NOW began the long and tragic travail of depression, lightened only by the fortitude and forbearance of the American people. As the extent and nature of the disaster grew slowly upon the nation, it became apparent that many innocent bystanders were going to be hurt.
Over the Diocese of Hartfield the blight ran its typical course. Banks began to fail, factories slowed down, workers were laid off, sales dwindled, mortgage foreclosures and evictions turned people out of their homes. Torments of hunger and cold ravaged the country; the pallor of underfed children, and the despair of jobless fathers, deepened. Middle-class families, having spent their savings, drew their curtains and starved with genteel resignation; men and women tramped the streets in search of work, crowded into churches and police stations, seeking relief; stood in lengthening bread lines or begged at the doors of charitable institutions. Instead of two-car garages, Hoovervilles of tin and tar paper rose outside industrial cities.
On the basis of sheer humanitarianism, the President was urged to make Federal appropriations for relief. Such proposals ran counter to Hoover’s economic philosophy. “I am opposed,” he said, “to any direct or indirect government dole.” Then he added:
This is not an issue as to whether people shall go hungry or cold. It is solely a question of the best method by which hunger and cold shall be prevented. It is a question as to whether the American people will maintain the spirit of charity and mutual self-help through voluntary giving and the responsibility of local government, as distinguished from appropriations out of the Federal Treasury. My own conviction is strongly that if we break down this sense of responsibility, of individual generosity and mutual self-help, and if we start appropriations of this character, we have not only impaired something infinitely valuable in the life of the American people but have struck at the roots of self-government.
Admirable as political theory, Hoover’s pronouncement put no bread in hungry mouths. Although the President sincerely believed that the sum of individual effort would overcome the depression, he did not realize that the individual, no matter how rugged, was powerless to combat the cumulative and gigantic disaster that had overtaken society. Individualism had caused the damage, but individualism could not cure it.
Like every other American community, Hartfield tightened its belt and attempted to combat the depression by local charities and institutional care of the needy. The first winter was a time of hit-or-miss distribution of cash, food, and fuel, as religious and municipal agencies tried to take care of their own. The resulting waste and inefficiency was so deplorable that the Honorable Aloysius P. Noonan, Mayor of Hartfield, summoned a civic conference to remedy the evils of piecemeal welfare.
Around the Mayor’s table rallied Hartfield’s community leaders; State and Church, bench and bar, banking and commerce—all the buttresses and ornaments of society were there. In cutaway, piped vest, and gray-striped tie came Governor Webster Turnbull; as candidate for U. S. Senator the Governor thought it possible that a political plum or two might lurk in the welfare pie. Beside him sat the silver-haired dean of Hartfield’s clergy, the Right (and truly) Reverend Tileston Forsythe, a Methodist-Episcopal in doctrine, a very great Christian in practice. Next down the table was Public Layman Number One—Harmon I. Poole, president of the Hartfield Trust Company, whose initials HIP on a ninety-day note told the borrower exactly who had him—and where. Between Banker Pool and Major Tom Overbaugh, state commander of the Salvation Army, sat the Most Reverend Stephen Fermoyle, D.D., Roman Catholic Bishop of Hartfield.
Stephen nodded to other community figures ranged about the table. Justice Rigg of the appellate court bowed in acknowledgment of the Bishop’s cordial headshake; Courtney Pike, chairman of the Excelsior Bolt and Screw Corporation, did likewise. No such response, however, came from Mrs. F. Dennison Towle, president of the Planned Motherhood League, who appeared to be polishing a mote in her pince-nez every time Stephen glanced in her direction.
His Excellency expected trouble from Mrs. Towle before the meeting ended. So did His Honor Mayor Noonan, who rapped for order and opened the meeting with a brief exposition of the dangers boiling up from the vat of hit-or-miss relief. “We must pool our resources in a community fund,” said the Mayor, “otherwise, to mix a figure, this thing will cut us to pieces.”
A civic babel rose from the conferees. Governor Turnbull wanted to know who’d administer the funds. “Will it become”—he minted a phrase—“a political football?” Harmon I. Poole made a pointed inquiry: “What bank will get the deposits?” Reverend Gilbey Dodds, rector of St. Alfred’s, offered the suggestion (tentative, to be sure): “Shouldn’t proof of church affiliation be required of all persons applying for aid?” Industrialist Courtney Pike took the position that no union member had the right to expect public relief while the union treasuries were loaded—“yes, and I mean loaded.” Mrs. F. Dennison Towle asked beamingly, “Isn’t this a good time to intensify our birth-control activities among the poor?” These and other questions embroiled the meeting; friction threatened the bearings of the community machine. Honest warmth was degenerating into spitting bad temper when Bishop Stephen Fermoyle rose in his place.
“No one at this table,” he began dryly, “can accuse my Church of lightly regarding her prerogatives in matters of faith or doctrine.” A humorous grunt from Banker Poole and an appreciative smile from Tileston Forsythe greeted his remark. “In ordinary times I would take the position—with all humility and great firmness—that my Church should not yield one iota of her spiritual primacy, or suspend for an instant her right to extend that primacy in every legitimate manner.” Bishop Fermoyle paused to freight his words with emphasis. “I feel, however, that in this hour of common peril, no religion, no civic group, should think in terms of creed or preferment. We must lay aside our sectarian differences. Help must be extended to human beings on the simple basis of need. As Bishop of the Roman Catholic Church in this Diocese, I shall require no proof of religious affiliation from any man or woman who requires assistance. And I pledge, further, that no attempt at proselytizing will be made by any individual or agency under my control.”
Stephen’s eyes circled the table. “If the members of the committee can make similar guarantees, I shall be glad to contribute one hundred thousand dollars from diocesan monies to the Hartfield Community Fund.”
The committee loosed its collective breath in a sigh of relief. This was the kind of leadership—backed by the kind of cash—that everyone at the table was waiting for. Everyone? Not Mrs. F. Dennison Towle. The president of the Planned Motherhood League, who had been gunning for Stephen ever since his birth-control letter, planted her pince-nez firmly on the bridge of her nose and aimed a battery of exceptions at her powerful foe.
“I’m sure we all appreciate Bishop Fermoyle’s generous offer,” she began. “What he says about laying aside religious differences is just splendid. But since the Planned Motherhood League is a nonsectarian organization, I must insist—I really must—that it be allowed to carry on its program, especially among the deserving poor.”
Mayor Noonan slapped his forehead with a despairing hand. That woman was in again! Webster Turnbull adjusted his gubernatorial cravat: “Now look here, Imogene,” he began placatingly. The Governor had to use that tone in speaking to Imogene Towle because she pulled a hefty oar in the Republican committee boat. Others at the table used other tones, according to their private convictions or theories of public welfare. When the fracas subsided, they all found themselves waiting for Bishop Fermoyle’s verdict. Would he withdraw his offer, excoriate Mrs. Towle, or—as so many others had done in the past—knuckle under to her demand that the Planned Motherhood League be allowed to continue its work?
Stephen fingered an assortment of barbed answers—any one of which would have destroyed Mrs. F. Dennison Towle. The ugliest retort might have been: “Madame, since your Planned Motherhood League is operating in defiance of law, your hands, legally speaking, are not quite clean. One more peep out of you, and I’ll slap criminal charges against you and your outfit.” Such a remark would have embarrassed both Governor Turnbull and Mayor Noonan; Stephen rejected it. Again he might have said: “Since Mrs. Towle cannot find in her pocketbook enough cash to match the contribution of the Catholic Church, won’t she try in the goodness of her heart, to match its forbearance?” But this smacked too much of the Pharisee. Adroitly, Stephen chose the one argument that would take the most skin off Mrs. Towle’s patrician nose and at the same time apply soothing unguents to everyone else’s.
“Is it possible,” he asked, “that so distinguished a citizen as Mrs. Towle has forgotten the most salient lesson of our American tradition? May I remind the lady member that when her Pilgrim ancestors signed their mutual-safety pact in the cabin of the Mayflower, no one claimed special rights or exemptions? The common welfare was uppermost then; it is my belief that the common welfare is uppermost now.” Stephen turned to the Mayor. “I am willing, however, to abide by the majority decision in this matter. I move, Mr. Chairman, that we put the lady member’s proposal to a vote.”
“Second the motion,” said Appellate Justice Rigg.
In the vote that followed, the lady member’s proposal was defeated, eight to three.
Briskly now, the committee proceeded to set a goal of $1,500,000 for the Community Fund, to be administered by a nonsectarian, non-political board consisting of the Mayor, the Reverend Gilbey Dodds, H. I. Poole, president of the Hartfield Trust Company (who had to be satisfied with half the deposits), Major Overbaugh of the Salvation Army, and the Bishop of the Roman Catholic Church. A firm of professional fund raisers offered their services gratis. In the door-to-door campaign that followed, the giant thermometer on Hartfield Common climbed from zero to boiling point in ten days. A sum of $1,650,000 was collected, every penny of which went into food, fuel, and clothing for the needy citizens of Hartfield.
Mrs. F. Dennison Towle continued privately to bring jellied broth, concert tickets, and contraceptive devices to the deserving poor.
IN FEBRUARY, 1930, Stephen learned that unauthorized nuns were begging in the factory towns of his Diocese. The method and scale of the begging suggested that a resourceful mind was behind the operation. On payday in various cities, two or three gray-habited nuns would stand at factory gates, basins in hand, soliciting alms of the workers. After skimming off a thin collection of dimes and quarters, the nuns would disappear, only to pop up next week in another town.
From several sources Stephen got the same details: gray-habited nuns, agate basins, quick fadeaway, and sudden reappearance at some distant point. He wrote letters to all the convents in his Diocese, requesting further information, but no one knew anything about the gray nuns. The mystery came down to this: who was begging, and for what purpose?
Stephen determined to investigate the matter personally. Knowing that Thursday was payday in one of the large electrical plants near the Rhode Island border, he drove out alone in his Buick one sleety afternoon and sat in his car, waiting for the mendicant nuns to appear.
Ten minutes before closing time, a trio of gray-habited women took their places at the factory gates; as the workers streamed out, Stephen saw the sisters holding out their basins in dumb, piteous appeal. The sight of holy women standing in the snow was too much for the workers; from thin pay envelopes everyone dropped a small coin into the basin. The whole procedure was beautifully timed and staged. When it was over, the nuns dumped their coins into a canvas bag carried by their leader, and caught an outgoing bus by the handles.
In the sleety twilight, Stephen followed the bus several miles through a semirural section lying between Lancaster and Hopedale. It was dusk when the nuns alighted and started walking down an unplowed road. Stephen parked his car at a gas station and trailed them on foot until they disappeared through an arched gateway. He approached the gate and read a small sign bearing the single word: Misericordia.
Pushing open the gate, he entered a desolate courtyard. A low rambling house, dormered and wide-verandaed in an outmoded style of architecture, stood under melancholy pines. Unshoveled snow clogged the steps. The falling sleet, a low wind moaning through the trees, and a single dimly lighted window on the second floor created an almost sinister atmosphere. What was going on in this gloomy house? Stephen opened the front door and walked in. Stale deodorants lay on the cold air. A candle stuck in a baking-powder tin threw flickering shadows on a number of closed doors on the drafty lower floor. Listening at the first door, Stephen heard a sepulchral groan. From the second came a gasping low cry; from the third, frightened whimpers.
A nun glided out of the shadows, carrying a sickroom utensil.
“May I see the Sister in charge here?” asked Stephen.
His priestly garb was passport enough. “You will find Sister Martha Annunziata on the second floor. Last door on the left.”
The smell of deodorant became heavier as Stephen mounted the creaking stairway. He found himself tiptoeing down an uncarpeted corridor dimly lighted by a single taper burning before a plaster figure of the Virgin. At the last door he listened to a strange antiphon; one voice soothed, the other answered with weak retchings.
Stephen rapped gently, then opened the door. A blasting stench of putrescence struck his nostrils. The odor of death came from a ghastly yellow-fleshed human being—whether man or woman, it was impossible to tell—propped up on pillows. The eyes were staring in pain, the lower jaw sagged uncontrollably as greenish bile poured across from its broken dam.
Kneeling by the bedside, a gray-habited nun gazed with infinite tenderness at the horrible face on the pillow. In her hands she held an agate basin to catch the fetid trickle oozing from the death’s-head. The nun was not praying or exhorting. From her lips came a laving murmur, the sounds a mother might whisper to a feverish child. Only one voice in the world could speak like that.
Lalage! Lalage Menton.
The nun lifted wet-shining eyes to Stephen, recognized him, and made a little signal, part headshake, part finger to her lips. The gesture said: “In a moment it will be all over. Please wait outside.”
Stephen was glad to close the door. In the drafty hallway, he knelt before the Virgin’s statue, and prayed for the soul that Lalage Menton was leading toward release.
The end must have been peaceful. Candle in hand, Lalage came out of the sickroom and beckoned Stephen to follow her down the dim hallway. At the top of the stairway, she faced him tranquilly. In the taper-light he could see that Lalage’s face had lost the contour of youth and the radiance of its first beauty. Her hands were roughened by menial labor; at thirty-two the nut-brown maid was prematurely old. But her eyes were illuminated from within, and a trace of old mischievousness curved her lips.
“I have been expecting your visit,” she said. “Scold me if you wish.”
“I have no wish to scold you, Sister Martha.”
“It was wrong to beg in your Diocese. Especially when I got your letter telling me to stop.”
“We’ll go into that later, Sister. Tell me about the work you’re doing here. What kind of place is this—a hospital?”
“No. Misericordia is a house of last breathings—a refuge for destitute incurables, who would otherwise die uncared for.”
“But these are medical cases. Doctors, hospitals, should look after them.”
Lalage’s work-roughened hand swept a row of closed doors. “Misericordia is filled with people who have been given up by doctors and hospitals. Our patients are dying of last-stage cancer and tuberculosis. Even morphine is powerless to ease their pain. Nothing can be done for their bodies. We try at the end to give them what comfort we can.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Not quite a year. We chose a bad time to start our work.”
“Have you no regular source of income?”
Sister Martha Annunziata shook her head in a proud negative. “Geraldines are always poor. The Mother House sends us all it can spare.”
“Why did you not apply to me for assistance?”
“By the rule of our Order we make no financial claims on the Diocese.” Lalage pinched a drop of melting wax from the candle’s edge. “We live on drippings, Your Excellency.”
A Sister whom Stephen recognized as one of the nuns he had seen at the factory gates approached. Her shoes and the lower part of her habit were still wet from snow.
“The throat case in Room Five is sinking, Mother Superior.”
“I will come, Sister.” Lalage Menton turned to Stephen. “Is there anything more you wish to say to me?”
“Yes.” Stephen firmed his voice. “I want you to stop begging in the Diocese of Hartfield. It is not fair to the workingmen.”
He waited for the female plea, “What else can I do?” It did not come, and Stephen knew that Lalage Menton intended to go on begging until she could find some surer source of income. To prevent this fearless, determined woman from committing the sin of disobedience, Stephen made a voluntary offer of assistance.
“I shall make a financial contribution to your work here. As of today, Misericordia House will be allotted five hundred dollars monthly from diocesan funds.”
“That is most generous, Your Excellency.” Faint suggestions of a tease were in Lalage’s voice. “You won’t chop down our pine trees, will you?”
Stephen smiled. “No, that won’t be necessary. But I must receive regular reports covering your expenditures, the number of patients admitted, and the treatment they receive. Is this quite clear, Sister?”
“Yes, Your Excellency.”
They were walking down the creaky stairs. “When money eases up a little,” continued Stephen, “we must think of making a few repairs. This place is a barracks, and a drafty one at that. I shall send one of my assistants out to inspect it in detail—foundations, furnace, plumbing, roof, everything.” In trying to be severe, Stephen found himself imitating Glennon’s executive voice and manner. “Simple piety isn’t enough, Sister. I must consider the physical well-being of the religious establishments within my Diocese.”
“Of course, Your Excellency.” Sister Martha Annunziata darted off to lay her ear against a door, the better to interpret the whimpering moans within.
Watching her come toward him again, the candle flame shielded with her hand, Stephen softened his official demeanor.
“Are you happy in your work here?”
“It is the work I was born to do,” she said simply.
Echoes of Lalage’s reply accompanied Stephen all the way back to Hartfield. She had answered his question as Theresa or Francis might have answered it. In fact, everything that Lalage Menton had ever said, everything she had ever done, was a perfect manifestation of the thing she was. All needy creatures claimed her, and in making a dedicated response to their needs, she had found the perfect fulfillment of her being.
AS THE DEPRESSION DEEPENED, Stephen’s parish visitations became grim affairs. Every church had its local difficulties; the Bishop’s antechamber swarmed with rectors and heads of religious orders begging for outright aid or for a reduction of the Cathedral tax expected of them. Stephen went over their parish accounts in detail, suggesting economies, short cuts, a trimming of sails to the economic hurricane. Yet, quite early in the depression, the Bishop of Hartfield had discovered that many economies were double-edged. If, for example, you discontinued building a school or called a halt to repairs, more men were thrown out of work. The wisest course (it took courage as well as wisdom) was to make prudent expenditures, dig into your cash reserves, and hope that they would hold out.
Meanwhile from the White House came an amazing series of pronouncements, denying at first that disaster had befallen the country, then later switching to a dogged reiteration that the crisis had passed. “There is nothing in the situation to be disturbed about”; “The crisis will be over in sixty days”; “Prosperity is just around the corner.” Despite these bland proclamations, the country sank deeper into the quagmire until at last the White House bulletin was greeted with derisive laughter.
Stephen marveled in those dark days that the great mass of the people, abandoned by their political leaders, did not rise in some violent outburst of fury. That they remained calm and well disciplined under the withering fire of disaster was a reassuring sign of the basic stability of the American character.
AT THE PEAK of his career, and at a time when his high office required the utmost expenditure of physical and nervous energy, Stephen Fermoyle was stricken by a crippling disease.
A sharp bout of pneumonia, induced by the strain of chronic fatigue, sent him to bed early in October, 1930. The good medical care of Dr. Howard Gavigan, plus the prayers of Stephen’s congregation, were apparently speeding the patient to uneventful recovery. After two weeks, he was able to walk about his room; already he had begun to plague Dr. Gavigan with the restless convalescent’s question: “When can I get back to work?”
“You’ll be able to celebrate Mass on All Saints’ Day,” promised the doctor. “Be grateful for the cure our Lord has worked upon you, and don’t test His patience or mine by any more questions.”
Then, on the morning of All Saints’ Day, Stephen noticed a curious swelling of his right leg—a distension so marked that he could not tie his shoe. “I’ll say nothing about it, try to walk it off,” he resolved, and managed to struggle through High Mass without revealing the condition of his leg to anyone. After lunch he was glad to get back into bed. The next day his leg was swollen to the knee. Alarmed, he called in Dr. Gavigan.
The old physician made a thorough examination of the swollen limb. He pressed the calf, put his fingers under the arch of Stephen’s knee, and asked humorously: “Been in any jungles lately?”
“No.”
“Then it’s probably not Wuchereria bancrofti”
“What are they?”
“The parasites that cause elephantiasis.” Dr. Gavigan was off on another diagnostic tack. This time he applied a stethoscope to Stephen’s heart, listened long, and brought his grizzled head up reassuringly. “Well, it’s certainly not cardiac, Your Excellency.”
“That’s fine. It’s not my heart, and it’s not elephantiasis. What is it?”
“I’ll be asking the questions today, Bishop. Anyone else in your family have trouble with their legs?”
“My father had varicose veins.”
Dr. Gavigan went into a ponder, and came out on the tentative side. “The Mayo Brothers might call it one thing,” he said, “and Elberfeld’s Calculating Horses might call it another. Meanwhile, I’ll call it phlebitis.”
“Is that good or bad?”
Dr. Gavigan began putting away his stethoscope. “It’s a common thing after pneumonia. No one ever died of it.”
“But it might prevent a man from crossing the street? Is that what you’re trying to say, Doctor?”
“Now don’t start painting the devil on the wall. We’ll keep you off your feet for a couple of weeks, and see what happens.”
“A couple of weeks! That’s impossible! I’ve got a Community Chest drive, an ordination, two confirmations”—Stephen flung out his hand impatiently—“and pecks of other business.”
“They can wait. Bed rest is nature’s best remedy.”
And bed rest it was, for two trying weeks. Dr. Gavigan bandaged the swollen leg, kept it elevated, and put his patient on a bland diet. Contemptuous of slow treatment, the swelling increased; Stephen’s leg was now enormous; it throbbed painfully and would not sustain his weight when he attempted to walk.
“I think we ought to call in a specialist,” admitted Dr. Gavigan finally. “A consultation is indicated here.”
“Get Dr. John Byrne,” said Stephen. “He’s specialist enough for me.”
John Byrne’s examination included laboratory tests of Stephen’s blood, urine, and a specimen of fluid drained from his swollen leg. Then, laboratory reports in hand, John Byrne sat down beside Stephen’s bed.
“My diagnosis agrees with Dr. Gavigan’s, Steve. You’ve got phlebitis—that is, an inflammation of the veins deep in your leg. The picture is complicated by a lymphatic involvement”—he started to explain what the involvement was when Stephen interrupted with a taut question.
“Is it curable?”
Dr. Byrne was strangely evasive. “Very little is known about lymphatic disorders. Cannon and Drinker are doing experimental work on the subject at Harvard. Sooner or later, something may come of it.”
“Meanwhile my leg will continue to look and feel like a sausage. Is that the story?”
“The acute phase may pass. Spontaneous cures have been reported.” John Byrne was encouraging. “We’ll try everything: arsenicals, drainage, heat …”
“And more bed rest.” Stephen was disconsolate.
“That’s about all we can do. You must have patience, Steve.”
Patience! Medicine easiest to prescribe, hardest to take. Patience! The calm enduring of catastrophe or pain. Patience! One of the moral virtues—a special gift of the Holy Ghost.
“I’ll try,” promised Stephen.
LIKE most men who have enjoyed the blessing of health all their lives, Stephen was a poor patient. Flat on his back, legs propped up on pillows, he passed through irritability to bitterness, through bitterness to desperation. For the first month he felt like a torture victim strapped to the floor of a belfry while monstrous chimes tolled “doom, doom” above his head.
Meanwhile diocesan business accumulated—and lapsed. Some details he handled from bed, some he delegated to assistants, but the more important duties—such as confirmations and parish inspections—demanded the Bishop’s physical presence. Stephen put whip and spur to his aides, all of whom responded with selfless devotion. Vicar-General Cannell strained the seams of his cassock to accomplish tasks that Stephen laid upon him; Mark Drury (a much-humbled man since the Wall Street crash) flogged both himself and his subordinates over the Chancery hurdles. Still, neither the Vicar-General nor the Chancellor possessed the canonical authority to administer confirmation or ordain new priests. Amby Cannell solved this problem by tracking down a retired missionary bishop, the Most Reverend Fabian Coxe, D.D., living with his sister on the outskirts of New Haven. Rickety and aging though he was, Bishop Coxe forgot his own infirmities and traveled about the Diocese, confirming and ordaining in Stephen’s stead.
Unexpected strength developed in Owen Starkey, Stephen’s stripling secretary. To the handling of an enormous correspondence and an ability to sift the essential grain from mountains of chaff, Father Starkey added various roving assignments. He became a mobile foreman in charge of building projects, the upkeep of cemeteries, and the inspection of the model machine shops that Stephen had established before his illness. Only a youthful diffidence in dealing with older clerics kept Father Starkey from being the perfect lieutenant.
“It’s hard for me to crack down on men who were celebrating Mass before I was born,” he confessed to Stephen. “Sometimes I feel like a buck private trying to tell a top sergeant how to lace his shoes.”
The mention of shoelaces brought a rueful groan from Stephen. Suddenly, shoes became the most beautiful things in the world; would he ever again enjoy the almost sacramental privilege of wearing them? Grumble and grin mingled in his warning to Owen Starkey: “The next man who mentions shoelaces around here will have to eat his own, boiled.” The Bishop’s tone softened: “Don’t let these top-sergeant characters frighten you, Ownie. Just remember that you’re my auxiliary legs, and step out accordingly.”
By means of auxiliary legs, hands, and eyes Stephen managed to keep the diocesan machinery rolling. He could not, however, do much about the depression. Like a merciless glacier it ground onward, crushing factories, banks, parishes, and human beings to economic flinders. Sources of private charity dried up, parishes plunged deeper into deficit; the diocesan treasury sank lower, and the Bishop of Hartfield lay in bed with a heavy leg and still heavier heart.
Visitors came—friends and family—each bearing some leaf of comfort to lay on Stephen’s coverlet. Glennon urged a trip to the Mayo Clinic for the best obtainable diagnosis and treatment. Corny Deegan drove down from Boston with two characteristic gifts: a carton of S. S. Pierce’s tinned brown bread and a powder-blue check for five thousand dollars. “Something for church mice to nibble on,” he said cryptically, folding the check between the pages of Stephen’s breviary. Bernie Fermoyle lugged in the newest thing in radio: a six-tube affair bristling with knobs and dials. “If you want to hear me, just turn this to six-sixty every night at eight o’clock. It’s the Jelo-Pud Hour, bringing you the jiffy dessert with the extra tremble.” Every evening, thereafter, Bernie’s chamois voice rubbed away some part of the day’s tarnish.
These and many other visitors—Alfeo Quarenghi, Paul Ireton, and Jeremy Splaine among them—were beacons that helped light Stephen’s passage across seas of illness. Their friendship was immeasurably sweet, a temporary prop to his loneliness, a corporal proof of love. Gradually, however, Stephen began to realize that mortal friends, with all their sustaining strength, could not float him over the sunken ledges of despondency. Only one Friend could do that. And where was that Friend now? Once in a midnight hour of querulous misery, Stephen cried out: “Deus meus, Deus mens, ut quid dereliquisti me?” (Lord, Lord, why hast Thou forsaken me?) To his anguished cry no answer came. God’s silence was stony, His face was turned away.
For five bedridden months Stephen’s condition did not change. John Byrne came down from Boston every week to drain off accumulated fluids or try an experimental drug. His skill and medicines were unavailing; Stephen’s leg remained a swollen useless thing suspended in a leather harness. A fever hung on, too. Three times a day the waxen fingers of Sister Frances Veronica placed a thermometer between Stephen’s lips, then after a tranquil reading of the mercury (how maddeningly composed the woman was!) she would make either a spike or a trough on her patient’s chart. The spike meant 100.2; the trough 99.4—a monotonous graph indicating the presence of a chronic low-grade infection that resisted both diagnosis and treatment.
One day while John Byrne was trying out a new heat lamp, Stephen asked him bluntly:
“Do you think I’ll ever be able to walk again, John?”
“‘Ever’ is a vague word. Suppose I said ‘no.’ How would that affect the situation?”
“I’d know what action to take about the Diocese. I could resign … let a well man take over the job. It’s not fair to serve six hundred thousand Catholics from bed.”
“Have you had any complaints about your administration?”
“No. Everyone is so—touchingly loyal.”
John Byrne brought the heat lamp closer to Stephen’s leg. “Then why don’t you develop a little loyalty yourself?” he asked in his quiet way.
Nerves frayed, patience in tatters, Stephen burst out irritably: “What do you expect me to do? Lie here for the rest of my life, hands folded in cheerful resignation, while my Diocese falls apart and my leg hangs from the ceiling like a piece of condemned pork?”
John Byrne turned off the heat lamp and sat down beside his brother-in-law’s bed. “What’s happened to you, Steve?” he asked sharply. “I know you’ve been flat on your back for six months. Agreed, it’s tough. From an ordinary man I’d expect the usual writhings—bootless cries to heaven and all that. But coming from you, it’s out of character.”
With scalpel words Dr. Byrne stripped his patient to the pelt. “Lately, I’ve been asking myself, ‘Is this peevish rebellious Bishop of Hartfield the fine priest I used to know? Has Steve Fermoyle lost his gift of humility? Has he forgotten that suffering is God’s physic to swollen pride?’”
Crimson shame tinged Stephen’s cheek as he gazed into the mirror that his brother-in-law’s honesty held up to him. Defenseless, he took John Byrne’s chastisement, then reached out for the surgeon’s bony hand. “Thanks for the bitter medicine, John. Dose me again if I need it.”
Now began the desperate struggle for acceptance of the Father’s will. In daily communion, by incessant prayer, and from pages of saintly works, particularly Thomas à Kempis’ Imitation of Christ, Stephen earnestly sought to place his life in God’s keeping. Almost he succeeded. For an hour or two he would recapture the power of accepting tribulation. A blessed repose would permeate his heart and mind. Then Ambrose Cannell or Owen Starkey would come in bearing news of parish hazards or some leak in the diocesan dike that only a bishop’s clenched fist could plug. Harnessed to his bed, Stephen would issue a fighting directive. Then the whole structure of his interior life would sway and crumble again.
Inching progress always ended in stunned retreat. How difficult to find solace in the serene pages of Thomas à Kempis:
“Thy way is our way, and by holy patience we walk to Thee who art our Crown. If Thou hadst not gone before and taught us, who would care to follow? What would become of us if we had not such a light to help us follow Thee?”
While Thomas nestled in the very bosom of the Lord, Stephen could not even catch His eye. Desperation was claiming him, when Dennis Fermoyle journeyed down from Boston to visit his son.
After forty years of service on the cars, Din had been put out to pasture on a meager pension. Age had melted down his once heroic torso; his baggy blue suit hung about him in folds; gun-flint sparks no longer leapt from his eyes. As old men will, he talked of his youth—the earlier years in Dublin before he had come to America.
“You know, Son, there used to be a Dublin legend that said every clan living on the banks of the Liffey carried some special mark of God’s favor. With the O’Donnells it was hair—men and women of that tribe had yards of silky gold falling around their shoulders. With the Flatleys it was all voice. When a Flatley sang or spoke, the lardy richness of it would drown you. The Desmonds had wonderful muscles. Every tribe had something.”
“What did the Fermoyles have, Dad?”
Din’s voice was tremulous with memory. “The Fermoyles were marvelous at games of leaping and running. A proud way of walking they had, too. People used to look out the window to see my father come swinging down Vico Road. It wasn’t a strut or a swagger—no.” Din tried to describe the legendary mark of the Fermoyle bearing. “Corny Deegan once said that my father looked like Adam striding across the first bog.”
To the loom of recollection Din added the dark thread. “There was a penalty attached to the possession of these gifts, son. The legend ran that Liffey men were always stricken in the place they were proudest of. And somehow, it always turned out that way. The O’Donnells went bald young, Desmond muscle turned early to fat. …”
“And the Fermoyles?” asked Stephen.
“Well, like every other clan—they were given their little cross, too.”
Little cross! From his pillow Stephen saw for the first time the tragedy of the proud-walking Dennis Fermoyle. Sprung of a clan famous for leaping and hurling, Din had early and obediently put on the harness that shackled him for life to the platform of a trolley car. Never a murmur all those years while his leg veins knotted and broke on the job. Could no lesson be learned from this godlike, uncomplaining man?
In the days that followed Din’s visit, Stephen searchingly examined the nature of his own “little cross.” Whether his illness was an outcrop of the Liffey legend (he smiled at the idea) or whether it was a harsh purge to his pride made little difference. The essential lesson that had to be learned over and over again (how many times, O Lord?) was that no man could understand the agony of Christ until he had suffered a similar agony in his own heart. Only then would he be able to bear his cross with fortitude; only then would he be worthy to hear the Father’s comforting promise: “Behold I am with you all days, even unto the consummation of the world.”
On these foundations Stephen began to build anew. The wisdom of à Kempis, once so shadowy, became luminously clear in the light of Din’s example. From the chapter entitled “Temporal Sufferings” Stephen read:
Lord, because Thou wast patient in Thy life, herein most of all fulfilling the Commandment of Thy Father, it is well that I, miserable sinner, should patiently bear myself according to Thy will. For although the present life seemeth burdensome, it is nevertheless made very full of merit through Thy grace; and to those who are weak, it becometh easier and brighter through Thy example and the footsteps of Thy saints.
My own father high among them, thought Stephen.
His fever hung on; the calf of his inflamed leg now measured thirty inches, more than twice its normal size.
Meanwhile the economic wheels of the richest nation in the world ground to a virtual halt as swarms of panhandlers shuffled along the streets muttering the refrain of the year’s theme song: “Brother, can you spare a dime?”
From his bed a stricken bishop administered such aid as he could to his people. The diocesan coffers were almost empty now. The depression, settling over the nation like a blight, might have crushed the Bishop of Hartfield had he not accepted with perfect trust the teaching of à Kempis:
A man may give away all his goods, yet that is nothing; and do many deeds of penitence, yet that is a small thing. And though he comprehends all knowledge and has great virtue and zealous devotion, yet much is lacking unto him, yea, one thing which is the most necessary of all. What is it, then? That having given up all things besides, he give up himself and go forth from himself utterly, and retain nothing of self-love.
IT WAS on a man who retained little of self-love that Dr. John Byrne performed a surgical operation in mid-April, 1931.
John Byrne came in quietly that spring morning, took the latest copy of The New England Medical Journal from his pocket, and showed his brother-in-law an article entitled “Surgical Management of Chronic Lymphatic Disorders.” “The Harvard people have come through,” he announced, the veriest minim of excitement in his voice. “I’ve studied their results, Steve.” John Byrne was professionally candid. “Three out of eleven cases died on the table; the risk of postoperative infection is great. …”
“I’ll take my chances,” said Stephen.
Adhering closely to the Harvard technique, Dr. Byrne made a long incision on the outside surface of his brother-in-law’s leg. From these areas the surgeon removed an affected mass of lymphatic tissues and fasciae. He then placed the patient’s skin in direct contact with the leg muscles, sewed up the wound with “interrupted sutures,” and bound the leg tightly with surgical bandages.
Blood transfusions, intravenous injections of sugar, and nurses on three shifts helped Stephen survive this pioneer adventure in plastic surgery. Three days after the operation The Hartfield Item carried a conservatively encouraging headline:
“Bishop Fermoyle Improves Steadily.”
On an inside page of the same edition, the Item ran a short news story reporting some rather odd goings-on in Topswell, fifteen miles southeast of Hartfield.
“It appears,” said the report, “that events of a miraculous nature are taking place at one of the graves in the Gates of Heaven Cemetery. Many cures have been effected, and afflicted persons in great numbers are flocking to the burying ground.”