The Last Gentleman

people,” she muttered, mostly ruminating with herself. “You know how women talk about such and such a priest being spiritual?”
    â€œNo.” How could he know any such thing?
    â€œI always steer clear of those birds. But no, actually I owe spiritual people, ladies, a great deal—they’re very generous with me when I beg from them. It’s a strange business, isn’t it? The most unlikely people are generous. Last week I persuaded the local Klonsul of the Klan to give us a Seven-Up machine. Do you think it is possible to come to Christ through ordinary dislike before discovering the love of Christ? Can dislike be a sign?”
    â€œI couldn’t say,” said the sleepy engineer.
    She brought herself up and looked at him for the first time. “Mr. Barrett, Jamie’s salvation may be up to you.”
    â€œEh? Excuse me, but apart from the circumstance that I do not know what the word ‘salvation’ means, I would refuse in any case to accept any such commission, Miss, ah—, that is , Sister—”
    â€œVal.”
    â€œSister Val.”
    â€œNo,” she said laughing. “Just Val. I am Sister Johnette Mary Vianney.”
    â€œIs that right?”
    His refusal, he noticed, was delivered with a tingle of pleasure, both perverse and familiar. Familiar because—yes, he remembered his father refusing a priest and taking some satisfaction in it even though he, his father, took the Catholics’ side in their troubles with the Klan. “Mr. Barrett,” the priest asked him with the same jolly gall, “I don’t think you realized it but you just fired one of my parishioners, heh-heh, and I want to ask you if you will take her back. She has a family and no husband—” “And who could that be,” said his father, his voice ominously civil. “Souella Johnson.” Souella Johnson, who, being not merely a winehead but, failing to find Gallo sherry in the house, had polished off as a poor substitute some six cases of twenty-year-old bourbon over the years. “I will not, sir,” said his father and bang, down went the telephone.
    â€œI will not,” he told Val with the same species of satisfaction. Perhaps we are true Protestants despite ourselves, he mused, or perhaps it is just that the protest is all that is left of it. For it is in stern protest against Catholic monkey business that we feel ourselves most ourselves. But was her request true Catholic gall, the real article, or was it something she had hit upon through a complicated Vaught dialectic? Or did she love her brother?
    He read in her eyes that he looked odd. “What is it?” she asked him smiling. For a split second he saw in her his Kitty, saw it in her lip-curling bold-eyed expression. It was as if his Kitty, his golden girl of summertime and old Carolina, had come back from prison where she had got fat and white as white and bad-complexioned.
    â€œWhat?” she asked again.
    â€œI was wondering,” said the engineer, who always told the truth, “how you manage to come to the point where you feel free to make requests of people.”
    She laughed again. “Jamie was right. You’re a good companion. Well, I can ask you, can’t I?”
    â€œSure.”
    â€œIt’s like the story about the boy who got slapped by quite a few girls but who—well. But it’s extraordinary how you can ask the most unlikely people—you can ask them straight out: say, look, I can see you’re unhappy; why don’t you stop stealing or abusing Negroes, go confess your sins and receive the body and blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ—and how often they will just look startled and go ahead and do it. One reason is that people seldom ask other people to do anything.”
    â€œI see.”
    â€œNow I have to go see Sutter.”
    â€œYes ma’am.”
    He began nodding in ancient Protestant fuddlement and irony, not knowing whether to bow, shake hands, or look down his nose. But it didn’t matter. She had left without noticing.
    6 .
    Jamie was not in the apartment. There were voices in the room next door. That would be Sutter and Val, he calculated, and perhaps Jamie. The old itch for omniscience came upon him—lost as he was in his own potentiality, having come home to the South only to discover that not even his own homelessness was at home here—but he resisted the impulse to eavesdrop. I will