Thomasina - The Cat Who Thought She Was God (24 page)

Mr. MacDhui arose heavily and went out of the room. He thought that he would seek out and have a talk with his friend, Mr. Angus Peddie, minister of the Reformed Presbyterian Church of Inveranoch, the inside of which he, MacDhui, had yet to see, or any other. He wished to ask him a question.

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T
he study of the rectory attached to the Presbyterian church was unfamiliar to Andrew MacDhui, and he felt as ill at ease there as a schoolboy.

Ordinarily nothing would have been simpler than for the veterinary to have dropped in upon the Reverend Angus Peddie at his home next door, as he did frequently for an evening of smoking or arguing and over a pipeful of shag and a glass of beer or two, and to have unburdened himself.

It was significant of the emotional state in which MacDhui found himself that he was unable to do this and place his dilemma before Peddie on an easygoing, man-to-man basis. Instead he paid his friend a formal afternoon call at his place of business, so to speak, and found himself constrained as any back-country parishioner in unfamiliar clothes and unfamiliar surroundings sitting, bowler hat in hand, on the edge of his chair, waiting for a word with the dominie.

True, Mr. MacDhui was dressed no differently than ever, in his old tweed jacket with the leather elbow patches; his flaming, unruly hair was hatless, but his spirit was subdued and he did favor the edge of the chair. From there he contemplated the minister sitting behind his desk, on which were piled books and papers, looking somewhat like a Mr. Pickwick in a literary mood, the potted plant standing on its mahogany pedestal in the corner, the tall bookcase, the electric fire beneath the brown mantelpiece, the chessboard with pieces on a small table, the etchings on the walls, and the dark paneling of the walls themselves.

Peddie, masking his surprise well at seeing him there, had said, “Come in, come in, Andrew, and sit down. No, you do not disturb in the least. The break is welcome and will save my congregation a sermon fifteen minutes too long, for I shall bring it to a close here and now.”

But when MacDhui had settled himself uneasily on a straight-backed chair a silence fell between them which was not relieved until Fin, the minister’s dyspeptic pug dog, got up out of his basket next to his master’s desk, puffing and wheezing, came over to the veterinary and sat up before him, begging with little paddling movements of his paws.

There was a dish of bonbons at MacDhui’s elbow and he reached absently for one, popping it into the dog’s mouth. The animal bugged out his eyes with pleasure and fell to enjoying it.

The Reverend Peddie regarded his friend with a triumphant smile. “There, you see?” he said.

Even MacDhui had to laugh and, the ice somewhat broken, he made a great show of loading his pipe to enable him to get a grip upon himself and somehow make a beginning. When he had got it drawing he said, “I wanted a few words with you, Angus.”

Anxious to help him, Peddie tried to read what was on his mind. “Is it that the child is no better? I shall continue to pray for her.”

Mr. MacDhui said, “Thank you. That is kind of you,” with a kind of stiff formality that the minister was not slow to note and he wished now he had not said it, or that he had waited for MacDhui to speak.

The veterinary, who had no conception of the meaning of the prayer that arises from the sincere and believing heart, felt a kind of odd resentment at the dominie’s words and at what he considered the implication that the most precious life on earth to him could be turned on or off, or regulated through mumbled words of supplication, incantation, or bribery-through-praise. It seemed to him a kind of presumption on the part of the minister that he had connections on high that MacDhui did not and that he was willing to contact them for him. He wished that his friend had not reverted to his profession even though he had come to consult him professionally, and he wished too, now, that he had not come at all, that he had had the strength to persist and try to find within himself the answer to his dilemma.

Yet, he felt, after a moment, since he was there he might as well make a beginning and so he said, “The diagnosis is still the same. Nothing is wrong and yet—everything is wrong. But that is not why I am here. It is about Lori.”

This time Mr. Peddie kept his face impassive and roundly placid as he said, “Ah yes. Lori. You said you might be going to pay her a visit. I gather you have done so.”

Into Mr. MacDhui’s mind came suddenly the recollection of Mr. Peddie’s warning to him. “You may find yourself in the greatest danger—the danger of coming to love God.” He wondered what his friend would say when he learned that it was not God that he, MacDhui, had come to love, but Lori. Aloud he replied, “Yes. I have been there a number of times, as a matter of fact.”

Mr. Peddie was feeling his way carefully. “And did you accomplish what you set out to do?”

“It was not necessary. Her—what she was doing had been—misrepresented to me. She is an innocent person and in no way can be said to fall foul of the law.”

The Reverend Peddie smiled engagingly. “Splendid. I was sure you would see this for yourself.”

“I was wrong,” MacDhui admitted. “I own it. I—I”—and here he fumbled for words—“I felt that I wished to help her.”

At the word “help” a gleam of understanding came into the eyes of the minister behind their gold-rimmed spectacles and he leaned forward on his desk, regarding his friend with renewed interest behind which lay just the faintest hint of amusement inspired by an appreciation of the little ironies of life and sympathy for one caught in their toils. He said, “That was good of you,” and did not add as the mischief in him might have prompted him to do, “For ‘help,’ read ‘love.’ ”

“She is innocent and good,” MacDhui repeated, “but quite mad—obsessed, I might almost say. Yes, that is the word, I think, obsessed rather than possessed. She believes that she can communicate with animals. It is true that she wields an extraordinary power over them, but this can be explained naturalistically. She professes likewise to speak with angels and hear their wings and voices.”

Mr. Peddie reflected and then said, “You know, there once was a man by the name of Francis who paused by the roadside in the vicinity of Assisi and preached an entire sermon to the birds, asking them first to still their chatter, which they did, and no one thought it odd, either then or since. Francis considered the beasts of field, stream, and air his brothers and sisters, an opinion since concurred with by a great many men of science, the structural similarities being unavoidable—”

Mr. MacDhui exploded, much to Peddie’s relief, for this calm, repressed MacDhui was unnatural. “Damn it, Angus, one can never pin you fellows down. You are slipperier than conger eels. You know very well that Lori lives an unnatural life, that, for whatever reason, she has abandoned reality to live in a world of her own creating, that—”

“Oh yes, Andrew,” Peddie interrupted his friend. “You chaps have a convenient label for everything that doesn’t coincide with your definition of normal—neurasthenia, schizophrenia, psychosis, manic depression—and every one must fit into one or the other categories, including those who do genuinely hear the voice of God. You leave us believers little choice but to register at the nearest asylum.”

The outburst unsettled MacDhui still further. “Then you are trying to tell me that you consider Lori sane?” he said with a touch of his old truculence, which Peddie welcomed.

The minister arose and went to the window which looked out upon the neat, whitewashed church and the graveyard behind it, through whose sprouting of graying tombstones the blue of the loch could be glimpsed, and he thought carefully before replying. Then turning to his friend, he said, “If to love and communicate, or attempt to communicate with a supreme being, in any one of a hundred different ways, is mad, then nine tenths of the people inhabiting this globe are insane. Or let me put it this way: the great appeal of Jesus was his compassion. Two thousand years ago He introduced love, pity, and gentleness into a brutal and demented world. Yet that world has been steadily moving away from His kind of sanity ever since. Five hundred years ago Lori would have been considered a saint.”

“Or a witch,” MacDhui added grimly, “as some call her even today.” The veterinary pursued his point again. “But if she were mad—or even only slightly deranged, a psychotic taking refuge in phantasy and escape from reality? There are some such, you know, for madness is not an invention, but an affliction—”

Preddie said, “Yes, if she were indeed, then—?”

“Well,” said MacDhui with a kind of desperation, “if she were—touched, or even as you say, a saint, dedicated and devoted, would it be a sin—”

He broke off here, for he could not bring himself to confess to Peddie that he was so deeply in love with Lori that he could see no way out of his dilemma. One did not wed a madwoman—

The stout little minister came away from his window, pointed a round, chubby finger at MacDhui’s breastbone and asked severely, “What have you to do with sin, Andrew MacDhui, and why should you who do not believe be concerned with it? Do you not know that sin is the peculiar privilege of the religious and one of the penalties connected with the life of an agnostic is that he can never enjoy it?”

MacDhui asked uncertainly, “Are you joking with me Angus?”

“Never less so! Don’t you see, my friend, that you are involving yourself in an unresolvable paradox? You are asking me whether it would be a sin to love and wish to espouse and have children by a woman you consider out of her mind. Do you not see that if you believed in God, you would not think Lori mad but only good, gentle and kind, a most dear and praiseworthy anachronism in a harsh and insensitive era?”

MacDhui’s reply was a bellow. “God! God! Always God! Is there no escape from God?”

Peddie replied ringingly, “There never has been, Andrew!” Then in milder tone he continued, “Do not be surprised that I mention Him. If you visit a psychiatrist you will hear of neuroses and libidos; a doctor will speak to you of glands and organs; a plumber hold forth about plungers and washers. Why should you be exercised when a minister speaks to you of God?”

MacDhui said heavily and without choler, “You set me an impossible task, Angus.”

“Do I? I have not that feeling. You and Lori each inhabit the extreme and far outer edges of your separate worlds. If both you and she were to move even slightly in the direction of the other—”

“I tell you it is impossible. Did you know that she hears—voices?” MacDhui could not bring himself to say “heavenly voices,” but he could not keep his glance from turning momentarily aloft as he finished the query.

Mr. Peddie looked the picture of innocence behind his gold-rimmed spectacles. “So did the Maid of Domremy!”

MacDhui glared at him. The minister ignored the look and said, “Had it ever occurred to you that there might be voices to hear?”

MacDhui arose and wandered over to the chessboard, where he idly lifted a few pieces. “Someone who manipulates us like these at His whim, or in accordance with some undisclosed rules of the game? No, no, Angus. I cannot. I cannot. I cannot.” He turned toward the door, but before departing, said with genuine sadness and disappointment, “You have not helped me, Angus.”

At his desk the little clergyman considered his friend’s accusation, searching his heart. Was there more he could have done or said? Was this the time? To Peddie there was no comfort to which humans could turn in time of travail but that of religion. What else was there in this world, into which he had looked so deeply, but darkness and despair? The dismal clank of the chains carried about by the agnostics had been ringing in his ears for years. A logical and philosophical man, some five thousand years of history and record of God’s manifestation of Himself and His Spirit to man appeared irrefutable. Yet he did not cite this to his friend. Instead he said, “I am sorry, Andrew. In the end you will help yourself. You will not find, you will be found, for that is the way it has always been. That which you will someday experience is not so much a faith or a belief in a myth or a series of myths, as a deep-seated feeling, a conviction that fills every corner of one’s being until there is no longer so much as an atom’s area of room for doubt. And to this conviction you can only help yourself. No one as yet has been able to explain a revelation or foresee the moment thereof.”

MacDhui said, “I do not understand you.”

Mr. Peddie sighed and said gently, “Well, then, do not try, Andrew. But let us each to our methods. You were upset before when I said that I would pray for Mary Ruadh, but you would not be were Dr. Strathsay to tell you that he meant to try out the effects of a new antibiotic on her. Yet in both cases conviction as to results have been obtained through experience and successful experiment.”

MacDhui nodded slightly, but said no more and went out, closing the door softly enough behind him. Long after he had departed, the Reverend Mr. Peddie sat motionless at his desk, a small, silent, thoughtful figure, as he reflected whether he had done right or wrong and how difficult it was to know.

For, while he was well aware of his Church’s attitude towards proselyting and the desirability of acquiring converts, he had his own concept of respect for his deity and His ability to look after His own affairs. While he kept his opinions to himself, he did not, in this modern world, hold with belaboring and persecuting agnostics into unwilling belief.

And besides he was well aware, not only of the wellsprings of MacDhui’s atheism, but also of the fact that he had already abandoned it but could not yet bring himself to acknowledge it. He saw in MacDhui that same violent, childish nature exhibited by the Italian peasants of the Romagna, who, when crops failed or storms damaged their harvest, punished their saints by removing them from their niches in the churches and banishing them to the cellar, awaiting a tangible demonstration of better behavior before restoring them.

Knowing the vet’s background and early problems, he felt sure that at some time as a young man he had prayed, “Oh God, help me! Please let me be a doctor.” Well, God’s will had crossed his will and a MacDhui was not one to take this lying down. However much he might be longing for the comfort that address and communion might bring him, he was too stubborn, willful, aggressive, and bitter to acknowledge it.