The trouble in Thor

by Armstrong Charlotte

  Cyril chewed his lip. Madeline held her head down. He couldn't communicate.

  "WTiat are you thinking that will do for you?" he mused aloud.

  "Why does it have to do anything for me?" said Arthur loudly. "Why do you have to look at it so cold-blooded? Listen, can't Madeline do something decent and friendly?"

  Madeline, who still held the tomato, turned her wrist and dropped it. "You want me to do that, Arthur?" she said sharply.

  "Yes."

  Now her face rippled. A wave of emotion altered it, but in a passage so swift that whatever she felt, whether anger, whether impatience, whether pity for his naivete, was gone before it could be read.

  "If I do, will you please be quiet?"

  "Quiet?"

  "About how crazy you are," she cried, and her fists beat the table so that the china jumped, "to be just hke Henry Duncane. Just, just . . ." her voice shpped shrilly, "be quiet, sometimes."

  "Gee," said Arthur, "Maddy, listen. . . I . . ."

  "No," she said fiercely, and got up. "I get . . . tired." She grasped her plate and her saucer and went into the kitchen.

  "What did I do?" Dropping his jaw, Arthur turned to his brother-in-law.

  "Got on her nerves I suppose," said Cyril mildly.

  Arthur immediately shifted and leaned on his elbow. "Listen, Cyril, if you'd see me through I can promise you I'd work like a dog. I'd make it up to you. The thing is . . ."

  Cyril settled and appeared to listen with grave interest. For my board and room, he thought cynically. But an inner part of his ears slipped shut against the posturing and passions of the man beside him. He thought the dream in that head, not in itself childish, but dreamed by a child, probably was not going to come true.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  She put them in a berry basket daintily nested in tissue paper, and she wrapped some of the paper all around. She worked with deft hands, although it was becoming so dim in the kitchen that she could scarcely see what she was doing. For it was late; even the long twilight of this northerly land was fading.

  Arthur was not in the house. He had set off up the hill with his dinner pail long ago. But, behind her, she knew C}Til was standing in the dining-room doorway watching, saying nothing.

  When the package was ready she left it and, slipping through the doorway without touching him or asking him to move, she ran up the narrow steep stairs to get a coat.

  She threw it around her and then looked back at herself in the glass with one long unblinking stare.

  When she came downstairs, Cyril had moved out of her way. But he watched her as she picked up the little square basket, as she went through the rooms to the front door. He said nothing. Nor did she.

  The arc light at the town hall corner was burning and, at the base of the tall pole, as ever on a fair evening, were gathered the rowdy boys, the restless young men.

  It was the central spot, the meeting place, and for an hour or two they would stand or slouch or shuffle there xA'atching for whatever shape the evening might take. There was nothing ordinarily for them to do in Thor. No mo'ie theater, no such thing as a bowling alley, or even an ice cream store.

  True, there was a saloon at a crossroads, just beyond the bridge over the railroad, southeast of town. It stood alone, muffled and secret, between main Thor and the eastern set-

  tlement, isolated from both with empty fields all around. A passer-by, walking on the soft, dusty shoulder of the road, would not hear or see much. The noise and the lights were walled and shaded away within. But if she were a woman, she would step softly and she would hurry with a stirring of the nerves until she was well past, for drunken men in aggressive moods had been known to erupt profanely through those doors.

  Sometimes, it is true, a group of the young men, having met at the town hall corner, would make off in the direction of this place, and the bolder might even enter. But in Thor, a boy who lived in his father's house contributed until he left it, and these were the young and unattached. They had very little money at their own disposal. So they had nowhere to go that was within their means. And, anyhow, they were overwhelmed and abashed in the saloon which catered to their elders. So they gathered here and discharged here, under the arc light, what gregarious instincts they had and, meanwhile, observed everything that moved in the heart of the town.

  Madeline, wearing her long, light coat, carrying the basket, slipped down her own side of the street and turned the corner. But they saw her and were struck silent. The sudden silence would have been their tribute to any married woman. (Unmarried girls passed at their peril). But for Madeline, after she had gone by, there was further comment; an outburst of loud talk and loud laughter.

  Madeline's face was carved and still. She walked with swift grace under the trees where it was growing almost dark,

  "Evenin', Miz Cole."

  She was startled.

  "Made ye jump eh?" Charley Beard, leaning on his gate, pipe in hand, chuckled. His little house was tucked m next to the church, and his yard was a bower. She had not seen him in the shadow of the tall shrubs.

  "A little," she said pleasantly. "It's a lovely night, Mr. Beard."

  "Yuss," he said, " 'tis." His pipe waved her along.

  Now she crossed the road under another arc light and started up the slope.

  Duncane's house, like all the others that lined the lakeside, had walks to both the back door and the front door coming in from this same street, for there was no road or even an alley behind them.

  Madeline hesitated at the back path which came first. But she did not hesitate long. She turned in and went up a long shadowed walk beside the driveway, around a mass of mock orange, to the kitchen door on the side of this house.

  Celestina's apprehensive face appeared in the glass. It was late in Thor for a knock at the back door.

  "Good evening," said Madeline brightly as the door cracked. "I have something here for Mrs. Duncane. Would you tell her please that Mrs. Cole thought she might enjoy . . ."

  "Just a minute," said Celestina and closed the door in her face. Madeline bit her lip and stared out into the gathering darkness.

  When the door opened again behind her, Henry Duncane stood there, Celestina's black head bobbing at his shoulder.

  "Why, hello," he said. "Come in."

  "I've brought a few of these for Mrs. . . ."

  "Come in, Mrs. Cole, please."

  She was forced to follow him across the kitchen where Celestina now stood by the sink and frankly stared. She could hear Libby Duncane's voice, within, saying,

  "Oh, that girl . . ."

  As they came into the sitting room, Libby was struggling to get up.

  "Oh, how do you do? Did she leave you standing? I'm so sorry , . ."

  "Good evening," said Madeline gravely and almost aloofly. "My husband thought you might enjoy some of our own tomatoes. He asked me to bring them over."

  Libby seemed delighted. She took the little basket. She peered under the tissue paper. She exclaimed, "Oh, how ver}' nice of you! And what beauties they are! Do please sit down, Mrs. Cole, won't you?"

  "I can't stay."

  "Oh, just for a minute . . ."

  All Libby said was as grateful and friendly as could be, but she was astonished just the same.

  Although the sitting room was vast, extending straight through the house, back to front in the center, it seemed cozy at night. The corners lay shadowed. A lamp lit the sofa and Libby's book as it lay open on the cushions beside her. Another lit the newspapers on the floor beside the desk and the chair, and Henry Duncane now walked over to that tall secretary where he had evidently been writing. He picked up his letter, folded it, slipped it into an envelope and licked the flap.

  "I'd better walk down to the depot with this, Libby," he said, each syllable precise.

  "Oh, Henr}', must you really?"

  "So if you will excuse me. . . ."

  "Of course," said Madeline.

  "Well, of course, dear," said Libby Duncane concealing a
small dismay.

  So the women faced each other. Dark-haired Madeline gracefully erect on the edge of a chair, poised as if to rise again soon—a woman reluctantly polite enough to stay briefly where she did not belong. And the fair-haired Libby with her awkward body resting as best it could against the cushions—a woman polite enough to insist briefly that the intruder stay.

  "And you raised them yourself?" she was saying, just on the edge of the false enthusiasm some people use to a child or an inferior.

  Henry Duncane went briskly out the back door.

  Celestina watched him go by with no comment on her dark handsome face. She finished the last dish and went up the back stairs. She had her own room and bath at the kitchen end. And, of the two, the bathroom was her special shrine and sanctuary. She spent far more time there than in the small, neat bedroom which was nothing so extraordinary. Besides, the bathroom overlooked the street side of the house, and often she would settle at its window in the dark and gaze with vague yearning down toward the arc light at the church corner.

  Young girls could no more stand in knots on street cor-

  ners in Thor than in any other town. They could of course, here, as well as anywhere, make excuses to pass that way between one respectable place and another. Celestina, however, was the Duncane's hired girl and, except on Thursday, a prisoner in their house. She was paid for it. But she was sixteen too. On a soft summer evening any prisoner would yearn through the bars.

  Downstairs, Libby said, "Oh, must you go so soon?"

  "I'm afraid so," said Madeline who had risen. "Please don't get up, I can just . . ."

  "I think Celestina has gone to bed," said Libby listening. "No, please . . . Come this way."

  Madeline did not offer to help her as she struggled up. It would not have done. In all their stiff exchange of commonplaces they had broken no ice and were no less strangers than before. Madeline had not tried. She had behaved like a messenger. Libbv had remained the gracious recipient of a gift out of the blue, who was too polite to admit how much it surprised her.

  Nevertheless Libby was not going to permit this visitor to leave by the back door. Timing her reiteration of thanks to take them just nicely to the point of parting, she switched on the hall light and then the porch light, and let Madeline out herself. It was necessary to linger a moment in the open doorway. Both women caught the rhythm just right. The evening was admired and thanks were finished neatly, and good nights were said in an interval just long enough.

  Then Madeline went down the three steps from the porch and Libby, within, held her finger on the switch until her caller's slim back was halfway to the gate. She then flicked it, causing darkness, and she turned thoughtfully back toward her book.

  For goodness sakes, she was thinking, that was odd. She paid no attention at all to the tomatoes in their basket on the end table.

  Madeline walked quickly till the dark flicked down. Then her feet faltered. The evening was absolutely still.

  Then a sound slipped across the lawn and stopped her. It was her name. She turned her head. The whole town was absolutely still.

  Her body broke its poised hesitation, and suddenly she ran on the grass; she shpped silently past the tall mock orange.

  "I wish you wouldn't come here," said Henry Duncane, in the deep dark.

  She felt a flashing triumph like a huzzah in her heart. She swayed toward his sensed presence and fell against him and laid her dark head on his breast.

  All the world was absolutely still as his arms came around her.

  Directly above them, in the dark, the prisoner pressed her mouth upon her forearm and her forearm on the open window sill. Light burned in Celestina's back bedroom, not here in the bathroom where she was absolutely still.

  "Don't do it," Henry said. "Please, Madeline." His voice was clogged and impeded for once, and Madeline, with her ear against his heart, exulted.

  Ah, she knew a secret! She alone knew it! This man, this one of the crisp decisions and the cool competence, this admired one with the clear voice, the sharp intelligence; even he wore in his breast a pounding heart, and the heart was just as tempted and torn and bewildered and uncertain as many another.

  She rested against him and filled her nostrils with the scent of his clothing and his skin, and felt his arms tremble even as he said sternly, "I won't have it."

  "Arthur," she murmured. "His idea ... he insisted."

  "Why?"

  "Oh, he—because he admires you."

  Henry made his arms hard to hold her away. "I won't have anything to do with him. Or you with Libby."

  She was startled. Her fingers closed clinging to his shoulders. She was interpreting that sharp alarm. She said, slowly, "No."

  "I won't have that," he said.

  "Ah, Henr}' . . ." He would not bend though her fingers pressed the warm flesh of his neck under the ear.

  "No," he said quickly, as if now he too caught the feeling behind what he had said and hastened to deny it.

  "All right. Yes, Henry. I know what you can't do." Her

  voice soothed and agreed while her whole bod-, all its magnetism alive, was slyly saying, "We are together. We are here together."

  "1 understand," she murmured aloud. "I'll do what you say. But you've got to let me tell you . . ."

  His arms neither tightened nor did they release her et

  "Don't tell me anything," he said doggedly.

  "I may never speak to you again in all my life," he said and it silenced him.

  "I've told you twice . . . this makes the third time three times and out . . . last time I'll tell you . . ."

  He said dr)ly, "I think I remember ..."

  "That I love you. Let me say it all." Her breath poured its warm whisper against his chin. "And you love me. You know I am the one for you. Though we met too late."

  He said neither yes nor no.

  "And that's the way it is, Henry. Oh, I know as well as you how much too late it is."

  "No good can . . ."

  "It's done. My mistake. Yours, too. You never said it and I don't ask you to say it. Or undo it. But I have to tell you. If you called me, I would come. I would go with you any time, any day, east or west, anywhere—so don't you see that I must get free?" She made her voice pure. "Mustn't I? There is no . . . nothing . . . nobody's health for me to consider. I ought not to stay as I am—loving you."

  She listened to his heart surging so mysteriously.

  "I don't ask you to get free," he said, and the fine edge was off his voice again. It had a choking sound.

  "I know. You can't."

  He pushed her at arms length. "I ask you nothing one way or another," he said angrilv. "If . . ."

  "Ah . . . if . . ."

  But he was not going to pursue the 'if of it.

  "I can't tell you what to do," he said quietly, helplessly.

  "Only call me," she murmured, "if you ever can."

  He was helpless.

  She thought now he might be at the breaking point, he might embrace her fiercely and desperately as she wished. He did not embrace her.

  'The little child," she said softly. "I understand." She knew his breath caught. "But I must ask ... A divorce is right, for me."

  "That's for you to decide," he said. And then in a voice cold with a kind of sorrow, "Don't come here again."

  "All right," she agreed forlornly. "I'll never come again. No more." And she let herself go drooping, soft as a flower.

  He bent, then. "Madeline, will you please ... for God's sake . . . keep away , . ." said Henry Duncane somewhat frantically.

  So she drew herself away, hurting him and trying him as much as she could with gentleness, with lingering. When she stood free, she snatched up his passive hand and put her lips on the back of it. Then she walked, brushing the bushes as if she were blind, away down the back path to the gate.

  Celestina let herself back on her haunches with no sound.

  Henry Duncane stood in the shadow with his hand held out from his
body. In his cool head he knew that the clean-cutting current of his life was to be, henceforward, somewhat blurred and sullied. He had become obligated. He was entangled in the lives of both women. This being intolerable, he would turn away from one. Now he perceived that, either way, there would be remorse for him. Only a part of him could go the way that he was going and this way—either way —would be clogged and muddied with regret, with guilty sorrow.

  He blamed nobody.

  From his gate, even at this distance, Madeline could see that the gang on the corner had gone. She was relieved. The arc lights shone down upon the bare deserted corners. The town was still. Her own feet rang too loudly upon the sidewalk. She hurried, crossed quickly, went past the silent church and plunged under the tunnel of branches.

  On a stoop a match flared. "Good night, Miz Cole," a voice said.

  Her heart jumped, "Oh, good night, Mr. Beard," she called, her breath catching. She almost ran as she rounded the turn toward her own house. She slipped between the lilacs and went inside.

  There was a light in Cyril's room but his door was shut and his blinds drawn.

  She locked the front door behind her and went in darkness through the tiny sitting room, to the dining room and to the stair. She groped up on all fours, using her hands to feel the steps before her.

  Her brother, Cyril, had never been known to come upstairs.

  In her room she lit the lamp and stood staring at her image, the flushed beauty, the wild triumphant happiness.

  She smiled. Arthur was naive.

  She crossed her arms on her breast and nodded at herself in the glass. You will see. You will see.

  And her mind went back over the few moments she had had with Henry, so far. Her first bold and direct acknowledgment of the state they were in. Ah, how wise she had been, to be so bold. For it had caught him. It was pulling him toward her, a little more, a little more, each day. It was her decisiveness, her quick reading of his shock when he first saw her, so beautiful and desirable, and her direct facing of the fact of her own desire (and now her threatened action which she would take, or not, in her own goqd time). All this was her charm over him.