Minnie's Bishop and Other Stories/Mad Antony
X.—MAD ANTONY
FATHER LARRY O'NEILL, the parish priest of Curraghmore, was a deservedly popular man with all classes of the community. The neighbouring Protestant gentry described him as "a thoroughly good sort," which was high tribute to his worth, for as a class the Protestant gentry are not inclined to be friendly to priests. But Father Larry was an exceptional man. He subscribed liberally to projects in which the gentry were interested, such as flower shows and yacht races. He never made political speeches, and his manners were so delightfully friendly and cheerful that no one could resist him for very long. The other gentlemen, those who represented the county in Parliament, and their political friends in the neighbourhood, spoke very highly of Father Larry, in spite of his want of interest in their favourite pursuit. He didn't like them to fire off orations at his parishioners, but he was always pleased to entertain them hospitably at the Presbytery. The food and drink he provided for them were of the best, and many a man was well content to keep his eloquence bottled up for the sake of enjoying the uncorking of Father Larry's excellent champagne. His own parishioners adored him, because he was singularly inexacting in the matter of dues and fees, and never wanted to raise money for the building of a new church.
All this was possible, because Father Larry was a well-off man. Shortly after leaving Maynooth he inherited a considerable fortune from an uncle, who had made money as a contractor in a midland town. In his earlier, unmoneyed days, Larry O'Neill had been a cause of a good deal of perplexity to his relations and ecclesiastical superiors. He was religious, which is proper and desirable in a candidate for the priesthood; but he was religious in an eccentric way, which nobody quite understood. He practised privately forms of asceticism which, if not actually heretical, were certainly unusual and suspicious. He read with enthusiastic admiration the lives of saints, which was right; but he appeared to want to imitate the extravagances of the saints, which was clearly undesirable. Nothing would be a greater nuisance in Ireland to-day than an Antony or a Francis of the primitive or mediæval pattern. But the acquisition of money sobered Father Larry. He put the saints in their proper places at the back of his mind, and set to work to realise a Christianity of a more practical kind than theirs.
Being rich and therefore comfortable himself he wanted to make everyone else comfortable too, as far as possible. Unfortunately, it wasn't easy to do this at Curraghmore. The people were half farmers, half fishermen. Neither industry by itself offers any prospect of wealth in the west of Ireland, and a combination of the two results, as a rule, in hopeless poverty. It was not enough to refrain from demanding subscriptions and fees from such people. It appeared necessary to adopt some means for bringing more money into the parish.
Meditating on ways of relieving the poverty of his people, Father Larry's thoughts turned naturally to the Government.
There is nothing the Government—any Government—enjoys more than spending money in the west of Ireland. There exist all sorts of organisations, officers, boards, departments, and officials for the sole purpose of spending money in Connaught and similar places. If you bring proper influences to bear on it, the Government, through one or another of its boards, will give you almost anything you want—a bull, a pig, a horse, a flock of hens, or a hive of bees. It will supply fishing boats, nets and apparatus for curing any creatures you may happen to catch. It will buy you a farm, build you a pig-sty, plant you an apple tree, or, if you prefer it, teach your daughter to make crochet. Father Larry, after a careful survery of the field of its activities, decided to have a pier. Neither he nor his parishioners wanted such a thing in the least. If some slave of a lamp had dumped down a ready-made pier on their coast they would probably have petitioned the Government to have the thing carted away. What they did want was the opportunity of earning good wages; and a pier, planned by Father Larry, and built under the superintendence of a Government engineer, would cost a great deal.
Once his mind was made up, Father Larry went to work with vigour. Dublin Castle and the adjacent offices were bombarded with letters from members of Parliament and councillors—county, district, and urban—who had feasted at Curraghmore Presbytery. The gentry, with the recollection of handsome subscriptions in their minds, used their influence. Father Larry himself had interviews with the Chief Secretary, who is ex-officio chairman of every board. The natural result followed. People who only wanted chickens or crochet hooks, and had not thought it worth while to erect powerful batteries, were told to wait awhile, and Mr. Simpson, B.E., was sent down to Curraghmore to choose a site for the new pier.
Now Father Larry and his parishioners had already decided that the pier was to be built on the end of a remote promontory—a site which offered several advantages. The nearest house was two miles distant, so no one would be disturbed by the progress of the work. There was no road to the place, so it would cost a good deal to get the building materials there. The sea outside was so rocky and shallow that boats never went within a mile of it, therefore the thing when finished would not interfere with the fishing or be in anybody's way. The situation was, in fact, an ideal one for a Government pier, and nothing remained except to explain its advantages to the engineer.
Father Larry met him at the railway station, and drove him to the Presbytery behind a fast cob. There was an excellent luncheon, a bottle of claret, and a good cigar. Then the cob was put to again, and trotted out to the place where the road stopped. From this point a view was obtained of the shore which the pier was to adorn. Mr. Simpson, though he had only recently emerged from the Trinity College Engineering School, was a shrewd youth. He knew that his tenure of office depended not upon the utility of the piers he built, but on his planning the expenditure of money in ways agreeable to local authorities like Father Larry. He wrote a report, in which he strongly recommended the site selected.
Early in the following May the work commenced. Father Larry took the greatest interest in all that was done, and invited Mr. Simpson to a six o'clock dinner on the day when the first stone was laid. The food and drink were of the best, and it was half-past seven when the two men emerged, in benignant humour, to smoke on the lawn in front of the Presbytery.
"A queer thing happened to-day," said Mr. Simpson. "Shortly after we started work the funniest looking old chappie you ever saw came out of a cave in the rock at the end of the beach. He stood looking at us for a long time. I give you my word I never saw such a scarecrow in all my life. He looked so infernally wretched that I offered him sixpence. You'll hardly believe me, but the creature refused it."
"Oh!" said Father Larry, "now that would be Mad Antony."
"You know him then?"
"I do not; but I've heard of him. He was a schoolmaster once, but he went clean off his head, and took to living in a cave. The country people send their children to him with cold potatoes and a jug of buttermilk when they have any to spare. He's harmless, I believe, but quite mad."
"He must be," said Mr. Simpson, with conviction. "Fancy his refusing the sixpense! I wish you could have seen him; you'd have laughed! His—By Jove! I believe this is the old chappie himself coming to pay you a visit!"
Father Larry looked round. A man, oddly enough attired to justify the anticipated mirth, approached them slowly. The remains of a pair of trousers hung in a ragged fringe a little below his knees. There were no buttons on them, but pieces of strings were laced through holes in the mate- rial and tied in knots. A bawneen, no longer white, but brown with age and want of washing was fastened in the same way across his chest. Over his shoulders, like a kind of mantle, hung a dilapidated sack. His head and feet were bare. The man was more miserable looking than any one whom Father Larry had ever seen. He fumbled in his pocket and drew out half-a-crown. The man shook his head.
"Food!" he said.
"Go round to the back door, my poor man," said the priest, "and tell my housekeeper to give you your dinner."
"It is yourself and no one else who must give me food."
Father Larry looked up, for the words surprised him. He saw two clear blue eyes, looking into his, and their expression puzzled him. They neither supplicated like a beggar's eyes nor glowed with sulky envy like a tramp's. It seemed—only the thing was manifestly absurd—that Mad Antony looked at him with pity. For a minute the men gazed at each other, and then it was the priest's eyes which dropped. He was harassed with a feeling that he had seen the man before, but where or when he could not recollect. He got up, went into the house, and returned with half a loaf of bread. Mad Antony took it without a word, recrossed the lawn, and disappeared through the gate.
Soon, for the evenings in May grow chilly after sunset, Father Larry and Mr. Simpson went into the house. At ten o'clock the engineer, pleading the necessity of early rising, took his leave. Father Larry stood on the doorstep, watched him wheel his bicycle down the drive, and heard the gate shut after him. As he turned to re-enter the house he was startled by a shout:
"Father O'Neill! Hallo! Here's this ridiculous old ragman sitting just outside your gate with the chunk of bread you gave him in his hand. I thought you'd like to know. Better bar your doors and windows! Good-night!"
Father Larry had his glass of whiskey and water, and went to bed. Instead of dropping straight off to sleep, as a man with a clear conscience and a balance in the bank has a right to do, he lay and tossed uneasily. Mad Antony's eyes vexed him because of their peculiar expression, and because he could not understand why they seemed familiar. Also, for his heart was kind, the thought of the poor wretch shelterless on the roadside hurt him. At last the trouble of his mind became intolerable. He got up, put on a dressing-gown, and went out to look for the man. The night was calm, and by the light of his bedroom candle he discovered him crouched beside the gatepost. He took him by the hand—the cold of it chilled his own—and led him into the Presbytery. He piled turf on the kitchen fire, and blew it into a blaze. Then he set out the remains of the dinner and a bottle of whiskey. His heart glowed with a desire to feed and warm the miserable creature before him.
"Come, my poor man," he said, "eat and drink. You shall sleep to-night before the fire; to-morrow I'll get you a suit of clothes, and we'll see what can be done for you."
But the man made no move to take the food. He looked intently at the priest, and the same inexplicable pity was in his eyes.
"Larry," he said at last, "have you forgotten me—Antony Callaghan, of Clooneen, who went to be a schoolmaster?"
"My God!" said the priest, "is it you indeed, Antony? What has brought you to this?"
"To this!" Mad Antony said no more, but there was a ring of triumph in his voice, and his face lighted up suddenly with an expression of great joy. Father Larry could not in the least understand what the strange exultation meant, only he knew very well that the man was not mad. Then, very curiously, without apparent reason, a recollection flashed on him.
"It was you who were the first of all to tell me the story of St. Francis and of that other saint of your own, the old St. Antony. It was down by the sea on Trawawn. The tide was racing in across the strand, and the sky was all black out west."
"The remembrance of it is on me, and of the other day, when you had served at Mass, how you and I read afterwards in the priest's book."
"Ah! indeed, I remember that too. Don't I know the words well enough now? 'Si vis perfectus esse, vade, vende quae habes et veni sequere me.'"
A thought came on him suddenly, awing him with its immensity.
"Antony?" he whispered, "you have done this?"
"I have tried," said the other, and a smile of great peace was on his lips. "And, Larry, my friend, all that they ever said is true. There is joy in it beyond the glory of the sun that sets across the sea in the summer time. The sweetness is far more than what the words of my tongue can tell. Larry! oh, Larry! I have found Him, found the beloved Lord Jesus, my sweet Saviour, and the delight of being with Him comes on me like the flood of the great spring tide in September when it flows over all the bay and kisses the grass above the rocks and winds smooth among the little islands, and is warm and infinite. I came to you to-day—only I could not do it because of the man who sat with you—to thank you for the good deed you have done me. It is through you, as I think, that I am going forth to-night from the last place I called my own, and giving up the last pleasure that bound me to the world—the faces of the little children who brought food to me. Now there is nothing, no, nothing on all the earth now to keep me back from—from Him.
He knelt and took the priest's hands and pressed them to his lips.
"So you have found it, Antony," said Father Larry, slowly. "You have found what we dreamed of when we were boys. And I" He dragged away his hands from the other's grasp and covered his face with them. Mad Antony looked up at him.
"Come with me," he whispered. "Come, leave all and you shall find it too. Remember, remember you heard the voice calling you. Once you understood what the great call means. Yes, you understand it still. Come with me."
The priest uncovered his eyes and looked at the figure before him. The bare legs stretched out stark below the ragged fringe; the face with its matted beard was emaciated; dirt stuck, clotted into scabs, on the bawneen.
"I cannot do it!" he said despairingly.
"Is it too hard for you? Ah! if you only knew, it is not really hard." He turned and went towards the door.
"Stay with me!" cried the priest. "You cannot go into the world alone like that. Stay and live with me. You shall share all I have. You can help me to be good, to do good. You cannot go! Oh, stay and I will say Mass every day and you shall kneel before the altar and take Him from my hands!"
Already Mad Antony was at the door, but he turned for a moment. The firelight reached him and played upon the grotesquely tattered clothing; but his face seemed to shine with a brighter light.
"How can I stay? Have I not heard the Voice? Must I not go to Him?"