The Cardinal

by Henry Morton Robinson

  In the laughter following this bit of esprit anglais, Sir Humphrey nodded to his more important guests: the Archduke Rollo, second in line to the defunct throne of Hungary, and his Archduchess Helen, forlornly beautiful in a wickless-lamp sort of way. To the chap with the Académie-Française whiskers—André Girardot, Prix Goncourt novelist—he gave a respectful glance. Slightly more chill was his recognition of Professor Kurt Gottwald, author of that massive tome, Welt-Politik und Zeitgeist, reputedly the philosophic basis of Nazism. Unlike Cassius, Professor Gottwald’s thinking had not made him thin. The Captain would be glad at journey’s end to say: “Auf Wiedersehen” to Herr Gottwald, his messy table manners, and his ugly sarcasm.

  Sir Humphrey exchanged smiles with His Eminence, Stephen Cardinal Fermoyle, newly elected to the Sacred College. Most exclusive club in the world, Sir Humphrey had been told. Cardinals were a doddering lot generally, but this American prelate seemed terribly fit. Youngish, too. Been mentioned as the first American Pope. Reasonable enough. With everything else crossing the Atlantic, why not the papacy?

  “I am sorry to hear,” said Sir Humphrey to Stephen, “that illness confines my old friend Cardinal Glennon to his quarters. His Eminence has proved an excellent sailor on previous journeys.”

  “Your compliments will cheer him, Captain,” said Stephen. “We hope to have His Eminence up for the concert later in the evening.”

  Lady Bracington’s carborundum voice gritted against the general ear. “Question for you, Sir Humphrey. Came up this afternoon after a beastly bit of impertinence from one of your stewards. The fellow actually mumbled under his breath.” With this upper-class prelude, Lady Adela put her question: “Could a captain shoot down a crew member who refused to obey an order?”

  Sir Humphrey’s reply was a model of conservatism: “If the captain were an Englishman, Lady Adela, the answer would be: ‘He could, but wouldn’t.’”

  Teutonic whimsy caused Professor Gottwald to make choking sounds with his soup. “You say ‘wouldn’t,’ Captain. Has England, in her orgy of appeasement, entirely renounced discipline?”

  Sir Humphrey kept his voice within bounds of the declarative. “British crews simply don’t disobey a properly given order.”

  Gottwald dropped the mask of amenity. “You forget the Titanic incident.”

  “I do not forget the incident. I happened to be one of the Titanic’s junior officers when she went down.”

  Pressing hard now, the author of Welt-Politik und Zeitgeist lapsed into a German locution. “Crew members were on that occasion shot, nicht wahr?”

  Sir Humphrey’s narrow-set eyes converged sharply on his guest. The man was hectoring him. Gratuitously and with ghoulish enjoyment the Nazi philosopher was exhuming pitiful events long buried by the sea. Sir Humphrey’s nostrils quivered. More than a quarter century ago, in this very latitude, at about this time of year, he had been hurled from his bunk by the collision of rushing steel with solid berg. There had been a desperate scene of confusion as twenty-five hundred passengers charged the lifeboats. Half naked, pistol in hand, Lieutenant Humphrey Grylls had supervised the lowering of No. 4 life raft—one of the few constructive actions performed on that fateful night—and had paddled 109 hysterical passengers out of the liner’s fatal down draft.

  “If guns were drawn on that occasion,” said Sir Humphrey, “it was to guarantee that women and children should have first places in the lifeboats.”

  “Really?” Gottwald reminded Stephen of an entomologist about to pin a rare butterfly to his specimen board. “Then how did you happen to survive, Captain?”

  Stephen had never seen a man on a crueler spot, yet there was no wriggling from the Britisher as he took the pin through his High-Anglican viscera. “If you are sufficiently interested, Professor, to read a detailed account of what happened, I recommend the British Admiralty report, published by the official board of inquiry.”

  Gottwald’s satisfaction was almost unbearable. “These reports you refer to, Captain. As a professional historian, may I point out that they were written by Englishmen, about an English disaster, as described by English—shall I say?—survivors.”

  Having permitted his guest the pleasure of bidding a grand slam, Sir Humphrey summarily took all the cards away from him.

  “History will always be written that way, Professor,” he observed. The Baronet spread a bit of personally printed butter on a biscuit, and turned to the young lady at his left. “I am looking forward to the pleasure of your concert later in the evening, Miss Byrne. Will you include any English composers in your repertory?”

  Something about the Captain’s question and his droll-dry manner of asking it brought a bubble of laughter to Regina’s lips. “Which English composer would you like to hear, Captain?”

  “Bless me if I can remember any of their names,” said Sir Humphrey. “Of course,” he added, “one can always find a tune in H.M.S. Pinafore.”

  AT THEIR VARIOUS STATIONS aboard the Oriana, plowing across the North Atlantic toward the New World, men and women advanced the pattern of destiny.

  In his suite on A deck, an octogenarian Cardinal thrust one leg out of bed, and cried: “Jeremy! These walls bore me. Must I lie here counting rosary beads forever? Clap some clothes onto me prestissimo, Monsignor. Fetch me my gold-headed cane. I want to have a front seat when Regina begins the opening movement of the Brahms Sonata.”

  In a stateroom on B deck, Conrad Szalay released some of his mounting tension by bowing a passage on the strings of a violin presented him by his patron, Cardinal Fermoyle. The instrument, a perfect replica of the Cremona school, bore the signature “Rafael Menton, 1937” on the parchment glued inside its maple back. In two years the violin had ripened marvelously, keeping pace with the prodigious development of its owner. Tonight, a cosmopolitan audience gathered in the music room of the Oriana would hear the young virtuoso present the fruits of eighteen months’ study with Georges Enesco, one of the greatest teachers in Europe.

  Ordinarily, the program offered at a shipboard concert is of the musical-meringue variety. This evening, however, the fare would be somewhat more substantial—and for two reasons. First, Cardinal Fermoyle must be given audible proof that his support and encouragement had not been bestowed unworthily. Second, the American concert manager, Frederick C. Schang, would be in the audience, checking personally on reports of Conrad’s wizardry that had reached him from Paris and London. If “Schangoni,” as many of his artists endearingly called him, were sufficiently impressed, a concert contract would be forthcoming. And with such a contract in his pocket, Conrad could ask Regina Byrne to marry him.

  IN A CABIN adjoining her Cardinal-uncle’s suite, Regina Byrne sat at a dressing table, clipping a pearl onto the lobe of her ear. Uncle Stephen had given her the pearl earrings in Rome, and had kissed the places where they would be worn. Odd? Not at all. What was odd about being kissed by a man you loved more than anyone else—Conrad excepted—in the whole world?

  Gazing at herself in the mirror, Regina no longer sighed for blonde curls and china-blue eyes. She knew now that her ivory-pastel coloring, with its violet underhue repeated in the shadows of her eyes and hair, was the dark beauty that Conrad loved most. He had said so, sometimes in his own words, sometimes in language borrowed from the poet who had sworn that dark was fair.

  Regina rose from her dressing table, pivoted on the toe of her satin slipper till her chiffon evening gown swirled like a ballerina’s. No music she would make this evening could accompany the saltarello bounding in her heart.

  AT A CORNER TABLE of the men’s bar, Andre Girardot was engaged in the typically French pastime of laying his intellectual doubts against a sympathetic ear. Born a Roman Catholic and educated by Jesuits, M. Girardot had, at the age of sixteen, slanted off on one of those agnostic tangents so dear to the Gallic mind. Now, a world-famous novelist at fifty-five, he was circling back to the faith—and making a very circumstantial tale of his experiences to Cardinal Fermoyle.

 
; “The only hurdle that blocks my wholehearted acceptance of the sacraments,” he explained to Stephen, “is the emphasis that Rome places on its institutional trappings. I should be so much happier, Your Eminence, if the Church would forsake temporal considerations, and return to the pristine simplicity of the catacombs.”

  Always the fisher of souls, Stephen angled cautiously for this intellectual carp. “One can always make the return privately,” he suggested. “Christ is just as accessible in the Eucharist today as He ever was.”

  M. Girardot clung with tenacity to his argument. “True. But might not Rome make a more powerful appeal if it laid aside political weapons, picked up the cross, and went forth crying: ‘Under this sign, and this sign alone, we conquer.’”

  Stephen was framing his reply when the bulky figure of Professor Kurt Gottwald waddled toward the table. Behind the Professor—erect, head shaved, and very soldierly in bearing—came Major General Piotr Kolodnov, military attache to the Soviet Embassy in Washington.

  By the freemasonry existing in a ship’s bar, Professor Gottwald felt he had the right to interrupt any conversation he pleased. By the same code, Stephen and M. Girardot were bound to accept the interruption. The French novelist would have preferred to continue his revelations to the American Cardinal, yet the prospect of insulting Herr Gottwald was also attractive. To state the case exactly, M. Girardot, a highly articulate Frenchman, longed for the pleasure of talking the German deaf, dumb, and blind.

  No sooner was Professor Gottwald seated when M. Girardot began making fancy shots on the pistol range of wit. He would have juggled wineglasses, even performed match tricks, for the sheer delight of keeping the Professor muzzled. Stephen was enjoying the spectacle of two professional talkers jostling each other like six-day bicyclists competing for a sprint prize. Girardot, all pace and vivacity, held his lead; Gottwald stubbornly pedaled behind him, while the Russian General, brooding over his cognac, brought up the rear. Suddenly there was a change of position. Girardot, having told the cynical fable (then current) of four authors—an Englishman, an American, a German, and a Frenchman—who displayed their national characteristics in a treatise on elephants, waited too long for laughter that did not come. Writhing on his fat haunches, Gottwald shot ahead of his Gallic rival.

  “Your tale is amusing, Monsieur. Instructive, too, since it leads us directly into the theme of nationalism—a subject developed exhaustively by the German philosopher, Hegel.”

  Triumphantly out in front now, Professor Gottwald proceeded to explain Hegel’s dynamic of history. “In every age,” he said, “there emerges a nation charged with the mission of carrying the world through its present phase of development.” Herr Gottwald held up his hand like a fat semaphore to keep the Frenchman and Russian at their sidings while the Hegelian express roared past. “Hegel tells us that the State is pure spirit embodied in the person of a leader whose actions reveal the unity and meaning of history. To those who have read my Welt-Politik und Zeitgeist, is it not three times clear that Der Führer is the perfect embodiment of the time-spirit?”

  Major General Kolodnov bristled. As military attaché to the Soviet Embassy, he could do no less.

  “Stalin has destroyed Hegel’s bourgeois conception of history,” he said. “History is the outworking of the class struggle, demonstrated in the Marxian triad: feudalism, capitalism, the soviet. The first two phases are already dead.” Kolodnov lifted his glass of Napoleon brandy. “I drink to Stalin, spokesman of the future.”

  “Quel sentiment!” murmured Girardot. He turned to Stephen. “Is Your Eminence content to be outdone in this court of orthodoxy? The champions of Hitler and Stalin have lifted their glasses. What? No toast to His Holiness Pius XII?”

  Stephen took the tease lightly. “I didn’t want to appear arriviste,” he smiled. “The two hundred and sixty-second successor to Peter needs no clinking of glasses to bolster his position.”

  “A very palpable hit,” said Girardot gleefully.

  Strains of music, unmistakably Brahms, entered the Oriana’s bar. Teutonic satisfaction relaxed Herr Gottwald’s features. “An encouraging sign, gentlemen. The ascendancy of German music appears to be acknowledged even on British ships.”

  “Let’s see who’s playing the German music,” suggested Stephen.

  The four men strolled into the adjoining salon, where an audience of about two hundred persons sat listening to Brahms’ A-major Sonata. At the piano sat Regina Byrne, quarter-profiled. Facing the audience, Conrad Szalay, violin lofted, was atttacking the first movement of the sonata with confident mastery. There was no chamber-music humility about his playing, yet no stridency either. The large singing tone of his violin filled the salon.

  “Resonant without grease,” said Herr Gottwald approvingly. “Just the way Brahms should be played.”

  At the end of the sonata, Conrad stepped aside to let Regina take the major share of applause.

  “Technique by the fistful,” said Kolodnov. “He plays like a Russian.”

  Stephen did not think it worth while to point out that Conrad was an American, born of Polish parents.

  “Our next selection,” Conrad was saying, “will be the Introduction and Rondo capriccioso of the French composer, Saint-Saens.”

  “Now we shall hear something,” said Girardot.

  Regina’s hands descended into silence and brought forth a subdued carillon. The violin entered, singing plaintively. Elegant legato tones resolved suddenly into a burst of droplets shaken from Conrad’s bow as he broke the harmonic spectrum into scintillating fragments. The plaintive air returned, and was again put to flight by a miniature explosion of spiccato notes in the lowest register of the violin.

  From the G string Conrad began subtly climbing until he reached the highest register of his instrument, poised there a moment, then descended in a parabolic cadenza. Regina bolted suddenly. Brisk, measured chords from the piano began beating the motif for a saltarello. Into a circle of clapping hands the violinist entered, capering gaily on the gleaming E string.

  Lawrence Glennon, his chin resting on the knob of a gold-headed cane, exhaled in sheer unbelief. Schang, the American concert agent, reserved judgment until the next section—the stumbling block of all but a few exceptional violinists. Stephen Fermoyle, listening to the flood of music pouring from Conrad’s violin, wished that Rafe Menton might have heard his instrument singing this night.

  A sudden magical impulse at the tip of Conrad’s bow sent it skipping upward in a rollicking staccato. With unerring mechanical precision, the fingers of his left hand drove like pistons propelled by the ignited fuel of his temperament. Hand extended to the very top of the fingerboard, he plummeted downward in a shower of sparks.

  Until this moment Herr Gottwald had always sniggered at the idea of French music. He was not sniggering now.

  Deserted momentarily by the pianist, Conrad executed a cadenza of triple-stopped chords with hammerlike strokes of his bow. Now the two instruments entered the home stretch together. Fingers beating like hoofs, Conrad hurdled the final arpeggios with effortless strength; he swept up the pianist in his exuberance, and ended on the swift gleam of a harmonic. Carried by the impetus, Regina crashed powerfully into a finale of majestic chords.

  The audience went up like a rocket. Gottwald, Girardot, and Kolodnov joined voices for the first time that evening: “Bravo! … Encore!” they cried, while Lawrence Glennon pounded the floor with his cane, and “Schangoni” made an involuntary clutch at his fountain pen. Even the Victoria Cross on Sir Humphrey’s dress coat shook visibly as he applauded. Flushed and happy, Conrad and Regina bowed to the audience and each other. Then, leaning close to Conrad’s ear, Regina whispered something. The young violinist smiled and nodded.

  “By special request,” he announced, “we shall now play a medley from H.M.S. Pinafore.”

  The Captain of the Oriana, enjoying himself enormously, was humming: “And when the breezes blow, I generally go below,” when a junior officer edged throu
gh the salon to his side. Evidently the young officer’s communication was grave, for Sir Humphrey left the salon and, instead of “seeking the seclusion that my cabin grants,” took up his station on the bridge of the Oriana.

  A gold St. Christopher medal in the fob pocket of his waistcoat warmed the Captain’s High-Anglican heart as he took personal command of his ship.

  TO WARD OFF the bone-piercing chill in the air, Stephen put on his ferraiolino, the great cape worn by Peter’s admirals, and stepped on deck. He drew his cloak cowl fashion around his head, and walked toward the bow of the vessel. Braced against the rail, he let his mind rove like a planchette across the events of the evening. How mixed, how blent of joy and grief, love and hatred, a few hours could be! The dominant note of the evening had been, of course, Conrad’s superb performance. His amazing virtuosity, his personal magnetism, and the obvious love that existed between him and Regina had struck a joyous yea-saying chord for every listener. Yet under the triumphant themes of art and love, Stephen heard the fearful discords jangling aboard the Oriana. That flareup at dinner between Sir Humphrey and Herr Gottwald! Ostensibly about an ill-fated ship, the encounter had in reality disclosed black hatreds squatting in the chasm of national rivalry. That rivalry had received grim underscorings from Gottwald and Kolodnov in the ship’s bar. Their bitter wrangling had drowned out the plea of a gentler Voice: “How often would I have gathered together thy children, as the hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and thou wouldest not.”

  On the darkened bridge above him, Stephen heard a series of paired chimes. Eight bells. By landsman reckoning, midnight. Day’s nadir, the deepest pit of darkness from which the day-star must climb wearily to the uncertain shelf of dawn. Never had the world’s midnight been more chill with dread. Never would the little hours climb more perilously to cockcrow.

  Stephen lifted his eyes to the stars glittering in the hard blue arch of heaven. True north, Polaris glowed. Pointing in constancy at the polestar was Dubhe of lustrous magnitude, guide to shepherds, navigators, and, occasionally, to drivers of trolley cars. Low on the sea rim burned the planet of many names—Lucifer, Venus, Hesperus—always the same star, fiery, threatening, and peculiarly linked with events in Stephen Fermoyle’s life.