Benton's Row

by Frank Yerby

  But if her final goal existed truly in a dreamer’s never-never land, her methods of accomplishing it were coldly, brilliantly precise and practical. Smiling that slow and secret smile that had goaded her father into almost killing her, she got up from the bed and began to dress without any haste whatsoever. She knew exactly where every member of the household was at that minute: her mother in the big kitchen, built for safety’s sake behind the house and apart from it, supervising the preparation of the midday meal; Wade mooning off by himself down by the river, bemourning his lost Babette; and her father, away since the day he had beaten her, in New Orleans, more than likely, drinking and consorting with those dreadful creatures down on Gallatin Street. She did not consider the negroes at all, except to take a few simple precautions against their eternal tale-bearing.

  Her toilet finished, she walked calmly across the hall and entered her father’s study. She opened the drawer of his secretaire and took out his cheque-book. What she was going to do, Tom Benton himself had made possible. A firm believer in practical education, he had long ago started teaching his children something about financial management. To this end, he had often sent Wade, and even occasionally Stormy, down to the bank to draw money for operating expenses. Stormy had already become official book-keeper for the plantation, for she was very good with figures. More, about six months ago she had entirely replaced Wade as her father’s messenger; a thing that had come about very simply and naturally as a result of Wade’s having lost a packet of notes containing more than five hundred dollars on the way home from the bank.

  “From now on, you stay home!” Tom had raged. “I’ll send Stormy—she’s twice the man you are, anyhow!”

  She sat there a long moment, her brow furrowed with thinking. At that moment her resemblance to her father was startling. Slowly she picked up the pen and began to write, imitating fairly well her father’s heavy strokes and painful penmanship. She wrote four cheques for five hundred dollars each, forging her father’s name at the bottom of them. Her work, of course, would not have supported detailed scrutiny; but she had little fear of that. The clerks at the bank would not look at the cheques too carefully; after all, they were accustomed to having her come in and draw large sums on her father’s behalf.

  It was a measure of her craft that she wrote four small cheques instead of one large one. Tom seldom drew more than five to seven hundred dollars at a time. Even though they were all made out to cash, Stormy reasoned that they would arouse less questioning than a single cheque for two thousand dollars. With her healthy contempt for the reasoning powers of ordinary humans, she was sure that the teller, already accustomed to cashing cheques of that particular sum, would give her the money without a qualm.

  She sanded the cheques, folded them, and put them in her handbag. Then she got up and walked slowly and thoughtfully out of the house, having made absolutely no mistakes at all—not even the normal one of packing her things and attempting to leave the house with a valise. She knew that the negroes would have run to her mother with that information before she could have passed the big gate. Besides, she consoled herself, my clothes are too countrified, anyhow. I can buy much prettier things in New Orleans.

  But before she had reached town, she had modified her plan in light of the fact that the voyage down-stream to New Orleans was far too long for anyone coming aboard without luggage, without even a hat or a parasol, not to arouse suspicion, particularly a young, unescorted woman. So, she decided, I’ll buy a ticket to Alexandria, get myself just a few things and a valise there, then go on to New Orleans, and then to New York.

  She had it all clear, all firmly fixed in mind when she came out of the bank with the money. Then she walked down to the landing and went aboard the Bayou Belle, smiling a little to herself.

  The whistle jetted its plume into the sky, screaming. The paddle-wheels turned over, bit water. The steamboat moved down-stream, gathering speed. And Stormy Benton, sitting on the foredeck, did not even look back.

  9

  THERE was one thing that could be truthfully said of Big Gertie: she ran an honest house. Tom Benton was able to leave it with almost as much money as he had when he went in, and that was a sizeable amount, for his pride made him keep his pockets well filled. But he was in no condition to visit anyone, and he knew it. He was bleary-eyed, unshaven, his clothes stained, unpressed, his shoes muddy, his handkerchief, hat and cane all lost somewhere en route during his Homeric bout of drunkenness.

  It was fortunate for him that he had always stayed at the Saint Louis Hotel, and was, therefore, well known there, both as a bon vivant and a free spender; it is extremely doubtful that otherwise the management of that august establishment would have let him in. As it was, they conducted him upstairs to his room in considerable haste, even going so far as to send the register up for his signature instead of having him sign it in the lobby, which might have brought his coming to the attention of too many of their distinguished clientele while in his present sadly disreputable state.

  But once safely in his room, Tom gave a convincing demonstration of the man from whom Stormy had got her traits. Within a half-hour he had bathed, been shaved and clipped by the hotel’s barber, had a manicure, sent a bellboy out armed with his size numbers to purchase a new hat, fresh underwear, new shirts, a new cravat and a cane; had also sent his suit down to be sponged off and pressed, and his boots to be shined.

  Then he sat down, grotesquely wrapped in towels, and forced down a fairish portion of the meal he had ordered, no mean feat after two weeks of steady drinking. By mid-afternoon he was able to smoke a cigar. By six o’clock, all his purchases having arrived, and his other clothing having been returned in an entirely presentable state, he was able to make such an appearance as he descended into the lobby as to bring all the hotel’s functionaries out to greet him, all smiles and respectful attention.

  He walked slowly up Royal Street, swinging his new cane. He felt, strangely enough, at peace with the world. He let his gaze wander over the old street, studying again the ironwork balustrades on the galleries like filigrees of fine old lace, moving very slowly, allowing the sights, sounds, smells of his favourite city to wash over him in a sensuous wave. It was as if he were seeing New Orleans for the first time, or—the thought tugged insistently at his consciousness—the last. Either way, it was good. He had had it all: joy, victory, bitterness, defeat; and having had all this, he found that he had grown very quiet inside, that his hungers no longer gnawed at his vitals, that the rage for living had gone out of him, so that now, at last, he was very quiet, and very complete.

  Some time during his two weeks of drunken stupor it had all burned out of him: the rage, the furore, the lingering hungers, the need to impress his stamp upon men and events, upon time itself. Things of tremendous importance to him before—his daughter’s shame, Sarah’s indifference to him, his son’s weakness—diminished before his dreaming eyes into their proper place in the scheme of things, becoming part of life’s inevitabilities, part of that slow reduction that time worked upon the spirit of a man, grinding down the prickly edges of his pride, until he could accept, believe, bear all things with equanimity, with only the faintest, sighing respect for the honour, pride, intractability of his youth.

  I’m a tired old man, he thought, nothing more. I want to do two things: see Lolette again, and meet my son—find out for good and all if I ever had it in me to sire a man—that’s all. After that, maybe the Yankees will ease me out of it. Had enough—Lord God, I’m tired!

  The house on Royal Street was a fine old courtyard house, hidden by walls with shuttered windows, frowning doors from the street, but flowering and gracious within. A negro in spotless livery took his hat and cane, and said with a trace of Gumbo-French accent:

  “Who I tell madame is calling, m’sieu?”

  “Benton,” Tom growled. “Mr. Thomas Benton.”

  “Yessir,” the negro said. Then he was gone, and Tom sat there a long time in the ante-room, unconscious of the pas
sing of time, the flower scents from the garden stealing around him, coaxing him into lassitude, into drowsiness, until the click of her heels upon the stairs drew him out of it, awakening him into life again, into consciousness.

  She stood in the doorway, smiling at him.

  “Tom!” she breathed. “So good of you to come!”

  He got clumsily to his feet and stood there, staring at her. She was exquisite. He stood there looking at her, and the sadness pressed down upon his heart like a weight. She was exquisite—not lovely any more. She had lost that look of a wild woods creature, frightened and shy, had become something else, something that troubled him because he did not know how to deal with it, or even exactly what is was. She was perfumed, coiffeured, lacquered, polished, dressed with a taste that reflected the summit of the art of an artful people; but her eyes had hardened, lost their fawn-like softness, considering him now with interest, but coolly, with faint amusement, but without the things that had endeared them to him before: either fear, or respect, or tenderness.

  “Well,” she said, and her voice held the ripple of barely concealed laughter in it, “aren’t you going to greet me?”

  “Ain’t sure I know you, ma’am,” Tom said. “Lord God, but you’ve changed!”

  She came up to him and kissed him, her lips clinging warmly, softly, expertly; then she drew back and laughed aloud.

  “But you haven’t,” she said. “Oh, you’ve got older and heavier. Greyer, too. But you haven’t changed. Not in the essentials. You’re still you—and that would be funny, if it weren’t so sad.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Tom growled.

  “Everything—nothing,” she said coquettishly. “Come on, don’t you want to see Clinton?”

  “One of the reasons I came, ma’am—I mean Lolette. Where is the boy?”

  “Upstairs,” she said. “He’ll please you. He’s your image. Come—”

  They went up the stairs together, without haste. And, walking close to her, Tom saw the threads of grey in her own dark hair, the tiny web of lines at the corners of her eyes, the ravishments of time that her skilful use of cosmetics concealed very well at a distance, but showed close up. She was a year younger than Sarah, but he was aware suddenly that stripped of her artifices she would have looked ten years older; and he knew with something like conviction, from her face, the history of her years.

  Time leaves no face unscarred, but pain and bitterness, loneliness and terror leave crueller marks. And that kind of pleasure born—he guessed, in this case at least—of the desire for vengeance, the abandonment of self into the mindless, soulless delights of voluptuousness, of lust and venery, droops the corners of the mouth, dulls the eyes, and twists the face in ways peculiar to itself.

  Had a hard life, ain’t you, baby-doll? Tom thought as they paused upon the landing, and the weariness was upon him, resting like a mountain upon his chest.

  “What are you looking at?” she said.

  “At how different you are,” Tom said heavily.

  “You expected me not to be? I’ve grown up, Tom. apparently you haven’t.”

  “You mean you’ve gotten hard,” Tom said. “There’s more than one way of growing up, Lolette. Some folks kind of mellow down into wine, and others sharpen up into vinegar.”

  “And I’m vinegar,” Lolette said quietly. “You want to know why, Tom?”

  “Reckon I kind of know already. I started it.”

  “And others finished it. My husband. My lovers—my many, many lovers. You see, it took me a long time to grow up, Tom. I kept looking for something that wasn’t there. Finally I learned that men at heart are either beasts or children; some needing the whip, and the rest a mother. Doesn’t leave much for a woman, does it? A real woman wanting one sole thing: a man who is master of himself, and hence, of his world. But he doesn’t exist, does he, Tom? A whining, weakling infant, wanting to be comforted or fed, or a snarling beast to be whipped back on his haunches—that’s all the choice a woman has. You find me hard—well, I am. I know now that men are there to be used, and to give one’s heart into their keeping is to toss it to a savage dog to tear.”

  Tom stood there on the landing, looking at her.

  “Well,” she said, “shall we go in?”

  “After you,” he said tiredly.

  He saw, as he entered the room, that the boy was not alone. He was talking to his grandfather, Louis Dupré, a flood of rapid French pouring from his lips. Babette sat on the arm of her father’s chair, gazing at this tall nephew of hers, only three years her junior, in awe and wonder.

  Seeing them, young Clinton stood up. At sixteen, he was already almost as tall as his father; but lacking Tom’s great breadth and enormous strength. Beyond that, as Lolette had said, he was his father’s image; but refined, somehow, softened by his mother’s beauty into a brooding handsomeness that Tom had never had. Still, seeing them together like that, anyone not blind or a fool could see instantly that here were father and son; and Louis Dupré was neither.

  “Espèce d’un cochon!” he got out. “Species of a pig! I should have known then, me! Par la Sainte Vierge, I should have known!”

  “Howdy, Clint,” Tom Benton said, and put out his hand. Slowly, hesitantly, the boy took it. His hands were slender, but his grip was iron beneath velvet, and Tom Benton smiled.

  “This is Mister Benton,” Lolette said evenly. “I’ve told you about him, Clinton.”

  Tom could see the blaze kindle in the boy’s dark eyes.

  “Then he is—?” he whispered.

  “Your father—yes,” Lolette said.

  Louis was on his feet then, like a cat.

  “I think I will kill you now, me!” he roared. “I think you done lived now sixteen years too long!”

  “Oh, don’t be a fool, Papa,” Lolette said calmly. “That was a long time ago, and there’s too much water under the bridge by now. Besides, if you kill all the men who’ve shared my bed, you’d need half the Federal Army to help you—”

  “Maman!” Clint said, “have you no shame?”

  “None,” Lolette mocked. “Men are such sentimental fools, Clinton, mon fils. I’ve tried to train you differently. Look, Papa, if you had killed Tom Benton sixteen years ago, I’d have wept my heart out. Today, I’d yawn. What are you trying to prove? That you can slice the liver out of this over-dressed country bumpkin, middle-aged as he is, and running to fat? Of course you can—this is nothing, you comprehend? Or are you still defending your daughter’s honour? Then I must decline the defence—I haven’t any of your peculiar, provincial honour left; I haven’t had for a long time—since, cher Papa, long before I met Tom Benton. If you like the pleasures of prison life, or the thrill of being hanged, go ahead—I won’t stop you. Well, Papa, what are you waiting for?”

  Louis stood there, looking at her. Then, very slowly, he reached for his hat.

  “Come, Babette,” he said, “we go home now, us. You’re my daughter—my only daughter now. Come—”

  Babette turned to her sister.

  “I think,” she said, “you’re perfectly horrible!”

  Lolette smiled.

  “And I think you’re a dear,” she said pleasantly. “But I think also that you will learn—and that’s a pity.”

  After they had gone, Tom stood there still, making no effort to sit down.

  “Well, Tom?” Lolette said.

  Tom didn’t answer her.

  “Clint-boy,” he said heavily, “I’ve been a bad father, maybe even a bad man—I don’t know. But I got a place up the country, nice spread of land. Any time you want to come there and live, I’d be mighty proud to have you. Make up for some of the time we lost. Even if you just come to visit, I’d be glad—what you say, boy?”

  Clint glanced at his mother.

  “I—I’d like very much to visit you, sir,” he said, “but I cannot live with you. I couldn’t leave my mother for so long—she’s not very well, and she needs me.”

  “Oh, you can visit him if you l
ike,” Lolette said. “It would do you good. Tom would certainly toughen you up a bit, and you need that. But I haven’t any intention of giving you up for ever to a man who ignored your existence for sixteen years. Well, Tom, aren’t you going to sit down?”

  “No,” Tom said, “I’m going now. When can the boy come?”

  “Next month,” Lolette said. “Give my love to your dear Sarah, won’t you, Tom?”

  “ ‘Bye, Clint,” Tom said, and put out his hand. “We’re going to have fun, boy. Mighty good hunting and fishing out at Broad Acres.”

  “Good-bye, sir,” Clinton said. “I shall be very pleased to come.”

  Lolette walked with Tom down the stairs and into the courtyard.

  “Strange,” she said quietly, “I’ve been looking forward to seeing you again, but it was no good—was it? I’d told myself that I’d given up for tinsel, for dross, the one real man I’d known. And I was right; but I’ve changed too much. One can never go back again, can one?”

  “No,” Tom said. “Reckon life is a one-way street, Lolette. ‘Bye now.”

  Then he put his hat firmly atop his head, and moved off down the street.

  Watching him stride away, Lolette had a feeling he did not go alone. A brightness moved before him; but behind him darkness came, growing, spreading, shutting off the light.

  She felt very strange suddenly: cold and weak and tired.

  I don’t understand it, she thought; what a crazy way to feel.

  Then she went back into the courtyard, closing very quietly the door between her and the world.