The Cardinal

by Henry Morton Robinson

  Against such innocence, protests were unavailing. Besides, twenty dollars would never solve the economic problem of St. Peter’s. The pastor needed a regular income, no matter how small; but before he could obtain such an income, the people of L’Enclume must have steady employment. To provide such employment Stephen had turned over in his mind a dozen projects. It occurred to him that the huge quarry dumps lying about the countryside might be converted into crushed rock for road building. But inquiries soon showed that Stonebury had neither the capital to set up a rock crusher nor any need for broken stone. Net: zero. Once while tramping across a rocky hillside he saw some glossy-leafed mountain laurel and recognized it as the stuff that florists used for wreaths and festoons. He picked an armful, and brought it hopefully to a wholesale florist in Litchburg. The florist said the laurel was excellent and in great demand, but that a recent state law forbade picking it for commercial purposes.

  All Stephen’s efforts to uncover new sources of parish revenue amounted to nothing. Meanwhile, as Sunday contributions dropped even lower, he learned that until the blueberry-picking season started, the population of L’Enclume would be on short rations. Then, at a time when hope, cash, and groceries struck new lows, he stumbled over a nugget of what seemed to be pure gold.

  Returning from a long, fruitless walk around the parish, he descended into the deep gorge between L’Enclume and St. Peter’s, picked his way across the peaty bog, and came to the grove of dark pines. At the edge of the wood he heard a metallic tattoo of ax strokes falling in double tempo. He entered the greenwood dimness and, standing under the branches of a majestic pine, saw two men swinging axes as only French Canadians can. They worked beaverishly at a great tree; two other trees lay felled in a small clearing, and a small portable sawmill stood near by.

  As Stephen stepped into the clearing, one of the men uttered a cry and plunged like a deer into the green cover of the forest. His companion looked up in surprise, then, seeing the priest, fell upon his knees and began beating his breast in a terrified mea culpa.

  The man on his knees was Hercule Menton.

  “Pardonn’ un pauvr’ woodcutter,” implored Hercule as Stephen approached. “Eet ees only t’ird wan we chop. Forgive, Seigneur.”

  “Why ask my forgiveness?” Stephen was puzzled. “Get up, man, don’t kneel to me.”

  Mustaches drooping with guilt, Hercule arose.

  “Do you own these trees?” asked Stephen.

  Hercule shook a vigorous “no.”

  “Who does?”

  “L’église … she owns.”

  “You mean this forest belongs to the parish of St. Peter’s?”

  Hercule nodded. “Twenny year ago Vince Trudeau lef’ all zese trees—to parish.” Hercule put in an extenuating bid for sympathy. “I tell Fath’ Hallee las’ year pine board wort’ t’irteen cent a foot in Litchburg.”

  “I suppose you were going to saw up these trees, sell the lumber, and hand over the money to Father Halley?”

  At this convenient contrary-to-fact interpretation, Hercule grinned cheerfully.

  “Oui, just what I t’ought I do.”

  “Well, hold off your philanthropy awhile,” advised Steve. “I’ll have to get Father Halley ready for the shock.” Calculation of the revenue to be had from one hundred thousand feet of pine board at thirteen cents a foot was making Steve tolerant of this wood-poaching, fiddle-making ex-dynamiter. “Say nothing about this to anyone, Hercule. I think we can put all the able-bodied men in L’Enclume to work for the first time since Merlin closed.”

  That very evening Stephen broached the subject of the pine forest to Ned Halley after they had finished their usual supper of bread, tea, and smoked fish.

  “I was told in the village today,” he began, “that the parish owns quite a stand of pine trees.”

  “Pine trees?” The pastor’s inflection was that of an invalid trying to remember when he had last taken his medicine.

  “Yes, down in the gorge, you know.”

  “I think I remember the place. At Christmas we get evergreen there. The trees are very handsome.”

  “Handsome and valuable. Do you realize, Father, that there’s about ten thousand dollars’ worth of timber in that grove?”

  “Well, well, I had no idea.”

  You’re going to get the idea, vowed Stephen. “I’ve taken the liberty, Father,” he went on, “of going into the matter with one of our parishioners, Hercule Menton.”

  “Ah, Hercule. A dear charitable friend. He has been kind enough to keep our wood box filled on occasion.”

  “Hercule assures me,” Stephen improvised, “that with the help of a few other—um—dear friends, he could cut down several hundred dollars’ worth of timber during the next month.”

  Ned Halley felt disposed to keep his new curate happy, but cutting down pine trees was not quite in his line.

  “Why,” he asked mildly, “should we go into the lumber business?”

  “Why?” Stephen almost lost his temper. “Why?” To get enough money (he wanted to say) to make our dilapidated old church a decent habitation for the Blessed Sacrament. To help us carry on our work among the sick and poor of this parish. To put bread in the pantry, meat on the table.

  Against Monaghan’s alligator hide he could have hurled these fighting arguments, but the self-naughting serenity in Ned Halley’s faded eyes tempered Stephen’s enthusiasm for the lumber business.

  “I merely suggested it as a source of parish revenue,” he said. Anything further would have been an attack on Ned Halley’s stewardship.

  “Thank you for the suggestion, Father.” Nothing more. No sarcastic hint, “I’m running this parish.” No abstract theorizing on the virtues of poverty. No apology for the shabby past or hand-to-mouth present. Just the placing of a period at the end of an impossible proposition.

  The gentle manner of that placing taught Stephen a deeper spiritual truth than he had ever learned from St. Francis or Alfeo Quarenghi. He saw that this obscure priest possessed a serene and literal trust in goods that thieves could not steal nor rust corrupt. Ned Halley did not quote Matthew on the subject of keeping no purse about one. He merely was the purseless man, fearlessly refusing to encumber his soul with perishable treasures.

  Ned Halley’s fearlessness made Stephen fearless, too. After that supper of bread and fish he stopped worrying about money. He found out that one could live without money, or at any rate without being overanxious about it, and that much of the energy he had spent in casting about for revenue had been a sheer waste of spirit. Faith that money would come in somehow, or that if it didn’t, why, that would be all right too, supported Stephen Fermoyle for the rest of his life.

  He staved off Hercule Menton’s queries about the pine forest, and took up his true work in the parish of St. Peter’s.

  STEPHEN’S first care was to tighten up the somewhat relaxed teaching and practice of religion among the people of L’Enclume. He scraped together a first-communion class of girls and boys, drilled them in the simple theology of the blue-green catechism, and incidentally gave them lessons in English reading and diction. He instructed a group of the more promising lads in the proper serving of Mass, with accompanying homilies on the function of soap, water, brush, and comb. On Friday nights during Lent he took over that solemnly beautiful devotion, the Stations of the Cross, symbolizing the Passion of Christ. The pump-organ was irreparably broken; Stephen taught his acolytes the words and music of the sorrowful Stabat Mater. At first their thin voices echoed through an empty church, but gradually the elders drifted in to watch the symbolic procession and to lift their broken French responses in the Five Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary. Stephen carefully refrained from taking up the collection that usually concluded these services.

  In preparing his Sunday sermon, Stephen modeled himself as closely as possible on Father Halley. The pastor had little apparent flair for preaching; he exhorted not, neither did he scold nor pass moral judgments in matters of drunkenness, u
nchastity, or missing Mass. He neither wept over his parishioners nor endowed them with feelings that they did not possess. Stephen soon realized that such seeming laxity was wisdom of a very special order, perfectly geared to the spiritual understanding of his people. Avoiding all pretensions to rhetoric, Stephen spoke simply and briefly to his unschooled listeners, never laying upon them more than their emotions could bear.

  Gradually he came closer to the people of L’Enclume, and found them—except for their rude poverty—not unlike the families of Irish and Italian descent he had known at St. Margaret’s. These exiled French Canadians were not quite so cheerful or outgoing as the Irish and not so quick-witted as the Italians. They were immature, superstitious, fearsome of strangers, and evasive as small furred animals when one approached them too suddenly. But they had a childlike gaiety and a gift of dramatic exaggeration (Hercule Menton was a perfect example) that easily led them into boasting and outright lying. What seemed like laziness was a philosophic acceptance of their high-and-dry helplessness. Watching a group of men lounging in pipe-smoking attitudes against a stone wall reminded Stephen of stranded dory men waiting for a tide to float them off.

  Everyone whittled in L’Enclume. Stephen decided to take advantage of this local skill in carving and joinery. He persuaded Alphonse Boisvert to repair the broken cross on top of the church. Boisvert did the job skillfully, then mended and varnished the rickety pews that had caused Stephen so much pain. Lest Hercule Menton feel slighted, Stephen asked him to freshen up the neglected Stations of the Cross. When the job was done, Hercule could stand outside the church after Mass on Sunday and boast to his circle of admirers, “Bes’ goddam Stations you buy in store, by gar.” And Stephen could honestly add, “You’re right, Hercule. Excepting the goddam part, they are.”

  Weeks passed, and as yet Stephen had not crossed a threshold in L’Enclume. Patiently he waited for an invitation into one of the mean shacks, but none came. Ned Halley made all the sick calls, and the old man would come tottering home covered with dust or mud after trudging on foot about his parish. Stephen begged for the privilege of relieving his rector, who always put him off with the same gentle excuse. “The people are used to me. Your chance will come, Father.”

  Stephen’s chance came on Friday noon in mid-May. He was leaning against a stone fence in L’Enclume, discussing with Roy Boisvert the repair of a church window when he saw Hercule Menton’s wife ascending the hill. At fifteen Adele Menton had been a buxom Nova Scotian belle, but twenty years of poverty and childbearing had filed her down to spindle thinness. She was wearing a faded calico wrapper, not too clean, and her mouth had the desperate pinch of chronic fatigue. The only remnant of her beauty was her bun of braided hair, still black, held in place by a cheap barrette. Stephen raised his hat, smiled good morning, but no spark lighted Adèle Menton’s agate eyes. What she needed (Stephen felt) was not the time of day from a young curate, but a few dollars to buy soap, food, a new comb for her hair, and some cotton dresses for her children. Through a screenless doorway she disappeared into the shack—a worn-out woman trudging beside a jobless man.

  Stephen had just concluded his talk with Boisvert when Adele Menton darted out of the house. “Hercule chop hees foot,” she screamed. “Com’ queek.”

  Stephen bounded across the road and entered the shack. The place was buzzing with flies, an undiapered baby was playing on the floor, and the scraps of many meals lay on a clothless table. A black iron sink was cluttered with dirty pans and dishes, and a wash boiler stewed on the sheet-tin stove. In a corner of the room stood an iron bedstead, and on its bare mattress Hercule Menton lay gasping while jets of blood spurted from his ankle.

  Stephen’s knowledge of first aid was slight, but he knew enough to clamp both hands around Hercule’s lower leg. He saw the throbbing artery, looking very much like a piece of sliced spaghetti, and squeezed harder with his thumbs. The crimson jet still spurted; loss of blood was sending Hercule into shock.

  “Get me something to tie around his leg,” said Stephen. “Tear up a sheet, a pillowcase, anything.”

  Adèle Menton had no sheets or pillow slips to tear up. The nearest piece of cloth was the calico dress on her back. She was about to rip it from her skinny body, when she realized that she would be standing naked before a priest. Instinct, primitive and female, instructed her now. She pulled the comb from the coiled bun on top of her head, seized a pair of iron shears, and slashed off a braid of her black hair.

  “Will zis do?”

  Stephen seized the rope of hair, bound it above the severed artery; using the shears as a purchase, he twisted the braid of Adèle Menton’s hair until it garroted Hercule’s foot. He was still twisting the improvised clamp when Barbe Leblanc, the local veterinarian, bounced into the room.

  “Nice emergency work, Father,” said Barbe approvingly. The vet scrutinized Hercule’s wound. “Another quarter inch, and he’d have opened up real trouble. But we can fix this with a stitch in time.” He pulled a needle and thread from his instrument bag and neatly sewed together the edges of the artery.

  “I don’t suppose you’ve got any bandages in the house,” he asked, in the tone of a man expecting a negative answer.

  A toothless beldame stepped forward with a basket filled with sphagnum moss, white and damp. “Better than bandages,” she said, thrusting a handful of it at Barbe with the confidence of the midwife offering a sovereign remedy.

  “Have to do for now,” muttered Barbe, molding handfuls of the absorbent moss onto the wound. He loosened the hair tourniquet and ordered Adèle Menton to make a pot of strong tea for her husband.

  “He’s going to live,” said the veterinary. In fulfillment of the prophecy Hercule opened his eyes.

  Seeing Stephen, Barbe, and a roomful of neighbors, he remembered what had happened. “Goddam ax, she slip,” he murmured apologetically. “Holy Vierge, I have bad luck because I eat rabbit on Friday.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” consoled Stephen. “Right now the job is to lie quiet and get well.” How one could do either in this crowded dirty room was a problem that must be solved by a higher intelligence than Stephen’s. Evidently Hercule was acquainted with such an intelligence.

  “Get Lalage,” he said to his wife, as if asking her to summon a sublime personage.

  “Who’s Lalage?” asked Stephen.

  “My bigges’ girl, nurse in Litchburg. When t’ings march crooked”—he made a zigzag line with his finger—“Lalage make t’ings march straight.”

  “Quite a talent,” observed Stephen. His eyes traveled slowly around the mean room. If Lalage could straighten out this confusion she must be a remarkable girl. He patted Hercule’s shoulder reassuringly and turned to Adèle Menton standing at the foot of the rumpled bed.

  “Poets say that hair is a woman’s crowning glory. You proved it today.” As both a man and a priest Stephen took the chance that Adèle Menton would understand at least a part of what he meant.

  WHEN he came back to see Hercule next day, chez Menton was a much-changed shack. No dirty dishes in the sink; floor scrubbed, and the small children glistening like newly soaped angels. Hercule was sitting up on two chairs with a clean gauze bandage skillfully bound from knee to ankle.

  “Who made all this miracle business?” asked Steve.

  Hercule smiled at the curate’s surprise. “Lalage, she com’ rat away when I call. All las’ night she feex—feex t’ings all over.” He lifted his voice, “Lalage! Com’ meet Father Fermoyle.”

  Stephen turned his head to see a young woman entering the room. She was the nut-brown maid, the ballad come to life. She wore a nurse’s uniform, crisp and white as a fresh carnation. He acknowledged her smiling, vital presence with deserved praise.

  “Your patient looks much better. You’ve done wonders already.”

  Pleasure at the compliment brought a russet flush to Lalage’s cheeks. “Thank you, Father.” As if recognizing a hazard, she avoided giving Stephen the full power of her voice or eyes.
She busied her hands with pillows and blankets, deftly bringing order to whatever she touched.

  Stephen valued the girl’s detachment. “Will you have Dr. Jennings over from Stonebury?”

  “Not unless infection sets in. That awful moss was loaded with all sorts of things that shouldn’t be put on a wound. But I cleaned it up last night.” Lalage made no mention of the overhauling she had given the house. “I think everything will be all right—if Dad will stay put for a week or so.”

  “I stay put so long you stay put,” bargained Hercule. The pure sadness in his voice reminded Stephen of Dennis Fermoyle’s way with Ellen.

  “I’ll stay a week,” she said, “if you’ll promise to carve a fiddle top while you’re laid up. Rafe can help you.” She turned to Stephen. “With two luthiers in the house, a violin ought to get finished once in a while, don’t you think?”

  “I do think so. Definitely.”

  Lalage’s offer and Stephen’s approval touched off the luthier’s pride. “Tell Rafe bring me maple block from top shelf. Chisel and whetstone aussi. I show you who fineesh bes’ goddam fiddle you buy in Boston.”

  Lalage was off in a rustle of starch. She returned with her brother Rafael, a youth of sixteen who looked like an apprentice version of Hercule. Curly shavings, insignia of the wood carver, clung to Rafael’s denim jumpers and black hair. In one hand he carried a slab of maple, in the other an assortment of gouges and chisels.

  “Here you are, Dad, the three-year-old maple you asked for.”

  Hercule seized the slab, waved it at Stephen. “T’ree year zis wood has wait.” His finger pointed at the wavy curl of the wood. “Voyez la fiamme. Bes’ flamme in Nort’ America.”

  “By flamme he means the grain,” explained Lalage. “Here, I’ll show you.”