J. Powers - Morte D'Urban

The Bishop and Doctor Percy chose to cross the creek at its nearest point, and both made it to the other side on their drives. Father Feld then took the direct route, and got one of his better tee shots of the day. Finally, Father Urban stepped up, removed his panama, put it back on, assumed his stance — he had twice been mistaken, in years past, for Tommy Armour — and shot. Bang! Just nothing for a while and then, in the distance, a jiggling, and then a tiny white hole in the green fairway that hadn’t been there before. Then jubilation among the novices. Their gray champion had outdriven Father Feld!

Father Urban handed back his driver for what he hoped would be the last time that day, and called for his seven iron. Then he tried to join the Bishop, who seemed to be in a hurry to have it over. “Be a bridge here next year,” Father Urban said, crossing the creek behind the Bishop, on steppingstones. “Maybe just old telephone poles,” he added, but he got no response from the Bishop.

Across the creek, the company split up, the Bishop and Doctor Percy going off together — they would be approaching the green from the right — and Father Urban and Father Feld going straight up the hill, followed by everybody else. Once again the Bishop was alone with his caddy, but that, Father Urban believed, was how the Bishop wished it now.

Father Urban watched Father Feld mis-hit his second shot, saw it punch at the rim of the volcano, and roll back down ten yards — into a bad lie, Father Urban would have bet. Father Urban then went on ahead to his own ball, thinking that No. 9 was one of those holes that revealed how much more there was to golf then being able to give the ball a ride. Father Feld’s irons had found him out. He was in trouble now.

From where Father Urban took his second shot, it was still impossible to see the flag, but he knew where the green was, and where the hole was on the green. He swung, taking up a little turf. From what he felt, and then saw, of the shot, there wouldn’t be much wrong with it, he thought. Confidently, he called for his putter and continued the ascent to the green, drawing the gallery of novices after him. When they saw where Father Urban’s ball lay, they murmured and moved back to the rim of the volcano so as to be in position to see Father Feld hit his next one — on which probably everything, if he had a chance at all, would depend.

Father Urban had kept going toward his ball. It was eight feet away from the cup, and back of it at that. “Close?” he asked Brother Harold, who had come down from the clubhouse in time to hold the pin.

“Well, I was afraid to leave the flag in,” said Brother Harold.

“Close enough,” said Father Urban, taking off his hat. He saw Monsignor Renton emerge from the clubhouse and waved, watching just that portion of the sky where he expected Father Feld’s ball to come into view, and failing to see the ball that came from the right and hit him on the head.

FATHER URBAN WAS taken unconscious to the hospital in Great Plains where he was anointed by the chaplain, X-rayed and heavily bandaged about the head by doctors, and put to bed. He regained consciousness during the night. By that time those who could have told him more of what had happened had gone home. All he could find out from the sisters was that he’d been struck in the head by a golf ball. In the morning, his speech was almost normal, and he discovered that he was in the Bishop’s suite.

That afternoon, he was permitted to have visitors — Wilf and Brother Harold, Monsignor Renton — but was forbidden to talk to them. Since his head was bandaged down over his eyes, his visitors tended to ignore him after the first few minutes.

However, he learned that it had been the Bishop’s ball, and that the Bishop no longer proposed to take over the Hill for a seminary. The Bishop was trying to create the impression that he wasn’t entirely influenced by this unfortunate but unavoidable accident, but what else, asked Monsignor Renton, could have made him change his mind? “An act of God, if ever I saw one.”

Father Urban regarded this statement as unsound and probably heretical in its implications, since it made short work of him as a responsible instrument of God’s will in an orderly universe. Father Urban doubted, however, that he, given the chance, could have wrought the great change that had come about through the wayward action of the Bishop’s ball.

“Actually,” said Monsignor Renton, “I didn’t see it. I thought somebody’d opened a bottle of champagne.”

“Be that as it may,” said Wilf. He was amazed to hear what had been going on right under his nose, and wondered why he hadn’t been told.

Thereafter, what could have been an occasion of rejoicing was marred by pettiness. Wilf seemed to think that Father Urban had gone over his head and that anything was preferable to that, and Monsignor Renton seemed to say that what had happened on the ninth green was pretty much what he’d had in mind all along, and that Father Urban, if it had been left to him, would have queered everything by using less peaceful methods of persuasion on the Bishop.

“They’re saying he should’ve kept his hat on, but that’s where they’re wrong — if you follow me.”

“Yes — if what you say is true, Monsignor.”

“It’s true all right. You guys don’t have a thing to worry about now. Just keep your nose clean. I see he’s sent flowers.”

“What I can’t understand, Monsignor, is why Father, here, didn’t tell me .”

“Probably he didn’t want you to be worried — needlessly.”

“But that’s part of my job.”

“How’s the hay fever, Brother?”

“Better, thanks, Monsignor. I’ve been getting these new shots.”

“Grateful as I am to Father, here, I don’t think he should’ve taken it all on himself.”

“I had the misfortune to be looking somewhere else, and I thought somebody’d opened a bottle of champagne. The chances are it didn’t sound like that to him.”

“Since I’ve been getting these new shots, Monsignor, I ran across an article that claims it’s all in your head — like seasickness.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it. It’s quite possible he heard nothing at all. We’ll have to ask him when he feels more like talking. I’d be interested to know.”

“I know I’ve been a lot better since I’ve been getting these new shots.”

“I still think I should’ve been told.”

“Frankly, I didn’t see any way out for you guys.”

And Father Urban, lying there, listening with the ears of one blind, wondered greatly at the ways of men.

But when the Bishop himself dropped in and expressed hopes for Father Urban’s speedy recovery, and complimented him on his play in the match with Father Feld, the earlier visitors, too, paid tribute to the patient.

“He’s one in a million,” said Monsignor Renton.

“One of our best men,” said Wilf.

“A dazzling performance,” said the Bishop, repeating himself.

Father Urban smiled mushily and broke his silence. “Up to a ploint ,” he said.

After three days in the hospital, it was all he was really suffering from. His big bandage was gone, the lump on his head was almost gone, and he was feeling fine except for occasional headaches. Plenty of visitors. Two days later, he was released from the hospital but was under orders to take things easy for a while (his headaches still came and went), and so, rather than return to the Hill and perhaps accomplish nothing under such a restriction there, he sought and got Wilf’s permission to move out to Lake Lucille. The accident had been kept out of the papers, but Mrs Thwaites had heard of it from her doctor (who was also the Bishop’s doctor and therefore Father Urban’s), and she had invited Father Urban to convalesce at her home. Katie called for him in Mrs Thwaites’s car — a Packard, old but not old enough, one of those postwar models that always made Father Urban ask himself, Who killed Packard?