The Moth

11

Next morning, when I was supposed to check in at the Cartaret desk, I was somewhere on the road from Gettysburg to York, watching the sun come up over the hills, with no more idea what I was going to do next than a grasshopper. I’d been driving since midnight, when I set her down at the hotel, but where I went I don’t know, though I remember sliding around Washington, from Rhode Island Avenue to Wisconsin, so it looks as though I must have gone up through Rockville and Frederick. There had been no gay so-long-see-you-tomorrow when she got out. After an hour, maybe, sitting there looking at the Severn, we started back and she had another crying spell like she had had in the studio. I didn’t ask her what the trouble was, didn’t tell her what we were going to do about it, didn’t try to hide it that I was doing a little crying myself. We both knew what the trouble was, and we both knew there was nothing to do about it. A man of twenty-two can’t go around with a girl of twelve, or marry her, or have anything to do with her, once he begins to notice what she looks like in a bathing suit, or she does. As we drove up Charles Street she asked me to let her out before we got to the hotel, and by that I knew she was going to cook up some kind of an alibi and not mention me at all. When I stopped she jumped out, slammed the door, and ran on without looking back. I sat staring at her, partly to see that nobody bothered her, partly for one last look, as I felt I’d never see her again. When she turned into the hotel I kept on up Charles Street and turned west on North Avenue. But when I came to Mt. Royal Terrace I kept on going.

When I got home, some time in the morning, my father and Sheila were out but Nancy was home and called down to me as soon as I stepped in the house that the hotel had been calling and that I should ring them right away. I said thanks, went upstairs to my room, and locked the door. Then I took off my clothes, put on pajamas, and lay down. After a while I heard the phone ring and then Nancy was at the door. “It’s the hotel again, Jack.”

“I’ll call them.”

“But they’re on the line.”

“I’ll call, later.”

She went and then she was back. “They say you’re due to work and won’t you please get down there as quick as you can because they’re short-handed already on account of people away on vacation, and—”

“Can’t you understand English?”

She stood out there five minutes arguing about it before at last she went. I must have slept then because next thing I knew it was three or four o’clock in the afternoon and I had to have something to eat. I put on a robe and went down and while I was frying myself some eggs Nancy came in the kitchen. “Well, my goodness, Jack, it certainly seems you’re acting very peculiarly. You could at least call them. They’re entitled to some explanation.”

“I’ll get around to it.”

“Is something wrong?”

“Just taking a little rest.”

“From what, may I ask?”

“That desk — answering questions.”

She flounced out of there, but in a minute, when I was at the table, tucking away the first food I’d had since the night before, she was back. “Well, what do you suppose that child did yesterday?”

“What child?”

“The one you tutored. Helen.”

“... She been up to something?”

“She just up and ran herself away?”

“You don’t say.”

“Mrs. Brems was just telling me — she got on a train yesterday, went over to Washington, took in all sorts of picture shows and the good Lord only knows what else — and didn’t get back till twelve o’clock last night.”

“I’ll be doggoned.”

That meant Helen had put over a story, so she wouldn’t have to answer questions about me, and neither one of us would be mixed up in it, together anyway. I listened to Nancy, all about how the police had been called in, and cracked dumb. After a while she went out, shaking her head over what young people were coming to, and I went up and dressed. Then I slipped out, before my father and Sheila would get home. That night, at least, I remember where I ate. It was in the Princess Anne Hotel at Fredericksburg, Virginia.

It kept up three or four days. I’d come in late, slip upstairs, and be in bed with the light out and the door locked before anybody could say anything to me. In the morning, I’d wait till the Old Man went out, and then I’d get up, shave, dress, and go downstairs. If Nancy or Sheila had anything to say, I’d get interested in the paper, or stall somehow, and then I’d roll out my car and shove off. By the second day Margaret was calling every half hour and then she didn’t call and then nobody called. It seemed to me, as I’d told Nancy, that I meant to call her “later,” or some time, but later never seemed to come. Then her letters began coming in. She had a clammy way of writing, about three cap I’s to the line, with every other word in quotes and all sorts of stuff about how ideally we were suited to each other on account of both being so artistic. But clammy or no clammy it was easy to see she was suffering from the same old yen, that the family had the heat on, and that she was going through hell.

One night, when I got in around two, my father was waiting for me. He called me in his study, where he was stretched out on the couch, and there was a highball beside him and a tray on the table. He made me a drink before he started. “Jack, there are one or two things I’d like to ask you about.”

“Such as?”

“What’s happened at the hotel?”

“Just felt like a little rest, that’s all.”

“Have you quit your job down there?”

“... Yes, I guess so.”

“What about Margaret?”’

“I haven’t seen her.”

“Is the engagement still on?”

“I’d say it was off.”

“May I ask why?”

“I changed my mind.”

“In other words, it’s none of my business?”

“The way I hear it, a marriage concerns two people.”

“That may be true or it may not be true.”

“Since when?”

“It involves two people provided he’s his own man and she’s her own woman. If not, it concerns, or can concern, quite a few more. And in this case, as Legg is responsible for his daughter and I’m responsible for you, the degree of your independence may not be quite as great as you think.”

“I’m free, white, and twenty-two.”

“You’re also broke, or nearly so.”

“I wouldn’t bring that up if I were you. But since you do bring it up, we can go into this question of your responsibility. You had quite a lot to say about that once before and you may remember I had quite a lot to say about it too, all opposite to your idea about it. And the way you discharged your responsibility was to lose me every cent I had, that I’d earned with no help from you, and that I’d pleaded with you to let me keep. Now, since there’s nothing you can do about your responsibility, no job that you can give me, no restitution of any kind you can make me for what your previous decision cost me, I’d say minding your own business for once in your life would be a very good idea.”

I wasn’t looking for trouble, and didn’t go in there with anything all learned up to shoot at him. But I guess it was in me and had to come out. It surprised me, the amount of pressure there was back of it, but nothing like as much as it surprised me, the way he took it. He held up his hand to stop me, but in a patient, calm way, as though he’d been all over that a good many times in his mind, and had maybe got a little further, figuring on it, than I had. “Jack, you’re wholly right, but you’ve got things backwards. You’re hacking at the general, that’s in the past, that nobody can do anything about, and overlooking the particular, that lies in the future, or could at least, and that might be of help, in your case... Of course it’s unconscionable, what we’ve done to you. But don’t get the idea you’re an exception.”

“Who is ‘we’?”

“This generation. My generation. I’m not the only one. We’re all in it. We thought the laws of sense had been repealed, back there in the 1920’s, and we went hog-wild. We squandered your heritage and there’s nothing left, nothing, but what you and millions of other boys like you can salvage out of it, and perhaps rebuild, when things get going again. In your case, you hold it especially against me that you earned the money I lost on Sam Shreve’s advice. Is that five thousand dollars any better, would it have bought you any more, than the five thousand dollars I could portion you with, in view of your impending marriage—”

“My cancelled marriage.”

“I’ll not admit it! I still have hopes for it!”

“Go on.”

“Of my own money, which would be partly yours now, and all yours when I’m gone, I lost much more than I lost for you. I’d hate to tell you what I lost. But am I an exception? I tell you, we’re a legion, a host. We live on every block of every city and every town and every village of this country. And you live on every block. You’re one of a million, ten million, boys who must be cheated, now, because their fathers were fools. But there’s nothing to do about them. Do you hear me, Jack? Some day they’ll have it, some day they’ll rebuild what was lost for them, but until then why stew up a corpse for the glue that isn’t in it? Let’s talk about you.”

“All right, then, talk.”

“What’s gone wrong with your marriage?”

“That I can’t discuss with you.”

“Is it what I think?”

“I don’t know what you think.”

“Have you picked up some disease?”

“I have not.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I have no disease.”

“Does the hotel irk you?”

“Possibly, but that wasn’t the reason.”

“Have you rowed with Legg?”

“No.”

“Mrs. Legg?”

“No.”

“Margaret?”

“No.”

“Then there can be but one reason.”

“Which is?”

“Another woman.”

I said: “There doesn’t have to be another woman. It could be such a thing as waking up to the fact you’ve made a mistake, and don’t want to get married, and especially don’t want to get married to this particular woman and this particular job, and then bringing the ax down before it’s too late.”

“And there’s such a thing as grand, tragic folly.”

“How would a fool know?”

That stopped him, but it sounded so mean and his face got so white I apologized, and he said it was all right and made two more drinks. But as I watched him it kept talking to me, a hunch that there was something more to it than he had said, something personal to him, and pretty soon I said: “What’s the rest of it?”

“Nothing, I guess, that concerns you.”

“I think there’s something.”

“I... had a deal.”

“With Mr. Legg?”

“About the hotel basement. He — approached me. About the possibility of converting it into a garage. I went into it pretty thoroughly, figured what I could pay for a lease, made him my offer, and it was agreeable to him. I think he’s concerned, over that girl, to head her away from this career he thinks pretty silly, and wants to sew her up, and you up, and me up, as many ways as he can. However, it would be an excellent arrangement. I could put Kratzer in charge, and have a backlog, as they call it, that would carry my own overhead, and Legg, on his side, would do well too.”

“And?”

“He’s suddenly cool to it.”

“Since — I took my powder on him?”

“After dinner, when I called him.”

I felt sorry to be the cause of one more thing gone wrong, but to make a human sacrifice out of myself and go through with it anyway, knowing what would be facing me and the way it would have to come out, was more than I could do. I mumbled something about being sorry, and didn’t go any further with it. All of a sudden he wheeled on me and said: “Jack, love is not all of marriage.”

“It’s a big part of it.”

“All right, but in every country except this one they give it a chance. They help love, with dots and dowries and portions and whatever each family can do in the way of the connections that make life easy to live and love worth having. In that way they at least escape the crazy divorce rate that prevails only in this land of the free — especially the recently free grass widow. I’ve rarely seen such promising auspices for a marriage: a lovely girl, easy work, comfortable pay, beautiful quarters, fine connections, and the certainty that eventually you’ll come into a property as valuable as most men dare to hope for.”

“I don’t want it.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Anyway, it’s me that’s doing it.”

“What are you doing, by the way?”

“...”

“I supposed it was something like that.”

One afternoon, a week or two later, I started down to Ocean City. It was a couple hundred miles, but the spot I was in, the further the better. But around Elkton it started to rain, and a few miles down the Shore I started back. I ate dinner in Havre de Grace and got back to town around nine o’clock. But on Mt. Royal Terrace I noticed a big Packard that looked like the Legg’s. Then I noticed the house all lit up, or anyway, lights on in the living room, which hadn’t been used that hour of night for a couple of years. I kept right on, and when I got to the park I took a turn around the lake to think it over. When I came back, instead of going down the street I went down the alley, pulled to one side, and parked. The garage was open. I went through to the yard and slipped around the house to the living-room windows. It was coming down pretty hard by now, but at least that meant there was no chance of my being heard. When I made sure the nearest window was open, I leaned my head so close I could smell the wet screen and peeped. Mr. and Mrs. Legg were there, and Margaret and Sheila and Nancy, but I couldn’t see any sign of Helen or my father. Nancy was crying, and right while I was looking at her Sheila pulled a sofa pillow up to her face, stretched out and began to bawl triple forte. Then Margaret began blotting at her eyes with her handkerchief, and Mrs. Legg began patting her. Mr. Legg kept staring straight in front of him, shaking his head. After a long while my father came in from the hall, and from the way he wandered around, looking at pictures and stuff, I knew he’d been taking a little stroll through the back of the house to think things over. Pretty soon he said: “Legg, I simply can’t believe it.”

“Neither can I, but there it is.”

“But Jack wouldn’t—”

“Oh!” Margaret screamed it, and when her face snapped around, with tears glittering in her eyes, she wasn’t very pretty to see. “Dicky saw them, I tell you. He followed them! From that place he took her to, after she showed up down at the island with all sorts of wild talk about jumping in the bay! Any idiot would know it’s been going on all summer.”

“I’m afraid so, Dillon.”

“I see.”

So that showed how Dicky had taken care of his end of it, but not what I was going to do about mine. Mrs. Legg began talking about how peculiarly she’d been acting all week, “ever since the Washington trip, or what she said at the time was the Washington trip. I knew there was something back of it, and I couldn’t get it out of my mind it was connected with Jack, and the peculiar way he was acting.” About that time Sheila recovered the power of speech and wailed that it was horrible, just horrible. Then the Old Man said: “What does the child herself say about it, Legg?”

“Say? She can’t even talk!”

“Well, she must have told you something!”

“Why must she? After Finley came over, and that boy told his tale, she went into hysterics. Not even her own mother could talk to her — could you, dear?”

“We took her up from the island, to the doctor, and he took one look at her and ordered her to bed. I don’t know what she’ll say. The condition she’s in, unfortunately, pretty well speaks for itself.”

“And if she admits it, what then?”

“I don’t quite know yet.”

“Do you mean you’re — considering the law?”

“I have to consider it.”

Once more I was slipping in the side door of the hotel, and along past the furnaces, and up in the freight elevator. Their suite was on the second floor, and her room first on the left of the little side hallway they had. I tapped on her door and right away heard her voice, and then she was there, in a little silk bathrobe, her hair tumbling all over her shoulders, and in my arms. “Jack, Jack, I knew you’d come.”

“Put on something and get down there. To the basement.”

“Where have they gone? To your house?”

“They’re up there now. Waiting for me. But how long they’ll wait God knows, and we have to talk. So be quick. Use the freight car and don’t be seen.”

I went down and waited and after a couple of years the car gave a clank and went up. Then it came down, and at last she was there, and we went over to a baggage truck and sat down. “First, let me look at you. What makes you so pale?”

“The dark dress, maybe. And I’ve had — a bad time.”

“Yes, now tell me.”

“Well, the day after that night, when I’d played hooky by going to a picture show, and then had the bright idea of traipsing me down to the island, and found them all gone, and then thought I’d play a trick on you and went up to that place with Dickie—”

“After deciding to jump in the bay.”

“Well? What would you have done?”

“Go on.”

“After you came and got me and took me home, I had to have a story, something to throw them off the track. So I said I had gone—”

“To Washington. I know. What then?”

“Then it was decided that it was being alone so much that had slightly unbalanced my mind.”

“And they brought you back to the island?”

“Yes, things having suddenly quieted down.”

“Why?”

“I think Dickie got scared.”

“He talked, though.”

“Yes. Today, just after lunch, it was threatening rain, and we gave up an idea we had, to go crabbing. Then Margaret went to her room for a nap, and Mother went back and began checking linen. Then Mr. Finley came over and I could hear them talking, from where I was, reading a magazine in my room, for some time. Then Margaret got up and went out there. Then I began to wonder what was going on and went out there, and from the way they kept looking at me I knew that whatever it was, Mr. Finley and Father were talking about me. Then Mr. Finley called Dick and he came over.”

“And what then?”

“Mr. Finley had been telling what Dick had told him.”

“Which was?”

“... That you had done something to me.”

“Do you understand what that was? I mean, what it was I’m supposed to have done to you?”

“Yes, Jack.”

“What did Dickie have to say?”

“He followed us, Jack. He must have, from what he said, because he knew exactly where we parked, there across from the Naval Academy, near the bridge. I think he sneaked out to his car, before we left Zeke’s, and pulled out when we did, without putting on his lights. And, in his own imagination, anyhow, he saw something. And when they began asking me about it, and Margaret began weeping all over the place, I... went to pieces a little.”

“Then they brought you to town?”

“And called a doctor. He put me to bed.”

“The worst is yet to come.”

“How?”

“Your father means to have me arrested.”

“For what?”

“Contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”

“But you haven’t!”

“No, but Dickie says so.”

“Will they believe him, instead of me?”

“I don’t know what they’ll believe.”

It was ten minutes before I got her quiet enough even to talk. Then we heard the watchman, ducked into the car, stooped down, and held our breaths. When he was gone we went out and sat down on the truck again and her hand crept into mine. It was cold as ice. “Jack, why did you come here? Tonight.”

“... To tip you. What’s going on.”

“That’s not all.”

“No.”

“You’re going away?”

“Yes.”

“You’re taking me with you?”

“No.”

“Jack, please.”

“It’s utterly unthinkable.”

“Jack, I love you.”

“I’ve’ loved you since you were two years old.”

“But not only that way. You love me more.”

“If I did, it wouldn’t be more, it would be less.”

“Jack, I’ve loved you since I was two years old, too. I’ve worshipped you. But not this way, as I feel now, until you undumbbelled me. That’s not so nice, to be the family simp, that can’t do algebra factors like Mother or beat the piano like Margaret. Then you came along, and believed in me, and made me happy. Then life began. Then I loved you this way, so I can’t even breathe when I look at you. Jack, you’ll have to take me! I’ll put my hair up! I’ll use lipstick and make-up, so I’ll look older! Jack, I’ll die without you! I love you, I tell you! And you love me!”

“Not that way.”

“Yes! It’s why you’ve left Margaret!”

“Listen, you. You’re to cut this idea out, get rid of it, anything that even looks like it. You’re to go back to school, study your lessons, do what they—”

But she turned from me, curled up on the truck like some kitten, and started to cry, terrible little sobs that she’d fight back and then couldn’t fight back. I got up, stumbled past the furnaces, somehow found my way out to the street.

At the house, the Packard was gone and the windows were dark, so I put the car away and went in. From the study my father called. There was no light in there, but his voice had a rip to it and I about knew the thick cut he’d have to his jaw when I turned on one of the lamps. But I wasn’t quite ready for the wild, maniac look he had in his eye. He was on the couch, and rose up off it like some corpse sitting up in its coffin, and stared at me, and began to talk. “You low, perverted scut, to do a thing like that!”

“Like what, for instance.”

“Are you going to stand there and say you didn’t?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’ve defended you — successfully, God help me. I’ve made threats that at last have had their effect, and at least the police won’t be called. But if you think I for one second think you’re innocent, you’re badly mistaken. I should have known it would be something like this. With the rotten, depraved blood that’s in you, to which something young is only a new excitement—”

Don’t ask me how I got through the rest of that horrible night. I stood there, and pumps began driving in my head, like they had the day I beat up the organist, like they do still, at no more than a look in somebody’s eye, if I happen to think that look means my mother. I held on to the door jamb, for control, and he talked on and on, and every other sentence he’d tell me to get out of there. I tried to tell him what the truth was, but it was like talking to something insane, and after a while I went upstairs. Then while I was packing, Sheila came in, looking thin and old in some kind of a Chinese kimono, and I told her I was taking clothes and underwear only, and might have to write for the other stuff. She said she’d send anything I wanted. Then she began to cry and I went over to kiss her but she turned away. At that I felt my face get hot, picked up my bags, and went downstairs. In the living room something moved and then Nancy was there with a thermos bottle and a basket full of sandwiches. She whispered the thermos had coffee in it. I thanked her and wanted to kiss her but hated the idea of somebody else turning away. I put the stuff under my arm and went out. Then I was in the car, driving through the night, with the rain coming down, the black road shining ahead, with no more idea where I was going than the Flying Dutchman, and just as much chance of getting there.