A Tender Victory

by Taylor Caldwell

  “What?” whispered the doctor incredulously. “What—what do they want?”

  “I don’t know,” said Mrs. Burnsdale, her voice broken. “I heard a noise out there a few minutes ago; thought it was thunder, or something falling, and I thought about Mr. Fletcher’s car, and I was worried about it, and I peeked out to see. And then I saw all those people! Kathy saw how frightened I was, and she looked and told the boys, and then Jean wheeled right to the drawer and got the knife, and Pietro got the hammer—and everything began again.” She sobbed, and the children looked at her soberly, and Emilie wailed. “I never saw such a thing!” cried Mrs. Burnsdale. “I’m scared, doctor. It takes a lot to scare me, but this time I am. This is a mob, doctor, and I can’t think why, except that maybe someone’s trying to hurt Mr. Fletcher again.”

  “They want to kill Papa,” said Jean. Pietro jumped and waved the hammer dangerously in the air. “Kill, kill!” he shrieked thinly. “We kill them!”

  “Don’t be stupid,” said the doctor, leaving the window and planting himself before the children. “Think this is Europe? This country ain’t a land of sweetness and light; it’s just like every other country. Except we got the law, and it works, and I’m going to call the law right this minute. Jean, the knife, please.” He held out his hand, and Jean, after a moment, gave it to him. Pietro threw the hammer on the floor. Kathy suddenly smiled, and Emilie’s sobs faded away. Max said, “The law.”

  Dr. McManus went into the parlor. None of the four men was speaking now. Johnny was sitting on his desk and regarding Mr. Swensen with a black face of frozen hatred, of which the doctor heartily approved. Mr. Swensen had an air of bored waiting, and his head was half turned toward the outside door. The doctor’s old flesh prickled and tingled as he looked at him. But it was necessary to be calm. Dan McGee and Mr. Dowdy sat side by side in an attitude of complete dejection. “Where are the children?” Johnny asked in surprise, taking his attention away from Mr. Swensen.

  Dr. McManus said heavily, “I’ve sent them upstairs. And now I want to use the telephone.” He passed Mr. Swensen on the way to Johnny’s desk, and said, slowly and deliberately, “You murdering sonofabitch.” He picked up the telephone and said, “Police, and make it fast. Here’s the number of the house—name of street—”

  He scrutinized the faces in the room. Three of them had turned utterly blank. One had not. The doctor said to that face, “You knew. You planned it all. If—anything happens—you won’t leave here alive. If I have to do something myself.”

  “What?” cried Johnny. “What is this? Are you crazy, doctor?”

  “You were his target all the time, Johnny,” said the doctor. “I suspected it. Now I know.”

  A heavy stone banged against the door, and a huge shout arose from outside, a savage and primeval cry. Johnny instinctively started for the door, and the doctor squeaked, “Stay away from there, you half-wit. There’s a mob outside. Swensen arranged it.”

  Dan McGee, his plump face as ghostly as Mr. Dowdy’s, slowly rose from the sofa. Mr. Dowdy got up also. Then Johnny, halfway to the door, suddenly swung on his heel, ran to Swensen, and caught him by the throat. Johnny’s face was terrible. “You,” he said. “You brought them here to frighten my children, to stone my house. Listen, you. If one of my children is hurt, I think I’m going to kill you. Do you understand? I’m going to kill you.”

  Mr. Swensen was no longer smiling. He stood very still in Johnny’s grip, but his affable face had become a marble effigy of contempt. “Take your hands off me,” he said in a quiet voice. “You’ve brought all this on yourself, parson.”

  Johnny drew back his big right arm like the flash of a piston, and his fist crashed onto Swensen’s jaw. Swensen staggered, and while he did so Johnny hit him again, and then again, until he fell to the floor. Johnny’s leg retracted for a kick into the man’s side. And then it dropped. His panting filled the room, stridently. He looked down at the half-conscious man on the floor and he said, “When you get up I’ll hit you again, and this time you’ll stay down.” His eyes flashed about the room like blue lightning. “I’m a minister,” he said. “And I’m also a man.”

  Dr. McManus was recovering from his amazement. “Good,” he said. “You’re growing up, Johnny.” The other men looked at Swensen, and then at Johnny, incredulously, and they rubbed their dazed faces with their shaking hands. They watched Johnny as he tore open the door and stood on the threshold. The night air poured with its sickly stench into the house, and there was only a pent silence outside as he appeared.

  He stood with his long, muscular legs apart, his hands clutching at the doorframe, and he said with great quietness, “What do you people want?”

  Only the silence answered him for a few moments, and then an immense roar went up, confused, rageful, hating, and full of blood lust. “Get out! Get out, you dirty Nazi! Get out of town, you dirty fascist! You union buster! You scab!”

  Why, thought Johnny, of course. These shouters are one and the same people, no matter what the epithets! They always were, from the beginning of time.

  Dr. McManus, his mighty old legs trembling, went to the door and peered over Johnny’s shoulder. The misty lamplight outside glimmered on at least one hundred wild and inhuman faces, on women’s tangled hair, on men’s bare heads, on open, wet lips and glinting eyes. Shadows hid their bodies; the faces and the heads floated in a slight yellowish fog, like disembodied nightmares. Now women began to laugh, high demented laughter of hatred, and foul words and obscenities rang in the damp autumn night.

  Johnny stood there and did not move. A woman screamed, “Get those goddam foreign kids out of here, right now, or we’ll take ’em apart with our hands!” A pair of clutching, tearing hands rose above the bobbing heads and made rending motions. “We don’t want no foreign kids here in our town, you lousy bastard!” A roar of approval echoed her.

  Johnny started to take a step forward, the terribleness brighter on his face, but the doctor seized hs arm. “Let me pass,” he said, and he sidled around Johnny and stepped down on the stoop below. There he stood, steadfast and as immovable as a boulder, his hands in his pockets, his shock of ashen hair blowing stiffly in the wind. He surveyed the mob with an evil smile. They had fallen silent at the sight of him, except for a low muttering.

  “Hello, pigs,” he said. “I see a lot of faces I know here. I operated on some of your stinking bodies. I see you in clumps on my free-clinic days. Remember? Don’t come to me again. Take your whimperings and your whinings to doctors who’ll charge you, like sensible men.”

  Something hissed through the air, and twanged, just missing the old man. It was a knife, and the blade buried itself in the doorframe hardly two inches below Johnny’s hand. Deftly and swiftly the doctor pulled it from the rotting wood and held it. A few alarmed cries rose. “Who threw that at the Doc? Hey—you!”

  “Well,” said the doctor, “I’ve got a knife now. I’m picking one of your faces, and the next move you make, that particular face is going to get this knife right between the eyes. Just don’t move.”

  A ripple of fear ran over the mass of restless faces; tongues licked lips; a growl rose from many throats. Someone yelled, “We ain’t got nothing against you, Doc! We don’t know who threw that knife! Just get out of the way, Doc! We don’t mean no trouble, if that minister just gets out of town with his foreigners tonight! Ain’t we got a right to say who lives in this town?”

  “You,” said the doctor calmly, balancing the knife in his hand, “ain’t got a right to live.” He did not look away from them. He held the mob with his malignant eyes. “In a couple of minutes the police’ll be here, and I’ve got influence, and I’m going to tell the boys to shoot to kill, and use their clubs, too.”

  He could hear them listening uneasily. But only the night wind sounded through the thinning trees, and over the houses opposite the yellow crescent moon hung in silence.

  Then Johnny said, loudly and clearly, “I’m not going away. Nothing, nobody, is going to
drive me away from the place where God has brought me. You’re just people, my people, and I don’t hate you, but you’re frightened, and you’ve been driven crazy by lies. Who made you come here tonight?”

  A howl answered him, rising almost palpably from the glistening faces below, but it came from scattered places, and the men and women looked fearfully to find the howlers. Then there was silence again, and a shuffling of feet. Suddenly a man raised a newspaper in the air and shook it. “It’s right here in the paper!” he shrieked. “The big interests sent you here to break our union!”

  “Who’re you?” a man demanded. “What mine you work?”

  Someone else pushed around Johnny and ducked under his arm and stepped down, and it was Dan McGee. At the appearance of the little plump man they knew and loved, there was a clamor of dismay and astonishment from the faces. Dan raised his arms, and the men shouted at him in acknowledgment. “It’s Dan! Dan. Let Dan speak! What’re you doin’ here, Dan?”

  “He’s sold us out!” a man bellowed.

  Faces swung angrily to the speaker somewhere in the crowd. “Dan wouldn’t sell us out! Hey, never saw you before! Who sent you?”

  “Yes,” said Dan gently. “Who sent him, and the others?”

  The mob swayed and twisted. “Fellows. Guys. Said they was union men from Scranton,” someone answered, uncertainly.

  Dan smiled at them, his round red face beaming in the lamplight. Windows in the houses across the street had been thrown open, and the apertures bobbed with curious and alarmed heads, the light behind them a dull yellow.

  Dan was considering. There would be blood shed tonight unless the agitators realized their danger and got away. And blood that was shed inevitably brought guilt and misery to those responsible for the shedding. So Dan waited, and he was relieved to see that here and there slight agitations appeared in the mob, movements as of men escaping as swiftly and as neatly as possible. The people were so intent upon Dan that they were hardly aware of these agitations and movements, serpentine and quick. The breath of the mob rose like steam above their heads in the dampness. Now earnest, shamed, and sheepish eyes regarded Dan.

  Then Dr. McManus shouted, “How’d you like to get your hands on the man who’s responsible for bringing you out here to hurt our good friend here, and his children, eh? And Dan too—he wanted you to tear Dan apart.”

  The mob’s voice rose on an insane and jubilant and eager note. “Where is he, Doc? Give him to us, Doc! We’ll get him, Doc!”

  Johnny’s heart suddenly swelled in him with an enormous sickness. A mob was always a mob—it only wanted a victim, no matter who. He clutched Dan’s shoulder, leaning down from the door. “Talk, talk,” he said urgently. “And shut up the doctor! For God’s sake.” Dan glanced up at him, and his kind face changed.

  “Now,” said Dan, “let’s wait a minute, and talk this over, see? I want to tell you boys something important. There isn’t going to be any strike, or any raises either.”

  “Shall I—?” began Dr. McManus gleefully; but Dan raised his voice commandingly to drown him out. No one noticed that Johnny had disappeared.

  Dan continued: “The owners can’t afford it. I got to talk fast, for the police are about here now. Hear that siren?” The crowd listened anxiously. “I got some sad news for you boys. You always liked Mr. Dowdy. Well, sir, he’s a dying man, worn out and sick. But he’s left you his mines—they’ll all be yours, too soon.”

  A deep, profound murmur of wonder and shame rose from the wall of men and women.

  Dan went on rapidly. “Mr. Dowdy knows you’re here. He doesn’t know why. We won’t tell him, huh? Make him feel much worse, you see.”

  The sirens were approaching with loud, primitive wailing. The crowd drew near the house as the three police cars pulled up.

  “We didn’t mean anything,” a confusion of voices said in honest bewilderment, forgetting. “Don’t even know why we came.”

  I got to hold them a little longer, thought Dan desperately, still clutching the doctor’s arm. The doors of the police cars opened, and the people jostled. They did not drift away. Most of them knew all the members of the police force of Barryfield, and as the burly young men began to get out of the cars there were shouts of relieved greetings. “We didn’t do nothing, Jim! It was just those guys kind of stirred us up—lies. We don’t even know who they are!”

  “They ought to be shot!” some women screamed. Now the whole mob was clamoring angrily, and with righteous indignation. They surrounded the police, incoherently pleading innocence and outrage, and looking about them for the strangers.

  I don’t know what Mr. Fletcher’s doing, thought Dan, but I hope I’m giving him time.

  Johnny had run into the parlor. He had found Swensen sitting weakly on a chair, mopping at the blood that ran from his mouth and nose. He kept shaking his head as if to restore his faculties. Johnny dragged him rapidly from the chair, and said in a fierce, repressed voice, “The mob wants you. They want to tear you apart, kill you. The police will soon be here, but the police won’t be able to hold them. Come with me! Stand on your own feet!”

  He dragged the dazed and bleeding Swensen, who was no longer elegant and urbane, to the foot of the stairs and listened. Mrs. Burnsdale had sensibly taken the children to their rooms, and a soft murmur floated down the stairs. “Come!” cried Johnny softly, and he pushed the man ahead of him into the kitchen, supporting his staggering body, holding him with all his strength. “The police won’t help you,” muttered Johnny, and he panted with his efforts. “Make an effort to help—come, on your feet—they’ll kill you.”

  Swensen was breathing raggedly with confused fear. His clothing was spotted with blood. As he struggled to support himself, with Johnny’s hands on his back and arms, he could hear the howling of the mob, and then, faintly in the distance, the wailing of sirens. “Hurry, hurry,” pleaded Johnny, distracted. “We’ve got two, three, four seconds—no more. Here, put your arm around my neck. That’s better.”

  Together they stumbled into the deserted kitchen and toward the back door. Johnny peered out into the darkness. No one was there. The mob was howling out front and the sirens were closer now. Johnny opened the back door, and the fresh air suddenly hit the dazed Swensen and began to restore him to his senses.

  “Why?” asked Swensen, taking great gulps of the cool air into his lungs. “Why are you doing this? You have every reason to hate me.”

  “Why?” Johnny repeated the question. “Because I’m a Christian. And because I know that mobs are never impelled by a true anger or a true sense of justice. They just want to kill. Anyone will serve. A few minutes ago they wanted to kill me. Now they want to kill you.” He looked at Swensen’s nose, with the blood still dripping from it. He sighed, and then his face tightened. He could hear the police out front now, and the furious, demanding voice of the mob, still seeking a victim, again justifying itself. “Are you all right now? Can you navigate?” He helped Swensen down the back steps into the yard. “There. Stand on your own legs, man. I’ve helped you all I can. From now on it’s up to you.” Johnny removed his hands from the shambling form and for a moment it stood there weaving, like a drunk about to collapse.

  “But why?” asked Swensen, coming out of his daze and turning to Johnny. “I don’t get it. Why are you helping me to get away?”

  “The answer,” said Johnny softly, “is in the difference between us—the difference in what we believe. I know why you came here. You came with hate in your heart, and the hatred in your heart made me hate you a little while ago. You represented to me all the evil I saw in Europe—the concentration camps, the crematoriums, things I can’t even mention. And then, suddenly, you became not the hunter, but the hunted. So now it doesn’t matter to me any more that you believe in one thing and I in another. You are the hunted, now, and a mob is always a mob, and a mob is monstrous. I have to protect you from it.”

  For a long moment Swensen stood there, bleeding and motionless, his light eyes fixed up
on Johnny, and those eyes reflected incredulous expressions of sharp derision, contempt, and bafflement.

  “Yes, yes,” said Johnny sternly, taking his arm. “I know. I’m a weakling, you think. Your kind is strong, and so you’ll inherit the earth—you think. But you won’t, you won’t! Because all the time you are the cowards, not we, for we aren’t afraid of anything, not even you. We don’t think it’s necessary for us to kill, just to survive.”

  “Why?” asked Swensen, wiping his oozing mouth with his handkerchief. “Why are you saving me from that mob?”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” said Johnny with bitter anger, pulling him toward the fence.

  “Wait,” said Swensen, resisting, and now his eyes were strange and intent. “Yes, I hear that pack of curs howling—”

  They could now see the mob beyond the fence swathed in sickening and coiling copper drifts of smog under the street light. “There’s the fence,” said Johnny. “Get over it, someway, into the next yard, and then to the next street. What are you waiting for?” he cried, in fear and exasperation. “Dan McGee can’t hold them much longer!”

  “I’m waiting for the answer to my question. An hour ago I wouldn’t have understood your answer. But I think I do now.” He smiled at Johnny, and shook his head as if in wonder, and not with derision. “Yes, I think I do.”

  He shouldered past Johnny, and then touched his forehead quickly in a humorous salute, and was gone. Johnny stood there a moment, then closed the door. He leaned against it, exhausted and frowning. We’re all guilty of his kind, he thought distractedly. We “good” people let them into our lives, because we lacked the positive force of the moral law to keep them out. Yes, we are guilty. Guilty of the betrayal of a whole world. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.