Despite all this agnosticism, my continued regard and good wishes.
Father O’Connor left the letter down and sighed. It was cynical, like Yearling’s conversation, reflecting the attitudes of the authors he so often spoke about: this man France, that man Butler, the sceptic Shaw. The great thing was not to be clever but to have Faith. Faith was a gift from God, freely given, not earned. Without it the human mind questioned even its own efficacy and lost itself in the darkness. The slum-dwellers for whom he expressed concern were richer in real treasures than Yearling, despite his money and his education, for they had Faith and with grace they would merit Heaven. Yet Yearling was a good man, who gave generous financial help when Mrs. Bradshaw approached him for the collections for the poor of St. Brigid’s. His combination of generosity and culture could not go unacknowledged by a merciful and forgiving God. Yearling would be rewarded in due season.
The clock above the mantelpiece, a heavy affair, too, in black marble, gave out a single, musical stroke. Father O’Connor rose.
‘Are you off?’ Father O’Sullivan asked, looking up. It was his form of politeness.
‘I have the early mass tomorrow,’ Father O’Connor reminded him, ‘so it’s early to bed and early to rise.’ Both smiled. The cliché displeased Father Giffley, who frowned behind his newspaper. When the door had closed he lowered it slowly and said:
‘John—be a good fellow and get me my early-to-bed nightcap.’
Father O’Sullivan left what he was doing to get the bottle and a glass. There was a jug of water, which he examined dubiously.
‘Would you like me to get you some fresh water?’
‘It will do well enough. Sit down and join me.’ Father O’Sullivan said he would—a small drop to make him sleep. His arm was still troubling him. Writing with it had not helped.
When the glasses had been filled, Father O’Sullivan protesting at the over-liberal measure which the other poured for him, they raised them ceremoniously to each other and Father O’Sullivan said, without meaning anything more than a customary Dublin greeting: ‘The first today.’
‘I wish I could say the same,’ Father Giffley responded with a sad smile. He looked over at the manuscript which lay open on the table.
‘Is it still the same devotional pamphlet—the one about the Holy Family and the humble Catholic home?’
‘I am trying to revise it.’
‘I once promised to read it for you and failed.’
‘A man of your experience,’ Father O’Sullivan said, ‘. . . I quite understand.’
‘I found I couldn’t. There are already far too many pious homilies addressed to the poor.’
‘I’ve never worked among well-to-do people. I don’t think I’d know what to say to them.’
True. Looking over his glass at the grey face of his curate, Father Giffley thought there were few priests in whom humility and a sort of common or garden holiness were combined to such excellent purpose; he gave and, as admonished in the famous prayer, he did not count the cost; he fought—and did not heed the wounds; he toiled—and did not seek for rest; he laboured and looked for no reward save that of knowing that he did God’s Holy Will.
Amen. So be it.
To wear the yoke without complaint. To be busy. Not to raise the eyes too high or too long from the work surrounding you. Not to look inward for too long nor to quest beneath name and occupation for the you that had been born hopefully of woman so many years ago. To ask continually Whither am I going? but never Who Am I? for there began the war of individual appetite with circumstances and the sanctions of the community and the Laws of God.
Yet if all refused the challenge to explore, the world would still be flat, suspended on the ageing shoulders of Atlas, or on the tortoise swimming eternally in an eternity of sea.
Revolt was better, even at the risk of damnation. To examine His Universe with the eyes of the critic and His Order with an eye to its improvement. The meek shunned Thought to save their souls; the reckless went forward knowing that a slip might send them to the furnace.
‘Thank you, John,’ he said, suddenly holding out his glass.
When the other poured gingerly, he raised his voice sharply. ‘Don’t stint.’
Father O’Sullivan, avoiding the eyes, poured again. He left the bottle on the table. The face disturbed him, its hard, staring eyes, its lips set thinly, the veins thick and blue in the temples.
‘And yourself?’ Father Giffley invited.
‘No, thank you,’ Father O’Sullivan said, indicating what was still left in his glass. ‘I have more than enough here as it is.’
‘Please yourself.’
That afternoon he had walked through the parish. The mood took him after lunch as he stared from the window of his room. At that time the tall, decaying houses, rising against a sky black with cloud, were waiting for the rain to begin. The gloom outside drew him. He went on impulse, without his overcoat or the walking-stick it was his habit to carry. He went through the streets with his hands clasped behind him, noting with a bitterness no longer new to him the signs of deprivation and poverty. Every rotten doorpost and shattered fanlight reflected his own decay. He had a craving for alcohol that made him no better than the dogs and the cats that nosed about the bins and the gutter. His hopes lay littered with the filth and the garbage of the streets. They were responsible, those pious superiors who had planted him in the middle of all this because he was proud and refused to fawn. The others drank afternoon tea and were at one with solid, middle-class people; he had refused to flatter the merchants. The others thought themselves of consequence, my lords the Reverends Pious and Priestly, the publicans’ sons from the arsehole of Ireland. Ho!—but vulgarity released pain, you with your silk hats for the respectable; soft, pitiless comfort for the destitute.
It began to rain, great blobs of sooty water that fell reluctantly, disturbing the dust and with it the malignant odours of street and sewer. Then the wind freshened and the rain started heavily, until even the dogs and the cats disappeared and he had the street to himself. He walked alone, coatless, his hands still clenched firmly against the small of his back.
He had been too long in the wasteland, at war with his superiors, deprived of the company of his intellectual equals. Not much, these equals of his, but equals, such as they were, and as such, necessary. Their absence had dragged him down. His pious superiors had anticipated that too. It was part of their plot against him. Had he been stronger, he might have triumphed over his surroundings. If he had less compassion he might have ignored them. Compassion—that was his undoing. He could be selfish and do little or nothing for people for whom nothing could be done anyhow. But he could not be blind, like the others. He felt. He saw. That was more than the Silk Hat Brigade had ever been capable of.
The rain increased until his clothes clung so tightly against his body that it was hard to walk. All their spite hung over him, trapped between rain-soaked houses, leaking roofs, gutter gurgling, wind-tormented streets. As he walked he looked about for shelter, passing door after door endlessly, until above gas-lit windows and frames of blackened paint he saw, reading laboriously through the rain: ‘Choice Wines James Gill & Son, And Spirits’. And went in.
He had never been in a public house before and hesitated to find his bearings. The floor was bare wood, covered with a layer of sawdust. Three gas-lamps suspended in a row from the ceiling lit it. At the far end a group of men were in conversation. The man behind the counter had noticed him and stood transfixed with shock.