by Talbot Mundy
Elsa spoke first: “Andrew,” she said after a long while, “I’ve meant the opposite — but I’ve become a perfect infliction on you. If karma is what we are told it is, mine piles up—”
“See here,” he retorted. “You’re always praising me and blaming yourself. Try reversing it.”
“I’m finding fault with both of us,” she said, resting her chin on her knees.
“What’s wrong with either of us?” he retorted. “Aren’t you doing your best? I know I am.”
“There must be something wrong,” she said after a moment.
“Yeah. We’re human.”
“We have been through so much together. And yet — I have tried to make myself understood—”
“You mean, by me?”
“Yes, Andrew. Just as a matter of fair play.”
“Sure it was fair play?”
“What would you call it?”
“Was it fair to yourself?”
“Yes. Of course it was. I shouldn’t feel like a stranger to you. And I’ve tried to understand you, for the same reason. But you’ve never let me.”
“People shouldn’t understand each other,” he answered. “It isn’t decent. To understand is to hate or despise. For instance, I understand St. Malo and Bulah Singh. If you understood me you’d despise me. I don’t wish that.”
“How could I possibly despise you, after all you’ve done. And besides, Andrew, you’re not a criminal.”
It was almost a question. She shrank at the inflection of her own voice. But it was too late to recall it.
“What is a criminal?” he answered. “Where’s the dividing line?”
“I meant, Bulah Singh, for instance, is a fugitive from justice. You’re not.”
“What is justice? I never saw any yet” Something had released the spring. Andrew was coming unwound. “Take an example,” he went on. “Do you consider your Monsieur X is receiving justice — from God — humanity — anyone? As far as it’s in me to give it, he’ll get it from me. But what do I know about him? So how can I give it? All I know is what I’ve heard about him, what you’ve told me, and what I infer. That’s all. It amounts to damned little justice? I’m a lawyer. There ain’t no such animal.”
“Andrew, you are difficult tonight.”
“Life’s difficult.”
“Do we know each other well enough for me to say what I really think?”
“About me?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll have to use your own judgment.”
“Is that a challenge? Or a warning? Or—”
“Sometimes things are said that stick like barbs. It isn’t wise to tell all you know, or all you think you know. Even when you’re in love it isn’t wise.”
He paused. Elsa held her breath. Had he divined her secret? Did he know she loved him? Was he resenting it? Was that the cause of his moodiness? She breathed again when he continued:
“You should know that. Did you tell Tom Grayne everything you thought you knew about you and him?”
“I tried to.”
“But you didn’t?”
“Couldn’t.”
“Women don’t understand,” he said after a moment. “They don’t realize that if a man respects ’em he shows ’em only his best. The mistake they make is in thinking it isn’t his best. They can’t let well enough alone. So they examine critically. Then they get more than they asked for — and bang goes another friendship, because they discover — or they think they do — what the man is afraid of.”
“Andrew, you’re afraid of something.”
“Maybe you’re right. I don’t doubt you’d like to be told. You’d take that as a compliment. But believe me, damned few compliments of that kind are worth what they cost.”
“Andrew, I wouldn’t count costs if I could do you any good. I feel, perhaps I could help, if you’d let me. I know you’re not afraid of these Tibetans, nor of Bulah Singh and St. Malo. You’re not afraid of tomorrow’s march — I know you’re not, although everyone else is — except me. But you’re afraid of something.”
“Meaning, I suppose, ‘tell Mamma.’”
“No. I refuse to be Mamma.”
“That’s good. If she had her own way my Mamma’s in heaven. She’s in hell if the preacher was right. Anyhow, one was enough.”
“You didn’t like her?”
“I loved her. But one was enough. When she died, I flew the matriarchal coop. If I hate anything it’s one of these synthetic mothers.”
Elsa felt she was getting nowhere, slipping backward. She threw caution to the winds: “Well, Andrew, there’s no need to tell you I’m burned up with curiosity. I know you’re afraid. And yet I know you’re not running away. So I think you’re afraid of yourself.”
Instead of answering, he met her eyes. The moonlight revealed his clearly but it did not tell the meaning of their strange excitement. Was he angry? He got up, strode as far as the pony lines, gave an order, found fault with Bompo Tsering, stood listening for a moment near Bulah Singh’s tent on his way back, and came and sat down. This time he didn’t look at her.
“See here,” he said almost savagely: “I won’t even try to tell you all of it. It’s too long and too difficult too much about me: But I’ll admit this: the arrival of the man we’ve agreed to call Monsieur X has upset me no end!”
“How, Andrew? In what way? Can’t you tell me at least that much?”
“Brought up memories. Conjured ’em — stirred ’em, like mud off a river bottom.”
“But you’re not an escapist, Andrew. You’re not running away from memories. I know you’re not.”
He looked at her. She marveled at his blindness that he couldn’t read how utterly she loved him. Or was it that her eyes were so dumb with love that they couldn’t tell?
“How can you know?” he answered. “You’re guessing. Or else you’re slapping on the praise to hide what you really think.”
“Andrew, do you like being cruel?”
“I hate cruelty.”
“Well then, please don’t suggest I’m lying when I tell you I know something. I don’t believe I do lie very often. I would lie to you last. Do you believe me?”
“Yes, I do believe you. You don’t tell lies.”
Suddenly she knew the veil that hid his memories was slowly being lifted — like a dark portcullis — by a force beyond his power to control. Her heart thumped so she was afraid he’d hear it.
He said quietly: “You’re the first person who has ever given me a square deal about that.”
“About what, Andrew?”
“About my not running away. God damn their souls to hell, every son of a bitch friend or enemy who ever heard the name of Freud has called me an escapist. What makes you think otherwise?”
“I suppose it’s intuition. Are you forgetting I’m clairvoyant — sometimes?”
He fell silent again, watching the shadows, listening. For the time he was two men. Two separate groups of senses held his attention. Instinct watched the bivouac, alert for familiar danger. Intuition trembled and leaped toward un-danger — unfamiliar — unknown, and very difficult to trust because instinct said no to it.
Elsa’s voice with a smile to it interrupted his thought: “Andrew, what is it that you’re not running away from?”
Heavier humor might have driven thought inward and scattered it. That light touch took the weight off. He laughed:
“My country ’tis of thee!”
He reached into his huge hip pocket for a hunk of root and his whittling knife. By the dim light of the lantern he carved guide lines, blocking off roughly the main planes of a head and shoulders. They might be anyone’s head and shoulders — something unborn yet.
“Andrew, you’ve always said you love your country. I got the impression that you love America far more than I love England.”
“I love America.” He whittled one side of the root smooth and then put it away. “Don’t you love England?”
“I suppose I do,” sh
e answered. “But not fanatically. What is there to love? Chamberlain and Lady Astor? Decadence — miles and miles of awful council houses — dreary monotony — suburbs — keeping up with the Joneses — snobbery — lip-service to traditions that died in the war — vulgarity — awful vulgarity — and an empire that means nothing now — always but L.s.d. — pounds, shillings and pence. I love some people in England. I can think of at least ten people whom I really love — perhaps a hundred whom I really like. But I think the England I would like to love died centuries ago. No, I’m not afraid of England,” she added. “Why are you afraid of America?”
He closed his whittling knife and put it away. It was an unconscious gesture, signifying nothing to himself. To an observer it was as clear as the line of his lips in the yellow lamplight that he had dismissed side issues. He intended to “come clean.”
“So you insist on knowing. Well, I’ll tell you. But answer this first: have you any cads in England? Any stinkers? Any lying hypocrites in high places — patrioteers — racketeers — pimps — panders — hogs with their snouts at the public teat — treacherous labor leaders — nouveaux riches, who’d sell their king for a tax rebate — unctuous churchmen drawing dividends from munition factories — double-crossing lawyers? — Any cowards, thieves, fakers, pompous bureaucrats, place hunters, sail-trimmers—”
“Andrew!”
“Well — have you any?”
“Yes, of course. All countries have them.”
“For every one you have in England, we have half a dozen in the U.S.A. What’s worse, ours are more competent. They’re bolder. They’re just as yellow at heart, but they’re tougher skinned and they’ve ten times the opportunity.”
“But, Andrew, surely all Americans aren’t grafters. In England we have—”
“Listen!” he interrupted. “You’ve some good men and women left in Great Britain. Some. No doubt, none better. But for every one you’ve got left, we’ve got at least two in the U.S.A. And they’re better than yours. There are plenty of reasons why that should be. The United States is the God-damned craziest country on earth. It’s a hotbed of all the phony isms, cults, philosophies, diseased religions, chicaneries, iniquities, stupid laws, vices, obscenities and God knows what else. But it’s the best country. And it’s the last one left that has a chance to lead the world out of the mess it’s in. I said lead, not save. It’s got the men and women who can do it, given a chance. But do they get the chance? That’s what eats me. Let a wise man — or an honest woman — and they’re scarce, mind you — make a move toward liberty, sanity, decency, dignity — those are all one, and don’t forget it — instantly a thousand greedy liars with tongues in their cheeks — smug, blatant lip-servers — all of ’em drooling for loot, slobbering for a chance to exploit — leap up behind some catch-phrase demagogue or pulpiteer to steal the movement or else kill it.”
He let indignation boil a moment, enjoying the emotion. Then he suddenly resumed: “Almighty God! You wouldn’t believe what gets by! One of my first important jobs was to help prosecute a political boss. His corruption was so obscene that nine-tenths of the evidence couldn’t be printed — even nowadays when people discuss syphilis at dinner. He was hand-in-glove with priests; they took money from him to what they call educate the children of the parents he had looted. He’d stood in with, and taken money from brothels, crooked gambling joints and all the rackets there are. No graft-sow was too rotten for him to milk. A nice, prissy-faced, silver-haired daddy with a smile that ‘ud melt your heart. His wife’s furs had been bought with a percentage of the earnings of diseased whores, who had to earn it and come across or go to jail. His sons were put through college on the proceeds of the bail bond business. That’s another stinking racket that only a son of a bitch would touch. He was proved at the trial to have double-crossed his own gang scores of times, and to have cunningly passed the buck to someone else. He was guilty of almost every crime in the calendar, including incitement to murder. He was a stinking, baby-kissing swine, who had the impudence to call character witnesses to prove he was a faithful Catholic. Even the Catholic Irish judge got sore at that; I guess he added two years to the sentence. But here’s where the limit came. This is what staggered me, so that I can’t even talk of it now without feeling sick at the stomach. He was brought up for sentence on a Friday. He got twelve years. He should have had life, but he was let off with twelve years, partly because of his age, and partly, no doubt, to encourage him to keep his mouth shut. What d’you suppose he said to the judge? You’d never guess. He said: ‘You’ll have your conscience to live with! There’s a God in Heaven. The Lord Jesus Christ was also sentenced on a Friday.’”
“But, Andrew, why should that man’s blasphemy offend you so much?”
“It didn’t. It doesn’t. This is what burns me. All the newspapers front- paged it. And what did the public do? The criminal himself, the prosecuting attorney, the judge, and all the members of the jury received a total of hundreds of thousands of letters from all over the United States, sympathizing with him and denouncing his prosecutors. Hundreds of thousands of letters. They were turned over to me to deal with. That’s how I know.”
“How did you deal with them? What did you do?”
“I sorted ’em. Studied ’em. I sort of added ’em to what I knew already from having talked to witnesses and having sat through the trial. At last I got permission to have ’em burned in the courthouse furnace. And by that time I had formed an opinion.”
“You mean about America?”
“Yes. And about me and my job.”
“Are you still of the same opinion?”
“Yes. I’m going to tell it to you. So get ready to laugh.”
Elsa didn’t speak. She felt more like crying. The fierce intentness on Andrew’s face recalled how he looked when her baby was being born.
“At first,” he said, “I thought of throwing up the law and turning politician. But I came across Lincoln’s statement, and I thought so much about it that I soon had it by heart. Mind you, Lincoln’s my hero. I’m quoting him exactly, word for word:
“‘Politicians are a set of men who have interests aside from the interests of the people, and who, to say the most for them, are at least one long step removed from honest men. I say this with greater freedom being a politician myself.’”
“Andrew, is that what you thought I would laugh at?”
“No. Wait. That’s corning. It occurred to me that if Lincoln couldn’t be honest in politics, probably no one can be. Jesus couldn’t. Certainly I couldn’t. But I could make a stab at being honest, and I owed that to my country, because I love my country. One thought led to another, beginning with the thought ‘my country,’ and leading on from that, trying to think honestly and throwing overboard all the pestilential tripe I’d learned in Sunday School about salvation by cruelty-torture on a cross and psalm-singing. Here’s where the laugh comes in. Are you ready?”
“Yes,” said Elsa.
“Thinking honestly for the first time, I began to see clearly. It was almost a knockout. I discovered that as long as there’s a louse-priest, or a pimp-politician — a whore or a racketeer or a mad-dog evangelist crook in the United States; as long as there’s a despicable financial buzzard preparing to rule a ruined world, or a hog-swill leader betraying his followers, or a tut-mouthed congressman lying for reelection — I’m it! It’s my country.”
“Andrew!”
“Laugh all you like. That’s what I thought. It’s what I still think. It’s what I know.”
“And you left the United States on that account?”
“No, I didn’t. I became a reformer — of me. I took a good long look — and — think about the professional reformers, and at some private ones too. I decided: the hell with them all. There might be one who wasn’t doing more harm than good. I couldn’t find him. Anti-saloon leaguers, anti-vice crusaders, Watch and Ward keyhole peepers — Ku-Klux-Klan-sters — every last one of ’em that I could find was parasiting off the pu
blic he was supposed to be out to reform. I’d be ashamed to be a professional reformer, simply on the ground of what I actually know about ’em as a class and as individuals, first-hand. God! I’d as soon be a missionary!”
“But you still haven’t told why you left the United States.”
“I’m coming to it. I could reform me. Couldn’t I? I could try, anyhow. So I got busy trying to avoid self-righteousness by bearing in mind that any rottenness I saw was in my own eye — the same way that color is in the eye of the looker. Started being honest with myself first. I found carving portraits in wood was a great help. Anything you can do with your hands helps train your mind. I tried hard, because I had to do something to keep my belly from turning over at the things I knew about my country — that’s to say about me. Then I made a mistake.”
He paused for a moment. He had to force the rest out of himself. He hated doing it. Elsa’s blood turned cold because she guessed again that he knew she had fallen in love with him and he was trying to cure her of it by revealing the unpalatable truth.
“I fell in love.”
He shot the words out like a pronouncement of doom, then got up and walked away, to look over the ponies’ rations and check up Bompo Tsering’s rearrangement of the loads. Elsa sat still, numbed.
“So it’s a mistake to fall in love.”
She turned that over in her mind. Or it turned itself over. It repeated, again and again. She smiled wanly. It was hardly a gentle hint. It held none of Andrew’s usual kindness. If he knew she loved him, as it seemed he did, it would have been more like him to say something straightforward about it. But she thought that perhaps all honest men hint clumsily and only the treacherous sort do it well. It was just Andrew being honest.