Such Is My Beloved (3 page)

“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 will 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

T
he 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 hardly 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.

But all the rest of that evening no one would glance at Midge. She tried whispering as she passed by, she nodded her head, she walked alongside them while her face and feet and hands got cold. She went far out of her usual way and down by the station where all the taxis were lined up at the curb, but the wide street was almost deserted. People kept getting out of cars and rushing into the station. Across the road the great face of the hotel gleamed with light. She kept on going over by the market and finally she went back to her own neighborhood by the theatres. With her shoulders hunched up, she was standing on the corner looking idly at the snow that was beginning to fall in big, heavy, wet flakes on the almost deserted streets. The slowness of the slanting snow made her feel all the more discouraged. But then she picked up the worried young man with the thin face, the little dark mustache and the big horn-rimmed glasses, who was a student, and she took him home on her arm. But he wanted to sit in the room with the blue curtains and talk to her, and she kept on trying to get him to go into the other room. “Come on and play house. Don't you want to play house?” she kept on coaxing. But he only smiled and twisted uneasily on his chair, trying to conceal his fear of her and hoping to make up his mind while he kept on putting her off. “I'll tell you what,” he said suddenly. “Take off your clothes and do a dance for me.”

A bit bewildered, she looked at him and then hated him and sneered. “What do you think this is? What's the matter with you?”

“What difference does it make to you what you do?”

“It makes a lot of difference. What do you think I am?”

“God, aren't you proud!”

“I can't dance,” she said sullenly.

“Go ahead and try. I'll pay you anyway.”

“I know what you are. You're a college boy, and you don't know any better.”

“What are you so stuck up about? What do you care what you do?”

“What do you think this is, a roadhouse? You get the hell out of here,” she yelled at him. With a grin of relief on his face, he hurried out, thumbing his nose at the door, and when she was alone she was so indignant and full of rage that she kept on pacing up and down the room. She felt helpless with resentment. She started to cry. There was no use going out again. It was after midnight. Ronnie was not coming home; she was staying the night with Lou. So Midge went over to the window and looked out, feeling lonesome, and the streets seemed so clear and cold that she shivered and wrote something with her finger on the frosted pane. “Maybe the priest might come along the street and stay and talk a while,” she thought. The church was just on the other side of the block. But no matter how she strained her neck she could not see the spire. “He would have been glad to see the way I chased that little college boy out of the room,” she thought, smiling. There would have been something about it that would have pleased him. It was almost as though she had done something for him, and it was more likely that he would give her money the next time he came to the hotel.