The Keys of the Kingdom (17 page)

‘One of our parishioners, a young woman, who has been delicate for a considerable time, was out walking on Monday of this week. The date, since we wish above everything to be precise, was March fifteenth, and the time, half-past three in the afternoon. The reason for her excursion was no idle one – this girl is a devout and fervent soul not given to giddiness or loitering. She was walking in accordance with her doctor’s instructions – to get some fresh air – the medical man being Dr William Brine of 42 Boyle Crescent, whom we all know as a physician of unimpeachable, I might say, of the highest, integrity. Well!’ Father Mealey took a tense gulp of water and went on. ‘As she was returning from her walk, murmuring a prayer, she chanced to pass the place which we know as Mary’s Well. It was twilight, the last rays of the sun lingering in pure radiance upon the lovely scene. This young girl stopped to gaze and admire when suddenly to her wonder and surprise she saw standing before her a lady in a white robe and a blue cape with a diadem of stars upon her forehead. Guided by holy instinct our Catholic girl immediately fell upon her knees. The lady smiled to her with ineffable tenderness and said. “My child, sickly though you are, you are the one to be chosen!” Then, half-turning, still addressing the awestruck yet comprehending girl: “ Is it not sad that this Well which bears my name is dry? Remember! It is for you and those like you that this shall happen.” With a last beautiful smile she disappeared. At that instant a fount of exquisite water sprang from the barren rock.’

There was a silence when Father Mealey concluded.

Then the Dean resumed: ‘As I have said, our approach to this delicate matter was made in the frankest incredulity. We don’t expect miracles to grow on every gooseberry bush. Young girls are notoriously romantic. And the starting of the spring might have been a sheer coincidence. However –’ His tone took on a deeper gratification. ‘ I’ve just completed a long interrogation of the girl in question with Father Mealey and Dr Brine. As you may imagine, the solemn experience of her vision was a great shock to her. She went to bed immediately after it and has remained there ever since.’ The voice became slower, fraught with immense significance. ‘Though she is happy, normal and physically well-nourished, in these five days she has touched neither food nor drink.’ He gave the amazing fact its due weight in silence. ‘Moreover … moreover, I say, she shows plainly, unmistakably and irrefutably, the blessed stigmata!’ He went on triumphantly: ‘While it is too early to speak yet, while final evidence must be collected, I have the strongest premonition, amounting almost to conviction, that we in this parish have been privileged by Almighty God to participate in a miracle comparable to, and perhaps far-reaching as, those which gave our holy religion the new-found Grotto at Digby and the older and more historic Shrine at Lourdes.’

It was impossible not to be affected by the nobility of his peroration.

‘Who is the girl?’ Francis asked.

‘She is Charlotte Neily!’

Francis stared at the Dean. He opened his lips and closed them again. The silence remained impressive.

The next few days brought a growing excitement to the Presbytery. No one could have been better equipped to deal with the crisis than Dean Gerald Fitzgerald. A man of sincere devotion, he was wise also in worldly ways. Long and hard-won experience on the local school board and urban councils gave him an astute approach to temporal affairs. No news of the event was permitted to escape, not a whisper, even, in the parochial halls. The Dean had everything under his own hand. He would raise his hand only when he was ready.

The incident, so miraculously unexpected, was a breath of new life to him. Not for many years had he known such inner satisfaction: both spiritual and material. He was a strange mixture of piety and ambition. His exceptional attributes of mind and body had seemed to destine him, automatically, for advancement in the Church. And he longed passionately for that advancement as much, perhaps as he longed for the advancement of Holy Church herself. A keen student of contemporary history, he likened himself often in his own mind to Newman. He merited equal eminence. Yet he remained, becalmed, at St Dominic’s. The only preferment they had given him, the reward of twenty distinguished years, was this petty elevation to the rank of Dean, an infrequent title in the Catholic Church and one which often embarrassed him on his journeying beyond the city, causing him to be mistaken for an Anglican clergyman, an inference he most cordially resented.

Perhaps he realized that while he was admired he was not liked. With the passage of each day he was growing more and more a disappointed man. He strove for resignation. Yet when he bent his head and said ‘ O Lord, Thy will be done!’ deep down beneath his humility was the burning thought: ‘ By this time they should have given me my mozzetta.’

Now everything was changed. Let them keep him at St Dominic’s. He would make St Dominic’s a shrine of light. Lourdes was his exemplar and, nearer in time and space, the recent striking instance of Digby in the Midlands, where the foundation of a miraculous grotto, with many authenticated cures, had transformed the dreary hamlet into a thriving town, and elevated, at the same time, an unknown but resourceful parish priest to the status of a national figure.

The Dean sank into a splendid vision of a new city, a great basilica, a solemn triduum, himself enthroned in stiff vestments … then sharply took himself in hand and scrutinized the draft contracts. His first action had been to place immediately a Dominican nun, Sister Teresa, trustworthy and discreet, in Charlotte Neily’s home. Reassured by her impeccable reports he had taken to the law.

It was fortunate that Marywell and all the land adjacent formed the estate of the old and wealthy Hollis family. Though not a Catholic, Captain Hollis had married one, Sir George Renshaw’s sister. He was friendly and well-disposed. He and his solicitor, Malcom Glennie, were closeted with the Dean upon successive days, holding long conferences over sherry and biscuits. A fair and amicable arrangement was at length worked out. The Dean had no personal interest in money. He regarded it contemptuously as so much dross. But the things that money could purchase were important and he must ensure the future of his shining project. No one but a fool could fail to realize that the value of the land would rocket to the sky.

On the last day of the negotiations Francis ran into Glennie in the upper corridor. Frankly, he was surprised to find Malcom dealing with the Hollis affairs. But the solicitor, when articled, had shrewdly bought himself into an old established firm with his wife’s money and quietly succeeded to some first-rate practice.

‘Well, Malcom!’ Francis held out his hand. ‘Glad to see you again.’

Glennie shook hands with damp effusiveness.

‘But I’m amazed,’ Francis smiled, ‘to find you in the house of the Scarlet Woman!’

The solicitor’s answering smile was thin. He mumbled: ‘ I’m a liberal man, Francis … besides being obliged to chase the pennies.’

There was a silence. Francis had often thought to restore his relationship with the Glennies. But news of the death of Daniel had dissuaded him – and a chance encounter with Mrs Glennie in Tynecastle when, as he crossed the street to greet her, she had sighted him from the corner of her eye, and shied away, as though she spied the Devil.

He said: ‘ It made me very sad to hear of your father’s death.’

‘Ay, ay! We miss him of course. But the old man was such a failure.’

‘It’s no great failure to get into heaven,’ Francis joked.

‘Well, yes, I suppose he’s there.’ Glennie vaguely twisted the emblem on his watchchain. He was already tending towards an early middle age, his figure slack, shoulders and stomach pendulous, his thin hair plastered in streaks over his bare scalp. But his eye, though palely evasive, was gimlet sharp. As he moved towards the stair he threw off a tepid invitation.

‘Look us up when you have time. I’m married, as you know – two of a family – but Mother still lives with us.’

Malcom Glennie had his own peculiar interest in the beatific vision of Charlotte Neily. Since his early youth he had been patiently seeking an opportunity to acquire wealth. He inherited from his mother a burning avarice and something of her long-nosed cunning. He smelled money in this ridiculous Romish scheme. Its very uniqueness convinced him of its possibilities. His opportunity was here, dangling like a ripe fruit. It would never occur again, never in a lifetime.

Working disingenuously for his client, Malcom remembered what everyone else had forgotten. Secretly, and at considerable expense, he had a geological survey carried out. Then he was sure of what he had already suspected. The flow of water to the property came exclusively through an upper tract of heath land, above and remote from the estate.

Malcom was not rich. Not yet. But by taking all his savings, by mortgaging his house and business, he had just enough to execute a three months’ option on this land. He knew what an artesian bore would do. That bore would never be driven. But a bargain would be driven, later, on the threat of that bore, which would make Malcom Glennie a landed gentleman.

Meanwhile the water still gushed clear and sweet. Charlotte Neily still maintained her rapture and her stigmata, still existed without sustenance. And Francis still prayed, broodingly, for the gift of faith.

If only he could believe like Anselm who, without a struggle, blandly, smilingly, accepted everything from Adam’s rib to the less probable details of Jonah’s sojourn in the whale! He did believe, he did, he did … but not in the shallows, only in the depths … only by an effort of love, by keeping his nose to the grindstone in the slums, when shaking the fleas from his clothing into the empty bath … never, never easily … except when he sat with the sick, the crippled, those of stricken, ashen countenance. The cruelty of this present test, its unfairness, was wrecking his nerves, withering in him the joy of prayer.

It was the girl herself who disturbed him. Doubtless he was prejudiced: he could not overlook the fact that Charlotte’s mother was Thaddeus Gilfoyle’s sister. And her father was a vague and windy character, pious yet lazy, who stole away from his small chandler’s premises every day, to light candles before the side altar for success in his neglected business. Charlotte had all her father’s fondness for the Church. But Francis had a worried suspicion that the incidentals drew her, the smell of incense and of candle grease, that the darkness of the confessional struck overtures upon her nerves. He did not deny her unblemished goodness, the regularity with which she carried out her duties. As against that, she washed sketchily, and her breath was rancid.

On the following Saturday as Francis walked down Glanville Street feeling absurdly depressed, he observed Dr Tulloch come out of Number 143, the house of Owen Warren. He called, the doctor turned, stopped, then fell into step beside his friend.

Willie had broadened with the years, but had otherwise changed little. Slow, tenacious and canny, loyal to his friends, hostile to his enemies, he had, in manhood, all his father’s honesty, but little of his charm and nothing of his looks. His blunt-nosed face was red and stolid, topped by a shock of unmanageable hair. He had an air of plodding decency. His medical career had not been brilliant, but he was sound and enjoyed his work. He was quite contemptuous of all orthodox ambitions. Though he spoke occasionally of ‘seeing the world’, of pursuing adventure in far-off romantic lands, he remained in his Poor Law appointment – which demanded no hateful bedside falsities and enabled him at most times to speak his mind – anchored by the humdrum, by his matter-of-fact capacity of living from day to day. Besides, he never could save money. His salary was not large; and much of it was spent on whisky.

Always careless of his appearance, this morning he had not shaved. And his deepset eyes were sombre, his expression unusually put out: as though today he had a grudge against the world. He indicated briefly that the Warren boy was worse. He had been in to take a shred of tissue for pathological examination.

They continued along the street, linked by one of their peculiar silences. Suddenly on an unaccountable impulse, Francis divulged the story of Charlotte Neily.

Tulloch’s face did not change, he trudged along, fists in his deep coat pockets, collar up, head down.

‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘A little bird told me.’

‘What do you think of it?’

‘Why ask me?’

‘At least you’re honest.’

Tulloch looked oddly at Francis. For one so modest, so conscious of his mental limitations, the doctor’s rejection of the myth of God was strangely positive. ‘Religion isn’t my province. I inherited a most satisfying atheism … which the anatomy room confirmed. But if you want it straight – in my old dad’s words, I have my doubts. See here, though! Why don’t we take a look at her? We’re not far from the house. We’ll go in together.’

‘Won’t that get you into trouble with Dr Brine?’

‘No. I can square it with Salty tomorrow. In dealing with my colleagues I find it pays to act first and apologize afterwards.’ He threw Francis a singular smile. ‘Unless you’re afraid of the hierarchy?’

Francis flushed but controlled his answer. He said a minute later: ‘Yes, I’m afraid, but we’ll go in.’

It proved surprisingly easy to effect an entrance. Mrs Neily, worn-out by a night of watching, was asleep. Nelly, for once, was at his business. Sister Teresa, short, quiet and amiable, opened the door. Since she came from a distant section of Tynecastle she had no knowledge of Tulloch, but she knew and recognized Francis, at once. She admitted them to the polished, immaculately tidy room where Charlotte lay on spotless pillows, washed and clothed in a high white nightgown, the brasses of the bedstead shining. Sister Teresa bent over the girl, not a little proud of her stainless handiwork.

‘Charlotte, dear. Father Chisholm has come to see you. And brought a doctor who is a great friend of Dr Brine.’

Charlotte Neily smiled. The smile was conscious, vaguely languid, yet charged with curious rapture. It lit up the pale, already luminous face motionless upon the pillow. It was deeply impressive. Francis felt a stir of genuine compunction. There was no doubt that something existed, here, in this still white room, outside the bonds of natural experience.