“I’ve told ye what I think, Maggie, and sure it’s a waste of breath to repeat it. Why do ye harp on it so? It’s the younger one, of course. The way he loves that child. Pitiful, it is.”
“Maybe. But I ain’t so sure.”
“It seems to be worryin’ ye more all the time. But it needn’t. It’s no business of ours.”
“I wouldn’t say that! It’s all the business I’ve got. Ye can’t help wonderin’ about it, Ma, a body wouldn’t be human.”
“Well, the blind one didn’t pay no mind to the child for so long, and raised all that cain about havin’ it here. He hated it. He wouldn’t be the father.”
“That’s just it. He might. He’d be ashamed and have a bad conscience.”
Mrs. Quinn made a mouth. “Not the way the younger one loves it.”
“But now the blind one loves it too. He’s gettin’ jealous of the way John loves Mr. Holt, Mr. Randall, I mean.”
“Maggie, ye’re imaginin’ things.”
“No I ain’t, Ma. Ye don’t see ‘em around the child all the time like I do. The blind one is tryin’ to be the boss instead of his brother, and he’ll start makin’ trouble one o’ these days, you mark my words. They’d do better to say right out which one is the father and not be headin’ into the kind o’ scrap they are. It’s bad for John, too.”
Mrs. Quinn poked anxiously at her dental plate and said slowly, “Which one do ye think he really looks like?”
“That’s got me stumped, Ma. I can’t decide. I look and look at John and sometimes I think I see one in him and sometimes the other. That would be just a family resemblance, of course—look at our James. He’s the dead spit of Uncle Terence.”
“Well, I guess they got their reasons.”
“Oh, I know their reasons. If they’d just stick to ‘em they’d probably be all right. I heard ‘em talkin’ only last week. They were sayin’ how when John is old enough to start school they’re goin’ to move to some small town where nobody knows ‘em, and say he’s the son of a dead brother o’ theirs and his mother died when he was born. That’s why they’ve taught him to call them both Uncle. It’s a good idee.”
“Maggie,” said Mrs. Quinn slowly. “Do ye really believe that?”
“What, Ma?” Maggie poured out the dregs of the mahogany-colored tea and began to spoon sugar into it. She did not look across the table.
“Why, that they’re ever goin’ to move away from here. Out o’ this house.”
“Well—” Maggie raised her eyes uneasily to her mother’s face, which had taken on a sharp expression.
“They’ve been talkin’ about it all the three years and more that I’ve been here, and the whole neighborhood—”
“Ma, ye ain’t been talkin’ to that McBane woman again?”
“I never talked to her willingly. Can I help it if I bump into her on the street?”
“Ye oughtn’t to listen to her,” said Maggie.
“That I don’t, Maggie, honest. She’s a sluttish sort and I want none of her. But she’s sure filled this block full o’ tales about them brothers.”
“Well, they are pretty odd, Ma. I wouldn’t have stayed this long but for John. He’s a lovely child, ye can’t help gettin’ that fond of him.”
“I know. I wouldn’t have let ye come here except I was so sorry for the poor mite.”
“Ma, do they talk about him too?”
Mrs. Quinn said, “Maggie, I tried to bring ye up decent and thanks be to the Blessed Virgin I succeeded better than I knew. Ye must be real innocent not to imagine how they talk.”
“Oh, I’m not that innocent. I just meant—do they talk like they knew which one is the father?”
“No, how could they? They just blab about both of ‘em. And the poor child. They see over the back fence when he’s out gettin’ his airings.”
“It’ll be a good thing when they do move away, then. They’d have to, for the child’s sake.”
“I tried to tell Mr. Randall what to do for the child’s sake the day it came into this house.”
“Oh, Ma, ye wouldn’t have had it left at an orphanage! Why, any home would be better than that.” Maggie’s lips trembled a little.
Mrs. Quinn heaved her knobbily corseted bulk from her chair and prepared to tackle the washing-up. She looked over her shoulder at Maggie and said, “Any home? Even one like this?” She jerked her chin upwards and turned one thumb downwards as if to encompass the upper and the nether reaches of this house. She shook her head slowly and tapped her forehead with her red forefinger. And Maggie sighed and went to have a look at John.
For weeks past Seymour had been preoccupied by his new installation in the cellar. Randall felt well satisfied at having bought the job lot of stuff. He had no idea just what Seymour was making down there, and he was not at all sure that Seymour knew either. Perhaps he was not making anything, only teaching himself gradually to use the lathe and the unfamiliar tools. It was not the sort of thing about which one questioned Seymour; nor, indeed, was anything else. But when Seymour emerged from his cellar and materialized in John’s room or the drawingroom or the back yard, and began to ask peremptory questions about John’s occupations or his habits or his food, Randall found it hard to be patient. Seymour was interfering and didactic just for the sake of being so. Randall often saw a resentful flush sweep across Maggie’s face when Seymour gave her some order concerning John which was very apt to be a contradiction of her own way of doing things or of what Randall had previously arranged with her. She evolved a quiet manner of saying, “Yes, sir,” to Seymour and ignoring what he said. Randall not only agreed with her; he backed her up in every way that was beyond Seymour’s observation.
It was raining one afternoon in October and Randall had John in the drawing-room reading Little Black Sambo to him. John sat in Randall’s lap, holding his beloved teddy bear. Teddy was John’s inseparable companion. He slept in John’s bed and sat in a toy chair beside John’s high-chair while he ate, and rode on the Kiddie Kar in front of John, strapped on by a blue leather belt. He had been loved bare in spots and his stuffing had leaked at some time before Maggie had sewed him up, for he was rather limp. John clutched him in his left arm, and with his right hand he pointed to the pictures he knew so well, chiming in whenever Randall made one of the classic pauses: “Now I’m the grandest Tiger in the Jungle.” He knew much of Little Black Sambo by heart; and Peter Rabbit, too, and The House that Jack Built. But Little Black Sambo was his favorite.
” ‘When Black Mumbo saw the melted butter, wasn’t she pleased!’,” Randall read. ” ‘ “Now,” said she—’ “
” ‘We’ll all have pancakes for supper!’ ” cried John. The door opened. He saw Seymour come in and he shouted, “Pancakes for supper, Uncle Seymour! Pancakes for supper!”
Seymour stood by the door for a moment, then instead of sitting down there as he often did, he walked over to Randall and John. He put out his hand and felt John’s thick curls against Randall’s waistcoat, and Teddy tight in John’s arm.
“Don’t you think, Randall,” he said, “that he’s getting too old to sit in your lap that way all the time?”
“He doesn’t do it all the time. But he wants to look at the pictures while I read to him, Seymour. That’s how he learns—he knows the words that go with each picture.”
“He can look at pictures sitting in a chair by himself. You baby him too much. He oughtn’t to sit in your lap. And always be clutching that teddy bear. That’s a baby’s toy.”
“He doesn’t think of it as a toy,” said Randall, in a tone so careful that it should have warned Seymour. “It’s a companion to him—he thinks of it as a person.”
” ‘Flour and eggs’!” cried John. “Finish the story!”
“You know that story by heart, John,” said Seymour. “You’re too big to hear the same story over and over.”
“Finish the story,” said John again, ignoring Seymour.
“Uncle Ran isn’t going to finish that story,”
said Seymour. “He’ll read you a new one.”
“Don’t want a new one. Finish Little Black Sambo, Uncle Ran!”
“Seymour,” said Randall, “would you mind going upstairs? If there’s anything to say about this let’s wait until later.”
“I’ll have something to say later,” said Seymour, “but first will you please put him down off your lap and stop making such a sissy of him? He oughtn’t to be so attached to that fool teddy bear, either. Give Teddy to Uncle Seymour, John.” He put out his hand and took hold of one of the bear’s arms.
“No! Leave Teddy alone.” John’s eyes widened and filled with tears and he clutched his bear tighter and huddled against Randall.
“Give me that teddy bear, John.” Seymour’s voice was hard.
“No!” John was beginning to cry.
“Seymour, I implore you. I can’t say anything with him here, but will you please—”
“You must obey, John,” said Seymour. “Give me the bear.”
“No!” John was howling.
“Give me that bear!” Seymour jerked sharply on the bear’s arm as John pulled it frantically away and buried himself and the bear in Randall’s arms, screaming. The arm came off in Seymour’s hand. John screamed in such terror that they heard Maggie flying down the stairs and into the room. She stopped in the doorway, gaping. “What—what’s—”
Randall was holding John tightly, looking over the child’s head at Seymour. His face was white and Maggie Quinn put her hand to her open mouth as she saw his expression. He took a long breath and forced his voice to an ordinary tone and said, “It’s all right, Maggie. Something happened to John’s bear. He’s frightened, but he’ll be all right. I’ll bring him upstairs in a few minutes.”
“Yes—sir,” she said, and went away.
“Now you go, Seymour,” said Randall. His face was still white with rage. Seymour stood there with the bear’s arm in his hand. “Give me that and get out of here.”
John huddled against Randall, sobbing.
“You put him down off your lap,” said Seymour.
“You give me that thing and clear out.” Randall shot out his right hand and seized the bear’s arm from Seymour. He bent over John and said, “Teddy’ll be all right, John. We’ll get him fixed right away. Nobody meant to hurt him. He says it doesn’t hurt him. He says it doesn’t hurt a bit.”
“It does hurt,” screamed John. “Teddy hurts.”
“He’ll be all right. He told me so.” Randall sat and comforted John and did not look up when Seymour turned and left the room. After a while John stopped sobbing and Randall wiped his eyes and blew his nose and began at the beginning and read through Little Black Sambo again.
But late that night he had it out with Seymour. He had not seen him since afternoon, leaving him to go to the kitchen by himself and feel around for whatever fruit or left-over food he wanted for his supper. Usually Randall carried something up to the library where they ate. This evening he stayed in his own room until the late hour when he heard Seymour go to bed. He did not want to talk in the library because it was directly below the room where John and Maggie were asleep. But from Seymour’s bedroom he was sure voices would not carry to the other end of the house.
Randall tried to speak with restraint, but in a moment they were deep in their worst quarrel since the first days that John had been in the house. They quarrelled savagely, but each stopped again and again on the verge of saying the one thing that justified him in his own mind, yet the thing he could not prove and therefore dare not say.
“It’s all your fault,” said Seymour. “You ought never to have kept him in the beginning.”
“Because I wasn’t afraid to take the consequences and you were? Just remember how you acted about it.”
“And I was right.”
“Then why don’t you leave him alone now? What are you trying to do to him, Seymour?”
“Keep him from being the sissy you’re making of him.”
“He’s not a sissy! The whole thing’s your imagination.”
“He is. You spoil him and coddle him—he’s got to have some discipline.”
“At the age of two and a half? Your cruelty today—you call that discipline?”
“He’s got to be deprived of things. Somebody’s got to be strict with him. He must obey.”
“He does obey—for a child of his age. He obeys reasonably. But when you want to interrupt him in the middle of something he’s interested in and take away something he loves and make him obey just for the sake of having your own way with him, that’s not teaching him obedience. That’s bullying him.”
“You’re a sentimental sop, Randall, you always were. With this child’s heredity—”
“If you’d think more about his feelings and less about his heredity—” Randall paused and stood staring at the floor, as if gazing into a pit which had yawned suddenly before his eyes. Down in its depths if he should dare to look, he would find everything he most dreaded. The grappling roots, the twisted wills, the bitter, futile efforts of weakness to hold its own against bullying force; the pitiful image of his mother, the despotic old woman whom Seymour—no, he thought, no, you must never see that in him. You must wipe it out, like the memory of Renata, of Seymour then; of us, of what we did; you must forget it all for John. No, he thought, putting his hand to his eyes, you must never see the past in Seymour, never the resemblance, never be reminded. But his hand went down and he looked at his brother, lying grey and sightless on that ugly bed; he stared until the strength went out of him and he could not muzzle the words that he heard, appalled, coming from his own mouth. His voice was thick and strange. “Seymour,” he said. “Do you know what’s the matter with you?”
Seymour made an ugly sound. Randall bent over him and said, close to his ear, “You want to believe you are his father. You act—the way She used to—Seymour, this is horrible! Stop it, stop for God’s sake before you destroy us. You’ll hate me. Perhaps you hate me now. You want to believe you are his father and you hate me because I may be. Oh, my God …” He turned away, chilled and sick.
It was out. Seymour lay with his eyes closed, his mouth locked contemptuously, his long bony jaw jutting. Randall saw wretchedly, as never before, the resemblance to the old woman whose room this had been, the likeness emphasized by the gloomy shadows and the flickering light of the single gas-jet overhead.
“No doubt,” said Seymour, with his mouth almost closed, “you feel exactly the same yourself. A fine, sane, healthy state of things. And you brought it all down on us.”
“Yes. Absolutely single-handed, I did. So I’ll take it off us too. I’ll take him away.”
“Oh, no! You can’t do that.”
“But you’ve as good as suggested I should. What do you mean?”
Seymour turned on his side and put his right hand over his eyes, a curious gesture as if to hide from their blindness something that even blindness could see.
“Don’t you understand?” he said, with an uncharacteristic tremor in his voice. “I—I love him too, Randall.”
They were silent. Randall struggled with the impulse to say, “If that’s what you call love, it’s nothing but destruction.” Instead, when he could speak with control, he said slowly, “If you really love him, Seymour, you’ll have to show it in ways that he can understand. He’s used to trusting the people around him and knowing where he stands with them. It’s no good if you do what you did to him today, and then give him some expensive toy tomorrow and think that makes up for it. He’s confused about you already. If you make him afraid of you I swear to God I’ll take him away. I mean I’ll do it before he gets frightened.”
“You’ll spoil him to death in the meantime.”
“He’s not spoiled! He’s just a normal child who’s fond of the people he’s dependent on. Maggie and I happen to do everything for him, but that’s no fault of yours. There isn’t much you can do, on account of your eyes. That’s too bad, but it’s nature. It’s fate. Stop fighti
ng it. Stop it before you do something you’ll be terribly sorry for.”
He stood for a moment, looking round the dim, stuffy room, every object and its position part of the pathetic scheme of the blind man for managing his existence. It was a forbidding room, it had always been; and though some of the furniture was changed and the old woman’s belongings replaced by Seymour’s, it was permeated by her personality. Memories came sweeping over Randall, memories of her heavy step and booming voice, memories of himself clinging to his mother in terror while they listened to her giving orders, browbeating Seymour, scolding the servants, bullying Lily. Mama, thought Randall. Mama literally went off her head on account of that old woman. That’s all ancient history. That’s supposed to be forgotten and done with. If it were, he thought, would we be the way we are now? Would we? Against his strongest efforts he had set a train of thought in motion, everything shoved by the single propellent, moving swiftly along, through the trail of his life, gathering and storing the tokens that were part of it. He had kept the things he had, and written what he had written, and hidden what he had hidden often without a purpose at the moment. But he had felt that the purpose would ultimately make itself known. He believed he had one in sight now. He would go and find out. He said, “Good night, Seymour, I’ve turned out the gas.” He left the dark room and went noiselessly up to the fourth floor and shut himself in the old day nursery. There by another dim gas light he took his little desk from its hiding-place and opened it and sat slowly leafing through his papers. He did that for a long time, reading, and then he took a blank sheet of music manuscript and in his minute hand began to write. He thought and pondered and scribbled, and sat and thought some more, all night almost until daylight.
The pattern repeated itself more and more often. Each time that Seymour made trouble and Randall forced him to back down, there followed an interval of uneasy peace. During these periods Seymour was contrite and Randall was conciliatory. And John, with his happy disposition, seemed too cheerful and interested in his busy little world to harbor any grudge or fear of Seymour, if he were old enough. But one could not really know, Randall felt. He watched John carefully to see whether he ever shrank from Seymour or otherwise unconsciously showed that the outbreaks had left their mark. Apparently not. But it was growing upon Randall that this house was no place to be bringing up a child. What Maggie had overheard—indeed, what Randall had deliberately said to Seymour in her presence—about their moving away to a small town was not only his intention for the future; he was beginning to feel that they should go soon. The move had first been associated in his mind with school, but he saw now that very soon, long before beginning school, John must have playmates. He could not play with the ragtag-and-bobtail that lived in the neighborhood. He could not know the children of anybody else, people from whom the Holts were forever cut off. Randall spoke about all this to Seymour one night shortly before Christmas, sitting in the library. Seymour reflected for a while and said slowly, “I suppose you’re right.”
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