Little Less Than Kind

by Charlotte Armstrong

  Felicia had been quietly reckoning up these differences when—all suddenly in a day—her mother had died. And she, desperate to help her stricken father, had tried never to grieve where he could see or hear her grief. Today she was remembering that time, that very bad time. When people said such stupid things. Cousin Abby had said all the stupid things, every one. Felicia had curled up like a snail in its shell to protect herself.

  Only one person … as she was remembering today … had said a thing that had meant a great deal to her. It wasn’t the minister, either. (Felicia Lorimer belonged to a church and faithfully attended. It was another little difference, but all her own.) No, it was not the minister. It was Mr. Cunningham. Mr. Hob Cunningham, who had come upon her on one of those very bad afternoons the week after the funeral, when she was trying to reach a peach on the tree and he had reached up and picked it for her—not just any peach, but the very one she’d had her eye on. He didn’t say, “I’m so sorry,” or, “Your mother was a lovely person Or, “You must not be unhappy, little girl. She wouldn’t have wanted that.”

  He had said, “Shakes you up, all right, doesn’t it, Felicia? Yep, it’s the one thing you hit and hit hard. And he’ll shake the nonsense out of you, Old Brother Death, when he comes.”

  She could remember looking up at him and thinking, Oh strong and true! And feeling a lot of nonsense draining out of her, leaving a hard peace.

  Now, she thought, I wonder if I liked Ladd Cunningham, in part, for his father’s sake. Because he was so strong and true. I guess poor Ladd is—neither.

  And she thought, Old Brother Death came for Mr. Cunningham so that he didn’t get to see his son the way he is. That would have been hard for him. No, not for him. Or at least, not too hard, because he was strong and true.

  She dreamed no dreams of a sentimental vindication, about Ladd Cunningham. She did not fantasy a day when he would come to her, contrite, knowing the hurt he had given her innocence, anxious to atone for it. Such a dream was nonsense. Why, if he had any idea that he had hurt her so, he’d hate her! He didn’t hate her, now. He didn’t even know her. He hated something about her that was only a mistake of his own. A hateful something.

  But it might not have been. Felicia was not so silly as to think that sex was evil. No, if there had been between them the sweet magnetism of the flesh, it might have been lovely. And there might have been such a time. But she had been so far from such thoughts—in that moment, Saturday. It was strange to her that his intuition had been so faulty. In fact, the whole incident scarcely had anything to do with Felicia. Well, she didn’t know him then. And now she never would.

  You might as well hit a hard thing hard. So the aching Sunday was over, and Ladd Cunningham was over and out.

  So … school next week and her senior year. Next year (Justin said) she could get away. She scuffled along. She saw a tassel fallen from a tree—such casual beauty. Beauty so lavishly falling all around that you didn’t even notice. Well, then, in spite of a wide world she had never seen (and in spite of Justin), here, where she walked, was the world? Was it not?

  So musing, her feet took her in at the familiar turn, to travel down the drive toward the kitchen door. A strange car was there, two women in it, and two more standing beside it.

  Felicia came on her bare brown legs, with her unpainted face childish over the big brown bag, looking about twelve years old. She was thinking, Why should anything bigger happen to you in some other place? A freakish and alliterative sentence popped into her mind. “Can your heart be broken better in Bombay?”

  The women had stopped talking at sight of her. She stopped walking and said, smiling more at her own whimsy than at them, “Hello. I’m Felicia Lorimer. Are you looking for my father?”

  “No, no,” said one of them tensely. “We’re waiting for Mr. Harper.”

  “I see.” Felicia nodded and went up the steps and into the kitchen. She didn’t “see.” She hadn’t the faintest idea who Mr. Harper was or where or why they were waiting at that spot. She was thinking her own thoughts. Can you worry worse in Winnipeg? Or dig death deeper in Detroit? (Old Brother Death) No, no, she thought proudly. It is just as hard, right here. Just as hard—every bit. This is the world and I am alive in it. The ache and the pain seemed to be loosening and letting her go. Her body felt lighter. She moved around the kitchen, putting the food away.

  Under the kitchen window the women were talking fiercely. They were all concerned with duty. One of them kept saying, in a fluster, “Better wait for Mr. Harper. Just wait for Mr. Harper.” It was their duty, she insisted, because it was only fair to wait for Mr. Harper. One was militant. The girl must be taken away. Surely some agency in the community had the power to take her away. Why, it was the duty of a decent community not to permit such things to be! For her own sake, for everyone’s sake, for everyone’s sake, she must, must, must, be taken away. Another wanted to go home at once and threatened to walk there. She had a daughter in high school who knew the girl. No, she would not take the girl into her home. She had her duty to her own. It was too bad. It was just too bad. But. She knew what her duty was. The fourth lady thought it was her duty to keep her mouth shut; she kept saying so.

  Little Felicia, in the kitchen, was not, in spite of her philosophy and contrary to her newly present resolution, listening, at all, to what was going on in the world that she was in. The first sound that attracted her attention was a long “ssssssh.” Then, her mind played back the loud sentence that had been shushed. “And he ought to be whipped, disgusting old beast.”

  Felicia stood still. She heard a man speak. “Let’s get out of here, ladies.”

  “But what?” “What did he say?”

  A car door banged. “He says he knows the boy and the boy is crazy.”

  “Tch, tch!” “Well, he would …” “He’d have to …”

  “Come on. Hurry up, please,” the man said, “I want to get going!”

  “But is it true, Mr. Harper? That’s the point, after all.”

  “Whether it’s true or not,” said Mr. Harper, “this is a terrible business, I’ll tell you that.” Car door banged.

  “Law?”

  Car engine into noise.

  “I say, a law?” A female speaking.

  Motor racing. Then foot off the throttle and lever into gear.

  “Oh, pity the little girl!”

  Then, shrill, “Mr. Harper, I want to go home, right now, if you don’t mind.”

  Car noise receding.

  Felicia drifted across the kitchen and looked out at the quiet yard where she knew every tree, every stone. The old stable beside the camphor tree was quiet.

  She pushed the screen door. She let it back behind her gently, not wanting it to slap shut with its normal crack of sound. Not knowing why. Just sensing that it should not.

  She went down the steps and across the yard, making her feet firm upon the place where she had fallen in the dark, because this was home and it must not be haunted. One had to live here.

  The stable door was open. She looked in. He had his back to her.

  “Dad?”

  He turned a face of terror. She felt as if he had hit her, so strongly did he will her to come no nearer. Her heart began to race.

  “What’s the matter?” she said.

  “No, no,” he said. “It’s nothing. Don’t think about it. I’ll see that you’re not bothered. I’ll see to that.” His pale blue eyes had a look she had never seen in them before.

  “What am I not supposed to think about?” she asked.

  “No, I can’t,” he said. “It’s insane. Insane. He can’t know what he is saying or doing. I told poor Abby.”

  Felicia, her mind flashing back to Saturday night, put both hands on the doorjamb and cried out, “Dad, I haven’t done anything wrong! I haven’t! I swear it!”

  “I know,” he groaned, “I know. And neither have I—that I knew or intended. I wish—I have to think, you know. But there’s the question. Where to turn to get the mo
ney. I was thinking of a boarding school …”

  Then, as if he couldn’t look at her any longer, he turned toward the big window, his face and his throat working.

  “You won’t believe a lie!” she cried.

  “No, no,” he said, “no, no, no. Or I could sell all this. I suppose … I suppose …”

  She knew him so well. He wasn’t believing a lie. No, something had hurt him and frightened him more terribly than she had ever seen him hurt or frightened. All she wanted to do, in this or any other world, was to run to him, touch him, send from her own frightened heart the strong and ancient messages of love, of loyalty, of her simple presence for his comfort. She ran two steps and then he turned and stopped her with that look of anguished fear. No, better not? Must not?

  “It’s all right,” he said falsely, with his poor smile, his poor, put-on painful smile. “We won’t let it destroy us. I don’t want you to think about it. I will take care of you. I will think of the way. People are not as cruel as that. Just let me alone to think of something, will you, darling?” Her father was weeping. “Just be a good girl?”

  Felicia said, in a little girl’s voice, “Daddy, if I fix a sandwich for lunch, will that be all right?”

  “All right,” he groaned. He buckled. He sat on a box. “I wish … I wish … your mother … wish your mother were alive.”

  But she is not, Felicia thought. Death took her. Old Brother Death. We are the ones who are alive. That is the hard thing.

  What was destroying him? He had his conscience, so vulnerable, so dainty, that he had never carved the Tiki-god. His ways went down the charming bypaths; the small enchantments were his concern. He saw no evil. He had his stubborn values, and his standards, and so his goodness. He had ever been her loving father and she loved him but …

  She was very, very old and she had seen much evil.

  She could do nothing for him. Not now. It was sad. It was hard. It was true.

  She would be a good girl and leave him alone.

  When she came into the house, the phone was ringing.

  “Is this the … little Lorimer girl?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is your father there, dear?”

  “Yes, but …”

  “May I speak to him?” The woman’s voice was timid and very sweet.

  “Not now. I’m sorry,” Felicia said.

  “This is Mrs. George Harper.” The voice went up to question recognition.

  “Yes, Mrs. Harper?”

  “Mr. Harper and I would like very much for you to come and stay with us a little while. Will you do that?” The voice seemed to assume that Felicia was about twelve years old.

  “I don’t know you,” Felicia said, bewildered.

  “Mr. Harper and I thought perhaps you would rather come and stay with people you don’t know.”

  “Why?”

  “This whole thing is … so unfortunate. Mr. Harper and I are afraid that the story is going to get around. We … we”—the woman was getting breathless—“only want to try to do what is fair. Mr. Harper regrets the whole thing and so do I, of course. We feel that we … Couldn’t I speak to your father?”

  “No,” said Felicia. “What story?”

  “Oh!” It was a little yelp of consternation.

  “I’d like to know just how … it was put to you,” said Felicia craftily.

  “But surely, if you … It’s just not wise, right now, dear, for you to stay alone in that house.” The woman was agitated.

  “I don’t stay here alone,” said Felicia loudly. “I live here with my father.”

  The woman’s breath gasped in. Felicia, connected with that gasp of air, was suddenly connected with the nature of the lie. “Disgusting old beast,” “terrible business,” “not wise to stay alone in that house with your father …”

  She heard the woman wail, “George, I can’t talk to her. You’ll have to do it.”

  A man said, “Hello? Hello?”

  She didn’t speak, but she didn’t hang up.

  “Little girl? Listen, we are coming right over.”

  “No.”

  “These damn women are going to spread this thing all over town and it’s not going to be any fun a-tall. Now, we only want to help you … and I don’t care what the truth is—”

  “You can’t help me,” Felicia said. She hung up. She ran upstairs.

  Nearly noon, and Cleona put her head out of the kitchen door of the Cunningham-Crown house and said, “Hi, Miss Felicia. Was that you rattling the pool gate?”

  “I guess it was.” The girl just stood there, looking behind her.

  “I’m waiting on the doctor.” Cleona let her ample form out through the screen door. “Or either Mr. Crown, when he gets the message.” Cleona felt like talking out the pressures of her responsibility. “Miss Abigail, she don’t feel so good.”

  “Poor Abby?” the girl said. She had on a blue cotton shirt and skirt. She looked too dressed up for a summer noon and yet not dressed up enough.

  “Oh, I got her quiet now,” Cleona said, fanning herself. “Her and Mr. Ladd had some words, I think that’s it.”

  “Mr. Ladd Cunningham? He isn’t here?”

  “No, ma’am. But you all want to go swimming, Miss Felicia, you know where the key is at. Sure is hot in the sun.”

  “It would be cool,” said Felicia, “in the water.”

  Cleona now gave her a sharp look. “Where you going, child, with that big old suitcase? You don’t look like you feel so good yourself.”

  “I was in a hurry.” Felicia pushed at her hair and looked behind her again.

  “You all visiting some friend of yours? Over night, probably?” The girl had her good shoes on but her hair was tied up, any old way, in a rubber band. Cleona was puzzled.

  “Yes, over the night.”

  “One of them slumber parties?” Cleona hooted. “And nobody sleeps a wink?”

  Felicia said, “Is it lonelier in Liverpool? Do you super-suffer in Saskatchewan?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing. Just silly. Silly, Cleona. Tell Mr. and Mrs. Harper—”

  “I don’t know any Mr. and Mrs. Harper.

  “Neither do I.”

  Cleona said, “You all come in here and let me give you a cool drink. You hear?”

  But Felicia braced herself and smiled up at the black woman. “I liked Mr. Hob Cunningham, didn’t you?”

  “I sure did. But Mr. David Crown, he is a very nice gentleman, too.”

  “So was my father.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good-bye, Cleona.”

  “You all have fun, hear?”

  Cleona shaded her eyes to watch the girl trudge down the Cunningham drive to the Cunninghams’ street. Then Cleona saw the doctor’s handsome automobile swoop to the curb and she smoothed her apron and her uniform and ducked back through the house to open the front door.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “She’s quiet, Mr. Crown. Dr. Jones, he’s up there now. She didn’t have no accident or anything. Her and Mr. Ladd had some words; that was it. And Dr. Jones, he’s taking care.”

  “Good. Thank you, Cleona. Where is Mr. Ladd now?”

  “Oh, he gone. He took off in his automobile.”

  “I see.”

  David felt no surprise. He felt, in fact, relief, believing that things were coming to a head in this house, the trouble would be opened up. He looked into Cleona’s beautiful mahogany colored eyes, feeling, as he often had, that she was a wise woman. “Do you know what happened?”

  “No, sir, I doesn’t,” said Cleona, “but Mr. Ladd, he ain’t been feeling too right with himself for a long time.”

  “I agree with you,” David started for the stairs and saw Dr. Jones coming down.

  Cleona was two jumps ahead of his thought. “I’ll go be with her,” she said and passed the doctor on the stairs.

  “Mr. Crown? She’s all right.”

  “Good. Will you come in here a minute?”

&n
bsp; “Certainly.”

  They went into the library. David did not know this doctor at all. He was Abby’s doctor. He had not been Hob’s. He was a little slick for David’s taste and a little too prosperous-looking. “What is it?” David asked him bluntly.

  “Emotion,” said Dr. Jones. He sat down in one of the leather chairs, evidently not worried about any dying person to whom he owed a visit, or, for any other reason, on tenter-hooks to be off.

  David offered him a cigarette which the doctor took.

  “Abby is very high-strung,” the doctor said. “It doesn’t take much to set her off.”

  “Do you know what ‘set her off’?” said David stiffly.

  “No, no. I believe that certain things were said that hurt her feelings in some way. She seems worried about her son.”

  “Rightly so,” said David. He did not know this man. He did not know how far he wanted to venture into confidence with him.

  “I don’t know the boy,” said the doctor, flicking his lighter shut. “But it is too bad that Abby can’t be protected from this sort of thing. Oh, she’ll be all right. Physically; you know, there’s not much wrong with her.”

  “Then these spells of what you call ‘emotion’ are not dangerous to her?” said David flatly. He did not like something here that began to sound two-faced.

  The doctor was evasive. “Why, not this one. But of course a chronic state of high emotion isn’t good for anyone.” Very smooth.

  David said, “There is something I must ask you. What did you prescribe for Abby in the way of pills for pain?”

  “For pain?”

  “Last summer.”

  “Last summer?” The doctor’s brows went up. “May I ask why you ask?”

  “Yes. Abby tells me she had some pills for pain and she took them to her husband in the hospital.”