Collected Stories (40 page)

“Go to hell!” snapped Evelyn.

All through the holidays she brooded over him and over her own weak character and rotten luck, and the day after the holidays, in the mood of disillusionment that follows Christmas, while still feeling that no one in the world gave a damn for her, she took out Jim's savings and caught the boat for London. The Reillys had friends there; a disorderly family called Ronan who had once lived on the terrace and had to get out of it in a hurry.

This was a scandal, if you like! The only one who really had a tolerant word to say for Evelyn was Joan, who said that, though, of course, it was wrong of Evelyn to have stolen the money, running away was the only decent way out of an impossible marriage. But then, Joan, as well as disliking Jim, loved romance and excitement. In Brigid the romantic was subdued a little by the mother; she knew it would be her responsibility to get Joan off her father's hands and that it had all been made ten times more difficult by the reports that were now going round that the Reilly girls were really what the schoolboys' mothers had always proclaimed them to be.

As for Myles, he was brokenhearted, or as near brokenhearted as his temperament permitted him to be. “The one decent boy that ever came to the house,” he said with his face in his hands, “and he had to be robbed, and robbed by a daughter of mine. God, Bridgie, isn't it cruel?” After that he began to cry quietly to himself. “I loved that boy: I loved him as if he was my own son. I could have spent my last days happily with him. And the little house I was going to build for him and all—everything gone!” Then he beat the wall with his fists and cried: “God, if only I could lay my hands on her I'd strangle her! Evelyn, Evelyn, you were the last I thought would shame me.”

Jim took it as you'd expect a fellow like that to take it. The person he seemed most concerned about was Myles. When he took Myles out for a drink, the old boy sat with the tears in his eyes and then spread out his big paws like claws and silently closed them round the spot where he imagined his daughter's neck to be.

“That's what I'd like to do to her, Jim,” he said.

“Ah, you're not still chewing over that!” Jim said reproachfully.

Myles closed his eyes and shook his head.

“What the hell else can I do?” he asked, almost sobbing. “It's not the money, Jim; it's not the money, boy. I'll pay that back.”

“You'll do nothing of the sort,” Jim said quietly. “That's a matter between Evelyn and me. It has nothing to do with you.”

“No, no, it's my responsibility, my responsibility entirely, Jim,” cried Myles in agony, swaying to and fro. He was indignant at the very suggestion that he wasn't responsible; if he'd had it he would have paid it ten times over sooner than carry the burden of it on his mind. But Jim knew his capacity for discussing what was the right thing to do without doing it, and indeed, without any prospect of doing it. Within a few weeks it had boiled down to the skilled assistance Jim would receive in any house he built for the girl who replaced Evelyn. But Jim showed no signs of even wanting to replace her. For months he was drinking more than he should have been.

T
HEN
, when all the commotion had died away, when Jim ceased to go to the Reillys' and there was no longer even a question of the ninety pounds being paid back, Evelyn came home. There was no nonsense about her slinking in the back door in the early hours of the morning. She wore a grand new tailormade with a hat like a hoop and arrived at the house in a car. Brigid watched her pay off the driver, and her face looked old and grim.

“I suppose that was the last of the money?” she asked bitterly.

“What money?” Evelyn asked, on the defensive at once.

“Why? Did you rob some other man as well?” Brigid asked. “What money, indeed?”

“That's gone long ago,” Evelyn said haughtily. “I'm paying it back. I suppose I can get a job, can't I?”

“I suppose so,” said Brigid. “If Jim Piper will give you a character.”

Myles got up and stumped upstairs to his room. He was very agitated. He told Brigid that he'd kill Evelyn with his own two hands, and became still more agitated when Brigid told him sharply that it would be better if he used a stick. He told Brigid that he didn't like being spoken to in that way. He didn't either. The truth was that Myles was in a very difficult position. Ever since Evelyn's fall Brigid had developed a high moral tone which was far too like her mother's to be wholesome. Unlike her mother's it could not be short-circuited by blandishments or embraces or even softened by tears. The girl wanted him to keep regular hours; she wanted him, suffering as he was from cruel responsibilities, to deny himself the consolation of a family chat after his day's work. There was a hard streak in Brigid; she never realized the strain he was living under.

For all her faults, no one could say that of Evelyn. She might be weak and a thief and deserve strangling, but she always knew the proper tone to adopt to a father a bit the worse for drink who knew he had done wrong and didn't want to be reminded of it. He knew he had sworn that she should never set foot in the house again, but damn it, she was his daughter, and—though it was something he wouldn't like to say—he was glad to see her home.

Joan too was glad, and she showed it. She was doing a tearing line with a bank clerk, a gorgeous fellow of violent passions, and Brigid, regardless of the way she had behaved herself with Ben Hennessy, chaperoned her like mad. Brigid herself had contracted a regular, a draper called Considine, and drapers being exceedingly respectable, she was taking no more chances. The Reillys were to be respectable if it killed them. Again and again with her cutting tongue she made it plain that Evelyn wasn't wanted. Joan thought it disgusting.

Besides, Evelyn's descriptions of life in London were a revelation to her. It seemed that in disgust with herself and life she had begun a sordid and idiotic love affair, and used it merely to lacerate herself further. It was only when she realized that the man she was associating with despised her almost as much as she despised herself that she broke it off and came home. Joan put this down to her sister's unfortunate character and her inability to get the best out of life. In Evelyn's position she would have acted quite differently. She wouldn't have permitted any man to despise her; she would certainly not have despised herself, and under no circumstances would she have come home. It worked so much on Joan's imagination that she even thought of going away, just to show Evelyn how it should be done.

But there was still one thing Evelyn had to reckon with. She had to face Jim. This is one of the tests which the small town imposes, which cannot be avoided and cannot really be worked out in advance. One evening late when she was coming home from a friend's she ran into Jim. There was no getting out of it. He was taken aback though he tried not to show it. He raised his cap and stopped. Evelyn stopped too. When it came to the test she found she couldn't walk past him; she was a girl of weak character.

“Hullo, Evelyn,” he said in a tone of surprise.

“Hullo,” she replied chokingly.

“Back for a holiday?” he asked—as if he didn't know!

“No, for good.”

“Homesick?” he added, still trying to make talk.

“Ah, for God's sake,” she cried with sudden violence. “If you want to talk, come away where we won't have the whole town looking at us.”

She led the way, walking fast and silently, full of suppressed anger and humiliation. Jim loped along beside her, his hands in the pockets of his trench coat. She turned up Lovers' Lane, a place they had used in their courting days. It was a long, dark, winding boreen with high walls, between two estates. Then she turned on him, at bay.

It is extraordinary what women can do in self-defense. She shouted at him. She said it was all his fault for being such a doormat; that no one with a spark of manliness in him could have let her be treated as she was at home, and that he knew she was heart-scalded and hadn't the spirit to stand up for her. She all but implied that it was he who had pinched her savings. He didn't try to interrupt her.

“Well,” he said lamely when she had talked herself out, “it's no use crying over spilt milk.”

“Oh, if it was only milk!” she said and began to cry. “Ronan's is no better than a kip. I never meant to take your money. I meant to get a job and send it back to you, but they kept cadging and cadging until every penny was gone.”

“I suppose we can be thankful it was no worse,” he said, and then held out his hand. “Anyway, are we quits now?”

She threw her arms about him and squeezed him fiercely. She was weeping hysterically and he patted her back gently, talking to her in a low, soothing voice. She did not tell him about the fellow in London. She wanted to forget it, for it made her ashamed every time she thought of it. Besides, she couldn't see that it was any business of Jim's.

After that night they continued to meet, but in a peculiar way, unknown to their families. Both were self-conscious about it. Evelyn would not invite Jim to the house and he was too proud to invite himself. The truth was that she felt Jim was behaving with his usual lack of manliness. He should have cut her dead when they met, or failing that, should have got drunk and beaten her up, all the more because she had behaved so badly in London. The fact that she hadn't told him of what took place in London only made his conduct more indefensible, and she suffered almost as much on his account as if the fault had been her own. They met after dark in out-of-the-way places, and it was weeks before word got round that they were walking out again. Joan was bitterly disappointed; she had thought better of Evelyn. Brigid, seeing a grand chance of washing out the scandal of the stolen money, changed her tune and demanded that Jim should see her sister at the house, but Evelyn refused sulkily. By this time her main anxiety was to keep Jim and Joan apart so that the London scandal mightn't leak out: not that she thought Joan would wish to betray her but because for some reason she was enormously proud of Evelyn's conduct and would be bound to boast of it. That was the worst of a romantic sister.

“If you're going to marry Jim Piper it's only right,” said Brigid.

“Jim Piper didn't say he wanted to marry me,” said Evelyn.

“Then what are ye walking out for?” cried Brigid.

“What do people usually walk out for?” Evelyn asked scornfully.

It was months before Brigid realized why Evelyn was so stubborn about not inviting Jim to the house, and by that time it was too late. Joan knew but Joan wouldn't tell. Evelyn told Jim one summer evening at the edge of a wood. She did it with an air of boyish toughness and braggadocio, smoking a cigarette. Jim was aghast.

“Are you sure, Evvie?” he asked mildly.

“Certain,” said Evelyn. “Joan looked it up in the library.”

Jim gave a bitter, embarrassed laugh and lay back with his hands under his head.

“That's a bit of a shock all right,” he said. “What are we going to do about it?”

“I suppose I'll only have to go back to Ronan's,” Evelyn said lightly. “They won't mind. What would shock them would sweat a black.”

“I suppose so,” Jim said ruefully. “We can't afford to rush into anything now.”

“No one is trying to rush you into anything,” she said hotly. “Get that out of your head.”

She was silent for a moment; then she got up quickly, brushed her skirt and crossed the fence into the lane. Jim came after her with a hangdog air. As he jumped down she turned and faced him, all ablaze.

“Don't attempt to follow me!” she cried.

“Why not?” he asked in surprise.

“Why not?” she repeated mockingly. “As if you didn't know! Oh, you codded me nicely! You wanted to get your own back for the money and you did, if that's any satisfaction to you.”

“It's no satisfaction at all to me,” Jim said, raising his voice. There was a queer, unhappy doggedness about his air. He put his hands in his trouser pockets and stood with his legs wide. His voice lacked resonance. “And I wasn't trying to get my own back for anything, though I had plenty of cause.”

“You had; you and your old money; I wish I never saw it.”

“It's not the money.”

“Then what is it?”

He didn't reply. He had no need to. Under his accusing eyes she reddened again. It had never crossed her mind that he might know.

“I suppose Joan was chattering,” she said bitterly.

“Nobody was chattering at all,” he said scornfully. “I knew all about it from the first night I saw you. You couldn't conceal it.”

“I wasn't trying to conceal it,” she blazed. “I have nothing to hide from you.”

“I'm not throwing it up to you,” he protested. “I'll marry you just the same when I can.”

“Marry me?” she spat. “I wouldn't marry you if you were the last living thing left in the world—you worm!”

Then she strode off down the lane, humiliated to the very depth of her being. If she had gone away without saying anything to him she could have kept her pride, but she knew that in her desperation she had as good as asked him to marry her and, what was worse, asked him under false pretenses. This was not what she had intended when she shut up about the London affair; then her only idea had been to protect her own wounded sensibilities, but now she realized that if ever the story got round, she would appear no better than any other little tart, pretending to be innocent so as to kid a man into marrying her. Nothing she could now do would alter that interpretation. She went home in such a fury of rage and misery that she blurted it out in a few sentences to Brigid.

“You'd better get some money for me somewhere. I'm going to have a kid, and I'll have to go to London to have it.”

“You're going to—?” began Brigid, growing pale.