The Weak-Eyed Bat

Chapter Three

“O popoi,” said professor Frost aloud.

Homer put “O popoi” into the mouths of heroes, and although classicists translated it delicately as “My good sir!” Professor Frost believed that it meant something a great deal stronger. Certainly it did when he said it, and whatever its meaning “O popoi” had an explosive, violent sound which was somehow satisfying.

He laid down his pen and glanced at his watch. It was 11:57. In three minutes Susan would appear, with July’s bills, apologetic but firm, and glowing with the light of good deeds done. Since the occasion came only once a month, Professor Frost conceded her the pleasure of pointing out her little economies. Not without misgiving, however. Since he was fifty-five and might reasonably expect to live to seventy, he considered the prospect of one hundred and ninety similar scenes, and sighed.

But at twelve o’clock, duty, incarnate in his daughter Susan, bombed his ivory tower with leaflets.

“Only thirty-nine dollars and twenty-one cents for groceries this month.”

She set the bill in front of him and he gazed at it profoundly and said, “Hm.”

“I’ve cut it four dollars this month.”

At the tone of her voice Professor Frost crossed himself piously and thought, “I sincerely hope, God, that you are not missing this.”

“Joan’s dress was twenty-nine dollars and ninety-five cents.” Righteous wrath with an overtone of pity.

“The meat bill is fourteen dollars and fifty cents. That’s too much.” Stern self-rebuke.

Professor Frost raised his handsome white head to study his paragon. Blessed Susan meek and mild, he composed, soul of fish and brain of child. He was pleased with this effort, and half-ashamed of his pleasure he atoned by saying:

“You manage very well, Susan. I’m always amazed at your head for business.”

In his own ears it sounded ironic but Susan blushed with happiness. When she blushed, her father decided, Susan was almost pretty in a wild-rose fashion. Her hair was brown, thick, and wavy. She had a good nose, straight and small. Thank heaven he’d been able to contribute something to her features, if only a nose! Her eyes were pretty if one discounted their expression, large and brown and long-lashed. She was too thin.

What Susan needed was two quarts of good red blood. Or a pretty dress. Or perhaps some male attention.

Joan’s emphatic footsteps on the stairs broke into his thoughts. She came in without knocking, still wearing her yellow bathing suit and obviously in a high rage.

“It’s customary to knock, I believe,” Professor Frost said mildly. “Susan and I are busy. Did you want anything in particular?”

“If I didn’t I wouldn’t come near you for the rest of my life.” She turned to Susan who at this unfilial address had been congealed bending over the milk bill. “Beat it. This is business.”

“I shall remain right here,” Susan replied, clutching at the remnants of her dignity. “When you are in this mood my place is with my father.” Wild horses couldn’t have dragged her away, father or no father.

Joan barely glanced at her: Susan wasn’t worth hating.

Amused, Professor Frost smiled at his younger daughter. “And what is the cause of these primeval passions, my dear?”

“Full of big talk as usual, aren’t you?” Joan said, sitting on his desk. “You can’t make me feel cheap with your lousy two-bit words.”

“Quite so, Joan,” he said calmly. “You are cheap, although I scarcely expect you to accept my evaluation of you.”

“You should be more respectful toward your father,” Susan unwisely interrupted.

Without turning Joan said, “You milksop. Don’t peddle your virtue around me.”

“Susan, perhaps you had better leave. I assure you I won’t require your protection. Joan’s periodic tantrums are more interesting than dangerous.”

“What’s that you’ve been writing, dear Papa?” Joan said. She snatched his diary from the desk and read aloud to Susan: “ ‘Virtue is a clammy thing, rather oppressive in these quantities.’ That’s you, Susan. Now shall I read something about me?”

“If you must humiliate yourself, Joan,” Professor Frost said.

“Listen to this. ‘June first. Am rather out of pocket this month, Joan’s penchant for the possessions of others having extended to Miss Bonner’s pearl ring. Total outlay: two hundred dollars.’ ”

“Joan!” Susan cried, horrified.

“This diary is worth a lot to me. I think I’ll keep it. If you don’t mind.”

Professor Frost held out his hand for the diary. “Certainly I mind. Don’t be childish, Joan. It has no value to you. It’s purely a personal record.”

She jumped off the desk and swung round to face him. “Personal record, hell! I know what you’re going to do with it, you bastard.”

He caught her hand, hard. “Put it back on my desk, Joan. Instantly. Put it back.”

Her fist caught him on the cheek. He lurched back, grasped at the desk helplessly, and fell to the floor. Joan watched impassively as Susan helped him to his feet.

“I’m packing,” she said calmly. “I’ll be gone tonight. And may the devil protect me from ever meeting either of you again.”

“Tom dear, you’re not eating,” Mary Little said at lunch. “What is the matter? You know you can tell me everything, dear, and I always understand.”

Tom choked and reached out hastily for a glass of water.

“It’s not about that young Frost girl, surely?”

“Of course not,” Tom said in an injured tone.

Mary sighed. She would have liked to believe the best, but it was so often wrong that she was compelled to believe the worst.

“Has she been forcing her attentions on you, Tom, dear?”

“No,” he said, with some truth.

“Oh dear! Tom, you’re not feeling — weak again, are you?”

“Why don’t you eat your lunch and not bother about me?” Tom speared a lettuce leaf viciously. “I’ve got a stomachache.”

Mary sighed again. How much better it would be for everyone if he really had a stomachache. But no, the trouble was spiritual.

“Tom, dear, you mustn’t try to deceive me. No matter how black the truth is—”

“It isn’t black,” Tom said loudly. “I haven’t done anything. There’s nothing to tell. I have a stomachache.”

Jennie saved the situation, as she often did, by bringing in the tea. She was apparently in the throes of some tremendous excitement, for her plump cheeks were pink and shining and her glasses had slid down almost to the end of her nose. She was very fond of Mrs. Little, and the relations between them were informal.

“They just had an awful row up at the Frosts’,” she announced with pride.

“It isn’t kind to gossip, Jennie,” Mary said, hoping that Jennie would not take this reprimand too seriously. Jennie didn’t.

“Miss Joan is running away. And she knocked her father down flat on the floor and pulled out handfuls of Susan’s hair. Oh, it must have been wonder — dreadful!” Jennie’s informant, Hattie Brown, frequently sacrificed truth to drama.

Tom turned pea-green. “That’s enough, Jennie.”

“Is Professor Frost seriously injured?” Mary asked in a shocked voice.

“Good gracious, I forgot to ask, Mrs. Little.”

“And Joan is really going away? Has she left yet?”

“She’s going tonight.”

“Thank you, Jennie. You may go now.”

Jennie hurried out, and Mary turned to her husband.

“Is that what is worrying you, Tom?”

“I’m not worried. I have a stomachache.”

“Poor Tom,” Mary said, shaking her head. “You are feeling weak again, aren’t you?”

“Oh hell,” Tom said.

She got up and came around the table to him, and put her hand fondly on his head.

“We’ll fight it together, Tom, as we always do.”

Tom’s face was ghastly. From the kitchen came Jennie’s voice raised in ecstatic song: “In the good old summertime, tra la.”

In her room on the ground floor Joan Frost finished her lunch. She set her tray on the floor outside the door and locked the door. Then she lit a cigarette and once again picked up her father’s diary. Now that she was leaving and had nothing to fear she could read his diary with considerable enjoyment. Later she would burn it, of course, but it was amusing to see how she had made him squirm.

“Joan has been sent home from Bishop Bethune. She is, according to the headmistress’ report, completely intractable. That lady made no definite accusations, but she made it clear that she considers Joan responsible for certain petty thefts that have occurred in the senior dormitory. Rather than be humiliated in this fashion I would increase her pocket money (already twice as much as Susan’s) but this would appear to be superficial treatment at best. Susan is uncommonly pleased at Joan’s return. The air bristles with righteous reproach.”

“Milksop,” Joan said absently, and flicked over the pages.

“Joan has just brought me the news of her engagement to Ralph Bonner. Although she has an emerald ring to substantiate her statement, I shall shelve it temporarily. Miss Bonner’s opinion of Joan is so low — and I have heard it so often — that I am forced to believe Joan’s fabrications are becoming more ambitious. Faced with the choice of Joan or death, Emily would, I fancy, choose the more innocuous.”

“What the hell does he mean by that?” Joan said.

“Susan managed to convey to me, with extreme reluctance, of course, the information that Joan is casting a predatory eye on that most unattractive fellow, Tom Little. She seemed disappointed that I did not immediately challenge the fellow to a duel. But I have two reasons for my isolationist policy in this affair: my efforts would be ineffectual, and I feel that to Mary Little forgiveness is the breath of life.”

“Is it?” Joan said softly. “Is it really?”

She closed the book and hid it beneath a pile of dresses in her suitcase. Then she went over to the mirror and examined her face intently, as if it were the face of a stranger. She was still at the mirror when Ralph came.

He knocked timidly at her door. Ralph was always a little frightened of Joan, and he knew from the sound of her voice over the telephone that she was going to be unpleasant.

She unlocked the door and he went in, a tall, handsome young man with a slightly vacant expression as if he were bewildered by everything that happened to him. All his efforts to help himself had been thwarted: Wang chose his clothes and dressed him, and Emily did his thinking and provided pocket money. Joan Frost was his first close contact with the world, and in her hands he was a baby in a blizzard.

He had a strong sense of chivalry gleaned from books, and when his aunt expended her vocabulary over Joan’s faults Ralph attributed it to jealousy and stood up for his fiancée. The tales connecting Joan and Tom Little he dismissed as malicious gossip.

“Hello, Joan,” he said, standing just inside the door. “I— Well, here I am.”

“You’re a simpleton, Ralph. I know you’re here. Sit down.”

He sat down nervously on the edge of a chair.

“Do you suppose your father—? I mean, after all, it’s your bedroom, and—” He looked down and saw the suitcase lying open on the floor. “Oh. Going away?”

“I am.”

“Oh.”

Joan laughed again. “Is that all you have to say, you spineless little fish?”

He glanced around the room, flushing. “The windows are open, Joan. I mean, I don’t want anyone to hear you talk like that. It might give them the wrong impression.”

“I don’t care who hears what I’m going to say to you, Ralph.”

The conversation lasted half an hour. At two, Dr. Prye saw Ralph walking along the lane.

“Young Bonner looks drunk,” he said to Nora.

Nora went to the window. “You’d get drunk, too, if you were engaged to Joan. Peace through alcohol.”

Prye turned to her with a puzzled frown. “Maybe he’s not drunk. He looks ill. Perhaps I should—”

“No, you shouldn’t.” Prye raised his eyebrows and Nora blushed. “Don’t get mixed up with this business,” she said quickly.

“You’re being a mysterious girl again, Nora. What business?”

Nora waved her hand vaguely. “All this. There’s going to be trouble and you’d be in the middle of the circle. Now you may dissolve in hilarity if you wish.”

Prye did not laugh. “How you prophesy, Nora. The Irish must be fey.”

“Sometimes,” she said seriously.

“I don't mind trouble. If there is any I’d rather be in the center than describing futile arcs on the edge.”

“If Joan were removed,” Nora said quietly, “the cause would be removed. That’s what psychologists try to do, isn’t it?”

“In a sense. But your view of the situation is too simple, too narrow. Joan is a catalyst, she merely aids the chemical reaction.”

“Is she insane?”

Prye drew a long breath. “That’s practically the only question a psychiatrist hesitates to answer. I occasionally can make a snap judgment that a person is not insane. But the other is more serious. Before taking away anyone’s legal rights and confining him in an institution I like to be sure of my facts. I must have time, opportunities for testing, a number of interviews, a behavior chart, a family history, and a physical checkup.”

“All that means you don’t know?” Nora said primly.

“I don’t.”

“What do you think, then?”

“I think that the slander laws in Canada are strictly enforced and that I have no intention of flouting them. And now if you’ll excuse me—”

“You’re going out?”

“I thought I’d take a stroll up the lane. I want some birch bark to build myself a canoe.”

Nora pursed her lips and said musingly: “You wouldn’t be going to the Bonners’, of course.”

“Naturally I have to pass the house. I can’t help the way the lane runs, can I?”

“Certainly not! In case of accidents who is your nearest relative?”

“The Pryes all die quietly in the line of duty,” Prye said. “See you later. I might have some news for you.”

Once out of the house he walked swiftly. On the veranda of the next cottage a woman was sitting knitting, and at the sound of his footsteps she raised her head and smiled. Prye smiled back at her. Even at a distance Prye saw that she looked ill. Her face was pale and set in the patient resignation of a chronic invalid.

“Hello,” she called. “Isn’t it a beautiful morning?”

Prye stopped and said: “Very. You’re Mrs. Little, I know.”

“And you’re Dr. Prye,” she said, pleased. “Welcome to our little circle. Won’t you come up and sit down?”

“Sorry. I’d like to but I have an engagement. Ask me again some time, will you?”

“Come in any time. I’d like you to meet my husband.”

She said it quite proudly, and Prye walked away hastily to avoid answering.

The wives of philanderers, he reflected, are wondrous to behold. They forgave and forgot; they were even proud of their pitiful spouses. Perhaps it was the fact that even though Tom could have Sadie or Mabel or Elsie he stayed married to Mary. Not surprising, Prye decided cynically, when it was Mary’s hand which rocked the moneybags.

Prye rang Miss Bonner’s doorbell and waited. Wang was in a particularly cheerful mood when he opened the door.

“Miss Bonner is very angry,” he announced. “Her temperature has soared to one hundred nine.” There was no doubt that Emily was very angry. Before Prye was halfway up the stairs he could hear her shouting at Miss Alfonse, and when he reached the second floor Miss Alfonse herself came scurrying out of the room and disappeared down the hall.

Prye went in without knocking. Emily’s head was resting against the back of her wheelchair. She was breathing hard.

From the doorway Prye said, “Hello, Emily. What’s the row?”

She opened her eyes and Prye saw that they were glassy.

“It’s Ralph,” she said in a whisper. “He’s just come from seeing that girl and he’s locked himself in his room.”

“Surely not an extraordinary thing,” he said lightly. “They’ve probably quarreled. Give him a chance to get over it.”

“No. It’s worse than that. They had an awful scene at the Frosts’ this morning. Joan knocked her father down. She’s leaving tonight and I don’t think she’s going alone.”

“You’re afraid Ralph is going with her?”

“I know it. He’s packing now. That’s why he’s locked his door. That double-crossing little slut.”

Prye raised his brows. “I thought all sluts were female.”

“That slut,” she repeated, as if she had not heard him.

“I’ll speak to Ralph if you like. Shall I?”

She made no reply, and he went out, shutting the door behind him. Wang was standing in the hall.

“Hear everything?” Prye asked coldly. “In that case you’ll know I want to speak to Ralph. Which is his room?”

Wang pointed to a closed door on the opposite side of the hall and Prye went over and pounded on it for some time. There was no response.

“Ralph!” he called. “Hey! Fire! Burglars!”

Wang smiled sadly. “Even the infallible Dr. Prye must sometimes fail,” he said, shaking his head, “although his tongue is as persuasive as a thumbscrew.”

“A pretty thought,” Prye said dryly. “I don’t suppose you know why he’s locked himself in his room.”

Wang looked modest. “My head throbs with ideas on the subject, but my heart says no.”

“Your heart says no what?”

“It says no, do not tell.”

Prye stamped furiously down the steps and back to his cottage. Nora was gone.

“Peace,” Prye murmured. “Perfect peace.”

The afternoon was full of it. When he went swimming the beach was deserted. When he returned there was no Nora and no Professor Frost. He lay down to sleep and not even a mosquito cut the silence. At five o’clock he got up in desperation and phoned Nora and offered her dinner if she was prepared to make it. They dined sumptuously out of cans.

It was about eight-thirty when he took her home, but already dark and moonless. Nora went into her cottage and Prye remained standing on the path, breathing in the heavy odor of sweet grass and pine needles which clung stickily to the sultry air.

A mosquito fastened itself to his wrist and he slapped it. The sound rang out sharp and echoed away. Immediately afterward, from the grove of silver birches behind Nora’s cottage, there was a soft rustle.

He closed his coat to hide his white shirt front and stepped off the path into the grove. The darkness poured around him like thick black oil, and the air seemed to be sucked out of the forest. Breathless, he turned to go back. There was a sudden swish behind him and he fell forward on his face. His head kept getting bigger and bigger and when it was as big as a house it splintered into little stars.

By that time he did not know or care that Miss Bonner’s spotlight had been shattered into a thousand pieces and that Mr. Smith’s dog was howling like a falling bomb.