Grandmother and the Priests (32 page)

“In time I was given another parish. Without pride I can now tell you, my friends, that my Bishop was pleased with what I had done in that awful parish, though I am sure it was only through the intercession of St. Francis of Assisi and the Grace of God. Each parish was better than the last. And finally — I was a Monsignor, and I went to Ireland to visit my parents.

“It was all that adulation of the humble — and the relatives — that undid me. I preened. My name was Brant, and not Murphy. I was very young, and though a priest, I was also dreadfully human. I basked. I walked with elegant strides. My English accent — for I had spent a year at Oxford at Uncle Padraic’s insistent request, to test me, as he said, hopefully — became extraordinary. On the last day in Ireland the old parish priest, who had a really devilish twinkle in his eye, presented me with a blackthorn shillelagh. I looked into his wise old eyes, and I was embarrassed. Had I really been that silly, that obvious? Nevertheless, I tucked the gift into the bottom of my handsome luggage — presented to me on my elevation by very old Uncle Padraic — and took the boat to Liverpool, and there picked up the train for Manchester and London. It is sad to remember that when I was on the boat I furtively threw overside the large brown package of food my mother had prepared for me, though I kept the bottle of the best Irish whiskey an uncle had given me. I had a moment’s regret that it was not Scotch.

“The train was crowded — that is, the third class, and the first — for liners had come in from America. I had thought to indulge myself in the first class, but there was not a seat in the carriage. As for the third class — that was unthinkable. I was a Monsignor now. I soothed my conscience with the observation that there was no room in the third class, either. So I found a second-class carriage which was not too crowded. I had neglected some reading, so I looked for a compartment that was not seething. Amazingly, I found one that was totally empty, and I disposed of my luggage in the rack, and settled down with a book, very learned, on the life of St. Francis. It was also stupefyingly dull. I had assigned myself this book as a spiritual exercise. I had had the vague thought that I needed it.

“Suddenly the door of the compartment opened. I thought the intruder to be a very young priest like myself, and then I saw he was an Anglican Catholic. He stared at me, then impatiently tossed his bag onto the rack, and chose a seat opposite me, and near the corridor, so he could be as far from me as possible. He was not a Bishop; he was only an Anglican priest. He probably had a country parish. He was a vicar, and, I observed to myself, smarting, he possibly had a frightful time with the tithes and the old ladies who were penurious, and the matrons with marriageable daughters who no doubt pursued him relentlessly if he was still unmarried, and the coarse country gentlemen with their horses and their sealed purses, and the spinsters who oversaw everything and were arrogant, and the country gentry to whom he had to defer and placate and plead with for funds, and the rich old widows who put buttons in the plate. So, benevolently, I pitied him.

“And, of course, he despised me as a Roman. In turn, I despised him as a harried mere Anglican priest, under the thumb of his lordship, the Bishop. His clothing was far better than mine; he wore gaiters, too, modest ones. He also had a fine cane. I suddenly thought of the shillelagh in my luggage. His cane had a silver top, beautifully scrolled. He made a point of putting it close to his knee. He opened a London newspaper and affected to be immediately engrossed in it.

“Yes, he was as young as I, and both of us had a considerable distance to go before we would be even twenty-seven. He was as tall as I, and as thin, and as elegant. He had a long, thin, flushed face, a long thin nose, and protuberant blue eyes, and a thin, impatient mouth. His young hands were as smooth as a girl’s, and his fair hair was smooth, also. After a little, it suddenly occurred to me that physically we could have been brothers! The only thing that separated us was our habits.

“The train did not move. There were whistles and shriekings and clankings, but the train had some minutes to spare before moving on.

“Now, Englishmen are amazingly shy. Once this shyness is breached, they are the friendliest and most considerate of men. But the breaching is a formidable thing, and not often accomplished.

“I worked on charitable thoughts as the newspaper rustled busily, and I saw only the thin black knees, the gaiters and the polished black boots. I was not very successful. What a silly prig, I said to myself, for after all, I was Irish in spite of my name, and the Irish are friendly folk. He reminded me of my classmates in the public school, and suddenly I felt degraded again, and rejected. And, as I am Irish, my temper began to rise. A miserable Anglican priest, bullied by the women in his parish, fawning on the gentry, placating matrons with daughters, pretending to an interest in horses and dogs! What a life was this!

“In turning the newspaper, he dropped it inadvertently, and bent to retrieve it. When he raised his long and narrow head our eyes met. Did he see my anger, my eager contempt? Or, did he see, at last, that we were two young men together? And, did he think I was English, and had he seen our resemblance to each other?

“It could have been all these things. It could have also been that we were lonely and unsure of ourselves. For he gave the most tentative of smiles, ready to erase it as an error of mine if I did not respond. I gave him the same sort of smile. He indicated the newspaper. ‘Beastly people, the Russians,’ he said. ‘There’s been still another pogrom. Quite uncivilized!’

“ ‘Quite,’ I agreed, with my Oxford accent. He looked surprised, then pleased.

“ ‘One never knows,’ he said, darkly, ‘with such people. Barbarians, really.’

“ ‘One never knows,’ I repeated.

“ ‘Quite un-English,’ he said.

“ ‘Quite,’ I said.

“He paused, and we looked at each other, warily. Then he said, ‘I am Father Francis Cutledge, Old Riding, Sussex.’

“ ‘I am Monsignor Brant,’ I said, with a little hateful pride, ‘of

London.’

“ ‘Brant,’ he said, musingly. His face brightened. ‘Are you a relative of Sir William Brant? Devonshire?’

“I smiled. I am afraid it was a rather superior smile. ‘No,’ I answered.

“Now he was certain that not only was I an Englishman but I came of A Family, probably much better than Sir William’s. He folded the paper carefully on his knee. He was prepared to chat, to be tolerant. After all, we were English Gentlemen, though I was unfortunately a ‘Roman’.

“ ‘Er,’ he said, shyly, ‘my father was — er — a Roman.’

“I was interested. ‘Truly?’

“He nodded. ‘And — so was my mother. A convert.’ He looked slightly depressed.

“ ‘And you became an Anglo-Catholic?’ I said.

“He studied me. Then he lifted his proud young head. ‘One has to go where one’s conscience, and convictions, call.’

“ ‘Quite,’ I said.

“Being an Englishman, he revealed no other secrets. He looked at the paper again, and repeated, ‘Beastly people, the Russians. Intolerant. Ignorant. And dangerous.’

“ ‘The Eastern Question,’ I assented, using one of the passwords of Oxford.

“He beamed, and his face was the face of a boy.

“ ‘One likes to remember,’ he said, ‘that in England such cruelty and barbarity and intolerance are unknown. One likes to remember that we have no Pales here.’

“ ‘Not visible, anyway,’ I said. ‘Not too obtrusive,’ I could not help that little smack.

“ ‘But we are the people of the Magna Charta,’ he said, flushing a trifle. ‘We are not barbarians. In politics, in dealing with the Empire, we are tolerant of all people.’

“ ‘Exigency,’ I said. ‘The Empire would collapse if — we — were intolerant. Even the subject, the colonial, people would not put up with too much overt arrogance and bad treatment. After all, they are men, too.’

“ ‘Exigency?’ he said, in amazement. ‘I never thought we English were exigent.’

“ ‘Indeed, yes,’ I said. ‘After all, I have spent most of my life in London, you know.’

“So I was a Londoner, into the bargain. I probably knew many of the nobility. I probably had relatives engaged in high finance and politics. One had to remember the Norfolks. The poor boy looked a little downcast, and I am afraid that I felt no surge of Christian charity. I was thinking of the Famine that had killed so many countless people of my own race, with no help coming from the English. I was thinking of the English landlords, and the tax-gatherers, those most detestable of men. And, I thought of Cromwell, who had driven Irish men, women and children into the sea, and who had called them ‘lice and nits’. My heart began to burn.

“ ‘But all in all,’ said the other man, ‘we are an Example to the World. The only civilized section of America is Boston, for instance, where live the descendants of English families.’

“I though of the old Mother Superior of a convent in Boston who, not many decades ago, had been trampled upon, to her death, by a mob of Bostonians, in her own convent, and the assault upon her nuns, and the violation of the altar, and the scattering of the Host and Its desecration. ‘Ah, yes, Boston,’ I murmured. I thought of the hate and contempt and disgust visited on Irish Catholic immigrants to Boston, the drawing-aside of skirts, the attacks on priests in the very streets, the frightened children in the little parochial schools, the basest labor which my countrymen had to accept in that Hub of Culture exported from England, the open insults inflicted, the scorn and derision. The Pale. Suddenly my heart burned for another reason than racial or religious: the hatred of man for man, the monstrous, inexcusable cruelty of man for his brother. My soul was filled with righteousness. And, it was then that God tested not only me, but the Anglican priest, Vicar Cutledge, who was also as stupidly righteous.

“The door of the compartment opened and we saw a very strange man peeping in on us timidly. He could hardly have been more than thirty, but he appeared much older, for he had a fine luxuriant beard, silky and black and slightly curling. He was tall and emaciated, and clothed very oddly, indeed, in black trousers which came only to his knees. From there, down to his peculiar boots, he wore white cotton stockings. He had on a long black coat to his knees, and even below, which flapped about him. He had a curious black hat. But what finally struck our attention were the large black eyes, shining and glimmering, the excessive whiteness of the skin beyond the beard, the delicate nose with sharp nostrils.

“All this would have been shocking enough to delicate Englishmen who had no prejudices. But the man exuded a most foreign odor, compounded of mothballs, alien food, and an un-British air. He had no gloves. His long white hands had a faint and constant tremor. He carried luggage that had a most exotic design on it.

“ ‘Please?’ he said to our staring faces. ‘Iss — it is nott — — ?’

“We were so stunned by this strange apparition that we said nothing. Then Vicar Cutledge instinctively moved from his far seat and planked himself right beside me! Newspaper, cane and all. We drew together, against this foreigner.

“He sidled through the door, starting as it slid to behind him, for the train had begun to move. He sat down as far from us as possible, no doubt feeling our animosity to a stranger, our instinctive, childish animosity. He looked at us for a long moment, we long-nosed, fair-haired, face-flushed young men. Then, pleadingly, he extended a piece of cardboard to us. ‘Iss?’ he murmured. Vicar Cutledge moved distastefully. I forced myself to glance at the cardboard. ‘Ticket,’ I said, loudly. ‘Very well.’

“He pondered on that a moment, translating it into his own language. Then he nodded brightly and treated us to a radiant smile which showed excellent teeth, a most un-British expression. ‘Goot,’ he said, proudly. He was so proud that he could hardly contain himself. ‘Englissh,’ he said. ‘Englissh. Like German, no?’

“ ‘No,’ Vicar Cutledge said, coldly.

“Now, both of us were educated young men, and we knew German and French. We could have spoken to the stranger in German. But we did not. Almost knee to knee we huddled together. We British. We unprejudiced, tolerant, Empire-building people. Vicar Cutledge’s cane caressed my knee.

“The stranger obviously did not understand that he had been rebuked, not only as a vulgar person who began a conversation without the minuet of propriety in a public carriage, but because he was also a foreigner. Vicar Cutledge hastily handed me a section of his newspaper, and I let the book about St. Francis fall to my side. We both buried ourselves in the pages. The train moved along the dreary gray walls of Liverpool, then began to clatter on its short journey to Manchester.

“ ‘Iss right? Mant-chest-arr?’ said the stranger, anxiously, to our newspaper-covered faces.

“ ‘Manchester,’ I said, sharply.

“ ‘Goot,’ he murmured.

“We read. I was acutely conscious of the foreigner’s presence, and his odor, which became a little intolerable in the close compartment. But we were both so afraid of moving — which would have given the foreigner an opportunity to talk to us or make a comment — that we endured the closeness and sweated. He kept his hat on, I noticed, after a furtive glance at him from the edge of the newspaper. What on earth was he? What was he doing in England?

“ ‘Peculiar — er — people coming to England, now,’ murmured the Vicar to me.

“ ‘Quite,’ I answered.

“ ‘A question was raised in the House, recently,’ murmured the Vicar.

“ ‘Understandable,’ said I, and may God forgive me.

“ ‘He is going only to Manchester,’ said the Vicar. ‘We go on to London.’

“ ‘Be grateful for small things,’ I said, in my ugly, priggish voice. I had a warm fellow-feeling for the Vicar.

“The volume of St. Francis sharply nudged my thigh. Pettishly, I pushed it aside. I read the editorial in
The Times
concerning Russia’s latest pogrom and thought of my Irish ancestors. ‘Beastly,’ I remarked to the Vicar, pointing to the editorial. ‘
One Should Do Things about This.
’

“ ‘Quate,’ he said, having deftly picked up my accent.

“ ‘We are civilized people in the world, now. I trust,’ I said.

“ ‘Indeed,’ said the Vicar.

“Unknown to us matching accent to accent, the stranger had moved right across to face us. He reached out and gently touched my knee. I started, let the paper drop a little. He was smiling, and pointed to my collar, and then to the Vicar’s.

“ ‘Iss — iss?’ he tried, helplessly struggling for the word.

“ ‘Priests,’ said the Vicar, in the loud and rejecting voice used for foreigners.

“I did not like that. I did not consider him a ‘priest’. I pointed to myself. ‘Monsignor,’ I said to the stranger with his great black eyes, his liquid, pleading eyes, and his alien beard.