Part 30 (2/2)
”The sister--Miss Madden--seems extremely strong,” he remarked tentatively.
”Celia may escape the general doom,” said the priest. His guest noted that he clenched his shapely white hand on the table as he spoke, and that his gentle, carefully modulated voice had a gritty hardness in its tone. ”THAT would be too dreadful to think of,” he added.
Theron shuddered in silence, and strove to shut his mind against the thought.
”She has taken Michael's illness so deeply to heart,” the priest proceeded, ”and devoted herself to him so untiringly that I get a little nervous about her. I have been urging her to go away and get a change of air and scene, if only for a few days. She does not sleep well, and that is always a bad thing.”
”I think I remember her telling me once that sometimes she had sleepless spells,” said Theron. ”She said that then she banged on her piano at all hours, or dragged the cus.h.i.+ons about from room to room, like a wild woman. A very interesting young lady, don't you find her so?”
Father Forbes let a wan smile play on his lips. ”What, our Celia?”
he said. ”Interesting! Why, Mr. Ware, there is no one like her in the world. She is as unique as--what shall I say?--as the Irish are among races. Her father and mother were both born in mud-cabins, and she--she might be the daughter of a hundred kings, except that they seem mostly rather under-witted than otherwise. She always impresses me as a sort of atavistic idealization of the old Kelt at his finest and best. There in Ireland you got a strange mixture of elementary early peoples, walled off from the outer world by the four seas, and free to work out their own racial amalgam on their own lines. They brought with them at the outset a great inheritance of Eastern mysticism. Others lost it, but the Irish, all alone on their island, kept it alive and brooded on it, and rooted their whole spiritual side in it. Their religion is full of it; their blood is full of it; our Celia is fuller of it than anybody else.
The Ireland of two thousand years ago is incarnated in her. They are the merriest people and the saddest, the most turbulent and the most docile, the most talented and the most unproductive, the most practical and the most visionary, the most devout and the most pagan. These impossible contradictions war ceaselessly in their blood. When I look at Celia, I seem to see in my mind's eye the fair young-ancestral mother of them all.”
Theron gazed at the speaker with open admiration. ”I love to hear you talk,” he said simply.
An unbidden memory flitted upward in his mind. Those were the very words that Alice had so often on her lips in their old courts.h.i.+p days. How curious it was! He looked at the priest, and had a quaint sensation of feeling as a romantic woman must feel in the presence of a specially impressive masculine personality. It was indeed strange that this soft-voiced, portly creature in a gown, with his white, fat hands and his feline suavity of manner, should produce such a commanding and unique effect of virility. No doubt this was a part of the great s.e.x mystery which historically surrounded the figure of the celibate priest as with an atmosphere. Women had always been prostrating themselves before it. Theron, watching his companion's full, pallid face in the lamp-light, tried to fancy himself in the priest's place, looking down upon these wors.h.i.+pping female forms. He wondered what the celibate's att.i.tude really was. The enigma fascinated him.
Father Forbes, after his rhetorical outburst, and been eating. He pushed aside his cheese-plate. ”I grow enthusiastic on the subject of my race sometimes,” he remarked, with the suggestion of an apology. ”But I make up for it other times--most of the time--by scolding them. If it were not such a n.o.ble thing to be an Irishman, it would be ridiculous.”
”Ah,” said Theron, deprecatingly, ”who would not be enthusiastic in talking of Miss Madden? What you said about her was perfect. As you spoke, I was thinking how proud and thankful we ought to be for the privilege of knowing her--we who do know her well--although of course your friends.h.i.+p with her is vastly more intimate than mine--than mine could ever hope to be.”
The priest offered no comment, and Theron went on: ”I hardly know how to describe the remarkable impression she makes upon me. I can't imagine to myself any other young woman so brilliant or broad in her views, or so courageous. Of course, her being so rich makes it easier for her to do just what she wants to do, but her bravery is astonis.h.i.+ng all the same.
We had a long and very sympathetic talk in the woods, that day of the picnic, after we left you. I don't know whether she spoke to you about it?”
Father Forbes made a movement of the head and eyes which seemed to negative the suggestion.
”Her talk,” continued Theron, ”gave me quite new ideas of the range and capacity of the female mind. I wonder that everybody in Octavius isn't full of praise and admiration for her talents and exceptional character.
In such a small town as this, you would think she would be the centre of attention--the pride of the place.”
”I think she has as much praise as is good for her,” remarked the priest, quietly.
”And here's a thing that puzzles me,” pursued Mr. Ware. ”I was immensely surprised to find that Dr. Ledsmar doesn't even think she is smart--or at least he professes the utmost intellectual contempt for her, and says he dislikes her into the bargain. But of course she dislikes him, too, so that's only natural. But I can't understand his denying her great ability.”
The priest smiled in a dubious way. ”Don't borrow unnecessary alarm about that, Mr. Ware,” he said, with studied smoothness of modulated tones. ”These two good friends of mine have much enjoyment out of the idea that they are fighting for the mastery over my poor unstable character. It has grown to be a habit with them, and a hobby as well, and they pursue it with tireless zest. There are not many intellectual diversions open to us here, and they make the most of this one. It amuses them, and it is not without its charms for me, in my capacity as an interested observer. It is a part of the game that they should pretend to themselves that they detest each other. In reality I fancy that they like each other very much. At any rate, there is nothing to be disturbed about.”
His mellifluous tones had somehow the effect of suggesting to Theron that he was an outsider and would better mind his own business. Ah, if this purring p.u.s.s.y-cat of a priest only knew how little of an outsider he really was! The thought gave him an easy self-control.
”Of course,” he said, ”our warm mutual friends.h.i.+p makes the observation of these little individual vagaries merely a part of a delightful whole.
I should not dream of discussing Miss Madden's confidences to me, or the doctor's either, outside our own little group.”
Father Forbes reached behind him and took from a chair his black three-cornered cap with the ta.s.sel. ”Unfortunately I have a sick call waiting me,” he said, gathering up his gown and slowly rising.
”Yes, I saw the man sitting in the hall,” remarked Theron, getting to his feet.
”I would ask you to go upstairs and wait,” the priest went on, ”but my return, unhappily, is quite uncertain. Another evening I may be more fortunate. I am leaving town tomorrow for some days, but when I get back--”
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