Two Solitudes

by Hugh Maclennan

  He went on to read the next note. “Certainly with the masses religion must rest on fear if it is to exist at all. The masses can be neither mystical nor intelligent. Therefore the Protestant Church is destroying itself by trying to explain everything. No magic, no religion. No hell, no church.”

  Marius wondered if this was heresy. Probably not quite, though it certainly suggested that the Church might have worldly motives. He dropped his eyes to the paper again. “The masses are ruled by their own sense of guilt. Therefore nationalism and sex are the two time-tested mediums through which they can be controlled by small groups. Hammer in absolute patriotism and absolute purity as ideals, and you have the masses where you want them. You can always keep them feeling guilty by proving that they are not patriotic and not pure enough.”

  Marius frowned again, not sure that he understood the full meaning behind the words. He read on. “If some of our priests don’t mind their step, they will turn the whole Church here into a nationalist political party. The hierarchy is too intelligent and cultured to want anything as crude as this, but unless our traditional fear of the English is eradicated, that is just what we are likely to get. Some of the lower clergy want it without a doubt. From most of them you can’t expect anything better.”

  The paper fell from Marius’ hand to the desk. This was certainly heresy, suggesting that the motives of a priest of God were no better than those of a politician. He had for some time suspected that his father was a free-thinker. His fondness for the English was a part of it. So were the convolutions of his private life. Now Marius felt he had absolute proof that his father was also a liar. He lacked the courage to say openly what he believed, escaping the consequences of his heresy by rendering lip-service and going to church occasionally and keeping a pew. His political actions proved him a traitor to his race. Now this book proved him a traitor to his religion as well.

  In sudden impatience Marius put both hands to the pigeon-holes at the back of the desk and began to turn them out. He was absorbed in his search until he thought he heard a noise. He looked up with a start, heard nothing, and then began pushing the papers and letters back in a frantic hurry. With a swift movement he closed the desk and locked it, slipped the key back into the drawer where he had found it, and stood up, tense and with moist palms. He went to the library door, opened it and listened carefully. There was no sound. He swore under his breath and closed the door again, moving softly back into the room. Then he let out a deep breath and stood there with his hands in his pockets, not moving.

  He felt decidedly annoyed because he had found no money. It was as though his father had deliberately fooled him. Nearly always there was money somewhere in that desk. He had seen it since he was a child whenever he had asked for spending-money; sometimes there was as much as a hundred dollars in various sized bills. His father held five hundred dollars in trust for him, a legacy from his own mother. Until his twenty-first birthday he could not legally claim it, but he needed money now, badly, and he saw no reason not to borrow against the five hundred.

  Part of Marius’ anger was caused by the knowledge that his father was naturally generous with money. By French standards, he was even reckless with it. Athanase would have given him any amount had he asked for it, but to ask his father for anything was something Marius could not bring himself to do.

  His breathing quieted and he went again to the window. A feeling of excitement, mixed strangely with sadness and pleasure, passed through him like a knife as he thought of his discovery. His father was a heretic. It gave him a tremendous sense of vindication. His father had never given regard to anyone’s feelings but his own. Now he would ultimately be found out, and then the world would know which of them was right, which one had suffered unjustly.

  He turned his head to listen but there was still no sound in the house. With a quickening in his blood he dropped on his knees before the bookcase beside his father’s desk. He let his hand move over a row of slim volumes on the bottom shelf. They were art books his father had brought from Paris years ago; he had first discovered their presence in the house when he was thirteen. His hand found the volume he wanted without searching, and he went back to the window with it. His fingers trembled as he opened the pages.

  Nude women gleamed from the smooth paper. He turned the pages and there were more nude women in reproductions of paintings by Titian, Correggio, Botticelli, Rubens and Ingres. As he looked at the lovely bodies he was both troubled and fascinated by his thoughts. These were the nearest he had ever come to the sight of a woman naked. So the forms lost individuality as conceived by the painters and became what he made them. They signified only the female being he did not know, the being which was beautiful and dangerous and at the core of sin. His fingers shook as he turned the pages.

  Then, as always happened when he opened the book, he became afraid the pages would be marked by his fingers. He dreaded that his father would some day know how often he looked at these pictures. Not that his father would have cared. It was a matter of guarding his thoughts and essential self from others; this had become an obsession with Marius.

  He replaced the book and dropped into an armchair before the cold hearth, resting his head on cold leather. His father was very proud of this library; in a way he was proud of it himself, for it belonged to the family.

  Steps were audible on the stairs. Marius sat upright, listening, tense. He was facing the door, and as it opened he saw his stepmother before she caught sight of him. Kathleen Tallard stopped still, staring. “Great heavens!” she said, speaking in English. “What are you doing here?”

  Marius leaned back in the chair with an elaborate show of indifference.

  “What’s the matter?” she said. “Are you in trouble?” Her voice had a husky, pulsing quality, but it was friendly, warm and frank.

  “Can’t I come home when I feel like it without you thinking something’s wrong? It’s my home, isn’t it? I was born here, wasn’t I?”

  “Why sure it’s your home. But you ought to be in Montreal. You don’t have a vacation for another month. What will your father say?”

  “What business is that of yours?”

  She was silent a moment. Then she said, “I only wanted to be pleasant. I don’t see why you always talk that way to me.”

  “Don’t you?”

  She turned from him and picked up a long-sticked match from a bowl on the table, struck it, lifted the mantle of the lamp that stood there and touched the match to the wick. Then she struck another match and lit the lamps above the hearth. After that she turned back to him with a smile. “There. That’s better. A little light makes even this place cozy. You need a fire, too.”

  She bent and sprinkled kerosene from a brass can over the logs which were already set on the andirons, then struck another match and dropped it on them. Flames leaped over the kindlings and the birch logs, and a pleasant smell of burning wood seeped into the room as the smoke made wreaths around the stones at the edge of the fireplace before the draft sucked them up the chimney. Marius lay back in the long chair with his hands in his pockets and his feet straight out, watching this woman he always thought of as “my father’s wife.”

  Kathleen stood up from the fire and moved with an easy, indolent grace to the centre of the room. The boy followed her with his eyes. “You’re in trouble, Marius,” she said. “Wouldn’t you like to tell me what it is?”

  “Why should I? Nobody ever pays any attention to me around here. What’s the idea of you starting now?”

  She picked up a book from the table and laid it down again, her mild eyes watching him. She was thirty-one and he was twenty. The fact that she was much closer to his age than to her husband’s was always an unspoken knowledge between them. “You haven’t come out here for fun,” she said. “I know men well enough to know how they feel when they look the way you do.”

  “I’ll bet you know how men feel!”

  Her voice flared up in lazy anger. “If you say things like that I’ll have to tell
your father.”

  He continued to stare at her, his eyes mocking. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  She made a slow movement with one foot, as if to stamp in anger, but the gesture died. “How do you know I wouldn’t?”

  His teeth showed white. “Because you’re afraid of trouble.”

  Kathleen shrugged her shoulders and picked up some magazines, putting them down again and making their edges straight. One dropped to the floor and she bent to retrieve it while Marius watched her, his lips opening slightly. God, she was beautiful!

  Ever since she had come to Saint-Marc nine years before, the house had seemed mysteriously evil, warm with sin. It was more than her beauty, more than the outrage he felt because his father had married a woman young enough to be his own daughter. It was her particular kind of beauty. The contrast between Kathleen’s white Irish skin and the intense ebony blackness of her hair was startling. Her lips were generous and her breasts were full, but her hips below this opulence were slender. As she straightened his eyes dropped. It was the way she moved and sometimes the way she looked at him that gave her so much power over his senses.

  He looked beyond her to the shadows in one corner of the room. She was his father’s wife. She was the mother of his half-brother. Paul was eight, he was pure, he knew nothing of his own origin; but he was this woman’s son. She must have been a girl hardly older than he was now when his father had first gone to her.

  Turning from the table Kathleen said quietly, “You’re afraid they’ll get you, aren’t you, Marius? It’s conscription.”

  For a moment his eyes met hers and yielded. Then he flushed. “I’m not afraid of anything. Understand? They won’t get me, either.”

  “Well, I’m glad you came back. Your father will fix everything up for you. Just wait and see.”

  “You think I’d beg him for anything?”

  “But it wouldn’t be begging–not from your own father! I’ll speak to him, if you like.”

  “No, you won’t. He thinks the war’s wonderful. Why not? He’s safe. He’s too old to be killed. Anyway, he sold out to the English long ago.”

  “Oh, don’t talk that way. Your father’s a very clever man.”

  “How would you know if he was clever or not?”

  “A boy like you can’t know as much about things like the war as his father does. You ought to be proud of him. And him a member of parliament in Ottawa, too.”

  “Proud! My God! I have to apologize to everyone I know every time I see his name in the papers! I have to say, ‘Sure, I know my father sells us down the river to the English, but I’m not like him. I’m not fooled by him.’ Me–having to say that to my friends about my own father!”

  Kathleen made a gesture of impatience and her face showed the mounting of a slow anger. Marius suspected that she saw through him completely and knew his secret thoughts as well as he did himself. There was a dreadful instinct in her for seeing into every male she met.

  “Your father’s always got on well with the English,” she said. “Why not, I’d like to know? They respect him. So does everyone else.”

  “Listen to what the students say and you’ll find out how much he’s respected.”

  “Students! The English are all right. They let us alone.”

  “Us?” Again the harsh laugh. “Since when did you become one of us? You can’t even speak French.”

  Kathleen shrugged her shoulders and turned away. “I don’t know what’s the matter with you. Why can’t you be nice and natural? You and the English! What did they ever do to you? Next thing, you’ll be saying old Captain Yardley is selling somebody out.”

  Marius was lashing himself into anger. He got up and began walking back and forth in the room. “Never mind about him. He’s a harmless old fool. But his friends aren’t. Look at that McQueen! The biggest profiteer in the country fixes things so his friends buy French land cheap. And my own father helps him!” He threw his arms wide in a theatrical gesture. “And why not? He buys things cheap too.”

  “You’re crazy. Your father’s not a business man.”

  “He doesn’t have to be. He bought you, didn’t he?”

  They faced each other, tense and angry. For a second he thought she was going to slap him and he made a sudden movement and caught her lifted hand. She swung in against him and he felt her body soft against his own and saw her eyes looking straight into his and for a second he forgot all about his father. So he stood there holding her wrist. Then he dropped his eyes and pushed her away, feeling shame strike his face like a wave of fire as he groped toward the door.

  Footsteps sounded outside on the gallery. “Who’s that?” he asked sharply, his hand on the knob.

  She looked at him calmly. After the things he had said, her poise was intolerable to him. Even her voice was completely expressionless. “It’s probably Captain Yardley. He’s coming to dinner.”

  “Where does he live–here or in his own house?”

  “He likes your father.” She moved toward the door. “Your father will be back from Ottawa tonight. They’re going to play chess after dinner, the way they always do.”

  Marius opened the door and made for the stairs. He bumped into Julienne on her way from the kitchen to open the front door. She stared at him, not knowing he was home. He clutched her arm. “Don’t tell anyone I’ve been here. Understand? I’m going back to town.”

  Julienne stood staring after him as he ran upstairs. Then she shook her head and pursed her lips. There had always been trouble between Marius and the master. Well, it was none of her business. She went on to open the door, where Yardley’s lean figure was silhouetted against the snow.

  Upstairs in his room Marius stood in the semi-darkness. He was trembling. The image of Kathleen’s lush body still brimmed in his eyes and he felt sick from shame. He struck a match and crossed the room, shielding the flame in his cupped hands. In the far corner he lit a candle. Then he struck another match and lit five more candles and the yellow light fell on a makeshift altar he had set up three years before when he was still at the seminary and thought he was going to be a priest. Above the altar was a small crucifix.

  Marius stood looking at it and then he turned slowly away, his eyes filled with tears. They came to rest on a picture on the side wall. He saw the slim face of a woman with neat black hair parted in the middle and drawn off her forehead. The woman’s eyes were lowered as though in modesty before the camera. It was the virginal face, almost the nun’s face, of his mother.

  Tears for his own loneliness overflowed his eyes as he fell on his knees in front of the altar and clasped his hands. The points of light on the candles swam before his sight. His mind was like a swelling liquid pain as he contemplated his own misery. His hatred of his father collapsed in a longing for his father’s approval, never attained because stubbornness of pride made him refuse consistently to do a single thing his father wished. The terrible thoughts his stepmother roused in him burned in the same way he was sure hell must burn, except that the torture of hell would contain more physical pain.

  For many minutes he stayed on his knees, his lips moving in prayer, and slowly he became calm. Still kneeling after finishing his prayers, he tried to think more clearly. The war had finally caught up with him. Thoughts of the army filled him with dread, mixed with bitterness against the English who were forcing the evil of war upon him. And the dread and the bitterness served to cancel out his shame.

  The candlelight made his shoulders a black silhouette in the gathering dark of the airless room. He got to his feet and looked at his watch. The train from town had reached Sainte-Justine some time ago and his father would be home any minute now. After having come all the way from town to get money he would now have to go back without it. And he would have to hurry to catch the west-bound train back.

  As he went down the stairs on tiptoe, and as he stood in the hall quietly putting on his coat and drawing a muffler about his throat, he listened to the voices that came through the half-open library door
. There was the clink of a bottle against glass and a chuckling laugh from Kathleen, then Yardley’s voice clear. “Down home we used to drink Demerara and when I was a lot younger than I am now I’d always get embarrassed, not being able to take it neat like most of them. You need a bull’s gullet for neat Demerara.”

  Marius missed Kathleen’s reply, but he could hear Yardley go on, “Barbados is a gentleman’s rum.” Then, after a moment’s silence, “Mr. Tallard late again?”

  Kathleen must have moved closer to the door, for he could make out her reply now. “I never worry about him. He’ll be here soon.”

  Marius stood in the dark hall balanced on his toes, listening intently. He might miss his train, but he could not bring himself to leave. The pleasant voices in the lighted room held him.

  “He worries, though,” Kathleen went on. “Too much. He’s not the way he used to be when I first met him, I can tell you that. He was fun, then.”

  “The way the war’s going, Kathleen, it’s enough to make anyone worry.”

  So he calls her by her first name, Marius thought. Well, why not? She was the kind men instinctively called by a personal name.

  “Still wanting to get back to the city?” Yardley said.

  “What’s the use of wanting?”

  “There could be a lot worse places to live than Saint-Marc.”

  “Where?”

  Marius shifted his feet in the hall. Then Kathleen’s voice went on, “With all the other places in the world to pick from, it still beats me why you came here.”

  “I’m not sorry,” Yardley said. “Must say, though, I never thought I’d have to work so hard in my sixtieth year. Lucky thing my health’s still good.”

  Kathleen’s voice was warm and lazy as she answered. “Well, it’s nice for me, your being here. He never thinks about me any more, you know. So I just drift. I guess everybody does and I guess it’s nothing but luck where you drift to.” She laughed quietly. “Well, I’ve had my lucky days, too.”