“Hardheaded, of course,” McAlpine agreed. He still felt a little drunk, but the familiar phrases had got him into the swing of things again. He was back where he belonged, after sitting up last night in a garish Negro nightclub feeling desolate over a little girl he hardly knew. He was where he belonged, and, more than that, his head was clearing; he could concentrate on the wrinkles at the back of Ernest Havelock’s thin neck. The head kept twisting, a hand came up to the neck. The draft from the open diningroom window was bothering Mr. Havelock. “Mr. Havelock is going to have a stiff neck in the morning. Now wouldn’t that be a pity?” he asked sardonically.
“I beg your pardon?”
“That draft from the open window. Why don’t we all close the window for Mr. Havelock?”
“I’ll close it, Jim,” Mr. Carver said, and as the cabinet minister turned to get another celery stick he whispered, “It’s fine to be independent, Jim, but don’t be foolhardy.”
At that hour at the Murdocks’ the guests, exhausting all the possibilities of formal conversation, began to feel lonely and wandered away from one another. The party began to break up into two groups. The French Canadians gradually retreated to the drawing room, where they could relax with one another, and the English-speaking Canadians moved toward the dining room and possession of the cakes and sandwiches. The cabinet minister, alone with McAlpine and apprehensive, said with a false heartiness, “I have to put in a phone call – I’ll be back, McAlister,” and hurried away.
McAlpine was left alone, feeling discontented; he had never felt so discontented, and he didn’t know why. In a little while he heard Wagstaffe’s voice: “I don’t want no trouble around here.” Then Roger’s voice: “Cut a man in Memphis.” But the voices faded. He wasn’t sure he had heard them. Then he saw it; of course it was only the liquor, but he saw it with a brilliant clarity: the carved leopard. And while she watched it, fascinated, it sprang at her, and he cried, “Look out!”
“Jim, oh, Jim!” Catherine called.
“Hello, Catherine,” he said, his tone full of relief.
“You look positively distressed, Jim.”
“I’m left alone.”
“Is that such a calamity? Everybody suddenly gets left alone around here. What have you been saying, Jim?” she asked with an anxious expression.
“Very little. Talking politics. Why?”
“Daddy was a bit worried.”
“What’s worrying him?”
“You didn’t insult McNab, did you? Or Havelock?”
“Not for the world would I insult him. Why should I?”
“Play along a little, will you, Jim? I mean, don’t be too out-spoken. Not tonight. Not here.”
“I’m an outspoken man,” he said grandly. “Isn’t that why your father wants me to work for him?”
“But you haven’t got the job yet, Jim. Don’t boot it out the window.”
“No. That’s right. No. I’ll be careful. I’ll get you a drink.”
“No, I’ll scoot along. Don’t drink any more, please.”
“I certainly won’t,” he said firmly.
People were going home; now that the room had thinned, he could see the pictures on the walls and the rugs on the floor. In the drawing room was an immense Chinese rug. An oriental rug was in the dining room. But Catherine had worried him. What possesses me? What compels me to smash it all up? he thought. And he moved into the drawing room among the French, where there was a solemn argument about André Gide. All these French Canadian Catholics spoke with enthusiasm about Gide, the Protestant. They were captivated by the Gide style. It bored him. It put him more on edge. Near by, Carver and a young French Canadian lawyer who had a cynical smile and a perfect English accent were arguing, Carver saying, “But obviously your people don’t produce enough engineers and technicians. All the emphasis is on the liberal education, the arts, the humanities.”
“Yes, we do need more engineers and fewer lawyers,” the French Canadian teased. “But we neglect other things, too, eh? Vitamins in tomato juice.” And he laughed and moved away.
Mr. Carver turned to McAlpine. “Education! Try and talk to these pea-soupers about education, and see how far you get,” he snorted with contempt. “But I shall go on trying, just the same.”
“That’s right,” McAlpine said in his best sardonic tone. “The white man’s burden, eh?”
“What’s that, Jim?”
“I mean trying to do something for an educational system. Taking the burden on yourself.” McAlpine was bewildered by his own imprudence.
“Oh, I see.”
McAlpine expected him to go on, I know what you mean, all right – you and that girl and those Negroes. But Mr. Carver smiled, offering nothing but good will. “A very neat touch, Jim,” he said complacently. “The white man’s burden – very good. I must remember it.”
Voices came from the hall: Good night, Angela – I always have such a good time – Good night – Good night, my dear.
“Just look at Angela,” Mr. Carver said as they sat down together. “A little light from her lamp for everybody. All that’s womanly and warm and gracious! H’m. Yet I find myself wondering… Oh, well—” Then he put his hand on Jim’s knee. “By the way,” he said confidentially, “I had a good talk with Horton this afternoon. Mentioned that you and I were going fishing on the ice.”
“Does he want to go fishing with us?” McAlpine asked.
“Horton? I don’t think he’d know one end of a fish from the other,” Mr. Carver said, smiling broadly. “Jim,” he said, his tone changing, “the job is yours. It’s all settled. A column three times a week. When could you start?”
“Any time.”
“Good! How about going on salary next Monday? Horton suggested a hundred a week. We can do better than that, of course, if it goes well. If I were you, I’d take a week to get two or three columns done you can show me; and we’d start printing you, say, in two weeks. There’s a desk at the office if you want to use it; or, if you’d feel freer, more independent not coming down, it’s all right with me.”
“I’ll try working in my own place, Mr. Carver.”
“Just as you say, Jim.” Their eyes met. Mr. Carver waited for approval. His smile was gentle and wistful; his eyelids red from the smoke in the room. But McAlpine felt only a grim satisfaction. The expected elation was absent. But it would come, it would surely come when his head cleared; he could hardly follow the flow of Mr. Carver’s relaxed, philosophical conversation: “… the editorial page… rational persuasion… I’m not a belligerent fellow… the method of old Plato. Life… life, a long series of crushing losses, the impermanence of everything beautiful and dear to us… the compact we enter into to protect our way of living… the economic and aesthetic barbarians always at the gates trying to hasten the end of things…” It got all mixed up for McAlpine until Mr. Carver said, “What do you say, Jim?”
“I say— I say Plato would like it, sir.”
“We should have a drink to Plato, Jim. You and me and Plato here in Montreal!”
From the hall voices were calling: “A lovely party – Remember me to the Judge, Angela – I’ll see you at our place, Angela – Good night, my dear—” Angela was shaking hands with one of her guests, and this guest was that tall, thin, bald Professor Fielding whom McAlpine had planned to get in touch with. He was twisting a white scarf around his scrawny throat, the light gleaming on his bald head. No, no, I should not see Fielding now, McAlpine thought. It no longer matters what he would say about Peggy. Not now. Not anymore. And he turned to Mr. Carver, wanting to feel himself held there, and yet he twisted around again; he had to turn, though crying out within himself, Don’t be a fool! He smiled thinly at Mr. Carver, wishing he might take him by the arm and walk him far away. “Why, there’s old Fielding,” he heard himself say in surprise. “I’ve been trying to get hold of him. Excuse me just a minute, Mr. Carver.” And he headed for the hall.
“Fielding! Fielding, old man,” he cried.
&nbs
p; “Why, hello there, McAlpine.”
“Have you been here all evening, Fielding? Where were you?”
“Sitting in the corner of the drawing room. I didn’t see you either.”
“You see what a bad hostess I am,” Angela said, laughing, and she turned to speak to someone else who was leaving.
As he shook hands warmly, McAlpine tried to find something to say about Peggy Sanderson that would sound easy and natural. “An odd thing, Fielding,” he said. “I was talking about you only the other day. Ran into one of your former students with a friend of mine. A little girl, rather pretty, too. What was her name now?” he said, alarmed by the sudden pounding of his heart. “Singleton. Yes, that’s it. No, no, wait a minute. Sanderson.”
“Singleton – Sanderson,” Fielding repeated, frowning.
“Sanderson, that’s it. About four years ago.”
“Is that so? Wait. No, I don’t seem to remember her. What does she look like?”
“Small and fair and delicate. An air of innocence. Like a little flower girl at a wedding. If you know what I mean.”
“H’m. Let me see. Ah, yes, yes, I do remember her now. Yes.”
“Strange how it takes a while to remember even the best of former students,” McAlpine said helpfully.
“Now that I remember her, she wasn’t much of a student. Mediocre. Definitely.”
“Then she – well, she didn’t make much of an impression?”
“No impression at all,” the professor said with a shrug. “Just one of those vague unimpressive featherbrained little girls that drift through a class and are never remembered.”
“Ah, I see.” McAlpine’s expression was incredulous.
Angela, who had only half heard, waited till Fielding had gone and then turned to say, “Was it Peggy Sanderson you were asking about, Mr. McAlpine? Is she a friend of yours?”
The glint in her eyes shocked him. The name Peggy Sanderson had aroused in her a personal resentment. Yet she was too tolerant to be disturbed by a woman merely having sympathy for Negroes. It must be something more.
“No. Not Sanderson. The name was Singleton. Betty Singleton,” he said, for he knew that Angela, if she had an antipathy for the girl, would gossip with Catherine.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Excuse me.” She relaxed and smiled. “Come on,” she said, taking his arm. “I insist you have one more drink. Just one for the road.”
But his denial of Peggy had left him stricken with remorse. “I’ll be with you in a minute, Mrs. Murdock,” he said. And he turned and walked swiftly up the stairs to the big blue tiled bathroom and locked himself in and leaned heavily against the door.
The tiled room was like a cell. He stood there trying to understand why he felt so ashamed of himself and so insignificant, and why he felt he had lost all his integrity. It wasn’t only that he had denied Peggy; but with the denial he had yielded up his respect for his own insight which had always been his greatest strength. Someone came up the stairs, tried the door, and delicately hurried away. While he listened to the retreating foot-steps he wondered if, in spite of himself, his faith in what he believed Peggy to be had really wavered. For hadn’t she been there all evening to haunt him? Hadn’t she followed him up the steps like a wraith from the white winter city to worry him when he wanted to feel gay and successful, to arouse in him that peculiar anxiety which had really been guilt? For last night and all day and all evening he had tried to abandon his faith in her. Yet he hadn’t been able to do it, either last night or here at the party: all evening he had been wanting to watch over her and to be always with her. To be always with her…
In the bright, immaculate, tiled bathroom he whispered, “Where are you tonight, Peggy? Go home, please go home. Go back to your room and be there by yourself tonight, Peggy. I’ll see you in the morning, and we’ll go our own way together.” He cried it out in his heart because he understood at last that he loved her.
When he went downstairs where Catherine waited, she suggested they walk home. She had been talking to her father and felt happy for Jim, and she wanted to prolong the glow of success for both of them. The wind had dropped, and it was easy going down the steps. “But the best part of the evening really was when we were here on these steps,” she said. “The part I’ll remember, Jim.”
“Yes.” He longed to find words that wouldn’t hurt her and yet would correct the wrong impression he had given her. “It’s odd how you can suddenly realize how important a friendship has become.”
“Yes. Oh, it is, it is,” she agreed, waiting anxiously.
“I’d count on your friendship, Catherine,” he began awkwardly, “no matter what was happening to me.”
“Yes, I think you could count on me,” she said faintly, frightened by his apologetic tone. “You could, Jim.”
“Comrades, always good comrades, eh?”
“Oh,” she said, hiding her pain. “I’m the good comrade, the best in Montreal, in fact. Your very good comrade.”
“In our own way we’ll always feel important to each other,” he went on wretchedly. But she knew what he meant; she knew he was implying she had got a wrong impression. Yet she chose to tell herself that he was still shy and afraid of himself with her, and that it need not be so.
She understands, he thought. If his job depended on his relationship with her, it had no dignity. He had made his own decision; he knew now with whom he belonged. He could hardly conceal his vast relief. At last he felt elation.
FIFTEEN
Her door was open and he went in. He had been there earlier in the afternoon, when Mrs. Agnew had told him Peggy was on the day shift. While he waited he paced up and down making eloquent speeches to her. Pausing, he listened; he went to the window and watched the lighted street. He sat down slowly on the bed, his thoughts racing wildly.
Then the street door opened and he heard broken steps in the hall and voices low and faltering. As he stood up, apprehensive, the door burst open; there was a whiff of the cheap factory perfume, and Peggy lurched in with Walter Malone, the big grey-haired editorial writer, just behind, his big hand jerking at the bandanna handkerchief on her head. Her white stricken face frightened him. Malone’s grey face, ugly and contorted, loomed up behind her. They both saw him.
“What is this?” he said. Malone’s mouth gaped open and the bandanna handkerchief fluttered from his fingers. Peggy stood there, too surprised to move toward him. And Malone, with time to control himself, grinned, the vicious hardness still in his eyes. “I see the professor gets around,” he sneered. “How should I know you had moved in?” As he turned to go McAlpine said, “Take your time,” and took a step after him.
“No, let him go, Jim,” Peggy whispered. She sat down on the bed and tried to smile.
Malone’s angry footsteps receded down the hall and Jim closed the door.
“What happened? What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Where did you come from, Jim?”
“I’ve been waiting here. What went on with Malone?”
“It’s all right,” she said. “It’s nothing.” But her nerves were tightened up and she couldn’t sit still; and as she stood up and walked around, her arms folded, she looked at him again and again. Finally she burst out, “Oh, the smug complacent fool! That phoney understanding. That stupid, stupid vanity. I feel dirty all over. His wretched arrogance! Big-hearted enough to come my way, and not mind! And not mind, do you see, Jim?”
“You haven’t told me what happened,” he said soothingly. “Take it easy, Peggy.”
“You’re right. Why should I let that embittered failure frighten me? Why should I be surprised at anything he does?” She sat down and tried to relax and took the cigarette he offered her. She rubbed her left shoulder. In a few minutes she was calmer. “I was coming home from work with Willie Foy, the shipper. Remember him? The boy who taught me how to work the crimping machine? Only eighteen and he wants me to go out with him. It was fun tramping through the snow with him.” Her tone changed as she remembered, an
d she smiled.
“Yes, I remember Willie,” he said, marvelling that her recollection of the boy could free her so quickly from her anger.
“Willie wanted me to go to a dance with him and we were kidding each other,” she said. “The cold air, you know, heightens the smell of the cheap perfume that’s all over us, and I said we were like two winter flowers, and he was saying I wouldn’t know him when he took a bath and put on his new drapes. This was on Dorchester Street. Malone must have been standing there by the restaurant. I didn’t see him till he stopped us. It was easy for him to scare Willie away. I mean he overawed him with his grey hair and his expensive overcoat, and then he took me by the arm to walk me the rest of the way.”
Her changing face made him want to put his arms around her. The break in her calmness had brought her wonderfully close to him. “I sort of knew what was coming,” she said. “He was kidding me about working in the factory, but with that awful sleazy understanding of his. I’d stay there two weeks, he said. “Then a new experience, always the new experience. The charm of novelty. He had known women like me in France!
Throwing that stupid tolerance of his around me like a big moth-eaten coat. France! France! Ah, the life he had led in France! In France a woman could have Negro lovers. Anything for a kick! And he was about the only man in Montreal who could understand and be sympathetic with my little sophistications. I wasn’t arguing with him. What do I care about his stupid sympathies? I wanted to get home and get rid of him. Well, he insisted on coming in, and in the hall, then – Well,” she went on unevenly, “he tried to kiss me and I guess he saw I hated it, and then – then it happened.”
“What happened?”
“Just – just what I saw in him.”
Her eyes were stricken again, and McAlpine, waiting, was sure what he had dreaded had touched her at last. “Maybe I pushed him away,” she went on shakily. “It’s dark in the hall with only that small light. He had pulled me against him. My face was against his coat. ‘You go for those jigs,’ he said. ‘They can touch you, but when I try and touch you— Am I such scum?’ It was the way his head shot back in the light, and the glazed sparkle in his eyes, sort of crazy white and wild, crazy with humiliation as if – as if I had left him nothing, nothing in the world to be superior to, and he was like a savage, and he raised his hand to – to – well, to beat something out of me, to beat me until I was dirtier than he was and he could feel big and proud again. Do you see?”
The Loved and the Lost Page 13
