Time Will Darken It (50 page)

And how did he know that his mother was unquestioning, loyal, and devoted? When the first of the year came around, his father, confronted with a long bill from Burton’s, walked the floor night after night worrying about where he’d get the money to pay it and shouting
Why did you need these three spools of cotton thread?
and
What’s this five yards of flowered calico?
and then his mother cried and in the end went right on charging things. They were in business together, the business of having a home and raising a family. And if he hadn’t been trying so hard not to discover it, he would have seen, by the time he was ready for long pants, that nobody loves, that there is no such thing as love.

Well, he was finished. Let the bills accumulate on the hall table. He was tired of paying bills. Mr. Holby could find a new partner and take over the front office for himself, as he had all along wanted to do. This wasn’t really his office anyway but his father’s, and he couldn’t fill his father’s place here and ought never to have tried. He ought never to have tried to do anything. What happened was bound to happen, from the beginning, and all you needed to do was to lie back and let it happen.…

The ringing of the telephone broke in upon his thoughts. He stopped and waited a moment, and then realized that it was nearly seven, that Miss Stiefel had gone home, and the outer office was dark. Like a man walking in his sleep, he made his way a step at a time towards the ringing, which was
repeated and insistent and like a voice calling his name. With his hand on the receiver he hesitated.

I’m through
, he said to himself.
Let accident decide. Let
——

The telephone stopped ringing.

8

“About six o’clock or a little after,” Mrs. Potter said. “We were all at the supper table, and I heard her call Austin, so I put down my napkin and went up to see if she wanted anything and——”

“You say the pains have stopped coming?” Dr. Seymour said.

“They stopped soon after I talked to you,” Mrs. Potter said.

“How long did she have them?”

“Oh, about an hour,” Mrs. Potter said. “I had some trouble getting you at first. I called your office and they told me you were at the hospital and when I called the hospital they said you had just gone, so I waited and called the office again, and that time——”

“I’ll go on up and have a look at her,” Dr. Seymour said. He took off his coat, his scarf, and his fur-lined gloves and left them in a neat pile on the chair in the hall.

“She’s resting quite comfortably,” Mrs. Potter said. “I took her up some toast and tea, and she ate that, and she says she feels fine.”

“I’d much rather she didn’t feel fine at this point,” Dr. Seymour said, and started up the stairs.

When he came down ten minutes later, Mrs. Potter said, “Is everything all right?”

“No,” Dr. Seymour said, “it isn’t. The pains may start again in a little while, but if they don’t——Where’s Austin? Why didn’t
he
call me?”

“Cousin Austin isn’t here,” Mrs. Potter said.

“Where is he?”

“I don’t know,” Mrs. Potter said. “When he didn’t come home for supper, I supposed that he had made some other plans. But Martha doesn’t know where he is either.”

“Did you call his office?” Dr. Seymour said.

“I’ve called three times,” Mrs. Potter said.

“Well, keep on trying,” Dr. Seymour said. “I don’t like what’s going on upstairs. I’m going to move her to the hospital, and then if anything happens, we’re at least prepared for it.”

“She was expecting to have the baby here,” Mrs. Potter said.

“I don’t care where she was expecting to have it,” Dr. Seymour said, “and two hours from now she won’t either, I hope. I want you to go up now and get her dressed and ready. Don’t hurry her. I don’t want her to be frightened. Just get her dressed and bring her downstairs. The telephone is in here, isn’t it?”

9

“He
was
here,” the waitress in the dining-room of the Draperville Hotel said. “He came in and ordered the steak dinner.”

“What time was that?” Randolph asked.

“About seven o’clock or a little after.”

“You’re sure it was Mr. King and not somebody else?”

“Oh, no,” the waitress said. “It was Mr. King all right.”

She was tired and her feet hurt. From years of watching
people cut up their food and put it away, a mouthful at a time, she had contracted a hatred of the human race (and of travelling salesmen in particular) that was like a continual low-grade fever. If arsenic had been easily obtainable and its effect impossible to trace, she would have sprinkled the trays with it and carried them into the dining-room with a light heart. But the handsome young man with the Southern accent confused and troubled her. She wanted to say to him, with her hand on his coat-sleeve:
Why do you care?
Instead she said, “He sat over at that table in the corner and he was alone. At least—no, I’m sure there wasn’t anybody with him. I noticed that he didn’t eat anything after it was brought to him, and I meant to ask if his steak was all right, but I was busy and pretty soon he got up and went out.”

“How long ago?”

“Oh, maybe half an hour, maybe a little more. I couldn’t say exactly. He left a dollar bill on the tablecloth, and the dinner only came to——”

“If he comes back,” Randolph said, “tell him to call home immediately—no, tell him to go straight to the hospital.”

“Is anything wrong?” the waitress asked, ready to cut her gown of green an inch above her knees, be his footpage, run barefoot by his side through moss and mire, and tell no man his name. Her question went unanswered.

As Randolph opened the door of the hack that was waiting outside, he said, “Drive around to the south side of the square. He may have come back in the meantime.”

There were no lights in the windows that were lettered
Holby and King, Attorneys at Law
.

“I’m going to try once more, even though the place is dark. Keep an eye out for him. He may be walking around the streets somewhere,” Randolph said to the cabman. He jumped out of the hack, ran up the stairs, and rattled the doorknob. It was still locked.

“Austin?” he shouted.

There was no answer. Randolph pounded on the locked door, waited and then pounded again. A door opened at his back and Randolph, turning around, saw Dr. Hieronymous, the osteopath. He was a large man with grey hair and a grey face. With his hands he could easily have broken the door down for Randolph but his voice was mild and he said, “Were you looking for somebody?”

“I’m looking for Mr. King,” Randolph said.

“He was just here,” Dr. Hieronymous said. “At least I heard somebody come up the stairs. I don’t know whether it was Mr. King or not.”

“About five minutes ago?”

“Why, yes,” Dr. Hieronymous said. “I’d say it was about that. Not more then ten minutes anyway.”

“And was there anybody just before or just after?”

“No, I don’t think there was.”

“Then it wasn’t Mr. King you heard, it was me,” Randolph said, and resumed pounding on the door.

10

The nurse rang the bell of the elevator repeatedly before the elevator ropes and then the elevator descended past their eyes. It was operated by a lame Negro who had difficulty opening and closing the doors. This elevator and the one in the county courthouse were the only permanent mechanical contrivances for levitation in Draperville.

“We’re going to put you in the room at the end of the hall,” the nurse said as she stepped out of the elevator. “It’ll be quieter.”

“I’m not sensitive to noise,” Martha King said.

“I was thinking of the other patients,” the nurse said cheerfully and then laughed. The laughter was not unkind but merely a way of sweeping up the pieces of a joke that, never much to begin with, had finally come apart in her hands.

The room at the end of the hall had two windows, one looking out on Washington Street and the other on the street in front of the hospital, where Dr. Seymour’s horse and rig were waiting, with the reins tied to the hitching post.

This is not at all the way I wanted it to be, Martha said to herself. I thought I’d be at home, in my own bed, with everything around me the way it always is. I thought Austin would …