Dennis Fermoyle brought the news home to Celia, who straightway carried it upstairs to Ellen.
“The Cardinal has split Monsignor Barley’s parish at last,” said Celia. “There’s a new priest named Father Ireton down at Mattakeesit, fixing up a temporary church.”
A private excitement took possession of Ellen when she heard the news. Fearful currents stirred within her; prayer did not quiet them. Like a distracted girl who knows that she is being challenged by womanhood, Ellen paced her room in agitated colloquy with herself.
“Have I the strength to undertake this long-awaited labor? Physical strength, yes; I am well enough to perform light tasks. It is courage of soul that I lack. Courage to leave this sheltered room, and pick up the strands of life that I laid down—where?—why?—how long ago?”
What am I afraid of?
Sleepless that night, Ellen could not answer these questions. When morning came, she arose and went to her window. Over fences and clotheslines, over the domestic gear and straggly vegetable gardens, a new day was beginning. Another day in His eternal cycle—a day that would be filled, like all His days, with a meaning above and beyond the commonplace appearance of things. Unbidden came the lines:
Teach me, my God and King,
In all things Thee to see
And what I do in any thing
To do it as for Thee.
“I will go forth this day and accept whatever task He assigns me,” said Ellen.
After breakfast, while Celia was busy in the kitchen, Ellen stole out of the front door and walked rapidly down Woodlawn Avenue. She passed the carbarns and after a few moments came to Mattakeesit Hall. Some remnant of terror counseled, “Turn back,” but a deeper instruction said, “This is the time and place.” She climbed the dark stairway, opened the door of the upper room, and saw a man in a white collarless shirt swinging an awkward broom at the dirty floor.
Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws
Makes that and th’ action fine.
Billows of dust whirled out the open windows; the sweeper sneezed, blew his nose in a handkerchief. Ever conscious of her lungs, Ellen wanted to say, “You should sprinkle first. No one dry-sweeps any more.” Actually she said, “I’m Ellen Fermoyle, one of your new parishioners.”
“Ellen Fermoyle? Not Steve’s sister?”
She nodded timidly. “And you’re Father Ireton. Stephen has told me a lot about you. He says you’re the best priest he knows.”
“I’ll go Steve one better. He’s the best priest there is.”
In the littered hall they stood wordlessly recognizing each other. Paul Ireton saw the invisible nimbus over Ellen’s head. And in the ascetic jut of Paul Ireton’s chin Ellen saw the man become priest. The covenant between them was instant, unbodied, and binding.
“When do you plan to say your first Mass here?”
“I wanted it to be next Sunday.” Paul waved a dubious broom at the floor. “But that’ll take a miracle.”
“Four days is time enough for a small miracle.” Ellen’s brown eyes surveyed the black hall, ticked off the necessities. “You’ll need some kind of temporary altar, with linens, of course. I’ll manage that if you’ll let me.”
“Let you? My dear girl …”
“How about vestments?”
“I’ve been promised the loan of some from Monsignor Barley—of all people. The things I haven’t got, and can’t seem to borrow, are a chalice and a Mass book. I guess some ecclesiastical supply house will have to extend me credit. If Seidelbander can do it, others can, too.”
“Then all we’d need right now is a pail of water, a mop, and some soap powder.” A proprietary glow flushed Ellen’s cheek. “We’ll make it shine, Father.”
Almost, they did make it shine. Paul Ireton scrubbed the floor while Ellen washed the windows. Sometimes they forgot each other’s presence, then remembering, they would look up, smile at each other, and fall to work again. All day they scrubbed and scoured; Ellen went home exhausted and fell asleep on a short prayer.
Next day she persuaded Celia to hand over a damask tablecloth won ten years ago at a whist party and still lying unused in the bottom of the linen closet. Ellen cut the prized fabric in two pieces, and hemmed them on the sewing machine. Laundered, they made acceptable altar cloths. The altar itself was improvised from a dry-goods packing case that Ellen found in the Fermoyle cellar. Bernie lugged it on his back all the way to the hall, then gave it two coats of flat white paint. Candlesticks, a pair of cut-glass cruets for wine and water, and three linen napkins were contributed by other parishioners. By Saturday noon Paul had completed his credit arrangement and appeared with a gold-plated chalice and a new Mass book.
Together they dressed the altar. “It’s beautiful,” breathed Ellen. “Nothing was ever so beautiful. The people will love it.”
“I hope so,” said Paul.
At ten o’clock on Sunday morning two hundred people climbed three flights of stairs to attend Father Ireton’s first Mass in Medford. They sat on chairs loaned by Tim Noonan, the undertaker, and saw their new pastor, an austere, gray-eyed priest in his early forties, emerge from behind a screen in borrowed vestments. They felt the loving severity of his manner, and when they heard his first announcement from the foot of the improvised altar, they knew he meant business.
“In this upper room,” said Father Ireton, “we begin a shared adventure in the new parish of St. Stephen’s. The Cardinal has laid upon us—upon you as well as me—the responsibility and privilege of starting a new parish. To me it means the opportunity that every priest longs for. To you it means the severance, painful perhaps, of old loyalties and the shouldering of fresh burdens. But I can assure you that those burdens will be divided between us. I shall hold my stewardship strictly accountable to you in all things. In return, I shall expect your help and confidence. Though our financial needs are pressing, we must not permit ourselves to be overborne by them, or forget the purpose of our work here. That work is primarily of the spirit, and as long as I am rector of St. Stephen’s, it shall remain so. I shall now read the Gospel for the day …”
LAWRENCE GLENNON’S faculty for surprising people who thought they knew him was a character trait that gave the Cardinal some of his best effects. As Chancellor Mike Speed put it to Stephen (in a figure borrowed from baseball), “Just when you’re saying to yourself, ‘Well, I’ve solved the man’s fast ball,’ he fools you with his knuckler.”
Soon after this, the Cardinal’s knuckle ball caught Stephen flat-footed. In the middle of a routine morning, His Eminence looked up casually and asked: “Father, do you remember a manuscript that you left in my keeping after our first interview?”
“The Ladder of Love?”
Glennon nodded. “I happened to glance through the work last night and discovered a certain literary elegance about it.” Recalling his earlier strictures on the subject of “mystical moonshine,” Glennon had the good taste to cough. “You’ll find the manuscript on the refectory table with my imprimatur written on the title page. I suggest, Father Fermoyle, that you start looking for a publisher.”
FINDING A PUBLISHER for The Ladder of Love proved to be a fascinating but somewhat thorny business. Though Glennon’s imprimatur was canonically essential, it did not, of itself, guarantee an interested body of readers. Stephen sent his manuscript to a couple of Brahmin firms on Beacon Hill and promptly received courteous letters of regret from editors who expressed themselves as being personally anguished because they “could not see their way clear at this time to bring out a volume so patently limited to a special audience.” Reardon & O’Neill, the Catholic publishers, were eager to get the manuscript, but Stephen had no in-tention of seeing The Ladder of Love lumped together with a basketful of devotional tracts and hortatory pamphlets. As he explained to Chancellor Mike Speed: “Quarenghi’s work deserves literary treatment. I’ll shop around till I find a publisher willing to handle it on a belles-lettres basis.”
This shopping around ran into months of
correspondence with various publishers. It was Mike Speed who finally brought the manuscript to the attention of Whateley House, a New York firm with a reputation for doing good things with essays and poetry. Whateley House offered Stephen a modest contract calling for a two-hundred-dollar advance against ten per cent royalties on the first twenty-five hundred copies; twelve and one half per cent thereafter. Stephen signed gladly and in due time received from Whateley House two sets of galley proofs in Caslon Old Style, a pleasing though conservative type face. He mailed one set of proofs to Quarenghi, accompanying it with a brief note:
MY DEAR ALFEO:
At last I have found an American publisher for La Scala d’amore. Your light still shines through my opaque journeyman translation; I think you need not be afraid of the reception your book will receive from readers and critics. Please go over this set of proofs, making any changes that occur to you, and mail the galleys back to me as quickly as possible. Too much time has passed already; Whateley House wants the book to be on their spring list, and if we move rapidly I think we can make it.
Love and homage to you,
STEPHEN
Quarenghi sent back the galleys without a single correction and a letter that said in part:
…I am deeply touched, Stefano, by your kindness and persistence in bringing about American publication of my work. Do I say “my work”? You have succeeded, dear friend, by the elegance of your translation, in making The Ladder of Love your own. Be the bearer of my heartfelt thanks to your Cardinal for his gracious imprimatur. And for yourself, Stephen, choose for permanent lodgment the innermost chamber of my heart.
Affectionately in Cristo,
ALFEO
The Ladder of Love, published in April, 1921, received glowing notices in the literary and religious press. A two-column review in The New York Times linked Quarenghi’s name with that of Santayana and Ortega y Gasset; not forgetting to give the Reverend Stephen Fermoyle a puff for his polished translation. The staid Boston Transcript went into critical dithyrambics: “Here at last is a writer who combines mystical insight with the too-long-neglected art of the essay. It is as though St. Bonaventura and Agnes Repplier had joined forces to produce a work of authentic spirituality—and impeccable taste.”
Catholic reviewers were unanimous in welcoming the book. The official journals of Dominicans, Benedictines, Jesuits, and Paulists assigned their sternest writers to the task of appraising the literary form and theological content of Quarenghi’s mysticism. No flaws of doctrine or lapses of style were uncovered. Stephen breathed freely when a Jesuit critic commended The Ladder of Love for having avoided “the pitfalls into which well-meaning but weakly endowed mystical essayists sometimes stumble.”
The sweetest triumph of all was the feature article appearing in The Monitor, the home paper of the Archdiocese of Boston. In this article Quarenghi’s career as a savant and diplomat was colorfully handled; Boston readers might easily have got the impression that Monsignor Quarenghi was a privy councilor to the Sovereign Pontiff himself, and an alter ego to Cardinal Giacobbi, the papal Secretary of State. This exalted prelate was on terms of closest intimacy (the story ran) with Cardinal Glennon’s secretary, the Reverend Stephen Fermoyle, a local boy from Maiden who had studied under Quarenghi in Rome. The Monitor then went on for several paragraphs describing Father Fer-moyle’s arduous labors of translation, and ended on a note of gratitude to Lawrence Cardinal Glennon for having recognized the outstanding merit of the work.
Reading the article, His Eminence beamed.
Felicitations poured in on Stephen like spring rain. At the May meeting of archdiocesan consultors, Chancellor Mike Speed gave him a hearty clap on the back—and even Auxiliary Bishop Mulqueen thawed out long enough to shake Stephen’s hand. Mulqueen hadn’t read the book and didn’t wholly relish Father Fermoyle’s success. Dick Clarahan was his fair-haired boy; privately Mulqueen wished that his protégé might be wearing the literary laurels that bound Stephen’s brow. The Bishop coolly minimized the whole business and continued to plump for Clarahan whenever comparisons were made between the talents of the promising pair.
Among the congratulatory letters that Stephen received were warm notes from Dollar Bill Monaghan, Milky Lyons, and Paul Ireton. The warmest note of all came from Dick Clarahan—who could well afford to step aside momentarily while Stephen took the plaudits of the crowd. “May I use your charming chapter entitled The Pears of Augustine’ as material for my sermon next Sunday?” wrote Dick. To this sincerest form of flattery Stephen replied, “You may add your luster to any of the poor pearls you find in my book, but I warn you I’ll be in one of the back pews when you cast them forth in your sermon.”
Stephen kept his promise. He sat in the rear of the Cathedral the following Sunday and heard Clarahan spin an opulent web of rhetoric that delighted every listener. Afterwards in the sacristy, Stephen showered praise upon the oration and was somewhat surprised when Clarahan seemed avid for more.
“Did you think my style too ornate?” he asked eagerly.
“Rich but not indigestible,” was Steve’s comment.
“I wish,” said Dick, “that you could hear one of the lectures I’m giving Wednesday evenings at Boston College. The series is called ‘False Prophets of Modern Materialism.’ Not quite so florid as my Sunday stuff. More matter with less art, you know.”
“What’s your subject next Wednesday?”
“I’m taking Darwin apart for the multitude.”
“I hope you’re not saying that it’s an insult to God and man to believe that Homo sapiens once lived in trees?”
“You don’t think he did, do you?” asked Clarahan.
“All the evidence isn’t in yet. I’m reserving judgment. But supposing man did swing from a branch at one time or another. He could still have had an immortal soul, couldn’t he?”
Clarahan took the whole thing as a tease. “Perhaps you’d better not come next Wednesday. You might taint the atmosphere. But I think you would be interested to hear what I’m saying about Freud the week after next.”
“Freud? That does interest me. I’ll be there.”
In 1921 a lecture on Sigmund Freud was something of a novelty in Boston. True, The Introductory Essays translated some years back had long been discussed in the Harvard graduate classes that Clarahan attended. Stephen, fairly familiar with Freud’s general theories, realized that Clarahan was giving an index of alertness by preparing a talk on the subject.
One of the smaller halls in Boston College was three quarters filled by Catholic intellectuals on the night of the lecture. Stephen, accompanied by Dr. John Byrne, slipped into the back row. After a longish introduction by Bishop Mulqueen, who referred to the speaker as the “bright particular hope of Catholic thought in America,” Clarahan began his address. His platform manner was flawless; he possessed an exceptional voice—an instrument of many stops and colors—a ranging vocabulary, and a Jesuit-trained gift of organization. His exposition of Freud’s theory of the unconscious was, as far as Stephen could judge, accurate and well knit. Not until Clarahan came to the contents of the Freudian id did he really cut loose.
“We are asked to believe by this self-styled scientist (who, incidentally, began his career as a dabbler in hypnotism) that the basic drives of the human soul—prepare yourself for a shock, gentlemen—are incest, cannibalism, and murder. Yes, these are the ingredients of the Freudian psyche. From infancy our only motives are three: to achieve sexual congress with our mother, murder our father, and devour whosoever prevents us from attaining our objectives.”
Clarahan paused to let the horror travel about the room. In perceptible shivers, it did. “But the common observations of mankind,” he continued, “prove that these monstrosities do not in fact occur. To account for this discrepancy between fact and fancy, Freud advances another absurdity: the theory of repression. He concedes that the individual learns to suppress his frightful urges toward incest and murder, but at what a cost! Crowded to the bottom of the psy
che, these urges crop out, says Freud, in the masked forms of dreams, anxiety states, and neurotic disturbances.
“Catholics will ask, ‘But what of free will?’ In Freud’s structure, free will—the keystone of moral choices—is abolished. Man is a creature of will-less compulsion, driven by sexual gases, so to speak, rising from the psychic cesspool that Freud would substitute for the soul.”
Clarahan pulled out the deepest stop of his voice box. “Can such things be? In place of St. Thomas Aquinas’ testimony concerning the divine origin and nature of the soul, must we substitute the Freudian nightmare of libido and repression?”
Clarahan warmed to his peroration. “We shall be increasingly urged in the years ahead to teach these infamous doctrines to our students. At this moment, in a lay university not a thousand miles from here, professors are attempting to dissect the soul as though it were a mass of pathologic tissue. I urge you, as educators faced by the responsibility of training young Catholic men and women, to extirpate from Catholic schools and colleges the works of Sigmund Freud.”
Enthusiastic applause greeted this close. In the question period that followed, not a great deal of new material was brought out. Few of Clarahan’s hearers were equipped to make a critical analysis of his remarks. Stephen wished to inquire into the relationship between Aquinas’ “concupiscence” and Freud’s “libido,” but knew that Mulqueen would mark him as a heretic for even suggesting the comparison. It was a nameless priest who asked the most perceptive question of the evening.
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