Grandmother and the Priests (25 page)

“I stayed with him for a while, and prayed, and saw his joyous peace in death as he had never known it in life. And then I closed his eyes and folded his hands and left him alone. I — I sent a telegram to the Bishop that night. And the Bishop replied that Oswold Morgan be given Christian burial, and that I would have information shortly.

“There was no one at the funeral but myself and the pallbearers, whom I had pressed into reluctant service, and the sacristan and the Sisters. There was none there whom his intercessions had cured, none who ate because of him, though starving before — ”

“But, they did not know,” said Ifor, gently.

“True,” said Father Andrew. “You see how human I am, that I can mention that? Within a week three important solicitors arrived here from London, bearing documents and Oswold’s will. I have told you the contents. But they gave me a letter from him, which he had written for me before he died. He had asked me, as his deepest wish, that I never reveal to the men of Gwenwynnlynn how he had helped them to some happiness and comfort and had saved so many of their lives, and had mended their homes and their streets and their church, and had given them their school, and endless other joys. To the last, as I have said, he did not know that his intercessions had also brought greater miracles to them.

“And so, I have kept his secret from them, and all the other secrets. But I have written the Bishop, and so he has asked me for full reports of the miracles, and the heroic virtues, far beyond the ordinary, which Oswold Morgan practiced. In the meantime, I am in a quandary. My vexation grows daily at being treated as a saint who has done wonders. And I must keep Oswold’s last request.”

Ifor puffed at his pipe. He had a pragmatic turn of mind. “It is not stated in the will that the people are not to know, or that if they are told of how Morgan benefited them the will will become null and void?”

“Ifor!” exclaimed Father Andrew, a little scandalized. “No. It was not so stated in the will, of course. But his letter to me — ”

“Was the request of a great man who did not know he was — er — a saint,” said Ifor. “But, as he is doubtless in heaven, and now eager to receive prayers and to intercede for miserable sinners, you must ignore that merely mortal letter. However, it is in the hands of the Bishop, and finally, of Rome. In the meantime, Andrew, you can do your share by slowly informing your flock of what Oswold Morgan has done for them, and will continue to do for them through his will. It will shock them, no doubt,” said Ifor, with some relish. “But men need shocking regularly, I’ve discovered. Men do not easily take to their hearts others whom they have hated, for then they are shamed and that is intolerable. And it is harder for Welshmen than most.”

He took a little more port and looked at his old cousin’s downcast face. “Look at it this way, too. When the Bishop’s sharp young priest comes to Gwenwynnlynn, and the people do not know about Oswold, the priest will receive the most scandalous reports, and that will probably end the matter. And what an injustice to your friend, the saint!”

“Ifor,” said Andrew, after a few moments. “What a mind you have! You are quite right!”

Ifor had considerable mischief in him. He said, “And have there been any miracles since Oswold died?”

Andrew considered. Finally he said, “I am not absolutely sure of that. It has been nearly three years — ”

“The finger of God,” murmured Ifor. “If there have been no miracles, authentic ones, for three years — Ah, well, let the Bishop decide.” His mischief made his eyes sparkle. “It is possible, after all, that you are the saint, Andrew!”

The hard summer rain had diminished when Ifor was alone again, preparing for bed. But a cold blue lightning pierced the shutters of the window. It was hard, considering what he had heard tonight, for him to concentrate on his prayers. Then, just as he was about to fall asleep, his right shoulder irritated him. Again. A very slight irritation which had appeared some weeks ago. It was hardly an itch; it was hardly an ache. Had he been sleepy he would not have noticed it at all. There was the faintest of prickles to it now, which might be only his imagination. He reached under his nightshirt and touched the spot, and it was as he remembered: the very smallest of rising in his skin. He had not touched it deliberately for some time. It appeared a little larger than before to his finger. The prickle, if it was one, was not in the slight elevation after all. It was nearby. Annoyed, Ifor lighted his lamp again, removed his nightshirt, stood before the mirror over the commode, and peered over his broad shoulder at the spot.

It was considerably larger than he had remembered, an intensely black spot right near his shoulder blade. And just below it, a smaller one, about one-sixteenth of an inch in diameter, whereas the other, to his surprise, had increased to about one-quarter of an inch. Tentatively, he pressed them both. The larger one was sore, only a little sore, but the irritation was not imaginary.

The savage blue lighting quickened through the shutters, then there was a smashing crash immediately afterwards. The room hummed. Ifor murmured a prayer. He put on his nightshirt again. Then he remembered something which gave him an extraordinary sense of relief. A few years ago he had acquired some warts on his hands, and then a crop had appeared behind his right shoulder and another crop on the side of his face. “Eat some mushrooms,” said the doctor, sagely, understanding that warts are a mystery and come and go at times by the most ridiculous hocus-pocus. So Ifor had eaten some mushrooms, confident of the doctor’s sagacity, and the warts had disappeared except for two small darkish ones near the shoulder blade. He had not thought of the matter for years. Apparently two had remained after all, and had become black. Black. The relief drained away. There was something ominous about the word, some vague connection — He went to bed and in the midst of the storm he fell asleep.

He had forgotten the whole matter when he awakened at dawn.

During the next few days he lived serenely and contentedly, realizing that he must have been tired before he came to the hamlet, for he felt a pleasant languor before going to bed. The people of the wild and heroic country, the fiercely azure lakes, the stark mountains and rusty outcroppings, the rapid little streams, the soft and musical voices, all aroused his old memories and day by day he became more and more a Welshman, even to developing an irascibility he thought he had overcome. His voice acquired the old accents. He assisted at Mass; he became a familiar sight to the men, who pulled their caps, and to the women, who curtseyed, and to the children, who smiled at him shyly. He was able to relieve Andrew at Mass some mornings, and though the old man protested, it was evident that his mortal flesh was very weary. And the church, narrow and small, was like a gem — because of Oswold Morgan.

He met the doctor, who lived in a small new house near a rill, and he and Andrew confided the contents of Oswold’s letter to Andrew. The doctor, Catholic himself, agreed with Ifor that the request should now be ignored, for the sake of both Oswold and the villagers. “God did not intend His saints to be ignored,” he said. He told Ifor of the miraculous cure of Mary, the little granddaughter of old Mrs. Burke. “An absolute, authentic miracle,” he said. “I examined the child myself when I first came here. Not even the best of surgery could have helped her, nor the best of drugs, even opium, relieved her periodic bouts of pain. You have seen the little lass yourself, Father? Well, and then. Is she not a picture of health and liveliness? There, too, is another matter which is distressing Father Lewis. He cannot, in all honesty, continue to let Sir Oswold go unknown, and the villagers will continue to regard him as a saint, and vex him, to the hurt of their own souls and perhaps his, unless the truth comes out. I will help you, myself,” he added, as he showed the younger priest his fine surgery. “When my patients come in, I will say: ‘You owe this cure, or this help, to Sir Oswold, who paid me, and who continues to pay me through his will, and you must thank him in your prayers!’ ” The doctor’s red Welsh face looked roguish. “Ah, and I’ve long wanted to say it, but Sir Oswold asked me not to, and now I can.”

“A fox,” said Father Andrew to his cousin, a little later, but fondly. “His stipend is enormous. He was well known in Cardiff, and is known well to the Bishop, and that will be a help when the sharp young priest arrives. How Oswold persuaded him to come here, and, mind you, I do not deprecate it, though — I do not know, Ifor. That must have been a miracle in itself.”

That Sunday after Holy Eucharist, Father Andrew stood in his pulpit and said simply to his parishioners, “It is a lovely church we have, and there is no more beautiful, for all its smallness, in Cardiff. For this we must thank, in our prayers, he who did this for us, Sir Oswold Morgan, who loved us, we who so little deserved his love.”

The doctor had already spread the story to his patients and they had incredulously, and with sullen and human resentment and expressions of disbelief, communicated it to friends and relatives. What! Old Oswold, with the ugly face of him, the blasphemous man, the man who lay buried in their churchyard but who, by the terms of his will, had desired no monument? They had hated him; as human beings, they hugged their hatred to themselves; they would not willingly relinquish it. “The doctor’s aye an ass,” they said in their pubs. “It’s the joke he has with us.” Ah, a joke. Eagerly, it was accepted, and with sighs of relief. “He will have a joke,” said the doctor’s gardener. “I mind me — ” He was heard out, happily. And then Father Andrew made his stunning announcement on Sunday, and, as a priest, he would not lie.

Father Andrew, sighing, saw wondering, stupefied and blank faces. These were bad enough. But the indignant faces made his heart burn. Indignant. Because the owners had been proved to be no Christians at all, in their lack of charity, in their hate, in their stupidity! Resentment flushed brows already flushed with wind and sun. Vexation glittered balefully in proud eyes.

“If they dared,” said Father Andrew to Ifor, as they ate their dinner, “they would desecrate his grave, some of them. They are that angry. Oswold was one of them; he dared to become rich and so become apart from them. His work, his imagination, his genius: all these were as nothing to them. They preferred to think the vilest things of him in connection with his money. He had been born in this village — therefore, their silly reasoning continues — he cannot have been of importance. But the worst crime he committed was helping them, raising them from mere animal living to manhood. No, people have not changed since the first Good Friday. They still would love to mangle and destroy those who help them.”

Old Mrs. Burke said sharply, for she was a privileged character: “And perhaps they are right, Fathers, and I beg your pardon for it. It may be that they know in the hearts of them that they deserve nothing, so why should they get something, with no merit of their own?”

“A philosopher in elderly petticoats,” said Ifor, then quickly complimented the old lady on the juiciness of the joint. “Mrs. Burke, I think you have uttered a profound truth.”

She tossed her head with pleasure, but Father Andrew, Ifor reflected, would have to spoil it. “I mind me,” said the old priest, “that you were one, Mrs. Burke, who said it was sacrilege to bury Sir Oswold in the consecrated churchyard.”

But Mrs. Burke was femininely ready for him, and she said with sturdiness, “I did not know he had been the instrument for a miracle for the little lass, Father.”

“Oh? They are now ascribing miracles to Sir Oswold?”

Mrs. Burke was exasperated. “Father! A man who gives to his people what Sir Oswold has given must be a saint, and if there is miracles about, then he must be the cause of them, and there is miracles.” She sighed in disappointment, thinking of her lost prestige of being housekeeper to a saint. Then she brightened, and her old sparkling eye fixed itself on Father Andrew. “And could it be, Father, that it was you who told him his duty, and he did it, and then — ”

Father Andrew groaned and lifted his hand. “Mrs. Burke,” he said slowly and loudly, “I did not even visit the poor gentleman until he was on his deathbed, and never did we talk together, until then. And that was long after he made a little heaven of what had been a little hell, and long after the miracles.”

In some way the people transferred their resentment towards Sir Oswold to the two priests, and on the next three days only the sacristan and the altar boys and the Sisters were on hand at Mass. “That will show them,” they said in the pubs, but what it was that would be shown was not quite clear. The doctor, too, was avoided, sharing in the general resentment. On Sunday, however, the church was filled again, not out of forgiveness, but out of obligation, teaching and habit. So it was with some involuntary sternness that Father Andrew prayed,
“Bonum est confidere in Domino, quam confidere in homine.”
(It is better to trust in the Lord than to confide in man.)

Those who had been cured began to speak of the great ability of the doctor, and this led to confusion, for the doctor was on the side of the immediate objects of displeasure, the priests. Then, very slowly, the church began to be revisited for lonely prayers, and there were more people at the daily Mass. But the Welsh, as Father Ifor constantly said, were stubborn. Let them stop hating themselves, in their own good time, for being stupid and un-Christian, and let them start forgiving themselves, again in their own good time, and “they’ll come around.” Father Andrew hoped so, dubiously, but he was overjoyed when he heard his first Confession, “after the uproar,” and the penitent said, “I am guilty of lack of charity in that I hated Oswold Morgan, who roofed my house and built the good school for my children.”

“I am guilty — I am guilty — I am guilty.” The refrain increased, with growing fervor. And then one day Sir Oswold’s lonely, unmarked grave, except for a tiny wooden cross which Father Andrew had put upon it, was heaped with late summer flowers, and the people were happy again, having forgiven themselves.

In the meantime Father Ifor helped Father Andrew to collect his notes and write out his report to the Bishop. They did this after tea, and as quickly as possible, as there had been a somewhat impatient letter from the Bishop. And Father Ifor had to end his holiday soon, which had been extended after supplication and explanation.

The first cold from the dark gray ocean and the somber mountains was already on the land when Father Ifor told his cousin that he must leave the next Monday. Father Andrew’s face became dejected. “And I have worked you so hard, lad,” he said, “so very hard. In spite of the good food, you have lost flesh, and there is a tiredness in your eyes, and a paleness about your mouth.” The old man looked more keenly, then was alarmed. “You must visit Dr. Brecon, for my own heart’s comfort.”

Father Ifor protested, but to ease his cousin’s alarm he went with him to Dr. Brecon’s surgery that afternoon. The surgery, as usual, was full, but a priest came first, and so Ifor did not have to wait. “Well, and well,” said Dr. Brecon, “have we more trouble on our hands?” But he looked with sharpening interest at Ifor.

“It is nonsense,” said Ifor. “I am in the best of health. I am here only to please Father Andrew.”

The doctor sounded and thumped and examined, with new and shining instruments which intrigued the younger priest. “In good order,” said the doctor, at last. “Heart, lungs, stomach, bowels. For a man of your age, Father, you are doing well. Put on your shirt.” Then he said, quickly, “What’s this, what’s this?” And he took the priest by his bare shoulder and pulled him nearer to the window.

“Two warts I had, from a large crop of years ago,” said Ifor impatiently. But the doctor took a magnifying glass and in deep silence examined the warts. Still in a grave silence, he reached under Ifor’s armpit and probed with his fingers. Then he sat down, hard.

“What is wrong?” asked Ifor.

But the doctor went to his waiting room and summoned Father Andrew, who came in full of trepidation at the sight of the doctor’s face. “There’ll be something wrong with Ifor?” he asked, and his voice broke.

The doctor opened his mouth, then closed it. He looked at his hands as if he hated them.

“We are men,” said Father Andrew. Father Ifor, watching the doctor, put on his cassock, slowly. “What is it?” said Father Andrew.

“The very worst,” said the doctor, and his fox-like face twisted with pain. “It could not be worse. Melanoma. And, it has already metastasized. There is a — growth — under the armpit, an ugly lump.”