THE BLACK SHEEP.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXX, Issue 13071, 10 May 1913, Page 9

THE BLACK SHEEP.

Once on a time m the good old days when, if house* weren't thatched with pancakes, then breadbaskets were lined with them, bannocks the like of which only the mothers m Erin used to make, there lived m Ireland m the county of Kildare iii the parish of Carnalway, m th« rectory thereof a veritable collie of & clergyman by the name of Edwin Titmarsh. To make this shepherd took threw generations'. His father and his father's father were parsons. Though i not as black as he was clothed, Dr Titmarsh was of forbidding countenance, •xpressive of Dont's and Thou-slmlt-nots. sleeping with one eye open, seeing to it that m his pastorate was no straying from tho fold, he had long since won himself the reputation of being a holy terror. Now m this pastorate were two extremes that came between him and his sleep more than all the rest ' of his charges put together, namely Harry Bailey, the / black sheep, and Ruth Helden, the flower of the flock. These extremes met one May day of finest weather imaginable for young ducks. Unluckily m Ireland it rains thirteen months out of the twleve. In next to no time the übiquitous shepherd ran across them and thought them ill-met indeed. The black sheep was making the eyes of his kind at the flower of the flock and she was making dewy violets at him, taking to the exigencies, of the one wise man's umbrella like a young duck to water. Ruth declined the offer of a lift home m the dog-cart. Thanks awfully, but she and the doctor were going m different directions. Dr Titmarsh said it seemed so, and turned his eyes heavenward like a dying duck m a thunderstorm. "Fine day, isn't it !" Harry remarked with the voice and nonchalance of a phonograph. He lifted his cap and took advantage of. the mechanical action to -'hake the drip off it. Not the least a bit sheepish looked he. In fact, he looked not unlike the traditional wolf, ihe Old Nick of time. A gauntness of frame, a jauntiness of bearing, an aquilinity of nose, a Van Dyke beard, a trick of smiling m it> together with a swarthiness of complexion, gave him m the eyes of his enemies a family likeness 'Co his famous namesake, the Old Harry. The doctor struck his cob blindly as Balaam, his ass. The cob started heaven- ; ward on the dead julhp. Leisurely, the flower, of the flock and the black sheep, snuggled together, veiled m spring rain, went the other way. Following the' example of the record- ' ing angel, let us look the other way. ! Hear the doctor, Hairry Bailey, was a < dyed-in-the-wool sinner. His conduct ■ v.-as positively disgraceful. My word for " 3"i, it wasn't. If at all it was negatively < *'isgraceful. The cardinal sin that dyedS j him so black was one, not of commis- 1 f ion, but omission. He never struck that j aquiline nose of his inside a church < ('.oor. Those were the heydays of Kil- J < are when swallows built their nests m t old men's beards, so saintly man, so i lame the birds." St. Patrick — more : power to his elbow ! — was still a power, j If Sunday found you neither m church i ■nor^in chapel, you were as good as m 1 the bad place. i Asked of the doctor the why and t wherefore of his not going to church, I •^Haxry swore up and down that it was I nobody's business but his own. i This the learned doctor denied equally < up and down, claiming that it was just c as much his business as Mr Bailey's, if ( not more. Was he not responsible to ( Heaven for the sheep entrusted to his i care, for every last one of them, not merely ninety and nine out of every , hundred? Not that he was particularly \ concerned about Mr Bailey. , Mr Bailey ] twuld go to perdition, if he would, and , welcome were it not for the example 1 his immediate dependents, not to say the parish at large. The church-going of t \te peasantry depended m no small . measure upon that of the gentry, f^o to < hurch, therefore, Mr Bailey must. "Must! You go to perdition and mind your own business." Now, what bare-footed beggar but knew that 'that was no way to talk to . ihe cloth ? Moreover, to add to his ' Meekness, Harry Bailey kept his past dirk. Of a sudden the black-winged n n gel had cleared the. way for him from .- cottonwood .shaok 'm the Northwest • Territory of Canada to Abbey Bailey of County Kildare.! People had been kinr 1 <-nough to take it for granted. that he had gone to Canada m the first place for ihe good of Ireland. Proud as Lucifer, Harry Bailey had let it go at that. Fact, ! it, he had gone for fun, thinking it a, : huge joke, to find it a grim one. From ihe day of his birth to that of his de- • parture to rough it m the daughter rountry, he had been bound hand and f .ot and head until he was as helpless as p. mammy to do for himself, make a living. In the race after the hind-footed dollar, he had just as good a chance against his competitors as a high-class Chinawoman m a hundred-yard dash ! against him. And so it came to pass — a pretty pass l>etween neighbors — that time and again when the good doctor and his incurable patient met, the former scanned the Jieavens as m search of a lost soul and the latter, looking along his nose an^ sniffing, searched the earth for the love lost between him and the pastor, neither seeming to find what he sought. This umbrella episode didn't tend to mend matters. This fairest danghber of the church lacked a father, a lack which her spiritual pastor and master took upon himself to supply, and her declining hia offer of a lift he construed into sin act of covert disobedience to his inplied command. What would her Sunday school children think of ,it, should they chance to see her carrying on with this infidel under the cover of a flimsy bit of silk. Whip up the cob All he had a mind to, there was no getting away from the fact that Ruth was bound that the fault should not be hers, did not the umbrella eerve for two almost as well as for one. Then, his pet lamb waa not only snowy but showy. The pride of the parish was Ruth Helden. When m competition with neighboring parishes, her children took all the prizes, it waa ever a matter of wonder that one so lovely should be so devoted to good works, one so young, so efficient. Beautiful enough to be frivolous and flirtatious and no great blame to her, the was serious-minded and demure. The totality of interests involved was much too much to let such goings-on go any further. The doctor assured the cob that they were going to be put n •top to right away quick, and italicised the assurance with other cuts of the whip. Well, as Satan would have it, the >, children did ■•* Ruth, and one bright i. .i

little bare-footed scholar who was en- 1 joying herself hugely making mud pies ' with her toes and catching big drops of rain with her tongue, put by her play to stare, and as she dropped her curtsey expressed her opinion of such goings-on by rubbing one far from godly finger across another significantly, as. much as to say, "Fie, teacher, for shame !" The next day the parish knew that Ruth Helden had walked an Irish mile with Harry Bailey m 'the rain, with but one umbrella between them, that it had taken them an hour m which to do it I and it downhill all the way. The morsel was rolled on many ,a tongue, nor was the spice of Ruth's declining with thanks the offer of a lift m tho dog-cart omitted. In short, this graciously accepted act of courtesy, m conjunction with this politely rejected act of — yes — discourtesy, set the parish of Galway by the ears. Dr Tit-marsh's parishioners, you say, were sure hard put to it for something to talk about. They sure were. It might have ended there, had not her spiritual master been tempted of th? devil to call the Sunday school teacher to task. Ruth answered, demure as • church mouse that she had found Mr Bailey extremely nice, that she thought he was very well worth converting and not an infidel anyway, and that she had a good mind to ask him to go to church with her, and that she wouldn't ,be a bit surprised if he would, and so forth. That evening the doctor let tlie sun go down upon his wrath, having, as aforesaid, yielded to the temptation of tbr evil one. The next morning Ruth Helden, gentle ' shepherdess, rose and looked dreamily out of heir window at the distant Wicklow hills covered with ' 'flocks of fleecy clouds shepherded by the slow, unwilling wind." The country folk, simple and gentle, called her the Elessed Damosel after a poem then much quoted, an J as far as her hair went, Ruth liad to acknowledge, the corn. Yellow like ripe corn it was, corn with the wind on it, the sun m it ; one looked to see the poppy of sleep shaken from it. As a great secret Ruth told the Wicklow hills that she would go out and forget her umbrella and take chances, which as an even greater secret, I tell you. No sooner said than done. She took her breakfast, no umbrella, the same road, the like chance, and no little interest m the shepherding of the clouds. She knew of no earthly" reason under the sun why she shouldn't take that walk, a walk she had taken many a time and oft before she had ever heard of this thirty-first cousin by the buttonhole of the Baileys of Abe Bailey. If he should happen to take it into his head to. take the same road at tho same hour, well, he paid taxes. She would tell right out that she was glad to see him, ' seeing as how she didn't know where on earth to turn for money for her . poor. Being the best-looking lady m Carnalway, not to say, Kildare — county of the Countess of Glonmel and the Duchess of Leinster — she had to do the begging for the parish poor. Her violet eyes would grow bedewed and give off a veritable odor of sanctity, be lifted to yours hard and dry as sin, and while saintly orbs and sinful were thus engaged m a battle royal, tho Blessed Damosel would lift your leather without a qualm of conscience, and cover for you, would you or . wouldn't you, a multitude of sins. Th-c Baileys — the heavens be their bed — had - not 'given a tithe of their tithe; bu' I this infidel would better look out for his pockets. What a pretty penny their back charity plus is now due would make! Ruth Hel den's early rising, her disinterested endeavor m the face of , calumny m behalf of her poor will, please Goodness, commend itself to the reader, Christian, infidel, Jeto, heathen, or what-not. Harry Bailey took a tumble to himself, out of bed into his duds — no tub, no breakfast, but, you bet, an nmbrella. 'Twould never do to forget that, though the sun was laughing . m his face and ho had learned weatherwisdom of the prairies of the Northwest. But a man could never tell what woman or weather was going to do m Ireland. Canada was no criterion. Had the! weather but lived up to expectations and the rain downpoured, the history of yesterday might have repeated itself; for even as pity like heaven-distilled dew was gathering on tho violets and Ruth's tremulous lips were being pursed to make her poor mouth, up drives the doctot m his dogcart. No need to tell it m Gotham nor publish it m the streets of San Francisco that Harry had overtaken Ruth, much to her surprise, and remarked that it looked awfully like rain. Dr Titmarsh oaught him m the very act of calling the heavens to witness that i looked as ho said. But nowhere was to "be seen a cloud big as a man's hand to justify his remark. North, south, east, and west sang the little birds, and m the zenith hanging -as though caged m the blue. No rough wind did shake the darling buds of May. Scarce breeze enough was there to make cowslip or violet to nod. From the Wicklow hills had dispersed the flock of fleecy clouds, driven by the slow, unwilling shepherd beyond the beyonds. On either side the hawthorn hedges drooped under the miracle of *'rosy-tinted snow." Nature had fully recovered from her good cry and for it was feeling all the better, the happier. Having now done our best to fill the gap m conversation with a beggarly bit of description, let's get down to brass tacks. "Good-day — I mean good-yesterday!" the doctor greeted. All this time which it had taken him to find his tongue he had been eyeing the umbrella, askance, not to say, accusingly. "Bet ybu a pony it rains before we get home !" Harry returned. * Somewhere was a storm brewing.Ruth could feel it m her bones, and her religious-for-rheumatism bothered ■ her. "Thanks awfully, Mr Bailey, but I don't gamble. Anyway, it's unsports- . manlike to make sure bets. Of course, it all depends qn. how soon or how late ! you get home. You might possibly not get home for a week." "Good idea !" Harry muttered defiantly, jumping at it. 'What do you \ say, Miss Helden? T)r Titmarsh, I'm ' sure, will waive ceremony and oblige .us. .A better .day for the deed we . could hardly look to find m a month of Sundays. Come, what do you say?" J Ruth didn't say. a word nor even breathe one syllable of "This is so ' sudden !" s "If you mean marriage, Mr Bailey, I j feel obliged to say that you seem to , think lightly of it, as if it were a pic- , nic, a garden party, a wayside incident. ] I don't know how you manage such _ things m the cattle country, but here respectable persons get married m } church. What do you say Miss t Helden "

I Miss Helden didn't say aye, yes, or no. "Show me," Harry demanded of th clergyman, "the cathedral that ran compare with God's out-of-door* n.-t a. day liKe this ! — any day." ; The famous St. Bridget's Cathedral of Kildare was not then restored, so the doctor couldn't very well point a comparative finger at that man-made bit of God's indoors, reconverted by the ruinous pagan ivy. Maladroitly, Dr Titmarsh changed the subject. "I understand," he addressed himself to Miss Helden, 'that the Widow Kilgariff is m a bad way. Could I prevail upon you to visit her with mo " For appearance sake, Ruth's spiritual master put his command m tho form of a question. The first thing Harry knew, the Blessed Damosel had been levitated into tho dog-cart and she and the doctor were going lickety-brindle uphill m the general direction of the necessitous widow. Thank Goodness, Harry Bailey, excowboy, was not m church. Let us quick as thought leave him there standing m the middle of the road and see if we can't catch up with the occupants of the dog-cart. We can. Scarcr are they out of earshot of wise man and umbrella than the kindly doctor bethinks him to breathe the cob. And now, though they keep straight on and Harry stands stockstill, events take an unexpected turn. The doctor never dreams but that the flower of the flock and the black sheep are engaged. That Harry's elaboration of the good idea of not going home for a week was a for-the-first time proposal of marriage was not to be thought of by the unromantic gray matter that filled Dr Titmarsh's capacious skull. The official, yea, officious herder of the Carnalway sheep was not a marrying man, save m his official capacity. He married matter-of-factly, after due publishing of ba:is and the usual so-forth of formalitie", without looking too closely into ttaa color of the sheep; but the iden of himself being given m marriage he entertained as little as if he were already m heaven. But with Dr. Titmarsh, to see his duty clear was to do it p.d.q., that i 3 to say, quick as a wink. Clear as that May day, the doctor now saw hia duty ; he must marry Ruth himself, be married to her. For the faithful to jilt the infidel was no sin. Quite the contrary. Hoaven knew he had hir hands full with this great family of his. without himself, adding to his responsibilities, but whero tho interests of the church were concerned, no sacrifi c could be too great fur him lo make. At whatever cost to self, tho parish should be , saved . When, hriwevor, he tried to make tiei duty equii'y clear to Rulh, he founc that he liad his hands full of reins, of cob, so to say. Ruth pursed up hei lips v and made noises, earthly noiser which sounded alike unearthly m tlv ears of man and beast. At any rate, the doctor looked scared to death and th oob tried desperately' to outrun the cart. '.&■.. Under tho circumstances, Ruth thought it safer to walk home, and said so. Having duly inflicted themselves upon the widow by way .of comforting her m her affliction, they started for homo safely, the one walking, the other driving. Her ey-r, full of the nakedness of tho wid .v.'s bit of land an gossoons galore, Ruth went homeward pensively, the pace of sorrow. Had you offered her a penny for her thoughts, she would have taken it, £o poverty-stricken of her poor was she. Soon, however, exhilirated of the wine of spring, she mended her pace, wip< her eyes free of the nakedness of the land, and forthwith had a vision of the doctor tearing by. Harry Bailey still standing, standing still, m the middle of the road ; of herself sauntering up to him nonchalantly, glad to see him, of tho opportunity to make her big dewy eyes, her poor pleading mouth, to complete the act which the doctor's arrival had cut short". An action of that sort left perforce unfinished is more exasperating than the name you know as well as your own but can't for the life of you remember. Of course, try as you will to make the action continuous, the ropo will show the splice, the iron, the weld. The end will be tacked on. None the less, she must tell him how glad she -was to see him, how much she expected of him. In the parish of Carnalway was many a widow other than Mrs Kilgariff m sore need of a miraculous cruse of oil. Her grief, however, was but a week old and she was dependent of Harry Bailey's, ono of his tenants. The deceased — God rest his soul — had rested his ailing body all too long before he had worried himself to death because he couldn't work himself. Scarce had Ruth gone a quarter mile when she saw Mrs Kilgariff's landlord crossing the. fields towards the widow's. So much for her prophetic vision, the second sight of the Celt ! Was he following her? Was he going to collect the rent long overdue — just to show the doctor? Evictions of the widow and the fatherless were not unknown m Ruth's Ireland. She would follow him to find out whether or not she were being followed. She had every bit as good a right as he. But when the Blessed Damosel got to the lane leading to Mrs Kilgariff's, it gave her such a turn that she couldn't make the turning. Even upon rehearsing tho white lie of a lost handkerchief, she felt herself growing red, and realising that, though she tried till she was black m the face, she couldn't tell it, she gave it up as a bad job^ She watched Harry Bailey stalk into the widow's cottage as if he owned the place. Whioh he did. Ruth saw red. Then she recalled Mm telling her but yesterday, that such was the use of the cow country, where a man, having first fed his horse the stranger's best, waltzed right into tho shack with never a by your leave or a God save all here. To be mad with him for taking the hospitality of Ireland for granted would never do. Somehow Harry hadn't walked as one intruding on grief, much less as ono bent upon giving the widow her walking papers. Thus watching and waiting, Ruth plucked a wreath of hawthorn blossoms ' and, her leghorn hat discarded, crowned herself queen of the May. In an amazingly short time, out bounced tho landlord like a tenant being forcibly evicted, half a dozen half-naked civilised beings at his heels. Then th f widow squeezed herself into the door- > way, and stood literally jammed there, • crying her eyen out into her apron. • Harry shook off the half-naked howling 1 : civilised, and incontinently fled. Seldom ! t can the man that rides run, but Harry 1 came a-running towards Ruth as if ho 1 could see her round tho corner waiting for him with open arms.

What would have happened, had he kept on running, the corner rounded, there's no telling. Luckily for him, her, and us, he stopped short of an indescrib- 1 able tragedy. Ruth gave him two looks, one that of a queen at a subject she is about to have beheaded ; the other that of a martyr Christian maiden at her Grucifier, a martyr whose thorn crown has blossomed more 'miraculously yet than Aaron's rod. Then she ran furiously to the widow's, almost half as fast as he had run from, leaving the ex-cow-boy not knowing what to think other than that women are queer cattle, every last one of them. The widow would not be comforted of Ruth. Ruth would know tho reason why. Tlie reason was obvious. Mrs Kilgariff suddenly disinterring her face, showed an apronful of money. "Mornin', hold your apron !" Mr Bailey had bidden, and emptied his pockets into it, until- she had to shove him through the door, to mako him stop, and him spilling gold and silver on the floor the same as if it were dirt. So instead of Harry Bailey catching it, sho giving it to him, Ruth must now needs catch him, give her to him together with a very different kind of an "it." Picking up her skirts far from self-righteously, she actually ran after him — after a man. The, man heard her, but didn't heed, the brute ! There was nothing for it but to lay a restraining hand upon his arm, bring him up with a round turn and ask him if he hadn't said something about not going home for a week; and if he had meant what be said. Mr Bailey managed to remember having said something like that, and owned up to its not being wholly devoid of meaning. Why so? Oh, nothing, only she wanted to know what were his objections to going to church. Not all the doctors of divinity that were ever graduated out of Trinity College could make her believe that he was an unbeliever. Then Harry told her how ten years before m Calgary m tho Northwest Territory of Canada a woman had kept him waiting a full hour — four times a bad quarter — m church. Then an there h<? had vowed never to enter a church again as long as he lived. "When I'm dead you can do what youi like with me," he> told her. Ruth vowed that she wouldn't keep him waiting one minute forher. But no. Much as Harry was now indebted to that infidel woman of then, the doctor was obliged to make it a garden party affair and solemnise the marriage m the black sheep's incomparable cathedral.