Castle Richmond Part 18

And this admiration for him induced his friends to overlook what they must have acknowledged to be defects in his character. Though he had a good living--at least, what the laity in speaking of clerical incomes is generally inclined to call a good living, we will say amounting in value to four hundred pounds a year--he was always in debt. This was the more inexcusable as he had no children, and had some small private means.

And n.o.body knew why he was in debt--in which word n.o.body he himself must certainly be included. He had no personal expenses of his own; his wife, though she was a very queer woman, as Lady Clara had said, could hardly be called an extravagant woman; there was nothing large or splendid about the way of living at the glebe; anybody who came there, both he and she were willing to feed as long as they chose to stay, and a good many in this way they did feed; but they never invited guests; and as for giving regular fixed dinner-parties, as parish rectors do in England, no such idea ever crossed the brain of either Mr. or Mrs. Townsend.

That they were both charitable all the world admitted; and their admirers professed that hence arose all their difficulties. But their charities were of a most indiscreet kind. Money they rarely had to give, and therefore they would give promises to pay. While their credit with the butcher and baker was good they would give meat and bread; and both these functionaries had by this time learned that, though Mr. Townsend might not be able to pay such bills himself, his friends would do so, sooner or later, if duly pressed. And therefore the larder at Drumbarrow Glebe--that was the name of the parish--was never long empty, and then again it was never long full.

But neither Mr. nor Mrs. Townsend were content to bestow their charities without some other object than that of relieving material wants by their alms. Many infidels, Mr. Townsend argued, had been made believers by the miracle of the loaves and fishes; and therefore it was permissible for him to make use of the same means for drawing over proselytes to the true church. If he could find hungry Papists and convert them into well-fed Protestants by one and the same process, he must be doing a double good, he argued;--could by no possibility be doing an evil.

Such being the character of Mr. Townsend, it will not be thought surprising that he should have his warm admirers and his hot detractors. And they who were inclined to be among the latter were not slow to add up certain little disagreeable eccentricities among the list of his faults,--as young Fitzgerald had done in the matter of the dirty surplices.

Mr. Townsend's most uncompromising foe for many years had been the Rev. Bernard M'Carthy, the parish priest for the same parish of Drumbarrow. Father Bernard, as he was called by his own flock, or Father Barney, as the Protestants in derision were delighted to name him, was much more a man of the world than his Protestant colleague.

He did not do half so many absurd things as did Mr. Townsend, and professed to laugh at what he called the Protestant madness of the rector. But he also had been an eager, I may also say, a malicious antagonist. What he called the "souping" system of the Protestant clergyman stank in his nostrils--that system by which, as he stated, the most ignorant of men were to be induced to leave their faith by the hope of soup, or other food. He was as firmly convinced of the inward, heart-destroying iniquity of the parson as the parson was of that of the priest. And so these two men had learned to hate each other. And yet neither of them were bad men.

I do not wish it to be understood that this sort of feeling always prevailed in Irish parishes between the priest and the parson even before the days of the famine. I myself have met a priest at a parson's table, and have known more than one parish in which the Protestant and Roman Catholic clergymen lived together on amicable terms. But such a feeling as that above represented was common, and was by no means held as proof that the parties themselves were quarrelsome or malicious. It was a part of their religious convictions, and who dares to interfere with the religious convictions of a clergyman?

On the day but one after that on which the Castle Richmond ladies had been thrown from their car on the frosty road, Mr. Townsend and Father Bernard were brought together in an amicable way, or in a way that was intended to be amicable, for the first time in their lives.

The relief committee for the district in which they both lived was one and the same, and it was of course well that both should act on it. When the matter was first arranged, Father Bernard took the bull by the horns and went there; but Mr. Townsend, hearing this, did not do so. But now that it had become evident that much work, and for a long time, would have to be performed at these committees, it was clear that Mr. Townsend, as a Protestant clergyman, could not remain away without neglecting his duty. And so, after many mental struggles and questions of conscience, the parson agreed to meet the priest.

The point had been very deeply discussed between the rector and his wife. She had given it as her opinion that priest M'Carthy was pitch, pitch itself in its blackest turpitude, and as such could not be touched without defilement. Had not all the Protestant clergymen of Ireland in a body, or, at any rate, all those who were worth anything, who could with truth be called Protestant clergymen, had they not all refused to enter the doors of the National schools because they could not do so without sharing their ministration there with papist priests; with priests of the altar of Baal, as Mrs.

Townsend called them? And should they now yield, when, after all, the a.s.sistance needed was only for the body--not for the soul?

It may be seen from this that the lady's mind was not in its nature logical; but the extreme absurdity of her arguments, though they did not ultimately have the desired effect, by no means came home to the understanding of her husband. He thought that there was a great deal in what she said, and almost felt that he was yielding to instigations from the evil one; but public opinion was too strong for him; public opinion and the innate kindness of his own heart. He felt that at this very moment he ought to labour specially for the bodies of these poor people, as at other times he would labour specially for their souls; and so he yielded.

"Well," said his wife to him as he got off his car at his own door after the meeting, "what have you done?" One might have imagined from her tone of voice and her manner that she expected, or at least hoped to hear that the priest had been absolutely exterminated and made away with in the good fight.

Mr. Townsend made no immediate answer, but proceeded to divest himself of his rusty outside coat, and to rub up his stiff, grizzled, bristly, uncombed hair with both his hands, as was his wont when he was not quite satisfied with the state of things.

"I suppose he was there?" said Mrs. Townsend.

"Oh, yes, he was there. He is never away, I take it, when there is any talking to be done." Now Mr. Townsend dearly loved to hear himself talk, but no man was louder against the sins of other orators. And then he began to ask how many minutes it wanted to dinner-time.

Mrs. Townsend knew his ways. She would not have a ghost of a chance of getting from him a true and substantial account of what had really pa.s.sed if she persevered in direct questions to the effect. So she pretended to drop the matter, and went and fetched her lord's slippers, the putting on of which const.i.tuted his evening toilet; and then, after some little hurrying inquiry in the kitchen, promised him his dinner in fifteen minutes.

"Was Herbert Fitzgerald there?"

"Oh yes; he is always there. He's a nice young fellow; a very fine young fellow; but--"

"But what?"

"He thinks he understands the Irish Roman Catholics, but he understands them no more than--than--than this slipper," he said, having in vain cudgelled his brain for a better comparison.

"You know what Aunt Letty says about him. She doubts he isn't quite right, you know."

Mrs. Townsend by this did not mean to insinuate that Herbert was at all afflicted in that way which we attempt to designate, when we say that one of our friends is not all right, and at the same time touch our heads with our forefinger. She had intended to convey an impression that the young man's religious ideas were not exactly of that stanch, true-blue description which she admired.

"Well, he has just come from Oxford, you know," said Mr. Townsend: "and at the present moment Oxford is the most dangerous place to which a young man can be sent."

"And Sir Thomas would send him there, though I remember telling his aunt over and over again how it would be." And Mrs. Townsend as she spoke, shook her head sorrowfully.

"I don't mean to say, you know, that he's absolutely bitten."

"Oh, I know--I understand. When they come to crosses and candlesticks, the next step to the glory of Mary is a very easy one.

I would sooner send a young man to Rome than to Oxford. At the one he might be shocked and disgusted; but at the other he is cajoled, and cheated, and ruined." And then Mrs. Townsend threw herself back in her chair, and threw her eyes up towards the ceiling.

But there was no hypocrisy or pretence in this expression of her feelings. She did in her heart of hearts believe that there was some college or club of papists at Oxford, emissaries of the Pope or of the Jesuits. In her moments of sterner thought the latter were the enemies she most feared; whereas, when she was simply pervaded by her usual chronic hatred of the Irish Roman Catholic hierarchy, she was wont to inveigh most against the Pope. And this college, she maintained, was fearfully successful in drawing away the souls of young English students. Indeed, at Oxford a man had no chance against the devil. Things were better at Cambridge; though even there there was great danger. Look at A---- and Z----; and she would name two perverts to the Church of Rome, of whom she had learned that they were Cambridge men. But, thank G.o.d, Trinity College still stood firm.

Her idea was, that if there were left any real Protestant truth in the Church of England, that Church should look to feed her lambs by the hands of shepherds chosen from that seminary, and from that seminary only.

"But isn't dinner nearly ready?" said Mr. Townsend, whose ideas were not so exclusively Protestant as were those of his wife. "I haven't had a morsel since breakfast." And then his wife, who was peculiarly anxious to keep him in a good humour that all might come out about Father Barney, made another little visit to the kitchen.

At last the dinner was served. The weather was very cold, and the rector and his wife considered it more cosy to use only the parlour, and not to migrate into the cold air of a second room. Indeed, during the winter months the drawing-room of Drumbarrow Glebe was only used for visitors, and for visitors who were not intimate enough in the house to be placed upon the worn chairs and threadbare carpet of the dining-parlour. And very cold was that drawing-room found to be by each visitor.

But the parlour was warm enough; warm and cosy, though perhaps at times a little close; and of evenings there would pervade it a smell of whisky punch, not altogether acceptable to unaccustomed nostrils.

Not that the rector of Drumbarrow was by any means an intemperate man. His single tumbler of whisky toddy, repeated only on Sundays and some other rare occasions, would by no means equal, in point of drinking, the ordinary port of an ordinary English clergyman. But whisky punch does leave behind a savour of its intrinsic virtues, delightful no doubt to those who have imbibed its grosser elements, but not equally acceptable to others who may have been less fortunate.

During dinner there was no conversation about Herbert Fitzgerald, or the committee, or Father Barney. The old gardener, who waited at table with all his garden clothes on him, and whom the neighbours, with respectful deference, called Mr. Townsend's butler, was a Roman Catholic; as, indeed, were all the servants at the glebe, and as are, necessarily, all the native servants in that part of the country. And though Mr. and Mrs. Townsend put great trust in their servant Jerry as to the ordinary duties of gardening, driving, and butlering, they would not knowingly trust him with a word of their habitual conversation about the things around them. Their idea was, that every word so heard was carried to the priest, and that the priest kept a book in which every word so uttered was written down. If this were so through the parish, the priest must in truth have had something to do, both for himself and his private secretary; for, in spite of all precautions that were taken, Jerry and Jerry's brethren no doubt did hear much of what was said. The repet.i.tions to the priest, however, I must take leave to doubt.

But after dinner, when the hot water and whisky were on the table, when the two old arm-chairs were drawn cozily up on the rug, each with an old footstool before it; when the faithful wife had mixed that gla.s.s of punch--or jug rather, for, after the old fas.h.i.+on, it was brewed in such a receptacle; and when, to inspire increased confidence, she had put into it a small extra modic.u.m of the eloquent spirit, then the mouth of the rector was opened, and Mrs. Townsend was made happy.

"And so Father Barney and I have met at last," said he, rather cheerily, as the hot fumes of the toddy regaled his nostrils.

"And how did he behave now?"

"Well, he was decent enough--that is, as far as absolute behaviour went. You can't have a silk purse from off a sow's ear, you know."

"No, indeed; and goodness knows there's plenty of the sow's ear about him. But now, aeneas, dear, do tell me how it all was, just from the beginning."

"He was there before me," said the husband.

"Catch a weasel asleep!" said the wife.

"I didn't catch him asleep at any rate," continued he. "He was there before me; but when I went into the little room where they hold the meeting--"

"It's at Berryhill, isn't it?"

"Yes, at the Widow Casey's. To see that woman bowing and sc.r.a.ping and curtsying to Father Barney, and she his own mother's brother's daughter, was the best thing in the world."

"That was just to do him honour before the quality, you know."

"Exactly. When I went in, there was n.o.body there but his reverence and Master Herbert."

"As thick as possible, I suppose. Dear, dear; isn't it dreadful!--Did I put sugar enough in it, aeneas?"

"Well, I don't know; perhaps you may give me another small lump. At any rate, you didn't forget the whisky."

"I'm sure it isn't a taste too strong--and after such work as you've had to-day.--And so young Fitzgerald and Father Barney--"

"Yes, there they were with their heads together. It was something about a mill they were saying."

"Oh, it's perfectly dreadful!"