She sat there by herself, untroubled and secure, her drink hardly touched. Not once did she glance over at the bar, and it may have been that she had not seen McAlpine come in.
The singer finished her song, and Gagnon, Rogers and Wolgast applauded so boisterously that many turned and looked at them, and the singer herself bowed in their direction.
“I’ll get her to have a drink with us,” Rogers said. “That white dress is like a sheath around her, isn’t it?”
“We’ve seen her, now why don’t we go?” Foley asked sourly.
“I was to buy you a drink if you were disappointed. Remember?” Rogers asked. “Okay. Call the roll. Who didn’t get his money’s worth? Professor Wolgast?”
“The babe’s a nice little dish,” Wolgast said judicially. “As them dames go, you’re right about her, only I don’t go for them dames. You don’t owe me any drink.”
“Professor Foley?”
“I want a drink.”
“Professor Jackson?”
“She’s terrific, I’d say.”
“Professor Gagnon?”
“Bring here over here and I’ll buy you a drink.”
“Professor McAlpine?”
“Yeah?”
“Do I owe you a drink?”
“What for?”
“What for? The kid with the vaginal voice.”
“Oh, no, no, no!”
“Professor Malone. Hey, where’s Malone going?”
Malone had left them and was slowly making his way across the floor toward that one table in the shadowed corner. The band was playing, and there was a loud hum of conversation. Waiters moved from table to table, and Malone’s path was blocked by couples who got up to dance. Not only McAlpine, but the others, too, were watching Malone.
“Ah, I see,” Wolgast whispered. “Our little friend, the nigger lover, over there.” And Jackson, blinking and tugging nervously at his pathetic little beard, said, “Sometimes I hate Malone’s guts. I talk to him a lot now, but I hate his guts.”
Confused by the pounding of his heart, McAlpine remained with the others, watching Malone and assuring himself it would be wiser not to intervene unless he were offensive. It would be wiser not to embarrass Peggy, who could rebuff Malone herself. But the dancers kept blocking his view of her table. For a moment he could not see Malone. When the way cleared again he saw him sitting at her table and beckoning to the waiter.
Peggy shook her head and turned away, but Malone, leaning closer, grinned and went on whispering. You could see Peggy’s hand on the table. If he as much as touches her hand I’ll move over there, McAlpine thought. But Malone didn’t touch her hand. Leaning back, his legs crossed, he talked to her while she watched the band. The musicians were putting down their instruments beside their chairs. Dancers drifting off the dance floor hid Malone from those at the bar.
Then they could see him lean close to her. He grinned and whispered, and his hand went to her shoulder. She slapped it away. McAlpine took two steps toward them, but everything happened too fast for him.
The Negro waiter spoke to Malone, who answered contemptuously with an arrogant gesture as he shifted his chair closer to Peggy. He put his arm around her shoulder. The waiter touched the arm. Malone wheeled around, half standing, shot out the heel of his hand and caught the waiter painfully under the nostrils, snapping his head back. Again he turned to Peggy, trying to get her to leave with him. McAlpine now was only twenty feet away from them. Wilson jumped down from the bandstand and came forward, not running, but in a hurried businesslike stride, hard-faced and grim, brushing past the tables and reaching Peggy’s table before McAlpine, whose way was blocked.
Wilson jerked Malone away from Peggy. He looked extraordinarily competent. He swung a left hook and caught Malone on the head. Malone lurched back. Wilson waited, crouched like a professional fighter, and Malone put up his own hands. He posed like an old-time fighter, his left out and his back stiff. It looked oddly comical. Wilson moved in and hit him with three hard left hooks and knocked him down.
It was all happening in a tight little circle formed by those who were at the adjacent tables. McAlpine tried to push his way through. “Peggy!” he yelled. She had stood up; she was lost and frightened. On his feet now, Malone whirled around. The waiter whom he had insulted was beside him, held by the manager. Ignoring Wilson, Malone smashed this waiter in the eye. There was a moment of silence. Nobody moved. Everybody waited. This was the dreadful moment McAlpine had been anticipating ever since the first night he had come there; he felt a strange exultation and he stiffened, ready to leap to her side, but he had the sense to wait and not break that silence with a violent gesture. He wanted to get Peggy quietly out of the café. Even one body lurching against another might break that strained silence.
Wagstaffe, standing frightened on the bandstand, swung around, grabbed his horn, and started to play. The other musicians hurried to their chairs and picked up their instruments. They followed Wagstaffe in his own version of the St. Louis Blues, and he had never had so much stuff on the horn as he did then. Some of the customers who knew what he was trying to do sat down and applauded. Those who had been circling around Malone and Peggy and the two Negroes milled around, trying to detach themselves.
While the Negro waiter expostulated vehemently with the manager who was pushing them away, Malone wiped his bleeding mouth and Wilson argued with his wife. They were in a half-circle around Peggy. She was too scared to back away. She couldn’t move. Supplication was in her lonely eyes. A thin, sad young Negro with gleaming hair put out both hands to her. “Come here with us, Peggy. Come away, girl,” he called.
“Keep out of this, you filthy black swine,” Malone yelled at him, and he sucked in blood from his bleeding mouth and spat it into the sad young face.
The young Negro swung at him. The waiter broke away from the manager and jumped Malone, and three of his colleagues who had been standing behind him also jumped Malone.
McAlpine roared, “Peggy! Peggy! Here!” and lunged toward her desperately, for her head had turned in his direction. It was extraordinary the way Wagstaffe played on so beautifully; but the other musicians had stood up, and their music was a discordant wail. That little old guy, the flashy old Negro porter whom McAlpine had seen the first night, came out of nowhere and threw his arms around Peggy to shelter her.
“Look at the nigger after that girl!” a white woman screamed. “Stop him!”
None of the white men had sympathized particularly with Malone when he insulted the waiter. They were all embarrassed. And they had made no move when three waiters tackled him and he rolled on the floor. But the first waiter made a mistake. He got loose and staggered to his feet; he saw Malone’s greying head rolling on the floor and he put the boots to him. He kicked him over the eye. A powerfully built white man, a truck driver who had been watching doubtfully, aware that his white pride and superiority were involved, shouted, “They got him down and kicked him!” His own moral problem had been settled. “Are we going to take that?”
He jumped at the little waiter, who backed away from him, sparring, swinging, lurching against tables and knocking chairs over. The waiter was no match for the big fellow. A lonely coloured girl wailing for her beaten boyfriend ran across the dance floor. McAlpine could no longer see Peggy. As he lurched around, hurling people aside, he saw Gagnon standing at the bar, his hand up to his head; someone had thrown a salt shaker at him. Gagnon picked on a Negro in a light brown suit. He swung at him, dazed him, and drove him along the bar. He hoisted him onto the bar. They were reflected in the big mirror, the flash of the Negro’s body sliding along the bar sweeping off all the glasses. The crash of splintering glass above the melancholy wail of Wagstaffe’s horn was terrifying. Other fights broke out. “Peggy!” McAlpine roared again.
Then he saw her. She tried to come to him. He knocked over a Negro, clawed at the mass of swaying bodies. A brown fist swinging at him caught him high on the forehead. Amazement was in his eyes as he rocked o
n his heels, then the wall of bodies closed in front of him. Women shrieked; the white ones struggled to get to the stairs. Some of them were weeping.
At the end of the bar Foley, who had sat down on the floor, was fumbling with his glasses, then adjusting them on his nose. Most of his body was hidden by the bar; only his red head stuck out, and he was full of profound and bitter disgust that he was there at all. Then Wolgast’s head rose above the level of the bar and he looked around with caution. Feeling secure, he stuck a cigar in his mouth; no matter what happened, he felt more at home behind a bar.
He watched McAlpine crash through the wall of bodies swaying around him; he heard him roar like a bull, swinging and clawing and cursing, trying to get to Peggy. The more he struggled, the more they clawed at him. Someone cursed him; he tripped, fell to his knees, and grabbed at the legs around him. A table crashed on the floor beside him and rolled away, and he was on his feet again. In the little clearing where the table had fallen he stood all alone, looking so big and threatening that the Negro waiters backed away, thinking he was crazy-drunk. He caught a glimpse of Peggy’s white blouse. He knocked over a little white man in a blue suit. They’re trying to keep me away from her, he thought. Then someone leaped on his back pinning his arms – a powerful white man who had an arm lock on him. The man yelled, “Take it easy, pal, take it easy before there’s murder. Break it up. The cops are coming, pal.”
“Let me go!” McAlpine shouted. He couldn’t see the man’s face, he could only feel his vast weight and his great strength.
The manager and Wagstaffe, yelling at waiters and Negro clients, tried to herd them into a corner, and a big uniformed doorman with a false nervous grin wedged himself between Negroes and white men. “Break it up, boys,” he urged them. “Break it up. The cops are coming.”
The fighting had stopped abruptly, and there was Peggy back against the wall, half stooped, her arms folded across her breast, her hands clutching her shoulders, trying to hide herself, and on his knees beside her was Wilson with a bleeding head.
Malone, who had been crawling along the floor, stood up, his torn face like a smeared white mask, his eyes popping. “There’s the little bitch that started it!” he yelled, pointing at Peggy.
“Yes! There!” screamed Mrs. Wilson, her voice a high quavering wail as she lurched toward Peggy. She spun around with an hysterical moan. “No good trash, no good trash!”
Wolgast had come from behind the bar with a slow calm step, his face impassive, an impressive solid man above the little tumult, a man on a horse.
“She’s a troublemaker,” he called out, “a first-class trouble-maker.” And it sounded like a calm impersonal judgment as he stood there with his hands on his hips.
“That’s right,” Wagstaffe yelled. “Get her out of here!”
“Go on, get out of here, you floozie!” the manager shouted at Peggy.
“Let me go!” McAlpine shouted wildly at the giant whose face he still hadn’t seen, but whose grip and heavy weight were drawing him farther away from the circle around Peggy. “Take it easy, pal,” the giant whispered consolingly. “You’ll be thanking me in a minute.”
Peggy took one slow, frightened step from the corner, then another, not seeing anybody, hiding within herself from their contempt; she stooped to pick up her coat and, while stooping, looked at the door. She straightened up; there was an effort at dignity in her first few steps, a wavering, uncertain dignity, but when Mrs. Wilson yelled, “Slut!” and snatched a catsup bottle from a table and threw it at her she began to run. The catsup sprayed from the bottle in a blood-red line toward her, and she screamed. Beer glasses thrown at her broke at her feet and scraps of sandwiches fell around her.
At the head of the stairs the Negroes and white women who had huddled there for safety made way for her; but as she brushed past them they jeered. A Negro woman tugged at her coat. “You’ve had it coming, you trash,” she rasped. Peggy turned around blankly. Then her fair head disappeared down the stairs.
“God damn you,” McAlpine said quietly to the giant. The threat was all in his suddenly relaxed body, and the giant said good-naturedly, “I’m your pal, buddy. I’ve saved you some trouble.” He relaxed his grip, and McAlpine slipped away from him without even looking at his face. He dashed toward the stairs, stumbling down and tripping. He whirled around, facing the hat-check girl. “The girl,” he said. “Girl with a light coat.”
Before she could answer he lurched out to the street, but there he stopped and drew back. A police car had drawn up to the curb. Four policemen jumped out of the car. Leaning idly against the door, he smoothed the sleeves of his coat and straightened his tie and brushed back his hair. He tried to convey the impression that he was waiting for the police. Each one of them glared at him suspiciously as they dashed one by one up the stairs. Then he stepped out to the street and looked toward the underpass. No one was on the sidewalk between him and the underpass. She got a taxi, he thought. If a taxi were out here she’d have jumped into it.
From the café across the street and from the little shops and the upstairs rooms came the neighbours, some in shirt sleeves, some in bathrobes and slippers, all looking up with curiosity at the windows of the café. It was like a crowd watching a building on fire. McAlpine made his way among them. No one noticed that he wore no hat or overcoat, for they had run out to the street without their own hats and coats.
He hurried across the intersection and up the street; when he got into the shadow of the subway he started to run.
Maybe she’s just on the other side of the underpass, he thought. Coming out of the underpass, he stopped. No one was ahead of him on the hill. There had been no snow in the underpass and running had been easy, but now that he was in the open again, he started to slip and skid. He spun around, one shoe deep in a snow bank, his foot soaking wet; but he came down heavily on both feet and kept his balance. He stared at the pink neon lights on Dorchester.
Fearing a policeman would see him and stop him, he slowed down to a walk. He darted out to the road and waved at each passing taxi. He got sprayed with slush. Finally a taxi stopped; he gave the Crescent Street address and leaned back in the cab, holding his head in his hands. His fingers touched a big bump on the back of his head and the feel of it astonished him. He could not remember being hit. His breathing sounded to him like a loud sobbing.
“Here you are, bud,” the driver said. McAlpine, paying him, was casual and polite. “Good night,” he said, thinking he was concealing from the whole city what had happened. “Nice and mild, isn’t it?” He waited from the cab to pull away, then he hurried in and along the hall. Her door was open.
TWENTY-FOUR
She was sitting on the bed, looking so bewildered and untouched that McAlpine couldn’t speak. He swallowed hard.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said.
“Me. Yes.”
“Well – well, that’s good, Jim.”
“Who else did you think it would be?”
“I – I didn’t know,” she said, closing her eyes, and then, still bewildered, she asked, “Where’s your coat and hat?”
“My coat and hat?”
“Yes.”
“Oh!” His hand went to his pocket for the cloakroom check as if to give it to her. “Yes. Here’s the check. I’ll have to get that hat. It’s Mr. Carver’s. I can get it tomorrow. How did you get here?”
“A taxi – right outside the door,” she said, her voice breaking. “I just jumped in. It was right there. It was odd how it was right there, wasn’t it?” Before he could answer she got up, tried to smile, and went over to the bed. She was no longer alone, and she did not have to hold on to herself, and she lay down and began to cry. Her hands kept working the pillow around her face, and he could hardly see her head, just her shoulders shaking with her heartbroken sobbing. The sound of her sobbing filled him with a peculiar poignant gladness, for he knew she wept out of shame and over the failure of her judgment of herself and others and her bitter humiliating disappo
intment.
The ceiling light shone on the short fair hair at her neck. He sat down beside her and comforted her; he stroked her head, saying nothing, and his understanding, his soothing and unprotesting affection compelled her to mutter a desperate defence of herself: “It was Malone. It was all Malone’s fault. That awful man! A man like that could start trouble anywhere,” she insisted. And when he didn’t remonstrate with her, she whispered, “Oh, no, no, no! Why don’t you say it was my fault, Jim? It’s me! You saw how they all turned on me?”
“It was awful, Peggy.” He said gently. “But a fight over a girl could happen in any café.”
“Oh, no! Not like that.”
“Yes. If a drunk makes himself offensive anything could happen. It could happen to any girl. It was the circumstances, that’s all. I don’t know how it started. What did Malone say to you?”
Turning on her side and looking at him gratefully, she said, “Well, when he came over to the table and asked me to dance with him, I refused. Then he asked me to go home with him, and I wouldn’t. Well, he called me a name and started pawing me. All the waiter did was ask him to go back to his own table. Any waiter would do that, wouldn’t he, Jim?”
“Of course he would.”
“Oh, Jim!” she said miserably. “You sound as if you still had such respect for me.”
“I love you, Peggy.”
“But you shouldn’t, Jim.”
“I can’t help it,” he said.
His gentle manner made her turn away. “Oh, keep on talking to me,” she pleaded, for his words soothed her, restored her, and entitled her to possess herself again. They went on talking incoherently. They told each other that something was finished. By repeating it again and again they made what had happened seem remote; they used it to help them understand why they were together in the room.
Yet they were still nervous and excited. They spoke of the inexplicable suddenness of the violence, of the way Wagstaffe had tried to get the band playing and of Malone’s viciousness. Soon they began to sound like two people who had been watching a fantastic brawl in a far-away café, and the girl they were talking about was not the girl who was lying beside him, and he was not the man who had struggled so wildly to be at her side. There in the room they were safe and unharmed and close together.
The Loved and the Lost Page 21