Grandmother and the Priests Page 15

  “I shall be leaving all of you very soon,” she said. “I am sorry, Father.”

  “Sorry to leave this cold spot?” he asked. “Here it be, almost midsummer, and cold as April in Edinburgh.”

  “I still love it,” said Pamela. She breathed deeply of the strong cool air and said, “I feel like a MacDougall, myself! I seem to know the people well.”

  The tears were like diamonds on her thick lashes in that cold and brilliant sun. “Ah, well,” said the girl, trying to smile again, “I shall never forget this island. I shall be here in spirit if not in body. Douglass has sent our letters to our families in London, though my great-grandmother, poor dear one, can hardly be aware that I’m even away. She often confuses me with my dead mother and other female relatives, so she has been spared any anxiety. But — Mary — has written to her parents that she will be married almost immediately to ‘a rich and powerful Scots chieftain’, and that all gifts be sent to her here.”

  She lost no time, thought Robert. He was heartbroken over Pamela’s gallantry and tremulous smiles. “Ye’ll nae stay for the wedding?” he asked.

  “No.” Pamela paused, and a sad mischief flashed into her beautiful black eyes. “If I did, Father, I would object at each of the banns! And if that would not be enough, I would object at the altar, itself!”

  “I see,” said Robert, with gravity. She was quite capable of doing just what she had said, this spirited girl, this passionate and devoted girl. “Ye dinna like your cousin?”

  “Mary? Oh, she is very well in her own milieu, in London. I did so want to see Edinburgh,” added Pamela, wistfully. “But I could hardly visit it alone, and I detest carrying maids with me. I wanted a companion, and I offered to take Mary, and her mother’s maid, Aggie — that fool! — and that is why we are now here. Had I known — ”

  The generous girl, then, had paid all the expenses of this curious journey, and not Mary, the arrogant and disdainful. “I have left my diamond earrings for her,” said Pamela. “My wedding gift.” She looked down at her tiny slippered feet, and her throat trembled. “A good day to you, Father. I believe it is tea-time.”

  She hurried off with fast little steps, her head held up valiantly, and as she passed others on the street they looked at her with involuntary affection and she bowed her head with courteous kindness. It was she, the generous-hearted, the kind, who should be lady of this isle, thought Robert, and he felt a little rebellious towards God. Then he remembered, with contrition, that if men are bent on destroying themselves God cannot interfere. Nevertheless, he went into the church and did some strenuous praying.

  The appointed hour for what Robert considered the MacDougall’s disgrace was sunset, he remembered. He said to Mistress MacDougall, who was very brisk and hurried in the manse that day: “Sae that none will be tempted, Mistress MacDougall, you and I shall sit here alone with the curtains drawn, by the fire — disna it ever become warm a little? — and then when the MacDougall has passed we shall hae our tea.”

  Mistress MacDougall’s face was a portrait of dismay; her eyes shifted. Robert regarded her with bitter satisfaction. She, like the other servile, always trotted eagerly to obey the MacDougall’s slightest edict. (It was strange that the servile, and therefore the destroyers, did so love legality and took extreme pleasure in the letter of the law!)

  “My mon, at hame,” she murmured.

  “Oh, ye will both hide behind your curtains, virtuously? Invite him, then, to hae tea with me, for I havena seen him often.”

  Mistress MacDougall looked depressed. Then she shook her head. “He is shy, Faether. He’d like to be at hame, waiting for me.” Then and there Robert decided that after tomorrow he would replace Mistress MacDougall. There must be a woman of spirit in the hamlet who truly loved Douglass, and must secretly, if not openly, be rebellious towards him in the manner of a true free Scot, an old lady whose blood ran truly in her veins and not treacherously.

  He was really frightened, now. Once the servile had seen their laird disgraced, they would flout even the simplest and most rightful laws of morality and self-respect, and the isle would come to the worst grief. Oh, if despots only knew what they did in their benign but too prideful hearts! They knew better, they thought, than their people, what was good for them, and so they attempted to kill the independence born in man. God gave man free will; the despots had no use for it.

  Robert had hoped for thunder and lightning and dark skies and sheets of concealing rain for the next day, but it had dawned like a rose and as sweet and warm. One small white cloud over the looming black crag gave Robert a little hope, but it swayed off over the ocean, which was as blue as the eye of a newborn babe. The sunset would have made a poet of an ox. And just as the church bells struck the hour of six Robert firmly drew the curtains over the little leaded windows of the manse, lit a lamp, looked Mistress MacDougall straightly in the eye and sat down with his breviary. She stared only at the fire, her thick red underlip moving in and out with her resentful thoughts.

  There was only silence outside, and no sound of footstep, no voice, no movement. The high-minded and those who loved the MacDougall would be staring into their fires also; the servile would be silent, but peeping and gloating. Then Robert heard the smallest quick footsteps on the street — leather — like the footsteps of a child. The MacDougall’s feet would make no sound on the cobbles, for they would be bare. What silly child had some silly mother sent abroad on such a portentous day? Robert caught himself in the very act of going to the door and peremptorily ordering the child within until the MacDougall passed, and Mistress MacDougall’s eyes gleamed hopefully. Robert went back to his seat before the fire. “Some foolish bairn who slipped away,” said Robert. The clock ticked; the fire sang to itself.

  Then, half an hour later, the streets were full of excited laughter and loud voices, and Robert ran to the door to find men bending over with mirth and women shrilling vehemently, and laughing also. He called urgently to his sacristan, whom he saw among the villagers, and the old man came at once, laughing so heartily that his face was crimson and tears were streaming from his eyes.

  “Mind ye, Faether,” he said honestly, after Robert had slapped him vigorously on the back, almost as strongly as the MacDougall’s own slapping, “I didna see it with me ain eyes, but some there are who saw it and are telling of it.”

  “What?” said Robert, with the most awful forebodings. The servile had not wasted a moment to make game of their laird.

  And then he listened with astonishment and heard the whole story.

  At sunset, precisely, or just as the sun slipped down from behind the crag and began his solitary journey into the western ocean, the MacDougall had appeared alone at the gates of his house, naked as the day he had been born. He had stood there, gazing at the silent and empty street, and then had stepped forth.

  What a grand figure he must have appeared, like the marble heroes and gods of ancient Rome, tall and broad and muscular, heroic and splendid in his manhood, and absolutely assured that no eye would look upon him in his nakedness! Robert thought, remembering his own days in Rome and his own awe.

  But there were peeping eyes to see and gloat, behind the draperies, at the great laird who had been humbled by a mere woman. The eyes were suddenly dismayed, and they blinked. For the MacDougall had no sooner set his huge feet on the cobbles than “the little lassie, Miss Stone,” had darted behind him, had thrown her black cloak with the roses over his shoulders — “and it coming down to the length of a kilt on him,” said the sacristan, wiping away his tears of joy and mirth. And then she had taken his hand, firmly and strongly, and in silence — “and he looking doon at her as at an angel suddenly seen with his ain een,” and she had walked beside him through the shut and silent streets of the hamlet.

  “Nae did they hurry,” said the sacristan. “They walked like lovers in the gloaming, the MacDougall with the cape swinging just above his knees, and the wee lassie with her face all lit up with the sunset, and sometimes leaning h
er head against his shoulder.”

  Robert could see them with his inner eye, the noble if despotic MacDougall, and the intrepid and understanding girl beside him, and he rejoiced. What revelation had been given to the MacDougall in that moment, what insight? “They walked like lovers in the gloaming.” He had not repudiated the girl and her mantle; he had held her hand; he had looked down at the riot of black curls on his shoulder; he had seen her passionate and loving and urgent face, her lovely and womanly face. He had seen love as he had never seen it before, and he had recognized it and had responded to it. He had known it all, in one flash of revelation.

  “And so,” said old Father MacBurne to the company about Grandmother’s fire, “the MacDougall was humbled in his heart, but not as Mary Joyce had intended. He was humbled as we all must be in the presence of unquestioning and unlimited love, which has much of God in it. He saw all that was to be seen, and it is given few men to see in that fashion.

  “It was her footsteps which I had mistaken as the footsteps of a bairn on the cobbles, her faithful and following footsteps, the only ones to break the silence.”

  It was Mary Joyce who was sent off the next day, with all her bags and luggage, not with the husband she had wanted in her arrogance, but only with two fishermen. It was Mary Joyce who was put on the train for Edinburgh. Robert, somewhat sinfully, would sometimes amuse himself with a conjecture about her enraged thoughts, she the rejected, the sent off, the abandoned, the ultimately unwanted, she who had never had anything to give except her barren heart and her ugly pride.

  “I am glad to say that the whole isle rejoiced over the wedding of the MacDougall and his lovely bride, who was as fair in her soul as she was fair in her face,” said old Robert, “Her husband’s Faith became hers, as once she had promised the deaf mon in his ain parlor on the nicht I first saw her, and his folk were her ain folk, and she brought self-respect to the servile, and freedom, through her gentle insistence, to the free. It wasna that the MacDougall was subservient to her. She merely instructed him, and he saw, and may all despots in the world see before it is too late!”

  Old Robert sighed. “It is too much to hope. But I mustna complain. I, who did not at first like MacDougall’s isle, could never bring mesel’ to leave it, and so I remained. I hae baptized the children of the MacDougall, and his children’s children, and soon I will baptize his great-grandchild. And the MacDougall and his lady look still as young as the morning, for sich is the air of the isle, and there is nae ache in me and I, too, am as young as the morning, as are they, at least in ma heart.”

  “But what of the diamond earrings Miss Mary Joyce received from her cousin?” asked Grandmother, avidly, after wiping away a sentimental tear.

  “Mary took them away with her,” said Father MacBurne. “What could a mon expect but that? It was sae like her.”

  Chapter Four

  Little rose was so entranced by the romantic story of the Doughty Chieftain and his proper bride that she dreamt that night of skirling bagpipes and noble kilted Highlanders and the gray ocean.

  She wondered if the MacDougall had a son or a grandson she could someday marry, and she huddled under her eiderdowns in the early morning to dream again.

  She kept out of Grandmother’s way that day so she would not be forbidden to join the enchanting company at night. There were two new priests arriving, she understood from Cook. Father MacBurne had left ‘with a fistful of pounds’ for one of his pet charities, and a message for Rose. She was to be a very good girl, indeed, and God would love her always.

  A Father Hughes had listened intently the night before to the story of the MacDougall, so when all the company was about the fire after dinner he said, “I, too, know a story of love, but it is a very strange one, and not to be understood, though since my experience I have heard similar. Who knows if heaven lies about us, not to be seen by our blind eyes, not to be heard with our deaf ears? Would we be frightened like little children? Then God is merciful to conceal almost all from us, lest we die of fear or lose our interest in the life we should live.”

  Father Hughes was an Englishman, polished and elegant, with fine white hands and an abstracted air. Like all the other priests, he was also old, but he was so vital, and his blue eyes were so young, that one forgot that he was not a young man.

  “Yes,” he said, “a very strange story of love, indeed, and sometimes I wonder if it was all a dream, for it happened so long ago and it has never been explained to me, nor any explanation advanced.”

  Father Hughes and the Golden Door

  “I was my old, widowed Aunt Amanda’s only nephew,” said Father Hughes, with a deeply tender expression on his face. “She had a number of nieces, my cousins, but she disliked them heartily, though they were apparently devoted to her.” Father Hughes coughed. “Aunt Amanda was very rich. I was the only one who bore her own family name — Hughes. My cousins were the daughters of Aunt Amanda’s sisters, but I was the son of Aunt Amanda’s only and beloved brother. She had been like a mother to my father, for she was fifteen years his senior; she had brought him up after their parents had died, and when she was twenty-one, in accordance with their father’s will, she was named his full guardian. So, in many ways, there was a filial and maternal relationship between them. My father’s two younger sisters — well, Aunt Amanda did not appear to care a great deal for them. She did her best for them, but only out of duty. My father was her pet.

  “Aunt Amanda and my father came from an old Covenanter family, and Aunt Amanda was very shocked when my father married an orphaned Catholic girl. She immediately wrote him that she was ‘cutting him off’. Not with the proverbial shilling, for the estate had been divided equally among the four, such as it was. She never spoke to my father again, and neither did either of his other two sisters, who servilely did whatever Aunt Amanda did, thus earning her vast contempt. For, you see, Aunt Amanda had married an enormously rich merchant in the City, and she had no children of her own, and my other aunts had married very modestly, and had a number of girls.

  “Aunt Amanda had written her brother, James Hughes: ‘Certainly, though you have married whom you married, your children will not embrace the Roman Church!’ I was the only child, and, of course, I was christened in the Church. Aunt Amanda, I heard, had a small stroke over the matter, but dutifully, as always, she sent the christening robe — which my father, grandfather and all my aunts had worn on that occasion — for me. She did not come to my christening. The robe was returned after I had worn it at that brief time, and Aunt Amanda never answered any of my father’s loving letters.”

  James Hughes was a gentle, dreaming man, who wrote poetry when he should have been studying briefs and such matters in the office where he was a junior barrister. He was a plodding and meticulous worker, and was assigned those dreary research and summing-up affairs which bored his elders madly. He did not mind. He was fond of detail, and it did not occupy all his thoughts. And he continued to write poetry, which was always adamantly rejected by the editors of poetry magazines and other publishers. Apparently it was very bad poetry, indeed, and his son, reading it years later, found it almost embarrassingly naïve and simple. But the man’s sweet and innocent heart glimmered on every line.

  His wife, Dorothy, was just like him. She was content with their tiny attached house in London, in one of the isolated mews. She was a happy little thing, and thought nothing of money and only of her God, her Church, her husband and her son. If she had one unhappiness it was because she had borne but one child, whom she had named Benedict for her favorite saint. She and her husband clung together like young trees, embracing both body and spirit intimately.

  James thought he should do better for his family, so invested his very small fortune in one of the speculative Bubbles which periodically assailed the Islands during those years. He lost it all. So now he had but his salary. He and Dorothy were not too concerned. They lived a dreaming and devoted life apart from the world, after the initial dismay. In many ways, their life tog
ether was an idyl. They read poetry to each other around the fire after tea. James became a Catholic. It appeared unthinkable to him that the slightest thing should divide him and Dorothy; he took instructions, and with his usual single-hearted devotion he entered the Church. If one such as Dorothy, he reasoned, could be a Catholic, then why should he remain outside the portal?

  He had one distress: his estrangement from his sister, Amanda. He wrote to her weekly, though receiving no reply, until the day of his death, when his son, Benedict, was ten years old. He had been killed by a tram, ten minutes after he had left a neighborhood church and after receiving Holy Communion. A man of utmost virtue, he had made his Confession only the evening before. The priest assured both wife and son that James had truly died in a state of Grace. It was possible, the kindly priest hinted, that James had entered heaven at once. His life had always been as pure as milk and as harmless as spring water.