Grandmother and the Priests (55 page)

The Bishop’s heart was loud in his ears, and thudding and trembling, and all his pulses throbbed in his hunger-stricken body. He knew the greatest terror of his life.

“Don’t be afraid, my lord,” said Lucifer, and his voice was like rolling music. “I see you know me. You are a very astute man. Do I seem very formidable to you, in all truth?”

The Bishop’s mouth and lips and throat were as dry as dust. It was some moments before he could reply. “But this is just an apparition of you,” he whispered. “You do not truly look like this.” His mind and his wits swirled; he tried to remember prayers and exorcisms, but they were like dropping water in his thoughts.

Lucifer cocked an indulgent eyebrow, and his face glowed. “And how do you know I do not look like this, my lord? After all, I am an archangel, and I was considered the most beautiful of all — by Him. I was also the most beloved. Or, have you forgotten?”

Now, like all devout churchmen, the Bishop had often thought of Lucifer and sometimes his thoughts had fascinated him. Ancient church-fathers had speculated on him and his dreadful empire of the pit, this tremendous angel who had fallen from heaven and who was still an archangel.

“But,” said the Bishop, “you are a spirit; you are purely spirit. How can I see with my eyes of flesh?” He clenched his tiny hands together, and trembled even more.

“Come, come,” said Lucifer. “Men have often seen me, through the ages. You have read of that. But perhaps you do see me with your eyes of flesh, and with the eyes of your soul also. Am I as fearful as you have heard, and as ghastly?”

The Bishop looked at him fully again. He admitted, “No. But then, you take many forms, I have heard. You seem like a young man in his pride of youth — ”

“I am in the pride of my youth. Archangels do not age.” Lucifer was amused. “It is true that I have appeared to men in the guises they found the most familiar, and so they were disarmed, but they clothed me with their imaginations. You see me as I am, for you are an old man and you have never lied in your life, and have no delusions.”

“It is true,” said the Bishop, “that you are very handsome. But — ”

“Women have always found me so,” said Lucifer. “I am irresistible to endless multitudes of them. Men have found me congenial, from the very beginning. I am much less unbending than — Him.” As he said that word his face burned more darkly, as if with inner fire. “I understand mankind, though — He — took on your flesh and lived among you. He understood men, but how many men have understood — Him? He humiliated Himself to the cross and to death, forgotten by those He had loved and saved, abandoned by His friends. I tell you, my lord: once men have known me and accepted me, they have never forgotten me!”

He held up his palm to the quaking Bishop, who, however, was humanly curious and whose heart was calming. “I have helped millions in their direst hours, when their prayers were unheard by — Him. I have never failed to respond to a man’s cry, when he called to me. But millions have not heard His voice — in answer — nor have they been helped.”

“That is a lie!” cried the Bishop. “You know it is a lie! Our Lord called you the father of lies, a liar from the beginning!”

“But, His Father mourned me,” said Lucifer, and for a single instant there was the most profound and supernatural anguish on his beautiful face. “He called me Star of the Morning. I stood at His hand, and knew His glory — and I loved Him. I knew Him for what He was, in all that He was. I saw Him face to face; I knew the Beatific Vision. Tell me, my lord, has there been a man on this world, of which I am Prince, who can say that with truth?”

“No,” admitted the Bishop. He thought for a few moments. “You have told me you loved Him. How, then, could you have rebelled against God, and declared yourself His enemy?”

Lucifer smiled very faintly, and with a contempt beyond the contempt of men.

‘Your theologians, my lord, have pondered that, and have tried to explain it. They never will, with their brains of mud, with their little hearts and their feeble imaginings, with their tiny fantasies. That is between me — and Him.” Again the anguish charged his face and all at once the Bishop fully knew the horror of hell, and the torment of it, and the loneliness. This tremendous archangel was the Terror, the awful Adversary of all that lived, but his grief was beyond all imagination, and perhaps greater than his hatred.

“I must ask you,” said Lucifer, “not to speak of Him again to me. There are matters beyond endurance. Look at me. I am as wise as He, and as immortal. I shall endure forever, as He will endure. Enough. We shall not talk of Him again.” His face was so terrible now that the Bishop felt that he was about to be consumed and disintegrated by its glow.

But he said, “Had you been as wise — and what blasphemy that is! — you’d never — ” But the presence seemed to expand, to swell, and for a terrifying instant to fill every corner of the room, the howling world outside, the very universe. The Bishop shrank in his chair.

‘What do you want of me?” he whispered. “I, a poor Bishop in my sorrow?”

“I want — you know what I want,” said Lucifer, who was again the most handsome man in the world, the most genial, the most charming, the most sympathetic and elegant.

“My soul!” cried the Bishop, and fumbled for his pectoral cross. Lucifer’s eye saw the movement, and saw the cross, and his dark face darkened even more. He put up his hand against it, as if it shone like the sun. The jewels on his fingers appeared living, each one quivering with sentient life and throwing showers of colored sparks into the little room.

“Your soul,” said Lucifer, and dropped his hand. He was smiling again.

“How was it possible to come into my house?” said the Bishop, having another thought. “I was in the midst of my prayers — ”

“I am able to go anywhere,” said Lucifer. “And I usually interrupt men in their prayers. For how dare men speak to — ” He paused. “If there is blasphemy, surely that is the most intolerable of them all. Intolerable.” All at once there was a most savage and enraged glitter in the splendid blue eyes, and the Bishop shrank again and fumbled for his cross.

“But let us discuss our affairs,” said Lucifer, and he was again the most engaging of apparitions. “Your soul.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said the Bishop, and even in his dread and fear he was indignant. “My soul is not for you, and if you were as wise as my poor baker you would know that.”

“You were a very sinful and violent young man, many years ago,” said Lucifer. “I never forget such men. I was often close to you in those days. I am close to you again, tonight.”

The Bishop blessed himself hurriedly. Lucifer watched with fresh indulgence.

“You were in despair tonight,” he said. “And despair is a cry to me. Or, is your memory failing again, my lord?”

“I was not in despair for myself,” said the Bishop. He could hear the ticking of his clock on the mantel, very loud, very hurried, as if it had gone a little mad. He could hear the gale against the windows; it seemed filled with multitudes of lost and wailing voices, screams and cries and implorations.

“You were in despair for the sake of those foolish young men and women who will assuredly die in a week or so,” said Lucifer. “If you had had faith you should not have wept so, and been so unconsoled.”

“I have faith,” said the Bishop. He could not take his attention from the rushing voices in the gale, and he was trembling still again until his clothing shook and all his flesh.

“Then, with your faith, go to the prisons, demand that they be opened at a single word, and deliver the imprisoned,” said Lucifer. “Did not — there was some mention, was there not, that faith even as small as a mustard seed could move mountains?”

The Bishop was silent.

“You do not have that faith, and that is why I have come to you.”

“There is such a thing as God’s will,” said the Bishop, and his old face was resolute and gray. “If it be His will — ”

“You were not satisfied with His probable will,” said Lucifer, “and that is why you were wrestling in your prayers. You did not pray, ‘Thy will be done.’ You prayed that it would not be done, but that your friends would be saved.”

Then the Bishop knew that he had reached the ancient paradox of man’s prayer: “Thy will be done — but do not will it!” He pondered on that, too.

“I was not asking anything for myself,” he said at last. “I was asking mercy for others, if it be His will.”

“Were you?” asked Lucifer. “I listened to you for a long time. You said nothing about — will. You asked for mercy.”

“We are permitted that. We are urged to pray for that.”

“We are getting nowhere,” said Lucifer, with impatience. “I am very direct in my ways, and you are discourteous, for I asked you not to speak again of — Him. Your young people will die, in spite of your prayers, unless you are willing to sacrifice yourself for them. And did not — was there not a Sacrifice — to save many more than these? Would you balk at a much lesser Sacrifice?”

Then the Bishop knew that he was being most subtly tempted, by the most terrible and subtle Tempter of them all, who could even speak of mercy and sacrifices and to the very heart of vulnerable and suffering man. How many men, thought the old Bishop, with new and horrifying insight, had given their souls to save others, in their generosity and pity? Who knew? Lucifer, it appeared, did not always tempt men through their evil nature, but by the deepest impulses and the noblest sentiments which can live in the heart of humanity. He exploited the best that was in a man, and the most sacrificial. He implied to man that he could do what God would not do, or could not do. And the man who listened —

Lucifer was a liar. He could no longer speak truth. The Bishop, reassured, drew a deep and shuddering breath. “You could not save those young folk.”

“You have forgotten. I always keep my promises. There is not the smallest legend that, having given my word to do what is desired, I did not keep it.”

The Bishop had to admit that to himself. He could not remember a pact with the devil which had not been kept. For a price. It was very confusing. He could see the faces of those in prison, and could hear their weeping again. He could hear their voices in the gale. They tore at his heart. His eyes filled with tears.

He was so distracted that when he felt something brushing against his little knee he started violently and looked down. It was only the ginger cat, fat and huge, whom Eileen, with fond youthful memories of her old brother, called Mustard. Mustard, like all her ancient and aristocratic tribe, had her own fancies and her own bullying manners and disdains. Eileen kept her not so much as a pet but for her redoubtable ways concerning mice and rats. (Mustard, at this time, was the only plump member of the family.) Consequently there was esteem and respect between those the Bishop called ‘my two colleens’. A lover of animals, the Bishop had greeted the advent of Mustard as a kitten, some five years ago, with enthusiasm and with endearing cries, and Mustard knew at once that she need not woo him but could manage him nicely and bully him out of tidbits by a mere whine. She kept her leg-brushing for Eileen, and her lap-leaping for her mistress, and all her purrs. She rarely even bothered to turn her head in the direction of her clerical servant, and affected to ignore his presence at all times.

The chair in which Lucifer was now sitting was Mustard’s by right of appropriation. She permitted only Eileen to sit in it, and then would curl herself on her mistress’s knees before the fire. Once the Bishop had absently dropped into it and Mustard had snarled like a tiger and crouched for the charge, all her ginger hair bristling and her golden eyes filled with fire. Since then he had avoided the chair. And she had never sat in his nor approached him voluntarily except when she decided that some rare delicacy he was eating should be shared with her.

“Mustard,” murmured the Bishop, weakly, as the cat pressed herself against his legs. Even in this disastrous hour he could feel surprise that she had approached him. The pressure against his leg became heavier and stronger, for Mustard was not only big but she was powerful, and all at once the Bishop remembered the dog he had had as a boy, who would press himself like this against his little master when he had felt his master was threatened. It was incredible, thought the Bishop, vaguely, that Mustard, who was a cat and who disdained him, should lean against him as if protecting —

Mustard’s head and shoulders extended beyond the Bishop’s knee. Her back was arched stiffly and powerfully; her neck was stretched in Lucifer’s direction and her great mouth was opened in a tigerish snarl and from her throat there issued a guttural and savage sound. Her golden eyes shimmered in the faint firelight, and they were distended and filled with hate, rage and fear. Her long thick tail was twice its size, and twitching ominously.

If the Bishop had thought, a few times tonight, that he was suffering from hallucinations because of hunger and grief, he no longer thought it. For Mustard was definitely seeing Lucifer and all his danger and terror. She was definitely protecting her old clerical admirer, and preparing to give her life for his if necessary, a most uncatlike resolution. She was horribly frightened; her stiff body was full of tremors. Nevertheless, she was threatening Lucifer, she a mere, haughty cat busy with the affairs of her life. Her snarling voice, brave and without a whine, was challenging the mighty Adversary.

“My cat,” murmured the Bishop, “seems to see you.”

“So she does,” said Lucifer, staring at the animal. “But then, all animals see the unseen; it is only man, with his muddy eyes, who sees darkly. The muddy eyes of muddy men! Yet — He — dishonored the glory He had created by giving not only life to the image of mud but giving it a soul, also! And then dying for it! Yet rare has been the man who has possessed the valor, the decency, the honor, the majesty and dignity, and the innocence of even the least important of animals. The vilest of the vile is man, and his history is written in the blood of his fellows. I tempted him, it is said. It needed little temptation! Not even the most starving and the most lowly of curs would have succumbed to temptation so easily. Ah, you will speak to me of free will, which you will say only man possesses. But I tell you that animals possess that free will also. If they did not, that lovely cat of yours would not now have resolved to attack me to the death if I lay a hand upon you, and that is not in the nature of the feline family, which is eminently sensible in all its ways. I have respect for animals, who do not betray or murder their kind and do not war against their kind. I respect their noble innocence. But for man,” said Lucifer, his voice dropping to a sound of muted thunder, “I have nothing but detestation and regard him with horror.”

The Bishop gaped. “You — you have
horror
for us? You?”

“Certainly,” said Lucifer, with a contemptuous smile. “Are you not the horror of all that lives? What animal does not flee from you, and know you? What wild thing comes to you with love and trust? The very worms wriggle away from your disease, your contamination. Man is the enemy of everything that lives. And I am his enemy, always, that unlovely thing, that degraded thing, that most unspeakable thing. You know I have sworn to destroy him, out of my detestation. When I heard, in the Councils of Heaven, that — He — had decided, long before your solar system and your world was ever created, to give His Only Begotten Son for your salvation, I revolted in disgust and horror. Do you blame me? What angel or archangel with intelligence would not have recoiled at the thought, and revolted?”

The Bishop, forgetting his fear, forgetting the constant snarling of Mustard, pondered on this, for he loved philosophy and was a man who liked to hear opposing viewpoints on a theological basis. After a little he said, “It is true that we are terrible and monstrous. Nevertheless, if Our Lord was willing to take upon Himself our human nature and die for us so that we might be saved from death, then we must possess something worthy.”