. Then she
spoke more seriously. “That ceremony must have interested you a good
deal, never having seen it before. I saw that it was all new to you, and
so I made bold to take you under my wing, so to speak.”
“You were very kind,” said the young minister. “It was really a great
experience for me. May--may I ask, is it a part of your functions, in
the church, I mean, to attend these last rites?”
“Mercy, no!” replied the girl, spinning the parasol on her shoulder and
smiling at the thought. “No; it was only because MacEvoy was one of our
workmen, and really came by his death through father sending him up to
trim a tree. Ann MacEvoy will never forgive us that, the longest day she
lives. Did you notice her? She wouldn't speak to me. After you came out,
I tried to tell her that we would look out for her and the children; but
all she would say to me was: 'An' fwat would a wheelwright, an' him the
father of a family, be doin' up a tree?'”
They had come now upon the main street of the village, with its
flagstone sidewalk overhung by a lofty canopy of elm-boughs. Here, for
the space of a block, was concentrated such fashionable elegance of
mansions and ornamental lawns as Octavius had to offer; and it was
presented with the irregularity so characteristic of our restless
civilization. Two or three of the houses survived untouched from the
earlier days--prim, decorous structures, each with its gabled centre
and lower wings, each with its row of fluted columns supporting the
classical roof of a piazza across its whole front, each vying with the
others in the whiteness of those wooden walls enveloping its bright
green blinds. One had to look over picket fences to see these houses,
and in doing so caught the notion that they thus railed themselves
off in pride at being able to remember before the railroad came to the
village, or the wagon-works were thought of.
Before the neighboring properties the fences had been swept away, so
that one might stroll from the sidewalk straight across the well-trimmed
sward to any one of a dozen elaborately modern doorways. Some of the
residences, thus frankly proffering friendship to the passer-by, were of
wood painted in drabs and dusky reds, with bulging windows which marked
the native yearning for the mediaeval, and shingles that strove to be
accounted tiles. Others--a prouder, less pretentious sort--were of brick
or stone, with terra-cotta mouldings set into the walls, and with real
slates covering the riot of turrets and peaks and dormer peepholes
overhead.
Celia Madden stopped in front of the largest and most important-looking
of these new edifices, and said, holding out her hand: “Here I am, once
more. Good-morning, Mr. Ware.”
Theron hoped that his manner did not betray the flash of surprise he
felt in discovering that his new acquaintance lived in the biggest house
in Octavius. He remembered now that some one had pointed it out as the
abode of the owner of the wagon factories; but it had not occurred to
him before to associate this girl with that village magnate. It was
stupid of him, of course, because she had herself mentioned her father.
He looked at her again with an awkward smile, as he formally shook
the gloved hand she gave him, and lifted his soft hat. The strong noon
sunlight, forcing its way down between the elms, and beating upon her
parasol of lace-edged, creamy silk, made a halo about her hair and face
at once brilliant and tender. He had not seen before how beautiful she
was. She nodded in recognition of his salute, and moved up the lawn
walk, spinning the sunshade on her shoulder.
Though the parsonage was only three blocks away, the young minister had
time to think about a good many things before he reached home.
First of all, he had to revise in part the arrangement of his notions
about the Irish. Save for an occasional isolated and taciturn figure
among the nomadic portion of the hired help in the farm country, Theron
had scarcely ever spoken to a person of this curiously alien race
before. He remembered now that there had been some dozen or more Irish
families in Tyre, quartered in the outskirts among the brickyards,
but he had never come in contact with any of them, or given to their
existence even a passing thought. So far as personal acquaintance went,
the Irish had been to him only a name.
But what a sinister and repellent name! His views on this general
subject were merely those common to his communion and his environment.
He took it for granted, for example, that in the large cities most of
the poverty and all the drunkenness, crime, and political corruption
were due to the perverse qualities of this foreign people--qualities
accentuated and emphasized in every evil direction by the baleful
influence of a false and idolatrous religion. It is hardly too much to
say that he had never encountered a dissenting opinion on this point.
His boyhood had been spent in those bitter days when social, political,
and blood prejudices were fused at white heat in the public crucible
together. When he went to the Church Seminary, it was a matter of course
that every member of the faculty was a Republican, and that every one of
his classmates had come from a Republican household. When, later on, he
entered the ministry, the rule was still incredulous of exceptions. One
might as well have looked in the Nedahma Conference for a divergence
of opinion on the Trinity as for a difference in political conviction.
Indeed, even among the laity, Theron could not feel sure that he had
ever known a Democrat; that is, at all closely. He understood very
little about politics, it is true. If he had been driven into a corner,
and forced to attempt an explanation of this tremendous partisan unity
in which he had a share, he would probably have first mentioned
the War--the last shots of which were fired while he was still in
petticoats. Certainly his second reason, however, would have been that
the Irish were on the other side.
He had never before had occasion to formulate, even in his own thoughts,
this tacit race and religious aversion in which he had been bred. It
rose now suddenly in front of him, as he sauntered from patch to patch
of sunlight under the elms, like some huge, shadowy, and symbolic
monument. He looked at it with wondering curiosity, as at something
he had heard of all his life, but never seen before--an abhorrent
spectacle, truly! The foundations upon which its dark bulk reared itself
were ignorance, squalor, brutality and vice. Pigs wallowed in the mire
before its base, and burrowing into this base were a myriad of narrow
doors, each bearing the hateful sign of a saloon, and giving forth
from its recesses of night the sounds of screams and curses. Above were
sculptured rows of lowering, ape-like faces from Nast's and Keppler's
cartoons, and out of these sprang into the vague upper gloom--on the one
side, lamp-posts from which negroes hung by the neck, and on the other
gibbets for dynamiters and Molly Maguires, and between the two glowed a
spectral picture of some black-robed tonsured men, with leering satanic
masks, making a bonfire of the Bible in the public schools.
Theron stared this phantasm hard in the face, and recognized it for a
very tolerable embodiment of what he had heretofore supposed he thought
about the Irish. For an instant, the sight of it made him shiver, as if
the sunny May had of a sudden lapsed back into bleak December. Then he
smiled, and the bad vision went off into space. He saw instead Father
Forbes, in the white and purple vestments, standing by poor MacEvoy's
bedside, with his pale, chiselled, luminous, uplifted face, and he
heard only the proud, confident clanging of the girl's recital,--BEATUM
MICHAELEM ARCHANGELUM, BEATUM JOANNEM BAPTISTAM, PETRUM ET
PAULUM--EM!--AM!--UM!--like strokes on a great resonant alarm-bell,
attuned for the hearing of heaven. He caught himself on the very verge
of feeling that heaven must have heard.
Then he smiled again, and laid the matter aside, with a parting
admission that it had been undoubtedly picturesque and impressive, and
that it had been a valuable experience to him to see it. At least the
Irish, with all their faults, must have a poetic strain, or they would
not have clung so tenaciously to those curious and ancient forms. He
recalled having heard somewhere, or read, it might be, that they were
a people much given to songs and music. And the young lady, that very
handsome and friendly Miss Madden, had told him that she was a musician!
He had a new pleasure in turning this over in his mind. Of all the
closed doors which his choice of a career had left along his pathway, no
other had for him such a magical fascination as that on which was graven
the lute of Orpheus. He knew not even the alphabet of music, and his
conceptions of its possibilities ran but little beyond the best of the
hymn-singing he had heard at Conferences, yet none the less the longing
for it raised on occasion such mutiny in his soul that more than once he
had specifically prayed against it as a temptation.
Dangerous though some of its tendencies might be, there was no
gainsaying the fact that a love for music was in the main an uplifting
influence--an attribute of cultivation. The world was the sweeter and
more gentle for it. And this brought him to musing upon the odd chance
that the two people of Octavius who had given him the first notion of
polish and intellectual culture in the town should be Irish. The Romish
priest must have been vastly surprised at his intrusion, yet had been
at the greatest pains to act as if it were quite the usual thing to have
Methodist ministers assist at Extreme Unction. And the young woman--how
gracefully, with what delicacy, had she comprehended his position and
robbed it of all its possible embarrassments! It occurred to him that
they must have passed, there in front of her home, the very tree from
which the luckless wheelwright had fallen some hours before; and the
fact that she had forborne to point it out to him took form in his mind
as an added proof of her refinement of nature.
The midday dinner was a little more than ready when Theron reached home,
and let himself in by the front door. On Mondays, owing to the moisture
and “clutter” of the weekly washing in the kitchen, the table was laid
in the sitting-room, and as he entered from the hall the partner of
his joys bustled in by the other door, bearing the steaming platter of
corned beef, dumplings, cabbages, and carrots, with arms bared to the
elbows, and a red face. It gave him great comfort, however, to note that
there were no signs of the morning's displeasure remaining on this face;
and he immediately remembered again those interrupted projects of his
about the piano and the hired girl.
“Well! I'd just about begun to reckon that I was a widow,” said Alice,
putting down her fragrant burden. There was such an obvious suggestion
of propitiation in her tone that Theron went around and kissed her. He
thought of saying something about keeping out of the way because it was
“Blue Monday,” but held it back lest it should sound like a reproach.
“Well, what kind of a washerwoman does THIS one turn out to be?” he
asked, after they were seated, and he had invoked a blessing and was
cutting vigorously into the meat.
“Oh, so-so,” replied Alice; “she seems to be particular, but she's
mortal slow. If I hadn't stood right over her, we shouldn't have had the
clothes out till goodness knows when. And of course she's Irish!”
“Well, what of THAT?” asked the minister, with a fine unconcern.
Alice looked up from her plate, with knife and fork suspended in air.
“Why, you know we were talking only the other day of what a pity it was
that none of our own people went out washing,” she said. “That Welsh
woman we heard of couldn't come, after all; and they say, too, that she
presumes dreadfully upon the acquaintance, being a church member, you
know. So we simply had to fall back on the Irish. And even if they do
go and tell their priest everything they see and hear, why, there's one
comfort, they can tell about US and welcome. Of course I see to it she
doesn't snoop around in here.”
Theron smiled. “That's all nonsense about their telling such things to
their priests,” he said with easy confidence.
“Why, you told me so yourself,” replied Alice, briskly. “And I've always
understood so, too; they're bound to tell EVERYTHING in confession.
That's what gives the Catholic Church such a tremendous hold. You've
spoken of it often.”
“It must have been by way of a figure of speech,” remarked Theron,
not with entire directness. “Women are great hands to separate one's
observations from their context, and so give them meanings quite
unintended. They are also great hands,” he added genially, “or at least
one of them is, at making the most delicious dumplings in the world. I
believe these are the best even you ever made.”
Alice was not unmindful of the compliment, but her thoughts were on
other things. “I shouldn't like that woman's priest, for example,” she
said, “to know that we had no piano.”
“But if he comes and stands outside our house every night and
listens--as of course he will,” said Theron, with mock gravity, “it is
only a question of time when he must reach that conclusion for himself.
Our only chance, however, is that there are some sixteen hundred other
houses for him to watch, so that he may not get around to us for quite a
spell. Why, seriously, Alice, what on earth do you suppose Father Forbes
knows or cares about our poor little affairs, or those of any other
Protestant household in this whole village? He has his work to do, just
as I have mine--only his is ten times as exacting in everything except
sermons--and you may be sure he is only too glad when it is over each
day, without bothering about things that are none of his business.”
“All the same I'm afraid of them,” said Alice, as if argument were
exhausted.