Grandmother and the Priests

by Taylor Caldwell

  “Oh,” whispered the Bishop, and clasped his hands, and was afraid to thank God.

  “And there was a fine gentleman,” continued the priest, “who paid the fine for them all, for where should the lads be getting pounds, and the girls the shillings, they who have not even copper pennies amongst them?”

  “A fine gentleman?” quaked the Bishop, his heart jumping again.

  “That he was, and no name he gave. He spoke of a patron. A gentleman like a Duke.”

  “Oh!” exclaimed the Bishop. “Was it a man with the face of an angel?”

  Jack Morgan stared at him, puzzled. “No, your Excellency. A man with a big yellow mustache.” He laughed again. “Are the angels growing mustaches now?”

  “It is happy I am,” said the Bishop, “that my children are free. But my heart is heavy that I made a pact with the devil for them, and had no trust in God.”

  Jack Morgan gaped. He was a man of good and earthy common sense, and he thought his Bishop feverish again. So the Bishop put his hand on Mustard and pointed to her burned head. With painful word following painful word he told his favorite priest of that howling winter night. Finally he ended with a hoarse whisper, “Is there forgiveness for me, I am wondering, Jack?”

  The priest rubbed his thick gray head, and stared at the Bishop, and coughed. He appeared bewitched by the tale, though he doubted its verity. He wanted to know of Lucifer’s appearance, and the Bishop described him. The priest was enchanted, and the Bishop thought, with dismay: Is Jack a little envious, as well as curious?

  “Well, well,” said Jack Morgan, in a loud and burly voice, “it was not the devil, I am thinking, for does he not have horns and hoofs and does he not wear red, as red as scarlet?”

  “I am no authority on his apparitions,” said the Bishop. “And it’s doubting, I am, that if he appeared so to man there’d be many lost souls, for very fear. I think I saw him, and it is all true, and he was the most beautiful creature I have seen in my life. For, is he not an archangel, and was he not the greatest of them all, with a face like the morning? And was he not full of grief and sorrow? I found it in my heart to pity him.”

  “That is a snare,” said Jack Morgan, suddenly remembering that he was a priest.

  “Sure, and that is true, perhaps,” said the Bishop.

  “It was not himself,” said the priest. “If it was not a dream, it was an angel of God.” And he blessed himself.

  The Bishop smiled wryly. “Would an angel of God burn poor Mustard’s head? Would poor Mustard, from thence on, refuse to sit in her favorite chair? No, it was Lucifer, and I made a pact with him for my children.”

  “Your soul?” exclaimed Jack Morgan.

  “No. My dearest treasure. And he’ll be calling for it soon.”

  The priest glanced nervously over his shoulder. Then he coughed again. “The devil takes only souls, my lord,” he said. “He is not tempted by — treasures. For, does not all that is valuable in the world belong to him? It is not possible that he would make a pact with you for anything but your soul.”

  “He does not know what my treasure is, Jack.”

  The priest was greatly relieved, and his high color returned. “Was it the devil, my lord, he’d have known, and there is no doubt, for does he not read the minds of men like a book?”

  “He could not read mine,” said the Bishop. “I tested him, and he could not read it.”

  The priest was even more relieved. “Then it was not Satan, or even one of his demons — if there was anyone at all, and you with the fever and the hunger. For no human mind is closed to him.”

  The Bishop wanted to believe it was all a dream. Perhaps a coal had fallen on Mustard’s head, when she went too close to the fire. And it was God’s mercy, alone, which had saved the young folk and set them free, and the mercy of an unknown benefactor who had paid their fines. Nothing could happen, thought the Bishop vaguely, without God’s permitting of it. On this comforting thought he fell into deep sleep, for he was still weak.

  When he awoke again it was midnight, and he felt his ancient strength returning. He begged Eileen to go to her bed, she who looked not ninety now, but one hundred and ninety. It needed little urging; she put a clapper on the table at his head, and went, bowed and very old and lean, to her own room and bed. It was cold in the Bishop’s bedroom, though the door was open to his small parlor so the heat of the fire could enter. Someone had been kind enough to send coals to heat the Bishop’s house, or ‘palace’, as the poor people liked to call it in their hopeful fantasies. The bed-warmer was cosy against the Bishop’s feet, against the long wool stockings he wore to bed in the winter, and the candlelight flickered and there was a lamp burning on a table in the parlor, within sight of the Bishop’s eyes.

  He pulled himself to a sitting position with only one gasp, and he turned his head and looked at the crucifix on his wall, and then at his prie-dieu, and then he pushed his thin old legs out of the bed and tottered to the prie-dieu and fell on his knees and bent his head over his clasped hands. Could he ask forgiveness for a dream, for are men responsible for the nightmares of their nights and the phantoms of their fevers? If it was not a dream, could he still be forgiven? He had made no pact, in the meaning of the word. He had offered his dear treasure, and Lucifer had accepted it, and this was puzzling, for he must have known what it was and how could he then have agreed?

  Mustard suddenly yelled and dived between the floor and the Bishop’s ankles and cowered there, and the Bishop knew, even before he lifted his bowed head, whom he would see. And there, surely, was Lucifer, himself, more beautiful than memory, his clothing covered with a cloak of rich velvet edged with ermine, the velvet as black as night and the fur whiter than snow.

  “I have come for your lordship’s treasure,” he said, in a very kind voice. “For, I have kept my bargain, as you know.”

  “Are you a dream?” asked the Bishop with fresh terror.

  “I am every man’s dream,” said Lucifer. “Infant or ancient, saint or sinner, I am all men’s dream.”

  “And you cannot be deceived?” said the Bishop.

  “No, I cannot be deceived,” said Lucifer. “May I assist your lordship to your feet?”

  “No, no!” cried the Bishop, horrified, and shrinking. He pushed himself to his feet. He stared at the great, dark angel. “You will not want my treasure,” he said, pressing his hands to his chest, in which his heart was shaking.

  “Surely I will want it,” said Lucifer, “for is it not dearer to you than your life?”

  “And you are knowing what it is?” said the Bishop.

  “Certainly. I know all things.”

  He looked smilingly at the Bishop, then courteously drew aside so that the Bishop could precede him into the parlor. The Bishop tottered to the threshold, then glanced back fearfully. Lucifer was regarding the crucifix in enigmatic silence, and there was a deep cleft between his eyes. The Bishop went into the parlor, his long nightshirt blowing about him in the drafts which no mortar could stop, and he supported himself with bits of furniture. He heard no sound, but all at once Lucifer was at his side.

  “The treasure,” he said, patiently.

  The Bishop bent his head and went to his little chest of drawers and opened the one at the top. A silver-gilt box lay there, very old and dim. He took the box in his hands and his eyes filled with tears. He lifted the lid.

  A delicate rosary lay on pink cotton-wool. It was made of silver-gilt, with pearly beads, and the cross was large and the Corpus was exquisitely cast in pure yellow gold. The rosary had been the christening gift to his grandmother by her own mother, ages ago, and in turn it had been given to his own mother on her christening day, and it was rarely out of her blessed hands until the day she died. She had told her son, long before he was a priest, that she must not be buried with it. It was her heart’s desire that he have it as his own, and be buried with it, for he was very dear to her. He had received it from her, finally, when she was dying.

  He had cheris
hed the rosary because of his darling mother. He had received his First Communion with it in his hand. It never left his person, even during the skull-cracking days. It was with him when he was ordained as a lowly priest. He felt that it was a talisman, the guardian given him by his mother. Once he had lost it, it dropping through a hole in his pocket, and his distress had been overwhelming. He had prayed feverishly to St. Anthony for its return, and one day the sacristan had brought it to him, saying he had found it in a crack near the high altar. Yet every corner had been searched over and over long before. The Bishop considered it a miracle. After that he kept it in its box, waiting for the day when he would lie in his coffin, with the rosary in his hands.

  Now his tears fell on the precious rosary, and he put his fingers gently over the lustrous pearly beads and the cross, and turned to Lucifer. He closed his eyes and mutely offered the box to him.

  The box did not leave his hands, and after a little he opened his eyes. Lucifer was gazing at the crucifix, and he was frowning.

  “You know I cannot take this,” he said in a very ominous voice.

  “It is my dearest treasure. It belonged to my grandmother and her mother before her; it was blessed, so long ago, by the Holy Father, himself, so I was told. It belonged to my sweet mother, who gave it to me with her dying hands. My heart is in it; it is the dearest thing I ever owned.” The Bishop’s voice trembled. “Not even for bread would I have sold it. Not even for my life would I have sold it. It is my treasure, for thousands of prayers were said with it, and every bead is holy.”

  Lucifer looked into his eyes, which were filled with tears.

  “Yes,” said Lucifer, “it is your treasure. And it is this treasure that you pledged to me. Tell me, my lord, did you know, when you promised it, that I could not accept it, for very excellent reasons?”

  The Bishop thought with all the honesty that was in him. Then he confessed, “I do not know. I was in much misery; my mind was not fully in order. But, I must speak truly: I hoped you could not accept it.”

  “You hoped to deceive me?”

  The Bishop again considered. “I prayed that I could. Yes, that I prayed, though I had heard you could not be deceived and could read the minds of all men.”

  Lucifer was silent. The Bishop said, “Did you read mine?”

  The great dark archangel began to smile. “Shall I tell you that? That will be my secret. As a penance, you will wonder all your life. It will enliven your idle moments. There is nothing like endless speculation to give interest to one’s existence.”

  The Bishop gently closed the precious box. He looked down at it. “I am speculating now, Lucifer.”

  Suddenly Lucifer laughed. It was not an evil, boisterous laugh, but a hearty one, mirthful, delighted, masculine. It was incredible, but the Bishop found himself laughing with him, and he had not laughed for many months.

  “Tell me,” said the Bishop, aching with his laughter, “Did you truly save my children?”

  “That,” said Lucifer, his beautiful face merry, “is something else I will not tell you. Am I not called the Great Deceiver?”

  His mighty blue eyes sparkled and flamed with his mirth, and his teeth glistened in the lamplight.

  “Farewell, Bishop Quinn. You will not see me again, not in this life nor in the next. I have enjoyed your conversation as I have enjoyed the conversation of few others. You are not entirely honest, but I doubt if that will be held against you, for I now hear the laughter in heaven.”

  He threw back his head and laughed again, that hearty and rollicking laughter. But suddenly he was sober. He looked at the Bishop.

  “You will remember a vision you had, which you saw in your church when you were fainting of hunger. Tell no one of it!”

  “Why shall I not?” said the Bishop.

  “Because it is my truth, though it was prophesied by Another. You shall not see it, nor the young priests following you. But those not yet born will see it, and it will be my triumph, my final triumph. Many there will be who will try to escape it, but they shall not! For man is a curse upon the earth, which would be free of him, but would He listen to me, He Who knows all? No, He would not. Yet He and I know that it will come to pass on this earth, and we shall see,” said Lucifer, vengefully, “who will triumph then! For in the womb of time there is breeding a race of men who shall be my total servants. Hail and farewell, Bishop Quinn, and rejoice that you shall not see that day!”

  “And that,” said Father Morley, “is the tale the Bishop told me, when I was young and despondent. I, too, wondered, for who could help it?

  “I also have another thought: Did my blessed Bishop, by his deceit, which was caused half by fever and starvation and grief, lift Lucifer one step towards the heaven he had lost? He liked to think so, to the end of his life. But then, it may all have been a dream. Who is there to tell?

  “However, when I strain my eyes upon the future, I wonder again. What horror is man preparing for himself, what suffering for his world? Be sure he is preparing!”

  Chapter Twelve

  “There were dozens of other stories I heard in Grandmother’s house,” said Rose to her husband, “and I remember some of them, and others are only fragments. But these are the ones I best remember, for they made such a difference in my life. Grandmother never returned ‘to the Sacraments’, except on her deathbed. But the stories I heard from her friends helped bring me to them, and that’s ironic when you think of it. I rarely saw Grandmother after I was eight. She left Leeds; she went everywhere. She wanted to see the whole world, and love it.”

  Her face saddened. “I can’t help thinking of her lying there alone in the churchyard, she who had never been alone before. And I can’t help thinking of the last years of her life, all her money gone, all her brothers and sisters dead, and no one to care at all whether she lived or died. She spent those last years with one of her sons, and they were quiet years. Knowing Grandmother, I feel they must have been a penance for all her sins. Do you remember how she looked when she was dead? Not peaceful or resigned. Just half amused, and — yes, relieved.”

  “Still,” said William, “she had things in her life which we’ll never have. She lived in a heroic and exciting and adventurous world, for all its faults. She lived when men were really men, and not tailored careful conformists. The priests you told me of: they were heroes. And heroes are always full of legends, themselves, and legends are invented about them. I think that modern man will be forgotten, for he has no heroism about him, in his thoughts or in his life. He’s just a little nonentity, a mediocrity that wants only one thing: safety. That’s why the brood of Satan is having its own merry way these days. There’s no one to oppose it.”

  “We don’t know that,” said Rose, looking at the emerald on her finger.

  “At least, they’re not getting any publicity,” said William. “No one hears about them, or knows about them, and that is just like not existing at all. All we hear of is the devils, and they’re getting stronger every day, though our so-called intellectuals spend half their time assuring us that man is really good and noble and needs only to reform his social institutions to be absolutely perfect. As if man, himself, isn’t responsible for the world he is making! But he loves to whine that he isn’t responsible. He’s not evil; it’s just his neighbor.”

  “I think,” said Rose, “that the worst thing in our modern world is that we have no dream. Our grandparents had one. It’s really the one and only dream — God and His love. They built their lives on it, and that’s why nations prospered then. Now I hear that the Americans are talking about ‘new goals’. That’s because they, and all of us in the world, have forgotten that we really have one goal, and that is God. We had a vision, but we drove it off. So we must invent petty little others, such as plumbing for the Hottentots, and fresh cows’ milk for the bushmen, and television for the natives in the Congo, and social engineers for Angola. What silly little visions! We’ve become a world of children, with all the vices of children, such as immed
iate small pleasures, shrill insistence, tantrums and invectives against all authority. Worse still, our worldly authorities are no more than children, themselves, except when they are devils. A world of children and evil! I wonder what it was Bishop Quinn saw in his vision so long ago?”

  “I think we all know,” said William. “That’s why we are so afraid. We did it all. We are just frightened because of our inevitable punishment, whether we are a Russian or an American, an Englishman or a Frenchman.

  “You remember what the hanging judges always say: ‘May God have mercy on your soul.’ Rose, somewhere in the world, among those who have dedicated their lives to God, there are men and women who pray that for us every hour. They are the heroes, though we don’t hear about them. It may be at the very last that their prayers will, indeed, save our souls. They can’t save our world, and that we know.”

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