Authors: James Gould Cozzens
Raising the legless chicken, George Bull got his teeth into the breast. "That's a fact," he agreed, when he could, "most of them aren't worth much, any way you look at them. They haven't had a real man in town since old Paul Banning died. Most of them are just a bunch of Miss Kimballs. Well, Connecticut's going to hell, that's about the size of it. Course, if I were young, I'd probably see it was a fine way to go—as much or more fun. Only I'm old. If I were fixing it, I'd have things the way they were thirty years ago."
He got out another spoonful of dressing, detached the wish-bone and nipped the meat off it. Discarding it, he added: "New Winton was a place to live, then; not something a road went through. You didn't have a bunch of bums rushing by all the time, with cowboys like Newell herding them up on Quail Pond. Look at the mills down at Sansbury and the Polacks! Time was when Sansbury was a white man's town. Look at the Roman Catholic convent there, or whatever they made of the Jenny place! What the hell are these monks and priors and novenas of the Little Flower doing in New England? Same with a lot of these Jew artists, like Lincoln over in the Cobb place. Jumping Jesus, what's he mean by calling himself Lincoln? Early American house! Why doesn't he go restore himself a synagogue in Jerusalem?"
He set aside the plate with the chicken's largely cleared skeleton.
"Huh!" he said, wiping his mouth. "I guess my sentiments are pretty wholesome at bottom! If Mrs. Banning could hear me, she might, forgive me my trespasses. Got a glass of milk?"
"I ought to have. The cows keep turning it out and it's hardly worth selling nowadays." When she came back from the ice-box, she said, "I'll warm it up for you. What you need's a good night's sleep, George. You'd better be feeling spry to-morrow; you may have your hands full with the fine old native stock."
"Sure. They're a bunch of bastards too."
At nine o'clock, Mary, knocking gently on the open library door, said: "Mr Banning. Excuse me, sir, but would you see Bert Ward?"
"Of course," he said, getting up. At the end of the hall, by the closed door, two men stood, their hats off, their hair laid flat in identical pattern, shining under the light with some oily dressing, one yellow, one black. Their overcoat collars were turned up, their gloveless hands were red. The blond one said: "I guess you remember me, Mr. Banning. I'm Bert Ward. I got your telegram."
"Of course I remember you, Bert." Mr. Banning put out his hand and took Bert's icy one.
"Oh —" Bert said. "Mr. Banning, this is my friend, Mr. Yedinak. He drove me up in his car. I hoped you wouldn't mind if I brought him in."
"Of course not. How do you do?"
"Very pleased to meet you. I tell Bert he be cold. I just got a open car. 1924 Peerless. Ha, ha! Well, it got here."
"Anton works at Remington Arms with me."
"Have you had supper?"
"Yeah, we got a hot dog at Sansbury."
"Wouldn't you like something more?"
"No, we had more than one. Ha, ha! I had four."
"Come into the library. There's a fire there. Sure you wouldn't like some coffee?"
"Well —"
"Or something to drink?"
"Ha, ha! How about it, Bert?"
"Mary, if you'll take these coats, please—and some whisky in the library."
"Boy, does that fire look good!" Anton Yedinak said. "Say, some horse," he added, looking at the lithograph. "Some stepper. I'd bet on him!"
"Bert's uncle used to drive him," Mr. Banning said. "That was long ago. Bert, I don't need to tell you how badly we felt about Larry——"
"That's all right, Mr. Banning. I was awful sorry to hear it. I said to Anton, I guess I'd better come." Some instant change had transformed Anton Yedinak's face. The life and agitation went out of it, replaced completely by a dolorous, gentle, Slavic melancholy. He sighed audibly; he nodded his head several times in agreement. "I tell him I drive him up," he said. "Then we drive back. Don't miss any work that way."
"I guess you're surprised I don't stay to see him buried," said Bert uneasily, "but you see, Mr. Banning, I can't get time off that way. Too many people in Bridgeport would like my job, I guess —"
"Thank you, Mary," Mr. Banning said: "That will be all right. Won't you help yourself, Mr. Yedinak? Why, no, Bert. I can quite understand. I'm sure Larry would too. When times are so hard —"
He stopped, pressingly aware in his own familiar private way of the warm library, the fine furniture, the bright, unnecessary fire. How deep, how terrible, how smugly jeering, the insolence of sitting here and telling Bert and young Yedinak that times were hard, or that he quite understood the need to leave one's dead brother and at once repeat the freezing trip in the wreck of somebody's discarded car in order to be at a Bridgeport factory when the whistle blew. Then that solemn appeal to what Larry would understand! Did he mean to imply that Larry, in some better, happier world —
Next he would be saying that the strife was o'er, the battle won!
To cover this excruciating shy shame—his impotence, when circumstances required him to reach people, saying or acting with simple ease the common word or part which made the contact human—he knew that he had only the mask of his composed face—a formal expression of reserve, with its implied detestable calm of superiority, its heatless charity, its exact politeness. Of course, the mask had its uses. Faced with it, he would be a brave man as well as a rude one who could still remember to say the things which Mr. Banning himself felt to be pertinent. Certainly Bert would not be the Nathan to pipe up — There were two men in one city; the one
rich, and the other poor
. . .
Probably Bert saw nothing wanting in Larry's lonely death down at the Evarts' house. He would not expect the Bannings to think of taking as good and expensive care of Larry as they would of Virginia. It was enough that they would have been glad, if Larry had managed to survive, to re-employ him, kindly overlooking the inconvenience he had caused them. What a comfort and economy to realize that beggars may not be choosers!
"Times are hard, I know," Mr. Banning repeated. He had the stoicism to do what must be done—the alternative to nothing—however dryly and badly. "The arrangements had better be as simple as possible —"
Knowing well enough that Bert could pay for them, if he could, only with the greatest difficulty, he was searching for some way not too arrogantly patronizing.
"I've got a little money saved," Bert said.
This miserable business simply could not go on, and Mr. Banning said, "Bert, Larry has been with us a good many years. I don't like to feel that we can't have any share in this. If you'd care to trust the arrangements to me, I'd like to be able to express in some tangible way our grief. I know, of course, in a matter like this, that you yourself would want to —"
Bert looked up at him quickly, brief and shamefaced. "Well, the truth is, Mr. Banning, I really haven't any money. I mean, I have about forty-one dollars in the savings bank. I would certainly be glad to use that; but I guess it wouldn't go far. I know it seems kind of — Well, Mr. Banning, it's mighty kind of you —"
Anton Yedinak, it could be seen, was also impressed by Mr. Banning's goodness. He nodded his head several times with what might have been spiritual applause. He looked into his whisky glass with a kind of holy joy at man's humanity to man.
3
By nine o'clock on Saturday morning, parked cars lined all the irregular open triangle surrounding the broken and empty horse-trough behind the station. They were backed in side by side, a tight rank along the platforms. End to end, they stretched in shabby procession to the apex, and then out of the short street between Upjohn's store and the Hall to the boundaries of the green. The open space was filled with the violent bright sunlight of a windy morning in the hills. Into Upjohn's Hall, a straggling constant stream of people moved unhurried through the double doors left open.
The sunlight, in a strong shaft following them, reached part of the way down the central aisle between approximately straight rows of Howard's light, folding chairs. This glow on the floor brought out a gloom in the rest of the big room. The neutral light from the high, narrow side windows fell soberly on standing groups of men, on circles of neighbours and relatives seated and turning to talk across the rows. The mixed chatter of a hundred voices in twenty small conversations rose now to a general unintelligible babble; sank next, letting single speakers, often women, come out clearly for a phrase or two— protest, prophecy, instruction.
"I hear he . . ."
". . . tried six times to get him. Mrs. Vogel told me —"
"Now, I got nothing against George. Don't misunderstand me. But . . ."
"Yes, and what's that going to get us? Answer me that . . ."
"I know both my boys are sick, and that's plenty for me to know . . ."
"Just the same, I can tell you . . ."
An outbreak of bold laughter brought a partial silence, for everyone, however confused or at odds, was serious. The indignant turning of a few heads found that it was Robert Newell, coming down the aisle with a hard tread of riding-boots. His callous, full-blooded face twitched with amusement at something Charles Ordway had said. Arrogantly, white teeth gleaming under his cropped moustache, gloved fists put into his breeches pockets, Robert Newell noticed the pause, appraised it with frank contemptuous pleasure. Mr. Ordway was embarrassed. Either he had not meant to be humorous or had not meant to have anyone know that he was.
Mrs. Bates, seated, called sharply to him: "You seem greatly entertained, Charles. How's Molly this morning?"
Robert Newell was out of her range, striding towards the most important of the standing groups, gathered at the end of the narrow platform around Matthew Herring in his black overcoat and Walter Bates. Mrs. Bates and Mrs. Vogel beside her, and Mrs. Jackson, contentedly between Mrs. Vogel and Mrs. Ely, all stared after him. Mrs. Jackson said, "He don't seem very considerate —"
Malcolm's being sick was a high price, but maybe it was worth it; for Mrs. Vogel, instead of accepting her remark in silence, answered: "I could tell you things about him, Helen. You'd hardly believe his brass walking in here in front of decent people that way —"
Mrs. Vogel would tell her, too, as soon as they had reasonable privacy. You might think that she and Mrs. Ely had needed to know the results of some such test. When Malcolm could come down with typhoid, as Mrs. Vogel's boys and Mrs. Ely's brother had, it would seem that, though from Bayonne, New Jersey, the Jacksons had indeed eyes, hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; and so all contact with them need not end after the half-furtive purchase of Gosselin Brothers' cut-price groceries.
If Mrs. Jackson had thought at first that she had as good a right to test and weigh Mrs. Vogel and Mrs. Ely, loneliness had tempered that presumption. It was hard to live, month in and month out, with only your good rights to comfort you. Given some inkling of the social state, Mrs. Jackson was content, too, to be set down a little lower than she first liked. She would not risk offending her two friends by any vain attempt at the more considerable conquest of Mrs. Bates. It was better the way it was, for Mrs. Bates simply wouldn't have her; yet, once sure that Mrs. Jackson was not going to mistake her subtle place, Mrs. Bates was perfectly cordial and civil. All was at last harmony.
"When I was a girl in Bayonne," Mrs. Jackson said, "there used to be a man who lived right across the street from us who —"
Mrs. Vogel had turned her bright sharp gaze on her, and lowering her voice, Mrs. Jackson went easily on about that scandalous man and those fascinating days.
Against the plain door jamb and the white clapboards of the adjoining wall, Harry Weems stood in the windy sunlight, bareheaded, a cigarette cupped in a hand red-knuckled with cold. He said: "Been to see Joe?"
May stepped aside to let the people behind her pass. "I was just there."
"How is he?"
"They're always better in the morning a nurse told me. He feels pretty sick; but, I mean, he knows things. He said to me right away: 'Look at that.' He began moving his hand on the bed. Harry, it's true! They don't know what did it, but something did. He's all over that. The nurse says the muscles are too weak for him to move it much; but he does move it. He feels things in it, I mean. He —"
"For gosh sakes! Say, when did this happen?"
"Oh, I forgot you didn't know. Doc Bull told me last night. I mean, and Doctor Verney thinks so, too, he said. Oh, Harry, it's awful! I feel so happy and everybody——"
"Hey, hey! Hang on to it!." He took her arm, drawing her farther aside. She got a crumpled handkerchief from her coat pocket. "I know," she said.
"Isn't it crazy —"
"Not so you'd notice it! Gosh, May, you'll never know how much of a relief it would be to me —" He regarded her with an intent, red-faced awkwardness as bad as her own. None of the phrases he wanted would come to him; for all easy, ordinary conversation dealt with things which might be worse; or were not so bad; or were pretty good.
"Yes, I know, Harry," she said. "All you've done —I know he's going to be all right. I didn't get off the switchboard until twelve last night, so I couldn't see. I would have told you, but honestly, I was afraid to. I mean, it's so silly, but I hadn't seen myself and I thought, if there were any mistake. I mean, I never thought it might be sort of bad luck—I wasn't supposed to see him this morning, but I told the nurse —"
Behind her, Harry Harris' warm, inevitably sardonic voice said: "You let me talk to Harry just a minute, will you, May?"
"See you later," Harry told her. "I want to go and see him as soon as they'll let me. Maybe we could when we get out of here —"
"All right," she said, confusedly glad that he had got this artless relief, and that, next meeting, they could both take it for granted with no need to find any right words.
Inside, she took the first empty seat. The man next to her said, "Good morning, Mrs. Tupping."