AN OLD PRIEST
FATHER MALONEY was in a mood, which, it must be confessed, was
distinctly unfavourable to his peace of mind. And not only his peace
of mind, but his appetite had suffered considerably thereby. Cold
corned beef and plum tart had been so much sawdust between his lips,
flavourless and exceeding dry. Even his after-luncheon pipe failed to
rouse him to a cheerier outlook on life in general. Now, when the joys
of tobacco had ceased to woo him, matters had, indeed, come to a pretty
pass. Anastasia, his housekeeper, clearing away the débris of the meal,
eyed him solicitously.
“You’re not ill, Father?” she asked, her black eyes snapping anxiety in
his direction.
For a moment he roused himself.
“Not at all, not at all,” he responded with a show of briskness, only
to relapse once more into gloom.
Anastasia shook her head.
“It’ll be that moidering business up to the Castle, I’m thinking,”
quoth she to herself, her lips tightening in a manner that would have
augured ill for the author of the business had he been anywhere within
sighting distance.
Returning to the kitchen she addressed a fervent, and, it must be
confessed, slightly authoritative decade of the rosary to Our Blessed
Lady, before beginning to wash up plates and dishes. To her mind
_something_ had to be done. Herein her mind and that of old Biddy the
nurse up at the Castle were distinctly in accord.
For one hour--two hours, perhaps--Father Maloney sat in his old
armchair. During that time he endeavoured, with some degree of success,
to say his office with attention. Then he once more lapsed into gloomy
retrospection and anticipation.
Since midday the world--the pleasant, material, sunny world--had been
turned upside down for him. It is true that this inversion had been
looked for, feared, for the last six months, but that fact did not
prevent the present phenomenon from being any the less unpleasant when
it actually occurred. It requires a peculiarly level head, not to say
a certain degree of something almost akin to callousness, to regard
matters from so totally different a point of view. It is a position to
which you cannot readily adjust yourself. At all events Father Maloney
found it one to which he could not readily adjust himself. It required
a supreme effort on his part merely to hang on, so to speak.
“Sure, and I ought to have been more prepared for it,” he muttered to
himself.
Getting out of his chair he went into the little hall, reached down his
hat, and took his stick from the stand. Anastasia saw him through the
open door of the kitchen. She came to it, a small dried-up woman.
“You’re not going out without your tea, Father,” she protested. “The
water in the kettle is boiling this very minute.”
“I’ll not be wanting any tea,” returned Father Maloney opening the
front door.
Anastasia went back into the kitchen, shaking her head sorrowfully at
the steaming kettle on the stove.
Father Maloney went slowly down the lane. It was powdered thickly with
white dust, since, for a fortnight past at least, the sky by day had
been blue and brazen, at night starlit and cloudless.
Two small girls passed him, belonging to his own flock. They dipped him
profound curtseys, glancing at him with bright bird-like eyes. He gave
but abstracted response to their salutation, which fact elicited from
them surprised and regretful comment as soon as he was out of earshot.
Though, for that matter, they might, at the moment, have reproached him
under his very nose, and gained no hearing.
Leaving the lane presently, he turned through a gate, and up the slope
of a grassy field. He had need of wider expanses than the hedged-in
lane afforded him.
He climbed slowly, pausing every now and then to take breath. At last
he gained the summit. Finding the sun distinctly warm, and being heated
by the ascent, he lowered himself slowly on to the short dry grass. So
busy was he with his own reflections, that he did not perceive a young
man lying in the shade of a blackberry bush some hundred or so paces
to his right. But it is very certain that the young man saw him; and,
seeing him, observed him intently.
* * * * *
When Corin had returned to his work, John had again betaken himself to
the open.
It was fairly obvious, so concluded John shrewdly, that a route
chosen for a morning ramble was not likely to be again sought in the
afternoon. The proceeding would savour too strongly of unoriginality of
ideas. But, so he pondered within his mind, it was just possible that
some other route might be chosen, and that by the favour of the gods he
might hit upon it. Therefore he had set out, leaving matters to those
same gods.
Having, after circumlocutious and disappointed walking, gained
his present post of eminence, he had lain down in the shadow of a
blackberry bush to muse over, and carp at, the fickleness of the gods
to whom he had trusted, and incidentally to survey the surrounding
country for a moving white-robed figure.
Till this present, no figure of any kind had come within his range of
vision; then, five minutes or so agone, turning his eyes leftwards, he
had perceived a stout elderly priest climbing the hillside towards him.
Here was some solace. If it were not the rose herself, it was at
least one who, it might pretty safely be concluded, was tolerably
well acquainted with the rose. A small backwater of a place, such as
Malford, does not, he might suppose, yield many priests, nor even,
presumably, more than one. There was little doubt in his mind but that
the approaching figure was the priest who officiated at Delancey Chapel.
John observed him intently, as I have said. He saw him lower himself on
to the grass with the slow deliberate movement of a stoutish man, saw
him gazing straight in front of him. From his position John had a view
of his face in something less than profile, but it was the dejection of
his attitude, rather than his face, that at the moment impressed our
John. He watched him, intent, absorbed.
“Something,” observed John mentally, “has recently upset his
equilibrium. Like a wise man he has come into the open to gain
restoration of balance.”
Which mental observation showed John to be possessed of no little
shrewdness, as you will perceive. And then, by a really marvellous leap
of intuition, he bounced straight into the heart of affairs, went in
with a splash, and came up gasping.
“Oh!” cried John to his soul, “that rumour, that obnoxious and
detestable rumour is true, and he has just been made aware of the
unassailable fact. The poor old fellow!”
No wonder he looked dejected, no wonder he gazed with all his eyes in
the direction of the towers of Delancey Castle plainly visible above
the distant trees. If the rumour were true, and John was now very
certain of its truth, it was enough to wring tears from the heart of a
flint, to call forth protestation from the tongueless trees and mute
stones of the old Castle itself.
An American claimant to that place! that utterly and entirely English
place! Its very walls, its surrounding trees and fields, were so
unmistakably and undeniably English. You might have taken up the whole
thing and planted it down in any remote and unexpected quarter of the
globe that you had chosen, and its whole atmosphere would have shrieked
its English origin dumbly, but quite, quite explicitly, at you. At any
time its origin would have been unassailable, and truly fifty times
more so at this present moment, as it lay serene and peaceful in the
blue and golden warmth of an August afternoon.
And now it was to be claimed by an American.
John suffered from no racial prejudice, I would have you to believe;
but there were some things that could be, and some things that could
not be. And for Delancey Castle to be in any but English hands would
be, to his way of thinking, a thing as incongruous and impossible as
that a Chinese should don the kilt of the Highlander, or that a South
Sea Islander should assume the Irish brogue. Oh, it was preposterous,
preposterous, preposterous. It was altogether unthinkable and
unimaginable.
And then suddenly he was aware of a difference in the old priest’s
attitude. It was a tiny difference, a subtle and quite inexplicable
difference, nevertheless it existed. And all at once John felt himself
a bit of an intruder, looking at what he had no atom of right to see.
Had he not feared that movement would make his presence known, he would
have moved on the instant. As it was he became absorbed in pulling up
small blades of grass from the ground. He pulled at them fiercely, his
eyes fixed upon them, the while he was most intensely aware of that
motionless old figure a hundred paces from him.
At length a sound--it might have been a half cough--caused him to raise
his eyes again. He saw the old priest pulling a pipe and tobacco pouch
from his pocket.
John watched him. The pipe filled, and the pouch replaced, Father
Maloney still fumbled at his pockets. It would appear that something
was missing.
“Matches!” said John. And cautiously he heaved himself to his feet.
Softly he advanced some steps, came to a line directly behind the old
priest, then marched boldly forward.
“Can I be of any use?” John held out a box towards him.
Father Maloney looked up surprised.
“I’m much obliged. Where did you appear from?”
“From over there.” John waved his hand in a backward and non-committal
direction. “I saw you intended lighting your pipe, but your intentions
were being frustrated.”
“Can’t think how I forgot them,” said Father Maloney pulling at his
pipe.
John dropped on to the ground beside him.
“What a view!” he announced in a pleasantly conversational tone. “And
what a day!”
“It is that indeed,” returned Father Maloney cheerfully.
John hugged himself inwardly.
“He’s got the hang of things again, brave old fellow!” he ejaculated
mentally. “But I’d give a very great deal to know the veritable
standpoint of affairs.”
Aloud he said. “Am I right in imagining that you are the chaplain of
Delancey Castle?”
“I am,” said Father Maloney. “What made you think so?”
“Well,” said John airily, “one does not expect to see a superabundance
of priests in a Protestant country, and when it comes to a minute spot
such as this, where you happen to know there is one priest,--well, when
you see him, you imagine he’s the one,” concluded John explicitly.
Father Maloney’s eyes twinkled.
“Under the circumstances, as stated by you, the inference might be
drawn,” quoth he.
And then followed a little silence. Both men were looking towards
Delancey Castle, and it may be pretty safely conjectured that the
thoughts of both were occupied by that same Castle.
John, if the truth be known, was longing--fervently longing--that the
old priest should give voice to that matter, which, he was fully aware,
was uppermost in their minds. For him to broach the subject would, he
feared, savour too strongly of impertinence on the part of a complete
stranger. Yet it is very certain that, without any undue curiosity on
his part, he desired intensely to know the actual rights of the case,
to arrive at the veritable truth of the rumour which had twice reached
his ears.
Now whether John’s desire was sufficiently intense to communicate
itself to Father Maloney, or whether it was that the subject which
so absorbed the old priest’s mind was bound to find an outlet in
speech, you may settle as best pleases you. For my part, I have no
definite opinion to offer on the matter, though I sway slightly in
favour of the latter conclusion. When every nook and cranny of the
mind is filled with a thought which increases in volume the more it is
absorbed, there comes a point when an outlet in speech is practically
a necessity, and, to my thinking, this point had been reached in the
present case of Father Maloney’s mind. Also it is quite possible that
he recognized the silent and unobtrusive sympathy of John. Certain it
is that he began to speak.
“I suppose you’ll have heard the news of yonder Castle?” he asked,
pulling at his pipe.
“I’ve heard rumours,” acquiesced John, “which I devoutly trusted were
nothing more.”
“I trusted that myself,” said Father Maloney grimly. “But the truth of
them is clinched now, and that’s a fact.”
“Ah!” said John quietly. And then, “Would you tell me the story? I
should like to hear it, if you wouldn’t mind telling it.”
“Not at all, since you’d be caring to hear it But it’s a longish tale,
and a bit complicated at that. It might be boring you.”
“Not a bit of it,” declared John fervently. “I’ve been wanting to hear
the truth of the matter ever since the first rumour reached my ears.
Honestly,” he continued smiling, “it has been nothing but the fear of a
snub that prevented me from broaching the subject the first moment I
dropped on the grass beside you.”
Father Maloney smiled.
“Ah, well,” he said.