"It makes me sick," she explained. "I've tried it and I can't drink it."
"Nonsense," he said. "Just have one glass. It can't hurt you."
"No, thank you. No. I can't drink it."
Mr. Edwards thought of her reluctance as a delicate, a ladylike quality. He had never insisted until one evening when it occurred to him that he knew nothing about her. Wine might loosen her tongue. The more he thought of it, the better the idea seemed to him.
"It's not friendly of you not to have a glass with me."
"I tell you, it doesn't agree with me."
"Nonsense."
"I tell you I don't want it."
"This is silly," he said. "Do you want me to be angry with you?"
"No."
"Then drink a glass."
"I don't want it."
"Drink it." He held a glass for her, and she retreated from it.
"You don't know. It's not good for me."
"Drink it."
She took the glass and poured it down and stood still, quivering, seeming to listen. The blood flowed to her cheeks. She poured another glass for herself and another. Her eyes became set and cold. Mr. Edwards felt a fear of her. Something was happening to her which neither she nor he could control.
"I didn't want to do it. Remember that," she said calmly.
"Maybe you'd better not have any more."
She laughed and poured herself another glass. "It doesn't matter now," she said. "More won't make much difference."
"It's nice to have a glass or so," he said uneasily.
She spoke to him softly. "You fat slug," she said. "What do you know about me? Do you think I can't read every rotten thought you ever had? Want me to tell you? You wonder where a nice girl like me learned tricks. I'll tell you. I learned them in cribs--you hear?--cribs. I've worked in places you never even heard of--four years. Sailors brought me little tricks from Port Said. I know every nerve in your lousy body and I can use them."
"Catherine," he protested, "you don't know what you're saying."
"I could see it. You thought I would talk. Well, I'm talking."
She advanced slowly toward him, and Mr. Edwards overcame his impulse to edge away. He was afraid of her but he sat still. Directly in front of him she drank the last champagne in her glass, delicately struck the rim on the table, and jammed the ragged edge against his cheek.
And then he did run from the house and he could hear her laughing as he went.
3
Love to a man like Mr. Edwards is a crippling emotion. It ruined his judgment, canceled his knowledge, weakened him. He told himself that she was hysterical and tried to believe it, and it was made easier for him by Catherine. Her outbreak had terrified her, and for a time she made every effort to restore his sweet picture of her.
A man so painfully in love is capable of self-torture beyond belief. Mr. Edwards wanted with all his heart to believe in her goodness, but he was forced not to, as much by his own particular devil as by her outbreak. Almost instinctively he went about learning the truth and at the same time disbelieved it. He knew, for instance, that she would not put her money in a bank. One of his employees, using a complicated set of mirrors, found out the place in the cellar of the little brick house where she did keep it.
One day a clipping came from the agency he employed. It was an old newspaper account of a fire from a small-town weekly. Mr. Edwards studied it. His chest and stomach turned to molten metal and a redness glowed in his head behind his eyes. There was real fear mixed up in his love, and the precipitate from the mixing of these two is cruelty. He staggered dizzily to his office couch and lay face down, his forehead against the cool black leather. For a time he hung suspended, hardly breathing. Gradually his brain cleared. His mouth tasted salty, and there was a great ache of anger in his shoulders. But he was calm and his mind cut its intention through time like the sharp beam of a searchlight through a dark room. He moved slowly, checking his suitcase just as he always did when he started out to inspect his units--clean shirts and underwear, a nightgown and slippers, and the heavy quirt with the lash curving around the end of the suitcase.
He moved heavily up the little garden in front of the brick house and rang the bell.
Catherine answered it immediately. She had on her coat and hat.
"Oh!" she said. "What a shame! I must go out for a while."
Mr. Edwards put down his suitcase. "No," he said.
She studied him. Something was changed. He lumbered past her and went down into the cellar.
"Where are you going?" Her voice was shrill.
He did not reply. In a moment he came up again, carrying a small oak box. He opened his suitcase and put the box inside.
"That's mine," she said softly.
"I know."
"What are you up to?"
"I thought we'd go for a little trip."
"Where? I can't go."
"Little town in Connecticut. I have some business there. You told me once you wanted to work. You're going to work."
"I don't want to now. You can't make me. Why, I'll call the police!"
He smiled so horribly that she stepped back from him. His temples were thudding with blood. "Maybe you'd rather go to your home town," he said. "They had a big fire there several years ago. Do you remember that fire?"
Her eyes probed and searched him, seeking a soft place, but his eyes were flat and hard. "What do you want me to do?" she asked quietly.
"Just come for a little trip with me. You said you wanted to work."
She could think of only one plan. She must go along with him and wait for a chance. A man couldn't always watch. It would be dangerous to thwart him now--best go along with it and wait. That always worked. It always had. But his words had given Catherine real fear.
In the small town they got off the train at dusk, walked down its one dark street, and on out into the country. Catherine was wary and watchful. She had no access to his plan. In her purse she had a thin-bladed knife.
Mr. Edwards thought he knew what he intended to do. He meant to whip her and put her in one of the rooms at the inn, whip her and move her to another town, and so on until she was of no use any more. Then he would throw her out. The local constable would see to it that she did not run away. The knife did not bother him. He knew about that.
The first thing he did when they stopped in a private place between a stone wall and a fringe of cedars was to jerk the purse from her hand and throw it over the wall. That took care of the knife. But he didn't know about himself, because in all his life he had never been in love with a woman. He thought he only meant to punish her. After two slashes the quirt was not enough. He dropped it on the ground and used his fists. His breathing came out in squealing whines.
Catherine did her best not to fall into panic. She tried to duck his threshing fists or at least to make them ineffective, but at last fear overcame her and she tried to run. He leaped at her and brought her down, and by then his fists were not enough. His frantic hand found a stone on the ground and his cold control was burst through with a red roaring wave.
Later he looked down on her beaten face. He listened for her heartbeat and could hear nothing over the thumping of his own. Two complete and separate thoughts ran in his mind. One said, "Have to bury her, have to dig a hole and put her in it." And the other cried like a child, "I can't stand it. I couldn't bear to touch her." Then the sickness that follows rage overwhelmed him. He ran from the place, leaving his suitcase, leaving the quirt, leaving the oak box of money. He blundered away in the dusk, wondering only where he could hide his sickness for a while.
No question was ever asked of him. After a time of sickness to which his wife ministered tenderly, he went back to his business and never again let the insanity of love come near him. A man who can't learn from experience is a fool, he said. Always afterward he had a kind of fearful respect for himself. He had never known that the impulse to kill was in him.
That he had not killed Catherine was an accid
ent. Every blow had been intended to crush her. She was a long time unconscious and a long time half-conscious. She realized her arm was broken and that she must find help if she wanted to live. Wanting to live forced her to drag herself along the dark road, looking for help. She turned in at a gate and almost made the steps of the house before she fainted. The roosters were crowing in the chickenhouse and a gray rim of dawn lay on the east.
Chapter 10
1
When two men live together they usually maintain a kind of shabby neatness out of incipient rage at each other. Two men alone are constantly on the verge of fighting, and they know it. Adam Trask had not been home long before the tensions began to build up. The brothers saw too much of each other and not enough of anyone else.
For a few months they were busy getting Cyrus's money in order and out at interest. They traveled together to Washington to look at the grave, good stone and on top an iron star with seal and a hole on the top in which to insert the stick for a little flag on Decoration Day. The brothers stood by the grave a long time, then they went away and they didn't mention Cyrus.
If Cyrus had been dishonest he had done it well. No one asked questions about the money. But the subject was on Charles' mind.
Back on the farm Adam asked him, "Why don't you buy some new clothes? You're a rich man. You act like you're afraid to spend a penny."
"I am," said Charles.
"Why?"
"I might have to give it back."
"Still harping on that? If there was anything wrong, don't you think we'd have heard about it by now?"
"I don't know," said Charles. "I'd rather not talk about it."
But that night he brought up the subject again. "There's one thing bothers me," he began.
"About the money?"
"Yes, about the money. If you make that much money there's bound to be a mess."
"How do you mean?"
"Well, papers and account books and bills of sale, notes, figuring--well, we went through Father's things and there wasn't none of that."
"Maybe he burned it up."
"Maybe he did," said Charles.
The brothers lived by a routine established by Charles, and he never varied it. Charles awakened on the stroke of four-thirty as surely as though the brass pendulum of the clock had nudged him. He was awake, in fact, a split second before four-thirty. His eyes were open and had blinked once before the high gong struck. For a moment he lay still, looking up into the darkness and scratching his stomach. Then he reached to the table beside his bed and his hand fell exactly on the block of sulphur matches lying there. His fingers pulled a match free and struck it on the side of the block. The sulphur burned its little blue bead before the wood caught. Charles lighted the candle beside his bed. He threw back his blanket and got up. He wore long gray underwear that bagged over his knees and hung loose around his ankles. Yawning, he went to the door, opened it, and called, "Half-past four, Adam. Time to get up. Wake up."
Adam's voice was muffled. "Don't you ever forget?"
"It's time to get up." Charles slipped his legs into his pants and hunched them up over his hips. "You don't have to get up," he said. "You're a rich man. You can lay in bed all day."
"So are you. But we still get up before daylight."
"You don't have to get up," Charles repeated. "But if you're going to farm, you'd better farm."
Adam said ruefully, "So we're going to buy more land so we can do more work."
"Come off it," said Charles. "Go back to bed if you want to."
Adam said, "I bet you couldn't sleep if you stayed in bed. You know what I bet? I bet you get up because you want to, and then you take credit for it--like taking credit for six fingers."
Charles went into the kitchen and lighted the lamp. "You can't lay in bed and run a farm," he said, and he knocked the ashes through the grate of the stove and tore some paper over the exposed coals and blew until the flames started.
Adam was watching him through the door. "You wouldn't use a match," he said.
Charles turned angrily. "You mind your own goddam business. Stop picking at me."
"All right," said Adam. "I will. And maybe my business isn't here."
"That's up to you. Any time you want to get out, you go right ahead."
The quarrel was silly but Adam couldn't stop it. His voice went on without his willing it, making angry and irritating words. "You're damn right I'll go when I want," he said. "This is my place as much as yours."
"Then why don't you do some work on it?"
"Oh, Lord!" Adam said. "What are we fussing about? Let's not fuss."
"I don't want trouble," said Charles. He scooped lukewarm mush into two bowls and spun them on the table.
The brothers sat down. Charles buttered a slice of bread, gouged out a knifeful of jam, and spread it over the butter. He dug butter for his second slice and left a slop of jam on the butter roll.
"Goddam it, can't you wipe your knife? Look at that butter!"
Charles laid his knife and the bread on the table and placed his hands palm down on either side. "You better get off the place," he said.
Adam got up. "I'd rather live in a pigsty," he said, and he walked out of the house.
2
It was eight months before Charles saw him again. Charles came in from work and found Adam sloshing water on his hair and face from the kitchen bucket.
"Hello," said Charles. "How are you?"
"Fine," said Adam.
"Where'd you go?"
"Boston."
"No place else?"
"No. Just looked at the city."
The brothers settled back to their old life, but each took precautions against anger. In a way each protected the other and so saved himself. Charles, always the early riser, got breakfast ready before he awakened Adam. And Adam kept the house clean and started a set of books on the farm. In this guarded way they lived for two years before their irritation grew beyond control again.
On a winter evening Adam looked up from his account book. "It's nice in California," he said. "It's nice in the winter. And you can raise anything there."
"Sure you can raise it. But when you got it, what are you going to do with it?"
"How about wheat? They raise a lot of wheat in California."
"The rust will get to it," said Charles.
"What makes you so sure? Look, Charles, things grow so fast in California they say you have to plant and step back quick or you'll get knocked down."
Charles said, "Why the hell don't you go there? I'll buy you out any time you say."
Adam was quiet then, but in the morning while he combed his hair and peered in the small mirror he began it again.
"They don't have any winter in California," he said. "It's just like spring all the time."
"I like the winter," said Charles.
Adam came toward the stove. "Don't be cross," he said.
"Well, stop picking at me. How many eggs?"
"Four," said Adam.
Charles placed seven eggs on top of the warming oven and built his fire carefully of small pieces of kindling until it burned fiercely. He put the skillet down next to the flame. His sullenness left him as he fried the bacon.
"Adam," he said, "I don't know whether you notice it, but it seems like every other word you say is California. Do you really want to go?"
Adam chuckled. "That's what I'm trying to figure out," he said. "I don't know. It's like getting up in the morning. I don't want to get up but I don't want to stay in bed either."
"You sure make a fuss about it." said Charles.
Adam went on, "Every morning in the army that damned bugle would sound. And I swore to God if I ever got out I would sleep till noon every day. And here I get up a half-hour before reveille. Will you tell me, Charles, what in hell we're working for?"
"You can't lay in bed and run a farm," said Charles. He stirred the hissing bacon around with a fork.
"Take a look at it," Adam said earnestly. "Neither one
of us has got a chick or a child, let alone a wife. And the way we're going it don't look like we ever will. We don't have time to look around for a wife. And here we're figuring to add the Clark place to ours if the price is right. What for?"
"It's a damn fine piece," said Charles. "The two of them together would make one of the best farms in this section. Say! You thinking of getting married?"
"No. And that's what I'm talking about. Come a few years and we'll have the finest farm in this section. Two lonely old farts working our tails off. Then one of us will die off and the fine farm will belong to one lonely old fart, and then he'll die off--"
"What the hell are you talking about?" Charles demanded. "Fellow can't get comfortable. You make me itch. Get it out--what's on your mind?"
"I'm not having any fun," said Adam. "Or anyway I'm not having enough. I'm working too hard for what I'm getting, and I don't have to work at all."
"Well, why don't you quit?" Charles shouted at him. "Why don't you get the hell out? I don't see any guards holding you. Go down to the South Seas and lay in a hammock if that's what you want."
"Don't be cross," said Adam quietly. "It's like getting up. I don't want to get up and I don't want to stay down. I don't want to stay here and I don't want to go away."
"You make me itch," said Charles.
"Think about it, Charles. You like it here?"
"Yes."
"And you want to live here all your life?"
"Yes."
"Jesus, I wish I had it that easy. What do you suppose is the matter with me?"
"I think you've got knocker fever. Come in to the inn tonight and get it cured up."
"Maybe that's it," said Adam. "But I never took much satisfaction in a whore."
"It's all the same," Charles said. "You shut your eyes and you can't tell the difference."
"Some of the boys in the regiment used to keep a squaw around. I had one for a while."
Charles turned to him with interest. "Father would turn in his grave if he knew you was squawing around. How was it?"
"Pretty nice. She'd wash my clothes and mend and do a little cooking."
"I mean the other--how was that?"
"Good. Yes, good. And kind of sweet--kind of soft and sweet. Kind of gentle and soft."
"You're lucky she didn't put a knife in you while you were asleep."
"She wouldn't. She was sweet."