Such Is My Beloved (11 page)

He hurried to his room and began to undress rapidly, but gradually his motions became slower till at last he sat heavily on the bed. He pulled off his shoes, and then stopped, still
bending down, listening, trying to remember; there was some one moment, a few words said during the evening he groped now to hear again; he heard Midge's voice and Ronnie's voice and Mr. Robison's, too, and almost every sound he had heard on the streets and coming from the boys on the corner. A snatch of conversation came up from the street below…. “He said take a ten per cent cut and I said I've already taken three cuts and I've got a wife and kids, and he said take it or quit, what are you going to do, and I said I got some independence and I'll quit, but first I'm going to punch you right on the nose, so I popped him one.” As he still groped for that one moment, Father Dowling began to think that the whole city for years had been whispering its story to him out of the darkness in snatches, in a huge confessional where he could not see the faces: “Yes, I want to be a Catholic but I don't want to have any more kids and the priest says you can't practise birth control and be a Catholic, so you'll have to leave the Church. I said to him, if you had all the kids I had you wouldn't be so hardboiled, I'll bet you ten cents, and anyway I'm a sick woman and what can I do?” Her voice faded away and became simply a part of the hum, faded into the strong, confident nasal voice, “Sure he was my old man and I stole from him, but he had plenty and look how often I saw him slug my ma when she asked for anything, so I grabbed all I could and lit out when he tried to stop me, and I don't feel sorry that he died. Maybe I do feel sorry. Yes, I guess I do a little or I wouldn't be here.” While Father Dowling was imagining he was remembering these voices coming from underneath the stirring and hum of the life outside, he was really still groping for that one voice, those few words; then he heard them clearly in Mrs. Robison's crisp tones: “Feeble-minded girls. Only feeble-minded girls go on the streets.” Then his thoughts came
flowing steadily. “The social service point of view, the unfit produce the feeble-minded, let's sterilize the feeble-minded, Mary Magdalen was feeble-minded and Mary of Egypt, too, and Joan of Arc heard voices; it becomes simply a problem of breeding, once you can sterilize the unfit it's easy to breed the whores out of existence, and the mentally fit are always moral, and immorality is simple feeble-mindedness. Mrs. Robison, Father Anglin, prominent women of the parish…” The darkness within him and the deadness became so deep he could hardly move.

Dragging himself over to the window, he looked out over the city. “I don't blame Ronnie and Midge, whatever they're doing,” he thought, for he felt sure that at this hour they would be walking the streets. He looked out over the roofs and lights and noises on the streets, over the corners where on Sunday evenings evangelists sang, and over that street where the crowd at this moment was streaming from the labor temple; somewhere out there where the lighted avenues lengthened and the streets criss-crossed, the girls were loafing and hunting. He felt full of love for them and sometimes he looked up at the stars.

 

FIFTEEN

A
ll that evening Mrs. Robison, in her most caustic manner, urged her husband to call on the Bishop and warn him that the young priest was apt to precipitate a scandal that would shame every decent Catholic in the city. Never had she discussed a matter with such passionate conviction. Father Dowling had implied by his indignation a contemptuous criticism of her manner of living and her spiritual and social life, and the more she pondered, the more she felt with deep sincerity that he was misguided, and the more she was determined to cling desperately to her faith in her own wisdom.

Her husband listened to her arguments, reasoned with her, sometimes like a naïve boy, and made many illogical objections, whereas all the time he knew he was not worrying about his wife's wounded vanity. “Now you mark my words, James. You're supposed to be a man of fine judgment in business. I'm simply saying, use your good judgment here in this case,” she said. It was the first time in years that her security and poise had ever been challenged, and in one way, her husband,
listening to her, wanted to duck his head and chuckle, but it was his own conscience and his own sense of duty that was disturbing him. If there was one thing more than another that he objected to, it was scandal that might affect his position in the community, and as a prominent citizen he had always felt it was his duty to cherish the good name of his religion, especially in this very Protestant community. But supposing Father Dowling was arrested with these two women? Supposing he was hauled into a police court…a fallen priest, immersed in the lives of two prostitutes? What was his duty? Of course a good Catholic ought always to shelter and protect his priests…no one on earth was so close to God. Once at an ordination sermon, he had heard an exuberant old priest shout out that the young priest was just as pleasing to God as the Blessed Virgin. Complaining to the Bishop might be a little like striking at a priest. “It would be something like hitting a priest,” he said to his wife.

“Supposing a priest were mad. Wouldn't you restrain him and use force to do it?” she asked.

“Don't be silly,” he said. “I've got nothing against him.” But he was remembering that once at college when he was being initiated and was being beaten by the boys, he had swung his fist and they had yelled, “He hit a priest. Oh, my God. Kill him,” and they had started to beat him harder than ever, and blindfolded as he was, he had wept until he heard their mocking laughter. “Now,” he reasoned irritably, “it's not up to me. It's up to the Bishop. Something has to be done.”

The next morning at the breakfast table, Mrs. Robison was graver and more meditative than usual, and she would have liked to continue the discussion, only the presence of their daughter, Celia, chattering briskly and laughing, made such an ugly conversation rather difficult. All Mrs. Robison
could do was throw one worried glance after another at her husband, whose rosy face was grave and full of resolution.

Mr. Robison was still thinking as he had thought all last night, “Who is Father Dowling? Where does he come from? What do I know about him?” He was trying to get rid of a peculiar regretful sympathy he felt for the young priest whom he had always found amusing in a harmless way, or maybe it was that he was still trying to get rid of that last bit of the disturbing feeling he had had going along the street with the young priest last night, when words had poured from him as he told of a love that was puzzling and hard to understand. “Maybe I oughtn't to speak to the Bishop till I understand the nature of his feeling,” he thought, and then he remembered, “But he always had too much to say. He seemed to be looking for trouble. He's always been tainted with dangerous thinking. His sermons against what he calls the bourgeois world. Always putting his head into situations he doesn't understand. A creature of excess. He'll make fools of us all. Lord knows what he's doing with those women and trying to get me to keep them for him.”

That morning, from his office, he phoned the Bishop. In the afternoon he drove up to the Bishop's palace. The palace was an old, dirty, gray-stone building, not far away from the Cathedral. Even when Mr. Robison was standing on the steps in the sunlight, ringing the door-bell, he hesitated and fussed with his coat lapels. He looked very dignified in his hard hat, showing the white hair against his rosy cheeks, and in his dark coat with the velvet collar, and his cream-colored gloves in the hand that held his cane. Just as the door was opened for him, he suddenly felt that he liked the young priest and would not willingly hurt him. It was actually like a mild feeling of humility, that feeling he had standing on the steps in the sunlight,
but then he remembered that he was doing a painful duty and he felt a bit more cheerful.

He was shown into the library, where Bishop Foley was smoking and waiting. The Bishop was nearly seven feet tall, with great broad shoulders and thick dark hair. He was a man who was respected by everybody in town who knew him. He had a big, round, heavy, dark, threatening face, and he was inclined to be a bit of a bully, although when it was necessary, as it was now when he put out his hand to Mr. Robison, he had a very charming manner. And he had a fine mind for politics, an intuition that compelled him to do the expedient thing, and this gift had advanced him rapidly in the Church, where he was supposed to be an administrator rather than a contemplative. Coming from poor people, he never could get used to the notion of luxury, and he used to walk long distances in the cold winter to save a few cents rather than take a cab. Every time he appeared in a pulpit and shouted in his great rolling voice, or sang the midnight mass in his splendid robes, with his towering height at the altar, people like Mr. Robison were much impressed; and the same people were likewise proud of him when he was on a platform with ministers of all denominations in a public cause which required him to look concerned, which he could do easily because he hardly ever smiled.

He shook hands enthusiastically with Mr. Robison, for they had had many fine conversations together, particularly when they were planning a financial campaign. Sitting uneasily on the edge of his chair, Mr. Robison took a deep breath and said, “I'm sorry, Your Grace, but I'm afraid this conversation will be painful for both of us. It has been worrying me all afternoon. I'm speaking to you with great reluctance and only in view of our old friendship.”

“Surely nothing can be as serious as that sounds,” the Bishop said, chuckling.

Then Mr. Robison realized with both relief and mild disappointment that nothing he could say would in any way shock this bishop, or disturb the immobile aloofness of his heavy sombre face, or make his eyes do anything more than shift around shrewdly while he listened. A bit of sunlight coming from the window touched his heavy red lips, which were so softly caressing a cigar while he waited patiently, as if the lawyer needed a good deal of time.

“It wouldn't be so serious if it were about myself. Only I'm going to talk about some one else.”

“I've never heard you speak harshly of anybody.”

“I don't want to be harsh now, but there's a good deal involved.”

“Who is it you have in mind?”

“A priest.”

“A priest?”

“Yes, a young priest. And that's the difficulty.”

“Before mentioning any names, Mr. Robison, do you mind telling me if the young priest is in trouble?”

“I think he's in very grave trouble, trouble that doesn't just touch him but may touch us all.”

Both men nodded their heads understandingly. Then Mr. Robison, looking more worried, hesitated and found it hard to actually mention Father Dowling's name. “Your Grace,” he said suddenly, “maybe it might be better just to tell you what happened, and then if you want to, you can ask for the priest's name.” And leaning forward, talking slowly, he told how the young priest had taken him to the hotel and brought the two girls to the house and how the priest explained that he had been going night after night to see them, giving them
money, giving them clothes and growing very fond of them. “And they were more than friendly with him,” he said. “They were very much at home with him. I must say it gave me a very funny feeling watching them with him. Now I'm not saying he wasn't trying to help them…”

“What makes you think he wasn't helping them?”

“Well, you can use your own judgment, Your Grace. When we couldn't find them at the hotel, we went out looking for them on the street and there they were walking the streets.”

“What did they actually want from you?”

“Money.”

“Umph.”

“I don't care about them wanting money. I'd give them money. But I don't want to contribute to a public scandal for the amusement of the whole city.”

“Tell me the young priest's name, Mr. Robison.”

“Father Dowling at the Cathedral. A likeable chap, too.”

The Bishop nodded his big head and sighed deeply, as if the sound of the priest's name had made him very sad, but what he actually was thinking of as he looked out the window so gloomily, was not of the priest but of a charity campaign he was about to launch throughout the city, and he was imagining the result of a scandal that would follow if a priest were implicated with two prostitutes. Sitting there, he could almost hear the story spreading and growing throughout the city, appearing first of all half hidden in the newspapers, and then whispered about till it became a matter for obscene joking. This was not the first time that a young priest had worried him; only a month ago one of them had got drunk and had driven an automobile into a parked car, smashing it up, and he had been arrested, and it had been necessary to have the matter adjusted very quietly. So the Bishop, sighing again, said
patiently to Mr. Robison, “I wonder if many people understand the temptations that continually confront a young priest. They're human beings, young men without much guile or experience, full-blooded and healthy, right out of the seminary into a world where many silly women dote on them. And yet the priesthood doesn't want them if they're not normal sexually, otherwise there would be no purpose in the vow of celibacy. It's astonishing to realize how few of them go wrong, isn't it? It would be impossible without the special grace of God. The greater the temptation, the more abundant the marvellous grace to strengthen them. Extraordinary, isn't it, Mr. Robison?”

“Indeed it is astonishing, Your Grace,” Mr. Robison said. But his face began to redden and he looked a bit angry, as though he were being rebuked, or as though he were being teased, and he remembered having heard it said that the Bishop spent many secret hours studying the modern philosophers, so he would always know more than the brilliant young men who tossed quotations at him. But then the Bishop added, “Such a state of affairs as you outline can't be allowed to continue, of course. Heaven only knows what might happen.”

“Ah, I'm glad you agree with me, Your Grace.”

“I agree with you entirely, Mr. Robison. I might say I know of no one I would rather have bring me this information. And I've got a pretty good idea that it worried you a good deal.”

“It upset me all last night, and I gave it plenty of consideration this morning, too. You know Father Dowling is a fine enough fellow in many ways. It's a shame, a ghastly shame.”

“By the way, Mr. Robison, you have possibly some connection through the courts with the police?”

“You're suggesting, Your Grace…”

“Dear me, it's hard to say what to do. It's a pity the police wouldn't arrest the girls and get them out of the way. Maybe we ought to pray for that.”

“We will, Your Grace.”

“Ah, we should forgive these young priests for having a little too much enthusiasm. They ought to have it. Let me know if you hear anything about the girls. And I know you'll mention the affair to no one.”

“I hesitated to mention it even to you.”

“I know it. You're a good fellow,” and standing up and smiling, the Bishop said, “How is Mrs. Robison? Be sure and remember me to her and tell her we must have a game of bridge some night.” And while they were both standing up, he suddenly switched the conversation and began talking about the possibility of the Chinese offering stubborn resistance to the Japanese invasion. “I've heard missionaries say that the Chinese make the best soldiers in the world,” he said. “That is, for trench warfare, because of their ineffable patience.” And as he talked in this fashion, Father Dowling seemed to have been forgotten, as an insignificant detail in a great plan is quickly passed by, and even Mr. Robison, chatting affably, began to feel that he had worried himself needlessly. After one or two dry jokes about political matters, the two middle-aged men put out their plump white hands, bowed to each other and the Bishop said, “Be sure and say a little prayer for me.”

Out in the sunlight, with his hat tilted cockily on one side of his head, Mr. Robison strutted along, holding his cane stiff in one hand, like a man who has come from an important and successful conference. But when he was at the corner, looking around for a cab, he suddenly remembered again the young priest's eagerness and his enthusiasm talking about the girls that night. And then he became uneasy, flustered, and irritable.

Instead of going back to his office, Mr. Robison went to his club for a cup of coffee, so he could relax and get rid of his uneasiness. And as soon as he stepped into the lounge room and saw a few of his white-headed cronies half buried in deep leather chairs, smoking, laughing, or dozing until they dropped forward, he knew that he had been wise in seeing the Bishop. If there were scandal these men, his business associates, would tease him slyly for weeks.