“I’m going to stay right here,” John said, and he sat down on the end of the bed. He was working himself up and staring savagely at the priest. All of a sudden he noticed the tears on his wife’s cheeks, and he muttered as though bewildered, “What’s the matter, Elsa? What’s the matter, darling? Are we bothering you? Just open your eyes and we’ll go out of the room and leave you alone till the doctor comes.” Then he turned and said to the priest, “I’m not going to leave you here with her, can’t you see that? Why don’t you go?”
“I could revile you, my son. I could threaten you; but I ask you, for the peace of your wife’s soul, leave us alone.” Father Macdowell spoke with patient tenderness. He looked very big and solid and immovable as he stood by the bed. “I liked your face as soon as I saw you,” he said to John. “You’re a good fellow.”
John still held his wife’s wrist, but he rubbed his other hand through his thick hair and said angrily, “You don’t get the point, sir. My wife and I were always left alone, and we merely want to be left alone now. Nothing is going to separate us. She’s been content with me. I’m sorry sir; you’ll have to speak to her with me here, or you’ll have to go.”
“No; you’ll have to go for a while,” the priest said patiently.
Then Mrs. Williams moved her head on the pillow and said, “Pray for me, Father.”
The old priest knelt down by the bed, and with a sweet unruffled expression on his florid face he began to pray. At times his breath came with a whistling noise as though a rumbling were inside him, and at other times he sighed and was full of sorrow. He was praying that young Mrs. Williams might get better, and while he prayed he knew that her husband was more afraid of losing her to the Church than losing her to death.
All the time Father Macdowell was on his knees, with his heavy prayer book in his two hands, John kept staring at him. John couldn’t understand the old priest’s patience and tolerance. He wanted to quarrel with him, but he kept on watching the light from overhead shining on the one baby-pink bald spot on the smooth, white head, and at last he burst out, “You don’t understand, sir! We’ve been very happy together. Neither you nor her people came near her when she was in good health, so why should you bother her now? I don’t want anything to separate us now; neither does she. She came with me. You see you’d be separating us, don’t you?” He was trying to talk like a reasonable man who had no prejudices.
Father Macdowell got up clumsily. His knees hurt him, for the floor was hard. He said to Mrs. Williams in quite a loud voice, “Did you really intend to give up everything for this young fellow?” and he bent down close to her so he could hear.
“Yes, Father,” she whispered.
“In Heaven’s name, child, you couldn’t have known what you were doing.”
“We loved each other, Father. We’ve been very happy.”
“All right. Supposing you were. What now? What about all eternity, child?”
“Oh, Father, I’m very sick and I’m afraid.” She looked up to try to show him how scared she was, and how much she wanted him to give her peace.
He sighed and seemed distressed, and at last he said to John, “Were you married in the church?”
“No, we weren’t. Look here, we’re talking pretty loud and it upsets her.”
“Ah, it’s a crime that I’m hard of hearing, I know. Never mind. I’ll go.” Picking up his coat, he put it over his arm; then he sighed as if he were tired, and he said, “I wonder if you’d fetch me a glass of water. I’d thank you for it.”
John hesitated, glancing at the tired old priest, who looked so pink and white and almost cherubic in his utter lack of guile.
“What’s the matter?” Father Macdowell said.
John was ashamed of himself at appearing so sullen, so he said hastily, “Nothing’s the matter. Just a moment. I won’t be a moment.” He hurried out of the room.
The old priest looked down at the floor and shook his head; and then, sighing and feeling uneasy, he bent over Mrs. Williams, with his good ear down to her, and he said, “I’ll just ask you a few questions in a hurry, my child. You answer them quickly and I’ll give you absolution.” He made the sign of the cross over her and asked if she repented for having strayed from the Church, and if she had often been angry, and whether she had always been faithful, and if she had ever lied or stolen — all so casually and quickly as if it had not occurred to him that such a young woman could have serious sins. In the same breath he muttered, “Say a good act of contrition to yourself and that will be all, my dear.” He had hardly taken a minute.
When John returned to the room with the glass of water in his hand, he saw the old priest making the sign of the cross. Father Macdowell went on praying without looking up at John. When he had finished, he turned and said, “Oh, there you are. Thanks for the water. I needed it. Well, my boy, I’m sorry if I worried you.”
John looked at his wife, who had closed her eyes, and he sat down on the end of the bed. He was too disappointed to speak.
Father Macdowell, who was expecting trouble, said, “Don’t be harsh, lad.”
“I’m not harsh,” he said mildly, looking up at the priest. “But you weren’t quite fair. And it’s as though she turned away from me at the last moment. I didn’t think she needed you.”
“God bless you, bless the both of you. She’ll get better,” Father Macdowell said. But he felt ill at ease as he put on his coat, and he couldn’t look directly at John.
Going along the hall, he spoke to Miss Stanhope, who wanted to apologize for her brother-in-law’s attitude. “I’m sorry if it was unpleasant for you, Father,” she said.
“It wasn’t unpleasant,” he said. “I was glad to meet John. He’s a fine fellow. It’s a great pity he isn’t Catholic. I don’t know as I played fair with him.”
As he went down the stairs, puffing and sighing, he pondered the question of whether he had played fair with the young man. But by the time he reached the street he was rejoicing amiably to think he had so successfully ministered to one who had strayed from the faith and had called out to him at the last moment. Walking along with the rolling motion as if his feet hurt him, he muttered, “Of course they were happy as they were . . . in a worldly way. I wonder if I did come between them?”
He shuffled along, feeling very tired, and couldn’t help thinking, “What beauty there was to his staunch love for her!” Then he added quickly, “But it was just a pagan beauty, of course.”
As he began to wonder about the nature of this beauty, for some reason he felt inexpressibly sad.
A Cap for Steve
Dave Diamond, a poor man, a carpenter’s assistant, was a small, wiry, quick-tempered individual who had learned how to make every dollar count in his home. His wife, Anna, had been sick a lot, and his twelve-year-old son, Steve, had to be kept in school. Steve, a big-eyed, shy kid, ought to have known the value of money as well as Dave did. It had been ground into him.
But the boy was crazy about baseball, and after school, when he could have been working as a delivery boy or selling papers, he played ball with the kids. His failure to appreciate that the family needed a few extra dollars disgusted Dave. Around the house he wouldn’t let Steve talk about baseball, and he scowled when he saw him hurrying off with his glove after dinner.
When the Phillies came to town to play an exhibition game with the home team and Steve pleaded to be taken to the ballpark, Dave, of course, was outraged. Steve knew they couldn’t afford it. But he had got his mother on his side. Finally Dave made a bargain with them. He said that if Steve came home after school and worked hard helping to make some kitchen shelves he would take him that night to the ballpark.
Steve worked hard, but Dave was still resentful. They had to coax him to put on his good suit. When they started out Steve held aloof, feeling guilty, and they walked down the street like strangers; then Dave glanced at Steve’s face and, half-ashamed, took his arm more cheerfully.
As the game went on, Dave had to listen to St
eve’s recitation of the batting average of every Philly that stepped up to the plate; the time the boy must have wasted learning these averages began to appall him. He showed it so plainly that Steve felt guilty again and was silent.
After the game Dave let Steve drag him onto the field to keep him company while he tried to get some autographs from the Philly players, who were being hemmed in by gangs of kids blocking the way to the clubhouse. But Steve, who was shy, let the other kids block him off from the players. Steve would push his way in, get blocked out, and come back to stand mournfully beside Dave. Dave grew impatient. He was wasting valuable time. He wanted to get home; Steve knew it and was worried.
Then the big, blond Philly outfielder, Eddie Condon, who had been held up by a gang of kids tugging at his arm and thrusting their scorecards at him, broke loose and made a run for the clubhouse. He was jostled, and his blue cap with the red peak, tilted far back on his head, fell off. It fell at Steve’s feet, and Steve stooped quickly and grabbed it. “Okay, son,” the outfielder called, turning back. But Steve, holding the hat in both hands, only stared at him.
“Give him his cap, Steve,” Dave said, smiling apologetically at the big outfielder who towered over them. But Steve drew the hat closer to his chest. In an awed trance he looked up at Big Eddie Condon. It was an embarrassing moment. All the other kids were watching. Some shouted. “Give him his cap.”
“My cap, son,” Eddie Condon said, his hand out.
“Hey, Steve,” Dave said, and he gave him a shake. But he had to jerk the cap out of Steve’s hands.
“Here you are,” he said.
The outfielder, noticing Steve’s white, worshipping face and pleading eyes, grinned and then shrugged. “Aw, let him keep it,” he said.
“No, Mister Condon, you don’t need to do that,” Steve protested.
“It’s happened before. Forget it,” Eddie Condon said, and he trotted away to the clubhouse.
Dave handed the cap to Steve; envious kids circled around them and Steve said, “He said I could keep it, Dad. You heard him, didn’t you.”
“Yeah, I heard him,” Dave admitted. The wonder in Steve’s face made him smile. He took the boy by the arm and they hurried off the field.
On the way home Dave couldn’t get him to talk about the game; he couldn’t get him to take his eyes off the cap. Steve could hardly believe in his own happiness. “See,” he said suddenly, and he showed Dave that Eddie Condon’s name was printed on the sweatband. Then he went on dreaming. Finally he put the cap on his head and turned to Dave with a slow, proud smile. The cap was too big for him; it fell down over his ears. “Never mind,” Dave said. “You can get your mother to take a tuck in the back.”
When they got home Dave was tired and his wife didn’t understand the cap’s importance, and they couldn’t get Steve to go to bed. He swaggered around wearing the cap and looking in the mirror every ten minutes. He took the cap to bed with him.
Dave and his wife had a cup of coffee in the kitchen, and Dave told her again how they had got the cap. They agreed that their boy must have an attractive quality that showed in his face, and that Eddie Condon must have been drawn to him — why else would he have singled Steve out from all the kids?
But Dave got tired of the fuss Steve made over the cap, the way he wore it from the time he got up in the morning until the time he went to bed. Some kid was always coming in, wanting to try on the cap. It was childish, Dave said, for Steve to go around assuming that the cap made him important in the neighborhood, and to keep telling them how he had become a leader in the park a few blocks away where he played ball in the evenings. Dave wouldn’t stand for Steve’s keeping the cap on while he was eating. He was always scolding his wife for accepting Steve’s explanation that he’d forgotten he had it on. Just the same, it was remarkable what a little thing like a ball cap could do for a kid, Dave admitted to his wife as he smiled to himself.
One night Steve was late coming home from the park. Dave didn’t realize how late it was until he put down his newspaper and watched his wife at the window. Her restlessness got on his nerves. “See what comes from encouraging the boy to hang around with those park loafers,” he said. “I don’t encourage him,” she protested. “You do,” he insisted irritably, for he was really worried now. A gang hung around the park until midnight. It was a bad park. It was true that on one side there was a good district with fine, expensive apartment houses, but the kids from that neighborhood left the park to the kids from the poorer homes. When his wife went out and walked down to the corner it was his turn to wait and worry and watch at the open window. Each waiting moment tortured him. At last he heard his wife’s voice and Steve’s voice, and he relaxed and sighed; then he remembered his duty and rushed angrily to meet them.
“I’ll fix you, Steve, once and for all,” he said. “I’ll show you you can’t start coming into the house at midnight.”
“Hold your horses, Dave,” his wife said. “Can’t you see the state he’s in?” Steve looked utterly exhausted and beaten.
“What’s the matter?” Dave asked quickly.
“I lost my cap,” Steve whispered; he walked past his father and threw himself on the couch in the living room and lay with his face hidden.
“Now, don’t scold him, Dave,” his wife said.
“Scold him. Who’s scolding him?” Dave asked, indignantly. “It’s his cap, not mine. If it’s not worth his while to hang on to it, why should I scold him?” But he was implying resentfully that he alone recognized the cap’s value.
“So you are scolding him,” his wife said. “It’s his cap. Not yours. What happened, Steve?”
Steve told them he had been playing ball and he found that when he ran the bases the cap fell off; it was still too big despite the tuck his mother had taken in the band. So the next time he came to bat he tucked the cap in his hip pocket. Someone had lifted it, he was sure.
“And he didn’t even know whether it was still in his pocket,” Dave said sarcastically.
“I wasn’t careless, Dad,” Steve said. For the last three hours he had been wandering around to the homes of the kids who had been in the park at the time; he wanted to go on, but he was too tired. Dave knew the boy was apologizing to him, but he didn’t know why it made him angry.
“If he didn’t hang on to it, it’s not worth worrying about now,” he said, and he sounded offended.
After that night they knew that Steve didn’t go to the park to play ball; he went to look for the cap. It irritated Dave to see him sit around listlessly, or walk in circles, trying to force his memory to find a particular incident which would suddenly recall to him the moment when the cap had been taken. It was no attitude for a growing, healthy boy to take, Dave complained. He told Steve firmly once and for all that he didn’t want to hear any more about the cap.
One night, two weeks later, Dave was walking home with Steve from the shoemaker’s. It was a hot night. When they passed an ice-cream parlor Steve slowed down. “I guess I couldn’t have a soda, could I?” Steve said. “Nothing doing,” Dave said firmly. “Come on now,” he added as Steve hung back, looking in the window.
“Dad, look!” Steve cried suddenly, pointing at the window. “My cap! There’s my cap! He’s coming out!”
A well-dressed boy was leaving the ice-cream parlor; he had on a blue ball cap with a red peak, just like Steve’s cap. “Hey, you!” Steve cried, and he rushed at the boy, his small face fierce and his eyes wild. Before the boy could back away Steve had snatched the cap from his head. “That’s my cap!” he shouted.
“What’s this?” the bigger boy said. “Hey, give me my cap or I’ll give you a poke on the nose.”
Dave was surprised that his own shy boy did not back away. He watched him clutch the cap in his left hand, half-crying with excitement as he put his head down and drew back his right fist: he was willing to fight. Dave was proud of him.
“Wait, now,” Dave said. “Take it easy, son,” he said to the other boy, who refused to ba
ck away.
“My boy says it’s his cap,” Dave said.
“Well, he’s crazy. It’s my cap.”
“I was with him when he got this cap. When the Phillies played here. It’s a Philly cap.”
“Eddie Condon gave it to me,” Steve said. “And you stole it from me, you jerk.”
“Don’t call me a jerk, you little squirt. I never saw you before in my life.”
“Look,” Steve said, pointing to the printing on the cap’s sweatband. “It’s Eddie Condon’s cap. See? See, Dad?”
“Yeah. You’re right, son. Ever see this boy before, Steve?”
“No,” Steve said reluctantly.
The other boy realized he might lose the cap. “I bought it from a guy,” he said. “I paid him. My father knows I paid him.” He said he got the cap at the ballpark. He groped for some magically impressive words and suddenly found them. “You’ll have to speak to my father,” he said.
“Sure, I’ll speak to your father,” Dave said. “What’s your name? Where do you live?”
“My name’s Hudson. I live about ten minutes away on the other side of the park.” The boy appraised Dave, who wasn’t any bigger than he was and who wore a faded blue windbreaker and no tie. “My father is a lawyer,” he said boldly. “He wouldn’t let me keep the cap if he didn’t think I should.”
“Is that a fact?” Dave asked belligerently. “Well, we’ll see. Come on. Let’s go.” He got between the two boys and they walked along the street. They didn’t talk to each other. Dave knew the Hudson boy was waiting to get to the protection of his home, and Steve knew it, too, and he looked up apprehensively at Dave. Dave, reaching for his hand, squeezed it encouragingly and strode along, cocky and belligerent, knowing that Steve relied on him.
The Hudson boy lived in that row of fine apartment houses on the other side of the park. At the entrance to one of these houses Dave tried not to hang back and show he was impressed, because he could feel Steve hanging back. When they got into the small elevator Dave didn’t know why he took off his hat. In the carpeted hall on the fourth floor the Hudson boy said, “Just a minute,” and entered his own apartment. Dave and Steve were left alone in the corridor, knowing that the other boy was preparing his father for the encounter. Steve looked anxiously at his father, and Dave said, “Don’t worry, son,” and he added resolutely, “no one’s putting anything over on us.”
The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan: Volume One Page 10
