The Cardinal by Henry Morton Robinson

Author:Henry Morton Robinson [Robinson, Henry Morton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion, Historical, FIC000000, FIC019000, FIC026000
ISBN: 9781468306439
Google: Sd2X_dNC4jgC
Amazon: B00AR48XQC
Barnesnoble: B00AR48XQC
Goodreads: 17554104
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 1950-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

THE HURRICANE’S ILL WIND blew the grief from Stephen’s heart. For three days he lay in his cabin, physically unable to stand. During an earlier phase of the blow he had managed to open the door between Glennon’s stateroom and his own, but a forlorn wave of the Cardinal’s hand told him that His Eminence was past caring for secretarial service. Back in his own bunk, Stephen surrendered to the torments of seasickness—and remembrance.

Images lurched past like figures in a migraine dream: Mona writhing in the filthy room at 5 Stanhope Lane; sheeted on the delivery table; washed and decently laid out in her casket. The despairing hunch of Din’s shoulders at the cemetery; the rosary beads dangling from Celia’s numbed hands—round and round whirled the fantasies on a carrousel of anguish. Above the shrieking wind rose mixed echoes of accusation and remorse: Take me out of here, Stevie … A nickel for St. Anthony … I advise immediate termination of labor … foetus humani abortum procuraverint … Trust me once more, Monny.

Most heartily sorry.

While the cabin bounced like a cube tumbling down a rocky hillside, Stephen clung to his berth, sick beyond sorrowing. To pray, weep, or even groan was impossible. Physical wretchedness filled him.

Odors assailed the membranes of memory: the carbolic stench of Gussie Lasquez’s stairway; the pomade on Gongaro’s hair; carnations withering in the funeral wreaths on Mona’s casket; the closet staleness of Celia’s ratty fur collar as she clung to him at the open grave—these surged up from his diaphragm in awful convulsions. Misery emptied him.

When the storm had spent itself, Stephen came on deck more haggard-green than ever. But violence of grief had spent itself too, and he was ready to let sun and sea caress him with forgetfulness. Dozing in a deck chair under a blue-silk sky, Stephen’s strength and spirits rose. The Strombo’s prow cut the calm sea like a diamond, and as the lengthening wake healed the scar—first with foam, then in seamless peace—Stephen felt his own wounds healing, too.

His principal chore was to keep Glennon occupied—a task that would have taxed the resources of an entertainment bureau and the patience of a governess handling a refractory child. Anxiety about getting to the conclave had turned Glennon’s soul into a weathervane pivoting on pure mercury: ceaselessly he boxed the emotional compass with fresh tantrums, and his fretting distrust of Giacobbi bordered on the irrational. Twenty times a day he would teeter along the edge of his monomania, then slip into a tirade against the Sicilian whom he regarded as the source of all his woes.

To check these outbursts, Stephen laid out a full-time program. Every morning he assisted Glennon at Mass in the StromboWs exquisite little chapel. After breakfast they would promenade on the sun deck or play a game of shuffleboard to the accompaniment of Glennon’s nervous calculations about the speed of the ship. Then came a session of coaching the Cardinal in Italian—a language that he had once used with fluency but had long neglected.

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