Fish On Friday

We were waiting in the reception parlor, waiting to go in to dinner. It happened in England, and it wasn’t far from London. Our hostess, who was busy with many things, had not had time to introduce us all round. There were some guests arriving late, there were name cards to be set at the proper plates, flowers to be straightened in vases, and a final challenge to be issued to the cook. There were probably innumerable other details needing attention. I have never been a hostess. I can only weakly imagine what nervous delights and delicious flurries reward that noble function and make it worthwhile.

I think it only proper that guests should suffer a little in return for the sweets of hospitality. I think it behooves us to stand around as awkwardly as possible while we are waiting to be introduced. I always try to look especially uncomfortable. I even try to look disgruntled. I endeavor to give the impression of wishing I had not come at all. I make a strong effort to suffuse my face with a horror of food, a horror of pleasantry, and a horror of company, It is even a good idea to become rigid, plastic, to stop breathing if possible — though this last is rather difficult.

And when the room has degenerated into a morgue or a mausoleum where everyone is statuesque, inanimate, and hateful, then let our hostess walk in and touch us into life with her own personality, Let her put us at our ease because we needed terribly to be put at ease. Let her charge us with affection and friendliness. For the real triumph of a hostess comes not after the dinner, for which, since she did not cook it, she can take credit only with reservations; but before the dinner when she assumes her delightful prerogative of establishing her guests in their various identities by walking into her waiting parlor and taking slime of the earth and breathing into it the soul of a dowager, a doctor, a coquette, or a clergyman, and sends them all chattering and alive into the dining-room.

We were standing about waiting to go in to dinner, and everyone, as far as I could see, was observing the ritual of good guesthood I have described above. We were all Punch-and-Judy figures, wooden and soulless, waiting for someone to jiggle our strings. Now and then a pasteboard gentleman would twist on his hinges; now and then a sawdust lady would stir in her rags; but this was to be expected, as even marionettes are subject to the laws of mechanics and gravity, There was occasionally a cough or a sniffle or a sneeze or a yawn that sounded dreadfully human and inappropriate. But for the most part it was as dull as a doll shop deserted by clerk and customer and littered with uncompanionable crockery.

At a moment of great stillness the voice of our hostess could be heard telephoning in the hall. We all listened as little eggs in a nest might listen to their bluebird. It was a voice full of song, full of promise, a prenatal music heard by unhatched fledglings. Soon it would come chirping into the reception parlor and peck at our shells, and we would emerge and cheep merrily, and become happy and fluttersome, and open our mouths for dinner.

Feeling, for reasons best known to myself, exceptionally irritable and uneasy, I undertook to glance at myself in a mirror near which I happened to be standing. I wanted to see if I looked as waxlike and expressionless as I was trying to look. It was a quick glance, but it startled me, for there were two of me in the glass. I saw myself double. Two black suits, two rabats, two turned-about collars, two sacerdotal somebodies of the same build and height. Horrors! Was it possible that in trying to suppress my personality I had actually reduplicated it!

I switched my gaze into the mirror again and saw to my indescribable relief that there was another priest in the room. My other reflection was a young cleric who stood in an opposite corner leaning against the mantelpiece. I turned my head and scrutinized him in the flesh. He looked very much like me. But he was not me. And for that I thanked God profusely, This incident led me, unsportingly, if you will, to violate the rules of the game and come to life ahead of time. I decided not to wait for the arrival of the lady of the house. I blossomed into vitality at once. I became myself prematurely, But I think I ought to be excused for doing so.

There happens to be in this world of strange social conventions one friendship that transcends all conventions and knows no rules. It is the brotherhood of Catholic priests. There is not, I swear it, under the stars an intimacy more reckless or more profound than the bond between one Catholic levite and another. It needs no coaxing, no prelude, no ritual. It is subject to no formality. We meet and possess one another instantly. There is not the shadow of a barrier between us, neither age, nor antecedents, nor nationality, nor climate, nor color of skin. Ours is a blunt, rough-hewn affection. It almost forgets to be polite. I can dine at his table without invitation; sit in his study and read his books before I have ever met him; borrow his money or his clothes with no bail; his home is my home; his fireside, my fireside; his altar, my altar. I can give him my confidences promptly and without reserve. I can neither edify nor scandalize him. We can quarrel without offense, praise each other without flattery, or sit silently and say nothing and be mutually circumvented.

How and why all this can happen is our own precious secret. It is the secret of men who climb a lonely drawbridge, mount a narrow stair, and sleep in a lofty citadel that floats a white flag. Singly we go, independent and unpossessed, establishing no generation, each a conclusion of his race and name; yet always companioning one another with a strange sympathy, too tender to be called fellowship, too sturdy to be called love, but which God will find a name for when He searches our hearts in Eternity.

I walked over to the mantelpiece where my priestly colleague was resting his elbow. I was very casual. Comrades are always casual. I spoke to him quietly, almost indifferently. “I didn’t know there were two of us.” That was all I said. And I took his hand but somehow or other it didn’t shake properly. There was something either too stiff or too loose about it, I don’t know which.

“How do you do?” he said very suavely, (We never say “How do you do?” and we never say it “suavely.”) “You’re an American, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Are you stationed in London?”

“No. Just visiting.”

“I’m just visiting, too.”

“Where do you come from?” I asked.

“Well, you see, my wife and I — ”

Bang ! A sheet of ice fell between us and shattered at our feet.

You fooled me, little High Churchman, Low Churchman, Broad Churchman, or whatever you are. I don’t dislike you. I like you very much. You have clean, honest eves, and though my principles depend on a creed, my friendships do not. And I like clean, honest eyes. But we are not friends yet. This is a dinner party. And who are you and I, sir, to speak before we have been properly introduced? . . .

Whereupon our hostess came in, radiant and charming, with a Fiat Lux in her eye. And she introduced us. He was Mr. Plummer, and I was Father Who’s-this. And we were terribly delighted with each other as we walked in to dinner.

Was it fate, or a faux pas, or my Guardian Angel trying to be funny, that put me at dinner next to Mr. Plummer’s wife? Whoever it was, or whatever it was, I thank them. For Mr. Plummer’s wife was the most unspeakably (one moment, please, while I change the sheet in my typewriter) —

I am given to superlatives. I overstate things. My friends have rebuked me for it. I have tried to correct it. But I haven’t. I can’t. I say “most” when I mean “much.” Without the words “tremendous,” “wonderful,” “amazing,” and “astounding,” my vocabulary would collapse. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t think. Megalomania is like a bad devil. It can be driven out only by prayer and fasting. And I have neglected to fast sufficiently.

Let me be restrained, therefore, at least on this occasion. Let me not say that Mrs. Plummer was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life. She was in her early twenties. It is probable that she was twenty-two, possible that she was twenty-three, but unthinkable that she was twenty-four. She looked ever so young to be married. She looked almost too young to be in love. Her Christian name (which Mr. Plummer let slip in the course of the dinner) was Evangeline.

It was very clear that Mr. Plummer had had something to say as to how she dressed and wore her hair. After all, the pastor’s wife should set a good example to the congregation, and the length of her skirts, the width of her eyebrows, and the shine on her fingernails might well determine the standard of the parish gossip. I do not know what the parish gossips said or thought about her, for parish gossips can manage to streak ink on a sunbeam, but Mr. Plummer’s wife satisfied perfectly my anticipations of an angel. I could not tell you what I ate while sitting beside her. I have a vague remembrance of seeing an oyster on a fork on its way to my mouth. But I have no notion of what became of it. I shall probably find it some day in my coat pocket.

Mrs. Plummer made no effort to shine at the dinner. Yet no one listened to or looked at anybody else. And in her simplicity she seemed entirely unconscious of the fact that she was the glory of our feast. Two or three débutantes, whose gowns were very garish and hung perilously from their shoulders on spider threads, sat like manikins and watched her score her easy triumphs without a single display of cleverness or a single sentence spoken for effect. Several inveterate table talkers like myself, who switch all conversations into the neighborhood of their own anecdotes, utterly subsided lest their ears should miss the rapture of Mrs. Plummer’s voice saying nothing more considerable than “Please pass the celery!”

Across the table from me sat Mr. Plummer beaming with satisfaction. He was enormously pleased with his little consort and the specimen of charm and decorum she was achieving in the name of the clerical profession. And it is embarrassing for me to say so, but Mr. Plummer spent half the time looking at his wife and the other half looking at me. There was pity in his eye. The wavelength of pity is very delicate, but there is no mistaking it. It is easy to look daggers and miss your mark, but the shafts of pity are suited to the eye’s most unerring performance. Even Mrs. Plummer detected it and endeavored to shield me in her sweet charity.

“It must be fine just the same to be a priest,” she said, and the strangeness and suddenness of the statement startled me into inarticularity.

“I remember,” she went on (oh, why did she go on?), “when we were in Italy last summer. My husband went walking in a little side street in Padua. And a group of children met him and thought he was a priest, and danced about him, and kissed his hand, and called him Padre mio and thought he didn’t belong to anybody but them!”

Mr. Plummer wilted and I dropped my head. And then it dawned on Mrs. Plummer what she had said. And I call upon a righteous Reformation, a loving Luther, a happy Henry, and a kind Calvin to witness that when they gave Evangelines to Evangelicals and took away from them the children in a side street in Padua, they made it possible for a woman to give a man the saddest, most hopeless and most poignant and most repentant look I have ever seen a woman give a man in my life. And if this be an overdose of superlatives, it is not an overdose of truth.