The Listener (3 page)

And the priest shall bring her near,

and set her before the Lord.

Numbers 5:16

Mrs. Merrill Sloane entered the sitting room with resistance. She wore severe tweeds and a sable scarf and carried a leather purse soundly closed. She was fifty years old, gray and sharp of face, neat and trim of figure, and had a hat that was at least five years old and good for another five years. It was of felt, with a dipping brim. Her no-nonsense shoes set themselves firmly on the carpet. She walked and moved with precision and stared haughtily at the others in the room. They did not look at her. Murmuring distastefully to herself, as if ashamed of her own emotions, she took a sealed note from her purse, marched to the slit in the wall near the oaken door, and dropped the note through the opening. She waited. Nothing happened. Men and women of all ages were reading the magazines and slim books of poetry which had been laid on the tables. She sat down, very stiffly. Why had she been so stupid as to come here? Restlessly she removed her gloves and looked at the large diamond on her finger. But she was more concerned with the fact that her hands appeared to be withered and grasping and deformed. All the women in her family had always had soft, smooth, white hands, even in their eighties and nineties. Why were hers so dry and parched, and with such big knuckles? She looked again at the others in the room. It was warm and fresh in here, though it was March outside and there were no windows or any visible source of heat. A spring day! Suddenly she thought of a spring day, and the room blurred before her eyes and she dropped her head. She forgot her silent companions. Vaguely she was aware that one by one they rose, were admitted beyond the oaken door. Finally she was the last. Then she heard the bell chime for her, and she stood up on legs suddenly weak and entered the other room.

Only a white, softly lit marble room, with a marble chair covered with blue velvet cushions. What was that tall alcove hidden by blue curtains? Mrs. Sloane frowned. Nonsense. John Godfrey — she had never met him — was a European, and possibly decadent, too. She remembered all the rumors. She sat down in the chair, as straight as an oak. She waited. The soft silence waited also. Oh yes, she recalled, she could say what she wished and someone behind that curtain would listen. All at once she was crying.

“Please pardon me,” she murmured. “I have a slight cold. Prevalent this year. Or a sinus condition. I’ve just come from Dr. Bundy’s. He isn’t very competent, I’m afraid. A very painful affair, this sinus condition. My head aches all the time. Sometimes I think I am just one ache. This ache — ”

The man who listened behind that curtain could not be interested in her sinus condition, which was due to the seasonable fogs and the melting snow. One must be dignified. “I should really tell you,” she said with severity, “that I don’t know why I am here. I’m sure my clergyman would not approve. He does deplore superstition so. Certainly he would not approve of my visiting you. I don’t know why I am here. So foolish.”

The patient silence waited. There was no hurry, no bustle, no rustle of clothing. No sound of traffic or of jet liners or of feet. No subdued opening or closing of doors. No clock. No ticking. No impatience. “Very restful,” said Mrs. Sloane approvingly. “It reminds me — ”

The man behind the curtain waited. He had all the time in the world. He listened. Mrs. Sloane blew her nose, murmured, wiped her eyes. “It reminds me” — she faltered again — “of a day in early May.”

She was weeping, all at once, like a spring torrent. “I can’t bear living any longer!” she cried. “I can’t bear it!”

She clenched her hands on her knees and was horrified at the echoing sound of her outburst. She looked about the marble room, cringing. Mrs. Merrill Sloane screaming like this, Mrs. Sloane who managed the Junior League ruthlessly, the Rheumatic Hospital League, the Debutante Cotillion, the Town Club; Mrs. Merrill Sloane who said, and said finally, who should be admitted to the very core of the city’s society, who should be chosen for the League for the Philharmonic, the Crippled Children’s Hospital Board, the Green Country Club. Mrs. Merrill Sloane whose husband could buy and sell the whole city.

Buy and Sell.

The man behind the curtain waited. She stared at the curtain, which did not move or stir. But she could feel the great patience, the great sympathy. “Are you someone I know?” she said. The man waited. “I suppose not,” she murmured. She paused. Then she exclaimed, “No one knows me!”

She had the strangest sensation that the man behind the curtain knew her very well, and with affection and understanding, and that she could trust him. She said, “I hope I can trust you. After all, I have a position. May I trust you?”

Did a voice answer “Yes”? She was never sure. “Very silly, really,” she said as the tears ran down her gray cheeks. “I shouldn’t have come. But there is all that talk. You listen, they say. No one ever listens anymore. My mother did, but she died when I was ten years old. I’ve never found anyone to listen since then. Certainly not my children!”

She leaned toward the curtains urgently. “Mine is a silly story. I’ve talked with my doctor. He’s indulgent! Indulgent! Does he ever know how much his indulgence is like slamming a door in one’s face? I’ve talked with my clergyman too. He’s very elegant. He delivers the most erudite lectures — I mean sermons. Are you a clergyman? I didn’t mean to offend you. But lectures — I tried to talk to him; he murmured something about ‘my time of life’. Is there a ‘time of life’ when one isn’t in agony? No!”

She twisted her gloves in her sweating hands. “I’ve thought of killing myself,” she said, and looked at the curtains fearfully. They were not agitated; there was no stir of protest behind them, nor reproach.

“A very silly story,” she said. “I don’t know why I am wasting your time like this. I have an appointment at — ” The man did not speak behind the curtain. “An appointment,” she repeated. Then she cried out, “What does an appointment mean! It means nothing at all! People all have appointments! With what? With whom? Why? With death?”

She paused. She said in a very low voice, “That is very strange. It has just occurred to me that we all have appointments with death. I never thought of that before. Death. Death. When you think of that, everything else seems very foolish. Except a spring day in May. That is all that matters.

“You see,” she said, “my family is very old, and very distinguished, in America. Scholars, professors, lawyers, doctors, financiers. There are three governors in my family, too, and four senators. My father could walk in and out of the White House any time he wished; he had only to announce he was going to Washington. I have sent his letters to the Library of Congress, and all the letters of the Presidents, too. My aunt married an English peer. We are very distinguished.”

If the man behind the curtain was impressed, he gave no sign. Mrs. Sloane became smaller in her chair, like a girl. “One has obligations,” she offered. The pale warm light beamed down at her from the ceiling. “One has duties,” she offered again. “One mustn’t consider just oneself, must one?”

Did the man say “No” in a very gentle voice? She leaned toward the curtain again. “You do understand, don’t you?” she said. “Really, I am taking up a great deal of your time with my silly story. What did I say earlier? Oh yes, an appointment with death.” She considered. “Once I read somewhere that when we love we have become acquainted with death. I am very irrelevant, am I not? I am ashamed of myself, too. My husband has at least eight million dollars; why should I complain of anything?

“Oh yes, that day in May. You see, I’d known Clyde Bennett since we were children together. He was of a very distinguished family too. He built a tree house on the land of our summer home. We used to climb up there together and talk. About the most childish things. A leaf, perhaps, from the elm. Full of veins. It was very wonderful, thinking of the sap in the leaf. Clyde had a magnifying glass. We’d look at things through it. The leaf. Green and living. An insect. We’d stare at it, and it would be frightened, just like a child, and we’d be sorry and let it go. I wonder what it felt. I’m sure it must have felt something. I never thought of that before; I never wondered if insects — and people — felt anything important. What is importance?”

She waited. There was no sound. But a sense of vigor came to her, like a memory of her childhood. She laughed tearfully. “Why, everything’s important, isn’t it? Certainly. Everything in the sight of — of” She put her hands over her face and whispered, “God.”

After a long time she lifted her head and faced the curtains resolutely. “I really don’t know why I am complaining! Clyde’s family lost their money; so did ours. So marriage was out of the question! I remember that last day I saw him. We were in the tree house, and it was spring, and May, and it was raining. Do you remember what rain sounds like in a tree, with the leaves rustling and dripping and gleaming about you, and no sound at all but the rain? And everything green and hushed and safe? Clyde and I were eighteen then. He asked me to wait for him. He had an uncle in Hartford who might help him. I never knew. I only knew what my father had said that last night, ‘Clyde is going away, perhaps for a long time. Our family is very distinguished, and famous. You have a duty; you are my only daughter and you have three younger brothers who must be educated to live up to our standard in life. Old families must never wither away; they owe a responsibility to their country. Only money can save them, and we have no money.

“ ‘But there is Merrill Sloane in my office. A country bumpkin, the son of a rich buccaneer. No family, of course. Pirates. Blackguards. But they have money. He wants to marry you’. ”

Mrs. Sloane bit her lip. Her tears were like acid on her cheeks. “I knew Merrill. A big, awkward, stumbling, bumbling young man. A university graduate; I simply don’t know what education is coming to when a man like Merrill can graduate — with honors! Summa cum laude. Think of that! I always thought that universities were above bribery, but now I simply don’t know! Besides, he didn’t have Clyde’s elegance and delicacy, and sensitiveness of character. A dull brute.”

She looked at the curtains. “A man of no family, no background; a family without learning and tradition. Peasants, really. Summa cum laude, as if he were a wise man! Isn’t that ridiculous? A wise man — Merrill! At least he had the intelligence not to try to appear wise; he was very quiet when I would see him in Papa’s office. Did I tell you that Papa had a lumber company? His father acquired it as a sort of joke; Grandfather was a banker, and he foreclosed on a fine farm with much timber on it. That is how Papa became interested in lumber — if he really was. But Papa really preferred Meissen china; he had quite a collection. Of course it sold for practically nothing. I never cared about it, myself.

“Merrill came in as Papa’s assistant. Such a joke in the family, the lumber, and then Merrill. Of course I must admit that Merrill had — has — a feeling for wood. He carves almost lovely things in his spare time. He has no social graces whatsoever; he belongs to no clubs, except nominally. Yet people seem to like him; I don’t know why.

“Oh, please forgive me. I forgot to tell you that I married Merrill when I was nineteen. For his money. For Papa. He saved all of us. My brothers went to Harvard and made excellent marriages. Merrill — I must give him credit again — didn’t seem to care much about all the money he had. He gave my brothers large, permanent allowances. Settled trusts on their children. That was quite unnecessary, you know. They could have tried to do something for themselves. One must have a little independence. I think Merrill really did that — ” Mrs. Sloane dropped her wet handkerchief, and her gray face became strained and startled. “I think Merrill did that for me! For me! To please me! I never thought of that before!”

She burst into wild tears and bent her head. “I never thought of that!” she sobbed. “To please me, to do something he thought I wanted!”

She shrank deeper into the chair. “Merrill! I married him because he said he loved me. And I despised him. I have despised him — all these years. Only a dull brute with dirty money he had inherited from his father. I couldn’t talk to him about anything — why couldn’t I? Summa cum laude. I thought that was such a joke. Was it a joke? Oh, God, was it a joke?”

She stood up and approached the curtain, and she was trembling. “I was so lonely all these years! But now I am wondering if Merrill hasn’t been lonely too. The children — our children. They all love Merrill; they talk with him. I never could. I say to them, ‘What can you talk about with your father?’ And laugh. They never laughed back. They looked at me — they look at me — as if they despised me, as if I were dull and stupid — Oh, God, are you listening?

“My children hate me! They have nothing to say to me. The girls avoid me; the boys are indifferent. But they are always with Merrill. I have no one. I hear them laughing with him, and talking, talking, talking. I’m so lonely! I’m so terribly lonely!”

She stammered, sobbed, wept. “Merrill. Are you lonely? What did I ever give you but scorn? Merrill! Poor Merrill! Why were you so patient? Why did you not leave me long ago? What am I to you?”

She went closer to the curtain, and it was within reach of her hand.

“What am I to you, who’ve offended you so? Can you ever forgive me? Oh, God, can you forgive me?”

Her shaking hand reached out and touched the button. The curtains stirred. She could see them through her tears. They blew as if in a slight wind. They separated, and a light shone out. Now the curtains rolled apart swiftly, and Mrs. Merrill Sloane stood and looked in silence. The light shone all about her.

“Yes, yes,” she whispered, gazing at the man fully revealed to her. “You forgive. I hope Merrill will too.”

She looked again and murmured. She walked through the rear exit, and she walked as a girl walks, running to someone who is waiting for her, and she is free, and full of joy and love. In the springtime.