At about this time, that imposing
spectacle, once described by Mrs. Twomey as “The
Big Doctor and little Danny Aherne walking the streets
of Cluhir like two paycocks,” was vouchsafed
to the town rather more frequently than was usually
the case. Dr. Aherne had sent a patient, who
was no less a person than the priest of the parish
of Pribawn, to the private ward of the Infirmary in
Cluhir, where he would, among other advantages, receive
daily visits from Dr. Mangan. Father Sweeny was
suffering from a broken leg, and other damages; a midnight
drive to a dying parishioner had ended, disastrously,
in an unguarded road-side ditch, and Dr. Aherne had
thought it best to consign a patient of such importance
to the care of hands less occupied, as well as of
higher renown, than his own.
Thus it was that the Big Doctor and
his kinsman saw more of each other than is often possible
for men whose work is as widespread and incessant
as is that of Irish Dispensary Doctors. On this
windy June morning they had met in the dreary yard
of the Workhouse, to which the Infirmary was attached,
and together they paced the long, whitewashed, slate-paven
passages that led to the Infirmary, pausing at intervals
to talk of matters quite unconnected with their patients,
but, if the frequency of the pauses, filled by the
sibilant whispers of the little doctor, and the deep
growls of the big one, was any criterion, none the
less absorbing.
“His name’s been accepted,”
ended the Big Doctor, after the lengthiest of these,
“and it would be no harm for you to be slipping
in a word, now and again, with the people through
the country, according as you’d get the chance,
Danny.”
“I will, I will,” replied
the little doctor, as he opened the door of Father
Sweeny’s room.
“You’re doing very well,
Father,” said Dr. Mangan, his inspection of
the patient ended. “I consider you couldn’t
be progressing more satisfactorily.” He
seated himself by Father Tim Sweeny’s bedside,
while the Nursing Sister-in-Charge rolled up bandages,
and conferred in lowered tones with Dr. Aherne, on
the subject of what he called the patient’s
“dite.”
“You’ll be going as strong
as ever you did in a few weeks’ time,”
continued Dr. Mangan, encouragingly.
Father Sweeny returned the Doctor’s look morosely.
“I’m sick and tired of
being here as it is,” he said, gloomily, “and
you talk to me of weeks!”
“Ah, they’ll pass, never
fear they’ll pass!” said the Big Doctor,
cheerfully. “I never saw the weeks yet that
didn’t pass if you waited long enough!
And I wouldn’t say but that you mightn’t
go home before you’re out of our hands entirely.”
Father Sweeny received these consolations
with an unpropitiated grunt. His large face,
with its broad cheeks and heavy double-chins, that
was usually of a sanguine and all pervasive beefy-red,
now hung in pallid purple folds, on which dark bristles,
that were as stiff as those on the barrel of a musical
box, told that the luxury of shaving had hitherto
been withheld. There are some professions that
tend more than others to grade the men that follow
them into distinct types. The Sea is one of these,
the Church, and pre-eminently the Church of Rome, is
another. The ecclesiastical types vary no less
than the nautical ones, and neither need here be enumerated.
It is sufficient to say that Father Sweeny, when in
his usual robust health, in voice, in appearance,
and in manner, provoked, uncontrollably, a comparison
with a heavy and truculent black bull.
“’Tis highly inconvenient
to me to be boxed up in bed this way, at this time,”
said Father Sweeny, with a small hot eye upon his
attendant nun that would have said instantly to any
one less entirely kind, religious, and painstaking,
that he had no immediate need of her services; “Sister
Maria Joseph, I wonder would you be so kind as to
bring me the paper? I didn’t see it to-day
at all.”
Sister Maria Joseph turned her amiable,
unruffled face, with that pure complexion that would
seem to be one of the compensations for the renunciation
of the world, towards her patient, and said, obsequiously:
“I beg your pordon, Fawther?”
The little eyes had a hotter sparkle
as Father Sweeny repeated his request.
“It’s a wonder to me,”
he growled to Dr. Mangan, after Sister Maria Joseph
had left the room, having taken, in her anxiety to
show respect, quite half a minute in closing the door
with suitable noiselessness, “why people can’t
attend to what’s said to them! If there’s
a thing I hate, it’s being bothered repeating
an entirely trivial matter, which “ here
Father Tim’s voice began to take on the angry,
high tenor of one of his prototypes “she
had a right to have heard at the first offer!
I declare I’m beside meself sometimes with the
annoyance I get!”
Dr. Mangan laid his spatulate fingers
upon the sufferer’s hairy wrist.
“We’ll have to give his
Reverence a sedative, Danny,” he said, winking
at his colleague. “I’d be sorry to
see you that way, Father; the bed’s narrow enough
for you as it is, without having you beside yourself
in it!”
Father Sweeny’s mood was one
to which chaff did not commend itself. He snatched
his hand from beneath the Doctor’s fingers, and
picked up some letters that lay beside him.
“Look at this, I ask you!
From Mary Murphy, saying her husband is quite well,
and that he took the turn for good from the minute
he was anointed! And me lying here crippled!”
“‘The dog it was that
died!’” quoted Dr. Mangan, smoothly.
“What dog?” demanded Father
Sweeny, with indignation, “I d’no what
you’re talking about!”
“Ah, nothing, nothing,”
said the Big Doctor, with a lift of the spirit at
the thought of his superior culture, “but surely
it wasn’t to show me Mary Murphy’s letter
that you sent poor Sister Maria Joseph on a fool’s
errand?”
“Why a fool’s errand?”
demanded the now incensed Father Sweeny. “What
d’ye mean?”
“Look at the newspaper on the
floor here,” returned the Doctor. “You’ll
have her back in a minute, begging your pardon again,
to tell you so.”
Father Sweeny glared, speechless,
at his tormentor for an instant; then, rinding the
Big Doctor unmoved “in the furnace of his look,”
he fell back on his pillows.
“Lock the door!” he commanded
angrily. He pushed a letter into the Doctor’s
hand. “Read that!”
“Hullo! The Major!
What’s he got to say to you, Father Tim?”
“Read it, I tell you!”
Dr. Mangan did so, with attention,
and read it a second time before he replaced it in
its envelope and handed it back to the priest.
“That’s a nice letter!”
said Father Sweeny, with a snort that he believed
to be a laugh. “What d’ye think of
that now, you that are so fond of Protestants!”
“I think the man is justified,”
said the Doctor, stoutly. “There’s
no such great hurry, and anyhow, his authority is
at an end. He couldn’t give you as much
as’d sod a lark now
“Nor he wouldn’t if he
could!” broke in Father Sweeny. “And
there is hurry, and great hurry! How will
I build my chapel without the land to put it on?
Will you tell me that?”
“Ah, you haven’t the money
gathered yet. The delay isn’t worth exciting
yourself about!” said the Doctor, soothingly.
Father Tim amused him, and he liked him, being well
aware that if his temper was hot, his heart was correspondingly
warm. “You’ll see the young chap
will give you the site as soon as look at you.”
“And how do I know the young
chap will be any easier than the old one? Isn’t
he there at Mount Music all day and every day, at their
tea-parties and their dinner-parties? Won’t
they have him married up to one of the daughters before
you can look around? He may call himself a Catholic,
but them English Catholics COME IN!”
Sister Maria Joseph’s faint
tap at the door had as instant an effect as a squib,
planted in the mane of the monarch of the bull-ring,
might produce.
“I cannt the door’s
locked, Fawther!” came Sister Maria Joseph’s
gentle voice, in mild protest. “I couldn’t
find the
Never mind it! I have it myself I have it, I tell you!”
shouted Father Tim; in his voice the appeal to a merciful
Heaven to grant patience was unmistakable.
Sister Maria Joseph, recognising with
trembling her superfluousness, withdrew.
“It’s Barty will have
that job we were speaking of just now, before you
were coaxing Sister Maria Joseph to go away from you,”
resumed Dr. Mangan. “Maybe you didn’t
hear he’s got the Coppinger’s Court Agency?
Young Coppinger offered it to him yesterday.”
“It’s a good thing it’s
out of Talbot-Lowry’s hands anyhow,” growled
Father Sweeny.
“Larry’s up at my house
every day now, about a concert they’re to have,”
went on the Doctor, tranquilly. “Tishy’s
helping him. He’s very fond of music.
I think you’re mistaken in thinking he’ll
be married to one of the Major’s daughters in
such a hurry!”
“The first thing he’ll
want to do is to tidy up his property and pacify the
tenants,” said Dr. Aherne, in his small, piping
voice. “They’re not too pleased with
the way they are now. The Major was rather short
with some of them, now and again. There was Herlihy,
and two of the Briens, was talking to me and saying
what would they do at all with Father Tim here, away.
They were thinking would Father Hogan
“Br-r-r-r-r-h!”
As a bull shakes his head, with a
reverberating roar at the foes he cannot reach, so
did Father Tim Sweeny, crippled and furious, roll his
big head, growling, on his pillows. His dark hair
lay in tight rings on his broad and bulging forehead,
and curled in strength over his head back to the tonsure.
His eyes were congested with the unavailing rage that
possessed him, as he thought of his parish left leaderless.
Had the “Ballad of the Bull”
then been written, and had Dr. Mangan been acquainted
with it (which seems unlikely) he might have again
proved his culture by remembering the injunction to
pity “this fallen chief,” as he saw the
impotent wrath in Father Tim’s bovine countenance.
“Don’t worry yourself
now, Father,” he said, consolingly, “I’ll
undertake to say it will be all right about the site
for the chapel, and what’s more, I’ll
undertake to say there’ll be nothing done about
it, or the tenants, or anything else, till you’re
well. The people will do nothing without you!”
He looked at his huge, old-fashioned gold watch.
“Oh, b’ Jove, I must be
off! Tell me, did you hear they have Larry Coppinger
chosen to be the candidate, when Prendergast retires,
as he says he will, before the next election?
There won’t be much talk of tea-parties for
Larry at Mount Music then! Any tea-party there
that he’d go to once he was a Nationalist M.P.,
I think he’d be apt to get ‘his tay in
a mug!’”
The Doctor got up and moved towards the door.
“I’ll support him, so!” Father Sweeny
called after him.