Father Damien | Page 4

I should offend others, your
colleagues, whom I respect and remember with affection, I can but
offer them my regret; I am not free, I am inspired by the consideration
of interests far more large; and such pain as can be inflicted by

anything from me must be indeed trifling when compared with the pain
with which they read your letter. It is not the hangman, but the criminal,
that brings dishonour on the house.
You belong, sir, to a sect - I believe my sect, and that in which my
ancestors laboured - which has enjoyed, and partly failed to utilise, and
exceptional advantage in the islands of Hawaii. The first missionaries
came; they found the land already self-purged of its old and bloody
faith; they were embraced, almost on their arrival, with enthusiasm;
what troubles they supported came far more from whites than from
Hawaiins; and to these last they stood (in a rough figure) in the shoes of
God. This is not the place to enter into the degree or causes of their
failure, such as it is. One element alone is pertinent, and must here be
plainly dealt with. In the course of their evangelical calling, they - or
too many of them - grew rich. It may be news to you that the houses of
missionaries are a cause of mocking on the streets of Honolulu. It will
at least be news to you, that when I returned your civil visit, the driver
of my cab commented on the size, the taste, and the comfort of your
home. It would have been news certainly to myself, had any one told
me that afternoon that I should live to drag such a matter into print. But
you see, sir, how you degrade better men to your own level; and it is
needful that those who are to judge betwixt you and me, betwixt
Damien and the devil's advocate, should understated your letter to have
been penned in a house which could raise, and that very justly, the envy
and the comments of the passers-by. I think (to employ a phrase of
yours which I admire) it "should be attributed" to you that you have
never visited the scene of Damien's life and death. If you had, and had
recalled it, and looked about your pleasant rooms, even your pen
perhaps would have been stayed.
Your sect (and remember, as far as any sect avows me, it is mine) has
not done ill in a worldly sense in the Hawaiian Kingdom. When
calamity befell their innocent parishioners, when leprosy descended
and took root in the Eight Islands, a QUID PRO QUO was to be looked
for. To that prosperous mission, and to you, as one of its adornments,
God had sent at last an opportunity. I know I am touching here upon a
nerve acutely sensitive. I know that others of your colleagues look back
on the inertia of your Church, and the intrusive and decisive heroism of
Damien, with something almost to be called remorse. I am sure it is so

with yourself; I am persuaded your letter was inspired by a certain envy,
not essentially ignoble, and the one human trait to be espied in that
performance. You were thinking of the lost chance, the past day; of that
which should have been conceived and was not; of the service due and
not rendered. TIME WAS, said the voice in your ear, in your pleasant
room, as you sat raging and writing; and if the words written were base
beyond parallel, the rage, I am happy to repeat - it is the only
compliment I shall pay you - the rage was almost virtuous. But, sir,
when we have failed, and another has succeeded; when we have stood
by, and another has stepped in; when we sit and grow bulky in our
charming mansions, and a plain, uncouth peasant steps into the battle,
under the eyes of God, and succours the afflicted, and consoles the
dying, and is himself afflicted in his turn, and dies upon the field of
honour - the battle cannot be retrieved as your unhappy irritation has
suggested. It is a lost battle, and lost for ever. One thing remained to
you in your defeat - some rags of common honour; and these you have
made haste to cast away.
Common honour; not the honour of having done anything right, but the
honour of not having done aught conspicuously foul; the honour of the
inert: that was what remained to you. We are not all expected to be
Damiens; a man may conceive his duty more narrowly, he may love his
comforts better; and none will cast a stone at him for that. But will a
gentleman of your reverend profession allow me