The Rebellion of Yale Marratt

by Robert H. Rimmer

  Yale knew that she had visions of herself being escorted by her son to some of the fancier night clubs. No doubt she would suggest that he wear his uniform. Even if the war was over -- no one could possibly object to his wearing his uniform for a little while longer.

  Of course, Yale wasn't a Major, but a First Lieutenant would provide a nice backdrop for Liz.

  Pat quickly took up the idea and embellished it with the glamor of daily jaunts after sailfish. Pat had chartered a boat. It was already waiting for him.

  Neither of them believed that Yale would refuse. When he did, it became just one more instance of his intractability. Five years away from home had obviously not changed his stubborn disposition. It was incomprehensible. There wasn't another young man in Midhaven who wouldn't have jumped at the idea.

  To close off the discussion and avoid further arguments, Yale told them that he wanted the next few weeks to iron out things in his own mind. Perhaps, while they were gone he would go down to the plant and look things over.

  It was a vacillating answer and he was angry with himself for the indecision. Before Pat got back from Florida he would have to make up his mind.

  What would Pat think if he knew that his son had a suitcase under his bed neatly packed with a million rupees? More than three hundred thousand dollars by present rates of exchange. Pat wouldn't worry about the moral issues -- that was certain. He would consider it a financial coup of the first order.

  Yale hadn't given much thought to the rupees. Money didn't interest him. He was directionless. But, very soon, he should attempt to convert them into dollars. Actually, any plans for the future hinged on whether he could make the conversion. He had only a few hundred dollars left from his mustering-out pay. The second he ran out of money Pat would have won.

  The lights from an approaching truck jarred Yale back to the present reality of the storm. As he crawled nearer, hugging his car to the side of the road, he realized that the truck wasn't moving. It was a snowplow. Yale stopped and cranked his window down. "How is it up ahead?" he yelled at the driver who was slouched down behind his wheel. A surly looking man leaned out of the cab and looked at him.

  "Couple of real drifts about a mile ahead . . . your way. I busted through them on this side, but they'll be filled in half an hour. My engine's conked out."

  "Sorry," Yale said. He wondered whether the driver planned to sit out the storm in the cab of his plow. "What is the name of this place?" Yale asked. The driver of the snowplow told him that it was Berks County.

  Yale waved good-bye. He had thirty more miles to go. At this rate it would take him an hour or more. It had been crazy to drive all the way to Boston. Doubly crazy to drive back in a blizzard; If he had been a little more cold-blooded, and not worried about what Cynthia thought, he could have been in bed with her right now. Why couldn't he just screw a woman and move on . . . that's all that was possible with Cynthia now. Why had he reopened pages of his life that should have been left closed?

  Was it the dark shadow that Mat Chilling had cast over his life ever since he had known him? Or was it because he was haunted by his love for Cynthia? Yale had tried to tell himself that the reason that he wanted to find Mat was that Mat might very well know where Anne was. Anne had liked Mat. She might have written to him. If Yale had told Harrigan, Harrigan would have investigated and found whatever Mat knew about Anne. But Yale told himself that he really must talk personally with Mat. If Mat were interested in re-activating his "Seek the True Love" . . . maybe he could help. It would be something to do. Once he got the rupees converted he could at least offer Mat financial help.

  The reasons he mustered were plausible reasons but Yale was too honest with himself not to admit the truth. He wanted to see Cynthia. He wanted to have her tell him why she still wore the ring he had given her in college. More than anything else he wanted to have the answer to the riddle that had haunted him so long. If Cynthia loved him, why had she left him? Once he found out, maybe he could banish the ghost of her forever.

  Knowing that it was a kind of immaturity to be at once so desperate to find Anne, and at the same time to feel this compulsion toward Cynthia . . . knowing it, but telling himself . . . to hell with such middle-class concepts . . . the day after Pat and Liz left for Florida Yale drove over to Midhaven College. The Alumni office would have Mat's address.

  Walking toward the administration building, he met Doctor Amos Tangle who greeted him warmly. "Pat told me you were home, Yale. I'm glad that you made it safely. A great many Midhaven boys didn't." Doctor Tangle looked properly sad. "Well, well . . . a lot of water has passed under the bridge since your college days. You are a grown man now. Won't be long before you are taking over for Pat. A good thing, too. As a minority stockholder I've told him time and again to loosen his reins a little. I think he will now. Fine thing . . . following in your father's footsteps. What brings you over to the college? Feeling nostalgic?" It crossed Doctor Tangle's mind that this might not be the wise thing to have said.

  Yale explained that he had met Mat Chilling in India. They had been very close. He had come over to the college to obtain Mat's address.

  This time Doctor Tangle's look of sadness was genuine. "Mat is dead. Yale! A terribly shocking accident. While Mat and I had parted ways over this love nonsense of his, nevertheless I always respected him. A brilliant mind. Such futility life has at times. Mat came home last November. . . ."

  Stunned . . . with a feeling of loss so deep that it was like a body blow, Yale wanted to shout, "For God's sake, how? What happened?" It was incredible. Impossible. It was as if Doctor Tangle were telling him that God was dead! But Yale said nothing. He listened, tears in his eyes, while Doctor Tangle told him how Mat was killed in an automobile accident. His car had skidded, plunged over an embankment, and Mat's neck had been broken.

  "Too bad. . . . too bad." Doctor Tangle's face reassumed its ministerial cast. "But we all have to go. At least Mat didn't suffer."

  Yale escaped Doctor Tangle and in the Alumni office he found the complete story. Mat had been returning to his home in Swampscott from Evans Academy, a boys' school up north on the Newburyport Turnpike. His car had skidded somehow, crashed over an embankment and turned over. Death was immediate. Fortunately, no one had been with him. He was survived by his widow, Cynthia Chilling, née Carnell, Class of 1939. There were no children.

  He called Mat's Swampscott address and found that the house had been sold. The woman who answered the phone told him that she believed Mrs. Chilling was living in South Boston . . . she was working at Jordan Marsh. Yes, she had a forwarding address. Yale wrote it down with a trembling hand.

  It was snowing lightly when Yale arrived in Boston. As he drove by the buildings of Harvard Business School, he remembered Sam Higgins and Agatha Latham. Either one of them might be able to give him some advice on how to dispose of the rupees. Was Agatha still alive? Evidently, or Pat or Liz would have mentioned it. As for Sam, he probably was well ensconced in his father's investment business. He would have to contact one or the other of them soon.

  The address that the woman had given him took him to one of South Boston's alphabet streets. A depressing area of houses built without style and without grace just after the Civil War. They had been erected too late to benefit from the clean lines of the Colonial period but not too early to suffer from the gingerbread and gimcrack construction of the turn of the century.

  Plowing through drifts, he walked into the entrance of a house indistinguishable from rows of its neighbors. He tried to ignore the pervasive smell of boiled spare ribs and the penetrating odor of animal fats that had seeped into the woodwork over the years.

  Why had Cynthia moved into such a poor place? Hadn't Mat left any money? He wondered why Mat hadn't gone back into the ministry instead of seeking a teaching job. If Mat had lived would he have tried to start his tent show again? It was too bad, because Yale had begun to feel that Mat Chilling was really himself, Yale Marratt . . . only properly focused; with the goal
s of his life clearly in front of him. There was no purpose . . no teleological meaning in a universe that could permit the snuffing out of a life like Mat's. Yale knew that Mat would have disagreed with him -- that if there were purpose in the world . . . it might be meaningful for men but it was of no interest or concern to the Ultimate.

  Peering around in the dimly lighted hall, Yale found Cynthia's name on a mailbox . . . third floor. Yale climbed the stairs apprehensively. Would Cynthia be home? What would she say? At last, he would be able to find out what had happened in 1939. That was six long years ago and the boy, Yale Marratt, had long since vanished into memory; buried beneath an accumulation of time that so far had added up to nothing. Was it worth knowing, now? Was there any reason, really, why Cynthia had left him beyond the simple fact that she didn't love him?

  A few seconds after his knock, the door opened. Cynthia, a startled expression on her face, greeted him.

  "Yale Marratt! I can't believe it," she gasped.

  Yale experienced the same surge of relief and happiness he had known when Cynthia used to come tripping down the dormitory stairs at Midhaven College.

  "Come in! Come in!" she said happily. "And excuse the mess!"

  He followed her into the room, noting that she was neatly dressed in a black skirt, and a pale green sweater that buttoned over her full breasts. He glanced around. It was a one-room apartment with a brass bedstead in one corner and a dresser. On the opposite wall there was a hot plate and a stained white sink. There was one chair near a small window that looked out over back yards full of trash and endless clotheslines. Cynthia sat on the bed and stared at him. "Oh, Yale, I can't believe it is you. You look so tanned . . . just like Mat when he first came back. You really have become quite handsome. Do you know that?"

  Yale blushed. He sat in the chair and fidgeted uneasily. His eye caught the entrance to a small bathroom. A clothesline stretched across it was hung with stockings and underwear.

  "I heard about Mat just yesterday, Cindar. I'm awfully sorry.

  She nodded. "It was a shock, Yale. Some days I can't believe the reality of it. I expect I'll go to our house in Swampscott and he will be there like he was, full of plans to help people, bursting with enthusiasm for new projects like thai one in Miami." She paused and stared at Yale, a hopeless expression on her face, her eyes moist with tears. She made a strong effort and recovered herself. "It's nice to see you, Yale. I guess you are about the only friend I have left in the world. Daddy died three years ago. After that Aunt Adar seemed to just wither away. The blow of having Michael killed in France and Lennie away in Germany with the Occupation . . . the empty house . . . the farm not producing . . . I stayed with her while Mat was in India. She died a few months before he came home."

  Cynthia sighed. "It's a crazy world, isn't it, Yale?" She looked more closely at his face. "You haven't changed much. You've got a shorter haircut. You look like a Harvard man." She grinned a little when he blushed. "But you're still Yale Marratt!"

  Yale tried not to stare at her uplifted breasts, and the slight curve of her stomach beneath her skirt. There was a saying he had heard in the Army: "good tits . . . no hips . . . good hips . . . no tits" -- but Cynthia belied the saying. Who was the famous painter who had looked for a model with a "pear-shaped ass"? Cynthia had it, plus full excellent breasts all molded by her skirt and sweater.

  She caught his glance. "Am I showing already?" She tried to make her voice light and humorous.

  Yale looked puzzled.

  "I'm pregnant, Yale. I thought maybe you noticed."

  Yale thought, Good God! -- No! Cynthia couldn't be pregnant! What an ironic twist of fate. Pregnant! Mat dead? She was kidding . . . playing for sympathy. "You don't look very pregnant to me," he said hollowly.

  He could see her stiffen a little with anger. "You never were one for social amenities, were you, Yale?"

  "Look who is talking," Yale said angrily. "I can't remember you gracefully saying good-bye to me. There must have been some nicer 'social' way of kissing me off. I don't remember any amenities at all."

  Cynthia sat down on the bed; tears in her eyes. "Yale, let's not shout at each other. I am sorry . . . sorry to the very core of my being. It was rotten, terrible . . . but it had to be done," she whispered.

  "I didn't come here to make you cry," Yale said, feeling his stomach twist. I'm a sap, he thought, she can still make me feel badly for her with just a facial expression. "I'm still a little stunned. I don't mean because you are going to have a kid, although that's really bad luck . . . but at Mat being dead." He paused, "Oh, hell, Cindar. You're pregnant. Mat got the prize. I should hate the bastard . . . be glad he is dead." Yale saw Cynthia wince. ". . . but I don't . . . in fact, for several months in India we were very close. When I think about him seriously it's with a great deal of admiration." Yale walked over to the bed. He looked at Cynthia. "I'm sorry for you, too mostly, I guess I'm sorry for myself."

  He sat down beside her, and noticed that she was still wearing the ring he had given her.

  "Yes, I'm still wearing it, Yale. Mat knew that you gave it to me." She smiled through her tears at his puzzled expression. "You must never blame Mat for what I did. He had nothing to do with it. He was a fine, good person. I'm glad I'm going to have his baby. . . ." She noticed the strange expression on Yale's face, and said sadly, "Don't you understand, Yale? Even though I loved you, we never could have been married. I'm Jewish . . . Jewish Jewish. Isn't that clear enough?" She hissed the words at him and then dropped back on the bed, sobbing.

  Yale looked at her, bewildered. He was struck again with the classic beauty of her face, wide-spaced eyes, and high cheek bones descending in perfect curves to a well-formed chin. He felt a resurgence of desire for her that was overwhelming.

  "God-almighty, Cindar. I must be stupid but I simply don't understand you. I loved you."

  "You're lucky not to have been involved with me. Now -- you are married to a girl your father couldn't object to."

  Yale stared at her, astonished by her statement. "What do you know about Anne?" he demanded. "Have you seen her?"

  "I never met her, Yale. Mat told me that she is lovely." Cynthia looked at him solemnly. "He told me about your marriage."

  "Did he tell you why Anne came back to the States so suddenly? Did he tell you where she is now?"

  Cynthia's face showed her surprise. "She was pregnant, Yale. Mat thought you knew! Oh, God, don't tell me you didn't know! I'm sure Mat thought you were well aware of what happened."

  Yale told her quickly that he hadn't seen Anne since the previous July. He told her how he had been searching for her . . . using a detective agency. Cynthia listened, amazed. "I can't understand it, Yale. I'm sure that she wrote Mat. I remember his reading her letter saying that you were excited and pleased with the idea of her having a baby. I think she was in Paris when Mat got the letter. She said that she was coming back to the States, to wait for you until the war was over."

  "I had absolutely no idea that she was pregnant," Yale said, stunned. It suddenly occurred to him that if Anne had been pregnant in Paris she must have known it when they were in India. The baby must already be born! Somewhere his child was living. My God, he thought, why had Anne done this? Or maybe there was no child. Maybe she had come home and had an abortion. That must be it! She had hated the idea of being pregnant by him. That was the whole answer; the end of a love.

  He told Cynthia his thoughts. She shook her head.

  "It doesn't seem logical, Yale. Of course, I don't know. All I do know is that Mat was happy that you had found her. He was sure she was deeply in love with you."

  Yale rubbed his hand against his face in a gesture of despair. "Oh, I've known two very logical women, haven't I, though? One leaves me because she's Jewish, and one because she's pregnant."

  "I'm sorry, Yale." She sighed, thinking that whatever motivated Anne to leave Yale certainly couldn't have been as terrible as that awful day in Pat Marratt's office.

  "Forge
t it. . . ." Yale said. "The problem is what are you going to do? Why are you living in a dump like this? Didn't Mat have any insurance? You better bring me up to date."

  "It's not your worry, Yale. I'll get along all right."

  "Look, stupid, I have money, I can help you."

  Cynthia replied as if she hadn't heard Yale. She stared at the ceiling, seeing disjointed pictures of the past five years flickering on its yellowed surface.

  "I didn't love Mat at first, Yale. He was older like a father . . . and good . . . a refuge." Yale leaned over her as she talked. . . . He watched her brown eyes, her full lips, her tear-stained cheeks, and he knew that his feeling for her hadn't changed.

  ". . . but when he came back from India, I knew that I had missed him. In the few months we had left together we really discovered each other. Mat had changed . . . the fire-eating, Bible-thumping evangelist had disappeared. He was more human somehow . . . still out to change the world but on a quieter basis. The 'Seek-the-True-Love' days were over. He had written a book in India and was determined to find a publisher." Cynthia smiled. "I guess somehow I had finally made up my mind that Mat was really going to be my life. That's when we decided to have a baby.

  "We bought a small development house in Swampscott. Mat had been promised a church of his own in a nearby town . . . in about a year . . . when the present minister retired. The money Mat had accumulated from the 'Seek-the-True-Love' venture, even the donated money which amounted to nearly ten thousand dollars and which Mat had tried to put into a special fund, was gobbled up by creditors.

  "Neither of us was very practical. You see, Mat had borrowed most of the money for the tent. It was second hand but it cost a fabulous amount. Then we had to have a trailer. . . ." Cynthia shrugged. "Anyway, we were pretty much broke. Even the money Daddy left me vanished. Mat had gone to Evans Academy to apply for a teaching job the day he was killed. They called me from the Melrose Hospital. He was dead before I got there. It was a stupid accident. His car skidded, went over an embankment. His neck was broken. . . ."