Grandmother and the Priests

by Taylor Caldwell

  Dorothy, the good Catholic, was joyous to receive such consolation. But the zest for life had immediately died in the poor woman, and she was only twenty-eight then. Even when Aunt Amanda came to the small funeral — James knew so few people well — Dorothy did not appear to be too aware of her presence, and kept turning her large dazed eyes on the big, formidable woman as if vaguely, and only occasionally, conscious of her presence. When Amanda, who was usually so grimly controlled, suddenly burst into wild sobbing and tears, Dorothy was dimly alarmed and tried to comfort her, glancing at others as if questioning why this stranger was weeping. When someone would say gently, again and again, “Your husband’s sister, dear,” Dorothy would nod and murmur, “Of course.” But it was only a polite murmur. It is very possible that to the last Dorothy did not consciously know Amanda as her sister-in-law, and James’ sister.

  A month after the funeral Aunt Amanda wrote to Dorothy: “As I now understand your financial position I will send you a comfortable check the first of each month, and will be responsible for the education of my brother’s son, Benedict.” Dorothy read the letter uncertainly then called upstairs: “James, darling, I have received the most curious letter! Please come down and read it.” Silence answered her, and she shook her head and said to her grief-struck little boy, “Did you hear your father go out, love? He is not upstairs.”

  Benedict was only ten, and he understood that his mother’s mind had suddenly gone, through sorrow and loneliness. Painfully, he composed a stiff letter to his Aunt Amanda, and the paper was blistered with his tears. Aunt Amanda arrived in her glistening victoria four days later — she lived in Grosvenor Square — to find that Dorothy had died in her sleep a few hours before. The birdlike and fragile heart had broken. God, in His mercy, understood that, without James, Dorothy was not truly alive, but only a torn and shattered remnant.

  “There are lambs who can withstand the white storms and furies of winter,” said Father Hughes, “and come out the sturdier for them, brisk and up-and-doing, as the poet has urged, full of ginger and love for living. But there are the smaller lambs, soft and gentle and bewildered, who die in the first real storm that assaults them. Our Lord, it is said, was particularly tender with them, and sought them out to bring them in from the storm. My mother was one of those lambs, and Our Lord had taken her home. I like to think of my young parents in heaven,” added Father Hughes, the firelight shining on his white hair, the web of years thickening over his lean face. “I am so much older than they were. Will they know me?”

  Aunt Amanda, apparently, suddenly realized what lambs her brother and his wife had been, and she was full of remorse and grief. After Dorothy’s funeral she took small white-faced Benedict home to her mansion, which he had never seen. That night she had placed her hands on his shoulders and had said, “I am a bad, nasty old woman, really detestable. I hope your father can find it in his heart to forgive me.” Then she had scowled. “But remember, my young master, not to take advantage of what you may consider a weakness of mine at this moment! You will go, next week, to such-and-such a preparatory school, and a prince of the Blood Royal is there, himself!”

  Benedict had said with his father’s own softness but firmness, “No, Auntie Amanda. I want to be a priest.”

  Aunt Amanda threw up her hands in horror, and her large fat face turned purple. She threatened; she vowed. As her husband had been a full-blooded man, she had acquired some rowdy oaths from him, and she roared them out thunderously. But little Benedict was not frightened — at least not too much — and repeated, “I want to be a priest. Papa and Mama knew, and they were happy.”

  Aunt Amanda slapped his face roundly, burst into sobs, and clutched him to her enormous breast. She had then ordered brandy for herself and a little sweet wine for the boy. They had drunk together in the gigantic and crowded drawing-room of her house, weeping in the firelight.

  She was not a lady to give up easily, and Benedict was not a big boy. She cajoled in the days that followed; she described her lonely state with moving self-pity; she embraced, slapped, thrust away, clutched him to her. The boy would obey her or she’d break his spirit! Benedict’s spirit remained singularly unbroken. Amanda shouted, “You are as obstinate as your poor father, who had not a brain in his head! Ungrateful young dog!”

  On the eighth day she suddenly announced that Benedict would go to a good Jesuit school in London, and that was the end of the matter. For some years. He went up to Oxford, and the row began again. The two now loved each other intensely, as only lonely people can love, and they quarreled almost all the time over Benedict’s unswerving decision. Priests came to talk with Amanda; she insulted them, gave them brandy and whiskey, ordered them to have dinner with her, and handed them large quantities of pounds. This was not in the way of a bribe. She merely thought them sensible men who would understand her position, and Benedict’s, as her heir. They understood. They also understood that Benedict had a real vocation.

  So Benedict went to his chosen Seminary, and Aunt Amanda did not write to him for two months. Then she presented the Seminary, which was very poor, with such an astounding sum that the Bishop, himself, came to see her to express his gratitude and to assure himself, probably, that he was not dreaming and that the cheque was genuine. “It’s the money his father should have had, sir,” said Aunt Amanda, wiping her eyes and scowling at the same time. “Had I given it to him — the foolish lamb — he’d not have been tramping the street that day, in the fog, but would have been alive now. For he’d have had his own carriage.”

  Benedict broke it very, very gently to his old aunt that he wanted to be a mission priest. Amanda had another stroke at this, a rather serious one, which served to bring Benedict to her side frequently, a condition that soothed her and made her hope. But when she was walking again, though with a cane, Benedict told her that his decision still stood. She hit him with the cane, and never used it in walking thereafter. “I don’t know where God is, to permit this!” she said. “My only living boy, with my father’s name!”

  Benedict was ordained, and Aunt Amanda was there, and she was in the church when he celebrated his first Mass. She sat upright, extremely fat and tall, and critically watched his every gesture. And tears of mingled joy and sorrow ran down her ruddy cheeks. “Now I can die in peace,” she told him, at the rich and bounteous reception she gave in his honor after the Mass, and she knelt for his blessing and her eyes rolled up touchingly. She lived to be ninety-four, and Benedict’s Order prospered mightily through her gifts. She left him a magnificent fortune, and she left each of her nieces one thousand pounds apiece. They took him to court, of course, claiming undue influence, but they lost the case.

  During the long years that she lived alone, except for servants, in her mansion on Grosvenor Square, Benedict visited her as often as he could, and he wrote several times a week to her. He had long ago, when he was only eleven years old, given up calling her Auntie. He called her Mother. “And no lad ever had a better and more loving and more cosseting,” said Father Hughes. “She spoiled me outrageously all her life, and bullied me half to death.”

  When she was seventy-six and Benedict almost forty, he had just returned from two years in Africa, and he went to Amanda’s house at once for the stay which had been granted him. Amanda was not perceptibly older. She was to give a tremendous dinner in his honor the next night. “I do want you to meet a darling old fool,” she told Benedict. “Why do they make you wear such an uncomfortable collar? Thank God for no gaiters, though; I really do not know why the poor High Church clergy wear them; silly-looking, I always thought. Never mind. Now, my darling old fool. Oh, he’s several years younger than I am. He’s never married. He reminds me of your father. I might remark, here and now, and no offense should be taken, that you have outgrown your father’s dreaminess and vapors, and that is all to the good. But Sir Joshua Fielding remains almost exactly like your father. I mentioned he is a bachelor? Yes. And no kin. But nothing concerns him; he drifts through life like that d
amned woman who fell in love with Sir Lancelot — ?”

  “The Lady of Shalott,” said Benedict, refilling his aunt’s brandy glass.

  “What a ninny,” said Amanda. “She could see the damned man in the mirror, couldn’t she? Was it necessary for her to go plunging after him, then dying? By the way, what was the curse on her?”

  “I never knew,” said Benedict, sitting across from his indomitable aunt and smiling at her fondly. “But I think there is a moral there, that those who dare not look at life should just glimpse it through their mirrors. Reality has a shocking effect on some people, you know. Very unfortunate. I often wonder how they can be so weak.”

  “Um,” said Amanda, with some sourness. “I was never one to stare at mirrors. How was the joint tonight?”

  “Excellent. Do we really have to have that stuffy dinner tomorrow, Mother?”

  “Yes, indeed. I have invited a number of rich Romans, for your benefit. It won’t hurt them to give you a few sovereigns for your Order. Rich people cling to sovereigns like flies to honey. One can understand that. Joshua is a Roman, too, and very good and sweet and generous. He’s the Lady of Shalott all over again.”

  “He refuses to look at life?”

  Amanda considered. Then shook her head, baffled. “I don’t know, dear Benedict. But how he can look at life, if he does, with such serenity and peacefulness is quite beyond me. He never speaks of religion to anyone. He quotes Shakespeare a great deal, especially Hamlet. What is it he is always saying? Perhaps I am not quoting it exactly: ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio — ’ There, I can’t remember the rest.”

  Benedict sat up, deeply interested. “Oh? Of course, I remember. It was not one of my favorite quotations.” He paused. “Is Sir Joshua superstitious?”

  “Dear me, my child,” said Amanda, irritably. “I cannot say about that. How you do go on in irrelevances! What has superstition to do with Sir Joshua, who lives in a world of dreams? I want you to meet him and for you to see what your father would have been like had the sweet lamb lived. It might,” added Amanda with a tinge of malice, “give you a start.”

  Some doddering old man who is possibly senile and has picked up an exotic thought or two in his travels, thought Benedict. He asked, “Has Sir Joshua ever been to India?”

  “He’s been all over the world, though why I really do not know,” said Amanda. “The rest of the world is so not-English, isn’t it? Must be very wearing and boring, and one can’t trust the water, I’ve heard, and such sinfulness going on.”

  Benedict suddenly laughed, remembering D’Israeli’s pungent remark on British morality.

  “Does he often speak of India?”

  “No. Not at all. And he has none of those frightful big brass plates, all carved with symbols and serpents, and strange furniture and hangings, all from India — so fashionable these days. They give me the vapors. Very depressing. One expects cobras to come gliding from under the sofas. No. Joshua’s house is just as comfortable and sensible as mine, and in as good taste.” Amanda looked about her complacently. Benedict looked about, too, and thought, as he had always thought, how crowded and how tasteless this rich room was, and then he thought how much he loved it as his home.

  “I don’t think,” said Amanda, “that he liked India. But what has India got to do with it, Benedict? How your mind wanders. That comes of the fevers you have been having in heathen places.”

  Benedict indeed had suffered from various fevers in jungles and in deserts, and he was here at home because his superiors thought he needed considerable time to recover. His superiors were very fond of Amanda now, and increasingly grateful, and she was old.

  There was no one at the party even of his own age, and he was not very young any longer. There was not a lady or gentleman present under sixty-five. Most of them were much older. They were all very fat and staid and had round opinions, like Amanda, and they all exuded that serene air which told of large bank accounts and solid investments. They laughed happily and cosily, and were satisfied and content. Sir Joshua Fielding was not like them in the least.

  In fact, Sir Joshua resembled, startlingly, a number of old and courtly Monsignori of ancient Italian family whom Benedict had met frequently in Rome. He had their slender and swaying height, their attenuation, their fine and patrician Roman profiles, their bright and mystical eyes, their noble heads, their exquisite manners, their air of detachment and quiet benevolence. Benedict wondered why he had never become a priest, himself, this regal old bachelor whose voice was both soft and resonant, carrying yet calm, and who wore about him, as an almost visible aura, the lofty saintliness of those who are genuinely good and innocent of spirit. And, like the Italian Monsignori, he appeared well aware of reality, in spite of Amanda’s fixed opinion of him. This mingling of intrinsic innocence and accepting worldliness was an intriguing blend, and Benedict soon became fascinated merely by watching his subtle face, his slight and graceful gestures, the way he lifted a glass and inclined his head, his sudden sweet smiles, and the laughter, never cruel, which lurked in the corners of his fine mouth. He was the sort of person of whom it is usually said when he is young, “He is not really a child,” and of whom it is said when he is old, “He will always be young.”

  Sir Joshua and Benedict became friends almost at once. He talked of Benedict’s life with interest, and he had the marvelous gift of listening and interpreting immediately. While listening, the merry eyes, so youthful and alive, would become soft and grave. And then Benedict suddenly knew, right in the midst of dinner, that in one way his aunt had been correct: Sir Joshua lived for a dream, and lived in it also, quite apart from his mortal life, which he appeared to be enjoying very much, indeed. There was no regret or sadness or yearning in that dream, Benedict saw, no mawkish superstition, no fanatic obsession, no removal from reality.

  Benedict began to wonder. Had he loved a girl he had lost, or a virtuous married woman whom he could not have? Certainly, there was a far glow of love in his eyes, but it was the glow of fulfillment and possession and joy. A man did not look like this after he had lost his love.

  Benedict began to probe delicately and curiously, for he was only human, when the gentlemen were left alone with their brandy and the ladies had retired to the drawing-room. He had found a seat for himself next to Sir Joshua, who was a general and respected favorite even among those beefy and very earthy men. The mighty chandelier poured down its rainbowed light on the gleaming white tablecloth; the paneled walls glimmered in firelight. The dinner had been excellent. The gentlemen, ‘Roman’ and non-Roman, felt a little constraint at having a priest among them, and quite a youngish one at that. Their elderly lewdness had to be suppressed, and this made them slightly melancholy. So, to give them an opportunity to whisper their innocent naughtiness to each other, Benedict leaned towards Sir Joshua and began his probing in what he thought was a most unobtrusive way. Suddenly Sir Joshua’s eyes began to sparkle with paternal amusement, and this made Benedict blush. The older man pulled his chair closer to Benedict’s, so that they formed a little island in the midst of gleeful whispers and noisy, abrupt laughter.

  The eternal and patient rain of England was falling outside, this early autumn night, and Benedict could hear its mysterious whispering against the shuttered windows. It was a most peaceful sound. It was, as the English said, “a soft night.”

  “Our friends are being considerate of you,” said Sir Joshua. “I am sure you could tell them of more outrageous things than those they are whispering now. They are very good men, you know, my dear boy. The strong, beating heart of England. The strong, lusty heart. I hope it beats forever! I hope the Empire will never disintegrate, as other empires have done all through the past. If that happens, a whole world will be lost to order and character and discipline and freedom. Yes, these are the heart of England. I think it is very kind of them to accept me so whole-heartedly, don’t you?”

  Benedict was startled. He stared at the aristocratic face smiling at him, and t
hen at the somewhat gross and very much overfed faces of ‘the heart of England’.

  “For, you see,” said Sir Joshua, removing the ash from his cigar gracefully, “my dear and wonderful father was only a traveler. He carried his pack on his back through three counties every year, walking every foot of the weary way. In the wildest of weather. He was such a little man. A lifetime of privation and hunger and poverty, and the hardest work, had stunted his body. But not his soul. I think he is a saint now, unknown to the Church but not to God. And my mother, to make ends meet, took in sewing and washing. She could not go out to the rich houses to work, for I was a sickly child. I owe my life, for what it is, to her endless and loving care. I was their only child.

  “So, you see that my friends are very tolerant, indeed, in accepting me among them, as if I had been born to their wealth and in one of their houses.”

  Benedict was astonished. He looked at Sir Joshua’s excellent broadcloth and fine linen, at his long white hands, so curiously youthful and supple, at his noble features and brilliant eyes. A beautiful ring was on the third finger of his left hand, worn in the manner of a betrothed woman. It sparkled and glowed with a thousand changing lights. It was not an opal, yet it had an opal’s restless and shifting colors, its cold yet fiery heart. Benedict found himself looking at that strange ring, even while he thought about what Sir Joshua had told him.