“We’re not to judge, Frank, but something like what’s upstairs doesn’t happen just by chance. Nothing comes by chance. Everything’s written down somewhere, you know, and we have to live the lives that are foreseen for us long before the world began. So you mustn’t look on your brother as a judgement on anyone. But I won’t say he isn’t a warning—a rebuke to pride, maybe.
My grandmother worked that into a sampler when she was a girl, and we’ve still got it on the wall.”
“All sinners, Victoria?”
“All sinners, Frank, however your aunt throws scent over it with her religious pictures and fancy prayers. That’s just the R.C. way of deceiving yourself, as if life was a fancy-dress party, with purple socks, and all. Life isn’t just for fun, you know.”
“But aren’t we ever to be happy?”
“Show me the place in the Bible where it says we are to be happy in this world. Happiness for sinners means sin. You can’t get away from it.”
“Are you a sinner, Victoria?”
“Maybe the worst of sinners. How can I tell?”
“Then why are you so good to the fellow upstairs?”
“We sinners have to stick together, Frank, and do the best we can in our fallen state. That’s what religion is. I don’t make the judgements. For all the silver and thick carpets and hand-painted pictures—your pictures too, clever though they are—this is a House of Sin.”
“But Victoria, that’s awful. And it isn’t an answer. If you’re a sinner, why don’t you sin?”
“Too proud, Frank. God made me a sinner, and I can’t change that. But I don’t have to give in, even to Him, and I won’t. I won’t give it to Him to say. Though He slay me, yet will I worship Him. But I won’t throw in the towel, even if He’s damned me.”
Thus, in addition to a little lukewarm Anglicanism, and much hot, sweet Catholicism, Frank imbibed a stern and unyielding Calvinism. It was no help with his personal difficulties. But he loved Victoria and he believed her, just as he believed Aunt. The only person who didn’t seem to have a God who was out for his scalp was Zadok.
Zadok’s religion, if it may be so called, was summed up briefly. “Life’s a rum start, me little dear. I’ve good cause to know!”
The House of Sin was, in its way, splendid, and Frank took satisfaction in its richness without having a clear idea of its ugliness. The drawing-room, so silvery blue, so crammed with uncomfortable “Louis” furniture, relieved only by the fierce mahogany gloss of the Phonoliszt, and the portly Victrola, repository of great music, including several records by the man-god Caruso. The dining-room, battleground of two great indigestions—Aunt’s manifesting itself in sternly repressed gas, and Grand’mère’s in a recurrent biliousness. Neither lady ever thought of moderating her diet. “I can take cream,” Aunt would say, as if many other luxuries were denied her; she took cream at every meal. “Oh, I shouldn’t, but I’ll venture,” was what Grand’mère would say, as she helped herself to another slice of Victoria’s superb pastry, usually manifesting itself as the casing of a sweet fruit pie. The dining-room, with its red velvety paper and its pictures of cardinals, seemed an outward enlargement of two outraged, overloaded stomachs. And then, Grand-pére’s study, so complex and tormented in its panelling, where much the most interesting books were his many albums of sun-pictures. A House of Sin? Certainly a house of vexations and disappointments, quite apart from those that plagued Francis.
Late on the night of Good Friday, when in deference to Mary-Ben and Marie-Louise the Senator had taken no wine at the salmon dinner (a day of abstention and fasting, you see), the Senator sat in the hideous study, refreshing himself with a little of his excellent bootleg whisky. A Cap at the door, which opened just wide enough for Dr. Joseph Ambrosius Jerome to slip in, smiling widely but not mirthfully, as was usual with him.
“Come in, Joe; I was hoping you’d look in. Will you take any spirits?”
“In spite of the day, Hamish, I will. And I’d like a word with you about the fellow upstairs.”
“No change?”
“Just growing older, like the rest of us. You well know, Hamish, that I didn’t give him long, years ago, when we moved him up there. He’s proved me wrong.”
“That was a bad decision, Joe.”
“Don’t I know it! But you remember we went into all that, and decided for Mary-Jim’s sake, and the sake of the baby that was coming, it was the best we could do.”
“Yes, but to pretend he had died! To pretend even to Mary-Jim! That awful pretended funeral—if Mick Devlin had known there was nothing in the coffin but some gravel he’d have had the hide off us both!”
“We had the support of Marie-Louise and Mary-Ben; they were sure we were doing the best thing. Do they ever speak of it now?”
“Not a word from either of them in years. Nobody goes up there but Victoria Cameron, and I believe Zadok, sometimes. I never go up. Can’t stand the sight of him. My grandson! Now why, Joe, why?”
“Reasons better not gone into, Hamish.”
“That’s not an answer. Have you any notion, yourself? What’s science got to say about it?”
“Did you read the book I lent you?”
“By that fellow Krafft-Ebing? I read some of it. When I read about the fellow who liked to eat his mistress’s earwax, b’God I thought I’d spew. You can take it away with you when you go. What’s all that got to do with Mary-Jacobine McRory, a beautiful, sweet-souled girl who got into a mess that might have happened to any girl, under the circumstances.”
“Ah, but what were the circumstances? I told you at the time: go whoring after the English and a life of fashion, I said, and you’ll be a sorry man. And what are you today, and what have you been ever since? A sorry man.”
“Oh, of course, Joe, we know you’re always right. And what has your rightness got you? You’re a cranky, half-crazy old bachelor, and my sister is a cranky, religious-crazy old maid, and however much you looked at her torn-off scalp you’d have been better together than the way you are now—which is together but tortured apart. So don’t preach to me.”
“There, there, Hamish. Don’t let’s have any of your Hielan’man’s hysterics. It hasn’t been all bad. When last I saw Mary-Jim she look happy enough.”
“Happy enough isn’t as happy as can be. Perhaps I was wrong. But I was trying to do the best for my child.”
“God, Hamish, nobody can do the best for anyone. People can only rarely do the best for themselves. Mary-Jim’s not over-bright, but God knows she’s beautiful, and that entirely robbed you of good sense. Good intentions can make terrible mischief, but so long as love lasts, they’ll last, and there you are. You didn’t do too badly. You landed your Englishman.”
“I wasn’t fishing for any Englishman! But she had to marry, and where in this place, or in Ottawa even, would there have been anybody good enough for her?”
“The old problem of the rich Catholic girclass="underline" where is she to find a husband on her own level?”
“I met some very fine Catholics in England.”
“Very fine? Well-born, I suppose you mean, and rich and educated? And I’m not saying that doesn’t count for a lot. But you ended up with Cornish.”
“And what’s so bad about Cornish?”
“Oh, get away, Hamish! You know fine what’s wrong with Cornish. What about that paper he made you sign?”
“He overreached me; I don’t say he didn’t. But he’s not turned out so badly. Listen, Joe, keep this under your hat, but there’s to be some interesting news soon of Cornish.”
“What’s he up to now?”
“It’s what he was up to all through the War. Working very much on the Q.T. and sometimes in serious danger, I understand. Well, when the next Honours List appears, he’ll be a K.B.E.—Sir Francis—and my girl will be Lady Cornish. What d’you think of that?”
“I think I’m happy for you, Hamish, and for Mary-Jim. Maybe not so happy for Gerry O’German and Mary Tess. To lose one knighthood only to have another pop up in the same family won’t sit well with them.”