The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [16]
Three-Star told Vinc to tie his bull to another ash can.
“Why, Three-Star!” Vinc said, shocked.
Someone in the audience told them to shut up.
“Didn’t your old lady teach you any better manners?” said Paulie.
“She’s better’n your old lady,” said Vinc aloud, but his remark didn’t carry up to the stage. People turned, annoyed.
“Yeah!” whispered Paulie to Vine.
Vine was open-mouthed and hurt; hurt that he should be treated so unjustly.
V
“Alas, my dear young friends, you must move down the hard and stony paths of life. And at times, it will be a difficult road.. It might be a long and lonely journey, unless you take, Gawd forbid, that false path which the great and Catholic-minded William Shakespeare described as the primrose path to the everlasting bonfire; the primrose path to the everlasting bonfire sown with the flowers and fruits of the Devil, bounded by beautiful rose bushes behind which hide old Nick and his fallen angels; the foxy, the sly and foxy hordes of hell. You must beware of old Nick, and you must not allow him to snare your souls. Old Nick, the Devil, is tricky, full of the blarney, as they say in the old country. He is like the fox, tricky, cunning, clever. He will always make false promises to you; he will seek to deceive you with all the pomp and gold and glory of this world. He is a master of artifice, and he will pay your price in this... if you will pay his price in the next world; if you pay his price in the next world, where hell hisses and yawns, and the damned suffer as no earthly being can or has suffered. False friendships, fame, riches, power, success, all will be strewn at your feet by old Nick, if only you sell your soul, like Mephistopheles... if only you deny our Lord, Jesus Christ.”
From the second row, center, Mr. and Mrs. Reilley listened to the priest. She was a reddish woman, generously supplied with flesh and bust. He looked like a conventional cartoon of a henpecked husband.
“Sure, isn’t he the walkin’ saint of God? And isn’t he the saint?” she said.
Reilley nodded his head from a long-standing habit of acquiescence.
“And isn’t he the grand scholar?”
Reilley nodded.
“And maybe the lad will take all of what he says to heart.” Reilley nodded.
“And maybe he’ll not run around like he does.”
“I hope so,” Reilley muttered.
“And sure, doesn’t the lad and the lass take the cake up there on the stage?”
“Uh huh!” from Reilley.
VI
The priest described the glee of the Devil when he, Lucifer, snares a young and innocent soul; and the boy Studs Lonigan on the stage had an imaginative picture of Satan in a tight-fitting red-horned outfit, like the creature on a Pluto water bottle, hopping out from behind a bush, clutching the soul of a young guy or a girl from the stony road of life and dragging it away as he smiled, showing all his teeth just like Deadwood Dick in the newspaper cartoons. Father Gilhooley told how cunning Satan took the Master up to the mountain tops of the world and offered him all the pleasures and riches of this life, if He deny His Father, and Jesus resisted, saying, Get thee behind me, Satan, for He must be about His Father’s work. The priest said that Satan must have, symbolically, taken the German Kaiser to the mountain tops and offered him the world and Kaiser Bill must have accepted, and that was probably why we had the terrible war devastating Europe. Yes, they must beware of old Nick, and they must persevere in the ways of the Master, who died that agonizing death on that terrible cross to redeem mankind. They must always remember that Christ died for them, and they must never put a thorn in His side by sinning. And they must not forget the advice and example, the teachings of the good sisters. They must say their prayers morning and evening and whenever they were heavily beset with temptations, they must keep the commandments of God and of Holy Mother Church, receive the sacraments regularly, never willfully miss mass, avoid bad companions and all occasions of sin, publicly defend the Church from all enemies and