There Is a River

by Thomas Sugrue

  Life had passed him by, and he had not known it was moving. Now he was doomed to be a businessman, working in a store, wrapping packages for other people, going to church only on Sundays and meeting nights.

  Eventually he would own the store, probably, and teach Sunday school. When the girls were raised and married he would build a house for his mother and father to live in. He would live with them, because by then he would be old, too, and naturally he would never marry. He would just do good for people and be nice to everyone. When Gertrude came into the store with her children he would ask her about them and talk to them, until she would turn away with tears in her eyes at the thought of the great love she had lost by not waiting for him.

  Suddenly, just as the lump in his throat seemed about either to choke him or burst, a voice in his head—a man’s voice, like his own—said, very sarcastically, “Well, what better way is there for a man to serve God and his fellow man?”

  He stopped in his tracks; he could feel himself blushing. What better way, indeed, could a Christian live, than by just such a life as he had outlined? And he had thought of it only because he was pitying himself: pitying himself for losing the life of a minister with a rich congregation, a fine house, and a beautiful wife and children. A true preacher would be a missionary and own nothing but his Bible.

  He walked on rapidly, still blushing. When a carriage with some of the guests from the party overtook him he was glad to accept the offer of a ride.

  Sitting backward, with his feet swinging out into the night and his eyes fixed on the sky, he puffed at his pipe and was no longer sorry for himself. He was going to give up the idea of being a minister. He had to. But he wasn’t going to give up Gertrude. He was going to marry her.

  FIVE

  Time found it easy to weave years into the fabric of Hopkinsville. There was never any change in the pattern. The same streets and buildings were to be covered with snow during winter, dusted with wind in March, cleansed with rain in April and May, and baked during the long, bright days of summer. The winters were cold, the springs wet, the summers hot, and the autumns glorious with soft air and leaves turned yellow, russet, and gold.

  To Edgar, who was in love and happy, the calendar and the earth were all that turned. His heart stood still, afraid to beat lest it tick away into memory the wonder of her feeling for him.

  That he loved her was not a source of happiness to him: it was a hunger which had constantly to be fed, and which could turn from ecstasy to torture if the supply of nourishment were cut off. It was her love for him that constantly thrilled him: that she did not tire of him, that she liked being with him, that of her own choice she chose his company above anyone else’s was at times almost more than he could bear. All his life he had yearned for things that were beyond him. He had become used to dreams that never came true. He was like a boy who had idly wished for wings and suddenly found himself flying through the air.

  He would be thinking about her as he worked in the store—wrapping a package or putting some new books on the shelves—when it would strike him that she was probably at the same moment thinking of him. He would see her, moving through the living room, picking up the book he had brought her to read. He would see her hand reach for the pages. He would follow the blood of her pulse up the slim arm to the clear, small face and the dark eyes, always so full of concern. He would look at the masses of hair, piled on her head like a basket, and look down into her head, trying to see what thoughts of him were moving through it. His hands would tremble, his face would flush, and he would move quickly to do something that would take his whole strength, and help him to still the wild beating that came up from his heart and flowed out through every part of him.

  He would move his thoughts away from her then, for safety’s sake. He would send them through the house in which she lived, pausing at each detail, taxing his memory to remember how it looked, and what he had been told about it. It steadied him to do this. It made his mind work, while his heart, in the background, slowed down to a normal beat.

  Next to the parlor of the Hill was the great hall, fronting on the porch, and larger than an ordinary room. In it were two large secretaries, one against each side wall. They were massive pieces of oak that reached to the ceiling. The upper part of each was shelved, with glass doors; the middle portion was a desk; the lower portion was shelved, with solid doors. Each desk had a lamp, and there was a large lamp, with a white shade, for reading. The shelves of the secretaries were filled with books; there were easy chairs scattered around for the library customers.

  He had not seen the bedrooms—there was one on the other side of the hall and two more between it and the rear of the house—but he had heard about the middle one, which Aunt Kate shared with Gertrude’s mother. There were two beds, of oak, and these beds had feather mattresses. Aunt Kate had plucked the feathers for her mattress; Lizzie, as Aunt Kate called her older sister, had plucked the feathers for her mattress. Each had done her own stuffing, sewing, and shaping. Every day they made up their beds, neither accepting assistance from the other. Each had her particular technique, and no one was allowed to touch either bed, for any purpose, except the owner. Each sister had a rocking chair. They were made of oak, with strong cane bottoms. As they moved about the house during the day they took their chairs with them, carrying them out into the back yard in summer. The chairs were as sacred as the beds, but their sanctity was sometimes violated. The sisters were continually accusing each other of occupying the wrong rocker.

  In the rear of the house was the dining room. It had an enormous oak table that dwarfed all the other furniture—sideboard, chairs, buffet. In one corner, fastened against the wall, was a large medicine chest, full of all sorts of patented drugs and home remedies. Aunt Kate constantly predicted that everyone in the house was going to be poisoned, because medicines for the cows, chickens, dogs, and human beings were all kept together in the chest, without even a differentiation of shelves to identify them. “I’ll go in there some dark night and get the wrong thing,” Aunt Kate would say, “and that will be the end of me.”

  Then there was the back room, with its famous potbellied stove. Old Mrs. Salter was a strict Christian. She constantly lectured her sons on such evils as cards, dice, and liquor, and promised dire punishment if she ever discovered evidence that the boys were indulging in any of them. One winter day she found a pack of cards in Will’s pocket. She called the family together, made a speech, and, opening the door of the stove, cast the cards into the flames.

  They were celluloid. The stove exploded, blowing off its door, tossing its lid into the air, and scattering fire over the room. No one was hurt, and the wandering firebrands were collected and extinguished. Mrs. Salter said nothing, but she seemed rather pleased. The explosion had somehow proved her point.

  The residents of the Hill lived at peace with the world and warred pleasantly among themselves. Sam Salter had established complete democracy in his home. If a controversial subject were brought up at the dinner table, he insisted that each person present, even the smallest child, express an opinion on it. He was contemptuous of anyone who agreed with anyone else. Each person was an individual, he thought, and ought to differ with every other individual, however slightly, in all things. As an architect he believed all bricks should be the same size; as a man he believed all human beings should differ.

  Thus Kate and her sister Lizzie lived harmoniously together without agreeing on a single thing. Kate looked after the animals—the cows, chickens, horses, and dogs; Lizzie looked after the plant life—the flower gardens and the orchard. Lizzie read omnivorously, preferring biographies and political treatises; Kate read the local newspaper each day, specializing in the social notes, births, deaths, and marriages. Lizzie was interested in politics and knew every officeholder in the community and state, either personally or by correspondence; Kate was interested in the social movements of people: she knew the genealogy of every family in the
county. Lizzie carried on a voluminous and controversial correspondence; Kate considered communication to be a verbal art.

  Together they ruled the Hill, following the death of the old folks in the years just after Edgar’s meeting with Gertrude. They had been devoted to their parents, and they were determined to carry out the wishes which Sam Salter had reiterated time and time again.

  “The house is free of debt,” he would say. “I want it kept that way, so it can always be a haven for any member of the family, and any of his family. Keep it so that whenever one of you gets into trouble, or is sick, or needs help, he’ll come back here. That’s what a home is for. Something to fall back on. You came back, Kate, and you came back, Lizzie, and some of your children may have to do the same thing. Keep the place for them. I don’t want them ever to be without a home, or to be forced to accept charity from a stranger.”

  The other children were home infrequently. Hiram worked for the Louisville and Nashville Railroad, and finally settled in Nashville. Will was a carpenter at the Western State Hospital, and eventually built a home for himself across the road from the Hill. Carrie, the younger sister, worked in Henderson, a nearby town, as a buyer for one of the department stores. She was home more frequently than her brothers, and because her age was close to that of Gertrude, Lynn, Hugh, Porter, Raymond, and Stella, she was an intermediary and peacemaker between the children and their mothers.

  The whole family took Edgar in as one of them, and this, like Gertrude’s love for him, filled him with wonder and trembling when he thought about it. Listening to them argue about the weather, the menu for Sunday dinner, patterns for dresses, the sermon of the preacher at their Methodist church, he could not understand how they were in agreement on such a controversial subject as a suitor for Gertrude. But if they recognized faults in him they accepted them as they accepted each other’s faults. They invited his opinions on the things which they discussed, and they disagreed with him heartily. He was delighted. It was the kind of family life he dreamed about, but which in his own home was not the rule.

  Between himself and his mother there existed an understanding which he shared with no other human being; it was a state of peace and love which he hoped someday would come to himself and Gertrude. But his father looked on the world with such an entirely different viewpoint that it was impossible even to disagree with him. To the things he expressed at the dinner table Edgar could not even find opposites. So, for the most part, he said nothing. His sisters were sometimes very close to him, sometimes oceans away. By degrees he realized that the most difficult and delicate of human relationships is that of brother and sister. Riding or walking out to see Gertrude he would be aware of a state of mind with regard to Carrie and Stella—who approximated at the Hill the position of his sisters at home—which was different from the state of mind with which he approached his own home when his sisters were there to greet him. The reason for the difference was easy to recognize; he was only worried that such things should be. He wanted tranquillity and peace with all the people he knew, but most of all he wanted to be able to relax in the knowledge that nothing was being held back, nothing was closed away. It made him lonely when this happened.

  Loneliness was his great problem, even though he now was acquainted with everyone in town; even though he now was a Sunday school teacher, thanks to his brilliance in answering questions in Bible class. These things were merely hills that led him down, on the other side, into wider and deeper valleys. It was so easy to become acquainted with a lot of people, so difficult to know one of them well.

  He had not thought about it until he fell in love. Until then he had been so absorbed in his own thoughts that it never occurred to him to be curious about what other people were thinking. Sitting beside Gertrude on their second date he had found himself watching her as she stared off into space, wondering what thoughts were passing through her head. He was jealous of them; he felt shut out, put away, as if he did not exist. Suddenly the enormity of the gulf that existed between himself and all other human beings was brought to his consciousness. No matter how close he might come to this girl, she could turn her head aside and be a million miles away. It was that way with everyone in the world.

  People talked with each other about things that were common to them, and about other people and what was commonly known about them. But when they ceased speaking they looked away: upward toward the sky, downward toward the ground, or off to the horizon, and a dazed, dreamy look came into their eyes, as if they had been put under a spell. Then they were in their own world, away from everyone else. He became painfully aware of these worlds. He would be laughing or smiling or nodding at something one of his friends had said, and thinking of a reply, when that look would come into the friend’s eyes, his head would turn aside, and Edgar would be alone.

  Everybody had two worlds, one for himself, one for his fellow man. Even his mother, moving about the kitchen in the solitude of her work, showed changes in the expression of her face as thoughts drifted, raced, or piled one upon the other in her mind. As soon as she noticed his presence her eyes lighted up, she smiled, and the world which they shared enveloped her. The other world, in which she had been living by herself, disappeared.

  He was no different himself; with everyone he knew, a separate situation existed. There were regular customers in the store; with each he shared different jokes, different subjects of conversation, different shoptalk. As a customer entered the store, Edgar’s mind dropped into the correct slot, and the existence they had created took up where it had left off the last time they were together.

  The better you knew a person the more things there were to talk about, and if you had a real good friend you didn’t hold anything back. That was the way he felt about it, but now it seemed to him that other people, no matter how much they took you into their confidence, always held something back. Probably he did, too. He didn’t tell his real, deep secrets to anyone but God. Other people must be the same. The privacy of thought was the dignity of man: that was why God made man with everything visible but the things that passed through his mind.

  That was the secret of love, too. When you loved people you wanted to rush right into the middle of their thoughts and share all their joys and sorrows, helping them wherever it was possible. But if they didn’t want you there, you were just a nuisance. It wasn’t enough for you to love them; they had to love you. If they didn’t, you couldn’t get into their thoughts, and then you suffered.

  He suffered with Gertrude. When they were together and she stopped to talk with someone else, or pat a dog, or pick a flower, he was envious of the person, the dog, or the flower. They wrenched her from him, and when she returned she stored something else in her mind that was apart from him—a little thing, but an addition to the long train that stretched back to the day she was born.

  She had grown up without him: it bruised him constantly. When the family at the Hill was gathered he heard of past joys and sorrows in which he had not shared. Gertrude and her brothers and cousins would talk of their childhood escapades, and he would sit in silence, aching, while she was transported from the world she shared with him to the world she shared with them.

  To marry her, to shut out from both their lives all but the existence they had begun to build together, was his only hope. Then slowly, bit by bit, they would grow together in their thoughts, so that when she went among other people he would not feel lonely, or be envious, because she would be carrying him with her, in her mind; she would think of them with his mind as well as her own, see them with his eyes as well as her own, talk to them with his opinions as well as her own. And he would do likewise. They would not be two persons then, but one.

  After that, when he dreamed of walking through the forest and meeting the figure with the cloth of gold, the veil over the face of the girl by his side would be lifted, and he would see that she was Gertrude.

  The dream had returned to him many times, and after he had
met Gertrude, and fallen in love with her, he had wondered why the veil was not lifted. Now he was sure that it was because the dream was a spiritual message, and to be truly married in the spiritual sense he and Gertrude would have to become one in their minds and hearts as well as in their souls.

  For their love now was a veiled thing, hidden from their thoughts by the things they could not say, hidden from their hearts by the feelings they could not express. They only knew of it because of the yearning they had to be together, and the willingness they shared to sit quiet by themselves whenever they had the chance.

  She was more pale and beautiful than ever. The death of her grandfather, followed by that of her grandmother, shook her frail health. She withdrew from South Kentucky College and remained at home, resting as much as her restless spirit would allow, taking the medicines and remedies Aunt Kate fixed for her, and reading the books Edgar brought her. Each month he brought her one of the new novels, and for a Christmas present he contrived to give her a complete set of the works of her favorite author, E. P. Roe.

  He wanted to propose, but he wondered if he should. Perhaps he should wait until her health was restored; perhaps he should wait until he was financially able to set a date for the wedding. But the yearning to have her for his own, to hear from her lips the words which would mean that she cared for him above all others, was too much of a temptation. On a clear, cold night in March, 1897—the 7th—he asked her if she would marry him.

  She looked squarely at him, and through him. Her brown eyes seemed to be considering his soul, reading the record of his iniquities and sins. His thoughts felt their nakedness. He fumbled for his pipe and tobacco.

  Gertrude looked away. She stared at the hand-painted shade of the parlor lamp, dreaming.