“Why, any sensible man could see from the beginning that Wilson could only fail!” he exclaimed vigorously. “That’s the trouble with idealists; they transfer their own virtues and dreams to other men and think everybody thinks the way they do and wants the same things. This is the way the poor damfools reason: Peace, justice, brotherhood and kindness are good things, aren’t they? Well, everybody wants good things, doesn’t he? The idealists are good men, and they don’t hate anybody, and they want mercy and tolerance and understanding between nations. They figure everybody is like them, and so, if everybody wants the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man on earth, why, it’ll just have to come, won’t it? What they don’t know is that for every idealist, and every good man, there are millions of other men who don’t give a good God-damn for anyone, and are just hell-bent on hatin’ and grabbin’ and murderin’ and fillin’ their own pockets.” He laughed robustly and shook his head with its mane of glistening snow-white hair.
“But one good man in Sodom could have saved the city,” murmured Wade, smiling.
“Well, damn it, there isn’t one good man in the whole world then,” said Sherry, laughing again. “You’ll see. Everything’s festering. Wait a few years, and all hell will break loose. Why? Because nobody really wants peace, or justice, or brotherhood, except idealists like Wilson. And there aren’t enough people like him anywhere to avert what’s inevitable.”
“Then you think the League of Nations will fizzle out?”
“I know it will,” replied Sherry sturdily. “Now, I’m not against it. Anybody but a damfool would be for it. But the world’s full of damfools, and so the League hasn’t a chance.”
He stared at Wade, whose face had become somber and grim. “Hey!” he said, giving the younger man a benevolent slap on the knee. “Don’t look like that. It ain’t that serious. What do you care? But you do, I suppose. Yes, I suppose you do. Lord, boy, the world ain’t worth it, believe me. Don’t you go and addle your brains about it, and go a-grievin’ up and down the country tryin’ to reform anybody. We’ve got Original Sin in us, all of us, and you’d best leave us alone to simmer in our own juices. What can you do, anyways?”
“I don’t like you to ‘simmer in your own juices,’” said Wade, with a hard note in his voice, though he smiled. “Too many of us have that attitude.”
Sherry slapped Wade’s knee again, and his eyes, for all their smiling, were softened with pity. “Go back where you come from, Wade. Marry up with some nice girl, back home. Practice your medicine, and let the rest of the world wag itself to hell. It’ll do it, anyways, believe me. Do you know something? Calvary was a big mistake.”
“One Man died on Calvary, so that the rest of us shouldn’t die on a million other Calvarys,” said Wade.
“But we will, just the same! And you can’t stop it—or Wilson, or anybody else. We’re hell-bent for Calvarys, all of us, with the devil poundin’ in the nails. At our own request.”
“Well,” said Wade grimly, “we’ve got to teach the rest of mankind that if it won’t accept peace and justice and friendship among nations, it’ll die in a welter of blood and leave the earth to the more sensible animals. We’ll live together, or we’ll die together, tomorrow, or next year, or ten, or fifty years from now.”
Frank listened to the argument with interest and felt some sympathy for Wade. He was surprised at Sherry’s speech, wavering as it did between the periods of the scholar and the simplicity and bad grammar of the countryman. He thought the last a complete affectation, a kind of self-conscious homeliness, and he was not entirely wrong.
“You can’t do anything about it,” persisted Sherry Hempstead. “Looky here, Wade, why don’t you get yourself a farm somewheres? Not in this God-forsaken country, but back home in Utah, or maybe somewheres else. Remember what ole William Penn said: ‘The country is both the philosopher’s garden and library, in which he reads and contemplates the power, wisdom, and goodness of God.’ Git around and dig in your garden, and ride over your farm, and, maybe, build a big wall around your house. Then forget the rest of the world. You can’t help it. No use making yourself miserable a-whinin’ over the rest of us.”
But Wade sat in dark and depressed thought, and Frank, who had seen his friend as cool and dispassionate, tolerant and extremely poised, was surprised. Then Wade, stirring, as if he were overpoweringly weary, said: “You talk like Cain, Sherry.”
“Sure, sure! Know what? Cain was a sensible man, and opinion’s been kind of hard on him. If he hadn’t knocked Abel on the head, sure as you’re livin’ someone else would have, the milky-blooded damfool a-worryin’ about God and doin’ good! Looky, I just read somethin’ this mornin’ what Stephen Crane wrote:
“A man said to the universe,
‘Sir, I exist!’
‘However,’ replied the universe,
‘The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.’”
Wade laughed in spite of himself and shook his head. Sherry listened to him, gratified that he had aroused his friend from his misery.
A woman entered the room with a silver tray on which stood three tall glasses. But it was not Sal, the servant. It was a tall and slender woman in early middle age, with a pale and beautifully carved face and a mass of bright blonde hair rolled and braided on the top of her small head. She wore an exquisitely fitted dress of blue linen, severe of line, which set off her slender and youthful figure, and no jewelry but a broad golden wedding ring. She moved gracefully and smiled at Wade with a sudden shining pleasure. “Wade!” she exclaimed, putting down the tray as the men rose, led by Sherry. “How glad I am to see you!” She held out her slim white hand, and when Wade took it, she pressed her other hand on top of his in a gesture of fervent affection.
“And I’m glad to see you too, Mary,” replied Wade. “I wanted to come sooner but there was an outbreak of typhoid, and I was very busy.” He indicated Frank. “This is Frank Clair, Mary, from the North. One of the oilmen and a friend of mine.”
She turned to Frank graciously, and he saw her pale composed beauty and her great light-brown eyes under golden lashes and brows. He had never seen sweeter or softer eyes, nor eyes so radiant and tender. Yet, in a curious way, they seemed blind to him, unseeing, dimly unaware and unfocussed. His first pleasure became discomfort, especially when he felt the coldness of her smooth hand and the bonelessness of her fingers. Then, it was not normal for a woman of her age to appear so youthful, so untouched. Her face and skin might have been those of a woman in her middle twenties, unlined and serene as of one newly dead in youth, arrested in the very act of blooming.
Involuntarily, as he held Mary’s hand, Frank glanced at Sherry. Sherry was looking at his wife with a smiling but passionate hunger and a profound intensity. He seemed to be watching her every act, and to be too alert, inexplicably ready for emergency. Yet nothing could have been more poised than Mary Hempstead, more gracious, more tranquil. Her voice was lovely, soft with the true Southern accent, unhurried and very sweet.
It was Sherry who held a chair for her, who touched her hand, who smiled down into her eyes, who went for a glass of wine for her. He pulled up his own chair beside hers, and she gave him an unruffled and grateful smile. Then she sat with her slim silken ankles crossed, her hands folded in her lap, and regarded all of them with illuminated eyes, impartially polite and pleased. And Sherry, as if temporarily oblivious of everyone else, sat gazing at his wife, watching her every motion with unconcealed devotion.
It was his imagination, of course, but all at once Frank found it difficult to breathe in that beautiful room in the center of which sat that lovely and serene woman. Surely it was his imagination which cast a faint and sinister light on the windows and gave everything an almost imperceptibly livid shadow.
Sherry leaned towards his wife, draped his arm over the back of her chair, and again she rewarded him with her bland and unseeing smile. Sherry now insisted that Wade fell him of affairs “up on Benton,” and his own e
xperiences in checking the typhoid epidemic. Wade’s voice appeared to please Sherry by its very sound, but he also had the isolated man’s interest in the smallest event of the countryside. He roared with delight at the account of the feud between two rival moonshiners, wanted to know of every new well drilled, asked about mutual friends. And Mary listened, turning her great pale brown eyes from one speaker to another, and sometimes giving Frank an engaging and friendly smile. She was the very picture of a feminine, adored and pampered wife, content to bask in her husband’s love, and to contribute nothing to the conversation, though sometimes, when Sherry spoke, she would glance at him with an eager, fond approval.
Later, on Sherry’s invitation, Wade and Frank went out to inspect the ripening tobacco fields and the horses in the barns, that had been brought in from the heat of the day. Sherry was proud of his horses. He was entering one coal-black filly in the races this year. The barns smelt of leather and horse and were meticulously clean. Frank’s interest in horses was not overpowering; to him, a horse was a horse, a not very intelligent animal with a flare for idiot malice and an appetite for oats. But Wade was genuinely absorbed and walked about from stall to stall, stroking the stupid beasts and allowing them to nuzzle his hand.
Sherry strode through his fields, talking incomprehensibly, to Frank, about tobacco and the mosaic disease, what he was doing to combat it, and what price he expected to get. His voice and his manner were genial and bluff; he was the typical gentleman farmer, full of vigor and health. Frank thought of the silent smiling woman in the room they had left, and wondered if she would be waiting, not stirring from her chair, when they got back to the house. She was. She sat there, still smiling faintly, lost in a strange cloud of dreams. Frank was actually startled when she gave evidence of seeing them, and invited Wade and himself to dinner.
Frank was now so uncomfortable and ill-at-ease that he felt great relief when Wade politely expressed his regrets and explained that he and Frank were expected to dine with Isaac Saunders. This amused Sherry, who made a few ribald remarks about the other man, which Wade fended off lightly. But Mary smiled her unchanging smile, and did not press her guests to remain. Frank had the impression that she was not even aware that she had given the invitation. She rose and shook hands with the two young men and graciously urged them to come again soon. There was no change of any kind in her charming and sightless expression.
Sherry put his arm about her, and she leaned against him lightly. They both followed Frank and Wade to the door and watched them go down the flagged path to the gate, where they mounted their animals, took up their reins.
Now a terrible thing happened. Mary suddenly broke loose from her husband, ran down the steps of the porch, hurled herself headlong towards them. Then, as if struck by lightning, by some frightful paralyzing horror, she stood on the path and flung up her arms. Petrified, Frank could see her beautiful face, transfixed, distorted, her rolling eyes, her pulled and twisted mouth. She began to scream, beating the palms of her upraised hands together. Sherry reached her in what seemed one bound and tried to take her in his arms. But she jumped away from him, sideways, not taking her eyes from Wade, who sat motionless and pale on his horse.
“Ronald!” screamed the poor, distraught woman, and her voice was a high and piercing wail, horrible to hear. “Ronald! My darling, darling, darling! O God, don’t do that to Ronald! O God, God, God! Have mercy! Ronald!”
Her eyes glared madly, hopelessly, terribly, upon Wade. Sherry tried again to seize her, and she sprang backwards from him with a wild shriek of horror, cringing double, folding her arms on her breast, huddling together as if shrinking away from death itself. She backed away, and Sherry followed her, murmuring soothing and urgent words, trying to fix her with his compelling eyes. He was white; even from that distance Frank could see how he was shaking. He held out his arms to Mary, imploring her, and followed her retreat, not hastily, but matching her own progress. Then she stopped, huddled over, moaning in an appalling voice, as if overcome with an unbearable grief and despair. Sherry lifted her in his arms; her golden head fell on his shoulder; her white arms trailing under his own. He carried her into the house, and to the last they could see his cheek pressed on her hair, and the tenderness in his whole body, and could hear, until the door closed inexorably behind the last flutter of blue dress and trailing hand, her shocking cries and his comforting words of compassion and love.
Stunned by the tragedy, Frank, unbelievingly, watched Wade canter off towards the hills. It was not until Wade was about two hundred feet away that Frank followed, caught up with him. He said almost angrily: “Good God, aren’t you going into that house to try to do something for that poor woman?”
Wade answered quietly, without turning his head: “Sherry knows what to do. She has these attacks—sometimes. Not very often, but sometimes.”
“That murderer! You can see it now! He won’t do anything for her; he’ll just shut her up. He’s afraid!”
“You don’t know, Frank,” said Wade, turning in his saddle to show his tight pale face. “You can’t call Sherry that. You don’t know. No one knows. I don’t think anyone ever will know.”
“She called you Ronald.”
“Ronald,” said Wade, almost inaudibly, “must have been a thin dark man, like myself. Then, he, too, was a minister.” He sighed. “It happened so long ago, twenty years or more. It’s been hard on Sherry.”
Now his eyes were narrowed, somber. Frank said resentfully: “Why did you take me there? It’s been a hideous experience.”
Wade smiled briefly, without amusement. “You’re awfully young, Frank. You don’t know anything about life, do you? I thought it might be a little education.”
“Education! Worst of all,” continued Frank naively, “I don’t suppose I’ll ever know the truth, either!”
“That’s what I mean.” Wade’s tone and smile were affectionate. “It’s not ever knowing the real truth about anything that educates a man.”
The farm and its gentle land, basking in sunlight, lay behind them. As they climbed the hill it retreated, became smaller, a haven of peace and contentment in the valley.
CHAPTER 50
Frank, after that distracting scene, was in no mood to make another call, and with considerable exasperation he asked: “What freak do we see now?”
Wade gave him a bright glance. “The one truly Christian gentleman I have ever known.”
“O God!” cried Frank wrathfully.
In a considering voice, Wade added: “He worships Aphrodite.”
“What!”
Wade nodded blithely. “That’s right. Aphrodite, Isis, Mary, Astarte—and I don’t mean symbolically, or in an ‘art’ sense. I mean it literally.”
Frank reined in his mare abruptly and pushed back his hat from his sweating forehead. He glared at Wade’s back, stupefied. “Are you serious? Or am I in a nightmare?”
“I’m serious, and you’re awake.” Wade halted, also, and laughed. He filled his pipe leisurely, and seemed to contemplate the brightening hills with objective pleasure. “Isaac Saunders, so I understand, was once an idealist. Like you. And like all idealists, he had a fixation on perfection. He had formed, in his own mind, an inflexible pattern for God. From what he had told me himself, he was probably a complete devotee and mystic. But I’m a little ahead of my story. Isaac Saunders isn’t a native of these mountains. In fact, he’s a Virginian, not a Kentuckian, and he was educated at Princeton, and then in Europe. Don’t look surprised. You’ll find lots of strange people here—”
“You think so?” said Frank, with heavy irony.
Wade ignored the remark. “Like so many of the fine aristocrats of the South, he was an Episcopalian, but when he was in Europe he played with the idea of becoming a Roman Catholic. He was a man in search of the perfect religion to clothe the perfect God. But none fitted his idea of perfection. He just went on from country to country, all over the world. It was only after many years that he began to have serious doubts that
God was perfect. For by that time Isaac, the idealist, had begun to discover the misery of man.
“Up to that time he hadn’t seen mankind at all. Humanity was just a shadow lying far below the shining perfection of God. Now he saw the multitudes of mankind, suffering, dying, despairing, and his tender idealist’s soul was at first stunned, then appalled, then tortured to the point of insanity. Now, if he had been a practical and reasonable man, he would have joined some merciful group of missionaries, or something, and set himself to alleviate some of the wretchedness he saw. But no, not Isaac. He saw the wretchedness, and hated God. He didn’t lose his belief that God existed—Oh, no. He didn’t become an atheist, as some idealists do when they find out what the world is. He told himself that man had a lot to forgive God, for making a world of such anguish and helpless pain and innocent death. But Isaac Saunders wasn’t going to forgive God. He was just going to be his enemy.”
“You make him sound ridiculous,” said Frank, as they went on, slowly. For some reason his face had begun to burn, and he was embarrassed and resentful.
Wade suddenly became grave. A sharp blue shadow cut diagonally across his face, and in it, under the brim of his hat, his dark eyes shone. “God forbid! I happen to know what agonies he must have suffered. He told me, a little. Well, anyway, it wasn’t possible for Isaac to go back to Richmond now and live smugly. He had seen too much, and he was too tormented. He couldn’t stand it any longer. He found these mountains, and retired into them like a hermit who wants to spend the rest of his life contemplating God and adoring Him. Only he wanted to contemplate God and hate Him.
There Was a Time Page 46
