Answer as a Man Read online

  “Good!” said Bernard. “I’ll buy him drawers to match.”

  Father Sweeney compressed his lips to stop a short laugh. He was a very serious young man. “He also engages in self-flagellation when he is alone.”

  “Now, does he?” said Bernard with interest. “Making up for lost time. A clout or two a day, which I used to wish to give him when he was home, would have prevented that. But better, as the Americans say, late than never.”

  “We don’t approve of it,” said Father Sweeney. He coughed a little. “Father O’Connell is under the impression that John is striving for sainthood.”

  “Nothing but the best for Father Garrity, is it?”

  “Bernard, you’re taking this too facetiously.”

  “Not I! I told you so two years ago when he first went there. But who listens to an old bucko like me?”

  “A year ago Father O’Connell suggested a Trappist monastery to John.”

  Bernard held up a hand. “I know. That wouldn’t suit Jack Garrity. He’d have to keep his mouth shut most of the time instead of talking about ‘sin.’ And he’d have to work like the devil. He wants to be out in the world denouncing everything that is pleasant and lovable and laughing. He wants to inflict pain on others, or at least rule their lives, which would be the same thing, I’m thinking.” He smiled at the priest. “There was a touch of that in you, too, once upon a time, Father. But you learned, that you did. Jack will never learn. What other crimes has he been committing? In another family he’d have made an excellent burglar or a confidence man. He has the talents for it.”

  Father Sweeney sighed. “He doesn’t seem to understand the doctrine of limbo. He believes in infant damnation, or implies that at least.”

  “So did the old missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant. He is just reverting to type, as they say.”

  “This is a grave matter, Bernard. You don’t seem to grasp the gravity.”

  “Do I not, indeed! I was one year, only, from ordination, and then was booted out. Well, boot Jack out, too.”

  Father Sweeney was suddenly interested. “Why were you booted out, Bernard?”

  Bernard leaned back in his straight rickety chair. “There was an old priest. Like Jack.” He grinned. “I clouted him.”

  “Dear me,” said the priest, who had wanted to do that several times during his own studies in the seminary.

  “It wasn’t only that,” said Bernard. “I didn’t agree very often, either. I didn’t think a man and his wife should live together if they hated each other, even if there were brats in the house.”

  Father Sweeney gasped. “You believed in divorce?”

  “Better divorce than murder, and burying a body in the cellar, as so many desperate husbands—and wives—do. A hell of a shock to the nerves, that is. Too much after a lifetime of strain. Yes, I know. ‘These whom God hath joined …’ Now, there’s the question! A man marries a hellion, or a poor soul of a woman marries a drunken brute. A vile sinner marries a saint. Did God join them in the beginning, or did the Devil? That’s the question!”

  Father Sweeney closed his eyes wearily. Bernard said, “Now, then, Father. Should a good man or woman be condemned to a long hell on earth in a bad marriage? Yes, yes. You would say such suffering ‘elevates’ the soul. I don’t believe it; never did. As I said, it often leads to murder. There’re few saints who revel in suffering, Father. Or enjoy it, except if they’re deranged.”

  The priest was aghast. “You mean you think that the multitudes of faithful souls who died for their faith were ‘deranged’?”

  “Some,” said Bernard hardily. “But as I have never met a saint, except one old priest in Ireland, and my son’s widow, Katie, I am not one to judge. But many’s the saint that goes unrecognized and unsung. It takes a little touch of the music hall to be recognized as a saint, humility or not. You will notice that the saints were always loudly praised for their ‘humility.’ I often wonder who started the rumor in the beginning.” He paused and looked surprised. “Perhaps that spalpeen of a grandson of mine has the makings of a saint after all! He was always jabbering about ‘humility,’ and a prouder young ass than he I never saw!”

  Father Sweeney, feeling somewhat agitated, stroked his hair again. He reached for his clay pipe, and took his time cleaning and filling it with cheap tobacco. Bernard did the same. He saw that the sky outside was effulgent with blue light; the window had been opened a little, and a sweet breeze entered the little study. Out of the corner of his eye Bernard regarded the priest with compassion. What the good Lord saved me from! he thought.

  “Yes,” said Father Sweeney with some sadness. “John is proud. He seems to think that he is without the usual sins, and so is far superior to the other young seminarians and even to some of his teachers.”

  “Well, let them boot him out, as I said.”

  “I thought you could offer some suggestions, Bernard.”

  “I just did.”

  “You can’t be serious!”

  Bernard considered. “Well, then. If you boot him out, he’ll be back on our hands, and that’s a thought to squeeze the soul. I blessed the day he left with his bags. I have a thought. Add some iron balls to the ends of the whips he’s using on himself.”

  “Bernard.”

  “Or set him to cleaning all the middens every day.”

  Father Sweeney blew out a large puff of smoke. “John decided one day, as a penance, to scrub the kitchen from ceiling to floor, and all the cupboards, and the contents of the cupboards.” The priest coughed delicately. “Unfortunately, the soapy, dirty scrub brush fell into the kettle of soup old Sister Mary Elizabeth had on the stove.”

  “And?” said Bernard, leaning forward.

  The priest kept his face sober. “She lost her temper, I am afraid. She beat him about the head and shoulders with a heavy iron frying pan. It was thought, for a day or two, that he had a concussion.”

  “And he didn’t?” said Bernard after a fit of hoarse laughter.

  “No.”

  “Sad, that. Might have improved his intelligence. What if I write him a letter and tell him that if he’s booted out he’s not to come back to my house, but get a job, say, in the coal mines? That should give him thought.”

  Father Sweeney thought so too. But he said, “Do write to him, Bernard, as I will, too. He’s determined to be a priest. I must remind him of certain virtues—”

  “He doesn’t believe in virtues. But he does believe in sins.”

  “I wish you would ask his sister to write him, too.”

  “Joanie.” Bernard considered, and his hard old face became tough. “Now, there’s two of a kind. They recognized that in each other. Yes. She is the only one who could influence him. I’ll tell her tonight that Jack will be booted out and put on the street if he doesn’t improve. She’s so proud of the idea of her dear brother being ordained. A threat that he might not be should frighten the—”

  “Bernard,” said the priest with haste.

  “Well. Yes, that should be enough. She might take time to think of the consequences, if she can pull herself out of her dreamings about that redheaded rascal Lionel Nolan.”

  The priest said with rebuke, “It was only last Monday that Mr. Pat Mulligan remarked how fortunate he was to have Lionel in charge of the dining room. The lad is not yet nineteen, and is very ambitious and efficient and untiring—rare attributes these degenerate days—and is full of ideas—”

  “Schemes, you mean, Father.”

  “Which have excited the approval of the patrons, Bernard.”

  “Oh, he does love his work!” Bernard’s face heavily darkened. “He’s after Joanie, and she’s after him.” He reflected. “Come to think of it, they’d make a good pair, though I hate to think of a Garrity woman married to such as Lionel.”

  “Lionel has had his salary increased to twenty dollars a week, and Mr. Mulligan is not rash with money. He says Lionel is worth every penny, including the tips.”

  “Jason’s also getting
twenty dollars a week, Father.”

  “Diligent,” said the priest. “Yes, Mr. Mulligan told me.” The priest spoke with some reluctance. “Well, diligence does make up for a lot of lesser things.”

  Bernard regarded him with gray fire in his small eyes. “I resent that, Father. Jason has more intelligence in his … his finger than Jack and Lionel have in their whole brains! A better boyo was never born! He has more than ‘diligence.’ He has a mind and a heart and most of the heroic virtues the Church is always talking about. Pity you never saw them. That beautiful old crucifix hanging there over the high altar, Father, that old Joe left to Jason—”

  Father Sweeney broke in, astonished. “But Jason told me that you had insisted he give it to my church!”

  Bernard’s face changed to a softness rarely seen by anyone but Kate. He nodded. “Yes, he would say that. It’s just like Jason. Never wanting any credit for himself. Kind, generous, quiet about himself. He’ll go farther than that Lionel devil, mind my words. And always with honor. Slower, but with honor.” He added, “Pat Mulligan told me that Jason is his—what was it?—yes, second in command. That’s what he said. Oversees everything. When Pat had the lung fever last winter, Jason took full charge, and nothing went wrong.” But Bernard asked himself: When did I last hear him laugh? Why doesn’t he go dancing on a Saturday night with the other lads? Why is it only work, and books? That is all he talks about, and his poor mother. “And that minds me, Father. My poor Katie must have a room to herself in the Sisters’ Hospital. We can afford it now, if not too much.”

  “You must speak to Sister Maria Francis,” said Father Sweeney with pity.

  “You can put in a word, Father. I talked to Sister last week, and so did Jason. She said there was no room in that damned poor little place. They can make room! Katie’s dying, and she wants to die in dignity, with no one but the good sisters there. She doesn’t want Jason and me to see how she is now …” His strong and resonant voice almost broke. At Kate’s pleading, he tried not to think of her condition. He tried, but he could not look on that haggard face with its feverish bright cheeks and eyes and see all that sweet patience without anguish.

  The priest sighed. “We need only twelve thousand dollars more for the new small wing,” he said. “We have five thousand. That is, we did have until we bought those two old houses next door. Twelve thousand dollars is a lot of money, I am afraid. The parishioners do try very hard, but they are all so poor. Mr. Mulligan gave a thousand dollars at Christmas. We used that to renovate the roof and put in a new furnace and put down concrete sidewalks. But the rooms will have to wait.”

  “And the papers are talking about a panic next year,” said Bernard. “Things are pretty bad now as it is. But let us cheer up. We are going to have a war. That should make things prosperous.” His voice had become bitter.

  Father Sweeney was astounded. Was Bernard out of his mind? “War? What war? With whom?”

  Bernard shrugged. “Father, I read all the papers. The bloody Sassenagh said in his Parliament, just recently, that Germany was ‘invading all our traditional markets in the world.’ That’s what wars are always about: markets. Call it territory, as they used to do, but it is markets in these days. Sure, and it’s the same thing. And there’s the bankers. They always invest in wars. That’s what Lincoln said, too. He hated and feared them like poison, and with good reason, Father. You should read more than your breviary and the religious rot … Sorry, Father. But there will be a war. D’you think the Spanish-American War was fought for some damned nonsense such as honor or ‘being attacked‘? They’re just excuses. We got Cuba and the other islands, didn’t we, out of that war? Well.”

  He stood up, and he stared at the silent priest grimly. “I’m thinking of Jason, Father. He’s twenty now. Old enough for a war—to die in—for the bankers and the munitions makers, and national prosperity.”

  “I’m afraid—” the priest began.

  “So am I, Father. But not about the same thing. You’ll put in a word for Katie? Jason and I are paying five dollars a week for her. We’ll try to make it more, when she has a room of her own.”

  He walked out into the warm spring air. Even the ugly old street seemed to shine with happy light. But Bernard did not see it. He was thinking of too many terrible things. The world had never been a good place in which a civilized man could live in peace. But the future glared into a far greater hell. Bernard knew that in his soul. He went to the shop where he worked.

  There were twenty-eight dollars a week “coming into the house,” as Bernard said. But there was Kate, who cost five dollars a week, and her doctor, whose bill was never less than ten dollars a month, and her medicines which he prescribed, and the rent had been raised two dollars a month, and there was John in his seminary, and a “woman” who had to be paid three dollars a week to care for the house and Joan now that Kate was no longer there, and fuel—the landlord no longer supplied coal, for the house now had gas—and food and clothing and repairs, and many other devourers of money, including dentists and offerings on Sundays and holy days of obligation. Joan’s embroideries brought in very little, for “times were hard,” as people complained. The cost of food had increased, too, and as Joan was “delicate,” the doctor said, and as Bernard was fearful that the girl might come down with the consumption, she must have good nourishment. She had developed a faint little cough like John’s when her brother and grandfather were present. There were also the small taxes on Jason’s fourteen acres of land, and the cost of living was steadily rising in 1906.

  The food from the Inn-Tavern was a tremendous help, but Joan lately had come to despise it vehemently and to declare she would rather starve than eat it. Jason, afraid himself, had yielded, as had Bernard, and she had the food she preferred, and the creamy milk she drank copiously. Jason often thought of his grandfather, who was seventy-eight, and though Bernard hardly was infirm and seemed to discount his years in his appearance, Jason knew that age would inevitably strike him down. He often fell asleep over his newspaper, and his enormous vitality was less.

  There were five people, which included the “woman,” to be cared for on twenty-eight dollars a week, not a poor sum in itself, but it could be extended only so far. Bernard put a dollar a week into his tin box under his bed. Jason had no savings at all. He knew his wages were far larger than those received by the average workingman, but he could not wear a workingman’s cheap patched clothing in the Inn-Tavern. He had had to buy a good wool suit for fifteen dollars a year ago, which the “woman” pressed and cleaned once a week, and he had to have immaculate shirts and stiff white collars and cuffs every day, and “decent ties,” two of them. Then, there was the barber. Bernard cut his own hair, but Jason had not that alternative.

  There were times when Jason silently gave in to despair.

  His only pleasures now were his own small store of books and those he borrowed from the public library, and his visits to his land halfway up the mountain. He could visit it only once or twice a month, on his Sundays off, but the land was his refuge, his renewal, his blessed silence after a long week of human voices and clamor and worry and work. Last Christmas Mr. Mulligan had given him, “for the family, too, Jase,” an inexpensive phonograph, and somehow Jason had contrived to buy four cylinder records, two by Caruso and two by Galli-Curci. He could only play them when Joan was out for an airing, pushed by the “woman.” She preferred ragtime. She called opera “dreary, like a funeral.” She spoke with admiration of the gramophone Lionel had recently acquired for his own house, and the lively tunes. Joan had taken to visiting Molly frequently and called her “my one and only dear friend”; Molly, on hearing this remark once, had crinkled her mouth unbecomingly but had held back her sardonic remarks.

  On this particular mild Sunday in April 1906, Jason took his bicycle to the foot of the nearest mountain and rode it up as high as possible on the wandering dirt road. When the road ended, he left his vehicle and climbed the rest of the way. How sweet and fecund the air was,
how warm and tender the sun on his bare head and shoulders! What a blessing the silence was, stirred only by the sounds of birds, the movement of wind among the fir trees and the oaks and wild birches and elms, chartreuse in their early leafings against the bright blue sky. The quiet here was the quiet of a cathedral, and the choir was the music of the holy earth, simple but profound and implicit with promise. In dim spots among the trees, trailing arbutus made gentle carpets, and there were patches of wild crocus and buttercups and purple pitcher plants and new brilliant grass. Somewhere there was a little spring, and it sang to the radiant air and its waters trickled over small stones down the mountain. Jason drank of its sweetness often; it was as clean and fresh as flowers themselves, and it was like an elixir to the youth.

  Tree toads sang, a celestial chorus celebrating life, and Jason paused to listen. He said, aloud, and somewhat sheepishly, “Hosanna!” The singing stopped for a moment, then resumed. A blue jay fluttered across his path and screamed; sparrows asked questions with irritation; a robin suddenly lifted his silvery voice. A rabbit scuttled nearby; a fox looked at Jason from behind a big stone. There was busy life here, but it was harmonious and had a meaning, unlike the world of men. The shining silence was everywhere, and the scent of the earth increased as Jason climbed. He stopped for a moment to put his hand on the warm bark of a great oak; it seemed to him that a slow heart pulsed under his palm, answering. To him, as to his Irish ancestors, trees were holy things, the home of druids, not to be violated. He wanted to worship, but he did not think of the God of the fervid cities. His impulse was toward Something more intense and immanent—indwelling yet immense and boundless and universal. He felt the immediacy of the godhead, listening, aware, burning with Being, young and joyous yet timeless, swelling with a love and mystery not to be comprehended by man. Here was all explained, even to the dark mind of humanity—if it would listen, which it rarely did. Here, indeed, was the peace that passed understanding, the eloquent peace of a majestic eternity, which knew nothing of death or pain or tumult.