"Well?" asked Father Healy.
"Well?" responded Denis.
"You will, of course, deny the calumny?"
Denis Quirk shook his head.
"The writer is a good man and a priest. As for the accusation, let time be the judge. I shall neither acknowledge nor deny it. There are others concerned besides myself."
Father Healy was for the moment bereft of the power of speech. He could not understand Denis Quirk"s att.i.tude. At last he cried:
"You are accused of being a divorced man!"
"If I am, the action was not from me. I then adopted the att.i.tude I now propose to adopt. I merely sat quiet. There are persons concerned in this whom I refuse to injure."
"And what do you intend to do?" asked Father Healy. "There will be a horrible scandal in Grey Town."
"I shall do what I did in the States--just live it down and wait. Time will put everything straight," said Denis Quirk.
"Your wife has married again?" the priest asked.
"I believe she has. Father Healy, all that I ask of you is your confidence and trust. There is certain to be a storm, but I am strong enough to stand it. I don"t wish to lose my friends, you least of all.
Will you believe in me?"
Father Healy looked in the man"s eyes, and Denis Quirk met his gaze unflinchingly. He was particularly ugly that day, but Father Healy could read human nature, and he believed that Denis Quirk was honest.
"I would have preferred you to have proved yourself innocent," he said.
"I cannot do that; others can. It is for them to speak, not me," replied Denis.
"I promise that I will hold to you," said the priest.
"Thank you, Father. If you will do that--you, the old mother, and one other--I am content," he said.
As the good priest left "The Mercury" in a particularly dejected frame of mind, he found Dr. Marsh waiting for him.
"Well?" he said. "A canard, I suppose?"
Father Healy made no reply.
"You don"t mean to tell me----," cried the doctor.
"I believe he is a wronged man, but he refuses to speak."
"I must speak to him myself. Don"t wait for me, Father. Just get away home, and pray that a miracle may put this straight."
Denis Quirk was still sitting as the priest had left him when Dr. Marsh burst in upon him, and plumped down on the chair that had been vacated by Father Healy.
"See here, Quirk," he began, without further explanation, "I am a man of the world, and I know the utmost capabilities of human wickedness. I don"t believe you are a real libertine. But I know Grey Town. Many a dog has been hanged here because of his bad name. You must disprove this."
"No, doctor. If you knew my story you would recognise the strength of my position. I must trust to time to put things straight."
"They will start another paper and fight you."
"Let them. That is what I want, a good fight," replied Denis. "Someone whom I can hit--hard!"
"And what if I withdraw my capital?"
"You won"t do that, doctor," replied Denis, with a quiet smile. "I know you."
"Well, Quirk, I"ll tell you what I think of you--a clever, Quixotic fool. But I will stand by you to the end. I am a sort of Ishmaelite; nothing pleases me better than an exchange of hard blows."
The two men shook hands in silence, and Dr. Marsh went out to find Father Healy waiting for him.
"We are a pair of idiots, you and I," said the doctor. "We ought to unite in hooting Denis Quirk out of Grey Town, but we shall fight for him to the finish. He is too ugly to be hopelessly wicked," he added, after a pause.
"Then you and I are not altogether bad," laughed the priest.
They walked in silence to the doctor"s gate.
"Won"t you come in?" he asked, as they paused to say good-bye.
"No, thank you. It is a strange thing I should have received the Bishop"s letter to-day," said Father Healy, reflectively.
Dr. Marsh could not grasp the meaning of this remark, so he refrained from comment on it.
"The Bishop wishes me to take a six months" holiday," continued the priest.
"You have earned it by hard work. A most reasonable suggestion. Take a rest before you die suddenly," said the doctor.
"And he suggests that I return to the old home in County Cork," added Father Healy.
"Naturally. Where would you go but to Ireland?"
"Why not America? It is a great country, and cousins of my own in every city. It might be I would find a cousin in Goldenvale itself."
"Goldenvale! Father Healy, you are a strange man, a many-sided man, but I don"t think you are the best fitted person I would select to be discovering other men"s secrets."
"Denis Quirk won"t help himself. I intend to help him," said the priest.
"And if you prove him guilty?"
"No man need know but that I went to Cork, after all. But something tells me I shall find him innocent."
"I am prepared to lay 6 to 4 on that myself. Well, Providence go with you, for you deserve it; and if you require money----," said Dr. Marsh.
"Not one penny. I have a small income of my own, inherited from my mother, G.o.d rest her soul! Molly shall go to the Finns, in Brunswick.
The change will do her good. And no one need know but that I am in Cork."