“No. Under no circumstances,” Mr. Robison said hastily.
“What's the matter with the hotel?” Ronnie said. “Gee, you don't seem to be in a good humor to-night.”
“I won't go into that place. That's settled.”
“That's settled,” Midge said. “What's the matter with you, Ronnie? Let the gentleman take us wherever he thinks best.”
“Mr. Robison, I wonder if we could go up to your place,” the priest said. “Perhaps you would prefer to go where you would have privacy and feel more at home.” The lawyer shook his head sharply, but Father Dowling was tugging at his arm, pulling him a few paces away, while the girls watched very haughtily, and he was whispering, “Mr. Robison, I'd give a good deal if these two poor girls could go to your home. I'd give a good deal if they could see your daughter and see how lovely and fresh she is. In this simple way we might do more than all my preaching could ever do. Would you do that, Mr. Robison?”
“Good God, Father, have you lost your wits?”
“It's the kind of thing you can handle perfectly, Mr. Robison.”
The lawyer was secretly pleased by the priest's compliment. They both turned and looked at the two girls, who were standing close together, shabby, awkward, full of doubt and suspicion. The stiffness went out of Mr. Robison's manner. Some of the warm good humor that was usually in him returned and he smiled broadly. Besides, he felt that he would be more secure in his own home, although he hoped that his wife would not come into the drawing-room.
“I'll get a taxi, Father,” he said. “I'll just leave the whole thing in your hands and if you want to go to my home, we'll be glad to have you.”
While he was out on the curb waving his hand for a taxi, Ronnie said to the priest, “Why should we go? He won't do anything for us. I could tell that as soon as he looked at me. He looked at me and made me hate him. He's an old bastard.”
“Please, child, don't talk like that. Do it for my sake,” Father Dowling whispered.
They got into the cab with Father Dowling sitting in the back seat between the two girls and Mr. Robison on the stool
in front of them, his hands clasping his cane that stuck up stiffly. There were few words spoken during the short drive. Midge lit a cigarette, and in the match-flare light, Ronnie blinked her eyes, Mr. Robison opened his mouth but said nothing, and the priest jerked his head back and said suddenly, “Easter is a full week earlier this year. Does anybody know how you tell when it's Easter each year?” But when no one answered him, he sat back contentedly, full of fine expectations. For the first time he was taking the girls among his own people. For the first time they would go into a good home and feel the warmth and kindliness of his people, and he was secretly hoping that Mrs. Robison would be there because she was such a splendid woman.
There was not even any conversation when they reached the house and Mr. Robison led the way into the drawing-room. Father Dowling began to beam good-humoredly because he felt at home here, where he had so often played cards and where many important world problems had been discussed. After taking off his coat and hat, Mr. Robison listened a moment apprehensively and said, “Now don't be shy, girls, sit down for a moment and let's talk a bit. Father Dowling has been talking to me about you. I'm your friend, you know.”
Midge and Ronnie were leaning close together on a small settee, their eyes furtively seeking out the splendors of the room. Sometimes they glanced appealingly at Father Dowling. Ronnie was still sullen and suspicious; Midge was peering at the furniture and rugs with the wonder and pleasure of a child. And sitting there with their faces heavily powdered and too brightly rouged and their lips so vivid, they did not look very respectable.
“Some dump,” Midge whispered.
“What are we doing here?” Ronnie answered.
“I told Mr. Robison that things were not going very well with you,” Father Dowling began quietly. He saw that the girls were uneasy. He pitied them and wanted to shield them from shame or hesitancy. He stood up. Walking over to them, he said, “Take off your coats, girls. Don't feel uneasy,” and he helped them take off their coats and smiled encouragingly as they sat there in the good dresses he had given them. And his manner was so simple and confident that both girls smiled timidly, forgetting they had ever mocked him, feeling that he was some one who had been close to them for a long time.
“Now, just what is it you'd like me to do for the girls?” Mr. Robison said. He had lit a cigar and was regarding Father Dowling and the two girls very shrewdly.
“What they actually need is work. Or if an effort were being made to get work for them, then they would need a little to keep them during that time. That's all. They're both very anxious to work. Aren't you?”
“Yes, Father,” Midge said. “We're good, willing workers.”
“Would you do domestic work?” Mr. Robison asked.
Both girls nodded and smiled. “Domestic work would just suit us,” Midge said. She was feeling more confident. Then Father Dowling said quietly, “If you could give them something to keep them in a cheap room till work was found for them it would be a perfect act of charity. I know it's been a hard winter and I know it's been difficult for men like you, but think of the predicament of these poor girls. You've never turned us down whenever we asked for anything, Mr. Robison. I know you won't now. The depth of the requirement is great here. Ah, I know that a deep charity is required, too.”
While the priest was talking in this way, Mrs. Robison had come into the room and was listening, with her slender white hands folded at her waist and her eyes shifting around
the room in astonishment. She was a tall woman with a few beautiful white streaks in her hair, who was still slender, whose skin was soft and pink, and who wore a plain black gown with a very low neck. No woman in the neighborhood, or for that matter in the whole city, had a more charming manner or more self-assurance, and it had always been a great satisfaction to the priests at the Cathedral to see her so devout in observing all the feast days and holy days and giving splendid leadership to all her co-religionists in the nicest social matters: and she was without ostentation, too, for she went to the very early masses by herself, whereas her husband and daughter went to the solemn high mass at eleven o'clock and bowed and nodded to everybody. And as she entered the room and looked at the two girls and the priest, she pursed her lips and was a bit amused and might merely have said, “Good evening,” and have left them, if her husband had not stiffened and remained rigid in his chair, with his face revealing many flustered expressions. “Hello, a conference?” she asked mildly.
“Two young friends of Father Dowling,” her husband said, getting up to introduce the girls. The priest had jumped to his feet at once, beaming his admiration of Mrs. Robison with such heartiness that she couldn't help showing how pleased she was by wrinkling the soft, smooth skin around her eyes, putting out her very white hand and tapping his arm affectionately. “I'd like you to meet these two girls,” he was saying. “It's very kind of your husband to take an interest in them. Miss Bourassa, and Miss Ronnie Olsen, two girls who live in our parish.”
“In our parish? Really? This is a pleasure,” Mrs. Robison said. There was a withdrawal and an aloofness in the way she bowed and appraised the girls so shrewdly. “Really? Are you friends of Father Dowling?” she asked.
Smiling broadly and with her head tilted to one side, Midge stepped forward, and in her most affected manner, because she hated the woman as soon as she found herself being appraised, she said, “It's a treat to set eyes on you, Madam. I'm sure we'll get on swell together, don't you think so?”
But Ronnie, standing up slowly, said with a kind of sober defiance, “Sure. We're friends of Father Dowling. We're good friends, lady. That's what I mean.” And she swayed her head restlessly from side to side as though she found herself chained to the sofa and forced to wait.
“You probably have many interesting things to talk about, and you'll have to excuse me,” Mrs. Robison said without trying to conceal her polite annoyance, and she went out after making sure that her husband understood by her bitter glance that he was to follow her.
“Just like that,” Midge said. “That's a signal to get on your horse, Ronnie.”
“She walks right in and puts the finger on us, Midge.”
“If she puts the finger on me like that again I'll bite her,” Midge whispered.
“What are you saying, girls?”
“Nothing, nothing, Father.”
Then there seemed to be difficulty in making conversation. Father Dowling was feeling ashamed. Of course he had not liked the way the girls had spoken to Mrs. Robison, but he was even more ashamed of her contemptuous appraisal of them. In that one shrewd appraising glance of a luxurious woman accustomed to security, she had condemned the girls forever.
Mr. Robison, who was growing more ill at ease, said, “Excuse me just a moment. I'll be with you in a moment,” and he left the room to see his wife.
As soon as he had gone, Midge said sharply to Father Dowling, “We're leaving here at once. Who does the old bitch think she is?”
“We shouldn't have come here,” Ronnie said. “I hate the likes of people like her.”
“I'll give her an eyeful,” Midge said, “if she puts her nose in here again.”
“Midge. Ronnie. Listen to me. Don't be rude to her. Wait just a little while,” Father Dowling said.
“We're not blaming you, Father.”
So they waited in silence and soon Mr. Robison returned, with his face flushed more brightly than ever, yet with a beaten look about him. There was something he evidently intended to blurt out as soon as he entered the room, but when he saw Father Dowling's hopeful face, he faltered and sucked his lips. “I wonder if we could discuss this matter some other time,” he said mildly. “Some important affairs have cropped up. Or, listen here, let's assume the matter is all settled in a kind of way, and a little later on I'll have a talk with Father Dowling here.” And then he muttered so only the priest could hear him, “My wife's a bit of a Bourbon, don't you see?”
“It's upsetting, upsetting to us all. Don't you worry, Mr. Robison. You'll do all you can, won't you?”
“All in my power. They're nice kids. The little one's kind of pretty, don't you think?”
But then from the door, Mrs. Robison called, “I've called a taxi for the girls, if you don't mind.”
“That was very kind of you, Mrs. Robison,” Father Dowling said. He had intended to be charming, but there was so much animosity in her wise gray eyes and such a contempt, too, for him, that he turned away angrily and wanted only to get the girls out of the house.
“Ah, yes. We really must leave now,” Midge was saying. “It's been a great pleasure to be here for the evening, Mrs. Robison. You must come and see me some time. Do you mind me telling you how I love that beautiful white streak in your hair? I've heard people say that anybody with a white streak in the hair has somebody crazy in the family, but I never believed that.” And laughing brightly she went over to Mr. Robison, taking short mincing steps, her left hand extended with the elbow crooked up and her fingers held high, almost level with her chin. “I know you'll be coming to see me some time. It was a treat to meet the wife after the way you've mentioned her so often to me⦔
“Midge,” the priest said sharply.
“Come on, Midge,” Ronnie said. “It's time we left.” Her heavy jaw was moving a bit as if she might cry, but she strode across the room, very angular, very sober and sullen.
With his mouth drooping open, Father Dowling stood at the front door and watched the girls walking to the taxi that was waiting on the road. He wanted to run after them and comfort them. They never once looked back. Then his desolation strengthened into a feeling of rage and he turned and stared at Mrs. Robison, who was standing beside him, waiting for him to speak, and when he did nothing but stare at her rudely with his face full of indignation, she said crisply, “I must say, Father, I don't thank you for bringing streetwalkers into my house.”
“And I can hardly compliment you, Madam, on the charitable way you received them.”
“Then we disagree.”
“Just about as emphatically as I can make it.”
“I might as well tell you I think the whole business too scandalous to be believed.”
“And I've been more scandalized in this house to-night than I've ever been in my life.”
“You probably haven't much experience in these matters. That's the trouble, Father,” she said, smiling sarcastically. “It might, indeed, be a difficult thing for us to discuss. We're both feeling short-tempered. You meant well enough, I know, but if you would realize that all prostitutes are feeble-minded⦔
“That's a sociological point of view. It's not a Christian point of view. I'm ashamed to have heard it from you.”
“There's not much use discussing the matter. Some other time, maybe,” she said.
“Now, if you want my opinion,” Mr. Robison said with a fine gesture of affability, “we're taking the whole matter too seriously. Come on, Father,” he said, tapping the priest's arm, and as he drew him out to the front steps, he whispered, “She's a bit of a Bourbon, I tell you, when she's aroused,” and there was a little pride in his whisper, for he would never have been able to dismiss a priest in the way his wife had done. “Treat the whole thing as a bit of a joke and let's try and forget it,” he said.
Father Dowling felt that they had given him his hat and put him out of the house, just as though he were the neighborhood nuisance. Even when he reached the sidewalk, he kept glaring back at the house, and as he walked, his anger and disgust alternated so sharply that he did not realize he was back at the Cathedral till he looked up and saw the spire and saw, too, the cross at the peak thrust up against the stars and felt no sudden affection but just a cool disgust, as if the church no longer belonged to him.