“Forget it,” he said, as if the whole thing had been nothing to him and he had understood from the beginning what she was. “I guess you’d better be getting on your way.”
“All right.”
“Well, there’s no use standing here. Aren’t you going along?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said, standing there staring at him, her face still full of humiliation.
“You better be heading somewhere out of here. Where are you from?” he asked awkwardly.
“Out of town,” she said. Then she touched him on the arm. “Listen, what was the idea?” she asked. While she waited for him to answer her face seemed to brighten. She was looking at him, looking right into his eyes. “Why did you do it? What’s it to you?” They seemed to be alone on the street while she waited breathlessly because she had been offered some incredible promise, a turn that gave her a wild hope.
“We were standing there watching,” he said uneasily, as he nodded to Webster, who had followed them out and was now standing by the window trying to hear what she said. “Me and my pal, we saw what was going on,” Malone said. Then, remembering their disappointment, he said bluntly, “We were betting on you.”
“How do you mean?”
“When we saw the detective watching you —”
“Yes . . .”
“Our money went on you . . . that she was wrong . . . you let us down, that’s all; we were wrong. We lose.”
“Oh,” she said, startled. As Webster came closer, she swung her head in wild resentment at him. Again they were both staring at her, watching her. She looked around the street at the faces of passing people as if everybody had suddenly stopped to watch her and make a little bet. “A buck she will, a buck she won’t, eh!” she said as her eyes brightened with a crazy fury. “Get out of my way,” she whispered. Swinging her foot she kicked him savagely on the shin.
As he felt the pain he could think only of how she had asked, “Why did you do it?” and waited breathlessly for some gesture from him. At that moment there did not seem to be a single good instinct, a single good thing in his life that he had not betrayed.
And she came walking right at him as if she would walk right through him if he did not step aside, and she had her head up and her fists clenched tight, going down the street, going deeper into the crowd with the sun touching her red hat and her good legs with the runs down her stockings.
EMILY
For four years Dave had had a room in Mrs. MacDougald’s house where Emily Sherwood also had a room, and every night and sometimes in the mornings he used to pass her in the hall. When he first knew her, he was twenty-one and she was thirty-one, and so shapely and stylish with her smart clothes, her lustrous black hair, and the faint dimple marks in her smooth cheeks, that she seemed to him just the kind of woman he had always longed to meet. For many nights he had lain awake, thinking of her fine laughing mouth while he made plans for coaxing her to go out with him the next day. In the evenings he used to try to be in the hall when she came home, so that he could follow her up the stairs and call out, “Just a minute, Miss Sherwood,” and then catch up to her and make awkward gestures like a big, shy, serious boy as he tried to persuade her to go to a show with him.
When he passed her door in the hall and it was not quite closed, he listened, holding his breath and trying to get up enough courage to call to her and urge her to let him come into the room. But he was never able to suggest that to her. Sometimes she was very kind to him, for his admiration delighted her, but she had explained that she had a lover named George Hamilton, who had gone to Montreal, and to whom she wrote long letters three times a week.
Dave became like a sullen, determined child. He was working in a broker’s office and at noontime, once, he came home to see her and tell her hot-temperedly that she was a fool to be wasting her life for a man who might never return to her. She squeezed his arm so tightly and laughed so merrily, he was ashamed of himself.
But during the last two years he noticed Emily looking much older. She didn’t seem so buoyantly cheerful either. Dave thought it was a shame that she didn’t have to make herself look elegantly attractive for some man who might see her from day to day, instead of dressing like a woman with no place go. She spent too much time by herself reading the poems of Lord Alfred Tennyson and waiting for the man to return to the city and marry her. Once she showed Dave some pictures of herself that she was sending to Montreal. In the photographs the dimples in her plump cheeks were quite deep and, since she was laughing, there were heavy lines in her face. She looked too heavy. Dave thought at the time that she made herself worse by probably insisting upon wearing the same size shoes she had always worn when a girl, which made her walk sometimes, when she was tired, as though her feet hurt her.
But by this time Dave had accepted her devotion for her lover as something marvelous and mysterious that he ought never to disturb. And, besides, he no longer was anxious to be in love with a mature woman of thirty-five: he had a nice young girl of his own now. So he had made a kind of lasting joke out of his love for Emily, and when he passed her in the hall he always said, “Are you sure you wouldn’t like to kiss me, Emily?” and they both laughed good-naturedly.
One night in the spring, after being to the theater with his girl, Dave returned to the rooming house and was passing along the hall by Emily’s room. Her door was open and he could see her standing there with her coat on as if she had just come in. Outside the first spring freshness had been in the air. The first really mild, clear weather had come at last after a bad, long winter. Dave had been walking along the streets with his girl and they had felt so exhilarated they had started to laugh out loud and walk faster with long, swinging steps. They had suddenly started talking about getting married in the summer. So some of this exhilaration was still in Dave when he stood outside Emily Sherwood’s room, wanting to be friendly with everybody in the world. He saw Emily, with her coat on, standing by the bureau, looking into the mirror with her hands up to her face. Her back was to the door, but he could see her image in the mirror. Her face looked drawn and tired, as though the image of an Emily Sherwood she had never really noticed before left her bewildered.
“Hello, Emily,” he called. “Going out, or coming in?”
She turned, but before speaking she looked at him steadily, and she was holding her lower lip with her teeth. In a low voice she said: “Hello, Dave, won’t you come in?”
As he went in he was embarrassed and he tried to figure out why she had at last invited him into her room. His heart began to beat unevenly because he couldn’t help remembering how he used to want to have her call him into this room, and now he didn’t know what she expected of him. Then she threw off her coat and he saw her in a new, flaming, red silk dress fitting far too tightly at the waist, so tightly that two of the fasteners had come undone. Dave didn’t like the dress. It made Emily look older, heavier, and more flamboyant. She actually looked loud and gaudy in such a dress, and she was really such a modest woman.
With a solemn face and wide, dark, sad eyes, Emily stared at him till he began to grin uneasily. Just to be casual and frivolous, he said, as he had been saying for the last two years in the same mocking tone: “Why, what’s the matter, Emily? Aren’t you going to kiss me?”
“Do you really want to kiss me, Dave?” she asked, timid and hesitating. Then she began to crimson. “You can kiss me if you want to,” she said, as though expecting him to be doubtful. She was acting like a woman who no longer believes that anybody could find her desirable. For the last two years Dave hadn’t wanted to kiss Emily; he hadn’t thought of her in that way for so long he couldn’t help hesitating, and when she noticed it he was ashamed of himself. He went over and sat beside her on the bed, putting his arm with serious gentleness on her shoulder and he kissed her lightly on the cheek. Her head seemed to droop to his shoulder, her eyes remained closed, but her lips were moving with a strange girlish excitement. So there was nothing left for him to do but kiss her aga
in. He began to feel uncomfortable. She didn’t seem to be Emily. And, besides, he started thinking of his own girl whom he had been kissing only half an hour ago. Emily was holding on to his arm as though she would never let it go.
Then she said, “What do you think of me, Dave? How do I look to you?”
“You look like a peach to me, Emily.”
“Oh, you’re grand, Dave. Are you sure you’re not teasing me?”
“You know how you always looked to me,” he said, smiling.
“Do I seem just as nice to you as I used to?”
“You’ve always looked the same, Emily,” he said at once.
She suddenly laughed out loud as she used to laugh when he followed her up the stairs four years ago. She seemed delighted to believe that she was so very desirable. She became quite sure of herself and smiled at him gaily as though expecting him to pursue her as he had always done. The rich warm blood surged back into her face and her eyes were bright and moist. As soon as he put out his hand and touched her again, she seemed delighted with what she thought was his eagerness and excitement. She no longer looked like a woman who is losing the last of her youth.
He didn’t really know what was the matter with her; he only knew that she had been miserable and wanted comforting and sympathy. So he smiled at her and went to embrace her again. “Something’s got into her. Maybe the fine spring nights outside have started her thinking about her lover,” he thought. Some of his old feeling for her returned, and when with warm sincerity he began to plead, “Kiss me, please kiss me, Emily,” he seemed to be saying exactly what she wanted him to say, for she smiled with delight, then looked more confused and more lovely.
Then he was astonished to find that she was resisting with a new, quiet confidence that exasperated him. “There, there now,” she said, just as she might have said a few years ago. “Heavens, I don’t know what you must be thinking of me. And what do you think George Hamilton would say if he walked in here and saw you kissing me?”
Laughing, he said, “I don’t know. I don’t know George.” He reached out to take hold of her hands, just to tease her.
“No, no, you mustn’t touch me,” she said gently. “It wouldn’t be fair to George. Now would it?”
“I suppose not.”
“I mean it’s like this. You have a girl yourself. You wouldn’t like somebody else to be hugging her, would you? You’d want her to be square with you. That’s the way it is with me, too; I want to be square with George,” she said with simple dignity.
Now she looked much lovelier than when he had seen her standing by the bureau looking into the mirror with her hands up to her face. He was so pleased to see her feeling cheerful again that he said, “Gee, Emily, I never could do anything with you, could I?”
“You always worried me. You do to this day, Dave. You’re still so persistent. If it weren’t for George . . .” she added mildly, “You know, he might be upset if he knew how much you like me.”
A wistful expression was on her face, and Dave felt uncomfortable, so he said, “That’s a pretty dress you’ve got on — where did you get it, Emily?”
“I bought it this afternoon.”
“What for, some big celebration?”
“Do you like it? George always used to say I looked good in red with my black hair. I bought these patent leather shoes, too. I went down to the station tonight to meet George.”
“Lord, Emily, after all that time! Where is he?”
“I’ve just come back from the station,” she said, looking worried. “I must have missed him.”
As he looked at her in her red silk dress that was to make her look so attractive in her lover’s eyes, and saw the fasteners that had burst open at the waist, and saw her wiggling her feet as though the new patent leather shoes hurt her, he had a sudden feeling that she never really expected to see George Hamilton again.
“Maybe something happened to him,” Dave said. “Maybe he was broke and couldn’t come. It’s an expensive trip.”
“Oh, no,” she said. “I sent him the money when I wrote to him. I must have missed him. I’ve just come back from sitting there for hours. Don’t you think that’s likely what happened, Dave!” She seemed to be appealing to Dave.
“Sure,” he said. “You must have been both looking so hard you couldn’t see each other. So you missed him.”
“That’s it, all right,” she said, taking a deep breath.
“And you were feeling so unhappy about missing him you called me in here for company, eh?”
“I was feeling blue, thinking I must have been careless in some way,” she said.
Frowning and making an awkward gesture with his hand, he thought: “I ought to put her straight about that cheap guy; he’ll never turn up.” So he said, “look here, Emily, let me tell you . . .”
“Tell me what?” she said unwillingly.
“Just that you’re lovely,” he said, jerking his head, for he suddenly realized with wonder that he couldn’t bear to disturb the happiness she had got from resisting him, as if the more he coaxed and urged her, the more she could believe she still had a lover, and that George Hamilton, wherever he was, must still want to marry her.
BIG JULES
They were having a lot of fun in the neighborhood with Big Jules Casson. Word had soon gone around that he had promised his old man he would never get into trouble again after he had been sent to reform school for stealing from Spagnola’s fruit market. The boys whose leader he had once been, and who had been afraid of him for years, found that he wouldn’t fight back; they mocked him on those winter nights when he came hurrying home from the job at the printing shop his father had got him. A big, raw-boned seventeen-year-old who seemed to have realized suddenly that he would soon be a man, he started running the minute he got off the bus. He trotted along with his head down and his hands deep in his overcoat pockets. When he passed the cigar store where the boys were playing the slot machines, and they saw him through the open door and yelled — “Hey, when did they let you out?” — he never turned his big serious face.
But one night in the middle of the winter, when it had been raining and half snowing for hours and he came trotting past the cigar store, someone called out, “Hey, Jules, what are you doing tonight?”
This time the voice seemed to be soft, friendly, and casual. So Jules stopped and turned. As he came into the light, his face showed how eager he was for companionship if only they wouldn’t kid him. Near the cigar-store door were three fellows whom he had grown up with. There was Phil Harris in a new overcoat, tight at the waist, with a pearl-gray felt hat, lighting a cigarette for Alf Maguire in the same old dirty overcoat he had worn the last five years. But the one who had called to him was leaning against the window, in a leather jacket and peak cap — Stuffy Meuller, whom Big Jules hadn’t seen for three months. It was hard to see the expressions on their faces through the light stream of snow. So Jules went toward them slowly.
“What’s on your mind?” he asked.
“Well, if it isn’t my old friend, Big Jules,” Stuffy Meuller said enthusiastically. As he reached up and slapped him on the shoulder, Jules nodded warmly. “Maybe we could go to the fights, eh, guys,” he said eagerly. “I haven’t been to the fights for months.”
But Stuffy Meuller, a little guy that Jules could have smacked down with one swing, kept up the elaborate enthusiasm. “Wait a minute, give me a chance to get used to you. I didn’t know they had let you out.”
When he saw that they were smirking at each other, Big Jules wanted to plead with Meuller to shut up. But Meuller, enjoying himself, went on, “If you weren’t doing anything I thought we might take a little trip over to Spagnola’s fruit market. What do you say, Jules?”
Jules was peering at their faces that looked so mocking in the light and the snow. Then he shook his head, as if puzzled. “Lay off,” he muttered. He was leaning close to them, holding himself taut, as if he had just had an insight into what he would always be. His face suddenly
frightened them. Scared, they backed away. But this only seemed to hurt him more. “What’s the matter?” he pleaded, taking a step after them. Shooting out his hand, he grabbed Meuller by the shoulder. “I’m not going to hurt you.” Now they were looking as frightened as if he had been going to pull a knife on them.
“Beat it, Stuffy,” Phil Harris whispered, shoving Meuller away. “Get going. He’s taking the plug out.”
As they went up the street he stood there, helpless, for now it seemed that in some way, after digging at him for months, they had found out that he was still what he had always been. After a little while, he started to go home, thinking desperately that maybe they were right, that if his life belonged to the lanes around Spagnola’s fruit market, if he had been pinned there forever the night the police caught him and the others rifling the till — even if he was just a kid when it happened — then the dream he had been carrying around in him for months of working hard and making something out of his life was all gone.
He suddenly began to walk faster, feeling a great longing to look into the faces of his own family and see if they, too, were really only waiting for him to get into trouble again; maybe they, too, were always thinking of the fruit market and the years when he was growing up near it. So when he went into the house, he hung back near the door of the living room, his hat still on his head, the melted snow dripping off the brim, and he looked around suspiciously. His father, who had been sitting in the armchair at the head of the table, his arms spread out over the evening paper on the table, did not look up. Nor did his mother. She was fixing the collar of his sister Alice’s dress, and Alice kept saying, “Please hurry, or I’ll be late.” But as Jules stood there staring at them, they turned one by one. He looked so excited and suspicious that his mother’s hand began to tremble. Her face showed that she was alarmed. Then his father, opening his mouth blankly, looked very grave and folded up the paper.
To Jules it seemed that they were just as frightened as the fellows at the corner, and he cried, “Why are you all gaping at me?”
The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan Page 9
