“Two young friends of Father Dowling,” her husband said, getting up to introduce the girls. The priest had jumped to his feet at once, beaming his admiration of Mrs. Robison with such heartiness that she couldn’t help showing how pleased she was by wrinkling the soft, smooth skin around her eyes, putting out her very white hand and tapping his arm affectionately. “I’d like you to meet these two girls,” he was saying. “It’s very kind of your husband to take an interest in them. Miss Bourassa, and Miss Ronnie Olsen, two girls who live in our parish.”
“In our parish? Really? This is a pleasure,” Mrs. Robison said. There was a withdrawal and an aloofness in the way she bowed and appraised the girls so shrewdly. “Really? Are you friends of Father Dowling?” she asked.
Smiling broadly and with her head tilted to one side, Midge stepped forward, and in her most affected manner, because she hated the woman as soon as she found herself being appraised, she said, “It’s a treat to set eyes on you, Madam. I’m sure we’ll get on swell together, don’t you think so?”
But Ronnie, standing up slowly, said with a kind of sober defiance, “Sure. We’re friends of Father Dowling. We’re good friends, lady. That’s what I mean.” And she swayed her head restlessly from side to side as though she found herself chained to the sofa and forced to wait.
“You probably have many interesting things to talk about, and you’ll have to excuse me,” Mrs. Robison said without trying to conceal her polite annoyance, and she went out after making sure that her husband understood by her bitter glance that he was to follow her.
“Just like that,” Midge said. “That’s a signal to get on your horse, Ronnie.”
“She walks right in and puts the finger on us, Midge.”
“If she puts the finger on me like that again I’ll bite her,” Midge whispered.
“What are you saying, girls?”
“Nothing, nothing, Father.”
Then there seemed to be difficulty in making conversation. Father Dowling was feeling ashamed. Of course he had not liked the way the girls had spoken to Mrs. Robison, but he was even more ashamed of her contemptuous appraisal of them. In that one shrewd appraising glance of a luxurious woman accustomed to security, she had condemned the girls forever.
Mr. Robison, who was growing more ill at ease, said, “Excuse me just a moment. I’ll be with you in a moment,” and he left the room to see his wife.
As soon as he had gone, Midge said sharply to Father Dowling, “We’re leaving here at once. Who does the old bitch think she is?”
“We shouldn’t have come here,” Ronnie said. “I hate the likes of people like her.”
“I’ll give her an eyeful,” Midge said, “if she puts her nose in here again.”
“Midge. Ronnie. Listen to me. Don’t be rude to her. Wait just a little while,” Father Dowling said.
“We’re not blaming you, Father.”
So they waited in silence and soon Mr. Robison returned, with his face flushed more brightly than ever, yet with a beaten look about him. There was something he evidently intended to blurt out as soon as he entered the room, but when he saw Father Dowling’s hopeful face, he faltered and sucked his lips. “I wonder if we could discuss this matter some other time,” he said mildly. “Some important affairs have cropped up. Or, listen here, let’s assume the matter is all settled in a kind of way, and a little later on I’ll have a talk with Father Dowling here.” And then he muttered so only the priest could hear him, “My wife’s a bit of a Bourbon, don’t you see?”
“It’s upsetting, upsetting to us all. Don’t you worry, Mr. Robison. You’ll do all you can, won’t you?”
“All in my power. They’re nice kids. The little one’s kind of pretty, don’t you think?”
But then from the door, Mrs. Robison called, “I’ve called a taxi for the girls, if you don’t mind.”
“That was very kind of you, Mrs. Robison,” Father Dowling said. He had intended to be charming, but there was so much animosity in her wise gray eyes and such a contempt, too, for him, that he turned away angrily and wanted only to get the girls out of the house.
“Ah, yes. We really must leave now,” Midge was saying. “It’s been a great pleasure to be here for the evening, Mrs. Robison. You must come and see me some time. Do you mind me telling you how I love that beautiful white streak in your hair? I’ve heard people say that anybody with a white streak in the hair has somebody crazy in the family, but I never believed that.” And laughing brightly she went over to Mr. Robison, taking short mincing steps, her left hand extended with the elbow crooked up and her fingers held high, almost level with her chin. “I know you’ll be coming to see me some time. It was a treat to meet the wife after the way you’ve mentioned her so often to me…”
“Midge,” the priest said sharply.
“Come on, Midge,” Ronnie said. “It’s time we left.” Her heavy jaw was moving a bit as if she might cry, but she strode across the room, very angular, very sober and sullen.
With his mouth drooping open, Father Dowling stood at the front door and watched the girls walking to the taxi that was waiting on the road. He wanted to run after them and comfort them. They never once looked back. Then his desolation strengthened into a feeling of rage and he turned and stared at Mrs. Robison, who was standing beside him, waiting for him to speak, and when he did nothing but stare at her rudely with his face full of indignation, she said crisply, “I must say, Father, I don’t thank you for bringing streetwalkers into my house.”
“And I can hardly compliment you, Madam, on the charitable way you received them.”
“Then we disagree.”
“Just about as emphatically as I can make it.”
“I might as well tell you I think the whole business too scandalous to be believed.”
“And I’ve been more scandalized in this house to-night than I’ve ever been in my life.”
“You probably haven’t much experience in these matters. That’s the trouble, Father,” she said, smiling sarcastically. “It might, indeed, be a difficult thing for us to discuss. We’re both feeling short-tempered. You meant well enough, I know, but if you would realize that all prostitutes are feeble-minded…”
“That’s a sociological point of view. It’s not a Christian point of view. I’m ashamed to have heard it from you.”
“There’s not much use discussing the matter. Some other time, maybe,” she said.
“Now, if you want my opinion,” Mr. Robison said with a fine gesture of affability, “we’re taking the whole matter too seriously. Come on, Father,” he said, tapping the priest’s arm, and as he drew him out to the front steps, he whispered, “She’s a bit of a Bourbon, I tell you, when she’s aroused,” and there was a little pride in his whisper, for he would never have been able to dismiss a priest in the way his wife had done. “Treat the whole thing as a bit of a joke and let’s try and forget it,” he said.
Father Dowling felt that they had given him his hat and put him out of the house, just as though he were the neighborhood nuisance. Even when he reached the sidewalk, he kept glaring back at the house, and as he walked, his anger and disgust alternated so sharply that he did not realize he was back at the Cathedral till he looked up and saw the spire and saw, too, the cross at the peak thrust up against the stars and felt no sudden affection but just a cool disgust, as if the church no longer belonged to him.
He hurried to his room and began to undress rapidly, but gradually his motions became slower till at last he sat heavily on the bed. He pulled off his shoes, and then stopped, still bending down, listening, trying to remember; there was some one moment, a few words said during the evening he groped now to hear again; he heard Midge’s voice and Ronnie’s voice and Mr. Robison’s, too, and almost every sound he had heard on the streets and coming from the boys on the corner. A snatch of conversation came up from the street below…. “He said take a ten per cent cut and I said I’ve already taken three cuts and I’ve got a wife and kids, and he said take it or
quit, what are you going to do, and I said I got some independence and I’ll quit, but first I’m going to punch you right on the nose, so I popped him one.” As he still groped for that one moment, Father Dowling began to think that the whole city for years had been whispering its story to him out of the darkness in snatches, in a huge confessional where he could not see the faces: “Yes, I want to be a Catholic but I don’t want to have any more kids and the priest says you can’t practise birth control and be a Catholic, so you’ll have to leave the Church. I said to him, if you had all the kids I had you wouldn’t be so hardboiled, I’ll bet you ten cents, and anyway I’m a sick woman and what can I do?” Her voice faded away and became simply a part of the hum, faded into the strong, confident nasal voice, “Sure he was my old man and I stole from him, but he had plenty and look how often I saw him slug my ma when she asked for anything, so I grabbed all I could and lit out when he tried to stop me, and I don’t feel sorry that he died. Maybe I do feel sorry. Yes, I guess I do a little or I wouldn’t be here.” While Father Dowling was imagining he was remembering these voices coming from underneath the stirring and hum of the life outside, he was really still groping for that one voice, those few words; then he heard them clearly in Mrs. Robison’s crisp tones: “Feeble-minded girls. Only feeble-minded girls go on the streets.” Then his thoughts came flowing steadily. “The social service point of view, the unfit produce the feeble-minded, let’s sterilize the feeble-minded, Mary Magdalen was feeble-minded and Mary of Egypt, too, and Joan of Arc heard voices; it becomes simply a problem of breeding, once you can sterilize the unfit it’s easy to breed the whores out of existence, and the mentally fit are always moral, and immorality is simple feeble-mindedness. Mrs. Robison, Father Anglin, prominent women of the parish…” The darkness within him and the deadness became so deep he could hardly move.
Dragging himself over to the window, he looked out over the city. “I don’t blame Ronnie and Midge, whatever they’re doing,” he thought, for he felt sure that at this hour they would be walking the streets. He looked out over the roofs and lights and noises on the streets, over the corners where on Sunday evenings evangelists sang, and over that street where the crowd at this moment was streaming from the labor temple; somewhere out there where the lighted avenues lengthened and the streets criss-crossed, the girls were loafing and hunting. He felt full of love for them and sometimes he looked up at the stars.
FIFTEEN
All that evening Mrs. Robison, in her most caustic manner, urged her husband to call on the Bishop and warn him that the young priest was apt to precipitate a scandal that would shame every decent Catholic in the city. Never had she discussed a matter with such passionate conviction. Father Dowling had implied by his indignation a contemptuous criticism of her manner of living and her spiritual and social life, and the more she pondered, the more she felt with deep sincerity that he was misguided, and the more she was determined to cling desperately to her faith in her own wisdom.
Her husband listened to her arguments, reasoned with her, sometimes like a naïve boy, and made many illogical objections, whereas all the time he knew he was not worrying about his wife’s wounded vanity. “Now you mark my words, James. You’re supposed to be a man of fine judgment in business. I’m simply saying, use your good judgment here in this case,” she said. It was the first time in years that her security and poise had ever been challenged, and in one way, her husband, listening to her, wanted to duck his head and chuckle, but it was his own conscience and his own sense of duty that was disturbing him. If there was one thing more than another that he objected to, it was scandal that might affect his position in the community, and as a prominent citizen he had always felt it was his duty to cherish the good name of his religion, especially in this very Protestant community. But supposing Father Dowling was arrested with these two women? Supposing he was hauled into a police court…a fallen priest, immersed in the lives of two prostitutes? What was his duty? Of course a good Catholic ought always to shelter and protect his priests…no one on earth was so close to God. Once at an ordination sermon, he had heard an exuberant old priest shout out that the young priest was just as pleasing to God as the Blessed Virgin. Complaining to the Bishop might be a little like striking at a priest. “It would be something like hitting a priest,” he said to his wife.
“Supposing a priest were mad. Wouldn’t you restrain him and use force to do it?” she asked.
“Don’t be silly,” he said. “I’ve got nothing against him.” But he was remembering that once at college when he was being initiated and was being beaten by the boys, he had swung his fist and they had yelled, “He hit a priest. Oh, my God. Kill him,” and they had started to beat him harder than ever, and blindfolded as he was, he had wept until he heard their mocking laughter. “Now,” he reasoned irritably, “it’s not up to me. It’s up to the Bishop. Something has to be done.”
The next morning at the breakfast table, Mrs. Robison was graver and more meditative than usual, and she would have liked to continue the discussion, only the presence of their daughter, Celia, chattering briskly and laughing, made such an ugly conversation rather difficult. All Mrs. Robison could do was throw one worried glance after another at her husband, whose rosy face was grave and full of resolution.
Mr. Robison was still thinking as he had thought all last night, “Who is Father Dowling? Where does he come from? What do I know about him?” He was trying to get rid of a peculiar regretful sympathy he felt for the young priest whom he had always found amusing in a harmless way, or maybe it was that he was still trying to get rid of that last bit of the disturbing feeling he had had going along the street with the young priest last night, when words had poured from him as he told of a love that was puzzling and hard to understand. “Maybe I oughtn’t to speak to the Bishop till I understand the nature of his feeling,” he thought, and then he remembered, “But he always had too much to say. He seemed to be looking for trouble. He’s always been tainted with dangerous thinking. His sermons against what he calls the bourgeois world. Always putting his head into situations he doesn’t understand. A creature of excess. He’ll make fools of us all. Lord knows what he’s doing with those women and trying to get me to keep them for him.”
That morning, from his office, he phoned the Bishop. In the afternoon he drove up to the Bishop’s palace. The palace was an old, dirty, gray-stone building, not far away from the Cathedral. Even when Mr. Robison was standing on the steps in the sunlight, ringing the door-bell, he hesitated and fussed with his coat lapels. He looked very dignified in his hard hat, showing the white hair against his rosy cheeks, and in his dark coat with the velvet collar, and his cream-colored gloves in the hand that held his cane. Just as the door was opened for him, he suddenly felt that he liked the young priest and would not willingly hurt him. It was actually like a mild feeling of humility, that feeling he had standing on the steps in the sunlight, but then he remembered that he was doing a painful duty and he felt a bit more cheerful.
He was shown into the library, where Bishop Foley was smoking and waiting. The Bishop was nearly seven feet tall, with great broad shoulders and thick dark hair. He was a man who was respected by everybody in town who knew him. He had a big, round, heavy, dark, threatening face, and he was inclined to be a bit of a bully, although when it was necessary, as it was now when he put out his hand to Mr. Robison, he had a very charming manner. And he had a fine mind for politics, an intuition that compelled him to do the expedient thing, and this gift had advanced him rapidly in the Church, where he was supposed to be an administrator rather than a contemplative. Coming from poor people, he never could get used to the notion of luxury, and he used to walk long distances in the cold winter to save a few cents rather than take a cab. Every time he appeared in a pulpit and shouted in his great rolling voice, or sang the midnight mass in his splendid robes, with his towering height at the altar, people like Mr. Robison were much impressed; and the same people were likewise proud of him when he was on a pla
tform with ministers of all denominations in a public cause which required him to look concerned, which he could do easily because he hardly ever smiled.
He shook hands enthusiastically with Mr. Robison, for they had had many fine conversations together, particularly when they were planning a financial campaign. Sitting uneasily on the edge of his chair, Mr. Robison took a deep breath and said, “I’m sorry, Your Grace, but I’m afraid this conversation will be painful for both of us. It has been worrying me all afternoon. I’m speaking to you with great reluctance and only in view of our old friendship.”
“Surely nothing can be as serious as that sounds,” the Bishop said, chuckling.
Then Mr. Robison realized with both relief and mild disappointment that nothing he could say would in any way shock this bishop, or disturb the immobile aloofness of his heavy sombre face, or make his eyes do anything more than shift around shrewdly while he listened. A bit of sunlight coming from the window touched his heavy red lips, which were so softly caressing a cigar while he waited patiently, as if the lawyer needed a good deal of time.
“It wouldn’t be so serious if it were about myself. Only I’m going to talk about some one else.”
“I’ve never heard you speak harshly of anybody.”
“I don’t want to be harsh now, but there’s a good deal involved.”
“Who is it you have in mind?”
“A priest.”
“A priest?”
“Yes, a young priest. And that’s the difficulty.”
“Before mentioning any names, Mr. Robison, do you mind telling me if the young priest is in trouble?”
“I think he’s in very grave trouble, trouble that doesn’t just touch him but may touch us all.”
Both men nodded their heads understandingly. Then Mr. Robison, looking more worried, hesitated and found it hard to actually mention Father Dowling’s name. “Your Grace,” he said suddenly, “maybe it might be better just to tell you what happened, and then if you want to, you can ask for the priest’s name.” And leaning forward, talking slowly, he told how the young priest had taken him to the hotel and brought the two girls to the house and how the priest explained that he had been going night after night to see them, giving them money, giving them clothes and growing very fond of them. “And they were more than friendly with him,” he said. “They were very much at home with him. I must say it gave me a very funny feeling watching them with him. Now I’m not saying he wasn’t trying to help them…”
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