The Road Through the Wall (21 page)

“The Desmonds were first,” Mr. Donald said. “Or the Merriams. I think the Merriams. After all, that house has been in his family. Yes, first the Merriams and then the Desmonds.”

They were both quiet for a while. Miss Fielding rocked peacefully, as though in a cradle, and Mr. Donald, his eyes shut, let his fingers unclench and lie easily against the arms of his chair.

“You never can tell,” Mr. Donald said finally, barely making words from the murmur of his voice. “You never can tell, never know, father knows best.”

“There's a lot to be said for religion in any case,” Miss Fielding said. “Not that I was ever very much of a religious. It's cruel not to give a child a chance.”

“Spare the rod and spoil the church,” Mr. Donald said suddenly. They frequently interrupted one another, or talked both at once, as though all that were necessary was to make a companionable noise. “Everybody worrying, everybody moving so fast, all going to church, all hitting each other, all worrying.”

Perhaps Miss Fielding thought she had been talking right along since her last statement, for she went on, “and never asked him again. Not that he would have allowed it, of course.”

“They ask me to watch,” Mr. Donald said. “They just sit there and expect people to watch them and be interested. They expect people to think everything is important and necessary. That's the word, necessary. Necessary is the word.”

“You take young people today,” Miss Fielding said. “They're not as high-bred as they used to be. The Terrel girls, for instance. I don't know the mother, but the girls are really not first-class.”

“Necessary is really the word.” The light on Mr. Donald's face made him seem much younger, and he smiled shyly. “It's hard to remember sometimes,” he confessed, “but sometimes I can think without trying. I remember the way the sun shone on my sister and me. She had a doll named Julia.”

“You can always tell about people,” Miss Fielding said.

“It used to be much warmer then,” Mr. Donald went on. “Sometimes it's so cold now in the summer I wonder about it. Even in the summer.”

“I expect to be very cool to them,” Miss Fielding said. “I haven't met the mother yet, but when I do I shall be very cool indeed.”

“I wish I knew why it happens,” Mr. Donald said. He leaned forward, preparatory to standing up. “Why it's so much colder now in the summer.” He looked directly at Miss Fielding, who turned her wrinkled old eyes to look at him.

“Why yes,” Miss Fielding said. “I expect we're all older than we were.”

When he stood up she rose and followed him to the door. “I'm very glad you came,” she said formally. “Come again.”

“Thank you,” Mr. Donald said as formally. “Thank you for letting me come.”

He went down the narrow flight of steps outside, and Miss Fielding held the door open to give him light until he reached the sidewalk. Then he called “Good night,” and she said, “Good night,” and closed her door and turned the key.

Back in her little room she turned out the oil stove and straightened the antimacassar on Mr. Donald's chair. “Not really first-class,” she was saying tunefully as she worked. “We're all
much
older now.”

•   •   •

Mrs. Merriam was sitting on the foot of Harriet's bed, leaning forward eagerly, and her eyes were light and earnest. While she talked she continually stretched her long hands out to her daughter, as though to grasp Harriet's mind and force it to accept her intent, as though to hold Harriet from running away. “I know you are the most generous and tolerant girl around here,” she was saying, “but remember, what is
most
important is not to let yourself get carried
away
.”

Harriet sat dully on her desk chair. She had been writing when her mother came in to talk to her; it was her regular writing time her mother had assigned, the two hours after lunch, and Harriet had been dutifully forcing metrical rhymed lines down on paper. The greater part of her writing time had been lost in her mother's talking; mostly Harriet was wondering if the lost time might still be required of her or if she would be allowed to go outdoors at her usual time.

“We must expect to set a standard,” her mother said. It was perhaps the third time she had said it, and it registered muddily on Harriet's mind. “We must expect to set a standard. Actually, however much we may want to find new friends whom we may value, people who are exciting to us because of new ideas, or because they are
different
, we have to do what is expected of us.”

“What is expected of me?” Harriet said suddenly, without intention.

“To do what you're told,” her mother said sharply.

“But what am I supposed to do?”

“You may,” her mother said, “in fact, I
insist
,” she added with relish, “that you see her once more, in order to tell her
exactly
why you are not to be friends any longer. After all,” Mrs. Merriam went on dreamily, “she ought to know why she can't hope to be your friend any longer.”

“Yes, Mother,” Harriet said. “I'd have to give her back her books anyway.” She waited for a minute and then, when her mother showed signs of leaving, she said, “May I go out now?”

“Of course, dear,” her mother said. She looked back at Harriet as she was leaving the room. “I can trust you, of course?”

“Yes, Mother,” Harriet said.

“You remember, dear,” her mother said lightly, “that little matter of those dirty letters. After all, I trusted you
then
.”

“But I didn't—” Harriet began, and her mother went on quickly, “I have never been
so
disappointed in my girl. It will take a long time, Harriet, before I forget the
filth
that went into those letters. The filthy words, the filthy thoughts.”

“I won't do it again,” Harriet said helplessly.

“Of course you won't,” her mother said gently. “We won't bring the subject up any more.”

•   •   •

Mary Byrne was standing lonesomely on the sidewalk in front of her house, shredding a leaf she had pulled off the bushes and looking at it trying to think of what to do, when she heard someone saying, “Hello, lady.” She looked up. She had, along with the rest of the neighborhood, encountered Beverley Terrel, had seen Frederica taking her up and down the block for careful walks; and she had, with the other children, laughed at her when Frederica was not around, imitating her clumsy walk and her thick speech. No one was afraid of Beverley, because she was always smiling, so Mary looked up and smiled back and said, “Hello, Beverley.” She was mildly surprised for a minute because Frederica did not seem to be around, but she forgot to be surprised immediately when Beverley held out a hand full of money.

“I've money,” Beverley said.

Mary leaned forward and touched it and then looked up at Beverley. “Where'd you get it all?” she asked, awed.

“Let's spend it,” Beverley said. She gestured back and forth rapidly with her hand, so that a dollar bill dropped to the ground. Mary picked it up respectfully and tried to hand it back, but Beverley clenched her hand so tight around the money that after a minute Mary gave up trying to force in the dollar bill and put it instead into her own pocket. She kept her hand on it ready to give back to Frederica when she came.

“Come on,” Beverley said. She gave Mary a push. “Come on, let's spend it,” she said.

Mary looked up and down the street quickly. No one was in sight, and yet by taking the dollar bill into her own pocket, even knowing she would not keep it, she had become an accessory, a participant with Beverley in something exciting and dishonest. “What'll we do with it?” Mary asked, dropping her voice to a whisper.

“Candy,” Beverley said immediately, “candy and hot butterscotch sundaes, and we can go to the movies if we want to, and we can buy lots of candy.”

Mary's mind dwelt on a chocolate bar with almonds, and then she realized that even the dollar bill in her pocket would buy many of them, and Beverley had so much money in her hand that it was impossible to count it.

“I'd have a marshmallow sundae too,” Beverley said. “And a butterscotch sundae and lots of candy.”

“We better run,” Mary said, as Beverley started toward Cortez Road. “My mother might not like it if she saw me.” Beverley began obediently to move faster and Mary followed, frightened already at the prospect of going all the way down the street without being seen. She had a feeling of warm friendship with Beverley which overwhelmed and disgusted the faint nausea she felt at the thought of doing anything or going anywhere with this great awkward girl who talked like a six-year-old child.

“We better not go to any of the usual places,” she said to Beverley. “We wouldn't want anyone to tell on us.”

“Take a taxi,” Beverley said. “We'll go far away. I've money.” She gestured forward with the money-filled hand.

“Do you want me to carry it for you?” Mary asked considerately. She wanted to know how it felt to hold that much money, instead of the paltry dollar bill in her pocket, but Beverley snatched her hand away and glared suspiciously.
“Mine,”
she said.

“You don't have to be mean,” Mary said. “
I
don't want your old money.” She drew away from Beverley, indignant that Beverley should think she wanted to steal. “I won't even go with you,” she said crossly.

“We'll have a marshmallow sundae,” Beverley said appealingly, “and lots of candy.”

“All right.” No one saw them, after all. They hurried down the street side by side, almost the same height. Beverley had a handful of money and Mary had a dollar bill in her pocket, which she had already resolved not to spend, since Beverley had so much more, but to save and return virtuously when they came back.

•   •   •

“We wouldn't turn you out,” old Mrs. Martin said down through the living-room filled with big vases and glassed-in flowers. She looked at her husband and he nodded heavily, his frightened old eyes blinking back at his wife. It was not the first time in his life, by any means, that old Mr. Martin had been frightened of his wife: there was the day they were married, young Mrs. Martin, as she was then, looking him over after the ceremony with narrow critical eyes, estimating accurately her future life with him; there was their son, storming out of the house against his mother's will, to go dancing with the girl he had set his heart on, and Mrs. Martin tight-lipped and threatening in the doorway; there was the night Hallie came home with Mr. Perlman. Mr. Martin, afraid of speaking for fear he should say something wrong, longing to be back in his greenhouses where things were steadily, quietly growing, looked at his wife and nodded, and then at his daughter-in-law with her bright pretty face, and nodded again.

“We wouldn't ever turn anybody out of our house, no one ever gets turned out of our house ever. Papa would never forgive me,” old Mrs. Martin said, “if I tried to turn his own son's wife out of our house.”

In the Martins' living-room there were great pink and blue pots holding plants Mr. Martin had brought home from the greenhouses, there were dark undistinguishable pieces of furniture, lined up soberly against the walls; the carpet was unfaded by the sun, because old Mrs. Martin drew the shades every afternoon to keep out the light. The family only sat here all together on Sundays, because then young Mrs. Martin did not work, but when they sat all together in the big echoing room it still seemed empty, because the ferns and the great furniture and the straight hanging curtains were made for an empty room, had sustained their purpose even against the voices, or the laughter and shouting of George and Hallie.

“But you've got to leave,” old Mrs. Martin said. “You must leave here.”

“I won't go,” young Mrs. Martin said. She sat daintily in a chair much too large, George and Hallie on either side of her, looking back and forth with wide incurious eyes. “I just simply will not go.”

“These changes,” old Mrs. Martin said, “all these changes in the estate, are not good for Papa. They are making all kinds of changes in the estate, perhaps soon in the greenhouses even.”

“May I point out just once more,” young Mrs. Martin said precisely, “that I am your own son's wife? When my George died—” She hesitated for a minute, and allowed her lip to tremble. “—when my
dear
George died, he promised me that I would always find a home for my children with his parents. And now. . . . Your own son's wife.” Young Mrs. Martin allowed her voice to catch and shake.

Mrs. Martin nodded this time, and her husband, looking at her, nodded afterward. “We would not turn out our own son's wife,” old Mrs. Martin said. “But you must leave.”

“And your grandchildren?” young Mrs. Martin said. “Your own son's own children. Who's going to take care of them?”

Old Mrs. Martin looked at George and then at Hallie, and for a minute her eye was cynical. “My own son's children,” she said, and they looked back stolidly at her. “But the little one runs away, to beg from strangers, and the great one does nothing. And when the little one runs away,” old Mrs. Martin said, with tremendous deliberation, “she is doing like her mother.”

For a minute old Mrs. Martin met young Mrs. Martin's eyes, and then the younger said with anger, “You don't need to talk nasty like that. I never did anything I'm ashamed of.”

“You must take my son's children and leave,” old Mrs. Martin said. “Papa and I are old and now we are worried about the changes in the estate. You must not live here any more.”

She looked at her husband, and this time he looked up and said, “Yes, yes, what Mama says.” Then she looked triumphantly at her daughter-in-law and said, “You hear?”