Benton's Row

by Frank Yerby

  “Grandma,” he said huskily.

  “Roland,” she wept. “Roland-boy. Lord God, Roland!” He opened the door and all but lifted her out. The girl came forward shyly.

  “Grandma,” Roland said, “this is Athene.”

  Sarah stood there, staring at her. Athene was a small girl. She was tiny, beautifully formed, exquisite. What held Sarah there was her colouring. She had never even asked about that, assuming that being French the girl must fit her provincial Southern conception of a ‘greasy foreigner’—dark hair, olive complexion, oily skin; but Athene du Bousquier Benton was none of these. She was as fair as a Scandinavian with silvery blonde hair, cut, Sarah saw with growing wonder, almost as short as a boy’s, and eyes of a shade between blue and green. She wore a simple suit whose singing perfection of cut, matchless chic, and skirt that stopped short eight inches above her ankles revealing the loveliest pair of legs that anyone in Benton’s Row had ever seen, was to earn her the undying enmity of every woman in town the moment they saw it.

  “Well, child,” Sarah said helplessly.

  “Enchanted, madame,” Athene whispered; then: “May I please kiss you, Grandmère? I want to—oh, so very much!”

  “Of course, child,” Sarah said, and gathered her into her arms. And it was over, then and there, all the anticipated difficulties, all the strangeness, all the fear.

  They sat on the veranda after the dinner was over and talked.

  “Yes,” Athene said, “I met Roland at the house of your very gentille daughter, Madame Rafflin. She is a grande dame, absolutely formidable, and from the day she met me she was planning to capture me for Roland. It was not, you comprehend, Grandmère, a thing difficult to do. The first time I saw him I had the most horrible fear because I was already engaged to a very nice boy—also a pilote—and your Roland was so very handsome and gay and charming and wonderful and formidable, I was afraid.”

  “You married this boy you were engaged to, didn’t you?” Sarah said.

  “Yes, Grandmère, I married him—and we had one weekend for a honeymoon—and he was called to the front. He had to fly an avion that only the bon Dieu and my prayers kept in the air at all. It was all we had in those days. And one day he encountered the great Capitaine Boelcke mounted on a machine like a falcon with a machine-gun on it while my poor Raoul had only a little pistol he carried strapped to his side.”

  She bowed her head a long moment.

  “I am sorry,” she said, when she straightened up, “but he was a very nice boy. And it is not pleasant to think that he had to jump because his machine was in flames.”

  “Don’t,” Patricia said, her voice shuddering up out of her throat, shredded upon her breath, torn; “please, Athene!”

  Athene jumped up and ran to her, embracing her, and crying, “I am so sorry!” she said. “I am a pig and a selfish beast! I had forgotten.”

  “It’s all right,” Patricia whispered. “It’s all right, dear.”

  Jeb sat there, staring at the floor.

  “Look, Roland,” he said heavily, “I never asked you this before. But could you tell me about my boy?”

  Roland stared at him, and his blue eyes splintered into slivers of ice, so that Jeb, watching, turned away his head.

  “No,” Roland said, and that was all he said, just that one word, ‘no’—without explanation, without even inflection, so that after he had said it the silence was almost tactile.

  Athene stood up.

  “This is very bad,” she said; “we have spoiled things with sadness. It is spring now—and Louisiana is lovely, more lovely than I imagined anywhere could be—let us be happy—let us all be happy, please.”

  “You will do, child,” Sarah said. “Looks like my boy did all right for himself; yessir—I think you did just fine, son.”

  “Thank you for that, Grandma,” Roland said.

  But in the pre-dawn hours of that same night Athene and Roland lay beside one another starkly awake, staring out into the darkness. Athene was crying.

  “She asked me if I were enceinte,” she whispered. “She wants so much that your family go on—that you should not be the last, my Roland. And I—I wish it, too! I want children—many children, but I told you that—and you said you also wanted them.”

  She came up on one elbow, staring at the outlines of his form in the darkness.

  “Why won’t you love me, Roland?” she whispered. “In le bon Dieu’s name, tell me why!”

  He lay there, staring at the ceiling.

  “Wrong word,” he said flatly; “not won’t. Can’t.” She put her head against the hollow of his throat, and her small arm across him.

  “You lie, Roland,” she said dreamily. “Remember the night of the Gothas? The night that nice black man brought you home?”

  She raised up, holding herself above him with her two hands pressed into the pillow beside his head.

  “Is it that you require an air-raid to excite you?” she said bitterly. “Or can you only make love with girls with whom you are not married—like that sale Martine?”

  “Athene,” he said wearily, “what woke you up?”

  “You—you were beginning to make noises. I was afraid you would scream again and wake Grandmère.”

  “That’s it, Athene,” Roland said.

  “What is it, mon coeur?”

  “The noises—don’t you see, ange. it’s the same thing? It’s a thing inside me. I do not remember when I awake that I cried out, or why. But it is the same thing. And when I dominate it—we will be all right.”

  She smiled then, put her fingers into his hair, ruffling it, laughing. Her moods always changed like that, mercurially.

  “I will not wait,” she teased. “I will take a lover. I will take your Uncle Jeb for a lover, because he is such a beautiful man.”

  “Not beautiful, Athene—handsome. We only say beautiful of women.”

  “Then you are wrong. He is beautiful and you are beautiful. But it is you whom I love. You, mon brave type, my tired old cabbage, my ancient pair of shoes.”

  She bent down and kissed his mouth. She kissed him a long time. Then she pulled away and stared at him.

  “Roland . . .” she whispered.

  “No, Athene,” Roland Benton said.

  2

  JEB DUPRÉ stood there watching his wife packing their clothing. The other things, the furniture, the dishes and glassware, were already packed. Their winter clothes were already gone, Jeb had shipped them to New York nearly a month ago. They themselves should have been gone long before. It was a good thing that Martin O’Conner was both a friend and an understanding man. It had been easy to explain to him the impossibility of their leaving before Roland arrived. It wouldn’t have been right to leave anybody as old as Grandma in the hands of the slovenly and careless servants who were all one could get these days. When he had been a boy, the negroes had been comparatively unspoiled; but now—

  Nor could they ask Grace, Hank’s widow, to go on taking care of her. Grace Bradley Benton was a young woman—she had a right to a life of her own. He’d heard that she was seeing a lot of that Nelson boy these days. Harvey Nelson wasn’t a bad sort, for all that his folks had been both Yankees and carpet-baggers. Still, Jeb reflected bitterly, she sure Lord got over her grief fast. Moved back with her own folks the day after we arrived—

  He didn’t need the job in New York. There was not, never had been, any question of the money involved. Although he had gained the reputation of being one of the most brilliant lawyers in the State, he had gained it at the cost of his personal popularity, by taking the cases of impecunious poor whites and negroes, his sole criterion for accepting a case being his belief that the accused had been unjustly treated. Since to be a pine-barren cracker or a black in the South meant that a man lived in a constant state of injustice, Jeb had never lacked cases—most of which he won; but rarely gaining a red copper from any of them. These two things his father, Clinton Dupré, Tom Benton’s illegitimate son, had left him: a perhaps ove
r-developed sense of justice, of moral indignation; and the money which afforded him the luxury of indulging his crusading spirit. The only reason, then, that he had accepted the position of Executive Vice-President of the O’Conner Enterprises, Inc, was to escape the thousand constant reminders of his son with which he was surrounded in Benton’s Row. In this point of view Patricia concurred. If they were to have any kind of life at all, it would have to be somewhere else.

  They had met Martin O’Conner in Switzerland, where they had gone in 1916 in pursuit of one of Jeb’s causes, taking care of French and Belgian orphans brought into the tiny neutral state by the Red Cross. O’Conner, who had given not only a large part of his personal fortune but his own services to the work, had been in charge of the bureau in which Jeb was placed. The moment he had heard Jeb’s fluent, idiomatic French, he made Jeb his assistant; and the deep respect which the two forceful, brilliant men held for each other ripened into real friendship. More than that, Mary O’Conner became equally fond of Patricia, and the friendship of the executive’s wife has never been an inconsiderable factor in American business affairs.

  “Jeb, darling,” Patricia said, “don’t stand there looking so fierce. It doesn’t help you look any more like an executive. Besides, you don’t have to change—I like you as you are.”

  “Like me?” Jeb said, making an effort at gaiety. “Heck, woman, all this time I’ve been labouring under the illusion that you loved me!”

  “Sometimes, once in a while,” Pat said. “I married you, didn’t I?”

  Jeb looked at her, and his dark eyes were sombre.

  “Yes,” he said quietly, “you did.”

  “Jeb,” Pat said, “don’t think about it. I married you because I loved you. I was pretty brazen about it, I think—chasing you all the way down to New Orleans. I’m glad of one thing, though.”

  “What’s that?” Jeb said.

  “That Stone—died while we were on our honeymoon. Hadn’t been for that, you never would have believed me. You’d still be thinking that I came to you because I’d lost all hope.”

  “Hadn’t you?” he said, and the little note of anger was there in his voice.

  “No. I did it because I was finally sure I loved you,” Pat said.

  “Sorry,” Jeb said, and smiled. “Reckon I’m just naturally crazy as far as you’re concerned, Pat. Else I wouldn’t still be jealous of a dead man. Anyhow, now we can go. I’m sure glad Roland’s back. I can stop worrying now. The war seems to have sobered him up a lot. He’ll behave himself now.”

  Pat shook her head gloomily.

  “He won’t,” she said. “He’s Stone’s son, remember. And you were brought up with Stone, so you ought to know.”

  He looked at her, his eyes dark and questioning.

  “Stop looking at me like that!” she said. “It’s insulting. I was never Stone’s mistress, since you insist upon knowing. Also, since you insist upon picking a quarrel with me—it was his fault I wasn’t, not mine. I would have been, if I had had the chance. Now get out of here and let me finish this packing, or we’ll never get up to New York in time!”

  “Pat!” he said, and his voice was stricken.

  She came over to him and put both hands on his shoulders.

  “I’m sorry, Jeb,” she said. “I’m a very honest woman, only sometimes I talk too much. That day you stormed out of the house swearing I’d never see you again, I knew I didn’t care what Stone did—that I’d been an awful fool. I started to cry. Then I decided that wasn’t any good either. So I came after you. And I’ve never been sorry—not for a minute. Besides, Jeb, we’re middle-aged people now. A man forty-five years old shouldn’t act like a child. And I’m a grown woman. I don’t moon over a ghost. We Hendersons aren’t icebergs, you know; and a ghost is entirely too insubstantial for me!”

  He smiled at her, but the smile was sad.

  “Get on with your packing, then,” he said, “I’ve a few more papers to clear up. If you want me for anything, I’ll be in the study.”

  Heaven deliver us from an over-sensitive man! Pat thought, and turned back to the valises.

  He had, of course, no other papers to finish. All he had, actually, was the necessity to remember it all again, to sort it out, to try to analyse it. He sat before his desk in his study and took a Sweet Caporal out of the mahogany box. He did not light the cigarette at once, but remained there, like that, gazing off into space, the unstruck match cupped in his hand, allowing himself to drift backward in time, back to that summer of enchantment.

  At that time, the summer of 1892, the magical one, he had been only eighteen years old. He had come home for the long vacation from the exclusive private school for rich men’s sons in New York City to which Clint had sent him. He had not been back in Benton’s Row a week before he accidentally encountered Patricia Henderson in the street. And that was the end of it, the finish of the various directions his life might have taken. From that moment it was settled, though he did not know it then.

  He stopped dead, open-mouthed, staring at her.

  “I could love you,” he groaned. “To tell the truth, I already do!”

  For more than half that golden summer they were sweethearts—for two whole months of magic. Sitting there in his study, so many years later, Jeb realised that there had never again been a summer like that one, nor could there ever be.

  It was so—so innocent, he mused. Yes, that was it—and that’s one of the things a man can rightly weep for: the loss of innocence, the blight that falls so soon upon all trusting, believing, faith. I remember the first night I kissed her—near the end of summer. Lord God, how clumsy I was! And she cried.

  He struck the match, lit the cigarette, drew in deeply, exhaled, the smoke veiling his face.

  I must have apologised a hundred times. Then she stopped crying and looked at me like a mischievous little water-nymph and said, “I was just crying ‘cause I’m happy, Jeb. Go on, kiss me again.”

  But those were the days no man can keep, that he can only cherish inside his heart. And they had ended badly, for in late August his half-brothers Stone and Nat Benton had come home from Virginia. It was a hot month, and Stone was bored. So he amused himself with little Patricia Henderson, took her buggy-riding, teased her, made outrageous love to her, in banter, in jest, though she did not take it so. Then, suddenly, it was done. Stone disappeared for two weeks, and came back to Benton’s Row with Hope Crandall on his arm.

  When he heard from Nat the story of his brother’s marriage, Jeb rushed over to the Henderson place. When he knocked on the door, and had been announced, he heard Pat’s voice sounding clearly from the bedroom:

  “Tell him to go away. I don’t want to see him!”

  And he, being himself, and young, turned and walked away from there. He went straight to his father’s office. Clinton was sitting behind his desk, reading some reports. He took off his glasses and looked at Jeb.

  “I want to go away, Dad,” Jeb said. He had started to call Clint ‘Dad’ when he was eight years old, in order to distinguish him from Wade, whom he had called Papa. “Far away.”

  Jeb was gone two years. He spent those two years in Paris, living with his Aunt Stormy in her lovely old house in Passy. He read for the law. He fancied himself a man of the world. He made his conquests among the little midinettes, minor actresses, barmaids, and daughters of concierges. He was a remarkably blasé, sophisticated young man. He knew wines, and the best years of their vintage. He could order a meal like a true gourmet. He had at his tongue tip all the latest patter of the art world.

  When, in 1894, he came home again, it was not, in truth, of his own free will, but because his Aunt Stormy had succumbed at last to her home-sickness, her desire to see her aged mother one last time before she died. And trying to oppose Stormy’s wishes was like trying to oppose the hurricane that had given her her name. They sailed from le Havre late in March and arrived in Benton’s Row the first of April, some weeks after Patricia Henderson had come home from Oberli
n College, announcing flatly that she wasn’t going back. “Expelled,” the gossips whispered at first, then said it aloud as the weeks wore on and everyone saw what she was doing.

  Patricia Henderson, riding boldly by daylight through the streets of Benton’s Row in Stone Benton’s buggy, married as he was, and the father of a year-old son, crowded the latest atrocity in Cuba out of men’s consciousness, becoming a topic of conversation far more exciting to the townspeople than even the ever-approaching war with Spain.

  The good Baptist Ladies paid a call upon Ashton Henderson. He showed them the door.

  “My daughter is a Henderson,” he said. “And Hendersons ain’t responsible to you. They’re responsible only to their own consciences and to God. We ain’t obliged to live the way your dirty minds think we ought to. Long as we’re doing right, we don’t have too much truck with appearances. Good-day, ladies. Next time tend to your quilting bees and your good works, and don’t go poking your noses into what don’t rightly concern you.”

  But afterwards he spoke to Pat about it.

  “You behaving yourself, girl?” he said gruffly. “Don’t want to have to take a pistol to that boy. Be a pity, him with a young child.”

  “I always behave myself, Papa,” Pat said. “I like Stone. If he were free, I’d marry him. But he’s not free, and I’m not a fool. I don’t intend to ruin my life like that Lolette Dupré did. Right now he claims to be awful unhappy with that frozen Massachusetts witch. I feel sorry for him. If he divorces her or she dies, I’ll marry him. But I won’t be any man’s mistress—not even Stone’s.”

  “Folks are talking,” Ash growled. “Sometimes you got to avoid the appearance of evil.”

  “To heck with them and their talk! I like Stone. I like being in his company. But if he hasn’t done anything more than complain about how bad his life is by Christmas, I’m leaving. Six months, Papa. And in the meantime, don’t worry about your girl.”

  Even out at Broad Acres, Jeb heard the talk. He worried over it for a week, then put the question to Nat: