Father Burke and Father Dunne knew that Father Brady was in a temper. It was evident in an occasional gleam from under his shaggy eyebrows, a tightening of his lips and a certain sharpness in dealing with their contributions to the conversation. From his transparent efforts to be polite to the guest they also knew that Father Bernardine was the cause. Already there were traces of sarcasm in the parish priest’s somewhat excessively deferential voice, and Father Burke looked forward with interest to the breaking down of the dam. Father Brady was seldom able to restrain the free expression of his thoughts beyond the custard and stewed apples. When he had the bishop to dinner, his sense of duty as a host invariably disappeared with the boiled mutton and caper sauce. Yet here was the whiskey and hot water on the table before he had taken down this fop of a missioner a single peg. Was the old man growing dotty? or could he be intending to ask the fellow to give a mission in the town? It was bad enough to have him poaching round at Carrickdhu and at the Mercy Convent, but to bring a Romeo like him into the town … Father Burke looked for sympathy to Father Dunne, but Father Dunne was stolidly intent on squeezing a lemon into his punch.
‘So the mission is over,’ Father Brady said gruffly, looking askance at Father Bernardine, who was watering his claret48.
‘Most successfully over, thanks be to God,’ said Father Bernardine. ‘Allow me,’ he added, moving the hot-water jug towards Father Burke.
‘No, thanks,’ Father Burke said, with a smile of superiority. ‘I never drink.’
Father Dunne smiled at his glass.
‘The pride of the cold-water tap,’ Father Brady said, with a shrug.
‘A little wine for the stomach’s sake?’ Father Bernardine said, with solemn playfulness.
‘Though it’s nothing to the sin of watering good claret.’ Father Brady gave a moody look at Father Bernardine’s glass. ‘Tom Curtin’s best, too. A successful mission, indeed!’ he added fiercely. ‘What did you do with his daughters? Tell me that now.’
Father Bernardine smiled, with a tolerant reserve.
‘He hasn’t sent the second one into the convent?’ Father Dunne said, with a faint show of interest.
The knife with which Father Burke was preparing a lemon for lemonade slipped and cut his finger.
‘Kitty? Surely not?’
He frowned at Father Bernardine while winding his napkin nervously round his finger.
‘Packing her off to-morrow or the next day,’ Father Brady said angrily.
‘I’m not surprised at Brady,’ said Father Dunne, balancing his spoon on the edge of his glass. ‘She was his only penitent, one might say. But where do you come in? She wasn’t one of your string49?’ he added, with a questioning look at Father Burke.
‘I naturally take an interest in everyone in the parish,’ Father Burke said loftily.
‘There’s news for us, Brady,’ Father Dunne chuckled. ‘He’ll be taking his share of the workhouse calls next.’
‘What do you mean by it?’ Father Brady said, glowering at the missioner.
‘My good friend, my dear friend,’ Father Bernardine mildly remonstrated. ‘You mustn’t blame me if your parishioners have vocations.’
‘And he certainly can’t blame Burke,’ said Father Dunne with a grin. ‘Brady has a down on him over the convent, so he tries to keep the girls outside it—except a few he’s tired of.’
‘Vocation! What’s a vocation?’ Father Brady snapped contemptuously. ‘A young girl gets a fancy for a minute, and you shut her up in a convent for life. She’s nearly sure to change her mind the next minute, but there she is behind four walls with the door locked and the key gone.’
‘There are too many women in the world,’ said Father Dunne, with gloom. ‘It’s a good job to get some of ’em put safely out of the way.’
Father Bernardine said, ‘A vocation is a positive prompting of divine grace in the choice of a state of life.’
‘Humph. The prompting of divine grace most young girls have is to get married.’ Father Brady meditatively sipped his punch.
‘You underestimate the spiritual side of a woman’s nature, her longing for Divine purity—’ Father Bernardine began, with one of his favourite pulpit gestures.
‘I’ll be sixty-two in October, and I didn’t walk through the world with my eyes shut,’ Father Brady interrupted dryly. ‘I don’t deny there are sports50 among women—known a dog in my time that wouldn’t look at a bone. But what most women want is a husband, and what all of ’em want is a child.’
‘I deny it absolutely.’ Father Bernardine set his thin lips. ‘Woman is a temple of virginity, of holy purity. She fell, of course, with Eve but the fall is more than counterbalanced by divine grace. There is sometimes a struggle with her lower nature, that malign legacy of Eve’s sin. But with the example of our Blessed Mother and the saints to sustain her, and the counsel of St Paul, and the aspirations of her higher nature fortified by prayer and grace—’
‘And clap-trap,’ Father Brady interrupted. ‘A few of ’em’ll be foolish enough to go into a convent. No wonder so many of ’em go half mad.’
‘Don’t be too hard on the poor things,’ Father Dunne said. ‘It’s pleasant enough sort of an asylum for a disappointed woman. They can’t all get married, and it’s not what you might call convenient to have a child without. What harm are they doing to anyone? If it weren’t for the breakfast I get at the convent every morning I’d be dead of indigestion long ago. As long as they’re able to cook lightly I’m all for ’em.’
Father Bernardine’s irritation with Father Brady’s interruption gave way to an expression of sadness.
‘We can’t rival your good confrères in facetiousness about holy things,’ he said to a gloomy Father Burke who was toying with the rind of a lemon.
‘Oh, Brady and Dunne will have their little jokes,’ Father Burke said, with a sickly smile. ‘I’m all with you, of course, Father Bernardine. Girls hurried into unsuitable marriages by inconsiderate parents! Nice girls brought up in a genteel convent—nice genteel girls forced to marry rough boors! Happily it makes them recognize their real vocation and seek the solace of a convent. Would you believe it that her father wanted that little girl we were speaking of, Kitty Curtin, to marry a regular clodhopper? You must know him? That hulking son of Mike Duggan?’ he added, his lips trembling with indignation.
‘She seems to have chosen the better part.’ Father Bernardine’s tone was one of complete detachment.
Father Burke frowned.
‘It’s true about her, I suppose?’ he asked, with an exaggerated assumption of indifference.
‘Your good parish priest says so.’ Father Bernardine smiled serenely. ‘Indeed, there is no secret about it, confessional or otherwise. On my way here I called to see her good mother who spoke freely about it.’
‘Between the two girls it’ll be a good lump51 for the convent—they’ll be able to build the new chapel now that they have the plans of. We’d have got more out of ’em by marrying ’em off, eh, Brady? Nuns are a caution, to be sure.’ Father Dunne gave a shrug of resignation, taking a sip of punch to help him.
‘Between her ass of a mother and yourself, ye have made a nice mess of the poor girl,’ Father Brady said, sweeping the claret bottle towards the missioner.
Father Bernardine moved the bottle back to the centre of the table with an assured smile.
‘Don’t,’ he said humbly, ‘confuse weak instruments with the mighty river of Divine grace.’
‘My God, ye took the little girl on the rebound before she had time to find her feet again,’ said Father Brady savagely. ‘You know it well, Donlevy.’
Father Bernardine shut his lips and stared impassively at the tablecloth.
‘Leave all women to God. As He denied ’em common sense, no doubt He has some plan for dealing with ’em.’ Father Dunne cheerfully mixed himself a little extra punch in a wineglass.
‘It’s a queer fool God’d be if He was responsible for every idiocy that’s put to His credit,’ Father Brady said, with a glare at Father Bernardine.
‘It’s not often that I can agree with my parish priest in spiritual matters, but I really think there is something in what he said of the rebound.’ Father Burke’s tone had a blend of condescension and anxiety. ‘I bow, of course, to your superior judgment, Father Bernardine. I can’t pretend to your experience. Still, in my own small way, I have some knowledge of souls. There was a revulsion from this Duggan. Is the idea of the convent a mere extension of this feeling of revulsion—a refuge as it were, from this purely human antipathy; or, is it the real divine call, on the signs of which we can, so to speak, lay our finger?’
‘If the young lady consulted me, surely you don’t expect me to discuss her?’ Father Bernardine said equably, but with a half-reproving smile.
‘Ye’re making a lot of bother about a girl going into a convent.’ Father Dunne yawned. ‘Nine chances out of ten she’ll regret it. But if she stops out, she’ll very likely regret that, too, married or single. So where’s the odds? Let’s have a walk down by the river, in God’s name.’
‘I’m not asking your opinion, I am merely giving mine,’ Father Burke said sharply to Father Bernardine, ignoring Father Dunne’s interruption with a contemptuous shrug. ‘I’m an outsider and can speak freely. I’ve known the young lady, however, for some considerable time, and I’ve never noticed any of the signs to which I have referred—which were so conspicuously present in her sister Winnie, for example. A strange confessor might easily be misled. One cannot be too careful in things of the spirit; and the consequences of a mistake might be a lifelong misery for the poor child.’
‘Quite true, quite true. Very interesting, indeed,’ Father Bernardine said, with a smile that suggested the possession of superior knowledge. ‘I think I will have a little more of your very excellent claret, Father Brady.’
Father Burke bit his lip and frowned. ‘Her parish priest, at least, might do something,’ he said pettishly. ‘Though she hasn’t consulted you itself,’ he added, with a sneer at Father Brady, ‘you should have tried to prevent the girl from making a fool of herself.’
‘Brady can do a lot. But to ask him to work a miracle now—that’s entirely too much,’ said Father Dunne, with a shrug.
‘She’s a sensible girl—that’s what beats me,’ Father Brady said, with a worried frown. ‘I went to her the minute I heard it, but she was as obstinate as a brick wall. The convent was stuck in her gullet—what the French call an idée fixe. I didn’t leave a stone standing on another in any convent in the country, with the abuse I gave ’em, but I might as well have been yelping at the moon. There’s no pit of foolishness a woman isn’t capable of falling into with her eyes wide open. But it was my friend here on the right that gave the push this time. “Father Bernardine advised me”, she said, just as if she was speaking to the Pope himself. “Who the devil is Father Bernardine?” I said, “but Pete Donlevy that I used to thrash every day, and I in the Seminary because he could never decline bonus, bona, bonum.” She has spirit in her that girl. She laughed in my face and said I was jealous, and all the time the heart was crushed out of her. I had to laugh myself at the idea of being jealous of a tailor’s dummy with a gramophone inside him. I’d be just as likely to be jealous of Burke there. May God help the poor girl all the same.’
‘If it wasn’t one thing, it’d be another,’ Father Dunne said, draining his glass.
‘Thanks for a most enjoyable dinner.’ Father Bernardine spoke with a faint note of injury in his voice and a flush under his ears. ‘I’m afraid I have to go.’
‘You know you’re always welcome, Pete.’ Father Brady rose with his guest. ‘You’re not at all a bad fellow if you weren’t such a damn fool.’
Father Burke said a sneering good-bye, which covered an uneasy jealousy. His own success with women always had a relation to sex. Very likely Father Bernardine’s were the same. Had Kitty fallen a victim? One could never trust those fellows’ pretence of asceticism. Brady and Dunne were dry sticks—Brady was old, too—but a fellow like Donlevy, with half the women in the country after him! Human nature couldn’t stand the strain even in a saint. Likely Donlevy made all the hay he could.
‘Coming for a walk, Burke?’ Father Dunne asked genially.
‘No.’
‘A tea-party?’ Father Dunne surmised, with a shrug.
Father Burke frowned, but he looked at his watch with a feeling of hope. He’d catch her at tea. He must see her to-day about all this. It was the mission nonsense that made Kitty avoid him. He’d soon put it out of her head. He stood at the window of his sitting-room, rattling his keys in his pocket till the three priests had disappeared down the drive. Was it better to make a plan or just trust to chance? If she’d only let him kiss her, everything would be all right. Poor Winnie, he thought, with reminiscent smile, wasn’t turning out half bad. But he’d have to be careful of Brady. He hummed a tune and ran lightly upstairs to his bedroom. The Muldoons expected him to tea—he’d have to cut that. And Mrs Cummin—‘bother Fanny,’ he muttered, ‘the staler she grows the more exacting she is.’ He put on a pair of white cuffs, brushed his hair and looked at himself carefully in the glass. He was dissatisfied with the hang of the coat from the shoulder, and changed to another suit. He sprinkled eau-de-Cologne on a clean handkerchief and fixed it with careful negligence in his sleeve. He took his newest silk hat from its band-box and adjusted it to a pleasing angle on his head. He hesitated between a silver handled stick and his best silk umbrella with the gold top, and chose the umbrella. He drew his gold chain across his waistcoat and fixed the large gold cross so that it hung well down in the centre. His grey reindeer gloves! No matter where he called now, he thought, with a half-bitter smile, he’d be wearing a gift of the house. Anywhere, except where he was going—from Kitty at least. Damn her! He’d let her go to the devil, and go somewhere he was welcome.
He left the Presbytery, banged the entrance-gate violently behind him, strode forward at a rapid pace, but slackened it when he noticed that his boots were getting dusty. Besides, it would never do to get hot. He went round by Daunt’s Terrace in order to avoid the Muldoons’ shop, kept his eyes on the pavement as he passed Rafters, and pretended not to see Bedelia who signalled to him from an upstairs window. He gave curt nods to passing acquaintances. Why should he bother about Kitty with the whole town to choose from? If he did want to see her, it was lucky it was market day … she’d be alone. He turned in at the shop door without hesitation.
‘Father Burke! Well, well, to be sure,’ Mrs Curtin said joyfully, over the heads of several customers. ‘Harry, come up here and finish Mrs Mulcahy’s order while I attend to the priest. I know you are, Mrs Greene, but I won’t be a minute. The snug, Father.’
She bustled round and opened the snuggery door.
‘It’s great news I have for you entirely,’ she said, in an eager, confident whisper, keeping his hand as she drew him into the little room. ‘Kitty is going up above,’ with a vague gesture, ‘as soon as ever her clothes can be made. The grace of God and Father Bernardine between ’em did it, glory be to God—not to mention your own prayers. I never seen a girl so set on it. No hysterics, no high-faluting, no nothing. It’s almost agin nature this taking it so quiet. I half pity Tom he’s so broke over it, but we must all learn to bow to the will of God. And them Duggans thought they had her in their pocket! The hand of God is over all, I say. It’s wonderful how He led that little girl along the right path. I have every reason to be proud of myself, but I’m a humble woman, thanks be to God. If I had ten more I wouldn’t grudge ’em to Him.’
‘You’re a wonderful woman,’ he murmured, with a suppressed sneer.
‘I did my best. Though it was a bit of a strain at times. I might be tempted to give in once in a while, but I knew God was behind me, and sure the result proves me right.’
She stood on tiptoe and looked over the side screen. ‘But there’s Mrs Greene looking as black as pitch. You’ll be going up to give Kitty a word in season before she goes? I’ll call Peggy to warn her.’
‘Please don’t take Peggy away from her work,’ he protested. ‘I ought to know my way up by this,’ he added, with a nervous laugh.
‘Lighten the poor thing up a bit,’ Mrs Curtin said cheerfully, as she held open the door leading to the hall. ‘She’s more like an old woman than a young girl for the last few days. It’s not within reason to let religion hang so heavy on her. There’s time and a place for everything, I always say.’
‘Trust me,’ he absentmindedly replied.
He mounted the stairs slowly, a sinking feeling at his heart. He pulled down his cuffs and the ends of his waistcoat, fixed his hat, gloves and umbrella in his left hand at the most effective angle, patted his hair and assumed the smirk with which he always entered a room. But to-day it was done almost unconsciously. For once he had very nearly forgotten himself. A desirable but unapproachable Kitty mocked his vision and made him tremble. Sphinx-like, with the veiled eyes of the woman in the picture in Dunne’s room, she could love. But how to reach her across that gulf?
For a moment he saw himself objectively—stripped of all pretence and hypocrisy, boldly acknowledging his love, facing obloquy even. He saw her approving smile and felt a glow of heroic courage. The world seemed to rock about him. He clung to his resolve, though he knew that his courage had oozed out of his trembling knees. He could do it and he would. He struggled for a moment, but the difficulties crowded in on him and overpowered him. He rested his free hand on the bannister for support. No man could face it. Cut off by an ubiquitous and relentless church that must keep up appearances at any cost. His pleasant, easy life gone … Brady couldn’t last for ever. Monsignor Burke was an easy game. And if he played his cards well and was careful … perhaps, a bishopric? Though that would be a heavy strain on one’s caution.
He was a fool even to think of the other thing. And her father and mother would cut her off without a penny. It was all so unnecessary, too. She was sure to learn common sense and take what she could out of life—reasonably, of course. And the opportunities were infinite. A priest had a passport everywhere, and was a fool if he didn’t make good use of it. He caught a glimpse of himself in the glass of a picture and smirked. He went through his usual operations with his clothes and hair, consciously now. With renewed self-respect he knocked at the sitting-room door, and opened it.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ Kitty said indifferently, without moving from her curled-up position in Winnie’s arm-chair, which was, however, turned away from the window. ‘I thought you’d never come in.’
‘A loosened bootlace,’ he said, with irritation.
He was angry with himself for having the feeling of irritation, and tried to overcome it … She might, at least, have offered him his usual chair. He put his hat and umbrella and gloves on the piano.
‘Come now. Don’t treat a friend like this.’ He held out his hand.
‘There are chairs,’ she said coldly.
Her eyes moved slowly from his glossy clothes and heavy gold watch chain to the shining hat and the gold handle of the umbrella protruding over the edge of the piano. Father Bernardine was so right, but this man—was he really a priest? There was more in religion than that—was so wrong. It wasn’t his dress altogether—that was merely vulgar. It was some combined effect of his leer and his Roman collar. Father Brady hadn’t it, nor Father Dunne. But there were others … And the more repulsive the leer the deeper the collar.
He was conscious of her look as he drew a chair near to her and sat down. He was always conscious of people’s looks; of some necessary relation of their thoughts to himself. He was still angry with her for her refusal to shake hands, but he made an effort not to show it. It was, he supposed, because he had once tried to kiss her.
‘Admiring my umbrella?’ he said, with a nervous smirk. ‘These things are thrown at me. I never brought it here before because Winnie never liked me to wear any but her gifts. Poor Winnie! She’s such a dear little thing, a bit of a goose, though, don’t you think?’
Kitty’s frown warned him, and he added hastily, ‘Bedelia Rafter gave me the umbrella. It’s really rather choice. What?’
She wondered if he had ever tried to kiss Bedelia Rafter. A sharp image of Bedelia Rafter and Stephen Muldoon, in the punt below the bridge, flashed through her mind. For a moment she had a giddy, intoxicating sensation. It must be like that to be kissed. Oh! But it was all right. Father Bernardine said there was no sin unless one consented after one was conscious of the thought as sinful. She murmured an ejaculatory prayer and said:
‘Wouldn’t you like some tea?’
‘What on earth put it into your head to go into a convent?’ he sneered, irritated by her casual treatment.
‘Because I want to, I suppose … I’d better go and tell Peggy about tea. She won’t hear a bell to-day—she’ll be in the shop.’
‘She saw me coming up,’ he said. ‘You needn’t make an excuse to run away. Ah! That’s why you are going into the convent. You are running away—from yourself,’ he added, with a sneer.
She winced. Perhaps she had always disliked him because he seemed to know her thoughts.
‘I’m not afraid of you, anyway,’ she said, defending herself.
‘Why should you be afraid of me? I’m your friend—have always been, if you would only let yourself see it.’ He spoke gently. ‘You’re afraid of your passionate heart.’
She flushed. If her heart weren’t dead that would be true. He was a beast.
‘There’s nothing to be ashamed of,’ he assured her. ‘It merely means that you’re a woman. You won’t escape your feelings by taking them into a convent. I know it will be worse there instead of better. They want their natural outlet. You can’t kill them by repressing them. They only become more active, more violent.’
She listened with a growing interest. His lisp had gone and he seemed more real. He was wrong, of course. The outlet she had wanted was closed to her for ever. If her feelings weren’t dead, they were dying. For hours at a time she felt so numb that she had no feelings left. Gradually they would die away altogether. Even now, by following Father Bernardine’s instructions, she could direct her thoughts. In the convent, actively working for the greater glory of God, she should be quite safe.
‘Take my advice and stay out. You’ll only make yourself the more miserable by going in,’ he wound up.
‘I couldn’t be more miserable than I am.’
‘Poor little thing. My poor Kitty,’ he said tenderly.
She felt his hand on hers, but she was inert, unable to move. Fascinated, she watched him rise from his chair and bend over her. Weak and passive she waited. She could note things: the satisfied smirk on his convulsed face; the absence of struggle in her own will; her feeling of peace and content as once on waking out of a fever; a sort of detached, curious expectancy. A mixed odour of lemon, stale tobacco and eau-de-Cologne awakened her. Mingled with the horrid attraction of his hot breath was the menacing face of Father Bernardine in the very moment of his fiercest denunciation of sin. Feebly and half-reluctantly she threw her hands forward.
‘Don’t be a little fool,’ he said angrily.
‘How dare you!’ Fiercely she flung him off. She trembled all over. Was there never to be any release? Thank God, she had just saved herself in time. Whether her clothes were ready or not, she’d enter to-night—to-morrow at the latest.
‘I suppose you’ve lost your heart to the pulpit Adonis?’ he sneered.
She frowned. What a thoroughly bad man he must be to speak like that of a saint. ‘He never forgets that he’s a priest,’ she said.
He shrugged his shoulders sceptically. ‘Anyhow, I can’t forget that I’m a man when you’re by,’ he said bitterly.
‘You shouldn’t, you know.’ She spoke gently now, her resentment ebbing away in a quickened interest. He was suffering, and it was because of her.
‘You’re a little devil—a heartless little devil. You’ll suffer for this yet. By God, how you’ll suffer for it. A convent!’ he laughed. ‘With a temperament like yours you’ll soon know what it is to be in hell.’
His words struck her with a cold fear. What if he knew? After all, he was a priest, and didn’t some bad prophet once foretell the truth.
‘Won’t you have some tea now, Father?’ she said with a frightened, absentminded stare at a Crown Derby tea-cup on a blue velvet bracket on the wall.
‘No, thank you, I’m going to the Muldoons for tea.’
She had a pleasant feeling of relief. He was just Father Burke, after all. She was a fool to think even for a moment that anything that he said could have any weight. Father Bernardine was so different. Handsome, but unconscious of it—just as the angels must be. One could be mistaken as to one’s own feelings, but a saint saw straight into one’s heart. With a pitying smile she watched Father Burke smirk at the mirror, pull at his cuffs and waistcoat, shake his shoulders into position and pat a lock of hair. He lingered over the arrangement of his hat, gloves and umbrella.
‘You won’t make friends?’ he appealed, turning round and facing her in all his seductive glory.
‘It’s really long after tea-time.’ She only half-suppressed a smile.
‘You’re choosing a certain road to the devil,’ he said furiously.
‘I prefer my own road, anyway, to yours.’
He looked at her as if he hated her, bit his lip, turned on his heel, and had assumed his usual pose of deprecating assurance, his head cocked a little to one side, by the time he had reached the door.
She watched him go half with relief, half with regret. If only he didn’t make love, he’d be interesting enough when he allowed himself to be real. Was there anything in what he said? Father Brady had hinted at something similar, but he was too angry with her to be coherent. And Father Brady, with his narrow experience, couldn’t know as much about the soul as Father Bernardine. She went to the window and looked out idly at the groups of people breaking and re-forming, chattering and bargaining in front of the shop. She turned away suddenly with a shudder. He might pass. She couldn’t bear that—yet. Father Bernardine had promised her happiness. She must be patient. She curled herself again in the arm-chair and stared at the wall above the piano. It was sure to come—not all at once, perhaps, but some time. Would it take a week, a month, a year?