“There you go,” he said. “Why can’t you be direct about things instead of sentimental?”
“Because I don’t want things that way,” she said. And then she cried passionately, “You can’t touch me whenever you like. You can’t do that to me just when you feel like it,” and her eyes were full of tears as if at last she had touched the true source of all her disappointment.
But he grabbed hold of her, held her a moment to show he could possess her, then pushed her away. “I’m not a little boy playing that old game,” he shouted. “We’re been married three years. Why all the rigmarole?” and he expressed the rage that was growing in him by banging her on the knee with his fist.
“Oh, you’ve hurt me,” she said, holding the spot. “Why did you do that?” and she began to cry a little. “That ends it. You’ll never hit me again,” she said.
“Damn it all, I didn’t hit you.”
“You did. Oh, dear, you did. That settles it. I’ll not stay around here. I’ll not stay another night. I’m going now.”
“Go ahead. Do what you want to.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll soon be gone,” she said, and with tears streaming from her eyes she ran into the bedroom. He stood gloomily at the door with his arms folded across his chest. He watched her pull out drawers, toss dresses into a suitcase, sweep silver at random from the top of the dresser. Sometimes she stopped to press her fists against her eyes. He began to feel so distressed, watching, that he shouted at last, “I won’t stand for this stupid exhibition,” and he jumped at her and flung his arms around her and squeezed her as though he would crush forever the unreasonable revolt in her soul. Then he grew ashamed and he said, “I won’t stop you, and I won’t stay and watch this stupid performance either. I’m going out.” And when he left her she was still pulling out dresser drawers.
As soon as Jeff walked along the street from the apartment house on that early winter night he began to feel that he really had not left that room at all, that wherever he walked, wherever he went, he would still be pulled back there to the room to watch her, and when he went into the corner tavern to have a glass of beer he sat there mopping his forehead and thinking, “Not just when I want, not just when I feel like it! I can’t go on with that stuff when we’re so used to each other. I’d feel stupid.”
In the crowded tavern men and women leaned close together and whispered and while he listened Jeff kept hearing her voice beneath the murmuring voices and the clink of glasses and seeing her face in the smoke of the tavern. As he looked around, a dreadful fear kept growing in him that whatever was warm and vital among people was being pushed out of his reach; and then he couldn’t stop himself from getting up and hurrying back to the apartment house.
He saw her coming out wearing her brown coat, and her felt hat was pulled over her eyes. She was carrying her bag. A taxi was waiting. In a foolish way, to hide his eagerness, he smiled and said, “May I take the bag for you, madam?” He even made a little bow.
“No, thanks,” she said, and she swayed the bag away from his outstretched hand, looking at him in that shy pleading way.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to take it?”
“Quite sure,” she said.
“All right,” he said politely, trying to smile while she got into the cab, and when the cab actually moved off along the street, he stood there, worried and unbelieving, feeling there was no place to go.
But he went into the apartment and as he wandered aimlessly into the bedroom and looked at the empty dresser drawers his loneliness deepened, and he thought, “I tried to use some common sense anyway. She’ll come back. If I went on struggling with her like that all the time I’d never be able to hold my job. I’ll bet a million dollars she’ll be back.”
And he waited and was desolate remembering the shy pleading look in her eyes as she swayed the bag away from him on the sidewalk, and he listened for every small sound from the street, the stairs and the door; and when at last he heard the key turning in the lock he jumped up triumphantly and rushed to meet her.
She came in quietly with a timid, apologetic smile, and as she pulled off her hat she said in a bantering tone, “What were you doing, Jeff? What was keeping you up till this hour?”
“Waiting for you, of course.”
“You mean you missed me?”
“Sure I missed you. You know I did, too,” he said. He helped her off with her coat, begged her to sit down, rushed to the ice box to get a snack for them and his face kept showing all of his childish triumph. She was delighted to be waited on in this different way. Every time the broad smile came on his face she asked, “What are you laughing at, Jeff?”
“How does it feel to be free?” was all he said.
But when they were going to bed and she had buried her dark head in the pillow she began to cry brokenly, and no matter how he coaxed her, or how gently he spoke she would not be quiet. “Aren’t we happy now, Mathilde? Isn’t it all over now?” he kept saying.
“No, I’m not happy. I can’t bear it,” she said.
“You can’t bear what?”
“The way you let me go. No matter what happened I didn’t think you’d ever let me go. You wouldn’t have done it two years ago.”
“But you wanted to go, Mathilde, and if I thought you wanted to . . .”
“Two years ago you would have made me come back. You would have been afraid of losing me.”
“I knew you’d come back like a homing pigeon.”
“Yes, you were so sure of it. You were so very sure,” she said, and then she put her hands over her face and turned her head away, mumbling, “I’m silly. I guess I sound silly. I guess I don’t know what I want,” and he could only see the back of her neck and her hand moving over her cheek.
As he walked around the bed, looking at her, he thought, “Why didn’t I stop her? Why can’t she see that knowing we love each other is better than worrying that we don’t,” but he began to feel terribly afraid. “Nobody loves insecurity,” he said, knowing his words sounded weak and apologetic. For a while he watched her, then went to speak, but he found himself shyly fumbling what seemed to be old words, so he stood there, silent, with his love becoming an ache, for it seemed a terrible thing that such words should sound strange just because they had grown used to each other. Then he knew that his fear had been that he would never be able to express all the feeling he had for her. And all he said was, “I had a glass of beer at the corner and I began to feel terrible.”
“Did you?” she said without looking up.
“I think I know what you’ve been missing,” he said.
“Yes?” she said.
“I couldn’t stay away from here,” he said. “I felt you’d be pulled back too.”
She looked up at him timidly for though the words he used were neither new, nor warm, nor strange, she began to feel his awkward shyness, she began almost to hear him thinking, “What happens that you can’t keep showing your love when it’s so strong in you?” She just waited there and grew shy too, and the feeling between them at that moment seemed so much deeper than any earlier time of impulse and sudden joy.
An Autumn Penitent
1
Joe Harding, at forty-seven, was plump and soft and a little bald, and having a slack time in Eastmount because he was a carpenter by trade, and there were only odd jobs for him. He had a large garden and carefully cultivated potato plants, but his wife, Lottie, was interested mainly in vegetables, like beets, peas, and tomatoes. Joe Harding’s sixteen-year-old niece, Ellen, every morning took the streetcar into the city to high school.
At one time the macadam highway from the city had extended only as far as the streetcar terminal a mile or so west of the village. The natural road was through the village in a line from the streetcar tracks down a sloping road between two heights of land, the road dipping down to an old river, its bed worn into a flat stretch of land. Houses were built along the road in the valley. Two roads crossed this main road, and houses had bee
n built at the corners and a little ways up the intersections, as if people had intended these new roads to be streets one day. The main road crossed the river and climbed up the hill on the other side of the valley to the macadam highway; a handsome new roadhouse was there on the highway.
Down the river below the old Eastmount road was the new high-level bridge, massive steel and cement work spanning the whole valley. The new macadam road curved in an arc from the streetcar terminal along the height of land, across the high-level bridge, missing the village on the ancient road through the valley.
On Friday evening after an early supper, Lottie, her white blouse open at the throat, was slowly washing supper dishes, moisture on her forehead. Ellen, drying dishes, did not seem so hot. Joe sat by the window, looking indifferently into Henry’s yard next door, at Lou Henry and her sloppy old mother squatting on their haunches on the back doorstep, knees hunched up to their chins. Looking directly at Lottie he saw that she was hurrying, excited because Hodgins, the young man from the Baptist college in the city, was holding the first important service in the old barn down the road.
Ellen hung up the dishtowel on the pipe behind the stove and walked into the parlor, looking for something to do. Watching her, Joe knew she wasn’t interested in going to the service in the barn and was pleased, and turned again to the window. Suddenly he felt uneasy, thinking of all the words the young evangelist might use while Ellen sat on a bench for an hour listening to him. He didn’t like thinking of it, and, anyway, was sure nothing would happen.
“Here’s the paperboy,” he said, going to the kitchen door. The boy left two papers. Joe went into the front room and, taking off his shoes, stretched himself on the lounge near the window, preparing to enjoy himself. He started with the police-court news, turning later to the front page, then to the sporting page, reading every news item. He read slowly, but when recounting a murder trial, a political speech, or even a story of a parade, he felt that he had been close to these people who got their names in the papers, caught in a stream of life swimming around him.
It was getting dark in the front room so he selected five or six stories from the papers. Putting on his shoes, he went into the kitchen. He sat down at the table. Mrs. Harding was combing her hair in front of the mirror over the sink.
“Listen Lottie,” he said. “This is worth reading.” He spread the paper on the table.
He read one of the six stories selected from the papers. Lottie listened, commenting tersely, while she combed her hair. They talked about the story: a man had imprisoned his young wife in his cellar after binding and gagging her and had disappeared. The imprisoned wife had no reasonable explanation of her husband’s actions. Joe looked at the matter from all angles as if he understood the difficulty between the young woman and her husband. Then he read another story.
Almost every night he read stories from the papers to Lottie and Ellen. He liked it better if Ellen were there because her imagination was lively and she was emotional.
After reading the stories he said casually: “I guess I’ll go sit on the front porch. May go down the road for a little while.”
He sat on the front porch. There were no sounds on the road. Looking over the tops of houses on the road, he could see the high-level bridge spanning the valley, an automobile moving across; then he wondered where Ellen had gone after drying the dishes.
She might have gone over to see Doris Kremer, he thought, remembering how he had seen the two of them last night when he came home from the hotel. Ellen had been talking to a young fellow under a light on the road. They had walked down the road still under the light, but going toward Fraser’s orchard. He had felt like hurrying after them to tell the fellow to go chase himself. She had passed out of the light into the shadow and looked full grown. The fellow might have been Zip Foster, who smoked cigars and tried to interest older men around the hotel with smutty stories about young girls in the neighborhood. Zip wore a derby hat when he went into the city. Joe could still hear his loud laugh accompanying the story about poor Rose MacIntyre.
Down the road a man was standing at the entrance to the barn and, watching him, Joe’s thoughts were interrupted. He had helped fix up the barn, his carpentry useful in the making of rough benches. They had worked many evenings after supper. The tall barn, big and old, was back a ways from where the road began to climb up the hill to the roadhouse and almost opposite the Hardings’. The barn was a stone’s throw from the river and in the nighttime could hardly be seen from the road, overshadowed as it was by one of the wooded hills, humping up in the valley. The board walls were weather-warped and a wind blew through the cracks. The barn smelled of manure, though horses had not been in it for a year.
Before it had got dark, Ellen and Doris Kremer, a skinny, dark girl, had come over from the Kremers’ place to watch the men fixing the barn. Ellen’s dress was a little tight at the bosom, and he remembered clearly how she had leaned against the door. Now he felt uneasy.
Lottie called from the kitchen and he answered almost nervously. He went inside. Lottie smiled encouragingly, pleased because he was going with them to the service. She looked good in her black silk dress with the long sleeves, and her hair parted in the center. He put on his coat. He heard Ellen coming downstairs and wondered why he had thought she had gone out.
2
The three of them walked down the road to the barn. Many people coming along the road nodded to Lottie, for it was understood Hodgins relied on her judgment and thought her an excellent woman. Lottie bowed politely and gracefully. There was a warm glow in the sky. It would not be really dark for an hour, but in the barn it was almost dark. The window were small and far apart. Joe and Lottie and Ellen sat on a bench three rows from the front.
On the platform, enlarged since Joe had helped erect it, were two rows of empty chairs in an arc. Three lanterns swinging from a beam at the roof and two lamps on posts at each side of the barn gave a pale yellow light. The horsey smell had not left the barn and seemed to come from under the rough, worn floor. People came in the wide door, walking uncertainly, unaccustomed as yet to the rough benches and the stable odors and the yellow lights at the roof. Joe knew all these people who sat down awkwardly and whispered.
Mr. Hodgins, smiling with agreeable determination, came in with Mr. and Mrs. Harvey Simpson. Most of the benches were soon filled. Over a hundred people sat on the hard benches and watched Mr. Hodgins smile encouragingly at Harvey Simpson and take the short steps to the platform.
Joe said to Ellen, “Do you know how they go ahead?” He didn’t know why he whispered.
“We sing soon,” Ellen said, not too seriously.
Hodgins began to talk pleasantly about the progress of evangelical work in the village and how it was time for many to make an open profession of faith. The young man cleared his throat, turned quickly the pages of a hymn book, and nodded amiably to Mrs. Kremer, sitting at the piano to the right of the platform, her hand holding down and creasing a page in the hymn book. The piano looked splendid in the barn, Joe thought. Everybody stood up, coughing and clearing throats. Mrs. Kremer pounded a chord, glanced alertly at Mr. Hodgins, nodded, and then looked encouragingly at the people on the benches. Hodgins started the singing, pumping his arms up and down regularly, vigorously.
There were ninety and nine that safely lay
In the shelter of the fold . . .
Joe did not have a good voice but made a gruff, friendly noise in his throat. Lottie and Ellen shared the same hymn book, Lottie singing seriously, her voice rising. Ellen had a good voice, Joe thought.
But one was out in the hills far away.
Mr. Hodgins began to talk in a low, confidential tone and Joe counted the chairs on the platform. Twenty-five chairs on the platform. He glanced at Lottie sitting stiffly on the hard bench, but Hodgins’ rising voice cleared away his thoughts. Hodgins, a young man at the university, had thought only of having his hair slicked back. “I used to think a good deal of my hair,” he said sadly, his lar
ge hand brushing back the black hair that stood up stiffly. His face was sallow in the lamplight. At one time he had flaunted himself before women, he said. In the even tone of his voice the word “women” had an emphasis like the crack of a whip.
Hodgins leaned forward, his lips moving quickly. Flinging his arms wide, he offered to lay bare his soul. At one time he had kept company with a girl in her teens who was very fond of him. That girl’s father had one evening accused him of leading her into dark places where the young soul longed for the fleshpots. He had said to the father of the girl, “I haven’t dragged her down, but I will lift her up in spite of you,” and he had lifted her up and was going to marry the girl.
Joe, though certain he was smiling good-naturedly, could not prevent himself thinking of Ellen, and the evening they had walked down to the beach. For a single moment he thought of Hodgins and himself as one, then, resenting it, he looked around seriously, almost believing people were fully aware that Hodgins was practically talking to him alone. Remote, and far away, he saw himself standing up there beside Hodgins and talking rapidly, and he muttered to himself, “For God’s sake, don’t be such a damn fool.”
Everybody on the benches was interested in Hodgins’ one-time proximity to sins of the flesh. Joe was vaguely pleased to hear that Hodgins had been accused of carnalities, and, feeling more comfortable on the bench, wished he could have seen the girl.
Hodgins was telling a story about a little boy from Galilee, his voice controlled, pauses giving time and movement to his words. Joe, looking out of the corner of his eye at Lottie and the people around him, was sure something was going to happen that would startle him into talking out loud. Everybody was leaning forward watching Hodgins, and intensely interested in the story of the little boy from Galilee.
The Complete Stories of Morley Callaghan: Volume One Page 19