“Be quiet. Don’t speak to me. You’ve disgraced me again and again,” she said bitterly.
“That’s the last time. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Have the decency to be quiet,” she snapped.
They kept on their way, looking straight ahead.
When they were at home and his mother took off her coat, Alfred saw that she was really only half-dressed, and she made him feel afraid again when she said, without even looking at him, “You’re a bad lot. God forgive you. It’s one thing after another and always has been. Why do you stand there stupidly? Go to bed, why don’t you?” When he was going, she said, “I’ll make myself a cup of tea. Mind, now, not a word about tonight to your father.”
While Alfred was undressing in his bedroom, he heard his mother moving around the kitchen. She filled the kettle and put it on the stove. She moved a chair. And as he listened there was no shame in him, just wonder and a kind of admiration of her strength and repose. He could still see Sam Carr nodding his head encouragingly to her; he could hear her talking simply and earnestly, and as he sat on his bed he felt a pride in her strength. “She certainly was smooth,” he thought.
At last he got up and went along to the kitchen, and when he was at the door he saw his mother pouring herself a cup of tea. He watched and he didn’t move. Her face, as she sat there, was a frightened, broken face utterly unlike the face of the woman who had been so assured a little while ago in the drugstore. When she reached out and lifted the kettle to pour hot water in her cup, her hand trembled and the water splashed on the stove. Leaning back in the chair, she sighed and lifted the cup to her lips, and her lips were groping loosely as if they would never reach the cup. She swallowed the hot tea and then she straightened up in relief, though her hand holding the cup still trembled. She looked very old.
It seemed to Alfred that this was the way it had been every time he had been in trouble before, that this trembling had really been in her as she hurried out half-dressed to the drugstore. He understood why she had sat alone in the kitchen the night his young sister had kept repeating doggedly that she was getting married. Now he felt all that his mother had been thinking of as they walked along the street together a little while ago. He watched his mother, and he never spoke, but at that moment his youth seemed to be over; he knew all the years of her life by the way her hand trembled as she raised the cup to her lips.
DAY BY DAY
Late afternoon sunlight tipped the end of the bench in the park where pretty young Mrs. Winslow was resting a moment before walking home. For hours she had wandered through the department stores, looking in all the shop windows, and had finally begun to feel a quiet contentment in her heart. Every afternoon when she went out, she tried to look gay, attractive, and carefree. Now, glancing idly at an old man who bobbed his head as he passed, she hoped she would never lose this contentment. Only a few slight changes in her life, she felt, would make her happy forever.
She sat absolutely still on the bench and the sunlight no longer shone directly on the park. The sun was dipping out of sight behind the office buildings. Two well-dressed young men who were crossing by the bench turned their heads so they could see her, and one whispered something to the other and she knew they had looked at her with admiration. Mrs. Winslow became so delighted with her own peace of mind that she began to long for the few small things that ought to go with it. All of a sudden she felt like saying a prayer, but then her heart became so humble in its eagerness that she could say nothing. Her silence and her wish really became more eloquent than any prayer she could make. Timidly at first, as though it were hard to get it clear, she began to ask God to make her husband content without any suspicion of her. She asked that she might never be permitted to do anything that might make John think he was losing her. If they could only go on living together as they had done two years ago, when they first got married, she would be satisfied. She was not complaining that their plans had failed, that bad fortune was always with them, or that her husband went from one job to another and the work was always less suited to him. “What is there about me that makes him feel so uneasy?” she asked. “If I say I’m going shopping he seems suspicious, and if I dress up and put on rouge it makes him jealous. I’d stay at home all the time and wouldn’t mind looking dowdy if I thought it would make him happy.” Then she said, in her quiet little prayer: “Just let us go on loving each other as we used to before we were married.”
She leaned back on the bench, full of rich inner consolation. It was so nice to sit on the bench and close her eyes and pretend it was the time three years ago when she and John were going dancing, first driving out to a wayside inn that served a famous chicken dinner. There had been three such fine full years before they had got married; just closing her eyes, she could see the way he used to grin and wave his hand high over his head when he came to the door to see her. She sat there with her hands in her lap, having this very satisfactory dream, without noticing that it had become twilight and many people were passing. At last she looked up at the pale lights in the office buildings around the park, sighed deeply, and then, as though awakening, said: “Oh, my goodness, what time is it?” She got up and started to hurry home.
Traffic was heavy on the streets; everybody was hurrying; but for a moment she stood on the pavement, a tall, inexpensively dressed but distinguished-looking woman whose thoughts were still so pleasing to her that she was radiant. She wished she were home so she could share her happiness; then she thought: “What’s got into me? John will be home waiting. I ought to be ashamed of myself.” She lived only a few blocks from the corner and she had a childish hope that somehow she might get home before her husband. When she got to the apartment, she was out of breath.
As soon as she opened the door, she heard John moving in the kitchen, moving from the cupboard to the table putting down plates for the dinner that had not been prepared. He was a tall, thin young man with short-cropped, fair, curling hair, a lean boyish face, a small, fair moustache, and worried blue eyes. He was wearing a white shirt frayed at the sleeve and old grey, unpressed trousers. For the past two months, he had had a job, a temporary one he hoped, collecting installments for a publishing house, and his thin face looked tired. When his wife saw him, she suddenly felt ashamed of her sleek hair and red lips, and more ashamed of being late. “John, darling, sit down,” she said, hurrying to put on an apron. “I was out shopping and I’m late. I’m awfully sorry.” But she couldn’t quite take the expression of warm, secret contentment off her face.
“You’d think you’d get tired being out all the time,” he grumbled as he sat down and crossed his long legs. She looked so flushed and out of breath and so neat and pretty, still glowing from hurrying and from the animation of her thoughts, he frowned and said: “You were shopping, Madge?”
“Not really,” she laughed. “I didn’t bring anything home.”
“You’re dressed up every afternoon as if you’d been some place.”
“There’s no harm in window shopping if I don’t spend anything,” she said quickly.
“Remind me that you ought to have something to spend.”
“I never mention it.”
“But you think it. You’re so patient about it. God knows, if I thought you were more contented, I might do better.”
She was so surprised, she felt like crying.
“Please don’t say I’m not contented, John, please don’t.”
But as she watched him shift his body around on the chair, and then let his hands drop between his knees, she knew he hadn’t said yet what was in his mind, and what had been agitating him while he waited for her to come home. Like a sullen boy, he suddenly blurted out: “What kept you so late, Madge? Where were you?”
“I was just around the stores,” she began, smiling. She paused and considered telling him how she had sat on the bench and thought about him, then she realized he would not believe her, so she added lamely: “I thought I’d walk home, but it took quite a long time.�
�� She felt her face flushing.
“Madge,” he said, watching her closely, “you’re lying. I know. Good God, you’re lying.” He jumped up, walked over to her, put his hands on her shoulders, and said: “What were you looking so excited about when you first came in? I noticed it.”
“There was nothing; I was out of breath from hurrying,” she said.
He began to clutch her shoulders as if desperately aware that he could not hold her, as if he felt that she belonged completely to the life they had lived before they were married. “You might as well tell me what you did, I know you’ve been lying,” he said. “You’re lying, lying.” His big hand was trembling as he took hold of her wrist, and she cried out: “Don’t hurt me, John. Don’t.”
“Admit you’re lying.”
“I was lying, John; but not really.’”
“I’ve known it all along. Why don’t you get out?”
“Let go my wrist. I’ve always loved you, John, I was just sitting on a bench in the park. I forgot all about the time. I got thinking and I sort of prayed everything would get better for both of us, and I sat there forgetting it was late. Can’t you see I’m telling the truth?”
Dazed from his anger, he began to walk up and down the room. He muttered: “Sitting around on a bench having pipe dreams. You refuse to try and get used to things. You ought to have something to keep you home. You ought to have about six children. Anyway, I’m tired of it. It’s beginning to get on my nerves.”
Without looking at her, as if he were ashamed, he snatched up his coat. She heard him slam the door. Rubbing her wrist, she sat down to wait for him. She felt he would return when he was tired out from walking, taking his great, long strides, and he’d be sorry he had hurt her. Tears were in her eyes as she looked around the mean little kitchen. She had such a strange feeling of guilt. White-faced and still, she tried to ask herself what it was that was slowly driving them apart day by day.
THE SNOB
It was at the book counter in the department store that John Harcourt, the student, caught a glimpse of his father. At first he could not be sure in the crowd that pushed along the aisle, but there was something about the colour of the back of the elderly man’s neck, something about the faded felt hat, that he knew very well. Harcourt was standing with the girl he loved, buying a book for her. All afternoon he had been talking to her with an anxious diligence, as if there still remained in him an innocent wonder that she should be delighted to be with him. From underneath her wide-brimmed straw hat, her face, so fair and beautifully strong with its expression of cool independence, kept turning up to him and sometimes smiled at what he said. That was the way they always talked, never daring to show much full, strong feeling. Harcourt had just bought the book, and had reached into his pocket for the money with a free, ready gesture to make it appear that he was accustomed to buying books for young ladies, when the white-haired man in the faded felt hat, at the other end of the counter, turned half toward him, and Harcourt knew he was standing only a few feet away from his father.
The young man’s easy words trailed away and his voice became little more than a whisper, as if he were afraid that everyone in the store might recognize it. There was rising in him a dreadful uneasiness; something very precious that he wanted to hold seemed close to destruction. His father, standing at the end of the bargain counter, was planted squarely on his two feet, turning a book over thoughtfully in his hands. Then he took out his glasses from an old, worn leather case and adjusted them on the end of his nose, looking down over them at the book. His coat was thrown open, two buttons on his vest were undone, his grey hair was too long, and in his rather shabby clothes he looked very much like a working man, a carpenter perhaps. Such a resentment rose in young Harcourt that he wanted to cry out bitterly, “Why does he dress as if he never owned a decent suit in his life? He doesn’t care what the whole world thinks of him. He never did. I’ve told him a hundred times he ought to wear his good clothes when he goes out. Mother’s told him the same thing. He just laughs. And now Grace may see him. Grace will meet him.”
So young Harcourt stood still, with his head down, feeling that something very painful was impending. Once he looked anxiously at Grace, who had turned to the bargain counter. Among those people drifting aimlessly by, getting in each other’s way, using their elbows, she looked tall and splendidly alone. She was so sure of herself, her relation to the people in the aisles, the clerks behind the counter, the books on the shelves, and everything around her. Still keeping his head down and moving close, he whispered uneasily, “Let’s go and have a drink somewhere, Grace.”
“In a minute, dear,” she said.
“Let’s go now.”
“In just a minute, dear,” she repeated absently.
“There’s not a breath of air in here. Let’s go now.”
“What makes you so impatient?”
“There’s nothing but old books on that counter.”
“There may be something here I’ve wanted all my life,” she said, smiling at him brightly and not noticing the uneasiness in his face.
Harcourt had to move slowly behind her, getting closer to his father all the time. He could feel the space that separated them narrowing. Once he looked up with a vague, sidelong glance. But his father, red-faced and happy, was still reading the book, only now there was a meditative expression on his face, as if something in the book had stirred him and he intended to stay there reading for some time.
Old Harcourt had lots of time to amuse himself, because he was on a pension after working hard all his life. He had sent John to the university and he was eager to have him distinguish himself. Every night when John came home, whether it was early or late, he used to go into his father’s and mother’s bedroom and turn on the light and talk to them about the interesting things that had happened to him during the day. They listened and shared this new world with him. They both sat up in their nightclothes and, while his mother asked all the questions, his father listened attentively with his head cocked on one side and a smile or a frown on his face. The memory of all this was in John now, and there was also a desperate longing and a pain within him growing harder to bear as he glanced fearfully at his father, but he thought stubbornly, “I can’t introduce him. It’ll be easier for everybody if he doesn’t see us. I’m not ashamed. But it will be easier. It’ll be more sensible. It’ll only embarrass him to see Grace.” By this time he knew he was ashamed, but he felt that his shame was justified, for Grace’s father had the smooth, confident manner of a man who had lived all his life among people who were rich and sure of themselves. Often, when he had been in Grace’s home talking politely to her mother, John had kept on thinking of the plainness of his own home and of his parents’ laughing, goodnatured untidiness, and he resolved that he must make Grace’s people admire him.
He looked up cautiously, for they were about eight feet away from his father, but at that moment his father, too, looked up and John’s glance shifted swiftly over the aisle, over the counters, seeing nothing. As his father’s blue, calm eyes stared steadily over the glasses, there was an instant when their glances might have met. Neither one could have been certain, yet John, as he turned away and began to talk to Grace hurriedly, knew surely that his father had seen him. He knew it by the steady calmness in his father’s blue eyes. John’s shame grew, and then humiliation sickened him as he waited and did nothing.
His father turned away, going down the aisle, walking erectly in his shabby clothes, his shoulders very straight, never once looking back.
His father would walk slowly along the street, he knew, with that meditative expression deepening and becoming grave.
Young Harcourt stood beside Grace, brushing against her soft shoulder, and made faintly aware again of the delicate scent she used. There, so close beside him, she was holding within her everything he wanted to reach out for, only now he felt a sharp hostility that made him sullen and silent.
“You were right, John,” she was drawling in h
er soft voice. “It does get unbearable in here on a hot day. Do let’s go now. Have you ever noticed that department stores after a time can make you really hate people?” But she smiled when she spoke, so he might see that she really hated no one.
“You don’t like people, do you?” he said sharply.
“People? What people? What do you mean?”
“I mean,” he went on irritably, “you don’t like the kind of people you bump into here, for example.”
“Not especially. Who does? What’re you talking about?”
“Anybody could see you don’t,” he said recklessly. “You don’t like simple, honest people, the kind of people you meet all over the city.” He blurted the words out as if he wanted to shake her, but he was longing to say, “You wouldn’t like my family. Why couldn’t I take you home to have dinner with them? You’d turn up your nose at them, because they’ve no pretensions. As soon as my father saw you, he knew you wouldn’t want to meet him. I could tell by the way he turned.”
His father was on his way home now, he knew, and that evening at dinner they would meet. His mother and sister would talk rapidly, but his father would say nothing to him, or to anyone. There would only be Harcourt’s memory of the level look in the blue eyes, and the knowledge of his father’s pain as he walked away.
Grace watched John’s gloomy face as they walked through the store, and she knew he was nursing some private rage, and so her own resentment and exasperation kept growing, and she said crisply, “You’re entitled to your moods on a hot afternoon, I suppose, but if I feel I don’t like it here, then I don’t like it. You wanted to go yourself. Who likes to spend very much time in a department store on a hot afternoon? I begin to hate every stupid person that bangs into me, everybody near me. What does that make me?”
The New Yorker Stories Page 2
