University of Virginia Library

48. CHAPTER XLVIII.
FATHER DEBREE'S WALK FROM BAY-HARBOR.

THE Sunday and its occupations passed, at Bay-Harbor.
Father Debree was absent-minded, and
looked anxious; and the old priest left him much
to himself; only showing, when he might, some mark of
fatherly kindness. On Monday the younger walked
towards Peterport, pale and worn.

Miss Dare, coming back from an early ride, drew up,
as she passed, to salute him; but got no other answer
than by his lifted hat, and a sad look of abstraction. A
moment after, the sight and sound of the fair girl was
lost in him as wholly as the sudden summer's book is
taken into and lost sight of in the deep, dark-rolling
river.

The pretty road, along which in other days he had
gone, observing, Father Debree was walking on, absorbed
in thought. The little beach, between the roadway and
the sea, received its long line of rippling waves and gave
them back, in vain, for him. He turned away to the
sweet little valley, on the landward side, where a lone
tree or two, an uneven bank to the right hand, a winding
little plain, green grass, and that humming silence which
even here, so near this beach, can be felt, would draw the
glance and the foot, too, of one who loves fair things and

stillness and is not hurried. This was the pretty place
of which he had spoken in his first conversation with
Mr. Wellon. As if he sought the beauty and the stillness,
and yet, as if he saw and felt them not, he turned
aside and walked among them; not like a man without a
purpose, but like one whose object was not there.

There stood a little knoll out from the bank at the
right of the narrow meadow, and at its foot and on its
side, grew a clump of bushes, behind which, on the inner
side, was a square-edged and flat-sided rock. On the
smooth-sward, with his brow against the rock, Father
Debree was kneeling, where the bushes screened him
from the road.

Absorbed as he was, and separated from all other
things and beings, (unless in thought he called them up,)
almost as entirely as if he were within the earthen
mound, another separation was about him, not for a
moment but for life; one that cut off from wife and
child and friend. Such a man, taken from his office and
its relations, was, at once, lonely; alone, of friends, in all
the world. He might have enemies enough. Indeed
let such an one be struggling with questions of faith, and
friends are gone. There is no sympathy among his
brother-priests or fellow-religionists for striving in the
spirit, wrestling through doubts and questions, bringing
them to proof of Holy writ and human reason, in the
court of one's own conscience.

Father Terence had a kindly heart, beyond his creed:
what other priest?

A touch of life upon his hand startled him. In such
a case how suddenly the roused body summons back the
mind to consciousness to counsel it.

He started from the earth, and it was a moment before

he saw clearly, and then he saw not a reptile; not a foul
beast; not an enemy; not the friendly Father Terence;
but little Mary Barrè.

At first he held the tiny hand that had been thrust up
into his, in silence, looking on the child, who, having
thus established a communication with him, stood partly
abashed and blushing, with her back towards him, and
her little foot sliding hither and thither upon the grass.
Her right hand held her apron gathered up, holding some
burden brought from her walk upon the beach or meadow.
A man may take a child into his confidence, when he
would shun the fellowship of men; and so it is ordained
of God. A child can often bring more good to us; for
what men want, when they are in perplexity or distress,
is to be brought back, without argument, to first principles;
to simple thoughts and feelings.

At such times we look back toward our own happy
childhood, instinctively; at such times, we welcome
children.

So Father Debree, the thoughtful and strong-thinking
man, stood with the pretty innocent, and, for a while,
looked on her silently; but he groaned.

“Ah! child,” said he, at length, “you've found
me?”

“Yes, I knew where you were,” said she, “didn't you
want me to find you?”

“No; not now, my little girl,” he answered; but he
did not send her away, and soon, with a long, deep sigh,
lifted her up and kissed her.

He did not seem to have thought of the strangeness
of the child's being there, unless she were under some
one's care so far from home; but now, as if it had just
occurred to him, he asked her, trying to use a gay tone

in saying it, but failing in the trial, for his voice broke
in it,—

“Where is the woman with the red handkerchief, this
time?”

The little girl did not, apparently, understand his
reference to their former meeting on the Backside,—perhaps
his memory had mistaken the color or the article of
dress; but while she stood and said nothing, there appeared
suddenly from the other side of the thicket, a lady,
who answered the question, saying

“Her usual guardian wears black;” in the softest
voice that could be; and stood before him in deep widow's
mourning.

This time Father Debree started backward, and, as he
moved, left the child standing in the midst between
them, in anxious astonishment, but holding up her little
treasure.

“Are you afraid of me, when we meet out of the Confessional?”
the lady asked.

He stood upright and silent, looking upon her, sadly
rather than severely or even as one surprised; but it
was only for a moment, and then with a hasty movement,
he turned his face away—it may have been to
gather strength.

“Is not the time come, yet?” she said, in a voice that
seemed to say that Time was coming and going, and it
would not do to let the right time go by. She seemed to
be making the utmost effort not to give way.

“What time?” asked Father Debree, in a gentle, sad
voice, still looking away from her.

“The time to speak to me as one that has an interest
in you and cares for you; and to let me speak to you, as
one that you care for and feel an interest in.”

Her voice was just so near to breaking, and, at the
same time, so timid, as to be exquisitely moving; just
such an one as is most hard to be resisted.

He turned again toward her and answered:—

“For such an interest as belongs to a Roman Catholic
Priest—”

“But no more, YET?” she asked, more timidly and
more brokenly than before; perhaps more movingly.

“No! there cannot be more!” he said, “I must work
out my own work, alone.”

She put her two hands silently before her face; no
sound escaped her lips.

The child ran to her and lifted up one little hand to
the lady's bended arm, and leaned the head against her,
looking towards the Priest.

“It is a hard thing,” continued he, “but I cannot help
it.”

At these words she took her hands from her face, on
which were the wet traces of silent tears, and some of her
black hairs taken in them, and with the beautiful look of
earnest truth, said:—

“No! that is not so; you mean that you choose that
the necessity shall exist: it is, because you make it.”

“You ought to say, I have made it,” answered the
Priest, sadly; but being made, it is. It was made long
ago.”

“Ah! but only God's Will is a law that cannot change.
Your will stands only as long as you hold it up; and
when it is against the right, it ought to go down.”

“I know it; I know it;” he answered, “none knows
it better than I, but a man may not at a moment be able
to disentangle himself of the consequences of his own act,
and I am not.”

“And have you rid yourself of all obligations but
those of your priesthood?” she said more strongly than
before, as if she knew just the weight of the weapon that
she was using.

“No, indeed!” said he, still sadly. “I never felt
more strongly, that they must all be discharged; but each
must have its time; the highest first.” No one could
mistake, for a moment, the sorrowful firmness with which
he insisted, for want of feeling; a woman with her nice
sense and quick sympathy, could, least of all, mistake.

“Have what you call the higher a right before the
earlier?”

“You mistake me!” he answered in the same sad way;
“I mean that the soul must save its own life, before any
thing; that when it is struggling through the blinding
billows and land is yet far, it must give all its strength to
that one single thing; it must struggle to the land. To
undo wrong is the first and nearest way of doing
right.”

When a man cries out of the Deep of his strong nature,
the voice is a more moving one than that of woman.
His was not broken, but it came from within his pale
worn face and mournful eye, and told what was going on
there. There was nothing in it like a pleading for pity;
there was nothing in it like a vaunt of battling-out, all
alone; it was the calm voice of a great, brave soul in extremity.
She answered it as such, and answered like a
woman.

“You are struggling, then?” she exclaimed, and cast
her eyes towards Heaven, and held up thither her clasped
hands, while tears ran down her cheeks. “Are you?
And may no one share the struggle with you? May no
one be at your side?” she asked, at length, turning

her weeping eyes toward him and holding out toward him
her clasped hands.

“No! it cannot be! It is my struggle, and mine
only; I must finish it alone. I have no right to sympathy;
and, while I wear this character of a Roman
priest, will not seek comfort where such a priest may not
look for it. Nor do I need human comfort. I feel myself
borne up and on; and so it must be.”

There was something indescribably grand in the mournful
calmness with which he spoke; but there was something,
also, touching to the very heart; and of such a
woman as this, who evidently felt the tenderest and
strongest interest in him. As he spoke, his eyes looked
far forth as if they could see the far-off and deep-heaving
ocean, though no eye could see it from that spot.

So there was a great gulf between them still. However
her heart might yearn toward him, they were separate.
But a woman's heart never loses hope, nor counts
any thing impossible that it needs; and she pleaded in a
woman's way:—

“I do not fear for the end,” she said; “No, no,—if the
work be what I hope and think! and I know you will not
need nor wish human help.—But have you no regard for
my suffering?” Immediately she cried, “No, I cannot
feign; that argument was only forced, and you would not
take it in earnest. Yet you are not right. Will you
still put off my claim to do my duty, as you insist on
doing yours?”

“When I cease to be a Roman Catholic Priest,—when
I am thrust out from the Roman Catholic Church,”—he
began; (and these were heavy things, and he said them
slowly, stopping there and leaving the sentence begun,
but not ended.) She looked at him, and he had his eyes

still turned towards the far-off, deep-heaving ocean, that
was beyond the reach of the eye's glance.

She had not changed her posture, except that she had
drawn up her clasped hands and rested her face upon
them, while traces of tears lingered in her eyes, and were
not dried off from her cheeks. She did not break the
stillness he had left. The child was gazing up into her
face. The stillness was deep indeed. The sun was
mounting noiseless up the sky; the shadows lay silent
upon the grass; and little yellow butterflies, without a
sound, were flitting now and then; while the wash of
water on the beach seemed to be against some barrier
quite outside of this still spot.

He turned toward her again, and said, calmly and
strongly:—

“Doubtless you know the nature of this conflict. If
you believe it to be a religious one, you are right.”

“Thank God!” cried she, suddenly, while the sudden
tears filled up her eyes again; “I thought so! Oh, I
knew it! I knew it must be! And yet not —?”

He answered:—

“It is indeed a thing to thank God for; but the end is
not yet.”

To her it seemed as if the end could not be far off
from the beginning, for she, like a woman, looked only at
the distance from one point to the other in the spirit, and
did not count the weary toil of climbing down and making
a way through thickets and across deep gulfs, and climbing
up.

“Why is it so long?” she asked. “What is there
between seeing error and renouncing it? and what is
there between renouncing it and taking up the truth you
knew before?—I speak out of a woman's heart; I am

but a woman,” she added, checking herself, as if she were
going too fast.

“You have done no wrong,” he said; “but it is not all
so simple. It is a kind wish to spare the throes of agony
that must be borne; but they cannot be spared. God's
work must take God's time; and there is but one way
for man in it—wrestling and prayer. This is not all;
there are many, many things to be done and suffered,
if”—

Again he left the sentence without end, and looked
toward the far sea.

“If!” she repeated after him. The word made it
seem as if it were farther to the end than she had suddenly
hoped—nay, as if that end might perhaps never be
reached. “I didn't think of any `if.'” She cast her
eyes sadly to the ground.

“I thought,” she began again, “how short this life was,
and how uncertain;—I thought that what we put away
from us now, we may never, perhaps, have in our power
again! What we have now, we must use now. I
thought of that, and I thought that a wrong which might
be”—

She paused, and, looking up, saw his eyes fixed earnestly
upon her.

He took up her unfinished sentence:—

“— a wrong which may be righted now, ought not
to wait.”

“Oh! I do not mean a wrong done to myself. It is
not my own happiness that I am looking for,” she exclaimed;
and, pale as she was, a flush came over her face,
which showed how singly her mind had followed its object,
without giving a thought to any possibility of misconstruction.

“Oh! no!” he answered, “no suspicion of selfishness
could fasten itself upon your words or on your look; but
if I were led along until I could not but throw off this
priesthood and abandon this Church, I shall go through
every step of it, God being my helper; and there are
many steps and hard ones, that you know nothing of.
But I would be alone in what I do and suffer; none can
do or bear it for me, and none ought to do and bear it
with me. You have met me here unexpectedly. We
may or may not meet again, Helen. I hope we shall.
I have told you, alone, what you have a right to know.
My way is not yet clear. If I live, and God leads me
out of this conflict to the end toward which I am now
drawn, we shall, if He will, meet again, and not as we
part now. Wait God's time, and pray for me! Good-bye!”

As he said these words, he turned suddenly on his
heel; but whether it was that the sad tone, in which he
said words of little hope, had overcome her, or that the
deep feeling of his farewell touched her more nearly than
ever, she sprang forward a pace or two after him.

“Walter!” she cried, tenderly and mournfully, “Walter!
not so! We may, indeed, never meet again. Let
not this be all—for ever! Let me say”—

As he turned round again, it might be seen that his
eyes were filled with tears; but he was just as calm and
self-possessed as before.

“Ah! if we meet again,” he said, “it may be for me
to open a sad heart; it may be for me to go down upon
my knees for your forgiveness.—My way is not yet
clear,” he repeated, and then said, “Now will you leave
me? And may God bless you!”

He held his hand out to her, and she silently took it in

both hers, and then silently released it. Silently, also,
the child came forward, unnoticed at first, and held up to
him the hand that was disengaged from her apron; and
when he saw her, he took her hand, and stooping down,
kissed her upon her forehead.

“God bless you, too, little Mary!” he said, and then
gently dropped her hand.

The lady spoke once more:—

“Oh! Walter! (—let me call you by your own name!)
May God bless you! I am of no account; but you—
oh! what work you might do for God! Oh! may God
bless you!”

Then taking little Mary by the hand, she led her very
fast away.

“Mamma!” said the little girl, when, after getting to
the road, she sat down at its side upon the beach, “is he
my uncle?” It was the same question that had been
asked at her in the Churchyard.

Her mother's head was between her hands upon her
knees. She answered thickly, through her weeping,
“Oh! no, Darling.”

Little Mary was ready with a child's substitute, and
she said:—

“He's my friend, then, isn't he, Mamma? He called
me Mary, now; that's what I told him my name was.”

Earthquakes and great convulsive changes of the earth,
—the slip of ice-cliffs, the cutting off of fertile fields by
the mighty stream astray, the overturning of a kingly
house, or razing of a boundary,—any of these will find
its place in history; but that for which no human record
is enough, and which is noted in God's Book alone,—a
thing of more account than any change of earth or empire,—is
the upturning of a single man's being.

Does any man who reads this know—(ay, some of
them do)—what it is to feel that the world of a man's
being is breaking from its orbit, and must be heaved into
a new one, and there fastened by sure bonds of drawing
and withdrawing, and not, in the mean time, between the
new and old, to wander wild, and go to wreck?