The mission had ended. Many, however, had risen not to leave but to kneel and pray, Father Urban knew, and were now impeding the progress of others trying to leave and putting them in a bad light for trying to do so. This was the one thing about his missions (and there was always much more of it on closing nights) that troubled him. Why should the very first fruits of his week’s sowing be confusion, self-righteousness, and animosity in the pews?
Katie had called during dinner to say that Mrs Thwaites wished to see him as soon as possible, and so, when he’d got out of his surplice and cassock, and Jack had got out of his, they drove out to Lake Lucille. When they arrived at the house, Father Urban suggested that Jack remain in the car. “I don’t know what’s on her mind, and you’ll be warmer here with the heater on. You can listen to the radio while I’m gone.”
In Mrs Thwaites’s room, the TV sets were off, the lights were on, and Dickie, Mrs Thwaites’s son, was present. Father Urban sensed that Dickie, whom he’d met on another occasion, was to be the subject of the conversation — and hoped he wasn’t thinking of going into the Clementines. Dickie, who had been in and out of too many orders already, according to Monsignor Renton, was now running a book and church-goods store over in Ostergothenburg, an establishment called the Eight Seasons. When Father Urban had asked why it was called that, Dickie had replied, “Why, because of the eight seasons, of course.” “What eight seasons?” “Why, the eight seasons of the church year, of course.” Father Urban hadn’t cared for that, not a-tall, but even without that, he wouldn’t have cared for Dickie. The boy, as his mother fondly referred to him, was forty-six, fat in the middle and soft all over, with a bottlenose (from his father, to judge by photographs in Mrs Thwaites’s room), and lots of hair (this from his mother) swept up in a gray mane that might have looked all right on the conductor of a symphony orchestra. No, Father Urban just couldn’t see Dickie Thwaites, with his record and his hair, even as a Clementine brother, and so he was alarmed when he heard Mrs Thwaites say:
“The boy’s giving up the store.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Dickie.
“It’s well to be sure,” Father Urban said, in case they were talking about Dickie’s vocation. “Were you, perhaps, thinking of something else?”
Dickie, who was sitting on a big footstool, with his hands all but lost in his hair, said, “This is the century of the cad.”
Father Urban thought this over for a moment, and then, to Mrs Thwaites, he said: “I take it this is why you’ve asked me here.”
“Yes, I thought you might be able to tell the boy what to do.”
Father Urban glanced at Dickie.
Dickie looked up from the floor at which he’d been staring. “Of course, I’d be interested in anything you might have to say, Father.”
Father Urban sat back in his chair, a club chair with an odd cushion, and was suddenly like a man sitting in a floating inner tube. “Then suppose,” he said, sitting forward, “we begin at the beginning. Why Ostergothenburg?”
Dickie said that he’d chosen Ostergothenburg, a highly Catholic community (as Great Plains wasn’t), to be near his mother — it was only an hour’s drive home in his little Porsche — and to be near St Ludwig’s and St Hedwig’s. Among the Dolomites who ran these colleges, one for boys, one for girls, both among the fathers and the sisters, Dickie had friends. He had opened the Eight Seasons in the summer, and had done well enough until late in the fall. Then “Dullinger’s young toughs”—Father Urban gathered that Dickie was referring to Bishop Dullinger’s young clergy — began to visit the Eight Seasons. They came not to buy and not even to browse. They stood around in their great stormcoats, dropping cigarette and cigar butts on the floor and saying whatever came to their minds, if you please. They laughed at the stock of sacred art, jeered at the work of such men as Franklinstein, Varian, and Foo. There had been incidents. Yes, Dickie’s friends and supporters among the Dolomite fathers and sisters had — at least the sisters had — clashed with Dullinger’s young toughs in the Eight Seasons. Unfortunately, it was now off-limits for Dolomites of both sexes, and college students seemed to be avoiding it, too. Here was the heavy hand of Bishop Dullinger. Dickie had been stuck with forty percent of his imported, and therefore unreturnable, Christmas cards. And now the brute (Bishop Dullinger) was refusing to consecrate a chalice purchased at the Eight Seasons, a chalice executed in the manner of Henry Moore. Back before Christmas, a group of laymen, obviously fronting for the diocese, had made Dickie an offer for the Eight Seasons. He’d rejected it out of hand. Then he’d heard a rumor that the diocese was going to open up a store of its own. And now — that very morning — another offer had come from the first group. This time Dickie had listened, but only because he wanted to discuss the matter with his mother and with his friends among the Dolomites. He had been calling St Ludwig’s and St Hedwig’s all day, but hadn’t been able to reach any of his friends, and well…
“Sell,” said Father Urban.
“That’s what I say,” said Mrs Thwaites. “You can’t afford not to.”
“I want to stay on and fight,” Dickie said to the floor.
“No good — not in your business,” Father Urban said. “You’re already finding that out. Did they make you a fair offer?”
“For the location and good will, yes, but nothing for my stock. Oh, they did say they’d take the rosaries and the worst of the books at cost.”
“Unload the rest wherever you can,” Father Urban said. “If the stuff’s as good as you say — and I don’t say it isn’t — that shouldn’t be so hard. I really don’t know too much about it. The only name that meant anything to me was Thomas More. That shows you how much I know about it.”
“Yes, doesn’t it?” said Dickie, in that nasty way he had.
After observing a moment of silence, Father Urban said, “Well, I’m afraid I have to run along.” He’d had enough of Dickie, and Mrs Thwaites looked as though she wanted her sets on.
“Thank you for coming, Father,” she said, “And many thanks for the advice.”
“I know it wasn’t what he wanted to hear,” Father Urban said, though he thought perhaps it was, “but I don’t think it ever pays to buck a bishop in his see.”
“He can’t afford it. Now get up,” Mrs Thwaites said to Dickie, “and see Father Urban out.”
Dickie removed his hands from his hair, rose from the foot-stool, and walked. At the door he passed out ahead of Father Urban. The boy seemed deep in thought. He said nothing until they reached the bottom of the stairs. “I’m bringing out a series of paperback books. Spiritual classics, you might call ’em,” he said, as if he wouldn’t.
“That sounds very worth-while. You’ll publish them yourself?”
“No, I’ll just edit them.”
Father Urban opened the door, as he had upstairs, and again Dickie passed ahead of him. They went down the steps together, and out to the car, Dickie talking. “There’ll be problems, of course, in editing. It won’t be easy. Denzinger’s Enchiridion, ‘the lost books’ of Tertullian — making such works attractive to a sizable audience, perhaps to a large audience, perhaps to a very large audience. Nobody knows what can be done with such works in cheap editions. It’s an experiment that’s never been tried.”
“Well, I must say it sounds very worth-while,” said Father Urban, opening the car door and taking care that Dickie didn’t get in. Father Urban turned off the radio and introduced Dickie, since he was still there, to Jack, and Jack to Dickie — as an author, saying, and hoping memory served him right, “Father’s doing the life of St Adalbert.”