In This Mountain (3 page)

“‘Nothing we do, however virtuous,’” quoted Father Tim, “‘can be accomplished alone; therefore, we must be saved by love.’”

Stuart leaned forward slightly in the chair. “I have enemies, you know.”

Father Tim didn’t say it, but he did know, of course.

“As you’re aware, ours is the poorest of the southeastern dioceses. So far, the idea of a cathedral has been largely dismissed as flamboyant, self-seeking, a display of spiritual pride, and a flagrant waste of money which could be used for higher purposes.”

“And that’s just for openers, I’m sure.”

“The diocese exists in a culture in which a cathedral smacks of European decadence, though the Baptists down the road just built a church to seat two thousand and nothing was thought of it, nothing at all.”

“Where will the cathedral be built?” asked Father Tim, looking on the bright side.

Stuart rose from the chair, grinning, and buttoned his jacket. “Come. I’ll show you on our way to lunch.”

“This is a cow pasture, Stuart!” He knew for a fact that he’d just stepped in something.

“Ah, Timothy, open your eyes! A cow pasture, yes, but one that slopes down to a magnificent view of the city! Look where we’re standing, for heaven’s sake! It’s a habitation for angels!”

The wind swept words from their mouths; their coats billowed and flapped like sails.

“…transept,” yelled Stuart, pointing toward the brow of the hill.

“…cruciform!” he shouted, waving with outstretched arms. Though it was nearly impossible to distinguish what Stuart was saying, his bishop’s countenance spoke volumes; he was as radiant as the youth Father Tim remembered all those years ago in seminary.

They hurried back to the car, swept along by the chill wind at their backs.

“So here are the particulars,” said Stuart, forgetting to put the key in the ignition. “We’ll build our cathedral of logs.”

“Logs.”

“Yes! Honest materials straight from our own highland forests, with scissor trusses of southern yellow pine, a roof of hand-split shakes, oak pews constructed by local artisans…. I can’t tell you how this excites me, Timothy!
Plus…
”

His bishop had a positive gleam in his eye.

“Plus, such materials are exceedingly cost-wise!”

“Aha.”

“We think we can do it for six million,” said Stuart. “A pittance, all things considered. At last we’ll have what we’ve needed for so many years—a common meeting place for our scattered diocese, a center of learning, and one day, I trust, a great choir school.”

The bishop started the car and they rolled slowly down the hill along the tree-lined street. “Pray for me in this,” he said quietly.

“I’ve been praying for you more than forty years, my friend.”

“Don’t stop now. You know, of course, that you are faithfully in my prayers, and ever will be.”

“Yes,” said Father Tim. “And I’m grateful.”

“But I’ve talked too much about my own interests. Forgive me, Timothy. Tell me what brought you today, what’s on your heart.”

The discussion of a great cathedral was a tough act to follow, but there was hardly a beat between the question and his answer.

“The mission field.”

Stuart winced visibly. “You’re not keeping busy enough, retirement generally gives too much time to think.”

“Don’t talk down to me, Stuart.” He hadn’t treated Stuart’s dream lightly, and he didn’t take kindly to having his own casually dismissed.

“You’re right, of course.”

“This is important to me, and to Cynthia. Besides, the commission is to go and tell, not sit home and fossilize.”

“I reacted that way because you’re diabetic. You don’t need to be stumbling around in some bleak outpost with no medical assistance.”

“I take two insulin shots a day, monitor my sugar closely, eat at regular intervals, exercise twice a week—it’s no big deal. Actually, my doctor would forbid a bleak outpost; we won’t go far from home.”

“Any idea where?”

“Somewhere in Appalachia,” he said. “It’s where the Dooley Barlowes and Lace Harpers come from.”

“Who is Lace Harper?”

“An exceptional young woman who’s the adopted daughter of my doctor and his wife, off to her first year of college this fall. It wasn’t long ago that she was living in the dirt under her house.”

“Whatever for?”

“To escape a drunken father who beat her senseless.”

“Dear Lord.”

“Until the Harpers took her in, she was almost completely self-educated, thanks to the county bookmobile. Now she’s one of the brightest stars her private school has ever seen. We’re exceedingly fond of Lace, we cherish the notion that someday she and Dooley might…well, you understand.”

“I see. And your boy, Dooley, he’s doing well, isn’t he?”

“A freshman at the University of Georgia, where he’ll study veterinary medicine. If you recall, Dooley’s the son of an abusive father he scarcely knew, and of a formerly alcoholic mother who gave her children away. Pauline has since come to know Christ and has married a believer; the transformation is wondrous. All this is to say I’ve seen what a difference it can make for kids like Dooley and Lace to be given a break, to be loved. In truth, it makes all the difference!”

Stuart braked, waiting to turn left, and looked at his old friend. “An English missionary said, ‘Some want to live within the sound of Church and Chapel bell; I want to run a rescue shop within a yard of hell.’ You have my blessing.” Of all his clergy, Timothy Kavanagh had been the one he could depend on completely, the one whose theology never wavered and whose friendship genuinely counted.

“I’ll need your help, Stuart, your input about the ministries we should consider.”

The bishop wheeled into the restaurant parking lot and switched off the ignition. He looked at Father Tim and nodded his assent. “You’ll have that, too,” he promised.

DO NOT PLANT UNTIL MAY 15!

Hessie Mayhew’s annual spring angst….

He sighed and dropped the newspaper to the floor.

Once he’d clipped along through the
Mitford Muse
in twenty, thirty minutes, max. Looking at his watch, he was dismayed to learn he’d just spent an hour and a half with the darned thing, as absorbed as if it were the
Chicago Tribune.

He’d even studied the classifieds, something seldom done in this life, and found his interest sincerely piqued by a walnut chest of drawers listed at a yard sale in Wesley.

Retirement. That was the culprit.

He snatched the latest
Anglican Digest
from the table by his chair and went at it, head down.

“Mail call!” crowed his wife, never happier than when the mail had been chunked through the slot in the front door.

And who wouldn’t be ecstatic? he wondered. Scarcely a day passed that her devoted readers didn’t express their admiration of her talent, beauty, wit, intelligence, and general benefit to mankind.

She sat beside him on the study sofa and busied herself with sorting.

“Fan letter, fan letter, fan letter, bill…bill, bill, fan letter, junk mail, bill…”—she was, he noticed, piling the bills in his lap, not hers—“junk mail, junk mail, fan letter, bill—”

“Doo wap, doo wap,” he said.

She stopped sorting and tore open an envelope.

“Oh, lovely, it’s not a fan letter, it’s from Marion!” Marion was their good and faithful friend from their interim on Whitecap Island; he always relished Marion’s long, newsy letters.

“Oh, my!” She burst into laughter.

“What?” he said.

“Ella Bridgewater’s bird, Louise…remember the canary that serenaded you? Well, it’s not Louise at all, it’s Louis! Marion has no earthly idea how Ella discovered this surprising fact, but it’s the talk of St. John’s.”

“Aha.”

“Marion’s going online and wants our e-mail address.”

“That will be the day.”

“And she and Sam send their love.”

“That’s all? Louise is Louis and they send their love?”

“That’s all, dearest, it’s just a little note.”

“Oh,” he said, disappointed. His wife moved quickly to other matters, using her letter opener to slice the flap of a white envelope.

“My goodness,” she murmured, reading. “Well, then…” She appeared briefly saddened, then looked at him and smiled.

“What is it?”

“I’ve been asked to tour the country with four other children’s book authors and illustrators.”

“Tour the
country
?” The thought chilled his blood. He remembered her trip to Lansing several years ago to read at a school. She had arrived home very late, just as he was calling the police to begin a statewide search.

“With a program called READ,” she said, glancing again at the letter, “an acronym for Readers Earn Author’s Day. Let’s see…umm…what a grand idea! Schools compete to read so many books, and those who reach or exceed the mark are eligible for a visit by Davant Medal authors. It all raises money for local literacy programs, and look…the other authors are my
favorites
!”

Her bright countenance frightened him.

“But…”

“But of course I can’t go,” she said.

“And why not?”

“Because it’s the first of August, and we’ll be in Tennessee.”

“Right!” He was flooded with relief. “Of course!” They were going to Tennessee in less than two months, to join forces with Our Own Backyard, the mission project they’d long prayed might present itself. Dooley would finish his freshman year at college, spend a few days with them in Mitford, and head to Meadowgate for the summer to assist Hal Owen in his veterinary practice.

Then Father Tim and Cynthia would tool across the state line to their year-long ministry in the newly formed OOB. The concept for this project, which was warmly endorsed by Stuart Cullen, had been developed by Father Roland, whose research had uncovered dumbfounding truths about the extent of poverty and deprivation in an area around Jessup, Tennessee. There they would find alcohol and drug abuse, violence, severe medical and dental problems, families without transportation, unpaved roads, a high rate of school dropouts—bottom line, an area not unlike Mitford’s Creek community before it had become a shopping center.

Theirs would be a simple ministry and, as far as he was concerned, that was among its attractions. Along with Father Roland and a zealous young Kentucky priest and his wife, they would live in the remote community much like other mountain families; except that, each afternoon, they would open the doors of their homes to whatever young people might come. There would be art classes and singing, Bible stories and books, food and games—a safe place, a good place; and on Sunday, he and the other two priests would celebrate and preach in the several widely scattered mission churches formed in the last century by ardent Anglican bishops.

The move itself would be the soul of simplicity: They would load the Mustang with kitchen gadgetry, a bolt of mosquito netting, five suitcases, four pillows, and a heap of blankets. They would ship thirty-six pounds of art supplies and two hundred books by truck. On arrival, they would set up housekeeping in a sparsely furnished metal building with a cement floor.

His wife had paled when told about the metal building, and had nearly reneged on the whole deal when the subject of cement floors arose.

“But,” she had said, “it’s not about cement floors.”

He patted her hand that held the letter.
I’m sorry
, he wanted to say, but didn’t. And he really was sorry, for he liked nothing more than to see his wife able to give something back in her own way, in a way not connected to being a priest’s wife.

He looked into her earnest face and was shamed by his feelings. He was unutterably selfish; deep down inside he knew it, and no, he could never confess it to her, not in a thousand years.

At Mitford Blossoms, he asked Jena Ivey for a dozen roses; long-stemmed, without wires, ferns, or gypsophilia, please, in a box lined with green paper and tied with a pink satin ribbon.

“Oh, I remember how she likes her roses!” Jena looked him in the eye, smiling. “And it’s been ages since you’ve done this.”

He blushed. He was still smarting from the dark recognition that he desperately feared being separated from his wife. It had made him feel suddenly weak and frail, like a child. All those years alone, a bachelor who seldom yearned for the hearthstone of a wife’s love, and now…he was a man beset with a dreadful mixture of anxiety and humiliation over the depth of his attachment.

“Make that…” The words lodged in his throat. “Make that two dozen!”

Jena blinked, unbelieving. She had never known but one other man in Mitford to buy two dozen roses at a whack, and that was Andrew Gregory, the mayor. Every time he and his Italian wife had an anniversary, Mr. Gregory hotfooted it to Mitford Blossoms and laid out cash money, no matter what the going rate.

“Why, Father! Cynthia will think…she’ll think you’ve gone ’round the bend!”

He forced a grin. “And she would be right,” he said.

“Tim?”

It was John Brewster, director of the Children’s Hospital in Wesley.

“Yes, John, how are you, good fellow?”

“Couldn’t be better, I have some great news.”

“I’m eternally interested in great news!”

“We’ve finally got the funds to hire someone, someone strong, savvy, good at encouraging our donors—the kind of person who can really make a difference around here.”

“Terrific! This has been a long time coming.”

“A long time coming, and I’m asking you to consider the position.”

There was a brief silence.

“We can talk about the particulars later. You’re the absolutely perfect person for the job, Tim—heaven-sent, if you ask me. I hope you’ll say yes.” “Ah.” He was oddly shaken. Yes, it was something he would like doing and would, in fact, be pretty good at doing. But…

“It’s too late,” he told the director. “I’ve recently made a commitment, Cynthia and I will be going up to Tennessee to work with a children’s program, we’ll come back to Mitford most weekends, but…”

“I hate to hear this.” He thought John sounded as if he might burst into tears. “I’m terribly disappointed, everyone agreed that I should call you at once. Is there any chance the other thing…could fall through, not work out?”

“I don’t think so. I’m sorry, too, I would have liked…”

John sighed. “Well, then, we’ve got to dig deep over here and reset our thinking. Ah. Well, then. Darn.”

He thought the director seemed fairly stricken.
It’s not the end of the world
, he wanted to say. “It’s gracious of you to ask, John, I’m flattered, really.”

And he was. He felt a spring in his step as he went down the hall to Cynthia’s studio and sat on her small love seat and told her what they’d just turned down.

She came and sat in his lap and kissed the top of his head and hugged him, wordless.

“Father!”

Hélène Pringle dashed across the driveway and into the yard of the yellow house. He observed with some fondness that she bobbed when she dashed, rather like a small hare across an open field.

She clutched a parcel in her hands, which she transferred to his. “Bread!” she exclaimed, huffing a bit. “Just baked. I hope you and Cynthia will enjoy it.”

“Thank you, Hélène!” The seductive warmth of the loaf seeped through the brown bag. “I just might eat the whole thing standing right here!”

His neighbor laughed with childlike merriment. What a transformation had occurred in this small, once-faint-hearted Frenchwoman who had moved next door from Boston two or three years ago. He hardly ever thought of it now, but they’d gotten off to an exceedingly rough start—Hélène had not only stolen a valuable bronze off his mantel, she’d sued him for big bucks—and all the while living in and renting his house. Thank heaven he’d dropped his charges, she’d withdrawn the lawsuit, and he and Cynthia now had the finest neighbor on God’s green earth. In truth, Hélène Pringle had grown in grace and stretched her wings considerably.

“Warming up!” he said of the weather, and was glad to hear such words from his mouth.

“
Oui! J’adore le printemps!
Oh, excuse me, Father, I always speak French when I’m excited!”

“I saw Françoise yesterday, she looks strong and happy.” Hélène had managed to bring her mother from Boston and install her at Hope House, where, though plagued by several complications of heart disease, she was flourishing.

“Mother loves your visits, Father, thank you for all you and Cynthia do for us. One day, I promise I shall repay you in some important way.
Absolument!
”

“Don’t even think it! Merely observing your happiness here gives us a double portion.”

“Three new students, Father! That’s fifteen, now, and I think I mustn’t accept more. I never thought I’d be able to say such a thing.” Hélène consulted her watch. “
Ça, par exemple!
It’s nearly time for Sophie Hawthorne’s eleven o’clock.”

Hélène’s piano teaching had introduced a pleasing new dimension to Mitford. He felt personally proud of her success, though he’d had nothing at all to do with it.

“Please help yourself to your roses when they bloom, Father, I must tell you I’m grateful to live in the home of a gardener! Well,
à bientôt
!”

“
Au revoir
, Hélène! Oh, and
merci
!” He estimated that his French vocabulary now included a whopping ten or twelve words.

She gave a fluttering wave, then darted across the driveway and over the lawn of the rectory and up the steps. He smiled. Precisely like a hare!

As he walked into the hall from the front door, he observed his wife standing by the living room window.

“I saw you talking with Hélène, I thought she might eat you with a spoon on the very spot where you stood!”

“Spying on me!” he said.

“It’s true, darling, but only while washing a smudge off the windowpane. I think she’s mad for you, but in an altogether decent way, of course.”

He judged Cynthia’s eyes to be precisely the color of chicory blossoms, soon to appear in the fields around Mitford. He set the bread in a chair and bounded to her and took her in his arms. “Why would you be jealous of me, for goodness’ sake?”

He was laughing as he said it, but he really wanted to know, needed to know; he suddenly craved to hear her say something that would knock his socks off. She was good at that…

“But I’m not jealous of you at all!”

“You’re not?”

“Of course not! Hélène is a lovely woman who’s scarcely ever known a decent man until she met her neighbor. Which is exactly the way I felt when I started popping through the hedge.”

Ah. Popping through the hedge. That had been the modus operandi of their courtship; he felt positively nostalgic just hearing her mention the hedge.

“Besides, Timothy, I know you’ll love me ’til death do us part, and then forever.”