Grandmother and the Priests

by Taylor Caldwell

  So Father Andrew had a number of the heroic virtues. Was it possible that those virtues had expanded to the dimensions of true saintliness? It was possible. But still — Father Ifor looked at the wall of lavender mountain, its changing face touched by the red, setting sun. The carriage passed a tiny blue lake, which reflected part of the mountain in a shade of purple and turned the edge of the sun to scarlet fire. Then they were trotting to the street on which Father Andrew’s church stood, and the rectory.

  The church had been wonderfully restored. Tall and narrow, its slates seemingly washed with crimson water under the dying sun, its cross flaming, it had a look of modest stateliness it had never possessed before. The rectory, too, had been restored. The front garden was filled with flowers. Then Father Ifor saw a knot of respectful men and women loitering near the garden gate. But the shutters facing the street were firmly closed.

  The coachman brought up the carriage with a flourish, leapt down lithely, ignoring his fellow villagers, and with a large gesture of importance assisted Father Ifor from the carriage, which irritated the priest a little, for he was in the prime of his life and not decrepit. The men on the street removed their wool caps; the women and girls curtseyed humbly. They gazed at him with marvelous, but annoying, solemnness of face. He tried to smile at them, but it was a little difficult under the circumstances, so he opened the gate and stepped onto the path. Immediately the small throng surged after him. “Wait, there, now!” exclaimed the coachman. “You are not to vex Father. Begone with you all.”

  “We want only a glimpse of Father Andrew, Tom,” said a woman, timidly.

  “Glimpse him at Mass tomorrow,” said the coachman, closing the gate. Hear, hear, thought Father Andrew, approvingly. He put his hand on the latch of the rectory door, and it opened to let him into the tiny parlor. A snug fire burned on the hearth; there were two comfortable chairs he had not remembered. And a Brussels rug! A ginger cat rose, purring. The coachman deposited the priest’s luggage behind the door of the bedroom he had always used, and then said, “You’ll do with a wash, Father?”

  “Yes. But where is Father Andrew?”

  “Here, Ifor,” said an old and fragile voice. Father Andrew was huddled against the wall, in the dusk, near the little window that looked out on the back garden. In dismay, Father Ifor thought: He is hiding! But why?

  Then Father Andrew came towards him, walking slowly and wearily, and the younger priest saw his face, thin, beaked, exceedingly troubled and sad. But when he smiled the old look of pale exaltation appeared again about his dimmed blue eyes, and he embraced his cousin and said, “Thank God that you could come, Ifor!”

  “There, now,” said Father Ifor, with a cheer he did not feel. He added, “All will be well.”

  “I hope so,” sighed the old man. He paused, held his cousin off, and said, “They have been feeding you better, I see.” His frail hands visibly trembled.

  “I eat regularly now,” said Father Ifor. But his cousin was looking at the coachman. “Thank you, Tom,” he said. “That will be all.”

  The coachman looked disappointed. He had been waiting for some mysterious ejaculation, some ‘sign’, which he could tell of in the pub tonight. But both priests stood in silence, so he bent his head for Father Andrew’s blessing, and he went off, reverently closing the door behind him.

  Then Father Andrew said, “Damn it.” He spoke with absolute feeling and his old passion.

  Father Ifor threw back his Welshman’s lion head and roared with laughter and relief. Father Andrew listened to that laughter, and relaxed. He began to chuckle under his breath. He pushed his cousin on the arm. “Off with you, for a wash,” he said. “And then we’ll have our supper, and our talk. And God knows,” he said, with renewed feeling, “I need it!”

  “I’ve heard much of the story,” said Father Ifor. “The villagers, on the train, so that will spare part of your strength. Are you really a saint?” he asked, with some mischief.

  Father Andrew groaned, and put a hand to his white head, and laughing again, Father Ifor went into the miniature bedroom where he had known so many cold mornings and bitter, icy nights. Then he stared at the dark polished floor, the new poster bed, the large crucifix on the wall, the comfortable leather chair. He took off his cassock, then remembered something. His cousin’s cassock had been very sleek, if rumpled, and of the best quality of cloth. His own, in comparison, was sackcloth. Wondering again, he went to the commode, poured water from the handsome pitcher into the basin, washed himself vigorously, and dried himself on an excellent linen towel. He went back into the parlor, where Father Andrew was gloomily staring at the fire, the ginger cat on his knee. His thin, veined hand was stroking the animal absently. “It’s Mrs. Burke’s cat,” he said, as if in apology, “but the beast has taken a fancy to me. Sit down, Ifor.” He paused. “There’ll be brandy in a bottle at the table near you, and two glasses.”

  A lamp had been lighted on the mantelpiece, but the shutters had been firmly closed over the little leaded window. There was a rustling outside, and Father Andrew’s nose twitched irritably. “Have they no homes or duties?” he asked.

  The brandy bottle had been hardly used. The glasses were smooth and pleasant to the touch. The two priests sipped in appreciative silence. The fire crackled; the cat purred. “I’ve sent Mrs. Burke off for the evening,” said Father Andrew, “so we could talk in peace. But there is her grandchild — ”

  “I heard about it. On the train. If a Welshman can do nothing else he can talk volubly, and descriptively. Was it really a — ”

  A dim color had come into Father Andrew’s fallen cheeks. He said, with youthful strength and emphasis, “A miracle? Yes, it was that. A miracle. As were the rest.”

  Father Ifor was a little depressed. He had hoped that his cousin could give him a rational explanation for all that he had heard. But the mystery was deepening.

  “Then,” said Father Ifor, hesitatingly, “there is — er — a saint about?”

  “A saint,” said Father Andrew. “There’s no doubt of it. But blind I was, until it was almost too late. Sir Oswold Morgan.”

  Father Ifor was stunned. “Wicked. A man of Satan. Blasphemous. Cruel.”

  “There was the finger of God,” said Father Andrew, sighing. “I never saw it, until almost too late. And now the Bishop wants a complete report, and then he will send one of his sharp young priests who will make up his mind if it should be referred to Rome.” He paused. “It will be! That I know! The finger of God. And then, we’ll have our local saint, and God knows that Wales needs one these days. There is no question that Oswold Morgan will eventually be canonized.”

  “I heard of him, on the train, and the things I heard — ” said Father Ifor.

  “That is the trouble,” said Father Andrew. He looked at his cousin, and the blue of his youth was shining in his eyes. “Has not the Church always taught that saints are not recognized as such, or acknowledged, by blind men? It is so, now. None was blinder than myself, may God forgive me.”

  “I heard he hated you, Andrew.”

  Father Andrew shook his head with sadness. “He hated no one, not even those who hated him. He hated only injustice and poverty and the exploitation of man by man, and man’s hardness of heart, and his lack of charity. He hated all sin. For the sinner he had only mercy and kindness. As you have seen, and heard.”

  He pushed himself wearily to his feet. “Mrs. Burke has laid out our supper. We need only to brew the tea.” He studied his cousin. “It is a fine meal. We’ll do justice to it, before I tell you more.”

  They went into the little kitchen, which was warm with a fire, and a kettle steamed on the hob, and the table had been laid with a white linen cloth on which stood platters of ham and beef and tongue and herring, and there were hot breads covered with a prim cloth, and mustard in a little silver pot, and cold brussels sprouts with an appetizing sauce, and sundry other things. Father Ifor was immediately ravenous, and made a mental note that at Confession he should tel
l that during Grace his mouth watered for the smell of the good food. As a pre-Confession penance he made a ceremony of seating his old cousin, and insisted that he help himself, first. Father Andrew gave him an impish smile, understanding, and turned up the wick of the lamp on the table so that the food could be seen in all its seductive glory, and not a rosy slice of ham ignored nor a cut of meat slighted in dimness. “Eat up,” said Father Andrew. “It is all for you, for I take little, to Mrs. Burke’s scolding and regret.”

  Father Ifor ate, putting aside the incredible story of an ‘evil’ man’s saintliness. His knife and fork moved rapidly, and sometimes rattled like castanets. Father Andrew, barely touching an edge of ham, and barely breaking off a small piece of bread, was heartened and happy. Ifor had common sense, yet in many ways he was a mystic. It was a comfort to have him in the house, a salve to the soul, for though one knew that God and all His saints and angels, and particularly His Blessed Mother, always heard a prayer and the cries of a man’s heart, it did the soul good to have the presence of a human being who spoke aloud in human tones, and in whom one could confide. Ifor was not young, but Father Andrew thought of him as a youth and remembered the day when the lad was only twelve and had come to him and had said, “I will be a priest. Like you. If it be the will of God.” A tall lad of twelve, a pit boy, already blackened with coal, already blistered, and three years out of school. Out of the people, themselves, came their strength. Out of their humility and lowliness had come their Saviour. World without end.

  They drank their hot, black, sweet tea, slowly and with pleasure. “We will leave all for Mrs. Burke to wash up. To do anything else, though I did it for years until she came to me, she would consider sacrilege, or, more, a reflection on her housekeeping.” Father Andrew’s sunken cheeks were quite flushed, and he seemed happier.

  They returned to the parlor, after giving the cat his share of food, and a saucer of rich yellow cream. Father Andrew produced a bottle of fine port. “The ‘saint’ seems to have done well by you, too,” said Father Ifor, delighted.

  “I wanted nothing,” said Father Andrew, with sudden gravity. “But it was in his blessed will. For me. Half of his fortune went to help the hamlet, in perpetuity, and the other half to the Church. To refuse what he had given me would have hurt him, and it was little enough I could do for him, considering my blindness and stupidity.”

  Father Andrew sipped the port. “You will not remember the Morgans, for Sir Oswold was older than you, Ifor, and he had long left Gwenwynnlynn before you were britched. He was the only child of his parents, and his father was a miner, and he was killed in one of Wales’ most disastrous mine explosions. Oswold was then but eleven years old, and his mother, to support herself and the lad, went into the mines, herself, for those were the days when women and children worked in the mines, too, and rarely a voice was raised in horror. She would not let Oswold work there, for she wanted him to study, for he would be a priest, he said. I did not know that until — ”

  “What thoughts went through the mind of that lad when his mother came dragging home from the mines, black of face, wounded in the hands, filthy in her poor clothing? He would not have it, no! He would sacrifice what he dearly desired, and go into the mines, and she should stay at home. No, said his devoted mother. Then there was another explosion, and she was killed, and he was alone, a big strapping lad then twelve.

  “From his toddling days he had been serious and silent and not interested in those things which other lads love. Though he could out-race and out-throw and out-wrestle any lad his age, and those much older, he had other preferences, and those were books, and, above all, God, and justice and mercy and kindness. He looked about him and saw the misery and desperation of the hamlet, the hunger, the women and children in the mines, the broken men, the soot and slag and ugliness which greed had created. He saw the leaking roofs of the cots, the ignorance, the animal life forced upon his people when they should be recognized as the children of God, and treated honestly and fairly, and not as beasts by the owners in England. Was not a Welshman a man, too, and did he not want a little song and joy in his life and a few shillings in his pockets, and a little meat on his gritty table?

  “These were the thoughts that set him apart from the other lads, and so made his face gloomy and somber, and so they called him ugly-faced and unnatural. He came to the priest before me, who was not a Welshman, and he laid his just anger before him, and the priest rebuked him for that anger and spoke of humility and submissiveness and eternity. And Oswold said to him, with new, strange anger: ‘And how is it possible for a man to think like a man when he is forced to live like an animal, without that animal’s security of a warm shelter the night and food he has earned?’ To live as the miners were living was not living at all, said Oswold. It was a betrayal of God to ask that His children starve peaceably and not have some of the fruits of their hard labor. So Oswold left the rectory in his stern wrath, and the old housekeeper gossiped, and it was said that Oswold had insulted the priest and turned from his Faith. So, now he was an apostate, as well as a stranger, and the people hated him, though the priest reproached them for their lack of charity. The young Oswold refused Confirmation. If God were against him, too, he said in his heart, and had no more love for His children than did their oppressors, then he wanted nothing to do with God. So thinks the severe and intolerant young mind, especially when it is stricken sick with woe and grief and pity and righteous anger.

  “Oswold went into the mines with a silent, fierce resolution. But not a woman or child or man there spoke to him, not even the Protestants, who might be expected to side with him against the priest. He was an outlaw. He bore all insults in the mines with fortitude and secret charity, and those are heroic virtues. He received the blows from ignorant and taunting men and did not return them. He knew the misery which inspired it all, for man will turn upon man in his despair, and hate the nearest human being because of the horror of his life. In understanding, Oswold was truly a saint.

  “When the priest, dimly beginning to understand, came to a newly opened mine to pray for the safety of the workers, Oswold stood apart with a cold proud face, his lip curling, and this further infuriated the people. The priest tried to talk with him, and he would not. The priest wrote him letters, and he never came. I have seen the letters, which Oswold kept. His anger was not against the priest, but against God. And, as he worked, he thought more and more. He slept in a mere ruined shelter. What he could spare he would stealthily slip into the hands of children, a copper or two. If a Christmas goose mysteriously appeared at the door of the priest, or that of a starving widow with children, no one dreamed that Oswold had gone hungry for a long time to provide it, he with the ‘ugly, dark face’, and the ‘blasphemy’, and his apartness. Nor should I have known of it if I had not seen a letter from the priest, in which that regretful old man expressed his suspicions, and begged the youth to come to him. But Oswold would not, for he was a stubborn young Welshman and he could not forgive God for all this desolation and death and ruin and suffering.

  “Then when he was about fifteen, Oswold disappeared. But he wrote to the priest in the fine and careful hand in which he had schooled himself, and it was the letter of a man not a youth. I found it in one of the old priest’s books, lying forgotten and moldering in yonder case. And it said, ‘I shall not return until I can deliver my people from the cruelty of those who oppress them and from the indifference of God. I beg of you that you forgive my rash words, but not the words themselves, and only the intemperance of them. If it is possible for you, Father, pray for me, though I shall not pray for myself! I am alone, as all men are alone.’

  “When I read that letter,” said Father Andrew, “I knew. But that was three years ago and too much time had passed, and it was almost too late.

  “It would take many days, Ifor, to tell you what Oswold did when he left Gwenwynnlynn, in the darkness of the night, with four shillings in his pocket, and all that he had in the world on his emaciated body. In hi
s youth coal was mined painfully with hand and pick and shovel. Labor was cheap. Who cared to invent any machine that would lighten that labor? Who cared about the men, women and children who periodically died in the mines, or spent short lives gasping out, in consumption, the dust they had inhaled, after years in the mines? They did not complain; therefore, they had nothing to complain about! The miners in Newcastle, England, had better hours and better wages, for Englishmen so near to London will often shout. But London, to the Welsh, was on another world. It was to the Newcastle mines that Oswold went, and he studied, and read, and watched, and thought, and it came to him, suddenly and brilliantly, what a machine could do to save the flesh and blood of man.