Charred Wood | Page 6

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 mass of low-growing, flowering shrubs. To the side, extending
towards the church, the hedge was tripled, with a space 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 passer-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-crushing 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 cassock was old and faded, but that
reddish buttons down its front distinguished it from the cassocks 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 accumulate. 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 buttons 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 title that sticks here in Sihasset, 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."