Grandmother and the Priests

by Taylor Caldwell

  The men in Darcy also cherished their donkeys and their few horses, for these carried the stuffs of barter and pulled the plows. The death of a horse was a major calamity. How would a man replace it? Darcy was days’ journey away from the nearest city, and inland where there were only blue lakes and not the sea where the ships came in. Horses were too tired, and too precious, for a man to use to ride even to the nearest village for a gossip with his kinsmen, so Darcy remained remote and isolated. But it was blessed in one thing: the climate was quite temperate and even, sheltered by hills from what the worst winter could do, and so the grass in the fields and on the hills remained green and edible for long months. Moreover, though it was stingy with its yield of oats and grains it grew fine potatoes, and there had been years when Darcy had been almost entirely kept alive by those vegetables. It was one of the few spots when, during the Famine, the potatoes did not rot. It also yielded peat for the fires. It also yielded some gray stone, and the miller had a small stone house, and the tiny church and rectory were of gray stone.

  “That sounds very grand, to say that my house and the church were of stone,” said Father O’Connor. “But the church held seats for about thirty people only, and they crowded, and the late-comers had to stand at the back and the sides and in the one little aisle. Many was the time the weary young mothers leaned against the cold stone, weak with hunger, and holding their squalling infants, and many was the time when I consecrated the Bread that my words were drowned out by the infant wailing. Yet, I am thinking now, the sound must have been sweeter to Our Lord than what I prayed, and the whimpering of the choir, which was composed of two ancient Sisters and one little boy with perpetual bronchitis. For, you will see, we all had bronchitis and we coughed the whole year through. The climate was not too harsh, but the hunger was. We had no doctor; we had a very ould midwife, and many was the young mother who died with the child to whom she had just given birth. Sometimes the child lived, and this meant that the father must try to persuade a pressed farmer for milk, if he had no cow of his own, and sometimes a mother with a nursing infant would help. Yet, I have never seen a village with so many sinewy ould people. The hundredth birthday would bring the children, the grandchildren, the great-grandchildren, and the great-great-grandchildren, with a cake for the sake of respect, but it was considered no tremendous age. I have buried many a man or woman who had lived long beyond the mark of the century, and to the last they had done their share of work in Darcy. It would have been a shame on them if they had shirked for one moment. Ah, they were grand people, my own, in Darcy! And never did the Sassenagh know of them to collect any taxes, which was a blessing from God.

  “There was no pub in Darcy. Each man contributed his share of malt and grains to the brewer, who made the beer, and he sold the beer for a length of wool or linen or a pair of boots. The beer was drunk by hearthsides, among friends. I never saw a drunken man in Darcy, or a slatternly woman. We had very little, but we had pride in ourselves and we had Faith, and we had love for one another. In all the things a man can be truly rich in, those we had. There are many who would say we had no ambition, except for the young lads and colleens who emigrated — but we had our God, and what more can a man have? Even if he suffers?

  “I was a young priest, but even the men and women beyond one hundred spoke of me with affection as the ‘ould Father’. They loved me and I loved them. They gave me what they could in fresh beef and bread and vegetables and though it was very little it was all they could do. The women scrubbed my tiny rectory, which had but two rooms, each only as large as a stall, and never was a rectory cleaner. The men planted flowers about it, and potatoes in the little garden, and radishes and even some lettuce. Those were the happiest days of my life.”

  Children were cherished in Darcy, though few survived birth or the year that followed, for they meant more hands in the fields, more hands at the looms. Children were riches in Darcy. And so it was that everyone pitied Peter Doyle and his wife that they had no children. Though they lived just a little better than their neighbors, with no helpless mouths to feed the first years, they were pitied. Peter became forty, then fifty, and Mary, his wife, looked towards her middle age, too. Both were strong and handsome people, with strong backs — but they had no children. Then when Mary Doyle was forty-five she finally conceived.

  Like Zachary and Elizabeth, they could not, at first, believe that such a miracle had been granted to them. The midwife was consulted, and was at first dubious. Mary was practically beyond child-bearing age; she had reached the ‘change’. But month succeeded month and Mary’s body increased. Each morning found the ecstatic couple at Mass, and each morning they received Holy Communion. If their neighbors were skeptical, they were not. Mary would have a child at last. They did not hope for a lad; a girl would be equally welcome. They looked about them with faces of gladness, and at last the whole village was praying for them both. Father O’Connor visited them often, just to look at Mary’s rapturous eyes of faith and joy. He wished, for the first time, that his church possessed an organ. It did have the ruins of one, far beyond repair; of course, there could never be any replacement, for lack of money. The two very ancient Sisters, and the little boy, did their best with their Gregorian chanting. But still, an organ would have been welcome on triumphant Sundays, to remember the miracle of Mary’s conception. However, there were times when the Sisters and the boy outdid themselves, and the tiny church rang like a holy gong.

  The whole village declared an unofficial holiday when Mary came to bed in her labor. The brewer recklessly broached a keg of beer for those who stood about the Doyles’ little house. The Sisters knelt at Mary’s straw bed, and Peter Doyle was almost beside himself with joy and fear and had to be upheld by Father O’Connor. It was a warm spring day, full of the fragrance of grass and soft wind, and there was the brightest sun. All appeared auspicious, in spite of Mary’s agonized and prolonged labor. Everyone knew she was in extreme pain, she who had never borne a child before. But no one heard her groan or scream. She bore her anguish with smiles of rapture and gratitude. She was about to deliver her child. Each time her middle-aged body was convulsed her eyes would light up like candle flames, and she would clasp her sweating hands towards heaven.

  The hours went by. The midwife’s face was lined with anxiety. She walked restlessly back and forth near Mary’s bed, praying and muttering. Then she called Father O’Connor. “She is dying,” she said, with the abruptness of all village folk. So Father O’Connor gave Mary the Last Rites, to the muted distress of those who waited. Mary rallied at once. “My baby will live, Father,” she said. A little later she gave birth to a boy child, and at the very moment he squalled his first breath she gave her last, humbly and prayerfully. Peter Doyle sat dumbly with his son in his arms and was so far away, as he looked at his dead wife’s calm and smiling face, that even the priest could not reach him.

  “ ‘Tis strange, and then again perhaps it is not so strange,” said old Father O’Connor, “that Peter began to hate his little son. He had had his dear wife for twenty-eight years, his dearest and closest companion in misfortune, hope, love, misery and joy. They had lived alone in the oneness of being for the greater part of their lives, and they had known each other as children. Mary was as much a part of Peter’s life as his body. In the deepest sense of marriage they had been as one, almost from their own births. Peter had never loved another girl, nor had Mary loved another boy. Their faces were as familiar to them as their own. They had exchanged their first childhood kiss, and their last. Peter had always been ‘Mary’s boyo’ and Mary had always been ‘Peter’s colleen’. They had sat next to each other at school and had looked at each other’s slates. They, too, had been only children. They were at once brother and sister and husband and wife. No one ever saw Mary, from her babyhood, without seeing Peter beside her. So, when Mary died Peter died also, though he lived thirteen years longer.”

  Father O’Connor sighed. “I knew it almost at once. I deplored it, but I understood.
Without Mary, Peter was not truly alive. He worked his little field, and came home to his cottage, where his dead father’s elderly aunt now lived to take care of the child. Ould Eileen must have been close to ninety then, but a strong and vigorous woman. She lived to be nearly one hundred and three, and then she died, and Stephen was twelve years old. Never, in those years, did his father speak to him, not in love, not in anger. Sometimes I talked to Peter but he would stare at me with his pale blue eyes and I knew that he did not hear me. On Sundays, he spent his hours near his wife’s grave, mumbling to her and smiling and nodding. It’s very possible he did not even know that he had a son, though later Stephen told me that his father had always hated him. Who knows the recesses of the human heart? Stephen worked in the field with his father, and if they had need to communicate it was only through gestures. It was a terrible life for a young lad, and Stephen came to manhood with bitterness in his heart and anger, for he was all alone. He believed his father held him guilty for Mary’s death, and that his life was a curse. As his father had rejected him and would not know him, he was sure that he was detestable and not worthy of human love and tenderness.

  “Stephen was a tall strong lad, like his father, but with his mother’s dark eyes. There was always a storm in them, from his babyhood. Those we reject, reject us; it is a truth we do not recognize. Stephen came to school for what the ould Sisters could teach him, but he was a restless lad, always looking beyond the hills. I was sure he would emigrate to America or at least to Liverpool. But he stayed on, laboring in the field, earning a penny here and there helping the shoemaker or the blacksmith or the brewer. He worked well, but he hardly spoke. His father became older and more tired, and Stephen did not speak of him. He was Confirmed, and Peter was not there. Stephen sang in the choir on Sunday, but Peter did not hear. The Sisters loved Stephen, but they were frightened for him. He was such a quiet and somber boy and he never smiled. He also did not sin in the full meaning of the word. When he was in the Confessional he would mutter that he sometimes wondered if God cared for him any longer, but that was all. The colleens of the village looked at him, for he was a handsome black-haired lad, tall in his boots, and with fierce and shadowy eyes. By that time he was all alone, for Peter had died when the boy was thirteen.

  “I remember me that it was past midnight when Stephen knocked on my door and told me his father was dying and had asked for the priest. That request was almost the only thing Peter had ever asked of his son. Peter made his last confession; I administered Extreme Unction. Then Peter asked for his son, and there were tears on his face. But Stephen was not in the cottage. It was a wild night of rain and wind. I returned to Peter, and remained with him for the little time he lived. When I had closed his eyes I had felt the wetness of his tears, and I looked for Stephen again. Then I went to the neighbors and asked them to stay with the dead man, for it was almost time for Mass. Stephen did not return for three days, and no one knew where he ran, and his father went to his grave with none of his blood to stand beside him.

  “It was not that Stephen was a sullen boy then, or resentful or rebellious, for had he been so he’d not have inspired the good ould Sisters with such anxious love for him. One of them told me that Stephen was lonely and desperate, but very conscientious. He worked the bit of land his father left, and he worked at anything else he could find to do. God knows I had little money of my own, but I found him odd jobs in my garden. He would talk seldom with anyone. He had a habit of walking in the woods all alone, and once I saw him so when the wind was high and it was sounding like a thousand harps in the trees. I stood at my distance and watched him and never have I seen a face so suddenly glorious and joyful and listening. He was listening to the great and crashing music of the wind, and its wailing among the boughs and its rustling and shouting in the leaves. He was then but fifteen, and he had the look about him of a wild black colt.

  “And once, in the spring, I saw him lying face-down beside a brook, his ear turned to the brown and hurrying water, and he was listening again, and smiling to himself and humming a faint song as to a thin trembling of music. I saw him often like this, in the woods and forest, beside the water, in the fields. What music he heard I did not know. I, myself, was shy and I knew shyness when I saw it and I was not at ease with Stephen, nor was he at ease with me. I did not even know the condition of his soul, for when he was seventeen he no longer came to Confession and only on Sundays to Mass. He was not in the choir now since his voice had changed. He sat in his silence at the end of the worn pew, and he left in silence, and alone. There were those who said he had gone queer in his head, but I did not think so. I prayed for the lad, and I tried to speak to him. He would listen respectfully, and make no answer. Except once.” The old priest smiled gently. “He said to me, ‘Father, it is not the grand voice you have at Mass, but there is one note like an angel’s trumpet.’ And then he hurried away. I had the most foolish thoughts after that about Stephen. I questioned the Sisters, but they told me that Stephen no longer had a voice and that they had known that since it had changed. But, one very ould nun told me, he would listen with painful attention to the choir, and wince if a note was bad.”

  Stephen was only seventeen when he came to Father O’Connor and told him he was going off ‘to the wars’. “Now,” said old Father O’Connor, “the Sassenaghs did not come to Darcy for the lads for their eternal wars and skirmishes, for the same reason that they did not come for taxes. The village was so small, so hidden, so isolated, and it did not have any business with its neighbors or the towns. The Sassenaghs just did not know about Darcy’s existence. Had there been a smell of a half-crown in all the village the Sassenagh tax-collector would have been there. But there was no half-crown; it was doubtful if any of the villagers would have recognized such a coin had they seen it. People lived apart in those days far more than they do now, and rare was the newspaper that came to Darcy and rare was the news even of the nearest village. I had the only books in the village; I knew that Stephen read what few I had, for so I was told, but I never caught him in my cottage. He came and went like a shadow.

  “But in some way a newspaper from Dublin had gotten, in a sad state, to Darcy, and it was far over a month old. There was another war, and fine wages were offered to the lads to join the Royal Army, and grand opportunities for adventure. So Stephen came to me and gave me the few acres of his land. I said I would not take them but would hold them for him, and so it was arranged that the men of the village would work that land, take half for their labor and give the rest to my church and the Sisters. I then asked Stephen why he wished to go to one of the Sassenagh’s wars — and I do not mind now what war it was — and he only shook his head and said he must go to see what the world was like beyond Darcy. I mentioned that he might be killed and he said, ‘Father, that would not be bad. For the likes of me, without kinfolk or friends or aught to care whether I live or die.’ It was the first time I had heard the lad speak so, and he spoke with no bitterness or pity for himself, and it was one of the most tragic things I had ever heard. I saw his eyes full for the first time, and they were far and lost for all the storm in them, and then he was gone. The villagers marveled at his going, and again spoke of the queerness, but they soon stopped their gossiping, for they had not known Stephen at all, no more than they noticed a silent tree in its accustomed place. He was long forgotten at the end of five years, and the little sod cottage stood alone and gathered dust and the men worked the small bit of land and began to speak of it as ‘the Doyle acres’. Not Peter’s as it had been, and not Stephen’s when he had inherited it. It was only Doyle’s, and none remembered Stephen’s face or what or who he was. He was forgotten except for myself, and the two ould Sisters died and took the memory of him with them.

  “Then, as suddenly and as invisibly as Stephen had left, so he returned. A little girl who had no memory of Stephen told me excitedly that gypsies were in ‘the Doyle cottage’, and that smoke was coming from the single chimney. I went at once, crossing the go
lden fields of autumn. It was another day of high wind, and it sang a different song than the one it sang in the other seasons, a song of lonely places and desolation and shadows that stood forever unseen by any man. When I came to Stephen’s tiny house he was there on the doorstep smoking, and he was a man grown and tall and very pale and thin, and the only thing that moved about him was the smoke from his pipe. His eyes stared at me but he made no sign of recognition. He did not even stand, as all men stood then when a priest approached. He just stared at me emptily and smoked, and I stopped and he bent his head a little to one side. And then as I passed over the thick turf a beam of sunlight struck his forehead and I saw that near his right temple there was the most dreadful of old scars. It was long and dark red and twisted, and it pulled up one of his eyelids so that he had the strangest expression.