His was a strong, fixed presence. His large, bland, expressionless face, which might have been almost handsome with a little light or color, and his large, straight torso seemed to repudiate the triviality of change. Yet for all his stolidity he soon manifested what appeared to be a habit of probing curiosity.
“I knew your father a little,” he began. “Our families were both in coke and bought out by Carnegie. That makes us in America, as the Frogs say, un peu cousin. Related by product if not by blood, like the oil and railroad clans. Once or twice removed, perhaps.”
“Or even three times in my case. A Roman priest is a long way from the glories of coke.”
“As far as all that?” He glanced significantly around the paneled library with its gleaming leatherbound sets.
“Oh, as you see, I visit.”
“I couldn’t help watching you and my wife talking together at dinner. You seemed so absorbed. May I ask whether you were discussing religion?”
“We were leading up to it, perhaps.”
He smiled. “You’re putting me off. I know how it is. It’s bad form to discuss religion in society. But the subject happens to interest me deeply.”
“My dear Mr. Douglas, you can’t believe I’m unwilling to discuss religion!”
He took my protest as an invitation. “I envy my wife her faith. My parents were strict Presbyterians. We were Scottish only two generations back. But the black streak in Calvinism always depressed me.”
“Surely it has lightened by now.”
“Almost too much so. We’ve gone from faith to good works. From sermons about hell fire to settlement houses. Isn’t religion essentially something within?”
I wondered whether he had quite escaped that depressing streak from Geneva. If Jamie Douglas had come down from the Highlands of his Scottish forebears to join in the gambols of his fellow men, he may still have left his heart in the rocky Presbyterian crags above.
“One can overdo that, I suppose,” I responded. “Like all those early hermits in the Egyptian desert.”
“But mightn’t they have known joy? I don’t know any Presbyterian, or any Protestant for that matter, who feels the joy that Claire feels in her religion, the inner peace and serenity. I wonder why I can’t have it too.”
“Well, of course, you can.” But then I remembered the Archbishop’s warning about appearing too zealous. Souls, he maintained, had to be fished for. “Hell is one of our dogmas, too, you know.”
“Yes, but I like what that wise old Parisian, Abbé Mugnier, said: that you don’t have to believe anyone’s in it.”
“Hmm. I wonder. Would God have created something He had no use for? But certainly there’s nothing that requires us to believe there are many people there. Perhaps only a tiny number.”
Mr. Douglas became strangely animated at this. “No, no, that would never do! If there were even one solitary soul languishing there, it would spoil heaven. For how could we go on forever and ever knowing that such suffering existed? You remember that phrase of Shelley’s about life staining the white radiance of eternity? Well, that’s just what a single damned person would do. No, Father, I doubt I could accept the idea of even an empty hell. For in a time as long as eternity mightn’t some poor soul tumble into it?” His earnest expression checked my impulse to smile. Could it possibly be that I didn’t want this compassionate man to become a Catholic? That I wanted him to remain just as he was? Our old butler came over now to tell me Mother wanted us to join the ladies.
As we rose, Mr. Douglas invited me to a dinner party that he and his wife were giving the following week. He added that he was particularly eager for me to talk to his youngest daughter. I accepted, surprised that the invitation had not come from Mrs. Douglas, who had asked for me as a dinner partner. Had I failed some unexpected test?
2
The Douglases had an old brownstone on a side street, wider than the usual of its kind (five windows in width), probably because Claire, contemptuous of the now-favored derivative Beaux Arts façades, had opted for the peaceful anonymity of the more common urban chocolate. Within, the big rooms harbored a clutter which in the dim light of Manhattan dwellings at first seemed the usual Victorian miscellany but on closer observation revealed itself as an eclectic collection of beautiful things: twisted Renaissance columns, Jacobean portraits of long-legged young nobles, sturdy Majolica platters, black walnut Italian chairs, bronze figures of gods, men and beasts, DelLa Robbia bas-reliefs, huge old folios spread open on tables and Chinese lacquered cabinets. Claire would sacrifice none of her treasures to the decorator’s rule of taste and proportion; she preferred to be able to concentrate on one perfect object at a time to being soothed by even the most harmonious arrangement of the second best.
Mrs. Douglas did not believe in large dinners; she preferred gatherings of eight, where the conversation could be general. But the party to which her husband had invited me was apparently an exception; it was, as their daughter Sandra rather crudely expressed it, the “annual massacre” by which her mother killed off all the people to whom she was socially indebted but whom she did not regard as qualified for her more intimate evenings.
Sandra, by whom I was, as anticipated, seated, was not a pretty young woman. She was short and firmly built and had a set, square-chinned countenance, but there was something appealing, perhaps even sexy, in her intent brown stare and her sharp clear articulation. One felt that she had a fund of passion to offer the right purchaser, if he should ever turn up, which she seemed to doubt.
“I hear you’re a great diner-out, Father,” was her somewhat aggressive opening. “How can you stand it?”
“You find it so boring?”
“Unutterably so. But perhaps you’re looking for converts. Is that it? Are you seeking to stretch that camel’s eye for the benighted rich?”
I laughed. “And then steal around behind them to shove them through? I like the idea.”
She glanced scornfully around the table. “If heaven is going to be full of the likes of these, it’s not for me.”
“The state of the soul takes curious shapes, Miss Douglas. But the soul is still there. Surely you believe that?”
“Oh, I suppose I must.” She shrugged impatiently. “But I may as well tell you, Father, I found it very hard when my sister Beatrice took the veil. A young healthy woman with a whole rich life before her! I’m afraid I’ve been in something of a rebel state ever since.”
So that was what was worrying Mrs. Douglas. “We can’t decide for others what will make them happy,” I responded in a softer tone. “Your sister may have achieved a peace of mind beyond anything a lay life could have given her. I’m sure your mother sees it in that light.”
She pushed her chin forward as she glared at me. “Has Mother ever had a doubt?”
“She is blessed indeed if she hasn’t.”
“Oh, she always seems to be blessed. Everything goes her way. She’s the greatest one for having her cake and eating it. She shudders at the ugliness of Catholic churches here and looks down on Philistine Irish priests, but she can go to Saint Patrick’s, which she condescends to find ‘handsome if derivative,’ and manages to be confessed by a sophisticated archbishop when she can’t find a cardinal. I’m sure it was the beauty and pomp of Catholic churches in France and Italy that converted her.”
“But those things can be innocent persuaders. If they help to bring us to the true faith, is that a bad thing? Isn’t it better than a fear of damnation?”
“But is it honest, Father?”
“I sometimes think that honesty is the primrose path. I’m sure it is for many Protestants.”
“Which is the direction you see me headed, I suppose. No, Father, if I should ever leave the frying pan, it would not be to fall into what makes it fry. What I sometimes think is at least a kind of dishonesty in Mother is the way she cloaks all her pleasures in godliness. When she goes to a concert or picture gallery, or when she’s reading poetry or admiring some old temple in Greece, sh
e’s never just on an art jag, like anyone else. Oh, no! She’s worshipping God.”
“And she isn’t?”
“Oh, I don’t go quite that far.” Sandra seemed exasperated that she wasn’t making her point. “I guess what I really object to is her impregnability. She does everything she jolly well wants to do. She crams all the beauties of earth in her pocket and looks serenely forward to taking them with her to heaven!”
“But she gave up. a career as a concert pianist to rear six children! That hardly smacks of selfishness, if that is what you are attributing to her.”
“She was multiplying herself, wasn’t she? And we’ll never know whether that concert career would have panned out.”
“You are hard on her. Has her life really been such a bed of roses? She may be properly proud of your sister, but to lose a daughter to so rigorous an order is surely a trial for any mother’s heart.”
To my shocked surprise Sandra burst out laughing. “That shows you were born a Protestant! No born Catholic priest would admit it was anything but a glory. No Irish one, anyway. And it shows how little you understand Mother. She was enchanted by Beatrice’s vocation. What was her loss compared with her child’s gain?” She laughed again, this time in a rather nasty tone. “Indeed, one wonders whether there was any real loss at all. If Mother had lived in the seventeenth century, she might have been like that horrible Madame de Sévigné, who conspired with her son-in-law to stuff her poor little granddaughter into a convent to save her dowry for the heir.”
“That was a different era.”
“How different? Do you know something, Father? I once thought seriously of taking vows myself. Five years ago, when I was eighteen. And do you know what stopped me? I couldn’t abide the idea of Mother’s pleasure!”
I felt the conversation was getting out of hand. “You have no idea, Miss Douglas, what grief your mother may have suffered under a stoic exterior.”
“It’s true I don’t. But don’t think I underestimate her. She may well be one of God’s saints. Saints are not overtaxed with human weaknesses, such as family loyalties and ordinary affections. Perhaps that is why they are so often made martyrs.”
“Your mother would have been a great one!”
“And how she would have loved it! Can’t you see her, clad in white, marching into the arena as the lions roared? Tableau! It would have been the ultimate art. But enough of Mother. There’s something I want to ask you. To be perfectly frank, it was why I asked Dad to invite you tonight. Mother, after meeting you, wasn’t so sure that you were the right person to consult. That meant for me you were. Well, here goes, before we have to switch the conversation.” She glanced distastefully towards the stout gentleman on her other side. “It’s about a friend of mine. She wants to marry a divorced man. Is there any way she can do it with the sanction of the church?”
I was pretty sure now who the “friend” was and why I had been summoned. Except that my bid had come from her father, whose views on the church were, to say the least, controversial. “Is he a Catholic?”
“They both are. Except she’s never been married.”
“And was he married in the church?”
“Oh, yes. And to another Catholic.”
I shook my head. “I don’t see how it can be done, unless he gets an annulment. Are there grounds?”
“I don’t suppose so. There are two children.”
“It looks bad.”
“But, Father, the happiness of two people depends on it!”
“I didn’t make the laws of our church.”
We both noticed that her mother was staring down the table at us. Did she suspect my Protestant antecedents might weaken my rigor? With a brief nod, she gave us the signal that the time had come to talk to our other dinner partners.
“I suppose God wants me to yack with the man on my left,” Sandra said sulkily. “Or at least to listen to him, for he never stops. Anyway, I want to send my friend to talk to you. Will that be all right?”
I was surprised. “Quite all right, of course. But what is her name?”
“It isn’t she; it’s he. Hadn’t you guessed that the she was myself? But you’ll know him when you see him. He’s an old friend of yours.”
And with this she turned away to leave me to the lady on my right, who was waiting, I soon discovered, to tell me of another peccadillo.
Early the following morning Mother’s old butler knocked on my bedroom door to tell me that a Mr. Chappell was waiting to see me in the library. Frank Chappell! I had seen him off and on in the year that had elapsed since I moved home, but nothing in our renewed relations had led me to suspect his romance with Sandra. I knew, of course, that his marriage to a beautiful debutante, whose selection of him had surprised his friends, had disastrously foundered, and that he had become a disconsolate “extra man” at the larger dinner parties, making up for his taciturnity by his punctuality and availability. But none of this had suggested a great passion.
That day, anyhow, he had the demeanor of a man subject to one. His countenance was wan and grim. “Sandra thought, because of our old friendship, and because it was I who brought you into the church, that you might be persuaded to marry us.”
I threw up my hands. “But, Frank, my dear old friend, it’s not in my power!”
“You could go to the Archbishop.” His tone seemed close to despair. “He could appeal to Rome. To the Pope himself, if necessary. I have plenty of money, now that my father’s gone.” He paused and then added ominously: “Reggie, you have no conception of what hell my marriage with Annabel has been. If I can’t marry Sandra, there’s no telling what I may do.”
“What do her parents say?”
“Oh, Mrs. Douglas is adamant, as you might imagine. She doesn’t even get angry. She simply shakes her head and repeats over and over: ‘But, Sandra, darling, you don’t seem to understand. He’s already married. Married. M-A-R-R-I-E-D.’ Her old man is not more help. He seems almost to enjoy the whole mess. ‘To hell with the true and only church,’ he tells me the moment his wife is out of hearing. ‘Do what you want. Are you a man or a mouse?’”
There was a terrible sincerity in Frank’s eyes; it put me in mind of a fire burning in a white enamel stove. His features, his arms, his body were immobile; everything about him was the same seemingly lethargic Frank except for that spark in his pupils.
“Are you thinking of leaving the church? Is Sandra?”
“I believe she might. But do I dare take the responsibility for her soul? I would for my own. I’ve already been in hell. My marriage was that. Oh, Annabel was amiable enough. But she slept with every man in sight, even the elevator men in our apartment house. I’ve heard people say that nymphomaniac is a silly term, but how else would you describe Annabel? She couldn’t help herself. She even apologized for it and begged me to leave her. My faith for a long time was the only thing that kept me from despair. But when her promiscuity reached the point where she carelessly left the door open, I had to divorce her to protect the children. And then Sandra came into my life, and I began to live again. She not only took care of me; she looked after my little son and daughter. And now my church chooses to put a bar between us! Reggie, it doesn’t make sense to me!”
“Nor to me!”
Had I said that? My pulse was beating rapidly and my thoughts seemed to be jumping up and down with my sense of the passion between him and Sandra. His stolidity, even his old apathy seemed to have been ignited by her intensity into a leaping fire. It seared me with a vicarious sexual excitement. Was it because of my envy, my sick, pulsating, throat-clogging envy, that I had first tried to thrust the cross roughly between them? Was I attracted to Sandra? Or was it even possible that I was attracted to the new Frank? We have now learned from Vienna that anything may exist in the id. And worst of all, if the latter supposition were true, might it not have been that which led me into the church? We know that God works His will in strange ways, but surely not as strange as that!
He was sta
ring at me. “Did I hear you right?”
“Listen to me, Frank. You say you’re willing to take responsibility for your own soul. Very well. You’re not consulting me, and I’m not advising you. But as for Sandra, I believe her marriage in a civil ceremony would be at most a venial sin. It would not be a marriage at all in the eyes of the church, but it would give her complete social respectability. Do I have to say anything more?”
Frank rose and threw his arms around me, hugging me tight. “Not another word, old pal. And you can count on me never to give you away. I’ll tell no one but Sandra.”
Frank’s departure left me in a flurry of agitation. I was glad that I had agreed to accompany Mother on her annual rest cure at Hot Springs. Comfortable in the Mammon of that vast caravanserai while she took her baths, I prayed not for enlightenment but for darkness. But when darkness came at last, it flickered with all the fires of hell.
Frank and Sandra, as I learned after their fatal accident, had decided on a civil ceremony. He had chartered a small plane to fly to Montana, where the ceremony was to be held and where they would afterwards spend their honeymoon on the ranch of a friend. The plane ran off course in a heavy storm and struck the side of a mountain, killing both pilot and passengers.
If the Almighty had used strange methods to get me into the church, was He using even stranger ones to get me out?
Mother really came out of herself for once. Never had she offered me greater sympathy. I was so disturbed that I couldn’t even go to the dining room, and she ordered our meals to be served in the sitting room of our suite. She even mixed the cocktails herself, insisting that I needed to be “braced.”
“You must try to see this, dear boy, as one of God’s mysterious ways of working out His will.”
“Very mysterious.”
“There are so many things we cannot understand. Why should we expect to understand this?”
False Gods Page 14
