CHAPTER VI

A HINT OF PINK

Cecilia sat well forward in the parquet seats of an opera house in Boston. Her small hand was curled up in the fat palm of a fat priest. The people who saw this smiled indulgently, then looked again; for the little girl was so pretty, and so happy, and the man's face was unusual.

The curtain had not gone up. They were a good fifteen minutes early.

"You see, Father McGowan-dear," said Cecilia, "it was not just their fault, for I am so different. I am still, but less so.... Then one day they said more than usual while I was reading that Sordello poem. (It isn't interesting, is it?)" Father McGowan smiled and shook his head. "And I thought I just couldn't stand it. I was so miserable that I even thought of taking the veil!" Father McGowan laughed suddenly. Cecilia looked at him with questioning eyes. "Go on, dear," he said gently, "and excuse a bad-mannered old priest."

She squeezed his thumb and continued: "Well, it was that day I decided to go home. I decided I could not be a lady, I mean I could not acquire a _savoir faire_ (that means a natural swellness)," explained Cecilia. Father McGowan nodded. His eyes twinkled. "So," said Cecilia, "I took all my money, and put on my hat and sneaked out. Then I walked down the block and across the Park. I saw a baby in the Park, a little girl, and she makes me think of Johnny when he was little and I took care of him. Then I thought of maw, and how she wanted me learned, I mean taught, and I went back. I am not very brave, and I wanted to cry dreadfully. I got in the hall, and there was Mrs. De Pui. She looked awfully cold, and she said, 'May I ask where you have been, Cecilia?' and then, that green-eyed girl I hated broke right in and said, 'I had a slight headache, and I asked her to post a letter for me, Mrs. De Pui. I _hope_ you don't mind.' The green-eyed girl is very rich, and so Mrs. De Pui said so sweetly that she hadn't minded at all.

"She always says 'post' instead of 'mail,' Father McGowan-dear. She spent two weeks in London last summer, and she said that the English accent became unconscious, or at least that she used it unconsciously. And she does except when she gets excited or talks fast.

"Well, she followed me upstairs, the green-eyed one, her name is Marjory, and I said, 'I do thank you.' Then I felt mean about the way I'd felt toward her, and I added, 'I am very sorry that I have hated you so.' Then she kissed me, Father McGowan-dear. Really, she did, and she said she was _glad_ I'd hated her. That it helped. She went down the hall, and paused at the turn to say, 'It is a great deal to ask, but some day I hope you'll like me!' Oh,--the curtain's going up! Look at that yellow dress. Aren't her legs _beautiful_? Mine are _so_ skinny!"

There was a burst of music, and the chorus waved their arms with the regularity of the twist of aspen leaves, when rain is coming.

Cecilia gasped. Then she sat breathless, watching every motion on the stage. A fat priest sat looking down at her. Once he took off his glasses and polished them. Something was making them misty.

The curtain went down. Cecilia gasped again, then she told of the awful, humiliating sick-cat episode, and of her disgrace in accepting a "choclut soda," and a pink sundae with whipped cream on top. Father McGowan was very understanding. He did not think it was a sin. In fact he was quite violently sure it was not. He grew very red in the face.

"What is the matter with that woman?" he asked in an entirely new, and really horribly stern tone. Cecilia didn't answer. Her startled eyes recalled him. "By George!" he said. "I forgot the candy!" and he produced from a coat pocket the most beautiful box.

"_Oh_," said Cecilia, "oh!" She smiled up into Father McGowan's face, and then added, "I can put that ribbon in a chemise. Oh, dear Father McGowan!"

"What is a priest to do," asked Father McGowan, "when all his inclinations are to kiss a young lady's hand?"

"I am so happy!" said Cecilia. Father McGowan put his other hand on the small one that lay in his. Cecilia tightened her little fingers about his thumb.

Father McGowan pushed away his plate. The chops were underdone, the potatoes soggy.

"Here's yer coffee," said Mrs. Fry. She was a perfect person for the housekeeper of a priest, being so visited with warts and a lemon expression that questioning her morals was impossible. Father McGowan stirred the coffee, then took a sip. He sighed. "Well,", he thought, "at least it makes fasting easier!"

In the hall of the rectory were twelve people. They were all shabby, and a boy of eleven sniffed with a wonderful regularity. They were all waiting to see a fat priest. A girl with sullen eyes and once pretty face looked around with defiant assurance. Opposite her on the wall hung a carved wood crucifix. When her eyes met that, she shrank, and then she'd look away, and again be sullenly brazen.

A well-dressed man rang the bell. The warted housekeeper answered it.

"I should like to see Father McGowan," he said. "I will only need a few moments of his time," he added on seeing the people waiting.

"Set down," ordered Mrs. Fry. "You'll have to wait yer turn." The man smiled. He was faintly amused. "I hardly think so," he said; "I am Doctor Van Dorn. My time is rather valuable. I can hardly waste it in that way."

"It's his rule," said Mrs. Fry, nodding her head toward the rear of the hall. "All who waits is the same. Yuh waits yer turn, or yuh goes. _He_ don't care." She had fixed her eyes above the man's head with all her words. He looked on her, frowning deeply, then said with an unconcealed irritation showing in his voice: "Will you at least take him my card?"

Mrs. Fry nodded. She held out a palm that looked damp, then went down the hall, reading the card as she walked. "He needn't be so smart," she made mental comment. "_Here_ he ain't no better than none of the rest." She went toward the table at which Father McGowan sat and shoved the card toward him. "He wants to see yuh right off, _now_," she said.

Father McGowan picked up the card, read it, and then laid it aside. "Tell him the rules," he said shortly. He turned back to a page of pink letter paper, with a daisy engraved on its top. He glanced from it to the clock. He still had twenty minutes before work began.

"Dearest Father McGowan, dear:" was written on the pink sheet. It was crossed out and below it was written, "Respected Father:--(I meant the first, but I suppose this is properer.) I can't tell you how happy you made me by the play and everything. I have put the pink ribbon in a chemise where it looks decorative, and cheers me up, as I like pink ribbons in underwear, although white are better taste. I am much happier. I am not _always_ happy, but do not tell Papa, nor any one that I am not. I _am_ much happier than I was.

"I apologise for clinging to you and kissing your hand good-bye when you left, but I am not sorry. It was very hard to let you go. Pink roses seemed _all_ thorns just then."

Father McGowan stopped reading. He looked across the room with far eyes. They were surrounded by fat wrinkles, and made small by thick lenses, but they were rather beautiful.

"I wanted to do as you suggested and try another school," he read, "but I somehow feel that I must finish what I've started, and I would like to show these girls that my soul is not purple silk trimmed with green velvet, if you can understand that; they seem to judge everything by rhinestone hair-pins, which is not a real clue to character.

"When you go to dinner with Papa, see that Norah uses the butter spreaders, which are small knives shaped like fruit knives. I will be deeply grateful. They are used for buttering bread, and so on (not to eat from).

"We are studying art. Andrea Dalsartoe, who painted the Madona of the Chair, just now. Marjory is so kind to me. She is an Episcopal but nice in every other way. They say a prayer to themselves when they go into church, too. She says, 'Peanuts, popcorn, and chewing gum, amen,' which I do not think is _very_ devout. She says it is just the right length when said _slowly_.

"You did make me so happy by that play and the candy. I have never had a better time but once, after which I was disgraced and sorry. (I had not met him socially, you know, which made it improper to eat sundaes with him, even while on an errand of mercy to a sick and dying cat.)

"We hear an orchestra every Saturday, chaperoned by our English teacher, who has asthma horribly and splutters a great deal. The music is classical and improving. I do not enjoy it very much, but there is a man in the orchestra who has an Adam's apple that wiggles and he helps me. One can always find enjoyment when looking for it, can't one? He plays a horn, and blows the spit from it often. He seems to have a great deal of spit.

"I have not thanked you the way I wanted to for the play, and everything, not forgetting the taxi ride and the sundae afterward. I do love you, Father McGowan, dear. I believe if there were more priests who believed in God, _and_ pink boxes of candy, there would be more Christians.

"Most respectfully, and lovingly, "CECILIA."

The clock struck one. Father McGowan folded up a pink sheet, and put it, in its envelope, in his pocket.

He was smiling gently. He opened the door into the hall, and the people struggled tiredly to their feet.

"Pax Tibi!" he said with a hand above his head. A girl with sullen eyes sobbed aloud. A Doctor sneered.

Much later the Doctor was admitted to a rather bare room, made tolerable by the colours of the books which lined its walls. The priest sat behind a table. They exchanged the usual formalities, then Father McGowan said: "Well?" Doctor Van Dorn shifted uneasily. "It is difficult to explain," he said. "I don't know just how to put it, but I thought you, if any one, could help me."

"I shall do all in my power to help you, if I think you need help," answered Father McGowan. The Doctor picked up a paper knife. He toyed with it, then blurted out: "I feel sure that there must be some reason for it, and that he's merely doing it from some evil wish."

"Who? Doing what?" asked Father McGowan.

The Doctor looked silly and laughed uneasily. "I'm not very coherent," he said.

"Oh, well," said Father McGowan, "we're both doctors in a way. We both meet that enough to understand it. Now take your time and tell me your story in your own way." He pushed a box of cigars across the table. "Want to smoke?" he asked with the move. The Doctor nodded and lit a cigar.

"It concerns a man named Madden," he said, "who, I have found, is one of your people. I have no proof, at least of the tangible sort, but I believe he is doing all he can to ruin me.... He is succeeding fairly well, too."

"Well, well," said Father McGowan. "Now what's he doing?"

"It began," said the Doctor, "with my hospital, which you know is a private affair, and in which some of my fellow doctors, with me, do some experimental work. The most of my clientele consists of the rather more well-known people of this city, as you know."

Father McGowan nodded. The Doctor's voice was as usual, and he began to swell a bit, with the tale of his hospital and its clientele.

"I rarely take charity work," said the Doctor. "All New York is after me...." Suddenly his face changed. "Was after me," he corrected. He studied the end of his cigar. "I did take one small chap," he went on slowly, "a charity case. He interested me. The complications were most unusual; however, you would not understand about them, and they do not influence the tale. I took him in and gave him the best of care, even to giving him a hundred-dollar room and an especial nurse. (His case was most interesting.) Well, as you know, the action of the muscles and organs is changed by anesthesia. I--ah,--I did but the slightest experimental work, keeping him well-fed, you know, and in this hundred-dollar-a-week room. The best of care, as I explained. He,--ah,--himself submitted to this slight pain when I told him that after it he would run and play as other boys. He had a natural, childish desire to run and play. Quite natural, I suppose."

"I suppose so," said Father McGowan. His tone was dry. His expression was very different from that which he had worn while reading the pink letter sheet.

"Then one day when a slight,--very slight, I assure you,--operation was absolutely necessary to his getting well, he said he would not, could not endure it. He had been quite weakened by his being in bed, and so on, but he screamed wildly. What he said was most improper and very ungrateful. He turned against us suddenly, as is the way of some when diseased." The Doctor stopped. He had grown rather white. He was again in a hundred-dollar room, which had a slat door, and no way to keep the voice of a frenzied charity patient from the rest of his aristocratic hospital. He heard the voice again: "Gawd, no, youse devils! ... Youse are killing me! Lemme die! Oh, Mister, don't strap me down! I can't stand it no more.... Don't--don't! Christ ... Christ ... Kill me, but don't----"

The Doctor moistened his lips, and came back to the bare room in St. Mary's Rectory. "He was most ungrateful," he said to Father McGowan, "and he bit my hand when I tried to silence him." Father McGowan was looking out of the window. The Doctor went on less surely. "A woman who scrubbed the floors heard this, and, as is the way with her class, got emotionally aroused. It seems she lived in a tenement, and had lived there when Jeremiah Madden had lived across the hall, before he made his money. She went to see him. He removed the lad from my care, and with his malicious help, lied viciously about me and my work, scattering statements broadcast, and giving their statements to the papers. My own profession do not largely back me up, being, I suppose, jealous, and of little spirit. I think they recognise my skill too well to love me. You read those articles?" he asked, turning to Father McGowan.

"That has nothing to do with your narrative," answered Father McGowan. "Please go on."

"Well," said the Doctor, his well-bred voice holding a hint of frost, "it,--that is, this malicious attack,--had prejudiced many. For the good of this Madden man's soul you should help him to be truthful, not to so belittle his nature by----"

"You're worried about his soul?" said Father McGowan. "Is _that_ why you came to me?" Father McGowan smiled. The Doctor shifted in his chair. There was the staccato tap of crutches on the bare floor of the hall. The knob of the door turned.

"Father," came in a small boy's voice from the doorway, "I brung yuh a toad. I want youse to bless it. It's dead. It was a cripple, too. I found it all mashed. You'll bless it? Me an' the fellers is going to bury it. _Ain't_ it cute?"

The Doctor had not turned.

"Come in, little Saint Sebastian," said Father McGowan. The little boy gave him a look that was pathetically adoring. His crutches tapped across the bare floor. Opposite the Doctor, he looked at him. Suddenly he screamed.

"Gawd! My Gawd! Oh, Father McGowan,--_don't_--let him have me!" He clung to Father McGowan's cassock as he sobbed out his broken prayer. "Don't, Mister, don't!" he ended weakly. Father McGowan picked him up. He looked at the Doctor.

"Go," he said.

Father McGowan again settled back of a bare table. A little boy sobbed in his arms. "Will you forgive me, little Saint Sebastian?" asked Father McGowan. The child's arms tightened around his neck. Father McGowan coughed.

"We're going to have some pink ice cream," he said after an interval. "Now here's my hanky. Gentlemen don't wipe their noses on their sleeves!"

"Will--will yuh bless the toad?" asked the child, after a damp smearing of Father McGowan's handkerchief. "He was a cripple. _Ain't_ he cute, now?" he added in a tender, little voice. Then he brightened and said loudly, "But I'm glad he's dead, for they ain't no Father McGowan toads to be good to little toad-cripples!"

Father McGowan coughed, and tightened his arms about Sebastiano Santo of the slums.

"Oh, dearest Paw--I mean Papa!" said Cecilia. She clung to him. The lights of the New York station blurred through her tears. Then she veered away from him, and gathered Johnny close.

"Aw," he said, "cut it! There's one of the fellows over there." But "one of the fellows" faced the other direction, Johnny saw, and he allowed himself to hug Celie quickly. He was glad to see her, but he felt a vague resentment toward her because her coming made his throat so stuffy. He remembered the time when he used to sit on her lap and eat bread spread thickly with molasses. He didn't know quite why he was thinking of it in the Pennsylvania Station.... He remembered that he used to pull her curls and that she'd pretend to cry and then kiss him, and then they'd both laugh, and laugh. It was always a great joke. And then she'd look at the clock and fry potatoes and meat over a smelly stove, and say, "Now laugh! Paw's coming home. He needs all our laughs!"

"John dear!" said Cecilia. Johnny forgot the past, and swelled. Cecilia's use of his name made him feel a man.

"Mister, will yuh please attend to this here baggage?" he heard his father say.

"Don't call him 'Mister,'" he corrected Jeremiah in an undertone. Cecilia stepped from them to a group nearby.

"Good-bye, Marjory," John heard her say. "Yes, I _will_ come to see you. You'll come to my house, too?" She turned to a rather more cool looking young person, and added less surely, "I would love to have you, too, Miss Annette, if you'd care to come."

"I'm rather busy----" John heard the Annette person reply. Then he saw her turn away from Cecilia. His heart grew hot. "If I don't see you again," said Cecilia, "I wish you the happiest kind of a Christmas!" Annette did not reply. The Marjory girl kissed Cecilia twice. "Good-bye, little Saint," she called after Cecilia. "I'm coming to see you to-morrow!"

In the motor there was a pause for inspection. "Yuh look so different," said Jeremiah rather wistfully.

"My heart is just the same," said Cecilia. "It will always be the same." She kissed Jeremiah Madden after her words and then leaned forward and kissed Johnny. He didn't mind, none of the fellows being present. Then they were silent, for when hearts are very full they are liable to wiggle up into throats and choke people when they try to talk. At last they were out of the crowded streets and on broad ones, where other cars, taking people pleasure-bent, rolled past them.

Then the house. The house from which Cecilia had gone last September, wearing a suit all over buttons, with a touch of "tasty" red here and there.

"Norah, darling Norah!" said Cecilia. Norah's red arms drew her close, then, quite in Norah's way, she eclipsed behind a blue-checked apron, and sobbed loudly. Cecilia looked about the hall. There was some new furniture. A hat-rack that was evidently the work of a lunatic with the unrestrained use of a jig-saw.

"Look up, Celie!" ordered Jeremiah. Cecilia looked up. Strung across the hall was an elaborate electric sign. The words were made of blue, yellow and red globes. She read: "Welcome to our Darling!!!" Cecilia gasped. Then she turned to her father. "It is beautiful," she said, "and just what I wanted." She stopped and swallowed with difficulty. Then added, "Papa dear, I love you so!" Johnny smiled. He raised his eyebrows and his shoulders. Then he sniffed. He thought he smelled the scent of roses.