The Project Gutenberg eBook ofCharred WoodThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: Charred WoodAuthor: Francis Clement KelleyIllustrator: J. Clinton ShepherdRelease date: August 23, 2005 [eBook #16585]Most recently updated: December 12, 2020Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Al Haines*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHARRED WOOD ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Charred WoodAuthor: Francis Clement KelleyIllustrator: J. Clinton ShepherdRelease date: August 23, 2005 [eBook #16585]Most recently updated: December 12, 2020Language: EnglishCredits: Produced by Al Haines
Title: Charred Wood
Author: Francis Clement KelleyIllustrator: J. Clinton Shepherd
Author: Francis Clement Kelley
Illustrator: J. Clinton Shepherd
Release date: August 23, 2005 [eBook #16585]Most recently updated: December 12, 2020
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Al Haines
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHARRED WOOD ***
"O, Designer Infinite, must Thouthen Char the wood before Thoucanst limn with it?"
"O, Designer Infinite, must Thouthen Char the wood before Thoucanst limn with it?"
"O, Designer Infinite, must Thouthen Char the wood before Thoucanst limn with it?"
ITHE LADY OF THE TREEIIMONSIGNOREIIIUNDER SUSPICIONIVKILLIMAGAVWITH EMPTY HANDSVIWHO IS RUTH?VIIBITTER BREADVIIIFATHER MURRAY OF SIHASSETIXTHE BISHOP'S CONFESSIONXAT THE MYSTERY TREEXITHIN ICEXIIHIS EXCELLENCY SUGGESTSXIIITHE ABDUCTIONXIVTHE INEXPLICABLEXV"I AM NOT THE DUCHESS!"XVIHIS EXCELLENCY IS WORRIEDXVIITHE OPEN DOORXVIIISAUNDERS SCORESXIXCAPITULATIONXXTHE "DUCHESS" ABDICATESXXITHE BECKONING HANDXXIIRUTH'S CONFESSIONXXIIICHARRED WOOD
ITHE LADY OF THE TREEIIMONSIGNOREIIIUNDER SUSPICIONIVKILLIMAGAVWITH EMPTY HANDSVIWHO IS RUTH?VIIBITTER BREADVIIIFATHER MURRAY OF SIHASSETIXTHE BISHOP'S CONFESSIONXAT THE MYSTERY TREEXITHIN ICEXIIHIS EXCELLENCY SUGGESTSXIIITHE ABDUCTIONXIVTHE INEXPLICABLEXV"I AM NOT THE DUCHESS!"XVIHIS EXCELLENCY IS WORRIEDXVIITHE OPEN DOORXVIIISAUNDERS SCORESXIXCAPITULATIONXXTHE "DUCHESS" ABDICATESXXITHE BECKONING HANDXXIIRUTH'S CONFESSIONXXIIICHARRED WOOD
[Transcriber's note: The Frontispiece and the "Something white…" illustration were missing from the book.]
The man lay in the tall grass. Behind him the wall of the Killimaga estate, from its beginning some fifty yards to his left, stretched away to his right for over a thousand feet. Along the road which ran almost parallel with the wall was the remnant of what had once been a great woods; yearly the county authorities determined to cut away its thick undergrowth—and yearly left it alone. On the left the road was bare for some distance along the bluff; then, bending, it again sought the shelter of the trees and meandered along until it lost itself in the main street of Sihasset, a village large enough to support three banks and, after a fashion, eight small churches. In front, had the lounger cared to look, he would have seen the huge rocks topping the bluff against which the ocean dashed itself into angry foam. But the man didn't care to look—for in the little clearing between the wall of Killimaga and the bluff road was peace too profound to be wantonly disturbed by motion. And so he lay there lazily smoking his cigar, his long length concealed by the tall grass.
Hearing a slight click behind him and to his right, the man slowly, even languidly, turned his head to peer through the grass. But his energy was unrewarded, for he saw nothing he had not seen before—a long wall, its rough stones half hidden by creeping vines, at its base a rank growth of shrubs and wild hedge; behind it, in the near distance, the towers of a house that, in another land, perched amid jutting crags, would have inspired visions of far-off days of romance. Even in its New England setting the great house held a rugged charm, heightened by the big trees which gave it a setting of rich green. Some of the trees had daringly advanced almost to the wall itself, while one—a veritable giant—had seemingly been caught while just stepping through.
With a bored sigh, as if even so slight an effort were too great, the smoker settled himself more comfortably and resumed his indolent musing. Then he heard the sound again. This time he did not trouble to look around. Something white swished quickly past him and he stared, bewildered. It was a woman, young, if her figure were to be trusted. His cigar dropped in the grass, and there he let it lie. His gaze never left her as she walked on; and he could scarcely be blamed, for he was still under thirty-five and feminine early twenties has an interest to masculine full youth. He had never seen anyone quite so charming. And so he watched the lady as she walked to the edge of the bluff overlooking the sea, and turned to the left to go along the pathway toward the village.
Five hundred yards away she was met by a tall man wearing a long black coat. Was it the priest he had noticed that morning at the door of the Catholic church in the village? Yes, there was no doubt about that; it was the priest. He had just lifted his hat to the lady and was now turning to walk back with her by the way he had come. They evidently knew each other well; and the man watching them almost laughed at himself when he realized that he was slightly piqued at the clergyman's daring to know her while he did not. He watched the pair until they disappeared around the bend of the bluff path. Then he settled back to look for his cigar. But he did not find it, for other matters quickly absorbed his attention.
From out a clump of bushes on his left, where they evidently had been hiding, two men appeared. He recognized them both. One was a book agent who was stopping at the hotel in the village; the other was the local constable. The book agent had a paper in his hand.
"That her?" he asked.
"Yaas, sir!"—the constable was surely a native New Englander—"I seed her face plain."
"I didn't," said the agent, with annoyance. "I have never seen her without that confounded veil. This is the first time she's had it thrown back. But the description is right? Look at it."
He showed the paper to the constable, tapping it as he read.
"'Brown hair, blue eyes'—did you see her eyes?"
"I sure did," answered the constable; "and they wuz blue."
"All right, then. 'Blue eyes, regular features'—how about that?"
"Reg'lar enough," said the constable. "She'd no pug nose, I kin tell ya that."
"'Regular features,' then, is right. 'Five feet four inches tall'—that's right. 'Small hands and feet'—that's right. 'About twenty-three years old; good figure.'"
"She sure hez all them," vouchsafed the wearer of the star. "I knowed her right away, and I've seed her often. She's been in Sihasset well nigh on a month."
"But where—" the agent turned to look at the unbroken wall—"where in thunder did she come from?"
The constable, pushing back his helmet, scratched his head.
"Damfino," he said. "That's the rub. There's no gate on this side of Killimaga."
"Killimaga?"
"A rich old Irishman built it and put a wall around it, too. We folks of Sihasset don't like that; it shuts off the view of the house and lawn. Lawn's what makes things purty. He wuz a queer old mug—wanted to shut hisself up."
"But how did she get out?" insisted the agent, coming back to the issue.
"Search me," offered the constable. He looked toward the top of the wall. "Clumb the fence, mebbe."
"With her dress looking as it does?"
"There's no other way. I dunno."
The agent was puzzled. "I want a closer inspection of that wall. We'll walk along this side."
Both agent and constable started off, keeping well behind the wild hedge along the wall so that they might not be seen from the bluff road.
The man lying in the grass was more puzzled than the agent. Why a book agent and a constable should be so anxious about a lady who was—well, just charming—but who had herself stepped out of nowhere to join a priest in his walk, was a problem for some study. He got up and walked to the wall. Then he laughed. Close examination showed him marks in the giant tree, the vertical cuts being cleverly covered by the bark, while the horizontal ones had creepers festooned over them. A door was well concealed. But the tree? It was large, yet there could not be room in it for more than one person, who would have to stand upright and in a most uncomfortable position. The man himself had been before it over an hour. How long had the lady been in the tree? He forgot his lost cigar in trying to figure the problem out.
Mark Griffin had never liked problems. That was one reason why he found himself now located in a stuffy New England inn just at the end of the summer season when all the "boarders" had gone except himself and the book agent.
Griffin himself, though the younger son of an Irish peer, had been born in England. The home ties were not strong and when his brother succeeded to the title and estates in Ireland Mark, who had inherited a fortune from his mother, went to live with his powerful English relatives. For a while he thought of going into the army, but he knew he was a dunce in mathematics, so he soon gave up the idea. He tried Oxford, but failed there for the same reason. Then he just drifted. Now, still on the sunny side of thirty-five, he was knocking about, sick of things, just existing, and fearfully bored. He had dropped into Sihasset through sheer curiosity—just to see a typical New England summer resort where the Yankee type had not yet entirely disappeared. Now that the season was over he simply did not care to pull out for New York and continue his trip to—nowhere. He was "seeing" America. It might take months and it might take years. He did not care. Then England again by way of Japan and Siberia—perhaps. He never wanted to lose sight of that "perhaps," which was, after all, his only guarantee of independence.
Siberia suited Mark Griffin's present mood, which was to be alone. He had never married, never even been in love, at least, not since boyhood. Of course, that had been mere puppy love. Still, it was something to look back to and sigh over. He liked to think that he could still feel a sort of consoling sadness at the thought of it. He, a timid, dreaming boy, had loved a timid, dreaming girl. Her brother broke up the romance by taunting Mark who, with boyish bashfulness, avoided her after that. Then her parents moved to London and Mark was sent to school. After school he had traveled. For the last ten years England had been merely a place to think of as home. He had been in India, and South America, and Canada—up on the Yukon. He would have stayed there, but somebody suggested that he might be a remittance man. Ye gods! a remittance man with ten thousand pounds a year! And who could have had much more, for Mark Griffin was a master with his pen. His imagination glowed, and his travels had fanned it into flame. Every day he wrote, but burned the product next morning. What was the use? He had plenty to live on. Why write another man out of a job? And who could be a writer with an income of ten thousand pounds a year? But, just the same, it added to Mark Griffin's self-hatred to think that it was the income that made him useless. Yet he had only one real failure checked against him—the one at Oxford. But he knew—and he did not deceive himself—why there had been no others. He had never tried.
But there was one thing in Mark's favor, too. In spite of his wandering, in spite of the men and women of all kinds he had met, he was clean. There was a something in the memory of his mother—and in the memory, too, of that puppy love of his—that had made him a fighter against himself.
"The great courage that is worth while before God," his mother used to say, "is the courage to run away from the temptation to be unclean. It is the only time you have the right to be a coward. That sort of cowardice istrue courage."
Besides her sweet face, that advice was the great shining memory he had of his mother, and when he began to wander and meet temptations, he found himself treasuring it as his best and dearest memory of her. True, he had missed her religion—had lost what little he had had of it—but he had kept her talisman to a clean life.
His lack of religion worried him, though he had really never known much about his family's form of it. For that his mother's death, early boarding school, and his father's worse than indifference, were responsible. But as he grew older he felt vaguely that he had missed something the quality of which he had but tasted through the one admonition of his mother that he had treasured. His nature was full of reverence. His soul burned to respond to the call of faith, but something rebelled. He had read everything, and was humble enough to acknowledge that he knew little. He had given up the struggle to believe. Nothing seemed satisfactory. It worried him to think that he had reached such a conclusion, but he was consoled by the thought that many men had been of his way of thinking. He hoped this would prove excuse enough, but found it was not excuse enough for him. Here he was, rich, noble, with the English scales of caste off his eyes, doing nothing, indolent, loving only a memory, indifferent but still seeing a saving something of his mother and his child love in every woman to whom he spoke.
Now something else, yet something not so very different, had suddenly stepped into his life, and he knew it. The something was dressed in white and had stepped out of a tree. It was almost laughable. This woman had come into his dreams. The very sight of her attracted him—or was it the manner of her coming? She was just like an ideal he had often made for himself. Few men meet even the one who looks like the ideal, but he had seen the reality—coming out of a tree. He kept on wondering how long she had been there. He himself had been dreaming in front of the tree an hour before he saw her. Had she seen him before she came out? She had given no sign; but if she had seen him, she had trusted him with a secret. Mark looked at the tree. It was half embedded in the wall. Then he understood. The tree masked a secret entrance to Killimaga.
He was still smiling over his discovery when he heard the voices of the agent and constable. They were coming back, so he dropped into his hiding place in the tall grass.
"Well, Brown," the agent was saying, "I am going to tackle her. I've got to see that face. It's the only way! If I saw it once, I'd know for sure from the photograph they sent me."
"Ye'd better not," advised the constable. "She might be a-scared before—"
"But I've got to be sure," interrupted the agent.
"Aw, ye're sure enough, ain't ye? There's the photygraft, and I seed her."
"But she slipped me in Boston, and I nearly lost the trail. I can't take chances on this job—it's too important—and I've got to report something pretty soon. That damn veil! She always has it on."
"Yep, she had it when she come down here, too, and when she tuk the house. All right, see her if ye can! Ye're the jedge. She's coming around the bend of the road now." The constable was peering out from his hiding place among the bushes.
"Is the priest with her?" asked the agent.
"He's gone back to the village. She didn't go that far—she seldom does. But he goes to see her; and she goes to his church on Sundays."
"I wonder if he knows anything?"
"Trust that gent to know most everything, I guess." The constable was very positive. "Father Murray's nobody's fool," he added, "and she won't talk to nobody else. I'll bet a yearlin' heifer he's on; but nobody could drag nothing out of him."
"I know that," said the agent. "I've been up there a dozen times, and I've talked with him by the hour—but always about books; I couldn't get him to talk about anything else. Here she is! Go on back."
The constable disappeared behind the bushes, and his companion stood out in the little clearing to wait.
The woman saw him; Mark, watching from the long grass, thought she hesitated. Then she dropped her veil and came on. The agent stepped forward, and the woman seemed distressed. What the agent intended to do Mark could not guess, but he made up his mind at once as to what he would do himself. He arose and, just as the agent met the lady, Mark's arm went through his and he—not of his own volition—turned to face the ocean.
"Hello, Saunders!" Mark said heartily. "Who'd expect to see you here, with no one near to buy rare editions?"
Saunders looked at him with annoyance, but Mark was friendly. He slipped his arm out of the agent's and slapped him on the shoulder.
"Look out at that sea, you old money-grabber. There's a sight for your soul. Did you ever think of the beauty of it? Such a day!—no wonder you're loafing. Oh! I beg your pardon, Madam. I am in your way."
Keeping Saunders' back to the lady, Mark stepped aside to let her pass. Saunders could not even look back, as she walked quickly behind them. The agent stammered a reply to Mark's unwelcome greeting before he turned. But it was too late, for Mark heard the click that told him that the tree had closed. He looked for the constable, to see if he had been watching her and had discovered the secret door; but the constable was leisurely walking toward the village.
As the two men walked along, Mark Griffin, tall and of athletic build, offered a sharp contrast to the typical American beside him. With his gray tweeds, Mark, from his cap to shoes, seemed more English than Irish, and one instinctively looked for the monocle—but in vain, for the Irish-gray eyes, deep-set under the heavy straight brows, disdained artifice as they looked half-seriously, though also a bit roguishly, out upon the world. The brown hair clustered in curls above the tanned face with its clear-cut features, the mouth firm under the aquiline nose, the chin slightly squared—the face of one who would seek and find.
He looked at his companion, clad in a neat-fitting business suit of blue, his blond hair combed straight back under the carelessly-tilted Alpine, and felt that the smaller man was one not to be despised. "A man of brains," thought Mark, as he noted the keen intelligent look from the blue eyes set in a face that, though somewhat irregular in feature, bespoke strong determination.
Mentally, the two men were matched. Should they ever be pitted against each other, it would be impossible for anyone to determine offhand which would be the victor.
The agent was disposed to be surly during the walk to the hotel, for he had become suspicious. Why had the fool Englishman done this thing? Did he know or suspect that the supposed book agent was really a detective? Did he know the woman? Was he in her confidence? How had she disappeared so quickly?
Saunders found it difficult to keep up even a semblance of interest in the conversation, for Mark gave him little time to think. He plied him with friendly questions until the detective wondered if his companion were a fool, or someone "on the inside." He wished that Mark would stop his chattering long enough to let him do the questioning. But Mark went right on.
"How's the book trade? Bad, I'll wager, so far from town. Why aren't you working?"
Saunders had to think quickly.
"Oh, I took an afternoon off; business has off days, you know."
"Of course. Any success this morning?"
"One order. Took me a month to get it—from the Padre."
"Ah!"
Mark gave the word the English sound, which convinced the detective that the speaker really was a fool who had stumbled into an affair he knew nothing about. But Mark kept up his questioning.
"Did you get to talk much with the Padre? You know, he interests me. By the way, why do you call him by that Spanish name?"
"Oh, I got into the habit in the Philippines; that's what they call a priest there. I was a soldier, you know. Did you ever meet him?"
"No; but I'd like to."
"Perhaps I could introduce you." They were walking through the village now, and Saunders glanced toward the rectory. "There he is."
The chance to get away attracted Saunders; and nothing suited Mark better than to meet the priest at that very time.
"Certainly," he said; "I'd be glad if you introduced me. I'll stop only a moment, and then go on to the hotel with you."
But this didnotsuit Saunders.
"Oh, no; you must talk to the Padre. He's your kind. You'll like him. I can't wait, though, so I'll have to leave you there."
"By the way," Mark went on with his questioning, "isn't the Padre rather—well, old—to be in such a small and out-of-the-way place? You know I rather thought that, in his church, priests as old as he were in the larger parishes."
"Why, you couldn't have been listening much to gossip since you came down here—not very much," said Saunders. "The Padre is here by choice—but only partially by choice."
"By choice, but only partially by choice?" Mark was curious by this time. "I don't quite understand."
Saunders smiled knowingly, and dropped his voice.
"It's like this," he whispered. "The Padre was a big man in the city six months ago. He was what they call a vicar general—next job to the bishop, you know. He was a great friend of the old Bishop who died three months before the Padre came here. A new Bishop came—"
"'Who knew not Joseph'?"
But the Scripture was lost on the agent.
"His name is not Joseph," he answered solemnly, "but Donald, Donald Murray. I read it on the book order I got."
"Donald! Funny name for a Catholic," commented Mark. "It sounds Presbyterian."
"That's what it is," said Saunders quickly. "The Padre is a convert to the Catholic Church. He was 'way up once, but he lost his big job as vicar general, and then he lost all his big jobs. I met a priest on the train once—a young fellow—who told me, with a funny sort of laugh that sounded a bit sad, too, that the Bishop had the Padre buried."
"I see," said Mark, though he didn't see any more than the agent. "But the priest doesn't take it hard, does he?"
"Not that you could notice," Saunders answered. "The Padre's jolly—smart, too—and a bookman. He has books enough in that little house to start a public library, but he's too poor now to buy many of the kind he's daffy over—old stuff, you know, first editions and the like."
They crossed the street to the rectory, an old-fashioned house nestling 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 aMonsignore?"
"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."
Father Murray looked interested.
"Yes, yes," he said; "I am a convert. It was long ago, though. I was a young Presbyterian minister, and it's odd how it came about. Newman didn't get me, though he shook his own tree into the Pope's lap; I wasn't on the tree. It was Brownson—a Presbyterian like myself—who did the business. You don't know him? Pity! He's worth knowing. I got to reading him, and he made it so plain that I had to drop. I didn't want to, either—but here I am. Now, Mr. Griffin, how did you happen to go the other way?"
"I didn't go—that is, not deliberately. I just drifted. Mother died, and father didn't care, in fact rather opposed; so I just didn't last. Later on, I studied the church and I could not see."
"Studied the church? You mean the Catholic Church?" Father Murray's mouth hid the ghost of a smile.
"No, it wasn't the Catholic Church in particular. When we worldlings say 'the church,' we mean religion in general, perhaps all Christianity in general and all Christians in particular."
"I know." The priest's voice held a touch of sorrow now. "I hope you will pardon me, Mr. Griffin, if I say one thing that may sound controversial—it's just an observation. I have noticed the tendency you speak of; but isn't it strange that when people go looking into the question of religion they can deliberately close their eyes to a 'City set upon a Mountain'?"
"I don't quite—"
"Get me?" Father Murray laughed. "I know that you wanted to use that particular expressive bit of our particularly expressive slang. What I mean is this: People study religion nowadays—that is, English-speaking people—with the Catholic Church left out. Yet she claims the allegiance of over three hundred million people. Without her, Christianity would be merely pitiful. She alone stands firm on her foundation. She alone has something really definite to offer. She has the achievements of twenty centuries by which to judge her. She has borne, during all those centuries, the hatred of the world; but to-day she is loved, too—loved better than anything else on earth. She has hugged the worst of her children to her breast, has borne their shame that she might save them, because she is a mother; yet she has saints to show by the thousands. She has never been afraid to speak—always has spoken; but the ages have not trapped her. She is the biggest, most wonderful, most mysterious, most awful thing on earth; and yet, as you say, those who study religion ignore her. I couldn't, and I have been through the mill."
Mark shifted a little uneasily. "I can't ignore her," he said, "but I am just a little bit afraid of her."
"Ah, yes." The priest caught his pipe by the bowl and used the stem to emphasize his words. "I felt that way, too. I like you, Mr. Griffin, and so I am going to ask you not to mind if I tell you something that I have never told anyone before. I was afraid of her. I hated her. I struggled, and almost cursed her. She was too logical. She was leading me where I did not want to go. But when I came she put her arms around me; and when I looked at her, she smiled. I came in spite of many things; and now, Mr. Griffin, I pay. I am alone, and I pay always. Yet I am glad to pay. I am glad to pay—even here—in Sihasset."
Mark was moved in spite of himself. "I wonder," he said softly, "if you are glad, Monsignore, to pay so much? Pardon me if I touch upon something raw; but I know that you were, even as a Catholic, higher than you are now. Doesn't that make it hard to pay?"
"To many it might appear that it would make things harder; but it doesn't. You have to be inside in order to understand it. The Church takes you, smiling. She gives to you generously, and then, with a smile, she breaks you; and, hating to be broken, you break, knowing that it is best for you. She pets you, and then she whips you; and the whips sting, but they leave no mark on the soul, except a good mark,if you have learned. But pardon me, here's a parishioner—" A woman, old and bent, was coming up the steps. "Come on, Mrs. O'Leary. How is the good man?"
The priest arose to meet the woman, whose sad face aroused in Mark a keen thrill of sympathy.
"He's gone, Father," she said, "gone this minute. I thank God he had you with him this morning, and went right. It came awful sudden."
"God rest him. I'm sorry—"
"Don't be sorry, Father," she answered, as he opened the door to let her go into the house ahead of him. "Sure, God was good to me, and to John and to the childer. Sure, I had him for thirty year, and he died right. I'm happy to do God's will."
She passed into the house. The priest looked over to where Mark was standing hat in hand.
"Don't go, Mr. Griffin, unless you really have to. I'll be away only a few minutes."
Mark sat down again and thought. The priest had said nothing about the lady of the tree, and Mark really wanted him to mention her; but Father Murray had given him something else that made him thoughtful and brought back memories. Mark did not have long to wait, for the door opened in five minutes and the priest came out alone.
"Mrs. O'Leary came to arrange for the funeral herself—brave, wasn't it?" he said. "I left her with Ann, my housekeeper, a good soul whose specialty is one in which the Irish excel—sympathy. Ann keeps it in stock and, though she is eternally drawing on it, the stock never diminishes. Mrs. O'Leary's troubles are even now growing less."
"Sympathy and loyalty," said Mark, "are chief virtues of the Irish I knew at home."
"Ann has both," said Father Murray, hunting for his pipe. "But the latter to an embarrassing degree. She would even run the parish if she could, to see that it was run to save me labor. Ann has been a priest's housekeeper for twenty-five years. She has condoled with hundreds; she loves the poor but has no patience with shams. We have a chronic sick man here who is her particularbête noir. And, as for organists, she would cheerfully drown them all. But Mrs. O'Leary is safe with Ann."
"Poor woman!" said Mark.
"That reminds me," said Father Murray. "I had a convert priest here a little while ago. His Bishop had sent him for his initial 'breaking in' to one of the poorest parishes in a great city. I questioned a little the advisability of doing that; so, after six months, when I met the priest—who, by the way, had been a fashionable minister like myself—I asked him rather anxiously how he liked his people. 'Charming people,' he answered, 'charming. Charming women, too—Mrs. O'Rourke, Mrs. Sweeney, Mrs. Thomasefski—' 'You speak of them,' I said, 'as if they were society ladies.' 'Better—better still,' he answered. 'They're the real thing—fewer faults, more faith, more devotion.' I tell you, Mr. Griffin, I never before met people such as these."
"Mrs. O'Leary seems to have her pastor's philosophy," ventured the visitor.
"Philosophy! That would seem a compliment indeed to Mrs. O'Leary. She wouldn't understand it, but she would recognize it as something fine. It isn't philosophy, though," he added, slowly; "rather, it's something bigger. It's real religion."
"She needs it!"
"So do we all need it. I never knew how much until I was so old that I had to weep for the barren years that might have bloomed." The priest sighed as he hunted for his pipe.
The discussion ended for, to Mark's amazement, who should come up the walk, veiled indeed, yet unmistakable, but the lady of the tree? Both the priest and his visitor stood up. Mark reached for his hat and gloves.
"Pardon me," said the lady, "for disturbing you, Monsignore."
Father Murray laughed and put up his hand. "Now, then—please, please."
"Well,Father, then. I like it better, anyway. I heard that poor man is dead. Can I do anything?"
"I think you can," said Father Murray. "Will you step in?"
"No, Father; let me sit here." She looked at Mark, who stood waiting to make his adieux. There was no mistaking the look, and the priest understood at once. Plainly astonished, he introduced Mark. The lady bowed and smiled. As she sat down, she raised her veil. Mark gazed timidly into her face. Though she was seemingly unconscious of the gaze, yet a flush crept up under the fair skin, and the low voice faltered for an instant as she addressed him.
"I am a stranger here, like yourself, I fancy, Mr. Griffin," she ventured, "but I have to thank you for a service."
Mark was scarcely listening. He was wondering if, underneath the drooping brim of her hat, amongst the curling tendrils of golden-brown hair, there might not be a hint of red to show under the sunlight. He was thinking, too, how pretty was the name, Ruth Atheson. It was English enough to make him think of her under certain trees in a certain old park of boyhood's days.
"Do you know each other?" Father Murray was evidently still more astonished.
"Not exactly," she said; "but Mr. Griffin has quick discernment, and is unhesitating in action. He saw someone about to—make himself, let us say, unpleasant—and he moved promptly. I am glad of this chance to thank him."
Mark hoped she would not try. The heavily lashed eyes of violet blue, under the graceful arches, were doing that splendidly. Mark was uneasy under the gaze of them, but strangely glad. He wanted to go and yet to stay; but he knew that it was proper to go.
Father Murray walked with him to the end of the lawn.
"There was nothing serious in the matter to which Miss Atheson referred, Mr. Griffin?" he said. "No one offered insult?" He was plainly anxious.
"Not at all," answered Mark. "I think the man only wanted to stare. I gave him a chance to stare at me—and at the water. That is all."
Father Murray looked relieved as he clasped Mark's hand.
"Good-bye," he said. "Come to see me again. I am usually alone. Come often. The latch-string is where you can reach it."
In the street Mark met Saunders, but this time it was the agent who wanted to talk.
"How did you like the Padre?" he began.
"Splendid. Thank you for the meeting."
"Did you see the lady who went in?"
"Yes; I was introduced."
"Introduced? Never!"
"Why not?"
"Well," the agent was confused, "I don't see why not after all. Did you see her face?"
"She had on a veil."
"Of course; she always has. She was the woman who passed us on the bluff road."
"You saw her, then?"
"Yes, I saw her; but not close enough to know whether—"
"What?"
"I think she is someone I know. Are you coming back to the hotel?"