Of Time and the River (37 page)

And on the desk there was a stack of letters which had also been delivered to him the day before. The letters had been written to one of McGuire’s own colleagues by a certain very beautiful lady of the town, of whom it is only necessary to say that she was not McGuire’s wife and that he had known her for a long time. The huge man—curiously enough, not only a devoted father and a loyal husband, but a creature whose devotion to his family had been desperately intensified by the bitter sense of his one unfaith—had been for many years obsessed by one of those single, fatal and irremediable passions which great creatures of this sort feel only once in life, and for just one woman. Now the obsession of that mad fidelity was gone—exploded in an instant by a spidery scheme of words upon a page, a packet of torn letters in a woman’s hand. Hence, this sense now of a stolid, slow, and cureless anguish in the man, the brutal deliberation of his drunkenness. Since finding these letters upon his desk when he had returned at seven o’clock the night before from his visit to Gant, McGuire had not left his office or moved in his chair, except to bend with a painful grunt from time to time, feel between his legs with a fat hand until he found the jug, and then, holding it with a bear-like solemnity between his paws, drink long and deep of the raw, fiery, and colourless liquid in the jug. He had done this very often, and now the jug was two-thirds empty. As he read, his mouth was half open and a cigarette was stuck on the corner of one fat lip, a look that suggested a comical drunken stupefaction. The hospital had long since gone to sleep, and in the little office there was no sound save the ticking of a clock and McGuire’s short, thick, and stertorous breathing. Then when he had finished a letter, he would fold it carefully, put it back in its envelope, rub his thick fingers across the stubble of brown-reddish beard that covered his bloated and discoloured face, reach with a painful grunt for the glass jug, drink, and open up another letter.

And from time to time he would put a letter down before he had finished reading it, take up a pen, and begin to write upon a sheet of broad hospital stationery, of which there was a pad upon his desk. And McGuire wrote as he read, slowly, painfully, carefully, with a fixed and drunken attentiveness, no sound except the minute and careful scratching of the pen in his fat hands, and the short, thick stertorous breathing as he bent over the tablet, his cigarette plastered comically at the edge of one fat lip.

McGuire would read the letters over and over, slowly, carefully, and solemnly. Burly, motionless and with no sound save for the short and stertorous labour of his breath, he stared with drunken fixity at the pages which he held close before his yellowed eyes, his bloated face. He had read each letter at least a dozen times during the course of the long evening. And each time that he finished reading it, he would fold it carefully with his thick fingers, put it back into its envelope, bend and reach down between his fat legs with a painful grunt, fumble for the liquor jug, and then drink long and deep.

It seemed that a red-hot iron had been driven through his heart and twisted there; the liquor burned in his blood and stomach like fire; and each time that he had finished reading that long letter, he would grunt, reach for the jug again, and then slowly and painfully begin to scrawl some words down on the pad before him.

He had done this at least a dozen times that night, and each time after a few scrawled lines he would grunt impatiently, wad the paper up into a crumpled ball and throw it into the waste-paper basket at his side. Now, a little after three o’clock in the morning, he was writing steadily; there was no sound now in the room save for the man’s thick short breathing and the minute scratching of his pen across the paper. An examination of these wadded balls of paper, however, in the order in which they had been written, would have revealed perfectly the successive states of feeling in the man’s spirit.

The first, which was written after his discovery of the letters, was just a few scrawled words without punctuation or grammatical coherence, ending abruptly in an explosive splintered movement of the pen, and read simply and expressively as follows:

“You bitch you damned dirty trollop of a lying whore you—”

And this ended here in an explosive scrawl of splintered ink, and had been wadded up and thrown away into the basket.

XXIII

Helen had lain awake for hours in darkness, in a strange comatose state of terror and hallucination. There was no sound save the sound of Barton’s breathing beside her, but in her strange drugged state she would imagine she heard all kinds of sounds. As she lay there in the dark, her eyes wide open, wide awake, plucking at her large cleft chin abstractedly, in a kind of drugged hypnosis, thinking like a child:

“What is that? . . . Someone is coming! . . . That was a car that stopped outside. . . . Now they’re coming up the steps. . . . There’s someone knocking at the door. . . . Oh, my God! . . . It’s about Papa! . . . He’s had another attack, they’ve come to get me . . . he’s dead! . . . Hugh! Hugh! Wake up!” she said hoarsely, and seized him by the arm. And he woke, his sparse hair tousled, grumbling sleepily.

“Hugh! Hugh!” she whispered. “It’s Papa—he’s dying . . . they’re at the door now! . . . oh, for heaven’s sake, get up!” she almost screamed in a state of frenzied despair and exasperation. “Aren’t you good for anything! . . . Don’t lie there like a dummy—Papa may be dying! Get up! Get up! There’s someone at the door! My God, you can at least go and find out what it is! Oh, get up, get up, I tell you! . . . Don’t leave everything to me! You’re a man— you can at least do that much!”—and by now her voice was almost sobbing with exasperation.

“Well, ALL right, ALL right!” he grumbled in a tone of protest, “I’m going! Only give me a moment to find my slippers and my bath- robe, won’t you?”

And, hair still twisted, tall, bony, thin to emaciation, he felt around with his bare feet until he found his slippers, stepped gingerly into them, and put on his bath-robe, tying the cord around his waist, and looking himself over in the mirror carefully, smoothing down his rumpled hair and making a shrugging motion of the shoulders. And she looked at him with a tortured and exasperated glare, saying:

“Oh, slow, slow, slow! . . . My God, you’re the slowest thing that ever lived! . . . I could walk from here to California in the time it takes you to get out of bed.”

“Well, I’M going, I’M going,” he said again with surly protest. “I don’t want to go to the front door naked—only give me a minute to get ready, won’t you?”

“Then, go, go, go!” she almost screamed at him. “They’ve been there for fifteen minutes. . . . They’re almost hammering the door down—for God’s sake go and find out if they’ve come because of Papa, I beg of you.”

And he went hastily, still preserving a kind of dignity as he stepped along gingerly in his bath-robe and thin pyjamaed legs. And when he got to the door, there was no one, nothing there. The street outside was bare and empty, the houses along the street dark and hushed with their immense and still attentiveness of night and silence and the sleepers, the trees were standing straight and lean with their still young leafage—and he came back again growling surlily.

“Ah-h, there’s no one there! You didn’t hear anything! . . . You imagined the whole thing!”

And for a moment her eyes had a dull appeased look, she plucked at her large cleft chin and said in an abstracted tone: “Ah-hah! . . . Well, come on back to bed, honey, and get some sleep.”

“Ah, get some sleep!” he growled, scowling angrily as he took off his robe—and scuffed the slippers from his feet. “What chance do I have to get any sleep any more with you acting like a crazy woman half the time?”

She snickered hoarsely and absently, still plucking at her chin, as he lay down beside her; she kissed him, and put her arms around him with a mothering gesture.

“Well, I know, Hugh,” she said quietly, “you’ve had a hard time of it, but some day we will get away from it and live our own life. I know you didn’t marry the whole damned family—but just try to put up with it a little longer: Papa has not got long to live, he’s all alone over there in that old house—and she can’t realize—she doesn’t understand that he is dying—she’ll never wake up to the fact until he’s gone! I lie here at night thinking about it—and I can’t go to sleep . . . I get funny notions in my head.” As she spoke these words the dull strained look came into her eyes again, and her big-boned generous face took on the warped outline of hysteria—“You know, I get queer.” She spoke the word in a puzzled and baffled way, the dull strained look becoming more pronounced— “I think of him over there all alone in that old house, and then I think they’re coming for me—” she spoke the word “they” in this same baffled and puzzled tone, as if she did not clearly understand who “they” were—“I think the telephone is ringing, or that someone is coming up the steps and then I hear them knocking at the door, and then I hear them talking to me, telling me to come quick, he needs me—and then I hear him calling to me, ‘Baby! Oh, baby—come quick, baby, for Jesus’ sake!’”

“You’ve been made the goat,” he muttered, “you’ve got to bear the whole burden on your shoulders. You’re cracking up under the strain. If they don’t leave you alone I’m going to take you away from here.”

“Do you think it’s right?” she demanded in a frenzied tone again, responding thirstily to his argument. “Why, good heavens, Hugh! I’ve got a right to my own life the same as anybody else. Don’t you think I have? I married YOU!” she cried, as if there were some doubts of the fact. “I wanted a home of my own, children, my own life—good heavens, we have a right to that just the same as anyone else! Don’t you think we have?”

“Yes,” he said grimly, “and I’m going to see we get it. I’m tired of seeing you made the victim! If they don’t give you some peace or quiet we’ll move away from this town.”

“Oh, it’s not that I mind doing it for Papa,” she said more quietly. “Good heavens, I’ll do anything to make that poor old man happier. If only the rest of them—well, honey,” she said, breaking off abruptly, “let’s forget about it! It’s too bad you’ve got to go through all this now, but it won’t last for ever. After Papa is gone, we’ll get away from it. Some day we’ll have a chance to lead our own lives together.”

“Oh, it’s all right about me, dear,” the man said quietly, speaking the word “dear” in the precise and nasal way Ohio people have. He was silent for a moment, and when he spoke again, his lean seamed face and care-worn eyes were quietly eloquent with the integrity of devotion and loyalty that was of the essence of his life. “I don’t mind it for myself—only I hate to see you get yourself worked up to this condition. I’m afraid you’ll crack under the strain: that’s all I care about.”

“Well, forget about it. It can’t be helped. Just try to make the best of it. Now go on back to sleep, honey, and try to get some rest before you have to get up.”

And returning her kiss, with an obedient and submissive look on his lean face, he said quietly, “Good night, dear,” turned over on his side and closed his eyes.

She turned the light out, and now again there was nothing but darkness, silence, the huge still hush and secrecy of night, her husband’s quiet breath of sleep as he lay beside her. And again she could not sleep, but lay there plucking absently at her large cleft chin, her eyes open, turned upward into darkness in a stare of patient, puzzled, and abstracted thought.

XXIV

For a long time now, McGuire had sat there without moving, sprawled out upon the desk in a kind of drunken stupor. About half-past three the telephone upon the desk began to ring, jangling the hospital silence with its ominous and insistent clangour, but the big burly figure of the man did not stir, he made no move to answer. Presently he heard the brisk heel-taps of Creasman, the night superintendent, coming along the heavy oiled linoleum of the corridor. She entered, glanced quickly at him, and saying, “Shall I take it?” picked up the phone, took the receiver from its hook, said “hello” and listened for a moment. He did not move.

In a moment, the night superintendent said quietly:

“Yes, I’ll ask him.”

When she spoke to him, however, her tone had changed completely from the cool professional courtesy of her speech into the telephone: putting the instrument down upon the top of the desk, and covering the mouth-piece with her hand, she spoke quietly to him, but with a note of cynical humour in her voice, bold, coarse, a trifle mocking.

“It’s your wife,” she said. “What shall I tell her?”

He regarded her stupidly for a moment before he answered.

“What does she want?” he grunted.

She looked at him with hard eyes touched with pity and regret.

“What do you think a woman wants?” she said. “She wants to know if you are coming home tonight.”

He stared at her and then grunted:

“Won’t go home.”

She took her hand away from the mouth-piece instantly, and taking up the phone again, spoke smoothly, quietly, with cool crisp courtesy:

“The doctor will not be able to go home tonight, Mrs. McGuire. He has to operate at seven-thirty. . . . Yes. . . . Yes. . . . At seven-thirty. . . . He has decided it is best to stay here until the operation is over. . . . Yes. . . . I’ll tell him. . . . Thank YOU. . . . Good-bye.”

She hung up quietly and then turning to him, her hands arched cleanly on starched hips, she looked at him for a moment with a bold sardonic humour.

“What did she say?” he mumbled thickly.

“Nothing,” she said quietly. “Nothing at all. What else is there to say?”

He made no answer but just kept staring at her in his bloated drunken way with nothing but the numb swelter of that irremediable anguish in his heart. In a moment, her voice hardening imperceptibly, the nurse spoke quietly again:

“Oh, yes—and I forgot to tell you—you had another call tonight.”

He moistened his thick lips, and mumbled:

“Who was it?”

“It was that woman of yours.”

There was no sound save the stertorous labour of his breath; he stared at her with his veined and yellowed eyes, and grunted stolidly: