My New Curate | Page 7

of Ireland. It weighs down like the
weeping clouds on the damp heavy earth, and there's no lifting it, nor
disburthening of the souls of men of this intolerable weight. I was met
on every side with a stare of curiosity, as if I were propounding
something immoral or heretical. People looked at me, put their hands in
their pockets, whistled dubiously, and went slowly away. Oh, it was
weary, weary work! The blood was stagnant in the veins of the people
and their feet were shod with lead. They walked slowly, spoke with
difficulty, stared all day at leaden clouds or pale sunlight, stood at the
corners of the village for hours looking into vacuity, and the dear little
children became old the moment they left school, and lost the smiles
and the sunlight of childhood. It was a land of the lotos. The people
were narcotized. Was it the sea air? I think I read somewhere in an old
philosopher, called Berkeley, that the damp 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