DAWN
19
it. The explanation was simple: widows. Perhaps they hadn't taken
the right tone in the announcement. Father Udovic's version had
been safe and cold, Monsignor Renton's like a summons.
It
might
have been emphasized that the Archbishop, under certain circum–
stances, would
gladly
undertake to deliver the envelope. That might
have made a difference. The sender would not only have to appreciate
the difficulty of the Archbishop's position, but abandon his own. That
wouldn't be easy for the sort of person Father Udovic had in mind.
He had a feeling that it wasn't going to happen. The Archbishop
would leave for Rome on the following Tuesday. So time was running
out. The envelope could contain a check-quite the cruellest thought
-on which payment would be stopped after a limited time by the
donor, whom Father Udovic persistently saw as an old person not to
be dictated to, or it could be nullified even sooner by untimely death.
God, what a shame! In Rome, where the needs of the world, tem–
poral as well as spiritual, were so well known, the Archbishop would've
been welcome as the flowers in May.
And then, having come full circle, Father U dovic would be hard
on himself for dreaming and see the envelope as a whited sepulchre
concealing all manner of filth, spelled out in letters snipped from
newsprint and calculated to shake Rome's faith in him. It was then
that he particularly liked to think of the sender as a little child. But
soon the middle-aged woman would be back, and all the others among
whom the hottest suspect was a feeble-minded nun-devils all to
pester him, and the last was always worse than the first. For he al–
ways ended up with the old man-and what
if
there was such an
old man?
On Saturday, Father Udovic called Monsignor Renton and
asked him to run the announcement again. It was all they could do,
he said, and admitted that he had little hope of success.
"Don't let it throw you, Bruno. It's always darkest before dawn."
Father Udovic said he no longer cared. He said he liked to think
that the envelope contained a spiritual bouquet from a little child,
that its contents had already been delivered, its prayers and com–
munions already . . .
"You should've been a nun, Bruno."
"Not sure I know what you mean," Father Udovic said, and
hung up. He wished it were in his power to do something about
