Grandmother and the Priests Read online

  And not even then, thought the Bishop, sighing. Nor, he added to himself, will I hae another, mysel’. It had all cost him three pounds, which he had been saving for a long time for this night. They retired to what the Bishop called his library, a mere hole of a little room solidly walled with books, cold as death, and with a handful of coals on the hearth. A table stood in the center of the room, and there were two hard chairs in front of the fire, which gave out practically no heat. Robert, feeling drowsy and stuffed, would have liked to absorb that fire, but his uncle was now all brisk business. He was spreading a map on the table, his bald head shining like a big egg in the light of the one dull lamp, and seeing that map, and the Bishop’s busyness, Robert’s premonitions returned in full power and with dismal liveliness.

  “Ye’ll hae heard of the MacDougalls of auld,” said the Bishop, smoothing out the map with small fat hands.

  Robert had thought the MacDougalls had been well cleared out by Robert the Bruce and the stronger clans, but his uncle soon disillusioned him. Now, here on this map, if Robert would please come to it, there was a small island. A flyspeck, merely, in the Outer Hebrides, which were no land-masses in themselves. His uncle informed him, with pride, that not even Haakon IV of Norway had been able to land his jarls on that island, because of the valor of the MacDougalls, and, the Bishop added as an afterthought, the general terrain facing the sea. (Robert, much later, suspected the terrain.)

  “Catholic, to the mon,” said the Bishop, with a happy smile. “There’s nae United Free Church there, laddie!”

  A Scotsman prefers to have the bad news immediately, rather than to delay it in the hope it will go away if ignored. In other words, Robert said to his uncle, the island needed a priest, and he was to be the victim. The Bishop tried to appear shocked, then he went to one of the chairs and admitted that such was the case. Robert wanted all the bad news in one blow; there was no common sense in cutting off a puppy’s tail inch by inch to spare him the pain of one large lop. So the Bishop lopped, after first trying to expound on the beauty, wild and unearthly, of the Hebrides. Robert was not beguiled. He only fixed his uncle with his grim black eye, his hands planted stiffly on his knees.

  MacDougall’s isle supported itself by sheep-raising and the production of the hardiest wool in existence. (“I can weel onderstand that,” remarked Robert.) The wool was much in demand for outer garments, if not for underdrawers. (“Scrape the hide off a mon, nae doot,” commented Robert, forgetting the fine meal in his dismay.) It also carried on some brisk fisheries, slate-quarrying, and, best of all, distilling. Robert looked up with a less anguished countenance. The Bishop nodded. “It was their whiskey you had, this night,” he said. Robert smiled the slightest of smiles, thinking of a hearty glass of that whiskey each night before dinner, at his own fireside, perhaps with a friend who was at least partly civilized. He then asked about the weather. One knew about the weather in the Hebrides. It was the national boast that a man could get his nose frostbitten, frequently, in mid-July, and everyone had exceptionally high color by reason of being unremittingly chapped. As for their storms — well, they admitted to a man, not without some pride, that God used the Islands as a proving-ground for storms He had in mind for the polar legions. He wanted to discover just how much wind, rain, snow, sleet, gales and general hell any bit of earth could stand without breaking up into chunks.

  And MacDougall’s isle, suggested Robert, was one of God’s favorite spots for testing. The Bishop sat down, as if suddenly tired, and nodded his head. “It hasna disappeared as yet,” he said, to which Robert replied that that was damned unfortunate — for him. And who ruled this less than Paradise on earth?

  The Bishop hesitated. Why, of course, the laird was Douglass MacDougall. Who else? A fine lad, in his mid-twenties, if somewhat wild, and still unmarried. Robert commented that Douglass probably carried his dirk in his teeth, his two hands being well occupied with more lethal instruments, such as maces and firearms. And, doubtless, he was as unread as any Congo bushman. The Bishop’s spirits picked up. No, the lad had taken a short, but effective, medical course in Edinburgh. The reason was obvious to the alarmed Robert. There was no physician on the isle, and in addition to owning and managing the fisheries, the quarries, the cattle and the sheep herds, and keeping general peace and order and acting as magistrate, the young chieftain officiated as obstetrician, bone-setter and general practitioner, midwife and veterinarian. “In a nutshell,” admitted the Bishop.

  “He’ll nae have time, then, for mischief,” said Robert, somberly. “It’s nae wonder he’s never wedded. Nae doot a virgin, by necessity.”

  There was no sense in being facetious, the Bishop admonished, remembering suddenly that he was a Bishop and this young man, though his nephew, was only a fledgling priest. One had to admire the MacDougall. In addition to his medical studies, he had become exceedingly proficient in the liberal arts, the law, Latin and Greek, and sundry other things. Robert marveled, only half believing.

  Then a horrid thought came to him. How did the isle communicate with its sisters in the event of great necessity? It had a telegraph, did it not? It did not, the Bishop confessed. But, there were the fishing boats and sailboats, which every man on the isle could handle — if the weather was not too ferocious nor the seas too high. During at least four months in the year boats from the big ships from Glasgow put in at its one usable cove, bringing necessities and taking away the salt herrings, the wool, the slates, and the thick homespun tweeds. And, at least five months in the year the boats from MacDougall’s isle called for the post on the nearest larger isle. “I think,” said Robert, “that I’d prefer the Congo.” But he said this without much hope. For eight months, then, one had only the MacDougall to turn to in distress or travail. No, said the Bishop, he was wrong. There were six Dominican Sisters there. Robert groaned, and held his head in his hands, and the Bishop looked at him sympathetically.

  But it was a sturdy and fairly prosperous place, the Bishop said. The MacDougall was a man for order and thrift and industry, and was no fool. He was also pious — in his way. The kirk was small, but in good order. Things could be much worse, said the Bishop, trying to brighten as Robert sank deeper into gloom. And very healthful. The last priest, who had died two months ago, had lived to be one hundred and ten years old, no remarkable age for Douglass’ isle. In fact, to die before one was ninety-five was considered to be dying in early middle age. Robert, unfeelingly, declared that the race was still evidently to the swift and the battle to the strong. More gentle souls perished practically at birth, doubtless. By the way, those Dominican Sisters — The Bishop hastily changed the subject.

  Robert had missed meeting the MacDougall in Edinburgh by two days. The MacDougall had come to the Bishop in search of a pastor, knowing his lordship was to be there to ordain a bevy of young Seminarians. “And how did he know?” asked Robert. “It’s nae possible his isle sends up smoke in signals, like the American Indians, and the other isles reply?”

  The Bishop laughed merrily. But Robert’s relentless eye still burned on his uncle like a black coal. “Aye,” said the Bishop, depressed at this. He went on with obviously false enthusiasm about the MacDougall.

  “A braw laddie.” The MacDougall was several inches over six feet tall, all muscle and extraordinary strength, and remarkably handsome, with eyes as gray as the Atlantic, hair black and curling and lively, a strong heavy nose and a gay but resolute mouth. There was nothing he could not do, or at least there was nothing he would not attempt. “A difference there,” Robert remarked forebodingly. The Bishop should have liked to detain him to meet his — er — new pastor, but the MacDougall had been suddenly recalled to his island because of a crisis in lambs and sheep-killing dogs and what not. A telegram from another island had been sent to him. Robert was not interested.

  The next day he was on his way to the Outer Hebrides, all the clothes and other objects he possessed in one small bag. The Bishop’s ancient housekeeper had put him up a large packet — la
rger than his own bag by far — containing the remnants of the leg of lamb, some buttered bread and marmalade, a half bottle of whiskey, oat cakes and honeyed scones, not to mention a jar of her best strawberry jam, and the rest of the lemon tartlets, which would serve him well on the cold and draughty third-class carriage on the train ‘to the end of the world’. The Bishop had given his nephew a heavy plaid shawl, which Robert attempted to refuse, knowing how much the old man needed it himself. But the Bishop insisted, stroking the thick folds lovingly. He also gave Robert another treasure: a rosary whose beads were real Oriental pearls, all iridescence, and the crucifix was heavy solid gold, the Corpus carved of mother-of-pearl, exquisitely. These were the only treasures the Bishop had ever possessed, and he insisted that Robert must have them, as he had been saving them for this very day. The shawl smelled overwhelmingly of camphor, but it was a blessing on the train, on his shoulders when he sat up, and covering him almost head to foot like a warm blanket when he lay on die hard bench to sleep, and protecting him completely when he ran out in the bitter rain at lonely stations for a cup of hot tea, carrying his bag of edible supplies.

  He had the carriage to himself, for the countryside was busy at this time of the year. Used to solitude, and a solitary by nature as were all Scotsmen, he was not lonely. He prayed, read a sound religious book, ate, slept a little, then surreptitiously took out a reprehensible yellow-backed paper novel in which he steeped and horrified his innocent soul. The racier passages were in French, and it was purely in the interests of relating French to Latin that Robert pored over them carefully, shaking his head the while and deploring modern tastes and the corruption of youth. Despite the shawl, his feet, in their big black boots, were getting numb with cold as the train scuttled north. Houses of dark gray stone lumbered by the carriage windows, and high clipped hedges showing faint green, and brown turbulent burns, and here and there patches of snow just beginning to melt at the edges. This was a wilder, more virile country than England, gloomily lowering under a lowering gray sky, and desolate and forbidding. A dark rain began to fall, mixed with sleet, and trees with lichen-covered trunks pressed close to the carriage, thrashing in a freezing wind. How barren it is, thought Robert dismally, he who was used to dismalness but though on a less outright scale.

  Firs, beeches, larches. Did they ever turn green and warm in this wide and brawling countryside? Chunky gray sheep appeared on the meadows, with lambs with black faces, and among them stood the lonely shepherds, wrapped in their plaid shawls from head to foot, and sheep dogs raced about, barking sharply in the icy silence. The shepherds were big men, much bigger than their city cousins, and Robert could see their rugged profiles, as rugged as their hard brown hills. Fierce lines of these hills appeared now in the distance, russet-brown, yellowish or tinged with purple, and once or twice Robert glimpsed the terrible Atlantic, the color of stone but tumultuous, breaking on monstrous black rocks and roaring in the inlets in a rage of white foam. May God forgive him for sending me yon, thought Robert, referring in his thoughts to his uncle, but it was not in a spirit of absolute charity and sincerity.

  The train groaned to a jolting stop at an anonymous hamlet and a dozen men and women, thickly clad, bonneted or capped, climbed clumsily into Robert’s carriage. A few women curtseyed on seeing him, a man or two lifted his woolen cap, the others stared as bleakly and fiercely as their native Highlands. Robert had spread himself over his bench; he gathered together remnants of lunches and teas, and hid his yellow-backed novel and dutifully opened his breviary. The older ladies remarked to themselves on his very obvious youth and their cold eyes softened a little. One of them said to him in a maternal fashion, “And a fine shawl that be, Faether, made by your mither, no doot?”

  The Protestants scowled, but the priest was so obviously boyish in spite of his height and his severe expression that they maintained the scowls with some difficulty.

  “Nay, Mistress,” said Robert, warming to some human contact and shifting his aching buttocks on the bench. “It was given to me by ma uncle, the Bishop, himself, in Edinburgh.”

  “I mark him well!” said an elderly gentleman. “He confirmed my youngest!”

  “A good mon with his tongue against the Sassenach!” said one of the Protestants, his cragged face flushing with approval.

  Robert’s thoughts became kinder towards his uncle. He let the ladies examine his shawl, and they approved of the texture but disagreed as to what clan it represented. The gentlemen gave their own opinions. A Royal Stuart; a mon with half an een could see that plain. “Nay, look at that blue thread!” said an old lady with spirit. “Hae I not be weavin’ the Tartan, and there’s nae blue thread in it!”

  “A Presbyterian shawl,” said a middle-aged man with the sour wit of his countrymen.

  “Aye, nae doot,” said another. “It’s always the blue, like their noses.”

  As glares now appeared, and there was some feeling around for stout sticks, Robert changed the subject quickly after a guard came in to light the paraffin lantern that swung from the smoky ceiling, He offered his pouch of tobacco, and the men lit up. Then Robert asked about MacDougall’s isle. They stared at him. Weel, there was no sich isle, not even in the Outer, Outer Hebrides. He was mistaken.

  “Born in Skye, mesel’,” said one man. “Niver heard of MacDougall’s isle. They cleared out the MacDougalls many’s the year ago.”

  Robert was at first depressed, then he began to hope. If there was no such isle, then there was no MacDougall and there was no frightful parish with Dominican Sisters in it. But his hopes crashed when a very old gentleman lifted a horny hand.

  “Wrong ye are,” he said, triumphantly. “It be north by north, and I seen it mesel’ when a lad.” He stared with pity at Robert. “Ye’ll not be goin’ there, Faether?”

  “That I be,” said Robert with wretchedness. “The auld pastor died.”

  They commiserated with him. The old gentleman enlarged on the subject of MacDougall’s isle, and the ladies, even the Protestant ones, said it was a shame and all that for a lad like this to be going yon. “Not so,” said the old gentleman, the authority on the MacDougalls. “It aye a Paradise, I heard, but a despotism with the young MacDougall.”

  “More like the lake of ice in Dante’s Inferno,” observed Robert. The allusion passed over their heads. They were curious about the MacDougall and his isle. Then they remembered remarks from their childhood. No one could do the MacDougalls in! Robert the Bruce and the rest, not to mention the Sassenach, had tried it, but one could not do the MacDougalls in. If many of them were still alive, then one day we’d hear of them and no doot about it! They had the spirit. Sae sad there was not more of it aboot these decadent days. If the Stone of Scone was ever recovered from the Sassenach’s throne in Westminster Abbey it would be taken by a MacDougall! Then Scotia would be free, with her ain king once more.

  Robert’s new friends left at the next hamlet with the warmest hopes for the end of his journey. The end of his journey, he understood, was also the end of the railroad. His heart was in his boots. He prayed awhile, then found a newspaper from Dundee with decorous headlines relating that two English spinsters had disappeared in Edinburgh three days ago and Scotland Yard was being called in. Miss Mary Joyce and her cousin, Miss Pamela Stone, were ladies of substance in London, and they had been visiting friends in Edinburgh and had gone for a carriage ride alone through the city. The coachman and the carriage had reported back to the friends. The ladies had taken a walk on Princes Street and had vanished into thin air and had never returned. Robert turned the pages listlessly, and then read the Agony Column with deep interest, being a young and imaginative man. This served to divert him until it was time for his breviary again. All was blackness outside his window. The cold grew more intense. Robert took off his boots and rubbed his numbed feet. He wrapped the shawl about them, suddenly blessing his uncle. He ate the last of the cold roast lamb and the remaining tart. There were no more stops for hot tea. He was as chill as death. And the
train still screeched and lumbered along. The lantern swayed smokily.

  A great bright white moon rose over the hills, flooding the stark countryside with a brilliant illumination. Must be familiar with the same scene on its own, thought the young priest miserably, remarking the silent desolation with only a distant light here and there visible. The train was running closer to the sea now; its pungent odor penetrated the compartment. Once or twice Robert saw crests radiant with icy silver, and heard the booming of the surf. Its boom and thunder became louder moment by moment, until the very walls of the carriage rumbled in answer. He saw lighthouses far out on the sea, flickering. The moon became brighter, almost fierce in its arctic splendor. And the snow patches, though this was May, were larger and whiter. There was a scent of pine and fir, too, poignant, overwhelming.

  Then the train, gasping, spent, came abruptly to a halt, and there was a hissing of steam. Robert sat up. A guard came in, lifted his eyebrows politely. “It will be the end,” he said.

  “Aye, and that it is,” said Robert, rising stiffly and staggering a little because his legs were so cold and numb. He flung the shawl about his shoulders, put on his hat, tucked up the last remnants of his journey into his bag, and murmured a prayer. He glanced through the window. The train had stopped at a mere cluster of stony little buildings like huts. One lantern blew against the moon. There was not a soul in sight.