My New Curate | Page 7

salt air of the sea has a curious phlegmatic effect on the blood, and will coagulate it and produce gout and sundry disorders. However that be, there was a weary weight on everything around Kilronan. The cattle slept in the fields, the fishermen slept in their coracles. It was a land of sleep and dreams.
I approached the agent about a foreshore for the pier, for you cannot, in Ireland, take the most preliminary and initial step in anything without going, cap in hand, to the agent. I explained my intentions. He smiled, but was polite.
"Lord L----, you know, is either in Monte Carlo or yachting in the Levant. He must be consulted. I can do nothing."
"And when will his Lordship return?"
"Probably in two years."
"You have no power to grant a lease of the foreshore, or even give temporary permission to erect a pier?"
"None whatever."
I went to the Presentment Sessions about a grant for paving or flagging the wretched street. I woke a nest of hornets.
"What! More taxation! Aren't the people crushed enough already? Where can we get money to meet rates and taxes? Flagging Kilronan! Oh, of course! Wouldn't your reverence go in for gas or the electric light? Begor, ye'll be wanting a water supply next," etc., etc.
I applied to a factory a few miles distant to establish a local industry by cottage labor, which is cheap and remunerative.
"They would be delighted, but--" And so all my castles came tumbling down from the clouds, and left them black and lowering and leaden as before. Once or twice, later on, I made a few spasmodic efforts to galvanize the place into life; they, too, failed, and I accepted the inevitable. When Father Laverty came he helped me to bear the situation with philosophical calmness. He had seen the world, and had been rubbed badly in contact with it. He had adopted as his motto and watchword the fatal Cui bono? And he had printed in large Gothic letters over his mantelpiece the legend:
'TWILL BE ALL THE SAME IN A HUNDRED YEARS.
And so I drifted, drifted down from high empyreans of great ideals and lofty speculations into a humdrum life, that was only saved from sordidness by the sacred duties of my office. After all, I find that we are not independent of our circumstances. We are fashioned and moulded by them as plaster of Paris is fashioned and moulded into angels or gargoyles by the deft hand of the sculptor. "Thou shalt lower to his level," true of the wife in Locksley Hall, is true of all who are thrown by fate or fortune into unhappy environments. In my leisure moments, when I took up my pen to write, some evil spirit whispered, Cui bono? and I laid down my pen and hid my manuscript. Once or twice I took up some old Greek poets and essayed to translate them. I have kept the paper still, frayed and yellow with age; but the fatal Cui bono? disheartened me, and I flung it aside. Even my love for the sea had vanished, and I had begun to hate it. During the first few years of my ministry I spent hours by the cliffs and shores, or out on the heaving waters. Then the loneliness of the desert and barren wastes repelled me, and I had begun to loathe it. Altogether I was soured and discontented, and I had a dread consciousness that my life was a failure. All its possibilities had passed without being seized and utilized. I was the barren fig tree, fit only to be cut down. May I escape the fire! Such were my surroundings and disposition when Father Letheby came.
CHAPTER III
A NIGHT CALL
It must have been about two o'clock on Sunday morning, when the house bell was pulled violently and a rapid series of fierce, sharp knocks woke up the house. What priest does not know that tocsin of the night, and the start from peaceful slumbers? I heard the housekeeper wake up Father Letheby; and in a short time I heard him go down stairs. Then there was the usual hurried colloquy at the hall door, then the retreating noises of galloping feet. I pulled the blankets around my shoulders, lifted the pillow, and said, "Poor fellow!" He had to say last Mass next day, and this was some consolation, as he could sleep a few hours in the morning. I met him at breakfast about half past one o'clock. There he was, clean, cool, cheerful, as if nothing had happened.
"I was sorry you had that night call," I said; "how far had you to go?"
"To some place called Knocktorisha," he replied, opening his egg; "'t was a little remote, but I was well repaid."
"Indeed," said I; "the poor people are very grateful. And they generally