Charred Wood Part 2

"Not that you could notice," Saunders answered. "The Padre's jolly--smart, too--and a bookman. He has books enough in that little house to start a public library, but he's too poor now to buy many of the kind he's daffy over--old stuff, you know, first editions and the like."

They crossed the street to the rectory, an old-fas.h.i.+oned house nestling among the trees, the parapet and pillars of its broad veranda almost hidden by a heavy growth of ampelopsis. In front of the house, a stretch of well-kept lawn was divided from the public walk by a hawthorn hedge, and, cutting through its velvety green, a wide graveled pathway swept up to the steps whose sharp angle with the veranda was softened by a ma.s.s of low-growing, flowering shrubs. To the side, extending towards the church, the hedge was tripled, with a s.p.a.ce of some six feet between. The lower branches of the evergreens forming the second row were scarcely higher than the hawthorn in front; while, in their turn, the evergreens were barely topped by the silver maples behind. That triple hedge had been the loving care of the successive priests for fifty years and served as an effectual bar to the curiosity of the casual pa.s.ser-by. In the little yard behind its shelter the priest could read or doze, free from the intrusive gaze of the village.

Father Murray, who was comfortably reading on the veranda, arose as his two visitors approached.

Saunders spoke quickly. "Don't worry, Padre. I ain't goin' to get after you again to sell you another set. I just thought I'd like to have you meet my friend, Mr. Griffin. I know you'll like him. He's bookish, too, and an Englishman. Then, I'm off." Suiting the action to the word, the agent, raising his hat, walked down the graveled path and down toward the hotel.

Father Murray took Mark's hand with a friendly grip quite different from the bone-crus.h.i.+ng handshake he so often met in America. Mark gazed thoughtfully at his host. With his thin but kindly face and commanding presence, the priest seemed almost foreign. What Mark saw was a tall--he was six feet at least of bone and muscle--and good-looking man, with an ascetic nose and mouth; with hair, once black, but now showing traces of white, falling in thick waves over a broad brow. Mark noticed that his ca.s.sock was old and faded, but that reddish b.u.t.tons down its front distinguished it from the ca.s.socks of other village priests he had seen on his travels.

"You are welcome, Mr. Griffin--very welcome." Mark found Father Murray's voice pleasing. "Sit down right over there. That chair is more comfortable than it looks. I call it 'Old Hickory' because, though it isn't hickory, yet it began life in this old house and has outlived three pastors. Smoke?"

"Thanks, I do--but a pipe, you know. I'm hopelessly British." Mark pulled out his pipe and a pouch of tobacco.

Turning to the wicker table beside him, the priest dug down into an old cigar box filled with the odds and ends that smokers acc.u.mulate. He found a pipe and filled it from Mark's extended tobacco pouch.

"It's poor hospitality, Mr. Griffin, to take your tobacco; but I offered you a cigar. You know, this cigar habit has so grown into me that it's a rare occasion that brings me back to old times and my pipe." Father Murray pressed the tobacco down into the bowl. "How long are you to be with us, Mr. Griffin?"

Mark was dropping into a lazy mood again; it was very comfortable on the veranda. "I haven't fixed a time for going on. I beg your pardon, but aren't those b.u.t.tons significant? I once spent six months in Rome.

Aren't you what they call a _Monsignore_?"

"Don't tell them so here, or I'll lose my standing. Yes, I am a prelate, a Domestic Prelate to His Holiness. I am afraid it is the domesticity of the t.i.tle that sticks here in Siha.s.set, rather than the prelacy. My people are poor--mostly mill workers. I have never shown them the purple. It might frighten them out of saying 'Father.'"

"But surely--" Mark hesitated.

"Oh, yes, I know what you are thinking. I did like it at first, but I was younger then, and more ambitious. You know, Mr. Griffin, I find that the priesthood is something like a river. The farther you go from the source the deeper and wider it gets; and it's at its best as it nears the ocean. Even when it empties into the wider waters, it isn't quite lost. It's in the beginning that you notice the flowers on the bank. Coming toward the end, it's--well, different."

"You are not beginning to think you are old?"

"No." Father Murray was very positive. "I am not old yet; but I'm getting there, for I'm forty-five. Only five years until I strike the half-century mark. But why talk about priests and the priesthood? You are not a Catholic?"

"I don't know," said Mark. "The difference between us religiously, Monsignore, is that I was and am not; you were not and behold you are."

Father Murray looked interested.

"Yes, yes," he said; "I am a convert. It was long ago, though. I was a young Presbyterian minister, and it's odd how it came about. Newman didn't get me, though he shook his own tree into the Pope's lap; I wasn't on the tree. It was Brownson--a Presbyterian like myself--who did the business. You don't know him? Pity! He's worth knowing. I got to reading him, and he made it so plain that I had to drop. I didn't want to, either--but here I am. Now, Mr. Griffin, how did you happen to go the other way?"

"I didn't go--that is, not deliberately. I just drifted. Mother died, and father didn't care, in fact rather opposed; so I just didn't last.

Later on, I studied the church and I could not see."

"Studied the church? You mean the Catholic Church?" Father Murray's mouth hid the ghost of a smile.

"No, it wasn't the Catholic Church in particular. When we worldlings say 'the church,' we mean religion in general, perhaps all Christianity in general and all Christians in particular."

"I know." The priest's voice held a touch of sorrow now. "I hope you will pardon me, Mr. Griffin, if I say one thing that may sound controversial--it's just an observation. I have noticed the tendency you speak of; but isn't it strange that when people go looking into the question of religion they can deliberately close their eyes to a 'City set upon a Mountain'?"

"I don't quite--"

"Get me?" Father Murray laughed. "I know that you wanted to use that particular expressive bit of our particularly expressive slang. What I mean is this: People study religion nowadays--that is, English-speaking people--with the Catholic Church left out. Yet she claims the allegiance of over three hundred million people. Without her, Christianity would be merely pitiful. She alone stands firm on her foundation. She alone has something really definite to offer. She has the achievements of twenty centuries by which to judge her. She has borne, during all those centuries, the hatred of the world; but to-day she is loved, too--loved better than anything else on earth. She has hugged the worst of her children to her breast, has borne their shame that she might save them, because she is a mother; yet she has saints to show by the thousands. She has never been afraid to speak--always has spoken; but the ages have not trapped her. She is the biggest, most wonderful, most mysterious, most awful thing on earth; and yet, as you say, those who study religion ignore her. I couldn't, and I have been through the mill."

Mark s.h.i.+fted a little uneasily. "I can't ignore her," he said, "but I am just a little bit afraid of her."

"Ah, yes." The priest caught his pipe by the bowl and used the stem to emphasize his words. "I felt that way, too. I like you, Mr. Griffin, and so I am going to ask you not to mind if I tell you something that I have never told anyone before. I was afraid of her. I hated her. I struggled, and almost cursed her. She was too logical. She was leading me where I did not want to go. But when I came she put her arms around me; and when I looked at her, she smiled. I came in spite of many things; and now, Mr. Griffin, I pay. I am alone, and I pay always. Yet I am glad to pay. I am glad to pay--even here--in Siha.s.set."

Mark was moved in spite of himself. "I wonder," he said softly, "if you are glad, Monsignore, to pay so much? Pardon me if I touch upon something raw; but I know that you were, even as a Catholic, higher than you are now. Doesn't that make it hard to pay?"

"To many it might appear that it would make things harder; but it doesn't. You have to be inside in order to understand it. The Church takes you, smiling. She gives to you generously, and then, with a smile, she breaks you; and, hating to be broken, you break, knowing that it is best for you. She pets you, and then she whips you; and the whips sting, but they leave no mark on the soul, except a good mark, _if you have learned_. But pardon me, here's a paris.h.i.+oner--" A woman, old and bent, was coming up the steps. "Come on, Mrs. O'Leary.

How is the good man?"

The priest arose to meet the woman, whose sad face aroused in Mark a keen thrill of sympathy.

"He's gone, Father," she said, "gone this minute. I thank G.o.d he had you with him this morning, and went right. It came awful sudden."

"G.o.d rest him. I'm sorry--"

"Don't be sorry, Father," she answered, as he opened the door to let her go into the house ahead of him. "Sure, G.o.d was good to me, and to John and to the childer. Sure, I had him for thirty year, and he died right. I'm happy to do G.o.d's will."

She pa.s.sed into the house. The priest looked over to where Mark was standing hat in hand.

"Don't go, Mr. Griffin, unless you really have to. I'll be away only a few minutes."

Mark sat down again and thought. The priest had said nothing about the lady of the tree, and Mark really wanted him to mention her; but Father Murray had given him something else that made him thoughtful and brought back memories. Mark did not have long to wait, for the door opened in five minutes and the priest came out alone.

"Mrs. O'Leary came to arrange for the funeral herself--brave, wasn't it?" he said. "I left her with Ann, my housekeeper, a good soul whose specialty is one in which the Irish excel--sympathy. Ann keeps it in stock and, though she is eternally drawing on it, the stock never diminishes. Mrs. O'Leary's troubles are even now growing less."

"Sympathy and loyalty," said Mark, "are chief virtues of the Irish I knew at home."

"Ann has both," said Father Murray, hunting for his pipe. "But the latter to an embarra.s.sing degree. She would even run the parish if she could, to see that it was run to save me labor. Ann has been a priest's housekeeper for twenty-five years. She has condoled with hundreds; she loves the poor but has no patience with shams. We have a chronic sick man here who is her particular _bete noir_. And, as for organists, she would cheerfully drown them all. But Mrs. O'Leary is safe with Ann."

"Poor woman!" said Mark.

"That reminds me," said Father Murray. "I had a convert priest here a little while ago. His Bishop had sent him for his initial 'breaking in' to one of the poorest parishes in a great city. I questioned a little the advisability of doing that; so, after six months, when I met the priest--who, by the way, had been a fas.h.i.+onable minister like myself--I asked him rather anxiously how he liked his people.

'Charming people,' he answered, 'charming. Charming women, too--Mrs.

O'Rourke, Mrs. Sweeney, Mrs. Thomasefski--' 'You speak of them,' I said, 'as if they were society ladies.' 'Better--better still,' he answered. 'They're the real thing--fewer faults, more faith, more devotion.' I tell you, Mr. Griffin, I never before met people such as these."

"Mrs. O'Leary seems to have her pastor's philosophy," ventured the visitor.

"Philosophy! That would seem a compliment indeed to Mrs. O'Leary. She wouldn't understand it, but she would recognize it as something fine.

It isn't philosophy, though," he added, slowly; "rather, it's something bigger. It's real religion."

"She needs it!"

"So do we all need it. I never knew how much until I was so old that I had to weep for the barren years that might have bloomed." The priest sighed as he hunted for his pipe.

The discussion ended for, to Mark's amazement, who should come up the walk, veiled indeed, yet unmistakable, but the lady of the tree? Both the priest and his visitor stood up. Mark reached for his hat and gloves.

"Pardon me," said the lady, "for disturbing you, Monsignore."

Father Murray laughed and put up his hand. "Now, then--please, please."