Bright Flows the River

by Taylor Caldwell

  “My mother had been a schoolteacher, poor thing,” she said. “And so I thought I should be one, too. I don’t regret it. I learned a lot about people then. Unfortunately all true, all depressing. I never lived on the proverbial pink cloud. I saw people clear, I saw them straight. A refill, Mr. Jerald?”

  He was surprised to find that he had drunk his drink. He held out his glass to her. The kitchen door opened and shut as she went out and again he smelled the aroma of the dinner and was, for the first time in many years, hungry. He relaxed in his chair and listened to the storm, which was not abating at all. He had a sudden desire to close his eyes and perhaps sleep a moment or two. The tenseness of his body was leaving him; he felt every muscle become sweetly limp and loose. He was startled when he found the refilled glass in his hands. “I must have slept,” he said, self-accusing and embarrassed.

  “You must be very tired,” she said, with sympathy. “It must be very hard, these days, to be a businessman, with all the taxes and aggravation—and frustration.”

  “Yes,” he admitted. He looked furtively at his watch. It was six o’clock, and he did not care. He said, “But isn’t teaching school an isolated and restricted life?”

  “No longer, what with the school boards, and the mommies clamoring about their offspring, and engrossed with their offspring, all intransigent and interfering. The hot lunches for their children were more important to them than what went into their minds. Then they demanded that teachers ‘love’ their dear kiddies, and ‘understand’ their emotions; though what that has to do with pure learning and education I don’t know. Then the school child psychologists! Mad, every one of them. Absolutely mad. They know nothing about human nature, nothing but theory, which is both ethereal and ridiculous. The rose garden syndrome, I used to call it. Education is no longer a preparation for life. It’s a preparation for unreal expectations. When young people go out into the actual world they discover that the world doesn’t really ‘love’ them, and that the world won’t pamper and pet them and worry about their ‘nutrients.’ That’s why we have so many angry and thwarted and belligerent young men and women now. They were outraged when they discovered they have to get down to the mundane necessity of working for a living. But, pardon me. I’m riding my favorite hobbyhorse. And I’m writing a book about it.”

  Guy found himself laughing. “It won’t sell, Mrs. Turner.”

  She smiled at him gleefully. “Perhaps not. But it’s relieving my feelings. It’s about time we adults protested. ‘J’accuse.’”

  Again she refilled his glass. Now he caught the fragrance of baking bread. “My father was a teacher,” he said. “He taught history. He gave it up. To live his own life, as he often remarked. On a big farm, which he hardly cultivated except for a few acres. He left the rest of it to raccoons, foxes, birds, rabbits, skunks, and such. It was a wild place.” He thought for a moment. “I really think my father was wild, too.”

  “So am I.”

  The alcohol was making a golden haze before his eyes and in himself. He felt such peace—

  “Tell me,” said Beth Turner. “How did you get into the development business?”

  He saw that she was genuinely interested, and not merely pretending.

  “I wanted to make a lot of money—fast.”

  “Why?”

  (What a stupid question!) He said, “It’s our only protection against the world, isn’t it?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t have a great deal of money, and I never felt I needed protection against anything. My protection was in myself. When I was young I thought I could help ‘improve’ the world. My mother told me that was my duty, poor thing. Then I learned that when you interfere with the world you only mess it up and, often, add to its misery. The only one you can really improve is yourself. If we all did that, instead of poking our fingers into others’ lives, we’d have a better world. A social reformer is a very dangerous man.”

  The storm showed no signs of abating at all, and the darkness increased except for the plunging swords of the lightning. A brass clock on the mantel chimed. Seven o’clock. Guy settled deeper into his chair. He did not fully see the compassion in Beth’s eyes, the shy tenderness. He only remembered it, later.

  It came to him, with a lazy surprise, that this was the first intelligent conversation he had ever had with a woman—even if some of her remarks were “stupid.” He was not sure he was pleased. He did not like women, though he needed them occasionally. He was certain that he did not like Beth Turner. She seemed to see too much. He was startled at this thought.

  “Do you have many friends?” he asked.

  “Friends? No, not really, except my animals, and my books. Perhaps I don’t have the gift for friendship. I don’t want anyone to get too close to me. If they do, they become inquisitive and kindly—interfering. I never get bored.” She paused, and then her face became eloquent and she looked away from him. “I’m a great Bible student. ‘I will lift up my eyes to the everlasting hills, from whence comes my strength. My strength comes from the Lord—’ I think God is the only friend I ever had.” Her voice sounded far away, yet resonant and certain.

  “Oh, you’re religious?” He thought of his mother with distaste.

  “No, not at all, in the general meaning of the term. I am just—sure. Orthodoxies obscure the Face of God. I not only see His grandeur in the world about me. I not only observe His law and order in the universe. I see His—wildness, too. And that’s not a contradiction in terms, either. The wilderness in the human soul is really the only splendor, an echo of God. Some might call it freedom.”

  Then he saw the tears in her eyes, and for the first time in his recent life he was moved. Only the strong can weep, he thought, and was amazed at himself.

  She said, “But what did you really want to do with your life, Mr. Jerald?”

  He was jolted, and angered. He wanted to reply brusquely to this impudence, and then he saw her expression, waiting, poignant. He said, “I wanted to be a physician, a research scientist—in cancer. But, it wasn’t possible.”

  “Why wasn’t it?” She appeared surprised.

  “Money, for one thing,” he answered with abruptness.

  She was genuinely taken aback. “Money shouldn’t have been a problem. It never is, really. A doctor I knew worked for his own living since he was nine years old. He put himself through college, then through medical school.”

  He thought of his father with furious impatience. “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” he said, with hard rudeness. “My father didn’t, either.”

  What an unhappy man, thought Beth, but she did not say this until much later. He stood up as if he could not bear this interrogation any longer, an interrogation which struck at his very inner core.

  “I must go,” he said. “It’s half past seven.”

  She stood up also. “The storm is still very bad, and getting worse.” she said. “Why don’t stay for dinner?”

  “Dinner?”

  “In about half an hour. Or, are you pressed for time?”

  Pressed. He was always pressed, for time, for money, for—? For what? He half turned away from her. “My wife is expecting me.” He did not know that he had thrown “my wife” at her as a man might throw a stone at a Magdalen. “My wife.” His look was challenging, rejecting.

  “Now, about that easement, Mrs. Turner.”

  She sighed, a deep and profound sigh. “Mr. Jerald, I will do this for you, seeing it’s the only thing which seems to matter to you. I will sell you enough land, six feet short of my trees, for your damned road. And I will ask my neighbors to sell you the rest. But only on condition that you—you—erect a chain-link fence on my side, to keep out—people. I don’t want children racing over my land and frightening my animals and intruding on my privacy. And I think my neighbors will demand that, too.”

  He found himself smiling. “All right. Then it’s settled.”

  They faced each other. Then, very slowly and gently, she put her hands
on his shoulders and as slowly and gently kissed his lips. Her mouth was soft and sweet and fragrant. He tried to recoil from her, then reluctantly, as if without his will, he put his arms about her and felt a tremendous loosening in himself, a kind of distant joy he had never experienced before. Her body was giving in his arms, spontaneous, abandoned, trusting. Her breast lay on his. “I love you,” she said.

  He stayed for dinner. He stayed the night. Once, in the cool darkness near morning, he murmured drowsily, “I love you, too,” and thought he meant it.

  “I never forgot it, I never will,” Guy said aloud in the dusk. “I never forgot that dinner, the breakfast next day. The surety, the warmth, the kindness, the generosity, the passion. I thought I had loved Marlene. But that was a boy’s dream. This was reality. It was the only reality I had ever known, except for my father.”

  James waited. He saw the anguish on Guy’s face, and he knew that Guy did not see him, nor was he fully aware of him. He was looking back in despair.

  He is thinking of that fine woman, thought James. Did he ever completely give himself to her? Had he kept a distance out of fear? Fear of what? Fear of life? Fear was a murderer of men’s souls. Had he mistrusted her, as he mistrusted himself? Mistrust, too, rises out of fear, fear of one’s own honest emotions.

  James waited, again. But Guy had closed his exhausted eyes. He had fallen asleep. He looked as if he were crying in himself; his eyelids quivered and jerked. He muttered something, then subsided.

  James knew there was no reason for him to remain here any longer, today. The battle still raged in Guy; it was becoming more intense, and closer. He would have to engage in it, or die. There was no other answer. Sighing, James left the suite and his depression was deeper than ever.

  That night he called Emma Godwin, his mistress. “Love, would you come to America and stay here for a bit with me?”

  She said nothing for a moment or two, then spoke sadly, “Jimmy, I don’t think so. You’re fighting something out in yourself, aren’t you, dear? I don’t think I can help you fight it. You must do it yourself, all alone. That’s what it always comes down to, Jimmy: We must fight our war ourselves. Lonely, terrible, yes. I know you’ll win, love, I know you will. And the victory will be all yours, and no one else’s. That’s the only victory worth fighting for.”

  17

  He did not come again. But then, Beth would think with grief, he had not promised to return, or even to call or write her. He had promised nothing, she remembered. Had he really said, “I love you,” in that early morning, or had he meant another woman, possibly even his wife? Since her husband, Keith, had died in Korea she had had a few lovers, for she was an ardent woman who loved men instinctively. So she was not inexperienced in the ways of men; the word “love” came to them easily and was said merely to please the women of the hour or to seduce them, and, in most cases, meant nothing. It was, in a way, a courtesy, a handshaking, a “thank you.” Beth seriously and often wondered if a man was truly capable of loving a woman, as a woman loved a man. She doubted it. But when a woman said, “I love you,” she most often meant it. God help us, thought Beth.

  She remembered their one night together, sometimes with joy but now mostly with mingled sadness and a sense of humiliation. Had he considered her a promiscuous woman, a woman of superficial emotion, or casualness? True, she had made the overt approach, for she had begun to love him five minutes after they had met. Did he believe she did that with other men also? Possibly. She had delighted in his big body, the touch of his hands and mouth. He had been rough and tender in his lovemaking, and she had given him what she had never given a man before, not even Keith Turner: A wholehearted abandon, a joyousness, a total surrender, a blissful completeness. He had slept in her arms, his head on her breast, and even in his sleep he had kissed her flesh. She would remember that vividly and with longing. But why did he not come to her again?

  There were times when she felt rage against him for her mortification, and his implied rejection and indifference. She remembered how she had prepared breakfast for him in the morning, and his unwilling smiles. She had caught him watching her, then he had looked away. A somber man, almost a gloomy man, a man who had moments of abstraction as if he had forgotten her, and who had answered her curtly when she had spoken to him. It came to her that he did not like women, as the laughing Keith had liked them. Even when he smiled his black eyes did not smile. After breakfast he had sat for a while at the kitchen table, smoking, covertly watching her, and she could not guess of what he was thinking, as she could with other men. He was a secret man, an enigmatic one, a wary and unconfiding man, and, and she had perceived, an unhappy one. Any attempt to probe his thoughts had been met with a taciturn brusqueness—as if she were too inquisitive. He had not known, it was apparent, that a woman wished to know as much as possible about the man she loved, not out of curiosity, but out of a desire to understand him better. Good God, she once thought, did he know that, and so had withdrawn? If so, why? I am no beauty, she said to herself, and I am not young, and he wanted no entanglements, not even at interludes. What was his wife like, his children? He had avoided the subject, when she, very subtly, had tried to discover. His wife, Beth recalled, had been, and was, very pretty, with a vague prettiness that was almost faceless. At least, damn it, she would think, other men find me interesting, but obviously he does not. And her humiliation increased.

  July drifted into gold August, and he did not come. But she saw men on his land, with bulldozers, and could hear their distant and echoing voices. She had heard that he liked to oversee his operations for himself, but she did not see him among his workers. But she saw the death of trees, and was angry. She did not consider human life to be absolutely sacred; trees were often more valuable than any human being, for they were both innocent and beautiful and asked for nothing but sun and rain and air. She began to despise herself for her waiting. But she could not help taking out her binoculars—which she used to watch birds—and directing them at the distant men. She had been fond of her lovers, but had not loved them. Now, to her dismay, she rediscovered pain, a sick yearning, a forlornness of spirit, and pangs which were both emotional and physical. She had not loved Keith this way, with a ripe and mature passion, and with an aching that at times became intolerable. To her own self-loathing she once found herself thinking of calling him at his offices. But to this shame she would not descend, though sometimes her hand hovered, as if by its own will, on the telephone in her small warm kitchen.

  Why had he gone to bed with her, as with a paid woman? A momentary hunger, a curiosity? She knew he was not a man of pretendings. There had been one or two instances when he had held her tightly to him, not with lust, but as if clinging to her, as if he had known her for a long time and loved her. Then he would restlessly turn away, repudiating her.

  Once, a year ago, in a shop in Cranston she had heard someone remark that he was a womanizer. She had heard other things but could not remember them now. That he was feared and admired, she did know; there was nothing else. She wanted news of him, for her love, instead of decreasing, was daily growing stronger. On a few occasions she would mention, to an acquaintance, that she had sold a small piece of land to him for an easement. But the only replies had been shrugs or a remark that he did build good houses and apartments and condominiums. She began to see that very few, if any, were interested in him as a man. Why was this? Gradually she became aware that he was an aloof man, a stranger, that he inspired no responses of an intimate kind, that he showed no interest at all in his fellow creatures, nor they in him.

  Why, we are two of a kind! she thought, with astonishment, and her love became stronger. Helplessly, out of her pain, she began to resent him, and she fed her pain with her humiliation. She began to dream of him almost nightly, and would awaken to find her hands reaching for him in her empty bed, her damned lonely bed. She had not cried since Keith had been killed; she would now find herself crying in her sleep. “Oh, damn him, damn him!” she would say aloud,
and her pain would sharpen and she would feel as one feels when a part of his body had been amputated. She was both bitterly amused at herself and enraged with herself when she started to hate his wife, to whom he returned every night and who had his name and kept his house.

  August became September, and trees were fading and the fields were high with corn and the mountains became a deeper purple against an autumn sky. He’ll never come again, Beth would mourn, and she knew she had lost all her pride, and had nothing left but her unceasing longing and suffering. She began to hate herself for her precipitousness. Men did not like aggressive women. They never understood that most often this aggressiveness came from love, for a desire to hold and be held by a beloved man. She had sometimes overheard men discussing women with derision and laughter and with ribald ugly words, as if women were merely a pleasant lewd commodity and not of their own species at all, not of human fears and passions and pain. She had often been in Europe, where, with the exception of the English, men loved women and with admiration and honest desire. This was not true of American men. American women were too open in their love, and had no reticence. They were candid and sincere, and had few if any arts. American men were, at heart, romantics. They held chastity, in women, of the utmost importance. They made no excuses for a woman driven by love and her own extremity. Such women inspired, not their response, but their dislike and avoidance, except for short and hurried occasions when it was for their own convenience and random desires. She recalled a Victorian joke: A man said distastefully to his enthusiastic bride, “Ladies don’t move!” American men didn’t like women who “moved,” in any way, except when with a highly paid whore. The last Puritans, thought Beth, and she reread The Scarlet Letter, by Hawthorne.