Grandmother and the Priests by Taylor Caldwell Page A

appeared to move about him like an aura was quenched. He might have been a peasant, sitting there in the rectory parlor with the ashen light of the dying year on his face. He was looking for help, in bewilderment.
     
    “I was much younger then,” said Monsignor, sadly. “I saw before me only a very simple young man who had been hurt in some fashion. I did not see a man who was dying, six months after his brother’s wedding. How was it possible to ascribe tremendously deep feeling to a young man whose chief pleasures in life were playing with his dog, hunting with his brother, and wrestling with some young ram in the frisky days of the spring? There he sat in his coarse, homespun britches, with his woolen stockings and thick boots which smelled of sheep-dung. His yellow hair fell in a shock over his forehead; his mouth was half open. The numb misery in his eyes was the misery of a hurt animal — I thought. God forgive me, but I did not know he was suffering because of his love for the Lady Dolores! I thought it was something else, and I did not know what it was!”
     
    The Monsignor, puzzled, urgently trying to help, talked vaguely to Henry. All men had their wretchednesses; he would not pry. If Henry wanted to speak, he would be heard. But a man had to have courage — Had he anything to say? Henry shook his head. Finally he stood up gravely, shook hands with the priest, went outside and rode away on his horse. “I had failed him,” said Monsignor, sighing. “I had given him a stone when he was dying for bread. I gave him generalities, when he wanted to be told that someone knew of his pain, and that God knew more than anyone else what it was, and was ready with consolation.”
     
    That night, dazed, tormented, utterly without understanding, without comfort, Henry hanged himself in his hut, attaching the rope to a nail in the rafters.
     
    The Monsignor, after his first incredulous shock, was faced with a problem. Henry was a suicide. If he had killed himself with the full force of his will, in full assent, arrived at coldly and with knowledge, then he could not be given Catholic burial. But Michael, weeping, discussed the situation with the priest. Henry had never been very intelligent; he had never grown mentally beyond the age of twelve, if that. In fact, he had not completed the final forms in school, but had been sent home at the age of thirteen, a hopeless case as his teachers had said. A man had not murdered himself. A boy, without understanding, had left the world, unaware of his great sin. Henry had deeply loved God. He had wanted to return to his Father, Who would give him what men could not.
     
    “And I did not know it was because of my wife, Dolores,” said Michael, huskily. “He came to the castle last night, walking in casually. He smiled at me. Then he bent over me and kissed my cheek, took Dolores’ hand and kissed it also. He left, without a word of greeting or farewell. I’d not know now if one of the shepherds had not told me of Henry groaning in his sleep and calling desperately for my wife, and weeping even as he slept. Ah, if the scoundrel had only told me so earlier and had not waited until my brother had done himself to death! My brother was crazed; he did not know what he was doing.”
     
    So Henry, a man in body but a child in soul, was buried in consecrated ground, near his parents, and all his ancestors, under the mighty oaken trees. Thinking of his bewildered agony, Monsignor could not sorrow over the young man. He could only marvel at the pain of the simple, for which they have no words, and could only pray that Henry now had peace. He said to Michael, as sensibly as possible, “Henry is in God’s hands. The future, and life, is still in yours, my lord. Your young wife will have a child in five months. Be as calm as possible with her, for this has shocked her, too.
     
    “I should have known,” said Monsignor, with some bitterness. “I am an Englishman, and I did not know