Читать книгу Candles' Beams - Francis J. Finn - Страница 3

AS Father David Rohan stepped into the waters of the Mississippi, ancient memories returned. It was here as a boy that, by his skill in swimming, he showed the promises afterward fulfilled in his becoming the finest athlete in Campion College. It was here, ancient memories reminded him, that after winning an exhausting swimming race of two hundred yards, he swam out, while still pumping for wind, into midstream and rescued an exhausted contestant.

This part of the upper Mississippi, some few miles above Dubuque, he had not seen since, seven years before, he had gone to the seminary. Many things had happened in these seven years. He had won out in philosophy and in theology as he had previously won out in athletics; he had achieved the priesthood—he could still almost sense the holy oils recently placed upon his hands—and he had lost his health.

Physicians had insisted that after ordination he should return to his native village, and, for a few months, resume, so far as possible, his old life on and in the river.

One of them told him he would recover; two others shrugged their shoulders; and Father David clearly understood that they had pronounced his death warrant.

But just now as, using the Australian crawl, he made his way out into midstream, his whole being revolted against their decision. He was himself again. He felt that he could, if put to it, win many another medal in the Mississippi waters.

Upon the heels of this buoyant feeling there suddenly came a sense of lassitude; and he had not made one hundred yards—he to whom a mile or more was once nothing.

“Pshaw!” he said, turning upon his back and floating. “What else could I expect? I’m out of condition. The wonder is I could go this far without losing my wind.”

Then he turned once more, and with a gentler, easier stroke made for the bank. Even as he turned, an apparition met his gaze.

Coming down, with measured pace, towards the shore was a young miss of nine. She appeared to be a gypsy. Her black hair failed to show even a distant acquaintance with comb and brush. It was a long, tangled mass. She was barefooted, barelegged, clothed in a slip of a gown.

The girl, as the Father scanned her, continued her grave walk till she reached the water’s edge; and, instead of halting, walked in. Land and water seemed all one to her.

Out into the water she stepped, until she was waist deep. Then throwing herself forward she began to kick and splash with enough vigor, apparently, to supply power for a large factory. This tremendous activity she kept up for fully five minutes, by which time she had swum about two feet.

“That little gypsy,” soliloquized Father David, “has put enough energy into her performance to carry her half way across the river.”

“I say, Sissie,” he remarked, as with his easy stroke he came within reach of the panting maid, “who taught you how to swim?”

“There ain’t nobody taught me; and I wish they would. I’m crazy to be a good swimmer.”

In a few minutes Father David got it into the head of the impressionable child that it was not necessary, in order to swim, to kick all the water possible into the air. Swimming was not exactly a shower bath.

“Say,” said the girl after mastering this truth, “my name’s Emily—Emily Billic; and I go to school, and I hate books, and what’s yours?”

“My name is David Rohan.”

“Oh! Are you the great swimmer that they all talk about?”

“I was a pretty good swimmer in my day,” returned the priest.

“Oh! I want to learn from you. Say, do you think I’ll make a great swimmer?”

“Judging by the progress you have made in the last ten minutes, I should think you would.”

“Hi! Hi!” screamed Emily. “Teach me some more.”

And teach her more he then and there did. Emily was not a gypsy. In fact, her face, yielding to the softening influences of the water, had become almost fair. She had no fear of the water. Whether her head was above or below seemed, so long as she could hold her breath, all one to her. It was quite conceivable that she could drown without discovering that disconcerting fact up to the last minute. The involuntary swallowing of the water seemed to her to be a part of the sport.

The only thing that evidently did worry the child was her dress. Three pins held it together; and these pins were not always faithful to their trust. More than once she ceased her exertions to get one pin or another into a resumption of service. It was in the pauses of one of these difficult tasks that she suddenly lifted changed eyes upon the young priest.

“O, say! Aren’t you a Fader?”

“I’ve been a priest for two weeks, Emily.”

“Say, I forgot; excuse me.”

Emily, as Father David clearly understood, referred to certain expressions which in previous moments of excitement had slipped from her innocent lips. If the priest could believe his ears, she had once, when he failed to reach her in time, addressed him cold-bloodedly as “You devil.” But he had not believed his ears at the moment.

“Say, Fader, will you give me a medal?”

“Are you a Catholic?”

“I was baptized; but I don’t know nothing.”

“Doesn’t your mother teach you your prayers?”

Emily shut her eyes, put her hands together and said:

“Name Fader, Son, Holy Ghost—Now I lay me down to sleep—Haily Mary now and at the hour of debt, amen.” Then she opened her eyes and looked for approval.

“Is that all you know?”

“I knew more, Fader; but I forgot.”

“And does your mother let you go swimming alone?”

“My mudder is dead. She went dead three years ago. And my fader, he is a fisher, and he sleep all day, and he fish all night. And he isn’t a Catholic; and he don’t care where I go, so I don’t wake him up.”

“Good gracious! And you are your own dress-maker?”

“I’ve got anudder dress besides this.”

Father David removed a string from his neck. On it were fastened a scapular medal and what is known as the miraculous medal of Our Lady. This latter he detached and gave to the child.

“Wear that all your life, Emily; it is the medal of God’s own Mother.”

Emily’s eyes showed the gratitude which her limited command of language failed to express. She hurried from the water, disappeared momentarily behind some bushes, and returned presently with the medal, attached to a very ancient shoe lace, hanging about her neck.

“Say, Fader, when are you coming swimming again?”

“I hope to come to-morrow at this same hour—four o’clock.”

“Four o’clock? And will you teach me some more?”

“Gladly.”

“Come on; let’s swim again.”

“Thank you, Emily,” returned the priest, whose lips were blue and trembling. “But I’m afraid I’ve stayed in too long. Now you run away and leave me to dress.”

“Good-bye, Fader.” Here Emily smiled engagingly and held up two fingers.

“Four o’clock? To-morrow?”

And Emily, like some infant naiad, turned and was lost in the trees.

The next morning Emily, at her humble home, received a package. She opened it in some fear and much wonder. She looked, she shrieked, she jumped into the air, putting, in the act, all three pins out of commission, and then, as she regained her feet, she kissed the medal, which was the only ornament that graced her sturdy person.

The package contained a dainty bathing suit. It was the first decent thing in the way of apparel she had received since her mother’s death.

When Father David, accompanied by a lad of twelve, reached the watery trysting place next day, he found the young naiad in all the glory of a many colored swimming suit. Her tangle of hair was hidden under a cap red as the head of a woodpecker. Altogether she was in appearance a much improved girl. On seeing Father David she set the woods ringing his name in welcome, and as she entreatingly added, “Hurry, Fader, come on in quick!” she proceeded to swim according to the directions given her the day before. Here, too, she displayed an extraordinary change for the better.

“I declare,” exclaimed Father David, as he entered the waters, “you have improved wonderfully. How did you do it?”

“Just as soon as I got my new suit,” answered the naiad, stepping on the bank and strutting proudly up and down to give her two companions an opportunity to see her in all her splendor of color, “I came right down and practised what you told me, Fader. That was at ten o’clock. Then I came down at eleven o’clock; then I came at twelve o’clock; and at one o’clock and at two o’clock.”

“Did you have any time for dinner?”

“I forgot all about dinner. Say, Fader, how do I look?” And Emily, with mouth and eyes opened to their widest, gazed earnestly into Father David’s face.

“You look simply elegant. I never saw any swimmer of your age look any finer; and you have improved wonderfully in swimming. Why, if you go on this way I’ll be able to teach you all I know in a week.”

For the next half hour Father David had two eager pupils on his hands. Master Tom Reynolds had thought he knew much of swimming, but he changed his mind during that afternoon. He had much to learn, and he went about it with almost the eagerness of Emily. Both children would do anything, however desperate, to win Father David’s slow, quiet smile and nod of approval. His lightest word was to them a command that must be obeyed. They were not only his pupils, but his slaves. And that slavery was made complete at the end of the swim, when Father David said to Tommie:

“Look you, Tommie, you can dress much quicker than I”—which, inasmuch as Tommie’s clothes consisted of a pair of jumpers, was manifestly true. “Now hurry into your things, and here’s some money. Go and buy ten cents’ worth of crackers and five cents’ worth of cheese.”

These words were not fairly out of the Father’s mouth before Tommie, fully robed, was off at a smart trot.

The naiad, meantime, also fully dressed—if the word fully could apply to anything so inadequate as her three-pin rag affair—was content to sit quietly behind some trees, as Father David had ordered her, looking with eager expectancy out upon the river—though the river, it must be confessed, had nothing whatever to do with that look of expectancy.

Father David was just about ready to show himself in public when Thomas returned.

Then there was a feast.

The revellers were two in number; and Thomas, though proud, with good reason, of his appetite, compared very poorly in efficiency with the half-starved naiad.

In the course of the banquet, the priest pointed out with some directness that people did not consider it good form to bolt their food. Teeth had their uses, too. And Emily, thinking, no doubt, that these words were an integral part of her swimming lessons, meekly submitted, and put her teeth to a use to which they had previously been strangers.

“Tell me, Fader,” ventured Emily upon the complete disappearance of the crackers and cheese, “are you going to stay here all the time?”

“O, how I wish you would!” eagerly the boy put in.

“I’ll be here only for two months at the most,” returned the Father, conscious of the intent eyes fastened upon him. He paused for a moment, and in the pause a dreamy expression settled upon his face. “I shall pass this way only once,” he added: “therefore—” He finished this sentence by bestowing upon his two listeners a smile, radiant, warm, yet touched with the awesomeness of one who is dipping into the finalities of the future. “Now, Tom, suppose we start back.”

“Won’t you come to-morrow, Fader?” cried Emily.

“I hope so.”

“At four o’clock?”

“Yes, Emily.”

“I’ll be waiting over at those trees, and I’ll not go in the water till you are ready.”

“Very good. Good-bye.”

The boy and the priest had not gone far when Emily came rushing down upon them at top speed.

“Say, Fader, I want to ask you something.”

“Well, child?”

Emily motioned Thomas away.

“Fader,” she whispered, “when you go away, won’t you take me with you?”

Father David had had many experiences in his thirty-two years of life, but never one so poignant as this. He had seen but a few moments before into his own future, and now he fancied he was looking into that of the child! Her upturned face was coarse, her eyes were bold, and, God help her, pathetic beyond words. There was little trace of refinement in her features and, judging by what he had learned of her home life, less promise. The only saving grace of her countenance was youthful innocence, a gracious thing which, like the lily, is here to-day and gone to-morrow. There was something else in her face which somehow Father David failed to note; it was love, love for him. Instead of answering her question, the priest, thinking at once of his own future and hers, laid his hand upon her tousled hair and said, “God bless you, my child.”

And Emily, kissing the medal, her only ornament, grinned and darted back into the woodlands.

It was an afternoon in August, five weeks since the Wisconsin naiad had startled the young priest. Four o’clock had passed. At the river’s edge stood Emily, waiting. The minutes went on haltingly; they changed into quarters. At last Thomas Reynolds appeared, dressed rather elaborately. There were shoes upon his feet.

“Where’s the Fader?” asked the girl.

“He—he’s not coming down to-day. He’s not coming no more,” answered Tom.

“Is he sick?”

“I should say he is. Last night he had a hemilage.”

“A what?”

“A hemilage. He spitted blood. He nearly died.”

“And—and is he better?” gasped the girl.

“The hemilage has stopped, but he’s weak as a cat. And he’s ordered to leave this place right away, and g-g-g-o to an ‘orspital.”

Tommie caught his breath several times as he spoke, while a tearful dimness obscured his eyesight. Emily, whose mouth throughout this disclosure had been wide open, let out a long and loud wail of grief. Literally she lifted up her voice and wept, while down her cheeks coursed a quick succession of tiny drops of tears.

Grief is catching. Tommie boohooed. For a few seconds he gave a loose rein to his grief; then remembering that he was a boy he set himself to check it, with the result that for several moments he made a series of extraordinary faces.

“Say, you baby,” he at length managed to say, “stop that confounded squalling.”

These words were uttered, as it happened, at a point where Emily, losing her wind, had stopped to take a full breath to be converted presently into another squall. So Emily caught his words. She closed her mouth, gulped, while her eyes seemed to spit forth sparks. Her face grew black.

“You devil,” she said fiercely.

Emily was standing on the bank. Thomas, furious at himself for what he considered his display of weakness, and furious at the girl for her display of temper, gave her a push. Over she went backward into the river; whereupon for several seconds Master Tommie found himself alone.

Suddenly she arose some fifteen feet from the shore, lying on her back and floating.

In this attitude the young lady reiterated her statement with a wealth of adjectives flanked by some extraordinary expletives. Emily was in a towering rage, and she was expressing herself in the artless and profane language which her father, in fits of anger, was wont to employ.

Tommie picked up a clam shell and sent it flying at the bobbing, red-capped head. Emily promptly dived to reappear several yards farther out. As her head came to the surface, another shell came whizzing toward her. She dived again. Tommie threw shells till he was tired, by which time Emily was forty yards away. At this distance it was not necessary to dive. Treading water, she made another speech to Tommie, every word of it breathing defiance, and ended by sticking out her tongue.

“You cat!” exploded Tommie. “I’m going right back to tell him what awful language you’ve been using.”

The young lady’s tongue suddenly returned to its proper place.

“O, Tommie,” she implored, “don’t do that! I forgot myself. Cross my heart—” There was a short interruption here. Emily in crossing her heart with undue fervor suddenly disappeared. “Cross my heart, Tom, I’m sorry and I won’t do it again. Excuse me, Tom.”

“And,” resumed the boy, still surly, “he told me to give you a message.”

At this the girl’s face lighted up. Throwing herself forward she made for the shore with a speed which caused even Tommie, acquainted as he was with her prowess as a swimmer, to wonder. Tommie had good reason to admire her speed, though it did not occur to him that he was just then watching the swiftest swimmer of her age in Wisconsin and the two neighboring states.

“Say,” she cried as she made land, “what—what did he say?”

“He said he wants you to keep on swimming every day.”

“Yes?”

“And he is going by the 8:40 train to-night, and he wants you to come down and bid him good-bye. Say, Emily, he thinks a whole lot of you.”

Emily’s face softened. Just then she looked beautiful.

“Say, Tom, I hope my dad will lash the daylights out of me when I get home. I’m sorry for all I said. I’m bad—oh, say, you won’t tell the Fader?”

“No, Emily, I won’t, and—eh—Emily, you won’t say anything about my shying those shells at you? I lost my temper and I’m sorry, too.”

“Not a word, Tom! And I’ll be at the depot at eight o’clock.”

And at eight o’clock the naiad was on hand. She was dressed for the occasion. Shoes and stockings were on her feet, what though one of those stockings was white and the other black. An absurd hat, with absurd artificial flowers, intended for a full-grown miss, concealed her tangled locks, and a white apron hid from view the many open spaces of her best dress. In one hand the naiad carried a bundle wrapped in a torrid looking bandanna; in the other a gorgeous bouquet of wild flowers, in the gathering of which she had spent more than an hour. There were also some beautiful roses which, truth compels me to say, were taken from the garden of a neighbor without his knowledge or consent.

“Look at the little water-devil,” observed the station agent. “What in the world is she up to? Never saw her so elaborately dressed before.”

Luckily for him the fair child failed to hear his remarks.

Emily seated herself solemnly and waited. Her mouth, an unusual thing, was closed, and her eyes, oblivious of all the sights of a railroad station at train time, were fixed intently upon the far horizon.

“Go away, I don’t want to talk,” she remarked severely to several who undertook to question her.

Ten minutes before train time a cab drew up, and from it, leaning upon the arm of Tommie and another boy, issued Father David. His face was bloodless, his eyes glassy.

“O, Fader!” bellowed the maid.

And Father David, hearing the familiar voice, broke into a smile so sunny, so genial, that for the moment he seemed to be his old self.

“Why, Emily!” he said, holding out welcoming hands.

“Say, Fader, I’m going with you,” said Emily. “I’m all ready to go. I’ve brought my clothes and my bathing suit.”

“But, my dear child, you can’t leave your father.”

“He won’t care. He don’t know, anyhow. O, Fader, please, please take me.”

“Emily,” said the Father, “I’m going to a hospital.”

“I’ll go, too.”

“No, my dear, that cannot be.”

“And when are you coming back, Fader?”

“I fear, Emily, I shall not pass this way again.”

“Aren’t you coming back?”

“That is as God pleases.”

Then Emily presented the flowers. For the time all her roughness was gone. She showed for a moment what she might have been under other circumstances. Father David was touched; the tears came to his eyes.

“God bless you,” he said hurriedly, and turned away.

Tommie Reynolds accompanied him into the car; and rage, jealous rage, entered the sorrow-stricken soul of the lone girl on the platform.

She was still boiling over when the train started. And in that moment she saw Tommie in the vestibule shaking hands with “the Father.”

This was too much. Throwing herself on the platform, face up, she howled and kicked in an abandon of grief till the train was out of sight.

In the spring of 1926, the Catholic hospital at La Crosse was all the brighter for the presence of a newly ordained priest. A slight nervous breakdown, occasioned by hard study and the ordeal of ordination, in no wise interfered with his ready smile and his sunny way of dealing with all who met him. In fact, he claimed that he had no reason at all for being in a hospital. He felt all right. He wanted to work. But his good bishop had insisted on his playing the invalid.

No doubt the good bishop was correct. The young priest had entered the room assigned him three weeks before, pale and hollow-eyed. And now his eyes were bright, twinkling, and upon his cheeks had come a pair of roses which put him quite in keeping with the rosy springtime.

At the moment that there came a knock at his door, he had just finished reading, for the twentieth time, this paragraph from a well worn manuscript, “The Diary of a Hospital Chaplain:”

Dec. 12, 1911. This morning at ten o’clock, died in the odor of sanctity, Father David Rohan. He was conscious to the last; sweet, affable, winning in word and manner. I never knew a lovelier soul. He had no fear of death. His last words were, “If God calls me, I am perfectly willing to go. But when I meet Our dear Lord, I am going to have a sort of a quarrel with Him.” When Father David said this, I, little knowing that his last moment was at hand, broke into a laugh. The idea! Father David would not quarrel with the meanest and most abandoned soul on earth. “Well, anyhow,” he added with that smile which, in winningness and sweetness, was unchanged, “I’m going to remonstrate with Him, and I am going to say something like this: ‘My dear Lord and Saviour, You have been good to me beyond measure. You gave me good parents, good friends, a good education, and no end of joy. Best of all, you were pleased, in your infinite goodness, to call me to the priesthood, and to allow me the greatest of all earthly privileges—to say Mass, and to say it eighty-seven times. But a priest ought to save souls. That’s his business. And I have not had a chance to save a single one. Why didn’t you allow me to save one soul before I died?” Father David came to a pause. His voice had grown weaker and weaker. He made me a motion. I understood. I caught up the crucifix, which he in his weakness could not reach, and held it before his dimming eyes. He repeated with me the Act of Love. Then as I gave him absolution and put the sacred image to his lips, he whispered, “O Lord Jesus, give me one soul before I go.” Then his head fell back. All was over. God rest his lovely soul. No doubt Our Lord knew what was best. Father David died without any chance to exercise the holy ministry, without any opportunity of saving a single soul.

The young priest, I say, had just finished the reading of these paragraphs, and had taken out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes, when there came a knock at the door.

“Come in,” he said.

The door opened, revealing the superioress.

“Good morning, Father. Are you ready for your first confession?”

“This—this,” he answered, “is so sudden.”

“But it’s an urgent case, Father. There’s a woman just brought in. It’s a clear case of lockjaw, and, although she looks perfectly well, she’ll be dead before night. She may become unconscious before long, and our regular chaplain has gone to visit the bishop on business.”

“O, in that case I’ll be only too glad, Sister.”

“As this is to be your first confession, Father, you will allow an old woman, old enough to be your mother, to prepare you. The woman is, and has been, a hardened and notorious sinner. She was brought in here cursing and screaming, and somewhat the worse for liquor. Our sisters at first could do nothing with her; and it took three of our male nurses to get her, kicking, biting, struggling, into the room assigned her. But here comes the strange part: no sooner did she enter the room than she at once quieted down. Her eyes grew soft, and she burst into a fit of weeping. When she could control herself, she turned to me and said, ‘Sister, I beg pardon, I am ashamed of myself. I know I’m going to die, and O, Sister, please get me a priest.’ And then she fell to weeping bitterly again. Never did I see so sudden and so extraordinary a change.”

The young priest arose, procured a stole and the holy oils, and said:

“I’m ready, Mother Superior; ask all the Sisters who can spare the time to go to the chapel and pray that I may handle this case right.”

On entering the woman’s room they discovered her lying quiet and calm, though the tears upon her face told the tale of her recent emotion. She was young; but dissipation had added years to her appearance.

“Father, Father!” she cried, raising hands of supplication, “will you help me? I’ve never been to confession in my life.”

“Certainly, my child. You need not worry at all.”

The Superior left the room and remained outside for nearly fifteen minutes. Then the door opened.

“Her confession is made,” said the priest gravely. “Now for Extreme Unction and Holy Communion.”

At these last rites there were present seven Sisters. Three of them wept openly. None of them had ever seen a dying person receive the last sacraments with such lively sentiments of faith, hope and love.

“Before I die,” said the penitent, “I want to ask pardon of all the world for my scandalous life. I’ve been bad, bad, bad. Father, will you stay with me a little longer?”

The Sisters left the room, all save the Superior, who was holding the dying woman’s hand.

“Father, do you know that you remind me of the dearest and best and only friend I ever had?”

“Indeed!”

“Yes; you have his nice smile and manner. It is sixteen years since I saw him. I knew him only for a few weeks.”

“Where is he now, my child?”

“He died long ago. He was a priest—he taught me to swim.”

“Good God!” cried the young priest, jumping to his feet and gazing intently on the woman’s face. “You are Emily!”

The woman on the bed rose up, her eyes all eagerness, and returned the priest’s gaze.

“And you,” she said, “are Tommie Reynolds. No wonder you reminded me of dear, dear Father David Rohan.”

It was now the Superior’s turn to be astonished.

“Why—why,” she exclaimed, “Father David Rohan died in this very room.”

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” cried Emily. “I felt him near. He’s here now. It is he who drove the devils out of me when those men forced me into this room. It was he who filled my heart all of a sudden with love of Jesus and sorrow for my horrible life.”

“And it was he,” resumed the superior, “whose last prayer and last words to the dear Lord were that he might not die before winning one sinner. Emily, he was praying for you; and his prayer was answered.”

“And it was he,” added Father Reynolds, “who in his few weeks’ dealings with me aroused in my soul—without his ever saying a word about it—an ardent desire for the priesthood. In all these years I have never forgotten him, and, Emily, you paid me just now the greatest compliment I could ask. You told me I acted like him. Well, I’ve been trying to do that for these last fifteen years.”

“After his death,” said the Superior, “his grave for over a year was visited daily by little children whom he had met during his last sickness in this hospital. And for the last ten years there are flowers laid upon his grave every week. Some grateful child has never forgotten him.”

“Sister,” said Emily, her face flushing and growing girlish, “I was that child.”

“ ‘How far a little candle throws its beams,

So shines a good deed in a naughty world,’ ”

quoted Father Reynolds. “Whenever I meet those lines I always think of dear Father David. And do you remember, Emily, his saying, ‘I shall not pass this way again’?”

“Indeed, I do. I often wondered what he meant.”

“So did I when I was a boy. But I found out during my studies. Here’s the entire quotation. I repeat it to myself every day:

‘I expect to pass through this world but once. If, therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do my fellow beings, let me not defer or neglect it; for I shall not pass this way again.’ ”

“I am happier now,” said Emily, “than I ever was since I met him on the river’s bank. God knows I have been wicked, but God knows, too, that the memory of his kindness to me has inspired me to save and protect many and many a poor, deserted little girl. And I know that he has saved my soul, and he has made you a priest to carry on the work he would have done. O, Father Thomas, be kind, be kind, be kind—especially to the poor little ones. Souls are being lost for want of kindness.”

“God helping me, I will, Emily.”

“And now, Sister and Father, I want to be alone. I want to talk to Our Lord.” She paused a moment and then continued, “I saw his grave the other day, and there came back to me the only two lines of poetry I ever learned by heart, and I learned them because they fitted him:

‘Only the actions of the just

Smell sweet and blossom in the dust.’ ”

And as Father Reynolds and the Superior left the room, their last glimpse showed them Emily kissing the crucifix and the last words they heard from her lips were: “My Jesus, mercy.”