The Cardinal

by Henry Morton Robinson

  Currently, the Cardinal was breaking up the big parishes around Boston. One after another, sleek suburban rectors were summoned into his presence to hear that a third or a half of their domains were to be shorn away from them and given to younger men. The shearing followed a pattern, tactful but firm. His Eminence, seated in the Tower Room with a map of the Diocese before him, would stretch out a hand to his visitor. “Sit down beside me here, Father Tom” (or John, or Bill), he would say cordially, “and have a look at this map.”

  A bit of exposition was now in order. “These crosshatchings,” Glennon would explain, “show density of Catholic population. You can see for yourself, Tom, that your parish is solid black, which means a population upwards of three thousand per square mile.” The Cardinal would lay his pencil tip on the parish under discussion. “And along this eastern edge here, the Melfield section is building up very rapidly.”

  Then the rector, who knew what was coming, might say: “Thus far, Your Eminence, we’ve had no trouble handling the increased population. Sure, the church is crowded on Sunday mornings, but what’s more cheerful than nice full pews and people standing in the back? If I could have an extra curate, and brighten up my basement church for the overflow, I’m sure we could accommodate everyone.”

  “I’m sure you could, Tom—for a year or two. But have you heard that Henry Ford is putting up a new assembly plant right on the border of your parish? When that goes up, you’ll be overrun entirely. Now here’s what I’ve decided to do.” Pencil in hand, Glennon would indicate a dotted line. “I’ve taken the eastern quarter of your parish and the western half of St. Vincent’s, and combined them into the makings of a new pastorate. Beginning next month …”

  For a few minutes Father Tom would be sullen, crestfallen, angry, or whatever else he dared be. But in the end it always came out on Glennon’s dotted line, and the pastor would walk out resigned to the partitioning of his parish. Sometimes he might even be grateful for relief from a burden becoming too heavy for his aging shoulders. Somerville, Newton, Lynn, and a dozen other overgrown parishes were divided in this way. Under the Cardinal’s scheme of reorganization, new churches were springing up all around Boston.

  Among the yet undivided pastorates was the Medford domain of the Right Reverend Patrick Barley—the Immaculate Conception parish, an ecclesiastic barony, huge, old, and immoderately ripe for pruning. Glennon’s pencil had often skirmished along its eastern marches, making a sally here, a foray there, yet never quite daring to invade the baronial holdings of Pastor Barley. Rumor said that His Eminence stood a bit in awe of Pat—and rumor spoke with a half accent of truth. Pat Barley, the oldest pastor in the Diocese, was already a cast-iron fixture when Lawrence Glennon came to Boston as Bishop in 1905. Father Barley’s memory ran back to the days when the United States was a missionary country, and the powers of individual pastors were virtually unlimited. Stubborn in the face of change, the Right Reverend Patrick Barley had clung to those powers. When, for example, Glennon installed a uniform system of bookkeeping for the entire Diocese, Father Pat had openly rebelled. “I’ll keep my books the way I’ve always kept them—in the crown of my hat,” he announced. It took Glennon five years to persuade Barley that he should keep a set of ledgers and send in monthly financial reports like everyone else.

  At eighty-two, Pat Barley was a grumpy old tyrant—a terror to curates and parishioners alike. Stephen knew him well. Father Barley had baptized him, and on many a frosty dawn Stephen had run all the way from Woodlawn Avenue to serve Father Barley at early-morning Mass—a service that had been an act more of fear than of love. Age had not softened the pastor; full of years and contending diseases—of which arthritis and a double cataract were the most crippling—he stood his ground against innovation and authority, defying anyone but death to budge him from his pastoral seat. Small wonder that Glennon hesitated to trim down the Barley holdings.

  Yet trimmed they must be. In the past decade the Catholic population of Medford had nearly doubled; the Immaculate Conception Church was no longer big enough, nor was Pat Barley strong enough, to care for the needs of the Medford flock. New parish lines were imperative, and Stephen happened to be present on the day Glennon drew those lines.

  The Cardinal and Chancellor Mike Speed were bending over a map like a pair of artillery officers when Stephen entered with the afternoon letters. Glennon’s pencil was tracing creatively. “With the Medford carbarns as a hub,” he said to his Chancellor, “we’ll describe a flat circle along Barley’s eastern boundary.” At the mention of “Medford carbarns” Stephen pricked up his ears. “Pat can keep the rich residential core of the old Immaculate Conception,” continued Glennon, “and we’ll give the poorer outlying sections to the new parish.” The Cardinal completed his dotted line. “What do you think of it, Mike?”

  “I think Pat’ll bell like a beagle when he hears the news.”

  “Let him. His belling and bawling have gone on long enough. The thing I’m worried about is finding a man capable of handling the new parish. Whoever goes in there will run smack up against the loyalties of old-timers—plenty of them—who were christened and married, shriven, yes, and shorn by Pat Barley. They’ll resent a newcomer, no matter who he is. And when they remember the money that old Pat Barley shook out of them (what a man he was with the collection box!), they won’t like the idea of digging down for a new church.”

  Chancellor Speed grasped the complexity of the problem. Part of his strength with the Cardinal was his unwillingness to minimize difficulties. “We’re running low on first-class administrators, Your Eminence,” he warned. “I’ll begin combing the Archdiocese for the best we have.”

  “Do so, Mike,” said Glennon thoughtfully, as Stephen left the Tower Room. “We won’t make a move until we find just the right man.”

  FOR A YEAR NOW, shiploads of khaki-clad heroes had come straggling home from war. At first, civic committees greeted them with boutonnieres, oratory, and brass bands; fresh from the awful crossroads of the Chemin des Dames and the carnage of Belleau Wood, the homecomers were harangued as national saviors by many a fulsome tongue. But gradually the welcoming committees mislaid their boutonnieres and lost their tongues; the brass bands forgot to go down the harbor on tugboats, and by the spring of 1920, incoming transports were docking like any other cargo vessel. Rumpled and seasick, the debarkers told bitter tales of yearlong waits at Brest for westward passage across the Atlantic. Some of these tales got into the papers. Congress investigated, Pershing pleaded, and the Boston Globe ran a streamer, BRING OUR BOYS HOME. But the country was thinking about something else. America, like the rest of the world, was emerging into the common light of postwar day.

  On a June morning in 1920, Stephen Fermoyle, coming out of the chancery office with his brief case full of documents for the Cardinal’s signature, saw the military figure of Paul Ireton ascending the steps. Still in his chaplain’s uniform, with a major’s oak leaf at his shoulder, Paul was grayer, older-looking than his forty-three years. The cleft in his blue-black chin seemed deeper, but the severity in his eyes lightened as he grasped Stephen’s hand.

  “Why the delayed home-coming, Paul? Where’ve you been?”

  “At Brest, where the paths of glory end in duckboards. A couple million Americans happened to be waiting there at the same time.” Paul’s voice lost color, like a phonograph record running down. “Some of them are still waiting.”

  Stephen could make no comment on the tragedy of those waiting men. He hedged with the standard question: “Is the mud as bad as they say?”

  “It isn’t the mud. It’s the idleness and desperation. No one can describe it, Steve. I won’t even try. All I want is a nice dry parish and work enough for three men. Say, where do I report for assignment around here?”

  “I’ll show you.” They were at the very door of the Chancellor’s office when a brazen idea leaped fully armed into Stephen’s mind. “Could you postpone reporting for duty till this afternoon?” he asked.

&nbs
p; “I guess the Diocese could struggle along without me till then. But what’s up?”

  Stephen’s idea was generating arms, legs, and a wonderfully smiling countenance. “Don’t cross-examine me now, Major. But be at the Cardinal’s residence at two P.M. today. That’ll give me a couple of hours to get the big wheels turning.”

  When Paul left him, Stephen darted into a room off the Chancellor’s office and walked down an alley of steel filing cabinets. He opened a file, ran his finger along an index until he came to the folder containing Paul Ireton’s record as a priest. Under a twenty-five-watt bulb Stephen studied the dossier. There it was, the whole story of Paul’s life and achievements, meticulously detailed, and very impressive.

  “If Number One isn’t convinced by this, he’s no judge of dossiers,” murmured Stephen.

  At two o’clock, with the antechamber full of suppliants—Paul among them—Stephen entered the Tower Room and plunged in medias res. “There’s a returned army chaplain, Major Paul Ireton, outside, Your Eminence.”

  Glennon looked up skeptically. “What does he want?”

  “He’s awaiting assignment to parish duties,” said Stephen, trying to remain impersonal. But the attempt failed, and the Cardinal’s secretary became a special pleader for his friend. “Paul Ireton is the best priest I know. He’s forty-three years old, was assistant pastor for ten years at St. Margaret’s, and has a brilliant record of overseas duty. …”

  “What’s the drift of this unsolicited panegyric, Father Fermoyle?”

  Stephen flushed. “I respectfully suggest to Your Eminence that Paul Ireton be assigned to one of the new parishes.”

  Glennon’s sarcasm cut like a carborundum wheel. “Thanks for your suggestion, Father. And have you selected any particular spot for this priestly paragon?”

  “Yes. The toughest, unlikeliest-to-succeed.”

  “We’ve got plenty of those. Where’s his dossier?”

  “I have it here.” Stephen spread the confidential record of the Reverend Paul Ireton on the table. The Cardinal’s suspicion that jobbery was afoot led him to examine the papers with more than usual care.

  “Let’s see, now. Ah, yes. Paul Ambrose Ireton, ordained Brighton Seminary, nineteen-five. Tenth in a class of twenty-six. Hm—m, not precisely a prodigy. Curate four years at Wakefield. Moderate praise from pastor. Transferred to St. Margaret’s, nineteen-nine. Ha, let’s see what Dollar Bill says about him.” His Eminence pored over Monaghan’s letter. “Father Paul Ireton, a priest of unusual caliber … high spirituality … exceptional devotion to parish duties. Wholly dependable in financial and administrative matters … judgment conservative but sound … sorry to lose him.”

  “Why did he go away to war?” asked Glennon suddenly.

  “I think, Your Eminence, that Father Ireton should answer that question himself.”

  “Bring him in.”

  Introducing Paul Ireton to the Cardinal was one of the happiest offices that Stephen ever performed. He was proud of Paul’s unflustered genuflection and soldierly mien as Glennon dissected him with a surgeon’s eye.

  “Sit down, Father Ireton,” Stephen heard Glennon say as he closed the oaken door.

  Half an hour later Paul Ireton came out of the Tower Room, a pale smile quivering above his cleft chin. Seemingly he was without a tongue.

  “Well?” Stephen shook him by the arm. “Well, what happened?”

  Paul Ireton’s voice was that of a man recounting hallucinations. “He’s sending me to Medford.”

  “To set up shop next to Pat Barley? What a location!”

  Paul was still in a daze. “He says I’m to build a church there. … He’s given me a start financially.”

  “He has! That’s most unusual, Paul. How much?”

  Paul Ireton opened his hand. There in his palm lay a worn Liberty-head nickel. “Carfare to my new parish. Oh, Steve … it’s come true.” The muscles of Paul Ireton’s throat contracted as he gulped down a rising lump.

  When His Eminence opened the door a moment later, his fine hazel eyes witnessed the extraordinary scene of two grown men, one in black, the other in khaki, pummeling each other joyfully about the head and shoulders. It occurred to His Eminence that jobbery had indeed been done, but on re-examining the papers in Paul Ireton’s folder he could not decide offhand who was jobbing whom.

  CHAPTER 2

  LIKE MANY A FLORENTINE before him, Captain Gaetano Orselli enjoyed making an entrance. Whether into a boudoir or harbor, he relished the drama of the entratura and had lifted it to the condition of a minor art. At the moment, he was looking forward to taking his ship into Boston Harbor for the first time since the Armistice. Off his starboard bow stood Boston Light, and a more welcome beacon the Captain had never seen. There had been times during the voyage when the Vesuvio’s tired engines and rusty plates had seemed no match for the Atlantic combers. But now the hazards were over; Orselli felt the slackening pulse of the Vesuvio’s engines as she reduced speed for the pilot boat, tossing like a chip at the foot of Boston Light. Down went the rope ladder; up scrambled the pilot with the speed of a frightened cat. The Captain’s responsibilities were over, and he could now yield himself up to the acclamation that an ocean liner receives on entering a friendly port.

  In his cabin, Orselli arrayed himself in his London-made uniform—a trifle easy around the waist after four Spartan years of war—adjusted his gold-embroidered hat to the precise angle of the Vesuvio’s smokestacks, and surveyed in a triptych mirror the total effect of glistening beard, broad back, and conquistador profile that never failed to please him. It did not fail him now. At forty-eight Orselli looked a robust forty-two, and thanks to the kindness of a certain donna generosa on B deck, he felt an eager thirty-nine. From his jewel box the Captain chose a gold snake ring, a fat python with emerald eyes, and slipped it onto his little finger. He was running low on jewelry, and because he would never wear this particular ring again he pressed it to his full lips in regretful farewell. “She has been deserving of you,” he murmured. Then nipping an English-market cigar between his handsome teeth, Gaetano Orselli went on deck.

  April sunlight, brilliant but not warm, broke into aquamarine splinters as it struck the channel. The fanfare of welcome was exploding all around the Vesuvio: sirens zoomed, flags dipped, and a cratelike airplane made a near miss as it attempted to drop a bouquet on the liner. At Fort Banks, international signals at the mast of the flagstaff officially spelled out “Welcome, Vesuvio,” while an irreverent noncom at the foot of the mast wigwagged “Viva Spaghetti.”

  Pleased by the reception, Orselli mounted to the bridge and began pointing out marks of interest to a group of distinguished passengers. The company was sparse: a four-star American general returning from the peace conference; a British banker-diplomat seeking a lower rate of interest on the new American loan; and a representative of a German cartel who hoped to regain certain important factories from the alien property custodian. Lastly, there was Archbishop Lodovico Rienzi, the Apostolic Delegate, veteran of many an embassy to the chancelleries of Europe, but now seeing for the first time the shores of the New World.

  The Archbishop, despite his diplomatic missions, was not a worldly man. His field was canon law, and his present assignment was to bring the structure of the great American sees into conformity with the Roman Curia. And because the Supreme Pontiff was scraping the bottom of his coffers for such poor coins as might be found, the Apostolic Delegate also hoped to speed the flow of New World contributions to the papal treasury. The Archbishop could smile approvingly, therefore, at the massed shipping, the crowded steel piers, and other signs of material prosperity in this teeming port.

  He gazed about the harbor in astonishment. “It is as large and almost as colorful as Naples! I confess I am much surprised.”

  “You will have many such surprises in America, Excellency,” said the Captain. “It is a country of unbelievable magnitude and resources. Raw perhaps, and without patina. But a century from now it will be ch
allenging Italy’s culture, and—am I being heretical?—even the spiritual authority of Rome.”

  Orselli disregarded the Archbishop’s politely pitying smile, and pointed to a huge, round-sterned vessel berthed at a new concrete pier. “That is the Leviathan, which was once queen of the Hamburg-American run. She was seized by the United States at the outbreak of the war, converted into a transport, and ferried half a million American soldiers to Europe.”

  “A monument to Teutonic stupidity.” Choosing not to offend the German openly, the Apostolic Delegate spoke in Italian.

  “You may well say so, Excellency,” said the Farbenindustrie man. “But you may count upon us not to make the same mistake again. The new Germany will make no mistakes. And as for luxury liners”—he beamed complacently at the company—“we shall have them, too.”

  “Aber natürlich,” said the English banker. “Everyone will have luxury liners again.”

  Orselli knew this to be true. Even now in the great shipyards of Ostia a new superliner was being built for him. As senior captain of the Italian Line he would tread its bridge and command its Italian crew. But ownership of the vessel would rest in foreign, which was to say, British, hands. Orselli permitted a jet of lava to erupt from his Italian soul.

  “Yes, magnificent new vessels will sail the seas again. But no matter what flag they fly, or where they are built, a British board of directors will control them.”

  “That is undeniably true,” said the Englishman.

  “But where will l’Inglese get the money?” asked the Archbishop a bit anxiously.

  The English banker-diplomat relished the innocence of the query. “Where does anyone else get it?” he murmured in French.