by Howard Fast
As he came forward, no one appeared. The place was a good deal as he had left it; nothing had changed; nothing was new. The fields were green and yellow, the hedges high and bluish, the trees broad over gobs of welcome shade. The trees were willow and locust and maple, lonesome, heavy trees. But he thought they had a little of a smile, a little of a nod for him; he thought that they knew him, and that they were welcoming him in their contained fashion.
High as his shoulder was the hedge beside which he walked, and broad as two paces. It was the sort of hedge that gave the lie to any assertion that America was young; it was a very mature hedge, and one that had known life. He walked along it, shuffling through the margin of grass that lined the road, until he came to the break, where a rickety old gate hung. As he opened the gate, it creaked warningly on its hinges. He walked in, along the flagstoned path, to the little garden where the tables and benches were set, Wearily he laid his bundle upon the table and sat down. No one appeared. There was no sound other than the thick humming of insects and the distant screech of a crow.
“Peter!” he ventured; and, raising his voice, he cried: “Peter, where are you, you sluggard!”
From within, there was a sound, a shuffling of feet, and opening and closing of doors, a sound coming nearer, until finally the front door swung inward, and an old man poked out his head.
“Peter, come here! Must I wait forever for a tankard of ale?”
Coming forward, the old man stretched his head like a turkey, straining his eyes to see; then he clapped his hands, forgot his age, picked up his apron, and almost ran to the tables. “I thought—” he began—“I thought surely my eyes—”
“A drink, Peter! Must I die here of thirst?”
“Yes. A tankard. A hundred tankards. Only be patient, and old Peter will serve you.”
“You are an old man, and a slow old man. Your joints crack.” But there was a warmth and affection in his voice; the old man had not changed much.
Presently they sat together, one on either side the table, John Preswick’s face buried in foam, the old man watching him with a fond, though an appraising, look.
When John Preswick had satisfied his thirst, he thrust away the tankard and glanced up. With the back of his hand, he wiped his mouth, and he half smiled.
“Old Peter,” he said, “you did not expect to see me again.”
“But I did,” the old man protested strongly.
“I have crawled back—because the other was too much for me.”
“But it is good that one should come back to the place that is his.”
“I come with nothing, Peter. Even the money is gone.”
“What is money!” shrugged Peter. And, indeed, in that quiet garden, tucked away behind the hedge, heavy with the scent of earth and of flowers, money could not have a place. Peter shrugged. “Yes. What is money!”
“Much, Peter, as I have come to learn. I went away a rich fool. I come back a beggar, but a slightly wiser man. Yet I am still a fool, Peter.”
“I knew you would come,” declared old Peter, sage as the ages.
“You have a wife now perhaps, Peter?”
“What would an old man do with a wife?”
“But you are hale as an old oak, Peter.”
“No, I am old and settled in my habits. I have no wife.”
“Then perhaps, Peter, you will take me—to work for you. You know I am a strong worker. I want only a bed and to be here.”
The old man’s eyes opened wide; questioningly he gazed at the worn, dark, yellow-haired person before him. In his face amazement mingled with incredulity. “To work for me?” he inquired. “When it is yours, all of it?”
“But not any longer. Before I went, I gave it to you—for the money. I wanted the money then, Peter,” he finished simply.
“That?” Peter let out his breath and smiled in relief. “That, you mean. But you do not imagine that I took it for your words! For three thousand?—No. I am an honest man. It is yours, and I have kept it for you. Some day you will return the money I gave you—if you wish. I do not need it. I am an old man. I desire only to be here.”
“There is the deed.”
Old Peter went into the house and returned with the deed. Carefully he tore it into bits and cast them away. And John Preswick laid his face in his hands and sobbed for the first time in many, many years. Old Peter walked over, bent, and laid a hand upon the yellow hair. “Come,” he whispered. “Come. Soon the post will be here.”
15
A YEAR later, John Preswick received this letter:
“DEAR LOVE:
“For many things you must forgive me, but for this most of all. I have married, but only because our daughter must have a name. I have married a fine and good man of whom I will not speak here. And I am not unhappy.
“But I write to tell of her—our daughter. Is that not terrible and wonderful, our daughter! My mother tells me she is much like I was, except that her eyes are blue—your blue. It is like the sea. I have told my mother all, and she seems to understand. I think sometimes that she dreams of you. To her it is not grotesque; it is beautiful.
“She is a healthy, large child, with clear, intelligent eyes. Discreetly, I made inquiries of a young medical friend of our family, a Dr. Van Aurstchen, who seems to love and to understand the child; but he does not appear to know a great deal. He says that if the stock is good, it may matter not at all, and I pray nightly that he is right. You see, I love her as I have loved no other person—but you. That is wicked, is it not, for my husband loves me? His name is Fredric Thatcher. He is a splendid person, and you must understand how good he is to me. You must understand, John Preswick, and forgive me and love me.
“I shall not write again; I cannot. As I write this, I am trying to be brave, as I know I should be; but it is so hard. I feel that some one is laughing over it all. That is why, even when I pray, I know I am not praying with my soul. Somehow, I can hear—laughter.
“Her name is Inez, as mine is, for I knew you love the name. She is beautiful, her eyes like deep wells. Remember, dear one, that the kisses I give her are from your lips. Remember, too, that I loved you. I ask much, for it is hard to remember—
“INEZ.”
He did not know, as he read it, that she was dead—after months of lingering, painful illness—after the bearing of the child. He did not know that she wrote the letter at the end, only then.
He received a short, impersonal note from her mother, a few lines. She had died. He did not wonder at the coldness of the note. He saw only the dread implication.
He wondered whether, as Inez had thought, it was all something of a jest.
He went to the Steer’s Head, climbing it for the first time in four years; and, at the top, he cast himself face down in the long grass. And in that manner he lay until the sun set, unmoving. When he returned to the inn, you would not have known, from his face, that he was anything but happy.
16
THE following summer, John Preswick married the daughter of a neighboring farmer: a stout, rosy-cheeked girl called Pauline, and in time she bore him a child, a boy whom they called John Preswick after his father. The marriage was a year old when Peter died; and then John Preswick donned the white apron and took over the duties of innkeeper. And with the apron, he adopted, without realizing it, the habitual, fawning manner, although there always remained in his eyes the former, flickering pride, especially when he read the reports of the war on the sea and of Jackson’s tragic stand at New Orleans. He grew settled in his ways, and he drank wine with his guests, and each evening he took his ale from a high-rimmed tankard, goat-covered, after which he would bank the fire and go upstairs, the thought of his wife, full-breasted and welcoming, and the warm bed cheering him. It was the same old four-poster bed that had been his grandfather’s and his grandmother’s. His wife, Pauline, was an excellent cook, and beneath her hand a roast or a fat goose became a work of art. He was not to blame in that he ate overmuch or that he drank too freely of t
he splendid ale his wife brewed. His paunch began to bulge. He took on weight about the shoulders and about the waist; his complexion turned from brown to pink; and his blue eyes began to recede into sockets of fat.
He forgot too. Once, so long ago, when he had been young and another, he had said that he never would forget—but he forgot. The years slid by, and with Pauline, and the roasts, and the inn, it was easy to forget. When he was young, he had seen old soldiers and wondered that their eyes were so lackluster, that there was no spring to their steps; but now—
That was the bitterest part of all—his forgetting. Five, and then ten years went past; and he was forty and large and fat as any innkeeper should properly be. It was after eight years of this marriage that the child came, renewing his waning faith in Pauline.
Very soon after he had returned to the Steer’s Horn, he went to find a Mr. Kwalkee, whom he had once sworn to kill. But he found that Mr. Kwalkee’s inn had burnt to the ground some years past, and the whereabouts of Mr. Kwalkee no one seemed to know.
But then, after all the years, walking through the streets of Charleston on one of his not infrequent errands there, he came face to face with this same Mr, Kwalkee, older, but much the same Mr. Kwalkee. And John Preswick, who was fat, whose cheeks were pink, whose paunch bulged, laid hands upon Mr. Kwalkee and strangled him to death, there, in the center of the street, while people danced screaming about them and strove to pull them apart. For though John Preswick was fat, he had not lost his strength. Only when Mr. Kwalkee was limp in his hands, face black, eyes bulging, tongue out, did John Preswick release him and step back—dazed.
He did not clearly know what had happened. Something red had flashed across his brain; something tore away his reason, making of him another man. Now he could not comprehend it. What was this thing at his feet?—and why were these people all screaming?—and why were they holding him like a common thief, his hands behind his back?—and what had prompted him to do this thing, if, indeed, he had done it, as they were saying?
Like a man in a dream, he was led to prison.
And then there were trials, endless trials, endless procedure, endless bickering, long nights in a small, wretched, vermin-infested cell, sieges with his wife during which she sobbed over something he could not quite gather.
What was it all? His head ached intolerably.
They read the sentence, and they condemned him to be hanged by the neck until dead.
In his fortieth year, John Preswick died upon the gallows in Charleston.
PART III
1848–1970
THE GARDEN
THE GARDEN
1
DR. FELIX VAN AURSTCHEN waxed philosophical—in his own, slightly ponderous manner. But at the very most, he was philosophical; triumphant he was not, nor was he even glad in his assurance. If anything, he was affected by the sadness which invariably descended upon him when another page bearing upon the impotence of man opened. Dr. Felix had seen much of life, and he did not bear with it. Most of it he forgave—as a jest, but the jest was far too practical for him to take any pleasure in being a part of it. He had not found it easy to bite into life through medicine; yet it had never occurred to him to step out. And since he was a sensitive man, life was much of a shambles.
And he loved Inez. He loved her, and he had lost, and, as is the way with men of his type, he continued to love her. Much of the world—his world—was bound up in the little good he could do, the rest in Inez Demity. Martin Demity was one of his closest friends, so he felt, at times, that after all it could hardly have been a great deal better. One loves, he would reflect, and if one wins, one loves for but a while, but if one loses, one loves forever. Half wistfully, he knew that he was doomed to love forever.
Now he said, his face longer than ever, his dark eyes clouded: “You will have to learn, you men of wealth, that there is one thing your money cannot buy. That is life. Everything else is yours by divine right—everything. But, my friends, you cannot buy life.”
There were four of them closeted in his office, which was in a small white and brown house upon the edge of Gramercy Park. His was a discreet office, with a discreet waiting-room opening to one side of it and an operating room—one of the newer type with all the imported porcelain furbelows—opening to the other. He, Dr. Felix, sat behind his desk, upon which he rested with his elbows, for he was as tired and weary with life as he had ever been. And they sat before him, one directly in front, Martin Demity, and upon the left Fredric Thatcher, Demity’s father-in-law, and on the right, his lawyer, Carl Stadter. They were all of them intent upon the doctor, their countenances matching the gravity of his, although the wistfulness was lacking.
As though it were any use to plead! The doctor watched Martin Demity as he leaned towards him, and looked into his face. “Felix,” whispered Martin Demity, “I used to imagine that you loved her as I do. I never thought, Felix—”
The doctor stopped him with a quick hand. “Please,” he said slowly, as if the words themselves hesitated, “we will not speak of that. I have done—all that I can.”
“To what end—?”
“I am sorry, Martin.”
“If it is any question of money—” Fredric Thatcher began.
“I know—I know. If it is money, you have all there is in the world. You are a millionaire, and your daughter is in her own name, and your daughter’s husband is. I have heard all that before, and I have told you before that I cannot do anything. If you wish to place your faith in another physician—”
“Now, Felix,” Carl Stacker interrupted gently.
“I am tired,” he apologized. “Forgive me.”
And again they sat in silence, while a breeze stirred through the open window, while the night closed down, taking what small light there was in the room. They were all of them intent upon their thoughts, unaware that the room was becoming darker each moment. On the desk there was an oil lamp, but the doctor made no move to light it. Perhaps he preferred the darkness. At last he said:
“Some day men will understand this, as they will understand other things, and then we will not have to blunder about in darkness. As the matter stands, it is beyond me, beyond our knowledge. Your wife, Martin, is a lovely and perfect woman; but her perfection is in her spirit; her body is dying. For years now, I have seen the thing under my eyes. It is not a disease of her lungs, although at first I feared that. It is simply that her body lacks something necessary to life. Yes, I realize that is not a very scientific diagnosis—but it is all I can tell you. In some ways the matter presents an analogy to the royal families of Europe, where continuous interbreeding of the same blood has destroyed all virility in the stock. Undoubtedly the thing is genital. Remember, her grandmother was a Jewess of the successive Spanish-Portuguese-Dutch derivation, a small group that first in Europe and then for perhaps a hundred years in New York bred entirely within itself; and even before that it must have mingled with the old Castilian, which was none too hardy in itself. I have studied what I could glean of the genealogy. All along the stock is, what, in your lips, would be termed good, and in mine—if you will pardon my speaking frankly—degenerate. It is in a process of decay; the pity being that the body goes first, while the mind attempts to live its life in a vehicle that is rotten even though beautiful.”
Closing his eyes, he bent his head, while Martin Demity muttered: “I see, Felix.”
“But don’t misunderstand me!” he snapped. “I am not speaking of Inez—as Inez. I am not speaking of what will come after this! I am only speaking of what has already been, and what cannot be undone.”
“Yes,” admitted old Fredric Thatcher, “it cannot be undone.” He was tired too, and he knew what the others could only surmise.
“I love her,” Martin Demity said simply. “If she had not borne me a child, it would have been otherwise—so the fault is mine. But I love her, and, Felix, you love her too. You will try to save her, Felix.”
“I cannot. If you were not my friend, I should l
ie to you. But I can neither lie nor save her. It is only a matter of time.”
He did his best to speak impersonally, as a physician rightly should, but it was difficult, and it took the heart from him. He thought of the last time he had bled her, of the deathly whiteness of her pointed, lovely face, of the subdued pain in her wide eyes. It was the curse of this family to have beauty—with the other. They were all beautiful in a narrow, feline manner: her mother, her grandmother—he had known both well—and they were much the same constitutionally. Only she, Inez Demity, was the frailest, and at the same time the loveliest. And, as in the case of her mother, she had given most of herself to the bearing of her single child, a girl, whom they had religiously called Inez. That was five years ago, and since then she had been living her death. He thought that if it were over soon it would be the kinder way—for Inez Demity; but, as with Martin Demity, he loved her.
“I will not bleed her again,” he stated. “She cannot stand it. The only possibility left is a change of climate; that is a chance.”
“That she will live?”
“It may extend her life—for years, perhaps. More than that I cannot say.”
“And where,” Martin Demity asked, a trace of hope springing into his eyes, “would you suggest?”
“Only the South. Winters cut into what little reserve she has. New York weather is particularly miserable.”
“Possibly Maryland?” Fredric Thatcher suggested. He had a bit of property in Baltimore.
“Even worse. I would avoid Virginia too.”
“Carolina?”
“Perhaps.”
Martin Demity shrugged his shoulders. He was still staring at Dr. Felix, and something flashed in the meeting of their eyes, something that told him more than he had ever before suspected; and he wondered, as many before him had wondered—for even Fredric Thatcher surmised, though he was aware of much—what there was tangled up in the web of this family into which he had married.
