There Are Victories

by Charles Yale Harrison

  XIV

  On entering the house Ruth discovered that she was late for dinner and ran upstairs to dress. Her clothes were laid out on her bed but her hands trembled so that when her mother knocked fifteen minutes later she was still undressed. Mrs. Throop bustled into the room.

  “Come along, darling, hurry! You’re keeping the Bishop waiting and he says he’s famished. Good heavens, your hands are trembling and you’re as pale as death. Whatever is the matter with you? Are you ill?”

  In reply Ruth sank to her bed, buried her face in her hands and burst into tears.

  “Ruth, my darling child,” Mrs. Throop said in alarm, “what’s the matter? Tell me! What’s happened to you? Oh, dear, I have a house full of guests and here you are carrying on like this. Tell mother what’s the matter.”

  She knelt down at her daughter’s side, patted her hands and attempted to comfort her, but the weeping continued. When the girl’s sobbing had subsided she observed that Ruth’s pallor was intense and her eyes were wide open. Mrs. Throop took a handkerchief, soaked it with eau de Cologne and dabbed the girl’s temples with it.

  When Ruth was more calm her mother urged her again:

  “Now don’t upset yourself, Ruth dear, but if you can, tell me what is the matter.”

  In a faltering and hushed voice Ruth stammered out her story: the drive to the top of the mountain, the walk through the woods, the heat of the afternoon, her fatigue, the cool pine grove, how she sat at her uncle’s side and rested her head against his shoulder, the kiss and—. Her mouth was hot and parched and as she talked she stumbled, groped for words to describe what had happened for which her convent vocabulary was now hopelessly inadequate.

  “And then I felt his hands, they were cold and clammy, here on my—my leg.” She wanted to say thigh but she knew her mother preferred limb. She compromised on leg. “He pressed me hard up against his body and his hand—.” She could go no farther, not even to her mother, and she lapsed into silence.

  Mrs. Throop listened without making comment. Then: “Why did you lean up against him?”

  “I was hot and tired—he asked me to.”

  “And why did you kiss him, being alone with him in the woods?”

  “He—he is my uncle—your brother.” Ruth was astonished at her mother’s tone which was relentless now.

  “And why, of all girls, should this happen to you? Why don’t things like this happen to me?”

  “I don’t know. Please, mother, I don’t want to talk of it any more now.”

  But the girl’s story held Mrs. Throop in morbid fascination. She urged her daughter to tell her more.

  “There is nothing more, mother.”

  Mrs. Throop looked grim and angry. Suddenly Ruth burst into a hot, resentful fury: “I hate him,” she said, nearly shouting; “I never want to see him again. I hope he dies—and I don’t want his filthy money. He—he told me that when he died he would leave his money to me, but I don’t want it. I suppose that he has been buying everything with his money, we—”

  “Ruth, how dare you talk this way about your uncle?”

  There were cruel, hard words—clenched fists—glowering resentful eyes. With a sinking feeling Ruth realized that she had not found sympathy in her mother, that the woman was groping for a reason to attack her, to defend her brother. Here, she realized, was no consoler, no assuager of grief and bewilderment. Here was a Steele, a defender of reputations, a preserver of the family, a silencer of family scandal.

  “He’s a dirty old”—she groped for a suitable word—the word she wanted was “lecher”—“he’s a dirty swine.”

  “Keep quiet,” Mrs. Throop ordered. “Your uncle is a clean upright man, a God-fearing man, do you hear? Why, I never heard of such a thing. How is it that things like that never happened to me when I was a girl? Tell me that?”

  There was nothing for Ruth to say. Mrs. Throop paced up and down the room in murderous silence.

  “Why is it that your uncle,” she continued, “who is nearly four times your age, a respected businessman, a benefactor of the poor and a generous contributor to the Church—why should this sterling person attempt to—er—make love to you?”

  The word love startled the girl. Love? Was that love? She remembered the books she had read: the lyricism, the poetic fantasies.

  —Is this what they meant? God, is it possible that Keats and all the great poets lied! Was Diana a harlot and Endymion a drooling swine like my uncle?

  She was no longer interested in what her mother was saying; the words poured from the woman’s lips, but Ruth found retreat within herself. She sat looking at the floor lost in thought as her mother continued her tirade.

  —Love! His scarlet lips livid against his pasty green face. To think that he—.

  Her mother was demanding an answer to a question she had made but which Ruth had not heard. Mrs. Throop stood over her daughter and continued with mounting righteous indignation.

  “Very well, then, I’ll tell you. You have a lustful heart—you tempted him, otherwise how could he have acted as you say?”

  “What? What?” Ruth rose to her feet and looked at her mother in bewildered astonishment. At first she thought she had not heard correctly.

  “Yes, I mean just that. It was your fault.”

  “Mother, what are you saying?”

  Mrs. Throop’s passionate defense of her brother now carried her well beyond the pale of reason: “Yes, you are a little wanton. You either tempted him or else you have misinterpreted a perfectly innocent kiss as an attack on your—your virtue. It is strange, I must repeat, that no one ever insulted me that way. Well, in either case you are a—a wanton.” She spat the word out at her daughter in a burst of uncontrolled anger; her eyes blazed and her face was white under the stress of her overwhelming rage.

  As Ruth heard the word “wanton,” her knees weakened under her. Her mother’s attitude was impossible to understand; it seemed so completely irrational and without basis. She caught the edge of her table and steadied herself, desperately trying to understand what was happening. Then she, too, was overcome by passion; and she struck out in blind defense.

  “You are not telling the truth—you are mistaken.”

  “So you persist in your damnable lie, do you?”

  “I am not lying—.”

  Without warning Mrs. Throop stepped back and brought the palm of her hand sharply across her daughter’s cheek. Ruth was stunned and stared for a moment or two at her mother, then she flung herself across the bed and buried her face in her hands. Her mother stood over her trembling with shame and anger (she was now aware of the injustice of her charge but there was nothing to be done about it; better to have the last righteous word) and said:

  “God forgive me for what I have done, but it is better that I should use my hands upon you than let you grow up to be a bad woman.”

  Then she left the room.

  For more than an hour Ruth lay upon her bed, numb with shame and bewilderment. After the blow it seemed as though her body had refused to function; her feet were cold and her mind was empty of thought. From the dining-room downstairs she heard the sound of conversation and once she fancied she heard her mother’s voice in laughter. Then she heard the front door open and the sound of the guests departing. It was quite late (she had lost count of time) when a maid came and brought her a tray of food.

  “Mrs. Throop says you are not to speak to anyone about what happened,” the maid said.

  Ruth did not answer but drank some tea until she felt the warmth return to her fingers and toes. Later when she undressed and got into bed, sleep seemed out of the question.

  —I shall never forget this day. I’ll never get through this night.

  But an hour later, after much fretful tossing and twisting, she fell into a heavy, exhausted sleep.

  XV

  At first her mother’s attitude was incomprehensible to Ruth. The deg
rading blow, the in­tolerance, the lack of motherly sympathy; these rankled for a long time. But as weeks went by and as Summer came and went, the memory of the painful scene became more and more clouded. And now that it was Autumn she recalled only on the rarest occasions the stinging pain and chilling humiliation which her mother had inflicted upon her. And when, at times, Mrs. Throop’s white, angry face stood before her eyes, she forgave her; forgave with that full, impulsive forgiveness which is youth’s. She did not realize it then, but she had learned wisdom through pain and suffering and when the ache and turmoil of the soul had passed she thought more calmly of the matter. All too soon she realized that this new world in which she was now living had no place for the over-sensitive, that girls were expected to resist improper advances, as they were prudently called, with tact and grace—with a nonchalant settling of the skirts, so to speak; the flight from the poacher should be studied and collected, not emotional and dramatic. Fright bordering on hysteria, such as hers had been, was uncalled for; it was bad breeding, unsettling, anti-social—particularly if the offender was one around whom a whole family rotated. Such an attitude was dangerous, it muddied the clear waters. And as she grew older Ruth came to understand, if not to condone, this passionate impulse on her mother’s part to maintain family serenity at all costs. For to Mrs. Throop her brother was the symbol of family security. In Francis Steele lay all the qualities which were revered by the Throops and their class. He was the figurehead of the social system in which the family found its warm and comfortable niche, he was the shield against which the blows of outsiders beat in vain. He was the totem which insured the happiness and security of the tribes Steele, Courtney, and Throop. He was Church, industry, commerce, flag, and morality. To have allowed his name to be smirched—the question of justice did not enter here—would have been tantamount to sacrilege, treason, indecency. It was not that her mother pardoned her brother’s act, on the contrary; but there were consequences beyond the obvious ones and there were circumstances in life which were best ignored. The bitter words and the angry charge of inherent lust and sinfulness which Mrs. Throop had hurled at Ruth were not rational or fully considered. They were the things which are sometimes said when there is a gnawing fear that perhaps the dreaded truth will be uttered or that the rock on which one’s life rests will suddenly be blown to atoms. These were the things which Ruth came to know in a dim way. She did not grant that her mother was right, she merely accepted the facts and marveled that things could be so.

  Fortunately her duties were many and engrossing. She was now in her last term at high school; there were social responsibilities and in her music she found solace and forgetfulness. And with the passing of time, although the wound had outwardly healed, its evil effects remained unseen to blossom forth at a time when she had nearly forgotten the dreadful pain and humiliation of that frightful afternoon and evening.

  XVI

  Edgar Kennedy’s first experience with sex occurred eight years before his marriage to Ruth. It was during his third year at high school; together with a group of youths he ventured, one Saturday night, into that section of the city which lies east of St. Lawrence Boulevard and immediately south of St. Catherine Street. Here, prowling through the dingy streets, past mysterious alleyways and cul-de-sacs, they came upon a house more imposing in its appearance than the neighboring establishments. From the transom over the door came the warm, inviting red glow which proclaimed the profession practiced behind the iron-latticed shutters. Now, in this as in all matters, there are varying degrees of excellence. On entering, the youths discovered that it was an “exclusive” place. In the halls and in the reception room the floors were covered with elaborately designed carpets (the color scheme ran largely toward red and its variants: scarlet, pink, maroon); the furnishings, divans, settees, and hangings were done in rich red plush. On the walls there were expansive portraits of nude women done in the flamboyant style which finds great favor with the owners of these establishments, the purpose of these paintings being comparable to the still lifes of food found in restaurants. The young men in quest of love were greeted in the foyer of the main floor by Miss Quinn herself; she was cordial but not profuse in her greetings, as befitted the madame of an exclusive house. His companions, who were older than Edgar, joked with their hostess (she resented the appellation of “madame” and preferred to be called just plain Miss Quinn; later, after several years of success, she became quite respectable, within limits, and married a young Jewish shoe merchant and set his tottering business upon a solid if somewhat soiled foundation), and asked to see “the girls.”

  In accordance with the rigid procedure of such institutions the young men were shown into the parlor. Here there was more gilded furniture (the delicate legs of which curved outward in keeping with the moral and decorative scheme of the place), scarlet plush hangings, and several highly-polished brass cuspidors each standing on a little rubber mat. On one of the walls facing the chair on which Edgar sat there was a painting depicting a lush nude woman with large breasts and pinkish thighs reclining on a chaise longue. The girls arrived in due time, about a dozen of them dressed in evening gowns (this was no mere brothel where men came and went hurriedly) representing, between them, the entire range of feminine pulchritude. They were dark, tall, fair, short, svelte, and robust. The intellectual and spiritual qualities of the young ladies were not readily ascertainable nor, to tell the truth, were Edgar and his comrades particularly concerned with these aspects of Miss Quinn’s protégés. It sufficed that they were girls. “The best girls in Montreal,” Miss Quinn boasted with an artificial and quick smile. She inclined slightly to obesity (the young Jewish merchant, among other things, admired heft) and there was in her a steely quality which reminded one of stiff, whipcord riding breeches, spurs, and riding crops. Her house, she said with becoming modesty, was the most moral one in the city. Here, she liked to say, there was no rowdyism, no narcotics, no picking of pockets such as went on in the more disreputable houses further east, or across the street for that matter. Her girls were not hardened prostitutes who had made the rounds of other houses, graduating first from the street; no, she herself recruited them fresh from the factories of the East End or picked them up of a Saturday night on St. Catherine Street: tired waitresses, discouraged housemaids, outright wantons. They were good girls, Miss Quinn said, not whores; nearly every one of them went to church on Sunday. Some of them were so young and naïve that it was almost touching. As the young men sat in the parlor Miss Quinn told the story of a young girl from Three Rivers whose innocence and naïveté was really laughable: she was in love with a ragged artist who lived in one of the wooden houses behind Laval University. He called upon her every Monday night; (“we are not busy then and I didn’t mind very much”) they were really in love and he used to bring her presents. Then a rich relative died and he decided to go to Paris to study. One Monday night he called all dressed up in new clothes (“he offered to pay like a gentleman now that he had money”) and asked to see his Yvette. She was very sad and wept a little. She understood, of course, that he would not be faithful to her while he was away but while she could not hope for fidelity she demanded that he exercise prudence. The girls in Paris, she had heard, were not—she hesitated to belittle her sisters in Paris—but they were not overclean. One would have to be extremely careful. Thereupon she took an ivory-bound missal from the drawer of her dresser and opening it gave him a scented package which had lain between its leaves. It was a package of rubber contraceptives. Her lover, also a devout Catholic, was outraged at this sacrilege and remonstrated with her. “I put them there,” the girl explained, “because now they are as good as blessed. Nothing will happen to them or to you. Always wear one and think of me.” The youths laughed but Edgar was visibly shocked. “I say,” he said, “that’s nothing to laugh about. I think it was—sinful.” One of his friends, a lanky, pimply youth, who rated high in scholastic philosophy, ceased laughing and replied to Edgar: “Oh, I don’t know, Kennedy. The gi
rl, in her simple way, was as devout as she knew how. I think, like many good religious stories, it borders a little on the sacrilegious.”

  The youths ordered wine and Miss Quinn started the automatic piano. After the wine was finished and the dancing ended, the inevitable question arose as to who was to have whom. There was much laughing and joking, for they had been instructed that among the upper classes love is a matter for jest and that only the lower orders and poets take love seriously. They joked particularly about Edgar. This was his first experience in lust and this, for some unaccountable reason, was a cause for great levity. Finally, however, the youths, each paired with a girl, went off to various parts of the house, financial arrangements being arranged beforehand with Miss Quinn.

  Upstairs in the bedrooms the furnishings were not so gaudy, not so pornographically regal; the upper chambers were for purposes—to use a current expression—strictly business. Here there were no gilded settees and no tinsel, and Edgar’s girl’s scarlet gown was the only stab of color in the bare, whitewashed room. Near one of the green shuttered windows stood a double brass bed; close at hand there was a small table with an ash-tray upon it and in the corner of the room there was a frayed arm-chair. Up against the wall facing the bed was a dresser with a mirror into which was stuck a card upon which was printed the following information: “I have this day examined Jeanne Larue and have found her free from all communicable diseases. Signed, Albert Giroux, M.D.” The card was printed in French and English, Montreal being a bilingual city.

  The sight of the card, the bareness of the room, the uncertainty as to what precisely was expected of him, filled Edgar with uneasiness. As the young lady went through the preliminaries of her ritual and as he felt her hands upon him this feeling of uneasiness began to approximate dread. He was seized with a desire to flee down the stairs, past the ornate reception room and out into the street. But Mlle. Larue, seeing his nervousness, sought to reassure him, and putting her arms about his neck, drew him down to the bed.