Father Broidy rushed down the stone steps and ran toward the Bishop's
carriage which had just stopped at the curb. He flung open the door
before the driver could alight, kissed the ring on the hand extended
him, helped its owner out and with a beaming face led the Bishop to
the pretty and comfortable rectory.
"Welcome! welcome to Alta, Bishop," he said as they entered the house,
"and sure the whole Deanery is here to back it up."
The Bishop smiled as the clergy trooped down the stairs echoing the
greeting. The Bishop knew them all, and he was happy, for well was he
aware that every man meant what he said. No one really ever admired
the Bishop, but all loved him, and each had a private reason of his
own for it that he never confided to anyone save his nearest crony.
They were all here now to witness the resurrection of Alta--the
poorest parish in a not too rich Diocese, hopeless three years ago,
but now--well, there it is across the lot, that symphony in stone,
every line of its chaste gothic a "Te Deum" that even an agnostic
could understand and appreciate; every bit of carving the paragraph of
a sermon that passers-by, perforce, must hear. To-day it is to be
consecrated, the cap-stone is to be set on Father Broidy's Arch of
Triumph and the real life of Alta parish to begin.
"I thought you had but sixteen families here," said the Bishop as he
watched the crowd stream into the church.
"There were but eighteen, Bishop," the young priest answered, with a
happy smile that had considerable self-satisfaction in it. "There are
seventy-five now."
"And how did it come about, my lad?" questioned the Bishop.
"Mostly through my mission bringing back some of the 'ought-to-be's,'
but I suppose principally because my friend McDermott opened his
factory to Catholics. You know, Bishop, that though he was born one of
us he had somehow acquired a bitter hatred of the Church, and he never
employed Catholics until I brought him around."
There was a shadow of a smile that had meaning to it on the Bishop's
face, as he patted the ardent young pastor on the arm, and said:
"Well, God bless him! God bless him! but I suppose we must begin to
vest now. Is it not near ten o'clock?"
Father Broidy turned with a little shade of disappointment on his
face to the work of preparation, and soon had the procession started
toward the church.
Shall I describe the beauty of it all?--the lights and flowers, the
swinging censers, with the glory of the chant and the wealth of mystic
symbolism which followed the passing of that solemn procession into
the sanctuary? That could best be imagined, like the feeling in the
heart of the young pastor who adored every line of the building. He
had watched the laying of each stone, and could almost count the chips
that had jumped from every chisel. There had never been so beautiful a
day to him, and never such a ceremony but one--three years ago in the
Seminary chapel. He almost forgot it in the glory of the present. Dear
me, how well Kaiser did preach! He always knew it, did Father Broidy,
that young Kaiser had it in him. He did not envy him a bit of the
congratulations. They were a part of Father Broidy's triumph, too. It
was small wonder that the Dean whispered to the Bishop on the way back
to the rectory:
"You will have to put Broidy at the top of the list now. He has surely
won his spurs to-day."
But again the shadow of the meaning smile was on the Bishop's face,
and he said nothing; so the Dean looked wise and mysterious as he
slapped the young pastor on the back and said:
"Proficiat, God bless you! You have done well, and I am proud of you,
but wait and listen." Then his voice dropped to a whisper. "I was
talking to the Bishop about you."
The dinner? Well, Anne excelled herself. Is not that enough to say?
But perhaps you have never tasted Anne's cooking? Then you surely have
heard of it, for all the Diocese knows about it, and everyone said
that Broidy was in his usual good luck when Anne left the Dean's and
went to keep house for the priest at Alta.
Story followed story, as dish followed dish, and a chance to rub up
the wit that had been growing rusty in the country missions for months
never passed by unnoticed.
The Dean was toastmaster.
"Right Reverend Bishop and Reverend Fathers," he began, when he had
enforced silence with the handle of his fork, "it is my pleasure and
pride to be here to-day. Three years ago a young priest was sent to
one of the most miserably poor places in the Diocese. What he found
you all know. The sorrowful history of the decline of Alta was never a
secret record. Eighteen careless families left. Bigotry rampant.
Factories closed to Catholics. Church dilapidated. Only the vestry for
a dwelling place. That was three years ago, and look around you
to-day. See the church, house and school, and built out of what? That
is Father Broidy's work and Father Broidy's triumph, but we are glad
of it. No man has made such a record in our Diocese before. What have
we others done by the side of his extraordinary effort? Yet we are not
jealous. We know well the good qualities of soul and body in our young
friend, and God bless him. We are pleased to be with him, though
completely outclassed. We rejoice in the resurrection of Alta. Let me
now call upon our beloved Bishop, whose presence among us is always a
joy."
When the applause subsided the Bishop arose, and for an instant stood
again with that meaning smile just lighting his face. For that instant
he did not utter a word. When he did speak there was a quiver in his
voice that age had never planted and in spite of the jokes which had
preceded and the laughter which he had led, it sounded like a
forerunner of tears. He had never been called eloquent, this
kindly-faced and snow-crowned old man, but when he spoke it was always
with a gentle dignity, and a depth of sympathy and feeling that
compelled attention.
"It is a great satisfaction, my dear Fathers," he began, "to find so
many of you here to rejoice with our young friend and his devoted
people, and to thus encourage the growth of a priestly life which he
has so well begun in Alta. No one glories in his success more than I.
No one more warmly than I, his Bishop, tenders congratulations. This
is truly a day the Lord has made--this day in Alta. It is a day of
joy and gladness for priest and people. Will you pardon an old man if
he stems the tide of mirth for an instant? He could not hope to stem
it for long. On such an occasion as this it would burst the barriers,
leaving what he would show you once more submerged beneath rippling
waters and silver-tipped waves of laughter. It seems wrong even to
think of the depths where lie the bodies of the dead and the hulks of
the wrecked. But the bottom always has its treasure as well as its
tragedy. There are both a tragedy and a treasure in the story I will
tell you to-day."
"You remember Father Belmond, the first pastor of Alta? Yes! Then let
me tell you a story that your generous priestly souls will treasure as
it deserves."
The table was strangely silent. Not one of the guests had ever before
known the depth of sympathy in the old Bishop till now. Every chord in
the nature of each man vibrated to the touch of his words.
[Illustration: "I asked him how he lived on the pittance he had
received."]
"It was ten years ago," went on the Bishop--"ah, how years fly fast to
the old!--a friend of college days, a bishop in an Eastern State,
wrote me a long letter concerning a young convert he had just
ordained. He was a lad of great talents, brilliant and handsome, the
son of wealthy parents, who, however, now cast him off, giving him to
understand that he would receive nothing from them. The young man was
filled with zeal, and he begged the bishop to give him to some
missionary diocese wherein he could work in obscurity for the greater
glory of God. He was so useful and so brilliant a man that the bishop
desired to attach him to his own household and was loath to lose him,
but the priest begged hard and was persistent; so the bishop asked me
to take him for a few years and give him actual contact with the
hardships of life in a pioneer state. Soon, he thought, the young man
would be willing to return to his larger field. The bishop, in other
words, wanted to test him. I sadly needed priests, so when he came
with the oil still wet on his hands, I gave him a place--the worst I
had--I gave him Alta. Some of you older men know what it was then. The
story of Alta is full of sorrow. I told it to him, but he thanked me
and went to his charge. I expected to see him within a week, but I did
not see him for a year. Then I sent for him, and with his annual
report in my hand I asked him how he lived on the pittance which he
had received. He said that it took very little when one was careful
and that he lived well enough--but his coat was threadbare and his
shoes were sadly patched. There was a brightness in his eyes too, and
a flush on his cheek that I did not quite like. I asked him of his
work and he told me that he was hopeful--told me of the little repairs
he had made, of a soul won back, but in the conversation I actually
stole the sad tale of his poverty from him. Yet he made no complaint
and went back cheerfully to Alta.
"The next month he came again, but this time he told me of the dire
need of aid, not for himself, but for his church. The people, he said,
were poor pioneers, and in the comfortless and ugly old church they
were losing their grip on religion. The young people were falling away
very fast. All around were well ordered and beautiful sectarian
churches. He could see the effect, not visible to less interested eyes
but very plain to his. He feared that another generation would be lost
and he asked me if there was any possibility of securing temporary aid
such as the sects had for their building work. I had to tell him that
nothing could be done. I told him of the poverty of my own Diocese,
and that, while his was a poor place, there were others approaching
it. In my heart I knew there was something sadly lacking in our
national work for the Church, but I could do nothing myself. He wrote
to his own State for help, but the letters were unanswered. Except for
the few stipends I could give him and which he devoted to his work, it
was impossible to do anything. He was brave and never faltered though
the eyes in him shone brighter and in places his coat was worn
through. A few days later I received a letter from his bishop asking
how he did and saying that he would appoint him to an excellent parish
if he would return home willingly. I sent the letter to Alta with a
little note of my own, congratulating him on his changed condition. He
returned the letter to me with a few lines saying: 'I can not go. If I
desert my people here it would be a sin. There are plenty at home for
the rich places but you have no one to send here. Please ask the
bishop to let me stay. I think it is God's will.' The day I received
that letter I heard one of my priests at the Cathedral say: 'How seedy
that young Belmond looks! for an Eastern man he is positively sloppy
in his dress. He ought to brace up and think of the dignity of his
calling. Surely such a man is not calculated to impress himself upon
our separated brethren.' And another chimed in: 'I wonder why he left
his own diocese?'"
"I heard no more for two years except for the annual report, and now
and then a request for a dispensation. I did hear that he was teaching
the few children of the parish himself, and every little while I saw
an article in some of the papers, unsigned but suspiciously like his
style, and I suspected that he was earning a little money with his
pen.
"One winter night, returning alone from a visitation of Vinta, the
fast train was stalled by a blizzard at the Alta station. I went out
on the platform to secure a breath of fresh air, but I had scarcely
closed the door when a boy rushed up to me and asked if I were a
Catholic priest. When I nodded he said: 'We have been trying to get a
priest all day, but the wires are down in the storm. Father Belmond
is sick and the doctor says he will die. He told me to look through
every train that came in. He was sure I would find some one.' Reaching
at once for my grip and coat I rushed to the home of the Pastor. The
home was the lean-to vestry of the old log church. In one corner
Father Belmond lived; another was given over to the vestments and
linens. Everything was spotlessly clean. On a poor bed the priest was
tossing, moaning and delirious. Only the boy had attended him in his
sickness until the noon of that day when two good old women heard of
his condition and came. One of them was at his bedside when I entered.
When she saw my collar she lifted her hands in that peculiarly
Hibernian gesture that means so much, and said:
"'Sure, God sent you here this night. He has been waiting since noon
to die.'
"The sick priest opened his eyes that now had the brightness of death
in them and appeared to look through me. He seemed to be very far
away. But slowly the eyes told me that he was coming back--back from
the shadows; then at last he spoke:
"'You, Bishop? Thank God!'"
"He made his simple confession. I anointed him and brought him
Viaticum from the tabernacle in the church. Then the eyes went wild
again, and I saw when they opened and looked at me that he had already
turned around, and was again walking through the shadows of the Great
Valley that ends the Long Road.
[Illustration: "Then I learned--old priest and bishop as I was--I
learned my lesson."]
"Through the night we three, the old woman, the boy and myself,
watched him and listened to his wanderings. Then I learned--old priest
and bishop as I was--I learned my lesson. The lips that never spoke a
complaint were moved, but not by his will, to go over the story of two
terrible years. It was a sad story. It began with his great zeal. He
wanted to do so much, but the black discouragement of everything
slowly killed his hopes. He saw the Faith going from his people. He
saw that they were ceasing to care. The town was then, as it is
to-day, McDermott's town, but McDermott had fallen away when his
riches came, and some terrible event, a quarrel with a former priest
who had attended Alta from a distant point, had left McDermott bitter.
He practically drove the pastor from his door. He closed his factory
to the priest's people and one by one they left. Only eighteen
families stayed. The dying priest counted them over in his dreams, and
sobbed as he told of the others who had gone. Then the bigotry that
McDermott's faith had kept concealed broke out under the encouragement
of McDermott's infidelity. The boys of the town flung insults at the
priest as he passed. The people gave little, and that grudgingly. I
could almost feel his pain as he told in his delirium how, day after
day, he had dragged his frail body to church and on the round of
duty. But every now and then, as if the words came naturally to bear
him up, he would say:
"'It's for God's sake. I am nothing. It will all come in His own good
time.'
"Then I knew the spirit that kept him to his work. He went over his
visit to me. How he had hoped, and then how his hopes were dashed to
the ground. Oh, dear Lord, had I known what it all meant to that
sensitive, saintly nature, I would have sold my ring and cross to give
him what he needed. But my words seemed to have broken him and he came
home to die. The night of his return he spent before the altar in his
log church, and, Saints of Heaven, how he prayed! When I heard his
poor, dry lips whisper over the prayer once more I bowed my head on
the coverlet and cried as only a child can cry--and I was only a child
at that minute in spite of my white hair and wrinkles. He had offered
a supreme sacrifice--his life. I gleaned from his prayers that his
parents had done him the one favor of keeping up his insurance and
that he had made it over to his church. So he wanted to die at his
post and piteously begged God to take him. For his death he knew would
give Alta a church. He seemed penetrated with the idea that alive he
was useless, but that his death meant the resurrection of Alta. When I
heard that same expression used so often to-day I lived over again the
whole story of that night in the little vestry. All this time he had
been picking the coverlet, and his hands seemed, during the pauses,
to be holding the paten as if he were gathering up the minute
particles from the corporal. At last his hand found mine. He clung to
it, and just an instant his eyes looked at me with reason in them. He
smiled, and murmured, 'It is all right, now, Bishop.' I heard a sob
back of me where the boy stood, and the old woman was praying. He was
trying to speak again, and I caught the words, 'God's sake--I am
nothing--His good time.' Then he was still, just as the morning sun
broke through the windows.
"That minute, Reverend Fathers, began the resurrection of Alta. The
old woman told me how it happened. He was twenty-five miles away
attending one of his missions when the blizzard was at its height.
McDermott fell sick and a telegram was sent for the priest--the last
message before the wires came down. Father Belmond started to drive
through the storm back to Alta. He succeeded in reaching McDermott's
bedside and gave him the last Sacraments. He did not break down
himself until he returned to the vestry, but for twenty-four hours he
tossed in fever before they found him.
"McDermott grew better. He sent for me when he heard I was in town.
The first question he asked was: 'Is he dead?' I told McDermott the
story just as I am telling you. 'God forgive me,' said the sick man,
'that priest died for me. When he came here I ordered him out of my
office, yet when they told him I was sick he drove through the storm
for my sake. He believed in the worth of a soul, and he himself was
the noblest soul that Alta ever had.'
"I said nothing. Somebody better than a mere bishop was talking to
McDermott, and I, His minister, was silent in His presence. 'Bishop,'
said McDermott, after long thought, 'I never really believed until
now; I'm sorry that it took a man's life to bring back the Faith of my
fathers. Send us a priest to Alta--one who can do things: one after
the stamp of the saint in the vestry. I'll be his friend and together
we will carry on the work he began. I'll see him through if God spares
me.'
"Dear Fathers, it is needless to say what I did.
"Father Broidy, on this happy day I have not re-echoed the praises
that have been showered upon you as much as perhaps I might have done,
because I reserved for you a praise that is higher than all of them. I
believed when I sent you here that you were of his stamp. You have
done your duty and you have done it well. I am not ungrateful and I
shall not forget. But your best praise from me is, that I firmly
believe that you, under like circumstances, would also have willingly
given your life for the resurrection of Alta."