"Convert you?" she laughed over her shoulder to me. "He wouldn't take
the trouble to try."
And I believe, indeed, he would not. His strong social nature was
evidently superior to any ambition of his cloth. He would have made a
famous diplomat but for the one quality of devotion that was lacking.
I use the word in its essential, not in its religious sense--devotion
to an idea, the faith in a high purpose.
We had one anxious day of it, and only one. A gale had driven most of
the passengers to the seclusion of their state-rooms, and left the
dinner-table a desert. Alone in the cabin, Father Shamrock, Fanny
Meyrick, a young Russian and myself: I forget a vigilant duenna, the
only woman on board unreconciled to Father Shamrock. She lay prone on
one of the seats, her face rigid and hands clasped in an agony of
terror. She was afraid, she afterward confessed to me, to go to her
state-room: nearness and voices seemed a necessity to her.
When I joined the party, Father Shamrock, as usual, was the narrator.
But he had dropped out of his voice all the gay humor, and was talking
very soberly. Some story he was telling, of which I gathered, as he
went on, that it was of a young lady, a rich and brilliant society
woman. "Shot right through the heart at Chancellorsville, and he the
only brother. They two, orphans, were all that were left of the
family.
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