The Storpteller.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXV, Issue 40, 4 February 1898, Page 23

The Storpteller.

A FORTUNATE MEETING.

The drawing-room car of the New York train for Boston, by way of Providence, was scarcely occupied on the morning of the 23rd of December, 18 — . A commercial traveller engaged in conversation with one of his fraternity, a somnolent mother with a wakeful brojd of children, a youthful looking priest saying his office, and, some half-a-dozen seats before him, a whole compartment occupied by herself, her maid and her handbags, was seated an old lady whose vacant gaze told that she was blind. These were all the passengers the car contained. Snow was falling when the train left Providence, and the thrifty, comfortable towns on the route, that look so fresh and pretty in the summer, appeared bleak and desolate under the cold grey atmosphere of the winter day. The priest had finished his office and was putting away his breviary in his valise, when a little commotion of tumbling bags aroused his attention The noise was caused by the maid of the old lady, who, in a futile endeavour to close the blind of the compartmeut behind her mistress, hai upset a portion of her travelling appurtenances. In an instant he was by her side to offer his assistance.

"You see, you must move this catch," he explained, and closed down the blind. The maid, red and heated from her previous exertions and her present discomposure, stammered out her confused thanks to the priest, who smiled pleasantly in return and went to resume the putting away of his book. '• What is it, Mary ? " asked the old lady, laughing. " What a noise you are making." " I couldn't shut the blind, ma'am," replied the maid ; '' the priest " — pausing abruptly to mend her expression — " I mean the gentleman shut it for me." " The priest ! What priest ? " asked her mistress in surprise. "He is sitting behind us ; I couldn't work the catch ; I'm sure, ma'am, he meant no offence," answered the maid, and if her explanation was vague, her eagerness to shield the priest from blame was the cause of it.

The old lady made no response, but closing her eyes, nestled among the shawls the maid had arranged for her comfort. The priest gazed out of the window at the white fields and villages the train was leaving behind, and thought how gloomy the day was, and of a journey he had taken in the opposite direction over this same road more than ten years before. As now he was journeying alone, so was he journeying then. In nothing else were the two journeys alike. Then it was summer weather and winter was in his heart. Now the conditions were reversed, though then he was a youth, while now he was a man. He could remember every particular of his last hour at home before taking the journey. The Japanese screen half open before the sitting-room window, to keep the draft from his mother, who sat in her great chair, laying down the law of her will ; he listening to her with a sad heart ; the window full of flowering plants and the tendrils of vines straying over it : the cat watching a bird that swung and hung on a branch of the pignut tree just outside the open door ; all these he could see. and he could hear his mother bid him follow the lead he had chosen, and the sound of his own voice bidding her good-bye. Then his mind reverted to other things in his life, the afterevents of his journey. Scenes in the seminary where he had studied many years ; scenes in the Roman College where he had been a student, and whence he was now coming, a priest, to assist in doing the work of a Boston parish. It had been a happy life all in all. he thought, though in early years it had been marked by lack of news from home.

Time changed that. Home came to ba to him a thing of the past; only sometimes, as on this day. vivid remembrances of it returned to him, but with no hard feeling, only sorrow that he and all that was dearest to him, his belief and his vocation, had been so misunderstood.

The commercial traveller had gone to the smoking-car ; the mother and her children were in various stages of sleep ; the priest, with a note-book and pencil in his hand, figured up his accounts ; only the blind old lady was restless and unoccupied. She very much disliked to travel ; she could see nothing, she would tell her friends, when they urged Ler to go abroad for a change. Why should she leave her comfortable home, where she knew every inch of ground ? As fur change of air, she declared that for her there was no better air than Boston air.

And now, unurged, she had journeyed all the way from Boston to New York to find that the object of her trip would have been as well attained by her remaining at home. No wonder, then, that she felt restless and wished herself seated by her warm lireplace receiving tne visits of her friends.

She had a great many friends, this old lady. Some who loved her lor herself ; others ior the pleasant people always to be met with at her fine old house at Brooklme ; and she would ha\e been very happy had it not been for hor blindness and her family troubles.

Everyone said and thought it was hard that such a nice old lady should have had so much tiouble with her children. Her eldest son had died with dipsomania, the doctors said, but the mother, who was an old-fashioned New England gentlewoman who never spared heKN?lf or her convictions, did not shirk giving his disease its Saxon name. There was a mystery attached to hei younger son, and it was generally supposed that lie ran aw;iy from home, and her daughter wluh^d marriel a man in all tiiug^ hsr inferior, had been dead many years. None of the things had changed her in the least from the proud and thoroughly sincere woman she was. But when amaurasis set

in and she lost her sight, she lost with it her hard pride. Her sincerity, however, she kept with all her vigour.

She too, like the priest, had been meditating on the past. Her thoughts, however, did not depict a peaceful repose on her countenance, such as now illumined the features of the priest absently viewing the falling snow. They only made her dissatisfied with herself, restless, and more anxious to reach home.

If her companion who read to her and wrote her letters had not been ill and unable to accompany her on her journey, she would have had someone to talk to, and the tedium of travelling- would have been lessened, the rattle and rumble of the train less irksome to bear. She tried to converse with her maid, but Mary was too much in awe of her mistress to converse in anything but negative or affirmative monosyllables. At last the old lady's nervous restlessness became more than she could bear, and she asked :—: — " Mary, is the priest who closed the blind for you still in the car ? " "Yes. ma'am," replied Mary, staring first blankly at the back of the priest, now turned towards her, and then afc her mistress. "I wish then," said the old lady, "you would hand him one of my cards, and ask him to favour me with a few minutes' conversation ; and you, Mary, may take another seat." It was nothing unusual for her to do what she was doing. She had been petted and spoiled by her circle of acquaintances, to whom she was a great personage ; she thought nothing of calling upon any one of them to help her while away an hour, and this was not the first time she had asked Buch a favour of a stranger, but never before without knowing something of the stranger's antecedents. The priest received the message delivered by the maid, and read the name engraved on the card with a little start of astonishment and a quick glance at the old lady, whose vacant eyes gave no sign, but on whose face was a look of anxious expectancy. Without a word to the maid he walked to where the owner of the card sat. Before he could speak her ear 3 had made his presence known to her, and she said : " Pardon me for troubling you, but 1 wanted to speak to you so much. I am blind," she added, with a little laugh ; " that will excuse me." His face was very white, and he put his hand to his throat as if he was suffocating. " Have you been blind long ?" he asked in a strained voice. At the sound of his voice her face again assumed an expectant look, which subsided as she answered : '• Three years ago amaurosis set in, and I have been entirely blind for about two ; but won't you be seated ?'" — an uneasy movement of his feet having betrayed to her that he was still standing. He seated himself opposite to her, and gazed at her with a troubled face, like to what one might wear who had been startled in his sleep. She did not speak, and he asked with a timid air, "Can I do anything for you ?" Not answering him directly she questioned : '• You are a Catholic priest, are you not ?" He replied that he was, and again offered his services. " I do not know that you can help me," she said, in a puzzled voice, and broke off abruptly, " I am a Protestant, not a bigoted one," she laughed. If it were not for the pain manifested in his countenance, one would have said that a smile of amusement crossed his lips as she made this statement. "I have a son who I believe is a priest," she continued, " and I am looking for him. I thought that perhaps you. a priest, could help me to find him. I have been to New York, where he went after he left home, and I have been told that one of his name has been ordered from Home, to be stationed, I think they said, in Boston." '■ And your son's name is ?" asked the priest, in a low voice. She heard his words, but could not see the little beseeching movement of his hands. " Philip Penrose — do you know a priest or anyone who is a Catholic of that name V she asked. He did not answer her immediately, and she repeated her question. •' I certainly know a priest of that name," he said slowly ; '• but the man I know can scarcely be the same, for he never left his mother." " Oh !" she exclaimed, and he was so occup'ed with the thought of what he was to say next that he did not perceive the angui.sh of her disappointment nor hear her murmur: "It is an uncommon name ; it may be Philip." The commercial travellers had returned to the car and to a renewed discussion of the respective merits of their respective goods ; the maid had joined the mother and her brood in sleep, and her mistress waited, in trouble and expectancy, for the priest to speak. It was no easy task for him to dtcide what was be^t to say. He knew the truth about this Philip Penrose. but not whether it wha the fittest thing to tell the mother now, or to wait until he had asceitained her real sentiments toward her son.

'• You do not speak,"' she cried, interrupting his train of thought '• I wish you would tell me all you know- abuut the Philip Penro«e with whom you say you are acquainted."

'■ The Philip Penroso 1 know," he said, and m his endeavour to repress his emotions his voice became harsh and un-ymp.ithetie, " was baptised a Catholic while still a, minor. His father was dead, and he was entirely under the control and charge of his mother "

'• I was a widow." she broke in, ■' I did all that a mother, more than a father, could do for Philip.

" He has acknowledged that a thousand times, with a heart full of love for you," answered the priest. "Go on. go on," she pleaded, with tear-, streaming from her sightless eyes.

'•His mother objected with all the force of her sirong will to his becoming a Catholic, but her will gave way to what, in this instance, was a stronger will "

" But I was sincere to my honest convictions," she cried. " He has always revered your sincerity above all things," returned the priest.

" And I did not respect his," she groaned. " But continue ; why do you stop ? " she insisted, forgetting that she herself was the cause of the interruption.

"He became a Catholic, and when he reached his majority announced his intention to study for the priesthood, and his mother gave him the alternative to leave home or renounce a call he felt had come from God. This time neither will gave way ; Philip left home "

He paused, shocked at the change that had come over her. Her face was long-drawn and pinched, and the hand she raised to point words she now ppoke trembled in the black-net mitt, like a withered leaf shaken by the wind. " But my will, God broke it ! " she cried. " Oh, reverend sir, look at me and make of me a moral for one of your sermons. Look at me, old and blind. Frank, my son Frank, died a drunkard's death, and his sister died little better than an outcast. I crushed and killed their wills, and when they went out from my care they had no wills of their own to fight the battle with the world."

She ceased to speak for a moment, overcome. When she spoke again to the priest, whose face glowed with love and pity, her manner was quiet and passionless. '• You have but told me what I know," she said. " What has become of Philip Pen rose ?"

The bell was tolling their approach to the Old Colony Depot, the terminus of their journey ; the few passengers in the car were gathering together their bags and parcels, and the maid was approaching to give such assistance as her mistress might need. The priest waived her back. The sightless eyes of the expeptant woman were upturned to his, and he bent over her and said in a voice that was thick with tears :—: — " Mother, don't you know me, Philip — your little boy, Philip ? " Her outstretched hands groped for him, and, unmindful of those who looked on in wonder, he rested in his mother's arms.

" You will come with me for a while ? " she asked, smoothing his hand in hers. " I will, mother," he replied. — Arthur Colt in The Catholic Fireside.