Time Will Darken It

by William Maxwell

  “Probably she learned from her mother,” Martha said.

  “I never had a chance to do that,” Mary Ellis said. “My mother was an invalid and we had a series of housekeepers. I was never even allowed in the kitchen.”

  “It’ll come, with practice,” Martha said, trying to follow the conversation in the study. “You get so after a while it’s second nature. You don’t even have to think about it.”

  “I don’t know,” Mary Ellis said despairingly. “I don’t think I’ll ever get to that point. I like to keep house and I like sewing—I make all my own clothes—but I don’t think I’ll ever learn to cook. It just isn’t in me.”

  “You mustn’t feel that way,” Martha said. She was struggling with herself to keep from getting up and going into the next room. Austin needed help. She was sure of it. They were solidly against him, appealing to his sense of honour, which was so easy to do if you were Bud Ellis and didn’t have any. But if she appeared in the doorway and said Stop it. I know what you’re doing, Bud Ellis, and I won’t allow it, Austin would never forgive her.

  “It isn’t that I don’t have enough time,” Mary Ellis was saying. “Although I’m busy, of course. But not like women who have children to think about. Did you have Ab right away?”

  “She was born a little over a year after we were married,” Martha said.

  “I envy you so,” Mary Ellis said. “Bud and I have been married nearly a year now and——”

  “Just because you don’t have a baby the first year doesn’t mean anything,” Martha said. “I know women who were married ten or twelve years before their first baby came.”

  “But I don’t want to wait that long,” Mary Ellis said. “I want to have my children when I’m young. Every time I see a child I want to touch it and hold it on my lap, and it’s making Bud very unhappy.”

  “That goes without saying,” Bud Ellis said in a loud voice. “But four thousand dollars is four thousand dollars. And if we’d known what we do now, we’d never have put money into the venture. I’m not accusing you of anything, Austin, but I’d like to know one thing: Why did you stay out of it?”

  Martha King waited, hoping against hope for the sound of her husband’s fist against Bud Ellis’ jaw. There was no such sound.

  “I try not to feel that way,” Mary Ellis said. “I know it’s foolish of me to …”

  Surely he won’t explain, Martha said to herself. Oh don’t let him stoop to explain.

  “I couldn’t afford to take the risk,” Austin said, in the next room.

  “Then you knew it was a risk?” Judge Fairchild said, as if he were leaning down from the bench to question the witness on the stand.

  Martha King looked across at the Danforths’ house, saw that it was dark, and realized that she wouldn’t have called Dr. Danforth even if they had been home. It was Austin’s battle, and she would have to sit by quietly and let him lose it.

  It is a common delusion of gentle people that the world is also gentle, considerate, and fair. Cruelty and suspicion find them eternally unprepared. The surprise, the sense of shock, paralyses them for too long a time after the unprovoked insult has been given. When they finally react and are able to raise their fists in their own defence, it is already too late. What did he mean by that? they say, turning to the person nearest them, who witnessed the scene and who might also have been attacked, although he wasn’t. There is never any help or enlightenment from the person standing next to them, and so they go on down some endless corridor, reliving the brutal moment, trying vainly to recall the precise words of what must—and yet needn’t have been a mortal insult. Should they go back and fight? Or would they only be making a fool of themselves? And then they remember: This is not the first time. Behind this unpleasant incident there is another equally unpleasant (and another and another), the scars of which have long since healed. The old infection breaks open, races through the blood, producing a weakness in the knees, and hands bound, hopeless and heavy at their sides.

  “Have you been to a doctor?” Martha King asked.

  “Yes. Dr. Spelman. He just told me to get lots of rest and not to get upset by things.” Mary Ellis seemed completely unaware of what was going on in the study. When Bud Ellis said, “I think you might have had the decency to tell us, Austin,” her face remained unchanged, hopeless, unhappy.

  Martha waited and said, “There’s something you can try, if you want to. Grace Armstrong told me about it. It’s something her mother discovered. Grace says that she would probably never have come into the world otherwise, and neither would her children. If you want to try it——”

  “I’ll try anything,” Mary Ellis said.

  “Well, then,” Martha said, “this is what you must do.…”

  12

  The people who lived on Elm Street, friends and neighbours, seldom spoke or thought of the Beach girls as separate personalities. It is true that they had a marked family resemblance and that their remarks and timid mannerisms were often interchangeable, but more important, it was generally recognized that they would never marry, and if they were ever to enter the ark with the other animals, two by two, it would have to be in each other’s company.

  At the kindergarten the children never for a moment confused them. If a child fell down during a game of tag or drop-the-handkerchief and skinned his knee or struck his elbow, it was Alice Beach that he rushed to. She wiped the children’s tears away, approved of their weaving, admired and sometimes correctly interpreted the drawings they brought to show her. When they grew tired of playing, she held them in her lap. If they started quarrelling over an alphabet plate or a necklace of wooden beads, she found something else to distract them temporarily from the emotion of ownership. So long as she was in the room there was a centre of love, of safety.

  In a child’s world, where there is a mother there must also be a father. There was nothing about Lucy Beach that could be considered masculine and yet she was able, when the children grew over-excited, to calm them. “Now that’s enough,” she would say. “No more.” And it would be enough and there was no more of that particular frenzy. She never spoke harshly to the children or punished them with a quick spanking, but they seemed to have decided by common consent to be afraid of her.

  Nora went from house to house in the mornings, collecting the children, who fought for the privilege of walking beside her. And because she was young, because she laughed easily and played London Bridge Is Falling Down and Drop-the-Handkerchief with as much pleasure and excitement as they did, they presented her with samples of their handiwork—crayon drawings and lopsided raffia baskets which she was expected to admire and keep always. When she sat down for a moment on one of the low kindergarten chairs, small arms encircled her neck. The children leaned upon her (all except Ab) and rubbed against her like cats and were in love with her without knowing it, and this in no way interrupted or interfered with their relation to Miss Lucy, the agent of punishment, and Miss Alice, the agent of comfort.

  Love and fear are so well taught at home that no educational system need be concerned with these two elementary subjects. The first stage of the Montessori Method is to develop the sense of touch, sight, and hearing. This is done through games, and by guiding the children’s attention to the association of objects, names, and ideas. They are taught the difference between hot and cold objects, between objects that are rough and those that are smooth. And by teaching children the words “hot,” “cold,” “rough,” “smooth,” you extend their sense of language before any question of reading or writing arises. They get their ideas of form and colour from playing with blocks and cylinders of varying sizes, which are fitted into frames that match them. There are no set lessons, no classes, no prizes or punishments of the usual kind. The only incentive is the pleasure, in a room where all kinds of interesting occupations are being pursued, of succeeding and getting things right. The hothouse plant, forced to bloom early and in time for Christmas or Easter, does not, of course, do very well afterward, but on
e way to discover the true rhythm of the universe is to try and improve on it.

  Though Alice and Lucy Beach had read Mme Montessori’s famous book, their own education had been at the hands of their mother. Touch, sight, and hearing were developed not by games but by crises. They were taught the difference between a warm, kind mother and a cold mother and how, by a simple act of disobedience, a failure in sympathy, they could change “kind” to “cold,” “smooth” to “rough.” As they grew older they became extremely adept at fitting their hopes into a frame that did not match. There were set lessons which, once learned, could not be unlearned. There were prizes, in the shape usually of a trip to Europe. And there were punishments of an unusual kind, which sent them weeping to their rooms and then brought them back to be forgiven by the person who had done something unforgivable to them.

  If Mrs. Beach had realized how easy it was to start a kindergarten, how simple to find a dozen mothers who were anxious to have their children out from under foot three hours every weekday morning, she would never have given her consent to the modest establishment over Bailey’s Drug Store. It was only one of many ideas that the two girls had hatched up, and the other ideas had always been exhausted in talk. This one they had carried through, to her amazement, and for the time being she could think of no way to put a stop to it.

  From nine until eleven-thirty, five mornings a week, the children accepted the kindergarten routine as they would have accepted an act of enchantment. When Lucy played the piano, they marched and sang. They wove hammocks and rugs out of coloured yarns. With scissors and paste and sheets of coloured paper they made houses and stores and churches with pointed steeples. At certain times, memory overtook them as it overtook Ulysses on the shore of Calypso’s island, and then they would come to Nora and say, “When are we going home?” or “Will my mother be home when I get there?”

  Every day when it came time to deliver the children to their homes, Nora had to stand and see one child after another leave her and run into outstretched, waiting arms. It was something that she never got used to.

  13

  “Why are you responsible?” Dr. Danforth asked. “All you did was draw up the papers.”

  “I know,” Austin said, “but I invited them here. They were guests in my house and don’t you see, that makes it look as if I——”

  Dr. Danforth didn’t at first understand, and then he said, “No … no, you mustn’t do that, my boy. They went into it with their eyes open. Or at least they should have gone into it that way. It was speculation pure and simple. And you have Martha and Ab to worry about, and another child coming. It wouldn’t be right at all. The thing will work itself out some way. Just give it a chance.”

  “I found out one thing,” Austin said, examining the tips of his shoes, “while they were here. It seems that there was a time when Mr. Potter was very hard up, and turned to Father for help.”

  “Is that so?” Dr. Danforth peered at Austin over his glasses. “I never heard about that.”

  “Father refused him,” Austin said, “and I can’t figure out why.”

  “It wasn’t Mr. Potter that the Judge was indebted to, if I remember correctly,” Dr. Danforth said.

  “I know,” Austin said.

  “It’s true that they were raised under the same roof and you might expect, for old times’ sake, that the Judge would want to do whatever lay in his power to help some member of his foster family. But you can’t judge people’s actions unless you know what went on in their minds at the time. Even if the Judge were alive today and you could go to him and ask why he refused to help Mr. Potter, he might not give you any satisfaction. He was a very proud man. It was his only fault, as far as I can make out, and with him it wasn’t exactly a fault; he had reason to be proud. He might rather let you think ill of him than defend himself against a charge that he figured you ought to know was false. That’s the way he was.”

  “Perhaps you’re right,” Austin said. “But I remember hearing him say a number of times how deeply indebted he was to the people who raised him, and how he’d never had an opportunity of paying them back.”

  “You can’t pay people back for the kindness they show to you when you’re in trouble,” Dr. Danforth said emphatically. “There isn’t any way of measuring, in terms of money, what you owe them. You can go on paying them back forever, and still be indebted to them. Sometimes they don’t need any help. Or maybe the kind of help they need you can’t give them. All you can do is look around for somebody that is in need of help and do what you can for them, figuring that it will all be cancelled out some day. I’m sure that’s the way the Judge looked at it. He was always helping somebody out of a tight spot, his whole life long. People that are near to you and that you have every reason for trusting—if they do something that doesn’t look quite right to you—you have to wait and give them time to explain themselves. And if they don’t or can’t explain because they’ve passed on, you still mustn’t jump to conclusions, my boy, or you may do them and yourself an injustice. The chances are that the Judge paid off this debt as he paid off every other, but felt obligated, even so, to the end of his life, and that’s why you heard him speak as he did. I don’t doubt that the story Mr. Potter told you about turning to the Judge for help and being refused is true, every word of it. The Judge could say no. But in every one of these letters there is something held back, and I doubt if he told you the whole story. Maybe that wasn’t the first time Mr. Potter turned to the Judge for money. Maybe it was the fourth or fifth time. Maybe the Judge went on his note and had to make it good afterward, the way he did for so many other people that pass as honest men. Or it could even be that he had some reason to distrust Mr. Potter. After all, they knew each other as boys. Maybe the Judge realized that any help he gave would just be frittered away on something foolish like an automobile. Sometimes, with men like Mr. Potter, there is no real way of helping them, even if you try. The more help anybody gives them, the deeper in they get. You can’t tell why he refused him. But I’ll tell you one thing—I wouldn’t believe any man that spoke ill of Judge King.”

  “I wasn’t speaking ill of him,” Austin said soberly. “I just wondered, that’s all.”

  Dr. Danforth looked startled. He took his spectacles off, restored them to their case, and put the case in his vest pocket. “I wasn’t talking about you,” he said. “I didn’t really get to know my own father until just at the end of his life. And even then, there were things I couldn’t ask about, or tell him about myself, for fear of upsetting him. I know what he was like as my father, but the rest of him, all that part that had nothing to do with me …” With a smile that apologized for the tears in his eyes, Dr. Danforth took out his handkerchief and blew his nose vigorously.

  There is nothing so difficult to arrive at as the nature and personality of one’s parents. Death, about which so much mystery is made, is perhaps no mystery at all. But the history of one’s parents has to be pieced together from fragments, their motives and character guessed at, and the truth about them remains deeply buried, like a boulder that projects one small surface above the level of smooth lawn, and when you come to dig around it, proves to be too large ever to move, though each year’s frost forces it up a little higher.

  14

  “The house seems a little chilly,” Mrs. Danforth said when her husband came back from the Kings’. She was sitting in her accustomed chair and her hands were engaged in the creation of the same white six-pointed star.

  “I’ll see what I can do about it,” he said.

  The rumble of furnace grates being shaken went through the silent house. A shovel scraped in the coal bin. An iron door clanged shut, and there were heavy footsteps clumping up the basement stairs. Mrs. Danforth looked up as her husband came into the room. He went over to his chair, sat down, rubbed his eyes with his hand, sighed, and said nothing. After a time he said, “Well, I’ve been over the whole business with him. He listened to everything I had to say, but he’s still going ahead with his
plans.”

  “I thought he probably would,” Mrs. Danforth said.

  “He feels responsible because he drew up the papers and because the arrangements were made in his house. If there’s anything in the world that boy doesn’t feel responsible for, I don’t know what it is. He has to borrow four thousand dollars. The bank won’t take the stock as collateral.”

  “Is that so,” Mrs. Danforth said.

  “I told him, ‘You’ll be lucky if you get out of this without having to go into bankruptcy.’ ”

  “What did he say to that?”

  “He didn’t say anything.”

  “Austin will never go bankrupt,” Mrs. Danforth said calmly.

  “The others are willing to ride along without bringing suit, in the hopes of getting their money back some day. It’s Bud Ellis who’s making the trouble. He threatened to bring suit against Austin.”

  “Why against Austin?”

  “Because if they brought suit against Mr. Potter and won, the chances are they still couldn’t collect anything. So far as Austin is concerned, they haven’t got a leg to stand on. The case would be thrown out of court.”

  “Austin must know that.”

  “Certainly he knows it, and so does Bud Ellis. It isn’t right. ‘Let them stew in their own juice,’ I told him. ‘You’ve paid off your father’s debts. That’s enough.’ … He mustn’t make a pauper of himself for people who aren’t even related to him.”

  “No,” Mrs. Danforth agreed.

  “I told him all that and a lot more, but it was so much wasted breath.”

  “Well, you’ve had your say,” Mrs. Danforth said, searching through the table drawer for a missing crochet hook. “Whatever happens now, it won’t be your fault.”

  15

  “How nice you look, Nora,” Alice Beach said.

  To her surprise, Nora went back into her room and took off her ear-rings. The look of expectancy on her face, as she went down the hall and said good night to Mrs. Beach, could not be taken off. Martha King’s long-delayed invitation had included them all, but Mrs. Beach had eaten something that disagreed with her and was in bed, and one of the girls was obliged to stay home and take care of her. Which one should go, and which one should miss this pleasant change from their ordinary routine, had been decided long ago when Lucy took lessons from Geraldine Farrar’s singing teacher and Alice stayed below in the little reception hall, listening to the sound of her sister’s voice ascending and descending the scale that ended with a chord on the piano.