The Cardinal

by Henry Morton Robinson

  This information, instead of salving the Monaghan burn, only scraped more flesh off. “So Jimmy Splaine gets sick and the Mass is disrupted. In the name of God, have we but one altar boy in the parish? Can’t some of you curates organize the altar service—teach half a dozen kids how to serve Mass?”

  Monaghan’s irritation, Steve felt, had a measure of reason. Hip-deep in parish finances, the pastor might fairly expect one of his assistants to take over the training of altar boys. Steve wanted to volunteer then and there—but now Frank Lyons was making a pallid gesture.

  “I’d like to instruct some boys in plain chanting.”

  The proposal infuriated Monaghan. “There’ll be no plain chanting in St. Margaret’s. This is a parish church, not a—a basilica.” He pronounced the word as though it were the name of a disease.

  Father Lyons sipped weakly at his glass of milk. Stephen stepped into the breach. “I’ll train some altar boys, Father.”

  “The job is yours. And no fancy stuff, mind you. Just the responses in decent Latin, and some sense of respect for what they’re supposed to be doing up there on the altar. You understand?”

  “I understand, Father.”

  Pastor Monaghan said grace hastily and rose from the table, eager to get at the cigar that he kept locked in a humidor in his room. The three curates sat silently looking at each other.

  “What’s he got against plain chanting?” the milky one asked petulantly. “It’s very beautiful. And important, too. Pius X wrote a Motu Proprio about it, you know.”

  “So he did,” said Steve. “Isn’t that the one where he says that mechanical instruments are no substitute for the glories of the human voice?”

  “That’s it,” said Milky eagerly. “The Sovereign Pontiff urges upon all Catholic pastors the importance of training choirs of children in plain chanting. Furthermore”—evidently Father Lyons had the document by heart—“he inveighs against the laxity of responses from the congregation and says that—”

  “Listen, you two,” put in Paul Ireton. “Consider the facts surrounding the writing of that Motu Proprio, will you? In the first place, Pius X was a Patriarch of Venice. Remember Venice, the place that held the glorious East in fee? No motorboats in the canals, no electric lights—just a lot of gondolas, singing boatmen, palaces on stilts, and all that. Fine. That’s the tradition Pius X was working in. But now you get a man like our pastoricus here, a gadget-loving Westerner who doesn’t know a square note from a round, living in an industrial town where electricity is cheap. Why in heaven’s name should he prefer plain song to the nice ten-thousand-dollar electric organ he’s just installed?”

  “But plain singing is a heritage from the earliest Church,” said Milky. “It has centuries of medieval tradition behind it.”

  “Plus three centuries of British—that is to say, Anglican—tradition,” said Paul Ireton. “You wouldn’t expect a man sprung from landlord shooters to embrace the practices of the landlord, would you?”

  “You’re being rather parochial,” sniffed Milky.

  “You mean,” corrected Paul Ireton, “I’m being rather Boston-Irish.”

  Steve sipped his coffee, reserving judgment. He had always wondered what curates talked about; surely it couldn’t always be as good as this. Both sides of the argument were familiar to him: Father Ireton was only repeating parochialisms of Din Fermoyle, Corny Deegan, and Monaghan himself, while Father Lyons was pleading, ineffectually enough, for the universal viewpoint that Stephen had acquired at Rome. Could the two ever be fused? Would America ever grasp the larger meaning of the Holy Roman Apostolic Church—an organization transcending national tongues, arts, and boundaries? And would Rome ever appreciate the peculiar vigor and quality of the transatlantic Church?

  Father Paul Ireton stuffed his napkin into an imitation-bone napkin ring with the finality of a man who’ll argue no more that day. Stephen felt a quickening admiration for this sober, scholarly priest who knew all the arguments but refused to be drawn into speculative debate.

  Paul Ireton lifted a beckoning finger to the new curate.

  “Confessions this afternoon,” he said. “We’ll start you off with the kids. Take the box on the west aisle at four P.M., and be ready to hear the quaintnesses that spring ex ore infantium.”

  A TREMOR such as he had never felt before seized Stephen as he opened the door of the confessional and sat down in semidarkness. He made his final plea to the Confessor of Saints and Angels. “Let me not judge harshly, Lord, as in mercy Thou hast not judged me.” He pushed back a small sliding panel, covered his eyes with his hand. Stephen Fermoyle’s work as a looser of sins began.

  Through the fine-meshed screen came the hasty, almost inaudible murmur of a twelve-year-old girl: “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s a week since my last confession. I went to Holy Communion and said my penance.” Then she poured out a little throatful of venial sins. “I talked in church three times. I got angry with my sister when she took my stockings. I slapped my brother once, no … twice. I answered my mother back when she told me to do something, and I was vain in front of the mirror while dressing.” A pause. “I … sinned against purity …”

  “In what way?” asked Stephen gently.

  “Playing post office—at a party—I let a boy kiss me on the mouth.” A little sigh. Glad to have it over and done with. “For these and all the other sins I may have committed, I ask forgiveness, Father.”

  In a minute the child had unreeled the commonplace scenario of her life. The slaps and bickerings, the budding female vanity at the mirror, the adolescent rebellion, the first kiss clumsily given, awkwardly received —Stephen saw them all. How comment on these undistinguished faults? —not faults even, for the word was too strong to characterize the things the child had done. What counsel could he offer this innocent soul? Vanity at the mirror gave Stephen a clue.

  “These little misdeeds of yours are like tiny flaws in a beautiful complexion,” he said. “When the Blessed Mother gazes into the mirror of your heart, will you try not to have even the slightest blemish there?”

  “Yes, Father. I will try.”

  “For your penance, say three Hail Marys. And now make a good act of contrition.” He lifted his right hand in the gesture of absolution.

  For two hours Father Steve heard the confessions of children—a monotonous catalogue without variation or enormity of any kind. “I lied, I swore five times, I had impure thoughts twice, I peeked at my sister while she was dressing.” And so forth, in the manner of earth’s newest angels, in saecula saeculorum.

  At six P.M. Father Steve emerged from his box, blinking like a mole as he stepped out into the late afternoon sunlight. There, pacing up and down in the bricked courtyard, was Father Paul Ireton, taking a breath of air before supper.

  Father Paul was in a twitting humor. “Ah, the young cure of souls, fresh from the Children’s Hour.”

  Steve fell into step beside him. “If this afternoon is any example, the kids of Maiden, Mass., are a fairly undistinguished bunch of sinners.”

  “It’s a sort of merry glissando compared to what you’ll hear tonight.” Paul looked at his watch. “We’ve just got time for six fast turns before supper. Come on, let’s step out.”

  Seven-thirty found Steve back in his box for the evening stint. The first half-dozen penitents were pious married women who repeated, on a slightly more adult level, the trivial offenses of their children. “I gossiped twice; I envied my neighbor the new piano she got on installments; I was late for Mass once, but I could have got there if I got up in time. I ate meat on Friday because nothing else was in the house but eggs. I took sixty-five cents from my husband’s pocket and lied about it afterwards. I—I refused my wifely duty to my husband on two separate occasions, because …”

  Stephen found that the women were more apt to extenuate their offenses than the men. The men would come right out with it: “I committed adultery four times.” But the women would beat about the bush with all manner of fancy
locutions. Stephen was beginning to think that something about the feminine soul made plain statements difficult.

  Just when he was feeling secretly complacent about his handling of things in general, Stephen got his comeuppance. As he opened the slide to his left, a faint attar of good perfume—vaguely carnation—struck his nostrils. The delicate voice of a young woman began a pianissimo recital of the usual minor offenses. Intelligent, a trifle sulky. After the briefest of hesitations she said with neither shame nor pride:

  “During the past six months I’ve had sexual relations with a man. Many times.”

  Steve asked the natural question. “Why don’t you get married?”

  “He’s a Baptist. My family doesn’t want me to marry outside the Church.”

  “Have you asked him to become a Catholic?”

  “I’ve begged him to turn, Father. But he hates the Church. He says terrible things about it.”

  “Yet you continue to go with him.”

  “Yes, Father.” She made a stubborn declaration. “I love him very much.” Then the fabric of her stubbornness gave way, and she uttered a miserable, “What shall I do?”

  The classic Montague and Capulet dilemma, complete with sectarian complications.

  Stephen wanted to rise, walk about while he thought out an answer. But motor release was denied him; he must sit still. And not only must he remain inside the physical boundaries of the confessional. More important yet, he must remain within the doctrinal bounds of his faith. In advising this erring daughter of the Church, his plain duty as a confessor was to set forth some well-established truths. Tenderly he began his instructions.

  “Hard though it is to break your relationship with this man, you must give him up. There is no other way to lasting happiness for either of you. If you marry him outside the Church it means a lifetime of spiritual grieving, not to mention the emotional antagonisms that mar so many mixed marriages.” Stephen paused. “And of course you must stop this business of illicit relations. It is dangerous, immoral—cheap.”

  Unsubmissive, the young woman lifted her chin. “It isn’t cheap at all, Father.”

  “But you intend to stop?”

  The girl shook her head. “I can’t.”

  “In that case,” said Stephen, “it is not within my power to grant you absolution. You cannot receive the sacrament of penance until you have made a firm resolution to give up your sinful way of life.”

  The girl rose from her knees. “Why did I come here anyway?” she murmured angrily. “I might have known.” Leaving behind her a scent of carnation, she flew from the confessional.

  Stephen’s instinct was to run after her, catch her by the arm, beg her to be patient with the Church and himself. But he could do none of these things. He knew he had been technically correct in refusing absolution, but he knew also that he had been too brusque, too unbending, not tactful enough. His want of skill had caused a troubled soul to slip through his fingers. He scarcely heard what the next few penitents were saying.

  “I slapped my son in anger …”

  “I refused my wifely duties …”

  “I was slothful about the house …”

  He was jerked out of his daze by a sourish, stale reek of alcohol, the aftermath of prolonged and excessive drinking. The man kneeling in the penitent’s booth was so large that sheer bulkiness brought his head and face close to the screen. A hangover breath, and a bad one, assailed Father Stephen’s nostrils. He drew out his handkerchief, held it to his nose. The man was sober enough now, but desolation and remorse were in his bent head and discouraged voice.

  “I broke my pledge again, Father,” he announced in a mumble of self-loathing. “It started last Saturday … a week ago.”

  More cautious now, Father Steve waited.

  “I spent my pay, and gave my wife the back of my hand when she asked me where it all went. She cried bitterly, not at the blow so much, but the sight of me lying drunk in front of my children, with no job left and a broken pledge besides.” He breathed heavily. The flood of self-pity subsided.

  “Where do you do all this drinking? Maiden has no saloons.”

  “I go to Boston. Around Dover Street mostly.”

  Stephen knew the region—a sink of derelicts. “Why do you pour this terrible poison into your body, made in the image and likeness of God?”

  The big man shook his head hopelessly. “I don’t know, Father. If you asked me, like you are now, I couldn’t tell you. I don’t mean to get drunk. I don’t want to. But I do.”

  Just like that. No convivial glass lifting, no cheerful clink to the accompaniment of song. Only a compulsive alcoholic, fumbling for the neck of his bottle. Stephen, helpless, without answer, almost overpowered by the man’s breath, begged inwardly for a spark of God’s grace to fall on him.

  “How old are you?” Stephen sparred for time. This one must not get away.

  “Forty-one.”

  Still no spark. Instead, physical nauseating revulsion. “What’s your job?”

  “I’m a stonemason, Father. A good one. I can always get work when I’m sober.”

  The odor was making Stephen ill. In another moment he would have to break out of his box and run for the fresh air in the bricked courtyard. St. Stephen, the patron saint of stonemasons, must have seen his namesake twirling a withered branch of helplessness—for the spark did fall. The glimmering of a plan.

  “Come around to the parish house tomorrow afternoon,” said Stephen. “I’ll have a talk with you. Perhaps I can find you a job helping Father Monaghan on the new school. Then you wouldn’t have to pass all those swinging doors on Dover Street.”

  “Would you do that, Father?”

  “We’ll see. Now make an act of contrition and ask God to have mercy on you and your family.”

  Wretchedly, the last confession heard, Father Stephen stumbled out of the box at ten-thirty P.M. Every muscle in his body was aching, every nerve taut and exhausted. His head was split by an ax of pain, his cheeks were flushed, the membranes of his throat dry as old flannel. And his spirit, which had soared with exaltation at suppertime, was now flat in the dust.

  Dizzily he straggled into the open air, strode up and down the strip of bricked courtyard.

  “I never knew. I never knew,” he kept saying to himself. “God forgive me. I never knew.”

  Paul Ireton fell into step beside him, solicitous but silent.

  “No one ever told me, Paul.”

  “It can’t be told,” said Father Ireton.

  Steve’s finger pressed his throbbing temples. “In all the books,” he said, “sin was an abstraction, a remote depersonalized theory about man’s failure to realize God’s will. But here it’s an ulcer burrowing in the flesh, a rage in the blood, a mortal itch in man’s brain, a rank wind in his belly.”

  “Bend with that wind, Stephen, or it will knock you over.”

  “I’m not thinking of myself, Paul. It’s the people, with their dirty laundry bag of little sins and the cancerous burden of the big ones. How can anyone help them?” Stephen’s grief was half guilt, half sweating sorrow for his fellow men. “What does one do?”

  “Got you down, has it?” said Father Paul.

  “Flat on the ground.”

  Paul Ireton put his arm around the young curate’s shoulders. “There’s this much to be said for the horizontal attitude, Steve. It has a long tradition behind it. Don’t ever forget that Christ, too, spent a bad night flat on the ground, under some olive trees a long way from Maiden, Mass.”

  They took a few turns up and down the brick areaway. “Come into the house,” said Paul Ireton. “I’ll give you a couple of aspirin.”

  CHAPTER 3

  THE RECORDER of minor annals, lay and ecclesiastic, making his entries for the Archdiocese of Boston as of Sunday, May 2, 1915, would have had a full but mixed book by sundown.

  HOLLOWED-EYED Filomena Restucci, kneeling at the shrine of the Virgin in the basement of St. Margaret’s Church, fixed her eyes on the lily-f
ringed heart of the Madonna and lighted a candle for the speedy recovery of her sweetheart, Victor Provenzano. If Victor hadn’t been stabbed twenty-four hours ago in a knife fight, he would have married her this day. Now, two months pregnant, Filomena wept natural tears and beseeched a miracle. “Let my Vittorio live, Madonna of Sorrows. Stop the blood coming from his mouth, and I will make to you a perpetual novena of my life.”

  She lifted her eyes to Mary’s statue, and screamed as she saw blood dripping from the Madonna’s flower-crowned heart.

  ASSISTANT Manager R. W. Bailey of the Boston Streetcar Company strode up and down his office, addressing a small audience of common mozos variegated in height, size, and demeanor, yet all sharing a certain ferretish aspect of nose and eyes. Assistant Manager Bailey, eligible as a case history in any textbook on peptic ulcers, was now giving his listeners some ulcers of their own.

  “Conductors all over Boston are getting away with grand larceny,” he screamed. “Unless you spotters bring in a dozen of these dirty-fingered bastards next week, I’ll see to it personally that you’re all fired.” He waved a sheet of paper at them. “These figures show that the company is losing five hundred dollars a month in knocked-down nickels. That figure must be reduced to zero. Zero, you hear?”

  Manager Bailey’s tone and manner changed from nagging to suspicion. He pointed a nicotine-yellow forefinger at his huddling listeners. “There’s a law that takes care of spotters in cahoots with crooked conductors. Now get the hell out of here, all of you, and prove that you’re on the level. Go on … get out. …”

  MONICA, loveliest of the Fermoyle clan, walked nervously to a secluded part of Forest Dale cemetery to meet her sweetheart, whom she was not allowed to invite to her home. A thin, good-looking Jewish boy stepped out from behind a copper beech and said, “Darling, I thought you’d never get here.” Thereupon he took her arm and led her to a still more secluded part of the cemetery, where they sat on the grassy knoll, talked, kissed, and kissed again till dark.