But he waited till he saw the middle-aged man in the gray coat come hurriedly out of the hotel, pull his hat down far over his eyes and start to walk furtively up the street, gradually increasing his pace and almost running as if expecting to be arrested at any moment, or to have some one touch him on the shoulder and point back at the hotel.
Father Dowling crossed over and entered the hotel. He did not even look at the man at the desk. He went straight to the stair with the bits of brass on the edges. His face was full of sober earnestness and there was a peculiar dignity about the way he carried his head. His scarf was high up around his neck, though he was so little concerned he never wondered whether the desk man noticed him. But Mr. Baer’s glasses were thrust up on the bridge of his nose, the head with heavy woodenly arranged hair shot forward, and grinning with his thick underlip tight against his teeth, he said to himself, “There goes the lamb of God again. I wonder which one he likes. Probably the little one. I’ll ask her about him. He’s the best-looking customer she ever had. More power to her good right arm.”
Father Dowling rapped on the white door at the head of the stairs, and when it was opened a few inches, he said mildly, “May I come in?”
“Lordy, it’s Father. Hello, Father.” He could just see the lower part of Ronnie’s jaw, the lighted tip of a cigarette and a cloud of smoke. “Come on in,” she said.
He nodded gravely. Midge, who was sitting on the chair where he had sat the other night, had on a very loose blue dress, like a slip. Her hair was done in curls on her neck. As soon as she saw the priest she stood up, making her little bow and putting out her left hand with the elbow extended from her body. “Hello, Father, how are you?” she said.
“You won’t mind sitting on the bed, will you, Father?” Ronnie said. Both girls were feeling good-humored, almost exhilarated, with their rouged cheeks flushed and their eyes full of animation. Ronnie, standing up with a good-natured grin on her stubborn face, pointed to the bed. “Sit down. How’ve you been, Father?” she said. He dreaded sitting on that bed, but finally he sat down, and was unable to do anything but stare at them severely. His big strong hands were lying heavily on his knees. His face looked white and full of uneasiness.
“You don’t look so cheerful, so chirpy to-night, Father,” Midge said. She seemed really concerned. “You look as if you’d been working at something too hard,” she said.
“What’s the matter with you, Father. You’re sitting there like an extra bed-post,” Ronnie said irritably.
“Tell me this,” he said with sudden anger. “Didn’t my coming here the other night mean anything to you at all?”
“It sure did,” Midge said. “Do you know, Father, I couldn’t get to sleep at all that night. Honest to God I couldn’t. I kept wanting to talk to Ronnie. I’d keep waking up and nudging her till she wanted to crown me.”
“Didn’t you regret the life you were leading?”
They didn’t answer him. The sullen dogged expression was on Ronnie’s face and Midge kept shifting her glance away, trying to avoid the priest’s angry eyes. But they did not look like persons aware of guilt. They were merely uneasy and resentful, as if they did not want to listen. Sometimes Midge looked directly at him with a bold impatience and he saw she was pretty, and remembered how she had taken the middle-aged man into the hotel half an hour ago. “I was on the street and I saw you both come in here with men,” he said quietly, without any anger, just as if stating a fact. “I stood there, waiting till the men came out. I know both of you. You don’t understand the anxiety a priest can feel for two girls like you. It was terrible to have to stand out there and know what was going on up here.”
“You might as well get off your high horse, Father. There’s no use talking to us like that,” Ronnie said.
“I’m on no high horse. I’m not talking down to you. I’m talking about something that happened.”
Ronnie was now sitting on the arm of Midge’s chair with her hand on the smaller girl’s shoulder. There was something Father Dowling admired in the direct and simple gestures of this big girl with the businesslike manner and the blunt speech. “Now see here, both of you, I’m not trying to be harsh,” he said. “Only I have been praying a lot for you and I thought I had really touched you in some way the other night….”
“Oh, don’t keep nagging at us,” Midge said. “Why do you come here if you want to nag us?”
“What’s that, my child? I don’t want to nag you.”
“You have a good time talking about praying for us, don’t you, but prayers won’t pay for our room, prayers won’t help me get my hair curled. You can’t eat prayers. How do you think we’re going to live? Did you ever stop to figure that out?”
“There are millions of girls with decent jobs. You seem full of bitterness.”
“There are more girls than jobs. What are you going to do with the girls left over? And this is the middle of a cold winter, too.”
“Isn’t it better to starve than lose your…”
“If that’s what’s worrying you and if it will buck you up and make us seem like tin saints, we’re just about starving now. Look around this dump. See all the silks and satins. What do you see? See that old brown coat of mine over there? I’ve been wearing it for three years. I have to take it off like it was tissue paper or it’ll fall to pieces. Isn’t this a lovely room? Don’t you hate to put your wet boots on that lovely rug? It’s filthy, filthy, filthy, but I’d rather be here than out there,” she said, pointing to the window. The little dark girl was pouring the words out of her as if she had become full of hate. “We’re not even high-class whores, see,” she said. “We take what comes our way and mighty glad to get it.” She was speaking with all the fury of an indignant, respectable woman and the mingling of her strange humility and her passion was so convincing that Father Dowling began to feel doubtful, as if there might be many things he did not understand. He could see the twisted heels on Ronnie’s shoes, the broken toe-cap, and the stockings with the sewn-up runs. A long time ago he had heard a Redemptorist priest preaching a sermon about the luxurious life of vice which was always a temptation to poor girls. Somehow, he himself had always thought of vice as yielding to the delights of the flesh, as warmth and good soft living and laziness. But as he looked around this room and at these angry girls he felt close to a dreadful poverty that was without any dignity. He felt, too, that Ronnie and Midge worked far harder than almost any young women he knew. Bewildered, he said, “I don’t want to seem stupid. I don’t want to abuse you, either. There’s no more degraded an existence than yours, but, listen, don’t be impatient with me. I’m not sure I’m wise enough to blame you. Perhaps there are many things I don’t altogether understand. I know it’s hard to be hungry and be a Christian. I understand that.”
“You bet your boots you can understand that. We can understand anything that touches our bellies.”
“Oh, she doesn’t hate you, Father. Don’t get excited, Midge.”
“Why should she hate me, Ronnie?”
“She doesn’t hate you. She’s just up in the air. Take it easy, Midge.”
“I’ll hate him if I want to. I hate everybody in the whole damned lousy world,” Midge said, jumping up from her chair, her round brown eyes brilliant with indignation. “I’ll hate his old man and his old woman and his whole damned family if I want to. See.” But she saw Father Dowling smiling very gently, as if her indignation was so honest he couldn’t help liking it. She grew quiet and after looking at him for a moment, she smiled a bit too, and said, “I guess I’m flying off the handle, Father.”
Father Dowling was smiling because he felt some of his eagerness returning. There was much he had not understood, there was a whole economic background behind the wretched lives of these girls. They were not detached from the life around them. They had free will only when they were free. He remembered suddenly, with a quick smile that brightened his face, how he had learned in the seminary that St. Thomas Aquinas has said we have not free w
ill when we are completely dominated by passion. Hunger was an appetite that had to be satisfied and if it was not satisfied it became a strong passion that swept aside all free will and rational judgment. If he properly understood the lives of these girls, he thought, he might realize they were not free but strongly fettered and he would not be so sure of judging them. And as if he were longing for some explanation that might restore his hope for the girls, he decided that he must first try and help them to live decently. He looked at them warmly and moistened his lips.
“What did you use to do?” he asked Ronnie.
“I worked in a department store. It wasn’t steady work, though.”
“Didn’t you like it?”
“Sure, only I’m telling you, I only worked part time.”
“Wouldn’t you like a decent job now?”
“Try and get me one.”
“I certainly will try,” he said.
He leaned back on the bed, almost at ease now, and began to ask Midge about Montreal, where she had lived, and how many children there were in the family. Smiling at him, as if she thought him very funny, she said there were twelve children in her family. She started to name them all. “Louise, George, Henry, Theresa,” then she stopped, frowned very seriously, tried to get the children in the right order of their emergence into life, giggled, and began to count slowly on her fingers. “How many’s that?” But when she had finished naming all the children and had described how their mother had managed to feed them all properly, she explained that she had left home with a fellow she had thought might possibly marry her. He had definitely promised to at the time. Then she was silent, reflective, frowning, trying to understand many things about those times, years ago.
She was silent so long that Father Dowling coughed, then laughed boyishly and began to explain that he had come from a country town up around the lakes. There had only been, as far as he could remember, his mother and one brother, and they had had a hard time putting him through the seminary. He could not remember his father, though he had a picture of him in his bureau drawer. It was always a satisfaction, it was more than that, it was delightful to see his mother and brother in the town when he went home for a holiday. They wanted to parade him into every neighbor’s home. His mother strutted around the main street and in the stores with her chest thrown out looking and talking like a bishop. Indeed, since his ordination, she had become the town bishop and was very severe about every one’s morals. Father Dowling started to laugh, a rolling hearty laugh, and Ronnie and Midge laughed too. Soon they were all feeling jolly and friendly. They kept on talking till Father Dowling heard the sound of wheels on the frozen road, the squeaking of iron wheels on hard snow echoing on the clear night air. “My goodness, it can’t be the milk wagon, can it?” he said, and he got up to go.
But when he had his hat and coat on he became very embarrassed and even blushed. Resolutely he put his hand in his pocket and took out a bill-fold. “I’m going to try and get jobs for you,” he said. “Won’t you let me help you until then?” He took two five-dollar bills, all there was in the bill-fold, and said, “Please take this. I know you won’t go on the streets if you don’t need money. Isn’t that true? At least the strongest temptation will be gone. Please take it.” He was actually pleading with them.
Midge looked at Ronnie. Both girls grinned. “Thanks, Father,” Ronnie said. “My goodness. You must excuse anything we’ve said. I had no idea–we did not expect anything like this. It’s mighty decent of you.”
“Oh, thank you, Father. You’re a peach,” Midge said.
“Now, good night, both of you. Think of me. Keep trying hard, and if you could only say a little prayer…well, never mind. Good night.”
Father Dowling went downstairs. This time, as he passed the desk, he did not like the way the proprietor smiled. There was a kind of leering comprehension in the smile that disturbed him.
But when he was outside in the clear night air, he knew it was very late. “My goodness,” he said and began to rush home. He was already planning whom he might ask to find jobs for the girls. Then suddenly he wondered if he ought to have given them money. He tried to define the objection to giving them money, but it remained too deeply hidden within him.
THREE
The next night Ronnie and Midge left the hotel at about ten o’clock. Ronnie went one way, on the side streets, and Midge went over to the brightly lighted neighborhood by the theatres.
With the money Father Dowling had given her Midge had bought herself a new brown felt hat which she wore tilted pertly on one side of her head. To-night she was feeling hopeful. There was a little animation in her face that came from feeling sure that she looked attractive. As soon as she was on the avenue she began to walk more slowly, stopping a long time at each interesting shop window to look at hats and lingerie and expensive hose, and peering with one eye at the window mirrors to see if any one was standing beside her. This last month had been a difficult one. It had been cold. Most of the men who might have picked her up were out of work. So she walked on down the street, her eyes swinging to the left and right, staring into faces coming toward her without ever moving her head, waiting eagerly for some faint intimation from some one that he had been attracted. All the men seemed to be walking rapidly with their heads down, their breath vaporing out on the cold air, men with black mustaches and full, ruddy faces and tall, slim, cold-looking men. Midge began to rub her hands together. The old kid gloves were thin. For the first part of the evening she would hope desperately that it would not be necessary to speak to any one and that some fellow of his own accord would follow her. Night after night, especially now in the winter, when so few seemed interested in her, it was getting harder and harder to speak to them when she knew they would refuse. When they kept on shaking their heads it got so that she did not expect them to want her.
Then she began to feel cold; hardly any one seemed to be on the street, so she went into a corner restaurant to have a cup of coffee. The hot coffee warmed her. Feeling more hopeful, she sat at the table demurely. The crowds would soon be coming out of the theatres.
If it had not been for her shabby clothes and a slyness in her eyes, Midge might have looked wistful, sitting at the white-topped table in the almost deserted restaurant. Four years ago she had been living in Montreal. She had been the oldest girl in their large family, and her mother and father had expected her to stay at home and help with the house and children. In the afternoon she had got into the habit of walking down by the docks and the riverside and looking at the ships from strange places and hearing the rough voices of seamen shouting in a language she did not understand. She used to look for a long time at the immense blueness of the wide St. Lawrence, flowing with such a dreadful steadiness toward the open sea. Down by the waterfront men laughed and spoke to her and hollered after her when she hurried away, full of excitement. At home her mother always seemed to be sick, or preparing for another child. Midge did the housework and dreamed of the streets at the waterfront, and the streets full of noise and shouting by the warehouses, and the streets by the big hotels in the evening.
Her first lover, a boy out of work named Joseph, took her to the all-night cafés and got her for his girl that winter, and she came to see him every afternoon. Her mother used to look at her sorrowfully when she went out on those afternoons, as if she knew all that was happening to her daughter, but was afraid to remonstrate for fear of driving her away from home.
Then she left Montreal with a lover named Andy, who lived with her for two months. They had been very much in love, she thought at the time. He used to run his hand through her black hair. They used to walk together in the fine spring evenings, with him smiling down into her face and holding her arm so tight, walking in the spring evenings all around the city parks and out by the lakeshore, making plans, following the crowds. And when he left her she was wild with resentment. For a time she was without any feeling. The first man that wanted her took her, a friend of Andy’s, though she could hard
ly remember that time with him. Looking back, that friend of Andy’s hardly seemed a part of her life, she could hardly remember his name. And after that no one stayed with her very long, but she went from one to another for a place to live.
The rich odors of cooking food and the hot coffee warmed Midge as she sat alone in the restaurant. She smiled to herself, for she thought suddenly of Father Dowling’s eager, earnest face. “He’s very nice. There’s a lot of fun in him. I wonder if he’s got much money? He looked very happy last night when he went out. Maybe we ought not to laugh at him. I wonder whether he likes me better than Ronnie?” she thought. And she went on smiling and liking the worried expression that had been on Father Dowling’s face and the deep rolling laugh that burst out of him when he talked about his mother and his home.
When she went out again, she looked up and down the street carefully. She saw the crowds beginning to come out of the theatre. She watched to see which way most of them were going and then sauntered toward them. There was a policeman standing on the corner across the street and she had to keep watching him all the time as he thumped his arms across his chest and stood far back in the doorway out of the cold wind. Then a young fellow with huge shoulders, who idled along with his overcoat open as though it were a hot summer evening, stared at her boldly when she passed, so she smiled ever so slightly and walked a little slower. By this time she could almost feel when a man turned around and was coming after her. She walked on without turning her head till she came to a drug store with a wide window, and she entered and sat down all alone at the counter, looking out at the street. The young fellow with the big shoulders stood on the pavement where he could see her, and when she smiled coaxingly he came in eagerly and sat down beside her. In this way she made him feel that he really knew her. They had a cup of coffee together. He had a short snub nose and many freckles and he looked like a laborer who was dressed up in his best clothes for an evening’s amusement. He was not at all shy and had a full generous smile. And by the time they left the drug store she was hanging on to his arm, he was holding her hand possessively as though she were his girl, and she kept on smiling up at him all the way over to the hotel, where he handled her with tremendous satisfaction till she was forced to make him think she was exhausted. Laughing and full of conceit, he gave her two dollars, then frowned, hesitated, wondering if he ought to give her more, and instead, he swore he would come and see her at the same time next week.
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