Pearl Buck - Gods Men

“We ought to have a real food chemist,” Henrietta told him on one of these days. “I don’t know how to get the taste you want, Clem. I don’t even know what it is.”

“It’s kind of like those meat rolls I used to eat at the Fongs’,” Clem said dreamily.

“But you were a half-starved boy then and anything would have been wonderful,” Henrietta suggested.

“Yes, but I never forget.”

Clem never forgot anything. He did not forget how it had felt to be a half-starved boy and his unforgetting mind made him know how people anywhere felt and what they wanted. The man in the White House could have got from Clem an accurate temperature of most of the world’s peoples in the crowded countries of Asia, but he did not know it, or even that he needed to know it. Meantime Clem had isolated himself from the war and was living ahead in the years after, when the new world would begin.

“War’s nothing but an epidemic,” he told Henrietta. “If you don’t prevent it in time it comes and then you have to go through with it. I’m glad we have no children, hon.”

“We might have had a girl,” Henrietta said with a wry smile.

“No, I’m glad we haven’t. She’d have been in love with a boy.”

The long process whereby William Lane decided to become a Catholic was one of combined logic and faith. His conscience, always his most fretful member, had become irritated beyond endurance by the monstrosity of his success, which was now uncontrollable. He needed to do nothing except to read his newspapers critically and then keep or discharge his editors. From somewhere in his ancestry, distilled through generations of New England lawyers, preachers, and reformers, he had received the gift of the critical mind attuned to his times. Long ago he had become as independent as a feudal baron. His chain of newspapers rested upon the solid properties of his own printing presses, and these in turn were set upon the sure output of his paper mills, which in finality rested upon the firm foundations of timbered land, stretching in miles across spaces of the north, in Canada as well as in the United States. He was impervious to the dangers and restrictions possible even to him, as the war blazed separately first in Asia and then in Europe. A pity about Hitler! Had he been well advised, Hitler could have been a savior against communism, the final enemy.

Upon the frightful morning after the attack on Pearl Harbor, when his valet drew the window curtains, William was weighed down by the necessity of making up his mind quickly upon a new policy for his staff. People must know immediately where he stood.

As usual when he felt confusion he decided to talk with Monsignor and he telephoned before he got up.

“Yes, William?” Monsignor said over the telephone. After two years or so, they had come to this intimacy. “How can I help you?”

“I feel confused,” William replied. “This war is bringing many problems. I must decide some of them today. I should like to talk with you this morning before I go to my office.”

“I am at your disposal,” the priest replied.

So William went immediately after he had eaten. Emory always breakfasted in her room, and he saw no one except servants whom he did not count. The morning sun shone down upon the magnificent granite Cathedral near the priest’s private home. Both stood in the upper part of the city against a background of skyscrapers, and their solidity was reassuring. Even bombs could scarcely prevail against the aging gray structure of the Cathedral, as formidable as a medieval castle. He rang the bell at a Gothic doorway and was immediately admitted by a young priest who led him in silence over thick velvet carpets spread upon stone floors. There was not one moment of waiting. It was an atmosphere far more courteous than that of the White House, where last week William had gone to call upon the President, repressing his personal dislike to do his patriotic duty, and had been kept waiting for nearly a quarter of an hour. In the end Roosevelt, though jovial, had not seemed grateful for William’s offer of help.

Monsignor’s library was a beautiful room. The crimson of the carpets was repeated in the velvet hangings at the Gothic windows, and mahogany bookcases reached to the arched ceilings. The air was warm and slightly fragrant. There was a great deal of gold decoration centering in a massive crucifix that hung in a long alcove, but carried out also in wide gold satin bookmarks, in the frames of two or three fine paintings.

Monsignor Lockhart was a handsome man, erect and dignified. His features were clear and he had fine, deep-set eyes of a clear hard blue.

“Sit down, William,” he said.

William sat down in a cushioned Gothic chair and began to consider his worries. There was nothing wrong in his daily life. He had no sins. He was entirely faithful to his wife and she to him. He knew that Emory, although she was a beautiful woman, was also fastidious, and he trusted her entirely and had never regretted his marriage. In her way she was his equal. There was no man in America above him in influence and few as rich. Had he been English he would of course have had a title. In that case he would have been poorer than he was, and Emory would not have enjoyed poverty. She had the finest jewels of any woman he knew. Emory in soft black chiffon, high at the neck and long sleeved, wearing her diamonds, was all he conceived of as beauty in woman. She had become a Catholic with him, and she liked wearing black chiffon and diamonds. With her dove-gray frocks she wore pearls.

No, his worries were entirely a matter of his responsibilities to the world, to the millions of people who looked at the pictures he alone chose and who read what he allowed to be printed. He wanted God’s guidance for this enormous responsibility, and for the stewardship, too, of his vast wealth. He did not want to give his money to any cause or organizations which would not submit to his direction. Unless he directed, he could not be sure of the right use of his support. He never gave money to a person.

He made known his wish to do right, never stronger than now, in view of the mounting war, and Monsignor listened thoughtfully, his hands folded. They were much alike, these two men, and they knew it. Toward human beings they were almost equally paternal. Priest and man, they had already what this world could give.

“I grieve for the peoples,” Monsignor Lockhart said. “In a war it is the innocent who suffer. The Church must assuage. You, William, must assuage. There will be much sorrow and death. You and I know how to find a comfort more profound, but the people are children and they must be comforted as children. God uses mysterious ways: Riches as well as poverty may serve Him. Continue as you have been doing, William. Do not try to take the people into high and difficult places, where they become afraid. Show them family life, show them love and kindness still alive, the ever protecting power of religion. The Church is eternal, surviving all wars, all catastrophes. Indeed, for us, God uses even wars and catastrophes. When men are afraid and distressed they come to the Church for shelter. So it will be again as it has always been.”

There was an atmosphere of calm reassurance in all the priest said and did. William, listening to that voice, so richly humane, so profoundly dominant, was aware of comfort stealing upon his own soul. It was good to be told that he must do only what he had been doing, good to remember that he was part of the vast historic body of the Church, which continuing through the ages, must continue as long as man lived upon this earth. The order, the structure, the cell-to-cell relationships of the Church comforted him. Outside all was disorder and upheaval but within the Church each had his place and knew it.