1936-11-26 — Page 8

JEFF

*EFF found himself sitting next to her one night in a movie, and when he dis- covered that she was neat and pretty, he be- gan to watch her furtively. Though she. didn't even turn her head, be felt sure she was aware of him beside her." When she got up to go, he followed her out, and as she- hesitated at the theatre entrance, drawiny on her gloves, he began a polite, finid conver sation. Then they walked along the street together.

He soon found out that her name was Jes- sie, and that she worked in a millinery store and lived with her father and mother. Until that night a month later when they were standing in the ball of her apartment house, saying good night in the way they had so often done in the last weeks, he hadn't thought he had much chance of making love to her. They were standing close together, laughing and whispering. Then she stopped laughing and was quiet, as though, the shyness which was hidden underneath her warm, affectionate ways was troubling her. She suddenly put her arms, tight around him, lifted up her face, held him as if she would never let him go, and let him know she was offering all her Зоте.

"I don't want to go home. Let me go in with you and stay a while," he pleaded.

“All right--if they're asleep,” she whis- pered.

2

As they opened the door and tip-toed into her place, the boldness he felt in her made his heart beat loud Then they heard her father cough. They stood still, frightened. her hand tightening on his arma.

"We'd better not to-night,” she whispered. "They're awake. "You'd better go quick.”

"Tomorrow night then?**

"Maybe we'll see," she said.

Brushing her face nervously against his, she almost shoved him out into the street.

As he loafed over to Eighth Avenue, bis nervousnéas left him. He was full of elation. and be thonght, “Gee whizz, she'll do any- thing I want now. It came so easy, just like I wanted it to,” and a longing for her began to grow in him. He still could feel her warmth and hear her urgent whispering. He grinned as he loafed along, for he had- thought it would take a long time and he'd have to go slow and easy. Lights in the stores, the underground rumble, and the noise of the crosstown buses on Twenty-third Street seemed to be touched and made im- portant by the marvellous tenderness with- in him. He wanted suddenly to lean against a bar or sit at a counter, hear men's laughter, and feel his own triumphant importance among them, and he hurried into the restaur- ant where he had a cup of coffee every night after leaving her.

At this time men from the bakery in the block came in for a lunch and a smoke, and Jeff, who had got to know some of them, sat st the counter and ordered a cup of coffee and looked around to see who else was in the res- taurant. There were two decently dressed girls, sitting at a table talking quietly. When Jeff smiled at the girls without any shyness, because a warm feeling for everyone and everything was in him, they shrugged their shoulders in surprise and laughed at each other.

Then the men from the bakery, with the strong, sweet smell of freshly baked bread on them, and their pants white with four, came in and set in a row at the counter and began to order plates of hot food.

Sitting next to Jeff was a big powerful fair-haired fellow wearing a little four- marked cap. The others called him Mfice, and Jeff had often seen him in the restaur-" ant. Having finished his plate and wiped his month, he winked at Jeff and said, "Hello, d. You around here again to-night? What's new?"

"Nothing," Jeff said. "I've just been feel- - ing pretty good." But he looked so happy as be grinned that Mike puckered up his eyes and appraised him thoughtfully, and the two girls at the table were watching him, too. To seem nonchalant, Jeff whispered to Mike, as he indicated the girls with a nod of his head, "How do you like the look of the blonde baby in the green hat?"

忒

"That one?" Mike said as he turned on his stool and looked at the girls, who were whis- pering with their heads close together. "That one, son? She's a cinch. Didn't you see the glad eye she was giving you? She's a soft touch. She'd give you no trouble at all"

"She don't look like that to me,” Jeff said. "I guess I can put my finger on them by

HAILS THURSDAY SUPPLISMENT, NOVEMBER 26–1936

THE VOYAGE OUT

To Jeff Life Seemed Like The Beginning Of A Voyage

And He Learned Little To Guide

Him!

this time. If you couldn't go to town with her in two weeks, you ought to quit," Mike said. Then, as if ashamed to be arguing about women with a kid who was so much younger, he added, "Anyway, she's too old for you. Lay off her.”

03 the But Jeff kept shifting around stool, trying to catch a sudden glimpse of the girl in the green hat, so he could see her as Mike had scen her, yet knowing that to him she still looked quiet and respectable and good-natured. When she smiled sudden- ly, she seemed like any other friendly girl- a little like Jessie, even. "Maybe Mike could have looked at Jessie and known from the start it would only take a month with ber," he thought. Feeling miserable, he kept staring at the girl yearning to possess Mike's wisdom, and with a fierce longing growing in him to know about every intimate moment Jessie had had with the men who had tried to make love to her. "If I had been sure of myself, I guess I could have knocked Jessie over the first night I took her out," he went on thinking. The elation he had felt after leaving Jessie seemed childish, and he ached with disappointment.

The girls, who had become embarrassed by Jeff's sullen atare, gút up and left the res-

taurant, and when they had gone Jeff said to Mike, "I get what you mean about that baby in the green hat.”

"What did she do?" Mike asked. "Nothing, nothing. It was just the way she swung her hips going out the door," Jeff said, and he lit a cigarette and paid his cheque and went out.

Jeff and his brother, who was a salesman out of work, had a small apartment on West Twenty-second Street. As soon as Jeff got home, he realized that the sight of the food in the restaurant had made him hungry, and be went to the icebox and got a tomato, i tending to ent some bread and make himself a sandwich. He was holding the tomato in his hand when there was the sound of some- one rapping on the door.

It was his brother's girl, Eva, a tall, alim girl with fine brown eyes, who was only about two years older than Jeff. She often came to the apartment to see Jeff's brother. She was at home with Jeff, and laughed & lot with him, and never minded him having a cup of coffee with them. But to-night she looked dreadfully frightened. Her eyes were- red-rimmed and moist, as though she had been crying.

"Hello, Jeff. Is Bill home?" she asked.

By

Morley Callaghan

"He ought to be home any minute Eva. I thought he was with you."

"He was, but he left me, and I thought be'd be here.”

“Why don't you sit down, and wait for kim?" Jeff said.

When she had been sitting down a little while and they were talking, Jeff found him- self trying to look at her as Mike had looked at the girl in the green hat in the restaurant, looking at the way she held her head, at her legs, at her eyes with such a strange, shrewd giance that she became uneasy and began to smooth her skirt down over her legs.

Jeff

"She knew what I was thinking". thought, smiling, and cynical," and he tried to aay with his eyes, "I know a lot more about. you to-night than I used to know. I'll bet if I put my arms around you, you'd snuggle up against me."

"What's the matter with you to-night?” Eva said uneasily.

Startled, Jeff said, "Nothing. There's noth- ing the matter with me."

"I guess I'm restless. I can't sit still. I think I'll be going," she said, and with her face flushed, she got up and went out before he could think of anything to say that might keep her there.

When she had gone, Jeff remembering the look of terror that had been in her eyes when she first came in, grew ashamed of the stupid, leering way he had looked at her. "Ite driven her away. Thinking of Mike made

me.sct like a fool." He hurried to the open

window and looked down at the street, and he could see her pacing up and down, wait- ing-

He stared at the window, watching, till he saw his brother coming along the street. Eva ran up to him, and they stopped under the light and began to talk earnestly. Ther Bill took her by the arm very firmly and they started to walk toward the corner, but then they tuned and came back and stood talk- ing beneath the window.

In the murmur of their voices the words were indistinguishable, but Jeff knew, from the tone, that his brother was apologetic and. fumbling. Then the voices rose a little and seemed to be lifted up to him, and there was a desperate pleading in the saatch of words. an eloquent sound Jeff had never heard in a girl's voice before. “It's all right.. I wish you'd understand I'm not worrying and I'll never, never hold it against you.” She stopped suddenly and grabbed at Bill's arm. Then she let him go and hurried along the street, while Bill stood still, looking after her.

When Bill came in, Jeff said, "Eva was in here waiting for you."

Throwing his hat on a chair, Bill walked aimlessly toward the bedroom. "I know she was here. I ran into her outside,” he said.

“What did she want?”

“Nothing important.”

"She was worked up about something, all TIED

"Why are you staring at me? What's the matter with me? What's the matter with you? Do I kook funny?” Fill said.

In Bill's eyes there was the same scared expression that Jeff had seen 'on' the "face of Eva. He was accustomed to having his older brother dominate him, even bally him, a little. Bill seemed years older than Jeff, because his hair had got so thin. And now the worry, the wonder, and fright showing in Bill's eyes made Jeff feel helpless.

“Eva thinks she's going away, but I'm not going to let her," Bill said. “I'm going to marry her even if we have to all live here together."

ל

"Doesn't she want to marry you ?”

"She keeps saying it's her fault, and I didn't intend to marry her, and now she's "put me in a hole at a time when we can't do anything about it. She wants to go away for a while till everything's all right." Then Bill, looking straight ahead, said quietly, “I don't know what I'd do if anything happened to Eva."

Jeff could still see Eva clutching at his brother's arm on the street-but not in the way Jessie had clutched at his owndarm--and he said hesitantly, "I've got a girl of my OWL. I wouldn't want to get in the jam you're in"

“Nobody does.” There's no use talking about it," Bill said, and he went into the bed- zoom and lay down on the bed.

Jeff knew that he was lying there quietly, fearing for Eva, loving her, and longing to protect her, RS

„As Jeff watched his brother lying inent on. the bed, he began to feel all his wretchedness and terror, and he himself grew timid I he went back to Jessie, it might get for them like it was for Bill and Eva now. Who wouldn't want to duck that?

He sat and pondered and worried about his brother for a long time. Then he knew and- denly that he was no longer even thinking of his brother; without noticing it, he had begun to dream of the way Jessie had held him against her, and he was thinking of them being together and whispering, to-morrow night in her place when it was very late. He could see her lifting her ardent face up to

He got up restlessly, realizing that neither Mike's wisdom nor his brother's anguish could teach him anything to-night, Standing at the open window, he looked out over the lighted streets where he walked a little while ago, looking over toward Jessie's place, stir- red with a longing for more and more of whatever she would be able to give him. It had started now for them and it would keep And then he was filled with awe, going on. for it seemed like the beginning of a voyage out, with not much he had learned on that night to guide him.

(The End)

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