THE INTER-FAITH CONVOCATION began next day with a luncheon in the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria. The Right Reverend Alfred Cartmell, Episcopal Bishop of Long Island, invoked the blessing of God on the assembly, ending his prayer with the plea: “Let Thy light so illuminate our hearts that we may see eye to eye those common truths vouchsafed unto all peoples through Christ our Lord. Amen.”
Stephen, seated on the right wing of the speaker’s table, found himself between Rabbi Jonas Mordecai, patriarch of orthodox Judaism, and Hubbell K. Whiteman, Ph.D., lay author of Protestantism on the March. The dubious droop of Rabbi Mordecai’s beard bred more interest than Dr. Whiteman’s chin-up militancy. After exchanging amenities with both luncheon partners, Stephen turned a sympathetic eye on the Rabbi as the latter gazed mournfully at the lobster cocktail heading the menu. Rabbi Mordecai went so far as to lift a small-tined fork, then laid it down again with a four-thousand-year-old smile of resignation.
“I’m out of the running already,” he whispered to Stephen. In the Rabbi’s voice were melancholy echoes of Leviticus: “Whatsoever hath not fins and scales shall be an abomination unto you.” Properly interpreted, the Rabbi’s observance of the ancient code of Jewish holiness was no mere dietary whim; rather a reverberation of Sinai’s thunder: “I, the Lord your God, am holy, and have set you apart from the peoples that ye should be Mine.”
Across Stephen’s meditation fell the voice of Dr. Hubbell K. White-man, “What hopes do you entertain, Monsignor, for the success of our Inter-Faith movement?” The question, legitimate enough, had the quality of a skirmisher’s shot. Dr. Whiteman was merely finding his range.
“Protestantism may benefit,” said Stephen. “But quite honestly, I can’t see what Roman Catholicism stands to gain.”
Dr. Whiteman was affable with a difference. “Suppose you change ‘Roman’ to read ‘American.’ Wouldn’t certain changes flow from such a shift in emphasis?”
“For example, Doctor.”
Hubbell K. Whiteman launched into a demonstration of the benefits that might accrue to Catholics if they organized, as he put it, “on an American basis.” During the mulligatawny soup (which Rabbi Mordecai did not taste) the author of Protestantism on the March made the point that American Catholics, divested of “foreign allegiance,” would be regarded “less suspiciously” in many quarters. Consequently, they would be eligible, he argued, “for a larger role in American political life.” Stephen replied that American Catholics were bound by no foreign allegiance—unless, possibly, God could be regarded as a foreigner. While the assemblage hacked away at broiled chicken, and Rabbi Mordecai clasped his wrinkled hands in resignation, Dr. Whiteman suggested that a stronger and really beautiful Christianity would result if all American faiths would federate, loosely perhaps, in the manner of the several states. He was pumping three hundred words a minute on this federation idea when Chairman Quincy A. Howson, professor of moral philosophy at the Manhattan Theologic Seminary, arose and said:
“The Convocation will now hear grace after meat, offered by that distinguished exponent of orthodox Judaism, Rabbi Jonas Mordecai.”
Everyone felt very democratic, very fine, when the puzzled Rabbi, not having touched a morsel of the luncheon, intoned the ancient Hebrew prayer of thanksgiving after food.
Professionally swift on the uptake, Chairman Howson now introduced the keynoter of the occasion, the Reverend Bradbury Towne, D.D. (Cantab.), LL.D., Harvard, and rector of St. Barnaby’s, New York City. Handsome and erudite in the high-Anglican manner, Bradbury Towne had worn the surplice of special grace for so many years that it now hung quite easily from his fine shoulders.
In diction and content Dr. Towne’s address was a thing of frank charm. “We are met to honor God and ourselves,” he said, “by considering those things which ought to be done, indeed which must be done, if His kingdom is to prevail in our midst. Although the imperfect arcs of existing (and sadly enough, competing) faiths are not capable of being wholly fused, as the poet Browning suggests, into a ‘perfect round,’ yet a beginning can be made. With a little less insistence on dogma perhaps, not quite so much emphasis on differences of ritual, and a more sincere attempt to understand the purely historical nature of those differences, the work of unification could be greatly advanced.” Dr. Towne went on to say that advantages both spiritual and temporal would flow from such a consolidation of faith. The Church United—“federalized” was possibly a better word—would be in a more strategic position to combat the materialism of the day. Sectarian rivalries at an end, less prosperous churches could merge with congregations more—ah—substantially founded. Harassed rectors would find themselves (a benign humor accompanied Dr. Towne’s descent into the idiom) using not quite so much red ink. And lastly, the miasmas of bigotry and intolerance having been blown quite away, religion in the United States could soar on new-found pinions into clear American ether.
Without ever saying so, Dr. Towne implied that he was both willing and ready to lead the wandering denominational tribes into the Promised Land of Unification.
Prolonged applause and a grim benediction by the Most Reverend Timothy Creedon, Catholic Bishop of Newark, followed the keynoter’s remarks.
Stephen could almost hear Tim Creedon muttering to himself, “What in God’s name am I doing here among these psalm singers?”
With the amiable aroma of Dr. Towne’s speech still hanging about them, the delegates proceeded to various seminars and forums to consider specific problems. Stephen was assigned to a discussion of “Religious Tolerance as an Instrument of Democracy.” With five other clergymen, including Rabbi Mordecai, he sat at a table facing an audience of probably a hundred laymen. The panel moderator, a white-eyebrowed veteran of the sectarian wars, explained that each speaker had ten minutes, and that a question period would give the laymen their chance later on. Meanwhile, no heckling, please.
The discussion was opened by the well-known Methodist preacher, John Fort Newcomb. “Tolerance,” he said, “is the virtue by which liberated minds make conquest of bigotry and hatred. It implies more than forbearance. Properly conceived, tolerance is the positive and cordial effort to understand another’s beliefs without necessarily sharing or accepting them. In the words of Phillips Brooks, Tolerance expresses a perfectly legitimate and honorable relation between opposite minds.’ I disagree with my friend. I want him to be true to his convictions, yet I claim the right and duty of trying to persuade him to my belief.” The speaker wound up by pointing out that tolerance is the basic ingredient of democracy, “the meeting in perfect harmony, or earnest conviction and high personal privilege.”
The next speaker, a Presbyterian minister named Alonzo Runforth, made the nice point that tolerance should not be confused with pallid indifferentism. He quoted John Morley: “Much that passes for tolerance is only a pretentious form of being without settled opinions of our own.” Danger lurks in this form of slothfulness, said the Reverend Dr. Runforth, “because tolerance, a fragile plant, has to be diligently tended, else it withers and dies. As it fades, another growth—the poisonous mushroom of intolerance—takes its place. A privilege is shorn away here, a censorship is erected there, hatreds take root, and soon we are living in the black forest of intolerance, sunless and fearsome for all.”
Thus far the discussion had gone forward on a high level of decorum. Now arose the Reverend Twombly Moss, a Southern fundamentalist, who slammed his open palm onto the table and exploded sulphurously. “Tolerance my necktie! What this country needs is a good five-cent stick of brimstone!”
The shocked moderator lifted white eyebrows. Who had put this zealot on the program? Whereupon Twombly Moss ripped off his necktie and brought the rod of Aaron down on the backs of the unrighteous.
“How can anyone be tolerant to violators of the Eighteenth Amendment?” he bellowed. “Take a man who says he has the right to sozzle in rum and use tobacco in all its forms—pipe, chew, and cigarettes. Isn’t license what he means? License to befuddle his brains and stunt his body with poison? And if you don’t believe tobacco is poison, just try this experiment. Tuck a plug of chewing tobacco under your armpits, then sit down in a rocking chair and try to be comfortable. Just you try! Inside of three minutes you’ll be sicker’n a gangrened beagle pup with the collywobbles.” The fundamentalist Savonarola raged on. “And another thing! There’s too much bunnyhugging going on to suit the Reverend Twombly Moss. This cheek-to-cheek dancing has got to stop. Clean house, I say. Cut out this tolerance twaddle and let’s put an end to booze, cigarettes, dancing, and cardplaying, or the country’ll wake up some Tuesday morning and find itself raking ashes in hell.”
An astonished hush settled over the hall. The hush was broken by the voice of some nameless wit in the back benches.
“What’s your stand on popcorn, Reverend? Agin that, too?”
A wash of laughter cleansed the sulphur-laden air. In the deluge Twombly Moss sat down, his five-cent stick of brimstone very much dampened.
It was hard to get the forum on the track again, but the white-eye-browed moderator finally succeeded. Two more speakers gave their views on religious tolerance. Then it was Stephen’s turn. This is what he wanted to say:
My dear friends, I find myself in agreement with most of the vague agreeabilities proposed in this forum. I would be lacking in frankness, however, if I did not tell you that the Catholic Church takes a most uncompromising stand in matters of faith and morals enjoined upon it by God. You will find the Church notably lenient in contemplating human frailty; but you will find it grimly unyielding when asked, in the name of tolerance, to deviate from the divine revelations and theologic dogmas on which Catholic doctrine is based. We hold our teaching to be the only true teaching. We will not alter any part of it; indeed we cannot, because man is powerless to alter the truth of God. In view of these facts, I see no point in extending my remarks.
Had Stephen been attached to an American diocese or speaking under the jurisdiction of an American bishop, he would have said these things (very probably Bishop Creedon was saying them this minute in another room). But because Stephen was attending the Convocation as a representative of the Apostolic Delegate, he felt obliged to protect Quarenghi from the controversy that certainly would result from such a forthright statement. Discretion rather than expediency prompted Stephen to temper his utterance as follows:
“Mr. Moderator, respected colleagues: It occurs to me that in our discussion of tolerance we have somehow overlooked its spiritual origin. No one has yet mentioned that tolerance is an extension of God’s great commandment, ‘Love thy neighbor’—an injunction that all of us, irrespective of creed, are bound to obey.”
At this acceptable Christian doctrine the moderator beamed. Stephen continued:
“May I point out that tolerance has two meanings: to suffer and to bear. Both meanings were combined into a single act when the Son of God became man in order to bear His cross and suffer on it for our redemption. It is my thought that we shall best fulfill God’s commandment when we imitate the tolerance of His son.”
There was a genteel patting of hands as Stephen sat down.
Rabbi Mordecai was the last to speak. He rose slowly, his bowed figure emaciated with advanced age, and gazed about the hall with eyes dimmed by seventy years of poring over the Torah and Kethubim. He fingered his beard, as if amused by what he had heard from the cleanshaven ministers of younger faiths. Then on the withered parchment of his forehead, bewildered wrinkles appeared.
“What can I say that will be helpful here?” he began. “It is not that I am old or tired, or wish to heap ashes of self-pity on my beard. But we are so far apart that not even the wisdom of Maimonides could bring us together in understanding. The food that sustains you is denied me. Your words are kindly intentioned, yet they do not fill my heart with gladness. Phillips Brooks is good, John Morley is good”—the Rabbi contemplatively rubbed the blue vein at his temple—“but because I have spent my life hearkening to Moses and Isaiah, I have lost my ear for prophets less majestic.”
Stephen wished that his brother George could have heard and seen Jonas Mordecai. The Rabbi was neither modern nor near to modern; he had made no concessions to contemporary culture. Outmoded but modeless, appearing rarely yet constantly among men, Jonas Mordecai was the very pattern of the dedicated priest. Out of the bickerings and doctrinal differences, the Rabbi’s voice emerged in beauty and wisdom as he went on:
“But now lest you go away saying what a cynical, weary old man this rabbi is, I will speak to you in a parable. There was once a king who owned a wonderful diamond. He was proud of his jewel, but one day by accident it was deeply scratched. The king called in gem cutters to repair his stone—yet try as they might, they could not polish away the scratch. At last there appeared in that kingdom a lapidary artist of surpassing genius. With skill and patience he carved a beautiful rose on the part of the stone that was flawed. And by his cunning art, he contrived to make the deepest part of the scratch the rose’s stem.”
Rabbi Modecai turned his palms outward in a gesture that might have had several meanings. All of which, in the tradition of parables, he left unstated.
The Inter-Faith Convocation ended next day. In none of its sessions did a lapidary artist of sufficient skill step forward to carve a rose on the scratched diamond of faith. In fact, during the forums on divorce, birth control, and religious education, the diamond received several new scratches.
Acrimonies were hushed, but not ended, by adjournment. The formal resolutions of the Inter-Faith Convocation, published some months later, were unanimous only in agreeing that bigotry and intolerance, like the grade crossing and the man-eating shark, must be eliminated.
Annus mirabilis 1927. The Book of Calvin was drawing to a close. Over the strayed homespun in the White House the Delphic mantle of double talk had descended; whatever he said or did was undiluted paradox. His fame rested on six words: “We must have law and order.” Yet during his presidency the law of the land was in a virtual state of suspension while mobsters proclaimed the statute of the tommy gun and rival beer kings dealt out the leering justice of the ride. Thrift was Cal’s religion; he could save fifty thousand a year on his salary and haggle about the number of hams to be served at an official dinner. But he made no protest against the orgy of stock gambling and financial thimblerigging that went on under his codfish eye. He sounded no trumpets, tilted at no windmills, and dodged every problem that could not be solved on an abacus. Having made the nasal announcement that the business of America was business, he sat back in his rocking chair and watched his countrymen engage in a breakneck scramble for the prosperity that still bears his name.
Given the fatness of these years, what happened in the United States? Was there a renaissance of the arts, a quickening of religion, a tranquil deepening of thought? No. Living under conditions nearly perfect (according to the advertising pages) for the expression of man’s nobler self, the people abandoned themselves to diversions, which, though not out of place at a Shriner’s convention, were scarcely creditable to a great nation at the peak of its material fortunes. While millions of children developed rachitic knobs from malnutrition, and the League of Nations floundered impotently without Western support, the American people gave themselves up to marathon dancing, pole-sitting, and kindred freak contests, each dizzier and more meaningless than the last.
Stephen Fermoyle, observing the Washington scene at close range, found little that was instructive. Only his intuitive belief that millions of private citizens were living lives of unproclaimed nobility and goodness saved him from outright pessimism. His state of mind was shared by many of the ecclesiastic friends he had made in the Cathedral chapter of St. Matthew’s and at the Catholic University, where he was preparing for his doctorate in philosophy. Whenever this set gathered for an evening, a single overwhelming question arose: “At what point might the Catholic Church legitimately draw America’s attention to the fact that ‘business morality’ and a laissez-faire theory of economics were forcing men into practices criminally at variance with divine and natural law?”
The question was neither academic nor theologic; it carried grave reality for employers and wage earners at every point where economics touched upon morals. Pope Pius XI described the struggle as one “in which only the strongest survive; and the strongest, often enough, means those who fight most relentlessly, who pay least heed to the dictates of conscience.”
Had the administration chosen to fulfill Leo XIII’s ideal of a Christian state, it could have done much to prevent the landslide of mischief that was about to be loosed upon all classes of society. But the government, impervious to spiritual influence, displayed the typical weakness of a state that excludes God from its deliberations.
AS ASSISTANT to the Apostolic Delegate, Stephen was learning a great deal about the Catholic Church in America. Most of his information came by way of diocesan reports clearing through Quarenghi’s office en route to Rome. From the study of these documents two facts emerged: in great centers of population, Catholicism was vigorous and thriving; under the guidance of competent bishops and hard-working pastors, large city parishes were expanding; new churches were lifting crosses and bell towers to the sky. But when one turned to outlying areas, the picture was less encouraging. Here and there, an energetic bishop managed to keep roofs on the shabby churches in his diocese. Generally speaking, however, the Roman Catholic faith was not prospering in the poorer agricultural regions of the United States. In fact, it was barely holding its own.
Quarenghi’s “office of vigilance” bound him to investigate this laggard condition; yet his manifold duties in Washington made a personal visitation impossible. Early in March, 1927, he looked up at Stephen from behind a rampart of official documents and casually asked:
“Would you be willing, Stefano, to undertake a mission above and beyond the call of paper work?”
“Try me.”
Quarenghi laid his finger tip on a wall map of the United States. “I want you to make a tour of this region,” he said, indicating the area between the Great Smokies and the Mississippi River. “Find out, if you can, what is happening to the Roman Catholics in the South and Southwest. Take three months, more if necessary, and make a report of your findings.”
In three months Stephen traveled ten thousand miles through a part of the United States he had never seen before. On muleback, in jerking day coaches and battered Fords, he traversed a terrain clothed with fern-brakes and pine—a land desolate at best, but made uglier where ruthless logging had pimpled the landscape with stumps. It was a region of starveling scarcity, where even the razor-backed shoat could not prosper and the black-snake whip cracked loudly in the hands of invincibly ignorant men. Stephen entered counties that had never seen a priest; in some states, paintless churches were supported on a vaguely missionary basis or not at all. White families traditionally Catholic were losing their faith by default, and the spiritual neglect of the Negro had permitted nearly ninety per cent of the colored population to fall uncontested into Protestant hands.
Stephen was shocked to see the linkage between economic poverty and religious hatred. In counties where the Church was poorest, the Klan flogged Roman Catholics relentlessly. But wherever a bold bishop thundered—though his altar might be hundreds of miles away—there, Catholics were least molested.
DEEP IN the desolate bayou country, far beyond the protection of any bishop, Stephen ran into serious trouble. He was returning (via the one-track Gainesboro & Pitney R.R.) from a solitary Josephite mission school for Negroes, when the train halted in the middle of a swamp. At the sound of drawling profanity Stephen looked out the window and saw the engineer mopping his neck with a blue bandanna.
As the only passenger on the train, Stephen had a personal interest in the proceedings. It appeared that Number 9, a cow-catcher locomotive of Stonewall Jackson vintage, had snapped an eccentric rod. According to Lem Tingley—engineer, fireman, and conductor on the G. & P.—the repair of eccentric rods was a complicated business. First you walked to Racey, the nearest whistle stop four miles down the track. From there you called up Gainesboro, the southern terminus of the G. & P. If anyone answered, you asked him to send up a new eccentric rod on a handcar. “Ought to get here tomorrow noon,” said Lem. “Then allow-in’ three or four hours for fittin’, we’ll be on our way by suppertime on Friday.”
The prospect of idling for thirty hours in a mosquito-ridden swamp was scarcely inviting. Quarenghi’s orders had been: “Find out what’s going on in the South,” and the time might be more profitably spent by visiting near-by towns. “Is there anyplace around here I could stay?” asked Stephen.
Yep, there was the Crescent House in Owosso, eight miles down the line. Decent enough place, but from the depths of his conscience, Lem Tingley couldn’t rightly recommend it to Stephen. “Folks hereabouts are apt to get ugly when they see a Roman collar.”
“I’ll take my chances.” Leaving his luggage on the train, Stephen started down the track. To prevent the sun from wilting his collar, he took it off; not until he reached Owosso three hours later did he observe the priestly amenity of putting it on again. The white badge of his office created a minor disturbance among the rocking-chair brigade seated on the rickety veranda of the Crescent House. Seven or eight loungers, looking for all the world like an unemployed posse, were apparently engaged in some kind of contest involving the production of tobacco juice. The volume, distance, and accuracy of the spitters fell off for a moment, then increased noticeably as Stephen mounted the steps.
A clerk who might have served as a Confederate drummer boy in the battle of Chickamauga reluctantly produced a register. “That’ll be two dollars—in advance,” he said, as Stephen signed his name. “Here’s your key, Mister. Room Four. Up them stairs, last door on the left.”
Room 4 smelled like the bottom of a fish barrel. An iron bedstead swarming with leprous scabs supported a sway-back mattress. Moldy straw matting covered the floor. On the wall hung a fly-blown religious calendar, the yellowed memento of a Full Gospel convention held long ago in Owosso. Stephen read the text for the month of August, 1912.
What is man that Thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that Thou visitest him?
The only plumbing in the Crescent House was a lavatory on the first floor. To this, Stephen descended. He was washing his face and hands, thinking pleasantly of the supper of fatback probably awaiting him, when a delegation of quid-and-chaw contestants lounged into the lavatory. One of them sluiced a half pint of tobacco juice into the washbowl and inquired: “What you all doing in Owosso?”
“Minding my own business,” said Stephen cheerfully.
“What sort of business might that be?”
“I’m a priest, making a survey of Catholic churches in this part of the country.”
“Fixin’ to start a Catholic church in Owosso?” A cheekful of brown liquid splashed off the cap of Stephen’s shoe.
“Look, Mister,” said Stephen, “you’ve either lost your aim or your manners.”
“’Tain’t his aim he’s lost,” snickered one of the trio. “Jeff can drownd a fly at twenty paces.”
Unmoved by this home-town flattery, the fly-drowner came to the nub of his argument. “Us folks in Owosso ain’t in favor of strangers wearin’ collars hindside foremost. We-all intend, friendly-like, to let them get out of town without causin’ no trouble. But if they-all don’t leave peaceable, why, we got ways of persuadin’ ’em.”
“I’m getting out of here as soon as I can,” said Stephen. “Will tomorrow morning suit you?”
“Right now’d suit us better,” said Jeff.
“Sorry I can’t oblige.” Stephen shouldered his way out of the lavatory.
Supper was an early-evening affair at the Crescent House. The menu was simple: pork chops, grits, black-eyed peas, and rain-water coffee. Exhausted by his eight-mile walk that afternoon, Stephen went directly to his room, removed his outer clothing, and lay down on the sway-back bed. It was dark when he was awakened by the sound of a heavy boot kicking at his door.
“Open up.”
Stephen jumped out of bed, pulled on his trousers and shoes, then opened the door. The corridor was filled with sheeted figures wearing conical hoods.
“You didn’t git out of town your way, so we’re gittin’ you out ours. Put your clothes on, collar and all. This is goin’ to be a full-dress affair.” Three pairs of hands jerked Stephen across the threshold. Other hands blindfolded him. He was tumbled down the stairs and into the back seat of an automoblie that grunted painfully under the weight of its occupants. No one spoke during the long drive into the country.
When the blindfold was taken from his eyes, Stephen saw that he was in the center of an open field. In the light of three burning crosses, white-sheeted men were ominously grouped. Directly in front of him a hooded man was caressing the lash of a blacksnake whip. Another hooded figure held a small glinting object in the palm of his hands.
“Know what this is?” he asked.
Stephen looked at the object in the man’s palm. “Yes.”
“What do you Catholics call it?”
“Catholics and Christians everywhere call it a crucifix,” said Stephen.
“Danged if you ain’t right. That’s what the whining nigger called it when we took it away from him. Funny the way he begged to kiss it when we strung him up.”
“Many men have begged to kiss it at the moment of death,” said Stephen.
The whip-handler took over. “Well, this ain’t no ‘Come to Jesus’ meetin’. There’ll be no cross-kissin’ here tonight. What we’re aimin’ to see you do, stranger”—he cracked the flexible lash past Stephen’s ear—“is spit on it.”
The values of the proposed ordeal by saliva seemed unreal to Stephen. That grown men should suggest such a thing nauseated him.
“What will it prove?” he asked.
“Why, it’ll just prove that no white-kidneyed priest can stick his nose in where he’s not wanted.”
Stephen saw his opening. “It’s all clear to me now,” he said. “I thought for a minute that you men came out here to see Christ’s image defiled. I was wrong. You don’t really want to insult your Saviour. You just want to scare a Catholic priest.”
“That’s about it, I reckon.”
“Well, start scaring.”
The whip-wielder expected a showier display of cringing. “You mean you ain’t going to spit on this here object?”
“I couldn’t possibly.” Stephen reversed the proposition. “You spit on it.”
The suggestion alarmed the master of ceremonies. He held the crucifix at arm’s length, gazing at it curiously like a man seeing something for the first time. “Don’t rightly know how’s I could.”
“How about some of you other chaw artists?” asked Stephen.
A tremor of negation passed over the group. “Throw the damned thing in the bushes,” someone muttered.
“No, give it to me,” said Stephen. He held the crucifix between thumb and forefinger, lofting it like a lantern in darkness. “Let’s get on with the whipping.”
“Jes’ ’s you say, Mister.” The hooded leader curled a python lash around his victim’s ankles. “Ef you won’t spit—dance!”
Ancient strength of martyrs flowed into Stephen’s limbs. Eyes on the gilt cross, he neither flinched nor spoke.
“Mebbe he needs a little music. Give him ‘Dixie’ on your harmonica, Lafe.”
The metallic wheeze of a mouth organ rose above the blacksnake’s thud. Joyless voices took up the refrain. Calloused hands beat out the rhythm. Higher around Stephen’s body, past knee and thigh, the whip climbed.
Den I wish I was in Dixie,
Hooray! Hooray!
Land of the quid and chaw. Forgive them, Lord, they know not what they do.
In Dixieland I’ll take my stand …
One had to take a stand somewhere. Dixie, Roncesvalles, Tyburn Hill—what matter where? Stephen prayed silently that no drop of spittle, no whimpering plea for mercy, would fall from his lips before the end.
Now, seeking a gayer tempo, the harmonica switched to “Turkey in the Straw,” but, for some reason not understandable to the audience, the show wasn’t coming off as scheduled. Murmurs of dissatisfaction began to arise:
“He don’t squirm proper.”
“Losin’ your touch, Jeff?”
The whipmaster was apologetic. “I can’t crack her in nacheral while he holds that thing in front of him. Anyone else want to try?”
There were no takers. All sadistic relish had evaporated by now. With a grunt of disgust, Jeff folded up his whip. “C’mon, let’s get back to town. The muskeeters’ll finish him off.”
Glum as hunters who had treed their coon but couldn’t get him down, the sheeted men clambered into their cars. Not until the last taillight had disappeared did Stephen lower the crucifix.
Alone, on a midnight terrain utterly strange to him, he knew that it would be foolhardy to wander about the countryside. The wisest course was to sit down and wait for morning. To the embers of the fiery crosses, Stephen added brushwood and broken branches, thereby gaining the companionship and protection that a fire offers. Sitting in its smoke, he kept the mosquitoes at bay, and by the firelight examined the welts on the lower part of his body. In several places where the skin was broken, dark trickles oozed and coagulated. Not a full baptism of blood—but close enough.
Through the little eternity between midnight and dawn, he pondered the mystery of the gilt crucifix. Even on souls shrouded in darkness, this glinting symbol of the perfect sacrifice had proved its power to moderate, however slightly, the passions of men.
At sunrise Stephen made a rough calculation of his position, then struck a course in a general southeasterly direction, hoping sooner or later to strike the G. & P. tracks. He breakfasted on water from a clear stream, bathed the dust and blood from his body, then continued his way across eroded fields too poor to support animal or human life. Hunger began to sap his strength. It was nearly midday when he struck a humpbacked dirt road sparsely rutted with wheel tracks. Exhausted, he lay down in a dry ditch by the roadside and fell asleep in the blaze of noon.
He was awakened by a foot poking at his shoulder. Looking up, Stephen saw a lantern-jawed man, his cheek bulging with the inevitable quid, gazing down at him. In appearance and costume, the stranger was a composite of all the loungers on the Crescent House veranda. Frayed straw hat, butternut jeans torn at the knees and sagging at the end of stretched-out suspenders. Unshaved chin, big Adam’s-apple. The posse type again, complete, except for shotgun and bloodhounds.
“Appears like you fell among thieves, brother,” the man was saying.
The Biblical cast of the remark was something of a novelty. Without answering, Stephen watched the stranger rummage in the haversack hanging from his bony shoulder. The man drew out a square of corn-bread, added a slab of fat-back to it, and offered the food to Stephen.
“Work up your strength on this,” he advised.
Stephen devoured the cornbread, then ruefully surveyed the appetizing bit of pork. No dodging the issue now. “Thanks,” he said, “but I don’t eat meat on Fridays.”
“Catholic, eh?”
Might as well get it over with. “Yes, a Catholic priest.”
The announcement caused no change of facial expression other than a ruminant sideslip of the tobacco chewer’s jaw. “Don’t see many of your kind in these parts. Where’re you bound?”
“I’m trying to reach the G. & P. track four miles south of Racey. Do you know the place?”
The man spoke pridefully. “Racey? Got a molar there. Figured to yank it tomorrow, but I guess Pa Crump wouldn’t object if it came out this afternoon.”
“Are you a dentist?” asked Stephen.
The man plunged his hand into his haversack and pulled out a pair of forceps. “Carry the tools, anyway,” he grinned. “Painless Tatspaugh’s the name. Antiseptic methods. Prices reasonable. Bicuspids and molars, two bits. Wisdom teeth, half a dollar.”
The itinerant dentist narrowed a diagnostic eye at Stephen. “You look all beat up, brother. What they been doin’ to you?” Without specifying who “they” were, Painless Tatspaugh drew a cocoa can from his haversack and scooped out a fingerful of salve. “Tatspaugh’s Sovereign Elixir,” he explained. “Guaranteed to heal cuts, ringworm, harness sores, and”—he spat mightily—“whip welts. S’pose I rub some of it over the painy spots.”
Stephen accepted the ministrations gratefully. Refreshed by the combination of cornbread, Sovereign Elixir, and Samaritanism in general, he rose stiffly to his feet.
Walking toward Racey at the terrific pace set by Painless Tatspaugh, Stephen revised his estimate of the Southern character considerably. Ben Tatspaugh chewed just as much tobacco and spat it as accurately as any man on the Crescent House veranda. He was unwashed, illiterate, and reasonably addicted to profanity. But he possessed that unpurchasable asset peculiar to no economic class or geographic region—the truly gentle soul. His gentleness came out when he stooped to gather a clump of foxglove which, he explained, would do Gran’ma Fugitt’s heart a world of good. It was revealed in his manner of adjusting the rope harness that was galling a mangy mule. Watching him extract a tooth from a sharecropper’s swollen jaw, Stephen realized that Painless Tatspaugh’s reputation sprang not alone from skill, but also from the almost hypnotic confidence he inspired in his patients.
Through a broiling dusty afternoon, Ben Tatspaugh’s long legs ate up incalculable mileage. Worn almost to exhaustion, Stephen finally panted, “How much further to Racey?” Without missing a stride, the itinerant dentist clucked encouragement. “Bear up, Reverend. We ain’t got fur to go.” From his haversack he pulled a black oval object, placed it to his lips, and blew a tentative note. “Mebbe a marchin’ tune’ll put sperrit into your legs. Ever hear a sweet pertater?”
Stephen admitted that he never had.
“Then you got a treat comin’, brother.” On the crude instrument, kin to the gourd, Ben Tatspaugh displayed his virtuosity as they crossed gullies, swamps, and unfenced fields. From a long repertory of hornpipes, jigs, and reels, he chose the liveliest. Then, his narrow chest pumping at full pressure, the sweet-potato player burst triumphantly into “Dixie.”
Way down south in de land ob cotton,
Old times dar am not forgotten,
Look away, look away, look away,
Dixieland.
Full circle. Same melody, same words, same landscape. Da capo al fine—only this time different fingers were searching the stops of Stephen’s heart. Dust-grimed but jubilant, he joined in the chorus.
Coming out of a pine grove, Stephen almost stumbled over a rusty railroad track. “Racey,” announced Painless Tatspaugh. He pointed south. “You’ll find Number 9 down thata way.” Solicitude was in his final question. “Want me to walk along?”
The man had already walked ten times the Biblical mile, and was willing to go still further. “No, thanks,” said Stephen. “I can make it from here.” In parting, he tried to press a five-dollar bill into his guide’s hand, but Ben Tatspaugh’s essential gentility waved aside more ready money than he would see in a month of molar-pulling.
“Keep your money, Reverend,” he said. “When I can’t help a neighbor out of a ditch, I better close up shop.”
A four-mile walk down the track brought Stephen into the presence of Lem Tingley, twisting a final nut onto Number 9’s eccentric rod.
“How’d you find things in Owosso?” asked the engineer.
“Pretty much like most other places.” How comment otherwise on the alternate threads of good and evil woven into the fabric of life?
No one ever knew that the assistant to the Apostolic Delegate had been flogged in the performance of his mission, or that his wounds had been anointed by a passing stranger. Stephen never mentioned it to Quarenghi or anyone else. The only memento of the affair was a cheap gilt crucifix that Stephen always tucked in his bag whenever and wherever he traveled.
HIS BRIEF CASE bulging with materials, Stephen returned to Washington and began writing a special report for the Apostolic Delegate. He spent a week describing the condition of the Church in the South, and ended his report with urgent recommendations for Catholic action in that neglected part of the United States. “To preserve and extend the faith in this region,” he wrote, “two things are needed: money and bishops. Funds must be raised by voluntary contributions from more prosperous areas. New bishops must be created in Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama. The incumbents must be vigorous young men, able to cope with the double challenge of economic want and religious bigotry.”
Stephen’s report, approved and signed by Quarenghi, was sent to the Congregation of the Consistory in Rome. The Cardinal Prefect of that Congregation, impressed by the urgency of the report, promptly recommended to His Holiness the creation of four new bishoprics in the United States as requested by the Apostolic Delegate.
The selection of these (as of all) bishops was no random procedure. To obtain the best possible men for the posts, the Church utilized its time-proved method of scrutiny based on the terna. Every two years the bishops of an ecclesiastic province come together in a meeting; at these meetings each bishop submits a terna—the names of three men in his diocese whom he considers most eligible for episcopal rank. These lists are then sent to the Apostolic Delegate, who forwards them, along with much collateral material, to the Congregation of the Consistory in Rome. Here the names and records of the candidates are carefully examined; all but the most promising are weeded out, and the remaining names are subjected to a still more searching scrutiny, consisting of additional letters of information, and comment from Church officials. The opinion of the Apostolic Delegate carries enormous weight here. This mass of material, sifted through an almost microscopic screen, produces at length the outstanding candidate. The name of this candidate is placed before the Holy Father, who, in the exercise of his power as Supreme Pontiff, makes the final choice when a vacancy occurs.
In the 1927 terna forwarded by Cardinal Glennon to the office of the Apostolic Delegate, Stephen saw his own name, bracketed with those of Michael Speed and Hubert Silvera of New Bedford. A shiver of apprehension ran along Stephen’s spine. The day was nearing when he would be called upon to defend, judge, interpret, ordain, confirm—and rule!
The call did not come at once. When Bishop Shields of Maine died that summer, the Right Reverend Michael Speed was named as his successor. Stephen attended Mike Speed’s consecration; with sixty-five other members of the American hierarchy, he watched his old friend prostrate himself before the altar, then rise to receive the miter and crozier, symbols of episcopal authority, from the hands of his consecrator, Lawrence Cardinal Glennon. Afterwards, at the reception in the new Bishop’s residence, there was much handshaking and felicitation all around. Not a man present begrudged Mike Speed his advancement; it was agreed that of all the younger clergy in the United States, the ex-Chancellor of the Boston Archdiocese best deserved, and would most eminently fulfill, the honors and responsibilities of his new post.
Scarcely a month later, the Most Reverend John T. Qualters, D.D., Bishop of Hartfield—a man heavy with years and riddled by five contending diseases (heart, kidney, liver, arthritis, and gallstones) gave up the ghost. To honor the deceased Bishop, whose diocese was the second largest in New England, the Apostolic Delegate accepted an invitation to attend the funeral and deliver the eulogy in person.
“I shall be gone a week or more,” said Quarenghi to Stephen shortly before he left. “In my absence, you will act as temporary charge d’affaires. If matters of special importance arise, you can get in touch with me at the residence of Cardinal Glennon in Boston.”
The Associated Press put the full text of Quarenghi’s eulogy—a moving oration in the highest tradition of sacred eloquence—on its wires. Letters and telegrams poured in from all parts of the country; even non-Catholic commentators hailed Quarenghi’s speech as the fruit of a new understanding between Rome and America.
When the Apostolic Delegate returned to Washington, his mood was quietly jubilant. “Well,” he said, “I’ve made my little swing around the circle. Isn’t that the idiom used by campaigners in this country?” Quarenghi went on: “I saw many remarkable things and people, but perhaps the most remarkable of all was your Lawrence Cardinal Glennon. Why, he’s a monument—a phenomenon.”
“I’m glad you discovered his real stature,” said Stephen. “In Rome he was overshadowed. But in this country people regard him as the ideal of what a prince of the Church should be.”
Quarenghi was going through the mail on his desk, apparently searching for a special envelope. “His Eminence thinks highly of you, Stefano. In fact, he sends you a gift.”
“A gift?”
“Yes.” Quite casually, Quarenghi handed Stephen a small box tied with an amethyst ribbon, then returned to the business of scanning his mail. Stephen snipped the amethyst ribbon, removed the outer wrapping of Glennon’s gift, and saw a ring case of faded blue velvet. He snapped the lid open, and there, in a groove of white satin, lay a ring—a beveled amethyst with a bezel of seed pearls.
It was the Dolcettiano ring that Orselli had given him years ago. The ring that Stephen had sold to defray the expenses of Ned Halley’s final illness. The ring that Glennon …
He looked up wonderingly at Quarenghi, who, having found the envelope he was looking for, was slicing its seals with an ivory-handled knife. “Si, si, Stefano.” The Apostolic Delegate was nodding and smiling. “Cardinal Glennon believed that you’d be needing your amethyst again,” he continued, glancing at the heavy fold of vellum he had taken from the envelope. “And my mail from Rome tells me that he was right.”
Quarenghi handed Stephen the vellum sheet bearing the personal crest of Pius XI. Stephen glanced at the document: three paragraphs in Latin covered the page. The first paragraph set forth the regrettable fact that His Excellency the Most Reverend John T. Qualters was deceased. The second paragraph recited that the See of Hartfield had consequently fallen vacant. The last paragraph read:
By virtue, therefore, of the authority transmitted to us in unbroken descent from Peter the First Disciple, we declare and publish our desire that the Right Reverend Stephen Fermoyle be consecrated Bishop of Hartfield in the United States of America, and that he shall enter at once upon the powers, duties, and obligations laid upon him by the solemn oath of his office. In testimony whereof we give this Apostolic mandate on the 14th day of July, anno Domini 1927.
The letter was signed Pius XI, and underneath the signature was the imprint of the Fisherman’s ring.