The Precipice

by Hugh Maclennan

  When whispering sounds do softly steal

  With creeping passion through the heart

  And when at every touch we feel

  Our senses beat and bear a part;

  When threads can make

  A heart-string shake…

  One thing had stood by her, and she had learned how to foster it. She had learned how to discover beauty when no one else was near. Through many winters she had memorized the stark outlines of naked trees silhouetted against freezing skies. She had strolled in the autumn through side streets, watching smoke rise from chimneys against pure northern colours, knowing that red-faced housewives were cooking roasts, pumpkin pies, and root vegetables for men coming home from work and boys tired from chores and football. It was the kind of beauty she understood, the kind which exists almost without knowledge of good and evil, probably the only kind possible in a puritan town.

  Softened by distance, the bells under the cruet-shaped cupola on the post office struck ten times. Lucy got to her feet, then her silhouette faded from the shore and merged with the deep darkness under the trees as she crossed the common on her way home.

  Tomorrow she would cook three meals, dust the rooms, make the beds, buy a few groceries, work in the garden. In the afternoon it would be her turn to serve an hour at the desk of the public library. Tomorrow would be just another summer day.

  THE Grenville Public Library occupied one corner of the ground floor of the courthouse, and the ledges of its high dusty windows were only four feet above the sidewalk. It was therefore possible for Lucy, turning her eyes sideways from the desk in an idle moment, to find herself staring directly into the eyes of Stephen Lassiter as he looked in at her from the street. For an instant their eyes met. He smiled at her and she smiled casually back, as she would at someone she had met but did not know well. Then, as rapidly as if she had been stung, she jerked her eyes away.

  She remembered that it was only yesterday when she had told Nina she had met Stephen Lassiter, and Nina was in the library now. A flush rose from her throat to her cheeks. Yet because she was free of all nervous gestures, this heightened colour merely accentuated the fine texture of her skin and combined with her wide-set eyes to give her an air of grace she never knew she had. Lassiter saw the change in her face and saw her look away. When Lucy glanced toward the window again, he had disappeared.

  She drew a deep breath and slowly let it out. Already her mind had set the scene she imagined would occur if Lassiter entered the library. Already she could see Nina coming forward to be introduced to him; Nina's china-blue eyes, innocently shrewd, darting from Lassiter's face to hers, and then narrowing as she realized that Lucy had never met him at all, and that the trivial lie Lucy had told her proved that her sister was a grotesque sort of woman, the pitiful kind one read about in so many of these library books, who invented romantic incidents which had never happened in order to fill up the blankness of her life. Wildly exaggerating the embarrassment of her position, Lucy was unable for a few moments to think at all.

  She got up from the desk and crossed to the magazine table. A blue-suited man with white hair, a red face, and a vast chin oozing out of his collar, was puttering over a pile of Blackwoods at one end of it. She straightened a stack of government bulletins which nobody ever read, and returned to her desk with some of her composure recovered. She remembered the night before. The night before, alone on the shore, she had told herself bravely that knowledge had made her free. It was bitter to admit that a woman like herself, devoid of prestige because she had no home or function of her own, could ever allow a trivial situation like this to matter.

  “Lucy?”

  It was Nina's voice from behind the first stack.

  “Yes?”

  “You know that book by Aldous Huxley you were reading?”

  “Yes.”

  Nina, still behind the stack and indifferent to the man at the magazine table and the old lady behind the first stack: “What was the name of it? I'd like to read it. After all, you did.”

  With the instinctive hypocrisy of a shy person defending herself against a possible situation by pretending the situation doesn't exist, Lucy rejected the obvious retort and moved eagerly to comply with Nina's whim. She was about to join her sister behind the stack when the old lady appeared with a battered copy of a novel by Kathleen Norris. Lucy stamped the date in the back of the book, replaced a card in a file, and watched the old lady depart. Then she joined Nina.

  “But you can't possibly find it here,” she said. “It's among the novels under the letter H.” She led her sister to the second stack. “I'm sure it's not out again. It's only a few days since I returned it.”

  She looked up. Her straining ears had caught footsteps approaching along the corridor. Leaving Nina where she was, she came out into the open, her eyes wary. Her flush had now disappeared. It was momentarily replaced by a dull annoyance at herself for being so vulnerable.

  The footsteps passed and the door remained as it was, half ajar. Lucy sat down again and let out a deep breath of relief. Her annoyance faded out and was replaced by a warm wave of affection for the whole world: for Nina, for the white-haired man in the blue suit, even for this dull and dusty library. Apparently Lassiter was not coming in after all and she was safe.

  “Lucy?” Nina was still behind the stacks. “Was it Point Counter Point?”

  “Yes.”

  “I've got it, then.”

  Meanwhile the white-haired man in the blue suit had been eyeing Lucy covertly. His wide red face was moist under his white hair as he ambled over to the desk. He moved with a floating movement, waving his hands, and Lucy set herself to receive him, for he was Tom McCarthy, the Grenville poet.

  “Ah, Miss Cameron, it was a fine thing I heard you say for Ireland when you were on duty here last week. I've been meaning to tell you. A fine thing, and one that needed to be said, and here of all places.”

  Lucy had no idea what he was talking about, but it didn't seem to make much difference, for McCarthy was under way.

  “When I first set eyes on you, Miss Cameron, I knew you weren't at all like the rest of them here. But I've never said a word.” He held one finger to his lips and winked. “And then, last week you said it.”

  “What did I say?”

  “And have you forgotten already? What you said about William Butler Yeats? Now then – there was a poet!”

  “Oh!” Lucy said. “I've often wondered if you knew Yeats when you were in Ireland, Mr. McCarthy?”

  “Knew him!” McCarthy said, and put a plump hand inside his double-breasted coat. “Man and boy I knew him.” The plump hand emerged from the breast pocket holding a crumpled sheet of paper. “And it's only fair to tell you something else, that in Ireland I was considered the better poet of the two.”

  He began to declaim a poem he had written the night before, inspired when he had counted seven white hairs resting in the comb after he had finished combing his hair. But a solid-faced woman bounced in, talking as she came, and McCarthy stopped abruptly and stared at her in indignation. Then he put the poem back in his pocket and leaned over Lucy's desk.

  “Another time, Miss Cameron? Say the word when. Another time when we're alone?”

  Lucy bent her head to the book which the bouncy woman had planked down in front of her, marked it, and laid it aside. When she looked up, the poet and the bouncy woman were staring at each other with mutual distaste.

  “And now,” McCarthy said, “I must be getting back to my little place. Mrs. Carruthers died last night, as everybody knows.” Glaring at the bouncy woman, “It was the heat, but only partly.”

  He floated out the door on his way to the Olivet Undertaking Parlours. As soon as he was gone, the woman leaned over the desk and nodded to the door.

  “What was he saying to you when I came in?” The stage whisper was louder than her natural voice.

  “He was telling me he knew William Butler Yeats.”

  “Oh, he did, did he! Well, I don't know
who that was, but I know all of Tom McCarthy I ever want to know. Imagine a man like that calling himself a poet! When I die, let me tell you, I'm not going to have his horrible white hands embalming me!”

  She left without taking out a new book, and then Nina emerged from behind the stacks with Point Counter Point. She went to the window and looked out, her shoulders wriggling as she leaned over the sill.

  “Do you know what's outside? Steve Lassiter's LaSalle!”

  Lucy pretended to concentrate on her book list. Nina left the window and sat on the edge of the desk, one neat thigh showing its contour through the strained cotton of her dress, the book in her free hand dangling at arm's length by her side.

  “Lucy?” Her voice was provocative. “Where did you meet him?”

  “Meet whom?”

  “You know perfectly well who.” Nina got up and crossed to the magazine table and began turning over the pages of an Illustrated London News.

  “What's he like?”

  “I don't know. I just met him, that's all.”

  “Where did you meet him?”

  Lucy hesitated. Footsteps were approaching again. But they could hardly be Lassiter's. If he had been intending to come into the library, he would have been here before now. Anyway, he hadn't looked the sort of man who cared about books.

  “At the tennis courts,” she said.

  Nina slid off the table, knocked a magazine on the floor as she did so, picked it up, and then glanced at her wrist watch.

  “Bruce should have been here ten minutes ago,” she said. “But he's always late for everything. What were you doing at the tennis courts?”

  “Watching.”

  “Lucy, why don't you ever tell a person anything?”

  The footsteps drew near and Lucy recognized them as Bruce Fraser's. So did Nina, who opened the door wide and stood there waiting for him to arrive. Bruce entered blinking in the light from the library windows. The corridor from which he had come was a dark place; so dark that people were always falling over the pails and mops the janitor left lying around in it.

  Bruce smiled at Lucy. “Is this your day?” Then, moving toward the stacks, “I think I'll see what I can find back here.”

  Nina tugged him by the arm. “Come on, Bruce – you won't want a book this afternoon when you're in the lake.”

  He grinned cheerfully. “No, but I'll want one tonight when I'm in bed.”

  She continued to hold his wrist. He remained stubborn and continued to smile. Finally she went with him behind the stacks, and Lucy's eyes followed them both with affection.

  For the next few minutes she was kept busy by a group of women who had come in together to return books and take out a new supply for the weekend. They stayed only a few moments because they all knew what they wanted. They brought new books from the shelves and while Lucy marked their cards they wondered aloud if it would rain for Mrs. Carruthers's funeral. Then they left, and the place was quiet except for the buzz of a bluebottle, the occasional blare of a motor horn in the street, and sporadic conversation between Nina and Bruce behind the stacks.

  Lucy had nothing to do for the moment. She relaxed behind her desk and leaned back in her chair just out of reach of the sunbeam which poured like a searchlight through the window. Filled with swirling motes, the sunshine illumined this cave of a room which the local chapter of the Daughters of the Empire had conspired to make as British as Rule, Britannia! Directly opposite Lucy's desk was a double portrait of the King and Queen. Beside it was a signed and framed photograph of Stanley Baldwin and his pipe. Over the door hung the royal coat of arms, painted on a wooden shield by a promising art student in the high school; it displayed a sick-looking lion barely able to meet the stare of a unicorn which not only had Byronic eyes, but also a Byronic collar. On the wall behind Lucy was a vast line-engraving entitled Mrs. Fry Reading to the Prisoners in Newgate Gaol, 1816. Elsewhere and at random were engravings of Lord Nelson, Queen Victoria opening the Great Exhibition of 1851, the Duke of Wellington, and the Earl of Grenville. Like a bull's eye facing the door was a sign in black and white which said, QUIET, PLEASE!

  Once again steps became audible in the corridor, but it was not until they reached the door that Lucy sat forward in her chair into the sunbeam and bent her eyes to the book list. Those steps were so heavy she knew they could only be Lassiter's.

  She was aware that he had entered the library. She was conscious of his presence directly in front of her desk. Still she didn't look up.

  “Well,” Lassiter said, “it seems as if I've found the place I was looking for. This is the library, isn't it?”

  Lucy had been in profile when he entered the room. The sunshine brought out all the highlights in her dark hair. The flush had returned to her cheeks and her quickened breathing caused a barely perceptible quiver in the soft skin of her lifted throat.

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “This is the library.”

  His voice was deep, vibrant, and American. It was quite loud enough for Nina to hear it behind the stacks, and to recognize to whom it belonged. When Lucy looked up she was conscious that Lassiter's eyes were fixed on her, and that he was smiling. His stare was so frankly interested that she could almost feel it touching her skin. She glanced away, astonished and confused. No man had ever looked at her in that way.

  “You certainly keep this place well hidden,” Lassiter said. He was still directly in front of the desk. “Someone told me it was in the courthouse, but a lot of help that was. Every door in this place looks the same from the outside.”

  As he continued to talk, Lucy's mind raced. He was so different from what she had remembered or imagined he would be. He tended to separate his words, and he spoke carefully, as though he had learned to play down the effect of ruthlessness suggested by his powerful body.

  “So far,” he went on, “I've been in two lawyers’ offices, the furnace room, and the jail.”

  Lucy felt herself frozen into the core of the brief silence that followed.

  Finally she said, “You're quite free to look around.”

  “Thanks.”

  Out of the corner of her eye, Lucy saw Nina sliding out from behind the stacks, an expectant look on her face. It reminded Lucy of a time years ago when she was a child. She was crossing a field on her way home from school with two boys. They knew a grass snake was hidden behind a rock and they prodded with sticks to bring it out, while Lucy stood to one side hoping it would never come. But it did come, and it looked exactly as she had expected it to look, and then the boys had picked it up and thrown it at her.

  She caught Lassiter's glance swinging back from the approaching Nina to herself.

  “You can take out five books at a time,” she said. “Two new ones and three old ones.”

  Lassiter's deep voice came back at her like a tennis ball bouncing off a wall. “That's pretty generous.”

  By this time Nina was beside the desk, but Lucy dared not look up at her. Bruce, she supposed, was still behind the stacks. Lucy felt like wringing his neck. Why hadn't he taken Nina swimming long ago?

  “Lucy?”

  She looked up, and the moment she met her sister's eyes she was sure Nina had found her out. That innocently malicious, half-smiling, half-mocking expression was just beginning to form about her lips. When it did form, when it covered all of Nina's face, Lucy was sure no hole in the world would be too small to hold her. But at the same time she saw something else, and it startled her. Nina's eyes were as bold as Lassiter's own, but bold in the female way of leading a man on while risking nothing. Nina was drinking in every aspect of the American as she affected to pay him no attention whatever. Lucy lowered her eyes to the book list.

  “Lucy?” Nina said again.

  Then she heard, as if from a long distance, her own voice speaking. “Nina – may I present Stephen Lassiter. Mr. Lassiter, this is my sister, Nina Cameron.”

  Her eyes dropped, but she saw nothing on her desk except a dancing blur of typescript. She was aware that conventi
onal remarks were being exchanged between Nina and Lassiter, and then, as one second ticked after another, she knew with a wild mixture of relief and astonishment that the situation her imagination had forecast was not going to develop. Bruce came out and Nina introduced him. He and Lassiter shook hands. Lassiter asked if he played tennis and Bruce said he didn't.

  Then Lucy glanced up again. Nina's eyes met hers and she caught a look of puzzled respect in them. She saw that Bruce had already disliked Lassiter and that Lassiter had responded with a glance showing total disinterest. Then Bruce and Nina left the library, Nina telling Lassiter she hoped to see him again.

  Conscious that her flush had deepened, Lucy was now confronted by one of the boldest grins she had ever in her life seen on a man's face.

  “Well!” he said. “What have I been waiting for all the time I've been in this town!”

  She opened her mouth to speak, to say something to apologize for her boldness, to make this American realize she was not the kind of girl he thought she was. No words came. She swallowed, and the tip of her tongue moistened her lips. Still she sat calmly.

  It was this apparent tranquility which checked the sudden spurt of eager confidence in Lassiter. He failed to understand her flush, or even notice it as such. All he saw was the strange and individual grace which the high colour had imparted to her features.

  “I haven't met you before, have I?” His voice was slightly hesitant, his grin had softened to a frank smile. “I've met a lot of people here, but if you'd been one of them I wouldn't have forgotten.”

  Lucy forced herself to face his eyes. Alone with him in the library now, she became quite cool.

  “I watched you playing tennis,” she said.

  “Oh! Then it was you I saw at the courts?”

  He took two steps over to the magazine table and perched on the edge of it. The table creaked under his weight.

  Looking at her with a mixture of shrewdness and curious amusement, he said, “How did you know my name?”

  “This is a pretty small town.”

  “But you knew my first name, too.”

  “Perhaps that makes it a smaller town still?”