Collected Stories (28 page)

It was distasteful to the Canon the way the lower classes were creeping into the Church and gaining high office in it, but it was a real heartbreak that its functions and privileges were being usurped by new men and methods, and that miracles were now being performed out of bottles and syringes. He thought that a very undignified way of performing miracles himself, and it was a real bewilderment of spirit to him when some new drug was invented to make the medicine men more indispensable than they were at present. He would have liked surgeons to remain tradesmen and barbers as they were in the good old days, and, though he would have been astonished to hear it himself, was as jealous as a prima donna at the interference of Bobby Healy, the doctor, with his flock. He would have liked to be able to do it all himself, and sometimes thought regretfully that it was a peculiar dispensation of Providence that when the Church was most menaced, it couldn't draw upon some of its old grace and perform occasional miracles. The Canon knew he would have performed a miracle with a real air. He had the figure for it.

There was certainly some truth in the Bishop's criticism. The Canon hated competition, he liked young Dr. Devaney, who affected to believe that medicine was all hocus-pocus (which was what the Canon believed himself), and took a grave view of Bobby Healy, which caused Bobby's practice to go down quite a bit. When the Canon visited a dying man he took care to ask: “Who have you?” If he was told “Dr. Devaney,” he said: “A good young man,” but if it was “Dr. Healy” he merely nodded and looked grave, and everyone understood that Bobby had killed the unfortunate patient as usual. Whenever the two men met, the Canon was courteous and condescending, Bobby was respectful and obliging, and nobody could ever have told from the doctor's face whether or not he knew what was going on. But there was very little which Bobby didn't know. There is a certain sort of guile that goes deeper than any cleric's: the peasant's guile. Dr. Healy had that.

But there was one person in his parish whom the Canon disliked even more than he disliked the doctor. That was a man called Bill Enright. Nominally, Bill was a farmer and breeder of greyhounds; really, he was the last of a family of bandits who had terrorized the countryside for generations. He was a tall, gaunt man with fair hair and a tiny, gold mustache; perfectly rosy skin, like a baby's, and a pair of bright blue eyes which seemed to expand into a wide unwinking, animal glare. His cheekbones were so high that they gave the impression of cutting his skin. They also gave his eyes an Oriental slant, and, with its low, sharp-sloping forehead, his whole face seemed to point outward to the sharp tip of his nose and then retreat again in a pair of high teeth, very sharp and very white, a drooping lower lip, and a small, weak, feminine chin.

Now, Bill, as he would be the first to tell you, was not a bad man. He was a traditionalist who did as his father and grandfather had done before him. He had gone to Mass and the Sacraments and even paid his dues four times a year, which was not traditional, and been prepared to treat the Canon as a bandit of similar dignity to himself. But the Canon had merely been incensed at the offer of parity with Bill and set out to demonstrate that the last of the Enrights was a common ruffian who should be sent to jail. Bill was notoriously living in sin with his housekeeper, Nellie Mahony from Doonamon, and the Canon ordered her to leave the house. When he failed in this he went to her brothers and demanded that they should drag her home, but her brothers had had too much experience of the Enrights to try such a risky experiment with them, and Nellie remained on, while Bill, declaring loudly that there was nothing in religion, ceased going to Mass. People agreed that it wasn't altogether Bill's fault, and that the Canon could not brook another authority than his own—a hasty man!

To Bobby Healy, on the other hand, Bill Enright was bound by the strongest tie that could bind an Enright, for the doctor had once cured a greyhound for him, the mother of King Kong. Four or five times a year he was summoned to treat Bill for an overdose of whiskey; Bill owed him as much money as it was fitting to owe to a friend, and all Bill's friends knew that when they were in trouble themselves, it would be better for them to avoid further trouble by having Dr. Healy as well. Whatever the Canon might think, Bill was a man it paid to stand in well with.

One spring day Bobby got one of his usual summonses to the presence. Bill lived in a fine Georgian house a mile outside the town. It had once belonged to the Rowes, but Bill had got them out of it by the simple expedient of making their lives a hell for them. The avenue was overgrown, and the house with its fine Ionic portico looked dirty and dilapidated. Two dogs got up and barked at him in a neighborly way. They hated it when Bill was sick, and they knew Bobby had the knack of putting him on his feet again.

Nellie Mahony opened the door. She was a small, fat country girl with a rosy complexion and a mass of jet-black hair that shone almost as brilliantly as her eyes. The doctor, who was sometimes seized with these fits of amiable idiocy, took her by the waist, and she gave a shriek of laughter that broke off suddenly.

“Wisha, Dr. Healy,” she said complainingly, “oughtn't you to be ashamed, and the state we're in!”

“How's that, Nellie?” he asked anxiously. “Isn't it the usual thing?”

“The usual thing?” she shrieked. She had a trick of snatching up and repeating someone's final words in a brilliant tone, a full octave higher, like a fiddle repeating a phrase from the double-bass. Then with dramatic abruptness she let her voice drop to a whisper and dabbed her eyes with her apron. “He's dying, doctor,” she said.

“For God's sake!” whispered the doctor. Life had rubbed down his principles considerably, and the fact that Bill was suspected of a share in at least one murder didn't prejudice him in the least. “What happened him? I saw him in town on Monday and he never looked better.”

“Never looked better?” echoed the fiddles, while Nellie's beautiful black eyes filled with a tragic emotion that was not far removed from joy. “And then didn't he go out on the Tuesday morning on me, in the pouring rain, with three men and two dogs, and not come back till the Friday night, with the result” (this was a boss phrase of Nellie's, always followed by a dramatic pause and a change of key) “that he caught a chill up through him and never left the bed since.”

“What are you saying to Bobby Healy?” screeched a man's voice from upstairs. It was nearly as high-pitched as Nellie's, but with a wild nervous tremolo in it.

“What am I saying to Bobby Healy?” she echoed mechanically. “I'm saying nothing at all to him.”

“Well, don't be keeping him down there, after I waiting all day for him.”

“There's nothing wrong with his lungs anyway,” the doctor said professionally as he went up the stairs. They were bare and damp. It was a lifelong grievance of Bill Enright's that the Rowes had been mean enough to take the furniture to England with them.

He was sitting up in an iron bed, and the gray afternoon light and the white pillows threw up the brilliance of his coloring, already heightened with a touch of fever.

“What was she telling you?” he asked in his high-pitched voice—the sort of keen and unsentimental voice you'd attribute in fantasy to some cunning and swift-footed beast of prey, like a fox.

“What was I telling him?” Nellie echoed boldly, feeling the doctor's authority behind her. “I was telling him you went out with three men and two dogs and never came back to me till Friday night.”

“Ah, Bill,” said the doctor reproachfully, “how often did I tell you to stick to women and cats? What ails you?”

“I'm bloody bad, doctor,” whinnied Bill.

“You look it,” said Bobby candidly. “That's all right, Nellie,” he added by way of dismissal.

“And make a lot of noise downstairs,” said Bill after her.

Bobby gave his patient a thorough examination. So far as he could see there was nothing wrong with him but a chill, though he realized from the way Bill's mad blue eyes followed him that the man was in a panic. He wondered whether, as he sometimes did, he shouldn't put him in a worse one. It was unprofessional, but it was the only treatment that ever worked, and with most of his men patients he was compelled to choose a moment, before it was too late and hadn't yet passed from fiction to fact, when the threat of heart-disease or cirrhosis might reduce their drinking to some reasonable proportion. Then the inspiration came to him like Heaven opening to poor sinners, and he sat for several moments in silence, working it out. Threats would be lost on Bill Enright. What Bill needed was a miracle, and miracles aren't things to be lightly undertaken. Properly performed, a miracle might do as much good to the doctor as to Bill.

“Well, Bobby?” asked Bill, on edge with nerves.

“How long is it since you were at Confession, Bill?” the doctor asked gravely.

Bill's rosy face turned the color of wax, and the doctor, a kindly man, felt almost ashamed of himself.

“Is that the way it is, doctor?” Bill asked in a shrill, expressionless voice.

“I put it too strongly, Bill,” said the doctor, already relenting. “Maybe I should have a second opinion.”

“Your opinion is good enough for me, Bobby,” said Bill wildly, pouring coals of fire on Bobby as he sat up in bed and pulled the clothes about him. “Take a fag and light one for me. What the hell difference does it make? I lived my life and bred the best greyhound bitches in Europe.”

“And I hope you'll live to breed a good many more,” said the doctor. “Will I go for the Canon?”

“The Half-Gent?” snorted Bill indignantly. “You will not.”

“He has an unfortunate manner,” sighed the doctor. “But I could bring you someone else.”

“Ah, what the hell do I want with any of them?” asked Bill. “Aren't they all the same? Money! Money! That's all that's a trouble to them.”

“Ah, I wouldn't say that, Bill,” the doctor said thoughtfully as he paced the room, his wrinkled old face as gray as his homespun suit. “I hope you won't think me intruding,” he added anxiously. “I'm talking as a friend.”

“I know you mean it well, Bobby.”

“But you see, Bill,” the doctor went on, screwing up his left cheek as though it hurt him, “the feeling I have is that you need a different sort of priest altogether. Of course, I'm not saying a word against the Canon, but, after all, he's only a secular. You never had a chat with a Jesuit, I suppose?”

The doctor asked it with an innocent air, as if he didn't know that the one thing a secular priest dreads after Old Nick himself is a Jesuit, and that a Jesuit was particularly hateful to the Canon, who considered that as much intellect and authority as could ever be needed by his flock was centered in himself.

“Never,” said Bill.

“They're a very cultured order,” said the doctor.

“What the hell do I want with a Jesuit?” Bill cried in protest. “A drop of drink and a bit of skirt—what harm is there in that?”

“Oh, none in the world, man,” agreed Bobby cunningly. “'Tisn't as if you were ever a bad-living man.”

“I wasn't,” said Bill with unexpected self-pity. “I was a good friend to anyone I liked.”

“And you know the Canon would take it as a personal compliment if anything happened you—I'm speaking as a friend.”

“You are, Bobby,” said Bill, his voice hardening under the injustice of it. “You're speaking as a Christian. Anything to thwart a fellow like that! I could leave the Jesuits a few pounds for Masses, Bobby,” he added with growing enthusiasm. “That's what would really break Lanigan's heart. Money is all he cares about.”

“Ah, I wouldn't say that, Bill,” Bobby said with a trace of alarm. His was a delicate undertaking, and Bill was altogether too apt a pupil for his taste.

“No,” said Bill with conviction, “but that's what you mean. All right, Bobby. You're right as usual. Bring whoever you like and I'll let him talk. Talk never broke anyone's bones, Bobby.”

The doctor went downstairs and found Nellie waiting for him with an anxious air.

“I'm running over to Aharna for a priest, Nellie,” he whispered. “You might get things ready while I'm away.”

“And is that the way it is?” she asked, growing pale.

“Ah, we'll hope for the best,” he said, again feeling ashamed.

In a very thoughtful frame of mind he drove off to Aharna, where an ancient Bishop called McGinty, whose name was remembered in clerical circles only with sorrow, had permitted the Jesuits to establish a house. There he had a friend called Father Finnegan, a stocky, middle-aged man with a tight mouth and little clumps of white hair in his ears. It is not to be supposed that Bobby told him all that was in his mind, or that Father Finnegan thought he did, but there is very little a Jesuit doesn't know, and Father Finnegan knew that this was an occasion.

As they drove up the avenue, Nellie rushed out to meet them.

“What is it, Nellie?” the doctor asked anxiously. He couldn't help dreading that at the last moment Bill would play a trick on him and die of shock.

“He's gone mad, doctor,” she replied reproachfully, as though she hadn't thought a professional man would do a thing like that to her.

“When did he go mad?” Bobby asked doubtfully.

“When he seen me putting up the altar. Now he's after barricading the door and says he'll shoot the first one that tries to get in.”

“That's quite all right, my dear young lady,” said Father Finnegan soothingly. “Sick people often go on like that.”

“Has he a gun, Nellie?” Bobby asked cautiously.

“Did you ever know him without one?” retorted Nellie.

The doctor, who was of a rather timid disposition, admired his friend's coolness as they mounted the stair. While Bobby knocked, Father Finnegan stood beside the door, his hands behind his back and his head bowed in meditation.