And then she had told him something. “I am going to have a child,” she had said, coolly, quietly, like that. Aline could be maddening sometimes.
At such a time, when the woman you have married tells you such a thing — the first child....
The thing is to take her into your arms, hold her tenderly. She should have cried a little, been both afraid and glad. A few tears would have been the most natural thing in the world.
And Aline had told him in such a cool quiet way that for the moment he had been unable to say anything. He just sat staring at her. The garden was dark and her face was but a white oval in the darkness. She was like a stone woman. And then, at that moment, while he was looking at her and while that queer feeling of being unable to speak had hold of him, a man had come into the garden.
Both Aline and Fred had jumped to their feet. For a moment they stood together thus, startled, afraid — of what? Were they both thinking the same thing? Fred now knew they were. They were both thinking Bruce had come. That was it. Fred stood trembling. Aline stood trembling. Nothing happened. A man from one of the hotels down in the town had gone out for an evening’s walk, and having lost his way had wandered into the garden. He stood for a moment with Fred and Aline, talking of the town and of the beauty of the garden and the night. Both had time to recover. When the man had gone the time for saying something tender to Aline had passed. The announcement of the coming birth of a son had passed like a remark about the weather.
Fred thought, trying to fight down his own thoughts.... It might be — after all, the thoughts he was now having might be all wrong. It might well be that, on that other evening when he had been afraid, he had been afraid of nothing, of shadow’s. On a bench near him somewhere in the garden, the man and woman were still talking. A few low words and then a long silence. There was a sense of waiting — for him no doubt, for his coming. In Fred a flood of thoughts, terrors — the lust to kill strangely mingled with the desire to flee, to escape.
He began yielding to temptation. If Aline had her lover come to her thus boldly she was not too afraid of being found out. One had to be very careful. The thing was not to find her out. She had meant to defy him. If he went boldly towards the two people and found what he was so afraid he would find, then all would have to come out at once. He would be compelled to demand an explanation.
He fancied himself demanding an explanation — the effort to keep his voice steady. It came — from Aline’s lips. “I have been waiting only to be sure. The child you thought was to be your child is not your child. On the day you went down into town to parade before others I found my lover. He is here with me now.”
If something of the sort happened then what would Fred do? What did a man do under such circumstances? Well, he killed the man. But that settled nothing. You were in a bad mess and only got into a worse. The thing to do was to avoid a scene. It might all be a mistake. Fred was now more afraid of Aline than of Bruce.
He began creeping softly along a gravel path lined with rose-bushes. By bending forward and going very carefully it might be possible to reach the house unseen, unheard. What would he do then?
He would creep upstairs to his own room. Aline had been foolish, perhaps, but she could not be a complete fool. He had money, position, could provide her with everything she wanted — her life was secure — safe. If she had been a little reckless she would soon get over it. When Fred had almost reached the house a plan came into his mind but he did not dare go back along the path. However, when the man who was now with Aline had gone away, he would creep out of the house again and come in noisily. She would think he knew nothing. He would in fact know nothing definite. Being engaged with the man, Aline had forgotten the passage of time. She could never have intended being so bold, being found out.
If she were discovered, if she knew he knew, there would have to be an explanation, a scandal — the Greys of Old Harbor — Fred Grey’s wife — Aline, perhaps, marching off with another man — the man a common man, a mere factory worker, a gardener.
Fred became suddenly very magnanimous. Aline was but a foolish child. To drive her into a corner might ruin her life. In the end his time would come.
And now he was furiously angry at Bruce. “I’ll get him!” In the library of the house, in a drawer, there was a loaded revolver. Once, when he was in the army he had shot a man. “I’ll wait. My time will come.”
Pride now swept through Fred and he stood up straight in the path. He would not creep to the door of his own house like a thief. Standing erect now, he took two or three steps, going, however, toward the house and not toward the place from which came the voices. In spite of his boldness he put his feet down very carefully on the gravel of the path. It would be very comforting, indeed, if he could console himself with the feeling of boldness and yet not be found out.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
IT WAS, HOWEVER, of no avail. Fred’s foot struck a round stone and he stumbled and was compelled to take a quick step to avoid falling. Aline’s voice called. “Fred,” she said, and then there was a silence, a very pregnant silence, as Fred stood trembling in the path. The man and woman got up from the bench and came toward him and a sick lost feeling took possession of him. He had been right. The man with Aline was the gardener, Bruce. When they had come to him the three stood for some moments in silence. Was it wrath or fear that had so taken possession of Fred? Bruce had nothing to say. The matter to be settled was between Aline and her husband. If Fred were suddenly to do something violent — shoot, for example — he would, of necessity, then become a direct participant in the scene. He was an actor standing aside while two other actors did their parts. Well, it was fear had hold of Fred. He was terribly afraid, not of the man Bruce, but of the woman Aline.
He had almost reached the house when he had been discovered, but Aline and Bruce, having come toward him along an upper terrace, now stood between him and the house. Fred felt as he had felt as a soldier when about to go into battle.
There was the same feeling of desolation, of being utterly alone in some strangely empty place. When you are about to go into a battle you suddenly lose all connection with life. You are concerned with death. Death is all about you and the past is a fading shadow. There is no future. You are not loved. You love no one. The sky is over your head, the ground is still under your feet, there are comrades marching beside you, near the road along which you advance with some hundreds of other men — all like yourself, empty machines — like things — trees are growing, but the sky, the ground, the trees have nothing to do with you. Your comrades have nothing to do with you now. You are a disconnected thing floating in space, about to be killed, about to try to escape being killed and to kill others. Fred knew well the feeling he now had; and that he should have it again, after the war had come to an end, after these months of peaceful living with Aline, in his own garden, at the door of his own house, filled him with an old horror. In a battle you are not afraid. Being brave or cowardly has nothing to do with the matter. You are there. Bullets will fly about you. You will be hit or you will escape.
Now Aline did not belong to Fred. She had become the enemy. In a moment she would begin to say words. Words were bullets. They hit you or missed and you escaped. Although for weeks Fred had been fighting against the belief that something had happened between Aline and Bruce, he need make that fight no longer. Now he was to know the truth. Now, as in a battle, he would be hit or he would escape. Well, he had been in battles before. He had been lucky, had escaped whole out of battles. Aline standing there before him, the house dimly seen over her shoulder, the sky overhead, the ground under his feet, none of these things now belonged to him. He remembered something — the young stranger beside the roadway in France, the young Jew who had wanted to pluck the stars out of the sky and eat them. Fred knew what the young man had meant. He had meant that he wanted to be a part of things again, that he wanted things to be a part of himself.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
ALINE WAS TALKING. Th
e words came slowly, painfully from her lips. He could not see her lips. Her face was a white oval in the darkness. She was like a stone woman standing there before him. She had found she loved another man and he had come for her. When she and Fred were in France she had been but a girl, she had known nothing. She had thought of marriage as just marriage — two people living together. Although she had done a quite unforgivable thing to Fred, nothing of the kind had been intended. Even after she had found her man and after they had been lovers she had thought, she had tried.... Well, she had thought she could still go on loving Fred, living with him. It took time for a woman to grow up just as it did for a man. We know so little of ourselves. She had gone along telling herself lies but now the man she loved had come back and she could not go on lying to him or to Fred. To go on living with Fred would be a lie. Not to go with her lover would be a lie.
“The child I am expecting is not your child, Fred.”
Fred said nothing. What was to be said? When you are in a battle the bullets hit you or you escape, you live, you are glad of life. There was a heavy silence. Seconds passed slowly, painfully. A battle once begun never seems to come to an end. Fred had thought, he had believed, that when he came home to America, when he had married Aline, the war was over. “The war to end war.”
Fred wanted to sink down in the path and put his hands over his face He wanted to cry. When you are hurt that is what you do. You cry out. He wanted Aline to stop talking, not to say anything more. What dreadful things words could be. “Don’t! Stop! Say no more words,” he wanted to plead with her.
“I can’t help it, Fred. We are going now. We were only waiting to tell you,” Aline said.
And now words had come to Fred. How humiliating! He was pleading with her. “It’s all wrong. Don’t go, Aline! Stay here! Give me time! Give me a chance! Don’t go!” Fred’s saying words was like firing at the enemy in a battle. You fired hoping someone would be hurt. That was it. The enemy was trying to do something dreadful to you and you tried to do something dreadful to the enemy.
Fred kept saying the same two or three words over and over. It was like firing a rifle in a battle — firing and then firing again. “Don’t do it! You can’t! Don’t do it! You can’t!” He felt she was being hurt. That was good. He felt almost cheerful about the notion of Aline hurt. He had hardly noticed the man Bruce, who had stepped a little back, leaving the man and wife facing each other. Aline had put her hand on Fred’s arm. His whole body was stiff.
And now the two people, Aline and Bruce, were walking away along the path on which he stood. Aline had put her arms about Fred’s neck and she might have kissed him, but he drew a little back, his body rigid, and the man and woman passed him as he stood so. He was letting her go. He had done nothing. It was evident preparations had already been made. The man Bruce was carrying two heavy bags. Did they have a car waiting somewhere? Where were they going? They had reached the gate and were passing out of the garden and into the road when he cried out again. “Don’t do it! You can’t! Don’t do it!” he cried.
BOOK TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
ALINE AND BRUCE had gone. For better or worse a new life had begun for them. Having experimented with life and love they had been caught. Now for them a new chapter would begin. They would be compelled to face new problems, a new kind of life. Having tried life with one woman and failed, Bruce would have to try again, Aline would have to try again. What curious experimental hours ahead for them, Bruce being a laborer perhaps, Aline without money to spend freely, without luxuries. Was what they had done worth the price? At any rate they had done it, they had taken a step from which they could not draw back.
As always happens with a man and woman, Bruce was a little afraid — half afraid and half tender — and Aline’s mind took a practical turn. After all, she was an only child. Her father would be furious for a time, but in the end he would have to knuckle under. The child, when it came, would stir the male sentimentality of both Fred and her father. Bernice, Bruce’s wife, might be harder to handle. Still — a little money. There was no chance her ever getting him again. There would be a new marriage, after a time.
She kept touching Bruce’s arm, and because of Fred, back there in the darkness, alone now, she wept softly. Odd that he, wanting her so much and now that he had got her, began almost at once thinking of something else. He had wanted to find the right woman, a woman he could really marry, but that was only half of it. He wanted to find the right kind of work too. Aline’s going away from Fred was inevitable, as had been his leaving Bernice. It was her problem but he still had a problem of his own.
When they had gone through the gate, out of the garden and into the road, Fred stood stiff and rigid for a moment and then ran down to watch them go. His body still seemed frozen with fear and horror. Of what? Of everything sweeping down on him at once, without warning. Well, something within had been trying to warn him. “To hell with that!” That Chicago man he had just left at the door of the hotel downtown, his words. “There are certain men who can get into so strong a position they can’t be touched. Nothing can happen to them.” He had meant money of course. “Nothing can happen. Nothing can happen.” The words rang in Fred’s ears. How he hated the Chicago man. In a moment now, Aline, who was walking beside her lover along the short stretch of road at the top of the hill, would turn back. Fred and Aline would begin a new life together. It would happen so. It would have to happen so. His mind leaped back to money. If Aline went away with Bruce she would not have any money. Ha!
Bruce and Aline did not go down along one of the two roads into the town, but took a little-used path that led abruptly down the hillside to the river-road below. It was the path Bruce had been in the habit of taking when, on Sundays, he went down to dine with Sponge Martin and his wife. The path was steep and overgrown with weeds and bushes. Bruce went ahead, carrying the two bags, and Aline followed, without looking back. She was crying, but Fred did not know. First her body disappeared, then her shoulders and finally her head. She seemed sinking into the ground, going down into darkness that way. Perhaps she had not dared look back. If she had turned she might have lost courage. Lot’s wife — the pillar of salt. Fred wanted to shout at the top of his voice—’
‘Look, Aline! Look!” He said nothing.
The path taken was one used only by laborers and servants who worked in the houses on the hill. It dropped abruptly down to the old road that followed the river and Fred remembered that when he was a boy he used to climb down that way with other boys. Sponge Martin lived down there in the old brick house that had once been a part of the stable of an inn when the road was the only one leading into the little river town.
“It is all a lie. She will come back. She knows that if she is not here in the morning there will be talk. She won’t dare. In a moment now she will come back up the hill. I will take her back but in the future life in our house will be somewhat different. I will be boss here. I will tell her what she can do and what she can’t do. No more foolishness now.”
The two people had completely disappeared. How very quiet the night! Fred moved heavily toward the house and went inside. He pressed a button and the lower part of the house was lighted. How strange his house seemed, the room in which he stood. There was the large chair in which, in the evening, he habitually sat reading the evening paper while Aline walked outside in the garden. In his youth Fred had played baseball and he had never lost interest in the sport. In the evenings during the summer he always looked to see how the various league teams were getting along. Would the Giants win the pennant again? Quite automatically he picked up the evening paper and then threw it down.
Fred sat in the chair, his head in his hands, but quickly got up. He remembered that, in a drawer in a little room on the ground floor of the house, a room called the library, there was a loaded revolver, and he went and got it, and, standing in the lighted room, held it in his hands. He looked at it dumbly. The minutes passed. The house seemed unbearable to h
im and he went out again into the garden and sat on the bench where he had been seated with Aline that time when she told him of the expected coming of the child — the child that was not his child.
“One who has been a soldier, a man who is really a man, a man who deserves the respect of his fellow men, does not sit calmly by and let another man go away with his woman.”
Fred said the words over to himself as though speaking to a child, telling the child what should be done. Then he went into the house again. Well, he was a man of action, a doer. Now was the time to do something. Now he had begun to grow angry, but did not know definitely whether he was angry at Bruce, Aline or himself. By something like a conscious effort he directed his anger toward Bruce. He was the man. Fred tried to centralize his feelings. His anger would not gather itself together. He was angry at the Chicago advertising man he had been with an hour before, at the servants in his house, at the man Sponge Martin, who had been Bruce Dudley’s friend. “I’ll not go into that advertising scheme at all,” he declared to himself. For a moment he wished that one of the negro servants in his house would come into the room. He would raise the revolver and fire. Someone would be killed. His manhood would have asserted itself. Negroes are such people! “They have no moral sense.” For just a moment he was tempted to press the muzzle of the revolver to his own head and fire, and then that temptation passed quickly away.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
GOING SOFTLY AND silently out of the house and leaving the lights burning Fred went hurriedly along the path to the garden gate and out into the road. Now he had decided to find the man Bruce and kill him. His hand gripped the handle of the revolver and he ran along the road and began to climb hurriedly down the steep path to the lower road. Occasionally he fell. The path was very steep and uncertain. How had Aline and Bruce managed to get down? They might be somewhere below. He would shoot Bruce and then Aline would come back. All would be as it was before Bruce had appeared and brought ruin to himself and Aline. If Fred, when he became owner of the Grey Wheel Plant, had only fired that old scoundrel, Sponge Martin.
Complete Works of Sherwood Anderson Page 120