Authors: James Gould Cozzens
There, then, around that grave, George Bull had been able to see New Winton—every person who could be said to matter, with many who did not. They stood sweltering together, formally seeing the last of James Cardmaker. Here were the ones he had to think of; old Paul and Mathilda Banning; Joseph Allen and his two elderly sisters; Samuel, his wife Sarah, and his brother, Daniel, Coulthard; the Herrings from Banning's Bridge; Micah Little from Truro—not one of those was left alive now. Perhaps thirty other adults, important only in so far as their talk might bring a matter to the superior handful's attention, and a scattering of restless, unwilling children raised the total attendance to sixty or seventy. Because of these people, he could not, plainly, continue to visit Janet Cardmaker.
In the early nineteen hundreds it hadn't occurred to George Bull that he could go anywhere, with or without proper reason, as often as he pleased; and if New Winton—that was, the Bannings, Allens, Coulthards, Herrings, Littles—noticed the improper conduct of two, by birth of their own small number; why, let them notice.! Let them notice until they burst! George Bull thought that he would need to be above suspicion if he wanted New Winton as a place to live and practise in. He dared say that he had been right, then. Times had changed as much as he had, since; like himself, the age seemed to grow in experience. The naïve sharp edge of shock and social outrage was gone from all the simpler improprieties.
Even in 1903 he had soon modified his view. What he needed to be was no more than careful. That meant some weeks when he could contrive neither to visit nor to meet Janet at all. Many of the meetings were marked by inconvenience of time or place which he had to laugh to remember. "By God," he thought, "we were pretty keen about it in those days."
In the kitchen, his fur coat off, George Bull sat down at the table. He could see one of those electric clocks on the shelf, its third hand a slim gilt needle crawling the steady circle without relief or rhythm. From it you got a glimpse of time as it must be, not as man measured it. It was all one, no beginning, no middle part, no end. He remained absorbed in it a moment while Janet took off her things. She was wearing a flannel shirt, so deep blue as to look black, and corduroy breeches. Her shapeless waterproof boots were laced to her knees. Leaving him, she disappeared into the pantry. When she came out she carried a gallon glass jug three-quarters full of hard cider.
"Have a drink, George," she said. "It's all I've got."
Knowing that she did not like cider, he finally found the booklet of government prescription blanks, unscrewed a fountain pen. "There you are," he said, "and take it to Sansbury. Anderson has in some new whisky so bad a bootlegger wouldn't sell it." He balanced the jug lightly. "I don't mind this stuff," he said.
The cooking stove had been removed from the kitchen, and where it had been, out from the sealed chimney stood a Franklin stove, taken from Mr. Cardmaker's one-time study. Janet did her cooking, or had it done when Mrs. Foster came, on a gleaming, extensive electric range set against the east wall, out of the way. Bent, busy at the basin in the other corner, soaping her hands, she said: "How's Mrs. Cole?"
"Oh, Aunt Myra's a little vague, now and then," George Bull answered. He filled his glass half full of cider and drank it off thoughtfully. "She's quite a girl, when you think that she was born in 1846. I overhauled her last week, just for fun. There really isn't anything wrong with her; I mean, nothing you could put your finger on. She's spry as you please; got all her teeth. I don't see anything to stop her. I wouldn't be surprised if she lived to be a lot over a hundred. Every now and then she takes to calling me Kenneth for a few days—that was her son. Died of typhoid at Tampa in the Spanish-American war. But she does practically all the housework—you can hear her dropping dishes in the kitchen and telling the little Andrews girl to let things be, she'll do them. She gets to Sansbury twice a week to the movies. Won't bother to go down to the station for the bus. She just goes out to the road and waves at the driver, so now he stops for her. The Bulls are pretty hard to kill."
"What's all this I hear about a row in town meeting last week?"
George Bull roared. "Row is right! I guess you could have heard me having moral indignation all the way up here."
"Well, go on."
"What do I have to go on about? I just told Banning the Board of Health was going to fine him fifty dollars for letting Larry use the river-bank for a dump. I told him I'd make it my business to see that water the children of New Winton used to swim in wasn't polluted. What did he think of that?"
"I heard Mrs. Banning wrote some letters to the County Health Officer."
"School Board stuff. I hadn't had a chance to vaccinate the brats at Cold Hill until to-day. She'll have to do better than that. Lefferts sent me the letter. He just took a pencil and wrote on the corner: 'Dear Bull: Here's your prize belly-acher again.'"
"What did you do?"
"I just told you. I got Lester Dunn to scout around until he found where Larry had dumped a lot of junk up the river. Then I fined Banning? fifty dollars."
"Quite a coincidence."
"Banning didn't seem to see it; but I'll bet Mrs. B. guessed. It's just the sort of thing she'd do herself, the bitch. Well, one good turn deserves at least two others. I told Mrs. Talbot—and for all I know, it's true—that she ought to have more sense than to let Mamie live at the Bannings'. Mrs. Banning would feed her what the dogs didn't want and put her up in the back garret with no heat. Of course, she gets pneumonia. I hear all over town now that Mrs. Banning practically fed her pneumonia with a spoon."
"George, you're a confirmed old devil, aren't you!"
Janet's amused voice was almost as deep as his.
From talking mainly to men, her tones had taken on something male. Hearing that plain accent, that ruminative inflexion given to words sober, positive, well- considered, you could see best not Janet, but out of a strangely vanished past, certain composed, farm- weathered faces; the men of an older Connecticut standing quiet, their grave eyes in direct regard, their opinions simply and unhesitatingly spoken—for they were as good as you were; a reticent, unpolished courtesy made them willing, for the moment, to assume that they were no better than you were.
Moved by these authentic, almost stilled tones, George Bull who belonged here by blood, found himself regretful. When, after his father's death and his Uncle Amos's, he came East there had seemed to him to be something here which he liked and wanted. Part of the feeling might have been mere relief, to have his father dead, Michigan so far away, the hard, cheerless business of his youth there definitely done. Perhaps all of it was that. It was on Memorial Day, 1889, that he first saw New Winton. He got off the morning train and heard a band playing—
land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim's pride
—blaring distantly down the green. They were, it happened, that day unveiling the little Civil War soldier to the somewhat belated memory of those brave men who fought for liberty and union. Half a company of the men in question could still assemble, wearing the dark blue of the Grand-Army. Everyone for miles around was listening to the remarks of one of Connecticut's own generals. Everything looked festive—bunting sagged from elm to elm at that end of the green. The people in their best clothes looked well-to-do; the town looked well-kept and prosperous—even, with this crowd, populous. Almost at once somebody had said to him: "You Eph Bull's boy, may I ask?" The speaker could, it developed, recall the Reverend Ephraim Bull when he was a child in New Winton, and had never thought either of the ministry or of Michigan.
Remembering that holiday morning, it was possible to deduce from it and mourn a lost comfort, a lost ease and peace in the intimacy of small valley, small farms, small towns with a couple of church steeples, small hills and ponds; rivers passed by insecure covered bridges. George Bull wasn't sure that such a land had ever actually existed, except on some summer or early fall days for an hour, or an afternoon. In the same fanciful way, life here seemed to him kind and friendly; the men were simple, but honest and happy, to a point not known in Michigan. Of course, the truth was that men were always the same everywhere; Michigan had been full of his own terrors and chagrins. He hadn't, for instance, wanted to be a doctor particularly; but what he wanted was not important to his father. The Reverend Ephraim Bull thought in vague stern terms of humanity. Some form of the urge he had felt to preach to the Michigan backwoods, he expected to find in George. There were not enough doctors out there.
Made miserable by poverty and poor preparation George Bull was certainly not promising. The exacting Doctor Vaughan soon advised him to leave Ann Arbor, where the new university medical school was beginning to get on its feet. Bull had mistaken his calling. George Bull couldn't leave; he had been afraid to go home. His father, getting older, got blinder, as though he had seen the glory of God to his permanent hurt. The old man went groping around, his hands out warily, and though George Bull could have broken him in half, the terrible voice, hoarsened and resonant, shouting as from a pulpit, paralysed him; the blind, uncertain hands seemed sure to catch him. With desperation in his efforts, he did better; Doctor Vaughan, pleased, let him stay.
"That was pretty long ago," he said, and grinned, seeing Janet looking at him. "Thinking," he explained. "I'm getting a little vague, like Aunt Myra. Well, Banning paid his fifty dollars all right."
"I guess he can afford it."
George Bull laughed. "He can. But he's lost a lot of money. They figured it out in the post office that he got no less than seven notices of passed dividends last quarter—intelligent girl, that Helen Upjohn. What she doesn't know or can't find out from smelling the mail isn't worth knowing. Well, I'll have some more of this hog-wash, and then I ought to be going. I want to see Mamie Talbot."
"Is she very sick?"
"No. She'll get by. Not as bad as your cow. Sort of puny, like her mother, though. I ought to take an interest just for the looks of it. Mamie insisted on going home when she felt bad, so she kind of got out of the Bannings' hands. Mrs. Banning wanted Verney to come up—for a consultation. He wouldn't do it. Said it was my case. Damn delicate of him."
"How do you get on with him?"
"We're pretty polite. All he wants anyway is a little professional chit and chat about how slick he is. He sort of fancies himself as a surgeon. Sometime I'll beat him to it. I'll tell him about those orchidectomies I performed on your calves. 'What you say is very true, my dear Doctor, but, in my limited experience, I find that I get the most satisfactory results—this was the technique I found so effective when I was attending the King of Iceland; you may have heard—by firmly grasping the —'"
"Now, listen," said Janet, "if you think you're out behind the barn talking to —"
"Slip of the tongue," said George Bull, refilling his glass. "Good thing Verney didn't hear me. He'd have a piece in the State
Journal
about the dangerous abuse of the Basle Anatomical Nomenclature in rural counties —well, hallelujah, I think I'm tight! Let me try that again. Basle Anatomical Nomencla —"
"You must have had a drink or two up Cold Hill."
"I did, for a fact. You ought to see Crowe, that pot-bellied little rat, put it away."
"Well, don't fall in the fire. I've got to get over and help Harold. When he hasn't someone working for him, he never gets the stripping done."
"What happened to that Truro boy—Donald Maxwell. Didn't you have him?"
"Harold thought he was fooling around with Belle. Not that it was the first time. It was just the first time Harold thought of it."
"So what?"
"Harold came to me and said he wanted me to fire Donald."
"And you did?"
"Well, Donald's always been the village satyr, and so he probably wouldn't be able to stop. I was afraid Harold might mention the matter to him and get half killed. Donald said to me: 'Ain't I a good worker, Miss Cardmaker?' I told him he'd better ask Belle about that. He said: 'Miss Cardmaker, you don't mean to say you think there was anything wrong between me and Mrs. Rogers?' Since pretty nearly every morning, when Harold took the milk down, I'd see him walk up to the cottage and then somebody would pull down the shade in the bedroom, I thought he had plenty of brass. 'Listen, Donald' I said, 'what do you want with that half-dead little slut? Why don't you go marry yourself a real woman and stop taking candy from kids like Harold? '"
"You must have scared him to death."
"I guess it gave him quite a shock. He said he would, he knew a girl in Torrington; only he hadn't any money. I took his note for five hundred dollars. Since it wasn't any good anyway, I told him I'd tear it up when his first son was born."
"Get it out and start tearing," said George Bull. "I helped a girl have his first son up at North Truro about five years ago."
"Yes, I know. But I told him no monkey business this time. Last Thursday he mailed me a clerk's copy of a marriage certificate from Torrington."
"Well, I'm damned," said George Bull. "You're quite a moral influence. But that doesn't help you milk the cows, does it?"
"Time was," Janet said, "when I could milk every cow in the barn with my two hands. With a machine to do all the real work, Harold can't even strip them."
"Well, of course," George Bull said, "you only have about twenty more cows now. That might make a difference. Let me know how my patient is."
Left alone in the warm kitchen, George Bull went and turned on the radio in the corner beside Janet's desk. Almost immediately—this was a much better set than the one he had got for Aunt Myra at home—a voice said: "WTIC, the Travellers, Hartford, Connecticut." With the suddenness of a switch swung closed, dance music of great volume and elaboration burst out, filling the room.
George Bull stood quiet a moment. Outside it had somehow got dark and he looked at the clock with the relentlessly turning gilt needle. It was practically six, and he decided that he could see Mamie Talbot in the morning just as well. The blurred glow of alcohol filled his big frame. It gave the music in his ears an unearthly sweetness, rich, intricate, and gay. Presently his pleasure in it had reached such a point that he felt impelled to dance; and so he did, after a fashion; performing a careless and exuberant two-step round the room.