The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan: Volume One

by Morley Callaghan

  The new, poorer people in town, or the farmers who drove in to church on Sundays, were uneasy when talking to Luella Stevens because she would never let them forget that she came from an old and once influential family. She had been the only daughter of a doctor. She lived alone now in an unpretentious brick cottage. People used to make up stories about how pretty she had been once, and how she had been in love years ago with a man who had gone to Chicago and become a wealthy merchant and the father of a large family. For a great many years afterwards, they said, she had cherished her secret of unfulfilled love until it was too late to bother with anyone else. Then her father had died; the people she had grown up with had gone away or were dead, too. The town had begun to decline and the only place that remained for Luella through the years, as it had been in her youth, as it had been for her family and the man who had been her lover and gone to Chicago, was the parish church and the choir with Catherine Hogan at the organ.

  Yet there was no longer any use pretending that Luella had the beautiful voice of her youth. After mass on Sundays old parishioners like Mrs. Todd, the stout, stubborn-faced wife of the town flour-and-feed merchant, began to say, “My goodness, did you hear Luella Stevens today? I declare upon my soul she was positively shouting. Her voice is gone completely. Someone ought to tell the poor woman.”

  When this was said, prominent ladies of the parish, standing on the sidewalk under the trees in front of the church, nodded their heads gravely as if at last a scandal of tremendous importance had crept into the stagnant life of the town. Those who hardly ever listened to the choir made up their minds to listen eagerly the next Sunday.

  Not knowing that her neighbors were now listening to her with a new rapt attention, Luella stood up on Sunday and, with as much confidence as she had ever had during the last thirty-five years, shouted at the top of her voice. Luella was aware, of course, that her voice was no longer a girl’s voice, but by attacking the high notes with an extra enthusiasm she imagined she got over them very nicely. On this Sunday, those who had come to pass judgment on frail Luella Stevens turned in their pews and gawked up at her aristocratic old face and soon their own faces were full of indignation at the way she was shouting. The fidgeting young ladies of the choir were aware that at last, judging by the way heads kept turning round, people were noticing Luella; they were so embarrassed that they dropped their own voices in shame and sang so listlessly that the young priest, Father Malone, who had been in the parish only a year, looked up, wondering what was the matter.

  After that mass, Mrs. Todd went around to the priest’s house to speak to Father Malone. The priest confessed frankly that he thought Luella Steven’s voice disrupted the whole choir. The wife of the flour-and-feed-merchant and the priest shook their heads sadly, talked in a low grave tone, and wondered who ought to speak to Luella. “Catherine Hogan is the one, she’s been there as long as Luella,” Mrs. Todd said in triumph. “A splendid suggestion,” said the priest. He thanked Mrs. Todd warmly for her exemplary interest in the matter and then accepted an invitation to play cards next Tuesday night with her husband and their family.

  So, one Sunday when the two old women, Catherine Hogan and Luella Stevens, were on their way home from church, they got into the discussion about church music and their own choir in particular. Catherine Hogan, the organist, was stooped and withered compared with Luella, who walked proudly upright. “Did you ever think, Luella, of letting some of the younger girls take some of the solos you’ve had so long?” Catherine asked. “Just so there’ll be some chance for their advancement.”

  “It never entered my head,” Luella said.

  “There are those, and mind now, I’m not saying who they are, who think your voice isn’t what it was, Luella, and that you shouldn’t be singing so much at your age.”

  “At my age, Catherine Hogan? And doesn’t anyone seem to remember that you, at seventy-two, are four years older than I am? Where’s your own memory, Catherine? Why, when I was a child I always thought you were too old for me to play with. You know you were always far ahead of me in school like one of the older girls. I’ve always thought of you like that and will to my dying day. Isn’t your eyesight failing you, Catherine?”

  Catherine Hogan was full of rage, knowing Luella was deliberately making her out to be an old woman when everybody in town knew she could play the organ blindfolded, that it didn’t matter if she had to be carried into the choir on a bed with her eyesight gone, she would still know the music. She was so offended she made up her mind never to mention the subject to Luella again.

  When she was alone in her cottage, cooking her dinner, Luella, muttering to herself, said, “Old Catherine’s mind must be wandering, the poor thing.” She simply couldn’t bear to think of leaving the choir. Instead of eating the food she had cooked she sat at the end of the table remembering all the tiffs she had had with Catherine in the last forty years; she thought of jealous women, of newer ones in the parish scheming to have their daughters take her place in the choir, and she grew frightened, wondering what there would be left in her life if her enemies were successful. She stood rigid, her lips began to move and soon she was giving everyone in the parish who had ever displeased her a thorough tongue-lashing.

  On Sunday, as if to threaten those who would deprive her of her rightful place, she gave full throat to her favorite hymn, singing more bravely than ever. Yet never was it so apparent as on that morning that the woman was simply shouting, that the last bit of sweetness had gone forever from her voice. Young people, who by this time had taken an interest in the matter, began to snicker. Mrs. Todd and Mr. J.T. Higgins, the undertaker, turned and looked up at Luella with a withering severity, and then, glancing at each other and screwing up their lips in disgust, they felt they positively despised the arrogant woman. The whole congregation, looking up at Luella when she had finished singing, began to feel that somehow she was making a shameful mockery of them all by refusing to retire. When they bent their heads piously to pray they felt she really had become their enemy.

  After the mass the priest, a tall man with powerful shoulders and a blunt nervous way of speaking, was white-faced, and when he left the altar he fumbled with his vestment, calling sharply to the altar boys who were beside him, “Quick, go up to the choir and tell Miss Stevens I want to speak to her.”

  When Miss Stevens came in, smiling benevolently at the young priest because she was always anxious to help, he stopped pacing up and down and dropped his hands to his sides. He wanted to blurt out, “You’ve become a perfect nuisance, I tell you. You distract me. I can’t offer up the mass. I can’t pray and listen to your terrible shouting,” but controlling himself and taking a deep breath, he said, “Miss Stevens, I noticed for the first time today that your voice was failing. I noticed your voice distinctly. Perhaps you feel you’ve served the choir long enough.”

  “For over thirty years,” she said coldly.

  “Yes, indeed, I believe you’re sixty-eight.”

  “Catherine Hogan was seventy-two last July,” Luella said triumphantly.

  “I don’t care how old Catherine Hogan is,” the priest, who was exasperated, said. “I don’t want to be harsh. I’d like to have you pick up the suggestion yourself. However, I’ll say frankly I think you ought to leave the choir.”

  “I understand,” Luella said tartly. Bowing coldly, she went out. She meant she understood that those who were scheming for her position were now successful, and with her head tossing, she walked past the little crowd of people standing in the sunlight in front of the church, not noticing how outraged they were as they stared at her.

  It was only when she was going down the old gray dust road, the road she had taken every Sunday of her life, that she began to feel frightened. By the time she got to the bridge over Swinnerton’s Creek, she was dazed. Leaning against the rail, she trembled and looked back over the road she had come. It had gotten so that now there was only one main road in her life, the road from her cottage to the church. She won
dered what had happened to her life, for though she had stood on this bridge often when she was a little girl, and often, too, when she was in love, and many times afterwards when she was alone, she had never had such a helpless feeling as she had now.

  Luella Stevens went a little late to mass the next Sunday. She went in timidly like a stranger entering a great cathedral in a foreign city and she stood in the last pew at the back of the church. Those around her, who noticed her, could hardly stop smiling and nudging each other, and if they had not been praying they would have burst into loud, hearty laughter. But Luella felt lost down at the back of the church: she couldn’t remember the last time she had been there, it was so long ago.

  Everything went peacefully except that when it was time for her solo Luella began to hum, and then, mechanically, she began to sing, though she kept her voice as low as possible.

  A week later she moved up a little closer to the altar where she could feel more at home, and she hummed and hummed and even sang a little louder. Mr. J.T. Higgins, the undertaker, nudged her sternly, but she simply moved away politely as if she understood that he wanted more room. The priest turned uneasily on the altar. Luella, noticing none of these things, was not aware of the rage and contempt they were all feeling for her. The undertaker went on turning page after page of his prayer book, and then finally he leaned over and whispered, “Would you please stop humming and singing? It’s impossible for me to concentrate on spiritual things.”

  “My goodness,” Luella whispered. “Has it got so that a poor body can’t hum to herself the songs she’s been singing for forty years?”

  But the priest could stand it no longer and turning on the altar and looking over the heads of everybody, he said firmly, “There must be no noise in the church during mass.”

  Glaring angrily at the undertaker, Luella tried to say to him with her eyes, “You see, by talking away and making a fuss like a small boy you humiliate both of us in this way. God forgive you,” but she really thought the priest was probably referring to small boys at the back of the church whose parents had raised them to be little savages.

  Soon no one would sit in the pew with Luella. By herself, she felt free. She sang quite loudly. It was impossible for those around her to pray. It was impossible for anyone, including the priest, to think of God when she shouted a high note, so they thought, instead, of Luella and what a stupid, arrogant, shameless woman she was, denying them all. They began to hate her. They wanted to hurt her so she would leave the parish forever. The priest, stalking down from the altar with long strides, looked as if he wanted to keep going right down the aisle, out of the church, and out of the town.

  While every man and woman in the parish who had self-respect and a love of the church was standing out on the sidewalk muttering and whispering of her scandalous conduct, Luella Stevens went home meekly. In the priest’s house, Father Malone was sending a message to Hector Haines and Henry Barton, two sober, middle-aged, prominent laymen, to come and see him on urgent business.

  When the laymen were alone with him in his library, the priest, shrugging his shoulders and throwing up his hands helplessly, said, “I can’t go on saying mass if these things keep on. I’m going to rely on you two men. Lord in heaven, it’s a perfect scandal.” Henry Barton and Hector Haines, two big, substantial men, cleared their throats and expressed a devout indignation. They were flattered to think the priest had come to them for assistance. The three of them talked gravely and bitterly, planning a way to handle Luella Stevens.

  In her pew up at the front of the church next Sunday, Luella Stevens, almost cheerful now to be there, found herself singing with the choir as she had done for thirty years. As soon as Catherine Hogan sounded the organ note for Luella’s old hymn, Luella began to shout as though she had never left the choir.

  Up on the altar the priest, kneeling with his hands clasped, lowered his dark head deeper into his shoulders and then at last he stood up and said clearly, “Will someone please take that woman out of the church.”

  Hector Haines and Henry Barton, who were ready in the pew across the aisle waiting for his signal, stepped over quickly and grabbed Luella by the shoulders, one on each side of her. The priest had said to them, “Be quick, so there will be no confusion.” Luella looked around, speechless and frightened. The faces of the two huge, prominent laymen were red and severe as they clutched her in their big hands and hustled her down the aisle. They towered over the small woman, grabbing her as though they were burly policemen throwing a thug out of a dance hall, rushing her down the center aisle.

  It was odd the way those who stared at her frightened face, as she passed, felt that they were seeing the end of something. Mrs. Todd, the flour-and-feed merchant’s wife, ducked her head and suddenly began to weep, and she only looked up to whisper, with her face bursting with indignation, “Oh, dear, this is so shameful.” All the others stirred and shifted miserably in their pews: some wanted to jump up and cry out angrily, “This is an outrage. Who is responsible for this?” and they glared their bitter silent protests at each other. “If she were one of mine there’d be trouble about this, I tell you,” Mr. Higgins, the undertaker, muttered, his face red with resentment. But the quieter ones were so humiliated that they could not bear to raise their heads. The priest, who had not counted on the great zeal of his two prominent laymen, thought, “God help us. What have we done?” and he was so distracted he could hardly go on with the prayers.

  No Man’s Meat

  Rays of morning light filtering through leaves on trees on the hill shone through the south window to the bed. Beddoes, sitting up, looked out the north window at the lake which was never blue in the morning sun, even when there was no shadow from the big rock across the water. The dark surface shone.

  Most of Beddoes’thoughts, closing his eyes, were of Jean Allen, who was coming in the early afternoon. She would have many fine stories to tell. She was such a beautiful woman he was already feeling very close to her, eager to share in her more adventurous life. Listening, he tried to hear if his wife in the next room was awake but heard no sound. Nearly every night he slept alone. A light, clean breeze came in from the hill window with the fresh smell of earth and leaves. Sometimes he went into his wife’s room in the morning, and they both liked it, though not often could they have a passion strong enough to destroy the feeling of calmness between them, a calmness overpowering all quick feeling and every day growing stronger. Hearing the steady swing of water on the shore Beddoes thought happily they had got beyond all undisciplined impulses and had achieved a contented peacefulness they had hoped for many years ago when they had first thought of getting married.

  Dressed neatly in city clothes and well-polished shoes Beddoes sat down for breakfast with his wife, a small woman, eager to smile quickly at him. Her thin body was held tensely even while talking and eating the food the maid served them for a late breakfast. This was one of the most important hours of the day for them in their life at Echo Lake. Talking, they remembered small excitements from the other day, sharing them fully, and casually she gave an opinion about a modern writer or painter, which led up to a conversation about most of the artists till they finished their breakfast. This was the way they always wanted the day to begin for them. The conversation was so pleasantly agreeable he couldn’t help looking at his wife admiringly.

  “We’ll both go into town to meet Jean at the station after lunch,” she said.

  “You’ve no idea how anxious I am to have her here,” he said. “She seems to have in her most of the life we haven’t touched. She’ll be a new stimulus for us.”

  “It’s such a lovely August day too. The lake and the rock and country will be a fine picture for her.”

  Mrs. Beddoes went into her workshop to spend her morning hours in woodcarving, for which she had some facility. For years she had thought of it as her work, a medium through which she could find a more orderly way of living. Beddoes went for his morning walk, up the low hill through cedars and elms to the
road leading into town, and stood for an hour talking lazily with John Scott, the farmer in the first cottage on the road over the hill, an old house with only a small garden. No one knew how Scott lived. His farm was of no value. But Scott was willing to talk in the mornings and they leaned against the fence, having a conversation mainly about the unproductive country, Scott, tall and strong, insisting he would make a better living trapping and fishing. Beddoes encouraged him, talking easily, occasionally witty and always intimating that there was some kind of sympathetic relationship between them. It irritated him slightly that the fellow would not take him very seriously, though he had come to this part of the country every summer for five years.

  Someone called from the door of Scott’s house; his wife, untidy, small, but full-throated and white-breasted and black-haired, calling, “There’s a bite to eat for you when you want it, John,” and smiling at Beddoes, watching him shaking hands with her husband. The two of them stood at the door smiling, watching Beddoes going down the road to his log cabin, a city fellow wearing a neatly pressed suit. Every day he walked at noontime by Scott’s house to talk with him, and always had some of the same thoughts, going down the road again, though he had no interest in Mrs. Scott at all. But there was always the disturbing picture in his head of the effortless way she came to the door and said easily, “There’s a bite for you to eat, John.” It annoyed Beddoes, who had been trying for years to be orderly and always conscious of his own dignity, to see this woman moving lazily, indifferently, so much a part of the untilled fields.

  The lake, blue and brilliant through the trees on the side by the cottage, further out was brownish-green and coppertinted and streaked with orange in the shadow of the great rock jutting up three hundred feet above the water and sloping far along the other side of the lake. The face of the rock was solid. At the base the water was black and motionless. On the rest of the mountainous rock, clumps of spruce, stunted and puny, were against the skyline. Beddoes, coming through the trees, heard his wife working and though there was a window in the room he had to pass going to the cottage door, he did not glance in.