Grandmother and the Priests (40 page)

There were no Sisters in the hamlet. The Catholic children attended the Squire’s good free school, and none of the Protestant children were permitted to jibe at them. The priest, of course, was expected to teach the children their catechism. In time, and with the growth of Catholic families, the Sisters would come. Father Tom hoped, a little unkindly, that this would not happen too soon. Sisters invariably took over a parish and dominated it.

Then one old gentleman said that the Squire had actually offered the ‘auld Faether’ a convent for nuns, but for some reason the ‘auld Faether’ had politely refused. This aroused Father Tom’s interest; however, the old gentleman had no explanation.

Father Tom wondered what the priest of the nearest hamlet which had enough Catholic families to warrant a priest thought of Squire MacVicar. A saint! said the old gentlemen, on the doorstep. Father Tom decided not to visit his brother in Christ for some time. His stubborn Scots loyalty had been aroused in behalf of young Mr. Gregor and his very young wife, who was expecting a child. And there was a vague thought hovering like a bee over his mind.

There were only forty Catholic children in the village, ranging from a month to twelve years in age. There were but sixteen in the catechism class. The Catholic families were, in the main, middle-aged or older. The younger did not breed more children than their Protestant neighbors.

Within a few days Father Tom had settled down in his parish and had met all his people. He could not understand himself, and often marveled. Whence had he acquired this new strength, this new spirit, this new sense of authority? He wrote his parents: “I have not coughed since I came here. The air is very salubrious, if cold. I have the heartiest appetite and am in good spirits. You would not know me.” In fact, the young priest did not know himself.

On Friday afternoon he brought out the ladder, filled a basket with slates, and climbed on the steep roof of his rectory. It was odd, he thought, as he hammered and chipped away, that no one seemed about; his hammer echoed all up and down the street. He did not know, until later, that he had scandalized his own people and was embarrassing the Protestants, who thought it ‘fair dreadful’ for a clergyman to be crawling and hammering all over the place, his coat off and his pullovers tucked in. No one, of course, offered to help him or do the job. The men were ‘sae busy’ and were too tired at evening. Besides, there was a bad conscience among both Catholics and Protestants. They covered this by telling themselves that the clergy should be above wanting a tight roof. The old prophets and holy men had lived in caves or in the desert or the forests, and had thought nothing of it, their minds fixed only on God. When Mrs. Logan repeated this opinion to Father Tom, he said, “The old prophets and holy men lived in warm climates, not in sae Godforsaken a place as this. I’ll not hae a leak over my head in the winter.”

Auld Bob expressed it as his opinion that the new priest was an oppressor of the poor and would not pay wages, and sacrilegious into the bargain, and had no respect for his calling, if one could consider ‘Romans’ as having a calling at all. He had fair stolen the slates from him, Auld Bob. This was an example of what the ‘Romans’ would do if they ever seized control of Scotland again. His friends agreed, though doubting that Auld Bob had lost anything on the slates.

The good clear weather was holding; the stone cottages along the street reflected the sun like mica; the dark cobbles gleamed; the sky had the hard jewel look of polished aquamarine. But no one was about. Father Tom whistled some dolorous ballad about lost maidens and cruel fathers, and then changed to an even more dolorous ballad concerning a young gallant sailor lost at sea. The more tragic the ballad, the happier he became, as he felt all his muscles stretch elastically in his labor and the cold wind ruffled his hair. For, as everyone knows, the true Celt reveals his contentment in singing of the more disastrous events of life. It is when his throat throbs the hardest that his heart is the happiest, a matter a mere Sassenach could not possibly understand.

The roof was very steep, but young Father Tom skittered up and down it, feeling more exhilarated by the moment, his heels and toes digging into the gutters for purchase, his knees gripping on the slates for support. Aha, he thought, godliness is entwined with hard labor; to labor is to pray. He opened his mouth to sing a particularly direful phrase which had to do with the dying of a lass in a wave rushing from the sea, and the fact that at sunset she could be heard calling, calling, calling — Joyously, the hammer becoming brisker, the priest’s eyes filled with tears at the thought of that desolate and childlike wailing as the blue and scarlet dusk came down.

So engrossed, he had not heard the calm clatter of a horse’s hoofs on the cobbles, and so did not hear the clatter stop, and was not aware of the horseman sitting below him and watching him with interest. He almost lost his footing when a loud and sardonic voice said, “Nae wonder the lass doesna come hame, with a song like yon to greet her, and such a singing.”

Father Tom, halfway up the roof, leaned heavily on the slates and cautiously glanced over his shoulder. He knew who that tall, gray, tweed-clad man was instantly, for he remembered the phrase Mrs. Logan and others had used: “A lordly man with a lordly air.” His face immediately suffused with various tints of magenta. His mouth fell open boyishly.

“A fine occupation for a priest,” said the lordly man with the eyes like bits of pale and polished stones.

Father Tom’s heart beat a little tattoo of embarrassment, and then he was angry. “You’ll know of a better, perhaps?” he said, and did not stammer once. Mrs. Logan twitched the curtain and surveyed Squire MacVicar with horror, and thought, for a moment, that he had a truly ‘divilish’ grin on his face. But she was also ashamed for the priest.

“Sich as praying for souls with the auld women — Parson,” said the Squire.

“And sich as praying for the souls of auld men — if such are not lost, the noo,” said Father Tom, and reminded himself that he must be contrite for that smarting answer — much later.

The man laughed sourly, but his eyes took on a harder stoniness. “We havena lost our spirit in the cloisters,” he said.

“I hae a good faether,” said the priest, wondering if it would be entirely sinful if his basket of slates slipped and fell like leaves onto the horseman, whose horse was as black as coal and whose coat resembled the better satins.

Squire MacVicar thought that over, his face darkening moment by moment. “And what will ye mean by that remark?” he asked at last.

Father Tom reflected. He would be doing the wee minister no good by inspiring new hostility in this very grim and very hostile man with the fine upright figure and the arrogant face.

“Sae very subtle,” he said. “If a lad hae a good faether he’ll not be afraid of the world when he is a man.”

“Um,” said the Squire, suspiciously. Father Tom resumed his dexterous work. The Squire moved his horse closer until his eye was on a level with the low eaves. “Not sae bad,” he remarked. “And where will a priest-lad be learning to manage slates?”

“My Dada,” said Father Tom, and made the street ring with his hammer.

“I see,” said the Squire with a touch of contempt.

“ ‘Mary, call the cattle hame, the cattle hame, the cattle hame! Mary, call the cattle hame, across the sands o’ Dee!’ ” sang the priest, his voice throbbing calamitously.

“Good God,” said the Squire, putting his gloved hands over his ears. “And will ye be assaulting the ears of the puir people with that voice when ye celebrate the Mass?”

Father Tom paused. The bee that hovered over his mind twanged a little nearer and sharper.

“And arouse the dead at Matins?” said the Squire.

“I hae no complaints,” said Father Tom, looking down soberly at the horseman.

“Not even at a Solemn Mass, lad? Not even at the Gloria?” The Squire chuckled nastily.

“I see,” said Father Tom. “My kirk hae had the pleasure of your worship’s company, perhaps?”

“Not I!” said the Squire. “I do not like mummery.”

Father Tom said,
“Quare fremuerunt gentes, et populi meditae sunt inania?”

The Squire snorted. “I know me Latin, laddie.”

“And as ye know your Latin,” said Father Tom, innocently, “ye’ll know, too, where that hymn occurs, and the occasion.”

The Squire smiled that dour smile of his. “Ye think me a fool? It is Midnight Mass, Christmas, the entrance hymn.”

Father Tom looked down at him with a beautiful affectation of admiring boyhood. “And ye’ll have such words and hymns in the Presbyterian church, perhaps? Aweel, aweel! If so, then the day of ane Fold and ane Shepherd is near at hand!”

The Squire scowled up at him in deadly silence, and his sharp cheekbones reddened. Father Tom smiled at him in immaculate innocence, waiting. The Squire cleared his throat. “I am a traveled man,” said the Squire. “I hae been in many’s the cathedrals in the Popish countries.” He waited a moment. “I do not like your tone. I am not ‘raging’, nor do I ‘plan vain things’.”

“Very, very good,” said Father Tom. He looked into his basket. “Now, if I should ask your worship to refill my basket with the slates, would ye do it for me and save me a scrambling doon?”

“Give it doon,” said the Squire in an irascible voice. So Father Tom leaned down and gave the Squire the basket, and the Squire, astonishingly, swung from his horse and filled the basket with slates. “Ye’ll have a pile here,” he said. “How many blasted holes do ye have in your roof?”

The priest surveyed the work he had already done. “Fifteen,” he said.

“But there’s more here.”

“Aye. I hae another job to do, another broken roof to make tight.”

“Not one of my hooses!” said the Squire, handing up the basket. (Mrs. Logan, peeping from behind the curtains, could not believe her eyes.)

“No,” said the priest. “Yours are all fair tight, I take it.”

“I take care of my ain,” said the Squire. “Have you a quarrel with me aboot it?” When Father Tom did not reply, he said, “And is there none of your ain to do the roof for ye?”

“The men,” chanted Father Tom, “are sae busy, with the sheep and the shops and the lambing.”

“Perhaps we didna like the parsons we got,” said the Squire.

“Some sheep, the fractious ones, perhaps do not like the shepherds, sir. But the shepherds will guard them from the storm, for a’ that. Our Lord did not promise us obedient sheep with good manners and kind hearts full of duty. Many a sheep hae a divil.”

“A fine Christian sentiment, that!” said the Squire. “A Popish sentiment. We’d not allow the minister to say that of one of us.”

“Calvin did. And there was Knox, a braw man with his tongue. Are the sheep teaching the shepherds in this village, sir?”

“Oh, be damned to ye,” said the Squire.

“It isna for ye to say,” said Father Tom. He became engrossed with his work. He scrambled about, examined critically, chipped here and there. He waited to hear the horse go away, but there was only silence except for his own brisk noise.

Then the Squire said, “That slate there ye are holding, it’s nae good.”

“Can a man expect goodness in all things, in this world?” asked the priest. He examined the slate. “Ye are right, sir. I was cheated. It was your Auld Bob, a rascal.”

“How much did he charge ye?”

“Seven shillings for thirty.”

“Ye say he cheated you? Laddie, ye cheated him!” The Squire gave his harsh chuckle again. “He doesna like Romans. Ye fair diddled him!”

Father Tom did not reply to him. He was frowning at the slate. Ah, well, he could halve it and put it near the eaves in a little place. He chopped.

“I like a man of parts,” said the Squire.

“I can lay bricks, too,” said the priest.

“Can you, now! And nae doot build a whole hoose?”

“Aye,” said the priest with pride. “A good hoose.”

“Stick to your last,” said the Squire. “Ye are in the wrong pew.”

“Our Lord was a carpenter,” said Father Tom. “Will ye give me some nails, too?”

So the Squire, growling, dismounted again and handed up some nails. “Ye’ll not dine well, after the offerings,” he said.

“Nae doot,” said the priest. “Ye will have a hand in that the noo. Ah, weel, the good Lord went hungry too, and hadna hoose to guard His head.”

“Ye hae a rash tongue, laddie. What business is it of mine if ye starve? I’m not a Roman.”

“I hear rumors,” said Father Tom. “It’s a hard hand ye have on this hamlet. Ye smile, and a man has a full stomach. Ye frown, and a man dines on oatmeal with nae milk or treacle.” He looked down at the Squire. “There’s some who hae a great empire, and some who hae an empire the size of a man’s hand. Both are not content”

“I am a just man,” said the Squire, strangely furious.

“So say all the tyrants. There’s nae difference between ye.”

“Ye’ll mind that tongue of yours, lad, or the village will be seeing the last o’ ye.”

“Oh? Ye’ll know my Bishop then, and ye sip your whiskey together?”

“Blast you! I am a man of righteousness and justice, but I’ll nae endure a mock from such as ye.”

Father Tom slowly and carefully turned himself about so that his back leaned against the steep pitch of the roof.

“And, so you are a man of righteousness and justice? You admit that, yourself? There’s no humility in ye, but only pride, which is the sin above all that drove Lucifer into hell. ‘Here the Almighty hath not built for His envy.’ Nay, Squire MacVicar built his ain little hell.”

The Squire colored deeply, and then turned ghastly white. He grasped his crop and started up the ladder and Father Tom watched him come in sober silence. The Squire’s head rose to the level of the priest’s knees and the priest could see his eyes even more clearly in that stark light, and they were evil with rage and vengeance.

“Ye are a man much older than my Dada,” said the priest. “And I canna kick your face or strike ye back. It is a’ your advantage.”

The Squire looked at his crop, then at the priest, then he hurled the crop down to the ground, and the two men stared at each other in silence. Finally the Squire spoke, very softly, “And did ye think I’d raise my hand to a priest?”