Randall took the paper slowly and looked at the solitary figure in the right-hand column. Without thinking, completely flabbergasted, he said, “Why—there must be some mistake, Seymour.” The balance showed less than two hundred dollars.
Seymour was silent. He did not ask what Randall meant. He sat for a while with his fists clenched on the letters in his lap. Then he stood up with a jerk, scattering them, and began to pace up and down the room, cursing. Randall sat and watched him, afraid to say a word. Presently Seymour swung round and snapped, “Why should there be a mistake? Surely you aren’t surprised?”
“Well—” Randall was embarrassed. Whatever he said would be wrong. “I guess I just supposed—”
“Ah, the gentleman of means,” said Seymour acidly, “who can afford to suppose!”
“You-you stop that!” Randall was in no mood for this. “What’s got into you?”
Seymour stopped pacing and shut his mouth hard. Randall saw a flush of embarrassment come over his face. “I’m sorry, Ran,” he said. He patted at the space to his left until his hand found Randall’s shoulder. “Please forgive me. I’m nervous.”
“Oh that’s nothing, forget it. But isn’t there some mistake about this?”
Seymour shook his head. “No. That’s the trouble. I’m in a good deal of a mess as a result of this bloody thing—” he passed his hand across his eyes. “It damn near kills me to do it, but I’m afraid I’ll have to ask if you can help me out for the time being.”
“I suppose you mean those bills.” Randall’s voice was dull.
“Yes. I don’t give a hang about most of them, they can just damn well wait. But there’s a bill from Willingdon—”
“You mean you haven’t paid him for a long time?”
Seymour tweaked hard at his moustache. “I—no.” He paused as if waiting for Randall to comment, and when he heard nothing he snapped, “It’s a damned outrage. The man’s a millionaire, those fees of his. He ought to be ashamed of himself.”
“You mean—he’s been pressing you?”
“What the hell else would I mean? The bastard had the gall to dun me to my face the last two times he was here.”
“How else could he dun you?” Randall muttered. “How long is it since you’ve paid him?”
“How should I know!” Seymour’s voice was shrill.
Randall said nothing. Seymour set to pacing again. The silence pressed on them like a pair of giant hands pushing them down against the floor. Randall waited until he saw that Seymour was not going to say anything, and then he asked, “How much do you owe Doctor Willingdon, Seymour?”
“Oh, open his goddam bill and look for yourself.”
Randall sat with the open envelope in one hand and the bill in the other. Several times he started to speak and then shut his mouth again. Each time he looked at the bill once more, and then at Seymour. “Gee,” he said, finally.
“Well, what are you so surprised about?” Seymour’s fingers twitched and he groped for a cigarette and matches. “Where do you suppose I found out what these muckamucks charge? You remember how I warned you when—when you had that surgeon?”
“Yes, but—” Randall ran his fingers through his hair again. “This must have been running on for a long time. Seymour,” he said, “what did you do with your money? Oh, the automobile.” He answered himself.
“Why, sure. I told you what I was going to do.”
“Of course I never realized you had this—piling up long before.”
“Well, I did. And since I had this fella telling me, in effect, that if I didn’t buy a car then I’d never have one at all, I damn well decided I’d have one. How should I know he’d turn into a bloodsucker?”
Randall looked again at Seymour’s bank statement. He said uneasily, for he was afraid of another outburst, “If you haven’t paid your doctor in such a long time—I don’t quite understand—maybe it’s none of my business,” he said uncomfortably.
“Oh, hell,” said Seymour. “If I’m going to ask you to help me out, I suppose you’ve got a right to ask about it. I got the money for the car from a crook by signing notes ordering the bank to make over my income to him every quarter until he was paid up—with too much interest, you can be sure.”
“And he’ll still be getting your money—until—?”
“Figure it out for yourself. You know I bought the car last Spring. He gets my money next month and the quarter after that—before I’m shut of him.”
“June.” Randall sat shaking his head. “That means you won’t have any more money than this—” he tapped the bank statement— “until next September.”
“That’s right,” said Seymour with the slashing note in his voice again. “Bright boy. Go to the head of the class.”
“Seymour, will you shut up?” Randall’s voice rose dangerously. He pulled himself together and said, “This bill of your doctor’s—why don’t you ask the Trustees to pay it?”
“My dear Randall, you ought to know the terms of those trusts as well as I do. The Trustees have no authority to pay out a dime more for us than the will says without a special order from the Surrogate’s Court. Do you think old Dickinson and that desiccated Judge Bronson would even think of going to the Surrogate’s Court without first skinning us alive of the last shred of our privacy? As soon as they find out I bought a car instead of paying some son of a bitch for the privilege of going blind—”
“Oh, Brother!” Randall jumped up, scattering the papers from his lap. He put his arm round Seymour’s shoulders and held him tight and said, “Of course I’ll help you. I don’t quite know how we’ll manage, I can’t possibly pay Doctor Willingdon all at once. But I’ll talk to him and work it out. I haven’t got much leeway myself, you know. I spent a lot of money, too. But we’ll manage somehow.”
“Ran, I feel like such a hound—”
“Oh, no.” Randall stood patting Seymour’s shoulder, wildly calculating inside a head not only unused to this kind of thing, but reeling as if the ceiling had fallen on it. Between now and next September he would be paying every penny of Seymour’s expenses and this enormous bill besides, if not—his eyes fell on the rest of Seymour’s mail strewn across the floor. God knew what those envelopes contained. There would not be a penny to spare for anything … anybody … anywhere.
Every day after Mrs. Quinn had cooked their deadly plain midday dinner and cleaned up the kitchen, now reimpressed into use, and gone home, Seymour went to his room to lie down. Randall usually went out at that hour to do the frugal marketing. He had found this the way to effect the strictest economy. Cooked food brought in from restaurants was now out of the question, although Seymour liked it so much better. It cost twice as much. And Randall found that he saved money by marketing himself, instead of leaving it to Mrs. Quinn. She not only spent more than he did, but he had to pay for more of her time.
So his days were an endless succession of petty details, the mornings filled by reading the newspapers to Seymour, the early afternoons by his patient searches for food at the lowest possible prices. He would walk blocks out of his way to save three or four cents, carrying a market basket on his arm in oblivion of the inquisitive or scornful stares of the neighborhood women. If he saved a quarter on a whole week’s food he thought it worthwhile. Seymour not only could not see the notebooks and account books in Randall’s room, filled with anxious budgeting in his tiny hand; once Randall had taken over Seymour’s debt to Doctor Willingdon, and all their joint expenses with it, Seymour did not give the matter another thought.
Each brother had withdrawn to a degree behind the screen of his own trouble. Neither sought, nor would have sought, the separate truth about the other. Both wondered secretly at times, and both shrank from discovering. Randall dared not plumb the wreck of Seymour’s life buried beneath his blindness and locked behind his pride. Was he desperately bored and lonely? What had become of his friends? None of them had been friends in a real sense, they had only been the companions of his pleasures, and t
hose would be the surest to fall away in affliction. And Seymour, listening to Randall while he read aloud with angelic patience, hours upon end, or chatted about the trivial things which took up his unnatural days; Seymour soon built the evasive defence of assuring himself that Randall did not think about that—or her—or it, any more. Better that he was busy, even if only in pursuit of potatoes for a penny less a pound than he might have paid.
But when Renata’s name disappeared from the Opera’s billings in the Times, Randall brooded heavily upon what had become of her. Had she gone back to Italy? He could imagine no alternative. He would have been thankful for the relief of not thinking about her at all, but that was not within his will-power. Well, then, would it lift him from his morass of wretched, guilty uncertainty to go to the opera house and inquire about her at the stage-door desk? They knew him; they would tell him. But when they did tell him, what good would that do? What could he do for her?
April dragged by and May too. Seymour was often short-tempered. He snapped at Randall, he scorned the dull food, he made thoughtless requests for this and that which Randall could not buy on his stringent budget. Seymour had apparently outgrown his contrition about the disaster and his concern for burdening Randall. His only concern now seemed to be himself, which Randall found too pathetically easy to understand. But mere understanding made matters no easier to manage. One hot night in the first week of June he was reading to Seymour in the library, conscious that Seymour was restless and not paying attention. When he was in that mood he made it hopelessly difficult to read to him. He would spring from his chair, pace the floor for a time, worry his moustache, light a cigarette, crush it out (while Randall thought of the price of that Turkish tobacco), stride up and down again. And if Randall paused, supposing him too bored to listen any more, Seymour said snappishly, “Well? What are you stopping for?”
But this time when Randall paused for breath at the end of a chapter Seymour stood with his elbow on the mantel and said, “Ran, I’ve been thinking of something.”
Randall sighed. That remark usually presaged a suggestion that money be spent. “Yes?” he said.
“I think we ought to have the telephone put back.”
Randall only said, “Why?”
“Thoughtful, aren’t you,” said Seymour. “I should think you’d be able to see for yourself that it’s the only way I could ever have a human being to talk to.”
“I see.” Randall’s voice quavered.
“Oh, I don’t mean to be rude,” Seymour hurried to apologize. “Of course—of course I appreciate all you—”
“Never mind that,” said Randall. “Maybe I ought to have thought of it myself. But now that it’s gone, that’s a few dollars we aren’t spending each month. We can’t afford it now, Seymour.”
“God damn it! Is there anything we can afford? I’m getting so sick of your pious penny-pinching—I think you like it. I think you actually like that vile boiled dog-meat with cabbage in it.”
Randall sat stiffly with the closed book gripped in his fingers. He sat imagining what it would be like to feel even more angry than he was now hurt. His mouth was shut so tight that his jaws ached. He had no intention of saying anything. Seymour, perfectly aware of this, stood hesitating for a moment; Randall saw him struggling with his temper. Then he muttered sullenly, “I’m sorry. I guess I get pushed pretty near the edge at times, Ran.”
“I know.”
“Well, I didn’t mean it, anyway. But I do think we ought to have the telephone again.”
“You were ready enough to have me take it out.”
“My God! Do I have to explain why?”
“No.” Suddenly Randall did feel angry, and he decided that for once Seymour was not going to have what he wanted. “But since you were glad to have it gone because that put you out of reach of your creditors and also of—of—”
“Well, what kind of damned fool do you think I am? When there’s a reason for something, it’s one way and when there’s no reason—Randall, don’t be so childish. Naturally, now that you’ve salted things down so those bastards won’t try to bother me, and we can take it for granted that—that—” he paused, embarrassed.
“What can we take for granted?” asked Randall, in a tone as icy as one of Seymour’s own.
“Why—that she, well, she’s out of the picture.” Seymour made rough gestures in the air. “If she was telling the truth she’d have had the child by now and whatever she was telling, the chances are she went back to Italy and won’t ever bother us again.”
Randall for a moment sank down in his chair, his face in his hands. Then he looked at Seymour, standing there with his eyes narrowed cynically, exactly as he used to do when he could see.
“So you’ve been thinking about it too,” he said bitterly. “And such wise, generous, compassionate thoughts. Sometimes I think you are the most selfish, diabolical—”
“Sure!” Seymour let his voice go in a scream. “Try this over on one of your crazy pianos and see how you like the music! Try being blind yourself! It’s wonderful! Nothing to do all day but worry about little brother’s—” he stopped short with a gasp and a shudder. Through the house, peal after peal, they heard the hoarse clang of the front doorbell. Somebody was pulling again and again at the rusty knob. Randall turned pale. Seymour stood with his mouth open, his hands trembling before him.
“What was that?” he said, choked.
Randall stood up, holding onto his chair. He licked his lips. “The doorbell,” he said.
“Nobody ever rings the doorbell at night.” Seymour stood squinting, bracing himself against the mantel. The bell clanged again. He cowered.
“I’m going down to see—” Randall began to move towards the hall.
“No,” cried Seymour. “Don’t go down there, Ran.”
“I’m going.”
“No, no. Stay here. What time is it?” The bell rang again.
“A quarter to one,” said Randall, and left the room. He went downstairs. He heard Seymour come out on the landing behind him. He looked back once and saw Seymour crouching there, holding onto the banister.
Slowly Randall opened the front door. Nobody was there. He looked, puzzled, out at the walk, and right and left as far as he could see. He saw nobody. Then he heard a sound, a tiny, utterly unmistakable cry. He looked down at his feet. There on the doorstep stood a basket. He dropped to his knees. The basket was oblong, like his market basket, with rounded corners. It was filled with a pillow and knitted wool shawls and there was a bow of pink ribbon tied to its handle. He saw the color of the ribbon in the dim light from the street. He saw the tiny, red, wailing face carefully hooded by a shawl; the child’s cry was thin and fretful. He lifted the basket, holding it tight in his arms, and took it into the house. He put it gently on the hall table and reached up to light the gas. The puny, choking wail continued.
Randall looked up the stairs. Seymour was still crouching at the top. His ears, thought Randall, his ears were always sharp and have been much sharper since he was blind. He has heard it already.
“What is it?” asked Seymour. His voice was strangled.
“You can hear,” said Randall, in tears.
“No, no, what do you mean?”
Randall bent over the basket. A piece of paper was tucked among the shawls. “There is a note here,” he said.
“What? Note? Well, what does it say?”
Randall did not speak, doubled over with the note crushed in his hand.
“The note,” said Seymour hoarsely from upstairs. “What does it say?”
“It says: Here is my child. Renata.”
CHAPTER 16
When John was two years old, Randall had a sand-pile made for him in the back yard, a square of smooth boards, filled with clean white sand which did not cost very much over at the building-supply dealer’s at the foot of Twenty-fourth Street by the river. Randall bought a toy spade and bucket and with these and a handful of clothespins, John kept busy and happy all the afterno
on. Randall usually sat watching him under the ailanthus tree, on a wobbly kitchen chair. The little boy was stocky and sturdy, with a firmness and accuracy about all his movements, and a solemnity in his baby face that reflected the concentration with which he played. Even though his aim when he did something might be incomprehensible to anybody else, he seemed to Randall always to have a definite purpose. He was a silent child, not given at all to prattling, which Mrs. Quinn and her daughter Maggie said was that different: most children were after making some kind of noise all the time. John spoke when he had something to say, and then slowly, thinking while he said it, in few words, clearly pronounced.
Randall watched him as he stuck his clothespins into the sand, patting them firmly into place. Then he began to shovel more sand around and between them, moulding it with his fingers into something that looked like a low Chinese wall, punctuated at intervals by the knobs on top of the clothespins. I wonder if he knows that he’s actually making a design, Randall thought. It looks much too orderly to be an accident. But he couldn’t know, at that age … John looked over his shoulder at Randall and gave him a beaming silent smile and went on with his wall. The sun was warm, and Randall sighed with recurrent relief that this back yard had turned out to be as good a place for John’s airings as it had. The board fence had been repaired and painted dark green, the bare black grit had been planted with sod, and Randall had even induced a few flowers to grow in the narrow border against the fence. What would we have done without it, he thought, imagining as he often had before the impossibility of sending the child out in its pram to be pushed up and down Twenty-fourth Street under the coarse stares of the neighbors … people who whispered or giggled or pointed or … why think about it? He had long fixed the habit of not thinking or caring about such people, or any people. But he had to be alert at every moment to protect John. He was always one step ahead of himself when it came to problems.
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