The Loved and the Lost Read online

  “If you would just take this parcel for Miss Sanderson,” he said, stepping into the hall.

  “Of course I will. Here, let me close the door. I get more colds standing at this door. I’m glad you called. I look a fright, I know. But last night— Well, I’m not used to it, you see. It was my cousin from St. Agathe. Mind you, after not seeing him for six months,” she added with a grateful smile. “La, what a man! And I’m not even sure he is my cousin. You understand? What an energetic baldheaded little man he is, and he must be all of sixty! I knew what he was like that evening last summer when he took me out to the Belmont amusement park and we rode all night in those little automobiles that keep crashing and everybody laughing. All night in those toy autos with my grinning little baldheaded man. Such fun it was! And to have him show up last night! It was something, I tell you. A parcel? Certainly, I’ll put it in her room. Who’ll I say left it?”

  “Oh, just say a stranger,” he said, opening the door and starting down the steps.

  “No, wait,” she called. “You’re not a stranger.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “But not really,” she called out. “Not really.”

  “Oh, yes,” he called back, waving and laughing.

  The wind felt good on his cheeks. The air was dry and bracing. It was an exhilarating day; and he could hear the pretty little English child as she turned to him asking anxiously, “But not really?” And he could not get the phrase out of his head. It was as if all the people who had ever had any authority in his life had been watching him buy snow boots for a white girl who liked Negroes, and knowing they had been watching him, he enjoyed it immensely. His father in consternation said, “Oh, but not really!” Old Higgins, incredulous that he could have been mistaken about him, murmured, “But not really!” And the officers in the ship’s wardroom, particularly Captain Welsh, with his decorations, grew red-faced and gasped, “Oh, not really!” “Oh, no, not really!” said the president of his university, looking alarmed. “My God, no, not really!” cried Mr. Carver.

  “Oh, yes,” McAlpine said aloud, chuckling with satisfaction, “really!”

  TEN

  He was having lunch with Foley in the La Salle but was early, so he got a copy of The Sun at the newsstand and, sitting in the lobby, opened it like a newspaperman, who always reads his own paper first. He had turned to the editorial page, which was to carry his column, when he saw Foley come in.

  Foley now was not the man he had been in the Earbenders Club. He was as solemn and brisk as a broker. They went downstairs to the bar and to one of the tables with the red and white chequered tablecloths. Foley wouldn’t take a drink; he never drank during working hours. McAlpine had a beer and the cold salmon plate, and Foley had a mushroom omelette. Foley was not in good humour.

  “Well, has The Sun come through yet, Jim?” he said. “Or is beautiful Joe still keeping you dangling?”

  “It’s going all right,” McAlpine said, and he told about the luncheon with Carver and about Horton putting the fat reporter, Walters, on the scales.

  “Now, isn’t that a lovely story!” Foley said sardonically.

  “A pretty sadistic story, I’d say.”

  “And you think it’s Horton who’s sadistic?”

  “I’m not that dumb. It’s not just Horton.”

  “As long as you see it,” Foley said. “All the newspapermen are wise to Carver. You see, Jim,” he grinned, “there always has to be a senior mind.”

  “A senior mind, yes.”

  “And does the junior mind ever get out of line?”

  “And Horton is only the junior mind, of course.”

  “Fine. So if junior seems to be the one who is against giving you the job—”

  “Oh, I’ll have the job all right,” McAlpine said quietly.

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that. Everything you say about Carver is true, but there’s another side to him, Chuck.”

  “I know all about Beautiful Joe,” Foley said irritably. “I’ve known people who worked for him. He’ll get hold of you by the short hair. He has hold of all his employees by the short hair, and some poor dopes think it’s a noble grip; but he reaches right into their lives till he owns them. Hell, his office is a family plantation, and he’s the kindly old master, and Horton is Simon Legree. Oh, well, to hell with Carver! He’s your problem. However, Jim,” he added frowning, “you’re not wrong about everything.”

  “No? What am I right about?”

  “You were right about Peggy Sanderson. I can’t understand it, but you’re right. I seem to have been the only one in town who wasn’t wise to her. Those guys around the Earbenders know her. The trouble is,” he went on, making an apology to himself, “I don’t pay much attention to any woman who comes to work in our office. But your little Peggy has had three or four jobs in the last six months, and I find out that in the last place they all got wise to her.”

  “Wise to what, Chuck?”

  “Why, about the dinges.”

  “The what?”

  “The black boys. You were right. She goes for them, Jim,” Foley said sourly.

  “I didn’t say she went for black boys, Chuck.”

  “Didn’t you? Well, it seems that she does, and now at our place too she’s out on her ear. They’ve just fired her.” Foley’s abrupt cynical laugh really showed how disappointed he was. “She’ll probably tell you it’s race prejudice, Jim. Well, it isn’t really that at all,” he said flatly. “The girl can’t concentrate anymore. That’s the dreamy look in her eyes that got me. It’s what you noticed in her, too, see? Well, she can’t concentrate because she’s all hopped up with the dinges making passes at her and probably laying her, too.”

  “Now wait a minute, Chuck. You have your own eyes, your own judgment. Why not see things in your own way,” McAlpine pleaded, wanting to save something valuable in Foley’s own life. “You’ve got it all terribly wrong. That girl isn’t throwing herself at Negroes. She’s not lying around waiting for them to make love to her, I know it for a fact.” His voice became patient and gentle; he told the story of Peggy’s childhood friendship with the Johnson family.

  “So that‘s her explanation?” Foley asked, after pondering a little.

  “It wasn’t offered as an explanation, Chuck.”

  “But you believed it.”

  “Yes. Don’t you?”

  “I think she’s lying.”

  “But why?”

  “To put herself in a sympathetic light, of course.”

  “That wasn’t your own first judgment of her, Chuck. You’re her friend. You’re important to her. I know you are.” In her name McAlpine was trying to hold on to his friendship.

  “All right,” Foley said impatiently. “I know what I said. Don’t rub it in, Jim.”

  “How do you know you weren’t right? Explain that to me, Chuck.”

  “How should I know how to explain it?” Foley asked. “There’s something about that girl that’s a big lie. Women like her love the lie that’s in the first impression they make. It wins them tenderness and approval and sympathy and forgiveness. And they’ll lie and cheat to preserve the initial advantage they win for themselves. They’re capable of anything, and there’ll always be someone around like you, Jim, to believe in them and plead that they’re being misunderstood when they fly off at crazy and unpredictable angles – blue jays—”

  “She’s a blue jay?”

  “Sure she is.”

  “But look here, Chuck,” McAlpine protested. “You could call a saint a blue jay.”

  “A saint— My God, wait a minute, Jim!” Foley’s whole tone changed. “Just what do you get out of this girl?”

  “What do I get?”

  “Yes, what does she do to you?”

  “I don’t know,” McAlpine said, growing embarrassed. “It’s – well, I don’t know. It’s just a glimpse of something.”

  “Go on. A glimpse of what?”

  “I’m not sure. I really don’t
know.” Picking up a fork, he began to make a little pattern on the tablecloth, then looked up apologetically. “Yes, just a glimpse, I suppose,” he said.

  “A glimpse you ever had before?”

  “I’m not sure. I was wondering about it last night.”

  “Another girl?”

  “Oh, no! It’s more like the way you feel when you suddenly come on something unexpected that’s just right.” He hesitated, trying to get it straight. “I remember we were in some hotel in Paris on the right bank, after the invasion,” he said. “It was raining. We ought to have all felt happy and victorious because we had talked about getting to Paris and the wonderful spree we would have, but there we were in the hotel room, dog-tired and inert, with the whole city dark and dead in the rain. I think we felt that we ought to celebrate. Really we wanted to sleep. We talked of going somewhere and seeing something. The rain put us off. We talked about girls. An English officer – a blonde chap, I forget his name – took me by the arm and suggested we go out for an hour. One hour, as a gesture to the freeing of the City of Light, and then sleep.

  “The Englishman had never been in Paris before, but he took me by the arm and we went out into the rain. We could not see anything. We sloshed along. We talked of going back to the hotel. Finally he spoke to a gendarme, and then all he said to me was, ‘Come on.’ I don’t quite know where we went. Some place near the Bastille.

  “I remember we plunged into some doorway, then along a dark alley. Then a door opened and we stepped into bright lights. Well, it was a little amphitheatre with the benches filled with people, and there was a tanbark surface and an encircling fence painted white, and down there in the toy arena were a couple of clowns in their pirouette costumes dancing around; a girl in a silver dress was riding a white horse; someone was leading an elephant across the arena. All this going on down there under a brilliant white light! Everything was so white and clean and fantastically surprising and so wonderfully innocent and happy. Maybe it looked like that because we had come in out of the darkness and the rain. We had come in out of the war. And the bright little circus was absolutely remote from the war. I was so surprised I gaped and blinked. It was beautiful. I felt so peacefully elated. Well—”

  He broke off, seeing the incredulous expression on Foley’s face. “I don’t know. Maybe I mean I seem to see Peggy somewhere in there – in that—”

  “That oasis of happiness,” Foley said dryly.

  “That’s right,” McAlpine said.

  “But you didn’t go back to that little circus.”

  “No, and I don’t think I could now.”

  “But you’ve gone back to Peggy.”

  “Just a couple of times.”

  “You shouldn’t have gone back; but, since you have, don’t do it again, or you’ll look too closely.”

  “But, as you say,” McAlpine smiled, “now that I have gone back—”

  “What’s the use?” Foley shook his head. “The tip-off on you, Jim, in those drawings you do. You’re a bit of an artist.”

  “So what?”

  “You see something in the kid you think no one else sees. If you could paint it, it would be done and you could forget it. But you want to grab it for yourself. Doesn’t that bring us back where we started?”

  “Where’s that?”

  “The Carvers. Remember? Well, there may be a reason Carver keeps you dangling.”

  “Go on.”

  “Catherine.”

  “Catherine? Oh, now, look here, Chuck!” McAlpine started to laugh. “If you’re implying my feeling for Catherine has changed because of what I’ve been saying about this girl, well, it’s absurd.” Obviously believing every word, he said, “Catherine is my kind of people, Chuck. A fine girl. I’m at home with her. We share the same interests, the same understanding, the same kind of taste and manners. I don’t know whether I love her or whether she could get to love me. It might work out that way, yes. If it did, well, fine. But this girl, Peggy. Well,” he frowned, “she presents a problem, a problem in understanding. Even more so now because of what you’ve told me. I’m going to try and tell Catherine about her. She’ll be as interested as I am. I think she’ll understand her better than you do. And she’ll understand my curiosity about her. I have a lot of curiosity, you know.”

  “And Catherine may have, too,” Foley said, ironically. He felt sorry for McAlpine. His concern was touching. He was an extraordinary man. He never protested his friendship. In his redheaded bespectacled quiet way he could sit with a friend and console him simply by being with him. Foley had no interest in politics and so social ambitions; he believed only in the quiet dignity of his friendships, and no man with him ever felt alone. Worrying now about McAlpine, he said with a deprecating smile, “I thought you came to town to ride high. Don’t you think you’d better get on your horse, Jim?”

  “But I haven’t got off.”

  “Jim, I’ll tell you something. You certainly have the will to be ambitious.”

  “Go on, Chuck.”

  “But the will isn’t enough.”

  “No?”

  “No. You have the will, but I doubt if you have the temperament. An ambitious man can’t have a set of feelings at odds with his will to advance on the target. Pin that in your hat, Jim. You can have it for nothing.”

  ELEVEN

  The little balance of interests which McAlpine had achieved in his own mind helped him to believe that he was busy. He didn’t notice himself pacing up and down in his room. He began to make some minor mistakes. He forgot to send out his laundry at the right hour. Having rung for the valet, he was told that he might get it done if he left it at the desk. He bundled it up in a laundry bag and took it down to the front desk and handed it to the clerk.

  “What’s this?” the clerk asked.

  “My laundry.”

  “Really, Mr. McAlpine,” the clerk said with a shocked air. “Not here. We don’t take laundry here. I believe you want the porter’s desk.”

  “Of course, of course,” McAlpine apologized, his ears reddening. It had been his first violation of the Ritz diplomatic protocol which he had always observed so carefully.

  Nor did he notice how he justified his absorbing interest in Peggy by telling himself he counted on Catherine’s sharing this interest. She had telephoned, wanting him to have lunch with her and her father at their apartment: they were contemplating the purchase of an authentic Renoir, she said. He made up his mind, hurrying over to the Château, to ask Catherine to walk down Crescent Street after lunch and meet Peggy.

  It was a reassuring luncheon. Mr. Carver told them that he was jogging Horton and soon would get some action. After lunch they went into the drawing room, where Jacques, the plump little French Canadian who was Mr. Carver’s man, had adjusted the Renoir on the chesterfield at the right angle to catch the light from the window. They contemplated the painting learnedly. It was a study of a girl at a piano. They drew back a little, they moved closer, they cupped their chins in their hands and nodded.

  “Tilt it forward a little, Jacques,” Mr. Carver said irritably. “Isn’t that a better light, Jim? No this way, a little more this way, Jacques.”

  All morning Jacques had been lifting the picture back and forth for Catherine and her friends, and now he looked tired and unhappy. Sad-eyed, he stood there tilting the picture wearily while Catherine, Jim, and Mr. Carver had a splendid discussion about Renoir’s different periods. McAlpine was good at these discussions. He had a flair for conversations about paintings, wines, and cheeses.

  “Jacques, could you hold the picture over there on the wall?” Catherine asked.

  “Of course, madame.”

  “You’ll never guess who the dealer got this Renoir from,” Carver said.

  “The Coulters had a Renoir,” Catherine said. “I remember Alma saying they had a Renoir.”

  “Not Coulter. He doesn’t need any money. It was young Sloane. You must have known young Sloane, Jim.”

  “Yes, of course. E
conomics Department, McGill.”

  “Jacques, let it tilt a little from the top. There! That’s the boy,” Mr. Carver said. The picture moved up and down slowly. “The colours blend beautifully with our walls, don’t they, Catherine? Yes, young Sloane had to get rid of some of his father’s treasures. Serves him right, too. These young radicals are good for everything but making a little money of their own.” He moved back to appraise the window lighting. “A little more to the left, Jacques,” he said, motioning. “Ah, that’s better. Yes, Sloane’s father had the most remarkable funeral in the history of Montreal, and along comes that son of his with blueprints for controlling everybody, sabotaging everything liberal his father stood for. Now he has to sell the family Renoir.”

  “Just the same, I like Bob Sloane,” Catherine said as Jacques, furtively resting his arms, let the picture sink down on the wall.

  “Humph! That young man is always out of line. A painter, though, has a great advantage,” her father added, smiling. “He can always put people and things in the right place in the pattern.”

  “At heart I must be a painter,” Catherine said with a helpless, good-natured shrug. Her suit coat was open, she stood with one hand on her hip, tall and erect with an easy tailored elegance; she had a glowing freshness and suggestion of charming candour, for she was at ease in her own home and, for the moment, at ease with McAlpine. She laughed and looked lovely and said, “You know what I’m like! If I’m in somebody’s house and I see a rug on the floor at the wrong angle I have to straighten it, and if I see a picture on a wall a little askew there I am straightening it, too. I suppose I feel the same way about people. I’m fond of Bob Sloane. I’d like to shake him or do something about him. Jim, I suppose, thinks I should try painting instead. Eh, Jim?”

  “If you’re fond of the guy go to it,” he said. But he felt uncomfortable that she could acknowledge with such innocent good will the flaw in her nature that made her want to tamper with other people’s lives. He had been trying to believe he intended to tell her about Peggy; now he had found an excuse for a secret withdrawal: if he mentioned Peggy, she would see her simply as a picture on a wall that had to be straightened; she would want to straighten him out, too, in his attitude toward the girl. By rejecting and pitying Catherine’s possessiveness he could believe he was free from the same trait himself.