There Was a Time

by Taylor Caldwell

  “Well, boys,” said Edward, faintly. He glanced about the living room, and his thin nostrils distended for an instant. The boys had done nothing today, in spite of his requests that morning; he could see that. But he never complained; that was both a virtue and a source of irreparable injury to his children.

  “Supper’s almost ready,” said Paul. He saw that his father was completely prostrated. But he never had any words to express what he thought and he lacked the tenderness to show it.

  Edward went into the bedroom to take off his shoes. He saw that the beds had been roughly made. The bare floor was splintered and stained; on the one rickety oak bureau was a pile of trash and odds and ends. The gaslight flared dimly from the wall. Suddenly, with a gesture of utter surrender, he threw himself face downwards across one of the beds, and lay as if dead, unmoving. An air of collapsed resignation enveloped his slight body in its worn and shabby serge suit. One arm hung limply over the edge of the bed in an attitude of dissolution. In his breast was a sick and intolerable pain, and he closed his eyes, swimming away on a dark and rolling tide.

  He could hear the boys squabbling ill-naturedly in the kitchen as the last touches were given to the dinner, but he was too ill to arrange the words that entered through his ears. All at once nothing mattered, nothing was important, except death. He dared not give way to this treacherous betrayal of his children; groaning inwardly, he pulled himself into a sitting posture, and pressed his wet and trembling hands over his eyes. He became aware that Gordon was standing in the doorway and talking peevishly, as though he had been trying to attract his father’s attention for some time. “Supper’s ready, Dad. I called you a couple of times.”

  “Yes, son, I hear you,” said Edward faintly.

  He crawled, shivering, into the warmth of the dirty little kitchen. He looked at his sons, and smiled at them with a selfish and passionate devotion. There was something terrible in his love for them, for it was too personal, too grasping and tenacious a love, and it excluded the world, repudiated it, held it off with gestures of suspicion and fear. His compassionate love for his children had deprived him of compassion for others.

  He tried to eat, but the food sickened him. He listened to all the slight and trivial things his sons had to say, and, as he listened, he smiled his sweet and quizzical half-smile, and his eyes roamed slowly from one to the other with a feasting expression.

  When he spoke to them tonight, it was in his usual manner, soft-voiced, wry, tolerant, and thoughtful. He treated them as men his own age. He discussed things with them. His interest in their thoughts and their days was not the sedulously cultivated interest of adults who think it their duty to appear interested. He was genuinely, passionately, greedily, absorbed in everything they thought and did.

  Paul spoke little. Between his father and himself was a great understanding, too complete for words. He ate steadily, his small pale face disinterested, self-bewitched, almost avaricious, and this infuriated Gordon, as it always did. His young nerves began to crawl with the old disagreeable sensation, as he watched Paul daintily extract every ounce of flavor from the poor dinner. He would roll a morsel delicately in his mouth, as if savoring it gloatingly; he would swallow it, and his yellow-green eyes would show a faint glaze, as if in ecstasy. “Like a cat,” thought Gordon, with sudden hatred.

  “Tell Dad about the funny little boy who came home with you today, Paul,” he said, with a laugh.

  Edward looked at Paul in smiling surprise, raising his eyebrows.

  Paul colored unpleasantly. “He’s not funny,” he said, coldly. “He’s not like other kids. He’s different, and bright. He’s coming to see me tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow!” exclaimed Edward.

  “He looked as if he needed a bath,” said Gordon, with enjoyment. “And his clothes were three sizes too small. Looks like a shabby, overgrown puppy, all legs and knobs, and he jumps around like a puppy, too. You’ll laugh when you see him, Dad. Paul wouldn’t pick out a nice boy. You’d know he’d pick out a freak.”

  Paul glared. “He’s not a freak. He’s just not stupid, like everybody else.” And then he was suddenly ashamed. He remembered all Frank’s strangeness and awkwardness, his queer rapid speech and grandiloquent gestures. Then his shame passed, and was replaced by a warm and affectionate indulgence and superiority. “He’s the only boy I ever liked.”

  Edward said nothing, but he was disturbed and puzzled.

  “Bah, you never liked anyone but yourself! I never saw such a selfish little beast as you, Paul,” said Gordon, with smiling carelessness. “You’ve always grabbed off things for yourself, even when you were just a baby. This new boy has probably got something you’d like, or he toadies to you.”

  Paul and his father exchanged a glance. Then Paul said: “You’re stupid. I don’t want anything from Frank, and he doesn’t toady. Besides, he writes books, and poems and things.”

  Now Edward’s lassitude lifted, and a tight jealousy squeezed his heart. He smiled indulgently. He said: “How children boast. They often try to gain importance that way.” He dismissed Frank as something too pettily amusing for discussion. But, for once, Paul was not in accord with him. His mouth tightened, and he looked away, with obstinacy. Edward, seeing this, was vaguely perturbed.

  They were eating their dry and sawdust-like bakery cupcakes when there came a smart though discreet knock at the door. The November wind has risen to a mournful howling, but the knocking sounded through it. Gordon rose and went into the living room where the gas, turned down, was dimly flaring. When Gordon opened the door, letting in a swirl of gritty wind, it was a woman’s voice that Edward and Paul heard, rich, warm, apologetic.

  “I’m sure you must excuse me, Sonny,” it said, laughing a little. “My, it’s cold tonight, ain’t it? Well, I thought, the poor boys and their Daddy will be having a hard time getting settled and everything, and no woman to cook anything for them, so, seeing I’m your neighbor, I thought I’d bring over a nice hot apple pie for your supper. Here it is. Be careful, the bottom’s hot. Your Dad home, honey?”

  Gordon’s affirmative answer, though reserved and diffident, was still pleasant and grateful. Edward, staring at the doorway, frowned. Paul laid down his knife and fork. Above their silence the gas flared, the rusty stove smelled of grease and dirt. In the doorway appeared a plump, buxom woman of about forty, with firm red cheeks, flashing teeth, and thick black hair in a rather disorderly knot on the back of her head. She was clad in stiff blue gingham and had a black shawl about her shoulders. Both Edward and Paul regarded her with the pale and affronted apprehension of those who suspect strangers. Edward did manage a stiff and frightened smile, but Paul glared at the woman. She beamed at them from the threshold. Gordon, behind her, was murmuring.

  “No, I won’t bother you folks,” she said heartily, bestowing her smile on them all like the anonymous heat of a friendly fire. She had just come from the shining cleanliness of her own snug home and she thought the dirt and indifferent slackness of this house frightful. “Of course,” she said later to her husband, “he’s a man, and they’re boys, but you’d think they would notice dirt, wouldn’t you, and want to do something about it?” But now she continued to beam upon them without betraying what she was thinking.

  “Awful night, ain’t it?” she asked cheerfully, pulling the shawl closer about her as she prepared to leave. Edward murmured; Paul continued to stare at her with fixed affront. His small body was stiff with dignity and outrage. “Well, winter’s coming, and everything—Say, I hope you folks are comfortable? You got everything you need? I know how it is when you’re moving.”

  Edward murmured again. He had not risen; he half turned away from her now, and played with his fork. There was something deathlike in the waxen fragility of his fingers. He did not ask his generous guest to sit down. He moistened his lips and moved his head slightly, as though looking for an escape. The woman’s vitality and the lush quality of her body and spirit made him shrink from her with pallid timidity an
d the unspoken epithet: “Vulgar.”

  The woman chattered on from her doorway. Gordon stood beside her, smiling uneasily. She folded her robust arms across her full bosom. “Your Missis been dead long, Mr. Hodge?” she asked sympathetically.

  “Yes,” replied Edward, faintly. The dusky and unhealthy tint of anger surged up into Paul’s face.

  “That’s too bad,” she commented. She heaved a big sigh. “Well, here today, gone tomorrow. You never can tell when it’s going to be your turn. That’s life. I hope you like the pie,” she added.

  She bustled out of the house, missing nothing, on the way, of the dirty and dreary confusion of the living room. At the outside door, she stopped to chat a moment with Gordon, who was burning with mortification at the conduct of his father. “If you need anything, honey,” she said, kindly, “just run in and ask. Don’t be backward.” She patted his shoulder and went out into the dark gale of the wintry night. Gordon, indignant, returned to the kitchen seething with reproaches. But they died in his throat when he saw that Paul was just in the act of throwing the hot and spicy pie into the garbage pail. There was something so vindictive, so savage, in his gestures, that Gordon stood there petrified, unable to say a word. Edward made no effort to restrain Paul, but sat in silence in his chair, smiling faintly, almost indulgently.

  “Interfering old pig!” exclaimed Paul in his fluting voice, as he gave the pie a last vicious poke in the bottom of the pail. “What business was it of hers if our mother is dead? Or anything? Why doesn’t she mind her own business?”

  Gordon made a prodigious effort to speak. “Why—you!” he cried hoarsely. “Why—” Rage exploded in him, rage lighted and fed by a thousand faggots: his father’s impotence and gentle obstinacy, his father’s and brother’s patronizing smiles, their blanknesses and silences, their unhealthy immobilities, the whole sordid and dank dreariness of his life and his home. There was a dimness before his eyes and a salt sickness in his mouth. And then he knew it was no use, no use at all.

  CHAPTER 22

  When Edward came home at noon on Saturday, he found a very odd young boy about thirteen with his son Paul.

  It had turned extremely cold during the night, and morning light had revealed the iron earth, corrugated and stiff, wrinkled and patched with the first snow. The trees had tangled themselves together in a bony confusion against an iron-colored sky. The shabby houses along the street hugged their clapboards about their thin walls as if for protection against the corroding air, and the smoke that came from their chimneys was thin and grudging.

  Paul and Gordon had made only languid efforts to clean up the dirt and confusion of their new home. The last packing case had arrived that morning and stood squarely on the dusty carpet of the living room, still untouched. Just as Edward entered the house a pale and watery beam of sunlight filtered in through the dusty windows, which were streaked with old finger marks. It revealed all the dustiness and squalor and disorder of the room.

  Gordon was sitting on top of the packing case, eating a cheese sandwich with great relish. His fair and intelligent face was full of amusement, and his eyes were laughing with indulgent malice. At a little distance Paul rocked lazily in the old leather chair. Between the brothers stood the tall strange boy.

  Just before Edward had opened the door, the weary man had had a dim impression of a new excited voice, strong and vehement. Then Gordon had begun to laugh. But now the new boy was silent, staring at Edward with the shy and half-hostile eyes of a young and frightened animal.

  Edward had no reaction towards other children than that of acute indifference and ennui. Therefore, he merely twitched his eyebrows absently, immediately and apparently becoming unconscious of the stranger. But under this obvious indifference, there was an uneasiness in himself.

  However, he was too exhausted to think of the matter. Paul had come to him and was helping him off with his coat. But Edward’s usual weariness had sharpened to pain today in the region of his heart, and for once the squalor of the house penetrated through his lassitude.

  “Children, children,” he said, faintly, “why haven’t you straightened up a little?”

  “O Dad, you should hear this boy!” cried Gordon, shrill with glee. He stuffed the last of the sandwich into his mouth, and chewed rapidly. “He says the most ridiculous things! You ought to hear him! I never heard anything so funny, all the ideas he has—”

  “Dad,” broke in Paul’s fluting voice, “this is Frank Clair, the boy I told you about last night.”

  Edward glanced briefly and without interest at Frank, with the absentminded expression of one whose attention is forcibly attracted. He made his cold lips smile, and he again forgot the boy except for that slight feeling of irritation. “Paul, did you find the hammer? We must open that packing case at once. Almost everything is in there.”

  There was no midday meal in readiness for him. The monstrous selfishness and self-absorption of his children had prevented them from thinking of such a thing. And, in truth, he would have liked a meal. His poor body would have revelled in a hot cup of tea, a bowl of soup, and a sandwich. He was too tired to get these for himself, and it did not occur to him to ask his children. One of his firmest theories was that parents should not “impose” upon their children, nor ask of them anything that they would not ask of a friendly acquaintance.

  Almost without his direction, his aching feet found their way into the bedroom. The beds, of course, had not been made. He sank upon one of them; there came to his nostrils the moldly smell of unaired bedding, of none too clean blankets, and old body smells. He did not care. He shut his eyes and sank into a confused nightmare of pain, into utter, though temporary resignation. He was too tired to sleep.

  Paul had found the hammer and was trying to persuade the perched Gordon to abdicate. Gordon, in response, settled himself more firmly, began to tease his brother.

  “Come on, Gordon, get off,” said Paul, half crying.

  “Don’t feel like it,” replied Gordon. “I want another sandwich. Get me another cheese sandwich, and after I eat it I’ll get off. But here I stay until I get the sandwich.”

  “But we need the stuff. I need my sweater and my rubbers and my mittens.”

  “Piffle. Why are you so energetic all of a sudden? This thing’s stood here since eight o’clock this morning, and you’ve never stirred to open it. What have you done, anyway? You slept until eleven. I never saw such a sleeper; you might as well be dead, and even when you are awake the few hours during the day, you are still half dead. Lazy little pup. Well, I’m staying here until I get my sandwich.”

  Frank had been watching interestedly, and with disgust. Young though he was, the disorder, the odors and dust, of this house had already affronted him. His own home, though cold and comfortless, was clean and well-ordered. Dirt was alien to his experience. As he was of an ardent and positive temperament, he could not understand Paul’s impotence. He said: “If I were you, Paul, I’d hit him with the hammer, good and hard.” He did not like Gordon, in spite of the latter’s surface pleasantness and amiability.

  “Oh, you would, would you, Charles Dickens?” asked Gordon, smiling goodhumoredly. “Read me that poem again, the one you just read, about ‘If I die.’ I like it.”

  Frank glowered, and dug his foot into the carpet.

  “You’re just a fake,” added Gordon, prodding him delicately with his toe. “I don’t believe you wrote it. You copied it out of some book. You can get into trouble that way.”

  He found Frank enormously amusing. He had not been so diverted for a long time. He regarded the other boy steadily and smilingly. Was there ever such a raw wrist and long bony hand, such big feet, so big a nose, such tight trousers and touselled hair! Like a farm boy, he thought with pleased disdain. Yet, under his teasing, he was sorry for the child, almost liked him. He had come to the conclusion, though, that the boy was “deep” and would bear watching.

  For the past hour or two, before the arrival of Edward, Frank had been full of
spirits. He had a gift for pantomime and a keen sense of the ludicrous, and when he spoke to a sympathetic audience his hands, his feet, his whole body, became virtual extensions of his speech. He had been “taking off” some of his neighbors for the edification of Paul and his brother, and the little house had been full of shrieks of laughter. Once or twice, Gordon had paused in his mirth to stare curiously at Paul. He had rarely heard Paul laugh, yet today Paul’s musical and piping laughter had been as frequent as Gordon’s.

  But the warmth and light had gone from Paul’s face now as he resumed his urging that Gordon get off the packing case.

  “I tell you what,” said Gordon, smirking comfortably. “Play me something on your violin, Paul. I feel in the mood for music. Then I’ll get off.”

  “Slam him,” suggested Frank. “I’ll take one arm, and you take the other, Paul. We’ll pull him off together.”

  But Paul sighed exhaustedly. He was really somewhat relieved, for he had an excuse for not attacking the packing case just yet. There was plenty of time. “All right,” he said. He went to the chest of drawers, tenderly opened the violin case and took out the instrument. Frank glanced at it, and was disappointed. He saw at once that it was a very poor violin, cheaply made, not at all like the quite excellent instrument of his father’s, which he had examined secretly at home. He had an idea! Some way, somehow, he would obtain his father’s violin for Paul! He had a sudden vision of himself presenting his father with a sheaf of green bills, and grandly buying the violin. He took the instrument from Paul and examined it scornfully. “That’s awful,” he said. “Why, it’s nothing but an old five-seventy-five thing! Just an old soap box with strings on it. I thought you had a real violin.”