‘Congratulations on an excellent job of work.’
‘In what respect?’ Harrison asked.
‘The decorations. Magnificent. Didn’t you think so, Father?’
‘A credit,’ Father O’Connor said.
‘We all did our share,’ Harrison acknowledged, modestly.
‘Better show here than in Herbert Park. I suppose you heard . . .’
‘I know what you’re going to say: That Murphy refused to be knighted. It sounds incredible.’
‘It’s perfectly true. I had the whole story from an official source. The King called for his sword, but the Lord Lieutenant had to whisper that it was no dice.’
‘With everybody looking on?’
‘In front of a galaxy of gapers.’
‘Good God!’
‘What is Mr. Murphy?’ Father O’Connor asked.
‘One of our own—a Catholic,’ someone blundered.
‘No . . . I mean, politically speaking,’ Father O’Connor hastened to explain.
‘A Constitutional Nationalist,’ Yearling said. ‘The crown for Ireland and West African concessions for William Martin.’
Everybody laughed. Yearling continued:
‘But you must not think it was a question of politics, Father. It was rumoured beforehand that Murphy had organised the exhibition and asked for chairmanship simply to get a knighthood. It so happens that organisers of exhibitions elsewhere had been honoured in that way. When Murphy heard the rumour he told Aberdeen that on no account would he accept such an honour. It appears that the message was not transmitted in time to the King, with the result that William had to say no in public. What do you think of that, Father?’
‘I think Mr. Murphy demonstrated that he is a strong-minded man and a man of principle,’ Father O’Connor said.
‘After the event he sent a letter to His Excellency asking him to explain his refusal to the King. It was delivered at Leopardstown races. I happen to know that it contained this.’
They looked at him expectantly. Yearling, their attention securely held, changed his voice and articulated with great emphasis.
‘I would not wish that His Majesty should leave Ireland thinking that he had left one churlish man behind him.’
Harrison voiced the feelings of the rest.
‘That was well said.’
Yearling looked derisive, but the rest agreed with Harrison. Father O’Connor reflected on the incident and felt admiration for the man, as much for his show of moral courage as for his gracious expression of regret. He felt that with men of like character at the head of Ireland’s business affairs the country must surely prosper. It was an added satisfaction to have gathered that the man concerned was a Catholic as well.
Harrison, not to be outdone in the matter of inside information, put down his cup with a compelling clatter and said:
‘Of course you know what happened at the Viceregal Lodge. I mean about Vicars and the Crown Jewels?’
‘I’d forgotten Vicars would be there.’
‘When Vicars was presented the King shook him by the hand—most warmly, I believe—and held a cordial and cheerful conversation with him. So what price Birrell now?’
‘A handshake and a smile won’t deflect our friend Birrell,’ Yearling said. ‘By God no!’
The others raised their eyebrows, disapproving of his language in front of the priest. Father O’Connor smiled and waved his hands to convey that he was not put out by full-blooded talk. They went on to discuss the theft, a subject on which each had a theory. When Father O’Connor rose and excused himself they stood politely and bowed him out. Then they resumed more freely.
Father O’Connor went into the church to pray a little before lunch. There was a man in front of him whose ragged coat was tied about the middle with a piece of cord. He had a dirty beard and his remaining teeth stood up like cartridges in his hungry face. Father O’Connor’s mind wandered from his prayers. The face particularly held his attention. A scavenger’s bag swung from his waist. The man left almost immediately. Father O’Connor, alone now in front of the altar, reproached himself for the pride he had felt a little while before. He was not endowed with a talent for bringing Christ’s word to the men of business or for living according to Christ’s wish while among them. He was not clever enough, nor was he strong enough to endure the small temptations to worldliness and conceit without becoming their tool instead of being their master. And it was not only the respect of the prominent which would corrupt him. There was corruption in the submissiveness of the ladies’ committees, in the deference to his superior musical knowledge on the part of the humble organist and the choir, in the assumption of his genteel parishioners that to have good breeding, a clean person and unremitting politeness was to honour Christ as He had commanded.
Father O’Connor left the centre aisle and knelt before the shrine of St. Anthony to continue his novena for the recovery of his mother’s rosary. She had given him the beads when he was a young student, a Galway rosary of amber and silver which had belonged to her mother before her. They were the only memento he had of her, a cherished link with the love he had lost when she died. Perhaps, thought Father O’Connor, their loss was part of God’s plan to chasten him, a trial to take his mind from the vanities of the genteel world around him, so that this grief would be with him to draw his thoughts back to the verities. Their disappearance was mysterious enough. At first he had thought the beads must be in the Bradshaw’s house, because he had first missed them after their musical evening. But they searched thoroughly and found nothing. They were not in his rooms or in the vestry. Father O’Connor prayed fervently and humbly. It remained now with St. Anthony, in whom he placed his last hope.
He rose after a while and left the church, finding it a relief now to close the door of the Parish House and leave the sunshine to those whose moods were a better match for it. His room was high up in the house, a quiet, carpeted retreat with two devotional pictures from which the faces of Christ and the Madonna brooded over the well-bound volumes that lined each wall. A letter lay on the table which had not been there when he left. He picked it up and read it, then he put it down and sat for a long time in thought. The letter promised him the transfer he had asked for. He would be posted to work among the poor in the first months of the New Year. God, he was now certain, was truly intervening to shape his life for him. Father O’Connor, sitting alone in the quiet, sunless room, felt his eyes pricking with tears of gratitude, and his heart being filled to overflowing with love of Christ.
CHAPTER THREE
Father O’Connor’s parishioners marked the change. There was a quietness about him in the weeks that followed, an abstracted dedication which marked his attitude to even the most unrewarding and inconvenient of his parish duties. In private he practised small privations, which included doing without lunch on each Friday. His devotion during his daily mass had the effect of making it unduly long, so that his parish priest had to remind him that those attending it had worldly duties and must not be detained unduly. Only in his sermons did he seem to become aware of the living church arrayed dutifully beneath his pulpit. On the second Sunday in Advent his vehement condemnation of worldly show and snobbery set a number of critical tongues wagging. Mr. Bradshaw was greatly offended.
‘That man O’Connor gave another most extraordinary sermon today,’ he said. I wonder the parish priest doesn’t speak to him.’
‘Whatever for?’ Mrs. Bradshaw asked. ‘Wasn’t he speaking on the day’s gospel? I’m sure he didn’t say anything that wasn’t in it.’
‘It’s not that,’ Mr. Bradshaw said, ‘it’s the construction he puts on things. You’d think it was a crime to wear a coat without a hole in it.’