Though the next day was Sunday, South Kenton was in a ferment against Dan Hendricks. What impudence to threaten a righteously-outraged community like that! Well, that was a piece with the rest of his behavior, the scum! He had gone too far, yes, he had gone too far! Something must be done about it.
My father said that, too, at the stuffily rich and hot dinner after church. He looked at me threateningly as he said it, though my mother tried by lifted eyebrows and pressed lips to keep his attention off me, and to warn him to leave me alone. I ate in silence; thousands of bitter and violent words surged behind my silence, but I kept quiet until coffee and pie were served. Then I looked at my father directly.
“Something must be done, Dad? Yes, but it wasn’t. The sheriff came from Ripley after old Mrs. Lewis had been burned to death. Everyone knew the house had been fired deliberately by skunks from South Kenton. But, nothing was done about it. The sheriff stood around and hummed and hawed, and then made a report that no one was guilty, that it happened by itself, and went away. Why wasn’t a decent and honorable attempt made to find out the criminals who had done it?”
My father stared at me. Gradually his face took on a purplish tinge. He waved his knife at me like a weapon.
“I might have known that you would stand up for that—that so-and-so! There’s something perverted in you! But now I warn you: if you continue to associate with him, you’ll do yourself harm. Harm, young man. You expect to take my place here, you expect to continue to have friends here. Well, you’ll find yourself on the other side of the fence with your precious damned friend one of these days, and you’ll get no help from me! The dirty atheist!”
“Why atheist?” I asked softly in the face of his mounting voice. “Because he doesn’t go to church? Is that the sign of an atheist? You go to church, Dad, but you’ve got mighty little religion about you. Didn’t you say to me only a few days ago that most people needed less God and more soap, and that religion was only an excuse for shiftlessness and stupidity?”
Rage and a sharp fear made my father’s eyes suddenly molten. He glanced quickly over his shoulder. Then he stared at me fixedly, and even with a little hatred.
“So, you’ll go blabbing what I said to you in confidence as justification for your fine friend Dan, will you? So that’s the kind of son I have!”
“I’m sure Jim didn’t mean anything like that,” interposed my mother quickly, but with a fierce glance at me. “Did you, Jim?”
I stood up and hurled my napkin from me. “You needn’t be afraid I’ll repeat it to the mealy-mouthed fools here,” I said. I went upstairs to my room, seething with rage. I tramped up and down for a long time. Outside it was all clear and golden, with a transparent light over the trees and in the sky. I could not stand it any longer; I would go for a walk. I couldn’t even bear to see Livy today, for it would mean going to her house. I wanted to strangle her father, who had given a sermon that morning about the stiff-necked who harbored sinners against the people and upheld unrighteousness and unholiness. I went downstairs. In the parlor my parents were talking to Beatrice Faire. She sat facing the doorway to the hall and saw me. She greeted me with a light laugh and a lift of her hand. I went in.
She sat there on the big and ugly horsehair sofa opposite my mother. She looked demure and sad in a plain organdy frock which swept to her feet and rose about her throat. On her head was some sort of floppy hat with pale pink roses on it. Against the cool and honey-colored smoothness of her cheeks curled tendrils of bright and vital hair. She had evidently just come, and as she talked to my mother in a soft and regretful voice, she played with the handle of her parasol with white-gloved fingers.
“I’m so glad to hear you say that, dear Mrs. Marcy,” she almost whispered, and delicately touched her eyes with a tiny white handkerchief. After her first greeting to me she ignored me, as did my parents, and I stood awkwardly in the doorway. “I said to myself this morning: ‘I’ll go to see Mama’s dear friends, and try to explain things. After all, they all love Mama. They know that what she did was not a kind of defiance to them, but only because she is so kind and sweet, and can’t bear to hear of anyone being sick, or suffering. They’ll know that she did it without thinking, for Mama always has hated anything nasty or mean.’ Perhaps, I said to myself, they’ll forgive her for being impulsive, and—and, you’ll forgive me, dear Mrs. Marcy?—and foolish. I’m sure Mama already is sorry and ashamed. But it’s because of her kind heart that she did it. And I thought: ‘I’m sure her dear friends, who’ve always loved her, won’t punish her too severely, but give her a chance to be sorry, and forgive her for what was only her too softness of feeling.’”
“I only hope that Sarah realizes what she has done,” said my mother severely, but her eyes were melting. She beamed on Beatrice with foolish fondness. “Though I felt really cold towards Sarah when I heard about it, I’m sure all of us are Christians and will try to understand. But, dear me,” shaking her head with dolorous bewilderment, “I can’t see why she did it. It isn’t like Sarah.”
Beatrice frankly covered her face with her handkerchief, and her shoulders shook gently. My father cleared his throat, and blinked. My mother rose quickly and put her arms about Beatrice, and sniffed audibly.
“You are such a dear child, my dear,” she said. “And for your sake, and even for poor Sarah’s sake, we’ll forgive her. We won’t even mention it to her. But I hope, in the future, that she won’t cause us such distress again. We’re all so fond of her. And of you, dear.”
Beatrice allowed my mother to dry her eyes. I watched everything with passionate loathing. I hated my father for the gruff affection he displayed for this young woman. My mother went on to say cheerfully that she would call on her friends this afternoon and persuade them to hold no hard feelings against Sarah. Then as Beatrice arose, my mother glanced at me, and suggested that I see Beatrice home. I was revolted, but there was nothing I could do. Beatrice and I, after she had bid my parents a tearful and grateful goodbye, went out into the warm summer day which now seemed unclean to me because of the girl’s presence.
Beatrice kept her head down and remained silent until we had left the important streets behind. Then when I glanced at her sideways I saw that she was smiling a little to herself. I wanted to hit her in the face.
“You aren’t deceiving me any!” I burst out violently. “You can only deceive old fools like my mother! You made a filthy display of yourself in order to protect your precious standing in this small town!”
I will give Beatrice credit. She was never hypocritical with her contemporaries, from whom she expected nothing. She merely smiled at me broadly.
“Well, we have to live, don’t we?” she demanded frankly. “Mama and I have to work for a living, or we’d starve. What would become of us if your mother and her friends didn’t come to us for their dresses and petticoats? If Mama was fool enough to put us in danger of starving, it was up to me to save her from herself, and myself, also.”
Even I could see logic in this, but my bitterness against her did not decrease.
“I bet your mother doesn’t know about this!” I exclaimed.
She shrugged. “Mama’s down there with that Lewis girl. But I hope you’ll have enough regard for her, seeing that you’ve always hung around the house and eaten her cakes and pies, not to say anything about this to anyone. Don’t be a silly, Jim. Be practical for once in your life. When it comes to ideals against bread and butter, only a zany would choose the ideals. I’d rather be comfortable than be right.”
“Oh, so you think your mother and Dan were right, eh? Well, that’s funny, coming from you!”
“Don’t be silly,” she repeated in a weary voice, as though she were arguing with a stupid child. “Of course I don’t think they were right. One has to live, doesn’t one? It’s only suicide to poison your own bread. There’s no question of right and wrong; there’s only a question of money in the bank and food on the table. Animals are much more simple and honest than we. They haven’t any ideals, which are only hypocrisy anyway.”
I looked at her with horror, not for what she had said, but because an ugly suspicion was aroused in me that she was right. But if she was right, then all beauty and honor and compassion and nobility were wrong. Perhaps, I thought confusedly, all the “fine things” were only hypocrisies, an attempt to glue self-preservation and security and blandnesses and safeties on the wild and terrible face of reality. Behind the pretty cardboard of virtues, frail and painted, howled the raw and frightful truth; perhaps we tried to drown out its howlings with sweet music and soft conversation. My thoughts were so confused and so devastating that I could not reply to Beatrice.
She touched my arm lightly. “You aren’t a fool, Jim,” she said. “You see what I mean.”
“Yes, I see,” I said bitterly. “I see. You think a full stomach is better than honor. Hell, perhaps you’re right. But, I don’t want you to be right. If you were, there’d be no use in anything. All the arts would be foolishness, all attempts at civilization would only be absurd. We—we couldn’t go on living. We’d all live in barricaded houses and kill at sight.”
She nodded humorously. Then she said, “Let’s not talk about it. It’s a lovely day.”
I felt like a silly and gawkish child who had been dismissed from intelligent discussion. I fumed and hated her as we walked along. She talked gaily and casually, but I did not answer. I could feel her amusement and self-satisfaction, and when I looked sideways at her and saw that she was smiling to herself, I knew that she was laughing at my silly mother and all her silly friends. And I knew I could do nothing. I could not put into words what I felt about her, and anything I said would only hurt poor Sarah.
Then an ugly and sharp realization came upon me with regard to Beatrice. Since Jack Rugby’s marriage to Amelia Burnett she had been all sweetness and humor and gaiety towards me. She had tried to keep from antagonizing me too much, and had appeared at our house unusually often on one pretext or another. Horror again struck me, and I moved away from her abruptly. She saw the involuntary gesture, and sighed a little, peeping at me furtively. She must have understood, for a few moments later she said: “Have you and Dan and Livy gone on any more bicycle rides lately? And why haven’t you asked me, too?”
“We haven’t gone,” I muttered.
“Is Livy’s foot still bothering her?” she asked with sweet concern. “I didn’t think so. It didn’t even swell. I wonder why’ she seemed so upset that day when she turned her ankle? Almost as though she had something on her mind. I wonder,” she mused thoughtfully, “if it’s because she thinks South Kenton doesn’t treat Dan right?”
“Perhaps,” I growled, then her words filtering into my mind with all their significance, I looked at her sharply. “What makes you think that? I can’t see the connection between her sprained ankle and her being upset and Dan Hendricks.”
“Don’t you?” she asked softly. And said nothing else. Her words hung in the bright and quiet air with a sickening significance.
“You’ve got an evil mind, Bee,” I said slowly. “If you’re trying to tell me that Livy likes Dan more than ordinary, he being just a friend, you’ve overshot your mark. What are you trying to say, anyway?”
“I?” She seemed hurt and surprised. “Why, nothing. Livy’s my dearest friend, and I love her dearly. I would never say anything about her, even if it were so. I’m sure Livy thinks only of you, Jim.”
We had come to her home now, and she exclaimed: “Mama must be home! The door is open.”
I wanted to leave her then, but I also wanted to see Sarah. I wanted to ask her some questions. I felt that in talking to her my threatened world would be set aright again. When we walked into the cool brightness of the little parlor we found Sarah rocking agitatedly in her gay little white chair, and sobbing dryly. She looked at us with anguished eyes and did not greet us. She only burst out:
“Jim! Bee! Poor Connie and her poor little baby died this morning! They caught cold during that rainstorm we had last week, and the barn roof leaking and all, and no one to take care of them but Connie’s poor father. It was lung fever. Two days ago something might have been done for them. But it was too late, though I did my best, sitting in that awful barn all night, with the mice and the dirt and the manure and the rats, and no light but a lantern, and that poor father crouching there in the hay, wringing his hands and sobbing! Not enough blankets, not enough food; no medicine. Oh, it’s a wicked world! And if there’s a God He’ll punish the wicked people who did this to a poor sick girl and her little baby!” She sobbed again. She looked old and ill, rocking there, overcome with grief. Her eyes were sunken, seemed fixed in their sockets from sleeplessness no and pain. “The poor baby, struggling for its breath, and the poor girl trying to nurse it in her fever, and looking at me and begging me to do something for it! Oh, I can’t bear it!”
“It’s very sad, I’m sure,” murmured Bee. She was ill at ease, and a crease of impatience came between her eyes. “But, Mama, you can’t do anything about it, now. Perhaps it was for the best.”
“Best!” Sarah’s gentle face flared with outrage and anger. “You can talk of ‘best,’ Bee! It’s never best, nothing is ever best, if it arrives there by suffering and injustice and cruelty! If you could have seen that poor girl—”
Bee’s voice, cool and practical, broke in on the threatened hysterics.
“You’re all tired out, Mama. And no wonder. I suppose you haven’t eaten anything since yesterday, and sitting up all night in the dampness. Let me help you to bed, and I’ll bring you a cup of hot soup and some tea.”
I hated her again, but I knew that she was right, and that it was best for Sarah. They seemed to have forgotten me. Beatrice helped her mother into the bedroom. I waited a few moments. I was shocked at what I had heard, but Sarah’s words had readjusted my shaken world for me, and I was relieved. I heard her sobs from the bedroom, but Beatrice said nothing. I went home.