The Cardinal

by Henry Morton Robinson

  “In that case,” said II Duce grimly, “you will be in no position to object when my agents catch up with this elusive traitor.”

  WHILE the crescendo of European events rose in a brutal scream, the city of Hartfield prepared to celebrate the tercentennial anniversary of its founding.

  Civic pride (and there was a great deal to be proud of) mounted steadily during the spring of 1938 and reached its peak on the Fourth of July. The great day went off in traditional American style; there was a parade in the morning, a baseball game in the afternoon. Home-town fans were delighted when the Hartfield Tomahawks scalped the Fair-haven Pioneers in a free-hitting 14-9 contest. Cokes and hot dogs, supplied gratis by the Chamber of Commerce, were enjoyed by all. Then along toward eight-thirty P.M., four thousand citizens crowded into the auditorium of Symphony Hall for a mammoth rally.

  The meeting opened with community singing of the national anthem. Immediately thereafter, Mayor Quincy P. Jenkins undertook the oratorical task of reviewing Hartfield’s growth from a frontier stockade to its present commanding position among the industrial cities of America. Other speakers roared like Kiwanis-Rotarian lions. “Hartfield’s municipal credit is A-Number One … our streets are broader … our water supply larger … our public buildings handsomer.” Thus spake the civic oracles in periods most pleasing to the Hartfield ear.

  Seated on the speaker’s platform, Archbishop Fermoyle thought that the tone of the meeting was too aggressively secular. He wanted to remind his audience that Hartfield might profitably model itself a bit more closely on Augustine’s City of God than on Chamber of Commerce press releases. He had hoped to take his text from the Psalm beginning: “Unless the Lord keepeth the city, he watches in vain that keepeth it.” But since the Right Reverend Tyleston Forsythe and Rabbi Joshua Felshin had trimmed their sails to the nonsectarian breeze, Stephen felt obliged to do likewise. Because honor among clergymen frowns on proselytizing at a public gathering, the nub of Stephen’s problem, as he sat waiting his turn to speak, was this: “How can I lift the spiritual tone of this meeting without mentioning Roman Catholicism?”

  A solution presented itself when a platoon of grade-school children saluted Old Glory. “We pledge allegiance to our flag,” they piped, “and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

  The words struck associative nonsectarian sparks in Stephen’s mind. Republic … Plato. Plato? … justice. Justice for all!

  Ideas older than Hartfield, more durable than public buildings of granite, more important even than municipal credit. Justice! A covenant made between God and man, a virtue passionately discussed by the Athenians, a blessing persistently sought by nations and individuals. While Mayor Quincy P. Jenkins introduced him, Stephen decided that a few remarks on the subject of justice would be very much in order.

  “Dear Friends and Fellow Citizens,” he began. “Others have spoken this evening of Hartfield’s glorious history and material achievements. The record is excellent, the story inspiring. But both would be meaningless were they not founded upon the immortal ideal of justice, celebrated by our school children in their salute to the flag. May I therefore, as an American citizen, speak tonight in praise of that ideal?”

  By the mechanics of a brief silence Stephen set the scene for his discourse. “Twenty-three hundred years ago, a little group of Athenians were engaged in a discussion of justice—the crowning virtue of the citizen and the supreme guide of the State. We know precisely how that discussion ran, because Plato—a member of the group—made a transcript of the conversation. It has come down to us as The Republic, one of the most influential treatises on politics and morality ever written by man.

  “Socrates, the antique forerunner of Christ, is guiding his disciples along an ascending path of argument. This man, whose physical ugliness is only less arresting than the beauty of his thoughts, turns to one of his young companions and says:

  “‘Glaucon, we have been speaking earnestly about justice for some time, yet I must confess I do not know the nature of this virtue. Can you tell me, Glaucon, either in your own words or in the language of any poet, what is justice?’

  “Glaucon tries bravely, but cannot tell Socrates what justice is. Thrasymachus, the bully and sophist, swaggers into the argument to define justice as ‘the interest of the stronger.’ But Socrates rebuts this argument by showing that although the physician is stronger than the sick man, it is in the patient’s interest that the doctor practices his healing art.

  “Driven by Socrates, the talk climbs steadily upward, until at length justice is defined as being—both in the State and the individual—the harmonious balance between all the other virtues. Curiously enough, the Republic that Socrates describes is, in its system of harmonious balances, not unlike our own ideal of government. …”

  There was a commotion in the auditorium. A man rose to his feet and shouted bitterly:

  “That’s a lot of eyewash, and you know it.”

  Members of the audience cried: “Shame … hire a hall … throw him out.”

  To quell the disturbance Stephen held up his hand. He had never been heckled before; the experience was unpleasant, but it must be met. “Let our friend speak. I’m sure we all want to hear what he has to say.”

  “Maybe you will, maybe you won’t,” said the heckler, his tone and manner revealing the professional haranguer of crowds. He addressed the audience as though warning them of a plague. “Can’t you see through this Catholic hocus-pocus?” he asked. “Wise up to Reverend Mr. Applesauce. All he’s saying is: ‘See how liberal the Catholic Church can be—get a load of what wonderful Americans we are. Allegiance to the flag? Sure. America the beautiful, Dominus vobiscum’ It’s the Rome line, and our speaker has got it down pat.”

  Boos from the audience failed to muffle the heckler, who now addressed Stephen directly. “Mr. High Priest of the status quo, I’d like to ask you a simple question.”

  The eternal Thrasymachus. “Ask,” said Stephen.

  “O.K. Can you give one specific example of how, when, or where the Catholic Church ever contributed to the idea of justice?”

  The man, whoever he was, deserved an answer—the best that faith and logic could provide. To phrase such an answer, Stephen took his stand on the highest possible ground.

  “This meeting began as a civic gathering,” he said. “I had intended—we had all intended—to keep it so. But the query from the floor illustrates the impossibility of separating eternal values from human affairs. I say then, in reply to the question, that the Catholic Church makes its chief contribution to human justice by reminding men that God, and God alone, is its source and perfect expression. I go further. I say that our American courts, our laws, our democratic way of life, are manifestations of that justice. And I am happy to add”—the Archbishop bowed gravely to the Reverend Dr. Forsythe and Rabbi Felshin—“that my Church claims no monopoly of this teaching.”

  With outstretched evangel arms Stephen turned again to the audience. “Nowhere have we yet seen God’s justice perfectly revealed in this world, nor are we ever likely to see it with our mortal eyes. But I profoundly believe that the system under which we live comes nearer to realizing justice than any state of which I have ever heard. We are permitted, in America, to approach the ideal expressed by Socrates: ‘To grow as much like God as man is permitted to.’”

  Part proselytizer, all priest, Stephen unloosed the eloquence within him. “It is toward this ideal that American life is irresistibly drawn. As in the oak germ there dwells, potentially patterned, the storm-loving and leafy citadel that is to be, so in man there resides a similar imperative to approach as nearly as possible the stature and form of divinity. The whole duty of society is to permit men to attain this form and stature. It must aid them not only to satisfy their material needs, but to actualize their spiritual possibilities as well.”

  Prophecy and realism mingled in the Archbishop’s voice. “At present, in many souls and
in many states, the battle goes against the forces of good. Some say the conflict will be fatal, but I have no such fear. Gazing at our country, I am not cast down. Our people are the throbbing proof that the Adversary makes but little headway in our midst. Thus far we have achieved much that an older world of hate and cruelty thought impossible. What future impossibilities need be feared? If we have come thus far by reason of the divinity within us, may we not, impelled by the same force, struggle yet higher toward the Face of Light?”

  Forgetting that the audience was not his congregation, Stephen lifted his hand to bless them.

  “Procedamus in pace et justitia,” he said, and from the auditorium there arose an affirmative roar, each voice crying in its own accent, “Amen.”

  IN AUGUST of that year, Dr. John Byrne made a routine checkup of Stephen’s physical condition. With stethoscope, blood-pressure machine, and a tiny instrument that threw a gimlet beam of light into his patient’s eyes, the physician went over his brother-in-law. At the end of the examination he asked: “How do you feel generally, Steve?”

  “Not exactly teeming with vigor. My appetite’s off, and I can’t get to sleep at night.” Stephen glanced questioningly at Dr. Byrne. “Find anything wrong with me?”

  “No, no. Your blood pressure’s a trifle high, but within normal limits for a man pushing fifty.”

  Pushing fifty! (Almost Monaghan’s age, thought Stephen, when I first knew him.) Getting on, getting on.

  With thumb and forefinger, Dr. John took a clinical pinch at Stephen’s bare arm. “Your muscle tone isn’t quite what it should be, and you’re as pale as a flounder’s belly. You’ve been working too hard, Steve. You need a layoff—a couple of weeks outdoors. Let the sun get a whack at your skin. Treat those lungs of yours to a whiff of fresh air.”

  “Fine medicine, Doctor. But where’s this rest cure going to take place? I hate resorts—and traveling’s no joy. When people discover I’m an Archbishop, they’re all over me with questions: ‘Will I meet my non-Catholic wife in heaven?’ ‘Can you fix me up for an audience with the Pope?’”

  John Byrne grinned. “I know how it is, Steve. Why don’t you ask George to take you for a trip on his boat? Rita and I had a wonderful two weeks on Lake Ontario with him last summer.”

  The idea of taking a holiday jaunt with his brother was most appealing to Stephen. That afternoon he put in a call to New York. George, it turned out, was planning a trip to Lake Champlain, and eagerly fell in with Stephen’s suggestion that they take a vacation together.

  “Meet me at the Red Wing Boat Club, East River and Fiftieth Street, next Saturday morning,” said George. “Look for a cabin cruiser with a flying bridge and Flotsam painted on her chubby stern. Bring some old clothes—not too many of them. We’ll spend most of the time in bathing trunks.”

  Glimpsing the Flotsam tied up at the Red Wing dock was a case of love at first sight. Freshly painted and broad of beam, the thirty-foot cruiser had the confident look of a boat that would go anyplace her owner dared take her. At Stephen’s cry, “Reporting on board,” George’s head popped out of the cabin. Forty-five, an SEC lawyer, and still unmarried, George was the perfect specimen of the fresh-water boatman—a creature happiest when wearing a Breton jersey and white duck shorts. Barefooted, he leapt onto the dock to greet his brother.

  “Stuffy!” he cried joyously. “I expected to see you pull up in an archiepiscopal barge, scattering benedictions. Lost your touch?”

  “Just laid it aside for a couple of weeks, Gug.” Taking in the brass and mahogany details of the trim craft bobbing at anchorage, Stephen already felt his ecclesiastic cares slipping away.

  “The crew sleeps forward,” announced George, taking Stephen’s bag. “You’ll find yourself sharing the fo’c’sle with a sea cook who doesn’t know a sextant from a folding anchor.”

  The sea cook turned out to be Bernie Fermoyle, the “Irish Thrush” himself, thirty pounds overweight, but obliged to carry the extra “custard,” as he called it, to keep his pipes sweet. The three brothers contrived, with the aid of a finger’s worth of Scotch, to cast the Flotsam loose. With George at the wheel, she slipped through Hell Gate, maneuvered under the Harlem River bridges—then pointed her bow up the broad Hudson.

  Somewhere north of Yonkers Stephen discovered how tired he really was. Lolling on the forward deck, he let the river begin its nerve cure with massive doses of sunlight and scenery. All that afternoon and most of the following day he dozed. Largo was the beat of the ancient waterway, a tempo quiet as the pulse of a drowsy woman. Myth simmered in its valleys; legend echoed from its low hills, unchanged since the Iroquois ranged through its passes. Sometimes the channel would broaden into a wide lake edged with rushes, abandoned icehouses, or stagnant towns. No two aspects of the river were identical; hour after hour it played infinite variations on a fluminal theme.

  Occasionally Stephen would waken from a nap to hear Bernie warbling “The False Bride of O’Rourke” or “Bendemeer’s Stream.” Unmistakable odors of corned-beef hash would rise from the galley ventilator to remind Stephen how good it was to be hungry again. Drenched by sunlight, and drugged by the river’s peace, he secretly praised John Byrne’s wisdom and the patron saint (whoever he was) of little boats.

  On the second day out, he saw George loading a small brass cannon. “What you doing, Gug?”

  George pointed to a grove-screened mansion standing high on the east bank of the river. “That’s F.D.R.’s place. I’m getting ready to fetch a salute to a great guy.” He jerked the lanyard, and a Lilliputian bang bounded off the riverbank.

  As the echoes died away, George asked:

  “Ever meet him, Stuff?”

  Stephen nodded evasively.

  “What’s he like?”

  “Pretty much as you said: ‘A great guy.’”

  “Don’t be so damn mysterious. What did you talk about?”

  “I’m sorry if I seem mysterious, Gug. But I can’t let even you into the secret. You’ll be reading about it in the papers one of these days.”

  By the time the Flotsam nudged into the first lock of the Champlain canal, Stephen had completely relaxed. George and Bernie were perfect companions; the three brothers spent whole days fishing off the side of the Flotsam or splashing about in birchy coves. In the evening, wonderful conversations sprang up; they would discuss the state of the world, or argue some point of law, metaphysics, or morals. But because blood is thicker than ideas, and because no flesh is sweeter than that clinging to the bones of one’s own family, they talked oftenest of the Fermoyle tribe, its fortunes and vicissitudes.

  Again they searched for Mona in the dark byways of the South End; again they tried to find a reason for Florrie’s incurable nagging. They recalled the time that Din saved Ellen’s life with his heaven-storming prayers. Together they laughed at Celia’s habit of “putting away” towels and table linen against a day that would never come. From Bernie, who still lived at 47 Woodlawn, Stephen learned that Celia retained much of her old bounce. “She goes to Mass every morning, cooks dinner for me, and still says ‘A hungry man is an angry man’ when she hands me my plate.”

  During one of these family talk fests, George posed a searching question.

  “Why did so few of us marry, Stuff? Rita’s the only one who ever took to the idea. You, Bernie, Ellen, and I are still single. Do you suppose anything’s wrong with us?”

  Stephen shook his head. “The Church holds that a person has the right to marry or stay single, just as he pleases. You don’t feel guilty about being unmarried, do you?”

  “I wouldn’t call it guilty. Still, there’s something odd about the three of us being bachelors.”

  Stephen turned to the Irish Thrush. “Why didn’t you ever get married, Bernie?”

  Very simply, like one of Bernie’s songs, the answer came. “I guess I never met anyone that I loved better than myself.”

  And I, thought Stephen, met One I loved better than myself or anyone else.

 
; Under Champlain’s red-gold moon they canvassed the subject of the celibate strain in the Fermoyle stock. Heredity? No, both Din and Celia had joyously embraced marriage and each other. Reluctance to take on obligations? Bernie admitted as much, but both Stephen and George could point to heavy responsibilities they had laid upon themselves. Fear of women? Blessed with a loving mother, why should this be so?

  George came nearest to suggesting an answer. “Maybe Din had something to do with it.”

  “In what way, Gug?” asked Stephen.

  “It’s hard to say exactly—but the old boy was a curious mixture of patriarch and bull walrus. He could speak to Jehovah, and knock off any yearling challenger with a sweep of his tusks. God forgive me for saying it, but I think he frightened us, Steve.”

  “He always scared me stiff,” admitted Bernie.

  Lying awake in his bunk that night while a gale swept down from Canada, Stephen pondered the testimony of his brothers. Could it be that the tip of Din’s walrus tusk—no matter how clipped by domesticity or velveted by affection—had somehow frightened his children, and shunted them off the feeding grounds of married love?

  If true, how strange! Stephen fell asleep, saying a prayer for the repose of Din’s patriarchal soul.

  Next morning, the rising gale made further northward progress impossible. With the wind at her stern, the Flotsam scudded south. Both cruiser and crew were glad to huddle into the protecting lock at Whitehall.

  The journey down the Hudson was a placid coda to Stephen’s holiday. Rested, tanned, hungry for work and food, he arrived back in Hartfield on September 1, and plunged again into his archiepiscopal labors.

  ADVENT, 1938. With a letter opener that was part poignard, part cross, the Archbishop of Hartfield slit a long envelope embossed with the Vatican crest, and drew out two sheets of note paper covered with the familiar handwriting of Alfeo Quarenghi.

  CARO STEFANO: