Free Grandmother and the Priests by Taylor Caldwell

sin?”
     
    The stranger laughed a little. “My dear fellow, is that any concern of mine? I have some respect for a man’s dignity; whatever he chooses to do is entirely his own affair. Yes, I know you are a priest, and priests have peculiar ideas. But again, you are a gentleman, and of a family of gentlemen. It surprises me that you can mouth such idiocies concerning God’s anger and ‘mortal sin’. Has God taken you into His confidence that you know His thoughts? Do you know the extent of His mercy? Have you considered the life of man, full of misery and pain, and whether it was worth the living? Let Michael Cunningham have the peace he is searching for; is it your affair to keep him from it?”
     
    The priest gulped, and made a feeble gesture with his hand. “Let me pass,” he said, in a broken voice. He took a step. It was as if he had come face to face with a sheet of invisible glass that barred his passage. Horrified, he lifted his hand to push it aside, and it was as if he touched stone. Yet it was transparent, and beyond it he saw the stranger, who was looking at him most seriously, and who spoke again.
     
    “You are a young man, for all you are a priest. You have been very vexed, have you not, at the absurd superstitions of the old women and the people of this hamlet? You have admonished them for their belief in ghosts and fairies and the little people, and the return of the dead, and vampires, and their conviction that virtue resides in some objects and evil in others. Excellent. You are quite right. I have often listened to your thoughts, the doubts in the midst of your prayers. You know the teaching of the Church, that Satan is absolute spirit, as are his angels. So he cannot annoy or trouble man with little hoaxes and pranks, such as your foolish people believe. In fact,” the stranger said, contemplatively, “you once considered if Evil could not, in fact, be merely man’s perverse nature. Your superiors were alarmed when you discussed that with them, and they told you that the greatest triumph of Satan was when he convinced mankind he did not exist. You accepted their word, by an act of your will. But you did not truly believe in the actual person of Satan, did you?”
     
    A cold and deathly certainty came to the priest. His lips moved soundlessly. The moon glared nearer, a sinister white globe.
     
    “Let me pass,” said the priest finally, putting his hand to his throat.
     
    The stranger frowned. “I am not preventing you, in this dreadful state of yours, from going anywhere you wish, my dear sir. You alone are preventing yourself.” He felt in his pocket and drew out a gold watch, which glittered in the moonlight. “Ah! Michael is adjusting the rope about his neck. There is some blabbering at the locked door. His little silly wife, and that shepherd. They are pleading with him. He will not listen. He cries that he killed his brother, that he is guilty of murder, and so must die, himself. But those blabberers!”
     
    “Father of lies, a liar from the beginning,” said the priest, and thrust his shoulder against the invisible wall.
     
    “My dear sir! Now you are speaking like one of your peasants! I thought better of you, Edward Albert Harrington-Smith! Your intellect has declined in these past months.” The stranger threw back his head and laughed indulgently. Even in the unspeakable terror of those moments the priest saw how handsome he was, how at ease, how young. Then he remembered what he had been taught: that Satan is pure spirit, and can assume any shape he desires at any time, and any aspect.
     
    “You are Satan,” said the priest, and shuddered.
     
    The young man frowned at him haughtily. “My dear Edward! This is absurd of you. I thought better of your intellect. Satan is only an abstract.”
     
    Michael was about to kill himself, and live forever in a realm that would be without God for eternity. Only a week ago, thought the priest, in his overpowering despair, I