John Webster rode to his house on a street car. It was half-past
twelve o’clock when he arrived and, as he had anticipated, he was
not expected. Behind his house, a rather commonplace looking frame
affair, there was a little garden with two apple trees. He walked
around the house and saw his daughter, Jane Webster, lying in a hammock
hung between the trees. There was an old rocking-chair under one of
the trees near the hammock and he went and sat in it. His daughter
was surprised at his coming upon her so, at the noon hour when he so
seldom appeared. “Well, hello Dad,” she said listlessly, sitting up
and dropping on the grass at his feet a book she had been reading. “Is
there anything wrong?” she asked. He shook his head.
Picking up the book he began to read and her head dropped again to the
cushion in the hammock. The book was a modern novel of the period. It
concerned life in the old city of New Orleans. He read a few pages.
It was no doubt the sort of thing that might take one out of oneself,
take one away from the dullness of life. A young man was stealing along
a street in the darkness and had a cloak wrapped about his shoulders.
Overhead the moon shone. The magnolia trees were in blossom filling
the air with perfume. The young man was very handsome. The scene of
the novel was laid in the time before the Civil War and he owned a
great many slaves.
John Webster closed the book. There was no need of reading. When he was
still a young man he had sometimes read such books himself. They took
one out of oneself, made the dullness of everyday existence seem less
terrible.
That was an odd thought, that everyday existence need be dull. There
was no doubt the last twenty years of his own life had been dull, but
during that morning, life had not been so. It seemed to him he had
never before had such a morning.
Another book lay in the hammock and he took it up and read a few lines:
“You see,” said Wilberforce calmly, “I am returning to South Africa
soon. I am not even planning to cast my fortunes with Virginia.”
Umbrage broke into protestations, came up, and put his hand on John’s
arm, and then Malloy looked at his daughter. As he feared would be
the case, her eyes were fastened on Charles Wilberforce. He had
thought, when he brought her to Richmond that night, that she was
looking wonderfully well and gay. So indeed she had been, with the
prospect before her of seeing Charles again after six weeks. Now
she was lifeless and pale as a candle from which the flame has been
struck.
John Webster glanced at his daughter. As he sat he could look directly
into her face.
“As pale as a candle from which the flame has been struck, huh. What a
fancy way of putting things.” Well, his own daughter Jane was not pale.
She was a robust young thing. “A candle that has never been lighted,”
he thought.
It was a strange and terrible fact, but the truth was he had never
thought much about his daughter, and here she was almost a woman.
There was no doubt she already had the body of a woman. The functions
of womanhood went on in her body. He sat, looking directly at her. A
moment before he had been very weary, now the weariness was quite gone.
“She might already have had a child,” he thought. Her body was prepared
for child-bearing, it had grown and developed to that state. What an
immature face she had. Her mouth was pretty but there was something,
a kind of blankness. “Her face is like a fair sheet of paper on which
nothing has been written.”
Her eyes in wandering met his eyes. It was odd. Something like fright
came into them. She sat quickly up. “What’s the matter with you, Dad?”
she asked sharply. He smiled. “There isn’t anything the matter,”
he said, looking away. “I thought I’d come home to lunch. Is there
anything wrong about that?”
* * * * *
His wife, Mary Webster, came to the back door of the house and called
her daughter. When she saw her husband her eyebrows went up. “This is
unexpected. What brought you home at this time of the day?” she asked.
They went into the house and along a hallway to the dining room, but
there was no place set for him. He had a feeling they both thought
there was something wrong, almost immoral, about his being home at that
time of the day. It was unexpected and the unexpected has a doubtful
air. He concluded he had better explain. “I had a headache and thought
I would come home and lie down for an hour,” he said. He felt they
looked relieved, as though he had taken a load off their minds, and
smiled at the thought. “May I have a cup of tea? Will it be too much
trouble?” he asked.
While the tea was being brought he pretended to look out through
a window, but in secret studied his wife’s face. She was like her
daughter. There was nothing written on her face. Her body was getting
heavy.
She had been a tall slender girl with yellow hair when he married her.
Now the impression she gave off was of one who had grown large without
purpose, “somewhat as cattle are fattened for slaughter,” he thought.
One did not feel the bone and muscle back of her bulk. Her yellow hair
that, when she was younger, had a way of glistening strangely in the
sunlight was now rather colorless. It had the air of being dead at the
roots and there were folds of quite meaningless flesh on the face among
which little streams of wrinkles wandered.
“Her face is a blank thing, untouched by the finger of life,” he
thought. “She is a tall tower, without a foundation, that will soon
fall down.” There was something very lovely and at the same time rather
terrible to himself in the state he was now in. Things he said or
thought to himself had a kind of poetic power in them. A group of words
formed in his mind and the words had power and meaning. He sat playing
with the handle of the teacup. Suddenly a great desire to see his own
body came over him. He arose and with an apology went out of the room
and up a stairway. His wife called to him: “Jane and I are going to
drive out into the country. Is there anything I can do for you before
we go?”
He stopped on the stairs, but did not answer at once. Her voice was
like her face, a little fleshy and heavy. How odd it was for him, a
commonplace washing machine manufacturer in a Wisconsin town, to be
thinking in this way, to be noting all these little details of life.
He resorted to a trick, wanting to hear his daughter’s voice. “Did you
call to me, Jane?” he asked. The daughter answered, explaining that
it was her mother who had spoken and repeating what had been said. He
answered that he wanted nothing but to lie down for an hour and went
on up the stairs and into his own room. The daughter’s voice, like the
mother’s, seemed to represent her exactly. It was young and clear, but
had no resonance. He closed the door to his room and bolted it. Then he
began taking off his clothes.
Now he was not in the least weary. “I’m sure I must be a little insane.
A sane person would not note every little thing that goes on as I do
to-day,” he thought. He sang softly, wanting to hear his own voice,
to in a way test it against the voices of his wife and daughter. He
hummed over the words of a negro song that had been in his mind earlier
in the day,
“And before I’d be a slave,
I’d be buried in my grave,
And go home to my father and be saved.”
He thought his own voice all right. The words came out of his throat
clearly and there was a kind of resonance too. “Had I tried to sing
yesterday it would not have sounded like that,” he concluded. The
voices of his mind were playing about busily. There was a kind of
gaiety in him. The thought that had come that morning when he looked
into the eyes of Natalie Swartz came running back. His own body, that
was now naked, was a house. He went and stood before a mirror and
looked at himself. His body was still slender and healthy looking,
outside. “I think I know what all this business is I am going through,”
he concluded. “A kind of house cleaning is going on. My house has
been vacant now for twenty years. Dust has settled on the walls and
furniture. Now, for some reason I do not understand, the doors and
windows have been thrown open. I shall have to scrub the walls and the
floors, make everything sweet and clean as it is in Natalie’s house.
Then I shall invite people in to visit me.” He ran his hands over his
naked body, over his breasts, arms, and legs. Something within him was
laughing.
He went and threw himself, thus naked on the bed. There were four
sleeping rooms in the upper floor of the house. His own was at a
corner and there were doors opening into his wife’s and his daughter’s
rooms. When he had first married his wife they had slept together, but
when the baby came they gave that up and never did it afterward. Once
in a long while now he went in to his wife at night. She wanted him,
let him know in some woman’s way that she wanted him, and he went, not
happily or eagerly, but because he was a man and she a woman and it was
done. The thought wearied him a little. “Well it hasn’t happened for
some weeks.” He did not want to think about it.
He owned a horse and carriage that was kept at a livery stable and now
it was being driven up to the door of the house. He heard the front
door close. His wife and daughter were driving out into the country.
The window of his room was open and a breeze blew in and across his
body. The next-door neighbor had a garden and cultivated flowers.
The air that came in was fragrant. The sounds were all soft, quiet
sounds. Sparrows chirped. A large winged insect flew against the screen
that covered the window and crawled slowly toward the top. Away off
somewhere the bell of a locomotive began to ring. Perhaps it was on the
tracks by his factory where Natalie was now sitting at her desk. He
turned to look at the winged thing, crawling slowly. The little voices
that lived within one’s body were not always serious. Sometimes they
played like children. One of the voices declared that the eyes of the
insect were looking at him with approval. Now the insect was speaking.
“You are a devil of a fellow to have been so long asleep,” it said.
The bell of the locomotive could still be heard, coming from a long
distance, softly. “I’ll tell Natalie what that winged fellow had to
say,” he thought and smiled at the ceiling. His cheeks became flushed
and he slept quietly with his hands thrown above his head, as a child
sleeps.