The Cardinal

by Henry Morton Robinson

  “Yes, Your Eminence.”

  “Why?”

  “The original appealed to me as a work of great power and beauty. I put it into English so that it might be enjoyed by others.”

  “What others?” snapped Glennon.

  “Anyone who—who takes pleasure in exalted thought and feeling.”

  “Ah, the lofty type. Not interested in muckers, grubbers, and such small deer, eh?”

  Stephen flushed at the libel. “I wouldn’t put it that way, Your Eminence.”

  “But your book puts it that way.” The Cardinal ran a finger down the table of contents. “Listen to these titles: The Fallacy of Occam’s Razor,’ ‘Alighieri and the Sweet New Love,’ The Pears of Augustine.’ You haven’t the gall, Father—in spite of your highflying fancies—you haven’t the gall to say that these essays could give any help on earth, or hope of heaven, to ordinary men or women?”

  A tart rejoinder sprang to Stephen’s tongue. He might point out that Quarenghi’s work, despite its literary flavor, was actually an ideal extension of the First Commandment: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart and soul.” Were “ordinary men and women” exempted from obedience to this commandment? And where, if not in God’s love, should one seek hope of heaven or help on earth? Wisely, Stephen suppressed these replies. He knew that the Cardinal would only be irked by such rebuttals. Submissively he bit his tongue.

  Submission was no new thing to Glennon; he exacted it from everyone, and usually required that it be accompanied by a certain amount of cringing. In Stephen’s silence he was keen enough to detect no trace of terror. A golden mark went down in the Cardinal’s book: here was that rare creature, a curate who could be obedient without cowering. Yet scarcely had the golden mark been recorded when a strange part of Glennon’s character asserted itself. It was habitual with him, after testing a man and finding him serviceable, to become suspicious of his motives. Suppose this gifted young curate were outflanking him with calculated self-restraint? Might not obedience be the mask worn by a climbing fellow bent on personal advancement? The Cardinal decided to cross-examine further.

  “What are your relations with the original author of this work?”

  “He was my professor of moral theology at the North American College in Rome.”

  Rome. Hm. The beanstalk of suspicion grew rapidly in Glennon’s mind. “Were you on terms of special intimacy with him?”

  “I could not use so warm a phrase, Your Eminence. I admired him immensely, and he was generous enough to show me some personal kindnesses.”

  “Such as? …”

  “Lending me books. Inviting me to accompany him on a holiday walking trip in the Campagna.” This niggling line of inquiry puzzled Stephen, but he continued: “On two or three occasions I visited him in his quarters, where we talked of literature and philosophy.”

  “Politics too, perhaps? Ecclesiastical politics?”

  What is the man driving at? thought Steve. “Only in a general way, Your Lordship.”

  “Have you heard from this, ah—Monsignor Quarenghi since your return from Rome?”

  “I’ve had three letters.” A desire to make the whole matter perfectly clear led Stephen to add, “In one of them, Monsignor Quarenghi mentioned that he had been transferred, because of wartime urgencies, from teaching to the secretariat of Cardinal Giacobbi.”

  The lobes of Glennon’s ears turned scarlet. The very uttering of Giacobbi’s name sent his blood pressure soaring; an ax of pain split his domed forehead, and a flood of jealousies poured into the cleft. So! His suspicions were well founded, after all. While Lawrence Glennon twiddled his cardinalitial thumbs in outer darkness, this scheming curate was inching his way toward the central chandeliers of light. A wretched satisfaction at having exposed this backstairs plot prompted Glennon’s sarcastic cut:

  “I daresay, Father Fermoyle, that you baited your Vatican hook with the promise of American publication?”

  The malignant unfairness of the charge touched off Stephen’s anger. His Fermoyle-blue eyes met Glennon’s hazel-irised attack without flinching. “I baited no hook, Your Eminence. I made no promise of publication. As a simple curate, how”—the sheer absurdity of the idea bewildered him—“how could I?”

  “A simple curate might well ask that question,” said Glennon. “But I detect in you, Father Fermoyle, such a lack of simplicity as I have rarely encountered in all the years since my ordination. I charge you with being that most unthinkable of creatures—a self-seeking priest.”

  Head bowed at the injustice, Stephen was silent. There was nothing he could say.

  His Eminence continued: “I could forgive your literary pretensions, your two hundred pages of mystical moonshine, if they were not aimed at such an obvious target. There is an ugly word for this kind of thing—a word I’ve never had occasion to use before.” Glennon brought the whip down hard. “I put it to you bluntly, Father Fermoyle: you are a toady, a foot-swallowing toady, and your mystical Ladder of Love is nothing but a—a handbook for climbers!”

  Hell might freeze over, but no one could talk like that to a Fermoyle. Pallid with anger, Stephen rose. “You must allow me to go, Your Eminence. My priesthood will not permit me to listen to such indignities.”

  “Will not permit?” Glennon’s wattles went turkey-purple. “Sir, your priesthood will listen to what my cardinalhood tells it. Primo: I will not grant the imprimatur you came here to get. Write your fine Vatican friend, say that the whole business is off.”

  His Eminence rose from the table and straightway lost precious inches of stature. Massive above the waist, his short thighbones cruelly robbed him of height and reduced him to a squat, bald man, fifty pounds overweight. “Secundo, I hereby remove you from the parish of St. Margaret’s. You need seasoning, Father Fermoyle, and I think I know just the brine to pickle you in.”

  He whirled to the archdiocesan map, pointed to an isolated pin at the northernmost tip of his domain. “As of next Monday you will be curate at Stonebury—and a moldier vat of obscurity I cannot imagine. The parish is called St. Peter’s—a touch of irony that will not be lost on a man with your ambitions, Father Fermoyle. You will serve as assistant there to the Reverend E. E. Halley, a conspicuous failure as a pastor. I wish you joy of each other.”

  Stephen genuflected in silence as the Cardinal concluded: “Possibly—though I doubt it, Father—Ned Halley can educate you in humility.” An unwonted melancholy banked the hazel fires raging in Glennon’s eyes. “For if the meek and the poor are really with us, you are about to make the acquaintance of the meekest spirit and the poorest administrator in the Archdiocese of Boston.”

  BOOK TWO

  The Rector

  CHAPTER 1

  THE NASHUA DIVISION of the Boston & Maine was, in 1918, the dreariest stretch of track in New England. Leaving the black mills of Litchburg behind, it wound across a wasteland of scrub timber and unscrubbed towns, then plunged into a desolate terrain of fern swamps, rocky farms, and abandoned granite quarries stretching to the New Hampshire border. This was the land of the Pilgrim’s pride, a land that the sons of Pilgrims had long ago deserted for the more bountiful prairies of the West. Never gracious, the region was now haggard and exhausted as it waited to sink back into its pre-Pilgrim state of flint, fern, and pine.

  Elbow on a sill of No. 64, the one-coach local making all stops between Litchburg and Nashua, Stephen Fermoyle laid against his heart the loneliness of the countryside. An April downpour was grooving rivulets through the sooty murk on the car window. Stephen watched the raindrops run their compulsive races to the bottom of the pane. Pathetic fallacy or no, these obscure tricklings might almost be symbolic of the vain courses of men. Grass would wither, raindrops would slide down a dingy window, and men would break their hearts in banishment. Meanwhile the seraphim would continue to circle about the throne, singing Gloria in excelsis.

  It was this latter perspective that Stephen proposed to himself as he gazed out upon the gloomy land
scape. He had not the slightest intention of feeling downcast by his transfer to Stonebury. His Eminence might fulminate like an archdiocesan Thor, but Stephen could not persuade himself to feel frightened or guilty, as the bolts of demotion whistled past his ears. A want of humility? Perhaps. But one had only to watch the raindrops jostling each other down the windowpane to realize that sooner or later they would all reach the sea.

  He had felt some natural pangs at leaving St. Margaret’s. The parting with Monaghan had been particularly painful. Dollar Bill, trying to be noncommittal, had succeeded only in being hoarser than usual. No Polonius advice, no counsel to be a good soldier. His gift of a new valise with a blunt, “You’ll be needing this in your travels, Father,” almost brought tears. His “Good-by, God’s blessings on you, Steve,” did bring them. At the door of the parish house he handed Stephen a letter. “Give this to your new pastor.” The frog in Monaghan’s throat had a strange croak. “And don’t make the mistake of judging him by his surroundings.”

  A pursy conductor wearing a Masonic emblem on his watch chain punched Stephen’s ticket as though it had personally affronted him. Catholic priests did not often travel on the Nashua division; even this one-man Romish invasion was something to get suspicious about. The conductor went back into the baggage compartment the better to brood over men with reversed collars, and stuck his head through the door only to announce a succession of local stops.

  “Stonebury, Stonebury,” he cried at last, making the name a reproach to right-thinking Protestants everywhere. Steve gripped the handle of his new valise, and swung off the car steps onto the platform. The baggageman, gingerly assisted by the conductor, rolled a paunchy keg onto the station platform. Then the wheezy engine snorted asthmatically toward New Hampshire, leaving the keg and Stephen alone in the drenching rain.

  The station door was locked. Stephen peered in the telegrapher’s window, saw a Morse key, a half-empty ticket case, and a spindle jammed with faded yellow dispatches. Of recent human activity there was no sign. He was about to start walking along the muddy road when a hammer-headed horse pulling a one-seated vehicle known as a “democrat” clopped up to the platform. Over the driver’s head sagged a tattered umbrella, once orange-colored, still bearing a hay-and-grain advertisement. From the washed-out horse and faded umbrella all pigments of energy had been drained; the spidery rig was a paradigm of decay.

  Then the driver leapt from his seat and the whole picture changed. Stephen had never seen a fellow with so many springs in his arms and legs; his agility was a combination of fox, hawk, and jumping jack. A brown wiry man he was; with skin the color of strong tea and eyes black as coffee jelly. Copious jets of tobacco juice spurting from his mouth had made brown blotters of his oversized mustache. He wore logging boots, patched butternut jeans, an oilskin jacket, and a hat that might have been stolen from one of the region’s scarecrows.

  The man saw the priest’s collar and touched his hat. Of all the salutations Stephen Fermoyle would ever receive, this crude obeisance was the most welcome. The brown man must be a Catholic. Stephen returned the salute. “Can you tell me how to get to St. Peter’s?”

  “Bes’ way, hop on rig. I drive you pas’.” No mistaking that dialect. Pure Canuck.

  Stephen started to put his suitcase behind the seat of the democrat, but the brown man held up a semaphore paw. “She go in front. Bar’l go in back.” He darted up the platform toward the fat keg and rolled it lightly toward his rig. With the exhibitionism of one who knows his own strength, he spat confidently into the palm of his left hand, rubbed it across his right, then seized the barrel at both ends, got his knee under it, and tossed it like an eiderdown pillow into the cart. As the springs of the tiny wagon flattened under the weight, the horse’s ears went up.

  “Napoleon, by gar, he tink oat tas’ good aft’ he pull me, you and bar’l two mile.”

  Horse blanket over his knees, the hay-and-grain umbrella shedding some of the rain, Stephen felt wonderfully expansive as the rig drove off. Soon they were passing through a valley of stone. Granite was the ground motif of the region; it cropped out in quartzy ledges and lay heaped in enormous dumps rimming abandoned quarries—deep ugly gashes that men had blasted in the granite hills. He wanted to ask his driver the story of these desolate workings, but waited till the brown man’s sidelong glances mounted to a query of his own.

  “You com’ for help Fath’ Hallee?”

  “Yes,” said Stephen. “I’m his new curate. My name’s Father Fermoyle. What’s yours?”

  “Hercule Menton.” Hercule tickled Napoleon’s rump with a broken whip. “Fath’ Hallee wan ver’ good man. But tired mebbe, like Napoleon here.”

  The whole countryside looked tired to Stephen. “What do people do for a living around here?”

  Hercule pointed his whip at the gaunt mast of a derrick. “When Merlin quarry cut beeg stones, everywan have good job. No more stone now.”

  The nostalgic sadness in his voice prompted Steve to ask, “Were you a quarryman, Hercule?”

  “Bes’ goddam dynamiter you find.” The artist was speaking now. “I drill deeper holes ev’ drilled in Merlin—thirty, forty hole same time, ha! Open dynamite with teeth, by gar.” The mimic in Hercule made him enact everything in motor detail. Now he chewed the waxed paper off imaginary dynamite sticks. “Then I tap heem into hole.” Hercule made pounding motions with his fist. “I wire all hole together perfect. Then I push blast handle down—wa-y down. Mountain say, ‘Hercule, why you do zis to me?’ Then she break like cider jug on stone floor.” Hercule’s coffee-colored eyes surveyed the broken fragments at his feet.

  Stephen had to laugh at the mimicry. “You blasted yourself right out of a job. What do you do now?”

  “Mak’ fiddle sometimes.” Hercule shook his head dolefully as if to say, “People don’t appreciate violin making in these parts.” He bent over and drew an ax helve from under the seat. “W’en fiddle trade slow, I carve bes’ goddam ax han’le you buy in store.”

  Stephen balanced the ax helve in his hand. The thing curved like a snake standing on its tail. “Why, this is a piece of fine wood carving, Hercule. But what do you do about axheads?”

  Hercule spat over his shoulder at the barrel flattening the springs of his rig. “Buy wholesale, fi’ dollar a dozen from Boston.” In humorful mimicry he went through the motions of fitting a forty-cent axhead onto a homemade handle, then handed the imaginary product to Stephen. “Wan dollar” he said, merriment bubbling out of him as sap pours from a maple.

  “Cheap at double the price,” laughed Steve. He had the good feeling that this ex-dynamiter, luthier, and axmaker would make a valuable companion either on a desert island or in a broken-down parish.

  Now they were clopping through Stonebury Center, a juncture of three roads that had long ago forgotten why they crossed each other. On the rain-swept village green a latticed bandstand was flanked by two Civil War cannon. The tallest structure in town was a two-story building with the gilt letters I.O.O.F. in an upper window. Bearing right, Hercule drove down a gantlet of boxy houses, mustard-brown and too high for their width. New England at its seediest. Puritanism needing a coat of paint.

  It was almost twilight when Hercule pointed with his whip to a gray pile perched on rising ground a mile beyond the town. “San’ Pierre,” he announced, bringing his rig to a halt. “I t’ink hill too steep for Napoleon wit’ bar’l on.”

  Stephen leapt down from the democrat. “Napoleon is excused. He’s already given me the ride of my life. Thanks, Hercule.” Stephen held out his hand. “God bless both of you.”

  “Merci, mon père. Giddap! …”

  Climbing the rain-swept hill, Stephen braced himself for his first view of the church. Built of granite, St. Peter’s could not tumble down for another five centuries. But its very durability gave it the sadness of subeternal things. Stephen walked around the church like a man inspecting a ruin. Cascades of water streamed from broken gutters. Panes of stained glass were missing, and
an arm of the cross atop the squat bell tower was gone. Stooping to inspect the cornerstone, Stephen saw the Roman numerals MDCCCLXXII. And in smaller letters the Latin for: “Thou art Peter. On this rock I will build my church.”

  Buoyed by the stubborn grandeur of his tradition, Stephen walked toward the parish house, a stone dwelling some hundred feet away. Chilled, hungry, he knocked at the door. A hot supper would fix everything. He knocked again. No answer. He pushed open a creaking door, and entered a musty front hall.

  “Father Halley,” he called … “Father Halley.”

  Still no answer. Through unaired rooms Stephen penetrated to the kitchen. The housekeeper must be very deaf. But the unpolished stove, curtainless windows, and bare table told him there was no housekeeper.

  A nickeled alarm clock over the sink said six-five, and was still ticking.

  Someone must live here; someone had wound the clock. Stephen washed his hands at the iron pump, then reconnoitered for something to eat. Church mice would have scorned the pantry. After much searching he found a tablespoonful of tea, a piece of smoked fish, and the heel of a rye loaf. He kindled a fire, boiled some water in a saucepan, swallowed two mugs of scalding tea, and gnawed at half of the rye heel. The fish he did not eat.

  The hands of the alarm clock were crossing each other at six-thirty when Stephen heard the front door open. He stood up expectantly to greet his rector. Quiet feet came through the house. The kitchen door opened, and Stephen Fermoyle saw Ned Halley in the flesh.

  There was little flesh to see. The aged priest weighed scarcely a hundred and twenty pounds, including the water in his overcoat and the mud on his shoes. White-polled he was, and toothless or nearly so. His lips had sunk into an oral hollow, deeper than the sockets of his still-burning eyes. He raised his white eyebrows in courteous apology that seemed to say, “Excuse me, whoever you are, for—for”—a fluttering motion of his hand included the poverty of the entertainment, his own fatigue—“for everything.”