Grandmother and the Priests by Taylor Caldwell

most brothers from their childhood, for their lives had been isolated and surrounded by the awesome beauty of nature. They were more attuned to the songs of birds than to the voices of men, more to the slow wood-heart of an oak than to the cities. Their castle was literally their castle, their defense against a world growing more hurried, frenetic and larger each day, more incoherently noisy and meaningless. Orphaned when Michael was only eighteen, and possessing no other relatives, they clung to each other silently but strongly. They had gone to the same school together; they went to Confession and Mass together. They worked, ate and moved together, the quiet-colored brother and the younger shining brother. It was not expected by their villagers that they appear in the local pub. But it was expected that they have their own friends among the county gentry. However, they were rarely seen and more rarely heard. Sometimes the hamlet would hear Henry calling to his sheep, and the bark of his dog, and sometimes they heard the crack of Michael’s gun in the forest beyond the castle. And, they saw the two brothers at Mass, sitting close together as if for protection.
     
    “But they were rigorous in the performance of their spiritual duties,” said Monsignor. “There was not a Saturday that they were not at Confession. I don’t recall them missing one Sunday Mass. Very often they came through the week, and at many times they were the only communicants there, receiving Holy Communion side by side at the rail. Moreover, in spite of their poverty, they were as generous as possible, tithing themselves severely. The Sisters never appealed to them and came away empty-handed, if it were only a leg of lamb or a loaf of bread, all they could spare on many occasions. And, in that giving, I am certain they went hungry, themselves. It is very necessary for you, my friends, to know how good they were, and how they loved each other and the Church. Henry may have been stupid, but he was noble, as was his brother.” Monsignor sighed.
     
    Who knows what Henry, the simple and loving, thought when his brother, Michael, became betrothed to the young and beautiful Dolores? One could be sure, said Monsignor, that he did not cry out or rail against his brother, or curse his fate or run away. He apparently accepted the situation. He was his brother’s attendant when the marriage took place in the church where Dolores had been baptized, and her ancestors before her. It was noticed that Henry was very white and suddenly very thin, and that though he smiled there was a look of agony in his eyes. He never returned to the castle. When the young folk came back from a very brief honeymoon in London, Henry had already taken up residence in a shepherd’s hut. It was understood, among the three of them, that this was best for all, “though I doubt,” said Monsignor, “that there was a word exchanged.” Michael and Dolores believed that Henry was delicately leaving the young couple alone, moved by natural reticence.
     
    “A man of intelligence rationalizes his misery after a time,” said Monsignor. “He accepts what he has to accept. He expects nothing very marvelous from living in this world. But the simpler man is like a child. He trusts life, implicitly. It cannot be cruel to him; it cannot take from him all that he has. It is kind, it is loving. Suffering is only a dream. He will awake, eventually, from a nightmare and find himself in his mother’s arms. Such thoughts are excellent, if they are spiritualized. But they can kill a simple man if he relates them to the objective world.”
     
    Henry, to the Monsignor’s surprise, appeared one day at the rectory. He sat on a chair and wrung his hands and looked at the priest with the simple and baffled anguish of a lamb that is being tortured. When questioned gently he could only move his lips soundlessly. What was it that troubled him? Henry shook his head, dumbly. All the light that had always