As soon as they opened the apartment door and lit the light in the living room, they heard her father come shuffling from his bedroom. His white moustaches were working up and down furiously as he kept wetting his lips, and his hair, which was always combed nicely, was mussed over his head because he had been lying down. “Where have you been till this hour, Sheila?” he said. “I kept getting up all the time. Where have you been?”
“Just walking with Bob,” she said. “I’m dead tired, Dad. We lost all track of time.” She spoke very calmly and then she smiled, and Bob saw how well she knew that her father loved her. Her father’s face was full of concern while he peered at her, and she only smiled openly, showing no worry and saying, “Poor Daddy, I never dreamed you’d get up. I hope Jack is still sleeping.”
“Jack said if you were with Bob, you were all right,” Mr. Staples said. Glancing at Bob, he added curtly, “She’s only eighteen, you know. I thought you had more sense.”
“I guess we were fools to walk for hours like that, Mr. Staples,” Bob said. “Sheila’s got a big blister on her foot.” Bob shook his head as if he couldn’t understand why he had been so stupid.
Mr. Staples looked a long time at Sheila, and then he looked shrewdly at Bob; they were both tired and worried, and they were standing close together. Mr. Staples cleared his throat two or three times and said, “What on earth got into the pair of you?” Then he grinned suddenly and said, “Isn’t it extraordinary what young people do? I’m so wide-awake now I can’t sleep. I was making myself a cup of coffee. Won’t you both sit down and have a cup with me? Eh, Bob?”
“I’d love to,” Bob said heartily.
“You go ahead. I won’t have any coffee. It would keep me awake,” Sheila said.
“The water’s just getting hot,” Mr. Staples said. “It will be ready in a minute.” Still chuckling and shaking his head, for he was glad Sheila had come in, he said, “I kept telling myself she was all right if she was with you, Bob.” Bob and Mr. Staples grinned broadly at each other.
But when her father spoke like this, Sheila raised her head, and Bob thought that he saw her smile at him. He wanted to smile, too, but he couldn’t look at her and had to turn away uneasily. And when he did turn to her again, it was almost pleadingly, for he was thinking “I did the only thing there was to do. It was the right thing, so why should I feel ashamed now?” and yet he kept on remembering how she had cried a little on the street corner. He longed to think of something to say that might make her smile agreeably – some gentle, simple, friendly remark that would make her feel close to him – but he could only go on remembering how yielding she had been.
Her father was saying cheerfully, “I’ll go and get the coffee now.”
“I don’t think I’d better stay,” Bob said.
“It’ll only take a few minutes,” Mr. Staples said.
“I don’t think I’ll wait,” Bob said, but Mr. Staples, smiling and shaking his head, went on into the kitchen to get the coffee.
Bob kept on watching Sheila, who was supporting her head with her hand and frowning a little. There was some of the peacefulness in her face now that had been there days ago, only there was also a new, full softness; she was very quiet, maybe feeling again the way he had kissed her, and then she frowned again as though puzzled, as though she were listening and overhearing herself say timidly, “If there was some place I could go …”
Growing more and more uneasy, Bob said, “It turned out all right, don’t you see, Sheila?”
“What?” she said.
“There was no trouble about coming home,” he said.
As she watched him without speaking, she was not at all like a young girl. Her eyes were shining. All the feeling of the whole night was surging through her; she could hardly hold within her all the mixed-up feeling that was stirring her, and then her face grew warm with shame and she said savagely, “Why don’t you go? Why do you want to sit there talking, talking, talking?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
“Go on. Please go. Please,” she said.
“All right, I’ll go,” he muttered, and he got up clumsily, looking around for his hat and coat. As he started to go, his face got hot with humiliation. He longed to look back at her, and when she did not call out to him as he went, he was full of a wild resentment.
In the cold, early-morning light, with heavy trucks rumbling on the street, he felt terribly tense and nervous. He could hardly remember anything that had happened. Inside him there was a wide, frightening emptiness. He wanted to reach out desperately and hold that swift, ardent, yielding joy that had been so close to him. For a while he could not think at all. And then he felt that slow unfolding coming in him again, making him quick with wonder.
1934
THE SNOB
It was at the book counter in the department store that John Harcourt, the student, caught a glimpse of his father. At first he could not be sure in the crowd that pushed along the aisle, but there was something about the color of the back of the elderly man’s neck, something about the faded felt hat, that he knew very well. Harcourt was standing with the girl he loved, buying a book for her. All afternoon he had been talking to her with an anxious diligence, as if there still remained in him an innocent wonder that she should be delighted to be with him. From underneath her wide-brimmed straw hat, her face, so fair and beautifully strong with its expression of cool independence, kept turning up to him and sometimes smiled at what he said. That was the way they always talked, never daring to show much full, strong feeling. Harcourt had just bought the book, and had reached into his pocket for the money with a free, ready gesture to make it appear that he was accustomed to buying books for young ladies, when the white-haired man in the faded felt hat, at the other end of the counter, turned half toward him, and Harcourt knew he was standing only a few feet away from his father.
The young man’s easy words trailed away and his voice became little more than a whisper, as if he were afraid that everyone in the store might recognize it. There was rising in him a dreadful uneasiness; something very precious that he wanted to hold seemed close to destruction. His father, standing at the end of the bargain counter, was planted squarely on his two feet, turning a book over thoughtfully in his hands. Then he took out his glasses from an old, worn leather case and adjusted them on the end of his nose, looking down over them at the book. His coat was thrown open, two buttons on his vest were undone, his grey hair was too long, and in his rather shabby clothes he looked very much like a working man, a carpenter perhaps. Such a resentment rose in young Harcourt that he wanted to cry out bitterly, “Why does he dress as if he never owned a decent suit in his life? He doesn’t care what the whole world thinks of him. He never did. I’ve told him a hundred times he ought to wear his good clothes when he goes out. Mother’s told him the same thing. He just laughs. And now Grace may see him. Grace will meet him.”
So young Harcourt stood still, with his head down, feeling that something very painful was impending. Once he looked anxiously at Grace, who had turned to the bargain counter. Among those people drifting aimlessly by, getting in each other’s way, using their elbows, she looked tall and splendidly alone. She was so sure of herself, her relation to the people in the aisles, the clerks behind the counter, the books on the shelves, and everything around her. Still keeping his head down and moving close, he whispered uneasily, “Let’s go and have a drink somewhere, Grace.”
“In a minute, dear,” she said.
“Let’s go now.”
“In just a minute, dear,” she repeated absently.
“There’s not a breath of air in here. Let’s go now.”
“What makes you so impatient?”
“There’s nothing but old books on that counter.”
“There may be something here I’ve wanted all my life,” she said, smiling at him brightly and not noticing the uneasiness in his face.
Harcourt had to move slowly behind her, getting closer to his father all the
time. He could feel the space that separated them narrowing. Once he looked up with a vague, sidelong glance. But his father, red-faced and happy, was still reading the book, only now there was a meditative expression on his face, as if something in the book had stirred him and he intended to stay there reading for some time.
Old Harcourt had lots of time to amuse himself, because he was on a pension after working hard all his life. He had sent John to the university and he was eager to have him distinguish himself. Every night when John came home, whether it was early or late, he used to go into his father’s and mother’s bedroom and turn on the light and talk to them about the interesting things that had happened to him during the day. They listened and shared this new world with him. They both sat up in their nightclothes and, while his mother asked all the questions, his father listened attentively with his head cocked on one side and a smile or a frown on his face. The memory of all this was in John now, and there was also a desperate longing and a pain within him growing harder to bear as he glanced fearfully at his father, but he thought stubbornly, “I can’t introduce him. It’ll be easier for everybody if he doesn’t see us. I’m not ashamed. But it will be easier. It’ll be more sensible. It’ll only embarrass him to see Grace.” By this time he knew he was ashamed, but he felt that his shame was justified, for Grace’s father had the smooth, confident manner of a man who had lived all his life among people who were rich and sure of themselves. Often, when he had been in Grace’s home talking politely to her mother, John had kept on thinking of the plainness of his own home and of his parents’ laughing, good-natured untidiness, and he resolved that he must make Grace’s people admire him.
He looked up cautiously, for they were about eight feet away from his father, but at that moment his father, too, looked up and John’s glance shifted swiftly over the aisle, over the counters, seeing nothing. As his father’s blue, calm eyes stared steadily over the glasses, there was an instant when their glances might have met. Neither one could have been certain, yet John, as he turned away and began to talk to Grace hurriedly, knew surely that his father had seen him. He knew it by the steady calmness in his father’s blue eyes. John’s shame grew, and then humiliation sickened him as he waited and did nothing.
His father turned away, going down the aisle, walking erectly in his shabby clothes, his shoulders very straight, never once looking back.
His father would walk slowly along the street, he knew, with that meditative expression deepening and becoming grave.
Young Harcourt stood beside Grace, brushing against her soft shoulder, and made faintly aware again of the delicate scent she used. There, so close beside him, she was holding within her everything he wanted to reach out for, only now he felt a sharp hostility that made him sullen and silent.
“You were right, John,” she was drawling in her soft voice. “It does get unbearable in here on a hot day. Do let’s go now. Have you ever noticed that department stores after a time can make you really hate people?” But she smiled when she spoke, so he might see that she really hated no one.
“You don’t like people, do you?” he said sharply.
“People? What people? What do you mean?”
“I mean,” he went on irritably, “you don’t like the kind of people you bump into here, for example.”
“Not especially. Who does? What’re you talking about?”
“Anybody could see you don’t,” he said recklessly. “You don’t like simple, honest people, the kind of people you meet all over the city.” He blurted the words out as if he wanted to shake her, but he was longing to say, “You wouldn’t like my family. Why couldn’t I take you home to have dinner with them? You’d turn up your nose at them, because they’ve no pretensions. As soon as my father saw you, he knew you wouldn’t want to meet him. I could tell by the way he turned.”
His father was on his way home now, he knew, and that evening at dinner they would meet. His mother and sister would talk rapidly, but his father would say nothing to him, or to anyone. There would only be Harcourt’s memory of the level look in the blue eyes, and the knowledge of his father’s pain as he walked away.
Grace watched John’s gloomy face as they walked through the store, and she knew he was nursing some private rage, and so her own resentment and exasperation kept growing, and she said crisply, “You’re entitled to your moods on a hot afternoon, I suppose, but if I feel I don’t like it here, then I don’t like it. You wanted to go yourself. Who likes to spend very much time in a department store on a hot afternoon? I begin to hate every stupid person that bangs into me, everybody near me. What does that make me?”
“It makes you a snob.”
“So I’m a snob now?” she said angrily.
“Certainly you’re a snob,” he said. They were at the door and going out to the street. As they walked in the sunlight, in the crowd moving slowly down the street, he was groping for words to describe the secret thoughts he had always had about her. “I’ve always known how you’d feel about people I like who didn’t fit into your private world,” he said.
“You’re a very stupid person,” she said. Her face was flushed now, and it was hard for her to express her indignation, so she stared straight ahead as she walked along. They had never talked in this way, and now they were both quickly eager to hurt each other. With a flow of words, she started to argue with him, then she checked herself and said calmly, “Listen, John, I imagine you’re tired of my company. There’s no sense in having a drink together. I think I’d better leave you right here.”
“That’s fine,” he said. “Good afternoon.”
“Good-bye.”
“Good-bye.”
She started to go, she had gone two paces, but he reached out desperately and held her arm, and he was frightened, and pleading. “Please don’t go, Grace.”
All the anger and irritation had left him; there was just a desperate anxiety in his voice as he pleaded, “Please forgive me. I’ve no right to talk to you like that. I don’t know why I’m so rude or what’s the matter. I’m ridiculous. I’m very, very ridiculous. Please, you must forgive me. Don’t leave me.”
He had never talked to her so brokenly, and his sincerity, the depth of his feeling, began to stir her. While she listened, feeling all the yearning in him, they seemed to have been brought closer together by opposing each other than ever before, and she began to feel almost shy. “I don’t know what’s the matter. I suppose we’re both irritable. It must be the weather,” she said. “But I’m not angry, John.”
He nodded his head miserably. He longed to tell her that he was sure she would have been charming to his father, but he had never felt so wretched in his life. He held her arm as if he must hold it or what he wanted most in the world would slip away from him, yet he kept thinking, as he would ever think, of his father walking away quietly with his head never turning.
1934
THE RUNAWAY
In the lumberyard by the lake there was an old brick building two stories high and all around the foundations were heaped great piles of soft sawdust, softer than the thick moss in the woods. There were many of these golden mounds of dust covering the yard down to the lake. That afternoon all the fellows followed Michael up the ladder to the roof of the old building and they sat with their legs hanging over the edge looking out at the whitecaps on the water. Michael was younger than some of them but his legs were long, his huge hands dangled awkwardly at his sides and his thick black hair curled all over his head. “I’ll stump you all to jump down,” he said, and without thinking about it he shoved himself off the roof and fell on the sawdust where he lay rolling and laughing.
“You’re all stumped,” he shouted, “you’re all yellow,” coaxing them to follow him. Still laughing, he watched them, white-faced and hesitant, and then one by one they jumped and got up grinning with relief.
In the hot afternoon sunlight they all lay on the sawdust pile telling jokes till at last one said, “Come on up on the old roof again and jump down.”
There wasn’t much enthusiasm amongst them, but they all went up to the roof again and began to jump off in a determined, desperate way till only Michael was left and the others were all down below grinning up at him calling, “Come on, Mike. What’s the matter with you?” Michael longed to jump down and be with them, but he remained on the edge of the roof, wetting his lips, with a silly grin on his face. It had not seemed such a long drop the first time. For a while they thought he was only kidding them, then they saw him clenching his fists, trying to count to ten and then jump, and when that failed, he tried to take a long breath and close his eyes.
In a while they began to jeer; they were tired of waiting and it was getting on to dinnertime. “Come on, you’re yellow, you think we’re going to sit here all night?” They began to shout, and when he did not move they began to walk away, still jeering. “Who did this in the first place? What’s the matter with you guys?” he shouted.
But for a long time he remained on the edge of the roof, staring unhappily and steadily at the ground. He remained all alone for nearly an hour while the sun, a great orange ball getting bigger and bigger, rolled slowly over the dray line beyond the lake. His clothes were wet from nervous sweating. At last he closed his eyes, slipped off the roof, fell heavily on the pile of sawdust and lay there a long time. There were no sounds in the yard; the workmen had gone home. As he lay there he wondered why he had been unable to move; and then he got up slowly and walked home feeling deeply ashamed and wanting to avoid everybody.
He was so late that his stepmother said to him sarcastically, “You’re big enough by this time surely to be able to get home in time for dinner. But if you won’t come home, you’d better try staying in tonight.” She was a well-built woman with a fair, soft skin and a little touch of gray in her hair and a patient smile. She was speaking now with a restrained, passionless severity, but Michael, with his dark face gloomy and sullen, hardly heard her; he was still seeing the row of grinning faces down below on the sawdust pile, and hearing them jeer at him.
Ancient Lineage and Other Stories Page 14