The ride up Yonge Street was short, there was hardly any traffic, and it was a straight road ahead. The cemetery was almost at the city limits, in the new district, with many fine houses on one side of the street and old frame houses on the other. As soon as they got out of the cabs John walked ahead to stand beside Lillian, afraid she would be hurt too much by Isabelle’s sorrow.
They buried Fred Thompson among the newer graves extending down the slope of the hill, away from the older plots in the cemetery with pretentious tombstones and the fine vaults on the flatland at the top. The grass was trimmed and watered on the flatland, but down the hill they had to keep clearing the brush and cutting the weeds, for the tall grass extended right up to the plot where they buried Fred Thompson beside his father. At the head of the plot was a square slab of granite with a stone cross, planted in the top surface. In the last days of September, on the damp, cold day with a few drops of rain falling, the wind blew the last leaves off the trees on the hill, scattering them over the neatly trimmed lawns of the plots. The leaves blew all over the slope and the drier leaves were carried farther away over the flatland and against the vaults.
The priest read the burial service over the empty grave. Fresh earth, clay on top of light-colored sand, was back a way from the pit and a few lumps of clay dislodged by drops of rain fell in quietly and a sudden gust of wind tossed leaves against the earth. The coffin was on the straps, and rollers were letting it down slowly. Mrs. Thompson began to cry quietly and Isabelle put her arm around her shoulder. John, leaning forward intently as they lowered the coffin, was suddenly glad it was disappearing from sight, and anxious for it to be lowered more rapidly and the earth piled in on top. The priest’s voice was sounding the words slowly and solemnly and unhurriedly, an old priest with long thin strands of hair who had buried many men in this cemetery. John wanted the earth piled in and the sod pounded over, ending it so he would have no more uneasy thoughts, and had a sudden feeling that if the earth would slide in rapidly at that moment he would never have to think of Fred Thompson again.
The priest had come to the part in his prayers where he reached down with a small trowel and tossed a little earth on the coffin. The earth fell on the casket with a sudden hollow sound, absolutely unexpected and startling, and falling on the casket it reminded John of lumps of earth falling from the roof in the dark cave Fred and he had made up in the bush when they were kids, and after school lumps of earth from the imperfect roof fell into the damp cave, sometimes in their faces and down their necks, while they sat there preferring the mystery of the chilly darkness to the sunlight outside shining through the leaves of the trees. And Isabelle, too, heard the sound, and John realized that all her feelings had been mixed up in the last month, for now she was crying and shivering and leaning weakly on Lillian simply because her brother was dead. All social thoughts that might have embittered her from the manner of his death were absolutely unimportant now, and John, liking her more at the moment, when there was not bitterness in it for her and just the natural sorrow, than he had liked her at any time the last three months, moved closer, wanting to put his arm around her and be one with her in her affection and her sorrow. But he did not touch her at all. Even at that moment, looking at Lillian, he knew he could not touch Isabelle, whom he had loved in the old days, in front of her without feeling embarrassed.
The wide-hipped aunt, enormous in an overcoat, took hold of Isabelle’s hand, patting and rubbing it as though expecting the girl to faint. Isabelle withdrew her hand abruptly. “Please, don’t,” she said. All her social feelings were restored when the aunt touched her, knowing how she felt about Fred. The big woman was annoyed because Isabelle, starting to cry, was simply behaving properly, and deserving to be comforted.
“Now, Isabelle,” the aunt said.
“Please, Mrs. Harcourt, don’t touch me.”
The aunt looked at John and Ed Henley, shaking her head and closing her eyes several times.
Walking up from the slope to the automobiles at the cemetery gate, Isabelle said to John: “You won’t mind if Lillian comes home and has dinner with us, John?”
“Not at all.”
“Will you come over afterward?”
“At any time. About eight o’clock.”
“Would you like to come home, too?”
“No, I’d rather not, Isabelle. I’ll come later.”
On the way back to the city John and the two neighbors and Ed Henley were in the cab. The nervous one no longer found it necessary to look at his watch, and seemed quite satisfied and happy again. The tall man smiled, showing all the long, white teeth, and said: “Well, that’s done.”
“We did all we could, anyway,” the short one said.
“We simply had to do it.” They went on talking about the bad time Isabelle and her mother would have, living in the city.
Ed Henley tried to interest John in stories about Fred, talking rather awkwardly, uncertain whether he was being appreciated. His winged collar had begun to bother him and he kept putting a forefinger down between his neck and the collar buttons.
“I’m not much used to these collars,” he said apologetically.
“They are a bother,” John said.
“Just the same I think I’ll go down to St. Agnes Club with it on tonight and give the boys a treat.”
“What club is that?”
“It’s a boxing club. I work out there a couple of times a week. You ought to come out.”
“Oh, you’re a fighter, eh?”
“Just an amateur, but I’m going in the city tournaments next month. That’s where I met Fred, out at the club. He wasn’t half bad with the gloves.” The man’s hands did not bother him now and he went on talking about his weight the rest of the way down the street, asking each one of the neighbors what he weighed and offering to guess John’s weight. “The only thing the matter with me is that my legs are built like a light heavyweight and I’m only tall enough for the middleweight,” he said. The two neighbors became very interested in him and felt the muscles on his arms.
John, turning up his coat collar, got out of the cab at Bloor Street, in the uptown section of the city, in the drizzling rain. It was not quite noontime, and in the armchair lunch, having a cup of coffee, he decided not to go to work in the afternoon. Sipping hot coffee out of the thick, white mug he carried on, in his own mind, the conversation with Ed Henley, suddenly angry that Isabelle should have any kind of intimacy with such a fellow. First he was calmly curious about the nature of such an intimacy, then resentfully angry to think of it at all.
Chapter Four
On the way over to the Thompson house, walking briskly, his head was down and both hands were in his pockets. It was bothering him that Lillian should have gone home with Isabelle, so eager to go on sharing all her feelings, and worrying him because he was in love with Lillian and all the last few months they had had few good times together because they always had to go on thinking of these other people when they ought to be having intensely happy moments. Such thoughts as these were not all at once in his head as he walked east, swinging his left leg so the toe turned in, but it became a strong feeling inside him, passing an automobile parked at the curb and seeing a fellow and a girl huddled together in the back seat, their arms around each other. It was not even dark, just a steady twilight, and lights were not lit on the street. Sidewalks had dried after the noon rain but the trunks and branches of trees, almost stripped of leaves now, were darkly damp, the bark holding the moisture. Ashamed of such thoughts about Lillian and Isabelle, he smiled, for it was only natural that Lillian should be glad to be in the company of Isabelle when it was an unhappy time for her, but even walking a little faster he couldn’t get rid of the steady, strong feeling. Twice he was ready to speak angrily to Isabelle as soon as he saw her but each time was ashamed of the notion.
He went into the house without knocking because he was such an old friend of the Thompsons. Lillian and Isabelle were walking together on the back veranda, their
voices coming to him, and he tapped on the window.
When they were sitting down together Isabelle said: “We were just talking about you.”
“I was thinking of both of you coming along the street.”
“Mother is lying down. I don’t know whether or not she’s sleeping.”
“Is she feeling all right?”
“I haven’t known for a long time how she has felt about it all.”
Lillian had told Isabelle that John was leaving the department store to devote all his time to singing.
“I daresay you didn’t like the notion of working in the store,” Isabelle said suddenly.
“That’s it.”
“It’s beneath you.”
“Not exactly.”
“That’s it. It is beneath you. A man ought to get away from the things that are beneath him.”
Lillian said casually: “I’m glad he’s quitting there. I want him to, as long as he can get along without it.”
“Then you both simply feel the same way.”
Isabelle asked Lillian to go in and see if Mrs. Thompson was resting. John and Isabelle sat alone on the back porch beside each other in the rocking chairs, hardly moving, watching lights come on in the back windows of houses on the other side of the block. The lights shone palely in the windows because it was hardly dark. The air was warmer than it had been in the afternoon, a warm, light breeze blowing from the east.
“Practically all the flowers are gone now,” Isabelle said.
Stems of flowers were still standing in the garden earth: withered flowers with broken stems; a few asters and zinnias still in bloom but fading in the daytime sun; tall stalks of flowers lying dry and dead against the fence. The leaves were still thick on the grapevine.
“I hate to see the last of them go,” she said. “I worked with them all summer.”
“They were very beautiful in the warm summer months.”
Watching her carefully, waiting for her to say something that would arouse him sooner or later, he began to rock rapidly, steadily, in the chair, catching a glimpse of the side of her face at the same angle every time. Since she had become so much thinner her nose now was almost too large for her face, and her forehead and chin were too prominent. Wetting her lips, she continued looking toward the garden, her bright eyes hardly wavering, because she was not thinking of the garden. She had on a black crepe dress, a collar high on her neck. The dress was a little too large, there was not movement under it, the cloth folds were unnaturally still.
“You ought to take care of yourself from now on,” he said rather formally.
“I suppose so. I’m not much to look at now.”
“You’ll soon be looking lovely again.”
“Now that we’ve started talking, what do you think I ought to do from now on?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean how am I going to live? Who am I going to love? Who am I going to be happy with?”
“You oughtn’t to go on looking at it in that way, Isabelle.”
“Of course not, John. But I can’t have many friends.”
“You can. You have.”
“You and Lillian, but who else now?”
She spoke casually and coolly, hurting herself with her own words and hurting John, too, who glared at her suddenly, uttering words she could not hear. He wanted to shake her for her silly determination to hurt him with the words about her brother.
“Look here,” he said impulsively, “I was fond of Fred, too. Stop talking about it. What is there to be gained by having all our old thoughts again? Why do you have to torture yourself and hurt me, too? I won’t have it, do you hear, Isabelle? I’ll not have another word of it. I won’t sit here if you go on talking about it. I’ll go around the alleyway there and not come back for a long time.”
“Sit down, John.”
“I’m sorry, Isabelle. I ought not to talk like that to you tonight.”
“I know, John. It’s got into your mind something like the way it’s got into mine.”
“Only differently.”
“Yes. But I was simply asking you what I ought to do.”
“Find some kind of work. Something to take up your time.”
“When I quit work in the office I knew I could never go back and have the people staring at me. Where else could I go where the same thing wouldn’t happen? I suppose I ought to get married.”
“It would be better for everybody.”
“But who around here even likes to have us for neighbors now? They point at the house when they pass. They’re sorry for Mother and me and would no doubt do things for us. The men around here, who’ve looked at me, look at me as though I ought to be an easy mark from now on. That’s why I didn’t think you and I ought to get married.”
“Maybe we wouldn’t have, anyway.”
“Maybe we wouldn’t. But you see what your feeling would have been if we had gone on? We would have had the same feeling and have had to stay on the outside of things.”
“Listen, Isabelle, you have your friends. You know Lillian and I both are with you. I love Lillian and we’ll get married and that’ll help you, too.”
“You’ll get married soon?”
“We can’t get married for a couple of years, because I want to go away and have my voice trained.”
“That will be lovely, but you shouldn’t bother with me if you want to get on in this city. People will hold it against you.”
“Nonsense. Stop talking about it.”
“But whom do you think I ought to marry?”
“Please let’s not talk about it at all.”
“You will do very well with your singing. The best churches in the city will have you as soloist and for concert work. Lillian will be your accompanist. Won’t it be lovely?”
“I hope so.”
“Lillian is rather sweet, but if she begins to get on at all, she’ll resent it if people talk to her about me.”
“You should be having some good thoughts about Lillian.”
“I do. At nighttime when often I couldn’t go to sleep and felt I had to think of something beautiful I thought of the way it was with you and Lillian.”
He said angrily: “Sit here if you want to, I’m going in.” Though he got up quickly she held his arm, and when he tugged twice, held it tightly, so he sat down slowly. “I’m not trying to be nasty,” she said quietly, her mouth remaining open a little, as though she were puzzled by her own thoughts. Refusing to look directly at her at all, he rocked vigorously in the chair.
“The trouble with you is that you think you have to be hard about it,” he said.
“I know.”
“You don’t have to be hard about it.”
“I’m not trying to be hard.”
“In your own thoughts you are keeping too much in the shadows. It’s over now, I tell you . . . .”
“It’s never over.”
“It’s over now, and you in your own thoughts are dodging in and out of the shadowy places and all the time it keeps getting darker in your own heart. And soon there’s no relief. Isabelle, dear Isabelle, let the hours and the days go slowly and easily. Sometimes I can feel you jeering at me and rebuffing me, just out of your own hardness. Do you remember when I used to say you were so sweetly soft in your own nature you were far too kind to other people? My God, soon you must start smiling and then laugh out loud.”
“Give me time. I will.”
“It’s too soon now, yes, but you must, I tell you.”
“But it’s so hard to laugh out loud when someone hearing you might be startled, then indignant. If only I could have it as it was a year ago. If I could just have all over again for a little while, the same friends and the same pleasures and never grow any older. But I have you. I must never let you go.”
“No need of it, dear.”
She seemed suddenly feverish, for her shoulders were trembling, though she was holding herself tightly, and he wished she would suddenly start to cry. There was nothin
g for him to say. His chair rocked steadily on the veranda. It was dark now in the garden and he could hardly see the stems of the few flowers, and sniffing eagerly he caught faintly the scent of the rose bush with the three small blooms. His feeling of resentment was becoming stronger, as he moved restlessly, now definitely angry with Isabelle, and ready to shake her if she held on to him with her words again. He said suddenly:
“The three roses are rather late, aren’t they?”
“Every year they come just at about this time.”
“I can just faintly get the odor.”
“They haven’t much odor at this time of year.”
“Are you thinking of cutting them?”
“No, we leave them on the bush every year till the petals fall.”
It was suddenly lighter than it had been before, thick clouds had opened and a strong clear moon shone in a dark sky, the moon riding in the dark blotch and the light clouds all around it. The moonlight shone on the garage roofs in yards, glinting on tin roofs and shining on the brick chimneys and throwing the long shadow on the houses. On the brick wall of the house three doors away were mauve shades and light tans and a small peach tree in the backyard had its branches outlined on this wall.
“Ed Henley is coming around. He ought to be here soon,” she said.
“Why do you have him around, Isabelle?”
It's Never Over Page 4
