There Was a Time

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  The car grunted to a stop. A very old woman climbed aboard painfully. She was dressed in an ancient black coat, down to her thick, bent ankles. Big black buttons twinkled in the yellow light. She wore a shapeless bunch of felt on her head; her hair, gray and stringy, flattened itself on her wrinkled forehead and fallen cheeks. She tottered down the aisle, found a seat, and sank onto it.

  Frank looked at her. He hated her. He resented it savagely that she breathed, this misshapen, dirty, ugly parody of humanity. Her watery blue eyes blinked behind steel-framed glasses. She pursed up her toothless mouth, and appeared to be chewing. Vacantly, she stared about her. Her wizened lips moved from side to side, then up and down, as if munching. She rubbed her cheek with her mittened hand; it trembled. She dropped it aimlessly, and chewed and munched again.

  Frank held himself tight against the back of his seat. He must not get up and kick her! They arrested people for that. How could he explain to the police: She was horrible-looking; she was old and hideous; she had no mind, no feeling! She was not even alive. She made me sick, so I had to hit her.

  The watery, almost sightless eyes turned toward him. The munching and chewing stopped. He looked at her. She shrank back. She mumbled something, a faint animal sound. Then she got up and moved back a few seats. Her mumbling grew louder. Now her sunken face became cunning and vaguely frightened. “What you lookin’ at, anyways?” she quavered to Frank’s back.

  He must press harder against the seat. He must hold himself still. The motorman jangled the bell, and Frank’s teeth clenched. Again the car stopped. A pale shabby woman of about thirty lumbered aboard, skirts dragging against her old buttoned boots. She carried a pallid child in her arms; the little four-year-old girl’s face was stained with dirt and dried tears. Frank watched them pass him. Filthy animals! They ate and excreted as did all other animals, and slept and snored and lived in their vile slums. But they had none of the wild beauty and grace of the furry creatures in the woods, the feathered creatures in the trees. They had not even the excuse of comeliness for their existence. Why was it not possible to kill them, to have done with them, to preserve the food they devoured for men who were truly alive and had a reason for living? It was an evil thing that they had been born; they became harmless only when they died. Between birth and death they were an affront to heaven.

  The nauseous pain deepened in him. Now he was truly sick. He pressed his lips against an involuntary retching. Everywhere he glanced he saw only ugliness, senseless motion, repulsive sights. Everything was foreshortened, dim, superficial. How had he forgotten, for a brief few hours that day, how unsightly and foul the whole world was, how offensive to the eye? How stinking!

  The child squalled behind him. He shivered with his hatred and disgust. The old woman was still mumbling. Now his hatred and disgust turned savagely upon himself. What a sentimental half-wit he was! Only a few hours ago he had felt a silly shining in himself, had believed he had discerned a meaning, a pathetic yet heroic pattern, in such creatures as these. He had ached and throbbed with a loathsome compassion; he had wallowed in languishing romanticism. Maria Pia! Giovanni! The old woman and the young drab woman, the squalling child! Beasts and dogs, in the deformed image of angels. Drooling laws permitted them to live. In a better and more realistic society they would not have been permitted to be born, or, born, they would have been destroyed and decently hidden from sight under the earth.

  He wanted to be home, in his handsome quiet room, with the lamplight glowing on his old bed, with his books about him. He wanted to shut out all this ugliness and forget it.

  Suddenly he was sharply frightened. He remembered Miss Woods, and the uproar at the table this morning. What would Miss Woods have to say to him when she heard him come in? Would she give him his notice? Fool! What had he done, and for what? For a pimpled, sallow-faced idiot who could not claim an exact paternity? For a slum rat with pretensions to being a man? He had jeopardized his quiet retreat, his pleasant life, for an Irving Schultz. He had insulted a respectable woman, and thrown a fire-lit room into embarrassed confusion. If he received his notice, it would not be more then he deserved. Now he began to breathe more quickly in his furious anxiety. He glanced at his watch. It was after eight. Miss Woods would be in her “parlor.” He would go to her at once, humbly apologizing, and he would go to Mrs. Crimmons, begging her pardon for his unjustified and insane insults. Perhaps, then, Miss Woods would permit him to remain. Perhaps he would not be driven out of her house. If only he hurried.

  He blew on the window, rubbed a hole in the frost. He would soon reach Linwood Avenue. He cursed himself for the imbecile he had been that morning. He yearned for his now threatened security and tranquil quiet. If only it was not too late! Why had he endangered himself so? What had made him stand up and shout at poor Mrs. Crimmons? What had there been in that slum rat’s face and eyes to induce him to injure himself in that disgraceful fashion? Babbling Bill! His father had been right, after all: he was a dreamer, a talker, an empty silliness. After all these years of effort, he had allowed a nameless something to ruin him. After all these years of struggling for normality, for respectability, for smooth averageness, he had permitted some delirious emotion to deface all the painful remodeling he had done to himself. He could not even remember the emotion, but he knew it was shameful. His face burned with misery and humiliation.

  He stood up and tugged at the bell-rope. He ran to the door. The old woman and the young one watched him go. The child squalled and struggled in her mother’s thin arms. The door closed after Frank; the car churned on without him.

  The old woman blew her nose on a dirty rag and mumbled: “See that feller just got off? Looked kind of dippy to me, or drunk, or somethin’. Looked at me, he did, like he wanted to kill me. And I never saw him before in my life! Must be drunk.”

  Frank plowed and stumbled through the snow to his rooming-house. His body felt hot all over, yet shivering. Blundering, maudlin idiot! If only it was not too late! He would talk to Miss Woods immediately, then go to Mrs. Crimmons and apologize. If only he had persuasive powers! But he had no natural graces, no cajoling ways. Feverishly he rehearsed: “Miss Woods, I’m terribly sorry. I don’t know what got into me.” No, that expression was English. He had worked so hard on himself to eliminate any Britishisms which he had acquired from his parents and which seemed to annoy Americans.

  “Miss Woods, I’m terribly sorry about this morning. Do you think Mrs. Crimmons would accept my apologies?” That was better. It had dignity. It placed him on a man-to-man basis with Miss Woods. He saw her large bland face before him, and hated her. I hate everything, he thought savagely. I’m sick of everything.

  He stamped his feet in the winter vestibule to rid them of snow. He saw that his trousers were wet far above the knee; snow had seeped in at the top of his arctics; there was a wretched area of cold between his shoulder-blades, as if a large icy hand were pressing there. Now he was shivering quite violently; he drew a deep breath. Immediately something stabbed him viciously in the right side. He held his breath, then slowly exhaled, frightened. He ought not to have run through the snow.

  He glanced through the velvet portieres of the parlor doorway. Miss Woods was sitting before the fire, surrounded by somber family heirlooms. Her cat slept at her feet. She herself was reading. She put down her book calmly when Frank entered, and looked at him steadily, without speaking. He could read neither animosity nor kindness in her eyes. She merely waited. Why didn’t she speak? She usually greeted him pleasantly. But it was evident to him, even in his confused mental state of anxiety, that she was waiting for something. He was relieved; she was expecting him to say what he must say. He spoke his rehearsed speech hurriedly: “Miss Woods, I’m terribly sorry about this morning. Do you think Mrs. Crimmons would accept my apologies?”

  Her face seemed to move towards him across the faded carpet, and he could see her eyes, very intent now, very piercing. She did not smile; her expression was closed and inscrutable. Then she said very
slowly: “You are really sorry?”

  He could see her almost as though he had brought her into sharp near focus with a telescope. Everything around him had become too clear, too vivid. But he was greatly relieved, for he had expected her first words to be stern and forbidding. However, she only watched him, and appeared to wait intently for his reply.

  He said eagerly: “Yes. I’m awfully sorry. You see—”

  She turned her head away from him then, and he saw her big pudgy profile against the firelight. She looked down at her be-ringed hands meditatively. Then she said: “Yes, I see.”

  She sighed; her great bosom heaved, as if with some deep regret. Still not turning to him, she continued: “I’m sorry too, Mr. Clair. But you will understand, I know. I can’t have violent controversies in my house. Mr. and Mrs. Crimmons are old—acquaintances of mine, and have been coming here for years. It would be awkward for them if you remained, would it not?”

  His heart sank. He felt the cold wetness of his clothing clinging to his shivering legs; the icy hand pressed deeper into his back. There was a faint sensation as of shock in the pit of his stomach. He stammered, as he had not stammered for years: “I—I think I could—apologize to Mrs. Crimmons, and it would be all right—”

  She shook her head. Now she turned completely away from him, so that he saw only her mass of white hair and her heavy shoulders. “I think it would be better for everyone, and for you, too, if you gave up your room a week from tomorrow. I really think so.”

  Mortification, rage and disappointment flooded over him. In that queer clarity which filled the room he could see every line in the face of that old woman, and the way the black silk shimmered on her shoulders and encased her arms like a dark sheath. Everything in the room became inimical to him, repudiating him, withdrawing from him. He was a stranger; he had never lived here, or spent one night here.

  “Please, won’t you—change—your mind, Miss Woods?” he stammered, pleadingly. “I—I like it here. In a way, it’s been the only home I ever had—”

  He hated her with profound malignance, because of his humiliation.

  She said, almost inaudibly: “I’m sorry. I don’t think you’ll ever have a home, Mr. Clair, until you find out about yourself. I’m very sorry for you. Truly I am. But perhaps one of these days you’ll understand what I am talking about now. I must ask you to excuse me. I can’t change my mind, so please don’t ask me.”

  The hateful, vicious old bitch! The fat and avaricious old harridan! She had allowed him to debase himself, enjoying every moment of it. He wanted to pummel her head with his fists. He wanted to kick her as he had kicked that ape, in the yard on Albany Street. But she was speaking again: “If I were you, I’d take a hot bath immediately. You are wet all over. And now, good night, Mr. Clair.”

  He went up the stairs, which swam before his eyes. He had to stop on the first landing to catch his breath, and again the hot knife stabbed his side. Now he was shivering so strongly that he had to hold on to the banister to keep from falling. The warmth and quiet and dimness of the old house were all about him, but it was a withdrawn pleasantness, which was going on without him. He saw lights under doors, heard a slight laugh, a cough, the rustle of a newspaper. A week from tomorrow he would be gone; the house and its fortunate inhabitants would have smugly forgotten him. He heard the old clock chiming in the parlor; a tall mirror on the wall before him glimmered, showing his ghost of a face. The wind was rising again; it was flowing about the stalwart eaves, gushing over the roof which would soon no longer be his cherished shelter. He would no longer have access to those fine books in Miss Woods’ den, nor would he be permitted to sit there in the depths of the old red-leather chair, enjoying the privilege only lately given him. He would not hear that melodious chiming again, nor linger in the dining room over warm winter breakfasts. Grief stung his eyes. This was his home; he was being evicted from it. Now he was exposed again, stripped naked, homeless.

  His room, at the end of the hall, was, all at once, too far. When he opened the door the furniture, the rugs, the old rich draperies, no longer welcomed him. He turned on the lamp by the bedside. It shone coldly on the white bed, which resembled a sheet of snow. He could feel the warmth on his skin, but it did not penetrate into his flesh. The pain was sharper, now, in his side, and came and went with his slow and careful breathing.

  He did not take off his soaking coat. With a kind of deep wonder, he thought: “Why, I’m sick! I can’t stay here. Something’s happened to me.”

  CHAPTER 43

  May foamed, a tide of flowering shrub and tree and plant, on every street, in every yard. Lilacs bent in plumes of poignant white and purple over broken fences; syringia shrubs were banks of snow against porches and verandahs. Forsaken back yards became beautiful with the rosy blooms of gnarled apple trees; elms dropped their showers of brown seed upon the earth; the young maple’s leaves were tipped with gold. Spring had tossed her pale green garments on every branch. Now the streets, at twilight, rang with soft echoes, and mauve shadows lengthened over brightening lawns. The city was embowered in fragrance, in sweetness under wide and gentle skies, though the air remained cool, and the wind, blowing from the lakes, still retained the sharp edge of churning ice.

  Frank Clair, wrapped in heavy coats, with an old blanket about his legs, sat on his grandmother’s verandah and looked silently at the street beyond the little lawn. He could smell lilacs, the freshness of new grass. Long beams of sun fell across his thin white hands with their strong knuckles. His hands lay on his coat, still, flaccid. He heard church bells ringing with a new spring clarity; several family groups passed, hurrying to worship. His eyes followed them indifferently, blankly, then turned away as if vaguely sickened. There was none of the new strength of the convalescent in him, none of the reborn hope. He sat there motionless, feeling the warmth of the sun on his hands, not caring, hardly feeling. The fresh wind blew a lock of his dark chestnut hair over his forehead. He did not push it back; it moved, lifted and blew across his eyes, and he did not shake his head to rid himself of it. His strong thin features appeared to fill his emaciated face; his lips were almost as white as his cheeks, and his eyes moved too slowly in their pits of dark shadow.

  Maybelle passed the screen door and peered out at him furtively. She saw him in profile; she saw how still he sat. She remembered his young quickness and restlessness. This was not like Frank, she thought with anxious petulance. It was more than she could put up with, after everything, to have him just sit there, day after day, seldom speaking, then only sluggishly, “showing no interest,” eating when querulously prodded, not responding when it was hinted to him that the doctor said he was well, and that he could soon look for a job.

  And me so fagged out, thought Maybelle, and been through so much. No one sympathized with her. And me a widow, her wretched thoughts continued, with nowhere to turn, and not even a place of my own. Among strangers. It was little enough for her son to do, to “show some interest,” and think about bestirring himself and getting a new job, and bringing in a bit of money. That doctor said to “give him time,” that he had had a bad bout with that Spanish flu, and that he was still a little weak. But he was pampering himself now, just sitting on the verandah on days like this, or sitting in his room in the attic when it rained. Never offered to help about the house. What if he did pay the doctor promptly, and was now giving his grandmother ten dollars a week for his lodgings? It wasn’t as if he were a proper lodger, with no responsibilities. After all, his mother had nursed him through “three weeks of hell,” and he had given her no thanks—not a word of gratitude. Nor had Mrs. Clair offered to relieve her of her tasks about the house, even when she had had to sit up for three nights the first week, when Frank had had pneumonia. It was hard; it was very hard. He had just lain there, cosy under his blankets, with a really good color in his cheeks, and he had not looked at her. What had he said? Just a lot of rot about a tree, and swearing like a navvy, and crying like a baby, a big lad like that! Never
showed her any sympathy for what she had to do, carrying his slops, and wiping up the floor when he vomited. Even when she dozed a few times in her chair, he had just talked and screamed and sworn, babbling like daft, and not giving her a minute’s rest. It was a fine thing, just, for the doctor to talk about nurses, but who had money for nurses? She, Maybelle, had “given it to him” when he had suggested a hospital. “Hospitals were full of quacks; ‘kill ’em quick,’ is their motto!” she had replied to him, and he had gone off with his tail between his legs. Yankees!

  No one had any sympathy for her, neither “the old devil” nor her son, and as for that doctor, he’d never dare show his face to her again. Maybelle’s brown eyes flashed vindictively as she looked out at Frank. Coddling himself there, when he could be bringing in some money. What if he never bestirred himself, she thought, frightened. What would “the old devil” say? Mrs. Clair was hinting in no uncertain terms that it was about time he took interest and looked about him for something to do. What when his money was gone? He had only two hundred dollars left. Somebody must tell him to brace up, to be a man, to get back on his own bottom.

  Frank began to cough suddenly, hoarsely and with violence. He was racked with the spasm, bending his head over the arm of the chair, his whole thin body shaking. What if he got consumption, now, like his father? Maybelle was filled with enraged terror. If he did, it was off to a charity hospital for him, mark her words! Her, a poor widow, at the mercy of strangers, in Yankeeland, with no place to go, with not even a stick of her own furniture and people expecting her to take care of “him.”

  Frank, in the act of raising himself from his bent position, glanced at the screen door. He’s seen me! thought Maybelle, with mingled anger and relief. He’s putting it on, for sympathy. Wants to coddle himself. Putting it on.