The Studs Lonigan Trilogy - James T. Farrell [162]
Melancholy misted his thoughts. Ah, he was growing old and life was moving along, he thought; he glanced towards Bill. Father and son faced each other with averted eyes.
“Bill, it was too bad, too bad this unfortunate thing had to happen,” Lonigan mourned, shaking his head in sadness, and then emitting a drawn-out and soft sigh of regret.
He stuttered and hesitated as he tried to say that he didn’t mind a young fellow drinking a little and having a good time, but that there was a limit, and he hoped that it wouldn’t happen again. He told Bill what great confidence he was placing in him. He hoped Bill would not destroy that confidence completely; last night he had shaken it severely, yes, severely.
He stopped talking. Father and son sat in silent misery. If only they could get a grip on the right words. They couldn’t, and were keenly aware of their smokes.
“Yes, Bill, it’s a great disappointment and it’s nearly broken your mother’s heart,” Lonigan said, arising.
He asked Studs to be more careful in the future and said that they would forgive this mistake, but that it shouldn’t happen again.
II
In Nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritui Sancti. Amen.
A street car grated by. The swinging doors of the church were shoved to admit influxes of worshippers. The new arrivals clustered about the two tables near the holy water founts at the end of the center aisles, paying their ten cents pew rent, causing coins to be weakly clinked together. The ushers led a few lucky persons to the last vacant seats towards the rear of the aisles, while many others joined those who stood in the back and down the side aisles. Those parishioners who had rented pews by the season or annually marched proudly to their reserved places towards the front. Feet were scraped on the rubber floor covering. A man coughed.
Father Doneggan, clad in gold vestments, of joyousness, bowed profoundly before the gilded golden altar with joined hands, and sing-songed:
Con fiteor Deo omnipotenti, beatae Mariae semper virgini...
Studs Lonigan knelt crushed in a pew towards the rear on the Blessed Virgin’s side of the church. He was aware of the perfume scent and presence of a girl beside him, and her squirrel coat was brushed tantalizingly against his knee. He bowed his head to pray, and thought that the Mass was sacred, the unbloody sacrifice of the body and blood of Jesus Christ, Our Lord, the symbolic repetition of His Holy and inspiring life, and he would have to hear Mass in the right and proper spirit. He shook his head to ward off the threat of sleep. He mumbled the words of the Our Father by rote, and looked forwards as Father Doneggan bowed down over the altar, and prayed rapidly:
Oramus te, Domine, per merita sanctorum tuorum quorum
Unwittingly, he wished that the mass was over. He had let himself in for it, coming to high mass. Anyway, Father Doneggan always hurried through his masses, and it wouldn’t be as long as if Father Gilhooley or Father Roney were celebrating it.
He heard the swinging doors, and the scrape of feet, and then, another street car. He glanced around to his right, and saw Young Rocky yawning. He watched Mr. and Mrs. Dennis P. Gorman proceed down the center aisle to their rented pews, past Austin McAuliffe, the usher who stood in the aisle and smiled as they approached. Over to his right and a couple of pews down, he saw Arnold Sheehan’s twin sisters, and he thought of how Arnold had bragged of them last night. They weren’t as good-looking, or as well-dressed as his sisters. He smiled, seeing the Nolan family marching down the center aisle to their pews; they were built like steps, first the old man, then the mother, then the three boys in the order of their sizes. He smiled again, remembering that joke he always sprung on Jim Nolan; “Every time your old man saves a couple of hundred bucks, he brings another Nolan over from the old country, and gets him a job on the railroad.”
He heard the choir singing:
Kyrie eleison!
Kyrie eleison!