Bright Flows the River

  “Well, thanks,” said Guy. He thought he was choking. He loosened his tie. “Where’s Bill now?”

  “I thought it would be better if he wasn’t on hand when you got home. So, he’s staying with that friend of his, Kenneth Fields. Oh, I’ve got all kinds of character witnesses, including Lucy’s dear pastor! There was never a kinder, more gentle, more considerate young boy—than your son. It’s a good thing we hold a lot of the witnesses’ paper, isn’t it?”

  “Thanks,” said Guy again.

  “Would you like to talk to Mrs. Clancy yourself?”

  “God, no.” Guy thought of his wife. “How is Lucy taking it? Screeching?”

  “I talked to her this morning. She’s on tranquilizers. I told her the less she says to you, the better for everybody. Oh, everything’s just ginger peachy now!”

  “Spare me the details,” said Guy, who felt so weak and faint that he thought he was dying, and hoped so.

  Little Julie Clancy did not die. But she would be internally maimed for life. It was all settled within two weeks, when the child left the hospital. It had cost a lot of money.

  On the day Mrs. Clancy and her daughter left Cranston, which was four weeks later, Guy called for his son at the Fields house and took him out to a quiet meadow, lonely, wet, and empty. There he beat William until the youth was unable to cry any longer and until he could not stand. It was done without conversation, without recriminations. Then Guy half carried, half walked his bloodied son to his car and took him home. Lucy fainted when she saw William’s condition, but Guy would not let her call Dr. Parkinson. He said, when she regained consciousness, “We’ll never talk of this again, any of us. Do you understand?”

  She could only stare at his dreadful face and shudder. She had never feared her husband before, but she feared him now. She was convinced he was mad.

  James waited in the suite, watching the awful memories running like dark water over Guy’s face. It went on for a long time. Then Guy put his elbows on his knees and dropped his head into his palms.

  “I should have let him take the consequences,” he said, in a distant voice. “I shouldn’t have interferred. But—there was everything on which I had based my life, staked my life. Everything. Still, I should have let him—”

  “What?” said James, gently.

  “My father would have called it a point of honor,” said Guy. “A point of honor. But you can’t cash honor at the bank.”

  “There’s the bank of justice,” said James with compassion, and he was all at sea. What was Guy rambling about, what memories were afflicting him?

  “There isn’t any justice,” said Guy. “There’s only money.”

  “My own father didn’t think so,” said James. “He gave it all up—for a point of honor, as you say.”

  Guy made a sound of desperate derision, dropped his hands, and said, “Go away, Jim. You make everything come back to me, and I don’t think I can stand it any longer. You make me feel—like shit.”

  “When a man feels that, he has confronted himself and passed judgment. On himself. And that’s the best he can ever do in his life.”

  But Guy turned his face away into the chair and would speak no more.

  19

  It was snowing when Beth Turner arrived at the Old House to take James with her. She had a little Volkswagen, cramped but warm, and almost new, equipped with what she told James were snow tires. He had been a little dubious about its lightness in the snow, but the small vehicle spurted forward like an animated toy, its wheels spurning the snow and the sheets of ice. Ground blizzards, like dust devils, twirled from the pavement, spun by the wind which was steadily rising. Beth drove expertly; James could see her strong contained profile in the whitish dusk of the day; it possessed dignity and firmness, yet the mouth was large and tender. He thought he had never seen so fine a woman, for all her plainness, and he began to wonder again about her and Guy Jerald. She asked him questions concerning England, which she loved, and they chattered together like old friends, but never with an intimate word. James saw that Beth had complete control over her speech and her emotions, an uncommon thing in a woman.

  Her green knitted hood slid back and showed the rubicund glow of her hair. He saw that her hair was long and so fine and sleek that it kept slipping from its pins, and when she glanced at him he saw the aliveness and sparkle of her eyes, sometimes amused, sometimes thoughtful, sometimes absent. Now she was glancing through the steamy windows of the car with some anxiety, for the snowstorm had definitely turned into a blizzard, dry and roaring with the wind. But the little car chugged on, cheerful and determined. Beth talked of her days as a teacher, and would laugh with elaborate shudders. She talked of her parents; she talked of her farm and the animals she loved. But she did not talk of Guy. This was not due to forgetfulness, he knew. She was a woman who would never betray anyone, nor confide their secrets.

  The distant mountains, for some time, had been shaking behind their trembling veils of snow. Now they had disappeared entirely. Beth turned on the headlights of the car; they shone dazzlingly on the snowflakes, which danced and whirled so that sight was cut off after a few feet. “It looks very bad, doesn’t it?” asked James, to which Beth said, “Oh, this is nothing. I’ve seen and driven in much worse than this. Pure ice, like blue steel.”

  “It looks like Switzerland,” he said. He found himself telling her anecdotes about his winter holidays in the Swiss mountains. He had rarely been so voluble; he had discovered she was an easy woman to talk to, attentive, genuinely interested, subtle. He found that he had been mentioning Emma Godwin, and was surprised at himself. Beth said, “You must love her very much.”

  This embarrassed James. He said, “We care for each other very deeply. We have known each other for a long time, over twenty years. Not only had Emma lost her husband and two little children in that water tragedy, but her whole life had been tragic. Her mother had become mentally incompetent shortly after Emma’s birth, and was confined to nursing homes and institutions for the rest of her life, which lasted seventeen years. It drove Emma’s father into bankruptcy, all that expense, you know; he was a barrister in the City, and doing very well until this misfortune came to him. He had hoped for a splendid future for Emma, his only child, but the burden was finally too much for him. Emma had to leave school and work in a London shop, a boutique. Her father’s health failed; all the savings and investments were gone; she had, for three years before his death, supported him as well as herself. She wanted a shop of her own, but there was no money. How she and her father survived is beyond me, but when he died of sheer misery, after prolonged medical care, Emma did not owe a penny. Her father had three pounds left.”

  He sighed. Beth nodded gravely. “Then,” James continued, “Emma developed tuberculosis. She almost died. But worse than that, to Emma, was that she could not pay the bills, hospital ones, you know. She fought for her life. Emma is a very brave woman. When she was released from the hospital, with admonitions that she was to eat ‘good, nourishing food,’ she had nothing but her mother’s betrothal and wedding rings. She had hoped never to be forced to sell them. But this was necessity. She went back to work in the shops. Then she was stricken with arthritis. It became so very bad that she could hardly walk, and her hands were crippled. It was then that Emma decided she must have recourse to God, for a female cousin had just died and left Emma with a little second cousin, a girl, to support.” James smiled sadly.

  “She didn’t apply for any—Welfare?” asked Beth.

  James was aghast. “Good God, no! Not my Emma! She would have starved first! She is a lady of immense pride. It was her pride, she said, that kept her alive. For some mysterious reason, after she took the child in—she had two wretched rooms, a bed-sitter, in a very unsavory part of London—the arthritis suddenly left her and has never returned. Her doctor was quite baffled. Well.” James paused. “Those were bad times. Emma was so skillful a saleswoman, and so knowledgeable about clothes, that she was never in any danger of
being sacked. In fact, the boutique flourished under her management. Still, there was little money, but Emma fought on. The child she had sheltered was, however, none too healthy. She was a wan small thing, but never complaining, and so even Emma did not guess, or know, for a long time—”

  He paused again. “There was a lady who had taken a fancy to Emma; the shop carried only expensive clothing. She relied on Emma’s taste. On several occasions she brought her husband with her, a stockbroker with large connections in the City. He was an excellent man, in his early forties. Emma was scarcely thirty. He invited Emma to have lunch with him several times, and she gladly accepted. It meant a saving. They were much attracted to each other. In short, she became his mistress, after some time, partly because she admired him very much and partly because her young second cousin had developed leukemia—and there was no money. The gentleman was very generous about this; for the first time in her life Emma accepted money which she had not earned, and it was not for herself. Too, there was affection.”

  He hesitated. “The child died, of course, but at least she had the best of care for eighteen months, with warmth and comfort and nurses and private hospitals. In the meantime, the gentleman’s wife had become aware of the liaison, and there was a divorce. The wife was generous; she was rich in her own right, and so there was no question of punitive settlements. Two days after the divorce, which was not punitive, either, Emma and her friend were married.”

  There was a long silence in the car. At last Beth said, in a shy voice, “Is she very beautiful?”

  “Emma? Not at all. She is almost ugly, but a very fascinating woman. After the first, you don’t notice that she is no beauty; her personality, her soul if you will, is so beautiful, so gay, so brilliant and quick, so kind, so aware.”

  James smiled to himself. Even so intelligent a woman as Beth Turner was sensitive about appearances, and knew herself to be no beauty, either. Ah, women, poor women, sad women, who know their first appeal to a man must be physical, and the more pleasing, the better. He added, “Lord Godwin was a very perceptive man; he saw what Emma was, and that is why he took to her at the very first meeting. Incidentally, when Emma married her lover she repaid all the old bills she had incurred. She told me they had been like an incubus on her for years.”

  “Are you two to be married?” asked Beth, still in that shy voice.

  “Married? Frankly, we never discussed that seriously. I think Emma is afraid of marriage, of responsibility. She is afraid of—death. Not for herself, but for me. She suffered so much when her husband died, and her children. She has the illusion that if I died she would not suffer that way, nor would I suffer in the event of her death, if we were not married. She is very wrong, of course.”

  “Of course,” said Beth, gently, and in the dim light of the dashboard James could see that her face was remembering and her lips were mournful. Now she rubbed at the windshield with her mittened hand, for the glass kept growing steamy, and several times she had to open the window to look out. “We’re almost home,” she said. On the last occasion when she had opened the window a great white whirlwind of snow had blown into the car, and the sound of the wind was an increasing roar. Huge blobs of snow stuck to the windshield, and the wipers would scarcely push them aside when more stuck. James could see nothing but these; the countryside was dark, with only an occasional distant light winking mistily. James was warm enough but the last blast from the opened window had assured him that it was monstrously cold outside. He said, “I miss Emma very much. I had not intended to be away so long. But I do owe old Jerry for my life. And we were close friends in the Army. In a way, we had no one else there. We were the ones outside the Pale.”

  Beth gave him a quick glance but made no comment. “We turn in here,” she said, and James found himself clutching his small seat with both hands, for the car was rocking and swaying over a very bumpy and unseen narrow road, which he guessed was unpaved. Beth said, “Guy’s men laid a wide road, on my easement, for his development nearby. I don’t use it. I don’t even look at it! Usually it’s full of station wagons, which I call mommy wagons, to the ladies’ annoyance. We aren’t friends. I’ve put up No Trespassing signs all over the boundaries of my little farm. This also annoys the professional mothers; they thought my farm should be open for the kiddies to race over freely and annoy my animals. I had to have a few obsessed fathers arrested for the trespassing. The fathers, too, thought a farm was public property. They wanted to hunt on it. Now I am the ‘old witch,’ and well hated, but at least I have privacy.” She laughed, and it was a delightful laugh. “A mother can forgive almost anything but someone who doesn’t ‘love the children.’”

  “It’s the same in England now,” said James, with regret. “Since the proletariat of the cities became dominant—I call them the street rabble—discipline, self-respect, order, a regard for privacy, for the sanctity of the individual, have been abandoned. All is now a welter of love. And hate, of course. We have a race problem, too. I often think of Moses’ admonition, that God had ordained the races and the nations to be apart, to have their own identity and wholeness which must not be imposed upon, or blurred into another. The blurring leads to confusion, resentment, and finally to implacable hatred. While all mankind is one brotherhood—I suppose—one must have respect for the apartness of his brother, and his brother’s need to be let alone. All this jumbling together, this assault on the dignity of others, will lead to disaster, I am afraid, and not far long from now.”

  The car came to a halt. “Here we are,” said Beth. But James could see nothing but a few scattered lights in a wall of snow. “I leave some lights on when I know it will be dark before I get back.” James opened the door and stepped into deep blowing snow, which engulfed his boots and stung his face. It was, indeed, very cold. He shivered, pulled down his hat and buttoned his coat to the throat. He plodded after Beth and marveled at the lithe quickness of her walk ahead of him, while he plunged and slipped. Now he saw the vague white outline of a small house almost upon him, and then Beth had opened the door and a path of warm lamplight struck out into the howling darkness; there was a wind of such force that it took the breath.

  Once inside, Beth relieved him of his hat and coat; his hands were quite numb, as was his nose, yet the walk had not been far. Beth knelt before the fireplace, set newspaper and kindling alight, and the big dry logs took fire immediately. James looked about the quiet and pleasant room with appreciation; he looked at the wall of books and the old rocking chair near the hearth. A bowl on a table, a fine Chinese bowl, held autumn fruit, and there were plants everywhere in pots, lush and fragrant. Some were blooming. It was all so welcoming, so peaceful, so inviting, so comfortable, he thought. So here old Jerry had come for sanctuary, for solace, and I don’t blame him. James’s acute eye saw that several pieces of furniture were authentic antiques, polished to a golden and brown blaze in the awakened fire.

  Beth had taken off her own hat and rough coat, and James saw that her frock was a deep yellow wool, plain and inexpensive, but beautiful on that tall and slender body. The wind had made her transparent skin rosy; her eyes were very bright, her tumbling hair disheveled. All at once, as Guy had seen, she was beautiful, with the rare beauty of complete womanhood, and its mystery also. He saw her high rounded breast under the wool, her white strong throat. She did not resemble Emma Godwin in the least, but to James there was a strange resemblance between the two women, for they were indeed women.

  “I have only a bean-and-ham casserole, and a salad, and Boston brown bread and an apple pie,” Beth said, but without apology. “And some vegetable soup, which I made yesterday. But it is my own ham. I smoke them myself.”

  “It sounds like a feast,” said James, ruefully thinking of his weight. He discovered he was hungry. He sat down automatically in the rocking chair and held out his hands to the hot fire. An honest fire, he thought, with a deep bed of old ashes. He saw there was a tall black and ancient clock in a distant corner. He was surprised to see it w
as quarter past six; the clock chimed, a sonorous and leisurely chime. Westminster. The window ledges outside were heaped with snow. The wind pounded the glass with a steady drumming note, and the snow hissed audibly. But here was security and calm.

  “I have only Bourbon,” said Beth. “It’s Guy’s favorite drink.”

  “And mine also,” said James, smiling at her with appreciation. “A taste I acquired. No ice, please. And a glass of water, with no ice, either.”

  “That’s the way Guy likes it,” she said, and there was a note of joy in her resonant voice, a note, he observed, almost of gratitude.

  She returned from the kitchen with a silver tray which held glasses, a pitcher of water, and a bottle of whiskey. There was also a dish of a variety of nuts. “Do help yourself,” she said, and he did so. She poured whiskey for herself. She sat down quite near to him, and he saw serenity coming back into her face, and he knew, again, that he was surrogate for another man. Lamplight and firelight mingled with each other. The rumbling of the fire kept the wind at bay, in the chimney, where it spoke with turmoil.

  “My house is really very small,” said Beth. “This room, a very tiny dining room, one bedroom, and a bathroom. But it is quite enough for me. I am so lucky to have found it, after I was forcibly retired from the schoolroom. My farm is very small, too, hardly a farm, less than sixteen acres, but it keeps me in vegetables and fruit and meat and poultry and eggs. It was so very—pleasant—until Guy built his development, and very quiet. Now I hear voices almost every day, and the sounds of cars. That’s why I really prefer winter, now. The voices aren’t so—imminent, and I can pretend no one lives near me. In the summer my trees hide the development, too, for which I am also lucky. Do you think I am a very naughty misanthrope?” she asked suddenly, and with laughter in her eyes.

  “No,” said James, with warm affection. “I don’t think man was intended to be cheek by jowl with his neighbor. That doesn’t lead to what the ‘liberals’ call understanding. It leads to—again—hatred and resentment. A man must have his wholeness, apart from others, a free air in which to live. I live in London, of course, where I have my practice, but on weekends we go to Emma’s house in Kent, a lovely large old house, and we spend our holidays there, and most of the summer. It’s quite a large estate, and no neighbors interfere with one, and call only when invited. England is so small—Little England now, alas—and so crowded that only a respect for the privacy of others keeps us from cutting one another’s throats. It’s called ‘English reserve.’ It’s really English pride, an acknowledgment that a neighbor deserves consideration.”