The Cardinal

by Henry Morton Robinson

  Daisy Lamping-Boland laughed like the rich and roguish widow-convert that she was. She had no intention of exposing her sources of supply to the other ladies of the Guild, and was not above twitting a man as distinguished as the Cardinal.

  “One of your bishops must have been in financial straits,” she said. “You should pay them a higher salary, Your Eminence.”

  His Eminence disliked twitting, and it occurred to him now that he disliked Daisy Lamping-Boland. He scrutinized the bauble in puzzlement. A genuine Dolcettiano, a bishop’s ring in the great Florentine tradition. Whose was it? Glennon had only one bishop under him, Mul-queen, his auxiliary; and he himself had given Mulqueen a bishop’s ring when consecrating him. This Florentine article certainly was not Mul-queen’s. But who in the Diocese would be trafficking in bishop’s rings?

  Glennon had ways of finding out such things. He proceeded with tactful directness.

  “May I ask the price of this ring, Mrs. Lamping-Boland?”

  “Two hundred and fifty dollars, Your Eminence.”

  The Cardinal signaled O’Brien, who counted out gold notes for the amount.

  Two hours later His Eminence was giving explicit instructions to Inspector Hugh Shea, chief of Boston detectives.

  “Hugh, I want you to get the whole story on this ring. Who sold it in the first place, how much he got, and all the rest of it. I don’t think it’s a criminal matter, you understand. I merely want to find out what’s going on, and who’s behind it.”

  “A short horse is soon curried, Your Eminence,” said Inspector Shea. “I’ll go to work on it myself.”

  The currying of this particular horse required a scant twenty-four hours of routine investigation among the Boston hockshops. At the end of that time Hugh Shea was reporting to Number One in person.

  “A young man dressed in the habit of an R. C. priest tried to pawn the ring at the shop of Susskind and Flatto, 8 Scollay Square,” recited Shea. “Susskind sent him to the shop of an Armenian Greek, Karaghou-sian by name, who gave him forty-nine dollars for it. Karaghousian brought it straight to Mrs. Daisy Lamping-Boland and sold it to her for a hundred and fifty. That’s the whole story, Your Eminence.”

  “Did you get the name of the priest?”

  Shea consulted his notebook. “He gave the name Stephen Fermoyle, and put down his address as Stonebury, Mass.” The inspector’s discretion was notorious. “I didn’t want to check further without your permission, Eminence.”

  “Quite right, Hugh. Many thanks. Send your man around when you’re taking up the Police Welfare Fund.”

  Reverently, the Inspector genuflected and retired.

  Glennon closed his fist over the Florentine ring in the manner of a boy with a grasshopper in his hand. He might almost have been murmuring the childish abracadabra: “Grasshopper, grasshopper, give me some molasses, and I’ll let you go.” The molasses was there all right, but how guarantee the maximum quantity? Should he call for his black Daimler, whirl up to Stonebury, and hold a drumhead court of inquiry in the parish-house parlor? The dramatic possibilities of dropping on Father Fermoyle as a red-winged hawk drops on a frightened rabbit appealed to His Eminence. It amused him to think of the scurrying that would go on in that shabby parlor. …

  Other considerations moved him, too. Intangible considerations, blent of guilt and nostalgia for the sight of a white-polled head with a thin gold aureole of saintliness shining above it. How pleasant it would be to sit down with Ned on the old equal terms of fellowship and talk of that sweetest form of death-in-life, the days that were no more!

  How sweet—and how impossible! Freighted with consciousness of a hundred failures, Ned Halley’s head would be bowed. Apology would hang weights on his tongue. The old laughing comradeship of the seminary was dead beyond recall. Foolish to dream of reviving it now.

  His Eminence pulled a brocaded bell rope. Monsignor O’Brien appeared. “Take a telegram,” said Glennon. He dictated:

  REVEREND STEPHEN FERMOYLE

  ST. PETER’S CHURCH

  STONEBURY MASS

  IMPERATIVE YOU PRESENT YOURSELF AT CARDINAL’S RESIDENCE TOMORROW AT 2:30 P.M.

  “Sign it and send it off at once, Dave. I want to get to the bottom of something.”

  THE TELEGRAM CAME at a critical time. Ned Halley, sinking like a broken ship, might go under at any moment. Stephen hesitated to leave the old man even for a few hours. His first impulse was to wire Monsignor O’Brien, stating the facts and requesting a postponement of the interview. But a second look at the “Imperative you present yourself” changed his mind. This was a command. He must go.

  Leaving the pastor in Lalage’s care, Stephen took the morning train to Boston. At two-fifteen he was sitting in the Cardinal’s wainscoted antechamber, on a high-backed armless chair, awaiting the summons into the Presence. Why had the Cardinal wired him? What did His Eminence have in mind? Good or bad, it made little difference to Stephen. Six months in Stonebury had armored him against the darts of political fortune. Lower in station it was impossible to go. You couldn’t fall out of bed when you were already on the floor.

  Monsignor O’Brien was beckoning. Stephen passed through the oaken door, mounted the spiral staircase, crossed the masonry floor of the Tower Room, and approached the refectory table where Lawrence Cardinal Glennon sat in his curule chair. The curate genuflected without flutter, kissed the Cardinal’s sapphire, and stood silent as a tall schoolboy waiting for the stern headmaster to speak.

  The Cardinal wasted no time in preliminaries. He produced Orselli’s amethyst, set it down on the table. “Have you ever seen this before?”

  A classic star-chamber opening. Truth was the best, the only defense. “Yes, Your Eminence,” said Stephen. “Until a few days ago I owned it. I sold it last Monday to a curio dealer in Marliave Court.”

  This open admission cut the prosecutor’s case off at the knees. His Eminence had expected something more in the line of dissimulation—a bit of startled quibbling, at least. He took refuge in sarcasm.

  “So you’ve given up writing mystical essays and gone in for peddling ecclesiastical jewelry, eh?”

  “I’d scarcely call the sale of one ring ‘peddling,’ Your Eminence.”

  “Whatever you call it,” snapped Glennon, “such traffic brings the clergy into disrepute. I’ll not permit it in my Archdiocese, you understand, Father Fermoyle.”

  “It won’t happen again, Your Eminence.” Stephen’s irony was lost on his superior.

  Glennon picked up the ring, regarded it with a connoisseur’s curiosity. “How did you come by this?”

  “It was a gift from a friend, Captain Gaetano Orselli of the Italian Line.”

  “You seem to have quite a way with these Italians,” said Glennon dryly. “Why did you sell it?”

  “For private reasons, Your Eminence.”

  Hedging answers always stirred up Glennon’s wrath. “Between a curate and his archdiocesan superior, there can be no ‘private reasons,’ as you call them, Father Fermoyle. I demand that you tell me why you disposed of this ring.”

  Very well, thought Stephen. You’re asking for it. “I sold the ring to pay the medical expenses of Father Edward Halley.”

  “Medical what?” The Cardinal’s tone was that of an incredulous patrician hearing that an old club member was in straits. “Is Father Halley ill?”

  “Dying, Your Eminence.”

  “Ned Halley dying?” Terror and remorse struggled for possession of the Cardinal’s throat. For a moment he was speechless; then indignation had its habitual way. “Why wasn’t I told of this earlier, Father Fermoyle?”

  Through the Cardinal’s broken defenses, Stephen saw his opening. A pawn sacrifice that might lead to an ultimate check. Shrewdly he invited attack: “I presumed that Your Eminence would be uninterested.”

  Lawrence Glennon bought the gambit. “Presumed?” He bounced the heel of his hand off the table. “Your presumption passes belief, Father Fermoyle. How could I be uninterested in Ned
Halley? He is one of my senior pastors, a fellow seminarian, a boyhood …”

  Lawrence Glennon started to say “friend.” Then in mid-sentence he realized that Stephen had lured him into a fool’s mate, and that the frosty blue eyes of this extraordinary young curate were now gazing at him as a humorous chess master might gaze at a tyro.

  His Eminence sat down in his curule chair, not as a Cardinal celebrant settling back to hear a Gloria at High Mass, nor yet as a Cardinal judge about to expound a point of canon law. His sitting down was the resigned performance of a faded beau who has unexpectedly caught a daylight reflection of himself in a full-length mirror. Or more exactly, the tired surrender of a man who knows he has made a poor showing in a life-insurance examination.

  Life insurance?

  Lawrence Glennon knew well enough that neither his scarlet sash nor pectoral cross could help him pass even the kindest scrutiny of stethoscope or blood-pressure machine. It occurred to him that organically he had exchanged a spleen for a heart, hypertension for a soul, and power for friendship. A dull deal all around. Why, even the edge of his mind was becoming dull! Thirty, twenty, even ten years ago, he would not have snapped at the intellectual bait that this stripling Fermoyle had dangled before him.

  But here he sat now, his paunch touching the edge of the table, his heart crushed between the steel jaws of memory. Ned Halley dying! Scenes, cracked and damaged like an old motion-picture film, unwound before him. Ned Halley, golden-haired, a shining circlet of purity above his head, stood smiling across the desk.

  “I’m sending you to Stowe, Nedboy. Your first pastorate, a great chance.”

  The film darkened as Ned Halley reappeared. “I’m giving you a fresh try at Needham, Ned.”

  The images were snowy, defective now. Maiden, Taunton, Wellfleet, God knows where, the parishes always meaner, Ned Halley’s hair no longer gold, his teeth going, body shriveling, a chaplet of failures dragging his bent neck lower. But always that circlet blazing above his head. Then the parish of dead hope—Stonebury. Buried alive in uncomplaining silence beneath an abandoned quarry dump. The reel flickered out.

  For the first time in many years Lawrence Glennon permitted himself to ask a question in a natural tone. “How is he?”

  “He is very low,” said Stephen. “I think he may die tonight.”

  “Is someone in attendance?”

  “A registered nurse. The daughter of a parishioner.” (How inadequate a description of Lalage Menton!)

  Cardinal Glennon’s hazel eyes rested on Stephen for support. A patriarchal shepherd-king leaning on the shoulder of a young herdsman. “Will you give Father Halley a message for me?”

  “Gladly, Your Eminence. A word from you will make him very happy.”

  “Tell him that I …” Like a man on a winter seashore trying to choose a handful of shells that would convey the depth and salt music of a June ocean, Lawrence Glennon tried to choose words.

  “Say that I …” The shells slipped through his fingers. The things he must say to Ned Halley could not be carried by a messenger. The Cardinal rose from his chair. He would go to Ned himself, tell him what should have been told long ago. He pulled the bell rope.

  “The Daimler,” said His Eminence when Monsignor O’Brien appeared. “Have a police escort to take us through traffic.” Again his patriarch glance rested on Stephen, and this time it was the eye of a stricken shipmaster appealing to a dependable first mate.

  “We should be there in ninety minutes,” he said.

  WITH LIVERIED TOM KENNY at the wheel, the black Daimler made it in eighty-seven minutes. Not a word was uttered. Deep in puce-colored cushions, the Cardinal gazed through plate-glass windows for thirty miles. Then he pulled out his breviary and like any other priest read his Office for the day. Stephen did likewise. It was the Feast of St. Joachim, the father of Mary; over and over through Matins, Lauds, and Vespers the Office repeated the moving lines of Ecclesiastes: “Blessed is the man that hath not gone after gold, nor put his trust in money, nor in treasures. Who is he? We will praise him, for he hath done wonderful things in his life. His goods are established in the Lord, and the Church of the Saints shall declare his alms.”

  Breviary still open, the Cardinal leaned toward Stephen. With his index finger he pointed to the three-word question, “Who is he?”

  Voiced acknowledgment was unnecessary. The Cardinal had recognized the picture, too. Somehow, twenty-four hundred years ago, Ecclesiastes had drawn a pen portrait of Ned Halley. The two men sitting on the puce-colored cushions smiled at each other.

  As they left the black mills of Litchburg behind, the Cardinal spoke for the first time.

  “Short end of the brisket, eh, Father?”

  “Certainly not the fancy end, Your Eminence.” Inwardly Stephen praised Victor Thenard and his butcher wagon. Without them he would not have known what the Cardinal was talking about.

  As the Daimler climbed the rising ground of St. Peter’s, Stephen had his first worries about protocol. How did one treat a visiting Cardinal? Did host or visitor take command? Protocol vanished when Lawrence Glennon said, “Tom Kenny will take care of me, Father. You get things ready inside.”

  Lalage Menton greeted Stephen at the door. “You’re just in time, Father—he’s sinking rapidly.”

  “Is he still conscious?”

  “His mind is very clear.”

  “Thank God!” Stephen barely had time to set a small table bearing the holy oils of Extreme Unction beside the pastor’s bed, when the Cardinal entered.

  “Pax huic domui,” said Lawrence Glennon.

  “Et omnibus habitantibus in ea” replied Stephen.

  The Cardinal came forward, not with the assurance of a great prince, but hesitantly, on tiptoe, like an intruder in sacred precincts. At the bedside he gazed down at Ned Halley’s face, shining with the preliminary phosphorescence of death. Gone was all likeness to the face he had known in youth. Only hollows remained, and the graying ash of Ned Halley’s eyes were banked by heavy lids.

  “Ned,” whispered the Cardinal, “it’s me, Larry.”

  Ned Halley opened his eyes. “Eminence,” he murmured.

  “No Eminence, Nedboy. No Eminence now.” The Cardinal dropped to his knees. “It’s Larry—Larrybuck, remember?”

  “Larrybuck … I knew you’d come. I lived till you came.”

  Tears streamed down the Cardinal’s face and fell on the atrophied hand he held between his own. “I should have come sooner, Nedboy. Forgive me, I always meant to come.”

  “You were busy with high deeds, Larry. High deeds in high places. I did not deserve your remembering.”

  “Gentle Ned, you deserved more than I ever gave. I should have made you my confessor, and lighted my path by the shining circle above your head. Instead, I saddled you with pack-horse assignments, mortgages, broken parishes.” The Cardinal buried his face in the torn quilt. “Forgive me, Ned.”

  “Forgiven, Larry … all …”

  Lawrence Glennon turned to Stephen. “He’s going. Bring the holy oils for Extreme Unction.”

  Stephen brought out the little table, set it at the Cardinal’s right hand. His Eminence dipped his thumb in the sacramental oil and carried it to Ned Halley’s eyelids. He anointed those eyelids in the form of a cross, saying in Latin as he did so:

  “Through this holy unction, and of His most tender mercy, may the Lord pardon thee whatsoever sins thou hast committed by sight.”

  What sins could they be? thought Stephen.

  Gently the Cardinal anointed the ears, nostrils, lips, and hands of his boyhood friend. Then he motioned to Stephen. “Lift the quilt so I can anoint his feet,” the gesture said. Eyes blurred with tears, Stephen did not spring quickly enough to execute this last service for his dying pastor. It was Lalage Menton who exposed the ghostly feet for their drop of sacred oil.

  The Cardinal’s thumb made the sign of the cross on Ned Halley’s wasted instep. “Through this holy unction, and of His most tender mercy, may t
he Lord pardon thee whatsoever sins thou hast committed by thy footsteps. Amen.”

  Like a thin veil, Ned Halley’s lifelong expression of ineffable courtesy dropped from his face. Eyes, ears, lips, and hands were freed from their sensual burdens. Feet that had never walked in any way but righteousness became clay. Ned Halley’s soul rose from the menial ash of body and leapt in flame to join the fellowship of saints, martyrs, and confessors.

  CHAPTER 4

  NOVEMBER WINDS pierced the flimsy shacks of L’Enclume. Stephen hugged the wood fire in Ned Halley’s old study, and bent over the litter of invoices, time sheets, and bills of lading on his desk. Midnight found him adding a long column of figures; pleased at the total, Stephen picked up his pen and began his report to the Chancellor of the Archdiocese:

  RT. REVEREND MONSIGNOR:

  I have the honor of transmitting to your office a complete account of the St. Peter’s lumbering operations, together with all financial records pertaining thereto.

  Acting under pastoral powers conferred upon me by the Cardinal on August 18, 1918 …

  August 18 … the day of Ned Halley’s burial. Gazing into the ruby embers, Stephen relived the events of that day. In a summer downpour, Lawrence Glennon had led the funeral procession from church to cemetery. As the earth fell on Ned Halley’s coffin, the Cardinal murmured a last requiescat, blessed the kneeling mourners; then, leaning on Stephen’s arm, had returned to the parish house for a supportive cup of tea.

  “Oolong, hot and strong, with plenty of sugar,” was his only command. But even a third cup of the heart-building brew failed to sponge away the Cardinal’s melancholy. His secretary loitered in the hallway, wondering how long His Eminence would mourn, yet not daring to approach the brooding prelate who sat in an armchair, sipping the black tea that Stephen kept pouring for him. Silence, and a kettleful of boiling water, was the treatment of choice; if liberally administered (Stephen reasoned), the grieving Cardinal would soon enough regain his spirits.

  Other more opportunistic calculations were churning, however, in the soul of Monsignor Andrew Sprinkle. He was, after all, head of the local deanery, and his office laid upon him certain responsibilities. With the Cardinal’s edge temporarily dulled, now was the time for all good men to broach the subjects closest to their hearts. Andy Sprinkle glided into the study, stirred the cup of tea that Stephen handed him, and made a cautious beginning: