Charred Wood. Bp. Francis Clement Kelley
"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 particular bête 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