Authors: James Gould Cozzens
After a time; the door opened; but he saw it was Janet and did not stop. She looked at him and laughed. "George," she promised, "you'll be on your ear in a minute."
"Go milk your cows," he roared. "I'm fine."
"Harold brought Pete Foster up with him."
"Fine. How's my patient?"
"She looks pretty near dead."
"Fine. Best thing could happen to her."
"Want some supper?"
"Hell, no!"
"Well, I'll, go up and change my clothes."
"Fine. I'll help you."
"You'd better stay down here, George."
"Sure, I'd better."
"Listen, George, it's cold as a barn. I left all the windows open. Wait until —"
"Wouldn't be the first barn we'd been in."
"I guess it wouldn't, at that," she admitted. "Come on, then."
3
"First," said Mrs. Talbot, "it was Bill; and then it was little Bill. Now it's her. I knew it as soon as she was sick. You needn't think I didn't know —" Her voice mounted on each word, and now she screamed; broke off, wailing faintly as she got in breath to scream again. "I knew it all the time." She clung to that; as though her foreknowledge justified something, made a point in her favour.
This was the way Mrs. Talbot had been going on, by herself. May Tupping could identify the awful sound which had brought her out across the back, hatless, shivering in her thin coat. "You've got to stop that," May Tupping said. "Mrs. Talbot, you've just got to stop it! Where's your coat? You come over to our house —"
"Long about six o'clock," Mrs. Talbot said, "she starts making this noise. No one just sleeping ever made a noise like that. I —"
In the anguish of her desire to hear no more, May's eyes blurred with tears. It wasn't about Mamie. Death, she saw, in Mamie's case—and why shouldn't it be that way in everyone's?—was a thing time passing took care of. Time arranged it and carried it safely through. The key to understanding, knowing how it was, came to her in a matter as simple as her trip's to the dentist in Torrington. The dentist hurt her so much she would be worrying all week. When the day came and she started, she would say to herself that at five o'clock, just three hours from now, she would be getting into the bus to come home. It would be all over. Time would take care of it; it had to be five o'clock not long from now; and when it was, as soon as that, everything would be all right. Death, too, might be bad to go to—there was that apprehensiveness of the trip to Torrington; nothing helped her any; you could not look out of the windows in peace or read a magazine with attention. Death, too, might be worse even than you thought, when you reached it—the dentist never hurt her less than she expected. Yet it would be past soon; a matter done with and no longer important. She stepped out into the end of the afternoon lying over Torrington.
She walked slowly, liberated, to the place where the bus stopped. On a pillar before the bank the great four-faced clock said five; and, as she had known it would be, all was well.
The peace of this idea wasn't shaken, even by Mrs. Talbot; but with nothing to make her cry about Mamie, May had nothing to justify herself. She thought: I feel as if I could hardly stand it. By it, she knew, she meant Mrs. Talbot. She was appalled to find herself taking this moment to be base enough to abhor Mrs. Talbot's dirty clothes and dirty house. She backed away at heart from Mrs. Talbot's loathsome weeping. Who could support the cumulative effect of such un-happiness, illness, dirt, poverty? Mrs. Talbot's hair— had she ever washed it?—lay in a scanty offensive snarl, matted to the back of her neck; and, looking down on it, May had to swallow twice before she could say: "You get your coat on. I'll be right back."
She closed the door, stepped down the two wooden steps and fled, her heels catching on the foot-marked path, yesterday's slush frozen hard as iron. She kept her mouth open, gulping in the clean air. Entering her own back door, she saw—it had been impossible for her to remember—that she had left nothing in danger on the stove. From this frigid shed of a kitchen, she passed into the warm room. "Joe," she said, "I've got to bring Mrs. Talbot over here. She's pretty near crazy—"
"Hello, May," Harry Weems said. He was sitting on the other side of the stove and she hadn't seen him at all. "What's the trouble?"
"Mamie Talbot died."
"Say, that's too bad!" Harry got to his feet, agitated. Joe had gone pale, his mouth tightening in a sort of sullenness. Joe wanted his supper, not Mrs. Talbot. Joe couldn't stand Mrs. Talbot anyway—who could? —and May didn't blame him. "I couldn't help it," she said, "She can't get herself anything to eat. Harry" she added in sudden appeal, "could we get a bottle of gin or something? We've got to give her something —"
"Sure thing," said Harry Weems. "Get you one right away."
"Wait. I'll pay you."
"Don't be dumb," he said. "Anything I have you can have. Gosh, May, what do you think I am?" He was a little redder; hurt; pulling his cap on as he went out.
"He'd never miss it," Joe said. Joe really tried, but he couldn't hide the bitter edge on his words. Look at Harry and look at him. "He made a hundred and seventy-two dollars last week," Joe said. "He brought five cases over from New York State last night, and he says practically all of them are spoken for. Listen, for God's sake, what's the good of bringing Mrs. Talbot here?"
"Joe, I tell you she's pretty near crazy. I don't know what she'd do. One thing: she wanted to go up and tell Mrs. Banning she hoped she was satisfied, because she's killed Mamie, all right."
"Well, I hear it's the truth."
"No, it isn't! It's just craziness. I think in some ways Mrs. Banning was pretty mean to Mamie. But I happen to know this, because Mamie told me. All this fall, Mrs. Banning came out herself and saw that Mamie drank a glass of milk with every meal."
"Larry keeps three Jerseys for her. She has to get rid of the milk some way, I guess."
"Another thing Mamie told me was when it got so cold last September, that week, Mrs. Banning came up to their rooms at ten o'clock at night herself to see if they had enough blankets."
"Banana oil!"
"I can't help whether you believe it or not. Mamie told me."
"Well, what's so wonderful about it? You keep saying 'Mrs. Banning herself,' like she was God or something."
"Well, lots of people wouldn't have bothered."
"Yeah, and she's one of them."
"Well, Joe, I'm sorry. I've simply got to bring Mrs. Talbot over for a little while."
"Go and get her and let's get it over with!" He shifted a little on his back. One arm slid inertly sideways; but before she could help him, he pulled up his shoulder, turned, making it fall back. "Go on," he said. "Get the hell after her!"
In that wing of Bates' store which was rented to the United States Government, the post office window was not yet open. Behind the high screen formed by the mail boxes, Helen Upjohn and Mr. Bates' daughter Geraldine could be glimpsed in hasty movement under the tin-shaded lights hung above them. There was a constant sound of paper striking glass softly as envelopes went into their proper boxes. Suddenly whole small oblongs would be blocked up with rolled afternoon papers from Danbury, Bridgeport, or New York. People who cared to pay for boxes from time to time stepped forward, twisted the small combination dials, drew out whatever there was and retired to lean against the varnished wainscoting, looking at it. A row of windows let those otherwise unoccupied gaze out.
All along the front, ample, mellow light flooded the section of cement side-walk. Between this paving and the triple concrete lanes of US6W stood half a dozen motor-cars, several of them with their headlights on, their front wheels against the side-walk edge. Out of the dark, new figures kept appearing on this well-lighted little stage. Some went to the doors of the store and came over inside; some walked past outside and came in at the post office door. This opened and closed constantly, admitting people who were brought to a halt by the press, distributing themselves as they could along the bits of unoccupied wall, against the board covered with notices about fourth-class mail, the Postmaster General's obsolete request to mail Christmas packages early, and the poster, in colours, of what was being shown at a Sansbury moving-picture theatre.
Above, under dusty glass, hung a framed picture displaying the leaves and flowers of the mountain laurel with an ornately lettered plea to spare it—
The Mountain Laurel, Kalmia latifolia, is made, constituted, and declared to be the state flower of the State of Connecticut—Public Acts of
1907. Up to it floated a general haze of tobacco smoke, a general murmur of voices and confusion of conversations.
Here, or stepped out a minute, or just coming in, were most of the men who had a stake in New Winton; power in its government, or position in the sense of running a business or owning a farm. Since everyone knew everyone else, clothes had no symbolic value here. Their good suits were at home. They wore old overcoats, old boots and overshoes; hats and caps meant only to cover the head. Mr. Bates, moving behind the grocery counter, his threadbare jacket hanging open on a sweater of sagging grey, was First Selectman. In a very old black overcoat, Matthew Herring, the Treasurer, retained by his tall, thin frame and composed face a distinct air of gentility. He came, of course, of superior people, living, well enough to-do, in a large house in the unfortunate taste of the seventies above Banning's Bridge. Charles Ordway was more citified. As Representative in the Legislature, he felt the need to be presentable in Hartford. He made up for bringing his new clothes home by great affability; he and Henry Harris, on several occasions his defeated Democratic opponent for his position, stood together in the friendliest possible intimacy. The clock now said ten minutes past six and Lester Dunn called loudly: "Let's go, Helen! Read what he wrote afterwards!"
There was a glimpse, for those against the notice-board, of Helen Upjohn's fleeting pale smile beyond the glass-fronted pigeon holes; a little laughter rewarded Lester Dunn. The door opened and George Weems came in from his adjoining garage. Several voices saluted him. Henry Harris lifted his brown, pointed face and said, "What do you know?"
"Not so much, Henry," George Weems nodded. "Hello, Charley." He paused a moment and added, "Harry just came by and tells me Mamie Talbot's dead."
Silence fell instantly. There was a following murmur; surprise; disinterested consternation; then, in a gradual, grave lament, separate voices: "That's too bad —"
"What, that's a shame —"
"Why, yes, Mr. Weems says Mamie Talbot's dead—"
"Don't seem right. How old's she? Not more than seventeen, I should say —"
"I doubt she's more than sixteen —"
"I surely feel sorry for Mrs. Talbot. You'd think she had her share of —"
"You can't hardly believe it. She was just as lively and —"
Henry Harris looked around, and seeing no one except Matthew Herring who could be called really intimate with the Bannings, allowed himself, for he had a longstanding political feud with Mr. Herring, to say: "I hear she took sick through overwork and underfeeding."
Matthew Herring, though he could not help hearing, paid no attention, so Henry Harris went on: "I notice they didn't keep her. Sent her home when she felt too bad to earn her pay."
Matthew Herring removed the mail from his lock box, snapped it shut, and turned about; his high, thin shoulders stooped a little; his long, reserved face expressionless. "You oughtn't to say things like that, Henry," he observed. "We know what you say never means anything; but strangers might take you seriously." He nodded to Charles Ordway and went out of the door.
There was a stir and snicker of applauding laughter, Through this relieved sound, a voice, harsh in an old bitterness re-aroused, came clear, heard by everyone: "What you expect when you got a horse doctor treating her? Just give him time, I say, and old Doc Bull can kill us all."
"That's all right, Virginia," Larry Ward said. "It's only about six or a little after. I told Mrs. Banning not to hurry you; you'd be along soon enough."
In the light-flooded garage, Larry's face had a beautiful warm bronze colour. The carefully shaved skin was firm and very finely textured. What should have been handsomeness was subtly spoiled by a too great regularity of feature. It gave him the blank, Insensitive look of a wax model. Like a model, too, his eyes were astonishingly bright, China blue, shaded in his bronzed face by an expression of perpetual mild perplexity. Virginia Banning got out of the Ford. "You'd better not keep Charlotte waiting," she said sharply.
"We're going to the dance at the Odd Fellows Hall in Sansbury," Larry said. "I guess she'll wait, all right." Showing at once his idea of the splendour of the proposed entertainment, and his pleasure in Charlotte Slade's probable docility, he came innocently close to smirking.
"Well, you needn't be so damned conceited," Virginia told him. "If I were Charlotte, I'd drop you cold!"
Larry looked at her, stunned to the customary confusion which afflicted him in matters not connected with farm animals or gasolene motors. He laughed a little uncertainly, straightened the bright orange necktie which he had knotted into a starched linen collar, and got into the Ford. The engine was still running, so he backed out promptly, halted. "Go on," Virginia said. "I'll shut the doors."
"Thanks!" he shouted, waving his hand, backed about and started down the drive.
Virginia made a slight, contemptuous sound between her teeth. She pushed her gloved hands into the pockets of her leather jacket, moving speculatively to look at Guy's car.
Standing on the clean cement of the garage floor next to her father's dark, sedately shaped, carefully kept sedan, this car of Guy's had a wonderfully violent air. Guy got something when he got that. She hoped, each time she saw it, that it would please her less, look more ordinary and less desirable; but it didn't. Its great power and tremendous potential speed could not have been more quietly, entrancingly evident. It had none of the shiny ostentation of lesser cars, turned out thousand after cheap thousand. Slate grey, its not too new enamel was flat and dull under a hardened film of dust and oil; its metal, of a luxurious tough thickness, showed the same lustreless practicality. A lean, three-pointed star was hung in a metal ring poised on the radiator cap; simple and severe badge of makers who didn't make cars for everybody, not a tricky little statue or ornament.