Slumped in the chair, his face burning, he remained silent for so long that Bouchard in his embarrassment offered him a cigarette, which he took and put in his mouth. His movements were slow and deliberate. He lit Bouchard’s cigarette for him and then his own. But his train of thought was not broken by these movements.
“Well, who do you think did it?” Bouchard asked abruptly.
“I don’t know.”
“No one in your mind?”
“No.” McAlpine had sunk into lethargy. He wasn’t interested.
It irritated Bouchard. “How does Wolgast come into it?” he asked, trying again.
“I don’t think he does.”
“I heard what you said to your friend in the Chalet. He asked you what it was about when I came in. You said it was about Wolgast and a horse.”
“Oh, that!” McAlpine said in a dull tone. “It was a general ironic remark.”
“Wolgast has an alibi anyway.”
“Everybody has an alibi.”
“Maybe we’ll never find out who did it, Mr. McAlpine. You know why?” Bouchard asked, insisting on getting his attention. “What if we all did it? The human condition. That has truth, don’t you think?” When he didn’t answer, Bouchard was wounded and wanted to jolt him. “Well, at least you’ll never know whether the girl was a slut or an innocent, will you?” Then he was embarrassed by the desolation in McAlpine’s eyes. “But in the way she died, resisting someone who thought she was a slut… Well, there you are. I think she really loved you,” he said blandly.
“Can I go now?”
“Indeed, yes,” Bouchard said. “I know you’ll be anxious to help if I need you.” He got McAlpine’s coat for him. But McAlpine lay inertly in the chair, his neck resting on the back, one leg curled under the chair, the other sprawled out stiffly. “I wouldn’t have any regrets if I were you, Mr. McAlpine,” Bouchard said, wanting to be friendly, for the discovery of a little human weakness in a cultivated man was always a consolation to him.
McAlpine didn’t answer. Bouchard waited, watching him, then smiled, believing he understood why he didn’t get up and march out: he couldn’t bear to go out; he didn’t want to be back among his friends who might learn his story and then look at him as that girl had done, wanting to scratch out his eyes. The darkness, the dizzying, stupefying darkness after the alcohol and the exhaustion was all he wanted. His breathing grew heavier. He was asleep. Bouchard went to shake him, then pitied him and put the coat on the table and went out.
When McAlpine woke up, his neck aching, his legs cramped, he couldn’t remember where he was. Then he stood up and put on his coat. In the corridor he hesitated, as if expecting to be called back or find the way barred. No one spoke to him. Outside, in the thin, cold dawn light, he shivered and turned up the collar of his coat. The sky was leaden, the hard lines of the buildings were beginning to emerge out of the night shadows. It was between the dark and the dawn. The grey lime-stone buildings in that light looked cold and bleak. A few lights still shone in office windows where the charladies scrubbed the floors. Water trickled along the gutters. All night the snow had been melting. Parts of the city were still shadowed by the heavy mountain darkness against the sky.
He wanted to walk for hours until he could understand that what had happened was not a stupid irrational mockery of his love. He had to know truly, and no matter how it lacerated his heart, what had prompted him to draw back in that fatal moment in her room instead of abandoning himself impulsively and going headlong with her and never leaving her no matter what she was. Oh, what had compelled him to put her beyond him? Always the high dark hedge, the black barrier. The lights and the laughter and the singing on the other side of the hedge. He had to figure it out.
It was getting a little lighter; the elephant grey of the lime-stone buildings dissolved in shafts of light. Trucks began to rumble down the streets. He was cutting down through the warehouse district, heading for Bleury. Pale lights in a few office windows were turned out. The doors of buildings opened and charwomen came out. In the dawn silence voices sounded loud and important. Noises came from the harbour, which hadn’t been touched yet by the sunlight. A yawping ship’s whistle was answered by a foghorn, like a moan, from another ship. But the noises were isolated; the small trickling sound of running water from the melting snow was still a night sound made in the morning.
Suddenly McAlpine thought, “Bouchard was right. It’s the human condition. Why did I make that remark about Wolgast?” Wolgast was not the only one who had a grudge against Peggy. All the best people could get behind Wolgast on his proud white whose. Not the magic horse of his childhood though! That was gone. In his own way, Wolgast now was a big success. He had got established. He had his pride.
McAlpine slowed down, for he didn’t want the sound of his own footfalls to protect and spare him from another painful glimpse of himself in that room last night with Peggy. “Oh, no, no!” he whispered. Yet he had made the remark about Wolgast. Even if he had been a little drunk, being there with Wolgast he must have thought, When I knew I had her and could keep her, maybe I remembered that I, too, had come to Montreal to ride a white horse. Maybe that was why I was always trying to change her. That was the sin. I couldn’t accept her as she was.
In the sky over the mountain a faint pink streak appeared. The rim of trees was a dark fringe against the pink light. On the mountain slopes the great homes and massive apartments were still in the grey shadow. As sunlight to the east glinted on the canal and touched church spires and towers, the city began to stir with a faint low hum. Monastery bells chimed clearly. The streetcars rattled along St. Catherine, a train pulled into the Windsor Station; all the new morning noises blended into a low rumble, getting louder until the night sound of the trickling water in the gutters was lost in the sounds of the morning.
As the sun touched the top of the mountain and suddenly brightened the snow, McAlpine stopped, watching it intently. He had a swift wild fancy: the streets on the slopes of the mountain were echoing to the pounding of horses’ hoofs. All the proud men on their white horses came storming down the slope of the mountain in a ruthless cavalry charge, the white horses whirling and snorting in the snow. And Peggy was on foot in the snow. She didn’t own a white horse. She didn’t want to. She didn’t care. And he was beside her; but he drew back out of the way of the terrifying hoofs and they rode over her. And now he was left alone on the street, and the young women who knew his story were staring at him sorrowfully, all saying the same thing.
Then he heard a voice saying, “What do you care what they say?” It was her voice, and he whispered, “Oh, Peggy, Peggy, wherever you are, be always with me.” And as he uttered this whispered cry he reached out desperately to bind her to him. Stopping, he watched the morning light brightening the snow on the slopes until the whole rich mountain glistened. His shoulders were hunched a little, his collar turned up, his face raised, as he regarded the sloping city with fierce defiance. Yes, what they say is unimportant, forever unimportant to me, he thought. I know what happened, Peggy. I know why you’re gone. In a moment of jealous doubt his faith in her had weakened, he had lost his view of her, and so she had vanished. She had vanished off the earth. And now he was alone.
Yet he would keep her with him. In some way he would keep her with him. Wondering where he was, he looked around for Bleury Street. He had a plan in mind, and everything quickened. He found Bleury and began to climb the long slope. He hurried along eagerly, believing he had found a way to hold on to Peggy forever.
He wanted to find the antique church she had taken him to that day they had walked in the thick falling snow. When he got to St. Patrick’s the tolling bell called the people to early mass. An old woman carrying a prayer book hurried by, and a gaunt bearded man holding a small boy by the hand. Prayer beads dangled from the boy’s overcoat pocket. While the St. Patrick’s bell clanged loud and close to him he looked up, alert. Soon the bells would ring in that little church nearby. He could get his bearings from the bells. Then he heard it, coming from the west and only a little way off, quick light chiming bells calling, softly calling, and he hurried in that direction; but the ringing faded away. He stopped and waited. Again he heard the light silver chiming. He followed where it beckoned, back to the east now and tantalizingly close; then it was gone. Another bell chimed from the mountain, monastery bells called from St. Catherine, and he wandered around confused, not knowing which way to turn, tormented by the soft calling bells…
But he went on with his tireless search. He wandered around in the neighbourhood between Phillips Square and St. Patrick’s. He wandered in the strong morning sunlight. It was warm and brilliant. It melted the snow. But he couldn’t find the little church.