Humours of Irish Life Part 46

"It's not piano-playing that I expect from you now," said the doctor, "but languages. You speak French, of course?"

"I learned it," said Lizzie, "but I wouldn't say I could talk it very fast."

"Never mind how slow you go," said the doctor, "so long as you get it out in the end. Are you good at German?"

"I didn't learn German."

"Italian?"

"There was one of the sisters that knew Italian," said Lizzie, "but it wasn't taught regular."

"Russian? Spanish? Dutch?"

Lizzie shook her head.

"That's a pity. Never mind. I'll put you down for French, anyway. I'll take you up with me to the workhouse hospital at six o'clock this evening. I want you to speak French to a man that's there, one of the sailors out of the s.h.i.+p that was wrecked."

"I mightn't be fit," said Lizzie, doubtfully.

"Oh, yes, you will. Just look up the French for religion before you start, and get off the names of the princ.i.p.al kinds of religion in that language. All you have to do is to ask the man, 'What is your religion?'

and then understand whatever it is he says to you by the way of an answer."

Dr. Whitty next called on Mr. Jackson and explained the situation to him. The rector, rather unwillingly, offered French, and seemed relieved when he was told that that language was already provided for.

"I thought," said the doctor, "that you'd be sure to know Greek."

"I do," said the Rector, "but not modern Greek."

"Is there much difference?"

"I don't know. I fancy there is."

"Well, look here, come up and try the poor fellow with ancient Greek. I expect he'll understand it if you talk slowly. All we want to get out of him is whether he's a Protestant or a Catholic."

"If he's a Greek at all," said the rector, "he'll probably not be either the one or the other."

"He's got to be one or the other while he's here. He can choose whichever happens to be the nearest thing to his own religion, whatever that is. Does Mrs. Jackson know Italian or Spanish?"

"No. I rather think she learned German at school, but I expect----"

"Capital. I'll put her down for German."

"I'm sure she's forgotten it now."

"Never mind. She can brush it up. There's not much wanted and she has till six o'clock this evening. I shall count on you both. Good-bye."

"By the way, doctor," said Mr. Jackson on the doorstep, "now I come to think of it, I don't believe there's a word in ancient Greek for Protestant."

"There must be. It's one of the most important and useful words in any language. How could the ancient Greeks possibly have got on without it?"

"There _isn't_. I'm perfectly sure there isn't."

"That's awkward. But never mind, you'll be able to get round it with some kind of paraphrase. After all, we can't leave the poor fellow without the consolations of religion in some form. Good-bye."

"And--and--Catholic in ancient Greek will mean something quite different, not in the least what it means now."

The doctor was gone. Mr. Jackson went back to his study and spent two hours wrestling with the contents of a lexicon. He arrived at the workhouse in the evening with a number of cryptic notes, the words lavishly accented, written down on small slips of paper.

Father Henaghan was the next person whom Dr. Whitty visited. At first he absolutely declined to help.

"The only language I could make any s.h.i.+ft at speaking," he said "is Latin. And that would be no use to you. There isn't one sailor out of every thousand, outside of the officers of the Royal Navy, that would know six words of Latin."

"They tell me," said the doctor, "that there's no great difference between Latin and Spanish or Italian. Anyone that knows the one will make a pretty good push at understanding the others."

"Whoever told you that told you a lie," said the priest; "and, anyway, I'm not going near that man until I'm sure he's a Catholic."

"Don't be hard-hearted, Father. Think of the poor fellow lying there and not being able to tell any of us what religion he belongs to."

"I'll tell you why I won't go," said the priest. "There was one time when I was a curate in Dublin, I used to be attending one of the hospitals. People would be brought in suffering from accidents and dying, and you wouldn't know what they were, Catholic and Protestant. I got into the way of anointing them all while they were unconcious, feeling it could do them no harm, even if they were Protestants. Well, one day I anointed a poor fellow that they told me was dying. What did he do but recover. It turned out then that he was a Protestant, and, what's more, an Orangeman, and when he heard what was done he gave me all sorts of abuse. He said his mother wouldn't rest easy in her grave when she heard of it, and more talk of the same kind."

"This is quite a different sort of case," said the doctor. "This man's not dying or the least likely to die."

"I'll not go near him," said the priest.

"I'm sorry to hear you say that, Father. The Rev. Mr. Jackson is coming up, and he's prepared to ask the man what religion he is in ancient Greek--ancient Greek, mind you, no less. It wouldn't be a nice thing to have it said about the town that the Protestant minister could talk ancient Greek and that you weren't fit to say a few words in Latin.

Come, now, Father Henaghan, for the credit of the Church say you'll do it."

This last argument weighed greatly with the priest. Dr. Whitty saw his advantage and pressed the matter home.

"I'll put you down," he said, "for Spanish and Italian."

"You may put me down if you like, but I tell you he won't know a word I speak to him."

"Try him," said the doctor.

"I'll not be making a public fool of myself to please you," said the priest. "If I do it at all I'll have no one with me in the room at the time, mind that now."

"Not a soul. You shall have him all to yourself. To tell you the truth, I expect everybody will feel the same as you do about that. The Rev. Mr.

Jackson didn't seem very keen on showing off his ancient Greek."

Colonel Beresford, when Dr. Whitty called on him, confessed to a slight, a very slight, acquaintance with the Russian language.

"I took it up," he said, "a long time ago when I was stationed in Edinburgh. There was a Russian scare on at the time and everybody thought there was going to be a war. I happened to hear that there were a couple of Russian medical students in the University, and I thought if I picked up a little of the language I might fall in for a staff appointment. I've nearly forgotten it all now, and I didn't make any special study of religious terms at the time, but I'll do the best I can for you. You've got all the other languages you say."

"I think so. I have"--the doctor took a list from his pocket--"French, Miss Lizzie Glynn. She was educated at a first-rate convent, and speaks French fluently. Greek (ancient and modern), the Rev. Mr. Jackson.

German and allied tongues, Mrs. Jackson. Italian, Spanish and Portuguese, Father Henaghan. That, with your Russian, makes a tolerably complete list."

"I'd no idea," said the colonel, "that we were such a polyglot in Ballintra. By the way, you haven't got Norwegian."