Father Damien | Page 9

he made the place illustrious and
public. And that, if you will consider largely, was the one reform
needful; pregnant of all that should succeed. It brought money; it
brought (best individual addition of them all) the sisters; it brought
supervision, for public opinion and public interest landed with the man
at Kalawao. If ever any man brought reforms, and died to bring them, it
was he. There is not a clean cup or towel in the Bishop-Home, but dirty

Damien washed it.
Damien WAS NOT A PURE MAN IN HIS RELATIONS WITH
WOMEN, ETC
How do you know that? Is this the nature of conversation in that house
on Beretania Street which the cabman envied, driving past? - racy
details of the misconduct of the poor peasant priest, toiling under the
cliffs of Molokai?
Many have visited the station before me; they seem not to have heard
the rumour. When I was there I heard many shocking tales, for my
informants were men speaking with the plainness of the laity; and I
heard plenty of complaints of Damien. Why was this never mentioned?
and how came it to you in the retirement of your clerical parlour?
But I must not even seem to deceive you. This scandal, when I read it
in your letter, was not new to me. I had heard it once before; and I must
tell you how. There came to Samoa a man from Honolulu; he, in a
public-house on the beach, volunteered the statement that Damien had
"contracted the disease from having connection with the female lepers";
and I find a joy in telling you how the report was welcomed in a
public-house. A man sprang to his feet; I am not at liberty to give his
name, but from what I heard I doubt if you would care to have him to
dinner in Beretania Street. "You miserable little -------" (here is a word
I dare not print, it would so shock your ears). "You miserable little
------," he cried, "if the story were a thousand times true, can't you see
you are a million times a lower ----- for daring to repeat it?" I wish it
could be told of you that when the report reached you in your house,
perhaps after family worship, you had found in your soul enough holy
anger to receive it with the same expressions; ay, even with that one
which I dare not print; it would not need to have been blotted away,
like Uncle Toby's oath, by the tears of the recording angel; it would
have been counted to you for your brightest righteousness. But you
have deliberately chosen the part of the man from Honolulu, and you
have played it with improvements of your own. The man from
Honolulu - miserable, leering creature - communicated the tale to a
rude knot of beach-combing drinkers in a public-house, where (I will so
far agree with your temperance opinions) man is not always at his
noblest; and the man from Honolulu had himself been drinking -
drinking, we may charitably fancy, to excess. It was to your "Dear

Brother, the Reverend H. B. Gage," that you chose to communicate the
sickening story; and the blue ribbon which adorns your portly bosom
forbids me to allow you the extenuating plea that you were drunk when
it was done. Your "dear brother" - a brother indeed - made haste to
deliver up your letter (as a means of grace, perhaps) to the religious
papers; where, after many months, I found and read and wondered at it;
and whence I have now reproduced it for the wonder of others. And
you and your dear brother have, by this cycle of operations, built up a
contrast very edifying to examine in detail. The man whom you would
not care to have to dinner, on the one side; on the other, the Reverend
Dr. Hyde and the Reverend H. B. Gage: the Apia bar- room, the
Honolulu manse.
But I fear you scarce appreciate how you appear to your fellow-men;
and to bring it home to you, I will suppose your story to be true. I will
suppose - and God forgive me for supposing it - that Damien faltered
and stumbled in his narrow path of duty; I will suppose that, in the
horror of his isolation, perhaps in the fever of incipient disease, he, who
was doing so much more than he had sworn, failed in the letter of his
priestly oath - he, who was so much a better man than either you or me,
who did what we have never dreamed of daring - he too tasted of our
common frailty. "O, Iago, the pity of it!" The least tender should be
moved to tears; the most incredulous to