The Cardinal

by Henry Morton Robinson

  “Could Kreisler make music on a packing case?” he would moan. “Lieber Gott… sooner or later, the boy must have a real violin.”

  CHAPTER 3

  TO STEPHEN the passing years brought a predominance of good. His Archdiocese flourished, his plans marched, his friends prospered. Judiciously, he brought forward younger men to assume key posts in chancery and parish; by 1935 his principal aides were—with the exception of Ambrose Cannell—all under forty. Owen Starkey no longer trembled at the scowl of clerical top sergeants. When he said to a grumbling pastor, “That’s the way His Grace wants it”—that’s the way it was. Gregor Potocki’s farm program attracted more Poles from urban to rural parishes; his thriving tobacco co-operatives proved that spiritual as well as material fruits can be grown when the seed falls on good ground.

  Ambrose Cannell, now an auxiliary bishop, was developing into the combination of executive and field officer that every ecclesiastical general prays for. He took responsibility without usurping power. Plain chanting and liturgical responses from the congregation—dreams that had slipped through Milky Lyons’ feeble fingers—became realities under Bishop Cannell’s vigorous hand. Putting his architectural ideas to work, Amby planned and supervised the building of three modern churches, clean-lined adaptations of the Gothic. In the magazine Liturgy he expounded the startling theory that an altar, being the stage on which the drama of Calvary is re-enacted, should be clearly visible from any seat in God’s house.

  “Keep the interior of the church uncluttered,” urged Bishop Cannell. “Let the altar stand forth like a jewel in the simplest of settings.” In certain quarters these ideas met traditional resistance—a matter of small concern to Amby, who knew that his chief was solidly behind him.

  With money flowing in from all parts of the Archdiocese (the new bookkeeping system was in full swing now), Stephen was able to apportion funds where they were most needed. To Misericordia House he allotted ten thousand dollars annually; no longer were the Geraldine nuns obliged to beg with basins at factory gates. Though Sister Martha Annunziata’s refuge was treated to major repairs, it still remained a drafty, underequipped barracks. A real hospital where incurables could receive medical and spiritual comfort in their last agonies would cost upwards of three hundred thousand dollars. To find such a sum became one of the Archbishop’s long-range goals.

  In the depression-charred cities of Hartfield’s industrial plain, Stephen continued to maintain diocesan machine shops. Hundreds of young artisans were trained in the key skills of casting, die-cutting, and toolmaking—trades that underlie the whole structure of America’s industrial system. As the assembly line of economic production began to whir again, graduates of these crafts schools found jobs as foremen and skilled machinists in the metalworking factories north of Hartfield.

  Late in 1935, Stephen allayed the printer’s itch that had long troubled him, by publishing the first edition of The Hartfield Angelus. On Amby Cannell’s advice, he had rejected several opportunities to buy a press; it was easier and cheaper, the Archbishop discovered, to have the actual printing done by someone else. Carefully he assembled a small staff—mostly laymen—then put the whole operation in charge of Father Terence Malley, a young priest with a flair for journalism. Stephen’s instructions to Father Malley were simple:

  “Bear in mind, Father, we’re not competing with the Associated Press or the New York tabloids. Coverage of world events is impossible. Just give Roman Catholics in Hartfield some idea of what’s going on in the Archdiocese and their own parish. Play up legislation or any other news that affects the Church. Consult me if you’re in doubt about the official angle.”

  Father Malley followed his Archbishop’s instructions to the letter; the paper filled a need, caught on. At the end of a year, with the Angelus going into twenty thousand Catholic homes, Terence Malley could report: “If we can pick up another five thousand readers—and sell a few more ads—we’ll be self-supporting.”

  ACROSS the bright sky of Stephen’s personal life occasional dark clouds began to run. He was reaching that age when the older men who had played decisive roles in his life were beginning to fail or pass away. Dollar Bill Monaghan had died, leaving an empty chair in the council of elders who had tutored Stephen’s youth. Lawrence Glennon was ailing, too; his climbing blood pressure brought cruel headaches, dizziness, and occasional blackouts. When on the Cardinal’s seventy-seventh birthday, Stephen inquired: “How does Your Eminence feel?” Glennon replied with the grim mot: “As well as I ever did—for about ten minutes a day.”

  Inoperable cataracts were forming on Corny Deegan’s eyes. Doomed to blindness, and no longer able to play his favorite role of deus ex machina, the contractor-Knight sat miserably idle in his magnificent home on the banks of the upper Charles. During one of Stephen’s visits, Corny attempted—not too successfully—to accept his fate with Christian resignation.

  “They tell me, Steve,” he said, “that a man marooned on an iceberg dreams mostly of tropic seas. Well, as the shadows drift in on me, I find myself remembering the wonderful eye power I used to have. Would you believe that when I was a hod carrier, I could tell how much a brick weighed just by looking at it?”

  The bitter present engulfed him. “Today I couldn’t tell the difference between a brick and a gray goose’s wing, unless”—he blinked a rheumy eye at his visitor—”unless it fell on me.”

  “The only thing that’s going to fall on you, Corny, is God’s peace—gentler than any goose feather. Lie back in the gloaming of a good life, and let it waft down on you.”

  Corny’s gloom did not lighten. “Before I can feel that gentle waftery, Steve, there’s spadework to be done on a buried corpse—my conscience.” The Knight of St. Sylvester took off on one of his notorious circlings around O’Houlihan’s barn. “You mightn’t suspect it, Steve, but a contractor is open to fearful temptations. Many’s the time I’ve cut a corner here or there, shaved a specification while the architect wasn’t looking, dumped a shovelful of sand where cement ought to go, or passed off a ton or two of shale for honest traprock.” Dolor and shame mingled in the Knight’s confession. “Things like that come back to plague me now.”

  Without condoning the practice of short measure, Stephen tried to comfort his old friend. “Stop worrying about it, Corny. None of your buildings ever caved in, did they?”

  “Oh, it was never that bad, Steve. ’Tis only that now and then—I—I skimped a bit, and the memory of it presses sore on my heart.”

  The priest in Stephen came forward. “What would you like to do about it? Restitution is always good for the soul.”

  “That’s what I knew you’d say, Steve. But since I never kept books on my skimpings—I wouldn’t know exactly where to send the cement, the crushed stone, or the money.” Corny lifted his dimming eyes hopefully. “I was thinking, Your Grace, that perhaps I might heap up all the skimped material into a noble building somewhere. My mind turns to a hospital or an institution for the aged and decrepit. Would you be knowing where such a building is needed?”

  “I might, Corny.” Visions of a new Misericordia House flashed upon the Archbishop’s inner eye. The better to ease his friend’s conscience, Stephen drew a desolate word picture of the Geraldine retreat for incurables, then touched up the facts with a brush of rhetoric. “The place is little more than a stable, Corny. You should hear the wind rattling the loose clapboards! A heavy fall of snow would snap the roof tree entirely.”

  The wind and snow did it. At a stroke, Corny could clear his conscience and assume his loved role of fixer. Off the penitential mat he bounced, swinging both arms.

  “Send your architect to his drafting board at once, Stephen. Let him specify nothing but the best. Granite foundations, steel and firebrick construction throughout. Copper roof, marble trim—nothing’s too good for those poor souls passing away in agony. I’ll talk to my lawyer about conveyances this very afternoon.”

  Corny Deegan never saw the handsome new Misericordia House
that he gave to the Archdiocese of Hartfield, but he was very much present when the cornerstone of Vermont granite settled into place. His hodlike hand passed over the quartz-speckled rock, felt the huge I-beams standing in place, and fingered the cement pouring out of the giant mixers.

  “No skimping here, Stephen,” he murmured. A gray goose feather settling over a field at twilight could not have fallen more peacefully than the syllables of Corny Deegan’s atonement.

  DIN FERMOYLE was failing. He carried a cane now, a blackthorn that gave him the look of an ambulatory tripod whenever he walked abroad. Mornings were spent in “getting his strength up”; then, after Celia had fixed him a bite of lunch, the retired motorman would hobble down to the carbarns for a pipe and a chat with Bartholomew (“Batty”) Glynn, likewise retired. On sunny days the pair sat on a bench outside the octagonal dispatcher’s box that had once been Batty’s domain. Too old for dispatching, Glynn was just coming of age as a Biblical commentator. What a knack he had for expounding the sublime truths of Ecclesiastes and Isaiah—one ear cocked to the Red Sox games on his portable radio!

  “Hark, Din, to the majesty of this,” Batty would say, tracing the verse with a heavy fingernail. “‘I have seen all things under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit.’ Was ever such wisdom uttered by man?” In the midst of Batty’s exegesis, the Yankees would score a run. “Vexation, is it? What would them Old Testament buggers know about it? … If Tris Speaker were in center field now, his throw-in would have nipped that runner at the plate.”

  When the game ended, or the flow of Batty’s wisdom grew thin, Din would start for home. The gradient of Woodlawn Avenue steepened every day. At the first hydrant, Din would pause for a lungful of breath; his next stop was Pat Creedon’s gatepost, where Pat’s children (or were they his grandchildren?) were playing hopscotch. Leaning heavily on his blackthorn, Din would take eighteen or twenty steps more; then halfway up the steep ascent he would turn to gaze backward at the vale of all his yesterdays. The crest of the hill was gained by a dogged foot-by-foot climb till he reached Number 47—still boxy, brown, and graceless, but mortgage-free now, thanks to the generosity of his sons and daughters.

  On June 2, 1935, Din climbed the hill more slowly than usual, took a longer look at the vale behind him, and entered the back door of his home. He greeted his wife with a pleasant word or two, so as not to worry her, then went into the parlor and lay down on the sofa for a bit of rest.

  A few moments later he cried: “Ceil, Ceil,” in an odd gasping sort of voice. Five minutes later he was dead.

  Celia Fermoyle told her son Stephen the manner of his father’s passing.

  “He came home from the carbarns where he sometimes spent an hour or two puffing at his pipe and listening to Batty Glynn explain the whole world from the beginning. The gift of tongues was on Batty, this afternoon,’ said Din, coming in the kitchen door. ‘At one time there, just before Gehrig hit a homer with two on, Batty had the Book of Psalms in pieces all over the carbarn floor—but when the game ended, he put them together like one of your patchwork quilts, Ceil.’ ‘Did you stand up to him and give him an argument, Din?’ I asked. ‘I did not,’ said Din. ‘The language was pouring out of the man, so I let it pour.’

  “Well, with that, Son dear, your father went into the parlor to take off his shoes and lie down while I went on getting supper. Beans, brown bread, and tea we were having, just the two of us. I was taking the bean pot out of the oven when I heard him call, ‘Ceil, Ceil,’ in a stranglish voice. I ran in, and there he was lying on the sofa, struggling for breath, his hand at the buttons of his balbriggan undershirt, and a glazy look in his eyes. ‘What is it, Din? I’ll call Dr. Hardigan.’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘by the time the doctor gets here, it’ll be too late. Kneel by my side, Dubhe.’”

  Celia buried her face in Stephen’s arm. “That was the name he used to call me when first we met, Son—the name of a wondrous star it is. …”

  Stephen knew the star. Below Polaris it burned in high magnitude, a sign to navigators, pointer nearest the Pole. Had this gray, withered woman in his arms once been the particular bright star in love’s firmament?

  “‘Kneel by me, Dubhe,’ said Din, ‘and put your cheek on mine. ‘Twill make it easier, and harder, darling, to break the promise I made you.’ So I knelt by him, Son, knowing the promise he meant—the only one he ever broke in all our married life. Then ‘Cumhyll,’ I cried, ‘O my proud-walking one, let me go first, as you always promised. …”

  Celia dried her eyes. “But he went without me, saying a very strange thing.”

  “What did he say, Mother?”

  “I didn’t catch the exact words. Something about a ‘watch in the night.’ Do you know what he meant, Son?”

  “Yes. It’s a verse from the Eighty-ninth Psalm, and it goes: ‘A thousand years in Thy sight are as yesterday, which is past. And as a watch in the night.’”

  God grant I may die, thought Stephen, with such grandeur on my lips.

  Assisted by Paul Ireton, Stephen said the funeral Mass for his father. The Most Reverend Richard Clarahan, Auxiliary Bishop of Boston, delivered the eulogy. In a moving tribute to the deceased, Bishop Clarahan pictured Dennis Fermoyle as the perfect pattern of the Catholic husband and father. The imprint of his character and the power of his righteousness were to be found, said the Bishop, in the lives of his children. It was an excellent oration. But above and beyond the rounded periods of eulogy, Stephen heard a man and a woman whispering before he was.

  “Dubhe, guide star, glisten for me always.”

  “Life-leaper, Cumhyll, leave me never.”

  … As yesterday which is past. And as a watch in the night.

  ARCHBISHOP FERMOYLE’S Thursday dinners were becoming famous. Intimate and exclusively masculine, His Grace’s table was considered something to get your legs under. Lawyers, artists, and authors would come, and physicians, judges, publishers, politicos, and financiers—to exclaim at the pheasant chasseur or flash a knowing eye at a cobwebbed vintage. “It’s the kind of a dinner,” Senator Bates Furnald explained to his wife, “that you don’t feel heavy after.” Alec Surtees, British lecturer-novelist, could write chattily in his journal: “Dined with Archbishop Fermoyle tonight. The man has a positive flair for serving wines. With the duckling he introduced us to a full-bosomed Nuits-Saint-Georges, quite trim about the ankles. A really superb Oporto followed the sweet. Damned good talk during and afterwards. He makes one give off, without chattering like a fool.”

  At the head of his own table, primus inter pares, Stephen entered upon one of the chief joys of life: stag company. He was fleshing up slightly, but the additional weight served to insulate his nervous system against the jarring assaults of public office and private pain. A broad interpretation of his function as a Catholic prelate enabled Stephen to accept the friendship of the men who ruled society, created its opinions, and took its praise or blame with Jovian unconcern. His ear was sought, his favor solicited, his judgment valued in matters extending far beyond the administration of his Diocese. Seven years in Hartfield had, in fact, given the Archbishop a function not unlike that of the municipal water supply—something that everyone unconsciously depends upon for purity and volume at a constant rate of pressure.

  On a particular Thursday evening in October, 1935, Judge Seth Feakins, an ornament of the Hartfield bench, sipped some of Stephen’s V.S.O. brandy and flicked an anecdotal ash from his cigar. “Odd case in court today,” he said to the dinner company. “It’s a prosecution for attempting to defraud the Columbia Indemnity Company. Defendant is an obscure violinmaker. ‘Luthier,’ he calls himself. Appears that the luthier insured an instrument for twenty-five thousand dollars. Claimed it was an Italian masterpiece. Insurance experts appraised the instrument, the premium was paid, and the policy duly issued.”

  Judge Feakins inhaled his brandy. “Barely a week later, an accident befalls.”

  “The fish leapt right out of the milk bottle, eh, Judge?�
� Harmon I. Poole, President of the Hartfield Trust Company, had a keen nose for rogues like this luthier chap.

  “Nothing so transparent, H. I.,” said Judge Feakins. “The defendant wasn’t directly involved in the accident. Seems he loaned the instrument to Mossel Pola, the concert violinist, in the hope that Pola would buy it. Pola was actually carrying the instrument to a concert, when a cab knocked him down. He suffered only minor injuries, but the violin was smashed to splinters.”

  Judge Feakins continued: “I use the word ‘splinters’ literally, gentle-men. The State’s case turns on an analysis of the shattered wood that once was a violin. Under the microscope it appears that the maple back of the violin isn’t Italian at all—but a piece of American curly maple about twenty years old.”

  “What does the luthier say?” asked Stephen.

  “His defense is interesting. He admits that the back of the violin is a piece of American maple. Says he carved it himself and glued it onto the original frame.”

  “He must be a man of unusual skill.”

  “Undoubtedly, Your Grace. But that’s not the point at issue. The question before the jury is: Can a three-hundred-year-old violin with an American back honestly be called an Italian masterpiece?”

  “Of course it can’t,” grunted H. I. Poole. “The man’s a trickster.”

  Stephen focused morals and law into a single beam. “To commit a mortal sin, intent must be present. Theologically, such intent is shown by ‘sufficient reflection and full consent of the will.’ The question I’d like to ask is: ‘Did the man intend to deceive?’”

  “An excellent point, Your Grace. Counsel for the defense admits that his client did not tell the insurance company about the full extent of his repairs. On the other hand, perhaps the insurance appraisers should have been more alert. Again, that’s a question for the jury.”