Part 18 (1/2)

'And you don't know why?'

'No, I don't; I can't tell you exactly why I've come. As I was reading my breviary, walking up and down the road in front of the house, I felt that I must see you. I never felt anything like it in my life before. I had to come.'

'And you didn't expect to find me?'

'Well, I didn't. How did you guess that?'

'You'd have hardly come all that way to find me sitting here in this armchair.'

'That's right. It wasn't sitting in that chair I expected to see you; I didn't expect to see you at all--at least, I don't think I did. You see, it was all very queer, for it was as if somebody had got me by the shoulders. It was as if I were being pushed every yard of the road.

Something was running in my mind that I shouldn't see you again, or if I did see you that it would be for the last time. You seemed to me as if you were going away on a long journey.'

'Was it dying or dead you saw me?'

'That I can't say. If I said any more I shouldn't be telling the truth.

No, it wasn't the same feeling when I came to tell you I couldn't put up with the loneliness any more--the night I came here roaring for drink. I was thinking of myself then, and that you might save me or do something for me--give me drink or cure me. I don't know which thought it was that was running in my head, but I had to come to you all the same, just as I had to come to you to-day. I say it was different, because then I was on my own business; but this time it seemed to me that I was on yours. One good turn deserves another, as they say; and something was beating in my head that I could help you, serve as a stay; so I had to come. Where should I be now if it were not for you? I can see you're thinking that it was only nonsense that was running in my head, but you won't be saying it was nonsense that brought me the night I came like a madman roaring for drink. If there was a miracle that night, why shouldn't there be a miracle to-night? And if a miracle ever happened in the world, it happened that night, I'm thinking. Do you remember the dark gray clouds tearing across the sky, and we walking side by side, I trying to get away from you? I was that mad that I might have thrown you into the bog-hole if the craving had not pa.s.sed from me. And it was just lifted from me as one might take the cap off one's head. You remember the prayer we said, leaning over the bit of wall looking across the bog?

There was no lonesomeness that night coming home, Gogarty, though a curlew might have felt a bit.'

'A curlew!'

'Well, there were curlews and plovers about, and a starving a.s.s picking gra.s.s between the road and the bog-hole. That night will be ever in my mind. Where would I be now if it hadn't been that you kept on with me and brought me back, cured? It wouldn't be a ca.s.sock that would be on my back, but some old rag of a coat. There's nothing in this world, Gogarty, more unlucky than a suspended priest. I think I can see myself in the streets, hanging about some public-house, holding horses attached to a cab-rank.'

'Lord of Heaven, Moran! what are you coming here to talk to me in this way for? The night you're speaking of was bad enough, but your memory of it is worse. Nothing of what you're saying would have happened; a man like you would be always able to pick up a living.'

'And where would I be picking up a living if it weren't on a cab-rank, or you either?'

'Well, 'tis melancholy enough you are this evening.'

'And all for nothing, for there you are, sitting in your old chair. I see I've made a fool of myself.'

'That doesn't matter. You see, if one didn't do what one felt like doing, one would have remorse of conscience for ever after.'

'I suppose so. It was very kind of you, Moran, to come all this way.'

'What is it but a step? Three miles--'

'And a half.'

Moved by a febrile impatience, which he could not control, Father Oliver got up from his chair.

'Now, Moran, isn't it strange? I wonder how it was that you should have come to tell me that you were going off to drink somewhere. You said you were going to lie up in a public-house and drink for days, and yet you didn't think of giving up the priesthood.'

'What are you saying, Gogarty? Don't you know well enough I'd have been suspended? Didn't I tell you that drink had taken that power over me that, if roaring h.e.l.l were open, and I sitting on the brink of it and a table beside me with whisky on it, I should fill myself a gla.s.s?'

'And knowing you were going down to h.e.l.l?'

'Yes, that night nothing would have stopped me. But, talking of h.e.l.l, I heard a good story yesterday. Pat Carabine was telling his flock last Sunday of the tortures of the d.a.m.ned, and having said all he could about devils and pitchforks and caldrons, he came to a sudden pause--a blank look came into his face, and, looking round the church and seeing the sunlight streaming through the door, his thoughts went off at a tangent.

”Now, boys,” he said, ”if this fine weather continues, I hope you'll be all out in the bog next Tuesday bringing home my turf.”'