|
Morley Callaghan
blurted out, 'I guess by this time all the guys around here are saying
I'm yellow. I'd like to be a thousand miles away.' He told how he
could not force himself to jump off the roof the second time. But
his father lay back in the armchair laughing in that hearty, rolling,
easy way that Michael loved to hear; years ago when Michael had
been younger and he was walking along the paths in the evening,
he used to try and laugh like his father only his voice was not deep
enough and he would grin sheepishly and look up at the trees over-
hanging the paths as if someone hiding up there had heard him.
'You'll be all right with the bunch, son,' his father was saying. 'I'm
betting you'll lick any boy in town that says you're yellow.'
But there was the sound of the screen door opening, and
Michael's stepmother said in her mild, firm way, if I've rebuked
the boy, Henry, as I think he ought to be rebuked, I don't know
why you should be humoring him.'
'You surely don't object to me talking to Michael.'
'I simply want you to be reasonable, Henry.'
In his grave, unhurried way Mr Lount got up and followed his
wife into the house and soon Michael could hear them arguing; he
could hear his father's firm, patient voice floating clearly out to the
street; then his stepmother's voice, mild at first, rising, becoming
hysterical till at last she cried out wildly, 'You're setting the boy
against me. You don't want him to think of me as his mother. The
two of you are against me. I know your nature.'
As he looked up and down the street fearfully, Michael began to
make prayers that no one would pass by who would think, 'Mr
and Mrs Lount are quarrelling again.' Alert, he listened for faint
sounds on the cinder path, but he heard only the frogs croaking
under the bridge opposite Stevenson's place and the far-away cry
of a freight train passing behind the hills. 'Why did Dad have to get
married? It used to be swell on the farm,' he thought, remembering
how he and his father had gone fishing down at the glen. And then
while he listened to the sound of her voice, he kept thinking that
his stepmother was a fine woman, only she always made him un-
easy because she v/anted him to like her, and then when she found
out that he couldn't think of her as his mother, she had grown
resentful. 'I like her and I like my father. I don't know why they
quarrel. They're really such fine people. Maybe it's because Dad
shouldn't have sold the farm and moved here. There's nothing for
him to do.' Unable to get interested in town life, his father loafed
The Runaway 385
all day down at the hotel or in Bailey's flour-and-feed store but he
was such a fine-looking, dignified, reticent man that the loafers
would not accept him as a crony. Inside the house now, Mrs Lount
was crying quietly and saying, 'Henry, we'll kill each other. We
seem to bring out all the very worst qualities in each other. I do all
I can and yet you both make me feel like an intruder.'
'It's just your imagination, Martha. Now stop worrying.'
'I'm an unhappy woman. But I try to be patient. I try so hard,
don't I, Henry?'
'You're very patient, dear, but you shouldn't be so suspicious of
everyone and everybody, don't you see?' Mr Lount was saying in
the soothing voice of a man trying to pacify an angry and hysterical
wife.
Then Michael heard footsteps on the cinder path, and then he
saw two long shadows flung across the road: two women were
approaching, and one was a tall, slender girl. When Michael saw
this girl, Helen Murray, he tried to duck behind the veranda post,
for he had always wanted her for his girl. He had gone to school
with her. At night-time he used to lie awake planning remarkable
feats that would so impress her she would never want to be far
away from him. Now the girl's mother was calling, 'Hello there,
Michael,' in a very jolly voice.
'Hello, Mrs Murray,' he said glumly, for he was sure his father's
or his mother's voice would rise again.
'Come on and walk home with us, Michael,' Helen called. Her
voice sounded so soft and her face in the dusk light seemed so
round, white and mysteriously far away that Michael began to
ache with eagerness. Yet he said hurriedly, 'I can't. I can't to-
night,' speaking almost rudely as if he believed they only wanted to
tease him.
As they went on along the path and he watched them, he was
really longing for that one bright moment when Helen would pass
under the high corner light, though he was thinking with bitterness
that he could already hear them talking, hear Mrs Murray saying,
'He's a peculiar boy, but it's not to be wondered at since his father
and mother don't get along at all,' and the words were floating up
to the verandas of all the houses: inside one of the houses someone
had stopped playing a piano, maybe to hear one of the fellows who
had been in the lumberyard that afternoon laughing and telling that
young Lount was scared to jump off the roof.
386
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
