Afterward, in the sacristy, the Bishop called the sermon “a dazzling performance,” this in the hearing of several mastodons who stood high in the diocese, and then asked Father Urban whether he’d be able to stay on a bit at St Monica’s.
“That’s not for me to say, Your Excellency.”
“No?”
“No, Your Excellency. That’s up to you and Father Wilfrid.”
“Is this the man I’m to write the letter to?”
“Letter, Your Excellency?” It appeared that the woman who’d made the mistake of writing to Father Urban on a post card had managed to get in touch with her group’s moderator. Father Urban was tempted to carry his show of forgetfulness further, to the point of making the Bishop explain what he was talking about, but thought better of it. He had only wanted it understood that he had many calls on his time and wasn’t to be taken for granted, and this, he believed, was now understood. “Oh yes,” he said. “That’s right, Your Excellency.”
For a moment, the Bishop seemed to be waiting — as if expecting to be dispensed from the necessity of dealing with Wilf. This could not be, according to the rules of the game (any breach of which was a breach of his own authority, as the Bishop should be the first to see), and so Father Urban, though he wished he could help the Bishop, waited him out and said nothing. When they parted, as they did most amiably, it was Father Urban’s feeling that he might have distinguished himself even more by his replies in the sacristy than by his sermon.
Wilf phoned that afternoon. “I’d like to have you stay on there for a bit,” he said.
“How long?”
“I’m hoping it won’t be for too long. The brochure’s out. Three big boxes came this morning. Freight. And Wacker at the station just dumped ’em out in the snow. They’re all right, though. I put a copy in the mail for you, but it looks like it might be cheaper if we delivered the larger quantities ourself.”
“In the truck?”
“That’s how it looks. Of course, we’ll take what we need when we go out on Saturday, Father John and I, and if you’re over this way in a car, you might pick up the bundles labeled St Monica’s and Cathedral — and any others you can deliver without too much trouble. Saginaw, Bucklin, Lowell.”
“If I get over that way.”
“And maybe Webster and Conroyo. They’re not so far from you.”
“How about Arna?”
“It’d help, if you would.”
As a matter of fact, Father Urban wouldn’t, but he knew several laymen who’d be glad to do the job for him.
“Oh, and another thing,” said Wilf. “Talk to that women’s group over there, will you? You know the one.”
“Was something said about that?”
“Yes. The Bishop wants it.”
“You spoke to him?”
“No.”
“Father Udovic?”
“No, the girl in the office.”
The next day, as Father Urban was leaving the house for a luncheon engagement, he asked Johnny Chumley to call Father Udovic at the Chancery. “Father Udovic wasn’t in,” Johnny said later, “but I talked to the girl in the office and she said she’d take care of it.”
That evening the secretary of the women’s group phoned the rectory, and, after a date was agreed upon, Father Urban inquired: “Will the moderator be there?”
“He can’t always attend, you know.”
“No?”
“He’s the busiest priest in the diocese, you know.”
“Let’s just say he’s the busiest bishop.”
On the night Father Urban addressed the group, the moderator failed to appear. However, he sent word that it was now his hope to attend the next meeting, and the group’s president made quite a bit more of this hope than she did of the fact that Father Urban was there.
Father Urban was unhappy about this, and, of course, about the Bishop’s failure to show up, but nobody could have guessed it. He gave his subject (“The Hand that Rocks the Cradle Rules the World”) everything he had, and then flatly refused to accept the envelope tendered him by the chairman. “Not a-tall, not a-tall.” During the refreshment period — just coffee, since Lent had begun — he exchanged a few words with Sylvia Bean. Sylvia, not a member of the group, had come as the guest of an older woman. “And I’m certainly glad I did. Too bad the Bishop couldn’t come tonight.”
Sylvia’s companion, who must have seen many such nights, said, “He’s a very busy man, I’m told.”
“Just about the busiest priest in the diocese,” said Father Urban. He returned to the rectory that night still in a quandary. He had hoped to probe the Bishop about the future of the parish, but gently, gently. The refreshment period would have been the time for it, the two of them going on with a subject scarcely raised, or not going on with it, as the case might be. A word from Father Urban, a word from the Bishop, and they would have known where they were — Order and Diocese — and neither would have suffered any embarrassment. It would have been so much better that way, better than asking for an appointment, and having to state one’s business.
“Dear James asked me today how you liked parish work,” Monsignor Renton said one night in the upper room, about a week later. Monsignor Renton still called at the rectory, though not so often as when Phil was there.
“What’d you tell him?”
“I said I thought you liked it. Say, what’d you do to Cox and Box? They’re really down on you.”
“I don’t know why they should be, unless…” Father Urban described the attempt made by the curates to spike the all-cartoon programs.
“That sounds like ’em all right. You’d never know it was that, though, to hear ’em talk. They say you’ve got your eye on St Monica’s.”
“What will happen here — in your opinion, Monsignor?”
“Oh, some hot shot’ll get it. I’d put in for it myself, if it weren’t for Orchard Park.”
“Somebody who’ll build?”
Monsignor Renton looked bleak at the thought. “At least Phil was spared that. That would’ve been the death of him.”
“And then you would’ve blamed me.”
“Yes, if I hadn’t found out what was behind it all.”
“What was behind it all?” Father Urban, who had fought squarely and fairly in the battle to influence Phil, and had emerged the winner, was wary of alibis from the loser. If Father Urban wasn’t the one most responsible (after God, of course) for Phil’s decision to build, then who was?
“Dear James,” said Monsignor Renton. “He met Phil on the street a few days before we left. ‘Build or else,’ he said. Phil told me that in Florida.”
Johnny Chumley, who was present when Monsignor Renton revealed this, said, “Yes, that’s true. The Pastor told me that before he left.”
“So there’s your villain,” said Monsignor Renton.
The Bishop’s ultimatum to Phil, and his asking how Father Urban liked parish work, and what Cox and Box, and possibly others, were saying — all these were considerations that led Father Urban to seek an appointment with the Bishop. Time was another. If the Bishop was in a hurry to build, wouldn’t Father Urban be the man to do the job for him? In this connection, it had occurred to Father Urban that Phil could be more useful to the parish dead than alive — the old coach gone but the big game still to be played, and won, for him. And if Father Urban did the job, the Bishop needn’t feel that he had to turn the parish over to the Clementines. There would be other ways in which they could be repaid. In time, the Bishop might come to think of the Clementines as his Praetorian Guard, standing between him and his own clergy, always ready to assume the risks and privileges of their special position. In any case, Father Urban would see the Bishop and find out whether there was any point in keeping the parishioners in a state of preparedness. As it was, more and more of them were getting after him to build.