COMPLETE SHORT STORY. “The Awakening”

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XIV, Issue 276, 1 November 1924, Page 9

COMPLETE SHORT STORY. “The Awakening”

(By

Deamer MacCormic.)

She appeared at last, just a pale wisp of a girl in a shabby frock, and with very quiet eyes. The boy had been anxiously, watching the Post Office corner for her, and the unexpected sight of her crossing the street from lower down and walking up towards him, all unconscious of his presence, caused his heart to leap into his throat, while he stood waiting for her. He stepped out, cap in band, when she drew within speaking distance and touched her arm. “Dot,” he said, “hello. Dot.” She started and a slight quiver ran through her frame, she trembled a little and shrank into herself at anything—tho voice of a newsboy, the rumble of a tram, the laugh of a passer-by—that intruded upon the dreams on which the grey, wistful eyes that were her one beauty were always fixed. Then a flood of colour rushed .into her little . sensitive face, and she turned, smiling, half over her shoulder, gently hurriedly, acknowledging his greeting and nervously, quickening her pace, as if hoping that it was all that he expected of her, that he would allow her to go her way again in peace. But—“ Are you taking your lunch up to the park, Dot,” he asked, and fell into step beside her. gazing at her averted face with all his soul—his worshipping young soul—in his eyes. “Yes,” she answered, and walked a litle faster, gripping the handle of her lunch case tighter and tighter. “So’m I.” he ventured. And then, with a gulp, after a pleading pause, “We may as well go together, Dot?” She sought wildly, desperately, like a scuttling, small grey mouse, for a means of escape. Oh, how to get rid of him before the time came to open the worn litlte case in which reposed tho poor little lunch ? I would rather go alone, thank you, Peter I But that would be so rude. I have to meet some of the girls, then! But that would not be true. Suddenly, she relaxed, suddenly she slackened her walk. Ther was no help for it, and she was so used, so used, to things for which there was no help; to having to wrap herself up in herself, very softly, very gently, away from humiliation and hurt . . . Whenever her workmates pressed sweets upon her, and cake, and fruit, kindly, qrudely pretending to have forgotten that her turn to treat had long passed, whenever she discovered in the street that her darned stocking heels showed, or that the solo of her shoo had begun to flap; whenever the talk about her turned to outings, and new frocks and holiday plans. Tired tears of mortification camo into her eyes as they turned in at the park ;ates and she saw that Mavis and Jdna and one of the girls from the finishing department were already established there on tho grass just inside with pies and cream cakes and a motion picture magazine. She murmured an inaudible something in response to their boisterous, good natured greeting and invitation to join them, and hurried up the path a step or two ahead of Peter.

Now when she got back there would be chaffing and laughter, and teasing about her “boy.” And she didn’t want a “boy,” she didn’t know what to do with him or say to him. She wished he wouldn’t be always meeting her like this, and wanting to take her Tome. or to Fuller’s or the pictures. . . But the tears were not all of mortification, as Petqp, having led her across the grass to a shady tree, stood aside attentively, humbly waiting, in his shabby but well-cut working clothes, for her to seat herself. How nice Peter always was to her! If only he wouldn’t be so nice, if only he would go away now at least and leave her to seat her lunch undisturbed and unseen. She sat down obediently, tucking herself further and further into a hollow between two mossy roots, and Peter dropped down beside her and opened his brief bag. “Do you like ham sandwiches. Dot?” he asked earnestly. “Yes, thank you, Peter,” she answered, and accepted one in confusion and held it between finger and thumb as if it were hot, her frecklepowdered face flushing painfully as she thought of the alternative that lay before her—the alternative of presently offering him one of her own day-before-yesterday’s-bread sandwiches in return, or of eating quietly, furtively from her box and ignoring him. And what to do with the sandwich? She couldn’t takt a bite until Peter did. tn he rgrowing embarrassment she raised her left hand, still holding the sandwich in her right, and took off the thick old winter hat whose floppy limp brim drooped sadly round her hot little anxious face, 'that was better—certainly this boy’s evident regard and preference for her filled her with alarm and panic but her wholly feminine unconscious instinct was to be not more unpleasing in his eyes than necessary. And it was much better, with the breeze stirring and lilting her short, light brown hair and sottly touching her cheek, and a warm little fleck of sunlight on the back of her wrist, as it lay in her lap. She let herself relax a little let herself lean a little against the friendly rough truck behind her. “It’s a beautiful day, isn’t it, Peter?” she even found courage, presently, to say. Peter sat up suddenly, hastily swallowing the slow, thoughful bite that he had just taken and leaning forward. His young mouth had a queer, strained white look about it, and he spoke deliberately, heavily even, to conquer a tendency he had in moments of agitation or excitement to drop his g’s and telescope his words. “Dot,” ho said, abruptly, “next Saturday will be my birthday.” ” The startled look was back in his eyes, the alarmtd flush was back in her cheeks. Was he—ho was!—going to ask her to celebrate the occasion by going with him to that picnic at Motutapu, or to that dance u> Newton that all the girls were talking about 1 But Peter was saying, swallowing and swallowing and tugging at the grass. “I’ll bo getting my money then, you know. Dot, and old Johnson, he was Dad’s best friend and I work for him, you know, says if I like I can put it into the business and then he’ll give mo a partnership later on.” She sighed in immense relief, smiling, her pleasure on his account making her appear unexpectedly pretty. “How nice. Peter! Are you going to?” “Yes.” Peter threw away a handful of grass and sat up straight again, fixiug his blue eyes almost miserably on her face. “And, Dot, I thought if —if yon—oh Dot —” ;at last pleading in a low, awed voice of entreaty, and pain, it was out, ‘ ‘could you promise to bo engaged to mo soon?” For a singlo moment, astounded, unbelieving, she stared at him, then the scorching scarlet poured and poured, terribly, into her cheeks. Ob, that shy garden that was her soul, how often, sinco there had been no mother sinco babyhood to help her guard it and tend it, had it been invaded and trampled upon, the still, moon-bathed little glades flooded all at once with crude, cruel light, the gentle flowers left lying parched and pitiful! And how often had sho set to work, patiently, sobbing, all by herself, to remove tho debris, and plant and cherish until tho httle garden smiled again* hidden and fragrant and tranquil! But that Peter—Peter, whoso strong, boyish hands were harsh and calloused from the work he loved in the garage, who had never travelled farther than Wellington, who could only stnmiier and gaze and gulp—should blunder

e into it, and wish to lead her down the d green little track on which she had never never dared set hey feet, to the g wee house in the valley far below e whose crystal, clear, lamp-lit windows e gleamed so sweetly sometimes in the g dusk or through the rainl s Quivering, outraged, with sobs tearo ing at her throat, she sprang up. r gripping her unopened box, and sped I, away from him, stumbling a little > down the nearest path, and he came after her, distressed, imploring. “Dot,” he said, “Dot, here's your n hat. Dot, I didn’t mean ” a But she had taken it and was gone. She caught a glimpse of her face in e a shop window mirror as she fled into i Queen street, and stopped, sobered e still choked with sobs, with her hand s to her throat, to recover herself. And s the sudden sight of a little dusty grey man on the edge of the curb caused 3 her heart to stop, lurch, and go on 9 again, draggingly, sickeningly. drain- , ing all the unaccustomed colour from s her cheeks, while she stood waiting for r him. t He had tried almost furtively, on r seeing h.er, to blip past behind a group of shoppers, but now, realising that it Jwas too late, he came reluctantly towards her, smiling pathetically, and r with an assumed air of jauntiness. i “Dad,” Dot whispered, her hand to her throat again, “its late, long past i your lunch hour, why aren't you at r work?” He smiled again, blinking his eves—- , very, blue eyes they were, and mild and gentle, with a child-like, half- ’ bewildered expression. j “It’s all right, Dossie”—he drew i beside her and began to fumble, 1 absently, with trembling fingers for a i cigarette. “My holidays are overdue, I you know 7 and this morning they told me 1 could take them now and gave , me my wages in advance. I’ve got [ them here,” he patted his pocket reI assuringly, apologetically. Holidays? You’ve lost your job! > You’ve been making more mistakes. > and forgetting things again, ana they’ve got tired at last and told you ; that you needn’t come back! She knew, she knew, she knew so i well that it was too great a weariness, . even, to utter the words, the questions. She only said, pushing the hair back with one finger from the temple in which the tiny wavering line of pain had suddenly begun to leap and quiver, “Well, you’d better take it home to Gwen, then, Dad. She said this morning that she’d have to wait till I got home with my wages to get something for tea.” She turned away, dully, with her hands clasped tightly, dumbly, in front of her, almost wringing them, in this new frantic anxiety, but he followed her and walked beside her, watching her anxiously, wistfully almost. He touched her arm, after a moment, timidly. “It’ll be all right. Dossie,’* he said, with a note of pleading in his voice. The old, old assurance I She sighed, a long, quiet sigh, and closed her eyes for a second. He tried again, half diffidently, halfeagerly, “and do you know, Dossie, while I’m at home. I believe I can fix that machine of mine. I believe I’m on the track at last, and if I’m right I’ll be able to finish it and get it on the market in no time. She knew this too; she knew how many times he had been “on the track ” how many, many times he had lost the way again after all. wandering forlornly back, shaky, blinking, but still with that smile, still with that pathetic gentle optimism in his faraway eyes. She stopped. “AU right. Dad,” she said, lustlessly, “But you’d better not come any farther. I’ve got to get back, and you’d better go home to Gwen with that money.” He stopped at once, drooping. “Yes. Dossie.” he agreed, obediently, ana stood naif helplessly gazing after her when she had turned away. She felt his gaze after a moment, hesitated, and went back, sighing, and put her arm round his neck and kissed him. “Good-bye, Dad,” she said, and roused herself sufficiently, from the sick misery into which he had plunged her to bestow a cold little extra squeeze. He brightened up, straightened up, immediately, gratefully, and turned when she had gone and ambled back along the town, smiling bling and patting forever at his pockets. When at five o’clock, pallid, trembling, with haunted eyes, Dot emerged from her factory, Peter was waiting for her in the gateway. Anxiety and distress had driven out kept out all thought of the incident in the park until the sight of Peter standing there brought it back, suddenly, like a stunning blow that blurred her sight and made her ears sing. She swegred, uncertainly, with the blush burning and aching in her cheeks, and would have avoided him, but he fell doggedly into step beside her. “Dot,” he said, “I don’t want to bother you, and you needn’t answer if you don’t like, but why won’t marry me? I’d be good to you, you know.” His eyes were on her thin profile, he was thinking of the grey hairs he had noticed at lunch time in her temple, his voice shook a little, “and I’m getting on and we’d be comfortably, off when we were married.” “I don’t want to marry anybody.” The words tumbled out in spite of herself and she walked faster, her hot, pathetically cared for little hands clenched round the handle of her case. “Oh. but, Dot, I’d like you to marry me,” he urged. “I-I’d give you everything you wanted. I’ve got a house, you Know, at Grey Lynn—it was my home, you know, before-a Dad and Mother died, and old Johnson’s been letting it for me and banking the rent. We could have it done up any way you’d like.” Dot knew the house. It stood, big and brown and bold, and close to the street with only a strip of ground and a picket fence between its bow windows and the long, uninteresting road. Oh, the dear little shy house in the valley! But Peter was saying; “And if you liked your family could live with us, Dot, and Gwen would be company for you while I was at work.” He waited a moment, and then, very shyly, as she did not answer: “And-—and I do like you, Dot. You’re—so different from other girls, not always dressing up and going out with boys, and laughing and talking out loud.” She glanced down at her shabby shoes, at her tired-looking, workstainod dress, her ungloved hands, and weary tears welled slowly into her eyes. She turned her head away. “Gwen should bo at school,” she said, carpingly, lest he should Eave seen them, because she did not know what else to say. He assented eagerly. “Well* she could, and the little chap, too, when he’s old enough, right through. And I could get your Dad a job at my place, cosy, if—if he was my father-in-law, and he’d get on sure because it’s just the work Tie likes. I don’t know why he didn’t take it up at first instead of the other.” She did not reply. He dared not try again; he could not, because of that lump in his throat. He was thinking as ho walked beside her, watching her, that ho would like to kiss Dot’s cheek, just once, very softly; that, if Dot ever let him kiss her, he would have to cry because of all the things he had done that he should not have done, because of all the things he had not done that he should have done. Because of that hurried, frightened lie that his father » had accepted at once, unquestionably,

and that he had never found courage to confess, because of that time he had raced out to plav f half-shamefacedly, half-eagerly. at his mother’s word of permission leaving his little sick, hot sister to borrow, whimpering under the bedclothes with the new boy that had been given her to console her. “WiU you, Dot?*’ he asked at last, very fearfully. “I can’t,” she answered, “oh, I can’t. Don’t. Peter.” “Oh, Dot, don’t say no now,” he begged, “think it over. Let me come in one night and see your father.” But she had fled away from him to thq. car-stop, and scrambled on her tram, just on the point of starting forward again. Aa she alighted and turned in at her gate she was joined from behind by her sister, a thin dark, sharp-faced child of fourteen. “Hulk), didn’t you hear me sing out?” she demanded, breathlessly and flourished a milk billy, “that Jimmy’s just got out of bed and upset the milk, and the dairy won’t have any till seven, so you’ll have to wait till supper for your cup of tea.” “Oh well,” said Dot, and went inside, ahead of her and hung up her hat. hat. Gwen flew past her, at a clatter and a wail from the kitchen, slammed shut the door of the gas oven, slapped and shook Jimmy and put him, protestingly loudly, back to bed, and exclaimed and darted into the pantry to evict the cat. “Dad’s out of work again, did you know. Dot?” she called presently, above the sound of running water and rattling plates, when order had been restored, “he came home for a while this afternoon and gave me some money and said he’d got his holidays and a fortnight’s wages in advance, but I’ll bet it’s the sack, because when it’s holidays you only get half wages and the rest when you go back in case you slip them up.” Dot caine out of the front room, pushing back her hair with that dumb little gesture of hers. “Oh, you seem to know everything, Gwen!” she said, sighing, from the passage. Qweu’s -brown face suddenly flamed. She sprang temporarily across the room to the door. “Oh, do I just, miss?” she cried fiercely “and haven’t I got. a right to ? Don’t I have to keep house and work harder than you, or do you think I just stay here and play and hot have a right to know anything?” Dot escaped from her into the gloom of her bedroom, a clean, pleasant enough little place with the threadbare blind drawn down low against the hot late sunshine. She dropped on her knees beside the bed. “I won’t!” she said, stormily, in a whisper; then, imploringly, her tone changing suddenly, pitiously, “oh, I can’t. 1 can’t. Oh, God, please don’t make me!” She clenched her hands, beating them against the edge of the bed, “I won’t 1” she cried again, fiercely, half wildly, “I won’t! Why won’t I? It’s not fair, God! Us! always us and why? What have we done? Why are you always punishing us,-even.if we do deserve it, why don’t your punish somebody else who needs it more than us? There are thousands of them, thousands of fat rich peapie . i . And Dad, he’s good and kind and gentle anyway, and you know it, God! .Why are you always punishing him—whyf And why. have we all got to pay, Gwen and Jimmy and me? It’s not fair, God, it’s not fair!” The wailing, rebellious words whispered, dissolved away into warm silence, leaving her, cowering, awed against the side of the bed. “God,’* she breathed, fearfully, and suddenly silently, began to sob, “forgive me I” She crouched lower, the muffled sobs coming faster. “God,” she began, wildly, brokenly. “let something happen, let something have happened, when Dad comes home. You can if you like, so 1 won’t have to, and I promise, oh I promise, to do anything else you like.” There was no answer—no grave, kind voice, made reassuring reply, and shivering, moaning a little, with hidden face, she cowered lower and lower waiting, while the red gold spots and little pools and bars of sunlight faded from counterpane and pillows and polished oilcloth. Jimmy, escaped again, pattered in on his little bare feet and clutched unsteadily at her to reach the clasp that held her hair in place. She pushed him away, blindly, then caught him up to her almost fiercely as he staggered and sat down with a bump, holding him so tightly that he grunted in protest, burying her face in his warm little neck. There came the sound of footsteps round the side of the back door opening. Dot put Jimmy down suddenly, poking the clasp into his hand to keep him quiet, and, shaking from head to foot, with chattering teeth, crept forward to the doorway. Her father stood there, swaying just a little at the end of the passage—his face was white, while his eyes were very blue and foolish; as ho took an unsteady step forward, smiling, drawing his face suddenly into gravity, smiling Again, an orange dropped from a bag under Ms arm and fell with a thud on the floor. Dot drew back, pushed Jimmy out gently, and closed the door softly. She lit a candle, took from an old tin trunk a prized and hoarded box of fancy stationery and began to write a note to Peter. “Dear Peter,” she said, hopelessly, stonily, “I am sorry I was rude and ran away from you tonight. If you like you can come and see' Dad to-morrow night.— Yours sincerely. Dot.” She blotted and folded it without rereading, it, slipped it into an envelope and addressed it and laid it ready to be stamped and posted. Then she blew out the candle and undressed in the dusk and climbed into bed, lifting her face from the pillow and calling out after a long time in response to Gwen’s impatient voice at the door that she didn’t want any tea. Then turned her face to the wall and drew the bedclothes over her head again. “Oh, well, you always have to get married sooner or later,” she told herself, dully. But in the night, in the hushed, holy hour before the dawn, she awoke suddenly, and it seemed to her that a pair of eyes, blue, honest, pleading, were, watching her, very wistfully, in the darkness. And, strangely, she smiled, turning with a nesting movement to the dim, grey window, and the high, quiet sky and faint stars. “Poor old Peter,” she said softly, “I should have posted that letter last night, so. he’d have got it first thing this morning.” And presently slept again, still smiling, with pale, peaceful, unturned little lace, ana a tear on her, cheek. »9*9M*9*a*M»*9*9*9