The City and the World and Other Stories by Francis Clement Kelley

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_The City and the World_
and Other Stories

BY

FRANCIS CLEMENT KELLEY

Author of

"The Last Battle of the Gods," "Letters to Jack."
"The Book of Red and Yellow." Etc., Etc.

SECOND EDITION

EXTENSION PRESS
223 W. Jackson Boulevard
CHICAGO

1913

PREFACE

These stories were not written at one time, nor were they intended
for publication in book form. For the most part they were
contributions to _Extension Magazine_, of which the author is Editor,
and which is, above all, a missionary publication. Most of them,
therefore, were intended primarily to be appeals, as well as stories.
In fact, there was not even a remote idea in the author's mind when he
wrote them that some day they might be introduced to other readers
than those reached by the magazine itself. In fact, he might almost
say that the real object of most of the stories was to present a
Catholic missionary appeal in a new way. Apparently the stories
succeeded in doing that, and a few of them were made up separately in
booklets and used for the propaganda work of The Catholic Church
Extension Society. Then came a demand for the collection, so the
writer consented to allow the stories to appear in book form; hoping
that, thus gathered together, his little appeals for what he considers
the greatest cause in the world may win a few new friends to the ideas
which gave them life and name.

FRANCIS CLEMENT KELLEY.

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS, July 30, 1913.

[Illustration: "Father Ramoni suddenly felt his joy congealing into a
cold fear."]

CONTENTS

TITLES Page

The City and the World 1
The Flaming Cross 20
The Vicar-General 44
The Resurrection of Alta 53
The Man with a Dead Soul 67
The Autobiography of a Dollar 74
Le Braillard de la Magdeleine 82
The Legend of Deschamps 84
The Thousand Dollar Note 89
The Occasion 109
The Yankee Tramp 119
How Father Tom Connolly Began to Be a Saint 127
The Unbroken Seal 136
Mac of the Island 144

THE CITY AND THE WORLD

Father Denfili, old and blind, telling his beads in the corner of the
cloister garden, sighed. Father Tomasso, who had brought him from his
confessional in the great church to the bench where day after day he
kept his sightless vigil over the pond of the goldfish, turned back at
the sound, then, seeing the peace of Father Denfili's face, thought he
must have fancied the sigh. For sadness came alien to the little
garden of the Community of San Ambrogio on Via Paoli, a lustrous gem
of a little garden under its square of Roman sky. The dripping of the
tiny fountain, tinkling like a bit of familiar music, and the swelling
tones of the organ, drifting over the flowers that clustered beneath
the statue of Our Lady of Lourdes, so merged their murmurings into the
peacefulness of San Ambrogio, that Father Tomasso, just from the
novitiate, felt intensely that he knew he must have dreamed Father
Denfili's sigh. For what could trouble the old man here in San
Ambrogio on this, the greatest day of the Community?

For to-day Father Ramoni had returned to Rome. Even as Father Tomasso
passed the fountain a group of Fathers and novices were gathering
around one of the younger priests, who still wore his fereoula and
wide-brimmed hat, just as he had entered from Via Paoli. The
newcomer's eyes traveled joyously over his breathless audience,
calling Father Tomasso to join in hearing his news.

"Yes, it is true," he was saying. "I have just come from the audience.
Father General and Father Ramoni stopped to call at the Secretariate
of State, but I came straight home to tell you. His Holiness was most
kind, and Father Ramoni was not a mite abashed, even in the presence
of the Pope. When he knelt down the Holy Father raised him up and gave
him a seat. 'Tell me all about your wonderful people and your
wonderful work,' he said. And Father Ramoni told him of the thousands
he had converted and how easy it was, with the blessing of God, to do
so much. The Holy Father asked him every manner of question. He was
full of enthusiasm for the great things our Father Ramoni has done. He
is the greatest man in Rome to-day, is Ramoni. He will be honored by
the Holy See. The Pope showed it plainly. This is a red-letter day for
our Community." The little priest paused for breath, then hastened on.
"Rome knows that our Father Ramoni has come back," he cried, "and Rome
has not forgotten ten years ago."

"Was it ten years that Father Ramoni passed in South America?" a tall
novice asked Father Tomasso.

"Ten years," said Father Tomasso. "He was the great preacher of Rome
when the old General"--he nodded toward the cloister corner where
Father Denfili prayed--"sent him away from Rome. No one knew why. His
fame was at its height. Men and women of all the city crowded the
church to listen to him, and he was but thirty-four years old. But
Father Denfili sent him away to Marqua, commanding the Superior of our
Order out there to send him to those far-off mountain people of whom
the papers were telling at that time. I did not know Father Romani
well. I was a novice at the time. But I knew that he did not want to
go from Rome; though, being a good religious, he obeyed. Now, see what
has happened. He has converted over one-third of that people, and the
rest are only waiting for missionaries."

"And the work is all Father Ramoni's?" the novice asked.

"All." Father Tomasso drew him a little farther from the group that
still listened to the little priest who had come from the Vatican.
"Father Ramoni found that the people had many Christian traditions and
were almost white; but it was he who instilled the Faith in their
hearts. There must be thirty of our Fathers in Marqua now," he
continued proudly, "and sooner or later, all novices will have to go
out there. Father Ramoni has made a splendid Prefect-Apostolic. No
wonder they have summoned him to Rome for consultation. I have
heard"--he lowered his voice as he glanced over his shoulder to where
Father Denfili sat on the bench by the pond--"that it is certain that
Marqua is to be made a Province, with an archbishop and two bishops.
There is a seminary in Marqua, even now, and they are training some of
the natives to be catechists. I tell you, Brother Luigi, missionary
history has never chronicled such wonders as our Father Ramoni has
wrought."

From behind them came the rising voice of the little priest, bubbling
into laughter. "And as I came through the Pincio all that I heard was
his name. I had to wait for a duchessa's carriage to pass. She was
telling an American woman of the times when Father Ramoni had preached
at San Carlo. 'His words would convert a Hindu,' she was saying. And
the Marchesi di San Quevo leaned from his horse to tell me that he had
heard that Father Ramoni will be one of the Cardinals of the next
Consistory. Is it not wonderful?"

The murmur of their responses went across the garden to old Father
Denfili. Father Tomasso, crossing the path with the novice, suddenly
saw a strange look of pain on the old priest's face, and started
toward him just as the gate to the cloister garden swung back,
revealing a picture that held him waiting. Four men--a great Roman
prelate, the General of San Ambrogio, Father Ramoni and Father Pietro,
Ramoni's secretary--were coming into the garden. Of the four Father
Ramoni stood out in the center of the group as vividly as if a
searchlight were playing on his magnificent bigness. His deep black
eyes, set in a face whose strength had been emphasized by its exposure
to sun and wind, gleamed joyous with his mood. His mouth, large,
expressive, the plastic mouth of the orator, was curving into a smile
as he gave heed to the speech of the prelate beside him. Once he shook
his head as the great man, oblivious of their coming before a crowd of
intent watchers, continued the words he had been saying on Via Paoli.

"And the Holy See is about to make your Marqua into a Province. Is it
not wonderful, Father Ramoni, that you will go back with that gift to
the people you converted? And yet to me it is more wonderful that you
wish to go back. Why do you not stay here? You, a Roman, would
advance."

"Not now, Monsignore," the missionary answered quickly. They were
passing the group near the fountain, going toward the bench where
Father Denfili sat. Ramoni's secretary, a thin, serious-visaged priest
of about the same age as his Superior, with bald head and timid,
shrinking eyes, took with the greatest deference the cloak and hat
Father Ramoni handed to him. Then he fell back of the old General.
The prelate answered Ramoni. "But you are right, of course," he
admitted. "It is best that you return. The Church needs you there now.
But later on--_chi lo sa_? You are to preach Sunday afternoon at San
Carlo? I shall be there to hear you. So will all Rome, I suppose. Ah,
you do well here! '_Filius urbis et orbis_--son of the city and the
world.' It's a great title, Ramoni!"

They had come in front of the bench where Father Denfili told his
beads. The prelate turned to the old General of San Ambrogio with
deference. "Is it not so, Father?" he asked. But Father Denfili raised
his sightless eyes as if he sought to focus them upon the group before
him. Father Ramoni, laughingly dissenting, suddenly felt his joy
congealing into a cold fear that bound his heart. He turned away
angrily, then recovered himself in time. Father Denfili was no longer
on the bench beside the pond. He was groping his way back to the
chapel.

It was a month before the Consistory met to nominate the new hierarchy
for Marqua. It had been expected that the first meeting would end in
decisive action and that, immediately afterward, the great missionary
of the Community of San Ambrogio would return with increased authority
and dignity to his charge. But something--one of those mysterious
"somethings" peculiar to Rome--had happened, and the nominations were
postponed.

In the month that Father Ramoni remained in Rome he had tasted the
fruits of his old popular success. On his first Sunday at home he
preached in San Carlo as well as ever--better than ever. And the awed
crowd he looked down on at the end of his sermon took away from the
church the tidings of his greater power. From that time nearly every
moment was taken by the demands of people of position and authority,
who wished to make the most of him before he went back to Marqua. He
scarcely saw his brethren at all, except after his Mass, when he went
to the refectory for his morning coffee. He had no time to loiter in
the garden, and the story of the conversion of the people of Marqua
was left to the quiet Fr. Pietro, who told the splendid tales of his
Superior's great work, till Father Tomasso and Brother Luigi prayed to
be given the opportunity to be Ramoni's servants in the far-away land
of the western world. But, if Ramoni was but seldom in the cloister,
he did not avoid Father Denfili. The old blind priest seemed to meet
him everywhere, in the afternoons on the Pincio, in the churches where
he preached, in the subdued crowds at ecclesiastical assemblies. Once
Ramoni caught a glimpse of his face lifted toward him during a
conference; and a remembrance of that old look in the cloister garden
gave him the sensation of belief that the old General could see, even
though Ramoni himself, was the only one whom he saw.

On the day the letter from the Vatican came, Father Ramoni, detained
in the cloister by the expected visit of a prelate who had expressed
his desire to meet the missionary of Marqua, passed Father Denfili on
his way to the reception-room. While Father Ramoni, summoning his
secretary to bring some photographs for better explanation of the
South American missions, went on his way, the blind man groped along
the wall till he reached the General's office. He had come to the door
when he felt that undercurrent of anxiety which showed itself on the
white faces of the General and his assistant, who stood gazing mutely
at the letter the former held. He heard the General call Father
Tomasso. "Take this to Father Pietro, my son," he said. Then he
listened to the younger priest's retreating footsteps.

Father Tomasso, frightened by the unwonted strangeness of the
General's tone, carried the atmosphere of tense and troubled
excitement with him when he entered the room the prelate was just
leaving. Father Pietro glanced up at him from the table where he was
returning to their case the photographs of Marqua. Tomasso laid the
letter before him and left the room just as Father Ramoni, bidding his
visitor a gay good-bye, turned back.

[Illustration: "I can't take it," he was sobbing, "it's a mistake, a
terrible mistake."]

Father Pietro was taking the letter from its large square envelope. He
read it with puzzled wonder rising to his eyes. Before he came to its
end he was on his feet.

"No! No!" he cried. "It is impossible. It is a mistake."

Father Ramoni turned quickly. The man who had been his faithful
servant for ten years in Marqua was very dear to him. "What is a
mistake, Pietro?" he asked, coming to the table.

"The Consistory," Father Pietro stammered, "the Consistory has made a
mistake. They have done an impossible thing. They have mixed our
names. This letter to the General--this letter--" he pointed to the
document on the table "--says that I have been made Archbishop of
Marqua."

Ramoni took the letter. As he read it he knew what Pietro had not
known. The news was genuine. The name signed at the letter's end
guaranteed that. Ramoni caught the edge of the table. The pain of the
blow gripped him relentlessly and he knew that it was a pain that
would stay. He had been passed over, ignored, set down for Pietro, who
sat weeping beside the table, his head buried in his hands.

"I can't take it," he was sobbing; "I am not able. It's a mistake, a
terrible mistake."

Ramoni put his hand on the other man's head. "It is true, Pietro," he
said. "You are Archbishop of Marqua. May God bless you!"

But he could say no more. Pietro was still weeping when Ramoni went
away, crossing the cloister on his way to his cell, where, with the
door closed behind him, he fought the battle of his soul.

II.

In the beginning Ramoni could not think. He sat looking dully at the
softened tones of the wall, trying to evolve some order of thought
from the chaos into which the shock of his disappointment had plunged
his mind. It was late in the night before the situation began to
outline itself dimly.

His first thought was, curiously enough, not of himself directly, but
of the people out in Marqua who were anxiously looking for his return
as their leader, confident of his appointment to the new
Archbishopric. He could not face them as the servant of another man.
From the crowd afar his thoughts traveled back to the crowd on the
Pincio--the crowd that welcomed him as the great missionary. He would
go no more to the Pincio, for now they would point him out with that
cynical amusement of the Romans as the man who had been shelved for
his servant. He resented the fate that had uprooted him from Rome ten
years before, sending him to Marqua. He resented the people he had
converted, Pietro, the Consistory--everything. For that black and
bitter night the Church, which he had loved and reverenced, looked to
him like the root of all injustice. The more he thought of the slight
that had been put upon him, the worse it became, till the thought
arose in him that he would leave the Community, leave Rome, leave it
all. After long hours, anger had full sway in the heart of Father
Ramoni.

At midnight he heard the striking of the city's clocks through the
windows, the lattices of which he had forgotten to close. The sound of
the city brought back to him the words of the great prelate who had
returned with him to San Ambrogio from his first audience with the
Holy Father--"_Filius urbis et orbis_." How bitterly the city had
treated him!

A knock sounded at his door. He walked to it and flung it open. His
anger had come to the overflowing of speech. At first he saw only a
hand at the door-casing, groping with a blind man's uncertainty. Then
he saw the old General.

In the soul of Ramoni rose an awful revulsion against the old man.
Instantly, with a memory of that first day in the cloister garden, of
those following days that gave him the unexpected, uncanny glimpses of
the priest, he centered all his bitterness upon Denfili. So fearful
was his anger as he held it back with the rein of years of
self-control, that he wondered to see Father Denfili smiling.

"May I enter, my son?" he asked.

"You may enter."

The old man groped his way to a chair. Ramoni watched him with
glowering rage. When Father Denfili turned his sightless eyes upon him
he did not flinch.

"You are disappointed, my son?" the old man asked with a gentleness
that Ramoni could not apprehend, "and you can not sleep?"

Ramoni's anger swept the question aside. "Have you come here, Father
Denfili," he cried, "to find out how well you have finished the
persecution you began ten years ago? If you have, you may be quite
consoled. It is finished to-night." His anger, rushing over the gates,
beat down upon the old man, who sat wordless before its flood. It was
a passionate story Ramoni told, a story of years in the novitiate when
the old man had ever repressed him, a story of checks that had been
put upon him as a preacher, of his banishment from Rome, and now of
this crowning humiliation. Furiously Ramoni told of them all while the
old man sat, letting the torrent wear itself out on the rocks of
patience. Then, after Ramoni had been silent long moments, he spoke.

"You did not pray, my son?"

"Pray?" Ramoni's laughter rasped. "How can I pray? My life is ruined.
I am ashamed even to meet my brethren in the chapel."

"And yet, it is God one meets in the chapel," the old man said. "God,
and God alone; even if there be a thousand present."

"God?" flung back the missionary. "What has He done to me? Do you
think I can thank Him for this? Yet I am a fool to ask you, for it was
not God who did it--it was you! You interfered with His work. I know
it."

"I hope, my son, that it was God who did it. If He did, then it is
right for you. As for me, perhaps I am somewhat responsible. I was
consulted, and I advised Pietro."

"Don't call me 'my son,'" cried the other.

"Is it as bad as that with you?" There was only compassion in the old
voice. "Yet must I say it--my son. With even more reason than ever
before I must say it to you to-night."

The old man's thin hands were groping about his girdle to find the
beads that hung down from it. He pulled them up to him and laid the
string across his knees; but the crucifix that he could not see he
kept tightly clasped in his hand. His poor, dull, pathetic eyes were
turned to Ramoni who felt again that strange impression that he could
see, as they fixed on his face and stared straight at him without a
movement of their lashes. And Ramoni knew how it was that a man may be
given a finer vision than that of earth, for Father Denfili was
looking where only a saint could look, deep down into the soul of
another.

"Son of the city and the world," he said. "I heard Monsignore call you
that, and he was right. A son of the city and of the world you are;
but alas! less of the city than you know, and more of the world than
you have realized. My son, I am a very old man. Perhaps I have not
long to live; and so it is that I may tell you why I have come to you
to-night." Ramoni started to speak, but the other put out his hand. "I
received you, a little boy, into this Community. No one knows you
better than I do. I saw in you before any one else the gifts that God
had given you for some great purpose. I saw them budding. I knew
before any one else knew that some day you would do a great thing,
though I did not know what it was that you would do. I was a man with
little, but I could admire the man who had much. I had no gifts to lay
before Him, yet I, too, wanted to do a great work. I wanted to make
_you_ my great work. That was my hope. You are the Apostle of Marqua.
I am the Apostle of Ramoni. For that I have lived, always in the fear
that I would be cheated of my reward."

Ramoni turned to him. "Your reward? I do not understand."

"My reward," the old man repeated. "I watched over you, I instructed
you, I prayed for you, I loved you. I tried to teach you by checking
you, the way to govern yourself. I tried to make a channel in your
soul that your great genius might not burst its bonds. I knew that
there was conflict ever within you between your duty to God and what
the world had to offer you--the old, old conflict between the city
and the world. I always feared it. All unknown to you I watched the
fight, and I saw that the world was winning. Then, my son, I sent you
to Marqua."

The old man paused, and his trembling hand wiped away the tears that
streamed down his face. Ramoni did not move. "I am afraid, my son,"
the voice came again, "that you never knew the city--well called the
Eternal--where with all the evil the world has put within its walls
the good still shines always. This, my son, is the city of the soul,
and you were born in it. It lives only for souls. It has no other
right to existence at all. There is only one royalty that may live in
Rome. We, who are of the true city, know that.

"And you, too, might have been of the city. The power of saving
thousands was given to you. I prayed only for the power of saving one.
I had to send you away, for you were not a Philip Neri. Only a saint
may live to be praised and save himself--in Rome.

"When you went away, my son, you went away with a sacrifice as your
merit, your salvation. Of that sacrifice the Church in Marqua was
born. It will grow on another sacrifice. Ask your heart if you could
make it? Alas, you can not! Then it will have to grow on Pietro's
pain.

"I have not seen you, for I am blind, but I have heard you. You want
to go back an Archbishop to finish what you say is 'your work.' You
think that your people are waiting. You want to bring the splendor of
the city to the world. My son, the work is not yours. The people are
not yours. The city, the true city, does not know you, for you have
forgotten the spirit of sacrifice. You went out to the world an
apostle, and you came back to the city a conqueror, but no longer an
apostle. Can't you see that God does not need conquerors?"

The old priest pressed the crucifix tightly against his breast. "What
would you take back to Marqua?" he demanded. "Nothing but your purple
and your eloquence. How could you, who have forgotten to pray in the
midst of affliction, teach your people how to pray in the midst of
their sorrows? Marqua does not need you, for Marqua needs the man you
might have been, but which you are not. The city does not need you,
for the city needs no man; but it is you who need the city, that you
may learn again the lesson that once made you the missionary of a
people."

Faintly, through the silence that fell the deeper as the old man's
words died away, there came the sound of footsteps pacing in another
room. Once more the old man took up his speech.

"They are Pietro's steps," he said. "All night long I have heard you
both. He has been sobbing under the burden he believes he is unworthy
to bear, while you have been raging that you were not permitted to
bear it. Pietro was only your servant. He would be your servant again
if he could. He loves you. I, too, love you. Perhaps I was selfish in
loving you, but I wanted for God your soul and the souls you were
leading to Him."

The old man arose. He put out his hand to grope his way back to the
door. It touched Ramoni, sitting rigid. He did not stir. The hand
reached over him, caught the lintel of the door and guided the blind
man to the hall. Then Ramoni stood up. Without a word he followed the
other. When he had overtaken him he laid his hand gently on the blind
man's arm and led him back to his cell.

When he came back the door of the chapel was open. Ramoni, going
within, found Pietro there, prostrate at the foot of the altar. Ramoni
knelt at the door, his eyes brimming with tears. He did not pray. He
only gazed upon the far-off tabernacle. And while he knelt the Great
Plan unfolded itself to him. He looked back on Marqua as a man who has
traveled up the hills looks down on the valleys. And, looking back, he
could see that Pietro's had been the labor that had won Marqua. There
came back to him all the memories of his servant's love of souls, his
ceaseless teaching, his long journeys to distant villages, his zeal,
his solicitude to save his superior for the more serious work of
preaching. Pietro had been jealous of the slightest infringement on
his right to suffer. Pietro had been the apostle. Before God the
conquest of Marqua had been Pietro's first, since he it was who had
toiled and claimed no reward.

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