Grandmother and the Priests

  “Yes, he was as young as I, and both of us had a considerable distance to go before we would be even twenty-seven. He was as tall as I, and as thin, and as elegant. He had a long, thin, flushed face, a long thin nose, and protuberant blue eyes, and a thin, impatient mouth. His young hands were as smooth as a girl’s, and his fair hair was smooth, also. After a little, it suddenly occurred to me that physically we could have been brothers! The only thing that separated us was our habits.

  “The train did not move. There were whistles and shriekings and clankings, but the train had some minutes to spare before moving on.

  “Now, Englishmen are amazingly shy. Once this shyness is breached, they are the friendliest and most considerate of men. But the breaching is a formidable thing, and not often accomplished.

  “I worked on charitable thoughts as the newspaper rustled busily, and I saw only the thin black knees, the gaiters and the polished black boots. I was not very successful. What a silly prig, I said to myself, for after all, I was Irish in spite of my name, and the Irish are friendly folk. He reminded me of my classmates in the public school, and suddenly I felt degraded again, and rejected. And, as I am Irish, my temper began to rise. A miserable Anglican priest, bullied by the women in his parish, fawning on the gentry, placating matrons with daughters, pretending to an interest in horses and dogs! What a life was this!

  “In turning the newspaper, he dropped it inadvertently, and bent to retrieve it. When he raised his long and narrow head our eyes met. Did he see my anger, my eager contempt? Or, did he see, at last, that we were two young men together? And, did he think I was English, and had he seen our resemblance to each other?

  “It could have been all these things. It could have also been that we were lonely and unsure of ourselves. For he gave the most tentative of smiles, ready to erase it as an error of mine if I did not respond. I gave him the same sort of smile. He indicated the newspaper. ‘Beastly people, the Russians,’ he said. ‘There’s been still another pogrom. Quite uncivilized!’

  “ ‘Quite,’ I agreed, with my Oxford accent. He looked surprised, then pleased.

  “ ‘One never knows,’ he said, darkly, ‘with such people. Barbarians, really.’

  “ ‘One never knows,’ I repeated.

  “ ‘Quite un-English,’ he said.

  “ ‘Quite,’ I said.

  “He paused, and we looked at each other, warily. Then he said, ‘I am Father Francis Cutledge, Old Riding, Sussex.’

  “ ‘I am Monsignor Brant,’ I said, with a little hateful pride, ‘of

  London.’

  “ ‘Brant,’ he said, musingly. His face brightened. ‘Are you a relative of Sir William Brant? Devonshire?’

  “I smiled. I am afraid it was a rather superior smile. ‘No,’ I answered.

  “Now he was certain that not only was I an Englishman but I came of A Family, probably much better than Sir William’s. He folded the paper carefully on his knee. He was prepared to chat, to be tolerant. After all, we were English Gentlemen, though I was unfortunately a ‘Roman’.

  “ ‘Er,’ he said, shyly, ‘my father was — er — a Roman.’

  “I was interested. ‘Truly?’

  “He nodded. ‘And — so was my mother. A convert.’ He looked slightly depressed.

  “ ‘And you became an Anglo-Catholic?’ I said.

  “He studied me. Then he lifted his proud young head. ‘One has to go where one’s conscience, and convictions, call.’

  “ ‘Quite,’ I said.

  “Being an Englishman, he revealed no other secrets. He looked at the paper again, and repeated, ‘Beastly people, the Russians. Intolerant. Ignorant. And dangerous.’

  “ ‘The Eastern Question,’ I assented, using one of the passwords of Oxford.

  “He beamed, and his face was the face of a boy.

  “ ‘One likes to remember,’ he said, ‘that in England such cruelty and barbarity and intolerance are unknown. One likes to remember that we have no Pales here.’

  “ ‘Not visible, anyway,’ I said. ‘Not too obtrusive,’ I could not help that little smack.

  “ ‘But we are the people of the Magna Charta,’ he said, flushing a trifle. ‘We are not barbarians. In politics, in dealing with the Empire, we are tolerant of all people.’

  “ ‘Exigency,’ I said. ‘The Empire would collapse if — we — were intolerant. Even the subject, the colonial, people would not put up with too much overt arrogance and bad treatment. After all, they are men, too.’

  “ ‘Exigency?’ he said, in amazement. ‘I never thought we English were exigent.’

  “ ‘Indeed, yes,’ I said. ‘After all, I have spent most of my life in London, you know.’

  “So I was a Londoner, into the bargain. I probably knew many of the nobility. I probably had relatives engaged in high finance and politics. One had to remember the Norfolks. The poor boy looked a little downcast, and I am afraid that I felt no surge of Christian charity. I was thinking of the Famine that had killed so many countless people of my own race, with no help coming from the English. I was thinking of the English landlords, and the tax-gatherers, those most detestable of men. And, I thought of Cromwell, who had driven Irish men, women and children into the sea, and who had called them ‘lice and nits’. My heart began to burn.

  “ ‘But all in all,’ said the other man, ‘we are an Example to the World. The only civilized section of America is Boston, for instance, where live the descendants of English families.’

  “I though of the old Mother Superior of a convent in Boston who, not many decades ago, had been trampled upon, to her death, by a mob of Bostonians, in her own convent, and the assault upon her nuns, and the violation of the altar, and the scattering of the Host and Its desecration. ‘Ah, yes, Boston,’ I murmured. I thought of the hate and contempt and disgust visited on Irish Catholic immigrants to Boston, the drawing-aside of skirts, the attacks on priests in the very streets, the frightened children in the little parochial schools, the basest labor which my countrymen had to accept in that Hub of Culture exported from England, the open insults inflicted, the scorn and derision. The Pale. Suddenly my heart burned for another reason than racial or religious: the hatred of man for man, the monstrous, inexcusable cruelty of man for his brother. My soul was filled with righteousness. And, it was then that God tested not only me, but the Anglican priest, Vicar Cutledge, who was also as stupidly righteous.

  “The door of the compartment opened and we saw a very strange man peeping in on us timidly. He could hardly have been more than thirty, but he appeared much older, for he had a fine luxuriant beard, silky and black and slightly curling. He was tall and emaciated, and clothed very oddly, indeed, in black trousers which came only to his knees. From there, down to his peculiar boots, he wore white cotton stockings. He had on a long black coat to his knees, and even below, which flapped about him. He had a curious black hat. But what finally struck our attention were the large black eyes, shining and glimmering, the excessive whiteness of the skin beyond the beard, the delicate nose with sharp nostrils.

  “All this would have been shocking enough to delicate Englishmen who had no prejudices. But the man exuded a most foreign odor, compounded of mothballs, alien food, and an un-British air. He had no gloves. His long white hands had a faint and constant tremor. He carried luggage that had a most exotic design on it.

  “ ‘Please?’ he said to our staring faces. ‘Iss — it is nott — — ?’

  “We were so stunned by this strange apparition that we said nothing. Then Vicar Cutledge instinctively moved from his far seat and planked himself right beside me! Newspaper, cane and all. We drew together, against this foreigner.

  “He sidled through the door, starting as it slid to behind him, for the train had begun to move. He sat down as far from us as possible, no doubt feeling our animosity to a stranger, our instinctive, childish animosity. He looked at us for a long moment, we long-nosed, fair-haired, face-flushed young men. Then, pleadingly, he extended a piece of
cardboard to us. ‘Iss?’ he murmured. Vicar Cutledge moved distastefully. I forced myself to glance at the cardboard. ‘Ticket,’ I said, loudly. ‘Very well.’

  “He pondered on that a moment, translating it into his own language. Then he nodded brightly and treated us to a radiant smile which showed excellent teeth, a most un-British expression. ‘Goot,’ he said, proudly. He was so proud that he could hardly contain himself. ‘Englissh,’ he said. ‘Englissh. Like German, no?’

  “ ‘No,’ Vicar Cutledge said, coldly.

  “Now, both of us were educated young men, and we knew German and French. We could have spoken to the stranger in German. But we did not. Almost knee to knee we huddled together. We British. We unprejudiced, tolerant, Empire-building people. Vicar Cutledge’s cane caressed my knee.

  “The stranger obviously did not understand that he had been rebuked, not only as a vulgar person who began a conversation without the minuet of propriety in a public carriage, but because he was also a foreigner. Vicar Cutledge hastily handed me a section of his newspaper, and I let the book about St. Francis fall to my side. We both buried ourselves in the pages. The train moved along the dreary gray walls of Liverpool, then began to clatter on its short journey to Manchester.

  “ ‘Iss right? Mant-chest-arr?’ said the stranger, anxiously, to our newspaper-covered faces.

  “ ‘Manchester,’ I said, sharply.

  “ ‘Goot,’ he murmured.

  “We read. I was acutely conscious of the foreigner’s presence, and his odor, which became a little intolerable in the close compartment. But we were both so afraid of moving — which would have given the foreigner an opportunity to talk to us or make a comment — that we endured the closeness and sweated. He kept his hat on, I noticed, after a furtive glance at him from the edge of the newspaper. What on earth was he? What was he doing in England?

  “ ‘Peculiar — er — people coming to England, now,’ murmured the Vicar to me.

  “ ‘Quite,’ I answered.

  “ ‘A question was raised in the House, recently,’ murmured the Vicar.

  “ ‘Understandable,’ said I, and may God forgive me.

  “ ‘He is going only to Manchester,’ said the Vicar. ‘We go on to London.’

  “ ‘Be grateful for small things,’ I said, in my ugly, priggish voice. I had a warm fellow-feeling for the Vicar.

  “The volume of St. Francis sharply nudged my thigh. Pettishly, I pushed it aside. I read the editorial in The Times concerning Russia’s latest pogrom and thought of my Irish ancestors. ‘Beastly,’ I remarked to the Vicar, pointing to the editorial. ‘One Should Do Things about This.’

  “ ‘Quate,’ he said, having deftly picked up my accent.

  “ ‘We are civilized people in the world, now. I trust,’ I said.

  “ ‘Indeed,’ said the Vicar.

  “Unknown to us matching accent to accent, the stranger had moved right across to face us. He reached out and gently touched my knee. I started, let the paper drop a little. He was smiling, and pointed to my collar, and then to the Vicar’s.

  “ ‘Iss — iss?’ he tried, helplessly struggling for the word.

  “ ‘Priests,’ said the Vicar, in the loud and rejecting voice used for foreigners.

  “I did not like that. I did not consider him a ‘priest’. I pointed to myself. ‘Monsignor,’ I said to the stranger with his great black eyes, his liquid, pleading eyes, and his alien beard.

  “He smiled again, radiantly. He fought for words in his small English vocabulary. Then his eyes shone. He pointed at me with delight. ‘Iss — ’Igh — priest?’ He indicated my Edge of Purple.

  “ ‘Monsignor,’ said the Vicar, chillily. ‘Not a Bishop!’

  “He had relegated me to a low class. I gave him one of my own chill looks.

  “ ‘The next elevation,’ I began.

  “He gave me a superior smile.

  “I was not High Church. I was not really recognized; I should never be recognized. In England. I was without the Pale. I was suddenly sick with anger, and remembrance, and furious that I should be angered.

  “We stared bleakly at each other, the Vicar and I. We served the same God, and we looked at each other with superior distaste. The stranger was momentarily forgotten.

  “The stranger said, in his wavering, guttural voice, ‘Iss — men of Gott-Holy Iss Nam.’

  “ ‘Priests,’ said the Vicar.

  “ ‘I am a Monsignor. Of the Holy Catholic Church,’ said I.

  “ ‘Men of Gott — Holy Iss Nam,’ said the stranger, delighted.

  “We could not understand his delight. We gave each other another bleak glance.

  “ ‘Holy Catholic Church,’ said the Vicar to me. ‘On what authority — ?’

  “ ‘The Apostolic Succession,’ I said. ‘You do not have it. Yours is a religion formulated by man. Ours is the Church, founded by Our Lord.’

  “ ‘There can be some controversy there,’ said the Vicar, knowingly. ‘We claim — ’

  “The stranger nudged me again. ‘Iss — man, you — a boy. Gott — ’

  “ ‘Many are called but few are chosen,’ said the Vicar, vigorously.

  “ ‘Chote-sen?’ said the stranger, bewildered.

  “I was feeling a little less hostility to the stranger. I pointed at myself. (After all, the Vicar had used the King James Version of the Holy Bible.) I made a beckoning motion, pointing upwards clearly, then pointing to myself. The stranger looked bewildered again. Impatiently, I pointed outside the window, to the sky, then again to myself.

  “ ‘Ahhhhh!’ said the stranger, nodding, and making a rich sound. He folded his hands together.

  “At least, I thought, he had some reverence for the clergy. But why had I not spoken in German — if he understood German? However, that reverence! I warmed to him a little.

  “ ‘Holy Iss Nam,’ said the stranger, and bent his head.

  “ ‘Holy is His Name. The Holy of Holies.’ The stranger understood.

  “Then the Vicar leaned towards me and whispered, ‘Not a heathen, apparently.’

  “I had not forgotten I was without the Pale. But, as a cultured gentleman I could not show my displeasure, and as a priest I should be as meek and humble as my Lord. I struggled mightily with myself. And I said — and may God forgive me — ‘Not from the benighted, at least.’

  “ ‘But these foreigners,’ murmured the Vicar.

  “We were again brothers, in snobbery, products of public schools.

  “ ‘Ah, yes,’ I sighed.

  “The stranger was looking at me intently, with that beaming, brilliant smile of his. “ ‘In England,’ he said. ‘Iss in England — ’ He struggled for the right word. He fought for it. Then, desperately, he made a gesture of beating, of pounding, of cutting of a throat.

  “ ‘No,’ I said, understanding all the gestures.

  “ ‘What does he mean?’ asked the Vicar.

  “I took some pleasure in my answer. ‘He means we don’t kill people here, in England, if they are different from us.’

  “ ‘Certainly not!’ said the Vicar, shocked. ‘We are civilized people! But these foreigners! How can we make him understand that, outcast though he is, a foreigner, and peculiar, and not English, he is safe?’

  “Safe, I thought. Where, in God’s name, is it safe for a man to live? Safe from his enemy, his fellow-man?

  “The stranger had subsided into himself. His hatted head was bent, his hands folded. He was murmuring strange words, rocking back and forth in his seat. My skin began to prickle with an awful warning. And then the train pulled into Manchester station.

  “There was a crowd outside, eager, searching at all windows. Running back and forth, shouting to each other, pointing. Not for me. Not for the Vicar. I felt very lonely, and very young.

  “Then the eager, searching faces were at our window, and joy lighted them. They raised their voices in loud exultation.

  “ ‘Rabbi! Rabbi!’ they cried, and pointed at the stranger w
ith joy.

  “The stranger rose, and waved his hand at his welcomers. He lifted his oddly designed luggage. He smiled at us, then pointed to the sky, then to himself.

  “He said to us, gently and sweetly, pointing at himself, ‘Iss — Russia. Pogrom. Iss coming to England. Rabbi.’ He searched our confounded faces, and his own saddened and there were tears in his eyes. ‘Iss — wife — kilt.’ He made a stepping gesture from the floor, three times, to his thigh. ‘Iss — child.’ He held up three fingers. ‘Kilt.’ I knew a little Hebrew, and knew what he said when he said it: ‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the Name of the Lord.’