Such Is My Beloved (4 page)

 

FOUR

R
onnie did not work the streets the way Midge did. There were times when she used to hate to see Midge leaning sentimentally on some fellow's arm, smiling up into his face and making him think she loved him. Of course, Midge, in this way, had men coming back to her all the time, but Ronnie, though, was full of contempt for such men who wanted to be petted and coaxed. That evening at ten o'clock she went out; she kept to the side streets, away from the big avenues, avoiding the crowds and the corners where the policemen walked most often. In her old red coat she looked like an ordinary, practical working girl, except that her lips were too red and her eyes were made up badly, and while she walked rapidly she kept quite warm. Every man who came toward her she estimated shrewdly, seeking the ones who were idling along, for she never expected a man to approach her. To-night she kept to the darker streets in the block behind the Cathedral, where there were a great many old rooming houses. When her hands began to feel stiff with the cold she took off her gloves and put her fingers in her mouth and blew her hot breath on them, but when she took her fingers out of her
mouth her hand looked red and beefy. The sharp dry coldness without any wind went right through her, because she could not wear too many clothes. Whenever a man was passing her she said, “Hello, kiddo,” and if he slowed down, she said, “I know a warm place for such a cold night.”

Ronnie had come from Detroit ten years ago with her father. In Detroit, in those days, times had been good, but there had been a jealousy between her father and mother that developed into a hatred, and when they were divorced they took turns having Ronnie live with them. They just used her as a means of hurting each other. They both insisted on having her and really didn't want her at all. Her father, when he had her with him, used to look at her morosely and wonder what to do with her. Her mother, when she had her, used to spend a lot of time trying to find out secrets about the father. So Ronnie became sullen and reticent with both of them and waited for the time when she would be old enough to live by herself.

One time she refused to return to Detroit and she got a job in a department store and a small room of her own. Those days, at first, were the best ones of her life. She lived frugally; she tried to save a little money; she had a splendid independence. But they shortened her hours at the department store; her pay envelope kept getting thinner till soon she was only working a few hours a week and not making enough to pay her room rent. It was then that she found out it was easy to attract men passing through the store and make dates with them for an hour or two later when she would not be working. She began by accepting small presents that went toward paying for her food and rent.

To-night, as she was walking up toward the Garden, where there was a boxing match, she saw a fat, middle-aged
man coming down the street with his fur-lined coat swinging open. He was smoking a big cigar and his hat was cocked on one side of his head and when she spoke to him, he said, “O.K. with me, sister. What have you got to offer? I'd just been wondering if there wasn't any whoring in this town. You go out looking for a woman and you're apt to pick up a policeman. Never saw such a dump. I'm from the West.” And Ronnie said considerately, “Maybe you'll want to just follow me. It will look better.” She always made this suggestion because so many men were nervous and kept looking around with such anxiety and fear of being observed that they attracted the attention of passing people. They felt so much more respectable just following Ronnie to the hotel, where it was never necessary for any one to stay with her more than twenty minutes.

But the bland gentleman, who was almost without passion, could hardly be coaxed to put down his cigar. He was a railroad man and he wanted to tell her about a hundred cities in a hundred places all over the continent. “I know fifty good guys like myself who'll be glad to see you when they come here. Danged if you won't set them up,” and he wrote down her name with a stubby pencil in a big black notebook which he kept in his hip pocket.

When the railroad man had left she hurried back to her best neighborhood, and the next one was a boy who was dreadfully shy, and only had a dollar. This boy with curly fair hair, who went to high school, seemed to think she was wonderful, and he was very timid, so she was kind and patient with him, so good-natured, in fact, that he wanted to stay in the room with her and talk with great eagerness. But he left like the others in twenty minutes.

After that, no matter how far away from her own neighborhood she walked, no one would speak to her, no one would turn when she reached out and touched an arm: they kept on passing, sometimes looking down at her face, shrugging their shoulders and hurrying on to their homes with their hands in their pockets. Hundreds of mysterious faces of hundreds of people, long hungry faces, full round faces with black mustaches, foreign faces, hard, bitter faces, all coming along the side streets from the shows, passed by, cold and solemn, some of them turning just long enough to glance at her appraisingly. Because of the cold, it was necessary to walk fast and so her thoughts were teeming full of these many faces, and full, too, of an increasing dread of the next new face, as if one more refusal would break something inside her. She was a stubborn girl, so she kept thinking, “Jees, they can't hurt me. It's all the same to me,” and yet she could not stop herself from staring sullenly at every man who passed, and growing warm with hate. It was at this time that the wet, heavy snow began to fall and drift across the street light. She stopped, looking up at the sky, and wondered where Midge was and why she hadn't met her all evening. She wondered if the falling snow would make Midge decide to go back to the hotel. “If it snows heavily to-night, it will be warmer to-morrow, maybe,” she thought. The corner grocery store was still lighted. Peering through the window at the clock, she said, “Goodness, twenty to twelve. Lou will be waiting for me if I don't hurry,” and she began to hurry back to the hotel like a girl who is eager to get home after the day's work is over.

She stayed in the hotel only long enough to powder her face and pat her hair and take with great care from the bureau drawer a neat bundle which she tucked under her arm. And
this time when she went out, she wasn't interested in any one who passed her. She looked ahead eagerly.

She saw Lou walking up and down slowly on the corner opposite the bank building, a lighted cigarette in his gloved hand. Lou was a little fellow in a dark overcoat and a derby hat, who leaned back a little so he would look taller, and who glanced contemptuously at almost everybody who passed by, so he could feel he was nursing his own strength and feel he was a bad man for any one to tangle with on a street at night. His face was soft and pallid, but his eyes were really hard and colorless. Three years ago he had been a shoe clerk. That was before he had met Ronnie. His father and mother, who had wanted him to become a business man, had thought the shoe business a good one for an industrious young fellow who was willing to learn rapidly and work hard, but the monotony of the life had begun to bore him. In the noon hours he had begun to go to the pool parlors. He began to bet on the horses, and he quit his job.

Lou appreciated Ronnie's good qualities and was very kind to her. Whenever she was sick, he insisted she go to the hospital at once. If she got into trouble with a policeman, he knew a lawyer who would rush to the station and arrange a small bail bond for her. For a holiday he sometimes took her to the country. And he kept on sending men to the hotel and telling them to be sure and ask for Ronnie and not to bother with the little dark girl, whom he did not like.

It did not seem cold to Ronnie as she walked along the street with Lou; the tingling night air only made her feel more alive. All the stubborn aloofness that had seemed a part of her nature disappeared. Laughing, she walked along, holding Lou's arm tight, feeling his body swaying from side to side with his swagger while he talked out of the corner of his
mouth. His rooming house was just by the bridge over the river and the railroad tracks. Across the bridge, on the other bank, behind the factories, they could see the jail, and they could see the reflections of street lights on the snow on the frozen river below. Sometimes an automobile light gleamed on the railroad tracks by the river and on the rows of boxcars, white capped with snow, more numerous further down by the dark waterfront and the bay. There was a long and lonely cry of an engine and the clanging of a bell, and a passenger train came rushing toward the bridge with its coaches gleaming with light and life and swift glimpses of men with their hats off, drummers and farmers and city men, relaxing on the green seats, quick glimpses of a thousand people never to be seen again as the swaying coaches roared under the bridge, going far north and points west on the continent with a rapid flickering of window life–then the darkness, the bare tracks, the river, the freight-yard, the boxcars, the factories and chimney stacks again.

“Don't you love it?” Ronnie asked. “Going right under your feet and going the Lord knows where.”

“Maybe it's going north.”

“Maybe it's going to Montreal where Midge comes from.”

“Maybe it's going to the Pacific Coast. You can't say for sure.”

“Gee, wouldn't you like to be on that train, Lou?”

“We'll take a trip some day, kiddo. Leave it to me.”

“Every time I see a train I want to be going away,” she said.

Lou had a big front room in an old house with long, poorly lit halls and great high ceilings. When they entered this room, they took off their coats eagerly, tossing them over the
furniture like people who were glad to be in their own house. Hiding the parcel she had been carrying under the folds of her coat, she ran to the gas stove at the end of the room, lit the gas, took the coffee pot down from the shelf and began to work busily like a contented housewife in her own kitchen.

When they had had their coffee and cheese sandwiches, she went to her coat on the chair, smiled happily, picked up the hidden bundle and said softly, “Look, Lou. You'll never guess what it is.”

“What's that you've got there?”

“It's a present. You'll never guess.”

“Who for?”

“For you, Lou.”

“Gee whiz,” he said. “Open it up and let me get my eye on it.” He had been walking around the room in his shirt sleeves, with his new hard hat still on his head as though he were proud of it. With his hands on his hips, he stared at the parcel, watching her carefully lift a pale blue shirt out of the tissue paper, and a dark blue tie. “They'll look swell on you, kid,” she said. “They'll look like a million dollars. Put them on now, baby, and let's have a look.”

“Say, I have a mind to do that little thing,” he said, holding the shirt and tie out at arm's length. “Blue always looks swell on me, don't it?” he said, walking across the room to the cracked looking-glass hanging on the wall. But as he began to unbutton the shirt he was wearing, he stopped suddenly, frowning, and said, “Where did you get the money for this stuff, Ronnie?”

“That priest gave me five dollars last night.”

“That priest again, eh? What did he do? Come through?”

“No chance. He gave Midge five bucks and me five to help us out, I guess.”

“I don't like the sound of this,” Lou said. “I don't like it at all.” His eyes looked very cold as he chewed his lips and thought, “What's the priest up to? What's he working at? You can't tell about priests. I don't trust priests. It's got to stop. He's soft-soaping her and he's talking business when he's laying coin on the line.” Glaring at Ronnie, he said with a soft viciousness, “I told you, Ronnie, not to let the guy in, didn't I?”

“I know, Lou, but you can't raise a row and he was pretty decent, Lou.”

“What's he mean to you, Ronnie?”

“He's nothing to me, he's nothing to you.”

“See what I think of the pair of you. Take a look at this,” he said, and he took the navy-blue tie that would have looked so splendid with the light blue shirt and began to tie it in knots, tearing it and jerking it, then throwing it savagely across the room. “I don't like him and I don't like you, see. I once knew a girl that got in dutch with a priest.”

Shaking her head, Ronnie looked at the tie and looked at Lou. She felt so miserable she could not speak. With her head down, she went over to the bed and began to undress slowly, fumbling awkwardly with her dress. From her stocking, she took the three dollars she had earned that night and put it neatly on the bureau at the side of the bed. She got into bed without saying a word and turned her face to the wall.

Lou kept walking up and down, his feet thudding on all the creaking floor boards till he tired himself out. Then he looked at Ronnie's body huddled under the blankets and at the back of her neck; there was no movement, and while she lay like this he knew she was crying. Lou shook his head savagely from side to side. “Never mind, kiddo,” he said at last. “Never mind, baby.” He began to undress. Then he rolled her over roughly. “Here,” he said. “Come on.”

He held her angular body in his arms and kissed her, held her tight and made love to her and felt her holding him as if she would never let go, and he wanted to go on loving her all the time.

 

FIVE

T
hat first Friday in February, warm afternoon sunlight melted the snow on the street, and all day at the Cathedral the Blessed Sacrament, the body and blood of Christ, was exposed on the altar. People kept on entering the church in the afternoon for short visits. There was no crowd, people came singly, but they kept coming all day.

The Cathedral was an old, soot-covered, imitation Gothic church that never aroused the enthusiasm of a visitor to the city. It had been in that neighborhood for so long it now seemed just a part of an old city block. The parish was no longer a rich one. Wealthy families in fine old homes had moved away to new and more pretentious sections of the city, and poor foreigners kept coming in and turning the homes into rooming houses. These Europeans were usually Catholics, so the congregation at the Cathedral kept getting larger and poorer. Father Anglin really belonged to the finer, more prosperous days, and it made him sad to see how many of his own people had gone away, how small the collections were on Sunday and how few social organizations there were for the
women. He was often bitter about the matter, although he should have seen that it was really a Protestant city, that all around his own Cathedral were handsome Protestant churches, which were crowded on Sunday with well-dressed people, and that the majority of the citizens could hardly have told a stranger where the Catholic Cathedral was.

On this first Friday of the month, when there was such a surprising amount of warm sunlight, people who went into the darkened church for a short visit blinked their eyes, kneeling, and did not see Father Dowling over to the left by the window. He was praying and contemplating the Blessed Sacrament. There was so much fervent earnestness in the way his hands were clasped and the way his head was bent and motionless, that he seemed to have become a part of the bench. No other priest spent so much time alone in the church on these Friday adorations as did Father Dowling. While a streak of sunlight filtered through the blue stained-glass window and shone on the back of his neck, he was meditating on love, on human love, divine love, and the love of man for God. Then he began to think of Ronnie and Midge, feeling that his love for them was growing, so that he might try and love them in his way as God must love everybody in the world. It seemed to him also that the more he could understand, love and help these girls, the closer he would be to understanding and loving God. So he made up his mind to be very patient, never to be angry if he was not immediately successful with them, and to see, if possible, that they were never in want. These thoughts filled him with hope.

As he left the church he decided to call that afternoon on Mr. James Robison, a wealthy lawyer, who had always been so willing to assist the priests in their charitable work, and ask him if he could get work for the girls.

So Father Dowling walked over to the lawyer's office, smiling, ruddy-faced, bowing to people he had never seen in his life before. He was looking forward eagerly to talking with Mr. Robison, because the lawyer was usually approached by Father Anglin when some favor was expected of him. Every time the young priest saw Mr. and Mrs. Robison coming out of the Cathedral on Sunday he felt a little glow of pride, knowing that no finer, more aristocratic, more devout people were coming out of church doors anywhere in the city. There had been a few occasions, too, when Mrs. Robison had invited Father Dowling to their home on an evening for a game of bridge and, of course, he was always there when she permitted her home to be used for a tea for charity. Father Dowling often hoped the Robisons would not move out of the parish because he knew people in the neighborhood were in the habit of jeering and saying that all Catholics were poor, unsuccessful in business and socially unimportant. But they could never say that about the Robisons. Mr. Robison, a big, handsome, white-haired fellow with a florid face, was one of the few men in the city who, on formal occasions, wore an opera cloak with a white silk lining. Father Dowling had seen him wearing this cloak with a high silk hat and silver-headed cane one night at a reception at the Bishop's palace. And besides, as a corporation lawyer, Mr. Robison knew the directors of the big trust companies, the bankers and politicians and the chief of police. He was a lawyer, and it was true there were many other lawyers, but he used to say often that he would never soil his hands by appearing in the police courts or having contact with the criminal element. He was a patron of music and he appeared with the socially prominent people of all denominations at the best concerts. He had perhaps only one weakness: if he gave a large amount to charity he expected his name to
be put at the head of the list in the newspapers, but, after all, he was entitled to this primacy of position; the only doubtful consideration was whether he ought to insist upon knowing what other people were giving. But aside from these matters, when Father Dowling saw the lawyer and his two fine daughters come out of church after the eleven o'clock mass on Sundays and get into their car, while the liveried chauffeur held the door open and the poor people stood on the sidewalk with their mouths open, he rejoiced and wondered, for it seemed truly remarkable that a wealthy man could be such a Christian.

In the lawyer's office on the twentieth floor of an office tower, Father Dowling waited, sitting up straight, holding his black hat in both hands. The only thought worrying him was that Mr. Robison might have been displeased by some of his sermons attacking the materialism of the bourgeois world. There must have been some displeasure in the Robison home, Father Dowling knew, because for the last two weeks he had not been invited there in the evening for a cup of coffee and a game of bridge. Mrs. Robison had always pretended to admire his skill at cards.

But the lawyer this afternoon received him very heartily. “Come in, come in, Father,” he shouted as soon as the office door was opened. “Sit right down. One moment. Here, have a cigar. Now, Father, what is it?”

Father Dowling, beaming and holding the cigar with great tenderness, said, “Beautiful weather out, simply wonderful. I've come to ask you a favor. Ah, Mr. Robison, we always seem to be asking favors of you. We're mendicants of the worst kind. Poor begging friars.”

“That's quite all right. I'm the man to come to. I'd be disappointed if you went to any one else. How is Father Anglin's cold?”

“Much better. The bottle of whiskey you sent him was a great help.”

“I hope you managed to get a nip?”

“Just a nip.”

Father Dowling smiled warmly, thinking, “He's really a splendid Christian.” His slight timidity left him. Clearing his throat, he leaned forward and said eagerly, “This is a simple matter, Mr. Robison. I'll put it very briefly. There are two girls in our parish in pretty desperate circumstances. They need work. I promised to get jobs for them. God knows what will happen if they don't get work.” He was leaning forward over the desk, his blue eyes shining with sincerity and a conviction that he would not be denied. He looked very handsome. But Mr. Robison, regarding him with a blank expression and a complete lack of enthusiasm, tried to draw away by leaning further back in his chair and putting the tips of his fingers together, shutting Father Dowling out. “Does the man think I'm an employment agency in times like these, with the legal business on rock bottom, so many men out of work and half the city on civic relief?” he thought. Shaking his head sorrowfully, he said, “Ah, Father, these are difficult times for us all. I'd like to help you. I'll try to help you as a matter of fact. But if you must know the truth, I'm cutting my own staff. However, do I know the girls?”

“I don't think you do. I'm sure you don't.”

“Old families in the parish, perhaps?”

“No, they are not well known. You might not know their names.”

“Still, you'd give them a good recommendation, I suppose.”

“I'm sure they'd be willing to work hard,” Father Dowling said.

“It's a pity things are like this in these times. Many unfortunate people, even our own co-religionists, must suffer. The whole city is suffering. Men like myself must do all we can to keep the people contented and we're doing so. I don't mind saying, Father, that I can't agree with your social and political philosophy expressed in some of your sermons, but still, still…”

“You don't think you know any one who'd have work for the girls?” Father Dowling said so brokenly that the lawyer was startled.

“Say, it's not any relative of your own, is it, Father?” he said with more interest.

“No. Just two souls in our parish.”

“Old friends of yours, maybe?”

“No, I haven't known them very long.”

“I understand. I'll make a note of it. But I have next to no hope. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll speak to my wife and ask her if she knows anybody who might want a couple of domestics. So don't worry, Father. It's mighty good of you to be taking such an interest in these people. Keep on with the good work. I admire your enthusiasm and energy.”

Looking very upset, the young priest got up, his face beginning to flush with indignation. The lawyer was talking to him as though he were a child, a man so cloistered from life that he could not be expected to understand an economic depression, or the suffering of a city or a whole people– a cloistered young man, respected only because he was a priest. Father Dowling shook hands gravely with the lawyer, asked to be remembered respectfully to Mrs. Robison, and went out with his face burning.

As he walked along the crowded streets, with the women carrying parcels coming out of the big stores, he looked
earnestly at each one as if he had never seen such people before. So many of them were well dressed, so many had their fur coats thrown open because of the sunlight, and were showing fine silk dresses. He longed to see Ronnie and Midge coming along the street in the crowd, well clothed, with some of the independence and contentment in their faces that he saw in the faces of these women. The snow was melting near the foundations of the buildings and the steam was rising. Father Dowling, standing by a drug store, kept thinking of the two girls with their old shoes and coats and their sewn-up stockings, in the hotel room, and he felt so much tenderness for them that he began to smile softly. As he heard the swishing of rubbers on the snow, he looked up and saw a beautiful woman with a mink wrap, fur-trimmed galoshes, and a face with a delicate hot-house bloom, getting into a big green car. Indignant, he wondered why God saw fit to permit so many people to have wealth and comfort, and so many to remain poor and hungry. “I'm sick and tired of those stupid platitudes about the poor,” he thought. “A Christian is entitled to self-respect, to warmth and good clothing in any kind of decent society. Even a religious, who takes the vow of poverty in life, has everything he requires. He lacks nothing really. He has warmth and comfort and leisure. You can't be a Christian when you're hungry and have no place to sleep, for then you're hardly responsible for what you do.” And the more he thought of social disorder, the more love and concern he felt for the two girls.

For the rest of the afternoon he went to see a few of his more wealthy parishioners. The women he called on welcomed him effusively, offered him wine or tea and talked to him as though he were a lovely boy, and he sat there very gravely, his eyes wandering around the room, his thoughts far
away. And the more homes he visited the more he was convinced that moral independence and economic security seemed very closely related. He kept asking every one of these indulgent and respectful women if they would try and find employment for two girls of the parish. He pleaded with them, feeling that they were not taking him seriously, as they fawned over him, pampering him. The way some young women flirted with a priest disgusted him. Sometimes they even wrote letters to him, pretending to be making all kinds of revelations, when they were really shamelessly offering themselves to him without realizing how he might be tempted and tortured.