Some Came Running (146 page)

She had, Bob said, kindly, as if he knew the pain he was causing him, she had been gone since right after the first of May. Just shortly after Wally Dennis left to join the Army, in fact.

“But
why!”
Dave said.

Bob shrugged sadly. “I expect just because she was worn out. You know, working with all of you, and trying to carry her classes also.”

Dave searched his mind. “Well,” he said haltingly, “well—did Wally’s leaving for the Army have anything to do with it, maybe?”

Bob pursed his lips. “Yes, I expect it did,” he said. “She’d been working with him for, well, nearly three years now. And then to have him just throw it all up. That was pretty discouraging, you know. She judged that six more months, at the
very
longest, would see his book done and in printable shape. Yes, I expect that did have a good deal to do with it.”

“But gee,” Dave said, “she didn’t even let me know she was going.”

“Well, I rather think she felt it best to just slip off, Dave, without telling anyone. She doesn’t like farewells any more than I. You’re the last to know, because you were so long coming over.”

“And I brought all this manuscript over to show her,” Dave said lamely. “That’s why I waited so long: so I’d have a lot.”

Bob smiled, painfully, almost as if he could hardly bear this interview. “Well,” he offered, “dear Dave, I can read it myself if you like.”

“Sure,” Dave said hopelessly; “you might as well. Why not?” and made as if to hand the manila folder over; but then suddenly he drew it back. “No, I guess I’ll keep it. What difference does it make, anyway?” he said. “What difference does it make who reads it? What difference does it make whether I
finish
it?” He stuck it under his arm and made as if to turn away, then suddenly he swung back around on Bob, suddenly full of fiery energy. “But, Bob!” he cried; “Bob,
you
know—”

In a quick gesture, Bob held up his hand and stopped him.

Shardine Jones, the Negro lady, had been at the stove fixing supper when Dave first came in. But under the impact of the news Dave had hardly even noticed her. Shardine had looked at Dave when he first came in, and had sniffed audibly to herself. She plainly wanted nothing to do with this man, and she equally plainly could not understand why Mr Bob and Miss Gwen did, either. But just as equally plainly, written on her sensitive dark face, was the conviction that it was not any of her business; and she did not intend to make it so. She had gone ahead with fixing Bob’s supper, her ears and mind as closed up as her dark face.

But nevertheless Bob turned to her now. “Shardine,” he said politely, “I wonder if you could let those things go for a while. I’d rather like to get my room straightened up, before I retire tonight.”

“Yas, sir,” Shardine said. “I’ll just turn the food off.” She kept her face averted away from Dave.

“Also,” Bob said politely, “please fix up a guest room upstairs. Mr Hirsh may be staying.”

“Yas, sir,” Shardine said, and left.

“I ain’t staying,” Dave said.

“Maybe you’ll change your mind,” Bob said. “Let’s have a drink, Dave.”

“I don’t care,” Dave said, dully; then he suddenly cried it out, loudly: “I don’t care if I have a drink or
not!
I don’t
care!”
But he followed Bob over to the countertop where he got out the mixing things.

“I think I’ll have a martini with you,” Bob said.

Dave hardly heard him. Pacing back and forth behind him while Bob mixed the drinks, suddenly transfixed with energy again, it all came spouting out of Dave in a regular torrent of words.

“Bob, you know we were in love with each other! I
know
she was in love with me! She even told me so once! And
you
know it, too! Now, don’t you?”

Bob hesitated a moment, then spoke without turning his head, “Yes, I know it,” he said. “I suppose there’s no harm in saying that much, now. Yes, I know she was in love with you, dear Dave. And still is, I expect. Yes, I’ve rather followed yours and Gwen’s love affair with considerable interest, Dave, right almost from its very inception.”

“And is that why you got her to go away from me?” Dave said.

“Dear Dave,” Bob said, almost crisply, for him, and stopped stirring the drinks. “Dear Dave, I had nothing whatever to do with Gwen’s going. She made her own decision. As a matter of fact, if I had any inclination at all toward any opinion, it would have been to have had her stay. But as I told you once, I feel very strongly that I must not interfere in any way in this matter between you and Gwen.” He had gone back to stirring. “But
why!”
Dave cried. “She loved
me! Why!”

Bob poured the drinks out into two little round glasses and turned around with them. Offering one of them, he stared into Dave’s eyes, and then smiled, “Here, take one of these and let’s go sit down at the table, Dave.”

Dave took the glass and followed him limply to the big table.

“But
why!”
he cried, as soon as he was seated. “You’ve got to tell my
why!”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave,” Bob said. “In the first place, I’m not sure I know. Because I think it was a combination of a lot of things, not the least of which was Wally’s leaving. Then, too, I’ve come to suspect that there’s some element in all of this that I’m missing somehow. Anything else I know is in the strictest of confidence, and I cannot divulge confidences. And as I’ve told you so many times before, I feel very strongly that I must not interfere karmically in something that is solely between yourself and Gwen.”

“More of that damned Yogi stuff,” Dave snarled.

“Dear Dave,” Bob said gently, “don’t take out on me your grief over Gwen’s leaving. That won’t do anyone any good.”

Dave rubbed his hand over his face and took a swallow of his drink. “Of course,” he said. “You’re right. I apologize.”

“And it isn’t
Yogi,”
Bob smiled. “It’s
yoga. Yoga
is the system. Yogi is an individual practitioner of it.”

For a moment, Dave so far forgot his distress that he was able to grin. Old Bob! “I apologize,” he said solemnly. “Yoga.” But then it hit him again, a spine-riving, stomach-shuddering force, that he had no more control over than he did over his heart’s beating. He took another swallow of his drink, and discovered that the glass was now empty.

“If you want another, help yourself,” Bob smiled. “Better yet, I’ll fix it for you. But I’m going to nurse this one,” he said. “No; no thanks. Look, Bob,” Dave said, leaning forward. “Where did she go? Maybe I could write to her. Do you know where she went?”

Bob hesitated for a moment, as if he were going to say: No, he did not know. But then instead, he said: “Yes, I do know where she is. But I’m afraid I can’t tell you that, either, dear Dave.”

“But if I just knew where she was,” Dave said. “If I could just
talk
to her. Bob, you don’t know how much we— And do you know, Bob, we never—” He was just on the verge of telling him that they had never slept together; but then he could not—not because of his own pride, but because of his feeling for Gwen. “Well, what if I wrote a letter and left it here with you? to forward on?”

Slowly, Bob shook his head. “No, I’m afraid I can’t do that,” he said sadly, but his eyes were steady. “You see,” he said, “she left instructions that she did not want to hear from anyone, Dave. Anyone. I’m not even writing her myself, in fact.”

Bitterness rose up in Dave. “Well, tell me this: Has she got another man with her?”

Bob did not like this, at all, and his eyes grew cold; but he did not recriminate. All he said was, gently: “No, she has no other lover. I think I can assure you of that.”

“I’m sorry,” Dave said. “I shouldn’t have said that, Bob.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” Bob said.

“But you don’t know how much I
love
her!” Dave said.

“Dear Dave,” Bob said gently, suddenly looking like a scholarly elder advising the young, “I have found that love between two persons very rarely varies in intensity—only in articulation. Even the lowest brute of a man can suffer consummate agonies when he feels love for his brute of a female.” He smiled. “You’re no exception, Dave. And, in fact, I rather think you’re playing just about par for the course.”

“Well, but what’s she going to do?” Dave said. “If she has no lovers, and if she has no writers around. So what’s she going to do?”

“Well, she said she intended to work on her book. And, in fact, I believes she intends to send it off to a publisher before ever coming home. If she does come home.”

Like a sudden dousing of cold water, Dave forgot himself momentarily, remembering Francine. “Listen, there’s something she should know about,” he said. “This isn’t any subterfuge, or anything like that. See— Well, do you know the structure of her book?”

Bob nodded. “Yes.”

“Well, see, my sister, Francine, was home for my niece Dawnie’s wedding; and she came to see me. Well, I inadvertently told her about Gwen’s book, and Francine figures pretty prominently in the book, you know. She was George Blanca’s lover. Well, she says if Gwen prints anything about her, she’ll sue. Gwen ought to know about this before she sends the book in.”

“Yes,” Bob said right away, “she should. And I’ll see that she gets the knowledge, Dave. And thank you. This is important enough she should know. She’s been rather worried about the possibility of suits over the book for some time.”

“I always did tell her that it was a novel she had there,” Dave said, and his eyes suddenly filled with tears. He turned away. “I’ve got to go, Bob,” he said after a moment. “Thanks for inviting me, but I can’t stay. And, Bob, I don’t hold anything against you. I know you’re only doing what she asked you to. It’s just that— I really did— If I only knew
why!”
Again, he turned away.

Bob’s face was lit up with sorrowful pain, when Dave turned back to him. “Dear Dave,” he said; “I know very little about life. Its purpose, or its reason. But in my life, I have learned just one thing, and it’s the most painful thing I’ve ever learned:

“Every man must find his own salvation. It’s not to be found in another person. Not in friendship; but most particularly not in love. That’s where our American culture—our whole
Western
culture—has fallen down. It’s tried to teach us that salvation can be found there: in love. Listen to a love song on the radio and see how it affects you, emotionally, even while your mind may be laughing at it.”

“I know,” Dave said.

“The simple avoidance of loneliness is not enough. The simple avoidance of pain, of discomfort, is not enough. That way we stagnate. That’s regression. We depend too much on creature comforts, in our culture; and love is one of the main ones of these. Did you ever notice how disgusting, how really idiotic,
requited
lovers are? Only when their love finally wears out do they really become human again, suffer again.

“It was the most painful lesson I ever had to learn,” Bob said sadly.

“Your philosophy does me very little good,” Dave said wryly, and then an old quote from the Bible came into his mind:
“I asked for bread and you gave me a stone,”
he said.

“It’s all I have to give, Dave,” Bob said.

“Well, I must go,” Dave said, and got up.

“What are you going to do about your book?” Bob said, getting up with him.

“Hell, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll finish it. Maybe I won’t. What difference does it make?”

“Well, that is something only you can decide for yourself,” Bob said.

“Hell, I only started writing the damned thing because I wanted to make Gwen love me,” Dave said. “I’ll read your manuscript, if you’d like to leave it,” Bob offered again.

“No. I think I’ll take it on back home with me.”

“Well, are you coming back over anymore? now that Gwen is gone?”

“I don’t know,” Dave said. He had reached the old cellar landing by the side door. “Yeah, I guess. But I don’t know.”

“That’s also something you must decide for yourself,” Bob said, smiling sadly.

“We’ll see,” Dave said. “I’ll probably be back over to see you sometime. So long,” he said.

“So long, Dave,” Bob said.

Outside in the little Plymouth, he dropped the manila folder in the seat and started the car up. He drove out through the gate of Bob French’s
Last Retreat.

He felt empty. He didn’t care whether he ever worked on the damned book anymore or not. And as far as that went, maybe it might be a good thing. Maybe it would show her someday what she had done to him. Maybe that was what he ought to do, just put the damned thing away and forget it.

It was a long drive back to Parkman, that five miles. He shuttled himself into the seemingly never-ending stream of great trucks coming off the bridge, and then he sandwiched himself in between two of them and just stayed there. He was too empty to even try to pass one of them.

Harriet Bowman and Guinevere French. The two unrequited loves. It seemed to be his destiny. Maybe there was something in his basic character which caused it? Well, if it was, it was a hell of a poor kind of a basic character to be saddled with. He had thought that one was rough—out there in Hollywood: Harriet Bowman. Harriet Bowman! Who married a goddamned lawyer! But that one was nothing compared to this one.
Nothing!
This time she had really loved him. Harriet Bowman never had. But
she
had. How would he ever again get a woman to fall in love with him? The him he was today. Hell, even the thought was ridiculous. Fat and forty and broke and prospectless.

By the time he got back to Parkman, the emptiness in him had been replaced by sheer burning rage at Gwen for what she had done to him. Not even a word. Outrage at her because he
still
didn’t understand what could have made her, loving him as he knew she did, do what she had done. Well, he would get hold of old slobby Ginnie Moorehead and have a royal drunken romping party tonight, and to hell with
her.

Maybe he would write the damned book anyway, just to show
her
what she had missed. But then when he looked down at the manilla folder, emptiness rose up all over him. He wasn’t even interested in it anymore. But, by God, maybe he’d write it anyway. Anyway, he would sure get hold of slobby old Ginnie tonight.