“U. S. Grant Harris, my grandfather, was perhaps the worst scalawag in American history. He stole a couple of railroads, made a great deal of money—$72,000,000, I believe was the exact figure—and died an empire builder, beloved and respected by all who knew him slightly—or at any rate by the society editors. He left two children—my father, Harwood Harris, who died when I was five years old, and my uncle, George Harris, head of Harris, Hunt and Harris, where I have the honor to be employed. My uncle carries on my grandfather’s mighty work—he stole a railroad in Central America only last week, come to think of it. I could have told him the locomotive won’t run, now that all the wood along the right-of-way got burned off in a mountain fire a few months ago, but he didn’t consult me, and—”
“Never mind the mountain fire. Whose house was that—where we spent the day yesterday?”
“...My sister’s, Mrs. Hunt’s.”
“Why did you say it belonged to a friend?”
“Well—of course, it really belongs to her husband. I hope I can call Hunt a friend.”
“I’d call him a brother-in-law.”
“I guess he is, but I never think of him that way.”
“Why didn’t you tell me all this sooner?”
“Well—you never asked me, and—”
“And, in addition to that, there was this little matter of—Miss Muriel Van Hoogland. Who is she?”
“Just a girl.”
“Whom you had promised to marry?”
“That was all my uncle’s doing. My uncle continues another pleasing custom of my grandfather’s, by the way—the negotiation of what he calls favorable alliances, meaning marrying his nephews off to girls who have money. It wouldn’t have meant anything except that my mother let the wool be pulled over her eyes and before I knew it, mainly to make her happy, I had got myself into something pretty serious.”
“And then Muriel went west?”
“Yes, that was in July.”
“To buy her trousseau?”
“That I don’t know.”
“Oh, I think we can take it for granted, that to be worthy of a Harris, Muriel would buy her wedding clothes at Adrian’s.”
“What she did in California I don’t-know and I’d rather we took nothing for granted, if you don’t mind.”
“And then?”
“And then you came along.”
“And then true love was so irresistible that you left Muriel stood-up at the airport and married me, is that it?”
“I guess that about covers it.”
“Well I don’t. You didn’t say anything about love when you asked me to marry you—not at first, and it hurt me, and I ought to have known that any other reason was an insult, and—”
“Is a marriage proposal an insult?”
“Oh, it can be, even from a Harris, if that one thing isn’t there—”
“Don’t you know how I feel about you?”
“Sometimes I know—or think I do. But that wasn’t why you asked me. It was all about the system and getting back at them, whoever ‘they’ are. Is that the only reason you wanted me, so you could get back at your uncle for trying to make you marry Muriel?”
“No!”
“Then what was it?”
“It would take me a week to explain it to you.”
“I’ve got a week.”
“They won’t let me do what I want to. They—”
“And who is ‘they’?”
“My uncle!”
“And your mother.”
“We’ll leave my mother out of this.”
“Oh no, we won’t.”
“I tell you my mother has nothing to do with it. If everybody in the world were as fine as she is—the hell with it! I—I’ve got to go see how she is. She’s my mother, can’t you understand that? And she’s sick. I’ve—I’ve brought this on her. I—”
He started for the door but I was there first. “And I’m your wife, if you can understand that. And you’ve brought this on me. You’re not going to your mother. I don’t care how sick she is—if she’s sick, which I seriously doubt. You’re staying here, and we’re going into it. I told you—I’ve got a week, I’ve got a lifetime. They won’t let you do what you want to do, I think that’s what you said. What is it you want to do?”
I still stood there by the door, and he began tramping up and down the room, his eyes set and his lips twitching. He kept that up a long time and then he dropped into a chair, let his head fall on his hands and ran his tongue around the inside of his lips before he spoke to stop their twitching. “Study Indians.”
“You—what did you say?”
He leaped at me like a tiger, took me by the arms and shook me until I could feel my teeth rattling. “Laugh-let me hear you laugh! I’ll treat you like a wife! Just let me see a piece of a grin and I’ll knock it down your throat so fast you won’t have time to swallow it! Go on—why don’t you laugh?”
“Is that why you have all these Indian things here?”
“Why do you think?”
“And you want to read books about them? I still don’t quite understand it.”
“What do I care whether you understand it or not, or anybody understands it? You don’t study Indians out of books. You study them on the hoof. You go where they are, and—oh, God, what’s the use?”
“You mean in—Oklahoma?”
“If you knew anything—or if you or any of them knew anything—you’d know that all the Indians aren’t in Oklahoma. More than half the population of this hemisphere is Indian—millions and millions of them—they’re the one surviving link with this country’s past—they’re anthropologically more important than all the tribes of Asia put together and—skip it. I’m sorry. It would be impossible to make you understand it, or any of them understand it, and I apologize for even trying.”
“You study them—and then what?”
“Write a book. That’s all—just a book.”
I sat down and then looked around the room at all the things he had in there and after awhile I got up and walked around looking at them one by one. There were little typewritten labels on most of them which I hadn’t noticed before, telling exactly where they came from, what their use was and what their names were in Indian languages and in English. Then I walked over to the big built-in bookcase that filled one side of the room and pulled out one or two books and looked through them. They were different from any books I had ever seen—most of them were bound in leather, some of them in parchment, and they were filled with all sorts of footnotes and scientific references. I knew then at least what he was talking about, the kind of books he wanted to write anyway, even if I had never read any books like that, or even knew there were such books. But there was still more I had to find out. “Why won’t they let you—study Indians?”
“Costs money.”
“In what way?”
“All you have to have is an expedition, a flock of assistants, an army of porters and a boatload of equipment. It runs into money, big money. And I’ve got money—all the money it takes—or will have some day, when George Harris is no longer trustee. That’s why I said I’d marry that Muriel idiot. I thought if I did that George might kick in, but when he got coy about it I knew that was just a dream.”
“You didn’t make the money.”
“Neither did George Harris. Neither did my grandfather. He stole it—and a lot I care. But isn’t it better to have it put to some decent use? Am I supposed to jump up and cheer when George Harris uses it to win a race with one of his yachts? All right, you want to know why I hate the system—any system’s wrong that lets useful wealth be wasted so George Harris can sail yachts— the Alamo, the Alamo II, the Alamo III, and the Alamo IV—aren’t they a lovely end-product for a civilization? For them men sweat and walk tracks in blizzards and tap flanges and get killed in wrecks, and for them I have to give up something that’s worth doing.”
“And to break that system you tried to organize a junior executives’ union?”
“I see. Marrying a waitress was merely exchanging a cap pistol for a pea shooter. They’re not much good against elephants either.”
“Listen, I’ve got you, and you’re my first step in cutting loose from George, his yachts and everything he stands for.”
I felt sick and queer and frightened. We sat there for a time in the half-dark, for it was now well after six, and then it was my turn to begin walking around. I kept passing the bookcase, and little by little it crept in on me that this man was my husband and that, in spite of my pride, I had to help him fight through somehow, even if I didn’t quite understand what it was about or believe in it at all, for that matter. I went over, sat down in his lap and pulled his head against me. “Grant.”
He put his arm around me and drew me close to him. “You never called me that before.”
“Do you want me to?”
“Yes.”
“I think the Indians are swell.”
“I think you mean you like me.”
“I more than like you, or will, if you’ll let me. But that isn’t what I meant, and that isn’t what you want me to mean. I don’t know much about Indians, or this book—”
“It’ll be a hell of a book.”
“That’s it—tell me about it.”
“It’ll take me ten years to write it but it’ll really be a history of this country that everybody else has missed. Listen, Carrie, they’ve all written that story from the deck of Columbus’ ship. I’m going to write it from San Salvador Island, beginning with the Indian that peeped out through the trees and saw that anchor splash down. It was a bright moonlight night all over the American continent the night before Columbus slipped into that harbor—did you know that, Carrie? I’m going to tell what that moon shone on—are you listening?”
“Go on. I love it.”
Six
I LAY IN HIS arms until it was quite dark and he told me more about his book and how it was not to be an ordinary history at all but a study of Indians and the imprint they have left on our civilization. Then for a few minutes he had nothing to say and then he stirred a little. “What’s the matter?”
“I’ve been thinking, Carrie, just as a sort of peace offering, hadn’t I better send some flowers around to my mother?”
“I think that will be fine—as soon as she sends flowers to me.”
“She sends flowers to—?”
“I’m the bride, after all.”
“Oh—that’s a different department. What she sends you, that couldn’t be just a bunch of flowers, you know, bought at the drop of a hat. But tonight—she’s not herself and it will make a difference.”
“Can’t you order them by phone?”
“I’ll have to put a card in. I’ll only be a few minutes, and then we’ll pick out a nice place to have dinner.”
He got his hat and went out, and I was left with this same feeling I had had before, of being sick and forlorn and up against something I didn’t understand, and mixed in with it was a sense of helplessness, for I was sure that it wasn’t the system, or his Uncle George, or the yachts that was the cause of his trouble, but this same woman he refused to talk about and yet seemed to have on his mind all the time, his mother. And what could I do about her?
The place seemed horribly gloomy then, and I wanted light. I groped all around but couldn’t find any of the switches. I began to cry. Then the house phone rang and I went to answer it and couldn’t find that. Then the phone stopped ringing and in a minute the buzzer sounded. I knew how I had come in, at any rate, so I opened the door. A policeman was standing there. “Carrie Selden Harris?”
“I’m Carrie Harris.”
It was the first time I had used my new name and it felt strange, but I tried not to show it to him.
“Warrant for your arrest. I warn you that anything you say in my presence may be used against you—come on.”
I asked him to wait, then went to change from my sport outfit, which I still had on, into a dress that seemed more suitable to be arrested in, and then, fumbling around in the dark, I really broke down and wept. Why couldn’t Grant be there instead of traipsing out to a florist’s to send flowers to a woman who hadn’t even had the decency to wish him well when he got married?
I don’t think I could have got dressed at all if the policeman hadn’t found a switch and turned it on so that a little light filtered into the bedroom.
I put on my green dress, a green hat and powdered my nose some kind of way and went into the living room. The policeman was a big man, rather young, and looked at me, I thought, in a kind way. “You got any calling to do about bail, something like that, be a good idea to do it from here. Station house phone, sometimes they got a waiting line on it and anyhow you’re only allowed one call. Besides, it’s pretty high on the wall for you to be talking into.”
“Thank you, there’s nobody I want to call.”
“You got a husband?”
“There’s nobody I want to call.”
I wouldn’t have called Pierre’s or waited for Grant to get back if they were going to send me to the electric chair.
I had never been in a police station before but I didn’t stay there long enough to find out much about it. We rode around in the police car, the officer and I, and it was a battered-looking place with a sergeant behind a big desk, and sure enough, five or six people waiting to use the telephone, which was so high against the wall that everybody had to stand on tiptoe and yell into it. The sergeant was a fat man who told me I was under arrest on a complaint sworn out by Clara Gruber for embezzlement of union funds, and that if I gave him the required information about myself quickly he might be able to get my case disposed of before the magistrate went home to dinner and at least I would know the amount of bail.
But just as I had finished giving him my name, age and residence, Mr. Holden came striding in and that was the end of it. He said something quickly to the sergeant and then I saw Clara Gruber standing outside the door looking pretty uncomfortable. He beckoned to her and then he, she and the sergeant went into a room where there seemed to be some kind of court in session. When they came out he took my arm and patted it. “It’s all over—Clara made a little mistake.”
“The money is still in the bank, every cent of it.”
“Don’t I know it? Come on—the girls are waiting to give you a cheer.”
What became of Clara Gruber I don’t know, because before I knew it I was in a taxi with him and in a few minutes we were at Reliance Hall. Hundreds of girls were up there holding a big meeting and when he brought me in they all started to yell and applaud and newspaper photographers began clicking flashlights in my eyes and when I got up on the platform the cheering broke out into one long scream. Next thing Mr. Holden was banging for order and a girl was on her feet nominating me for president. That was when I got into it. I made them a little speech, saying that I still regarded myself as one of the them and wanted to keep on being treasurer but that I couldn’t be president because I had just got married and might not have the time to give to the duties. However, I never really finished about why I didn’t want to be president. As soon as I mentioned my marriage they all broke out again into yells and I realized that why they were cheering for me had nothing to do with the
money at all but was really on account of my marrying Grant. I felt warm and friendly and a little weepy, because it meant something after the day I had had to know I had friends, but at the same time I wanted to get out of there, because what they had in mind was a successful Cinderella and I didn’t feel that way about it at all and even hated the very idea. Besides, no matter how angry I had been at Grant, I had to get back to him.
Mr. Holden must have guessed what I was thinking, because he banged for order again and made them a little speech saying I had to leave and for them to continue with the reelection of a new president and he would be back. So next day, I found out, they elected a girl by the name of Shirley Silverstein from the Brooklyn restaurant.
When we got to the street we didn’t take a taxi, we went to a little coffee pot around the corner and I ordered bacon and eggs, and Mr. Holden had a cup of coffee. His whole manner changed as soon as we had done our ordering, and he sat there studying me until finally a bitter little smile came over his face. “Well—how does it feel to be rich, envied and socially prominent?”
I could see he was horribly disappointed in me for having, as he thought, engaged in a cold-blooded piece of gold-digging, and I had to exercise control to keep from laughing in wild shrieks. However, I merely said: “Please—I didn’t know anything about that until I read the papers.”
“I think you’re lying.”
“I’m not lying.”
He lit a cigarette and studied me for a time, then took my hand again. “How’s it going?”
“Terribly.”
“I wanted you myself.”
“Then why didn’t you ask me?”
“I made up my mind long ago I would never ask any woman unless I knew she wanted me to—a great deal.”
“I thought you meant something else.”
“I did. If you didn’t want me enough for that I wouldn’t want you enough for this.”
I felt somehow guilty, as though I ought not to be talking of such things with him at all, so I said nothing. After a moment he went on: “Did you?”
Root of His Evil Page 6