When Bouchard returned, McAlpine scowled at him. “You don’t have to leave me alone. Understand?”
“Excuse me,” Bouchard said gently as he sat down. “I was merely doing some phoning. You will understand I wanted to check with your hotel. Abut the hour of your return.”
“I’ve told you it’s irrelevant.”
“You say it is your fault. I still would like to know the one who actually killed her. Unless you know. No? One of her Negro friends?”
“Who it was is – is,” McAlpine began, his voice breaking, “also unimportant.”
“I am not asking now for a statement, understand, Mr. McAlpine. Maybe you would like to tell me how you were involved.”
“How I was involved? That’s very funny. Why, I loved her. I loved her and wanted her to be sure of herself.”
“I want to know how you were involved in her death.”
“I don’t know what you’d call it,” he said so softly he could hardly be heard, for he had put his hands over his face.
Bouchard was stirred by his protesting worried tone; it was interesting. He eyed him shrewdly, helping himself to some coffee. Then he leaned forward, bright-eyed, ready to offer his understanding of those hidden impulses that had intellectual interest for him. He knew he had been right in recognizing in McAlpine an intellectual equal who could quicken his curiosity.
“You say you loved her,” he said sympathetically. “Well, it is understandable. A pretty girl. But that daughter of Mr. Carver is also handsome. Now, this Sanderson girl, they say, led a loose life, she had peculiar tastes. She hung out in strange places. You are a man of refinement and education. A professor. I must know why you went after her. Something about her piqued your curiosity, eh? Is it not so? Something elusive, strange, perhaps a discontent in your own life – boredom.” He became absorbed himself and pleased with his own insight. “Around St. Antoine,” he went on while McAlpine stared at him, drugged by the flow of words, “when the white and the black get mixed up, there is a field of many strange, perverted tastes for a white girl to develop. Of course you were interested. Something outside your own experience, eh? I myself understand that craving for novelty. You know the works of André Gide?”
“Sure. Sure.”
“Gide. The French novelist. No?” he asked as McAlpine, straightening up, glared at him. “No?”
“All this backwoods talk about Gide,” McAlpine jeered at him brutally. “It’s all talk. I don’t think anybody around here reads Gide.”
“But just the same—”
“Just the same – what?”
“I say Gide has a fine style.”
“Oh, my God, we all have a fine style! Where am I?” McAlpine looked around, then stared blankly at Bouchard, the colour draining from his stricken face. He made a desolate gesture, dropped his head on his arms, and began to weep.
It was very embarrassing for Bouchard, whose eyes had been glittering with intellectual sympathy. He didn’t like it. It was primitive to weep. He got up and walked around the end of the table.
“All right. All right,” he said roughly. He hadn’t cried publicly himself since he was a small boy. “Come on now.” But McAlpine ignored him.
The solid stenographer came in, leading the way for Catherine. “Have some dignity,” Bouchard whispered, and now he was truly annoyed.
“I’m sorry. Excuse me,” McAlpine said.
His reddened eyes and the misery in his face shocked Catherine; she backed against the wall and wounded Bouchard by looking at him reproachfully.
“Ah, madame,” he said, bowing. “Very good of you to get here. Do sit down. Here at the table. Thank you,” he added as she approached the table.
“Mr. McAlpine,” he said genially, “I did some phoning – really for you. That Mrs. Agnew helped you anyway with her story about the man she heard after you left. I have phoned your hotel, and the night clerk remembers you coming in. He looked at the clock. It was a late hour for a man to be out without a hat or coat. The time checks right – for you…” Then he turned to Catherine. “But Mr. McAlpine admits he was involved, and you, madame, think so, too.”
“I don’t know,” she said nervously. “I only said—”
“I was involved,” McAlpine said. “Catherine, you have a right to know how I was involved.”
“If you didn’t do it – I mean—” She was so troubled she couldn’t speak for a moment. “If – if you had called me – if only you had explained—”
“Wait,” he pleaded.
“Let him talk,” Bouchard said impatiently. “I want to know how long he has been mixed up with this girl.”
“Ever since I came here,” McAlpine said.
“Oh, no, Jim!” Catherine whispered.
“That’s the truth,” he insisted. Trying to keep his voice steady, he concentrated intently on one table leg. Their presence didn’t embarrass him. He only hoped they would understand his anguished protest. He wanted to get it all straight for them.
He began with his first meeting with Peggy and the growth of his curiosity, how she had troubled him, and the growth of his own insight into her nature and the growth of his faith in his insight. All he wanted was that she should be herself. He loved her. Yet everyone he knew wanted to destroy her. They had resented her. He knew their resentment meant trouble, and he could feel it coming as you listen in the dark and hear someone creeping after you. His own faith, he said, couldn’t be broken by his friends, nor by the appearance of things, or the fact that she courted destruction. He had known that he was drawing her away from a life that did not become her, and he had waited patiently for her to realize she could love him.
Sometimes he faltered, forgetting they were listening to him, the words coming slowly. He would pause, searching his memory for an illuminating incident, then begin again. His voice choked as he spoke of the hours he had passed alone in her room dreaming of seeing her in other places, in other clothes, with other people; he spoke of the pleasure he had got watching her being affectionate and laughing. He looked up, wondering if Catherine understood his suffering. The compassion in her face gave him a melancholy eloquence.
She was fumbling in her purse for her handkerchief, because the story of his devotion had filled her with sad regret that she herself had never stirred him, and yet she understood with generosity. A feverish glow was in her eyes as she listened. He’s what I thought he was, she told herself. Loving and passionate and reckless and impulsive and faithful. No wonder I loved him. It could have been me. Over and over again she kept thinking painfully, it could have been me; and she waited, hearing the words she had always wanted to hear from him, hearing them about another, but glowing ardently as she identified herself with the other girl. When he described the trouble in the café and his struggle to be with the girl she could feel him struggling to be with herself, and when he told of rushing wildly up the street to get to the room, and of what had happened in the room, she was breathless with a strange, painful, yielding ardour, waiting for him to possess her.
“I could have stayed with her all night,” he said. “She was mine. There and then she was mine. But when I looked back on the way it had been – the others – all the others – I could not believe she wanted only me. She was alone, rejected by everybody. I happened to be there. She was feeling grateful. I wanted to be fair to her. I wanted to give her a chance to be sure. To make staying with her a part of that awful night – it wasn’t right, was it? She needed respect above all, didn’t she? Wasn’t I right in wanting to be fair to her?”
For an apprehensive, silent moment Catherine and Bouchard dwelt on that night and what it could have meant.
“And so you left her?” Bouchard asked.
“Until the morning. Only till the morning when she could feel free, understand,” he said, longing for absolution from the silence of their profound disappointment, and from the look in Catherine’s eyes. But Catherine stood up slowly. “I see,” she said. In her thoughts she was left in the girl’s roo
m, left there without that gesture of reckless, ruthless devotion she could understand and forgive because it would be worthy of him. And she stared at him resentfully. “Catherine,” he said, coming around the table toward her apologetically, “I know I was unfair to you.”
“What?” she asked, all her disappointment showing in her face. “Unfair?” She was confused by what had happened to her and what hadn’t happened, and what she had wanted and what she hadn’t wanted.
“I know how you must have felt.” Longing to make a friendly gesture, he took her by the arm.
“Oh, don’t touch me now,” she said fiercely, and she slapped him across the face.
Bewildered, he backed against the table. His hand went up to his face. Catherine waited tensely, expecting Bouchard to interfere with her. She tried to smile disdainfully, but she was shaken by her own violence and its meaning, and what it might have revealed of her.
“Do you need me anymore, Mr. Bouchard?” she asked nervously.
“No, madame. Not anymore.”
“Thank you,” she said in her clipped cool tone, and she walked swiftly to the door.
He still felt the blow on his face, but it was the expression he had seen in her eyes that tore at his heart; and he wanted to cry out.
“Why did she slap me? Why?”
“Women have odd impulsive resentments,” Bouchard said philosophically. “I don’t think you quite lived up to her expectations.”
TWENTY-NINE
Slumped in the chair, his face burning, he remained silent for so long that Bouchard in his embarrassment offered him a cigarette, which he took and put in his mouth. His movements were slow and deliberate. He lit Bouchard’s cigarette for him and then his own. But his train of thought was not broken by these movements.
“Well, who do you think did it?” Bouchard asked abruptly.
“I don’t know.”
“No one in your mind?”
“No.” McAlpine had sunk into lethargy. He wasn’t interested.
It irritated Bouchard. “How does Wolgast come into it?” he asked, trying again.
“I don’t think he does.”
“I heard what you said to your friend in the Chalet. He asked you what it was about when I came in. You said it was about Wolgast and a horse.”
“Oh, that!” McAlpine said in a dull tone. “It was a general ironic remark.”
“Wolgast has an alibi anyway.”
“Everybody has an alibi.”
“Maybe we’ll never find out who did it, Mr. McAlpine. You know why?” Bouchard asked, insisting on getting his attention. “What if we all did it? The human condition. That has truth, don’t you think?” When he didn’t answer, Bouchard was wounded and wanted to jolt him. “Well, at least you’ll never know whether the girl was a slut or an innocent, will you?” Then he was embarrassed by the desolation in McAlpine’s eyes. “But in the way she died, resisting someone who thought she was a slut… Well, there you are. I think she really loved you,” he said blandly.
“Can I go now?”
“Indeed, yes,” Bouchard said. “I know you’ll be anxious to help if I need you.” He got McAlpine’s coat for him. But McAlpine lay inertly in the chair, his neck resting on the back, one leg curled under the chair, the other sprawled out stiffly. “I wouldn’t have any regrets if I were you, Mr. McAlpine,” Bouchard said, wanting to be friendly, for the discovery of a little human weakness in a cultivated man was always a consolation to him.
McAlpine didn’t answer. Bouchard waited, watching him, then smiled, believing he understood why he didn’t get up and march out: he couldn’t bear to go out; he didn’t want to be back among his friends who might learn his story and then look at him as that girl had done, wanting to scratch out his eyes. The darkness, the dizzying, stupefying darkness after the alcohol and the exhaustion was all he wanted. His breathing grew heavier. He was asleep. Bouchard went to shake him, then pitied him and put the coat on the table and went out.
When McAlpine woke up, his neck aching, his legs cramped, he couldn’t remember where he was. Then he stood up and put on his coat. In the corridor he hesitated, as if expecting to be called back or find the way barred. No one spoke to him. Outside, in the thin, cold dawn light, he shivered and turned up the collar of his coat. The sky was leaden, the hard lines of the buildings were beginning to emerge out of the night shadows. It was between the dark and the dawn. The grey lime-stone buildings in that light looked cold and bleak. A few lights still shone in office windows where the charladies scrubbed the floors. Water trickled along the gutters. All night the snow had been melting. Parts of the city were still shadowed by the heavy mountain darkness against the sky.
He wanted to walk for hours until he could understand that what had happened was not a stupid irrational mockery of his love. He had to know truly, and no matter how it lacerated his heart, what had prompted him to draw back in that fatal moment in her room instead of abandoning himself impulsively and going headlong with her and never leaving her no matter what she was. Oh, what had compelled him to put her beyond him? Always the high dark hedge, the black barrier. The lights and the laughter and the singing on the other side of the hedge. He had to figure it out.
It was getting a little lighter; the elephant grey of the lime-stone buildings dissolved in shafts of light. Trucks began to rumble down the streets. He was cutting down through the warehouse district, heading for Bleury. Pale lights in a few office windows were turned out. The doors of buildings opened and charwomen came out. In the dawn silence voices sounded loud and important. Noises came from the harbour, which hadn’t been touched yet by the sunlight. A yawping ship’s whistle was answered by a foghorn, like a moan, from another ship. But the noises were isolated; the small trickling sound of running water from the melting snow was still a night sound made in the morning.
Suddenly McAlpine thought, “Bouchard was right. It’s the human condition. Why did I make that remark about Wolgast?” Wolgast was not the only one who had a grudge against Peggy. All the best people could get behind Wolgast on his proud white whose. Not the magic horse of his childhood though! That was gone. In his own way, Wolgast now was a big success. He had got established. He had his pride.
McAlpine slowed down, for he didn’t want the sound of his own footfalls to protect and spare him from another painful glimpse of himself in that room last night with Peggy. “Oh, no, no!” he whispered. Yet he had made the remark about Wolgast. Even if he had been a little drunk, being there with Wolgast he must have thought, When I knew I had her and could keep her, maybe I remembered that I, too, had come to Montreal to ride a white horse. Maybe that was why I was always trying to change her. That was the sin. I couldn’t accept her as she was.
In the sky over the mountain a faint pink streak appeared. The rim of trees was a dark fringe against the pink light. On the mountain slopes the great homes and massive apartments were still in the grey shadow. As sunlight to the east glinted on the canal and touched church spires and towers, the city began to stir with a faint low hum. Monastery bells chimed clearly. The streetcars rattled along St. Catherine, a train pulled into the Windsor Station; all the new morning noises blended into a low rumble, getting louder until the night sound of the trickling water in the gutters was lost in the sounds of the morning.
As the sun touched the top of the mountain and suddenly brightened the snow, McAlpine stopped, watching it intently. He had a swift wild fancy: the streets on the slopes of the mountain were echoing to the pounding of horses’ hoofs. All the proud men on their white horses came storming down the slope of the mountain in a ruthless cavalry charge, the white horses whirling and snorting in the snow. And Peggy was on foot in the snow. She didn’t own a white horse. She didn’t want to. She didn’t care. And he was beside her; but he drew back out of the way of the terrifying hoofs and they rode over her. And now he was left alone on the street, and the young women who knew his story were staring at him sorrowfully, all saying the same thing.
Then
he heard a voice saying, “What do you care what they say?” It was her voice, and he whispered, “Oh, Peggy, Peggy, wherever you are, be always with me.” And as he uttered this whispered cry he reached out desperately to bind her to him. Stopping, he watched the morning light brightening the snow on the slopes until the whole rich mountain glistened. His shoulders were hunched a little, his collar turned up, his face raised, as he regarded the sloping city with fierce defiance. Yes, what they say is unimportant, forever unimportant to me, he thought. I know what happened, Peggy. I know why you’re gone. In a moment of jealous doubt his faith in her had weakened, he had lost his view of her, and so she had vanished. She had vanished off the earth. And now he was alone.
Yet he would keep her with him. In some way he would keep her with him. Wondering where he was, he looked around for Bleury Street. He had a plan in mind, and everything quickened. He found Bleury and began to climb the long slope. He hurried along eagerly, believing he had found a way to hold on to Peggy forever.
He wanted to find the antique church she had taken him to that day they had walked in the thick falling snow. When he got to St. Patrick’s the tolling bell called the people to early mass. An old woman carrying a prayer book hurried by, and a gaunt bearded man holding a small boy by the hand. Prayer beads dangled from the boy’s overcoat pocket. While the St. Patrick’s bell clanged loud and close to him he looked up, alert. Soon the bells would ring in that little church nearby. He could get his bearings from the bells. Then he heard it, coming from the west and only a little way off, quick light chiming bells calling, softly calling, and he hurried in that direction; but the ringing faded away. He stopped and waited. Again he heard the light silver chiming. He followed where it beckoned, back to the east now and tantalizingly close; then it was gone. Another bell chimed from the mountain, monastery bells called from St. Catherine, and he wandered around confused, not knowing which way to turn, tormented by the soft calling bells…
The Loved and the Lost Page 25
