Grandmother and the Priests (15 page)

So Mary, beautiful but dowerless, could do worse than marry the MacDougall. He adored her. In this hamlet she would be a queen. So, her angry demands to be returned to her ‘pampering’ family had been merely stage-play. Once convinced of the MacDougall’s wealth, and once fascinated by his handsomeness and adoration which confirmed her own self-adoration, she had become quite reconciled.

Still, Robert in his misery hoped that she might have some love for him. The thought of a rapacious marriage was too much for him to bear. Miracles had happened before. Mary’s keen nature might be changed. He doubted it. If the MacDougall was a despot, and a benevolent one, it was certain that his wife would be even more despotic, and she would be cruel. And greedy. She would spend half her time in London, and be a neglectful wife and mother. To accomplish this, she must first degrade him and make him her slave. There was no other explanation. The future would kill the spirit of the MacDougall.

It was the MacDougall, later, who confessed to Robert that his letter had made him think of his status and his despotism.

A benevolent despot, Robert would think, is bad enough and can become unendurable, but a cruel despot, as Mary Joyce would become when she took the weapon of power from a fatuous husband, would make a hell of this isle. In the meantime, however, the isle was in a ferment of excitement such as it had not experienced since more than twenty years ago when a band of fugitive criminal Norwegians had attempted to land there and force the islanders to hide them from their pursuers. (The islanders had overwhelmed them, neatly trussed them, and had delivered them virtuously to the law at Skye, after a day and night on the ocean in a sailing vessel. If some of the Norwegians became slightly damaged in the process, they had no one to blame but themselves.) Now the isle was to have a lady as well as a laird, and a bonnie lassie she was indeed, with the face and bearing of a queen. Some who had seen Pamela thought her more bonnie, and more like themselves in appearance and in manner, but the MacDougalls were fascinated by Mary’s long golden hair and pale face. And it was time for the MacDougall to marry and produce heirs for the sake of the isle and its peace.

On the day before the day on which the MacDougall was to ‘pamper’ his intended bride by walking naked through the few streets of the hamlet Robert considered if he could call any peeping a mortal sin. But the Seminary had not provided, in its rules, for this contingency, so he solemnly told at Mass of Peeping Tom, who had been struck blind when gazing at the ‘unclad’ and virtuous Lady Godiva. Unfortunately, the communicants were more fascinated by the story than the moral lesson. Robert talked of ‘respect’ and ‘obedience to the wishes of authorities’, but only the servile, and therefore potential traitors and mean-hearted, pursed out their lips in plump agreement. Those who loved the MacDougall truly, and therefore did not like his despotism, looked vexed that the pastor should even suggest that they would peep.

Walking through a street of little shops that afternoon, Robert came on Pamela Stone, who was listlessly glancing through the small windows, a parasol tilted over her head, her dark curls flowing from under a flowered bonnet with rosy ribbons, a rosy dress half concealed under a very long black cape which came almost down to her ankles and was embroidered with roses. When she saw Robert she smiled, and her dimples appeared, but a moment later her eyes were glistening with tears.

“I shall be leaving all of you very soon,” she said. “I am sorry, Father.”

“Sorry to leave this cold spot?” he asked. “Here it be, almost midsummer, and cold as April in Edinburgh.”

“I still love it,” said Pamela. She breathed deeply of the strong cool air and said, “I feel like a MacDougall, myself! I seem to know the people well.”

The tears were like diamonds on her thick lashes in that cold and brilliant sun. “Ah, well,” said the girl, trying to smile again, “I shall never forget this island. I shall be here in spirit if not in body. Douglass has sent our letters to our families in London, though my great-grandmother, poor dear one, can hardly be aware that I’m even away. She often confuses me with my dead mother and other female relatives, so she has been spared any anxiety. But — Mary — has written to her parents that she will be married almost immediately to ‘a rich and powerful Scots chieftain’, and that all gifts be sent to her here.”

She lost no time, thought Robert. He was heartbroken over Pamela’s gallantry and tremulous smiles. “Ye’ll nae stay for the wedding?” he asked.

“No.” Pamela paused, and a sad mischief flashed into her beautiful black eyes. “If I did, Father, I would object at each of the banns! And if that would not be enough, I would object at the altar, itself!”

“I see,” said Robert, with gravity. She was quite capable of doing just what she had said, this spirited girl, this passionate and devoted girl. “Ye dinna like your cousin?”

“Mary? Oh, she is very well in her own milieu, in London. I did so want to see Edinburgh,” added Pamela, wistfully. “But I could hardly visit it alone, and I detest carrying maids with me. I wanted a companion, and I offered to take Mary, and her mother’s maid, Aggie — that fool! — and that is why we are now here. Had I known — ”

The generous girl, then, had paid all the expenses of this curious journey, and not Mary, the arrogant and disdainful. “I have left my diamond earrings for her,” said Pamela. “My wedding gift.” She looked down at her tiny slippered feet, and her throat trembled. “A good day to you, Father. I believe it is tea-time.”

She hurried off with fast little steps, her head held up valiantly, and as she passed others on the street they looked at her with involuntary affection and she bowed her head with courteous kindness. It was she, the generous-hearted, the kind, who should be lady of this isle, thought Robert, and he felt a little rebellious towards God. Then he remembered, with contrition, that if men are bent on destroying themselves God cannot interfere. Nevertheless, he went into the church and did some strenuous praying.

The appointed hour for what Robert considered the MacDougall’s disgrace was sunset, he remembered. He said to Mistress MacDougall, who was very brisk and hurried in the manse that day: “Sae that none will be tempted, Mistress MacDougall, you and I shall sit here alone with the curtains drawn, by the fire — disna it ever become warm a little? — and then when the MacDougall has passed we shall hae our tea.”

Mistress MacDougall’s face was a portrait of dismay; her eyes shifted. Robert regarded her with bitter satisfaction. She, like the other servile, always trotted eagerly to obey the MacDougall’s slightest edict. (It was strange that the servile, and therefore the destroyers, did so love legality and took extreme pleasure in the letter of the law!)

“My mon, at hame,” she murmured.

“Oh, ye will both hide behind your curtains, virtuously? Invite him, then, to hae tea with me, for I havena seen him often.”

Mistress MacDougall looked depressed. Then she shook her head. “He is shy, Faether. He’d like to be at hame, waiting for me.” Then and there Robert decided that after tomorrow he would replace Mistress MacDougall. There must be a woman of spirit in the hamlet who truly loved Douglass, and must secretly, if not openly, be rebellious towards him in the manner of a true free Scot, an old lady whose blood ran truly in her veins and not treacherously.

He was really frightened, now. Once the servile had seen their laird disgraced, they would flout even the simplest and most rightful laws of morality and self-respect, and the isle would come to the worst grief. Oh, if despots only knew what they did in their benign but too prideful hearts! They knew better, they thought, than their people, what was good for them, and so they attempted to kill the independence born in man. God gave man free will; the despots had no use for it.

Robert had hoped for thunder and lightning and dark skies and sheets of concealing rain for the next day, but it had dawned like a rose and as sweet and warm. One small white cloud over the looming black crag gave Robert a little hope, but it swayed off over the ocean, which was as blue as the eye of a newborn babe. The sunset would have made a poet of an ox. And just as the church bells struck the hour of six Robert firmly drew the curtains over the little leaded windows of the manse, lit a lamp, looked Mistress MacDougall straightly in the eye and sat down with his breviary. She stared only at the fire, her thick red underlip moving in and out with her resentful thoughts.

There was only silence outside, and no sound of footstep, no voice, no movement. The high-minded and those who loved the MacDougall would be staring into their fires also; the servile would be silent, but peeping and gloating. Then Robert heard the smallest quick footsteps on the street — leather — like the footsteps of a child. The MacDougall’s feet would make no sound on the cobbles, for they would be bare. What silly child had some silly mother sent abroad on such a portentous day? Robert caught himself in the very act of going to the door and peremptorily ordering the child within until the MacDougall passed, and Mistress MacDougall’s eyes gleamed hopefully. Robert went back to his seat before the fire. “Some foolish bairn who slipped away,” said Robert. The clock ticked; the fire sang to itself.

Then, half an hour later, the streets were full of excited laughter and loud voices, and Robert ran to the door to find men bending over with mirth and women shrilling vehemently, and laughing also. He called urgently to his sacristan, whom he saw among the villagers, and the old man came at once, laughing so heartily that his face was crimson and tears were streaming from his eyes.

“Mind ye, Faether,” he said honestly, after Robert had slapped him vigorously on the back, almost as strongly as the MacDougall’s own slapping, “I didna see it with me ain eyes, but some there are who saw it and are telling of it.”

“What?” said Robert, with the most awful forebodings. The servile had not wasted a moment to make game of their laird.

And then he listened with astonishment and heard the whole story.

At sunset, precisely, or just as the sun slipped down from behind the crag and began his solitary journey into the western ocean, the MacDougall had appeared alone at the gates of his house, naked as the day he had been born. He had stood there, gazing at the silent and empty street, and then had stepped forth.

What a grand figure he must have appeared, like the marble heroes and gods of ancient Rome, tall and broad and muscular, heroic and splendid in his manhood, and absolutely assured that no eye would look upon him in his nakedness! Robert thought, remembering his own days in Rome and his own awe.

But there were peeping eyes to see and gloat, behind the draperies, at the great laird who had been humbled by a mere woman. The eyes were suddenly dismayed, and they blinked. For the MacDougall had no sooner set his huge feet on the cobbles than “the little lassie, Miss Stone,” had darted behind him, had thrown her black cloak with the roses over his shoulders — “and it coming down to the length of a kilt on him,” said the sacristan, wiping away his tears of joy and mirth. And then she had taken his hand, firmly and strongly, and in silence — “and he looking doon at her as at an angel suddenly seen with his ain een,” and she had walked beside him through the shut and silent streets of the hamlet.

“Nae did they hurry,” said the sacristan. “They walked like lovers in the gloaming, the MacDougall with the cape swinging just above his knees, and the wee lassie with her face all lit up with the sunset, and sometimes leaning her head against his shoulder.”

Robert could see them with his inner eye, the noble if despotic MacDougall, and the intrepid and understanding girl beside him, and he rejoiced. What revelation had been given to the MacDougall in that moment, what insight? “They walked like lovers in the gloaming.” He had not repudiated the girl and her mantle; he had held her hand; he had looked down at the riot of black curls on his shoulder; he had seen her passionate and loving and urgent face, her lovely and womanly face. He had seen love as he had never seen it before, and he had recognized it and had responded to it. He had known it all, in one flash of revelation.

“And so,” said old Father MacBurne to the company about Grandmother’s fire, “the MacDougall was humbled in his heart, but not as Mary Joyce had intended. He was humbled as we all must be in the presence of unquestioning and unlimited love, which has much of God in it. He saw all that was to be seen, and it is given few men to see in that fashion.

“It was her footsteps which I had mistaken as the footsteps of a bairn on the cobbles, her faithful and following footsteps, the only ones to break the silence.”

It was Mary Joyce who was sent off the next day, with all her bags and luggage, not with the husband she had wanted in her arrogance, but only with two fishermen. It was Mary Joyce who was put on the train for Edinburgh. Robert, somewhat sinfully, would sometimes amuse himself with a conjecture about her enraged thoughts, she the rejected, the sent off, the abandoned, the ultimately unwanted, she who had never had anything to give except her barren heart and her ugly pride.

“I am glad to say that the whole isle rejoiced over the wedding of the MacDougall and his lovely bride, who was as fair in her soul as she was fair in her face,” said old Robert, “Her husband’s Faith became hers, as once she had promised the deaf mon in his ain parlor on the nicht I first saw her, and his folk were her ain folk, and she brought self-respect to the servile, and freedom, through her gentle insistence, to the free. It wasna that the MacDougall was subservient to her. She merely instructed him, and he saw, and may all despots in the world see before it is too late!”

Old Robert sighed. “It is too much to hope. But I mustna complain. I, who did not at first like MacDougall’s isle, could never bring mesel’ to leave it, and so I remained. I hae baptized the children of the MacDougall, and his children’s children, and soon I will baptize his great-grandchild. And the MacDougall and his lady look still as young as the morning, for sich is the air of the isle, and there is nae ache in me and I, too, am as young as the morning, as are they, at least in ma heart.”

“But what of the diamond earrings Miss Mary Joyce received from her cousin?” asked Grandmother, avidly, after wiping away a sentimental tear.

“Mary took them away with her,” said Father MacBurne. “What could a mon expect but that? It was sae like her.”