As the evening wore on the dancing grew more and more uninhibited, the liquor changed from champagne and whiskey to rum and beer, and proceedings settled down to something more like a woolshed ball. By two in the morning only a total absence of station hands and working girls could distinguish it from the usual entertainments of the Gilly district, which were strictly democratic.
Paddy and Fee were still in attendance, but promptly at midnight Bob and Jack left with Meggie. Neither Fee nor Paddy noticed; they were enjoying themselves. If their children couldn't dance, they could, and did; with each other mostly, seeming to the watching Father Ralph suddenly much more attuned to each other, perhaps because the times they had an opportunity to relax and enjoy each other were rare. He never remembered seeing them without at least one child somewhere around, and thought it must be hard on the parents of large families, never able to snatch moments alone save in the bedroom, where they might excusably have other things than conversation on their minds. Paddy was always cheerful and jolly, but Fee tonight almost literally shone, and when Paddy went to beg a duty dance of some squatter's wife, she didn't lack eager partners; there were many much younger women wilting on chairs around the room who were not so sought after.
However, Father Ralph's moments to observe the Cleary parents were limited. Feeling ten years younger once he saw Meggie leave the room, he became a great deal more animated and flabbergasted the Misses Hopeton, Mackail, Gordon and O'Mara by dancing-and extremely well-the Black Bottom with Miss Carmichael. But after that he gave every unattached girl in the room her turn, even poor homely Miss Pugh, and since by this time everyone was thoroughly relaxed and oozing goodwill, no one condemned the priest one bit. In fact, his zeal and kindness were much admired and commented upon. No one could say their daughter had not had an opportunity to dance with Father de Bricassart.
Of course, had it not been a private party he could not have made a move toward the dance floor, but it was so nice to see such a fine man really enjoy himself for once.
At three o'clock Mary Carson rose to her feet and yawned. "No, don't stop the festivities! If I'm tired which I am-I can go to bed, which is what I'm going to do. But there's plenty of food and drink, the band has been engaged to play as long as someone wants to dance, and a little noise will only speed me into my dreams. Father, would you help me up the stairs, please?" Once outside the reception room she did not turn to the majestic staircase, but guided the priest to her drawing room, leaning heavily on his arm. Its door had been locked; she waited while he used the key she handed him, then preceded him inside.
"It was a good party, Mary," he said.
"My last."
"Don't say that, my dear."
"Why not? I'm tired of living, Ralph, and I'm going to stop." Her hard eyes mocked. "Do you doubt me? For over seventy years I've done precisely what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it, so if Death thinks he's the one to choose the time of my going, he's very much mistaken. I'll die when I choose the time, and no suicide, either. It's our will to live keeps us kicking, Ralph; it isn't hard to stop if we really want to. I'm tired, and I want to stop. Very simple."
He was tired, too; not of living, exactly, but of the endless facade, the climate, the lack of friends with common interests, himself. The room was only faintly lit by a tall kerosene lamp of priceless ruby glass, and it cast transparent crimson shadows on Mary Carson's face, conjuring out of her intractable bones something more diabolical. His feet and back ached; it was a long time since he had danced so much, though he prided himself on keeping up with whatever was the latest fad. Thirty-five years of age, a country monsignor, and as a power in the Church? Finished before he had begun. Oh, the dreams of youth! And the carelessness of youth's tongue, the hotness of youth's temper. He had not been strong enough to meet the test. But he would never make that mistake again. Never, never...
He moved restlessly, sighed; what was the use? The chance would not come again. Time he faced that fact squarely, time he stopped hoping and dreaming. "Do you remember my saying, Ralph, that I'd beat you, that I'd hoist you with your own petard?"
The dry old voice snapped him out of the reverie his weariness had induced. He looked across at Mary Carson and smiled.
"Dear Mary, I never forget anything you say. What I would have done without you these past seven years I don't know. Your wit, your malice, your perception..."
"If I'd been younger I'd have got you in a different way, Ralph. You'll never know how I've longed to throw thirty years of my life out the window. If the Devil had come to me and offered to buy my soul for the chance to be young again, I'd have sold it in a second, and not stupidly regretted the bargain like that old idiot Faust. But no Devil. I really can't bring myself to believe in God or the Devil, you know. I've never seen a scrap of evidence to the effect they exist. Have you?"
"No. But belief doesn't rest on proof of existence, Mary. It rests on faith, and faith is the touchstone of the Church. Without faith, there is nothing."
"A very ephemeral tenet."
"Perhaps. Faith's born in a man or a woman, I think. For me it's a constant struggle, I admit that, but I'll never give up."
"I would like to destroy you."
His blue eyes laughed, greyed in the light. "Oh, my dear Mary! I know that."
"But do you know why?"
A terrifying tenderness crept against him, almost inside him, except that he fought it fiercely. "I know why, Mary, and believe me, I'm sorry."
"Besides your mother, how many women have loved you?" "Did my mother love me, I wonder? She ended in hating me, anyway. Most women do. My name ought to have been Hippolytos."
"Ohhhhhh! That tells me a lot!"
"As to other women, I think only Meggie... But she's a little girl. It's probably not an exaggeration to say hundreds of women have wanted me, but loved me? I doubt it very much."
"I have loved you," she said pathetically.
"No, you haven't. I'm the goad of your old age, that's all. When you look at me I remind you of what you cannot do, because of age."
"You're wrong. I have loved you. God, how much! Do you think my years automatically preclude it? Well, Father de Bricassart, let me tell you something. Inside this stupid body I'm still young-I still feel, I still want, I still dream, I still kick up my heels and chafe at restrictions like my body. Old age is the bitterest vengeance our vengeful God inflicts upon us. Why doesn't He age our minds as well?" She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, her teeth showing sourly. "I shall go to Hell, of course. But before I do, I hope I get the chance to tell God what a mean, spiteful, pitiful apology of a God He is!"
"You were a widow too long. God gave you freedom of choice, Mary. You could have remarried. If you chose not to remarry and in consequence you've been intolerably lonely, it's your own doing, not God's.". For a moment she said nothing, her hands gripping the chair arms hard; then she began to relax, and opened her eyes. They glittered in the lamplight redly, but not with tears; with something harder, more brilliant. He caught his breath, felt fear. She looked like a spider.
"Ralph, on my desk is an envelope. Would you bring it to me, please?" Aching and afraid, he got up and went to her desk, lifted the letter, eyed it curiously. The face of it was blank, but the back had been properly sealed with red wax and her ram's head seal with the big D. He brought it to her and held it out, but she waved him to his seat without taking it. "It's yours," she said, and giggled. "The instrument of your fate, Ralph, that's what it is. My last and most telling thrust in our long battle. What a pity I won't be here to see what happens. But I know what will happen, because I know you, I know you much better than you think I do. Insufferable conceit! Inside that envelope lies the fate of your life and your soul. I must lose you to Meggie, but I've made sure she doesn't get you, either." "Why do you hate Meggie so?"
"I told you once before. Because you love her."
"Not in that way! She's the child I can never have, the rose of my life. Meggie is an idea, Mary, an idea!"
But. the old woman sneered. "I don't want to talk about your precious Meggie! I shall never see you again, so I don't want to waste my time with you talking about her. The letter. I want you to swear on your vows as a priest that you don't open it until you've seen my dead body for yourself, but then that you open it immediately, before you bury me. Swear!" "There's no need to swear, Mary. I'll do as you ask."
"Swear to me or I'll take it back!"
He shrugged. "All right, then. On my vows as a priest I swear it. Not to open the letter until I've seen you dead, and then to open it before you're buried"
"Good, good!"
"Mary, please don't worry. This is a fancy of yours, no more. In the morning you'll laugh at it."
"I won't see the morning. I'm going to die tonight; I'm not weak enough to wait on the pleasure of seeing you again. What an anticlimax! I'm going to bed now. Will you take me to the top of the stairs?"
He didn't believe her, but he could see it served no purpose to argue, and she was not in the mood to be jollied out of it. Only God decided when one would die, unless, of the free will He had given, one took one's own life. And she had said she wouldn't do that. So he helped her pant up the stairs and at the top took her hands in his, bent to kiss them. She pulled them away. "No, not tonight. On my mouth, Ralph! Kiss my mouth as if we were lovers!"
By the brilliant light of the chandelier, lit for the party with four hundred wax candles, she saw the disgust in his face, the instinctive recoil; she wanted to die then, wanted to die so badly she could not wait.
"Mary, I'm a priest! I can't!"
She laughed shrilly, eerily. "Oh, Ralph, what a sham you are! Sham man, sham priest! And to think once you actually had the temerity to offer to make love to me! were you so positive I'd refuse? How I wish I hadn't! I'd give my soul to see you wriggle out of it if we could have that night back again! Sham, sham, sham! That's all you are, Ralph! An impotent, useless sham! Impotent man and impotent priest! I don't think you could get it up and keep it up for the Blessed Virgin herself! Have you ever managed to get it up, Father de Bricassart? Sham!"
Outside it was not yet dawn, or the lightening before it. Darkness lay soft, thick and very hot over Drogheda. The revels were becoming extremely noisy; if the homestead had possessed next-door neighbors the police would have been called long since. Someone was vomiting copiously and revoltingly on the veranda, and under a wispy bottle brush two indistinct forms were locked together. Father Ralph avoided the vomiter and the lovers, treading silently across the springy new-mown lawn with such torment in his mind he did not know or care where he was going. Only that he wanted to be away from her, the awful old spider who was convinced she was spinning her death cocoon on this exquisite night. At such an early hour the heat was not exhausting; there was a faint, heavy stirring in the air, and a stealing of languorous perfumes from boronia and roses, the heavenly stillness only tropical and subtropical latitudes can ever know. Oh, God, to be alive, to be really alive! To embrace the night, and living, and be free!
He stopped on the far side of the lawn and stood looking up at the sky, an instinctive aerial searching for God. Yes, up there somewhere, between the winking points of light so pure and unearthly; what was it about the night sky? That the blue lid of day was lifted, a man permitted glimpses of eternity? Nothing save witnessing the strewn vista of the stars could convince a man that timelessness and God existed. She's right, of course. A sham, a total sham. No priest, no man. Only someone who wishes he knew how to be either. No! Not either! Priest and man cannot coexist-to be a man is to be no priest. Why did I ever tangle my feet in her web? Her poison is strong, perhaps stronger than I guess. What's in the letter? How like Mary to bait me! How much does she know, how much does she simply guess? What is there to know, or guess? Only futility, and loneliness. Doubt, pain. Always pain. Yet you're wrong, Mary. I can get it up. It's just that I don't choose to, that I've spent years proving to myself it can be controlled, dominated, subjugated. For getting it up is the activity of a man, and I am a priest.
Someone was weeping in the cemetery. Meggie, of course. No one else would think of it. He picked up the skirts of his soutane and stepped over the wrought iron railing, feeling it was inevitable that he had not yet done with Meggie on this night. If he confronted one of the women in his life, he must also deal with the other. His amused detachment was coming back; she could not disperse that for long, the old spider. The wicked old spider. God rot her, God rot her!
"Darling Meggie, don't cry," he said, sitting on the dew-wet grass beside her. "Here, I'll bet you don't have a decent handkerchief. Women never do. Take mine and dry your eyes like a good girl."
She took it and did as she was told.
"You haven't even changed out of your finery. Have you been sitting here since midnight?"
"Yes."
"Do Bob and Jack know where you are?"
"I told them I was going to bed."
"What's the matter, Meggie?"
"You didn't speak to me tonight!"
"Ali! I thought that might be it. Come, Meggie, look at me!" Away in the east was a pearly luster, a fleeing of total darkness, and the Drogheda roosters were shrieking an early welcome to the dawn. So he could see that not even protracted tears could dim the loveliness of her eyes. "Meggie, you were by far the prettiest girl at the party, and it's well known that I come to Drogheda more often than I need. I am a priest and therefore I ought to be above suspicion-a bit like Caesar's wife comb I'm afraid people don't think so purely. As priests go I'm young, and not bad-looking." He paused to think how Mary Carson would have greeted that bit of understatement, and laughed soundlessly. "If I had paid you a skerrick of attention it would have been all over Gilly in record time. Every party line in the district would have been buzzing with it. Do you know what I mean?" She shook her head; the cropped curls were growing brighter in the advancing light.
"Well, you're young to come to knowledge of the ways of the world, but you've got to learn, and it al- ways seems to be my province to teach you, doesn't it? I mean people would be saying I was interested in you as a man, not as a priest."
"Father!"
"Dreadful, isn't it?" He smiled. "But that's what people would say, I assure you. You see, Meggie, you're not a little girl anymore, you're a young lady. But you haven't learned yet to hide your affection for me, so had I stopped to speak to you with all those people looking on, you'd have stared at me in a way which might have been misconstrued."
She was looking at him oddly, a sudden inscrutability shuttering her gaze, then abruptly she turned her head and presented him with her profile. "Yes, I see. I was silly not to have seen it."
"Now don't you think it's time you went home? No doubt everyone will sleep in, but if someone's awake at the usual time you'll be in the soup. And you can't say you've been with me, Meggie, even to your own family." She got up and stood staring down at him. "I'm going, Father. But I wish they knew you better, then they'd never think such things of you. It isn't in you, is it?"
For some reason that hurt, hurt right down to his soul as Mary Carson's cruel taunts had not. "No, Meggie, you're right. It isn't in me." He sprang up, smiling wryly. "Would you think it strange if I said I wished it was?" He put a hand to his head. "No, I don't wish it was at all! Go home, Meggie, go home!"
Her face was sad. "Good night, Father."
He took her hands in his, bent and kissed them. "Good night, dearest Meggie."
He watched her walk across the graves, step over the railing; in the rosebud dress her retreating form was graceful, womanly and a little unreal. Ashes of roses. "How appropriate," he said to the angel. Cars were roaring away from Drogheda as he strolled back across the lawn; the party was finally over. Inside, the band was packing away its instruments, reeling with rum and exhaustion, and the tired maids and temporary helpers were trying to clear up. Father Ralph shook his head at Mrs. Smith.
"Send everyone to bed, my dear. It's a lot easier to deal with this sort of thing when you're fresh. I'll make sure Mrs. Carson isn't angry." "Would you like something to eat, Father?"
"Good Lord, no! I'm going to bed."
In the late afternoon a hand touched his shoulder. He reached for it blindly without the energy to open his eyes, and tried to hold it against his cheek.
"Meggie," he mumbled.
"Father, Father! Oh, please will you wake up?" At the tone of Mrs. Smith's voice his eyes came suddenly very awake. "What is it, Mrs. Smith?"
"It's Mrs. Carson, Father. She's dead."
His watch told him it was after six in the evening; dazed and reeling from the heavy torpor the day's terrible heat had induced in him, he struggled out of his pajamas and into his priest's clothes, threw a narrow purple stole around his neck and took the oil of extreme unction, the holy water, his big silver cross, his ebony rosary beads. It never occurred to him for a moment to wonder if Mrs. Smith was right; he knew the spider was dead. Had she taken something after all? Pray God if she had, it was neither obviously present in the room nor obvious to a doctor. What possible use it was to administer extreme unction he didn't know. But it had to be done. Let him refuse and there would be post-mortems, all sorts of complications. Yet it had nothing to do with his sudden suspicion of suicide; simply that to him laying sacred things on Mary Carson's body was obscene.
She was very dead, must have died within minutes of retiring, a good fifteen hours earlier. The windows were closed fast, and the room humid from the great flat pans of water she insisted be put in every inconspicuous corner to keep her skin youthful. There was a peculiar noise in the air; after a stupid moment of wondering he realized what he heard were flies, hordes of flies buzzing, insanely clamoring as they feasted on her, mated on her, laid their eggs on her. "For God's sake, Mrs. Smith, open the windows!" he gasped, moving to the bedside, face pallid.
She had passed out of rigor mortis and was again limp, disgustingly so. The staring eyes were mottling, her thin lips black; and everywhere on her were the flies. He had to have Mrs. Smith keep shooing them away as he worked over her, muttering the ancient Latin exhortations. What a farce, and she accursed. The smell of her! Oh, God! Worse than any dead horse in the freshness of a paddock. He shrank from touching her in death as he had in life, especially those flyblown lips. She would be a mass of maggots within hours.
At last it was done. He straightened. "Go to Mr. Cleary at once, Mrs. Smith, and for God's sake tell him to get the boys working on a coffin right away. No time to have one sent out from Gilly; she's rotting away before our very eyes. Dear lord! I feel sick. I'm going to have a bath and I'll leave my clothes outside my door. Burn them. I'll never get the smell of her out of them."
Back in his room in riding breeches and shirt-for he had not packed two soutanes-he remembered the letter, and his promise. Seven o'clock had struck; he could hear a restrained chaos as maids and temporary helpers flew to clear the party mess away, transform the reception room back into a chapel, ready the house for tomorrow's funeral. No help for it, he would have to go into Gilly tonight to pick up another soutane and vestments for the Requiem Mass. Certain things he was never without when he left the presbytery for an out- lying station, carefully strapped in compartments in the little black case, his sacraments for birth, death, benediction, worship, and the vestments suitable for Mass at whatever time of the year it was. But he was an Irishman, and to carry the black mourning accouterments of a Requiem was to tempt fate. Paddy's voice echoed in the distance, but he could not face Paddy at the moment; he knew Mrs. Smith would do what had to be done. Sitting at his window looking out over the vista of Drogheda in the dying sun, the ghost gums golden, the mass of red and pink and white roses in the garden all empurpled, he took Mary Carson's letter from his case and held it between his hands. But she had insisted he read it before he buried her, and somewhere in his mind a little voice was whispering that he must read it now, not later tonight after he had seen Paddy and Meggie, but now before he had seen anyone save Mary Carson.
It contained four sheets of paper; he riffled them apart and saw immediately that the lower two were her will. The top two were addressed to him, in the form of a letter.
My dearest Ralph,
You will have seen that the second document in this envelope is my will. I already have a perfectly good will signed and sealed in Harry Gough's office in Gilly; the will enclosed herein is a much later one, and naturally nullifies the one Harry has.
As a matter of fact I made it only the other day, and had it witnessed by Tom and the fencer, since I understand it is not permissible to have any beneficiary witness one's will. It is quite legal, in spite of the fact Harry didn't draw it up for me. No court in the land will deny its validity, I assure you.
But why didn't I have Harry draw this testament up if I wanted to alter the disposition of my effects? Very simple, my dear Ralph. I wanted absolutely no one to know of this will's existence apart from you, and me. This is the only copy, and you hold it. Not a soul knows that you do. A very important part of my plan.
Do you remember that piece of the Gospel where Satan took Our Lord Jesus Christ up onto a mountaintop, and tempted Him with the whole world? How pleasant it is to know I have a little of Satan's power, and am able to tempt the one I love (do you doubt Satan loved Christ? I do not) with the whole world. The contemplation of your dilemma has considerably enlivened my thoughts during the past few years, and the closer I get to dying, the more delightful my visions become.
After you've read the will, you'll understand what I mean. While I bum in Hell beyond the borders of this life I know now, you'll still be in that life, but burning in a hell with fiercer flames than any God could possibly manufacture. Oh, my Ralph, I've gauged you to a nicety! If I never knew how to do anything else, I've always known how to make the ones I love suffer. And you're far better game than my dear departed Michael ever was. When I first knew you, you wanted Drogheda and my money, didn't you, Ralph? You saw it as a way to buy back your natural métier. But then came Meggie, and you put your original purpose in cultivating me out of your mind, didn't you? I became an excuse to visit Drogheda so you could be with Meggie. I wonder could you have switched allegiances so easily had you known how much I'm actually worth? Do you know, Ralph? I don't think you have an inkling. I suppose it isn't ladylike to mention the exact sum of one's assets in one's will, so I had better tell you here just to make sure you have all the necessary information at your fingertips when it comes to your making a decision. Give or take a few hundred thousands, my fortune amounts to some thirteen million pounds.
I'm getting down toward the foot of the second page, and I can't be bothered turning this into a thesis. Read my will, Ralph, and after you've read it, decide what you're going to do with it. Will you tender it to Harry Gough for probate, or will you burn it and never tell a soul it existed. That's the decision you've got to make. I ought to add that the will in Harry's office is the one I made the year after Paddy came, and leaves everything I have to him. Just so you know what hangs in the balance. Ralph, I love you, so much I would have killed you for not wanting me, except that this is a far better form of reprisal. I'm not the noble kind; I love you but I want you to scream in agony. Because, you see, 1 know what your decision will be. I know it as surely as if I could be there, watching. You'll scream, Ralph, you'll know what agony is. So read on, my beautiful, ambitious priest! Read my will, and decide your fate.
It was not signed or initialed. He felt the sweat on his forehead, felt it running down the back of his neck from his hair. And he wanted to get up that very moment to burn both documents, never read what the second one contained. But she had gauged her quarry well, the gross old spider. Of course he would read on; he was too curious to resist. God! What had he ever done, to make her want to do this to him? Why did women make him suffer so? Why couldn't he have been born small, twisted, ugly? If he were so, he might have been happy. The last two sheets were covered by the same precise, almost minute writing. As mean and grudging as her soul.
I, Mary Elizabeth Carson, being of sound mind and sound body, do hereby declare that this is my last will and testament, thereby rendering null and void any such testaments previously made by me. Save only for the special bequests made below, all my worldly goods and moneys and properties I bequeath to the Holy Catholic Church of Rome, under the hereby stated conditions of bequest:
First, that the said Holy Catholic Church of Rome, to be called the Church hereafter, knows in what esteem and with what affection I hold her priest, Father Ralph de Bricassart. It is solely because of his kindness, spiritual guidance and unfailing support that I so dispose of my assets. Secondly, that the bequest shall continue in the favor of the Church only so long as she appreciates the worth and ability of the said Father Ralph de Bricassart.
Thirdly, that the said Father Ralph de Bricassart be responsible for the administration and channeling of these my worldly goods, moneys and properties, as the chief authority in charge of my estate. Fourthly, that upon the demise of the said Father Ralph de Bricassart, his own last will and testament shall be legally binding in the matter of the further administration of my estate. That is, the Church shall continue in full ownership, but Father Ralph de Bricassart shall be solely responsible for the naming of his successor in administration; he shall not be obliged to select a successor who is either an ecclesiastical or a lay member of the Church.
Fifthly, that the station Drogheda be never sold nor subdivided. Sixthly, that my brother, Padraic Cleary, be retained as manager of the station Drogheda with the right to dwell in my house, and that he be paid a salary at the discretion of Father Ralph de Bricassart and no other. Seventhly, that in the event of the death of my brother, the said Padraic Cleary, his widow and children be permitted to remain on the station Drogheda and that the position of manager shall pass consecutively to each of his sons, Robert, John, Hugh, Stuart, James and Patrick, but excluding Francis. Eighthly, that upon the demise of Patrick or whichever son excluding Francis is the last son remaining, the same rights be permitted the said Padraic Cleary's grandchildren.
Special bequests:
To Padraic Cleary, the contents of my houses on the station Drogheda. To Eunice Smith, my housekeeper, that she remain at a fair salary so long as she desires, and in addition that she be paid the sum of five thousand pounds forthwith, and that upon her retirement she be awarded an equitable pension.
To Minerva O'Brien and Catherine Donnelly, that they remain at fair salaries so long as they desire, and in addition that they be paid the sum of one thousand pounds each forthwith, and that upon their retirements they be awarded equitable pensions.
To Father Ralph de Bricassart the sum of ten thousand pounds to be paid annually so long as he shall live, for his own private and unquestioned use.
It was duly signed, dated and witnessed.
His room looked west. The sun was setting. The pall of dust which came with every summer filled the silent air, and the sun thrust its fingers through the finestrung particles so that it seemed the whole world had turned to gold and purple. Streaky clouds rimmed in brilliant fire poked silver streamers across the great bloody ball which hung just above the trees of the far paddocks.
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