The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan - Volume Three Page 7

  Still hoping she might come out, he kept looking at the house, and then he took a few steps in an aimless, puzzled way. He began to walk, slow and dejected, down to the car, and he got in without looking back.

  As she watched him passing out of sight Cretia felt she had hurt herself so deeply nothing now could matter. “Why can’t I stop loving him? I don’t want to love him. He never brought me anything but misery,” she thought. But she felt the hurt she had given herself sinking deep into her.

  She went up to the big, sunlit room with the fine, old furniture, but she felt that she had become more of a stranger in this room than she had ever been. Lying on the bed, she longed for the Tudhopes to return. She waited, with her breath held, with her fists clenched hard. At first she heard every slight noise outside, then faint and farther away she heard the water falling over the rocks in the glen, the same water she had heard running the last night she had walked with Dick before he went away, when he had walked beside her, swinging his big body, trying to pull away from her on the night road while she cried a little and there had been no sound except the noise of the freight train passing by Clover Hill and the water falling in the glen. Standing by the fence he had kissed her clumsily. “I’ll be here next week,” he kept saying. Then he was gone, without looking back, as if it had become a new night.

  The sun was almost down in the late afternoon when the Tudhope car came back up the drive and was backed into the garage. From the window Cretia watched Tudhope help his mother out of the car. His little white fox terrier yelped joyfully and scampered forward to welcome them. Tudhope stopped to smell the blossoms from the apple orchard. “It always made him happy to know I loved the orchard,” Cretia thought. “Maybe he’s thinking we’ll walk down the road like we did two nights ago with him holding my arm so gently. When I told him I loved the smell of the apple blossoms and the white glory of them in the moonlight ever since I was a child, he seemed so happy, as if now he understood the orchard had been growing all the time for the purpose, growing for me.” She began to make a little prayer that she might have a fuller love for Edward Tudhope. He came into the house like a quiet man who is glad to be home with his books and his tobacco.

  “Cretia, where are you?” he called. When she came he looked at her for a long time, as if ashamed of something he dared not define, but when he saw that she was smiling with more tenderness than she had ever shown to him, he smiled broadly.

  “I’m glad you’ve come back,” she said. “I don’t like being alone.”

  “Who around here would harm you, Cretia?”

  “Nobody here. I know every sound that comes from the glen, and yet when it gets dark now I don’t want to be alone.”

  “I brought the city papers. I’ll get them and read to you while dinner is being prepared,” he said. “I left them out on the veranda.” He was fond of reading aloud, for when he read slowly there was a sonorous rolling to his words, and a dignity that was not there at other times.

  He went out, and when he came in he was carrying the papers loosely, as if he had forgotten about them. He said softly, with the words sliding out easily as if they had been in his mind a long time, “I saw Dick Bennet down at the hotel.”

  “He will not come here,” she said, feeling at once that she should not alarm him.

  “As soon as I saw him I felt sure he had been here, Cretia.”

  “It’s terrible that you should feel sure of it. Don’t you see what that means?”

  “On the way to town my mother kept saying there was a queer look on your face, an expectant look that made her uneasy,” he said. Then he called out suddenly to his mother who had gone upstairs, “Light the light, mother. It’s dark down here.”

  “It’s not dark yet,” Cretia said, “The light’s streaming in the window.”

  “You can’t see in that light. It’ll be dark in a minute,” he said irritably. Then he began again, “It’s odd the way I felt sure he had been here as soon as I saw him. Maybe it was the way he and the hotelkeeper looked at me.” His voice sounded gut-tural. After pausing, his words gained fresh strength, his big body was thrust forward, “Cretia, you saw Dick Bennet this afternoon, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” she said simply. “He came up here and I did not expect to see him. I ran from him and stayed in the house.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? I waited for you to tell me. You were with him while we were away.”

  “I did not want him to come here,” she said.

  “He came while we were away.”

  “Can’t you see I did not want him to come?”

  His face was red as he shouted, “You’ll not have him coming around here badgering us. You’ve never stopped loving him. You’ve never stopped hoping. Day after day you’ve hoped.” But his own words were hurting him so much he could hardly breathe. Then they heard the old woman, who had heard them talking, come hobbling down the stairs as fast as her weak old legs would carry her. At the door she stopped and peered angrily at Cretia though as yet she did not know what the quarrel was about. She only knew that her son was looking like a sick man, and she saw Cretia standing straight with her breasts rising and falling and her whole face full of resentment.

  “There’s no reason why you should shout at me,” Cretia was saying. “What do you want me to do? You’ve always been so good to me that I’d rather do anything than hurt you. If you don’t trust me . . .”

  “What’s the matter with her?” the old woman interrupted.

  “Dick Bennet’s come back. I saw him at the hotel. He was here with her while we were away and she lied about it.”

  The old woman, with her hands up to her head, rocked from side to side and then she stopped and whispered coaxingly to her son, “Be easy, Edward. It does not matter. Don’t look so miserable, son.” All that passionate part of her life since her marriage, and even more so after the death of her husband, had been devoted to shielding her son from disappointment. The more he had endured, the more she wanted to suffer for him. She seemed to live on, without a life of her own, as if there would be no purpose in dying before her son died. Paying no attention to Cretia, she continued to stare at her son, full of anxiety and compassion, but the hurt eagerness in her old eyes only made him more angry. He seemed to have been seeing it in her eyes all his life, since he was a boy, slow and awkward, when the kids used to tease him on the way home from school. There had been a little girl he had liked once named Susie, who had asked him to pick her a flower from a hedge on a private lawn, and he had said, “All right, Susie,” and the other kids who were there had shouted their laughter and started calling him “Susie.” They teased him for years and made him full of rage and yet impotent because he was so much bigger. His mother used to wait at the window of their house, watching for him to come home, watching him for a long time while he turned, throwing stones at kids who were following him, and when he went into the house she was waiting with this passionate look in her eyes, this same expression that he saw now and had seen for so many years. “Cretia,” he said harshly, “God knows, everybody in the whole country-side knows I’ve been a fool about you.”

  “What do you mean, Edward?” she said.

  “Never mind what I mean. But I’ll not have you here with him seeing you and you loving him.”

  “Your mother asked me to come here, and you asked me to marry you and I said I would.”

  “If young Bennet came once, he’ll come again. I know how you feel about him and how you’ll watch for him.”

  “You don’t trust me at all, Edward.”

  “Let her go,” the old woman said bitterly. She had never wanted him to marry her, feeling there was a stigma attached to her that could never be forgotten. “Let her go where she wants to go,” she said.

  Cretia was looking up at Tudhope, half pleading, with her hands straight down at her sides, the three of them knowing that he couldn’t help loving her. “Where do you think you will go?” he asked, as she turned away, walking slowly across the
room in her loose print dress. For a while she stood by the window, unanswering, with her face pressed against the pane. “I told Dick to go,” she said. Her voice was so low they could hardly hear her. “I told him that whatever happiness I could have in the world I wanted to try and have it here.”

  “I don’t believe you,” he said. Except for the people who were in debt to him, or people to whom he gave work, he did not believe that anyone was really grateful to him, or could love him. He longed to believe Cretia; in all his life there had been no experience to justify such a belief. “It’s so very quiet out,” she was saying. “You can’t hear a bit of sound in the trees.” Her voice was soft, as if she had forgotten where she was and was dreaming.

  “What are you thinking of?” he asked irritably. “Aren’t you listening to me at all?”

  “No. I don’t care if I never hear your voice again,” she said.

  “You were thinking of Bennet and wondering where he was waiting.”

  “Mrs. Tudhope,” she said suddenly, “why should he talk to me like that? You shouldn’t want to hear him talk like that. What’s the matter with both of you? Why are you staring at me? You’re both waiting for me to go? All right.”

  Tudhope looked away uneasily, and then he said, “There’s no hurry.”

  “I’ll go down to the village,” Cretia said.

  Tudhope tried to say something gentle and considerate, but his fierce resentment would not permit him to speak.

  The old woman, watching him, knew how he was groping for the tender remark that always came after his anger had gone, so she said, “Let her do what she wants to do, son.”

  But when Cretia passed by him with her light, loose coat now covering her body, he bent forward anxiously so that she would see how humble he had become. She did not turn. She went to the door and opened it and said quietly, “Good-bye,” and she stepped out.

  His bitterness became so great that he shouted, “Go ahead. I’ll see that you go. Go faster, faster, hurry.” He was standing with his heavy body framed in the door, his strong hands clutching the posts, watching her go down the path with her open coat ballooning back. Then he shouted in alarm, “Cretia, wait a minute,” and he went out and started to follow her. His fox terrier came out of the shadow and circled around him. He was watching Cretia so intently as he followed that he stumbled off the path.

  The night was so absolutely still that every rustle could be heard from the fields, and the night bird circling around the great elm by the road leading down to the highway screeched and swung in a wide circle against the clear sky. Cretia looked up, startled.

  By one side of the bridge on the highway there was a low flat rock. Cretia sat down on this rock and her body became a part of it in the shadow. Tudhope stopped about twenty yards from her, and he watched, hesitating. The lower part of her body was hidden, but her head was turned toward the hill, looking up the road. The water was running smoothly under the old bridge, and Cretia thought, “Next month the yellow pond-lilies will nearly cover the surface of the water.” Steadily she kept on staring up the stone cottage opposite the hotel. “I won’t go near that cottage. Dick must not see me,” she was thinking. “In a moment, when I have rested, I’ll go on.” Yet without moving she continued to stare at the lighted windows of the cottage. “Why wouldn’t Edward Tudhope trust me. He seemed so sure, I wonder why?”

  While she watched the lighted window, all those days that had passed since Dick had gone away seemed to become full of purpose. She could hear her father speaking to her as he had spoken that night when he had found her leaning against the picket fence, watching the automobiles passing on the road. Her father pretended to be bending down examining roots in the ground, then he suddenly touched her shoulder and said, “Dick’s gone for good, girl. Make up your mind to that.” But she had said calmly, “He’ll be back, Dad, I can feel it in my bones.” Then her heart began to thump so loudly she pressed her hand against the spot, for all the time of her waiting seemed triumphantly fulfilled in her now.

  Someone was calling softly, “Cretia, Cretia.” Aroused she looked back and saw Edward Tudhope standing on the road. Then his big body began to lurch toward her. She was scared. She had never had a fear of Edward Tudhope like she had now, hearing the sound of his foot scraping on the gravel road and seeing him raise one arm slowly. “Don’t you dare come near me,” she called. “You go back.”

  “Cretia. I was stupid. Cretia, you’ll catch a cold. Come back to the house.”

  “Keep away,” she said, jumping up. “Don’t you come up here.”

  He hesitated, half turned as if afraid of offending her, and then came on steadily. She started to run, and when she turned, he was far back on the road, she was opposite the stone cottage. Light from the window was thrown across the road. There was a big patch of darkness and then another stream of light from the hotel. Her heart began to beat so heavily she wondered what she might be planning to do. “If I just rest here a minute, maybe Dick will come out. Maybe he will know I’m out here because it’s so still you could almost hear a person breathing,” she thought, but, suddenly she grew bold and walked up the little path through the wild flowers, and rapped on the cottage door.

  Dick opened the door, his thick hair rumpled and his shirt open at the throat. “Cretia,” he said. “What’s the matter? What happened? You’ve been running.”

  “Let me come in, Dick,” she said.

  When she sat down in a chair in the small room he stood a few feet away, so upset at seeing her that he could not speak, but could only wait for her to look up again, her face full of fright and wild surprise. In between deep breaths, she told him why she had come up the road. “It got that I just had to come,” she said. “I don’t understand it. I just had to come.” They sat looking at each other. “Dick,” she cried. “We must not stay here. I want to go away.”

  “We’ll go to the city, we’ll have to get someone to take us.”

  “We’ll walk along the road,” she said, standing up.

  “You couldn’t do that,” he said.

  “We’ll walk along the road and someone driving will pick us up,” she said.

  They went out to the road, but they had not taken many steps before they heard someone running. “Cretia, Cretia, come back,” they heard Tudhope calling.

  With his terrier prancing behind him Tudhope put his hand on Cretia’s arm and tried to hold her. His face was wild in the twilight. But he said nothing more.

  “Let go her arm,” Dick said.

  “You left her once, Bennet. Go away,” he said. The three of them were on the road, only now Tudhope was pulling at Dick’s arm. Then he stopped, and he held Dick by the shoulder. “You can’t do this, Bennet,” he said. Even when Dick shoved him and began to strike at him blindly he would not let go, and his dog was barking madly and snapping at Dick’s legs.

  Then Tudhope sank to his knees on the grass beside the road, and he did not try to get up. His head was bowed. His dog circled around him, rushed back toward the house, then turned again and came hurling back to him where it suddenly stood howling in the first bit of moonlight.

  “We can’t leave him there,” Cretia said. “I won’t leave him like that. Edward, please get up. I won’t leave him. He was so good to me,” she cried.

  “No, go on, go on, Cretia,” Tudhope said. “I shouldn’t try and stop you.”

  “He’s all right,” Dick said.

  They went walking down the road, speaking no words but full of rising eagerness. An old car with dim lights came toward them and Dick stepped out and waved his arm. “Give us a lift,” he called.

  “Where are you going?” the farmer asked, stopping.

  “As far as you’re going toward the city,” Dick said.

  “Then get in with your missus,” the farmer said, glancing shrewdly at Cretia and grinning. He had a heavy rough moustache and a battered hat.

  They were sitting in the back seat of the car, silent and wondering. When they came to the top of
the hill Cretia leaned out, looking over the whole country in the gathering darkness. As she watched the country sloping away in that light she felt she would never see it again, the soft rolling farm hills, the mesh of tiny lakes, the solitary elms; away to the right was Clearwater, farther on ahead was the great beach by the bay and a blur of many soft lights that was Orangeville — the whole country rolling and rising till it was lost in the one thin line of light toward the bay.

  The Cheat’s Remorse

  Phil was sipping a cup of coffee in Stewart’s one night, sitting at the table near the radiator so that the snow would melt off his shoes and dry, when he saw a prosperous-looking, blue-jowled man at the next table slowly pushing a corned beef sandwich on rye bread away from him as if the sight of it made him sick. By the way the man sighed as he concentrated on the untouched sandwich anyone could see that he was pretty drunk. He was clutching his food check firmly in his left hand as he used the other to tug and fumble at a roll of bills in his pocket. He was trying to get hold of himself, he was trying to get ready to walk over to the cashier in a straight line without stumbling, pay his check with dignity, and get into a taxi and home before he fell asleep.

  The roll of bills in the man’s hand under the table, as he leaned his weight forward staring at the cashier, started Phil thinking how much he needed a dollar. He had been across the country and back on a bus. He was broke, his shirts were in a hand laundry on Twenty-sixth Street, and a man he had phoned, a man he had gone to school with, and who worked in a publisher’s office now, had told him to come around and see him and he might be able to get him a few weeks’ work in the shipping-room. But they wouldn’t let him have the shirts at the laundry unless he paid for them. He couldn’t bear to meet a man he had grown up with who was making a lot of money unless he had a clean shirt on.

  As he leaned forward eagerly watching the man’s thick fingers thumbing the roll of bills, trying to detach one while he concentrated on the cashier’s desk, the thing that Phil had hardly been daring to hope for happened: a bill was thumbed loose from the roll, the fat fingers clutched at it, missed it, and it fluttered in a little curve under the table and fell in the black smudge on the floor from the man’s wet rubbers.