There Was a Time

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  This was one of the days that brought his dreams back to him vividly. Of all those who slept, inert, in shaded bedrooms, or drowsed in hammocks under back-yard trees, or rocked silently on verandahs, he alone was alive, restless, seeking. The city was his. He walked for two or three miles, reveling in the desertion under the hazy, smothering sun, encountering nothing but an occasional panting dog or a beer wagon slowly heaving along, the teamster asleep on his high seat. A shop-window or two glinted back at him dustily, but nothing stirred behind them.

  Now he was on a wide and stately avenue, clasped in trees, the lawns all level plush in the silvery, windless air. He saw low gray walls and terraced grounds, silk-shrouded windows and sun-bathed slate roofs, flower beds and distant gardens. Here, too, nothing moved.

  He paused at the gate of a stone wall about four feet high, and peered through it. He saw winding drives dark with warm trees, shrubbery, the gray wall of a far house, and the latter’s immense and shining windows. Nothing lived or moved in that spreading vision of calm majesty and silence. He clutched the gate and gave it a tentative shake. It opened. Without thinking, he stepped into the fragrant enchantment of the grounds, heard the faint crunch of gravel under his feet. He moved dreamily towards the house. On one side he saw arbors covered with vines, on the other side a wall of evergreen shrubbery. And now all the adjoining houses vanished, and he was alone in a garden of mystery and soft, shadowless light.

  He was only a young boy, and none too clean, his face was dirty, his hair uncombed, his shoes were scuffed. Yet he did not feel himself an intruder. It was right that he should be here; this was his home. He had found his way back; he belonged on this drive, walking towards the looming mansion at the end of it.

  Absorbed in his dreams and his pleasure, he did not see a little girl approach him from the direction of the house. It was not until she stood directly in front of him, staring at him with enormous dark eyes, that he became aware of her. She was a very pretty little girl, with a mass of black ringlets on her shoulders, smooth slender legs in red socks, with patent-leather slippers on her feet. She wore a bright pink dress, all ruffles, ribbons and edges of lace, and there was a pink bow high on the top of her curls.

  “Hello,” she said, gravely, gazing at him with expectation.

  He did not answer. He only stared at her. He had never seen anything half so beautiful, so sweet and entrancing. His hostility toward girls was much less than his hostility toward boys. Girls were gentler, not so brutal or vicious. But they had malice and slyness, and he was more afraid of these than he was afraid of brutality. One could cope with physical brutality with one’s fists; but there was no coping against malice and slyness, no defense against soft treachery and malignance. The little girl delighted him with her beauty, but he remembered that girls were cunning and mean. So he only stood and stared at her, ready for flight when her eyes would light up with the nasty expression with which he was familiar.

  But, to his surprise, she remained grave and expectant, and she seemed even pleased. “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Frank,” he answered, warily.

  “Mine’s Jessica,” she confided. Her eyes opened a little wider, as she waited for him to make the next move. But he merely rubbed the gravel under his foot, and looked at her. Her face was like a doll’s face, perfectly tinted, and she had a full coral mouth like a nasturtium. She regarded him eagerly.

  Then he said rustily: “You live here?”

  She shook her head while her ringlets bounced. “Oh, no, just my uncle. I live on Porter Avenue with my daddy. But it’s my birthday, and my uncle’s giving me a party. He bought me this dress. Isn’t it pretty?” and she spread out the pink ruffles until they were a rosy gauze about her little figure. “Are you coming to my party?”

  “I guess—not,” he stammered. “I wasn’t invited. Your uncle doesn’t know me.”

  She dropped the ruffles and regarded him with disappointment. Then she brightened. “Well, you can stay, anyway, though it isn’t until four o’clock.” She had a high sweet voice. She gazed at him with fond and complete acceptance. “I like you,” she announced. “I don’t like boys, much. But I like you. Do you fight?”

  “Only when I have to,” he said. “Then I fight hard. That’s because I’m English,” he added proudly, and now without the defiance he always felt when he was obliged to admit his race.

  She admired him with her eyes. She looked him up and down, and found all of him admirable. She gave a little skip. “I’ve got a kitten in the summerhouse,” she said. “I’m not going to let the others see it, but I’ll let you.”

  She turned and beckoned, ran on before him. He followed, watching her pretty little legs flashing behind her. She was a fairy, a rosy fairy, floating over the green grass, and he followed like one hypnotized. She led him along the side of the great gray house, and he saw the wall of it towering above him. And now he was in a garden, a garden of dreams, glowing with flowers, dotted here and there like a park, with vast willows and elms. There was a white summerhouse at the end of the garden, covered over with a green and scarlet blaze of climbing roses. Here was set white wicker furniture with red cushions. A kitten mewed in a little basket on a white table.

  Frank was tentative about the kitten and more than a little wary of it. He had never been permitted close contact with animals. Dogs, according to his mother, were likely to go “mad,” and cats were “dirty.” He watched little Jessica take up the white kitten in her arms and nuzzle its fur with her small nose. He stood and watched, fascinated, then stretched out a grubby and hesitating hand and patted the animal’s head.

  Jessica sat down and held the kitten on her knee, and Frank sat on the edge of a chair. He could not look away from the little girl. Each moment her face became lovelier to him, more enchanting, a face out of his dreams. He felt the strangest sense of familiarity. He watched the girl; she did not babble or twitter as other girls did, or squirm or giggle. She just sat quietly, stroking the kitten, and gazing at the young boy with her grave dark eyes. Her mouth opened on the very slightest and most thoughtful smile, and her expression was expectant.

  “You are somethin’ like my daddy,” she confided at last, as if puzzled.

  Frank laughed his rusty, hesitating laugh. “Oh, gosh, I’m not so old,” he said.

  But she frowned a little, still gazing at him, and the gravity became deeper in her eyes.

  “My daddy is a great—artist,” she said. “He plays beautiful, on the piano.”

  “My father used to play the fiddle,” boasted Frank.

  Jessica brightened. “Maybe he knows my daddy.” When Frank shook his head, she was disappointed. She looked down at the kitten, and even Frank could see that she had become saddened.

  The hot and hazy silence of the summer lay over the little summerhouse. Insects buzzed on the flowers outside. A wasp bumped in, then bumped out. A cloud of yellow butterflies blew by the door. The two children sat and looked at each other solemnly.

  “I wish you could stay for my party,” said Jessica at last. But he knew from her tone that she well understood why he could not. She sighed. “I like you,” she said, and now her voice was clear and strong. “I like you, Frank. I wish you’d never go away again. But I suppose you must.”

  He looked through the open door of the summerhouse at the wide, parklike grounds, and at the trees standing in their own gauzy shadows. “I’ll come back some day,” he said, softly. “Yes, I bet I will. And I won’t go away again.”

  He did not know why he felt so at ease with this little girl, why her presence did not disturb him, why she gave him so much consolation when she looked at him, and so much quiet joy. She did not seem like a child to him, but part of a lovely dream. It was as if he had always known her, and always would, as if he understood that some day he would come back to her. She sat so quietly, stroking her kitten, and just gazing at him.

  He said: “Do you like your party, and—everybody—that’s coming?”

&nbs
p; She shook her head. “No, but my Uncle Wentworth—he’s Daddy’s brother—says I don’t know how to play, or anything, and that I ought to know other girls, too, and maybe some boys. But Daddy doesn’t think so. Besides, I’d-rather be with Daddy, and listen to him play. Sometimes he goes away on long trips, and plays, and then we have some money. And then we don’t have,” she went on, frankly, “and we have to let Mrs. Marks go—she takes care of me when we have money—and then Daddy just waits and plays until he goes away again, and then he sends for Mrs. Marks, and she comes back.”

  “You must have a nice uncle,” said Frank, entranced.

  Jessica shook her head emphatically. “Oh, no, he’s terrible. He doesn’t like me or Daddy. But he hasn’t a wife, or anything, and Daddy says maybe Uncle Wentworth wants to leave me his money, and Daddy says he doesn’t want me to have it. But he let Uncle Wentworth give me this party, because we’re going away to New York next month, me and Daddy, and so it doesn’t matter about the party.”

  “You are going away?” cried Frank, aghast.

  Jessica nodded, and beamed. “Oh, yes, and we’ll never come back, maybe.”

  Then her face changed, became oddly somber for one so young. And again she waited.

  Frank clutched his knees with his hands and stared at her. Then he said: “You’ll come back. I know you will! And I’ll come around a lot, and wait for you, Jessica;”

  She regarded him in silence for a long time, then she nodded, very slowly. “Yes. I guess you will, too. I won’t ever like any other boy but you, Frank.” She lifted her small white chin, and her deep eyes smiled at him.

  Frank did not know the meaning of charm, but he felt it. Everything about the little girl was grave and reflective, mature and understanding. She had strength and gentleness, and he felt them, and they were like a consoling sweetness to him.

  He got up, as if something was temporarily over, and said: “Guess I ought to go now.”

  She nodded, rose and put the kitten back in its basket. Then she gave him her small hand and smiled at him.

  She watched him go. She did not accompany him back to the driveway. Once he turned and waved to her. She stood in the door of the summerhouse, like a large rosy doll, and waved in return.

  He came back the next day, but he did not see her. He hardly expected to, however. But still he came. He came when it was autumn, and the leaves were flying and crackling under torn dark skies. He never saw her. But it was enough to be near the place where he had seen her.

  He never forgot Jessica. Even when he met Paul Hodge, who became so much a part of him all the rest of his life, he did not forget. Once or twice he thought of bringing Paul to this house, but something restrained him. He could not tell even Paul. And then as the years went on, he forgot the exact location of the house, and even the street. But he never forgot Jessica. Jessica, and the awful burden of his life, prevented him from developing any strong interest in other girls, except in the most casual and most exigent sense.

  He never forgot, but finally he came to believe that he had dreamt another dream, part of the many beautiful and lost dreams of his childhood. Yet always, when he heard a girl laugh in a certain way, he would turn his head and look, and watch, and wait, until the girl had passed.

  CHAPTER 18

  Schools, parents, home, had become faint and disagreeable unrealities to him.

  The school on West Avenue, near Hampshire Street, numbered eighteen, was larger than the school on Vermont Street, but just as old and grimy. He found that by lurking in the basement after classes were dismissed at three, he could avoid the jeering and obnoxious children. Then he had the suddenly quiet streets to himself, lined with noble trees and full of sunlight. There, walking home slowly and dreamily, he could evolve tales of stupendous magic and adventure, stories of the discovery of strange and spicy islands set in turquoise seas. He was beginning to write these down in his notebooks, during lessons in history and mathematics and grammar. No one saw them as yet. Sometimes he composed poems, filled with leaping and colorful words, which quieted his spirit as well as made it restless.

  Then, on a dreary day in November, he found his friend, his ear, his alter ego, and his companion.

  It was an ashen November day, with brief wild sunlight as colorless and dazzling as water, and with wilder and briefer gales of astringent wind. It was at recess that Frank found his friend, hovering uneasily in a corner of the playgrounds, hovering uneasily as he was doing, himself.

  Beyond the iron palings that circumscribed the schoolyard could be seen the bare lashed boughs of trees, the dun roofs and sides of shabby houses, the dull vista of empty, littered streets. There was a parched silence in the air. From a side street came the monotonous bell of a scissors-grinder and umbrella mender, and the occasional echo of a horse’s trot and the grind of heavy wheels. These only enhanced the silence beyond the schoolyard, and made it more melancholy and somber.

  The schoolyard itself was unattractive, and contained no swings or other implements of play. Its ground was covered by small sharp white stones, which crunched under the feet of the children with loud, snapping noises. There was no ease between the sexes. When the sun went behind mounds of black clouds, the red tam o’shanters of the little girls sprang out like dull yet animated fires in the sudden gloom. But the fires bobbed decorously among themselves, and did not mingle with the black caps of the little boys. The teacher, exhausted and drained, went back into the school and then reappeared, shivering in the sheltering doorway in her thick cloak, and rubbing bony hands that appeared never to have been soft and warm and tender. It was her week to watch the children, and she stood in her doorway, regarding them with a hatred that shot from her red and swollen eyelids. She only hoped that the boys would not begin to fight again, or invade the ranks of the little girls for a session of hair-pulling and punching.

  Frank Clair never played with the others. They would not have accepted him. Nor did he desire their company. He wandered about near the brick wall of the school, scuffing the gravel. Even the little girls, in spite of their apparent indifference, coyly conscious of the other sex, did not glance at him, though he had a strange handsomeness which was daily growing more evident.

  He suddenly collided with another boy, who was leaning against the wall and staring sullenly and impassively before him.

  Frank did not know what made him pause so suddenly and stare so frankly at the stranger. He vaguely remembered having seen him in class that morning, but he had forgotten him until now. Was it the boy’s expression, fixed and abstracted, which caught Frank’s attention, or something deeper, some kindred chemistry of blood and spirit? He never knew. He could only look at the boy, and find him familiar in some mysterious and nameless way.

  The other was as tall as himself, and of about the same age. Frank saw a small pale face, rather insignificant eyes of no definite color, pale hair well-brushed and sleek, a tilted nose with sensitive nostrils. Hair, skin and eyes seemed of one vague and colorless hue, verging on a greenish yellow, overcast with somberness. The face was utterly without expression, frozen and immobile rather than blank, but the eyes held in them the watchful and apprehensive quality of something almost feline; they were greenly luminous, unearthly, full of fear, suspicion and cautiousness.

  The boy was very thin, and all his bones were delicate. His clothing was less soiled and patched than Frank’s, and was excessively neat. His listless, relaxed hands hung at his sides. When he saw Frank gazing at him with such steadfast alertness, he moved uneasily, as if to go away, and a flash of fright and wary desperation showed in his eyes.

  “Hello,” said Frank, and he was surprised at the confident sound of his own voice.

  “Hello,” replied the new boy, faintly, and without inflection. His voice had a certain lack of timbre, a certain lack of strength. It was almost a girl’s voice, fluting and piping.

  All at once, Frank felt that he had known this boy always, that never, with him, would he experience the old shrinking a
nd dread in himself, that he would be understood, not misconstrued, not ridiculed or despised. There was a wooden bench nearby, and he sat down. The other boy, as if compelled by some stronger will, sat down, too. His listless hands relaxed on his knees; they lay there, clean and empty. He looked at Frank, with a certain expectancy, indeterminate and vigilant, which was to become as familiar to Frank as his own face. Something warm and contained began to swell in Frank. He who had always avoided strangers, had turned aside from lingering groups on the street, had walked blocks out of his way to evade the necessity of recognizing acquaintances, felt master of a chaotic and miserable existence. He had a rather grim if infrequent sense of humor, and tremendous depths of sympathy and prescience in his nature, which no one had ever suspected. He smiled reassuringly at the other boy, who was regarding him with that curiously apprehensive distrust. Perhaps it was that distrust which touched Frank, which made him feel strong and assured.

  “You look scared,” said Frank, with friendly candor. “What are you scared of? That old dummy teacher up there, or the damn kids? I’m not. All she can do is screech, and that’s all they can do, too: screech. Even in their minds they screech. And their fathers and their mothers screech in their minds, just like them. The whole world screeches. I’m sick of it.”

  Into the strange boy’s face there crept a strange expression. It was as though the tight and somewhat wizened greenishness of it was melting and softening. The living blood mounted through the film of that pallor, warming and timid. He still regarded Frank in silence, but it was a comprehending silence, full of gratitude and wonder. His catlike eyes became translucent, like emeralds struck with sunlight. His mouth parted eagerly, showing a row of big, perfect white teeth. His whole expression was that of someone who had suddenly heard a familiar voice, a familiar language, in an alien and lonely land.