Collected Stories

  “You keep back, I tell you,” he said.

  “Why back?” Weddel said. He looked at the boy’s wan, strained face; he thought swiftly, “I dont know whether I am playing Indian or not.” He said aloud: “Why must he keep back?”

  The boy looked at Weddel; he stopped, pulling the sorrel up. “We’d work,” he said. “We wouldn’t shame you.”

  Weddel’s face was now as sober as the boy’s. They looked at one another. “Do you think we have guessed wrong? We had to guess. We had to guess one out of three.”

  Again it was as if the boy had not heard him. “You wont think hit is me? You swear hit?”

  “Yes. I swear it.” He spoke quietly, watching the boy; they spoke now as two men or two children. “What do you think we ought to do?”

  “Turn back. They will be gone now. We could …” He drew back on the bridle; again the Thoroughbred came abreast and forged ahead.

  “You mean, it could be along here?” Weddel said. Suddenly he spurred the sorrel, jerking the clinging boy forward. “Let go,” he said. The boy held onto the bridle, swept forward until the two horses were again abreast. On the Thoroughbred the Negro perched, highkneed, his mouth still talking, flobbed down with ready speech, easy and worn with talk like an old shoe with walking.

  “I done tole him en tole him,” the Negro said.

  “Let go!” Weddel said, spurring the sorrel, forcing its shoulder into the boy. “Let go!”

  “You wont turn back?” the boy said. “You wont?”

  “Let go!” Weddel said. His teeth showed a little beneath his mustache; he lifted the sorrel bodily with the spurs. The boy let go of the bridle and ducked beneath the Thoroughbred’s neck; Weddel, glancing back as the sorrel leaped, saw the boy surge upward and on to the Thoroughbred’s back, shoving the Negro back along its spine until he vanished.

  “They think you will be riding the good horse,” the boy said in a thin, panting voice; “I told them you would be riding … Down the mou-tin!” he cried as the Thoroughbred swept past; “the horse can make hit! Git outen the path! Git outen the.…” Weddel spurred the sorrel; almost abreast the two horses reached the bend where the path doubled back upon itself and into a matted shoulder of laurel and rhododendron. The boy looked back over his shoulder. “Keep back!” he cried. “Git outen the path!” Weddel rowelled the sorrel. On his face was a thin grimace of exasperation and anger almost like smiling.

  It was still on his dead face when he struck the earth, his foot still fast in the stirrup. The sorrel leaped at the sound and dragged Weddel to the path side and halted and whirled and snorted once, and began to graze. The Thoroughbred however rushed on past the curve and whirled and rushed back, the blanket twisted under its belly and its eyes rolling, springing over the boy’s body where it lay in the path, the face wrenched sideways against a stone, the arms back-sprawled, openpalmed, like a woman with lifted skirts springing across a puddle. Then it whirled and stood above Weddel’s body, whinnying, with tossing head, watching the laurel copse and the fading gout of black powder smoke as it faded away.

  The Negro was on his hands and knees when the two men emerged from the copse. One of them was running. The Negro watched him run forward, crying monotonously, “The durned fool! The durned fool! The durned fool!” and then stop suddenly and drop the gun; squatting, the Negro saw him become stone still above the fallen gun, looking down at the boy’s body with an expression of shock and amazement like he was waking from a dream. Then the Negro saw the other man. In the act of stopping, the second man swung the rifle up and began to reload it. The Negro did not move. On his hands and knees he watched the two white men, his irises rushing and wild in the bloodshot whites. Then he too moved and, still on hands and knees, he turned and scuttled to where Weddel lay beneath the sorrel and crouched over Weddel and looked again and watched the second man backing slowly away up the path, loading the rifle. He watched the man stop; he did not close his eyes nor look away. He watched the rifle elongate and then rise and diminish slowly and become a round spot against the white shape of Vatch’s face like a period on a page. Crouching, the Negro’s eyes rushed wild and steady and red, like those of a cornered animal.

  VI

  BEYOND

  Beyond

  Black Music

  The Leg

  Mistral

  Divorce in Naples

  Carcassonne

  Beyond

  THE HARD ROUND ear of the stethoscope was cold and unpleasant upon his naked chest; the room, big and square, furnished with clumsy walnut—the bed where he had first slept alone, which had been his marriage bed, in which his son had been conceived and been born and lain dressed for the coffin—the room familiar for sixty-five years, by ordinary peaceful and lonely and so peculiarly his own as to have the same odor which he had, seemed to be cluttered with people, though there were but three of them and all of them he knew: Lucius Peabody who should have been down town attending to his medical practice, and the two Negroes, the one who should be in the kitchen and the other with the lawn mower on the lawn, making some pretence toward earning the money which on Saturday night they would expect.

  But worst of all was the hard cold little ear of the stethoscope, worse even than the outrage of his bared chest with its fine delicate matting of gray hair. In fact, about the whole business there was just one alleviating circumstance. “At least,” he thought with fretted and sardonic humor, “I am spared that uproar of female connections which might have been my lot, which is the ordinary concomitant of occasions of marriage or divorcement. And if he will just move his damned little toy telephone and let my niggers go back to work—”

  And then, before he had finished the thought, Peabody did remove the stethoscope. And then, just as he was settling himself back into the pillow with a sigh of fretted relief, one of the Negroes, the woman, set up such a pandemonium of wailing as to fetch him bolt upright in the bed, his hands to his ears. The Negress stood at the foot of the bed, her long limber black hands motionless on the footboard, her eyes whitely backrolled into her skull and her mouth wide open, while from it rolled slow billows of soprano sound as mellow as high-register organ tones and wall-shattering as a steamer siren.

  “Chlory!” he shouted. “Stop that!” She didn’t stop. Apparently she could neither see nor hear. “You, Jake!” he shouted to the Negro man who stood beside her, his hands too on the footboard, his face brooding upon the bed with an expression darkly and profoundly enigmatic; “get her out of here! At once!” But Jake too did not move, and he then turned to Peabody in angry outrage. “Here! Loosh! Get these damn niggers out of here!” But Peabody also did not seem to hear him. The Judge watched him methodically folding the stethoscope into its case; glared at him for a moment longer while the woman’s shattering noise billowed through the room. Then he flung the covers back and rose from the bed and hurried furiously from the room and from the house.

  At once he realized that he was still in his pajamas, so he buttoned his overcoat. It was of broadcloth, black, brushed, of an outmoded elegance, with a sable collar. “At least they didn’t have time to hide this from me,” he thought in fretted rage. “Now, if I just had my.…” He looked down at his feet. “Ah. I seem to have.…” He looked at his shoes. “That’s fortunate, too.” Then the momentary surprise faded too, now that outrage had space in which to disseminate itself. He touched his hat, then he put his hand to his lapel. The jasmine was there. Say what he would, curse Jake as he often had to do, the Negro never forgot whatever flower in its season. Always it would be there, fresh and recent and unblemished, on the morning coffee tray. The flower and the.… He clasped his ebony stick beneath his arm and opened the briefcase. The two fresh handkerchiefs were there, beside the book. He thrust one of them into his breast pocket and went on. After a while the noise of Chlory’s wailing died away.

  Then for a little while it was definitely unpleasant. He detested crowds: the milling and aimless and patient stupidity; the concussion of life-quick flesh
with his own. But presently, if not soon, he was free, and standing so, still a little ruffled, a little annoyed, he looked back with fading outrage and distaste at the throng as it clotted quietly through the entrance. With fading distaste until the distaste was gone, leaving his face quiet and quite intelligent, with a faint and long constant overtone of quizzical bemusement not yet tinctured with surprised speculation, not yet puzzled, not yet wary. That was to come later. Hence it did not show in his voice, which was now merely light, quizzical, contained, “There seems to be quite a crowd of them.”

  “Yes,” the other said. The Judge looked at him and saw a young man in conventional morning dress with some subtle effluvium of weddings, watching the entrance with a strained, patient air.

  “You are expecting someone?” the Judge said.

  Now the other looked at him. “Yes. You didn’t see—But you don’t know her.”

  “Know whom?”

  “My wife. That is, she is not my wife yet. But the wedding was to be at noon.”

  “Something happened, did it?”

  “I had to do it.” The young man looked at him, strained, anxious. “I was late. That’s why I was driving fast. A child ran into the road. I was going too fast to stop. So I had to turn.”

  “But you missed the child?”

  “Yes.” The other looked at him. “You don’t know her?”

  “And are you waiting here to.…” The Judge stared at the other. His eyes were narrowed, his gaze was piercing, hard. He said suddenly, sharply, “Nonsense.”

  “What? What did you say?” the other asked with his vague, strained, almost beseeching air. The Judge looked away. His frowning concentration, his reflex of angry astonishment, was gone. He seemed to have wiped it from his face by a sudden deliberate action. He was like a man who, not a swordsman, has practiced with a blade a little against a certain improbable crisis, and who suddenly finds himself, blade in hand, face to face with the event. He looked at the entrance, his face alert, musing swiftly: he seemed to muse upon the entering faces with a still and furious concentration, and quietly; quietly he looked about, then at the other again. The young man still watched him.

  “You’re looking for your wife too, I suppose,” he said. “I hope you find her. I hope you do.” He spoke with a sort of quiet despair. “I suppose she is old, as you are. It must be hell on the one who has to watch and wait for the other one he or she has grown old in marriage with, because it is so terrible to wait and watch like me, for a girl who is a maiden to you. Of course I think mine is the most unbearable. You see if it had only been the next day—anything. But then if it had, I guess I could not have turned out for that kid. I guess I just think mine is so terrible. It can’t be as bad as I think it is. It just can’t be. I hope you find her.”

  The Judge’s lip lifted. “I came here to escape someone; not to find anyone.” He looked at the other. His face was still broken with that grimace which might have been smiling. But his eyes were not smiling. “If I were looking for anybody, it would probably be my son.”

  “Oh. A son. I see.”

  “Yes. He would be about your age. He was ten when he died.”

  “Look for him here.”

  Now the Judge laughed outright, save for his eyes. The other watched him with that grave anxiety leavened now with quiet interested curiosity. “You mean you don’t believe?” The Judge laughed aloud. Still laughing, he produced a cloth sack of tobacco and rolled a slender cigarette. When he looked up, the other was watching the entrance again. The Judge ceased to laugh.

  “Have you a match?” he said. The other looked at him. The Judge raised the cigarette. “A match.”

  The other sought in his pockets. “No.” He looked at the Judge. “Look for him here,” he said.

  “Thank you,” the Judge answered. “I may avail myself of your advice later.” He turned away. Then he paused and looked back. The young man was watching the entrance. The Judge watched him, bemused, his lip lifted. He turned on, then he stopped still. His face was now completely shocked, into complete immobility like a mask; the sensitive, worn mouth, the delicate nostrils, the eyes all pupil or pupil-less. He could not seem to move at all. Then Mothershed turned and saw him. For an instant Mothershed’s pale eyes flickered, his truncated jaw, collapsing steadily with a savage, toothless motion, ceased.

  “Well?” Mothershed said.

  “Yes,” the Judge said; “it’s me.” Now it was that, as the mesmerism left him, the shadow bewildered and wary and complete, touched his face. Even to himself his words sounded idiotic. “I thought that you were dea.…” Then he made a supreme and gallant effort, his voice light, quizzical, contained again, “Well?”

  Mothershed looked at him—a squat man in a soiled and mismatched suit stained with grease and dirt, his soiled collar innocent of tie—with a pale, lightly slumbering glare filled with savage outrage. “So they got you here, too, did they?”

  “That depends on who you mean by ‘they’ and what you mean by ‘here.’ ”

  Mothershed made a savage, sweeping gesture with one arm. “Here, by God! The preachers. The Jesus shouters.”

  “Ah,” the Judge said. “Well, if I am where I am beginning to think I am, I don’t know whether I am here or not. But you are not here at all, are you?” Mothershed cursed violently. “Yes,” the Judge said, “we never thought, sitting in my office on those afternoons, discussing Voltaire and Ingersoll, that we should ever be brought to this, did we? You, the atheist whom the mere sight of a church spire on the sky could enrage; and I who have never been able to divorce myself from reason enough to accept even your pleasant and labor-saving theory of nihilism.”

  “Labor-saving!” Mothershed cried. “By God, I.…” He cursed with impotent fury. The Judge might have been smiling save for his eyes. He sealed the cigarette again.

  “Have you a match?”

  “What?” Mothershed said. He glared at the Judge, his mouth open. He sought through his clothes. From out the savage movement, strapped beneath his armpit, there peeped fleetly the butt of a heavy pistol. “No,” he said. “I ain’t.”

  “Yes,” the Judge said. He twisted the cigarette, his gaze light, quizzical. “But you still haven’t told me what you are doing here. I heard that you had.…”

  Again Mothershed cursed, prompt, outraged. “I ain’t. I just committed suicide.” He glared at the Judge. “God damn it, I remember raising the pistol; I remember the little cold ring it made against my ear; I remember when I told my finger on the trigger.…” He glared at the Judge. “I thought that that would be one way I could escape the preachers, since by the church’s own token.…” He glared at the Judge, his pale gaze apoplectic and outraged. “Well, I know why you are here. You come here looking for that boy.”

  The Judge looked down, his lip lifted, the movement pouched upward about his eyes. He said quietly, “No.”

  Mothershed watched him, glared at him. “Looking for that boy. Agnosticism.” He snarled it. “Won’t say ‘Yes’ and won’t say ‘No’ until you see which way the cat will jump. Ready to sell out to the highest bidder. By God, I’d rather have give up and died in sanctity, with every heaven-yelping fool in ten miles around.…”

  “No,” the Judge said quietly behind the still, dead gleam of his teeth. Then his teeth vanished quietly, though he did not look up. He sealed the cigarette carefully again. “There seem to be a lot of people here.” Mothershed now began to watch him with speculation, tasting his savage gums, his pale furious glare arrested. “You have seen other familiar faces besides my own here, I suppose. Even those of men whom you know only by name, perhaps?”

  “Oh,” Mothershed said. “I see. I get you now.” The Judge seemed to be engrossed in the cigarette. “You want to take a whirl at them too, do you? Go ahead. I hope you will get a little more out of them that will stick to your guts than I did. Maybe you will, since you don’t seem to want to know as much as you want something new to be uncertain about. Well, you can get plenty of that from a
ny of them.”

  “You mean you have.…”

  Again Mothershed cursed, harsh, savage. “Sure. Ingersoll. Paine. Every bastard one of them that I used to waste my time reading when I had better been sitting on the sunny side of a log.”

  “Ah,” the Judge said. “Ingersoll. Is he.…”

  “Sure. On a bench just inside the park yonder. And maybe on the same bench you’ll find the one that wrote the little women books. If he ain’t there, he ought to be.”

  So the Judge sat forward, elbows on knees, the unlighted cigarette in his fingers. “So you too are reconciled,” he said. The man who Mothershed said was Ingersoll looked at his profile quietly. “To this place.”

  “Ah,” the other said. He made a brief, short gesture. “Reconciled.”

  The Judge did not look up. “You accept it? You acquiesce?” He seemed to be absorbed in the cigarette. “If 1 could just see Him, talk to Him.” The cigarette turned slowly in his fingers. “Perhaps I was seeking Him. Perhaps I was seeking Him all the time I was reading your books, and Voltaire and Montesquieu. Perhaps I was.” The cigarette turned slowly. “I have believed in you. In your sincerity. I said, if Truth is to be found by man, this man will be among those who find it. At one time—I was in the throes of that suffering from a still green hurt which causes even an intelligent man to cast about for anything, any straw—I had a foolish conceit: you will be the first to laugh at it as I myself did later. I thought, perhaps there is a hereafter, a way station into nothingness perhaps, where for an instant lesser men might speak face to face with men like you whom they could believe; could hear from such a man’s own lips the words: ‘There is hope,’ or: ‘There is nothing.’ I said to myself, in such case it will not be Him whom I shall seek; it will be Ingersoll or Paine or Voltaire.” He watched the cigarette. “Give me your word now. Say either of these to me. I will believe.”