The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century (26 page)

Dorn broke in. “But Barbara, she’s been in a holdup. She’s dumb—”

Fury made her ugly. “Is that an additional attraction? Dumb or not, get the slut out of here! Get her out right now, I say!”

“Barbara, you’re not listening. You don’t understand.”

She turned her back on him and faced me. “I should have remembered you were a ladies’ man, Mr. Self-taught Backmaker. No doubt you imagined Haggershaven as some obscene liberty hall. Well, it isn’t! You’ll be wasting any further time you spend here. Get out!”

I suppose—recalling the scene with Little Aggie—I was less astonished by her frenzy than I might have been. Besides, her rage and misunderstanding were anti-climactic after the succession of excitements I had been through that day. Instead of amazement or outrage I felt only vague puzzlement and tired annoyance.

Dorn, after getting Barbara out of the room, offered stumbling explanations (“Overwork, overwork”) which jolted between the patent loyalty prodding him to cover her defects and a painful desire to distract my mind from the episode. Only when we were relieved of our responsibilities by the arrival of several women who effectually sealed the girl away from all further masculine contact and he took me to Mr. Haggerwells’ study, did his nervousness somewhat abate.

Thomas Haggerwells, large-boned like his daughter, with the ginger hair faded, and a florid, handsome complexion, made me welcome, but he seemed to have something else on his mind. Finally he stopped abruptly in the middle of a sentence and turned to Dorn. “Ace, Barbara is quite upset.”

I thought this extreme understatement, but Dorn merely nodded. “Misunderstanding, Mr. H,” and he explained the situation.

Mr. Haggerwells began pacing the flowered carpet. “Of course, of course. Naturally we can’t turn the poor girl out. But how can I explain to Barbara? She... she came to me,” he said half proudly, half apprehensively. “I don’t know quite—” He pulled himself together. “Excuse me, Mr. Backmaker. My daughter is high-strung. I’m afraid I’m allowing concern to interfere with our conversation....”

“Not at all, sir,” I said. “I’m very tired, if you’ll excuse me...?”

“Of course, of course,” he answered with evident relief. “Ace will show you your room. Sleep well—we will talk more tomorrow. And Ace—come back here afterward, will you?”

Barbara Haggerwells certainly seemed to have both Ace Dorn and her father pretty well cowed, I thought, as I lay awake. But it was neither Barbara nor overstimulation from all I’d been through that day which caused my insomnia. A torment, successfully suppressed for some hours, invaded me. The chance the hold-up gang could have been supplied with Sprovis’ firearms was remote far beyond probability; connecting the trip of the Escobars with the counterfeiting of Spanish pesetas was fantasy. But what is logic? I could not quench my feeling of responsibility with ridicule, nor charge myself merely with perverse arrogance in magnifying my trivial errands into accountability for all that flowed from the Grand Army. Guilty men cannot sleep because they feel guilty. It is the feeling, not the abstract guilt, which keeps them awake.

At last however, I slept, only to dream Barbara Haggerwells was a great fish pursuing me over endless roads on which my feet bogged in clinging, tenacious mud. But in the clear autumn morning my notions of the night before dwindled, even if they failed to disappear entirely.

How shall I write of Haggershaven as my eyes first saw it twenty-two years ago? Of the rolling acres of rich plowed land, interrupted here and there by stone outcroppings worn smooth and round by time, and trees in woodlots or standing alone, strong and unperturbed? Or the main building, grown from the original farmhouse into a great, rambling eccentricity stopping short of monstrosity only because of its complete innocence of pretence? Shall I describe the two dormitories, severely functional, escaping harshness only because they had not been built by carpenters, and though sturdy enough, betrayed the amateur touch? Or the cottages and apartments—two, four, at most six rooms—for the married fellows and their families? These were scattered all over, some so avid for privacy that one could pass unknowing within feet of the concealing woods, others bold in the sunshine on knolls or on the level.

I could tell of the small shops, the miniature laboratories, the inadequate observatory, the dozens of outbuildings. But these things were not the haven. They were merely the least of its possessions. For Haggershaven was not a material place at all, but a spiritual freedom. Its limits were only the limits of what its fellows could do and think and inquire. It was circumscribed only by the outside world, not by internal rules and taboos, competition or curriculum.

Its history was not only a link with the past, but a possible hint of what might have been if the War of Southron Independence had not interrupted the American pattern. Barbara’s great-great-grandfather, Herbert Haggerwells, had been a Confederate major from North Carolina who had fallen in love with the then fat Pennsylvania countryside. After the war he had put everything—not much by Southron standards, but a fortune in depreciated, soon to be repudiated, United States greenbacks—into the farm which became the nucleus of Haggershaven. Then he married a local girl and became completely a Northerner.

Until it became imperceptible with daily custom, I used to stare at his portrait in the library, picturing in idle fancy a possible meeting on the battlefield with this aristocratic gentleman with his curling mustache and daggerlike imperial, and my own plebeian Granpa Hodgins. But the likelihood they had ever come face to face was infinitely remote; I, who had studied both their likenesses, was the only link between them.

Major Haggerwells had patronized several writers and artists, but it was his son who, seeing the deterioration of Northern colleges, had invited a few restive scholars to make their home with him. They were free to pursue their studies under an elastic arrangement which permitted them to be self-supporting through work on the farm.

Thomas Haggerwells’ father had organized the scheme further, attracting a larger number of schoolmen who contributed greatly to the material progress of the haven. They patented inventions, marketless at home, which brought regular royalties from more industrialized countries. Agronomists improved the haven’s crops and took in a steady income from seed. Chemists found ways of utilizing otherwise wasted by-products; proceeds from scholarly works—and one more popular than scholarly—added to the funds. In his will, Volney Haggerwells left the property to the fellowship.

Except for the scene after my arrival, I didn’t see Barbara again for some ten days. Even then it was but a glimpse, caught as she was hurrying in one direction and I sauntering in another. She threw me a single frigid glance and went on. Later, I was talking with Mr. Haggerwells—who had proved to be not quite an amateur of history, but more than a dabbler—when, without knocking, she burst into the room.

“Father, I—” Then she caught sight of me. “Sorry. I didn’t know you were entertaining.”

His tone was that of one caught in a guilty act. “Come in, come in, Barbara. Hodgins is, after all, something of a protege of yours.”

“Really, Father!” She was regal. Wounded, scornful, but majestic. “I’m sure I don’t know enough about self-taught pundits to sponsor them. It seems too bad they have to waste your time—”

He flushed. “Please, Barbara. You really... really must control...”

Her aloof scorn became open anger. “Must I? Must I? And stand by while every pretentious swindler usurps your attention? Oh, I don’t ask for any special favors as your daughter—I know too well I have none coming. But I should think at least the consideration due a fellow of the haven would prompt ordinary courtesy even when no natural affection is forthcoming!”

“Barbara, please! Oh, my dear girl, how can you...?”

But she was gone, leaving him obviously distressed and me puzzled. Not at her lack of control so much as her accusation that he lacked a father’s love for her. Nothing was clearer than his pride in her achievements or his protective, baffled tenderness. It did not seem possible that so wilful a misunderstanding could be maintained.

From Ace I learned this tortured jealousy was a fixture of her character. Barbara had created feuds, slandered and reviled fellows who had been guilty of nothing but trying to interest her father in some project in which she herself was not concerned. I learned much more also—much he had no desire to convey. But he was a poor hand at concealing anything, and it was clear he was helplessly subject to her, but without the usual kindly anesthetic of illusion. I guessed he had enjoyed her favors, but she evidently didn’t bother to hide the fact that the privilege was not exclusive; perhaps, indeed, she insisted on his knowing. I gathered she was a fiercely moral polyandrist, demanding absolute fidelity without offering the slightest hope of reciprocal single-mindedness.

Among those at the haven was an Oliver Midbin, a student of what he chose to call the new and revolutionary science of Emotional Pathology. Tall and thin, with an incongruous little potbelly like an enlarged and far-slipped Adam’s-apple, he pounced on me as a readymade and captive audience for his theories.

“Now this case of pseudo-aphonia—”

“He means the dumb girl,” explained Ace, aside.

“Nonsense,” said Midbin. “Pseudo-aphonia. Purely of an emotional nature. Of course, if you take her to some medical quack he’ll convince himself and you and certainly her that there’s some impairment of the vocal cords—”

“I’m not the girl’s guardian, Mr. Midbin—”

“Doctor. Philosophiae, Gottingen. Trivial matter.”

“Excuse me, Dr. Midbin. Anyway, I’m not her guardian so I’m not taking her anywhere. But—just as a theoretical question—suppose examination did reveal a physical impairment?”

He appeared delighted, and rubbed his hands together. “Oh, it would. I assure you it would. These fellows always find what they’re looking for. If your disposition is sour they’ll find warts on your duodenum—in a post-mortem. Whereas Emotional Pathology deals with the sour disposition and lets the warts, if any, take care of themselves. Matter is a function of the mind. People are dumb or blind or deaf for a purpose. Now what purpose can the girl have in being dumb?”

“No conversation?” I suggested. I didn’t doubt Midbin was an authority, but his manner made flippancy almost irresistible.

“I shall find out,” he said firmly. “This is bound to be a simpler maladjustment than Barbara’s—”

“Aw, come on,” protested Ace.

“Nonsense, Dorn. Nonsense. Reticence is part of those medical ethics by which the quacks conceal incompetence. Mumbo jumbo to keep the layman from asking annoying questions. Priestly, not scientific approach. Art and mystery of phlebotomy. Don’t hold back knowledge—publish it to the world.”

“I just think Barbara wouldn’t want her private thoughts published to the world.”

“Of course not, of course not. Why? Because she’s unhappy with her hatred for her dead mother. Exaggerated possessiveness for her father makes her miserable. Her fantasy—”

“Midbin!”

“Her fantasy of going back to childhood in order to injure her mother is a sick notion she cherishes the way a dog licks a wound. Ventilate it. Ventilate it. Now, this girl’s case is bound to be simpler. Bring her around tomorrow and we’ll begin.”

“Me?” I asked.

“Who else? You’re the only one she doesn’t seem to distrust.”

It was annoying to have the girl’s puppylike devotion observed. I realized she saw me as the only link with a normal past, but I assumed that after a few days she would turn naturally to the women who took such obvious pleasure in fussing over her affliction. Yet she merely suffered their attentions; no matter how I tried to avoid her she sought me out, running to me with muted, voiceless cries which should have been touching but were only painful.

Mr. Haggerwells had reported her presence to the sheriff’s office at York where complete lack of interest was evinced. He had also telegraphed the Spanish legation who replied they knew no other Escobars than Don Jaime and his wife. The girl might be a servant or a stranger; it was no concern of His Most Catholic Majesty.

The school uniform made it unlikely she was a servant but beyond this, little was deducible. She did not respond to questions in either Spanish or English, giving no indication of understanding their meaning. When offered pencil and paper she handled them curiously, then let them slide to the floor.

Midbin’s method of treatment was bizarre as any I’d heard of. His subjects were supposed to relax on a couch and say whatever came into their minds. This was the technique he had used with Barbara, as he informed me at length and in detail, and it had produced the story of her matricidal fantasy—which I found so shocking, but which he regarded with true scientific detachment—but little else.

Since this couldn’t work with the dumb girl, he had to experiment with modifications. Reclining on a couch seemed to be basic however, so with my reluctant assistance, which consisted only in being present, she was persuaded to comply. But there was no question of relaxation; she lay there warily, tense and stiff, even with her eyes closed.

Again, looking at her lying there so rigidly, I could not but admit she was beautiful. But the admission was made quite dispassionately; the lovely young lines evoked no lust. I felt only vexation because her plight kept me from the wonders of Haggershaven.

It seemed to me I had to cram everything into short days, for I was sure the fellows would never accept me. I realized that these autumn weeks, spent in casual conversation or joining the familiar preparations for rural winter, were a period of thorough and critical examination of my fitness. There was nothing I could do to sway the decision; I could only say, when the opportunity offered, that Haggershaven was literally a revelation to me, an island of civilization in the midst of a chaotic and brutal sea. My dream was to make a landfall there.

Certainly my meager background and scraps of reading would not persuade the men and women of the haven; I could only hope they might see some promise in me. Against this I put Barbara’s enmity, a hostility now exacerbated by rage at Oliver Midbin for daring to devote to another the attention which had been her due. Already I had learned something of her persistence and I was sure she could move enough of the fellows to vote against me to insure my rejection.

The gang which had been operating in the vicinity—presumably the same one I had encountered—moved on. At least no further crimes were attributed to it. Deputy Sheriff Beasley, who had evidently visited Haggershaven before without attaining much respect, came to question the girl and me.

I think he doubted her dumbness. At any rate he barked his questions so loudly and abruptly they would have terrified a far more securely poised individual. She promptly went into dry hysterics, whereupon he turned his attention to me.

He was clearly dissatisfied with my account of the holdup and left grumbling that it would be more to the point if bookworms learned to identify a man properly instead of logarithms or trigonometry. I didn’t see exactly how this applied to me; I certainly was laudably ignorant of both subjects.

But if Officer Beasley was disappointed, Midbin was enchanted by the whole performance. Of course he had heard my narrative before but as he explained it, this was the first time he’d savored its possible impact on the girl. “You see, Backmaker, her pseudo-aphonia is neither congenital nor of long standing. All logic leads to the conclusion that it’s the result of her terror during the experience. She must have wanted to scream, but she dared not—she had to remain dumb while she watched the murders.”

For the first time it seemed possible to me there was more to Midbin than his garrulity.

“She crushed back that natural, overwhelming impulse,” he went on. “She had to—her life depended on it. It was an enormous effort and the effect on her was in proportion; she achieved her object too well, so when it was safe for her to speak again she couldn’t.”

It all sounded so reasonable that it was some time before I thought to ask him why she didn’t understand what we said, or why she didn’t write anything down when she was handed pencil and paper.

“Communication,” he answered. “She had to cut off communication, and once cut off it’s not easy to restore. At least, that’s one aspect of it. Another one is a little more tricky. The holdup took place more than a month ago—but do you suppose the affected mind reckons so precisely? Is a precise reckoning possible? Duration may, for all we know, be an entirely subjective thing. Yesterday for you may be today for me. We recognize this to some extent when we speak of hours passing slowly or quickly. The girl may be still undergoing the agony of repressing her screams; the holdup, the murders, are not in the past for her, but in the present. And if she is, is it any wonder she is cut off from the relaxation which would enable her to realize the present?”

He pressed his middle thoughtfully. “Now, if it is possible to recreate in her mind the conditions leading up to and through the crisis, she would have the chance to vent the emotions she was forced to swallow. She might—I don’t say she would—she might speak again.”

I understood such a process would be lengthy, but I saw no signs he was reaching her at all, much less that he was having an effect. One of the Spanish-speaking fellows translated my account of our meeting and read parts of it to the recumbent girl, following Midbin’s excited stage directions and interpolations. Nothing happened.

Gradually I passed from the stage when I wanted the decision of the haven on my application to be postponed as long as possible, to the one in which the suspense became wearing. And now I learned that there was no specific date set; my candidacy would be considered along with other business next time the fellows were called on to make an appropriation, or discuss a new project. This might be next day, or not for months.

When it did come, it was anticlimactic. Several of the fellows recommended me, and Barbara simply ignored my existence. I was a full fellow of Haggershaven, securely at home for the first time since I left Wappinger Falls more than six years before. I knew that in all its history few fellows had ever voluntarily left the haven, still fewer had ever been asked to resign.

Fall became winter. Surplus timber was hauled in from the woodlots and the lignon extracted by compressed air, a method invented by one of the fellows. Lignon was the fuel which kept our hot water furnaces going and provided the gas for lighting. Everyone took part in this work, but my ineptness with things mechanical soon caused me to be set to more congenial tasks in the stables.

I was one afternoon currying a dappled mare when Barbara, her breath still cloudy from the cold outside, came in and stood behind me. I made an artificial cowlick on the mare’s flank, then brushed it glossy smooth again.

“Hello,” she said.

“Uh... hello, Miss Haggerwells.”

“Must you, Hodge?”

I roughed up the mare’s flank again. “Must I what? I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“I think you do. Why do you avoid me? And call me ‘Miss Haggerwells’ in that prim tone? Do I look so old and ugly and forbidding?”

This, I thought, is going to hurt Ace. Poor Ace, befuddled by a Jezebel; why can’t he attach himself to a nice quiet girl who won’t tear him in pieces every time she follows her inclinations?

I finished with the mare, put down the currycomb and dusted off my hands. “I think you are the most exciting woman I’ve ever met, Barbara,” I said.

It is said the attainment of a cherished wish always brings disappointment, but this wasn’t true of my life at Haggershaven. My brightest daydreams were fulfilled and more than fulfilled. At first it seemed the years at the bookstore were wasted, but I soon realized the value of that catholic and serendipitous reading for more schematic study. I began to understand what thorough exploration of a subject meant and I threw myself into my chosen work with furious zest.

I also began to understand the central mystery of historical theory. Not chronology, but relationship is ultimately what the historian deals in. The element of time, so vital at first glance, assumes a constantly more subordinate character. That the past is past becomes increasingly less important. Except for perspective it might as well be the present or the future, or—if one can conceive it—a parallel time. I was not exploring a petrification, but a fluid.

During that winter I read philosophy, psychology, archaeology, anthropology. My energy and appetite were prodigious. Even so I found time for Barbara. The “even so” is misleading, however, for this was no diversion, no dalliance. People talk lightly of gusts of passion, but it was nothing less than irresistible force which impelled me to her, day after day. The only thing saving me from enslavement like poor Ace was the belief—correct or incorrect, I am to this day not certain—that to yield the last vestige of detachment and objectivity would make me helpless, not only before her, but to accomplish all my ambitions, now more urgent than ever.

And yet I know I denied much I could have given freely and without harm. I know, too, that my fancied advantage over Ace, based on the fact that I had always had an easy—perhaps too easy—way with women, was no advantage at all. I thought myself the master of the situation because her infidelities—if such a word can be used where the thought of faithfulness is explicitly ruled out—did not bother me. I was wrong; my sophistication was a lack and not an achievement.

Make no mistake. She was no superficial wanton, moved by light and fickle desires. She was driven by deeper and darker than sensual urges; her mad jealousies were provoked by an unappeasable need for constant reassurance. She had to be dominant, she had to be courted by more than one man; at the same time she had to be told constantly what she could never really believe—that she was uniquely desired.

I wondered how she did not burn herself out, not only with conflicting passions, but with her fury of work. Sleep was a weakness she despised, yet she craved much more of it than she allowed herself; she rationed her hours of unconsciousness and drove herself relentlessly. Ace’s panegyrics of her importance as a physicist I discounted, but older and more learned colleagues spoke of her mathematical concepts, not merely with respect, but with awe.

She did not discuss her work with me, for our relationship was not intellectually intimate. I got the impression she was seeking the principle of heavier than air flight, a chimera which had long intrigued inventors. It seemed a pointless pursuit, for it was manifest such levitation could not hope to replace our safe, comfortable guided balloons. Later I learned she was doing nothing of the kind, but not speaking the technical jargon of her science, that was what I made of Ace’s vague hints.

In the spring all of us at Haggershaven became single-minded farmers until the fields were plowed and sown. No one grudged these days taken from study; not only were we aware of the haven’s dependence on economic self-sufficiency, but we were happy in the work itself. Not until the first, most feverish competition with time was over could we return, even for a moment, to our regular pursuits.

Midbin had for some while been showing the dumb girl drawings of successive stages of the holdup, again nagging and pumping me for details to sharpen their accuracy. Her reactions pleased him immensely, for she responded to the first ones with nods and the throaty noises we recognized as signs of agreement. The scenes of the assault itself, of the shooting of the coachman, the flight of the footman, and her own concealment in the cornfield evoked whimpers, while the brutal depiction of the Escobars’ murder made her cower and cover her eyes.

I cannot here omit mentioning that Barbara constantly taunted me with what she called my “devotion” to the girl; when I protested that Midbin had drafted me for the duty she accused me of hypocrisy, lying, faithlessness, sycophancy and various assorted vices and failings. Midbin, of course, explained and excused her outbursts by his “emotional pathology,” Ace accepted and suffered them as inescapable, but I saw no necessity of being subject to her tantrums. Once I told her so not, I think, too heatedly, adding, “Maybe we shouldn’t see each other alone after this.”

“All right,” she said, “yes... yes. All right, don’t.”

Her apparent calm deceived me completely; I smiled with relief.

“That’s right; laugh—why shouldn’t you? You have no feelings, no more than you have an intelligence. You are an oaf, a clod, a real bumpkin. Standing there with a silly grin on your face. Oh, I hate you! How I hate you!”

She wept, she screamed, she rushed at me and then turned away, crying that she hadn’t meant it, not a word of it. She coaxed, begging forgiveness for all she’d said, tearfully promising to control herself after this, moaning that she needed me, and finally, when I didn’t repulse her, exclaiming that it was her love for me which tormented her so and drove her to such scenes.

Perhaps this storm changed our relationship somewhat for the better, or at least eased the tension between us. At any rate it was after this she began speaking to me of her work, putting us on a friendlier, less passionate plane. I learned now how completely garbled was my notion of what she was doing.

“Heavier than air flying-machines!” she cried. “How utterly absurd!”

“All right. I didn’t know.”

“My work is theoretical. I’m not a vulgar mechanic.”

“All right, all right.”

“I’m going to show that time and space are aspects of the same entity.”

“All right,” I said, thinking of something else.

“What is time?”

“Uh? Dear Barbara, since I don’t know anything I can slide gracefully out of that one. I couldn’t even begin to define time.”

“Oh, you could probably define it all right—in terms of itself. I’m not dealing with definitions but concepts.”

“All right, conceive.”

“Hodge, like all stuffy people your levity is vulgar.”

“Excuse me. Go ahead.”

“Time is an aspect.”

“So you mentioned. I once knew a man who said it was an illusion. And another who said it was a serpent with its tail in its mouth.”

“Mysticism. Time, matter, space and energy are all aspects of the cosmic entity. Interchangeable aspects. Theoretically it should be possible to translate matter into terms of energy and space into terms of time; matter-energy into space-time.”

“It sounds so simple I’m ashamed of myself.”

“To put it so crudely that the explanation is misleading: suppose matter is resolved into its component—”

“Atoms?” I suggested, since she seemed at loss for a word.

“Something more fundamental than atoms. We have no word because we can’t quite grasp the concept yet. Essence, perhaps, or the theological ‘spirit.’ If matter—”

“A man?”

“Man, machine or chemical compound,” she answered impatiently. “Is resolved into its essence it can presumably be reassembled at another point of the time-space aspect.”

“You mean... like yesterday?”

“No—and yes. What is ‘yesterday’? A thing—or an aspect? Oh, words are useless. Even with mathematical symbols you can hardly.... But someday I’ll establish it. Or lay the groundwork for my successors. Or the successors of my successors.”

I nodded. Midbin was at least half right; Barbara was emotionally sick. For what was this “theory” of hers but the rationalization of a daydream, the daydream of discovering a process of going back through time to injure her dead mother and so steal all of her father’s affections?