Luke Delmege

Front matter

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Contents

OHAPTEB PAOB

I. Introductory 3

II. The Illusions op Youth 17

Chapter I Intropuctory

It happened in this way. I was absorbed in a daydream — an academic discussion with myself as to whether demand created supply or supply elicited demand— a hoary question throughout all the debating societies of the world ; and I was making but little progress toward its solution, when suddenly it solved itself in a remarkable manner. I thought I heard, above the rumbling and muffled thunder of the colossal printing press, far away in a certain street in New York, the word " Copy " shouted up through a telephone. The voice was the voice of that modern magician, the foreman printer. " Copy " echoed in the manager's room, where, amid piles of paper, damp, and moist, and redolent of printer's ink, the great potentate sat. " Copy," he shouted through his telephone, with something that sounded like a prayer — but it wasn't — to the editor, many miles away. " Copy," shouted the editor through his telephone — no ! that hasn't come yet, but it will one of these days. But "Copy," he wrote three thousand miles across the bleak, barren wastes of the turbulent Atlantic to one sitting on a rustic seat in a quiet garden in a country village beneath the shadows of the black mountains that separate Cork County from Limerick, and with Spenser's "gentle MuUa" almost washing his feet ; and " Copy " settled the academic question forever. That mighty modern Minotaur, the press, must be glutted, not with fair youths of Arcady

4 litJKE DELMEGE

and fair maidens of Athens, but with thoughts that spring from the brains of mortals, and dreams that draw their beautiful, irregular forms across the twilight realms of Fancy.

This it is that makes literary men irreverent and unscrupulous. Was it not said of Balzac, that he dug and dragged every one of his romances straight from the heart of some woman? "Truth is stranger than fiction." No 1 my dear friend, for all fiction is truth

— truth torn up by the roots from bleeding human hearts, and carefully bound with fillets of words to be placed there in its vases of green and gold on your reading-desk, on your breakfast-table. Horrid? So it is. Irreverent ? Well, a little. But you, my dear friend, and the rest of humanity will have nothing else. " Nihil humani a me alienum puto," said the Latin poet. We have gone a step further. We will have nothing that is not human. The stage may be gorgeous ; the scenery painted by a master hand ; the electric light soft, lambent, penetrating; the orchestra perfect from bass drum to first fiddle ; but the audience gapes and yawns, and is impatient. There is something wanting. Ha! there it is, and we are all alive again. Opera glasses are levelled, men and women hold their breaths lest the least trifle should escape them ; the mighty conductor is nowhere ; all eyes are strained on what ?

— a little child, perhaps ; a clown, an Italian shepherdess, a bandit, a fool, — no matter, it is human, and it is for this figure that stage and scenery, lights, flowers, and music become at once ancillary and subservient. And so, when Copy ! Copy ! 1 Copy ! ! ! tinkled like an impatient electric bell in my ears, I said : I must seek a type somewhere. Look into your inner consciousness, said a voice. No use! It is a tabula rasa, from which everything interesting has been long since sponged away. Call up experiences ! Alas ! experiences are like ancient photographs. At one time, I am quite sure, this elegant gentleman, dressed in the fashion of the sixties, was attractive and interesting

INTRODUCTOEY 5

enough. Now, alas, he is a guy. So with experiences. They thrill, and burn, and pierce, then fade away into ghosts, only fit to haunt the garret or the lumber room. No I get a living, breathing, human being, and dissect him. Find out all his thoughts, dreams, sensations, experiences. Watch him, waking and sleeping, as old Roger Chillingworth watched Arthur Dimmesdale in that terrible drama by Hawthorne. Then you have flesh and blood quivering and alive, and the world is satisfied.

Fate, or the Fates, who are always kind, threw some such subject across my path in those days when imagination was feeble and the electric bell was growing importunate. I knew that he had a story. I guessed at it by intuition. Was it not Cardinal Manning who said, when he was asked to imitate his great compeers, Wiseman and Newman, by writing a novel, "that every man carried the plot of at least one romance in his head ? " Now, this man was a mystic and a mystery. He was a mystic, or was reputed one, because he had once — a young man's folly — written something about Plato ; he was called a mystery, because he wore his hair brushed back from his forehead right down over his coat collar ; and scarce one of the brethren had ever seen his inner sanctum, or was ever able to break through the crust of a deportment which was always calm and gentle and sweet, but which drew an invisible line somewhere between you and him — a line of mystic letters : " Thus far shalt thou come, and no farther." Some thought that he gave himself too many airs and was conceited ; one or two rough-spoken, hard-fisted colleagues dubbed him as Carlyle dubbed

Herbert Spencer : " an immeasurable ; " but there

he was, always calmly looking out on the tossing, turbulent ocean of humanity from the quiet recesses of an unluxurious hermitage, and the still deeper and more sequestered recesses of a quiet and thoughtful mind.

Like all conscientious interviewers, I had made a few desperate attempts to get inside this mystery and unravel it, but I had always been repelled. I could never get beyond the adytum of the temple, though I coughed loudly, and put the shoes off my feet with reverence. It was unapproachable and impenetrable. One day, however, it was borne to his ears that I had done a kind thing to some one or other. He no longer said with his eyes : You are a most impertinent fellow ! The outworks were taken. Then I wrote him a humble letter about some old fossil, called Maximus Tyrius. To my surprise I received four pages of foolscap on the Fourth Dissertation : —

Then, one winter's night, I was bowling home in the dark from the railway station, and became suddenly aware that voices were shouting warnings from afar off, and that the line was blocked. So it was — badly. My mysterious friend was vainly trying to cut the harness on his fallen mare, whilst his trap, dismembered, was leaning in a maudlin way against the ditch.

" A bad spill ? " I cried.

" Yes ! " he said laconically.

" Is the jar broke ? " I asked.

" I beg pardon," he said stiffly. Then I knew he had not heard the famous story.

"Pardon me," he said, "I don't quite understand your allusions."

"Never mind," I said, with all the contempt of a professional for an amateur, as I saw him hacking with his left hand, and with a dainty mother-of-pearl-handled penknife, the beautiful new harness. " What do you want mutilating that harness for, when the trap has been kicked into space ? "

" I thought 'twas the correct thing to do," he murmured. Then I said in my own mind : He i» an immeasurable .

" Here, Jem," I cried to my boy. He came over, and whilst I held up the mare's head, he gave her a fierce kick. She was on her feet in an instant.

INTRODUCTORY 7

" Where's your man ? " I asked.

" I don't know," he said wonderingly.

We found the man, safe and sound, and fast asleep against the hedge.

"Come now," I said, for I had tacitly assumed the right to command by reason of my superior knowledge, " montez ! You must come with me ! "

"Impossible ! " he said, "I must get home to-night."

"Very good. Now, do you think that you can get home more easily and expeditiously in that broken trap than in mine ? Hallo ! are you left-handed ? "

"No, but my right arm is strained a little, just a little."

I took the liberty of lifting his hand, and a small, soft, white hand it was. It fell helpless. Then I saw that his face was very white. This showed he was a thorough brick.

" Is the jar, — I mean the arm, — broke ? " he said, with a smile.

Then I knew he was human. That little flash of humour, whilst he was suffering excruciating pain, told volumes of biography. I helped him up to the seat, and, without a word, I drove him to his house.

The doctor called it a compound comminuted fracture of the ulna ; we called it a broken wrist. But it was a bad business, and necessitated splints for at least six weeks. I volunteered to say his two Masses every Sunday, my own being supplied by a kind neighbour ; and thus I broke down the barriers of chill pride or reserve, and saw the interior of his house and of his heart.

The former was plain almost to poverty ; the latter was rich to exuberance. Four walls lined with books from floor to ceiling, a carefuUy waxed floor, one shred of Indian carpet, and a writing-desk and chair — this was his sitting-room. But the marble mantelpiece was decorated with a pair of costly brass Benares vases, flanked by a pair of snake candlesticks ; and his writing-desk was of Shisham wood, and it perfumed with a strange, faint aroma the whole apartment. Over in one corner, and facing the northern light, was an easel ; a painter's palette leaned against it, and on it was a half-finished oil-painting — one of those dreamy sea scenes, where the flush of the setting sun is deepening into purple, and the sleeping sea is curled into furrows of gold and lead. A large three-masted vessel, its naked spars drawn like the scaffolding of some airy mansion against the sky, was passing out into the unknown. It was the everlasting enigma of futurity and fate.

I had no notion of losing valuable time. I commenced business the first Sunday evening we dined together.

" I am a story-teller," I said, " and you have a story to tell me. Now, now," I warned, as I saw him make a feeble gesture of protest and denial with his left hand

— " don't quote the Needy Knife-Grinder, an' you love me. You have seen a great deal of life, you have felt a great deal, you have resolved a great deal ; and I must do you the justice to say that you have nobly kept your resolution of retirement and seclusion from your species

— that is, from brother-clerics. Here are all the elements of a first-class story — "

" But I've never written even a goody-goody story," he said. "I doubt if I have the faculty of narration."

" Leave that to me," I said. " Give me naked facts and experiences, and Worth never devised such fancy costumes as I shall invent for them."

" But," he protested, " why not seek more interesting matter ? Here now, for example, is an admirable book, exemplifying the eternal adage : ' Human nature is the same the wide world over.' I dare say, now, you thought that Anglican clergymen are moulded into such perfection by university education, and the better teaching of social life, that there is never room for the least eccentricity amongst them."

" Let me be candid," I replied, " and say at once that such has been my conviction — that a,t least so far as social virtues are concerned, and the balancing and

INTRODUCTORY 9

measuring of daily social environments, theywere beyond criticism. But have you discovered any freaks or prodigies there ? "

" What would you think," he replied, " of this ? A dear old rector driven to resign his parish by his curate's wife, against whom he had foolishly warned the aforesaid curate in the days of his bachelorship. She affected to believe that he was an antediluvian, spoke to him with the sweet simplicity of a child at tennis parties and five o'clock teas ; then discovered that once he had preached a borrovjed sermon, and ever afterwards remonstrated with him in public on the misdemeanour ; ' Ah ! you dear old sly-boots, when you can preach so beautifully, why do you give us that wretched Penny Pulpit so often ? ' "

" Look here ! " I said, " that's a perfect mine. Have you any more diamonds like that ? "

" Well, not many. The mine is salted. But what do you think of the good rector, who advertised for a curate, married, but childless, to occupy the rectory, whilst the incumbent was off to Nice on a holiday ? "

" Well, did he get him ? "

" Rather. But the lady was a dog-fancier, and brought with her fourteen brindled bulldogs. That rectory and its grounds were a desert for three months. No living being, postman, butcher's boy, baker's boy, dare show his face within the gates. Occasionally there was a big row in the menagerie. The mistress alone could quell it."

" How ? "

" Can't you guess ? "

" I give it up, like Mr. Johnston."

" Well, a red-hot iron, which she kept always in the kitchen fire for the purpose."

" Rather drastic," I said. " Who could have thought it in staid England ? Verily, human nature is everywhere the same."

" Which proves ? " he said questioningly.

I waited.

" Which proves," he continued, "that there is nothing half so absurd as to deduce general sweeping propositions about nations and races from very slender premises. The world is full of strange faces and strange characters."

Then I knew he was coming around. And he did. Poor fellow ! he had to take to bed a few days after, for the pain was intense and the weather was moist. I had great doubts whether our local physician was treating that dangerous wound scientifically, and I proposed a few times to call in some leading surgeon from the city. The medical attendant indeed assented, and I saw he looked alarmed. But my poor friend declined.

" It will be all right," he said, " and after all it is but a weary world. Oh ! to sleep and be at rest forever : to know nothing of the weariness of getting up and lying down, and the necessities of this poor body, its eating and drinking, and being clothed ; to be free from the eternal vexations of men, their vanity, and folly, and pride. I shall dread to meet them even in Heaven. ' Look for me, my dear friend,' as a good poet has said, ' in the nurseries of Heaven.' "

Then my heart went out to him, for I saw his had been a troubled life, and day by day I sat by his bedside, whilst partly as an anodyne to pain, partly to please me, he went over the details of his life. Then, one day, I hinted that his life had been a carriere manquSe, and that he was a soured and disappointed man. He raised himself on his left arm, and looked at me long and wistfully. A slight discoloration had appeared above the fractured wrist. He pointed to it.

" That is the black flag of death," he said. " You will find my will in the lower locked drawer of my writing-desk. I have left all to sick and poor children. But you are wrong. I am not soured, or deceived, or disappointed. I have a grateful heart to God and man. I have not had an unhappy life. Indeed, I have had more than my share of its blessings. But, my friend," he said earnestly, " I am a puzzled man. The enigma of life

INTRODUCTORY 11

has been always too much for me. You will have guessed as much from all that I have told you. I seek the solution in eternity of the awful riddle of life."

He fell back in great pain, and I forgot my calling as interviewer in my sympathy as friend. Dear Lord ! and the world called this man proud.

" Now," I said, " you are despondent. Your accident and this confinement have weighed on your nerves.

You must let me send for Dr. S . I'll telegraph to

the bishop, and he'll put you under obedience."

He smiled faintly.

" No use," he said, " this is septicaemia. I have probably forty-eight hours to live. Then, Rest ! Rest! Rest! It's a strange thing to be tired of life when I had everything that man could desire. This pretty rural parish ; a fair competence ; churches and schools perfect ; and," he gave a little laugh, "no curate. Yet, I am tired, tired as a child after a hot summer day ; and tired of a foolish whim to reconcile the irreconcilable."

" And why not give up this brain-racking," I said, " and live ? Nothing solves riddles but work, and steadily ignoring them. Why, we'd all go mad if we were like you."

" True," he said feebly, " true, my friend. But, you see, habits are tyrants, and I commenced badly. I was rather innocent, and I wanted to dovetail professions and actions, principle and interest (forgive the sorry pun), that which ought to be, and that which is. It was rather late in life when I discovered the utter impracticability of such a process. Life was a Chinese puzzle. Then, too late, I flung aside all the enigmas of life, and flung myself on the bosom of the great mystery of God, and there sought rest. But, behind the veil ! Behind the veil ! There only is the solution."

He remained a long time in a reverie, staring up at the ceiling. I noticed a faint odour in the air.

" You know," he said at length, " I was not loved by the brethren. Why ? Did I dislike them ? No I God forbid I I liked and loved everything that God created. But I was unhappy. Their ways puzzled me, and I was silent. There was nothing sincere or open in the world but the faces of little children. God bless them ! They are a direct revelation from Heaven. Then, you will notice that there is not a single modern book in my library. Why ? Because all modern literature is lies ! lies ! lies ! And such painful lies ! Why will novelists increase and aggravate the burdens of the race by such painful analyses of human character and action ? "

" Now, now," I said, " you are morbid. Why, half the pleasures of life come from works of imagination and poetry."

"True. But, why are they always so painful and so untrue? Do you think that any one would read a novel, if it were not about something painful ? — and the more painful, the more entrancing. Men revel in creating and feeling pain. Here is another puzzle."

It was so sad, this gentle, pitiful life drawing to a close, and without a farewell word of hope to the world it was leaving, that I had neither comment nor consolation to ofPer. It was so unlike all my daily experiences that I was silent with pity and surprise. He interrupted me.

"Now for the great wind-up. To-morrow morning you will come over early and administer the last Sacraments. When I am dead, you will coffin my poor remains immediately, for I shall be discoloured sadly and shall rapidly decompose. And you know we must not give our poor people the faintest shock. I wish to be buried in my little church, right under the statue of our Blessed Lady, and within sound of the Mass. There I spent my happiest hours on earth. And I shall not rest in peace anywhere but where I can hear the Mass-bell. You think I am wandering in my mind ? No. I am quite collected. I often debated with myself whether I should not like to be buried outside, where I should hear the people walking over my grave.

INTRODUCTORY 13

But no ! I have decided to remain where the Divine Motlier will look down with her pitying eyes on the place where this earthly tabernacle is melting into dust, and where the syllables of the mighty Mass will hover and echo when the church is silent betimes. And no foolish epitaph. ' Here lieth,' and ' pray for his soul.' That's all."

He was silent for a little while ; but now and again a faint shudder showed me the agony he was suffering.

" I am tiring you," he said at length ; " but sometimes I dream that in the long summer twilights, when my little village choir is practising, some child may allow her thoughts, as she is singing, to pass down to where the pastor is lying ; and perhaps some poor mother may come over to my grave, after she has said, her Rosary, and point out to the wondering child in her arms the place where the man that loved little children is lying. We are not all forgotten, though we seem to be. Here, too, is another puzzle. I am very tired."

I stood up and left the room, vowing that I would leave that poor soul at rest forever.

I administered the last Sacraments the following day, after I had seen the doctor. He was much distressed at the fatal turn things had taken. " He had not anticipated ; 'twas a case for hospital treatment ; the weather was so sultry ; he had dreaded amputation, etc. No hope? None." The patient was right.

And so two days later, exactly as he had anticipated, we were grouped around his bedside to watch and help his last struggle. But even in that supreme moment, his habitual equanimity did not desert him. Courteous to all around, apologizing for little troubles, solicitous about othfers, eagerly looking forward to the lifting of the veil, he passed his last moments in life. Then about six o'clock in the evening, just as the Angelus ceased tolling, he cried : —

"'Tis the soul-bell, the passing-bell, is it not?"

" 'Tis the Angelus," I replied.

" Say it with me, or rather for me," he said. Then a few minutes later : " 'Tis growing very dark, and I am cold. What is it ? I cannot understand — "

And so he passed to the revelation.

An unusually large number of the brethren gathered to his obsequies, which was agaiu very strange and perplexing. He was buried as he had desired, and his memory is fast vanishing from amongst men ; but the instincts of the novelist have overcome my tenderness for that memory, and I give his life-history and experiences. Am I justified in doing so ? Time must tell.

I should, however, mention another circumstance. At the obsequies were two old priests, one bent low with years, the other carrying the white burden of his winters more defiantly. The former asked me : —

" Did Luke speak of me, or wish to see me ? "

I had to say " No ! "

He went away looking very despondent.

The other called me aside and said : —

" Did Luke express no wish to see me ? "

Now, I was afraid of this man. He, too, was an oddity, — a deep, profound scholar in subjects that are not interesting to the multitude. He was one of the few who knew Luke well.

" Yes," I said ; " several times. But he always drew back, saying : ' Father Martin is old and feeble. I cannot bring him such a journey in such weather. Don't write ! It will be nothing.' "

" Did you think that this accident was a trifle, and that there was no danger of fatal issues ? "

I coughed a little and said something.

"And did you think it was right," he continued-, " that the only friend he probably had in the world " — here his voice broke — " should have been excluded from his confidence at such a momentous time ? "

" I really had no alternative," I replied. " I did all I could for him, poor fellow; but you know he was peculiar, and you also know that he was supersensitive about giving trouble to others."

" Quite so. But when you saw danger, you should

INTKODUCTOKY 15

have summoned his friends. This is one of those things one finds it hard to condone. He has left a will and papers, I presume ? "

" Yes," I said ; " I have charge of all."

" Have you opened the will ? "

"Not as yet."

"Please do so, and see who are the executors."

We opened the will then and there, and found that my troublesome interlocutor, the Reverend Martin Hughes, was sole executor. He closed the will at once, and said, coldly : —

" Now, would you be pleased to hand over all other papers and confidential documents belonging to my deceased friend ? You can have no further need of them — "

" I beg your pardon," I said ; " the good priest just departed gave me a good deal of his confidence. You know that I was in hourly attendance on him for six weeks. I asked him to allow me tell the story of his life, and he consented, and granted me full permission to examine and retain all his letters, papers, diaries, manuscripts, for that purpose."

"That puts a different complexion on things," said Father Hughes. "You fellows are regular resurrectionists. You cannot let the dead rest and bury their histories with them."

"But if a life has a lesson?" I ventured to say, humbly.

" For whom ? "

" For the survivors and the world."

" And what are survivors and the world to the dead?" he asked.

I was silent. It would be a tactical mistake to irritate this quaint old man. He pondered deeply for a long time.

" I have the greatest reluctance," he said, " about consenting to such a thing. I know nothing more utterly detestable than the manner in which the secrets of the dead are purloined in our most prurient generation, and the poor relics of their thoughts and feelings scattered to the dust, or exposed on the public highways for the ludlhrium of an irreverent public. And this would be bad enough, but we have to face the lamentable fact that it is not the reality, but a hideous caricature of the reality that is presented to the public — "

" You can prevent that," I said meekly.

" How ? "

" By simply taking the matter into your own hands. No man knew Luke Delmege half so well as you — "

" I'm too old and feeble for all that," he said.

" Well, let's strike a bargain," I replied. " Every page of this history I shall submit to you for revision, correction, or destruction, as seems fit, if you keep me on the right track by giving me as much light as you can."

" It is the only way to avert an evil," he replied. I told him I was complimented.

And so, with bits and scraps of frayed yellow paper, torn and tattered letters, sermons half-written, and diaries badly kept, I have clothed in living language the skeleton form of this human life. On the whole, I feel I have done it well, although now and again an angle of the skeleton — some irregularity — will push forward and declare itself. Sometimes it is an anachronism which I cannot account for, except on the score of great charity on the part of my deceased friend, who seemed to have preferred that his ignorance should be assumed rather than that charity should be wounded. Sometimes there is a curious dislocation of places, probably for the same reason. And soiuetimes I have found it difficult to draw the seams of some rent together, and to make times and circumstances correspond with the modern parts of our history. And if "the tear and smile " of Ireland alternate in those pages, it is withal a solemn history; and many, perhaps, will find in it deeper meanings than we have been able to interpret or convey.

Chapter II The Illusions Of Youth

He was a young man, a very young man, otherwise he would not have been so elated when

was called out for the fourth time, and he had to request his diocesans to watch the huge pile of premiums he had already won, whilst he passed up the centre aisle of the prayer-hall, and his bishop, smiling as he raised another sheaf of calf-bound volumes, handed them to him, with a whispered " Optime, Luca." And yet, if a little vanity — and it is a gentle vice — is ever permissible, it would have been in his case. To have led his class successfully in the halls of a great ecclesiastical seminary ; to be watched enviously by five hundred and sixty fellow-students, as he moved along on his triumphant march ; to have come out victorious from a great intellectual struggle, and to receive this praise from his bishop, who felt that himself and his diocese were honoured by the praise reflected from his young subject — assuredly, these are things to stir sluggish pulses, and make the face pallid with pleasure. And if all this was but the forecast of a great career in the Church ; if it pointed with the steady finger of an unerring fate to the long vista of life, strewn with roses, and with laurel crowns dropped by unseen hands from above, there would be all the better reason for that elastic step, and that gentle condescension which marked the manner of the successful student, when his admirers gathered o 17 around him, and even his defeated rivals candidly congratulated him upon his unprecedented success. Yet, withal, he was modest. Just a little spring in his gait ; just a little silent reception of adulation, as a something due to his commanding position ; and just a little moistening of his eyelids, as he dreamt of a certain far home down by the sea, and the pride of his mother as he flung aU his treasures into her lap, and his sisters' kisses of triumph for the beloved one — ah me ! who would say nay to this ? Let |he sunshine, and the roses, and the love of thy loved ones play around thee, thou pale and gentle Levite, while they may. Soon the disillusion will come, the laurels will fade, and the sunshine turn to gray ashen shadow, and the tender and strong supports of home and love will be kicked aside by Time and Fate ; but the arena of life will be ever before thee, and every fresh triumph will be a fresh conflict, and thou wilt be a friendless one and naked. But how didst thou come to believe that the quiet study hall was the world, and thou the cynosure of all eyes — the proverb in all mouths ? Listen, dear child, for thou art but a child. The mighty world has never heard of thee, does not know thy name ; the press is silent about thee ; the very priests of thy diocese do not even know of thy existence. Thou art but a pin's point in the universe. He does not believe it. He has been a First of Fiest,^ and the universe is at his feet.