A Complete Story

New Zealand Tablet, Volume L, Issue 26, 5 July 1923, Page 11

A Complete Story

(By Fullerton Waldo, in the New York Outlook.)

Father Rovier Gets a Letter

I. M The Cure walked along the river-bank with a mind in pain. If the Son of God, stretched on the'cross, had cried aloud, “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” was an altogether human French-Canadian priest to blame for feeling as though God was too busy elsewhere m His universe to give heed to him? Father Rovier had come out from Brittany when lie was twenty, and now he was fifty-seven. For thiroy-sevcn years be had beeen knocking at the doors of the beans of his scattered people, and only a few in all that time, had undone the latch and let him in. When he came from France, his hair was black, his cheeks were red, his knees were supple, and ais step was springy. He laughed in a way that would almost clear a room of smoke or drive a ground mist from a meadow. When he swung an axe-helve, his ' whole body followed after. When he preached, he drove and stung like a hailstorm. Now', walking by the river, at fifty-seven, he felt old and knew that he had failed. His hair was a whiter silver than the willow leaves that whispered. The little river beside him frolicked along and laughed round the smoothworn pebbles and the bleaching driftwood tangles. In days of old he would have laughed back, and he would have been glad of the sun and the blue, as of the cheerful noise of the water. But now he was spent, and the years of black ingratitude had nearly broken him; and he wanted to be called home; he wanted to rest. It was Sunday afternoon, and he was walking hand in hand with pain and grief from place to place because he had no means to ride. His parishioners never had paid him enough to let him keep a horse, though he had a meagre, rickety cow that clanked about the rubbly pasture lot as hungry and lonesome as her master. The Sunday before at Mass his whole congregation of thirty-three, including seven babies, put a dollar and a quarter in the plate. This morning he had taken them to task for being so niggardly to God. It was not Father Rovier’s way to mince words and spare his congregation. “You, Onesime Joulin,” he said, “you sold a cow, and you got fifty dollars for her; and you, Julie Bourbaix, for one linen table-cover, as I know, you had twelve dollars from a tourist; and the rest of you, for soap and candles and rugs and rag-carpets you have made, and turnips and potatoes you have raised, have received good prices; and you can afford to give and support the Church. It is not I who ask it; it is the Lord. Tjc hon Diev■ will not bless you and your families and your farms while you let His church and His ministers perish of neglect. Here I have to help me only this little Indian boy of twelve, who lights the candles and puts them out again and passes the plate to you. God fills your tables with food, but you put little or nothing in the dish for Him and for His Holy Church.” Their faces were impassive as they listened, and, though the tears were in his eyes, he had not stirred them. In fact, he had displeased them so that when the little Indian hoy brought the plate back to the altar this time' it held nothing at all except the worn red flannel at the bottom. How could he live ? Father Rovier was asking himself as he walked along the river road. And how could he change the hearts of his people if in thirty-seven years they were not changed? Elijah the prophet had the ravens; the little Cure was by no means a prophet, and there were noV fowls of the air to help him. No manna fell from the skies, and the face of heaven seemed adamant to his lonely petitions, <£:•; Up and down this road, in his rusty cassock, he had 1 trudged in summer and sledged (when some one gave him a lift) in winter. He was at the beck and call of the poorest. He had given medicine and performed surgical

operations. He had administered Extreme Unction and closed the eyelids of the dying. The (phenomena of life flora the cradle to the grave were facts as constant in his life as his own penury. . Is one helped him with his turnips and potatoes, his cabbages, the scanty hay for his cow, the spruce and,birch and juniper for his winter fires. An old, old Scotchwoman came from the nearest house, half a mile off, and rattled the fire-irons sufficiently to cook meals, of sorts, for him in the summer-time. But in winter, when drifts locked the road past his door, he must fend for himself utterly. "What a weary, dreary, solitary life! And now even God, it seemed, had forsaken His servant. 11. hen Father Rovier came back from the dying man whom he had gone to see, old Mrs. MacDonald was getting his supper ready for him. There was a letter a body left wi’ me for you this afternoon, she said, as she lifted the lid off a kind of vegetable stew and a strong odor of cabbage steamed into their faces. \ Mho complains this time?” the Father asked, wearily, “How should I know?” the old woman bristled. “D’ye think I lay my eyes to the balderdash they write you? I have enough to do to keep ye fed. Havers! was there ever such a man to eat!” “Am I, then, such a gourmand?” smiled the priest. “If that means a swiller of vittles,” said the old woman, “ye are all that an’ mair. An’ I serve ye notice, I 11 come nae mair to cook for ye till ye pay me that ye one me. Four dollars down.” She banged her hard palm on the bare table. “It four weeks now, d’ye ken, syne ye paid.me.” ■But, Mrs. MacDonald,” the priest expostulated, “I have nothing to give you. What do you think was in the plate Sunday last?” She did not answer. She shrugged her shoulders, and stirred in the mess on the stove with the long-handled wooden spoon. “One dollar and a quarter,” said Father Rovier. “And to-day, because I. chided, it was less.” “What was it?” wheezed the beldame, her back still turned to him. “It was nothing.” “Naething at all?” She faced about, and • drops of gravy plashed from her ladle. “Nothing, Mrs. MacDonald.” Sic a fule as ye are to stay here!” she exclaimed, furiously. “And sic a fule as I am to take pity on ye and leave the glide man an’ the bairns at hame an’ trudge down the road half a mile twa times a day to cook for ye! I’ve done it not because I cared for ye, ye Papist. I’ve done it because 1 needed the siller. That was all. Nae siller, nae mair parritch. Nae mair vittles. Nae mair o’ onythin’, Nae mair o’ me! Ye poor gawk! Ye doited feckless loon ! Gae back to yer mumblin’s and yer croonin’s an yer ringin a little bell, an’ yer kickshaws and yer didoes an’ yer rig-a-ma-jigs in the kirk. I’ll ha© nae mair o’ ye an’ yer outlandish, Romish clamjamfery. Auld Licht I am, an’ Auld Licht I stay. This parish is crowded as long as you and me is here. If ye had the spunk o’ a louse ye’d scare them wi’ hell-fire into payin’ ye. They fear ye nae mair than they fear the green cheese of the face of the moon. They laugh at ye. Are ye a man or a rabbit? Pit the fear into them, mon ! Pit the fear!” “I’ve told them as plainly as I can,” the priest answered, gently. “It was because I scolded so to-day they gave me nothipg at all. I am at the end. I do not see the way ahead. You are the last friend, it seems. And will you leave me now? Well, if it must be, then it must be. I thank you, that you have come so far to cook for me for so little money all this time. I will pay you when I can.” - “It was for the money only,” growled Mrs. MacDonald. “I wadnae cook for a follower o’ the Babylonish abomination otherwise. I have heard nae clink o’ the siller—l gae hame, an’. I stay hame!” She reached for her bonnet and shawl. The shawl lay ! on the window-sill, where the big flies droned in and out. A letter fell to the floor from a fold of the shawl. She picked it up and handed it to the priest.' '

“Here’s yer letter I brought}” she said, ungraciously. £/// The hand was strange, “I wonder who could have i>/a : written this,” he mused aloud. , ' Mrs. MacDonald, shawl on and bonnet in process of 1,. adjustment, was held by curiosity. f . “Nae hand that ever I saw before,” she said. “Anither complaint, I dare say.” -He sighed, and ran his thumb under the flap of the envelope. \ Then he turned red and white, and gasped, k jt . “It’s —it’s a twenty-dollar bank note.” “Is it real?” exclaimed the. canny’Scotchwoman. J He held it to the light. “Yesthe Bank of Nova Scotia,” he said, slowly. “And a letter with it.” He began to read. . “Father Rovier, —Mrs. MacDonald has told me of all the good work you do in your parish— how you have gone on year after year in the midst of sickening ingratitude, asking nothing for yourself, helping every living creature, even to •Jjjhc cows and horses and stray dogs, and travelling miles in the dead of night to the ailing. She says those of your people who are not too mean are too poor to pay you anything, and that you are wearing your heart out on them, and are fagged and discouraged. Here is S2O. It is a first instalment'. I will send you more. This is not for your church, it is for you.” The priest gazed at Mrs. MacDonald, and his lip trembled. “Who sent it? Do you know her?” “Yes, I ken the lady.” “What is her name?” “She told me I shouldna tell. She is an American. She comes frae Boston. She was passin’ through. She bought a rag-carpet frae me, and told me where to send it. But she made mo promise I won kin a tell. An’ it’s not a Papish priest that would make me perjure mysel’.” Father Rovier was silent a moment. “All my life I have had three kinds of letters,” lie said, slowly. “Complaints, and business of the 'church, and then this. This is the only one of its kind that I ever had. Never in the thirty-seven years was a gift like this made, to me for myself. Now I can get a doctor for old Pore Cliabanel, who has the cancer.” v 'T' He dropped on his knees at the table, . and with his ' head on his arm was silent in prayer for his unknown benefactress. The flies droned in and out of the window. Mrs. MacDonald came over presently and touched him on the shoulder, “When ye get through speakiu’ to God, ' there’s one word I wish to say.” He looked up. “What is it, -my good Mrs. MacDonald?”

“Papist or not,” she declared, fiercely, “I’ll cook for ye forever and a day. And I’ll take nae pay for it.” % “Forever and a day?” he repeated. “That is a long, long time, Mrs. MacDonald. I shall be dead by the end of that time. And then, my good woman, I will ask if you please that you bury this letter with . me. I wonder who she was. I wonder. But God sends His angels unawares;” Somewhere between laughter and tears, Mrs. MacDonald was talking to herself as she waddled along the half-mile of red-clay road to her home. It was a shame to deceive the gude old mon,” she told herself. “But he wouldna ha’ ta’en it otherwise frae one sae pair as me. ’Twas a wonderfu fine letter the school inspector wrote fer me. Lord forgie me the lie I told! It was worth while, my savin’ I came frae Boston, jist to see Father Rovier’s face!”