Grandmother and the Priests (24 page)

“And so it was that the mine-owners gave it to the workers that machinery would replace them and throw them out of work and into destitution.

“But they did not know Oswold. He had his facts at hand. He recalled to those newspapers who would publish what he said — and let no one boast of a free press, Ifor! — that the same controversy had arisen at the time of the invention of the sewing machine, and the locomotive, and the steam engine. ‘Rather than taking work from men, they produced work for men, on a tremendous scale,’ he said. ‘They also increased the comfort of man and enlarged his mind and freed him from the grossest labor.’ The newspapers not agreeable to Oswold attacked him as the enemy of the workingman, and it is not the least odd that these newspapers were the ones whose owners despised the workingman and all he represented. Such sudden virtue became incongruous even to the most unthinking. The manufacturers made Oswold’s machines, and paid him the magnificent royalties he demanded.

“He had other inventions, too, which would insure more safety in the mines. They were expensive; now even the newspapers which had supported him paused. So Oswold and the unions fought alone, and they won. It will never be truly safe to work in a mine, but the greatest dangers could be eliminated, and is not a man worthy of his life?

“Oswold became a very rich man, and he was knighted, as Her Majesty declared it, for services to his countrymen. He did not marry, for he was a celibate at heart. And now he was sixty-two years old, and all his struggles had spent him. He remembered Gwenwynnlynn and he returned here to die, in the sight of remembered mountains, in the sight of the graveyard where his parents and grandparents and their ancestors before them had been buried. And in sight of the church whose old priest, now dead, had not understood in the beginning. He saw Gwenwynnlynn as it was, and he determined to change it, and he did, for in the heart of every saint there is the deepest love for God and His children. You see, my dear Ifor, he had forced the sale of the coal mines of Gwenwynnlynn to himself. But no one knew it. Not even I, until three years ago, when Oswold was already dying.”

The hard cold rain made the fire splutter on the hearth, and Father Andrew threw more coal upon it and used the poker to advantage. He looked at ‘young’ Ifor, who was thoughtfully staring into his glass of port.

“Slowly,” said Father Andrew, “Oswold tried to buy the other mines, but he could not, for however rich a man is he cannot do everything alone, and he had sworn his friends to silence about what he had already done. Those friends were the poor leaders of the unions, struggling everywhere, and they loved him devotedly and gave him their word. He had no other friends. Saints rarely have friends; they are usually hated and derided, for they love, and love is always rejected by hard-hearted men. One only has to consider Our Lord — and the state of the world, which does not improve measurably. Who is interested in a newspaper story of a man’s charity and sacrifice? But let a member of the Royal Family commit the smallest indiscretion, or the heads of the Continent’s royal families, or let a new style be introduced, or a murder of impressive proportions be committed, or an actress be drawn into a grand affair by a ‘notable personage’, and the people seethe with silly excitement and talk of nothing else in their pubs and on the street. Oswold had no fear that what he had done would be mentioned to any extent in the newspapers. He had murdered no one, he had taken no notorious mistress, he had scandalized no one, he had not engaged in breeding the horses which could be expected to win at the Derby, he had done nothing shameful, nothing evil. Therefore, why should space be given him anywhere in the newspapers?”

“And he came back to Gwenwynnlynn,” said Ifor, refilling their glasses. “He was spent; he was tired. But he had been hated here.”

“He wished to make what he called ‘a modern hamlet’, so that others could see and follow. They will, eventually. They may not do it today, nor tomorrow. But they will do it. What has been done for Gwenwynnlynn will be known; it will take a little time, but it will be known. Oswold had his offices in London. He left proof that it was possible not only to maintain former income by installing better conditions, but to increase it! And no rich man can forever remain aloof from such possibilities.”

“But no one knew here, Andrew? Why is that?”

The old priest sighed. “Saints do not advertise themselves; good men do not seek out a name in the world. I did not know.

“Oswold built a house for himself in Gwenwynnlynn, he who had no wife and no children. He told me, but so much later, that he had never had a house before, and he wanted one now. It is the instinct of man, his instinct for shelter when he is sick and old, or when he is young and has a family of children. But — he had not forgiven God.”

“And you consider him a saint?”

Father Andrew smiled. “Once, when I was a child, I read a story of a man who wept for His people, and mourned for them. He is Our Lord. And then I read another story of a man who also wept for his people and their sufferings, and upbraided God for them, and he helped his people, though they did not know it. And when he died and was confronted by the Judge, the Judge asked, ‘Who is there who will defend this man?’ And a multitude arose and cried out, ‘He delivered us from pain, out of his love and mercy, and he led us into peace, though our eyes were blind in those days.’ And the Judge said, ‘You have done good, My blessed servant, for when you sheltered the least of these and fed them and clothed them, you did it unto Me.’ ”

A howling summer gale thrummed in the chimney. The ginger cat jumped into Ifor’s lap, and he stroked it absently. He remembered again the hatred and contempt of the cotswold for Oswold Morgan, that bitter and loving man, and he felt humble.

“The men of Gwenwynnlynn did not know him, as I did not know him,” said Father Andrew. “Their lads threw stones at his windows and broke them. For, he had the hard cold face on him, and he would not speak, and wandered over his acres alone. He read and he studied. And he did not pray. He remembered his mother and his father.

“I’d not have known at all, even in the beginning, when he was here, if I had not gone on my rounds, hoping that we could build a school for our children. The Sisters were here, but there was no school. I went to Oswold’s grand house, and he opened the door for me, himself. I took up my courage, and asked him for money, and he said, ‘I give no money to the Church.’ I said to him, ‘God has not left you. You have left Him,’ and he uttered a jeering curse and shut the door in my face.

“But a week later the Sisters received a fine piece of land near the little convent they have, and it was written to them from London that an anonymous donor had given them the land. More, they need have no worries for the school. It would be built for them at once. And so it was, a school to make the hamlet gasp in pride and joy. That was but the beginning. But you have heard that from the men of Gwenwynnlynn, on the train. Tomorrow, I will take you into the church, before Mass, and you must assist me, and I will show you what Oswold Morgan did for it.”

“And how did you finally know?” asked Ifor, with passionate interest.

“God reveals things suddenly, so all may know at once, or in His mysterious ways He reveals them but to a few, and slowly, so that their stupid blind minds, such as my own, will learn. For man is stubborn in his stupidity, and prefers his prejudices to the truth.

“My first suspicion came about one Sunday afternoon, warm and sunny and balmy for Wales, after my dinner. I went on foot, for I had not even a bicycle then, to visit the sick and old and dying. And on one street I saw Oswold’s fine carriage, with its two black horses, and he was in it, his hands on his cane. He was watching some children playing, the children he had rescued from starvation and disease and premature work. He did not speak; he did not smile. He only looked, and I paused, and it was as if someone had touched my cassock and said, ‘See what you must see.’

“The children played, and the coachman sat on his high seat, and Oswold sat on his cushions, his hair shining in the sun from under his fine silk hat. Then bit by bit the children came nearer the carriage, and they began to glance at the unsmiling man who sat there, and they came closer, without speaking. Then they were not playing any longer. They leaned against the carriage and they stared solemnly up at that withdrawn and bitter face, and he looked back at them, and it was as if an exchange was made, for suddenly a very little girl took off the red ribbon on her plait and reached out and put it in Oswold’s hand. He smoothed it, nodded, and then drove off. The children played again, and I stood and thought. A little thing, but momentous. The children had seen his love for them, though their wiser elders had never seen anything. He had drawn them with that love, as a fire draws a cold man.

“And on that very night I went to the home of a miner who was dying of the consumption, as was told you by his wife on the train. He was unconscious. All were kneeling about him. We had prayed the Litany for the Dying. I was saying, as the man was gasping his last breath, ‘I commend you, dear brother, to Almighty God, and I entrust you to Him Who created you, so that by your death — When suddenly the dying man blinked his eyes, color surged into his cheeks, and he sat up and looked about him and shouted — indeed, he who was dying shouted — ‘What is this?’ And he looked at his weeping wife and children and his friends and at me, and was astounded.

“You can imagine the rejoicing when he threw aside his blanket, laughed and demanded food at once! But I had heard lonely footsteps in the dark on the street and I rushed to the door, old as I am, and stared up the road. There was a bright thread of moon in the sky — and I saw Oswold Morgan walking slowly, tapping his cane on the cobbles, his head bent. I went after him, and though I am so old I ran like a young man, and I took his arm. He frowned at me in his dark way, and I said, ‘He who was dying is well — ’ And he pulled his arm from my hand and said, ‘Is it mad you are, old Father?’ and went on his way.”

Father Andrew shook his head. “He did not know, certainly. But later, much later, he told me that he always walked like that, late at night, arguing with God why He permitted suffering and sadness and the pain of the innocent. He did not know, either, that he was blind. He did not know he was praying! He did not know he was asking mercy for those in the shuttered houses he passed, and that his whole soul was prostrated in his desperate prayer, and with faith. For a man who argues with God, and cries for mercy for others, is a man who believes, let him say what he will. He is love, and God never is silent before the cry of selfless love, but always does He answer it, Ifor, in one way or another.”

The two priests filled their pipes with tobacco; the ginger cat purred. The little clock on the mantelpiece struck nine sweet notes. The wind beat in the chimney like a restless heart, and the rain smacked at the windows, even through the shutters.

“And so it happened,” said Father Andrew, after his pipe was drawing well and he had removed his slippers so the soles of his old feet would warm on the fender, “that each time a miracle occurred Oswold Morgan was passing in the night. I knew this, myself. Four times I saw him with my own eyes, and on other times I made the most prudent inquiries, in the most casual manner. Had anyone, I asked, seen Oswold Morgan that day, and the happy people would stare at me impatiently and say, ‘What is that to us? Yes, now you mind me, I saw him passing. It is good he did not know of this miracle you have done, Father, for he would have cursed us instead!’

“And that was when I became frightened at last, for God knows I am no saint, and it was the first I had recalled — though there may have been other occasions — that I was being addressed as one of the blessed. I said to my people, ‘I did not do this thing, nor was it done through me. God can perform miracles through His chosen, and He has not chosen me!’

“But all I said, in patience, and then in vexation, and then in warning of sin, went unheeded. I, Andrew Lewis, a lowly priest, an unworthy man, and a sinner, was no saint! But someone unknown was, and though I resisted, I came to know who it was, though he did not know it, himself.

“There are ways of making inquiries discreetly. It took a long time, through the Bishop and his friends in London, to discover who had made a joyous place of this hamlet. But the Bishop was pledged to secrecy, and he asked me to come to see him in Cardiff, and so I went, and he told me. It was Oswold’s determination that the hamlet not know their benefactor; if it became generally known, he had warned his solicitors and others, he would withdraw at once, and leave Gwenwynnlynn forever.

“I had my terrible predicament at home. The people knelt for my blessing, which I always gave. But when they address me as a holy saint, then I must protest. You saw them at my gate, tonight — ”

“But Oswold Morgan is dead now,” said Ifor. “You can tell them.”

Father Andrew shook his head. “It is not easy to decide. Let me tell you.

“One afternoon I went to see Oswold Morgan again, determined to look on that strange cold face, and praying that some enlightenment be given me. I found him sick, and close to death, attended by only one woman, old and a widow, who would consent to be near him. For, you see, the people say he is ‘of the devil’. I sent the old woman away, then words I had not intended came to my lips, and I said, ‘I know you, Oswold Morgan, and I am blind no longer.’

“He looked at me, from his bed, his great poster bed covered with finest blankets, and he asked me what he had asked me before, ‘Is it mad you are, old Father?’ So uninvited I sat near him, and we looked eye to eye for a long time, and he was the first to turn away, sullenly. I saw how feeble he was, and sick, and close to dying. I said to him, ‘Come home, my son, for your Father is waiting. He has been with you always, and you did not know.’ ”

Father Andrew stroked the hot bowl of his pipe. “Oswold did not speak for a long time; he must have slept a little, in his weakness. Then suddenly his eyes opened, and like a child he said, ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.’

“I heard his Confession. I came to him day after day, and he told me all that I have told you. He confessed his good as one would confess his sins, and he would smile at me, briefly and darkly. But still he did not know that his very passing a house of the dying or sick or crippled, and his intercession ceaselessly for them, had cured them. I did not tell him. God would tell him on the proper occasion.

“Then one afternoon when I was preparing to visit him I had the impulse to take the Host to him, and the holy oils. It came like a command to me, and tears rushed into my eyes. ‘Oh, no,’ I said in my heart, for the doctor had told me that Oswold was improving, that his great heart was rallying lately. But still I obeyed that silent command, and I went to him on the bicycle I had mysteriously found near the door one morning, and when the people saw me, and saw what was in my hand, they removed their hats, and wondered who was dying.

“It was as I feared. My friend was dying, and he was alone. Dumbly, for he had no breath, he watched me prepare the table near him with a white cloth. Dumbly he stared at the crucifix I placed there, and the lighted candles, and the bottle of holy water, and the dish of other water in which I washed my hands. I wiped them on a towel. We were alone. I said, ‘Peace to this house — You shall sprinkle me with hyssop, O Lord, and I shall be clean; You shall wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.’ ” Father Andrew paused. He pulled out a huge handkerchief and blew his nose. “May God spare me,” he whispered, “from having to administer again to such a one I know now I most dearly loved and knew, and honored.”

“But, it was a privilege,” said Ifor. He was still a trifle dubious.

Father Andrew nodded. “But my heart is human, after all. I blessed Oswold; I prayed, as a priest must pray. I anointed him. Alone, I prayed the Litany for the Dying. And then for the first time those dying eyes brightened, and Oswold whispered, ‘I asked only one favor of God: that you would know and come to me, today.’

“To administer the Sacrament of Extreme Unction to a saint is a Grace not given to many,” said Father Andrew, with some bewilderment. “Why did He give that Grace to me, in this small forgotten place, in that lonely house? But let me continue. I had just said, ‘Go forth from this world, O Christian soul,’ when Oswold, with a smile of incredible beatitude, murmured like a contented and weary child, and fell asleep. There was no struggle, not one last gasping or groaning. He died in the utmost peace, and in the dying he turned his head expectantly, and smiled again, as if recognizing someone he loved who had come for him.