A Tender Victory

by Taylor Caldwell

  He paused. Johnny’s hands had clenched into fists. He could not look away from the priest, whom he now hated almost as much as he hated God.

  “What do you know of God, Johnny? You’ve been a good minister, a good man. You’ve comforted the sick and the dying. You’ve rescued the helpless. You have prayed, and believed in your prayers. Is that as far as you can go? A limited man? A man who cannot accept his own agony, cannot offer it to God as a supreme gift, but who feels that he, above all other ministers, all other priests, has a special protection from the torments that afflict all of us, sometime or other? Johnny, you are a man of pride, of vainglory. You have committed a deadly sin. Johnny, you are not a minister. You have offended the all-loving, all-merciful God, with your pride, your self-pity, your unwillingness to find, through prayer and hope, the reason for your pain. Johnny, I am leaving you now. I don’t think I can ever come back. It’s too painful for me to see a minister fall away from God.”

  Lorry, watching Johnny, saw the ultimate agony on his face, for all the fury in his eyes. Oh, please, please, she said in herself to the priest, you are hurting him too much, too much.

  Johnny’s hands gripped the arms of his chair. His face became convulsed, like the face of a dying man. Lorry could endure it no longer. She stood up and ran to him, and fell on her knees before him. She broke into a great burst of tears, and put her head on his knee.

  Johnny’s hands slowly relaxed. He looked down at Lorry, and the torture left his face and was replaced by a wondering expression of pain and mystic revelation. The priest stepped back, and Dr. McManus leaned forward in his chair, trembling with the certainty that something strange and mysterious was now occurring. He could not believe it when he saw Johnny’s hand lift slowly and feebly and rest itself on Lorry’s head. She had pinned the long lengths of her hair too loosely, in her haste, and at Johnny’s touch, at the pressure of his hand, her hair spilled down over her shoulders and covered her neck and back, glimmering like fire in the candlelight. Her face was hidden on Johnny’s knee, and her sobs filled the room, and echoed back to all of them.

  The priest moved backward into the shadows, and he closed his eyes briefly. His heart began to beat fast.

  Then Johnny, with infinite tenderness and understanding, put his hands on Lorry’s cheeks and raised her head and looked into her eyes. He smiled at her, with profound sorrow. She leaned against him, weeping uncontrollably.

  “Johnny,” she said brokenly, ‘‘listen to me. Do you know what you’ve done for me? You’ve saved my soul. Do you know what I was before I knew you? I hated everybody, I hated myself, I believed in nothing; I wanted—revenge—for what I believed someone had done to me. He had done it, yes, but out of his own viciousness and ignorance. You made me forgive him, Johnny, almost forgive him. With your help, I can really forgive him.

  “I was a bitter and ruthless woman, Johnny, and you sent me on my way to do the things you would want me to do. For four days a week, since I left here, I’ve been working very hard with the American Friends Committee, the Quakers, rescuing children from Europe, just as you rescued your own children. I’ve given money, but more than all the money I’ve given, I’ve given my hands, the faith you gave me, and the love and understanding you gave me.”

  Johnny’s hands held her face tightly. He bent over her, as if in protection and comfort. His fingers were buried in her hair and he drew her closer to him, and his face was full of light and love.

  Lorry raised herself a little and put her head on his breast, and his arms closed about her.

  “Because of you, Johnny,” she said almost inaudibly, “I did this. When I became too tired, I thought of you. When I looked at the poor terrified children, I remembered you, and I said to them what you said to your own, and they were comforted and not frightened any more. Because of you, Johnny, because of you.”

  Dr. McManus, whose eyes ached, dimly, looked at the priest. But the priest was still praying.

  Johnny was rising in his chair now, holding Lorry in his arms. He pressed her against him, and then gently kissed her forehead. “The children,” he said, “the poor children. God bless you, Lorry, my dear, my dear.”

  The priest turned abruptly and left the room. Dr. McManus sat and watched as Johnny comforted Lorry. Johnny was actually saying, “I was wrong. I’ve sinned too, Lorry. I don’t know where I’ve been all these days. I wonder if God will ever forgive me! I wonder if He’ll accept me again? I don’t know. He may never listen to me again.”

  Now he was full of a new sorrow, and a terrible remorse and humility. He saw Dr. McManus for the first time, and smiled slightly at him over Lorry’s head.

  Now there was a rapid drumming of many feet on the stairway and the priest entered again, and with him were the children in their night clothes, crying, holding out their arms. “Papa, Papa!” they called in tears, and they ran to Johnny.

  He put Lorry gently aside, and the children swarmed about him, and he hugged them to him, comforting them. “I’ve come home,” he said. “I was away for a while, but I’ve come home.”

  Now he was alive, awake, still torn with grief, but accepting it humbly. He held out his hand to the priest without speaking, and Father Krupszyk took his hand and pressed it in silence.

  The next Sunday Johnny delivered his first sermon since Christmas Eve. His regret was that Lorry had had to return to New York.

  29

  Pietro and Jean went to early Mass so they could see Johnny before he went into his church. Max, too, returned early from Sunday school. They were happy and excited, though more subdued than usual, remembering Emilie. However, there was their father again, smiling, though abnormally thin and pale, waiting to greet them, to ask about church and Sunday school. His arms ached for the lost little body of Emilie in his arms, and Pietro, with the fine sensitivity of the Italian, knew this, and pretended to be pettish, and climbed upon Johnny’s knee. Johnny felt the pressure of the slight and wiry body and was speechlessly grateful. The other children understood too, and did not give Pietro their usually scornful glances for his emotionalism.

  They were now told of the love between their father and Lorry, and of a future marriage. “But not too far in the future, though,” Johnny had added hastily, at the look of disappointment on their faces. “You see, Aunt Lorry made a promise to God, a few months ago, that she would help Him with His orphan children from Europe, children like you. And who breaks a promise to God?” He thought of his own broken promise, but he knew he had been forgiven. However, his face had taken on a shadow, for all his smile.

  “Sometimes,” said Pietro thoughtfully, as he brushed a little lint from Johnny’s shoulder with his restless hand, “it is not well to make a promise to God that you can’t keep. Or that it’s silly to keep.”

  “This isn’t silly,” said Johnny. “Aunt Lorry’s promise doesn’t end until late in the summer, and you’ve got to be patient. Yes, Kathy, of course you can be the flower girl. And now, pests, I’ve got to leave you and go into the church.” They kissed him and watched him go, and each, in his small way, realized that some mournful change had come to him. They were too young to know it to be spiritual growth.

  The congregation could not fail to notice how deathly pale their minister had become, how emaciated. The church was crowded, to give him comfort and sympathy. They saw the gray streaks at his temples and sighed, yet he stood with dignity, his hands clasped loosely before him. There was something remote about him, yet paradoxically, something charged and imminent. His voice, when it came, was not faint or weak, but forceful and strong.

  “Our Divine Lord,” he said, “has spoken of the punishment which those who offend the little ones who love him shall inherit.

  “In my house there was such a little one, almost an infant, who used to listen to me with rapture when I told her of Our Lord’s love for her. You see, until I found her she had never known the meaning of love, or what love was, or the joy and the wonder of it.”

  He paused, his throat ti
ghtening. The eyes of many women became wet, and men bowed their heads.

  “I loved her, and so did the other children I rescued from death. She couldn’t get over it. When I kissed her, even on the night that she died, when I tucked her in her bed as you tuck your own children, she would smile at me wonderingly—and blissfully. I taught her to love God. She couldn’t wait, that night, for the morning when she would celebrate His birthday. But—she never had the chance. She had said her child’s last innocent prayer to Him, in confidence that He had heard her and had blessed her. And no doubt He did.” His mouth twitched with bitter agony, and he could not speak for several moments.

  “Shall this child have died in vain? I have heard that ninety-six old people and little people like my Emilie died during what the scientists nonchalantly said was an ‘inversion.’ They were killed by it. I see that several fathers and mothers are not in church today. They are home, still mourning their dead, the little ones like Emilie who had done no harm, and who had loved their parents and God, and who had waited, like her, for Christmas.”

  He took a step or two closer to his congregation, who listened in deep silence.

  “I have read the papers, as you’ve read them. The doctors say, very cautiously, that the smog with which this city is afflicted was only a contributory cause of these ninety-six deaths. ‘Only,’ they say. These weak and ill old men and women and children were barely holding on to life anyway. They would probably have died a day later, two weeks later, two months or perhaps a year later.”

  Johnny’s voice rose passionately. “And who are those who have deprived these ninety-six victims of those days, those weeks, months, or even years? Who shall say to any of us that it is no matter that we have lost a few more smiles, voices, laughter, and love on this earth? Who shall have the arrogance to dare say that what we have lost, and what our loved ones have lost, is nothing at all, because the victims were doomed in any event? Who has given them the right so to poison the living air that they can be the sole judges and tell us how long our children and our parents may live, and how long we may see their beloved faces and hear their voices? Those precious days, hours, week, months—they belonged to us, and not to those who, out of their monstrous greed, have spread corruption and death over our city.”

  The congregation sat upright in the pews, and the candlelight revealed the flash of scores of furious eyes.

  “Who has given these men the power of life and death over us? Who has said it is their right to inflict suffering upon us? I know them. You know them. They live far up in the hills, where their own children do not gasp to death, and their old fathers and mothers do not stifle. Many times these things have been brought to their attention, but they have only smiled, and done nothing. One, I heard, even said that it was a good way to keep down the population!”

  A deep murmur of anger ran through the church. Johnny leaned forward, his hands clenched together.

  “They have assumed the prerogative which belongs only to God—the right over life and death. They have offended the little ones. They say it will cost too much money for smoke elimination. What money? The money which was earned for them by those who have had to watch their children and their parents die, and could do nothing!

  “I have the figures here which tell exactly how much it would cost these men to eliminate the smoke from this city, the grit and filth from its streets, the stinging sickness in our lungs and the stench in our nostrils, the staining of our homes and the killing of our gardens and our lawns. I have the figures which are a matter of life and death for the helpless. They are not small. But neither are they so large that one child is not worth more. The cost would not deprive the men who pollute our city of their fortunes. Yet they refuse to do what they must do, to prevent their poisoning of us, their killing of us. Why? Is money so precious, so sacred, that in comparison our lives are nothing?”

  The congregation stirred.

  Johnny lifted his hands. “If murderers were caught poisoning our water system, justice would be swift and sure. Yet these men who have made our air a source of death are not punished. They are not even reprimanded! And why? Because they hold the marvelous power of profit over our politicians, because our politicians are their creatures, and because of the bounty of the masters the creatures, too, can escape the yellow death that swirls through our streets.”

  Johnny advanced almost to the wooden edge of the three steps that led from the altar. His face was blazing. “The people’s patience is long and mild. But the time has come when patience is no longer a virtue but a cowardly vice. If you, the people, do not do something now about this death in our streets, then you too sin by your silence and cowardice, and you are as guilty as they.”

  His voice dropped exhaustedly. “I have never believed that the pulpit is the place for discussions of worldly matters, but a place where ministers should speak of God. But I am now impelled to speak to you to have mercy on the sick, the dying, the children—some of whom may be in your homes at this very moment. On your way out at the doors, you will find mimeographed petitions I have had prepared for you. Take them, fill them with names. Send them to the mayor of this city. Urge immediate action; demand it. Let you men who work in the foundries, the mills, and the factories declare, through your officers, that if the smoke is not eliminated you will remain away from your open hearths, your benches, your machines. The source of the yellow death will then be eliminated.

  “You can be sure,” he added, “that these men who have killed those we love can never withstand the wrath of a whole populace. Pittsburgh and other cities have eliminated the sulfurous evil that had been poisoning them. They did this because their people demanded it with one loud, sure, and determined voice. You can do this also.

  “You can begin tomorrow. Perhaps the next inversion may not come for a year, or two years. But it may come in a week, or a day. Who, sitting here now, can say with truth that in so short a time your houses may not become houses of mourning?

  “Has my child died in vain? Some of you women have seen her. Some of you will remember her, on Christmas Eve, sitting in the pretty dress in which she was buried three days later. You will remember her child’s face, her smiles, her ecstasy of anticipation, which was never fulfilled. I beg you, I implore you, not to let her death be in vain.”

  He could speak no more. He looked at them imploringly, his hands held out. And they looked back at him with hard resolution or weeping silence.

  When he joined Dr. McManus, he had the satisfaction of seeing that the petitions had been taken, to the last one. He leaned back in the limousine and shut his burning eyes. The doctor glanced at him, hunched forward, and drew his eyebrows down almost to his very eyelids. They were nearing the Victorian mansion when the old doctor said, “They’ll fill ’em out! They’ll be piling up in masses on that damned mayor’s desk in a couple of days. You’ll see.”

  “I hope so,” Johnny answered. His heart was palpitating, and he was breathless.

  The doctor chewed his lip. “No time like the present,” he said. “I’d like to tell you about some people I know. Good people. The father was a clerk in one of the men’s shops here. He died, two months ago. And a week ago the wife died, in childbirth. The baby died too. Just young, nice, kindly people. Respectable, independent, patriotic, brave, and hopeful. I want you to see what’s left.”

  “Not now, for God’s sake,” Johnny murmured, out of the depths of his sorrow and weariness and his lonely yearning for Lorry.

  “Yes, now. Tomorrow may be too late. Somebody needs you more than you need you.”

  Johnny thought of Emilie’s chair, forever empty. He thought of the small, translucent face and the large blue eyes and the eager little hands. She had a special call for him when he came home from church, or from his sick calls or other duties, a rapturous call as if she had not believed that he would ever return. He kept his eyes shut, and he heard Emilie’s voice calling him anxiously.

  He did not know that the limousine had stopped unt
il the doctor rudely poked him. “Come on,” said the doctor. “You aren’t dying. Stop stewing in your misery. You’re needed. What’s a minister for?”

  They were standing before a small gray house, neat and clean, with a red roof, and a little lawn heaped with snow. Using all his last strength, Johnny dragged himself from the limousine and went with the doctor up to the steps. He made one final effort. “I’m not in a mood to comfort anybody just yet,” he said. “There’s still not much comfort in me.”

  “One sometimes finds comfort in strange places,” said the doctor, ringing the bell.

  The door was opened by a minute old woman in a gray gingham dress with a shawl over her shoulders. It was evident that she was not in the least surprised to see them. She smiled wanly. “Come in, please,” she said. She looked at Johnny with an expectation he could not interpret. “I hope it’ll turn out all right, Mr. Fletcher,” she said. “I sure hope you’ll like Debby.”

  “Debby?” repeated Johnny. “Your daughter, your granddaughter? Is she ill?”

  “You ask too many questions,” said the doctor.

  They entered the tiniest of neat parlors, with braided rugs and old furniture. A canary sang somewhere in a cage, and a kitten slipped down from a chair. The doctor whipped up the kitten expertly in his hands. “Always hated cats,” he said, nestling the little animal on his shoulder and stroking it fondly.

  “So I see,” said Johnny, smiling in spite of himself.

  “That’s Debby’s kitten,” said the old woman, who had been introduced to Johnny as Mrs. Dietrich.

  “Well, get her,” said the doctor. “We’ve got a dinner waiting.”

  Mrs. Dietrich left the little parlor, which had an odor of potpourri and wax. Johnny looked about him with interest, saw the bric-a-brac in a corner closet. “Is Mrs. Dietrich a German?” he asked. “She’s got an accent.”