Tempest-Tost

by Robertson Davies

  Lieutenant Swackhammer, too, was a success. He had a fund of small talk, and although he had lived inland for the first eighteen years of his life, he had subsequently developed a bluff, sailorly, salt-water manner, which went very well with his somewhat extreme deference to age and grey hairs. He laughed a good deal at nothing in particular, and had a splendid grip of whatever was obvious and indisputable.

  With such guests as these, Mrs. Bridgetower blossomed. The Torso laughed at all her ironies, and whenever The Torso laughed, Lieutenant Swackhammer laughed too. Pearl Vambrace, though apt to be silent, was respectful and behaved nicely, and when she did speak, she said something sensible, and said it in a neatly rounded sentence, of which her hostess approved. In the atmosphere of success, Solly brightened up, and poured out the wine with a generosity begotten of relief.

  The meal was a long and heavy one, and concluded with special glasses of ice-cream, into which a spoonful of crěme de menthe had been injected, like a venom; with this, chocolate peppermint patties were served and Pearl, who was unaccustomed to rich food, began to feel a little unwell and sleepy. It was at this point that Ada announced that Master Solly was wanted on the telephone.

  “The telephone is the curse of the age,” said Mrs. Bridgetower; “even our after-dinner coffee is not safe from it.”

  “Oh, how right you are,” said Bonnie-Susan; “you know, Mrs. Bridgetower, I often think things were really better when you were a girl. No ’phone, and no boys calling up all the time, and all those lovely horses and carriages and everything.”

  “Absolutely right,” said the Lieutenant, champing a third peppermint patty.

  “I do not quite ante-date the telephone,” said Mrs. Bridgetower, “but in my youth it was employed with a keener discretion than is the case today.”

  Meanwhile Solly, with the receiver at his ear, was listening to Humphrey Cobbler.

  “Hello there, Bridgetower, what about coming to see me tonight?”

  “Can’t. It’s the night of the Ball, you know.”

  “What Ball? Oh, that thing. Well, you don’t want to go to that, do you?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “You amaze me. Oh, I suppose you’re protecting your interests, eh?”

  “I do not understand you.”

  “The hell you say. She’s going with Tasset, isn’t she?”

  “I believe so.”

  “And who, if I may ask, are you escorting to this dreary brawl?”

  “Miss Vambrace.”

  “Who’s she?”

  “Miranda in the play.”

  “Oh, her. Can’t say I know her. She doesn’t sing, does she?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, find out before you do anything silly. Remember my advice; take a woman with a good big mezzo range every time. Listen, how would it be if I came with you?”

  “No.”

  “I’ve got a dress suit.”

  “You have no invitation.”

  “A formality. We artists are welcome at all doors.”

  “No; it wouldn’t do.”

  “I could carry a fiddle case; pretend I belonged to the orchestra.”

  “No.”

  “Don’t you think you’re being just a teeny-weeny tidge snobbish and class-conscious?”

  “No.”

  “Very well, then; sweep on in your fine carriage over the faces of the humble poor. There’ll come a day.… You don’t want to reconsider?”

  “No.”

  “Can’t you say anything but no?”

  “No.”

  “Very well then. Go ahead; plunge into a maelstrom of gaiety. And God forbid that, when the revel is at its height, your merriment should be dampened by thought of me, crouched over a dead fire in my sordid home, drinking gin out of a cracked cup.”

  “God forbid, indeed.”

  “In poverty, hunger and dirt.”

  As you say.

  “Well—good-bye.”

  “Good-bye.”

  THE CARDS OF INVITATION specified that the Ball would begin at nine o’clock. To Hector’s precise mind, unattuned to elegant delay, it was therefore important that he should appear upon the stroke of nine, and he was dressed in his hired evening suit by half-past eight. He was not happy about the suit. It was not the cut or the fit that bothered him, for he was not pernickety about such things; it was, rather, the material of which the suit was made; this was a face-cloth, which time had rendered not merely smooth, but slippery. The way in which the coat cut away to the tails, and the shortness of the tails themselves, seemed to him to be not quite right, but he assumed that there were many styles in evening coats. The old man from whom he had rented the suit had assured him that it was a splendid fit, and that he looked like a prince in it. There had been no white waistcoat to go with the suit, so Hector had purchased a smart one for himself, as well as a collar, a stiff shirt and a tie which was conveniently tied already, and fastened at the back with a secret hook. The obvious newness of his linen, he hoped, would take the eye of society from the curious shininess of his suit.

  By a quarter to nine he was in the hall of the Y.M.C.A., waiting for his taxi. It was prompt to the minute, and at precisely five minutes to nine he found himself at the Ball.

  Nobody was on hand to receive him. Nobody asked for his card of invitation. On a dais at one end of the room the band was chatting, and a couple of orderlies in the gallery were arranging chairs. There was no one else to be seen. Turning from the hushed splendour of the empty ballroom Hector sought and found a door marked “Gentlemen”; it was dark, quiet and comforting in there, and he settled himself to wait.

  IT WAS NOT A HAPPY CHOICE of a hiding place, for although nothing could be more natural than his presence there, and nothing less likely than that any official person, finding him, would ask to see his card of invitation, it was a retreat with humiliating associations for him. Was it not behind a similar door, similarly marked, that he had taken refuge so many years ago, at the Normal School “At Home”?

  Here, in the darkness, he could not escape that recollection. Time had somewhat blunted the edge of it, and he had got into the habit of pushing it down into the depths of his mind whenever it troubled him, but tonight he was without defence. Sweating slightly, he faced the fact that he had made a fool of himself at the “At Home”, and that it was possible that he might make a fool of himself again at the Ball, and for a similar reason.

  Hector had been a prominent figure in his year at the Normal School. By the time the annual “At Home” was due he was easily the leader among the young men of the class. Had he not been chosen by popular vote as “Student Most Likely to Become Deputy Minister of Education”? And as such he was the obvious person to invite Millicent Maude McGuckin to be his partner at the “At Home”. For in the atmosphere of the Normal School the cleverest boy and the cleverest girl were expected to appear together at this function; like crowned heads when a royal marriage is in prospect, they had little personal choice in the matter; their academic position determined their relationship to one another, and if either happened to have a morganatic attachment to some less brilliant member of the class, that unworthy affection had to be suppressed for the evening of the “At Home”.

  Of those girls of Hector’s generation whom the chaste goddess of Primary Education called to her shrine, Millicent Maude McGuckin was the fairest and most proud. She wore glasses, it is true, but behind them her eyes were brown as the waters of a Highland stream. Her upper teeth were, perhaps, more prominent than those of the insipid stars of Hollywood, but they gave a swelling pride to her upper lip, and formed her mouth into a pout which fairly ached for kisses. Her curly hair was chestnut brown; her skin was dark and sweetly flushed over her cheeks. It was a time when the female bosom was rising again from the flatness to which the ’twenties had condemned it, and Millicent Maude McGuckin’s bosom, swelling gently under the stimulus of a good mark on a test in Classroom Management, or heaving proudly in a debate on “Resolved:
That Country Children Are Culturally Handicapped In Comparison With City Children” was a thing to make tears of ecstasy sting the eyeballs. The bosom was coming in, but the stress upon the female leg which was so characteristic of the ’twenties had not diminished, and in this department of womanly beauty, too, Millicent Maude McGuckin was richly dowered.

  Is she that way,

  Lovable—and sweet?

  ran a song popular at the time. The answer in her case was a breathless affirmative from all the young men of her year at the Normal School.

  It was never doubted that Hector would escort her to the “At Home”. It would be his duty to call for her at her boarding house, walk her to the school, dance the first and last dances with her, squire her at supper and assist the Principal and staff in greeting the guests. But Hector boasted that he would do more. It must be remembered that he had never mixed on easy terms with boys and girls of his own age before he went to the Normal School, and his quick success there went a little to his head. He boasted to a group of other male students that in the Moonlight Waltz he would kiss Millicent Maude McGuckin. They expressed vehement and brassy doubt that he would do any such thing. He reaffirmed his intention; indeed, he took bets on it. It was the only time in his life that he bet on anything, and as it was himself, he considered it a certainty.

  The night of the “At Home” came. Hector’s courage was shaky when he called for Miss McGuckin, for he scarcely knew her, and when she tripped down the stairs of her boarding house in a blue frock, looking more lovely than would be thought possible in the light of the ruby lamp which hung there, he wondered if he had not dared too much. This was not a girl to Get Fresh with, he thought. This girl was a Sweet Girl now, and the only change in her condition which was at all thinkable was the change to Wife and Mother. That he should debauch her, by so much as a single kiss, was an unnerving thought. To Hector a kiss was no trivial matter. He had never kissed anyone but his mother, and he had an unformed but insistent notion that a kiss was, among honest people, as binding as a proposal of marriage. And in his scheme of planning and common sense, marriage had as yet no place. Yet he ached to kiss her. He wanted to kiss her without being prepared to marry her. He was shocked and at the same time sneakingly proud of this voluptuousness in himself.

  Millicent Maude McGuckin did nothing to allay his fears. A spirited girl, with a turn for debating, she had thoughts of a parliamentary career, and of asserting the right of women to take over everything, in a large and general way. Her attitude toward Hector, therefore, was one of mettlesome raillery. When he made as though to help her on with her coat, she said, “Thanks, I’m still quite capable of putting on my own coat,” and when he took her arm to help her down the icy steps of the boardinghouse she said, “What’s the matter? Are you afraid you’ll fall?” When he became silent under these witty rebuffs, she said, “You certainly aren’t very conversational tonight, are you?” And when he haltingly tried to make amends she said, airily, “Oh don’t talk if you have to make an effort; I dare say you are wishing I was some person else.” By the time they reached the Normal School, Hector was completely cowed by Miss McGuckin’s bantering social manner.

  Standing in the “receiving line” was no ordeal. It was Hector’s task to introduce each couple as they arrived to the Principal, who had not seen most of them since four o’clock that afternoon. The Principal then passed on these introductions to his wife, who repeated them to old Dr. Moss, the principal emeritus. Miss McGuckin was on the other side of this venerable pedagogue, so that both her maddening charms and her wounding wit were spared him, for half an hour or so. But he had to join her again for the Grand Promenade which opened the “At Home”. This ceremony probably derived from some Grand Polonaise, or other European court ceremony; nothing quite like it is traceable among the customs of the British peoples. The older guests disposed themselves in knots about the broad corridors of the Normal School, and the students, in couples, arranged themselves in processional formation in the entrance hall. Then, as the band on the third floor, where the assembly room was, played a spirited march, the pupils, arm in arm, paraded through the school and up the stairs, bowing to their guests and being bowed to in return. It was rather a pretty and pleasing custom and one which the students enjoyed, but for Hector it was a humiliation. Miss McGuckin kept whispering “Left, left … you know your left foot, don’t you?…Bow; don’t just duck your head.… Don’t hold my arm so tightly.” And as she badgered him, the more he was enthralled by her, and the more eagerly he wished to dominate her, win her, hear her say “Oh, Hector!” as he covered her full lips with kisses.

  Nobody could say of Hector that he was not persistent. He danced with Millicent Maude McGuckin, as custom demanded, and made no reply to her criticism of his dancing save a sheepish smile. He endured it when she took him into a corridor to demonstrate a step. Under her direction he opened and closed windows, fetched chairs, and harried the band leader to play her favourite tunes. For although her conversation, baldly recorded here, may suggest that Miss McGuckin was censorious and demanding, it must be remembered that she was only eighteen, and the charm of youth clouded the sharp outlines of her essential character. The other girls—charming girls, destined to be capable schoolteachers and agreeable women—seemed to him insipid beside this paragon. A worshipper of planning and common sense himself, Hector adored these characteristics in Miss McGuckin, and never thought that a woman might possess more pleasant attributes. But she made him nervous, and when he was nervous his stomach, in his own phrase “went back on him”.

  This trouble was not too inconvenient until the supper interval. He felt secret stirrings in his bowels, but had no time to consider them. But a supper of eight sandwiches, two pieces of cake, six cookies, and a plate of ice cream, washed down with two cups of coffee, gave his revolting stomach something to work on.

  He took supper with Miss McGuckin, of course, and also with old Dr. Moss and Miss Ternan, the instructor in Art. Dr. Moss described his trip to the Holy Land in considerable detail, while the others listened. The old gentleman carried in his pocket a New Testament, bound in wood from the Mount of Olives, which he showed for their admiration. Millicent Maude McGuckin was full of pretty curiosity, asking for information about the diet of the Holy Land, and demanding in particular to know whether Our Lord had subsisted chiefly on dates, pomegranates and figs; it appeared extremely probable to her that He was a vegetarian. It was not necessary for Hector to say anything, so he ate stolidly, and poured hot coffee down upon cold ice cream with the recklessness of youth. And then, all of a sudden, his stomach squealed.

  The borborygmy, or rumbling of the stomach, has not received the attention from either art or science which it deserves. It is as characteristic of each individual as the tone of the voice. It can be vehement, plaintive, ejaculatory, conversational, humorous—its variety is boundless. But there are few who are prepared to give it an understanding ear; it is dismissed too often with embarrassment or low wit. When Hector’s stomach squealed it was as though someone had begun to blow into a bagpipe, and had thought better of it. His neighbours pretended not to notice.

  A rumbling stomach may be ignored once, but if it persists it will shake the aplomb of the most accomplished. Hector’s stomach persisted, and Millicent Maude McGuckin began to raise her eyebrows and speak with special clarity, as though above the noise of a passing train. Miss Ternan flushed a little. Old Dr. Moss unhooked the receiver of his hearing-aid from the front of his waistcoat and shook it and blew suspiciously into its inside, as though he feared that a scratchy biscuit crumb had lodged there. The stomach squealed loud and long, and then the squeal would drop chromatically in tone until it became a low, hollow rumble. It was as though, nearby, an avalanche of boulders was plunging down a mountainside toward a valley, in which a spring torrent raged and foamed. And then, inexplicably and in defiance of nature, the boulders would rush back up the hill, to be greeted with screams and bagpipe flourishes by the stricken mountaineer
s.

  After an eternity of this, Hector rose. “Got to see if the orchestra are getting any supper,” said he, and left the room, his face its darkest red.

  In the men’s washroom he had taken stock of himself. A fine fellow he was, to be partner to Millicent Maude McGuckin, and then carry on like that! What about the Moonlight Waltz now, and his boast that he would kiss her! Was this—the theological explanation came pat to his mind—a Judgement on him for his sinful boast that he would Take Advantage of a sweet and innocent girl, before everybody—before the Principal and his wife, before old Dr. Moss, who carried a Testament bound in wood from the Mount of Olives? Like many young people, Hector was convinced that his elders were the implacable foes of Eros.

  No! He had to go through with it! He had bet two dollars and fifty cents that he would do it! But the fiends in his stomach, like an offstage chorus, mocked his determination with snarling laughter. Suppose the stomach howled aloud as he danced the Moonlight Waltz? Suppose—oh, horror inconceivable!—the winds within him could not be contained as he danced! There was nothing, nothing in the world—not money, not pride, not love of Millicent Maude McGuckin—which would make him risk such shame.

  So he remained where he was. Faintly he could hear the Midnight Waltz begin. For this special dance, all the lights save a few which had been covered with blue gelatine were turned off, and it was deemed to be the epitome of langorous romance, and the crowning glory of the “At Home”. With this special dance in mind, Millicent Maude McGuckin’s mother had made her a new gown of electric blue satin, wonderfully gathered so that it shimmered and crinkled as she moved, making her, as the instructor in Nature Study remarked admiringly, look just like an electric eel. Whether she danced this dance, or whether she sat it out, Hector never knew. The next day he was eyed curiously by the student body, and those with whom he had laid bets made no attempt to collect them. It was known that Mackilwraith had reached some sort of crisis at the “At Home”, but whether it was drink, or whether, as one boy suggested, he had suddenly Had the Call to the Ministry in the midst of the gaiety, no one knew, and no one liked to ask. As for Millicent Maude McGuckin, she never spoke to him again.