NOVEMBER WINDS pierced the flimsy shacks of L’Enclume. Stephen hugged the wood fire in Ned Halley’s old study, and bent over the litter of invoices, time sheets, and bills of lading on his desk. Midnight found him adding a long column of figures; pleased at the total, Stephen picked up his pen and began his report to the Chancellor of the Archdiocese:
RT. REVEREND MONSIGNOR:
I have the honor of transmitting to your office a complete account of the St. Peter’s lumbering operations, together with all financial records pertaining thereto.
Acting under pastoral powers conferred upon me by the Cardinal on August 18, 1918 …
August 18 … the day of Ned Halley’s burial. Gazing into the ruby embers, Stephen relived the events of that day. In a summer downpour, Lawrence Glennon had led the funeral procession from church to cemetery. As the earth fell on Ned Halley’s coffin, the Cardinal murmured a last requiescat, blessed the kneeling mourners; then, leaning on Stephen’s arm, had returned to the parish house for a supportive cup of tea.
“Oolong, hot and strong, with plenty of sugar,” was his only command. But even a third cup of the heart-building brew failed to sponge away the Cardinal’s melancholy. His secretary loitered in the hallway, wondering how long His Eminence would mourn, yet not daring to approach the brooding prelate who sat in an armchair, sipping the black tea that Stephen kept pouring for him. Silence, and a kettleful of boiling water, was the treatment of choice; if liberally administered (Stephen reasoned), the grieving Cardinal would soon enough regain his spirits.
Other more opportunistic calculations were churning, however, in the soul of Monsignor Andrew Sprinkle. He was, after all, head of the local deanery, and his office laid upon him certain responsibilities. With the Cardinal’s edge temporarily dulled, now was the time for all good men to broach the subjects closest to their hearts. Andy Sprinkle glided into the study, stirred the cup of tea that Stephen handed him, and made a cautious beginning:
“For many years, as Your Eminence well knows, the parish of St. Peter’s has had slight function—and no revenue. Might it not be the part of prudence, Your Lordship, to close its doors at this time?”
In his temperless state, Glennon would have nodded assent, but Stephen’s quick-taken breath caused him to turn a querying head. “You hold another view, Father Fermoyle?”
“I do, Your Eminence.”
“State it.”
“With all deference to Dean Sprinkle, I disagree that the function of St. Peter’s is slight. Your Lordship saw its people kneeling at the grave today. Their number is upwards of one hundred and fifty. Thirty children of Sunday-school age are being prepared for first Holy Communion. I cannot believe that their spiritual needs would be best served by closing the church.”
Studying his tea leaves, Andy Sprinkle saw a dark young man crossing his path. Because the Dean saw no money in the young man’s hand, he cheerfully waited for Glennon to roar, “What about parish revenues?” Within two sips of oolong, the Sprinkle prophecy was half fulfilled: Glennon clicked cup against saucer and asked:
“What about parish revenues?” The words were strong, but the roar was weak.
“Revenues could be found, Your Eminence,” said Stephen.
“Where? How?”
Short questions requiring a long answer. From a drawer in Ned Halley’s desk, Stephen drew forth a pen-and-ink map of the parish, unrolled it on the table, and placed his finger on the gorge. “This valley,” he said, “belongs to the parish. It was deeded to the church twenty years ago, but the title has never been recorded.”
Lawrence Glennon examined the map. “What makes the property of special interest?”
“A forest of prime timber, Your Eminence. Some twelve hundred first-growth pine trees. By cutting only three hundred of them—a fourth of the existing stand—I estimate that we could net thirty-five hundred dollars.”
The Dean contributed a typical Sprinklerism: “Canon 142 of the Codex juris canonici expressly states: ‘Prohibentur clerici mercaturam exercere’—in plain English, priests may not engage in business.”
“I am familiar with the canon, Monsignor,” said Stephen. “But our lumbering operation would not be conducted by a priest.”
“By whom then?” asked Glennon, faintly alarmed.
“It would be a joint undertaking, Your Eminence … somewhat on the pattern set by the Canadian fishing parishes. In Nova Scotia, pastor and parishioners share the fishery profits on a co-operative basis. Here in Stonebury, our local unemployed would perform the actual labor of chopping and sawing. Their wages would be paid from the sale of the lumber, and the remaining sum would accrue to the owner of the trees—namely, the parish of St. Peter’s. Both parties would benefit, and”—Stephen bowed respectfully to Andy Sprinkle—”canon law would not be infringed.”
The Dean shifted his ground. “Apart from canon law,” he said, “is it the function of a parish to make economic arrangements for its people? We are interested in their spiritual welfare, yes. But I fear we shall find ourselves in deep and dangerous waters if we begin looking after their material prosperity.”
Glennon was relishing the debate; his silence gave Stephen permission to rebut.
“May I remind the Dean of Aquinas’ aphorism: ‘A certain minimum of material well-being is essential to the good life’? And may I point out that the whole weight of Leo XIII’s social encyclicals is on the side of a wider, more equable distribution of wealth?” The absurdity of the term “wealth” struck Stephen. He turned to the Cardinal. “The cutting of these trees would mean the bare difference between unrelieved poverty and a fighting chance to get our people through the winter.”
Monsignor Sprinkle had saved his best argument till last. “The logging interests of Litchburg would quite properly protest if the parish of St. Peter’s began competing with them in the production of lumber.”
“That might be true,” said Stephen, “if any logging interests were left in Litchburg. But the industry abandoned this area twenty-five years ago. The Litchburg dealers are mere jobbers; their interest is to buy semifinished lumber. I’ve gone into the matter with them, Monsignor. They are eager to pay nine cents a board foot for all the pine they can get.”
Glennon’s hazel eyes rested appreciatively on Stephen. “Your plan has a certain short-range ingenuity, Father Fermoyle. But what about next year, and the year after that?”
“Careful cutting and systematic replanting of seedlings would guarantee a small permanent income to the parish, Your Eminence. And that’s all we need to keep St. Peter’s open.” Stephen was pleading now. “The people of L’Enclume are thrifty and industrious. If we turn our backs on them, they will be economically stranded. But with the few dollars earned from the cutting of this lumber, they can be saved, both as citizens and Catholics.”
Stephen’s challenge was the whetstone that Glennon’s steel needed. “There is merit in your plan, Father. I never like to close a parish, and I am quite willing to give St. Peter’s another chance. That is”—he turned with a fair imitation of deference to Monsignor Sprinkle—”that is, if the Dean has no objections.”
Studying the tea leaves in his cup, Andy Sprinkle now saw the money in the hands of the dark young man. “I have no objections, Your Eminence.”
“Good.” The old edge of authority was in the Cardinal’s voice. “You have my permission to give this project a trial, Father Fermoyle. Your authority will be that of rector here.” The glow of being in business once more suffused His Eminence. His circulation quickened. Life could go on, and Lawrence Glennon suddenly decided that it should.
“I must be getting back to Boston,” he said, rising from the armchair that had been his melancholy throne. “Have Monsignor O’Brien put my bags in the car.” On the front porch he extended three fingers of farewell to Andy Sprinkle, then peered with exaggerated concern at a world of falling rain. “Is there an umbrella in the house, Father Fermoyle?”
Stephen rummaged about in the front hall closet, found a venerable umbrella, and held it protectively over Lawrence Glennon’s head. Escorting him to the car, Stephen was obliged to curve his arm around the Cardinal’s massive person. At the feel of the lean extensor muscles against his back, Glennon gazed up at the strong-boned face above his • own.
“You are not afraid of me, Father Fermoyle?” His observation was half question.
“Afraid? Not at all.”
“Most people are. Why aren’t you?”
“I’ve never thought about it. But now that you’ve asked me”—Stephen assessed the problem objectively—”I’d say it’s because you remind me of my father.”
“Do I resemble him in build or features?”
“No. The resemblance isn’t physical.” Stephen tried to isolate the single characteristic that linked Lawrence Glennon to Dennis Fermoyle, and smiled when he discovered it. “It may help if I tell you that my father was sometimes called ‘Din the Down-Shouter.’ He roared a great deal, and pounded the table with his fist when he wanted to make a point.”
“Did none of this frighten you?” asked Glennon.
Stephen shook his head. “No matter how much Din roared or pounded, he always gave me the feeling that he loved me.”
“He must have been a remarkable father. Is he still living?”
“Very much so. But his voice and drive are beginning to fade.”
Beginning to fade, mused Glennon. The male voice crumbling at the edge … the power drive sifting downward through the hourglass. … “It happens to all of us,” he murmured. “First we fade, then we fail.” The Daimler slid alongside; Glennon roused himself. “Finish up this job here, Father Fermoyle. Be pastor to this rural flock. I shall watch with interest.”
Stephen’s arm lowered the older man into the puce-colored cushions. “Felling lumber is a far cry from translating mystical essays, my son,” said the Cardinal. “But there is a place in the Church for both.” He raised his hand with an affectionate gesture, part blessing and part farewell.
ALL DURING OCTOBER, axes rang in the gorge of L’Enclume. Tall pines swayed and crashed; nimble woodsmen lopped off boughs, fed the trunks to Hercule Menton’s improvised sawmill, then loaded wide boards onto trucks of the Litchburg Lumber Company. Under Stephen’s direction the St. Peter’s Lumbering Association—the first organization of its kind in the Archdiocese of Boston—was converting parish pines into employment and cash.
And now, on November 2, the operation was successfully over. Stephen’s figures astounded him; after deducting all expenses, there would be a clear profit of $3680.24. More than two thousand dollars would go to the twelve axmen who had cut the trees down; each worker would receive $204.10 for six weeks’ labor—the highest wages ever earned in L’Enclume.
Stephen finished his report to the chancery and looked unbelievingly at the staggering sum of $1131.04 credited to the parish of St. Peter’s. “What will I do with so much money?” he asked the graying embers in the fireplace.
Then the answers began coming in. …
Stephen’s first care was to mark Ned Halley’s grave with a stone. In a creek bed he found a huge granite boulder flecked with feldspar, and asked Hercule Menton to search it for flaws. With his quarryman’s hammer Hercule tested the boulder for secret defects. “She ring solid” was his final verdict. Leaving the other planes rough, he polished one face of the stone, and on this quartz-gleaming surface, Stephen bade him carve the simple epitaph:
IN MEMORIAM
EDWARD EVERETT HALLEY
JUNE 10, 1855—AUG. 16, 1918
“A PRIEST FOREVER, ACCORDING TO THE ORDER OF MELCHIZEDEK”
Carting, polishing, and carving Ned Halley’s headstone cost Stephen sixty dollars.
Next he bought seedlings for the pine forest and set them out between the stumps of the felled trees. Three hundred seedlings and the labor of planting them came to one hundred dollars—an investment that would be returned fortyfold in twenty years.
The bulk of the money went into repairing the church. Its interior was plastered and painted, the front doors were rehung on new strap hinges of wrought iron. For the sanctuary and altar steps, Stephen bought a new burgundy-colored carpet. A decent armchair for his study and a new cotton-tufted mattress for his bed took a quick fifty. And after much poring over catalogues from ecclesiastical supply houses, Stephen ordered some new vestments and a gold-plated chalice at a cost of two hundred dollars. He paid himself two months’ arrears in salary (one hundred dollars) and bought a ready-made suit of clerical broadcloth—the first since his ordination—for thirty-five dollars. By this time the parish bank account was down to three hundred dollars and the young rector began to think of putting on the brakes.
But it was impossible to stop short. He took cross-eyed nine-year-old Angela Boisvert into Boston for a delicate operation that centered the child’s eyeballs and transformed her squinty face into confident prettiness. On the day that he fetched Angela home from Boston, Stephen dropped into a small bookshop, and permitted himself the luxury of an hour’s browsing. In a heap of secondhand tomes he discovered a copy of L’Art des luthiers italiens, containing many full-page illustrations of violins made by the Cremona masters. For five dollars he bought the book and presented it to Rafael Menton on the lad’s seventeenth birthday.
Rafe was making better fiddles than Hercule now—rugged instruments with a voice big enough to sing above the stompings of country square dancers. Though Rafe’s violins were selling locally for twenty-five dollars apiece, the young violinmaker had no illusions about their quality. “Crates,” he called them contemptuously, and kept on trying to turn out more graceful instruments. But the mysteries of design and construction, the secrets of glue and varnish, eluded him. Hercule could teach him no more; short of studying with a new master, L’Art des luthiers italiens was the most encouraging gift Rafe could have received.
Laying the book on his workbench, he turned its pages with devotional wonder. “Do you think that violins as beautiful as these will ever be made again?” he asked Stephen one day.
“I do, Rafe.” Stephen said the thing he believed. “American artists will produce works—violins among them—that the ancient masters never dreamed possible. No valuable part of tradition will be lost, but we will add New World accents and fresh strength to the old designs.”
Rafe lifted his eyes from the colored plate of a glorious, golden Amati, and gazed at the clumsy contours of the maple block he had been carving. “I know you mean what you say, Father. But right this minute,”—he hefted the inert maple as though it were lead—“it’s awful hard to believe.”
THIS was the happiest time of Stephen’s life. The war to end war was over; the jubilant Armistice rocket that filled the sky with sparks of golden hope had not yet come down a dead stick. Into his pastorate Stephen poured the vigor of his young thirties, an inexhaustible flood of love and energy. The winter set in bitterly cold, and Stephen shuddered at the thought of the hardships that the sale of the pine trees had averted. On his parish rounds he noticed the good effects of the little cash earned by the axmen of L’Enclume: a new rocking chair in the Crèvecoeur living room; fresh tar paper on the d’Éon roof; a nickeled parlor stove here, a square of carpet there. The children went shod in stouter shoes, housewives burgeoned out in cheap calico dresses, and Adèle Menton wore a new tortoise-shell comb in her hair.
Daily he explored the full possibilities of the priestly life. He attended the sick, counseled the discouraged, and solaced those who came to him with human cares. For relaxation he would skate, far up Spectacle Pond, where the men of L’Enclume were cutting ice. Through winter twilights he skated home, tingling with cold, happily aware (like that earlier poet-skater) of a Presence in the leafless wood, and happiest when, like him, he cut across the reflex of a star.
Contact with the outer world was scant. He rarely left Stonebury and seldom heard from anyone but his family or a few old friends. Occasionally a letter came from Quarenghi telling of diplomatic adventures or some canonical crux; at wider intervals, a postcard from Orselli promising a renewal of their loves when the postwar Atlantic passenger runs began again. “Are you a bishop yet?” the Captain scribbled, and Stephen smiled as he recalled Orselli’s hopes for him. Far away and long ago … echoes from another sphere. …
Into this obscure Eden, the serpent crawled—a buxom, good-looking serpent named la veuve Agneaux. Stephen began hearing whispers about la veuve—the Widow—who lived in a substantial farmhouse just across the New Hampshire border and wove spells for a not-too-select clientele. The spells were usually woven on a cash basis, but often—cash being scarce—her customers paid for her favors in day labor. La veuve had the best-tilled fields and the highest woodpile in the surrounding countryside.
Occasionally her business judgment wavered. Like the Wife of Bath, she had a weakness for men “meek, young, and fresh abed.” And it was this weakness that caused la veuve to burn, by no means hopelessly, for Rafael Menton. She had met him at a barn dance, liked the music he made in her blood, and promptly took him home for a command performance, the first of many.
Stephen learned of the affair from Rafe’s mother. Shawled and grieving, Adèle Menton came into the parish house one snowy afternoon. “I am worried about Rafe, Father,” she began, then very simply told the story of la veuve’s blandishments. “Speak to him, Father,” she pleaded. “Warn him against this woman. Tell him of the great danger …”
Stephen could agree that Rafe was in danger—but not chiefly from la veuve. Sooner or later, adelè must realize that the lifeless quarries of Stonebury, the stagnant air of L’Enclume, were the real threats to her craftsmanly gifted son. He sat down beside the grieving mother and tried to buoy her with knowledge of God’s secret way with His chosen ones.
“It would be easy for me to read Rafe a lecture—urge him to avoid this woman. At the proper time I may do so. But la veuve is only a part of Rafe’s trial. He must struggle with a still heavier burden—the development of the luthier’s skill breathed into him by the Holy Ghost.”
The idea that le Saint-Esprit had anything to do with Rafe’s fiddle-making was entirely new to adelè. She checked her tears as Stephen went on. “Rafe should get away from L’Enclume. He needs better instruction in the art and practice of violinmaking. Offhand, I can’t tell you where he’ll find the right master. But he’ll find him.
“Meanwhile, be loving with your boy. Say nothing about la veuve.” Stephen smiled down at adelè Menton’s tearful face. “Loosen your hand a little—as God does sometimes. Rafe will not stray far. Be confident, as I am, that the son of those tears can never be lost.”
FROM CHILDHOOD, the crèche (or manger) had always seemed to Stephen an essential part of Christmas. The humble tableau of the Holy Family surrounded by the Magi and dumb kine never failed to renew in him fresh wonder at the mystery of the Incarnation. All children, he knew, loved that scene in the stable, and this year Stephen determined to satisfy their longing with a real crib.
Early in December he set the whittlers of L’Enclume to carving the conventional figures of wise men, shepherds, and oxen. To Hercule Menton he assigned the carving of Mary; Alphonse Boisvert undertook Joseph; to Rafael went the coveted honor of whittling out the Babe. For two weeks cunning jackknives flashed in the lamplight, and the more the soft pine wasted, the more the figures grew.
Now the painting began. Stephen distributed tiny cans of precious vermilion and crimson lake. Gilt dust was mixed with banana oil for the gold crowns of the three kings. The Virgin’s robe was traditionally blue; Joseph’s tunic came out a yellowish brown (too much gamboge), and the Infant’s cheeks were the rosiest pink that ever glowed in a stable. Stephen had to smile when he saw that Rafe had given the Babe brown eyes.
Individually the pieces were excellent, but when Stephen set about arranging them he found that they did not combine well. Was it their newness? Perhaps. “They aren’t used to each other yet,” was Rafael’s way of putting it. Stephen tried to conceal his disappointment at the stiffly formal atmosphere of the cr&che. Several times he tried rearranging the figures, but finally resigned himself to the fact that the manger was not a success.
Late one afternoon, a couple of days before Christmas, he entered the church, thinking to make a happier arrangement of the crèche. In the crimson light flowing from the sanctuary lamp he saw a young woman bending over the crib; her posture was that of a mother putting a child to bed, and she murmured softly as she tucked and patted the figures in the manger. At her feet was a pile of hay.
Only one woman in the world could bestow such comfort and order with her bare hands.
“Lalage!”
The girl turned. Wisps of hay were in her chestnut hair. The hay was timothy, and its perfume hung field-sweet above Lalage Menton’s face.
“I hope you don’t mind what I’m doing to your crèche,” she said.
“What are you doing?”
“Just making it into a stable. It was a stable, remember? With hay.” She stuffed handfuls of fragrant clover under the oxen, making them appear to be munching contemplatively at the wonder before them. Lalage tucked more hay about the kneeling figure of Mary, softening the edges of her blue robe and bringing her an inch nearer the Child. “There—she looks more comfortable, don’t you think?”
“Yes, she does.” Stephen marveled at Lalage’s way with things living or inanimate. “But what’s that you’re putting on St. Joseph?”
“It’s chilly in here,” said Lalage, “so I made a little sheepskin vest for him.” She slipped the garment over the carpenter-saint’s shoulders, kissed the back of his patient neck. “All we need now is a bellyband for the Infant.”
Stephen found himself vetoing the bellyband. “I’m afraid,” he said, “that a touch like that would make things too—too naturalistic. After all, the crèche is intended to suggest what happened that first Christmas night. The hay helps carry out that suggestion—it was just the thing we needed. But if we get too realistic—with a vest for Joseph, and a bellyband for the Christ child—we’re apt to lose sight of what the characters stand for.”
Lalage gazed at the three principal figures as if trying to grasp a meaning beyond them. “I forgot they stood for anything,” she said. “I keep thinking of them as people in a cold barn.”
Lalage Menton’s ideas about the Incarnation might bring smiles or even frowns to a synod of bishops, but Stephen realized that she was the bearer of something much more important—the special love that is the monopoly of women.
Droll defiance was in her face as she looked up at Stephen. “I wish I’d been around to help Mary that night. I’d have pinned a nice warm bellyband on her baby, no matter who He was.”
“Pin it on him now,” said Stephen. And as he watched Lalage’s capable fingers bind the swaddling cloth around the figure of the Babe, he had the feeling that any mother would have welcomed such help on a cold night in a drafty stable.
They left the church together, Lalage carrying the remnants of her hay in a clovery bundle. “I promised Napoleon I’d bring back all I didn’t use,” she explained. Outside the sacristy door she inhaled the fragrance of her timothy bouquet. “Mmm—it’s soaked with summer.” Artlessly she lifted her armful of hay to Stephen’s face. “Doesn’t it make you think of August?”
The scented grass awoke memories in Stephen—the summer night he had found Lalage straightening out his kitchen; the day her hair had brushed his cheek as they bent over Hercule’s fiddle top. Irritably he wondered how any woman could be so honest and provocative at the same time. Lalage’s mixture of outgoingness and coquetry—her fearless and disarming advances—were these the marks of childlike innocence or feminine design? Stephen had never been able to decide. He could not decide now.
They walked through the winter dusk toward the road that Lalage must take to L’Enclume. It would be a lonely walk; Stephen wanted to go with her, but prudence advised no deeper personal involvement with this affectionate girl. He was about to bid her good night when Lalage said:
“My father tells me he sees you skating sometimes on Spectacle Pond.”
“Yes, I often go there.”
“Will you skate with me there tomorrow night?”
The invitation was guileless as a snowflake, but Stephen held off his acceptance. Lalage put a special plea in her voice. “It’ll be the last time I’ll ever skate on Spectacle—and I want it to be with you.”
“What do you mean, ‘the last time you’ll ever skate on Spectacle’?”
Lalage’s inflection was matter-of-fact. “The day after Christmas I’m going away to the Geraldines.”
“The Geraldines! The nursing sisterhood?”
Breathing at her clover nosegay, Lalage nodded. “I’ve always wanted to go, ever since I was a little girl. That’s why I studied nursing.”
“But the Geraldines! They take only incurables into their hospital. Hopeless t.b. cases, last-stage cancer—and all that.” Stephen couldn’t reconcile Lalage’s brimming health with the death-in-life duties of the Geraldines. “It’s the grimmest kind of burden.”
“It’s the one I was born to carry,” she said simply.
If her simplicity was a rebuke, it was also a revelation. So this was the secret of Lalage’s wide-open heart, her mystifying habit of walking up to life with outstretched arms! Stephen understood now the hidden source from which her actions bubbled. Strong in vocation, dedicated to purity, she could pour affectionate strength over everything she encountered: a braggart father, a spavined horse, a whittled wooden figure of Joseph, a fellow creature wasting incurably to death—or a priest, endangered perhaps, by a too-stuffy reading of his role. All needy things claimed her, and she responded in proportion to their want. Everything Lalage Menton did or said was only a manifestation of the thing she was.
Standing beside her in the snowy road, Stephen realized that anyone fortunate enough to be the object of this girl’s love should count himself the recipient of a special grace. Could he not match that gift with a generosity of his own?
He would try.
That night Stephen searched his emotions concerning Lalage. Honestly he put the question, “What do I feel about this girl?” Without equivocation he could answer: “She is the most natural and unspoiled woman I have ever known. Out of a surplus of human affection (which cannot be disregarded) she has asked me to go skating with her on the eve of her departure for the convent. To refuse would be churlish; to accept would give me pleasure and make Lalage happy. …
“I will go skating with her.”
But he did not go.
When the next evening came, etched blue with winter stars, Stephen could not give himself permission to keep a rendezvous with this girl who would never skate again. There was nothing wrong about meeting Lalage on a sheet of wind-swept ice. They would join hands as skaters do, and glide up the pond together under a tall sky. Coming back, they would joyously surrender themselves to the goad of a December wind. All very innocent and harmless. But Stephen knew that some pleasures, innocent though they might be, were not for him. The knowledge gave him no feeling of elation or virtue. Actually, he felt rather ignoble at being unable to match the yes-saying generosity of Lalage Menton’s heart.
IRON WINTER merged into the rigorous season of Lent—then, as if tired of severities, spring took Church and nature by the hand and led them both into the warmth of April. Again L’Enclume became a scene of crackling activity; clotheslines flapped in the breeze; shawled women gathered at the tail of Victor Thenard’s meat wagon, while their husbands lounged with blunt, brown pipes against sunny walls. Nothing had changed—yet everything was different. And the difference, Stephen realized, sprang from his sharing of human hardships and triumphs with these people. They had come through a year together. They had survived winter, and now were quickening into a new cycle of hope.
It was the third Saturday after Easter when Corny Deegan drove up from Boston in his black Cadillac. After an admiring inspection of Stephen’s refurbished church, the papal nobleman accepted an invitation to supper. The one-dish meal of spareribs and cabbage cooked and served by Agathe d’Éon was settling pleasantly while Corny—a mouse-colored Corona in his hard, red fist—talked about Rome (from which he had just returned), Vatican politics, and a dozen other matters. Clearly the papal Knight had something more than his elbow up his sleeve, but exactly what it was, Stephen could not determine. At last he broke in on Corny’s detailed account of the Cardinal’s plan for a new cathedral:
“Cornelius, what in heaven’s name are you being so canny about?”
“Can’t an old friend pass the time of day?”
“The time of day and all night, too. It’s a joy to have you and to hear of your missions in high places. But every so often you start to grin like a man who knows something. What is it, Corny?”
Cornelius came down to cases. “Do you remember holding an umbrella over the Cardinal’s head on the day of Ned Halley’s funeral?”
“I do.”
“Well, His Eminence remembers it, too. Spoke of it this morning. He was much moved by the fact that you weren’t afraid of him—that you dared put your arm around his exalted person. But the thing that struck him most was the reason you gave for your fearlessness.”
Stephen laughed. “I told him that he reminded me of Din. It’s true, Corny; he does. Glennon is a peremptory man with a stiff Irish neck. But Din’s that way, too. He’s a perfect father—and Glennon, somehow, seems to fit into that pattern.”
Cornelius, the father of five girls and a hard-drinking son, was meditative. “Every man dreams of having a son who loves him without fear. Would it surprise you to know that the Cardinal has such a dream?”
“Not at all. Even God had it. But what’s this mystery prologue leading up to? Does His Eminence plan to adopt me?”
“Adoption isn’t the word for it, Steve. But he’d like to have you around him. In fact—to stop all this beating about Paddy O’Houlihan’s barn—Glennon’s decided to make you his secretary.”
Astonishment whirled Stephen to his feet. Three times he paced diagonally across the study, then halted in front of the contractor-Knight. “Have you been up to your old fixing tricks again?” he demanded.
Corny raised a solemn, red-freckled hand as if taking an oath of innocence. “It’s no doing of mine, Steve. Number One picks his own peppers. And out of the whole bushel, he’s picked you. Somehow I had the idea that this news would be pleasing to you.”
“A year ago, it would have been wonderful. But right now I want to stay at St. Peter’s. I suppose I could say that my work here isn’t finished yet—not even begun. But the honest truth is, Corny, I like it here.”
The papal Knight held the fire—or more accurately, the blackthorn—of his sarcasm. He loved Stephen too much to bring that heavy bludgeon down with, “Oh, the wee man likes it here, does he? He wants to stay in his nice broken-down parish and be a brushwood saint to a tribe of Canuck woodcutters.” Even to twirl such a shillelagh in Stephen’s presence was dangerous. Corny was silent for the length of a Hail Mary; then he spoke with all his forthrightness.
“Once, I thought you were ambitious, Stephen. I see now that the fire of the Holy Ghost has burned that ambition right down to cinders. But did you know”—there was a cheerful upturn in Corny’s voice—“that cinder blocks make the best building material? Stuff that’s passed through fire to ash can’t be burned by anything else. Master contractors know that. Glennon knows it. That’s why he’s chosen you for his purpose.”
The contractor-Knight laid a hodlike hand on his friend’s shoulder. “The days of your initiation are over, Stephen. Now the real work begins. For the next forty years you’ve got to be the toughest, tenderest, damnedest priest of your generation—a son worthy of the father—a chip off that old cinder block, Din the Down-Shouter.”
BREAKING pastoral ties, Stephen discovered, was like breaking the point off his heart. He made his final rounds of L’Enclume, entering low-roofed homes once peopled by strangers. Now, just as these strangers had begun to think of him as their champion and friend, he must tell them that he was going away. Scrawny women, whom he had first seen gabbling around the butcher wagon, held greasy aprons to their eyes when they heard the news. Men who had sullenly drifted away from him a year ago now wrung his hand in dumb puzzlement. “Why you leave us, Father? You come back to see us sometime?” they asked. And to these unanswerable questions Stephen gave the most cheerful replies that he could summon. He entered the pine forest in the gorge and, standing under massive boughs, recaptured for a moment the sorrow of banishment breathing through the theme poem of this sacred wood, The Nut-Brown Maid. No longer exiled, elected to preferment, he could say now:
I need not to the greenwood go,
Alone, a banished man.
But the triumphant finale was mixed with a motif of mourning. The persons associated with the ballad—Ned Halley, Hercule Menton, and the Nut-Brown Maid herself—had passed, or were passing, from his life. The tears of ever-changing things. He fingered the pine seedlings between the giant stumps of their predecessors; during the hard winter the young trees had taken root, and were an inch prouder in height than when he had planted them.
For the last time he visited the burned-out forge and laid his hand on the legendary anvil that had given his parish its name. L’Enclume! He knelt amid the cobwebbed debris and briefly praised the Maker of symbols so meaningful and lasting on the tongues of men.
Stephen said his pastoral good-by from the altar on the fourth Sunday after Easter. The church was filled. In the front rows sat his first-Communion class; the girls flower-crowned, white-veiled, on one side of the center aisle; on the other, little boys in patched serge suits and white silk ties. Behind these scrubbed first communicants sat their fathers and mothers—the men weather-scarred and ageless, their wives aged too early by poverty and domestic toil. Gazing into the familiar faces, Stephen saw the indestructible toughness that is the preserver and guarantor of life; a more reassuring vision, no lover of humanity could ask to behold.
He read the Gospel for the fourth Sunday after Easter. It was from John xvi, verses 5-12, and began: “At that time Jesus said to his disciples, ‘I go to him that sent me.’” He finished reading Christ’s last discourse to His disciples, laid aside the Book, and spoke to his people.
“My dear friends: For the past few days we have been saying good-by to each other. In your homes or along the roadside, we have clasped hands as friends do in parting, and bid each other farewell. Though there has been much sadness in these farewells, we have tried to keep them as cheerful as possible, saying to each other, ‘After all, Boston is not so far from L’Enclume. We will be running into each other all the time. You will visit us, we shall visit you. Let us say, then, au revoir. Good-by until we meet again.’
“I heartily wish that my going was merely a matter of au revoir. Even more heartily, I wish that I might never go away at all. If I could spend my life among you, baptizing your children, preparing them for Communion, bringing you the sacraments, and growing ever closer to you in friendship and love, this I would choose to do.”
Stephen paused. “But to a priest, such dear and human happiness is not permitted. Lest we become attached to mortal friendships and thereby forget the immortal love of Him to whom we are dedicated, we learn to say not au revoir, but adieu.
“À Dieu. To God. Your native language, in its ancient wisdom, instructs us in obedience to His will, His work, His plan.
“Together we have come through many hardships. During the rigorous seasons of winter and Lent we have measured and sustained each other. Spring and Easter have given us victory over cold and death. We have had other victories, too: I see it in the faces of the boys and girls who today will receive our Lord for the first time. I see it in your gentleness to one another, husband to wife, father to son, neighbor to neighbor. I feel it in the ties of mutual trust and love that were beginning to bind us together. But now these ties must be broken.
“I have told you why.
“In the Gospel for today, Christ says to His disciples, ‘I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.’ I do not know exactly what our Lord meant by these words, for the promise contained in them is fearful and great. But I think He meant that we should ready ourselves for the gifts of suffering and joy He holds in store for us”—Stephen spoke very slowly—“and accept obediently whatever burdens, sorrows, and commands He lays upon our lives.
“It is in this spirit of obedience that I say to you now, ‘Adieu, mes amis.’
“It is in this spirit of acceptance that I say, ‘Adieu, mes frères.’”
Stephen opened his arms as if to embrace the people of L’Enclume. “I have called you friends and brothers. You are more. The priest whom you call ‘Father’ echoes your love with a still dearer name. My children all! Till the day when we are gathered up into the arms of the eternal Father, I give you that tenderest of farewells. ‘Adieu, adieu, mes enfants. …’”
He raised his right hand to bless them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.