The tension broke. No one entered the store, but there were ominous rumbles from the crowd. “Break his neck! He’d better watch out, that damned atheist, or he’ll find his store burning around him, too. Drag ’em both out and hang ’em! No place in this town for such folks. Sarah Faire! She don’t know what she’s doin’. Drag ’em out!”
But no one dragged them out. Wally gathered the ends of the sack together in trembling hands; Sarah held his arm. Wally swung the sack over his shoulder, and the man and woman started toward the door.
“Wait,” said Dan softly. He reached behind the counter and removed from the wall a new shotgun. Deliberately he loaded it. He walked behind Sarah and Wally to the door. The crowd, again heavily silent, parted, and Wally and Sarah started down the wooden stairs. Dan stood in the doorway, calm and very white. His mild brown eyes were full of something very terrible, though he smiled a little.
“The first man that moves is never going to move again,” he said, very quietly, as though he were making a commonplace remark.
No one moved. In a deathly silence the stony-faced man and sweet-faced woman went on their way down the street as though they were entirely alone on it, walking steadily and unhurriedly. Sarah was quite small, and her plump shoulders were a good six inches under Wally’s, but there was something so resolute, so courageous and strong about her whole attitude that everyone gaped after her with more astonishment than anger. But after the two had disappeared around the corner, the fury of the crowd turned on Dan Hendricks. Almost in a body they surged toward him, and I am ashamed to confess that I retreated a little to one side, against the wall. I would like to say that I sprang up the steps and stood beside Dan, but I did not. I am sorry I did not. I would like to have that to remember.
I would like to shut out from my memory the sight of Dan standing on his threshold, dauntless, quietly smiling, the shotgun in his hands, cocked and ready. I have no doubt that he would have used it to good effect if it had been necessary. But when four men had almost reached him, he began to speak, and his voice was like a trumpet suddenly blown. Yet it was very calm, slow and casual, as though he were merely holding a pleasant conversation.
“You know,” he said, and his very voice stopped them, “you know, you are a lot of dirty dogs. Yellow dogs, at that. You won’t rush this gun; I know you. There isn’t a man among you. Men wouldn’t be here, now. They would be minding their own business and going their own ways. Men never gather in mobs to do injury to defenseless folks. Men uphold law and order. But mobs are yellow behind and red in front, with teeth to tear women with, and claws to mangle babies. Being a mob, you won’t rush this gun. You care too much for your guts. You know that I’d like to plug you, and that I’d do it with the greatest of pleasure. I’m ready, if you are.” He marked a spot with the toe of his boot. “That’s the line. Cross it, if you dare.”
His eyes roved over them, inviting them, scorning them, jeering at them. Those eyes touched me, I know, but he gave no sign of recognition. I shrank back, hot and cold, covered with shame and self-hatred.
The men looked at each other, but no one moved. Shamefaced expressions began to appear on scattered faces. The mob was composed of those beyond the limbo; I was relieved to see no one belonging to our little society. They were all the lesser craftsmen, village folk who lived precariously and meanly, supplying the wants of the elite, and a scattering of farmers who loved a fight, a “shivaree,” and excitement for its own sake. They growled contemptuously at Dan, but they backed slowly and reluctantly from the point of his rifle. They called him filthy names, but still they backed away, for all their threats and their upraised fists.
They began to scatter to distant corners, still looking back at the store menacingly. But it was with the menace of a bull that has been defeated, and roar though they might, it would be another day before the mob attacked.
I edged away along the side of the building, then accelerated my speed, hating myself, but putting distance between myself and Dan’s store. I dived through a side street, all cool and massive greenness and quiet houses and gardens afire with zinnias, hollyhocks, phlox, and late roses. My face was hot, and the muscles in it felt drawn and tight. I was almost running, and it wasn’t until I saw curious glances directed at me from the vine-hung porches that I slowed down.
My confused thoughts became coherent. I was filled for a while with passionate annoyance toward Dan Hendricks, though I now know the cause of it. I had been too cowardly to stand with him, and so I tried to justify my actions. What had made him such a melodramatic fool? I reasoned. Why did he have to go out of his way to antagonize a community that already hated him, and would gladly do him harm? He could have used tact instead of histrionics. He could ostensibly have refused Wally Lewis any assistance, but helped him through the back door. I persuaded myself that there had been something ridiculous in his attitude as he had stood in his doorway with cocked gun, defying ruffled roosters that he must have known would not have really attacked him. He loved, I proclaimed to myself, heroic gestures, even if they were made only before a barnyard. A Don Quixote, with all the absurdity of the original. Schoolboyish, that’s what. Silly. Now he had practically ruined himself, prevented himself from ever being accepted in a decent community. The latter might have forgiven him his origin in time, might even forget that he had refused to join the church, that he had laughed in the Reverend Bingham’s face, that he had never conformed even in the most trivial of customs. I recalled slight evidence to bolster up my case that the animosity of South Kenton had been abating towards him. Hadn’t Jack Rugby invited him to his wedding? Of course, he had not attended, but even that would not have been held against him very long. Hadn’t Tom Williams only recently and grudgingly admitted that Dan “had brains, if he only knew how to use them, and didn’t stand in his own light”? South Kenton would make few overtures toward the pariah, but if he had shown a decent and humble spirit, an eagerness to understand and to conform, kept a guard on his frank and slow-moving tongue, demonstrated a desire to be accepted and a willingness to be chastened and taught, South Kenton would have held out a stately and dignified hand to him and helped him up. But he had done none of these, and now he had committed the worst crime of all, aligned himself against the whole community and all its prejudices, and stood squarely with an outcast against all decencies and lawfulnesses. He had lost everything, all his chances, for a creature that deserved no help but only a kick in the hindquarters. What folly, what stupidity!
Then I thought, with the effect of light breaking in on my mind: Why, he did not care a snap for all these things so valued by myself and others like me! I had never really realized this; I had thought it a sort of youthful bravado. But now I knew he really did not care, that they were nothing to him, that he wanted not a thing from South Kenton but a meager living, that should South Kenton hold out its hand to him he would turn his back on it. It was not that he had a vital contempt for South Kenton, but only a profound indifference, such as the wind and the sun might feel.
He had been right! Absolutely right. He had stood for compassion and pity and humanity against all the smallnesses and the venoms of the small town. He had had a large eye; Wally Lewis was nothing to him as an individual, but only as a symbol of all that was outcast and helpless and persecuted and suffering. It did not matter to him if the suffering were deserved or not; he saw only the suffering. I knew with a terrible humility that Dan had never been able to bear the sight of pain; I remembered his almost girlish wincing at the spectacle of a pariah dog with a broken leg, and the sheer agony on his face when he had seen a group of schoolmates chasing and tormenting a cornered rat. Oh, he was right! And we were all wrong, all of us, secure and armored cowards hounding and slashing at a poor naked beast.
My self-hatred rose like a sickness in my throat. I hung around the back streets, unable to go home where I would hear denouncing discussions of what Dan had done. I wandered aimlessly, until it got dark, and then I crept back to Dan’s store. It wa
s already closed and unlighted, but I saw the lamp through the kitchen window. I crept to that window and peeped in. Dan was cooking his solitary supper over the coal range, and through the opened window I could hear the spluttering of the bacon and the bubbling of the coffee pot. I moved to the door and knocked, calling his name weakly. He opened the door and I stepped in, unable to look at him. He waited in silence.
“Dan,” I blurted. He did not speak, and I looked up at him furtively. His face was kind and grave and contained something of the pity it had had when he had looked at Wally Lewis. I broke down, sniffling like a ten-year-old, and fumbled for my handkerchief, all my shame and detestation for myself and misery making a salt taste in my mouth.
He did not move a step nearer to me, but merely studied me gravely.
“Dan,” I mumbled, “I’m sorry, Dan.”
He moved slightly, and sighed.
“It’s all right, Jim,” he said in a gentle voice. “It’s all right.”
I turned and ran out of the room, stumbling over the steps, and out into the cool darkness. I ran all the way home. Once there, I avoided my parents, and went up to my own room. I had the feeling, when the door had closed after me, that in some way I had grown older, that things would never be the same for me.
Chapter Nine
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.