Brooklyn Page 0,87
warmly at Mrs. Kehoe and said that she would love that and then went to her room and opened the letter. The Bartoccis, Father Flood said, could offer her one month’s unpaid leave, the date to be arranged with Miss Fortini, and, if she passed her exams, they hoped they could offer her a job in the office over the next six months. She left the letter on the bed and went upstairs to find her tea almost poured.
“Would you feel safe if I took the lock off the basement gate?” Mrs. Kehoe asked her. “I didn’t know what to do so I asked that nice Sergeant Mulhall whose wife plays poker with me and he said that he would have his officers keep a special watch on it and report on any untoward activity down there.”
“Oh, that’s a great idea, Mrs. Kehoe,” Eilis said. “You should thank him on behalf of all of us the next time you see him.”
She hoped that the law exam would be as easy as the last time. And she was happy with the work she had done in all the other subjects. As part of the final exam, however, every student would be given all the details of the annual life of a company, rent and heat and light, wages, the fact that machinery and other assets might devalue each year, debt, capital investment and tax. On the other side, there would be sales, money coming in from a number of sources, be they wholesale or retail. And all of this would have to be entered into ledgers in the correct column, it would have to be done neatly so that at an annual general meeting when the board and shareholders of a company wanted to see clearly how profit or loss had been made, they could do so from these ledgers. Anyone who failed this part of the exam, they were told, would not get a passing mark even if they did well in other papers. They would have to repeat the entire exam.
One evening close to the exams, when Tony was walking her home, Eilis told him about her plan to go home for a month once the results came. She had already written to her mother telling her the news. Tony said nothing to her, but, when they arrived at Mrs. Kehoe’s, he asked her to walk with him around the block. His face was pale and he seemed serious and did not look at her directly as he spoke.
When they were away from Mrs. Kehoe’s he sat on a stoop where there was no one, leaving her standing against the railings. She knew that he would be upset about her going like this but was ready to explain to him that he had family in Brooklyn and he did not know what it was like to be away from home. She was prepared to tell him that he would go home too for a visit under similar circumstances.
“Marry me before you go back,” he said almost under his breath.
“What did you say?” She went to the stoop and sat beside him.
“If you go, you won’t come back.”
“I’m just going for a month, I told you.”
“Marry me before you go back.”
“You don’t trust me to come back.”
“I read the letter your brother wrote. I know how hard it would be for you to go home and then leave again. I know it would be hard for me. I know what a good person you are. I would live in fear of getting a letter from you explaining that your mother could not be left alone.”
“I promise you I will come back.”
Each time he said “marry me” he looked away from her, mumbling the words as though he were talking to himself. Now he turned and looked at her clearly.
“I don’t mean in a church and I don’t mean we live together as man and wife and we don’t have to tell anybody. It can be just between the two of us and we can get married in a church when we decide after you come back.”
“Can you get married just like that?” she asked.
“Sure you can. You have to give them notice and I’ll get a list of things we need to do.”
“Why do you want me to do it?”
“It will just be something between us.”
“But why do you want it?”
When he spoke now he had tears in his eyes. “Because if we don’t do it, I’m going to go