J. Powers - Morte D'Urban

Father Urban gazed around the handsome room. A man nodded to him. Father Urban nodded back and murmured, “Hello.”

“Friend?” said Jack.

“Apparently.”

“If what we’re eating now…”

“Shish kebab.”

“If this has always been considered a great delicacy throughout the Middle East, as you say, I think it’s quite possible Our Lord could have eaten it at some time. We know Our Lord participated in at least one wedding feast, that of the poor couple who ran out of wine. Let’s hope they weren’t so poor they couldn’t afford meat, mutton if not lamb. I daresay lamb wasn’t so dear in those days. But there were a number of occasions when Our Lord dined with the rich and well-to-do — Pharisees and the like.”

“I didn’t say Our Lord hadn’t eaten shish kebab. I only said I didn’t know,” said Father Urban, thinking they’d have some fine evenings together.

The waiter filled Father Urban’s glass.

Jack, again confronted by his full one, downed it all. “Save you a trip.”

“I wish you wouldn’t keep saying that,” Father Urban said, regarding Jack with suspicion. “Would you like some coffee?”

“Urban, I would, if you don’t mind.”

“Shouldn’t drink so much.”

“No.”

“You can’t handle it.”

“No, and I’ve never cared for it — not that this isn’t very good wine. One of the hardest things about the priesthood for me — the wine.”

“Why didn’t you say so?” Father Urban knew why, though. Jack had been trying to keep his end up.

A little while later Jack said, “Why not pay us a little visit while you’re up that way?” Jack had shown signs of drowsiness before, but now, not waiting for Father Urban to reply, he closed his eyes and dropped off. Poor Jack!

Whether Father Urban would have evaded the question again and left Jack with his illusion, or whether he would have sacrificed it to the truth, he didn’t know. He did know that the choice was no longer his, and that their next meeting was going to be much harder than it might have been for him. He would have to pay for misleading Jack into thinking too well of him, but not pay too much, perhaps, when one considered the high cost of fellowship to the author of “Danger Ahead!” Jack, as he must have done on a thousand and one nights, sitting up in a day coach to save money, was weaving in sleep, banking as the train took a curve.

Father Urban shook him gently with one hand, and with the other he hailed a blackamoor coffee boy.

AFTER THE FIRST night of the mission in St Paul, the only question was whether the floor of the old church would hold up for the duration, so great were the crowds. Unfortunately, the pastor wasn’t on hand to see them. But the first assistant, who said he knew the boss’s every wish, seriously considered calling him in Hot Springs to urge him to fly home a few days early, in time to hear Father Urban. That was how the first assistant felt about Father Urban. And the second assistant, who belonged to what the first assistant said was an old St Paul family, kept taking Father Urban out to eat. They went to the best restaurants in the Twin Cities, and in the end Father Urban awarded the palm to the Criterion. As for the people — they gave as good as they got, and were, as Father Urban told them, wonderful. The first assistant was wonderful. The second assistant was wonderful. It was that kind of mission, Father Urban’s last mission, and he went out like a champion.

On the final night, after the solemn closing, the assistants threw a party for Father Urban in the rectory. With plenty to drink, snacks provided by a caterer of imagination, and with none of the company much over thirty (except Father Urban), and no laymen present, it was a pretty lively affair. Father Urban was very favorably impressed by the quality of the St Paul clergy. Along about midnight, however, somebody turned up the volume on the hi-fi and there were other indications that the party might get rough. Father Urban was asked whether it wasn’t possible for preaching, even good preaching, to defeat its own purpose.

“Ah, ha!” he said.

“I’m not talking about Billy Graham, or Fulton Sheen.”

“You’re talking about me.”

“Well, yes, Father.”

First Father Urban threw them a curve by putting in a good word for Billy Graham, and then he said, “I’ll answer your question by telling you a little story.” Somebody groaned. “All right. Then I won’t. I’ll give it to you straight. The big miracles happen — or they don’t — after I’m gone. That’s all there is to it. It’s up to you.”

“It’s up to us.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“After you’re gone.”

“Yes.” That, said Father Urban, was when the real work began, the long haul. That was when they could be thankful they were what they were — priests of the order of Melchisedech, with the sacraments, the wisdom, the power, and the glory of the Church behind them. Oh, the task that Father Urban set them was great, of course it was, but it was not too great — not for them . After all, it was not required that they succeed, but only that they do their best. Father Urban said he sometimes thought there were those who considered this too much. “I may be wrong.”

By their silence, the young men showed that he might be right. Yes, they seemed to say, they saw what he meant, and it wasn’t too much to ask of them. “Sometimes, though”—this from one of them—“don’t the people get all hopped up?”

Father Urban let it appear that he was temporarily at a loss for words, which was not the case, for he had been over this ground before, on many such occasions. The trick was in making it seem that each time was the first time. “Hopped up? Has anything ever been achieved in this world except by people hopped up? Salvation least of all! Our Lord said, ‘Go, and teach ye all nations.’ He did not say, ‘Go, and have ye a beer.’ Oh, I know what you’re driving at, but I think anybody who’s ever seen me work will tell you I preach a pretty clean mission. I keep the razzmatazz to a minimum.”

“That’s true,” said the second assistant.

“Yes, and that’s why I can’t understand it,” said the first assistant.

“But you know,” said Father Urban, easing up and smiling, “I sometimes wonder if I shouldn’t preach and conduct myself in such a criminal manner that the local clergy would seem like living saints to their parishioners! Maybe that’s the answer to your question! If so, it opens up a whole new field!”

In one way or another, the young men applauded Father Urban, and he, thinking he wouldn’t do much better than that, got up and bade them all good night. They wouldn’t let him retire, however, until he’d given them each his blessing, and then three of them followed him to the foot of the stairs, one asking where he was off to next. For Father Urban this was the hardest question of the evening. Early in the week, with everything going so well, in church and out, he had decided to say nothing about his next stop. He had met a lot of people in St Paul, and yet not one of them, though they all knew he was a Clementine, had so much as mentioned the foundation at Duesterhaus. This had shown him how much of a splash the Order was making in Minnesota and had made what was happening to him seem even more of a comedown. So he just smiled now and said, in the words of St Paul, “God knows,” and got the hell upstairs.

The next morning, after saying the early Mass, he took a taxi to the station and boarded one of the few passenger trains still in operation on the Minnesota Central, the Voyageur, or Voyager, as it was called.