Tender Victory

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  Mr. Summerfield smiled indulgently. But he did not answer. Esther picked up a floating fold of the sari and looked at it. “I love you, MacDonald, and that is why I stay here with you, and play the fool. I’m bored to death, sick and bored to death. I take up fads simply to relieve my boredom. Worst of all, I’m beginning to be bored with you.” She lifted her eyes and they were full of dark fire. “Smile, MacDonald, but it’s true. And I know something else: you aren’t a Somer Granger. You don’t believe a word of what he guides you to write. You aren’t a Communist; you aren’t even a leftist. What has Granger to do with you, MacDonald? What kind of blackmail is he holding over your head to force you to do the things you do, the things you write?”

  His face changed, hardened, and then she saw the sudden gray flashing of terror across his features. He said, in a loud and coldly furious voice, “Granger’s right. You’re a fool, Esther. You’ve said only one sensible thing, that I’m not a Communist. I never was. I am only a democratic, progressive man who is trying to right—”

  “Right what?” asked Esther quietly. “The insult to your father, when he was poor and unimportant? Is that how you try to rationalize things? MacDonald, you need help, but Dr. Granger’s not the man to give it to you.”

  The gray terror again flashed across his face. Esther shook her head. “I don’t think it’s all your father, after all. It’s something else, something even more terrible. I don’t think you have what Granger calls a guilt complex because you inherited wealth. Some other kind, perhaps. After all, what is wrong with inherited wealth, so long as a man doesn’t use the money to degrade himself and do stupid things? Very few sons of rich men do that, anyway. They usually carry on their fathers’ work and expand opportunities for everybody. MacDonald, Dr. Granger has made your mind sick, though he calls it ‘adjustment.’ He has terrorized you in some way, and made you accept his lies, and made his lies yours, so that you have come to believe them yourself. I can’t stand it! I can’t stand by and watch your disintegration!”

  She strode back and forth, all her customary composure gone, and wrung her hands desperately. “What has he done to you? What lies about yourself has he told you? MacDonald, answer me! Each day you seem more ill, more irrational. Let me help you!”

  He set down his glass with violence, but she saw that his lips were bluish. “Esther, stop raving.”

  She bent toward him, in naked anguish. “Darling, listen to me. I’ve been reading about men like Granger. They practice spiritual blackmail. Don’t you remember the time he told us about some troubled college boys who came to him and confessed they had been Communists, and that they were now ashamed and sickened and full of guilt? Don’t you remember how he laughed about it, and how he told us that he’d comforted those poor children and assured them they had no reason to feel guilty, and that they were really ‘lovers of mankind’? He had such fun telling us. He sent those boys on their way, forever spiritually diseased and insane, to carry their infection with them to corrupt others. Just as he corrupts you.”

  Summerfield stood up. “Esther, stop it. You’re out of your mind.” He paused. For the first time in many years he saw tears in his wife’s eyes, and his heart pounded with inexplicable pain. He lowered his voice. “You’re giving Granger too much importance. I’m using him, not the other way around. Believe me.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t, I don’t believe you. I believe you’ve passed beyond the stage where you can recognize truth any longer.” She reached to the desk swiftly, caught up Dr. Granger’s notes, and tore them across and across, again and again.

  He gasped, caught her ripping hands, and stopped them. She opened her fingers and let the fragments drift to the floor. She was crying openly now, and Summerfield pushed her from him, less in rage than in despair. “Stop lying, darling!” she begged him. “Stop it now, and perhaps you’ll be well again. You aren’t a bad man; you’re not an evil man, as your son and our daughter believe you are. How can they be so blind? You are really what you were as they remember you years ago, an honest man. They love you, MacDonald, but they’ll never come back, they’ll never speak to you again, because you won’t let them. Because, perhaps, you can’t let them.”

  He cried out now, and she had never heard that sound before in his voice. “Why don’t you let me alone? Go away, for God’s sake!”

  She stood in absolute silence then, looking at him. He sat down at his desk and stared at it blankly, the muscles about his mouth twitching.

  “All right, MacDonald,” she said, very softly. “I’m glad you want that. I’ll go away. Tonight. And I’m never coming back, never, until you’ve put that wicked man out of your life, until you stop pouring out his own poison in your newspapers.”

  His head jerked up. “Esther. Don’t be a fool.” His voice was dwindled and weak. “You know I can’t and won’t let you go away from me. You—you just irritated me for a moment. You’ve worked yourself up into hysterics.”

  “Oh, darling,” she said wearily. “You can’t even say a word of your own. ‘Hysterics, hysterical.’ Two of Granger’s favorite words, to explain away things dangerous to him and to what he wants. But he is one of the real hysterics, the real uncontrollables.” She put her trembling hand on his shoulder. “MacDonald, you’ve known me a long time. I’m the mother of your daughter. Try to answer me honestly for once. Have you ever seen me really hysterical?”

  He looked again at his desk. He started to speak, then was silent. Still crying, she bent her head and kissed his cold cheek. “Darling, I’m so glad. You still haven’t completely lost the faculty of recognizing the truth.”

  She picked up his limp hand and pressed it to her lips. He did not look at her. She thought with terror, He’s ill, he’s frightfully ill. Barry, Lorry! Come back and help me! How can you be so cruel to your father? Come back!

  She still held his left hand, and then, to her incredulity, she saw his right hand, moving as if under an automatic impulse, take up what he had already written and crush it in his fingers. Then he sat and gazed at it emptily. She let herself drop into a chair beside him, and her heart was pounding in her ears. Her mouth moved in silent, grateful prayer, and she closed her eyes.

  Dimly she heard the door open, and then shut. She turned her head to see who had come into this room unannounced, and then she cried out joyfully, “Lorry! Lorry! I knew you’d come!” She got to her feet, and her husband stood with her, disbelieving.

  Lorry remained at a distance, rigid and white, and she looked only at her father, with cold and terrible denunciation.

  “Lorry!” he exclaimed, and he was young again, and there was a flush of life on his cheeks. He went toward her, his hands extended, and she stepped back. “Don’t touch me,” she said. “Don’t ever touch me again.”

  They stood and stared at her, speechless. And then, all at once, she felt that something had changed, shifted. She was sick with her anger and her hatred, but still she knew that something had changed. Her parents seemed mysteriously altered, greatly and emotionally moved. But it was only her imagination, she told herself, almost frightened, and very confused. That was her father there, Johnny’s enemy, her enemy, the enemy of all men of good will and honor. She must hate him; she did, indeed, hate him. Her mouth shook; for a moment she felt giddy and ill. She clenched her gloved hands together, and repeated over and over, in herself, Hate him. Hate him.

  “Lorry, when did you come home? Lorry, what is wrong?” asked her father, feebly. “What is the matter? Lorry, speak to me. What have I done?” He turned to Esther, who was watching Lorry with wide, still eyes. “Talk to her, Esther.”

  “What shall I say?” asked Esther. “Our daughter walks into our home, her home, and she’s our enemy. Aren’t you, Lorry? I never saw it until now; I never really knew it until today. She’s our enemy, MacDonald, because she doesn’t understand, and never tried to understand. She’s really a very stupid girl.”

  Lorry removed her fixed gaze from her father and turned it to her mothe
r with an expression of shock. She said, “How can you say that? You know all about him.”

  Esther did not answer for a moment. For suddenly she saw how vulnerable her daughter was, how young, how bitterly hurt and suffering, how relentless, how blindly passionate. Esther’s heart stirred with pity. She put her hand on her husband’s arm and answered gently, “Yes, dear, I do know a lot about your father—now. A great deal more than I ever did. And you—you know nothing.”

  It seemed to Lorry that the carpeted floor moved under her feet, so intense was her amazement, and then came her renewed anger. “So he’s corrupted you now, too, Mother, has he? He’s convinced you. You, of all people!”

  “What does the girl mean?” cried Mr. Summerfield. “Lorry! I’m your father!”

  “No!” Lorry’s voice was almost a scream. “Not any more! Not again, as long as you live, and I live!” Her nameless fright rose, and her confusion, and the old tearing pain. For an instant she was a young child, and she wanted to burst into tears of terror and loneliness, and to run to her father and let him hold her to him, comforting her. An awful sense of deprivation clenched at her throat, an awful sense of grief, of mourning. But he had betrayed her; he had driven her, and Barry, away. He hates us, and so we hate him, her darkening thoughts rushed on. Oh, God, give me the strength to say what I want to say, and then help me out of this house forever.

  She looked from her father to her mother, and there was a mute agony in her green-blue eyes, an enraged but helpless expression on her face. Esther had not come to her as she had expected; Esther stood beside her husband and her face was strangely sad, strangely waiting, and very gentle. I’m imagining things, Lorry told herself again. I don’t understand—what is wrong here? What has changed? Mother, Mother. Don’t you remember me? Why do you stand there with him, so close to him? And then tears smarted Lorry’s eyelids, and she thought, involuntarily—just as I want to stand with him, as I used to, so long ago.

  She could not take her eyes from her father now. He is old, she thought vaguely. He’s suddenly an old man. I’ve made him old, right this minute. He isn’t formidable; I just thought he was. She swallowed the huge swelling in her throat, and forced her thoughts to Johnny, and her rage started up in her again, whipped both by her grief and her consternation.

  “I came to say something,” she said. “It won’t take long. Barry will soon know; he should be back any day.” She gave all her attention to her father; she could not understand her mother’s silence, her remoteness, her mysterious air of waiting. Lorry’s flesh felt cold and rigid; she could not control the constant trembling that ran in waves over her body, and the feeling of abandonment, of unbearable desolation.

  “Yes?” said her father. “Barry? Yes, dear. What about Barry?”

  It was a nightmare, of course. Her father was speaking to her as he had spoken when she was very young, and had just awakened from a fearful dream. But he was old—old—I’ve made him old, thought Lorry, and shut her eyes to protect herself from her giddiness. I’m glad he’s old; I hate him.

  She said in a faint voice, “I’ve seen your last editorial about Johnny Fletcher.” Now her eyes flashed at the sound of that beloved name. “Your lies about him. Always your lies, from the very beginning. And now you want to destroy him entirely, don’t you, because he’s done something good for this city?”

  Johnny Fletcher. Mr. Summerfield, bewildered, contemplated that name. It seemed to be a name gone far off, in some shadowy distance. He leaned against his desk and tried to consider. If only his head would stop aching; he had so many bad headaches these days. They always numbed his thoughts, and took the strength from his body.

  “What does it matter about that man?” he murmured dully. Esther turned to him in alarm, and took his elbow strongly. He did not feel her touch. “You haven’t been here for months, Lorry. He’s caused many disturbances. I can’t seem to remember just what they were at this minute, but they disorganized the life of this town. There’s something else I seem to remember. He influenced you against me. You left your home and your parents, because of him.” He rubbed his forehead with the knuckles of his right hand. “What does it matter about that man?” he repeated.

  His words, which appeared to Lorry as contemptuously indifferent and dismissing, excited her to fresh rage. “There’s something you don’t know! Barry doesn’t know yet! Do you want to hear it?”

  “What has anything about that man got to do with my son and my daughter?” Mr. Summerfield’s voice faded. It was not his own strength that was upholding him. There was a strong arm about him, and he was grateful. “All I know is that he is a busybody and a rabble-rouser.” He gazed at Lorry desperately, and now he could hear the rising panic of his own heart. He was almost convinced that he was dreaming this; worse still, he told himself, it did not matter whether he was dreaming or not. Lorry, in her turquoise suit and her furs, had taken on a flat, cardboard quality, like a poster. The room had narrowed, darkened, foreshortened. He was very tired; he knew these manifestations of his weariness well; he had first known them a few months ago. What did Granger call them? “Flights from reality.”

  “I’m not trying to escape reality,” muttered Mr. Summerfield. “It’s only that I’m very tired, I suppose.”

  “MacDonald!” cried Esther. She forced him back against his desk, for his weight had become increasingly heavy against her supporting arm. She glanced at her daughter almost with hatred. “What are you trying to do to your father?”

  Frantically convinced that her mother had completely deserted her, Lorry lost control of herself. “What am I trying to do to him? How can you—? What has he done to all of us? Tired? He says he’s tired! How tired we are of him!”

  Her terror had returned, more frenzied, more tearing, than before. Something was wrong! This was not as she had expected it to be. She did not know where to turn, what words to choose. She could feel a terror in the room, beyond herself. “Listen to me. I won’t bother either of you any longer, if you’ll just listen now. I’ll go away, and you’ll never see me again.” Her voice broke. “What has Johnny Fletcher got to do with us? Don’t you remember what Barry told us about the chaplain who rescued him on the Normandy beachhead? Barry was wounded, almost fatally—you remember—and was in some rocky hole, and nobody was permitted to go after him, because the bombardment was too heavy. But one man did, though they tried to stop him. He went to Barry and crouched in the hole with him, and gave him first aid, and comforted him. Remember? And then he carried Barry to safety on his back. Remember?”

  “Oh, no!” said Esther. “Oh, it wasn’t Mr. Fletcher! Oh, Lorry!” This was too frightful to be true.

  But Lorry was smiling fiercely, and nodding, and her tears ran down her cheeks. “Yes! It was Johnny Fletcher.”

  “It’s not possible!” cried Esther wildly. “Things—couldn’t be as cruel as that! Barry told us that the chaplain was killed in the Battle of the Bulge.”

  Mr. Summerfield staggered away from his desk and his wife, though she threw out distracted arms to hold him. He crept to a chair and fell in it, and his hands dropped between his slack knees. “It’s a nightmare,” he said in a curiously thin voice. “It’s only a nightmare.” He tried to moisten his dry lips, which tasted of metal, and then his mouth fell open soundlessly.

  “Remember?” Lorry’s relentless voice of hating accusation went on. “Where Barry went, the chaplain followed. He knew Barry didn’t have much of a chance to live. You’ve seen Barry’s scars, which make him limp sometimes. There was a night, Barry said, when he knew he was dying, and so did the doctors and the nurses in the field hospital. But the chaplain spent that night on his knees beside Barry’s cot, because he knew Barry wanted to live. Barry had never heard anyone pray before; you never taught either of us to pray—” “Lorry!” said Esther.

  “Lorry, look at your father.”

  “I’m looking,” said Lorry, with a bitter green flash of her eyes at her mother. But she shrank a little when she turned he
r regard on her father again. She went on, “This chaplain, the man who saved your son’s life, is the man you’ve been hounding, libeling, stirring up mobs against, trying to deprive him of his very life and the poor children he rescued. You did that to him, in payment. Paid in full, for saving Barry!”

  Esther went to Lorry and stood before her and said, “You knew it all the time, Lorry, didn’t you? You could have stopped it. You could have told your father from the very first. You didn’t learn about it just now, did you?”

  Lorry tried to stare her mother down, but she was trembling again, and the sickness was rising in her, and her fear of the unknown in this room. “Yes,” she said, “I did know. But I wanted to see how far he’d go.”

  Esther gestured toward her husband, collapsed in his chair. “Very well, Lorry. That is as far as he did go. Look at him. Did you ever try to help him, to understand him? Never, not once. Neither you nor Barry. Did you once ever think that there might be something in his life that was torturing him, something that a wicked man used for his own purposes?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” stammered Lorry. She went to her father’s desk and, as he had done, she leaned against it for support. There was a sharp blow of shock in her heart. “I—I shouldn’t have come alone.” She looked at her father, and shivered, and now she wept, putting her hands over her face. “It was all wrong from the beginning; I should have brought Uncle Al, Johnny.”

  “You should have told your father, from the very first. You could have saved him, then. How much you must have hated him, Lorry.” Esther turned from her daughter and ran to her husband, for his face was parched and as wrinkled as a mummy’s and he had the appearance of a dying man. She knelt beside him, for his head had begun to nod uncontrollably. Esther put her arms about him and pulled his head to her breast. She cried to her daughter, “I’ll never forgive you, Lorry, never!”

  Lorry started toward her parents, but Esther, kneeling, repudiated her with a passionate gesture. “Go away,” she exclaimed. “Go away and never come back, Lorry. I can’t forgive you; I never want to see you again.”