Collected Stories (22 page)

“Thanks, father,” she said, and he saw at once that his gruff appeal had touched some deep and genuine spring of feeling in her. “I'll cut it out altogether.”

“You know, I think I would,” he said gravely, letting his eyes rest on her for a moment. “You're an intelligent girl. You can get all the excitement you want out of life without that. What else?”

“I had bad thoughts, father.”

“Ach,” he said regretfully, “we all have them. Did you indulge them?”

“Yes, father.”

“Have you a boy?”

“Not a regular: just a couple of fellows hanging round.”

“Ah, that's worse than none at all,” he said crossly. “You ought to have a boy of your own. I know there's old cranks that will tell you different, but sure, that's plain foolishness. Those things are only fancies, and the best cure for them is something real. Anything else?”

There was a moment's hesitation before she replied but it was enough to prepare him for what was coming.

“I had carnal intercourse with a man, father,” she said quietly and deliberately.

“You what?” he cried, turning on her incredulously. “You had carnal intercourse with a man? At your age?”

“I know,” she said with a look of distress. “It's awful.”

“It is awful,” he replied slowly and solemnly. “And how often did it take place?”

“Once, father—I mean twice, but on the same occasion.”

“Was it a married man?” he asked, frowning.

“No, father, single. At least I think he was single,” she added with sudden doubt.

“You had carnal intercourse with a man,” he said accusingly, “and you don't know if he was married or single!”

“I assumed he was single,” she said with real distress. “He was the last time I met him but, of course, that was five years ago.”

“Five years ago? But you must have been only a child then.”

“That's all, of course,” she admitted. “He was courting my sister, Kate, but she wouldn't have him. She was running round with her present husband at the time and she only kept him on a string for amusement. I knew that and I hated her because he was always so nice to me. He was the only one that came to the house who treated me like a grown-up. But I was only fourteen, and I suppose he thought I was too young for him.”

“And were you?” Father Cassidy asked ironically. For some reason he had the idea that this young lady had no proper idea of the enormity of her sin and he didn't like it.

“I suppose so,” she replied modestly. “But I used to feel awful, being sent up to bed and leaving him downstairs with Kate when I knew she didn't care for him. And then when I met him again the whole thing came back. I sort of went all soft inside. It's never the same with another fellow as it is with the first fellow you fall for. It's exactly as if he had some sort of hold over you.”

“If you were fourteen at the time,” said Father Cassidy, setting aside the obvious invitation to discuss the power of first love, “you're only nineteen now.”

“That's all.”

“And do you know,” he went on broodingly, “that unless you can break yourself of this terrible vice once for all it'll go on like that till you're fifty?”

“I suppose so,” she said doubtfully, but he saw that she didn't suppose anything of the kind.

“You suppose so!” he snorted angrily. “I'm telling you so. And what's more,” he went on, speaking with all the earnestness at his command, “it won't be just one man but dozens of men, and it won't be decent men but whatever low-class pups you can find who'll take advantage of you—the same horrible, mortal sin, week in week out till you're an old woman.”

“Ah, still, I don't know,” she said eagerly, hunching her shoulders ingratiatingly, “I think people do it as much from curiosity as anything else.”

“Curiosity?” he repeated in bewilderment.

“Ah, you know what I mean,” she said with a touch of impatience. “People make such a mystery of it!”

“And what do you think they should do?” he asked ironically. “Publish it in the papers?”

“Well, God knows, 'twould be better than the way some of them go on,” she said in a rush. “Take my sister, Kate, for instance. I admit she's a couple of years older than me and she brought me up and all the rest of it, but in spite of that we were always good friends. She showed me her love letters and I showed her mine. I mean, we discussed things as equals, but ever since that girl got married you'd hardly recognize her. She talks to no one only other married women, and they get in a huddle in a corner and whisper, whisper, whisper, and the moment you come into the room they begin to talk about the weather, exactly as if you were a blooming kid! I mean you can't help feeling 'tis something extraordinary.”

“Don't you try and tell me anything about immorality,” said Father Cassidy angrily. “I know all about it already. It may begin as curiosity but it ends as debauchery. There's no vice you could think of that gets a grip on you quicker and degrades you worse, and don't you make any mistake about it, young woman! Did this man say anything about marrying you?”

“I don't think so,” she replied thoughtfully, “but of course that doesn't mean anything. He's an airy, lighthearted sort of fellow and it mightn't occur to him.”

“I never supposed it would,” said Father Cassidy grimly. “Is he in a position to marry?”

“I suppose he must be since he wanted to marry Kate,” she replied with fading interest.

“And is your father the sort of man that can be trusted to talk to him?”

“Daddy?” she exclaimed aghast. “But I don't want Daddy brought into it.”

“What you want, young woman,” said Father Cassidy with sudden exasperation, “is beside the point. Are you prepared to talk to this man yourself?”

“I suppose so,” she said with a wondering smile. “But about what?”

“About what?” repeated the priest angrily. “About the little matter he so conveniently overlooked, of course.”

“You mean ask him to marry me?” she cried incredulously. “But I don't want to marry him.”

Father Cassidy paused for a moment and looked at her anxiously through the grille. It was growing dark inside the church, and for one horrible moment he had the feeling that somebody was playing an elaborate and most tasteless joke on him.

“Do you mind telling me,” he inquired politely, “am I mad or are you?”

“But I mean it, father,” she said eagerly. “It's all over and done with now. It's something I used to dream about, and it was grand, but you can't do a thing like that a second time.”

“You can't what?” he asked sternly.

“I mean, I suppose you can, really,” she said, waving her piously joined hands at him as if she were handcuffed, “but you can't get back the magic of it. Terry is lighthearted and good-natured, but I couldn't live with him. He's completely irresponsible.”

“And what do you think you are?” cried Father Cassidy, at the end of his patience. “Have you thought of all the dangers you're running, girl? If you have a child who'll give you work? If you have to leave this country to earn a living what's going to become of you? I tell you it's your bounden duty to marry this man if he can be got to marry you—which, let me tell you,” he added with a toss of his great head, “I very much doubt.”

“To tell you the truth I doubt it myself,” she replied with a shrug that fully expressed her feelings about Terry and nearly drove Father Cassidy insane. He looked at her for a moment or two and then an incredible idea began to dawn on his bothered old brain. He sighed and covered his face with his hand.

“Tell me,” he asked in a faraway voice, “when did this take place?”

“Last night, father,” she said gently, almost as if she were glad to see him come to his senses again.

“My God,” he thought despairingly, “I was right!”

“In town, was it?” he went on.

“Yes, father. We met on the train coming down.”

“And where is he now?”

“He went home this morning, father.”

“Why didn't you do the same?”

“I don't know, father,” she replied doubtfully as though the question had now only struck herself for the first time.

“Why didn't you go home this morning?” he repeated angrily. “What were you doing round town all day?”

“I suppose I was walking,” she replied uncertainly.

“And of course you didn't tell anyone?”

“I hadn't anyone to tell,” she said plaintively. “Anyway,” she added with a shrug, “it's not the sort of thing you can tell people.”

“No, of course,” said Father Cassidy. “Only a priest,” he added grimly to himself. He saw now how he had been taken in. This little trollop, wandering about town in a daze of bliss, had to tell someone her secret, and he, a good-natured old fool of sixty, had allowed her to use him as a confidant. A philosopher of sixty letting Eve, aged nineteen, tell him all about the apple! He could never live it down.

Then the fighting blood of the Cassidys began to warm in him. Oh, couldn't he, though? He had never tasted the apple himself, but he knew a few things about apples in general and that apple in particular that little Miss Eve wouldn't learn in a whole lifetime of apple-eating. Theory might have its drawbacks but there were times when it was better than practice. “All right, my lass,” he thought grimly, “we'll see which of us knows most!”

In a casual tone he began to ask her questions. They were rather intimate questions, such as a doctor or priest may ask, and, feeling broadminded and worldly wise in her new experience, she answered courageously and straightforwardly, trying to suppress all signs of her embarrassment. It emerged only once or twice, in a brief pause before she replied. He stole a furtive look at her to see how she was taking it, and once more he couldn't withhold his admiration. But she couldn't keep it up. First she grew uncomfortable and then alarmed, frowning and shaking herself in her clothes as if something were biting her. He grew graver and more personal. She didn't see his purpose; she only saw that he was stripping off veil after veil of romance, leaving her with nothing but a cold, sordid, cynical adventure like a bit of greasy meat on a plate.

“And what did he do next?” he asked.

“Ah,” she said in disgust, “I didn't notice.”

“You didn't notice!” he repeated ironically.

“But does it make any difference?” she burst out despairingly, trying to pull the few shreds of illusion she had left more tightly about her.

“I presume you thought so when you came to confess it,” he replied sternly.

“But you're making it sound so beastly!” she wailed.

“And wasn't it?” he whispered, bending closer, lips pursed and brows raised. He had her now, he knew.

“Ah, it wasn't, father,” she said earnestly. “Honest to God it wasn't. At least at the time I didn't think it was.”

“No,” he said grimly, “you thought it was a nice little story to run and tell your sister. You won't be in such a hurry to tell her now. Say an Act of Contrition.”

She said it.

“And for your penance say three Our Fathers and three Hail Marys.”

He knew that was hitting below the belt, but he couldn't resist the parting shot of a penance such as he might have given a child. He knew it would rankle in that fanciful little head of hers when all his other warnings were forgotten. Then he drew the shutter and didn't open the farther one. There was a noisy woman behind, groaning in an excess of contrition. The mere volume of sound told him it was drink. He felt he needed a breath of fresh air.

He went down the aisle creakily on his heavy policeman's-feet and in the dusk walked up and down the path before the presbytery, head bowed, hands behind his back. He saw the girl come out and descend the steps under the massive fluted columns of the portico, a tiny, limp, dejected figure. As she reached the pavement she pulled herself together with a jaunty twitch of her shoulders and then collapsed again. The city lights went on and made globes of colored light in the mist. As he returned to the church he suddenly began to chuckle, a fat good-natured chuckle, and as he passed the statue of St. Anne, patron of marriageable girls, he almost found himself giving her a wink.

Judas

“S
URE
you won't be late, Jerry?” said the mother and I going out.

“Am I ever late?” said I, and I laughed.

That was all we said, Michael John, but it stuck in my mind. As I was going down the road I was thinking it was months since I'd taken her to the pictures. Of course, you might think that funny, but after the father's death we were thrown together a lot. And I knew she hated being alone in the house after dark.

At the same time I had my own troubles. You see, Michael John, being an only child I never knocked round the way other fellows did. All the fellows in the office went out with girls, or at any rate they let on they did. They said “Who was the old doll I saw you with last night, Jerry? You'd better mind yourself, or you'll be getting into trouble.” To hear them you'd imagine there was no sport in the world, only girls, and that they'd always be getting you into trouble. Paddy Kinnane, for instance, talked like that, and he never saw the way it upset me. I think he thought it was a great compliment. It wasn't until years after that I began to suspect that Paddy's acquaintance with girls was about of one kind with my own.

Then I met Kitty Doherty. Kitty was a hospital nurse, and all the chaps in the office said a fellow should never go with hospital nurses. Ordinary girls were bad enough, but nurses were a fright—they knew too much. I knew when I met Kitty that that was a lie. She was a well-educated superior girl; she lived up the river in a posh locality, and her mother was on all sorts of councils and committees. Kitty was small and wiry; a good-looking girl, always in good humor, and when she talked, she hopped from one thing to another like a robin on a frosty morning.