Allan lit a cigarette, and the red flame lighted up his thin dark face with its fixed eyes. But he said gently enough, “And what would you do, Dad?”
Tim said, “I would tell the men, in those days, about the God they have lost, somewhere among the machines and the fine trains and the flyin’ machines and the automobiles. I would tell the children every day, in all the schools, about God; and I would set the priests and the ministers to walkin’ the streets every day, and stoppin’ the people, and tellin’ them; and I would ask the newspapers to tell them; and I would have all the churches open all the time, day and night, with the candles burnin’, and a priest or a minister in them every hour; and I would light up the crosses on the steeples against the. night skies, as bright as the sun.,”
He turned to Allan and cried out, “When ye make a man into a machine, it’s the heart and life ye are taking from him, and when ye count the hours of a man’s life as ‘man power’ ye have sinned against God Himself! And when ye have made of all men only machines, then there will be an evil day such as the world has never known.”
“So,” said Allan to Rufus, who had listened without a single remark, “I sent Dad home in the carriage, and took the train back to New York.”
He stood up, then paused when Rufus held up his hand and said, “Just a moment, my boy.” He regarded Allan in a long and serious quiet. Then, in the kindest of voices, he went on: “Allan, though you think you have a remarkable gift for it, you are really a very poor liar. You don’t have the bland features to make your lying convincing. You see, from the very moment you came in here I knew that something out of the ordinary was bothering you, and upsetting you. It wasn’t that drive with your father. Tell me; I’ve heard enough bad news in my life and it’s too late, now, for anyone to try to ‘shield’ me. I don’t need it.”
Rufus continued, even more kindly: “Your first really awful lie, which convinced me you were lying, was when you innocently said you sent your father home in the carriage and you immediately took the train back to New York. That would be old Thirty-eight. In that event, you’d have been here two hours before you actually arrived, in spite of the storm which began in Philadelphia. I’m not a curious man,” went on Rufus, settling himself deeper in his pillows. “If you had any private—affairs—it would be of no importance to me. But the fact that you tried to deceive me has convinced me that whatever it is you are hiding might be important to me, or ‘hurt’ me in some way. It isn’t business; it’s something personal. What is it, Allan?”
“Nothing,” said Allan. “You’re imagining things, sir. It’s true there is something else, but I can tell you tomorrow. You’ve been ill. …”
Rufus shook his head lowly. “Haven’t you learned yet that the worst part of bad news is wondering what it is, while fools try to ‘protect’ you? That’s adding the torture of apprehension to the coming blow. What is it, Allan? Who, for instance, died in Portersville? There’s no one there whose death would affect me very much, now, except—” He pushed himself upward, painfully, and his broad face, through which the large bones had begun to project lately, turned ghastly. “Allan? Is it—Laura? No? Lydia!”
Allan was sick with his alarm. He sat down again and rubbed his eyes, and could not speak. Rufus said gently, “When? How?”
Allan threw up his hands. “I tried to tell Cornelia; I think she suspected something. But she wouldn’t let me tell her. There’s the Vanderbilt dinner for us, and she said that bad news could wait until tomorrow. I think she’s very sensible, in away. …”
“When? How?” repeated Rufus inexorably. “Speak up; I can’t wait until tomorrow.”
Allan surrendered. “Cornelia will. … You mustn’t let her know I told you. I did send my father home, just before the Thirty-eight left. Then, at the station, I called up to find how Mrs. Purcell was. Ruth couldn’t answer; a servant did. Mrs. Purcell—she had rested after lunch, and when her daughter went to have tea with her, she found her—in the bed.” He sighed. “I immediately went there. And tried to do What I could, which was nothing. Ruth was quite calm; she was crying, but not making any noise, just the tears running down her face as she talked with me. She wanted to be alone in the house with her mother—until tomorrow. I had to respect her wishes, though the idea was morbid. …”
“I don’t think so,” said Rufus in a normal voice. “I think it very natural. That is the way it should be: the first day one should be alone with one’s dead.”
He glanced at a distant table. “Will you give me a glass of brandy, please, and do have one for yourself.”
Allan obeyed. Rufus’s hand did not tremble as he took the fragile glass and began to sip. Allan gulped his drink in a gesture of desperation. Rufus said, “You don’t appreciate good brandy, Allan. You drink it as an anesthetic. I’ve never needed an anesthetic, for anything.”
He leaned his powerful gray head back against the abominably tinted satin pillows, and closed his eyes. He began to talk, as if to himself: “Lydia hasn’t been my wife for almost thirty years. In fact, she wasn’t my wife since Cornelia was born, and that is about forty years. Forty years. Much happens in that time; you bury your dead in every sense of the word. Except that I never buried Lydia. To me, in spite of a second wife, and—two sons, I never had any other wife but Lydia.”
He sipped at the brandy again, tilted the glass so that the firelight was reflected on the liquid. “So ‘Mrs. Purcell’ died quietly in her sleep. Even if I were—well—I wouldn’t go to her funeral. Lydia wouldn’t want it; she hated funerals. You and Cornelia are the only ones who could go—properly.” He laughed soundlessly at the last word. “I’ve found that propriety is a very useful thing. It saves a lot of wear and tear on the emotions. I won’t even send Lydia a flower. So, I’ll just lie here and pretend she and I are young again, and I’ll be in the mountains with her.” He glanced at the clock on the mantel. “You are due to go, I think, in about two minutes.”
Allan walked slowly toward the door. When he was almost there, Rufus said, “Do you believe in life after death, Allan?”
Allan did not turn, but he said dully, “No. No, I don’t think so.”
“Some people think if you don’t have that faith you are without comfort. I, personally, am of the opinion that’s balderdash. Who would want to live, after living in this world, no matter how comfortable or successful a life you’ve had? I like the idea of nothingness very much; I like the idea of not being any longer. That comforts me.”
Then Allan did turn, but Rufus was smiling at his brandy again, with complete serenity. “You’d better leave, Allan,” he repeated. “And don’t tell Cornelia tonight; she didn’t want to know, anyway.” He added, quite strongly, “I’m going to think of what your father said to you today. I believe he is right. You see what old age does for people!”
When Allan had left, Rufus put down his glass carefully and began to think. He had believed that he would think exclusively of Lydia, but now he could only think of Cornelia, his daughter. He said to himself: I, too, would have refused to listen to bad news when an important matter was imminent. Cornelia, as I was, is all immediacy. That is the source of her strength. No permitting of life to intrude. Cornelia is even stronger than I was; there were times when I couldn’t sleep, thinking of old Steve. Cornelia would have done the same to him as I did, but she wouldn’t have lain awake a single moment, afterward. Neither Lydia’s death, nor mine, and probably not even Allan’s, will disturb her for more than a day or two.
He thought of his earlier days of marriage with Estelle, and now he began to remember things he had not thought he had even observed. Cornelia, laughing disdainfully at Estelle’s simpers, and goading the older woman, and ridiculing her to her father when she and Rufus were alone. She was always managing to be alone with her father, even as a child. Estelle was a fool—yes. She was a poseur—yes. She had very little intelligence—yes. She was artificial and “radiant” and dull—yes. All that could be admitted.
But Cornelia saw her
as a threat to herself, thought Rufus with wonder. A threat to what she would inherit; a threat to her own power. She deliberately maneuvered Estelle into situations that would make her appear ridiculous in my eyes, and in the eyes of others. I can remember—I can remember. … I laughed, and so all possibility that Estelle and I could become friends, and I could draw her away from her foolish ways into full womanhood, was destroyed by my and Cornelia’s laughter.
And when the boys were born—What did Cornelia call them? “Plucked little robins.” I began to think they were not mine at all! Cornelia was always there, when I held them, making fun of them. They weren’t really ugly; I just saw them through Cornelia’s eyes. She used my love for her—for she was so like me that I couldn’t help loving her more than anyone else—to make my sons appear too absurd and stupid and colorless for my serious consideration. She hated them because they would naturally be my heirs, too.
I can remember—I can remember. … I was sitting in the garden in Portersville, and the little fellows were running all around me, and tugging at me to play with them, and shrilling in the excitable voices they had. I was smiling at them and thinking, for perhaps the first time, that they were nice little creatures. And there came Cornelia, almost a young lady, so beautiful, so full of color and vitality, with her parasol over her head, and I forgot the boys. And she said to them; “Run away, monsters. You’re bothering Papa. Go and play with your mother.” She sat down beside me on the swing, and kissed me, and I forgot all about my sons. … So many similar episodes, with only one thing in Cornelia’s mind as she stroked my hair and talked with me. How witty she was, and also so good-tempered and full of humor. There were even times when I wished she were not my daughter. …
And just as Cornelia said, I let my sons “go and play with their mother.” They were Estelle’s, as Cornelia had told me a thousand times. Estelle brought them up; my only wish was that they wouldn’t intrude on me, because they bored me, as their mother bored me. But who told me that they and their mother “bored” me? What was it that Lydia said to me, Lydia who was so wise: “I think you should send Cornelia far away for a few years, to school. It isn’t good for her to be home so often, and it isn’t good for the whole household.” I should have listened; if I had listened, my son Jon would not be dead now, and Norman would not be a smiling stranger to me.
My sons. Estelle made them impotent—and dangerous. Because they really had no father who cared for them, or had an interest in them. Because Estelle was hurt, she revenged herself on me through our sons. She adored them, but she used them against me. Everything that they were, and what Norman still is, was my fault.
Rufus reached out and refilled his brandy glass. His right arm and leg were curiously numb, and there was a severe pain in the left side of his head. It is the brandy, he told himself. I remember when Norman, who was four, had scarlet fever, and was very restless. He was calling for me, and Estelle rushed onto the terrace at Newport and shrieked that I must come. And Cornelia looked at her as one looks at a repulsive spider and said, “Tell the nurse to bathe him again. She’s such a lazy person; I can’t imagine why you keep her, Estelle.” We were talking about the road just then, and I became impatient with Estelle and said, “Yes, go bathe the boy. I’ll go in so see him before dinner.” Estelle crept away, and Cornelia watched her go and said, “How Estelle dramatizes everything! Norman is being difficult, that’s all. Just look at Estelle! East Lynne in person, moving across the grass as if you had beaten her or something.” And we laughed together. Norman never called for me again.
There was Jon. I recall, now, that he wasn’t a “grinner” like Norman. A very earnest little boy, even if Estelle had spoiled him abominably, because I wasn’t there to stop her. He was always reading, though he was so hysterical and shrill and had a way of running heedlessly up and down in a sort of blind way. I can see him, running, with his eyes all distended as if he didn’t see anyone, and Cornelia finally catching him with such good nature, and sending him off so he couldn’t “bother” me any longer. I remember how he began to scream, over and over, as Cornelia pushed him away; he screamed for a long time, even in the house. He never had a father. Cornelia managed it so he never had.
Year after year fluttered mustily through Rufus’s memory. The pain was heavier in his head, but he was hardly aware of it. How clever Cornelia had been! My sons learned to hate me, for Cornelia had taught me to mock them in a fond sort of way. Their ideas were always puerile; who told me that? Cornelia. “But then, one must remember their mother is so prettily—childish, Papa. It really is quite feminine to be childish, like Estelle; no wonder you fell in love with her. I’m not feminine in the least, am I?” But she was; she is. She has a terrible kind of femininity, the very essence of it. She persuaded me she did not; she wanted me to believe she was more manly than my sons. She wanted me to think she was in every way my “son,” and the only child I had who would ever be interested in the road. …
Jon. Why did you die? It wasn’t the poison, for there was no poison. Did you die because you couldn’t stand what you had made of your life? But you didn’t make your life, not entirely. Cornelia helped you, though you never knew it; your mother helped you, and perhaps you understood. But a death is never simple, not a death like yours. There are a thousand agonies. A man kills himself, and a hundred people are guilty of it; but no one ever punishes them, no one ever cries out to them, “Cain, where is thy brother, Abel?” Rest in peace, Jon. And if you still live, forgive me.
I practically disinherited my sons. Why? Once Cornelia went over the stocks and bonds and savings which Estelle has. She was so laughingly surprised at the amount of money Estelle possesses. “Why, the boys could do us a lot of damage, Papa, if they only had the brains! Or, at least, they could do me such a lot of damage.” How could I let anyone “damage” my girl? And so I left my sons practically nothing.
Norman. Rufus moved on his pillows with a spasm of pain that was more mental than physical. He remembered that he very rarely “saw” Norman, even when that young man was with the family in Portersville, Newport, New York, or France. What was there to “see”? All at once he “saw” Norman as he must have seen him hundreds of times, not the boyishly smiling full face of him, not the mediocre profile. He saw a Norman he had never noticed consciously: the featureless stern embryo, the high withered forehead, the gnarled and shriveled cheek, the long neck, the thin, sloping shoulders. Where had he seen ghostly outlines like that before? It was terribly necessary for him to remember. Ah, yes, he had it now. The “intellectual” friends of Jon, in New York, London, and Paris! Full face, they appeared alert, even brilliant, even thoughtful and discerning. But from another view there was the betrayal of their emotional paucity, their spiritual immaturity, their meager grasp of life and the meaning of life, their fetal lack of contact with the world and their fellows. Unfinished, and never to be finished, these poor, sapless, and sinister men. Their Marxism, their Socialism, their Fabianism—all their isms—what were these things but the expression of their ominous ignorance, their umbilical attachment to the placenta of unbirth? Norman was one of them, one of the unborn, secretly and silently poisoning the body of his host.
Frantically, now, Rufus tried to sit up, to call. But his right side was heavy as lead, and immovable. The brandy, he thought confusedly; I have drunk too much of it. I’ll wait a little, and then I’ll send for Norman. Surely there must be a way to bring him into life, even now.
I must talk with Allan, too. Allan. Rufus closed his eyes; it was too much of an effort, now, to keep them open. What made a man drink as Allan drank? He was a frantic and desperate man. Of what was he afraid? Of the demands upon him? Who made those demands? Cornelia. Cornelia, who despised weariness and weakness, who must always be a-doing, who had such inexhaustible verve, who endlessly took and gave nothing?
Yes, Lydia, thought Rufus, I understand so much now. It is very kind of you to come and stand beside me and smile at me. Yes, I know you must leave very soon
. It is very foolish of me, but I thought I remembered you with white hair; a dream. You are so young, and wise. I’m glad you have forgiven me for not being what you thought I was. Laugh; I love to hear you laugh. Will you sit near me for a while? Good. I want to talk to you about—No, I only want to talk to you about us, and Steve, and Alice, and my father and my mother. Then we’ll go downstairs together and join them before the fire. Your hand is so cool and firm on my forehead, and it has taken away the pain. The pain? But it was as much outside me as in me. I am an old man, and I have had years to remember, and to think. …
Cornelia whispered to Allan, as she stood beside her father’s bed, “He has such a very good color, hasn’t he? Almost rosy.”
“He’s flushed. I think he has a fever or something,” replied Allan uneasily. “And he’s making a very loud noise, breathing.”
“Snoring. All old people snore,” said Cornelia. “Besides, it’s very warm in here.” She lifted her aquamarine ostrich fan, and an aura of rich and spicy scent flowed about her. “Let him sleep, poor dear. We’ll just tiptoe out; he hasn’t slept well recently. Do come, Allan; we’re very late.”
They went into the sitting room beyond the bedroom, where Rufus’s man was just entering with a tray. “Mr. deWitt is sleeping,” said Cornelia. “Don’t wake him.”
PART FOUR
43
From the very first, Allan Marshall had hated Washington. Later visits, through the years, had increased this hatred, as they had increased his knowledge. Unlike most Celts, he had no affinity for politics, and his father’s enthusiasm for politics in any form had bored him. Perhaps, he would admit to himself, Patrick Peale had “soured” him on governmental activities, or perhaps his contacts with politicians over the decades had convinced him, as they had convinced Thomas Jefferson, that that government is the best which governs least.