Collected Stories (110 page)

“Oh, indeed, 'tis true,” she said. “I often blamed myself over poor Jim. Sometimes I think if only I might have been a bit easier on him, he might be here yet.”

“Most of us have to go through that sooner or later,” he said, feeling that perhaps he had gone too far and reopened old wounds. His own old wounds were never far from breaking open, because often a light or careless word would bring back the memory of his mother and of his diabolical adolescent temperament. “We have to be careful of that, too,” he added. “Because it's not the guilty ones who go on brooding but the others—the people who're only partly guilty, or maybe not guilty at all. That can happen, too. I had a man here last week talking about his wife's death, and nothing I could say would persuade him but that he'd wronged her. And I knew for a fact that he was a husband in a million—a saint. It's something we can't afford to indulge. It turns into a sort of cowardice before life. We have to learn to accept our own limitations as human beings—our selfishness and vanity and bad temper.”

He spoke with passion, the passion of a man teaching a lesson he has never been able to learn himself. Something in his tone made the old woman look at him, and her face softened into a sweet, toothless old smile.

“Haven't you great wisdom for such a young man!” she exclaimed admiringly.

“Great,” he agreed with a jolly laugh. “I'm the biggest idiot of them all.”

But she shrugged this off. “Ah, what else were the saints?”

“Look here, ma'am,” he said, rising and standing over her with mock gravity. “Don't you be going round talking about me as a saint or you'll be having me sent to a punishment parish. The poor Bishop has trouble enough on his hands without having to deal with saints. I'll say eight-o'clock Mass on Sunday for your boy. Will that do you?”

“My boy?” she said in surprise. “But Timmy wasn't my son, father. Sure, I said I had no children.”

“No. I took it he was your stepson.”

“Is it Jim's?” she exclaimed with a laugh of genuine amusement at his mistake. “Ah, sure, Jim wasn't married before, father. Don't you see, that's why I had to come to you?”

“I see,” he said, though he didn't, and anyhow he felt it was none of his business. The woman, after all, hadn't come to make her confession. “What was his surname so?”

“Ah, father,” she said, still laughing but in a bewildered way, “I'm so distracted that I can't explain myself properly. You have it all mixed up. Sure, I thought I explained it.”

“You didn't explain it, ma'am,” he said, repressing his curiosity. “And anyway it's nothing to me who Timmy was. That's a matter between you and your confessor.”

“My what?” she cried indignantly. “Ah, father, you have me distracted completely now. This has nothing to do with confession. Oh, my, what's that Timmy was? If I could only think!”

“Take your time, ma'am,” he said, but he wondered what was coming next.

“A poodle!” she exclaimed. “Now I have it.”

“A what?”

“A poodle—a French poodle is what they called him,” she said, delighted to remember the proper term. And then her big eyes began to fill with tears. “Oh, father, I don't know how I'm going to get on without him. He was everything to me. The house isn't the same without him.”

“You don't mean you're asking me to say Mass for your
dog
?”

“Oh, I'm not asking you to do it for nothing,” she added with dignity, opening her handbag.

“Are you a Catholic at all, ma'am?” he asked sternly, fixing her with a glowering look that only seemed to amuse her. She tossed her head with a sudden saucy, girlish air.

“Wisha, what else would I be?” she asked gently, and he felt that there was nothing much he could say in reply.

“And do you know what the sacrifice of the Mass is?” he went on.

“Well, as I go every morning of my life, father, I should have some idea,” she replied, and again he had the feeling that she was laughing at him.

“And don't you know that you're asking me to commit sacrilege? Do you even know what sacrilege is?”

“Ah, what sacrilege?” she exclaimed lightly, shrugging it off. She took three five-pound notes from her old handbag. He knew she intended the money as an offering; he knew it was probably all she had in the world, and he found himself torn between blind rage and admiration.

“Here,” he said. “Let me get you another drink. And put that blooming money back in your bag or you'll be losing it.”

B
UT
the very sound of his voice told him that he was losing conviction. The terrible little old woman with her one idea exercised a sort of fascination over him that almost frightened him. He was afraid that if he wasn't careful he would soon find himself agreeing to do what she wanted. He poured her a drink, threw himself back again in his armchair, and at once gave way to his indignation.

“I cannot stand this damn sentimentality!” he shouted, hitting the arm of his chair with his clenched fist. “Every day of my life I have to see good Christians go without food and fire, clothes and medicine, while the rich people taunt them with the sight of their pampered pets. I tell you I can't stand it!”

“Why, then, I'm sure you're right, father. But I'm not rich, and no poor person was ever sent away from my door with nothing, as long as I had it.”

“I'm sure of that, ma'am,” he said humbly, ashamed of his outburst. “I'm sure you're a better Christian than I am, but there are different needs and different duties, and we must not confuse them. There are animal needs and human needs, and human needs and spiritual needs. Your dog has no need of the Mass.”

“He was very fond of Mass. Every morning he came with me and lay down outside the chapel door.”

“And
why
did you leave him outside the chapel door?” asked Fogarty.

“Why?”

“Yes, why? Wasn't it that you made a distinction between an animal and a spiritual need?”

“It was nothing of the kind,” she said hotly. “It was the parish priest that asked me, because some old fools complained. Hah, but I often sneaked him in when they weren't looking, and let me tell you, father, none of those old craw-thumpers behaved as devotionally as my Timmy. Up with the Gospel and down at the Elevation, without my saying a word to him. And don't tell me that Our Blessed Lord wasn't as pleased with Timmy as with them.”

“I'm not telling you anything of the sort,” he said, touched and amused. “All I am telling you is that now that your dog is dead, prayers can make no difference to him. Your dog couldn't incur guilt. Your prayers may make a difference to your husband because, like the rest of us, he did incur guilt in this life and may have to atone for it in the next.”

“Ah, it's easy seen you didn't know Jim, father. Poor Jim was innocent as a child. He never did anything wrong only taking the little sup of whiskey when I wouldn't be looking. I know he got a bit cranky when he had a drop in and I wouldn't give him any more, but sure that's a thing you wouldn't give a second thought to.… No, father,” she added thoughtfully, looking into the fire again, “I don't mind admitting that the first day or two after he died I wasn't easy in my mind at all. I didn't know what little thing he might have said or done on the side, unknown to me, or what little taste of punishment they might give him. I couldn't rest, thinking of him burning down there in Purgatory, with people he didn't know at all. A shy man, like that, and a man—I won't belie him—that would scream the house down if he as much as got a splinter in his nail. But then I realized that nobody in his right mind could be doing anything to him. Oh, no, father, that's not why I get Masses said for Jim.”

“Then why do you get them said for him?” Fogarty asked, though he knew the answer. His own big heart answered for him when his reason didn't.

“Sure, what other way have I of letting him know I'm thinking about him?” she asked with a childlike smile. “He's always in my mind, morning, noon, and night. And now Timmy is the same.”

“And when I tell you that it makes no difference to Timmy—that Timmy can't know he's in your mind?”

“Ah, well, father, these things are great mysteries,” she replied comfortably, “and we don't know all about them yet. Oh, I know there's a difference, and I'm not asking for anything impossible. Only one small Mass, so that he'll know. But when I talk to people about it, you'd think I was mad from the way they go on. They tell me he has no soul, because he never committed sin. How does anybody know he didn't commit sin? A little child doesn't commit sin and he has a soul. No, father,” she went on with iron determination, “I know I'm old and I have no one to advise me, and my head isn't as good as it was, but thank God I still have my wits about me. Believe me, father, a dog is no different from a child. When I was feeling low coming on to Jim's anniversary, Timmy would know it. He'd know it as if he could read what I was thinking, and he'd come and put his head on my lap to show how sorry he was. And when he was sick himself, he'd get into my bed and curl up beside me, begging me with his eyes to make him better. Yes, indeed, and when he was dying I felt the same way about him as I felt about poor Jim—just the way you described it, thinking of all the times I was hard on him when he didn't deserve it at all. That is the hardest part of it, father, when you have to try and forgive yourself.”

“I'm sure you have very little to forgive yourself for, ma'am,” Fogarty said with a smile. “And God knows, if it was anything I could do for you I'd do it, but this is something that, as a priest, I can't do.”

“And there's no one else I could go to? You don't think if I went to the Bishop myself he'd let you do it?”

“I'm quite certain he wouldn't, ma'am.”

“Ah,” she said bitterly as she raised herself heavily from her chair, “if I was younger and smarter with my pen I'd write to the Pope about it myself.” She turned to the door, and Fogarty sprang to open it for her, but the courtesy was lost on her. She looked at him with deep mournful eyes that seemed to contain all the loneliness in the world. “And it's wrong, father, wrong,” she said in a firm voice. “I'm as good a Catholic as the next, but I'd say it to the Pope himself this minute if he walked into this room. They
have
souls, and people are only deluding themselves about it. Anything that can love has a soul. Show me that bad woman that thanked God her husband was dead and I'll show you someone that maybe hasn't a soul, but don't tell me that my Timmy hadn't one. And I know as I'm standing here that somewhere or other I'll see him again.”

“I hope you do, ma'am,” he said, his big voice suddenly growing gentle and timorous. “And whenever you say a prayer for him, don't forget to add one for me.”

“I will not indeed, father,” she said quietly. “I know you're a good man, and I'll remember you with the others that were good to me, and one of these days, with God's help, we'll all be together again.”

An Act of Charity

T
HE PARISH PRIEST
, Father Maginnis, did not like the second curate, Father Galvin, and Father Fogarty could see why. It was the dislike of the professional for the amateur, no matter how talented, and nobody could have said that Father Galvin had much in the way of talent. Maginnis was a professional to his fingertips. He drove the right car, knew the right people, and could suit his conversation to any company, even that of women. He even varied his accent to make people feel at home. With Deasy, the owner of the garage, he talked about “the caw,” but to Lavin, the garage hand, he said “the cyarr,” smiling benignly at the homeliness of his touch.

Galvin was thin, pale, irritable, and intense. When he should have kept a straight face he made some stupid joke that stopped the conversation dead; and when he laughed in the proper place at someone else's joke, it was with a slight air of vexation, as though he found it hard to put up with people who made him laugh at all. He worried himself over little embarrassments and what people would think of them, till Fogarty asked bluntly, “What the hell difference does it make what they think?” Then Galvin looked away sadly and said, “I suppose you're right.” But Fogarty didn't mind his visits so much except when he had asked other curates in for a drink and a game of cards. Then he took a glass of sherry or something equally harmless and twiddled it awkwardly for half an hour as though it were some sort of patent device for keeping his hands occupied. When one of the curates made a harmless dirty joke, Galvin pretended to be looking at a picture so that he didn't have to comment. Fogarty, who loved giving people nicknames, called him Father Mother's Boy. He called Maginnis the Old Pro, but when that nickname got back, as everything a priest says gets back, it did Fogarty no harm at all. Maginnis was glad he had a curate with so much sense.

He sometimes asked Fogarty to Sunday dinner, but he soon gave up on asking Galvin, and again Fogarty sympathized with him. Maginnis was a professional, even to his dinners. He basted his meat with one sort of wine and his chickens with another, and he liked a guest who could tell the difference. He also liked him to drink two large whiskeys before dinner and to make sensible remarks about the wine; and when he had exhausted the secrets of his kitchen he sat back, smoked his cigar, and told funny stories. They were very good stories, mostly about priests.

“Did I ever tell you the one about Canon Murphy, father?” he would bellow, his fat face beaming. “Ah, that's damn good. Canon Murphy went on a pilgrimage to Rome, and when he came back he preached a sermon on it. ‘So I had a special audience with His Holiness, dearly beloved brethren, and he asked me, “Canon Murphy, where are you now?” “I'm in Dromod, Your Holiness,” said I. “What sort of a parish is it, Canon Murphy?” says he. “Ah, 'tis a nice, snug little parish, Your Holiness,” says I. “Are they a good class of people?” says he. “Well, they're not bad, Your Holiness,” said I. “Are they good-living people?” says he. “Well, they're as good as the next, Your Holiness,” says I. “Except when they'd have a drop taken.” “Tell me, Canon Murphy,” says he, “do they pay their dues?” And like that, I was nearly struck dumb. “There you have me, Your Holiness!” says I. “There you have me!”'”