The Cardinal

by Henry Morton Robinson

  The happiest event of the day took place when Stephen presented his father to Cardinal Glennon. Proudly he led Din to the armchair that Glennon had transformed into a throne by the simple act of sitting in it. Din, the earthly father, and Glennon, the spiritual sponsor, both aware of their equity in the young Bishop of Hartfield, shook hands as equals. Tutored by natural dignity, Din bowed over the Cardinal’s sapphire; Glennon, moved by the knowledge that in one respect at least this grizzled motorman was his better, drew Din close, locked him for a moment with a half embrace, and said:

  “This must be a proud day for you, Mr. Fermoyle.”

  “It is, Your Eminence.”

  Glennon’s imperious hazel eye scrutinized Din’s massive head. “Stephen once said I reminded him of you. Can you see the resemblance?”

  Visible evidence told Dennis Fermoyle that the resemblance was not physical. He had all his hair, the Cardinal was bald as an egg. Din’s midriff and hands were hardened with toil: Glennon was paunchy, soft. A life of command had given the Cardinal a viceregal carriage; drudgery had bowed Din’s head and shoulders. Could a likeness exist between these two men? Dennis saw that it could. Lacking courtier skill, he uttered the simple truth:

  “I think I know what Stephen meant, Your Eminence. I taught my son to prize fearlessness. If he finds a resemblance between us, it is because he sees my teaching magnified in you.”

  Din’s compliment fairly took the wind out of Glennon’s purple sails. “You Fermoyles,” he murmured, then recovered himself sufficiently to add: “The most striking resemblance that I note in this room, Mr. Fermoyle, is the notable likeness between you and your son.”

  The blue vein in Glennon’s domed forehead was throbbing violently—the outward sign (Stephen knew) of a splitting headache brought on by strain and excitement. “Would Your Eminence like to lie down a bit?” he asked tenderly.

  “And miss the jollification? No, Steve boy, no. I can have a headache any day—but how often can I enjoy a family party like this? So much prayer and ceremony today! Let us be people for a little while.”

  Pressing around their Bishop-brother were the Fermoyles: Bernie, resplendent in morning jacket, ascot, and suede spats—no longer the touch artist, but a rising radio star, billed nationally as “the Irish Thrush”; George, the political lawyer, and adviser to Alfred E. Smith, correct in the not-to-be-imitated New York manner of selecting and wearing clothes. Here was shy Ellen, unwimpled descendant of St. Theresa, the frail candle of her body still flaming with secret devotions and tireless labor in the sacristy. In all thy orisons remember me, Ellen. Childless Florrie, trying to yield a little under her heavy corset as Stephen embraced her. Next, Rita and Dr. John Byrne, weaving an oak-and-ivy pattern of Catholic marriage, their four children budding around them. And gazing up at Stephen, the dark-curled fosterling, Mona’s child, that the Byrnes had adopted as their own.

  “Regina, this is Uncle Stephen,” said Rita.

  Nothing bashful about Regina. “Hello, Uncle Stephen,” she said, making a little curtsy. Delicate face turned upward, she accepted his kiss with a matter-of-fact comment: “You smell like a church.”

  General merriment. “Out of the mouths of babes,” remarked Glennon.

  In the doorway Mrs. Goodwin was announcing luncheon, served buffet style in the dining room. Diligent thumbing through the pages of her Marion Harland Cook Book had led the housekeeper to choose scalloped oysters, stewed tomatoes, Parker House rolls, Washington pie, pistachio ice cream, and coffee as the opening salvo in her campaign to “stay on” with the new bishop. She had brought out the Spode china, Gorham silverware, and double damask napkins, all of which created a proper sense of awe in Celia Fermoyle. In a private conversation with Mrs. Goodwin, Celia ticked off her son’s favorite dishes: creamed codfish on Fridays, beef and kidney pie, hot gingerbread, well buttered, and clam chowder without tomatoes. “Before he goes to bed,” continued Celia, “he sometimes likes a glass of milk with a slice or two of homemade bread and a small pitcher of molasses.” All of which Mrs. Goodwin noted for future reference.

  While an edifying clatter of forks went on in the dining room, Stephen foraged for laggards in the parlor. There he found Dollar Bill Monaghan, failing somewhat in eyesight but otherwise in good repair, discussing the high costs of construction with Cornelius Deegan. Mike Speed and Paul Ireton, seminarians together at Brighton, were catching up on the lost years. Stephen shunted them toward the table. Hanging back, too, was Father Jeremy Splaine, a chestnut-haired young curate with electric blue eyes and the chrism of ordination still wet on his forehead. “Jemmy, you remind me of the Italian peninsula,” said Stephen. “You’re too long for your width. Into the dining room with you.”

  From her discreet station in the butler’s pantry, Mrs. Goodwin watched the provisions vanish like so many rabbits at a magicians’ convention, while waves of merriment creamed up the walls of the dining room. She decided that the stoutish man in the morning coat and ascot tie must be quite an entertainer, else why should tears of laughter be streaming down the Cardinal’s face at some story or other about a piccolo player?

  BACK in the parlor, Bernie Fermoyle was gradually taking over the party. Good food, and the even headier stimulant of Glennon’s laughter, had brought out Bernie’s biologic compulsion to sing and play. Sooner or later he would sit down at the piano and cast his warbling spell over an audience quite ready to be entertained. His opportunity came sooner than he had expected. Sipping coffee, crony fashion, with the Cardinal and Stephen in a curtained bow window, Bernie fingered the silver knots on the beige overdrapes.

  “Such grandeur, Steve,” he said. “Quite a bit different from ‘Shanahan’s Ould Shebeen.’”

  Lawrence Glennon pricked up his ears. “ ‘Shanahan’s Ould Shebeen’? My father used to sing it. I didn’t know anyone remembered ‘Shanahan’ these days.”

  “Show His Eminence how good your memory is, Bernie,” suggested Stephen.

  Thus persuaded, Bernie strolled over to the Ivers and Pond, twirled the piano stool a couple of times, and sat down with the easy seat of the born performer. He vamped a few bars, then, laying back his head, sounded off with his own variant of the all-but-forgotten ditty describing the forlorn plight of one Cassidy, longing amid wealth, for the old carefree days in Shanahan’s Ould Shebeen:

  In me bran’-new brownstone mansion—lace curtains hangiri fine,

  The Cathedral round the corner and the Cardinal in to dine—

  Sure I ought to be stiff with grandeur, but me tastes are mighty mean,

  And I long for a mornin’s mornin’, at Shanahan’s Ould Shebeen.

  That’s why, as I sit on me cushins, wid divil a thing to do,

  In a mornin’ coat of velvet and a champagne lunch at two,

  The mem’ry comes like a banshee, meself and me wealth between,

  An’ I long for a mornin’s mornin’ in Shanahan’s Ould Shebeen.

  ’Tis fit I mix with the gentry—I’m a laborer now no more—

  But ohonel those were fine times, lad, to talk of them makes me sore,

  An’ often—there’s times, I tell you, when I’d swap this easy chair,

  An’ the velvit coat, an’ me footman wid his Sassenach nose in the air,

  An’ the Cardinal’s elegant learnin’ too—for a taste o’ the days that ha’ been,

  For a glass o’ a mornin’s mornin’ in Shanahan’s Ould Shebeen.

  Lawrence Glennon struck his plump hands together in hearty applause. “More, more,” everyone cried.

  “Any request numbers?” asked Bernie.

  Din spoke up. “Like a good boy, Bernie, give us ‘Drill, Ye Tarriers, Drill.’”

  “Sure thing, Dad.” Again Bernie was off in song—this time his own version of a railroad chantey sung by Irish immigrant laborers who had made straight the transcontinental way for America’s steel tracks.

  Oh, every morn at seven o’clock

  There are twenty tarriers on the rock.

&nb
sp; The Boss comes along and says: “MacGill,

  Put all your powder in the cast-steel drill.”

  (Voice of Boss: spoken) “Stand out there with the warnin’ flag, Sullivan. Look sharp, O’Toole. Blast! Fire! All over.”

  Then drill, ye tarriers, drill;

  Drill, ye tarriers, drill.

  Oh, it’s work all day with no sugar in your tay

  When ye work bey ant on the railway.

  So drill, ye tarriers, drill.

  Blast away that hill,

  Crack those ledges with your I-rish sledges.

  Drill, drill, drill.

  (Voice of Boss: spoken) “Stand out forninst the fence

  with the flag, McCarthy. Where’s the fuse, McGinty?

  What? You lit your pipe with it? Stop the handcar

  coming down. Stand back! Blast! Fire! All over.”

  Just as the terrible blast went off,

  A mile in the air went big Jim Goff;

  When payday next it came around

  Jim’s pay a dollar short he found.

  “What for?” said he. Came the boss’s reply:

  “You were docked for the time you were up in the sky.”

  Operating on the vaudeville formula, “Always leave them laughing,” Bernie retired. Stephen hoped the Cardinal would volunteer to play, but His Eminence made no movement toward the instrument. Instead he gazed paternally at the little girls clustered around Rita Byrne. “Will any of you young ladies favor us with a selection?” he asked. While Louise and Elizabeth Byrne snuggled blushingly into their mother, Regina piped up:

  “I’ll play.”

  “Good girl. What pieces do you know?” asked the Cardinal.

  “Für Elise and Le Secret.”

  “Why, those are quite hard. Especially Le Secret.”

  “Not really. Sister Veronica says it’s only the sharps and flats that make it seem hard.” Regina twirled the piano stool till it teetered up to its last spiral groove, then climbed aboard and sailed through the chromatic narrows of Le Secret. It was a sprightly, though by no means prodigious, performance for a six-year-old child. After absorbing the last drop of applause, Regina followed with Für Elise. “It’s by Beethoven,” she explained, then proceeded to gather up the gently melodic phrases into her little basket of music. Her assurance and beauty fascinated Stephen. He was sorry when Regina, her repertory exhausted, started to climb off the stool.

  Obviously, Glennon was sorry, too. “Have you any other pieces?” he asked.

  “Sister Veronica says my Chopin won’t be ready till next week.”

  “Chopin?” Glennon pretended to rack his memory. Then hoisting himself out of his armchair, he walked to Regina’s side. “Does it go like this?” The Cardinal fingered the first four measures of the Prelude in A major.

  “Yes, yes!” Regina clapped her hands. “How did you know?”

  “Oh,” His Eminence was suitably vague, “Sister Veronica tells me things. Do you think you can play it now?”

  Regina began bravely enough, then bobbled hesitantly over a wrong note. Violet eyes sought the Cardinal’s help. “That doesn’t sound right,” she said.

  Glennon agreed. “How many sharps in the key of A major?”

  “Three. F, C, and G.”

  “Sharp your F and see what happens.”

  Regina sharped her F, smiled gratefully at His Eminence, and went on. Toward the end she broke down. “I don’t remember how it goes from here.” Arms around the little girl on the piano stool, his hands on the keyboard, Lawrence Glennon finished the prelude.

  Afterwards he sat down at the piano and improvised on a theme from Scarlatti.

  Almost a quarter of a century before, he had embroidered this very theme in the presence of a Pope long dead. Sadness wove a golden thread through the Cardinal’s music; meditatively his fingers explored the nostalgic shadows enshrouding departed days and friends. A triumphant note emerged as he recalled the power and the glory that had been his; honors of place and preferment—he had known them all. An unwonted melancholy returned to his music; he had missed something, too—something that Dennis Fermoyle had enjoyed in fullest measure. The rewards of family life, the pride of gazing at a powerful son, a taller, nobler projection of oneself! How did it feel to be surrounded by earthly immortality in the shape of beautiful children repeopling the world with others like themselves? The power to consecrate bishops lay in Glennon’s hands, but he could never fondle as his own a dark-haired little girl with violet eyes who could tell you fearlessly, and quite correctly, that the key of A major had three sharps.

  Glennon’s music took on a more buoyant voice as he glanced across the room at his spiritual son, who, hearing the sadness in the Cardinal’s playing, gazed back at him with unspoken sympathy. Glennon smiled, nodded: “It has passed. All is right again.” Breaking off his musical meditations, the Cardinal ended his little recital with a showy arrangement of Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance, a selection perfectly suited to the taste and understanding of his audience.

  Homage and affection saluted him as he left the piano. Both were comforting to His Eminence, but more comforting yet was the fact that his headache had entirely disappeared.

  CHAPTER 2

  SURVEYING his Diocese, Bishop Fermoyle was obliged to acknowledge that a substantial vineyard had been entrusted to his keeping.

  The see of Hartfield, southernmost diocese in New England, covers an area of fifty-five hundred square miles in one of the oldest and most prosperous sections of the United States. At the center of the Diocese lies the city of Hartfield, capital of the state, a traditional stronghold of mercantile and industrial wealth. The home offices of great insurance companies give an air of solid permanence to its business district; a huge railway terminal makes Hartfield a nexus between New England and the rest of the United States. North and east of the capital, populous manufacturing cities produce fine metal goods: locks, tools, clocks, watches, building hardware, firearms, and precision instruments. West of the Hartfield River lie rich agricultural counties whose chief crop is an excellent grade of shade-grown tobacco. In 1927—the year that Stephen took up his duties as Bishop—the population of the state was one million five hundred thousand; of this number approximately one third were Roman Catholics.

  Stephen’s spiritual authority over his people was virtually unbounded. Canon law made him an ecclesiastic king, answerable solely to the Pope and limited only by the common law of the Church. He had the power to judge, teach, interpret, censor, ordain, and confirm. But if his powers were large, his obligations were heavy. Upon him fell the responsibility of preserving in his Diocese the purity of Catholic doctrine and the vigor of Catholic faith. He must maintain constant vigilance over the conduct and training of the clergy, oversee the education of youth, and protect the sick and destitute within his jurisdiction. At regular intervals he must make a personal visit to every parish in his Diocese, audit the parish accounts, inspect the physical property of the Church, and ascertain the moral condition of pastors and people. The office of bishop has always demanded enormous physical strength, rare executive ability, vast prudence, superhuman tact, and (in a diocese the size of Hartfield) the ability to collect and administer large sums of money. Dangers surround a bishop’s throne. He must resist the temptation of letting financial and administrative activities become ends in themselves. To remind him of his chief function, he is obliged to celebrate every Sunday and feast day the missa pro grege—the shepherd’s Mass for the flock given to his keeping.

  And finally, like any other man, the bishop must somehow find time to cultivate and preserve his own soul.

  Stephen spent the first few days familiarizing himself with the organization of his Diocese. Chancery maps and records told him that he had jurisdiction over some two hundred pastors, four hundred curates, fortyseven parochial schools, six hospitals, three orphanages, eleven convents, and a seminary. To acquaint himself all at once with these various institutions and their personnel was impossible. St
ephen turned for further information to the quick intelligence of Monsignor Ambrose Cannell, administrator of St. Philip’s Cathedral.

  Culturally, Ambrose Cannell was a type new to Stephen. Britishborn, and a convert from Anglicanism, Monsignor Cannell had inherited from his Dorsetshire forebears the country-squire ruddiness that one associates with tweeds and fox hunting. In addition to one of the best classical degrees that Oxford could confer, Ambrose Cannell possessed a marked interest in liturgy, church music, and architecture, as well as a most practical sense of how far the silk threads in a goldback could be stretched without breaking. Besides being the perfect administrator of a large Cathedral, Amby performed the still more difficult feat of remaining quite British and making his Celtic-American colleagues rather like it.

  Stephen’s first interview with Monsignor Cannell (it was really an informal conversation) took place in the Bishop’s study on the second floor of the episcopal residence. Stephen was poring over a diocesan map when the administrator’s fresh-colored countenance emerged through a cumulus cloud of pipe smoke, which in turn rose from the handsomest meerschaum Stephen had ever seen. The sherry-colored bowl of Amby Cannell’s pipe was a counterpart of the man himself—nutty-flavored, aromatic, humorous, and reliable.

  Stephen sniffed appreciatively at the smoke nimbus surrounding his colleague. “What’s the name of that Elysian blend you’re burning?”

  Ambrose Cannell removed the curved amber bit from his mouth. “You may think I’m overplaying the part,” he said, “but it’s a mixture of Three Nuns and Parson’s Pleasure.”

  “You give it a Trollope flavor,” said Stephen. Ambrose Cannell, who had heard all too few literary allusions since leaving Oxford, appreciated the donnish touch. Between great billows from his meerschaum, the administrator piled a hayrick of facts and figures onto the Bishop’s desk.