Бетти Смит - Maggie-Now

The room smelled good of coffee simmering in the kitchen, of mellow, burning tobacco, and the warm, ironing smell of freshly lalmdered linen. He saw stunted boughs of a bare bush outlined outside a window. He knew it was the priest's treasure, the lilac bush.

Maggie-Now had told him about it.

Father Flynn knew the purpose of Claude's visit. After a few preliminary remarks about the weather, the state of the world and [276]

the war, and after both had agreed that the boys wouldn't be out of the trenches by Christmas, Father Flynn filled his pipe, lit it and settled back in his chair.

"I understand," he said, "that you wish to marry Margaret and have agreed with her to a Catholic marriage ceremony."

"Yes, sir."

"What is your faith?"

"Oh, I'm a Christian at large," said Claude airily. Too late, he realized he'd said the wrong thing. He saw the priest's kindly expression go stern and he waited apprehensively for the priest's reply.

"If I asked your political affiliation, no doubt you'd say you were a citizen at large. Is that correct?" He saw Claude shift his eyes. "I mean," said Father Flynn, trying again, "what is your denomination? "

"I'm not a Jew, if that's what you're getting at," said Claude.

"That statement," said Father Flynn, coldly minting each word, "should be made with humility and not with arrogance."

"Sorry," mumbled Claude.

"For our Lord was a Jew," said the priest.

Father Flynn thought: '4s an ordained priest, I nzast love, u~Zdersta~zd and forgive him. But as private citizen Joseph Flyer`, I calZ't stand the sight of him. God forgive me.

Thought Claude: He hates me, the way her father Ed her godmother hate nze. The way everyone who loves her hates me.

"What was your parents' religion?"

"I don't know."

"You, a non-Catholic, have come to nze," said Father FlyrIn sharply, "to plead for the privilege of marrying a Catholic. I will refuse you that privilege unless. ."

"I do not know who my parents were," said Claude quietly.

Father Flynn put his pipe down very carefully. He put his finger tips together, leaned back in his chair and waited. He waited. He waited a long time.

Finally, he urged: "Yes, my son?"

"I was brought up in a nondenominational institution. A

very good one. Someone paid for me. I was given a good education. Someone paid for it."

1 277 1 "I see,' said the priest. And he did see. He understood now why Claude was the way he was.

"Have you told Margaret?"

"No. I have told no one in the world, except you."

"Tell her."

"If I choose not to tell her, will you tell her?"

"As a priest, I cannot violate a confession. As a man, I

will not violate a confidence."

"Thank you, sir."

"Father," prompted the priest.

"Father," said Claude.

"But tell her, my son. She is worthy of knowing it."

"I think she knows," said Claude.

Claude had a feeling of immense peace. He felt a great warmth toward the priest; almost a feeling of tenderness.

That's why he wanders, thought the priest. He goes to a new place, thinking there he will find a flit of the piece that's missing from his life.

They talked further. (Claude said he would like to be converted to Catholicism. Father Flynn said he couldn't become a Catholic merely by requesting it. He'd have to take instructions, learn the history and theology of the church. It would take time.

"And there is the question of faith. It cannot be taught you, you cannot have it by announcing that you have it. It must come from something within you. There is no formula. You will know when you have it. Only then can you become a Catholic."

"How soon?" asked Claude. "For Margaret's sake. I

want to be one with her in all things."

"To some, faith comes soon and to others, late. And to many, it never comes at all."

It was dark in the room now. The housekeeper came in to turn on the lights. She spoke bitterly and said she couldn't keep Father's supper warm much longer. It was drying up. Father Flynn apologised and asked her indulgence five minutes longer. He stood in some fear of his housekeeper. She left the room muttering.

"I always have a glass of sauterne before my supper,"

said the priest. "Will you join me?"

Claude said he would. He stood up when the priest did.

He was relieved that, for once, someone didn't say: "Keep seated."

L278] The street seemed cold and lonely after the warmth of the priest's living room. Claude went to a bakery lunchroom and had several cups of coffee and a couple of doughnuts. He was tired to death. The day before he had traveled through miles of snow to get to Maggie-Now. He had sat up most of the night talking to her and had put in a hard day shoveling snow.

He didn't know how long he had been in the lunchroom. A stout woman was shaking him awake.

"You can't sleep here, Mister. Go home."

He made his way to the movie cheater where Maggie-Now was working. She gave a gasp of pity when he loomed up before her outside the glass enclosure. He looked so tired and bedraggled. She gave him a ticket and told him to wait inside for her; she'd be through in an hour and would fix a hot supper for him.

He stumbled into the theater and collapsed in a back-row seat. He slept soundly through the most controversial part of The Birth of a Nation.

IN SPITE of all Pat's efforts to lick Claude with his

"mind," plans for the marriage went forward. Pat had come to the conclusion that Claude was an ex-convict, else why was he so reticent about his past? He knew his daughter would not marry an ex-convict. But how to get Claude to admit it?

Pat, knowing how most men babble when they are drunk, took him to a saloon to get him drunk. Claude spent the evening staring into his untouched shot glass of rye. He wouldn't drink; he wouldn't talk. Pat drank too much and he was the one who talked. He told Claude the complete story of his life and, when he had finished, he told it all over again with variations. Then he got sick and Claude had to take him to the men's room and hold his forehead while he retched. Claude took him home, gave him a Bromo

[,79] Seltzer and put him to bed.

In order to be with l\laggie-Now in the afternoon, Claude got a job as night clerk in a downtown Brooklyn hotel. He wouldn't say what hotel except that it wasn't the St. George. Maggie-Now asked no questions but Pat had to know. Claude wouldn't name the hotel but Pat got this much out of him: that it was a small family hotel catering to permanent guests, mostly elderly couples who had just enough money to keep out of the poorhouse.

From this explanation, Pat concluded that the place was a brothel, else why should Claude go to so much trouble to throw him oflf the track by assuring him that the place was so respectable? Now if Maggie-Now had proof that Claude was a procurer. .

He decided to let Claude compromise himself. He took him aside and asked how about their having a fling together. He hinted that Claude would be a long time married, and..

"Maybe you can dig up two 'skirts' for us from that hotel where you work and get us a couple of rooms there and I'll bring along a bottle of Four Star Hennessy and we'll have ourselfs a high old

, time.

Claude looked at him with distaste and said: "Aren't you a bit along in years for that sort of thing, old sir?"