“No, we can’t now,” she said. “It wouldn’t be safe for me.”
“We ought to now.”
“It would be bad for me that way,” she said. Her face was white and her eyes moist, but she held on to this one practical thought. So laughing, he kissed her, and laughed at himself, mussing her hair. Though it was cool, a damp breeze blowing over the big pond in the lowland in the park, he would not go into the house because he didn’t want to see or speak to anyone else.
“You’ve thought it all over?” he said, still feeling she should agree with him only after some kind of a stubborn pressure.
“Well, it’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but I want you to be happy, too.”
“It had to happen some time. You’ve been at me all summer and we might as well do it decently and then I’ll be happier having my own place.”
Going home he walked several blocks before it occurred to him to get a streetcar. On the car he was sure his face was solemnly expressionless and sat down hurriedly, smiling a little, and trying to get a sullen expression on his face. An elderly woman holding a sleeping child in her arms smiled at him: the woman, thinking he was smiling at the expression on the child’s face, pulled back the blanket from one eye and smiled again and John glared at her.
Hardly looking at him the woman said: “Do you like babies, mister?”
“Sometimes, madam.” Ashamed of his curtness, he added quickly, “It’s a lovely child. How old is it?”
“Three months. He looks nice now, but you should see him in the daytime. His expression is altogether different.”
The woman, red-faced and cheerful, spoke with a broad accent, and he was obliged to hold this conversation with her till she got off the car, then ridiculing her to himself, a vulgar woman, he tried hard to get again the flow of the fine thoughts of Lillian.
At home he went to bed and did not bother to read. He turned out the light and lay awake in the bed and heard faintly the Erringtons talking in their bedroom. On the front veranda, underneath his bedroom, two cats were moaning softly. The Erringtons’ cat, a Maltese, sat on a cushion in the chair that was on the veranda every night and the two cats came to see it later in the evening. They kept on moaning at each other till the electrician, who lived next door, opened his bedroom window and made strange hissing noises, and they ran away into an alley further down the street.
All week he was tender and patient and considerate of Lillian, just as though they were going to be married, and on Saturday night she took him to see the apartment on the third floor in a new apartment house in the north end of the city, and the window looked out on a wide lawn and hedges. The building was only two minutes’ walk from the corner and the car line, and, the other way, only ten minutes to the end of the street and down the path to the ravine. They were a little shy, standing together alone for the first time in the room this afternoon, while she told him she had decided to give lessons on the piano, and it might, in a few months, be even more economical to have the apartment. He was hardly listening, knowing that in a few moments he would be making love to her and she was just talking herself into the mood for it. They were looking out the window at the hedges. It was a new street and a vacant lot with trees was between the apartment house and the next house. The hedges were turning brown, and two small birds were darting at them, rising and darting farther along. A little sunlight glinted on the humming birds’ small bodies, brilliant-breasted, as they pivoted in the air, almost hovering in one spot, tumbling and darting into the hedge again. The air was still and quiet in the afternoon sunlight and the small wings whirred but could hardly be seen: then they were out of sight, but the wings whirred farther along the hedge, and they balanced and ducked and the sunlight glinted again.
“How beautiful,” she said.
But she cried a little, sitting down when he started to make love to her, and wanted him to do everything slowly. It was all new to her and she kept both fists shut tightly at first, closing her eyes as though determined to shut out her own feeling, giving herself to him for the first time. She was a small slim woman and her eyes were shut, her mouth open a little, all her muscles relaxed, and she was almost too fragile. This physical fragility and weakness was apparent only when she was without tension, with her eyes closed.
He stayed with her all that first night.
After practicing with the choir at the church, or the nights he was free, he came to the apartment, and they were happy with amusements, which seemed suddenly to become more important than anything else in life. The most difficult songs he practiced with her at the piano, and they were happy because their attention was taken into their work, till his voice tired and he began to clear his throat noisily, his lips closed, looking serious and dignified, and walking to the far corner of the room. Lillian kept on playing the piano while he sat down watching her; so happily aware of her perfection for him the music lost all design. She was playing the piano, glancing at him occasionally over her shoulder, then seriously regarding the sheet of music. Lillian enjoyed music because it always gave her fresh experience and meant, to her personally, something beyond the melody or the rhythm that was in the piece. She was at the piano long after he was tired, still getting the full value and suggestion of the notes. Her ear was better than his, never tiring so quickly, and she retained a sense of personal experience after he heard objectively only the sounds.
They had cakes and tea and sandwiches while talking eagerly about his voice. The ambition between them was for his voice and how it might develop later on with careful training. They agreed it was getting a little fuller and becoming absolutely effortless. Later they had a small brandy and he shook his head seriously, asking for another one. The brandy warmed them and they did not talk so earnestly about the singing and the music, and she wanted to be petted and loved gently till it was no longer necessary to talk at all. For the rest of the evening she was almost religiously obedient to all his wishes, as though it were a new excitement and a pleasure to do anything he suggested.
They had the brandy at the same time almost every evening.
After he had made love to her he went home, for they did not want the caretaker in the apartment house to think she was a loose woman. He liked going home to the room in the Erringtons’ house; he could lie awake and think of loving Lillian. The walk home was over the viaduct, and he was always glad when he came along the street and looked up at the house and saw the windows of his room over the veranda. The Maltese cat curled up on the cushion on the veranda chair was not disturbed, for he came home at this time every night.
On Sunday evening Isabelle was with Lillian when he came to the apartment. She would not wear mourning and had on a red felt hat. Her lips were red and she was sitting carelessly on the arm of a chair, talking enthusiastically.
“Dear John,” she said.
“It’s fine to have you here, Isabelle.”
“If I had only known how nice it was I would have been here before.”
He was almost shy with Lillian and embarrassed, looking at Isabelle, for he did not know her feeling. Lillian and Isabelle went on talking rapidly as if they had many important things to discuss in a hurry. Isabelle was too cheerful, too determinedly good-natured. They were talking about a scandal that had been in the papers, and then Isabelle got up, walking around the room, looking at the furniture and the bed, the rugs on the floor and then at the bed again. The furniture, though not expensive, interested her, and she nodded her head, expressing appreciation of everything as she crossed the room quickly, her body bent forward a little and stood at the window. Twice she turned, glancing at John, who was sitting uncomfortably a few feet away from her, and looking at him, she smiled, merely trying to indicate that in her own way she was sharing their good time and it was not necessary to talk about it at all. Before sitting down she suddenly put her arms around John and kissed him. Her lips were firm, hardly moving when she kissed him and said, “I love both of you.”
�
�Are you feeling any better?” John said.
“I get a little feverish easily, but I do think it makes me look a little livelier. Could we have a drink now?”
“I’m getting a little brandy for the three of us,” Lillian said.
John said, “Are you doing anything at all these days, Isabelle?”
“Not a thing, John; just loafing.”
Amused, she glanced at him and he smiled, holding the one expression on his face till Lillian returned with the brandy. Isabelle drank very quickly and said lazily: “I suppose you’re around here a lot now, John?”
“Early in the evenings mainly.”
“Lillian’s lovely isn’t she?”
“Very.”
“You know I’ll be feeling good for days thinking of you here with Lillian. It’s almost better than letting Ed Henley marry me. He wants to marry me. Can you imagine a man like that?”
“You love him,” he said resentfully.
“I like him and he’s comforting. Why do you resent any affection I have for that fellow?”
“I don’t, but you can’t marry him. Promise me you won’t marry him,” he said, reaching out, holding her hand and squeezing it. Lillian, who had been staring at Isabelle started biting her lip, trying to keep from crying, because she felt that everything was prepared for the beginning of her own happiness and Isabelle was too intent upon degrading herself. Isabelle, insisting she might marry Ed Henley, shook her head stubbornly as if compelled to go on with a plan that was necessary, though disagreeable. Wrinkling the corners of her eyes she stared at the floor, then said brightly: “John, tell me, when will Paul Ross be coming back to town?”
“Within a week or two. Why?”
“Will you ask him to phone me?”
“You really don’t know him well.”
“Oh, you fix it.”
“All right, I’ll fix it.”
“You’ll fix it, will you?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then I’ll go along now. I’ve got a date. So long.”
After she had gone there was no easy flow of conversation because John couldn’t find ready words, sitting alone, wondering why he could not standing thinking of Isabelle marrying Ed Henley.
Lillian, standing by the window, swung aside the curtains. “Isabelle’s worrying you, John, dear,” she said.
“Nonsense, how can such a pretty girl be so ridiculous.”
“It’s not ridiculous; it’s just that Isabelle’s worrying you.”
“Wrong, my love.”
“You were sitting there thinking of her.”
“Wrong again,” he smiled.
“The grin on your face is hideous, it’s so false.”
“All right, I’ll look solemn and sullen.”
“Don’t bother. Tell me, instead, how far did your affair with Isabelle go? I mean did you actually love her? Isn’t that the way to put it? I mean was everything easy between you so you could touch her when you felt like it?”
“I never touched her, Lillian.”
“Honestly?”
“Honest to God.”
“You did, by the way you say it.”
“I touch wood. I didn’t”
“Did you used to have quaint amusing expressions and an intimate ritual just the two of you shared?”
“I tell you we never went in for that at all. Occasionally we kissed, that’s all. But, Lord, let up, Lillian, it’s too much like a coroner’s inquest at the morgue.”
“Were they lovely long kisses, sweetheart?”
“Shut up, Lillian. Come away from that window. What’s the matter with you tonight?”
“I’ll tell you explicitly, shall I?”
“Please do.”
“Well, you were so obviously uneasy when Isabelle was in the room I felt like your second wife acting hostess to your first wife who has just called, particularly when she glanced in the bedroom and you looked as if you had been caught playing hookey from school. I’d feel happier in this apartment if you’d swear you didn’t know what girls and Isabelle were all about, and you were just Lillian’s little white-headed boy.”
“I’ll take a pledge. Come here and sit down. In reality I’m a Y.M.C.A. secretary.”
“You come over here by the window.”
“Here I am then, now what?”
“See how clear the night air is out over the city and the houses, and the hill and the lights slope downtown, and the pink and yellow lights on the high signboards are reflected so brilliantly there seem to be no stars in the sky.”
“Our city, I suppose. Sometimes it’s bright and sometimes it’s shoddy but . . .”
“A bright and shoddy city where John, the troubadour, was often discouraged because the Conservatory of Music had a monopoly in the city.”
“A bright city where Lillian lost her heart but not her head to a sullen young singer.”
“A shoddy city where Lillian lost her virginity to the same sullen fellow.”
“A bright city, where the sullen young man and the hapless virgin, now despoiled, stood at the window looking out over the city and finally kissed each other.”
“But don’t bite me, please,” she said.
They talked about Isabelle again on Saturday afternoon after they had walked east on the apartment house street and had gone down the ravine, finally walking along the old belt line, an abandoned railroad track through the valley. This afternoon Lillian was trying to conceal that she was uneasy from thinking of loving him so freely with a marriage so far away. Since he had expected her to have sometimes such a feeling he did not trouble her with questions, and she did not irritate him by talking, knowing the unhappiness was only temporary, because she hadn’t got used to the new way of living. She felt she was really happier, but still close to an old way of thinking. The rusty track was on a high ridge in a narrow valley and the ties, sunk in the ground, were almost covered by earth and grass. The valley slopes were thickly wooded and alongside the track ridge a small stream ran noisily over worn flat rocks. It was the middle of October and leaves that had not fallen were red and brown, and on the hill trees were patches of green and blotches of brown, and beautiful red leaves. October was often a fine month, but when red and brown leaves fell slowly it was the last of the fine months and it was easy to enjoy thoughts pleasantly sad, feeling in the one mood with the hills and bare trees. Lillian, walking along the track slowly, a long twig in her hand she used to poke at the ties, was having an uneasy feeling from a lack of security, thinking of her family in the country and the values she had always thought important. It was much easier, being already in the mood, to take a pleasure in a groping for remembrances to strengthen her emotion, and she remembered one of the few walks she had ever taken with Fred Thompson along this old belt line, only it had been in the spring on a first warm day, and she had tripped and fallen over one of the ties.
“It was in the early spring,” she said, “and Fred was carrying a light coat and we sat down back there by the bridge.”
“He had an absurd theory just about that time,” John said, “that it was important he should enjoy himself completely.” Fred had gone to the war and it had taken four years, and afterward his first concern had become the complete enjoyment of himself. They talked about Fred Thompson, each adding a memory, a brief picture of him, fragmentary recollections, giving him life, as they walked along the track. Fred had laughed at John’s notion that he might be an artist singing the compositions of other men, and had thought it of no more importance than bricklaying or snow shoveling. One day he had taken John aside to ask him if he thought it worthwhile studying hard for so many years, thinking always of an elusive fame, when he might begin at once to have a good time by simply considering himself as an unimportant part of the life around him. The war years had given Fred the feeling that an individual was hardly of any importance at all, and at first his notions had become anarchistic; then, loafing in the daytime, he had started reading about the Middle Ages and thought it a be
autiful time when all the people and scholars were part of a cultural plan giving shape to the life around them. He liked to think it might someday be that way in his own country, but was too lazy to do anything but lie on the grass, his long legs crossed at the ankles, and talk enthusiastically with his eyes closed. He had got hold of a pleasant idea and liked talking about it.
John began to speak eagerly to Lillian of days when Fred and he were kids and they had come up into the hills after school, only they had called it the “bush” then because it made it seem farther away, though really only part of the park valley beyond the city limits. They were having this conversation all along the narrow ravine till it widened out into the main valley and they saw, far across, all the houses on one side and down below, the tall dark chimneys of the brickyards, and down the valley, over the Don River, the big white viaduct with the red cars moving.
Suddenly John said: “Look here, Lillian, why did you move into the apartment if it bothers you and makes you unhappy.”
“Because I thought it would be best for both of us, but now I can’t seem to get used to it. I keep thinking we ought to be married.”
“I mean what really put the thought into your head?”
“I told Isabelle about the way we were feeling and we talked a little.”
“She thought it would be better for you to get an apartment?”
“She thought it might be better to be practical and in the long run it would be better for both of us.”
“Isabelle really persuaded you.”
“She helped me think and make up my mind.”
“I say she persuaded you. Do you hear?”
He would not talk any more, staring down at one of the rusty tracks. He did not want to look up at her, simply following the line of the track. Earnestly he was concentrating on the surface of the track. “So, that’s it, is it?” he muttered once. “That’s it. That’s it. She’s got a hold of you.” Lillian held on to his arm but he would not talk at all.
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