Grandmother and the Priests (7 page)

When the girl saw the priest she uttered a broken cry and groveled at his feet, wordlessly praying for help. He pulled in a harsh breath. He struck the door with his fist. “Michael! In God’s Most Holy Name!” he cried.

There was a sharp silence. Then a muffled and bitter voice sounded from behind the door. “You could not help him! You would not save him! My brother! I’ve sinned against him, and my life is forfeit.”

The priest gasped, over and over, supported by the shepherds. His eye dropped to the weeping Dolores. He whispered to her, “Let your woman’s loving heart guide you! The tower — it faces the window of his room. Go up the tower — ”

“Father,” she sobbed. “The tower is old, falling. There are only a few steps.” She put her hands over her body, as if to protect her child. “Dark, dark and crumbling — how can I climb?” Her wet face, streaked with dust, was wild with terror.

“God will be with you,” said the priest. “As He was with me.” His strength had returned a little in his extremity. “Go. I am here.”

The girl pushed herself to her feet. The lantern showed her disheveled black hair lying on her shoulders, the anguished blue of her eyes, her white lips, her gray woolen gown swollen over the outline of her child. “Yes,” she whispered. She stumbled away and went down the stairs, and the priest said to one of the shepherds, “Go with her to the tower. Help her.”

The priest pulled in another breath. He leaned against the door. “Michael,” he said, in a stern and quiet voice. “You have been lying to yourself. That is sin enough. But you are thinking of a mortal sin; if you die in it, without absolution, then you will eternally separate yourself from God — ”

“So did my brother,” said Michael, wearily. “Go away, you priest.”

“Your brother did not die in mortal sin,” said the priest, “and you know that well. He was a child in mind and soul. He did not truly will his death. You are willing yours. Your parents, your brother, Our Lord — never will you see them, and always will you be separated from them, forever.”

“I believe nothing,” said Michael, in a terrible voice. “Had there been a God of mercy He should never have let my brother die, alone and in pain, the child he was — ” There was a sound of weeping. “I took from him his love. I married the girl who loved him. Out of my greed and heedlessness, thinking of none but myself.”

“Foolish lies,” said the priest. “Lies to yourself,” So long as he kept Michael talking he would remain alive. There was a window in the thick stone wall, and there were cracks in the crumbling tower, a few feet away. The priest could see the light of a lantern ascending through those cracks, but so slowly, so slowly. Once the light faltered, fell back. Then it climbed again, inch by inch. He thought of the dark there, the remnants of steps, the close and circling passage, the bats, the cobwebs, the sound of wind rushing through the round and fallen roof, the glimmering of the sinister moon striking against the inner stones, the struggling girl. What if she fell, and died, and her child with her? Oh, God! cried the priest to himself. Have I done wrong? It was a thought — an idea — have I done wrong?

He knew that Michael’s room had a huge bay, with a window, so that it faced the tower almost close enough to touch. He envisioned Michael in the room, with the rope about his neck.

“You speak of lies,” said Michael, in a low and dying voice. “There are lies that are not spoken. What did you give my brother, to save and comfort him? He came with a broken heart, and you murmured platitudes. His soul was wounded, and you gave him polished phrases.”

“Yes,” said the priest. “Forgive me. I have sinned before God. But I did not know! But you know, Michael, you know. I sinned in my stupid ignorance, but you wish to sin with the full assent of your will.”

“Give me absolution then, before the fact,” said Michael, jeering. “ ‘Forgive me, Father, for I am about to sin.’ ”

“Open the door, Michael. Let me hear your confession.”

“Ah, no, and that I will not be doing! Do you think me a child? You will seize and hold me, and keep me.”

“I cannot do that,” said the priest. “I’ve injured my leg.” He paused. “And I encountered the devil, himself, in your forest, who tried to prevent me from coming to you.”

Michael shouted with laughter. “Is it you who are speaking, Father? You who spoke of ‘superstition’? Who scolded the old women for their tales of Satanic encounters and the divils howling at night in the forest? Where is your Oxford teaching, Father, and your high-bred disdain for these tales?”

“I was wrong,” said the priest. “I saw Satan. He was waiting for your soul. He struck me down, Michael, and I am standing here with an injured leg, and my blood is on your floor.” His voice was humble, gasping.

There was a silence. Then Michael’s voice was nearer the door. “Oh, and it is so? Tell me, Father, and what was Satan like? He had the horns on him, and the tail, and he breathed fire?” The jeer was louder.

“No,” said the priest. The lantern was only five feet, now, below the ruined archway of the high window of the tower. It was faltering below, moving about. “He was not like that at all. He appears to us, Michael, in the forms that may please us most, so that he can the more easily deceive us.”

“It is not the Sassenagh speaking, surely?” said Michael, and he laughed his ugly laugh again. “And was it in the likeness of an Oxford don that he appeared to you, Father?”

“No,” said the priest, and now he wondered. “He appeared to me in the likeness of the young men I had known as friends in my Oxford days. Yes! That is it!”

“Then how will he appear to me, Father? In the guise of my brother? Then it will be welcoming him, I will.” He had lost the accents of his Dublin and London schools. Michael spoke like one of his own people. “D’ye know what I am doing now, Faether? I have just thrown the rope over the rafter. I am climbing the chair.
Confiteor Deo omnipotent . . . quia
peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo, et opere . . .
”

The priest fell to his knees and clasped his hands and laid his cheek against the locked door.
“Domine, convertere, et eripe animam meam; salvum me fac propter misericordiam tuam . . . !”
The shepherd started to kneel, then uttered a loud cry, and pointed. The priest forced himself to his feet, and looked through the narrow window.

Dolores was standing on the broken and shifting stones of the ruined window sill of the tower, facing her husband’s window. Her little hands clutched the sides; she wavered in the moonlight, and appeared like a ghost, herself, in her pale gown, her wind-flying hair.

“Michael! Look!” exclaimed the priest. “Your wife! Dolores, in the window of the tower! She will fall!”

There was an instant’s silence, then the rushing of feet, the falling of a chair inside the room. Then a loud and desperate shout that echoed all through the castle.

“Dolores! My love! Dolores! Go down!”

The girl’s voice was faint but clear. “No, and that I will not, Michael, unless you come for me and take me down. If you kill yourself, as you have sworn, then I and our child will die with you, for I will throw myself from the tower and we will live in hell forever — together!”

“Dolores!”

The girl said, “You have not known me, that I love you, that you are my heart and life, and that there is no living without you, Michael. But no, Michael, it is you who do not love me, so why should I live? Hang yourself, Michael, and take me with you.”

She stood, trembling, catching herself, high above Michael’s window. The priest stood at his own window, shaking, praying numbly. The girl looked at the moon. Its strange light glimmered on her face, the dark pits of her eyes, her eerie smile. The wind caught her gray gown and it blew out from her so that she seemed to be sailing outwards with it, and Michael screamed.

Then the wind died, and she was there, still safe, but only precariously so, teetering on the ledge of the window. “What?” she said. “And you have not gone yet, Michael, so I can join you?”

“Dolores,” groaned her husband. “My love, my life.”

She shook her head. “Not your love. Not your life, Michael. If it were so you would come for me, for I am tired and alone, and I cannot go down these stairs again. I am tired, Michael. It is so easy to die. A step, and I will fall.” She put out one small foot, and Michael screamed again. Dolores sobbed, miserably, and leaned forward.

Then there was the shrieking of a rusty lock and the wooden door was flung open, and Michael, with the rope still about his neck, charged out of the room. He did not see the priest, and so knocked him heavily to the stone floor. His footsteps clattered down the stairs. The outer door rocked open, and there was a scrambling on the rubble.

“Dolores! Dolores! Wait! I am coming!”

It was not possible that he could have gotten up those crumbling stairs, the empty spaces, so fast, yet he did. The priest, pulling himself to his feet, leaning against the window, was incredulous when he saw Michael behind the girl, lifting her from the ledge, then holding her, weeping together, in his arms.

“I baptized a fine son for them a few months later,” said Monsignor. (Grandmother’s great hall clock struck midnight.) “I remained in that parish for five years, and I baptized a beautiful little girl for them, and then another son.”

But that was of no importance to Grandmother. She waved her glittering hand impatiently, and cocked her head at Monsignor Harrington-Smith. “And did you truly see the devil, himself, in that forest, Monsignor?” she asked, squinting her green eyes mockingly.

“Yes, I did,” he said with quietness. “I had never seen him before, nor have I seen him since. To my knowledge,” he added, slowly. “Who knows how often all of us see him? Who can tell when we encounter him? He always speaks in the language we know, and with the pride in our own hearts. If he came to us, hateful and dreadful, this world would be a place of purity rather than of terror and despair and death — for we should avoid him. But he comes to us in the guise that will deceive us most, and sometimes that guise is the appearance of a friend.”

The other priests had listened with solemn faces and wide glistening eyes.

“Not always,” said Father McGlynn. “It reminds me — ”

Monsignor Harrington-Smith became aware of Rose. “Isn’t it time for the little girl to be in bed?” he asked.

“Hah!” said Grandmother. “It’s little sleeping she does, and I doubt she will sleep this night!”

Rose did, however. But her prayers were very fervent beforehand.

It was raining, of course, when Rose awakened the next morning.

Her bedroom was extremely damp and cold, so she hurriedly washed and dressed and went down to the kitchen, which was her favorite room. First of all, it was warm, and warmth is not to be despised in England. It was also very large, with red brick walls and red brick floor, and it had a fireplace which was always roaring and a black iron stove that was always deliciously fuming. One long wall was hung completely with copper vessels, from the size just large enough to boil an egg to one in which major laundry was done — all graduated neatly. A kitchen maid did nothing but polish those vessels with vinegar and rottenstone, the instant they were removed from the fire or stove. There was also, always, a copper teakettle simmering on the hob, singing away with all its little heart, and there was a big, brown earthen teapot steaming, good black tea such as only the British can make and which will put hair on anyone’s chest.

There was also Cook, a fat and lumbering woman with a secret fondness for children which she hid under a cross expression. She was invariably good for a small cake baked on top of the stove, round and thick, made of butter, flour, sugar and condensed milk, and ineffably delicious. Cook had a heavy hand for the kettle maid and the scullery maid, and a shouting voice for ‘the man’, a meek little person who did odd jobs around the house. As far as Rose knew from personal experience, he had no tongue at all, for she never heard him speak. But he did have a huge black mustache that spread out far beyond his cheeks, and which fascinated her. She never did find out what sort of ointment or wax he used to keep that mustache so rigid and in such perfect order and so brilliant. His name was Egbert.

A leaded window, across from the wall that held the kettles, looked out upon Grandmother’s vegetable garden. It reached almost from one corner to the other, and touched the ceiling. It had a window seat, with many cushions, and here Rose used to perch, sipping her hot good tea and eating the cake Cook had baked for her, lingering over every drop and every crumb.

So, with anticipation, she took her place on the window seat this morning, sniffing the fragrance of her little baking cake, the smoky odor of the fire, and the rugged scent of tea. The maids were whimpering, and Cook had the aspect of an impending cyclone. Rose knew the symptoms. Grandmother had Her Liver again.

Grandmother’s Liver always made a living hell of the household. It had a definite personality for Rose, though she had not the slightest idea about that interesting organ, where it was located, or even if it was attached to Grandmother at all. It lived apart, but imminent, like a brooding bogeyman, and was always attended by Grandmother’s oaths, which one could hear right down in the kitchen. “At it again, Her Liver,” Cook muttered. She mixed Epsom Salts with some water and ordered Egbert to take it to Grandmother. He shrank. “Go on,” said Cook commandingly, but not without some sympathy. “She won’t bite you.”

“Hah,” sniffed the youngest maid, sniggering.

“Cowards, all of you,” said Cook, in her Lancashire accent. Egbert looked at the glass in his hand, and his expression was that of one about to burst into tears. “Go
on
!” shouted Cook. “Or she’ll be down here, herself!”

That was enough to frighten Egbert even more, if possible, and he darted out of the room with the foaming glass. “And why’n’t you take it yerself, Cook?” asked the kettle maid, with some impudence. Cook, who was stirring an iron kettle of soup, lifted her ladle threateningly. “Keep a civil tongue in your head,” she admonished the girl. She scowled at Rose. “It’s you, is it?”

It was obviously Rose. She discreetly looked away, trusting in Cook’s good nature, and regarded the sopping March garden outside, all gray and black and withered stalks under an ominous sky. The rain washed the windows; the fire crackled; hissing water was poured on fresh tea. She heard Grandmother screaming from far up in the house. “It’s the drink and the rich food,” muttered Cook, who indulged in both, herself.

Then Rose saw a large pan near her, on the window seat. It was filled to the brim with murdered larks, dead little songsters whose lovely voices would never again warble at heaven’s gate, quiet little wings that would never rise from warm earth again in a flare of joy and exultation, little claws that would never mark their hieroglyphics in dust again. Rose looked at the three or four dozen of them in the pan, and cried out in repulsion and sorrow, and almost fell from her seat.

“For God’s sake,” said Cook, angrily. “Wot’s wrong with the brat? Speak up; wot’s wrong with you?”

Rose could only point, crying, at the larks. Cook shrugged, stared. “Wot of it? Fresh larks, at the market this morning. For a pasty for the Madam, and her guests. A pasty,” she repeated, trying to make the child understand. “A big pie. Very good, indeed. Ever so good.”

Rose was horrified. She could have accepted murder in time, but not the eating of the fruits of murder. She ran from the window seat and sat on the stool near the fire, crying loudly. She had no words to convey her grief and loathing. She averted her face.

Cook was mystified. “Wot’s got inter ‘er?” she demanded of the maids. “Not got The Liver too, has she?”

The maids giggled. One of them went to the window seat and removed the pan. “Squeamish, like,” she said.

“No worse than chickens, and chickens is the dirtiest fowl, they are,” said Cook. “Now, now, stop the whimpers; here’s the cake, and very good it is, and fresh tea.” But the cake choked Rose and she could not swallow the tea. She went back to her room and cried and did not know why she cried. She only knew she was lonely, and that the wind was howling and the rain lashing at the windows, and that somehow there was no one in all the world except herself, wrapped in a blanket and huddling in a chair for warmth.

She must have slept, for eventually someone was shaking her, and there was Cook with a tray and an uncomfortable smile on her face. “I’ve brought you some hot broth, mutton and barley,” she said. “And a scone or two, and marmalade, and tea. Scones just from the oven, buttered. Now, you’ll be a good girl, won’t you, and eat it all for Cook?”

Cook sat on the edge of the bed and fed Rose like a baby, and Rose could not offend the good woman. After a little Cook said, “It does no good to cry over things you can’t help, Rosie. And the sooner you harden your heart, the less you’ll suffer as you go through life. There, now. You’ve finished the broth. Have a bit of the scone.”

“I don’t have to eat — ” Rose said, imploringly.

“The pie? Certainly not,” said Cook, in a sturdy tone. “I’ll make a beef-and-kidney little pasty for you, all for yourself. There, now, give us a smile. And if you’re a good girl, you can have your dinner right downstairs with me, in the kitchen.” This was a favor, indeed, for Cook ate alone, majestically, and not even Grandmother dared disturb her serious meals.

Rose went down to the kitchen with Cook, who had baked the lark-pasty while Rose had slept, and had discreetly hidden it in the pantry. It was jolly there, in the late afternoon, with the fire dancing on the brick wall, the kettle singing, the girls joking, and Cook always threatening meek little Egbert, who came and went with his brushes and pails and polishing-cloths, his small figure wrapped in a blue-and-white-striped apron from neck to ankles. The wind and the rain increased in force, but they only added to the air of warmth and comfort in the kitchen now. The copper vessels shone like gold on the wall, and there was the rich fragrance of cake and soup and a roast wafting through the room. At tea, Rose had jam sandwiches and a slice of cake, and a boiled egg. This was the loveliest place in the world. And she would dine with Cook. Rose reminded her of this frequently, until she groaned with exasperation.

They had a fine dinner together, of beef-and-kidney pie, and the larks were almost forgotten. The kitchen bell jangled on its spring, and Cook glowered at it. “She knows as it’s My Dinner,” she said, not moving. “She can wait.” The bell flew wildly. “Humph,” said Cook, buttering another scone. The kettle maid left before dinner; the scullery maid was never permitted in the other parts of the house. She peered through the doorway where she was washing up. “Ain’t that her tearing the bell to bits?” she asked.

“It is,” said Cook, comfortably.

“Maybe she’s got a fit,” suggested the girl, with some happiness.

“Not her,” said Cook. “It’s fits she gives to others. She’ll wait till I’ve done.”

But Grandmother did not wait. After about five minutes she charged into the kitchen, wrapped in a red silk robe which gave her hair, on kid curlers, an orange tinge. Rose had never before seen Grandmother without ‘paint and powder’. The Liver, her temper, and her lack of cosmetics made her skin darkly sallow and coarse, and it was sprinkled all over with big gingery freckles. Her pale mouth was writhing with rage, and all hell was in her green eyes.

“And you didna hear me ring, damn you?” she screamed at Cook.

Cook turned slowly on her immense rump, like a liner moving into position. She regarded steaming Grandmother with dispassionate dignity.

“It is My Dinner, Madam,” she said, and pointed at the kitchen clock on its shelf. “It was agreed — I think, Madam — when I entered this household, after Lady Humphrey had made me a much better offer, and where my wits were I don’t know — it was agreed that My Dinner was not to be disturbed under any circumstances. I’m not one as breaks my word, nor do I expect others to do so.” She set her teacup down smartly.

Grandmother paused. Women like Cook were not to be had at the beckoning of a finger. She said, still simmering, but in a lower tone, “It’s Elsie’s day off, and that you knew, Cook. You could have done me the favor, your damned dinner or no damned dinner. It’s nae wonder ye have the backside on you like a lorry horse.”

“My anatomy,” said Cook, with majesty, “belongs to me. I gave you no rights to it, Madam, for your uncalled-for comments.” Rose gazed at Cook with admiration, awed at her lofty periods.

“Oh S — ,” said Grandmother, and she suddenly grinned.

“Wot can I do for you, Madam?” asked Cook. “I’m one as lives and lets live.”

Grandmother snorted. She turned her blue-green glare on Rose. “It wasna you I wanted, Cook. It was the bairn I was looking for, and I couldna find her, and I rang the bell. It’s a fancy my friends have taken for her, and they’ll be wanting her ladyship’s presence. After dinner,” added Grandmother, hastily, no doubt understanding that Rose had innocently put some curb on her tongue the night before. “And where has her ladyship been?” she demanded of Rose, the fierce eyes looking like green fire.

“With me, Madam. I invited her to have dinner with me,” said Cook.

“No!” exclaimed Grandmother, marveling, “and you not wanting the Angel Gabriel at your dinner, if himself should ask!”

Cook lifted her large arm grandly, and poured another cup of tea.

“I makes exceptions, sometimes,” she said. “Sometimes,” she added.

“Aweel, aweel,” said Grandmother, marveling still more. She contemplated Rose thoughtfully. “And have ye nae better dress than that damned Tartan frock?” she demanded.

“No, Grandmother. Except my Sunday-school blue wool. And it’s only Thursday.”

“Put on the damned blue wool,” said Grandmother. “Sunday!” she snorted again. “A shame it is that ye havena proper clothes. I had twenty frocks at your age.”

“I believe,” said Cook, “that Leeds do have shops, though they’re closed now. But tomorrow.”

Grandmother did not like this hint at all. “You’ll be minding your own business, Cook,” she said, curtly. “It’s nae your pocket. Mind you, now,” she said to Rose. “At half-past nine.”

Though Grandmother was of the school that believed children should rarely if ever be seen before their twenty-first birthday, she had no interest in their bedtime. Cook shook her head as Grandmother flounced from the room. “It’s a good thing, it was, that you napped this afternoon, Rosie,” she said.

She permitted Rose to help the scullery maid dry the dishes, and then she took her upstairs to wash her and comb her hair and tie it with a blue ribbon. She buttoned the many back buttons on Rose’s fine blue wool frock, which was becoming a little too short. “There’s some,” she commented, kindly, “that does not like red hair. I fancy it, myself. Tomorrow, I’ll curl it proper, with the iron. Too late now.”

She led Rose to the door of the drawing-room, admonished her to behave herself, and Rose was on her own again.

Rose recognized some of the priests from the night before, but three were not there tonight. Three strange ones had taken their place.

Rose’s old friends greeted her with affection and she was introduced to the three burly strangers. She gathered, later, that one had just arrived from Scotland with gossip and messages, and had dropped in on Grandmother hopeful, as were the others, that he might save her soul. The rich brown burr of him rang heartily in the room, though he was a very old man, and Rose listened to it in her chimney corner. She noticed that the Scots priest laughed much less than did the others, and she thought him ill at first for all his height and his air of ancient vitality. As for Grandmother, she had made a miraculous recovery, her lips very red, her nose very white, and her hair done in an elaborate style. She wore a black velvet dress of more discreet cut than of the night before, for Scotsmen are priggish and even those laymen who indulge in immorality do it as modestly as possible. Grandmother said, “Ah, Faether MacBurne, and ye’ll not be disappointing us?”

Father MacBurne was long and lean, with the red, prominent face of the Scot, the curved Semitic nose of the true Celt, and the Celt’s fierce eyes. But his hair was very white though thick, and his hands were slightly gnarled. “Very weel, Rose Mary,” he said, “but it’s nae a sad story like the others.”