Such Is My Beloved (12 page)

 

SIXTEEN

A
fter mass in the morning, Father Dowling was ashamed of the way he had been thinking of the parish people the night before. He ate breakfast with Father Jolly and Father Anglin, looked a long time at the old priest's severe, weary face and made little conversation with either one of them. As they ate, he knew they were looking at him as though he were gloomy and haggard. Father Jolly, who was very fond of music, talked a lot about a concert he had attended. Father Anglin once asked Father Dowling if something were bothering him and waited for an answer with his blue eyes blinking steadily.

In the early afternoon he hurried to the hotel and rapped on the white door and waited, and when there was no answer, he went back to the street and stood in front of the hotel, with his hand up, shading his eyes from the sunlight, wondering where he might find the girls. As he walked slowly around the block, looking on the streets and through restaurant windows, he was thinking, “Wherever they are, whatever they're doing, God would forgive them now.”

Before he went home, late that afternoon, he called on
Mrs. Canzano, a poor Italian woman, bulging with her twelfth child. Her husband was out of work, and he tried patiently to instill into the poor woman a Christian resignation to a life of misery.

Early that evening he was ready to go again to the hotel, but he received a call to the bedside of old Mrs. Schwartz, that old lady whom he had visited that winter night when he first met Ronnie and Midge; only this time the old woman was really dying. He knelt beside her, praying for her, he stroked her head so lightly that her eyes were full of wonder. There were no shouts from her, no struggle as there had been on that other night, no fear, just a fixed simple smile on her face as he anointed her, and then she died very peacefully.

The way this old woman had died was still in his mind, making him calmer, when he went later that night to the hotel. When he was on the stair the proprietor looked at him in a certain way, a half smile, and Father Dowling knew that the girls were in the room, and he rapped on the door lightly with sureness and eagerness. But the door was opened only a few inches and he heard Ronnie say “Who is it?”

“I want to see you, Ronnie,” he said.

A few inches more the door was opened, and Ronnie, smelling of cheap perfume and perspiration, and with her hair mussed over her head, said sullenly, “You'd better go away. You can't come in here any more.”

“I'll wait, then,” he said.

“You ought to go away and leave us alone,” she said, closing the door.

Waiting, listening to every sound that came from the room, he walked up and down the narrow corridor, and sometimes he heard a laugh, and he said, “That's Ronnie,” and sometimes he heard a man's voice and he frowned. As he kept
on walking, his own footfalls sounded dreadfully loud, so loud he thought they made it hard for him to hear Midge's laughter. She was in one of those rooms. Then these sudden wild noises that he sometimes heard and sometimes imagined began to make him feel so unhappy that he tried to tread more heavily so his footfalls would drown out all other sounds. He thought of the peaceful death of old Mrs. Schwartz just a few hours ago. “Death and life, death and life. Where is the beginning and where the end?” he muttered. “What did I expect the girls to be doing? What else was there for them to do? God help them. Last night they were insulted and hurt. I can't blame them if they hate the whole city.”

Then the door opened and he hurried along the corridor and almost bumped into the swarthy, short, fierce-faced man with shiny black hair and yellow teeth, who was coming out of the room. Mumbling something, the man turned, scared, and darted down the stairs, looking back once in spite of his fright.

By this time Father Dowling had his foot in the door, and he pushed his way into the room against the weight of some one pushing from the other side. There was Ronnie, breathing heavily, in an old green kimono and a pair of silk stockings and green pumps, and her hands were on her hips and her head was wagging from side to side in complete disgust. “For the love of Mike, Father,” she said. “Why don't you leave us alone? You got your nerve pushing in here.”

“Ronnie, Ronnie, just a minute. I only want to say how sorry I am for last night. It was my fault taking you there.”

“Forget it. You don't think I'm sitting here worrying about your friends, do you?”

“He's not my friend, he never was.”

“No? Never mind. He may get drunk and stumble in here some time, then he can go to church and tell you about it.”

“Listen, Ronnie, I may have made a mistake and I embarrassed you and Midge. I had the best of intentions. Forgive me, won't you?” Coaxing, he smiled and put out his hand and touched her arm.

Frowning, as though he were a reckless young person and she did not know what to do with him, she sat down on the bed. Then she looked at the door leading into the other room and she wished he would go. As she lay back and crossed her legs, he could see a two-dollar bill showing through the silk stocking just below her knee. He could see the figure “two” quite clearly. His face, flushing at first, suddenly got white. Following his glance, Ronnie looked down at the two-dollar bill and grinned. “That's the gent that just went out,” she said.

“I bumped into him,” the priest said, dropping his glance to the floor.

“He didn't hurt you, did he?”

“Please don't talk about him, Ronnie.”

Then there was the noise of laughter in the other room, Midge's laughter, and then other horrible sounds, and Father Dowling, thinking of Midge being sick and yet having some one in there, moistened his dry lips, went to speak, faltered as he stared at Ronnie, and listened and waited while she stared at him, his mouth opening and waiting for words to come from him, when there was only within him a shame that was making him die.

“I told you you'd better go away,” Ronnie mumbled angrily. “What are you sitting there for if you don't like it?”

“I came to see you both and I'm waiting, that's all,” he said. And then he smiled suddenly as if he were encouraging
her, and he surprised her so that she shrugged her shoulders, said, “Suit yourself. Have your own picnic,” and then looked at him with wonder.

Without any warning the other door was opened all of a sudden, and a huge, fat Italian, in a good navy-blue suit, his dark face beaming with an everlasting satisfaction, his dark eyes shining with new life, came out laughing and shaking his head happily. He must have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds. His name was Al Spagnola and he was in the fruit business. With one great expansive sigh of contentment that included Ronnie and Father Dowling, whom he hardly noticed, he walked across the room and out to the hall.

Father Dowling was astonished and angry because of the man's brazen, laughing contentment. “A big pagan, a happy animal. I seem to have seen him some place before. Just an earth worm, a barbarian right out of pagan Rome two thousand years ago,” he thought.

Midge, leaning lazily against the doorpost, watched the priest and puffed slowly at a cigarette. Her face was pale and calm. For a long time she stared at Father Dowling and then smiled just a little bit as though he amused her in some secret way she would never reveal. And then she snapped at him: “You haven't got the gall to come around here to-night nagging at us, have you?”

“I don't want to nag, Midge. What makes you think I want to nag? I'm apologizing, not nagging. I came around here so you could nag at me.”

“I didn't think you'd put your nose around here again.”

“I don't know why you'd think that.”

“You had us insulted. You had us treated like dirt.”

“That's why I want to apologize, don't you see, Midge?
That's all I can do. If you don't want me to call on you again, all right, but you had an apology coming to you anyway,” he said.

When the girls saw that the priest was not angry with them, nor disgusted at finding them with men, they grew ashamed and looked at each other foolishly. By this time both girls were sitting together on the bed. Father Dowling was smiling patiently. “All I say is you shouldn't have come in here when we were busy,” Midge said, as though defending herself.

“You shouldn't let that worry you, Midge. Look here. I'm not worrying about it at all. I can forgive you for that to-night. You were provoked and bitter in spirit. Let's be friends again, eh?” he said.

But the girls could see that while he was forgiving them, the hurt remained very deep in him, for while he pleaded with such smiling eagerness, he was white-faced and halting sometimes in his speech. All last night and to-day, too, whenever they had mentioned him, they had jeered and joked at him, but now they couldn't sit there at ease and look at him when he was so full of humility. They both began to remember that they liked him very much; they wished he would not go on pleading with his eyes so silently, or keep making it so clear that he forgave them willingly.

“We're not blaming you for anything, Father. What made you think we were? What put that idea into your head?” Midge said.

“Oh, hell, we know there's nothing wrong with you, Father,” Ronnie said.

“That's fine. Maybe you think everything I've ever recommended to you is pretty shallow, I mean you think the people I've respected are pretty shoddy.”

“I'm not holding your lousy friends against you. You got used to them, I guess. We're not going to snoot you because of those mugs.”

“You get used to anything,” Ronnie said. “But you shouldn't play around with people like those Robisons. When you get down to brass tacks they're dirt. I wouldn't give that old hussy a tumble if I dropped from a parachute right on her knee. Don't get me wrong. We're whores and we know we're whores, but she's a different kind of a whore. See what I mean? Don't let her worry you, that's all.”

“I knew you'd be bitter to-night. I don't blame you for your resentment,” he said.

Looking puzzled, the girls shifted their bodies awkwardly on the bed and did not answer. He added simply, “That's why I wanted to be with you to-night. Do you mind if I stay a while?”

He was so friendly, he seemed to like them so much that they felt vaguely pleased and they did not want to offend him. As he talked mildly, he was locking the fingers of one big hand into the fingers of the other, smiling at them sometimes with that curious diffidence that always puzzled them.

“What do you want to do, Father?” Midge asked.

“Just stay here a while with you,” he said, laughing.

“All right, that's easy. In that case I'll get dressed,” Midge said. She started to go to the other room. Then she turned, because she liked him and knew how often he worried about her and because this kind of friendship seemed so very rare, and she said, “I'm sorry, Father, that you saw me like this.” And she went into the room to get dressed.

Father Dowling began to smile warmly as he walked up and down the room, for his whole being was full of hope as he kept thinking, “How simple she was when she said that.
What a fine simple regret. She'd be such a beautiful child under different circumstances. She'd have such understanding, too, and a far deeper understanding than so many superficially polite women have.” As he paced back and forth, he smiled with relief, and Ronnie, who was watching him, full of curiosity, said, “What are you thinking about, Father? What do you find so funny?”

“I was thinking of Midge.”

“Thinking what about her?”

“Just about the way she turned at the door.”

“Do you love her?”

“In the same way I love you.”

“But you don't smile like that when you think of me?”

“I often think of you. I always see the two of you together in my thoughts.”

But she smiled at him very skeptically, as if she had a secret she would not tell, and when she was smiling, having this thought, she looked good-natured, easy-going and not at all stubborn or sullen, though her face was powdered thickly and her lips were a livid streak.

As soon as Midge returned to the room, Father Dowling asked them if they were hungry. “I've got a dollar in my pocket,” he said. He wondered if they might get some sandwiches and coffee at the lunch counter on the street and have the food there in the room. “I'll go down and get the stuff for you,” Midge said, and they all began to laugh as though they were looking forward to having a very good time.

While Father Dowling was opening the windows wide to let the fresh air into the room, Ronnie had taken a bottle of cheap red wine out of the bureau drawer. Midge came back with the sandwiches wrapped in a white napkin, and a big steaming coffee pot. The priest insisted on waiting on the girls;
he poured the coffee for them, he put the sandwiches on the saucers, he wanted them to like the food. “This is the first time we ever ate together,” he said, and he seemed very pleased.

And they used the coffee cups for the wine, too, and he poured the wine for them with a special graciousness, as if he were a host at a banquet. Then he began to talk about food, about savory dishes he had tasted, about recipes he knew by heart, about cheese and wines that had “a mysticism all their own,” as he put it. The girls kept looking at each other and wanted him to go on talking. He remained very late. He would not go home while there was any chance of them going out on the street. All the time he was talking he was trying to think of some one who might loan him money without asking questions. The girls began to get sleepy. It was very late when the priest went downstairs. Even the proprietor had gone to bed.

 

SEVENTEEN

O
n this night it was damp and cold and the streets were deserted, so Midge returned to the hotel. Her clothes were wet and she was chilled to the bone. She opened the white door and walked into the room. She saw two detectives talking to Ronnie and laughing. Cringing behind Ronnie was a worried little man with a thin, hatchet face, who looked as if he was going to cry. As Midge walked in, this little fellow was saying, “This guy Lou tells me to rap on the door and just ask for Ronnie and that's God's truth.”

When Ronnie saw Midge she put her hands up to her head and sat down slowly on the bed, and one of the detectives, the big, fair-faced, blue-eyed fellow in the hard hat, grabbed hold of Midge and said, “Here you are, baby. We're just holding a little surprise party waiting for you,” and he started to shake her roughly and watch her head sway from side to side on her shoulders.

But Midge neither smiled nor wept. She just said, “What's the use of being so tough?” and sitting down beside Ronnie, she asked her, “What happened?”

“I don't know. These guys just walked in.”

The two policemen began to joke at the two girls and jeer at the little fellow who had really begun to cry. “Doesn't he look like the answer to a woman's prayer, Joe? I'll bet he never has to pay a girl. They probably pay him,” one said. Then they pushed him one way, and then pushed him back again. And they kept this up till Midge said wearily, “Oh, leave the guy alone, why don't you?” So the cops turned roughly on the girls. Ronnie jumped up and started kicking at them with her heels while Midge sat there full of hate, but too scared to move.

“Take it easy, Sam,” the smaller detective in the light overcoat said. “We've got nothing much against these kids.”

Scratching his head thoughtfully, the big, fair fellow said, “That's right. Maybe you're right at that, Joe. I never looked at it in that way,” and turning to Ronnie, he said, “What's the use of making trouble, sister?”

“All right. Keep your hands off me, that's all,” she said.

Every one in the room was silent and peaceful now while they waited, and then Midge, who was sitting rigid with her hands in her lap and her face white, suddenly began to cry. She did not know what was the matter with her, except that she felt weak and was trembling; and as she kept on wishing she could stop crying, she was steadily hating herself, for she knew that Ronnie was resenting such an exhibition of weakness. Pleading for something she herself did not understand, she said to Ronnie, “Please don't let me bother you, kiddo. What are we waiting for?”

Nodding laconically to the girls, the fair detective thumbed toward the door, and when they got up, he stood between them, holding their arms and whispering, “Mind now, kids, no fuss. Take it easy,” and with the other detective following with the little man, who was still pleading desperately, they went downstairs to the desk. And there was the proprietor,
red-faced, expostulating, shaking his fist and cursing to an enormous detective who was smiling good-naturedly and saying, “You'll have lots of time to talk about that to-morrow.”

Then they all went out to the street where a small crowd had gathered on the sidewalk and on the road around the open door of the police wagon. A thin, misty rain, making the lamplights dim and the streets glisten, was falling on the upturned faces of the crowd. Lights from the barber shop shone on the open wagon door. Ducking their heads down in the collars of their coats, the two girls were pushed toward the wagon, but at the curb Midge slipped and fell, hurting her knee, and some one in the crowd started to laugh. The girls were helped into the wagon along with the proprietor and the sobbing little man.

On the drive over to the station no one spoke. The wagon began to smell of steaming wet clothes. Midge was beside Mr. Baer, who had his hands folded angrily across his chest, and next to him, only huddled by himself in the corner as if he dreaded the contamination that would come from sitting close to one of the girls, was the little lean man who had asked at the door for Ronnie.

At the station they were put in separate cells, but just before they were separated, Ronnie whispered to Midge, with her voice breaking with anxiety, “You don't think Lou's in wrong, too, do you, Midge? They couldn't do anything to Lou, could they?” On her angular face there was fear and desperate unhappiness. All the time in the wagon she had been thinking of Lou, for if Lou remained secure and free there somehow seemed to be so much to hope for.

And even when Midge was alone in the cell she was still thinking how foolish it was of Ronnie to worry about a man like Lou. “He'd bleed her to the bone. He'd pick the last scrap of flesh from her bones and then roll her over with his boot.”
And having these thoughts, and feeling terribly tired and without any hope, she sat there till a policeman came to the cell door, peered in, tramped back along the corridor and then returned with another cop who said, “She's not bad at all, heh? Heh, cutie, come here.” They both laughed hoarsely but they couldn't get her to notice them. “Maybe you want a lawyer, little one,” they said. “No, thanks,” she said bluntly. She cupped her chin in her hands and put her elbows on her knees until they went away.

“Maybe it might help to get Father Dowling,” she thought. “Maybe he could get us out. But no, he couldn't, and it wouldn't do any good and I couldn't stand the way he'd feel and have that hurt look on his face. There was that look on his face the other night. I won't drag him into it.” For a long time she sat there, motionless, rigid, while it got very late; there were footsteps in the corridor and footsteps on the street outside. She could not sleep. She began to feel scared. Her knee was paining her. The stocking was torn at the spot. You could hardly see it in that light. One by one, she began to think of all her sisters in their home in Montreal, one by one, remembering little things about them, their clothes, their hair, their voices, and she wanted to see every one of them before she died.

“Why do I have to think of dying? I'm not going to die.” But she was even more scared and she tried eagerly to think again of Father Dowling; but now there were flowing within her all the noises and the cries of that city where she had been born, the noises of the waterfront, the strange guttural voices of drunken sailors calling, softly calling, her fearful going away and her return to the flowing water, the lapping restless heaving water, flowing so steadily in her now and filling her with dread. And at last there floated into her thoughts the face
of Father Dowling. She liked to think of his face now, his thick hair and the gentleness in his smile. She began, too, to think of his big, soft, strong hands as if they might hold her and strengthen her even as these thoughts were strengthening her. “I'll never see him again. I'll bet a dollar I never see him again,” she thought, and saying this, she was suddenly left without any feeling of security at all as if she were utterly alone. She thought that maybe she might have done something to please him, or even now she might yet do something. She tried to remember one short prayer she had known years ago, but the words came so slowly, the words were fumbled and twisted and she frowned, felt shy and was puzzled by her own feeling as she said, “He knew there wasn't much wrong with me except this.”

Shaking her head, she suddenly laughed and jumped up and began to walk up and down the narrow cell. “What on earth was the matter with me sitting there,” she thought. Then she went over to the door and called, “Heh, sweetie.” When the policeman on duty came, she put her lips against the bars, smiling, coaxing, “Don't you think you might slip your little girl friend a cigarette?”

“Can't be done, sister,” he said.

“Please, darling, not for little me? To little me from little you? Isn't that pretty? It would be like a valentine.”

“A few minutes ago you were mighty snooty to us, weren't you. You've changed your tune now,” he said.

“Oh, not so much, just a little, but it's still a good tune,” she said.

“Well, try and smoke it, then,” he said, walking away.

In the morning the two girls were taken to the city hall and put in the cells below the court; later they were brought into the courtroom and sat drooping on a bench by the dock.
The woman magistrate, in her black robe, a Mrs. Helen Hendricks, was sitting with her chin cupped in one hand, staring out the window. This woman had been a magistrate for the last five years. It had been felt at the time of her appointment that a woman judge would be more tolerant, or at least more understanding of women than a man would be, but this nervous, severe little woman was often inexcusably harsh. Women dreaded to come before her. There seemed to be some deep restless cruelty within her that often made her savage, particularly when there was a charge of immorality being considered. She often smiled, particularly when some woman tried to faint or grow hysterical, and then she would stand up, lean over the desk and snap, “Stop that sort of thing around here. Try and fool your husband with that sort of nonsense. Don't try and fool me.”

The court clerk said, “Catherine Bourassa and Veronica Olsen,” and the constable at the door shouted, “Catherine Bourassa and Veronica Olsen,” and another policeman outside the door shouted along the corridor, “Catherine Bourassa and Veronica Olsen,” all their voices roaring hoarsely, and while all this shouting was being done the girls were sitting beside a sad-looking colored woman charged with vagrancy, a thief from the department stores, a gray-haired member of the Salvation Army and three prim, confident, tired-looking social service workers. When the last voice had echoed outside with their names, the two girls stood up slowly and a constable beckoned them toward the stand. In the courtroom, among the lawyers, the other vagrant women and the constables, Ronnie and Midge looked plain, shabbily dressed and almost unnoticeable. Ronnie had her old red coat thrown over her arm and was standing there in the black silk dress the priest
had given her, which was spotted now and badly wrinkled; Midge, too, wore Father Dowling's gray dress and the badly discolored gray shoes.

No one paid much attention to them. There was nothing remarkable about the case. Four similar cases were on the court calendar for that same morning. To the court officials all these women, after a little while, began to look alike. So the magistrate went on staring out the window, waiting, and hardly glanced at Midge and Ronnie. “You are charged with being found in a common bawdy house. How do you plead, guilty, or not guilty?”

“Guilty,” they both said, without lifting their heads.

“Just a minute, Your Honor,” the court clerk said. “There are others charged along with them. There's a charge of procuring against Lou Wilenski, a charge of keeping a bawdy house against Henry Baer, and a charge of being found in against Raymond Frizzel.”

“Bring them in then,” the magistrate said. There was once again the loud shouting and echoing of names. First Lou came in with a constable, wearing his green sweater and with his hair combed smooth, glancing around contemptuously at everybody in the court. Among the big policemen he looked even smaller, but this distinction seemed to make him feel all the more independent and stronger. Glancing over at the girls, he smiled once and winked, and then he became perfectly enigmatic.

Still fussing and expostulating, Mr. Baer was insisting the case be adjourned till he could get a lawyer. His black hair still had the sharp white part. His face was quivering with indignation and his glasses helped to make him look like a respectable taxpaying citizen.

When Ronnie saw Lou, she grabbed Midge's arm, her hand began to tremble, she kept muttering, “What have they got against Lou? They're not going to do anything to Lou.” For the first time she was suddenly alive, angry and eager. As she stood up, with Midge tugging at her, trying to restrain her, her face had that honest, direct expression that Father Dowling had loved. She wanted to plead with the magistrate and explain that Lou should not be there at all.

The little man with the hatchet face, who never raised his head, willingly gave evidence against the girls, for he understood he would escape without even a fine. He said Lou had met him in the poolroom and had sent him to the hotel and he had given money to Ronnie. While he was speaking an extraordinary viciousness crept into his voice; he wanted to hurt the girls so deeply they would never forget him. His face lit up triumphantly when he finished, for he knew he would be free. Then he added hastily, for fear of forgetting something, “That man,” pointing at Mr. Baer, “was at the hotel desk and he pointed to the stairs and said, ‘Go up there.'”

“Is there any previous conviction against these girls?” the magistrate asked.

“Last year they were convicted of similar offences, Your Honor.”

“You've been here before, then?” she said to the girls.

“Yes, ma'am,” they said.

“Old offenders,” she said. “Back as usual.”

The tips of her fingers were caressing her plump chin as she said, “The most horrible offence here was on the part of the man who was procuring. He's little better than the scum of the earth. There's no previous conviction against him but I'm going to send him down for three months. The city is well rid of such rattlesnakes.”

Then Ronnie screamed, “That's not fair to Lou. He's done nothing to nobody. He's never been in trouble. He's a good man. He never treated anybody bad. Look at his face. Look at him standing there, ma'am. He's full of kindness. Please, ma'am, you don't know him like I do. If he's done anything it's my fault, because I got him to do it and he did it for me.” Ronnie started to cry as she pleaded with the magistrate, who only smiled and said, “My goodness, girl, what eloquence for such a wastrel.” And then she went on, “You, Veronica Olsen, where do you come from?”