Grandmother and the Priests (58 page)

He threw back his head and laughed again, that hearty and rollicking laughter. But suddenly he was sober. He looked at the Bishop.

“You will remember a vision you had, which you saw in your church when you were fainting of hunger. Tell no one of it!”

“Why shall I not?” said the Bishop.

“Because it is my truth, though it was prophesied by Another. You shall not see it, nor the young priests following you. But those not yet born will see it, and it will be my triumph, my final triumph. Many there will be who will try to escape it, but they shall not! For man is a curse upon the earth, which would be free of him, but would He listen to me, He Who knows all? No, He would not. Yet He and I know that it will come to pass on this earth, and we shall see,” said Lucifer, vengefully, “who will triumph then! For in the womb of time there is breeding a race of men who shall be my total servants. Hail and farewell, Bishop Quinn, and rejoice that you shall not see that day!”

“And that,” said Father Morley, “is the tale the Bishop told me, when I was young and despondent. I, too, wondered, for who could help it?

“I also have another thought: Did my blessed Bishop, by his deceit, which was caused half by fever and starvation and grief, lift Lucifer one step towards the heaven he had lost? He liked to think so, to the end of his life. But then, it may all have been a dream. Who is there to tell?

“However, when I strain my eyes upon the future, I wonder again. What horror is man preparing for himself, what suffering for his world? Be sure he is preparing!”

“There were dozens of other stories I heard in Grandmother’s house,” said Rose to her husband, “and I remember some of them, and others are only fragments. But these are the ones I best remember, for they made such a difference in my life. Grandmother never returned ‘to the Sacraments’, except on her deathbed. But the stories I heard from her friends helped bring me to them, and that’s ironic when you think of it. I rarely saw Grandmother after I was eight. She left Leeds; she went everywhere. She wanted to see the whole world, and love it.”

Her face saddened. “I can’t help thinking of her lying there alone in the churchyard, she who had never been alone before. And I can’t help thinking of the last years of her life, all her money gone, all her brothers and sisters dead, and no one to care at all whether she lived or died. She spent those last years with one of her sons, and they were quiet years. Knowing Grandmother, I feel they must have been a penance for all her sins. Do you remember how she looked when she was dead? Not peaceful or resigned. Just half amused, and — yes, relieved.”

“Still,” said William, “she had things in her life which we’ll never have. She lived in a heroic and exciting and adventurous world, for all its faults. She lived when men were really men, and not tailored careful conformists. The priests you told me of: they were heroes. And heroes are always full of legends, themselves, and legends are invented about them. I think that modern man will be forgotten, for he has no heroism about him, in his thoughts or in his life. He’s just a little nonentity, a mediocrity that wants only one thing: safety. That’s why the brood of Satan is having its own merry way these days. There’s no one to oppose it.”

“We don’t know that,” said Rose, looking at the emerald on her finger.

“At least, they’re not getting any publicity,” said William. “No one hears about them, or knows about them, and that is just like not existing at all. All we hear of is the devils, and they’re getting stronger every day, though our so-called intellectuals spend half their time assuring us that man is really good and noble and needs only to reform his social institutions to be absolutely perfect. As if man, himself, isn’t responsible for the world he is making! But he loves to whine that he isn’t responsible. He’s not evil; it’s just his neighbor.”

“I think,” said Rose, “that the worst thing in our modern world is that we have no dream. Our grandparents had one. It’s really the one and only dream — God and His love. They built their lives on it, and that’s why nations prospered then. Now I hear that the Americans are talking about ‘new goals’. That’s because they, and all of us in the world, have forgotten that we really have one goal, and that is God. We had a vision, but we drove it off. So we must invent petty little others, such as plumbing for the Hottentots, and fresh cows’ milk for the bushmen, and television for the natives in the Congo, and social engineers for Angola. What silly little visions! We’ve become a world of children, with all the vices of children, such as immediate small pleasures, shrill insistence, tantrums and invectives against all authority. Worse still, our worldly authorities are no more than children, themselves, except when they are devils. A world of children and evil! I wonder what it was Bishop Quinn saw in his vision so long ago?”

“I think we all know,” said William. “That’s why we are so afraid. We did it all. We are just frightened because of our inevitable punishment, whether we are a Russian or an American, an Englishman or a Frenchman.

“You remember what the hanging judges always say: ‘May God have mercy on your soul.’ Rose, somewhere in the world, among those who have dedicated their lives to God, there are men and women who pray that for us every hour. They are the heroes, though we don’t hear about them. It may be at the very last that their prayers will, indeed, save our souls. They can’t save our world, and that we know.”

Previews of eNet Press ebooks are just a click away.

Read an excerpt from another great book by Taylor Caldwell.

Choose to read just one, or all of them!

Please follow this link -

http://taylorcaldwell.us/tc_works.html

or visit our website

www.enetpress.com

eNet Press Inc.

16580 Maple Circle, Lake Oswego OR 97034

View a 90 second message

Why eNet Press could be your best source for ebooks:

http://enetpress.com/readers_movie/