All the king's men

by Роберт Пенн Уоррен

  She was standing there, not quite ready to start patting the blue carpet with an impatient toe, turning her smooth, cool face (under a light-blue felt hat) slowly from one side to the other to survey the room. I caught the flash of blue in her eyes in the mirror. When she was just behind me, she said, "Jack."

  I didn't look round. "Slade," I said, "this strange woman keeps following me round, and I thought you ran a respectable place. What the hell are you going to do about it?"

  Slade had swung round to look at the strange woman, whose face was all at once chalk-white and whose eyes were uttering sparks like a couple of arc lights. "Lady," Slade said, "now look here, lady–"

  Then the lady suddenly overcame the paralysis which had frozen her tongue and the blood hit her cheeks. "Jack Burden!" she said, "if you don't–"

  "She knows your name," Slade said.

  I turned around to face the reality which was not something caught in the ice of the mind but was something now flushed, feline, lethal, and electric and about to blow a fuse. "Well, I declare," I said, "if it isn't my fiancée! Say, Slade, I want you to meet Anne Stanton. We're going to get married."

  "Gee," Slade said, his pan as dead as something in the sink next morning, "I'm glad ter–"

  "We're getting married in twenty-hundred-and-fifty," I said. "It will be a June wedding, with–"

  "It will be a March murder," Anne said, "right now." Then she smiled, and the blood subsided in her cheeks, and she put out her hand to Slade.

  "Glad ter meetcha," Slade said, and though the face which he exhibited might well have belonged to a wooden Indian, the eyes in it didn't miss any of the details suggested by the coat suit. "How about a drink?" he asked.

  "Thank you," Anne said, and settled on a Martini After the drink, she said, "Jack, we've got to go," thanked Slade again, and led me away into the night full of neon lights, gasoline fumes, the odor of roasted coffee, and the honk of taxis.

  "You have a wonderful sense of humor," she said.

  "Where are we going? I sidestepped her remark.

  "You are such a smart aleck."

  "Where are we going?"

  "Aren't you ever going to grow up?"

  "Where are we going?"

  We were walking aimlessly down the side street past the swinging doors of the bars and oyster joints and past newsstands and old women selling flowers. I bought some gardenias, gave them to her, and said, "I reckon I am a smart aleck, bit it is just a way to pass the time."

  We walk on another half block, threading through the crowd that drifted and eddied in and out of the swinging doors.

  "Where are we going?"

  "I wouldn't be going anywhere with you," she said, "if I didn't have to talk to you."

  We were passing another old woman selling flowers. So I took another bunch of gardenias, laid down my four bits, and shoved the blossoms at Anne Stanton. "If you can't be civil," I said, "I'm going to smother you in these damned things."

  "All right," she said, and laughed, "all right, I'll be good." And she swung on to my arm and matched her step to mine, holding the flowers in her free hand, her bag tucked under the off elbow.

  We kept step, not talking for a half block. I looked down, watching her feet flick out, one-two, one-two. She was wearing black suède shoes, very severe, very mannish, and she clicked the pavement with authority, but they were small and the fine ankles flickered, one-two, one-two, hypnotically.

  Then I said, "Where are we going?"

  "To walk," she said, "just walk. I'm too restless to be still."

  We walked on, down toward the river.

  "I had to talk to you," she said.

  "Well, talk then. Sing. Spill."

  "Not now," she said soberly and looked up at me and I saw in the light of the street lamp that her face was very serious, even worried. The flesh seemed smoothed back, even painfully taut over the wonderful perfection of the bone structure of her face. There wasn't any waste material in that face, and always there was a hint in it of a trained-down, keyed-up intensity, though an intensity kept under the smooth surface of calm, like a flame behind glass. But the intensity was keyed up more than usual, I could see. And I had the feeling that id you turned the wick up a fraction the glass might crack.

  I didn't reply, and we took a few more paces. Then she said, "Later. Now just walk."

  So we walked. We had left the streets where the bars and pool-rooms and restaurants were, and the blare or whimper of music from beyond the swinging doors. We passed down a grubby, dark street where a couple of boys scurried along by the walls of the houses, uttering short, lost-sounding, hollow calls, like marsh birds. The shutters were all closed on these houses, with here and there a tiny chink of light showing, or perhaps the faint sound of voices. Later in the spring, when the weather turned, people would be sitting out on the sidewalk stoops here in the evenings, talking back and forth, and now and then, if you were a man passing, one of the women would say in a conversational tone, "Hey, bud, you want it?" For this was he edge of the crib section, and some of these houses were cribs. But at this season, at night, whatever kinds of life were in those houses–the good life and the bad life–were still withdrawn deep inside the old husks of damp, crumbling brick or flaking wood. A month from now, in early April, at the time when far away, outside the city, the water hyacinths, would be covering every inch of bayou, lagoon, creek, and backwater wit a spiritual-mauve to obscene-purple, violent, vulgar, fleshy, solid, throttling mass of bloom over the black water, and the first heartbreaking, misty green, like girlhood dreams, on the old cypresses would have settled down to be leaf and not a damned thing else, and the arm-thick, mud-colored, slime-slick moccasins would heave out of the swamp and try to cross the highway and your front tire hitting one would give a slight bump and make a sound like _kerwhush__ and a tiny thump when he slapped heavily up against the underside of the fender, and the insects would come boiling out of the swamps and day and night the whole air would vibrate with them with a sound like an electric fan, and if it was night the owls back in the swamps would be _whoo__ing and moaning like love and death and damnation, or one would sail out of the pitch dark into the rays of your headlights and plunge against the radiator to explode like a ripped feather bolster, and the fields would be deep in that rank, hairy or slick, juicy, sticky grass which the cattle gorge on and never get flesh over the ribs for that grass is in that black soil and no matter how far the roots could ever go, if the roots were God knows how deep, there would never be anything but that black, grease-clotted soil and no stone down there to put calcium into that grass–well, a month from now, in early April, when all those things would be happening beyond the suburbs, the husks of the old houses in the street where Anne Stanton and I were walking would, if it were evening, crack and spill out onto the stoops and into the street all that life which was now sealed up within.

  But now the street was blank, and dim, with a leaning lamppost at the end of the block, and the cobbles oily-greasy-glimmering in its rays and the houses shuttered, and the whole thing looked like a set for a play. You expected to see the heroine saunter up, lean against the lamppost and light a cigarette. She didn't come, however, and Anne Stanton and I walked straight through the set, which you knew was cardboard until you put out your hand to touch the damp, furry brick or spongy stucco. We walked on through without talking. Perhaps for the reason that if you are in a place like that which looks like a cardboard stage set and is so damned _q-u-a-i-n-t__, whatever you say will sound as though it had been written by some lop-haired, swivel-hipped fellow who lived in one of those cardboard houses in an upstairs apartment (overlooking the patio–Oh, Jesus, yes, overlooking the patio) and wrote a play for the Little Theater which began with the heroine sauntering into a dim street between rows of cardboard houses and leaning against an askew lamppost to light a cigarette. But Anne Stanton was not that heroine, so she didn't lean against the lamppost and didn't say a word, and we kept on walking.

  We walked on down till we
came to the river, where the warehouses were and the docks fingered out into the water. The metal roofs of the docks glimmered dully in the rays of the street lamps. Above the pilings of the docks a thick tangle of mist coiled and drifted, broken here and there to show the sleek, velvety, motionless water, which glimmered darkly like the metal of the roofs, or like a seal's black, water-slick fur. A few docks down, the stubby masts of freighters were barely visible against the dark sky. Somewhere downstream a horn was hooting and moaning. We moved along beside the docks, looking out into the river, which was tufted and matted over the blackness with the scraggly, cirrus, cottony mist. But the mist stayed close to the surface of the river, and to look out over it made you think of being on a mountain at night and looking for miles out over clouds below. There were a few lights over on the far shore.

  We came to an open pier which I remembered as the place where excursion boats picked up their crowds in summer afternoons for the moonlight ride up the river–big, jostling, yelling, baby-carrying, pop-and-likker-drinking, sweating crowds. But there wasn't any big side-wheeler there now, white as wedding cake, cranky and improbable, with red and gilt decorations, and no calliope was playing "Dixie" and no whistles blowing. The place was as still as a tomb and as blank as Gobi on a moonless night. We walked out to the end of the pier, leaned on the railing, and looked across the river.

  "All right," I said.

  She didn't answer.

  "All right," I repeated, "I thought you wanted to talk."

  "It's Adam," she said.

  "What about Adam? I asked, evenly.

  "You know–you know perfectly well–you went there and–"

  "Look here," I said, and I felt my blood getting up and my voice taking on an edge, "I went there and made him a proposition. He's a grown man and if he doesn't like it he doesn't have to take it. There's no use blaming me and–"

  "I'm not blaming you," she said.

  "You just started to jump me," I said, "but if Adam can't make up his own mind and can't take care of himself, you needn't blame me."

  "I'm not blaming you, Jack. You're so jumpy and touchy, Jack." She laid her hand on my arm, on the rail, and patted me, and I felt the head of steam in me drop a few pounds of pressure.

  "If he can't take care of himself, then you–" I began.

  But she cut in, quick and sharp, "He can't. That's the trouble."

  "Now, look here, all I did was to offer him a proposition."

  Her hand, which had been laid on my forearm to soothe me and pat down the steam pressure, suddenly clamped on me, driving the fingers damned near to the bone. I jumped, an even as I jumped, I heard her say, in a low, tense voice, almost a whisper, "You can make him take it."

  "He's a grown man and he–" I began.

  But she cut in again, "You've got to make him–you've got to!"

  "For God's sake!" I said.

  "You've got to," she repeated, in that same voice, and I was sure that the fingers clenched on my arm were bringing blood.

  "You were just now giving me hell because I merely offered him the proposition," I said, "and now you say I've got to make him take it."

  "I want him to take it," she said, and her fingers fell away from their grip.

  "Well, I'm damned," I observed in the direction of the great interstellar darkness, and then peered into her face. There wasn't much light–I could see the face, an unnatural chalk-white, and the eyes were just dark gleams–but I could tell that she meant what she said. "So you want him to take it?" I said slowly. "And you're Governor Stanton's daughter and Adam Stanton's sister, and you want him to take it?"

  "He's got to," she said, and I saw her small gloved hands clench on the railing, and felt sorry for the railing. She stared out over the coiling carpet of the river mist, as from the mountain out over the clouds hiding the dark world.

  "Why?" I asked.

  "I went up there," she said, still looking out over the river, "to talk to him about it. I wasn't sure he ought to when I went up. I wasn't sure then, but when I saw him I was."

  Something about what she was saying disturbed me, like an offstage noise or something caught out of the tail of your eye or an itch that comes when your hands are full and you can't scratch. I was listening to what she was saying, and it wasn't that. It was something else. But I couldn't catch what. So I shoved it onto the back of the stove, and listened to what she was saying.

  "When I saw how he was," she was saying, "I knew. I just knew. Oh, Jack, he was all worked up–it wasn't natural–just because he had been asked. He has cut himself off from everything–from everybody. Even from me. Not really, but it's not like it used to be."

  "He's awful busy," I objected lamely.

  "Busy," she echoed, "busy–yes, he's busy. Ever since he was in medical school, he has worked like a slave. There's just something driving him–driving him. It's not money and it's not reputation and it's not–I just don't know what–" Her voice drifted off.

  "It is very simple," I said. "He wants to do good."

  "Good," she echoed. Then, "I used to think so–oh, he does good–but–"

  "But what?"

  "Oh, I don't know–and I shouldn't say it–I shouldn't–but I almost think that the work–even the doing good–everything is just a way to cut himself off. Even from me–even me–"

  Then she said, "Oh, Jack, we had an awful row. It was awful. I went home and cried all night. You know how we've always been. And to have a terrible row. You know how we've been? You know?" She insisted, and clutched my arm, as though to make me agree, to make me tell her how they had been.

  "Yes," I said, "I know." I looked at her and was afraid for a second she was going to cry again, but she didn't, and I should have known it, for she was the kind that did her crying on the midnight pillow. If she did any.

  "I told him," she was saying, "I told him that if he wanted to do any good–really do any good–here was the time. And the way. To see that the Medical Center was run right. And even expanded. And all that. But he just froze up and said he wouldn't touch the thing. And I accused him of being selfish–of being selfish and proud–of putting his pride before everything. Before doing good–before his duty. Then he just glared at me, and grabbed me by the wrist and said I couldn't understand anything, that a man owed himself something. I said it was his pride, just his pride, and he said he was proud not to touch filth, and if I wanted him to do that I could just–" She stopped, took a breath and, I guessed, a new grip on her nerve to say what she was about to say. "Well, what he was going to say was that I could get out. But he didn't say it. I'm glad–" she paused again–"I'm glad he didn't say it. At least, he didn't say it."

  "He didn't mean it," I said.

  "I don't know–I don't know. If you had seen his eyes blazing and his face all white and drawn. Oh, Jack–" she grabbed my arm again, and shook me as though I were holding back an answer–"why won't he do it? Why is he this way? Doesn't he see he ought to? That he's the man and he's got to? Why, Jack? Why?"

  "To be perfectly brutal," I said, "it is because he is Adam Stanton, the son of Governor Stanton and grandson of Judge Peyton Stanton, and the great-grandson of General Morgan Stanton, and he has lived all his life in the idea that there was a time a long time back when everything was run by high-minded, handsome men wearing knee breeches and silver buckles or Continental blue or frock coats, or even buckskin and coonskin caps, as the case may be–for Adam Stanton isn't any snob–who sat around a table and candidly debated the good of the public thing. It is because he is a romantic, and he has a picture of the world in his head, and when the world doesn't conform in any respect to the picture, he wants to throw the world away. Even if that means throwing out the baby with the bath. Which," I added, "it always does mean."

  That held her for a moment. She turned her face from me and looked out over the misty river again. The she murmured, "He ought to take it."

  "Well," I said, "if you want him to do it, you've got to change the picture of the world inside h
is head. If I know Adam Stanton." And I did know Adam Stanton, and at that moment I could see his face with the skin drawn back tight over the bone and the strong mouth like the neatly healed wound and the deep-set blue eyes blazing like pale ice.

  She hadn't answered me.

  "That's the only way," I said, "and you might as well settle for that."

  "He ought to do it," she whispered, looking over the river.

  "How much do you want him to?"

  She swung to me, and I peered into her face. Then she said, "As much as I want anything."

  "You mean that?" I said.

  "I mean it. He's got to. To save himself." She grabbed my arm again. "For himself. As much as for everybody else. For himself."

  "Are you sure?"

  "Sure," she said, fiercely.

  "I mean sure that you want him to do it? More than anything?"

  "Yes," she said.

  I studies her face. It was a beautiful face–or if not beautiful, better than beautiful, a tense, smooth, spare-modeled, finished face, and it was chalk-white in the shadow and in the eyes were dark gleams. I studied her face, and for a moment just did that and let all the questions just slide away, like something dropped into the mist and water below us to slide away in the oily silence of the current.