Authors: James Gould Cozzens
"Well, it wasn't that —"
"What wasn't what?"
"Oh, well. I mean, all right. Can I do anything now?"
"No, there's no need. I'm going to Sansbury at one o'clock. I won't be back until supper-time. You come to-morrow at half-past seven."
2
On Tuesday, March seventeenth, the sun came up a poor yellow in the grey east. Soon it could not be seen at all. A gradual overcasting deepened evenly; the sky was a seamless cold grey; there was no wind.
Henry Harris, going out to sit on the steps with his paper, presently came in, went back to the round stove and settled down there.
"Get some snow this afternoon," he said contentedly to Walter Bates.
Unfolding his paper, propping his feet on the curved fender, he saw Matthew Herring enter, proceed in silence to the post office and start twisting the dial on his lock-box. When he had drawn the mail out and clicked the door closed, he came across to the counter and said: "Walter, let me have a tin of cocoa, will you?"
With sober cordiality Henry Harris said: "Good morning, Matthew. Looks as if we'd have some snow."
Half turning, Matthew Herring answered: "I should think it very likely."
Henry Harris grinned a little more. "Cold," he agreed. "Seems to be getting kind of cold in here, too. Well, we can't expect everything, can we? No, sir! We ought to be content with what we have." Rattling the paper, he got his chair to a more comfortable angle and began to read.
Numb in a weariness not really of work, but of prolonged strain and nerves exhausted, Miss Stanley, at the window, had her brooding, vacant watch disturbed by a gradual change of tone in the afternoon. Starting a little, she gave it her attention, and saw that a hazy thin fall of snow had begun. Stronger, whiter, it was drawing a curtain of fine flakes down the light wind, spinning over the grey hills.
Doctor Verney, by the bed, made a movement, the chair shifting; and at once Miss Stanley was aware, her own heart seemingly louder, that the long interval was stretching too long. Turning sharply, she saw Doctor Verney start too, as though the same lull of weariness had half stupefied him. His hand went out to the table, drew the waiting hypodermic from the fold of sterilized cloth.
Miss Stanley, instantly beside him, clasped one hand tight over the other, and she could feel the colour leaving her face, her cheeks stiffening, her eyes fixing in distraction, for it was going to be a near thing. Unprofessionally, she could experience at once a despair and a kind of desperation, oppressed, consumed with a sense of the great unfairness of this whole struggle. The child started with nothing; there was no flesh to sustain her—not an ounce in the narrow buttocks, nothing on the slight, moulded arms; on her narrow chest those piteous flat breasts. You would think she lived on nothing but the breath painfully passed out through the cracked, parted lips and the small, dull, stained teeth. Her hair was dragged back, tangled, as though the last thing she had known was that it was too hot. Miss Stanley could see the exposed ear, and stunned by the newness of something often seen but never noticed, she was aware for the first time of the remarkable delicacy of its structure, the astonishing frail beauty of its proportions.
While second went to stuporous second, they stood together, their breaths held, their minds pressing on the familiar physiological progression. Now, the hasty diffusion in the veins, the sudden indescribable biochemics of the absorbed adrenalin; now, the lash laid on, the cardiac muscle shocked alive, the arterioles in tumultuous contraction, the almost still blood resurging. Now, now, must come, caught back, quick still, rough from the shades, the gasp in of air; life at once extended a little, letting them breathe again too.
Slowly, first he, then she, did breathe. He looked at her, and she, blankly, back at him.
"Well, it's all up," he said. He dropped Virginia's wrist.
Yet they still waited a moment, facing each other in pointless expectation. Doctor Verney said: "Can you reach that stethoscope on the table there, Miss Stanley."
Pocketing it finally, while Miss Stanley stood watching, he turned and walked to the door. In the hall, he called quietly: "Mr. Banning, may I speak to you a minute."
Here in the heavy' gloom of the stormy afternoon he waited, close to the door he had closed, while Mr. Banning came out of the upstairs sitting-room and approached him. Doctor Verney lowered his voice. He said: "You will know best how to handle it with Mrs. Banning. I have to tell you that Virginia has just passed away."
Mr. Banning had, of course, known it already. Probably he had known it since noon, and had not been at all deceived. "Yes," he said, "that was to be expected."
Silent a moment, he then added hastily, as though to make up for his strange way of speaking, his voice low too: "I see, Doctor. Thank you. Lucile is asleep. I don't think I'll wake her."
Now they were both silent, and then both started uncertainly to speak together. Doctor Verney stopped and Mr. Banning went on. "I only want to say that I know that you've done everything humanly possible. I want you to know what a comfort it has been to be able to feel —"
"It came very quietly," Doctor Verney said. "Of course, she never recovered consciousness. There doesn't seem to be any way for me to —"
"Of course not. We mustn't—I mean, that it will be very difficult for Lucile. She seems to be sleeping quite soundly. Last night—you know. I think that it would be best if I saw that Guy was notified."
Turning, he went to the stairs and down them. There was still enough grey light in the library for him to find the telephone, and holding it, he waited, looking out at the whirl of snow, thinking. After a moment, he was distracted by the sight of Mary in a black coat or cloak making her way from the back towards the stables. In each hand she held a pan and now, dim and boisterous, arose the deep barking of the dogs. Galloping through the haze of falling flakes, they came to meet their suppers half-way.
Mr. Banning lifted the receiver and said: "May I have Western Union in Sansbury, please?"
"I'm sorry," May said. "He seems to have left the Evarts' place. Just a moment and I'll try him at home."
She plugged in 11, twitched the key, waiting.
After a while she pulled it, let it snap back. "I'm sorry," she said, "Doctor Bull does not answer."
Another lamp lit, and whipping out the new plug, she slipped it in, thumbed over the key and heard Mr. Banning say, "—Western Union in Sansbury, please —"
Her right hand went out; the number six toll-line lamp turned golden.
"Western Union, please," she said to the Sansbury operator. —, After a moment a clear voice responded: "Western Union."
May said: "Here's your party, Mr. Banning."
She let go the key, sitting in the twilight, gazing out at the snow whirled over the green, blown around the iron soldier on his stones. This was like winter beginning all over again; but she felt strong enough to stand it; for sooner or later it had to be spring; and Joe would be well.
Content, she began to read, holding up the book to the light, filling herself again with the great harmony of lines which, perhaps at first passed over, you lived to see radiant:
His servants he, with new acquist
Of true experience from this great event
With peace and consolation hath dismissed,
And calm of mind . . .
Automatically she thrust out a hand, pushed back the key to see if her line were still busy.
In her ear jumped the clear voice in Sansbury saying: "I will repeat the paid telegram to Mr. Guy Banning—" May let go, Silence cutting in. Suddenly she thought: "But why does he telegraph instead of telephoning?"
She drew the key back—"Yale College, New Haven, Connecticut. Virginia died at half-past five to-day, Please come at once. Signed, Father. That name is, V as in victor, I as —"
From the kitchen Janet Cardmaker heard the blare of flames softly growing in the Franklin stove, the click and slide of the big chunks of cannel coal, now splitting hot.
Beyond the window the recently begun snow was thickening fast, a whirl of weightless, thin flakes in the early twilight. It hurried unseasonable through the lilac buds. It drove blindly down the sloping meadow. She took the whisky bottle by the neck in one hand. Between the fingers of the other she caught up two of her great-great-grandfather's fine crystal wineglasses.
In the kitchen George Bull sat back, quiet as the room. Janet could just see him, sidelong through the pantry door. Firelight shone across the solid slope of his cheek, making a shadow up from the arrogant hedge of eyebrow. He watched the flames with that bold, calm stare-away, his blue eyes steady. Now he moved, rousing himself, stretching his big legs, grunting in the comfortable heat. Casual, but sonorous and effortlessly true, she could hear him humming to himself.
There was an immortality about him, she thought; her regard fixed and critical. Something unkillable. Something here when the first men walked erect; here now. The last man would twitch with it when the earth expired. A good, greedy vitality, surely the very vitality of the world and the flesh, it survived all blunders and injuries, all attacks and misfortunes, never quite fed full. She shook her head a little, the smile half derisive in contemptuous affection. Her lips parted enough to say: "The old bastard!"