The Cardinal

by Henry Morton Robinson

  “St. Philip’s is not the richest cathedral parish in the United States, Your Excellency,” he began, “but its revenues are steady and substantial. During the last fiscal year, parish collections amounted to one hundred and ten thousand dollars; special gifts and contributions added another thirty thousand. These are boom-time figures, you understand. Ordinarily, I think you may safely count on an income somewhere in the neighborhood of one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  One hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars! Since, by canon law, cathedral revenues accrue to the bishop, this sum would be at Stephen’s personal disposal. After deductions, of course. “How do expenses run?” he inquired.

  A flawless smoke ring haloed up from Amby Cannell’s pipe. “Heat, light, upkeep, and repairs on the Cathedral—twenty thousand dollars. Salaries to clergy, choir, and organist come to an equal amount. Ecclesiastic supplies, new vestments, and so on—oh, I should say, seventyfive hundred. Then there’s the episcopal household. Bishop Quakers, a frugal man, spent somewhere between ten and twelve thousand a year on servants, food, and other domestic expenses.”

  Sixty thousand dollars gone in a puff! “How about the parochial school?” asked Stephen.

  “Never less than thirty-five thousand dollars, Your Excellency.”

  “Is the seminary self-supporting?”

  “Last year there was a deficit of ten thousand dollars.”

  “And St. Andrew’s Hospital?”

  “Depends on contributions. Bishop Qualters was always digging down for it.” In the glowing bowl of Amby Cannell’s meerschaum, the Bishop’s fine income was being consumed to a still finer ash.

  “Why, we’ll be lucky to keep out of the red!” exclaimed Stephen.

  “It will require some management,” agreed Monsignor Cannell. Blandly, he went on to explain certain capital outlays long put off by Stephen’s predecessor. The entire Cathedral needed sandblasting; its roof and buttresses could stand a structural overhauling. The new outpatient clinic of St. Andrew’s Hospital was only half financed. Amby Cannell waved his amber pipestem at the shabby furnishings of the Bishop’s study. “Naturally you’ll want to make some alterations in your own house … Mrs. Goodwin concurring, of course.”

  Stephen smiled. “By stretching my canonical authority I may be able to get rid of the antimacassars.”

  Humorous resignation was in Amby Cannell’s sigh. “That’s more than Bishop Qualters was ever able to do.”

  Curiosity inflected Stephen’s voice. “I never knew him. What kind of man was he?”

  “In his prime, he ran a splendid shop here in Hartfield. He was a methodical man, an able organizer, scrupulous in his accounting, both fiscal and moral.” Monsignor Cannell stuffed a palmful of ribbon cut into his meerschaum. “Towards the last, it was the old story of prolonged illness. Ex pede Herculem,” he concluded cheerfully.

  Loyalty to his departed leader and present colleagues prevented Amby Cannell from saying more. Nor did Stephen press for details. He was content to let the facts, whatever they were, advertise themselves at the first meeting of the diocesan Curia.

  THE OUTSTANDING FACT about the Hartfield Curia—the board of ecclesiastics that acted as Stephen’s aides and advisers—was the extreme age of its members. Every man at the council table was several years older than the Bishop. Vicar-General Mark Drury, an imposing oak of a man at seventy, had become intellectually blanched by standing for twenty-five years in the nobler shade of Bishop Qualters. Like that earlier cleric, Dean Swift, the Vicar-General was beginning to go from the top. A noticeable tremor agitated his head and voice as he greeted his superior and took the seat at his right hand. At Stephen’s left sat Chancellor Gregory Shane, currant-dry after too many years on the vine. He had hoped to succeed the “old Bishop” at the latter’s demise; obliged to step aside while a younger man grasped the crozier, Gregory Shane suffered the all-too-human pangs of those who serve well, wait patiently, and watch the prize go to another. Ranging down the table were other members of the council: Joseph Drumgoole, a dun-colored cleric, head of the charitable bureau; Edward Rickaby, chief of rural deans; and Thomas Kenney, of the marriage tribunal.

  Never one to cut butter with a cleaver, Stephen knew well enough that butter did not cut itself. Assuming that everyone else knew it too, he moved without preliminaries into the business that had piled up since the last meeting. Decisions on many points had apparently been hanging fire for months. The docket of the marriage tribunal was badly clogged; the tempo of its hearings on annulments would have to be speeded up. Monsignor Drumgoole’s report on Catholic charities indicated a failure of grasp somewhere; expenditures were being made without proper investigation. He could not, for example, answer Stephen’s direct question: “Has the herd of Guernseys at St. Brendan’s Home for Boys proved to be a profitable venture?” Dean Kenney’s recommendation that Polish-speaking priests be obtained for the tobacco-growing parishes in the Hartfield River Valley was excellent, yet the Dean had no idea where such priests could be obtained.

  Stephen’s decisions in these matters were tactful and conservative. Hundreds of similar meetings under Glennon’s chairmanship, followed by four years in Rome and two in Washington, had given the new Bishop a tremendous background of judgment and experience in the handling of ecclesiastic affairs. For fifteen years he had studied under able masters; now, his apprenticeship over, his journeyman service behind, Stephen’s touch was steady, his voice sure, as he disposed of the council’s business. Feeling his strong hand, the diocesan consultants, familiar with the mysterious rule which decrees that some men must lead while others follow, were content, for the most part, to fall into line behind their young Bishop.

  The only clash occurred when Chancellor Shane finished reading his report on the financial position of the Hartfield see. The report itself was encouraging: there existed a working capital of four hundred and fifty thousand dollars—not a vast reserve when checked against annual expenditures. Half of this sum was in cash, and the remainder in Grade A common stocks. Both cash and securities were held, of course, in the Bishop’s name as a corporation sole.

  “Should we not,” the Chancellor was asking, “divert a larger portion of our cash into the purchase of common stocks?”

  Stephen fingered the typewritten sheets of Monsignor Shane’s financial report, which included a portfolio of the securities owned by the Diocese. He scanned the list: Aluminum Corporation, Carbon and Carbide, Pennsylvania Railroad, International Nickel, Standard Oil, United States Steel. Blue chips all. “What is the history of these investments, Monsignor Shane?” asked Stephen. “When were they purchased, on whose advice, and at what cost?”

  Chancellor Shane had the matter at his finger tips. “Bishop Qualters bought them in 1922, at the suggestion of his brokers, Demming, Condit, and Hughes. Steel was picked up at eighty-five, Aluminum at one hundred and fifty. In the past six years all the diocesan holdings have more than doubled in value. The best financial opinion is that they will go higher.” A litmus test of Monsignor Shane’s voice would have indicated the presence of acid. “Very much higher.”

  Stephen pondered his reply. “One hundred per cent would seem a reasonable profit. Suppose we sold now?”

  Drawstring muscles tightened the Chancellor’s lips. “Why sell, Your Excellency? These are boom times.”

  Boom times! The expression was tripping off everyone’s tongue. Yet beneath the rising tide of Wall Street prosperity, one felt an ugly undertow. Last year the Florida bubble had burst; rumors of overproduction and layoffs were gaining currency. Now and then, even the stock market would stumble ominously. Stephen remembered his ten-thousand-mile trip through the starveling South. No boom times in Dixie! He recalled a caustic remark made by his brother George: “If yachts were selling for ten dollars apiece, most people couldn’t afford to buy a cake of Lifebuoy Soap.” Totaling the sum of all these parts, Stephen was reminded of the trick question in arithmetic. “Add six apples to five pears, and what do
you get?” Answer: “Nothing.”

  “I don’t pretend to any special knowledge of the stock market,” said Stephen. “Doubtless these shares will go higher. Yet I’d feel safer if we held onto our cash, and converted these common stocks”—he tapped the portfolio with his finger—“into less hazardous securities.”

  The Bishop solicited opinions from his consultors. “Feel free to speak, gentlemen. Remember, it’s diocesan money that’s involved.”

  Father Drumgoole led off. “I see in the Times this morning that Steel went up four points. If we ride along with the market another six months, we might get enough to finish the outpatient department of St. Andrew’s.”

  Whether Vicar-General Drury’s head was nodding assent or merely shaking with age, Stephen couldn’t tell. Monsignor Drury said nothing. Tom Kenney volunteered, “A friend of mine in Wall Street tells me we haven’t seen anything yet.”

  Chancellor Shane took the candid role. “Why not consult with Harry Condit down at Demming, Condit, and Hughes? He’d give us the professional slant.”

  Briefly, Stephen considered the proposal. “We all know what that would be, Monsignor. ‘Load up.’ ‘Double your holdings.’ ‘Don’t sell America short.’ Maybe it’s smart professional advice.” The Bishop of Hartfield studiously kept the iron out of his voice. “But we’re not going to take it. Monsignor Shane, I want you to sell these stocks at the market opening tomorrow. Deposit the proceeds in the Hartfield Trust Company, and tell Hammond, their vice-president, that we want to put our money into the safest, solidest bonds he can buy for us.”

  No one at the table made an audible murmur of dissent. The Bishop had spoken. Gregory Shane did exactly as Stephen bade him, and for a whole year had the unbearable satisfaction of seeing United States Steel and Aluminum Corporation climb steadily into the blue. The Chancellor’s cup of satisfaction overflowed when Steel touched two hundred and fifty and Aluminum five hundred dollars a share. As a matter of fact, Monsignor Shane was—until a certain unforgettable day in October, 1929—as smug and difficult a clergyman as one could find in the entire Western world.

  AUTUMN’S SEPIA SCARF went down the wind; winter covered earth’s nakedness with an ermine stole. This was the season Stephen loved best; temperatures that made ice and snow were kindest to his blood, driving it in a full tide to heart and brain. In judgment and action he grew steadily surer; yet he made few actual changes in the diocesan picture, preferring to give his advisers and pastors the secure feeling that their tenure depended on ability and performance rather than on the Bishop’s whim. Human errors of judgment were overlooked. “It could happen to anyone” was Stephen’s favorite expression in letting a subordinate off the hook. The unspoken inference was “Don’t let it happen again.”

  Only when a man was clearly incompetent, as in the case of Father Frank Ronan, did the Bishop intervene.

  Frank Ronan, a middle-aged priest whose mercurial temperament quite outmatched his intellect, was the supervisor of St. Brendan’s Home for Boys. St. Brendan’s had started out as a run-of-the-mill orphanage, then, following a nice puff in a national magazine, had become for a time one of those “boy-town” schools that never fail to grasp the popular imagination. Father Ronan installed an honor system in the classroom; he let the boys police themselves while they hoed vegetables in the St. Brendan truck garden and turned out crude furniture in the model carpenter shop. During the early twenties, St. Brendan’s was a laboratory for social workers alert to the trend of the times; it received an enormous amount of publicity and a few medium-sized bequests. All of which became fatal wedges that opened up the flaw in Father Ronan’s character. He fell into the dangerous habit of spending a hundred dollars for every fifty he collected, and became so busy paying interest that he quite neglected his human charges.

  Finding himself mired in a financial bog, he attempted to jack himself onto solid ground by purchasing a herd of Guernsey cows. The idea, as presented to Bishop Qualters six months prior to his death, had two brilliant features: primo, every orphan and invalid in Catholic institutions throughout the Diocese would grow fat on Guernsey milk; secundo, the St. Brendan herd would be paid for by monies formerly handed over to commercial dairies. Quid pro quo and quod erat demonstrandum—except that the plan didn’t work. The cows had been in operation for almost a year, and the flow of butter fat was disappointingly meager.

  With the money he was getting and expected to get, Father Ronan had built a model dairy farm: silos, milking machines, cream separators, all very expensive. Then he brought his boys into contact with his cows. The carnage was ghastly. Being neither a farmer nor a disciplinarian, Frank Ronan didn’t know what to do. And while he scurried around for fresh funds, neither the cows nor the boys made any progress with each other.

  Inklings that all was not well at St. Brendan’s reached Stephen through various channels. Twice he referred the matter to Father Drumgoole, hoping that the director of charities would straighten things out. Then shortly after Christmas a paragraph appeared in “Pickles and Chowder,” a peppery column conducted by Jake Mabbott in the Hartfield Item. The paragraph ran:

  No one who values his job would dream of criticizing the conduct of affairs at a certain orphanage not a thousand miles from the state capital. Only kids and cows are involved, anyway. If worst comes to worst, the kids can always hit the road. But what can you do if you’re a cow?

  Stephen called in Father Drumgoole, showed him the “Pickles and Chowder” paragraph. “What’s behind this, Father?”

  The director of charities struck the newspaper with the back of his hand. “Just what you’d expect from a booze-fighting agnostic like Jake Mabbott. He hates the Church and everything it stands for.”

  “I’m not interested in Jake Mabbott’s personal habits or theologic background,” said Stephen. “He isn’t discussing faith and morals here. He’s talking about orphans and cows. Stop beating the devil around the bush, Father. What’s going on at St. Brendan’s?”

  The gist of Father Drumgoole’s answer was that Frank Ronan had been in squeezes before and had always worked himself out of them. It seemed that he had one of those sunshine-and-shower temperaments. Cloudy today, rosy tomorrow. If the Bishop would only have patience …

  “I’ve got the patience of Bruce’s spider,” said Stephen. “But I don’t want to see any more digs at us in ‘Pickles and Chowder.’”

  The next day Stephen had a phone call from Mayor Aloysius Noonan. “Sorry, Bishop,” said the Mayor apologetically, “but my health commissioner says he’ll have to tack a notice on Father Ronan’s barns. Things are that bad up there.”

  “Can you hold your commissioner off for twenty-four hours, Mr. Mayor, till I take a look for myself?” “Sure thing, Bishop.”

  Early next morning Stephen made an unannounced call at St. Brendan’s Home for Boys. He left his car at the gate and walked into an Augean mess. The dormitories were filthy; the kitchen worse. Little boys were underclothed, big boys were underfed. But the real shock came when Stephen entered the stables. Manure piles, bales of hay, bags of feed, and assorted dairy equipment were inextricably tangled. After much climbing and detouring, Stephen discovered Father Ronan surrounded by a group of shivering boys, trying to make an AC electric cream separator work on DC current—a miracle that would defy the full powers of a first-rate saint.

  Stephen beckoned to Frank Ronan. “I wish to speak to you privately, Father.”

  Through snowdrifts they trudged in silence to the office of St. Brendan’s, a curtainless clutter of broken furniture and disordered files. Stephen closed the door and faced the collarless, haggard priest. “You have exactly ten minutes to tell me what you’re trying to do here,” he said.

  In ten years Father Ronan couldn’t have told. His unshaven face sank between dirty-nailed hands. Sobs of shame and relief shook him; shame at his failure, relief that the ordeal was over at last.

  Sorry as Stephen felt for the man, he felt infinitely sorrier for the boys and the cows. H
is first act was to relieve Father Ronan of all responsibility and send him to a rest home. Next he summoned the frightened lay brother in charge of St. Brendan’s kitchen and dormitory. “Clean up your departments in twenty-four hours,” he ordered. “I’ll be back this time tomorrow for an inspection.” A phone call to a commercial dairy brought in a cattle expert to supervise the feeding and care of the Guernseys. None of these temporary measures, however, solved the deeper problem of setting St. Brendan’s Home in order.

  Stephen took the problem back to his office and talked it over with Amby Cannell. The administrator stuffed a half ounce of shag into his meerschaum, and said:

  “I’ve never been in the milk business, but if I ever did go into it I’d call in the Xaverian Brothers to help me. They’re wonderful with boys and farm animals.”

  “Unfortunately, we haven’t any Xaverian Brothers in this Diocese.”

  “Your friend Bishop Speed might send down a flying detachment from Maine,” suggested Monsignor Cannell.

  “Amby, you think of everything. Get Mike Speed on the phone, will you, please?”

  Forty-eight hours later a squad of Xaverians were in full charge of St. Brendan’s. Within two weeks the Guernseys were streaming with milk. The little boys were clothed, the big boys were fed, and Catholic institutions throughout the Diocese of Hartfield began receiving regular shipments of milk, butter, and cream.

  The stirabout at St. Brendan’s had several consequences: Father Joe Drumgoole lost his job as director of charities and was quietly transferred to the small parish of Denham; Amby Cannell received a pound canister of Parson’s Pleasure from his Bishop and took over Vicar-General Drury’s office when the latter succumbed to a stroke. As for Father Frank Ronan, he wandered out of the rest home and was last seen hitchhiking along the Boston Post Road toward New York.

  Despite all of Stephen’s efforts to find him, no trace of Frank Ronan ever turned up. He became one of the ten thousand souls who each year slip their moorings and drift by rudderless courses into the port of missing men.