“Phil didn’t come home that Thanksgiving, either, and then the whole stupid family was invited to Philadelphia, and you never heard such a noise. Laughing and yelling and hugging each other. That was for Christmas. And Phil didn’t come home in the spring, and then not in June. The family was whispering around, but I couldn’t hear what they said. He came home in July for just four weeks. I was eighteen then, and he was twenty-one, and we could be married.” The handkerchief was wet and useless, so Mary let her tears flow, down onto the flowers, down onto her cheap but sturdy winter coat and neat dark blue dress.
“Again it was like the beginning, those four weeks. And I’d say to him, ‘We can be married now, Phil’. And he’d kiss me hard on the mouth and say, ‘Just be patient’. And I was. And then at the end of that four weeks his engagement to that boy’s sister showed up in the newspaper.”
Mary’s color ran from her cheeks at the remembrance of that old agony.
“I thought I’d lose my mind,” she said, her voice hoarse and low. “I thought I’d just lose my mind. I couldn’t work. I said I was sick, and I went upstairs to my room and lay down on the bed. Maybe I fainted, or maybe I slept. I don’t know. But I kept waking up and saying, ‘Oh, thank God it was just a nightmare!’ Only, it wasn’t. It’d come back to me, like a knife in my chest. I kept thinking I was dying, and then I was scared, thinking of God and how angry He was with me, and this was my punishment and I’d end up in hell for sure. No one wanted me now, not Phil, not God. Nobody.”
She could see the curtains through her tears. “Well, all that day I was sick and just about dying. And then I couldn’t go down and get dinner, and I could hear the old lady grumbling. I’d lift my head, and then I’d have to run into the bathroom and throw up. Phil wasn’t around. I waited and waited, and it got dark, and then the house was full of company; I could hear them laughing and shouting; I could hear Phil, too. I sat up and told myself it was a mistake. If it was true, and the old man forcing him into this, then we could run away together. I’d saved a little money, and Phil had a big allowance. I just had to wait for Phil.
“And right about one in the morning he came to my room in his pajamas, like always, and I was in his arms, and I was almost out of my mind again. He kept putting his hand over my mouth and then trying to close it with kisses. He kept saying, ‘Hush, hush, it’ll be all right. You’ll see’. And I was so sick, and so tired. Then suddenly I was happy again. Phil would take care of everything. I’d just about fallen asleep, I was so tired, when the light flashed on, and there was the old man.”
Mary shuddered and cringed and squeezed her eyes together.
“It was awful,” she whispered. “I pulled up the sheet around me, and Phil jumped out of bed and pulled on his pajamas, and the old man looked like he was going to go up in flames. And he looked at me! I never had anyone look at me like that! And he said, ‘The evil woman taken in adultery. You dirty tramp, in a better age than this they’d stone you to death. Get out of this house at once, you filthy creature’.
“And Phil kept saying, ‘Now, Dad, please, Dad, it’s all right, Dad. Don’t shout like that. You’ll have Mother and the girls up here. Please, Dad. It’s all right’. And all I was afraid of was that the old man would punch him. But he didn’t. He kept looking at me, like he hated me like death, and he said, ‘My poor boy, seduced by this vile wretch who dared to sleep in a house where innocent young girls are sleeping. My poor boy. Go to your room’. I almost laughed; I never wanted to laugh so much in my life, though I was crying by now. And Phil said, ‘You can’t put her out now, Dad. It’s almost morning. What will people say?’ And the old man nodded and said, ‘You are quite right. But you,’ he said to me, ‘be out of the house before my daughters get up’. ”
Mary sobbed, her yellow hair flying about her face. “You know what I said to him? ‘Mr. Mallon, I’ve got my savings in your bank. Three hundred dollars’. And he said, ‘Be there when the bank opens, and if you are in this town by five o’clock I’ll have the police after you’. And he meant it, too. And I said to Phil — he was looking so white and sort of green around the mouth — ‘I’ll be in the bus station at four o’clock,’ and I tried to smile at him so he wouldn’t look so sick.”
Mary looked at the curtains again in vague fear. “You are listening, aren’t you? I could sort of feel you listening. And look, it’s half-past three. Easter morning. When Our Lord rises from the dead. Oh, I shouldn’t even speak about Him! I’ve got no right to, a woman like me. Why, He’d turn me away, wouldn’t He? Like — like — it was something I read in the Holy Bible — No, He didn’t turn the woman away. I wish I could remember the whole story.
“Well, I got my money out of the bank, and I was in my best dress, with a short white coat and hat, and I had my suitcase, and I was happy again. Phil would meet me at the bus station at four, and we’d leave town at five. I ate a big breakfast, then I was sick at the stomach again and had to throw up in the ladies’ room. But I was happy just the same. I sat in the bus station the whole day, reading a magazine.
And then it was four o’clock. And I went to the door and watched for Phil. And then it was half-past four, and quarter to five, and they were loading the bus for this city. And Phil didn’t come. So I ran to the telephone, and the old lady answered it, and though I tried to disguise my voice she knew it, and she screamed at me about the police and hung up, and I knew Phil couldn’t come; maybe they had him locked up in his room and they wouldn’t let him out. I got on the bus and I came to this city, and I found myself a room in a cheap hotel, and then I wrote to Phil, telling him where I was.
“But they must have opened my letters. He never wrote me, and he never came to me. And after a month I knew I’d never see him again. I got a good job as a waitress. That was ten years ago.”
She leaned back in the chair, exhausted. “Maybe everything would have been all right, except Well, in a couple of months I found out I was going to have a baby. I couldn’t believe it! I still didn’t know how it happened, I was that dumb. Phil’s baby. So I went to a doctor, and I asked him what was the matter, and he told me, and he said, ‘Mrs. — ?’
And quick as a wink I said ‘Mrs. Mallon’. And then it hit me. I don’t even remember getting back to the rooming house where I lived.
“I thought and thought. God didn’t want me. Phil couldn’t come to me. I didn’t want to hurt him. His father would have killed him. I even thought of killing myself. And then I got this good job I have now, and I told people my husband was in the Army and I was Mrs. Mallon. I was, in my heart. All the time. And that’s what they know me as now. And I had my baby, a dear little boy, and I called him Phil, after his father, and the people in the hospital mailed letters I wrote to Mr. Phil Mallon in the Army. But I didn’t put any return address on them. I was getting smart by now. And I paid everything myself.
“I got my little boy out in the country, where all the little kids should live, with the grass and the trees and flowers and fresh air. I pay good for him, too. He’s a darling little boy. And everything would be all right, except that a year ago I met Francis Lewis. He’s a young farmer, and it’s a big farm, and he’s all alone on it since his dad died a couple of years ago. He came in the restaurant; he’d just brought his beef cattle in. And right away we liked each other, and he came back and took me out.”
Mary shivered. “And now you’re really going to hate me. I told Francis I was a young Army widow with a little boy, and he believed it. It didn’t matter at first. And then I sort of began to think of him. He’s so good and kind. I don’t feel for him like I felt for poor Phil, who couldn’t come to me and who doesn’t even know he has a little boy nearly ten years old. Imagine that! Not knowing you have a child! I just ache for Phil.
“Then Francis asked me to marry him, and I thought of being his wife, safe on that nice farm, with somebody to care about me again, and how wonderful it would be for little Phil, and we’d be all together. And then I thought what a cheat I was, and so I
had to tell Francis, and I knew that would be the end. But do you know something? It wasn’t! No sir, Francis is that kind of man; he’s thirty-two. It’s just that he hates Phil — not my little boy — my Phil. And he said, ‘It doesn’t matter, Mary. I will just be marrying a young widow with a child. We’ll have to keep that up, for the boy’s sake and ours’. That’s the kind of man Francis is.”
Her young face suddenly glowed, and she smiled. Then her smile went away. “But how can I do that to Francis? He deserves a better girl than me, somebody good and nice. We’d have to be married in the Church, and I’d have to go to confession, and what will the priest say? He’d say just what God would say, and old man Mallon. So I’m holding off, and I won’t take a ring yet, and here I am.”
She waited. The room was still shimmering with light, and it was almost dawn. “Tell me!” cried Mary in despair. “Tell me that I must be real strong and send Francis away, and that God wouldn’t want him, either, if he marries me! Tell me! All at once I feel I love Francis, but I can’t do this to him!”
There was no sound. Mary stumbled to her feet. She extended the flowers. “I brought these for you. They’re so pretty; Madonna lilies, too. Take them.”
She crept to the curtains, read the brass plate, then touched the button, her whole body shaking. The curtains fell apart, and she fell back, uttering a great and terrified cry.
She looked at the man before her, and she trembled more and more. The light appeared to grow stronger, more triumphant. Mary bowed her head.
She whispered, “Will you take my flowers? They’re all I have to give you. Maybe, because of all my sins, I should’ve given the money to charity or something. But I want you to have them. Will you take them? Please?”
Closer and closer, blinded by tears, she approached him again. She put the flowers tenderly at his side. “You did listen,” she murmured. She straightened up, weeping reverently. “Why, you always listen, don’t you? Look! It’s Easter morning! It’s dawn outside. And you — you — ”
She knelt down and clasped her hands. “I remember now. The woman wasn’t turned away. ‘She loved much’. I remember now. Yes, I loved very much, and I love again.
“You want me to have Francis and my little boy, don’t you? Yes, that’s what you want! Oh, I’ll be so good to them both!” She swallowed her tears. “And there was another Mary, and a man she thought was the gardener. And now I know no priest will ever turn me away. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t!”
She bent her tired head and pressed it against the man’s feet, and suddenly she slept for a little while.
The bells of the churches began to ring. “The Lord God is risen! He is risen!” And Mary slept, and the flower scent filled the room. He watched over her, in her safety, and her golden hair covered his feet. They kept the vigil together.
SOUL SEVEN
The Betrayer
All things betray thee, who betrayest Me.
Francis Thompson: “The Hound of Heaven”
“I hope” said the young man coldly as he looked at the curtains this warm, late spring day, “that you aren’t a psychiatrist. You see, I was in analysis, myself, for over a year, and I know only too well now — as I did even before that — that I am in the wrong profession, maladjusted, a round peg in a square hole, and that so long as I remain in my — profession — I will be emotionally disturbed and troubled and will continue to have my psychosomatic headaches. Which are really disabling, I assure you, even if there is no physical basis for them.” He laughed disdainfully.
“So I won’t waste your time if you are a psychiatrist. Frankly, I am a little tired of the jargon. In the light of what I’ve learned, the jargon seems puerile to me, though of course I’d never tell my — ” He paused abruptly. “Are you a psychiatrist?”
The room stood about him in its fresh white silence. He waited. Then he nodded, relieved. “I’m glad you’re not. So you must be a physician. But then you may be a marriage counselor. I am not married, though I am thirty-eight years old. The girl to whom I was engaged — We had a violent disagreement, and the engagement was broken. Her ideas, to say the very least, were childish. Of course there are men in my profession who would disagree, especially those of the Roman persuasion, but after all, the majority of young men in my profession, in these days, understand that we’ve advanced beyond the kindergarten era.”
He looked down at his well-kept hands, his dark blue trousers and fine shoes, and he dusted a speck from the sleeve of his excellent blue and brown sports jacket. Absently he examined a new callus on his right palm. He had been doing a great deal of golfing recently. The greens were fine this year, the club smarter, the people more suave and cultured and better-mannered. That was, of course, because of new and younger members. He was very popular among them and saw them regularly, and not only at the club. In fact, he had never been so popular. It was a mark of a well-rounded personality if people liked you; at least he was no neurotic. Even Dr. Bergson had assured him of that. “You could do much better as an executive,” Dr. Bergson had said, “or a consultant in human relations. Eminently fitted for that, I’m convinced. Especially that. Personnel work. You know people and their problems; there’s a big demand for your specialized sort of work.”
The young man put his hand to his forehead; another of those damned headaches. He was a tall and slender man, with a long, intense, ardent face which he kept under control constantly; he knew his secret tendency to ardor and passion and all the other disheveled emotions. Once or twice, lately (but only once or twice!), he had forgotten to keep his voice modulated in the club when some ass had made a gently sneering remark and had mentioned ‘bad taste, these days’. The young man’s heart had suddenly pounded then, his cool face had flushed, and he had been guilty — that was the only word for it, guilty — of raising his voice a little vehemently. The older men in the locker room at the club had looked disturbed but serious, and one or two had nodded; but the younger, his close friends, had appeared startled and embarrassed and had hurriedly changed the subject, as if to spare his shame and cover up his social blunder. His social blunder.
“Did you speak?” he asked, suddenly aware of a change of quality in the atmosphere of the silent room. “Did I hear you say, ‘A social blunder?’ in a questioning tone of voice?”
No one answered him, but he was convinced that he had heard those words. He said as if his thoughts had been spoken aloud and heard in entirety: “Of course, there in the locker room, I was guilty of a faux pas. In a way. That was no place for discussion. My study is the place. And my pulpit. For you see, I am a minister, and I have one of the largest and most desirable parishes in this city. I am the Reverend Mr. Anson Carr. So if you are a clergyman you will see we have much in common.” He laughed with a carefully cultivated ease.
It was strange, and purely imaginary, certainly, that he should have the impression of a gentle smiling, a sense of brotherhood. But it made him laugh with genuine ease now, as if in the company of an older colleague to whom he could speak frankly.
“I was right to come,” he admitted. “I suspected that you were ‘of the cloth’, as my grandmother used to call it. There is a Mrs. Merrill Sloane in my congregation, a lady for whom I had had little sympathy two years ago because of her various personality defects. A most remarkable change has come over her, and I hinted I’d be interested to learn what had accomplished this. She told me only that she had been here to see you, and then she said — that was a month or more ago — ‘Do go yourself, Mr. Carr. It is just what you need’. I must admit that I was disturbed at this; I wasn’t aware that I ‘needed’ anything. Not anything that was visible to my congregation, at least. If a woman once so self-centered as Mrs. Sloane was aware of my ‘need’, then it must be flagrantly evident. I hope you are not offended, but that is the reason I am here: to find how to conceal some of my — thoughts — from my congregation.”
He paused. His headache was becoming very ferocious. He took a beautifully enameled pillbox from his p
ocket and slipped a tablet on his tongue and swallowed with a little difficulty.
“Not that I will have a congregation much longer,” he said, clearing his throat. “I have no right to it. For you see, I am dry. Dry as death, dry to the very marrow of my bones. Like David, I cry out to my God from the darkest depths, and there is no answer. Have I lost my faith? I don’t know. Perhaps. It is as if I’ve been working for years on a desert, excavating parched bones and presenting them as living forms. A desert. Dry bones. A minister has no right to a church and a congregation when he experiences that dryness, has he? He is, in a most important way, a total fraud. So I am doing more than merely considering leaving the ministry. I intend to resign in September — and accept another position. Money is no object; I have a private income from my father’s estate, and Mother has her own income. She is living in Florida with my sister.”