“And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?”
Her voice was clear and distinct and the missing tooth scarcely lessened its tranced solemnity. Laskell, glancing at Emily, saw her tense pleasure as the child was launched, saw the diminishing anxiety as Susan’s down-swung hand indicated the feet, the high-swung arm indicated the mountains green, the cradling arms indicated the Lamb of God, the suppling wrist and arm pointed to the pleasantness and extent of the pastures.
Susan went on:
“And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic Mills?”
And now Laskell could feel Emily’s lessening worry and then her relaxed pleasure as Susan began the third stanza with all its objects to be snatched from the surrounding air. As for himself, he felt himself hardening against any judgment his friends might be making upon this method of reciting. He felt very stern toward Nancy if Nancy should be feeling that there was any vulgarity in it. He looked for the back of Nancy’s head to see if it showed suppressed laughter. But if he was prepared to be angry with Nancy if Nancy should laugh, he was also prepared to be angry at Emily for that part of her foolish pride in Susan’s performance that went beyond proper maternal feeling.
Susan plucked boldly from the air her spear of burning gold and her arrows of desire. She expressed a certain gratified surprise that they should be brought so quickly upon her demand. She accepted her sword and commanded the clouds to unfold. Then having received the reins of the chariot of fire, she tossed them aside and was going on.
She took one step forward, as if to indicate that the mood or key was to change.
“‘I will not cease from Mental Fight’”— She had stamped her foot.
Dismay came over her face. But she did not make any of the gestures people make to show that they are conscious of having committed an error. Her frightened eyes moved once to the side and she began again.
“‘I will not cease from Mental Fight’”— She said it as she had undertaken to. But she stopped and was unable to go on. Why had he interfered? Never in his life had Laskell made so foolish and desperate a mistake. He heard Emily’s tight breath beside him and then her anguished desperate “Oh!” The child stood immobile, unable even to struggle against the confinement of her lapsed memory.
“‘Nor’!” said Laskell in a loud neutral voice. “‘Nor shall my Sword’”—
Every head was turned to look at him. But he was aware only of Susan starting into motion again.
“Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant land.”
And she dedicated the sword to sleeplessness, she built Jerusalem with a complicated upward movement of two hands, and she demonstrated the greenness and pleasantness of the land. Then she bowed and there was loud applause—not, of course, for her art, and certainly not for what she had predicted about Jerusalem and England, but for the misfortune she had suffered and sustained.
There were advantages in lack of sensibility, for Mr. Gurney came forward and put his arm around her and hugged her to him and said, “Thank you, Susan Caldwell,” just as if it were the radio. “Thank you, Susan Caldwell,” he said again. “That was very, very beautiful.” And he whispered something in her ear, dragging her off balance and thus making her a child entirely.
And she was no doubt glad to be a child and not a performer, for she smiled. She walked off the stage, down the steps, and then stopped as she saw that she was being met by her father. Emily clutched Laskell’s arm. Susan did not advance and neither did Duck. They stood there and looked at each other.
“Oh, God,” said Emily.
Duck laid his head slowly on one side and regarded his daughter from the angle. “A fine one,” he said slowly. “A fine one you are. A disgrace.”
Susan only looked at him, neither advancing nor retreating. He had only to take two steps forward to reach her with his hand. The first blow, on the left cheek, was with the palm. The second, on the right cheek, was with the back of the hand.
Mr. Gurney’s agonized cry of “Stop!” in an almost feminine voice came at the same time as Emily Caldwell’s shriek, and when the audience recovered from the shock of these two sounds from opposite ends of the little hall, it saw that the child had fallen and it made a great rattling of chairs. It was Kermit Simpson who picked her up in his arms and laid her on the edge of the platform, while Gifford Maxim and Arthur Croom and Mr. Folger and another man stood against him with their faces to the crowd and stretched out their arms and said what on such occasions is always said, “Stand back. Give her air.” Emily Caldwell had made her way forward and stood with Kermit over the child. She stood so a moment and then uttered a horrible cry, lost to all consciousness and almost to all humanity, an animal’s cry, not able to call forth sympathy from anyone who heard it but only dread and repulsion.
The cry so separated the woman from everyone else, and so denied and insulted them all by its animal isolation, that someone had to interpret it. “She’s dead. He killed her,” someone announced.
Laskell, on the edge of the crowd, saw a figure pushing its way back against the pressure. It was Duck Caldwell, and he stood for a moment as if recovering his breath after escaping a danger. Then he ran, making for the farther door, running with his shoulders forward. He vanished through the door. Laskell ran after him.
11
THE KNIFE, when Laskell later held it in his hand, was not much of a knife. It was only the sort of pocket-knife that any man might carry. A man who worked as a carpenter would use such a knife for scoring a plank before sawing it, or for splitting a bit of soft wood. The handle was scarcely big enough to span the palm. The blade that had been opened, although the largest of the three, was not long, not longer than the width of three or four fingers, and not at all sharp. It was the kind of blade that is rounded at the end, not pointed. It could not have stabbed easily, scarcely at all, and if Duck had intended to cut anyone’s throat with it, he would have had to apply himself long and earnestly to the job.
The blade was stained and dark, anything but gleaming, and the only thing that told Laskell that Duck had a knife in his hand was the soft little round-and-round movement that Duck made, his hand held out from his body. And then Duck said, “Keep away. I got a knife.”
It was not yet fully dark as Laskell ran out of the church. But it was nearly dark. Laskell looked around him but Duck was not to be seen. Behind him, in the church, he heard the beehive noise of sixty or seventy people getting a fact into their heads. It made the outdoors seem very still. And it was the stiller because of the unseen presence of Duck. For Duck must be hiding somewhere.
“Duck!” Laskell called. It was the first time he had ever addressed the man by name, that slightly ignoble nickname. “Duck!” he called again, very urgently. At any moment the loud murmur in the church would cease and the people would be coming out.
There was no answer. “Duck!” he called again. “Come out! Where are you?”
Suddenly a clump of bushes by the side of the road stirred and rustled and then Duck stood out on the road. His clean white shirt was very clear in the twilight; at that distance Laskell could not see the stain of blood on it. Duck said nothing, just looked and lowered. His body swayed slightly. He was still drunk.
Laskell started to run toward him. His heart was pounding with the high excitement of what he was about to do. “I want to talk to you,” he called as he ran.
Duck stood in the middle of the road. “Keep away,” he said. He held up his left hand with the palm forward, like a traffic policeman. “Just keep away from me,” he said with the supreme reliance on reasonableness that drunken men have.
“I want to talk to you,” Laskell said.
Duck had lowered his hand but now he raised it again in the same way, palm thrust forward. He seemed to feel that there was great meaning and authority in that way of holding up his hand. “Just keep away from me,” he said in a reasoning voice. It was as if he were offering a compromise. “Just don’t come near me,” he said. And then he began making that soft circling movement with his right hand. But as Laskell continued to approach, he said, “I got a knife. Keep away—I got a knife.”
Laskell had in any case slowed down to a walk. “Listen, Duck,” he said. “Don’t be a fool. I want to talk to you.”
“I’m warning you,” said Duck. “I’m telling you. Just keep away from me.”
What Laskell had to say to Duck could not be shouted. He continued to approach. He thought, and with a gleam of pride in his practicality, that once Duck knew what he was about to be told, there would not be even the appearance of danger that there was now. But he kept his eye on the gentle, continuous, circular movement that Duck was making with his right hand.
Suddenly Duck turned and ran again. Laskell ran after him. He was exasperated with the man’s stubbornness and lack of comprehension. He shouted once, “Duck!” but his breath was coming hard and he made up his mind to call no more. He was not gaining on Duck but he was not losing ground. Neither of them could run very well on the rough, stone-strewed road. Then Duck stopped dead and turned and faced Laskell. When Laskell slowed down and again began to walk forward, he was nearer the man than before the absurd chase began.
Laskell said, “It’s not what you think. She’s dead, but it wasn’t you who killed her.”
It was not a very enlightening way to put it. It was like telling a riddle to a man in great danger. And Duck, his mind made up and very clear about what had happened, naturally did not hear the phrase that exempted him from guilt.
Laskell tried again, “She had a weak heart,” he said.
But the statement seemed as weak as Susan’s heart. It seemed ridiculous to run after a man who had killed his daughter to tell him that she had a weak heart. And if Duck heard the statement at all, it seemed to enrage him.
“God damn you!” Duck shouted in a sudden fury. His voice cracked with the fierceness of his rage. “I told you to keep away from me. Don’t you God damn touch me!”
“Will you listen to me?” Laskell shouted. He was suddenly in a rage too. It swept over him, the desire to blast and blight this man who would not accept the salvation that was being offered him. And because he took another step forward, Duck rushed.
Laskell must have known in some way that Duck’s threat was real, for he did not take more than the one step, and he was not wholly unprepared for the rush. And there was something inconclusive about the way Duck tried to use the knife, something merely demonstrative, as if, together with his intention of stabbing, he had also the intention of showing just how he would go about stabbing. Laskell was able to catch the wrist before the blow struck. The wrist was as strong as iron and its pressure downward was very great—greater, Laskell knew, than he could sustain for long. Suddenly Duck tried to pull his wrist free to strike again, but Laskell held on, and out of his boyhood he remembered to slip his thumb up to the tender hollow where Duck’s thumb-tendon met the wrist. He remembered the excruciating pain that could be inflicted by pressure here and the legend that boys solemnly imparted to each other that “no one could stand that pain long” but was bound, upon its continuation, to drop his weapon. In spite of the impressive certainty of this statement, Duck’s wrist was again pressing forward and down. Yet Laskell must have been inflicting some pain, for Duck began first to beat at his face with his left hand and then, changing tactics, to pound his biceps. This was perhaps a memory from Duck’s boyhood, for the pain to Laskell was intense and he knew that he could not stand it long. He fought to catch Duck’s left wrist and caught it. Then what he had learned in his boyhood turned out to be true, for suddenly Duck’s hand actually opened and the knife dropped from it. But at that very moment Laskell felt Duck’s balance shift and he knew that a kick was in the making and where it would be aimed and he leaped to the side, still holding the wrist. His impulse of self-protection must have been strong indeed and very sudden, and Duck’s rage and self-forgetfulness must also have been great, for Duck was lying on his side in the road.
The hand on Laskell’s shoulder was Maxim’s. Maxim said, “All right, John. Let him alone now.”
There were six or seven other men and they stood around in embarrassment. Duck lay on the road, not moving. “Is he all right?” said one of the men.
Laskell realized that he still held Duck’s wrist. He let go of it. Duck’s eyes were open, but he lay perfectly still. Laskell was revolted by the sight of Duck lying there with his eyes open, and he was revolted by himself for having brought Duck to this low state. It seemed to him that there never had been anything uglier than the picture of himself and Duck as they had been through their fight and were now. They all stood there looking in embarrassment at the man lying in the dust of the road. He lay there, not moving, looking up at them. He expressed his hatred and rage in that way. Then he got up. He rose very slowly to his feet. He brushed himself off elaborately. When he had done this in his own good time, he said, “All right. Let’s go.”
The men did not quite know what to do about it. They had chased after Duck to take him, but now that they had him, they did not know what to do with him. He himself solved their problem for them by starting off up the road and they regrouped themselves around him loosely, so as not to make too much of a point of his being a captured man. Still, they walked close to him.
Laskell watched them go. His message was still undelivered and he had to shake off the effect of Duck lying there in the road with his eyes open, letting his supine state sink into the consciousness of the people who stood around him, letting it be a kind of insult to them. He started after them suddenly and then he felt Maxim’s hand on his arm. “Hold it!” said Maxim, but Laskell shook him off impatiently. He called, “Wait a minute,” and ran to catch up with them. They all stopped in the road and turned to see what he wanted and he said, “Listen, Duck—”
Duck turned very slowly and contemptuously. He looked at Laskell with a blank face and then spat at him shortly, once. The spittle did not reach Laskell, and was scarcely meant to reach, but there was such a fullness of hatred in the act that Laskell stopped dead not only in his tracks but in his being. For whether or not Duck knew it, Laskell knew that Duck had reason to hate him.
The group started on its way up the road. Laskell stood still and watched them go.
Maxim said, “Are you all right, John?” It was what he had said, Laskell remembered, that day when he had come on his visit and had seen Laskell attended by Paine. He still had his old practiced solicitude for suffering.
“I’m all right,” Laskell said.
Maxim put his head close in the very dim light and looked at Laskell’s face. “Your lip is cut,” he said. Laskell became aware of his swollen mouth. Licking his lip, he tasted the saltiness of blood.
“Come down to the trailer and I’ll put something on it. You need a drink.”
Without answering, Laskell began walking toward the trailer and Maxim walked with him.
The trailer was hot and close, for the day had been very hot and had not yet cooled off, but Maxim switched on the electric fan and said, “It will be cool in a few minutes. Or would you like to sit outside?”
“No, it’s all right here.”
Maxim got out a bottle of whisky and said, “Have you a clean handkerchief?”
Laskell produced a handkerchief. It was clean, but Maxim inspected it before he poured the whisky on. “Here,” he said, “put this to your lip a minute. It’s as good a disinfectant as anything.”
The whisky burned Laskell’s cut lip in a therapeutic way. Maxim made Laskell a stiff drink and one for himself. As Laskell dabbed at his lip with the old strong bourbon that Kermit stocked, he remembered the smell of whisky on D
uck’s breath. He took a large swallow of the drink, then finished it. Maxim made him another.
Maxim sipped his own drink slowly for a few minutes. Then, as if he had just remembered something, he reached into his pocket and took out the knife. He did not look at it but laid it down in a matter-of-fact way on the settee beside Laskell. “Here’s your knife,” he said. “I picked it up on the road.” He said it very casually, but he was looking at Laskell with a veiled curiosity.
“It’s not my knife,” Laskell said. Then he looked sharply at Maxim. “It’s not mine. It’s his. What made you think it was mine?”
It was a sizable error that Maxim had made, and Maxim seemed to think so, for he dropped his eyes and masked his face. Then he looked at Laskell and made a dry, complex gesture with his mouth and eyebrows. He seemed to mean to say, “All right, if you say so. Perhaps I’m wrong, but perhaps not so wrong as you think.”
Laskell challenged the gesture. “What made you think it was my knife? That’s an odd mistake.”
Maxim shrugged elaborately. “After all,” he said, quite as if it were an answer.
But Laskell was at the end of some patience or other. “‘After all?’” he said explosively. “After all what? What are you trying to say?”
Maxim looked with a kind of gentle forbearance at his friend—all through the time since the trailer had arrived he had been acting as if Laskell were his friend and now he looked at Laskell with a friend’s tolerance. He explained most painstakingly. “He ran and you ran after him. You were out of the door before any of us thought to move. You were very fond of the little girl. You loved her.”
Whatever Maxim was intending to say was dimmed for Laskell by the sudden appearance of Susan in the past tense. For the first time he understood that the fact was not that Duck had killed Susan but that Susan was dead. The realization came to him suddenly, and it had the effect of a blanket over his mind.
The Middle of the Journey Page 33