The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan - Volume Three Page 6

  Miss Schwartz crossed the road to one of the department stores and was glad she had on her heavy coat with the wide sleeves that made a warm muff. The snow was melting and the sidewalk steaming near the main entrance. She went lightheartedly through the store, buying a little material for a dress on the third floor, a chemise on the fourth floor and curling-tongs in the basement. She decided to take a look at the dresses.

  She rode an elevator to the main floor and got on an escalator because she liked gliding up and looking over the squares of counters, the people in the aisles, and over the rows of white electric globes hanging from the ceiling. She intended to pay about twenty-five dollars for a dress. To the left of the escalators the dresses were displayed on circular racks in orderly rows. She walked on the carpeted floor to one of the racks and a salesgirl lagged on her heels. The girl was young and fair-headed and saucy looking; she made Miss Schwartz uncomfortable.

  “I want a nice dress, blue or brown,” she said, “about twenty-five dollars.”

  The salesgirl mechanically lifted a brown dress from the rack. “This is the right shade for you,” she said. “Will you try it on?”

  Miss Schwartz was disappointed. She had no idea such a plain dress would cost twenty-five dollars. She wanted something to startle Sam. She never paid so much for a dress, but Sam liked something fancy. “I don’t think I like these,” she said. “I wanted something special.”

  The salesgirl said sarcastically, “Maybe you were thinking of a French dress. Some on the rack in the French Room are marked down.”

  Miss Schwartz moved away, a tall commonplace woman in a dark coat and an oddly shaped purple hat. She went into the gray French Room. She stood on a blue pattern on the gray carpet and guardedly fingered a dress on the rack, a black canton crepe dress with a high collar that folded back, forming petals of burnt orange. From the hem to the collar was a row of buttons, the sleeves were long with a narrow orange trimming at the cuffs, and there was a wide corded silk girdle. It was marked seventy-five dollars. She liked the feeling it left in the tips of her fingers. She stood alone at the rack, toying with the material, her mind playing with thoughts she guiltily enjoyed. She imagined herself wantonly attractive in the dress, slyly watched by men with bold thoughts as she walked down the street with Sam, who would be nervously excited when he drew her into some corner and put his hands on her shoulders. Her heart began to beat heavily. She wanted to walk out of the room and over to the escalator but could not think clearly. Her fingers were carelessly drawing the dress into her wide coat sleeve, the dress disappearing steadily and finally slipping easily from the hanger, drawn into her wide sleeve.

  She left the French Room with a guilty feeling of satisfied exhaustion. The escalator carried her down slowly to the main floor. She hugged the parcels and the sleeve containing the dress tight to her breast. On the streetcar she started to cry because Sam seemed to have become something remote, drifting away from her. She would have gone back with the dress but did not know how to go about it.

  When she got to the boarding house she went straight upstairs and put on the dress as fast as she could, to feel that it belonged to her. The black dress with the burnt orange petals on the high collar was short and loose on her thin figure.

  Then the landlady knocked at the door and said that a tall man downstairs wanted to see her about something important. Mrs. McNab waited for Miss Schwartz to come out of her room.

  Miss Schwartz sat on the bed. She felt that if she did not move at once she would not be able to walk downstairs. She walked downstairs in the French dress, Mrs. McNab watching her closely. Miss Schwartz saw a man with a wide heavy face and his coat collar buttoned high on his neck complacently watching her. She felt that she might just as well be walking downstairs in her underclothes; the dress was like something wicked clinging to her legs and her body. “How do you do,” she said.

  “Put on your hat and coat,” he said steadily.

  Miss Schwartz, slightly bewildered, turned stupidly and went upstairs. She came down a minute later in her coat and hat and went out with the tall man. Mrs. McNab got red in the face when Miss Schwartz offered no word of explanation.

  On the street he took her arm and said, “You got the dress on and it won’t do any good to talk about it. We’ll go over to the station.”

  “But I have to go to Windsor,” she said, “I really have to. It will be all right. You see, I am to be married tomorrow. It’s important to Sam.”

  He would not take her seriously. The streetlights made the slippery sidewalks glassy. It was hard to walk evenly.

  At the station the sergeant said to the detective, “She might be a bad egg. She’s an old maid and they get very foxy.”

  She tried to explain it clearly and was almost garrulous. The sergeant shrugged his shoulders and said the cells would not hurt her for a night. She started to cry. A policeman led her to a small cell with a plain cot.

  Miss Schwartz could not think about being in the cell. Her head, heavy at first, got light and she could not consider the matter. The detective who had arrested her gruffly offered to send a wire to Sam.

  The policeman on duty during the night thought she was a stupid silly woman because she kept saying over and over, “We were going to be married. Sam liked a body to look real nice. He always said so.” The unsatisfied expression in her eyes puzzled the policeman, who said to the sergeant, “She’s a bit of a fool, but I guess she was going to get married all right.”

  At half past nine in the morning they took her from the cell to the police car along with a small wiry man who had been quite drunk the night before, a colored woman who had been keeping a bawdy house, a dispirited fat man arrested for bigamy, and a Chinese man who had been keeping a betting house. She sat stiffly, primly, in a corner of the car and could not cry. Snow was falling heavily when the car turned into the city hall courtyard.

  Miss Schwartz appeared in the Women’s Court before a little olive-skinned magistrate. Her legs seemed to stiffen and fall away when she saw Sam’s closely cropped head and his big lazy body at a long table before the magistrate. A young man was talking rapidly and confidently to him. The magistrate and the Crown attorney were trying to make a joke at each other’s expense. The magistrate found the attorney amusing. A court clerk yelled a name, the policeman at the door repeated it and then loudly yelled the name along the hall. The colored woman who had been keeping the bawdy house appeared with her lawyer.

  Sam moved over to Miss Schwartz. She found it hard not to cry. She knew that a Salvation Army man was talking to a slightly hard-looking woman about her, and she felt strong and resentful. Sam held her hand but said nothing.

  The colored woman went to jail for two months rather than pay a fine of $200.

  “Lena Schwartz,” said the clerk. The policeman at the door shouted the name along the hall. The young lawyer who had been talking to Sam told her to stand up while the clerk read the charge. She was scared and her knees were stiff.

  “Where is the dress?” asked the magistrate.

  A store detective with a heavy moustache explained that she had it on and told how she had been followed and later on arrested. Everybody looked at her, the dress too short and hanging loosely on her thin body, the burnt orange petals creased and twisted.

  “She was to be married today,” began the young lawyer affably. “She was to be married in this dress,” he said and good humoredly explained that yesterday when she stole it she had become temporarily a kleptomaniac. Mr. Hilton had come up from Windsor and was willing to pay for the dress. It was a case for clemency. “She waited a long time to be married and was not quite sure of herself,” he said seriously.

  He told Sam to stand up. Sam haltingly explained that she was a good woman, a very good woman. The Crown attorney seemed to find Miss Schwartz amusing.

  The magistrate scratched away with his pen and then said he would remand Miss Schwartz for sentence if Sam still wanted to marry her and would pay for the dress. Sam could h
ardly say anything. “She will leave the city with you,” said the magistrate, “and keep out of department stores for a year.” He saw Miss Schwartz wrinkling her nose and blinking her eyes and added, “Now go out and have a quiet wedding.” The magistrate was satisfied with himself.

  Miss Schwartz, looking a little older than Sam, stood up in her dress that was to make men slyly watch her and straightened the corded silk girdle. It was to be her wedding dress. Sam gravely took her arm and they went out to be quietly married.

  Three Lovers

  The first to see him coming down the road was Al Stevens. He was sitting on the veranda with his Uncle Andrew. Thin misty rain had been falling for hours on green grass and meadowland sloping down to the river. No one else was on the road. A mist was hanging over the river between the trees, and there was the hollow clanging of a cowbell by Burnam’s pasture, sounding loud and clear on the moist air.

  Stepping down suddenly from the veranda and standing in the rain in his shirtsleeves, Al Stevens said to his uncle, “Dick Bennet’s coming up the road and looking as if he’s going somewhere in a hurry.” But old Uncle Andrew, who had been deaf and dumb all his life, went on reading his paper. Al tried to sign, slapping his fingers on his palms, got impatient, and went into the house, calling, “Mollie, come here a minute, take a squint down the road and see what you see.” The rich, sweet odor of baking tea biscuits came from the kitchen.

  “Leave me in peace in my kitchen,” Mollie called.

  “It’s a sight that’ll burn you up, woman.” His wife came from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, her plump cheeks rosy from the heat of the stove. They hurried out to the veranda and looked down the road at the tall young man with the wide shoulders, who was swinging toward them with his big stride. His thick hair was shining in the soft rain. “He’s coming up here,” Mollie said. Dick Bennet was almost up to the veranda. They could see his solemn young face, his dark eyes, and his massive, loose-jointed body.

  “Hello, Mrs. Stevens. Hello, Al. How’s everybody?” he said.

  “Hello, Dick,” Al said, shaking hands heartily. “Where have you been? We’d like to ask you in Dick, but as it is we’ve got no room.”

  “It’s a great pity that we can’t ask you in,” Mollie said firmly. “I dare say you’ll be going on up to the hotel.”

  “It’s very likely,” Dick said. For such a big man it was odd to see him go suddenly shy. He turned and called back, “I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Mrs. Stevens. So long, Alfred.” He went down the path, and on up the road.

  Joe Tobin, the hotelkeeper, was cleaning glasses at the counter when Dick came in and said, “Hello, Joe. Have you got a room to spare?”

  “Man alive, is it you, Dick? You’ve got no sense in your head to come back here.”

  “Don’t I come back every year?” Dick asked, laughing.

  “Not with the way people have been talking about you now.”

  While Dick’s face was reddening, Joe Tobin said, “Look, there’s the Tudhope car. Stand here at the window.” They saw a man about forty getting down from beside the girl on the front seat. Edward Tudhope had on a large gray raincoat. As he walked around the car, walking with a slight limp, he took off his hat to a long row of elderly loafers on the veranda. All his life he had had a physical shyness because of his limp but in this place, at least, he was at home. Here nearly everybody owed him money, farmers unable to sell their crops had borrowed from him, and they came along with the storekeeper and the villagers, to the old colonial house overlooking the glen to pay the interest on their notes.

  Tudhope was looking up at the girl in the car while filling the tank with gasoline. You could see only her shoulders and face and thick auburn hair, but she seemed full of composure, as if for a long time she had been looking dreamily along the road. The old men watching and the boys on the step, too, knew of the love big Tudhope had always had for Cretia Tolmie, waiting patiently for her to grow up; and now these men staring at her were puzzled that Tudhope and his mother had so gladly taken her into their home after young Bennet had loved and then abandoned her. So they were staring, trying to see more of her, feeling the soft beauty of her face, remembering how just a few months ago even the little kids had looked after her and whistled as she went along the road. Her face now glowing in the mist.

  Joe Tobin said, “She’s as pretty as a peach in sunlight, ain’t she now? I’m surprised at a man like you passing her up.”

  “What’s Cretia doing with Tudhope, Joe?”

  “She’s marrying him in a week or so.”

  “Where’s Cretia staying?”

  “She’s staying with Tudhope and his old mother. Her father died, you know,” Tobin said, and he began to whistle thinly as he watched Dick’s big dark face.

  But Cretia Tolmie, herself, did not hear that Dick Bennet was back till the next morning. Cretia came out of the house and began to putter around the flowerbeds on the wide lawn. It was the warmest of spring days with no breeze, and brilliant sunshine all over the hilly country. Dark plowed land was streaked with rich furrows and oat fields were a heavy green. Cretia bent down, poking with a light stick at the earth. The late spring flowers were opening.

  Then she saw Joe Tobin’s dilapidated car passing by the road and she called out, “Hello, Joe.” He stopped the car, watching her for a long time as though waiting for her to come down to him. And when she did come striding toward him he muttered, “She’s the prettiest thing I ever set my eyes on in these parts. There’s something rosy about her.”

  As Cretia smiled up at him, he said, “Are you going my way?”

  “No, why do you ask, Joe?” she said.

  “Cretia, Dick is back. You ought to know.”

  They looked at each other, but could not speak for a moment, and then she said fearfully, “Where is he Joe?”

  He said, “I had no room. He’s in the old stone cottage opposite the hotel. People are getting to hear about it.”

  Along the highway and in the village at the foot of the glen people were hearing that young Bennet had returned, but no one had dared to go up to the house and tell Tudhope. Once more Joe Tobin looked into Cretia’s face; then he shook his head and started the car.

  Cretia could not understand why she was suddenly afraid to go back and into the house. She sat on the veranda in the rocking chair with her skirt billowing out around her, sitting in the shade and listening to an oriole over on the edge of the orchard, while all the time she seemed to be really knowing that Dick would come. She was startled, feeling full of guilt, when old Mrs. Tudhope opened the door and said, “We’re going into town. Are you all right, Cretia? Is there anything you need?” There was something fierce and yet tender about the woman’s pinched little face. She had begun to like Cretia. She wanted to be as devoted to her as she was to her son. “There’s nothing you want, eh?” she said, peering at Cretia and wondering at the hushed expectant look she saw.

  “No, there’s nothing I need at all,” Cretia said.

  When Edward Tudhope and his mother got into the car, Cretia saw the shy smile lighting his solemn eyes as he threw a kiss to her. She felt there would always be peace and gentleness in a life with him, and she wondered if her love for him might now grow steadily from year to year. And yet almost at once she found herself thinking, “If I could just see Dick for a moment. If I could just see his big awkward body, so I could tell him to go away.” She was also saying, “He had better not come around here. I wouldn’t even let him set eyes on me.” There was a stillness of waiting in her, even deeper than the dreadful uneasiness she felt, which seemed a part of the blue sky and the seeds growing in the rich earth.

  Not much later Cretia heard a car coming up the road and she thought the Tudhopes must have turned back. But this car was swerving from side to side. It stopped in front of the house and she saw that Dick Bennet was driving. He came running toward her with his hand reaching up. “Hey, Cretia,” he called.

  “What are you doing here, Dic
k?”

  “Cretia, put on your coat and get some things. I’ve come to get you.”

  “Go away, Dick,” she said. “You’re not coming near me. You’ve neither shame nor pride.”

  “I got the car from the garage in the village,” he said. Out of breath, he stood a few feet away, wanting to edge closer, yet knowing, if he moved, she would run into the house.

  “You must never come up here again,” she said vehemently, but he looked so bold and sure of himself that she was bewildered. “You ought to know how I’d hate the sight of you,” she said.

  “I know I’ve been a fool, Cretia. I had a crazy notion I ought to be free and not tied down, so I could see a lot of places. I’ve been all over. I’ve been to Detroit, Montreal, and New York, but I couldn’t sleep at night for seeing you always there in my dreams.”

  “I’ve made up my mind, Dick. It doesn’t matter. You didn’t care what happened to me. What would I have done without Edward Tudhope? Whatever happiness I’m going to have in this world I want to have here with the Tudhopes.”

  “I thought you’d be saying something like this,” he said in a reasonable, confidential voice. “You think you’ve got to say it, so I’m coming up there to get you and pick you up and put you down in the car. Don’t get scared. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  “You must be crazy as a cricket,” she said, putting her hand out, feeling for the door. He came toward her almost sidelong in his slow step because there was a soft reverence in him for her body that made him afraid to grab hold of her, and she quickly stepped back into the house and slammed the door and locked it. She got so weak she thought she might faint, and she knelt down leaning heavily against the door, listening. She heard him step off the veranda and run around to the back of the house and start shaking the locked back door. When she was calmer she got up and looked out the window, and there he was walking up and down, looking up at all the windows. “He’d never leave me now,” she thought.