Time Will Darken It

by William Maxwell

The final work of shaping and selection was done by the Friendship Club. The eight regular members of this club were the high practitioners of history. They met in rotation at one another’s houses for luncheon and bridge. The food that they served was competitive and unwise, since many of them were struggling to maintain their figures. After the canned lobster or crabmeat, the tunafish baked in shells, the chicken patties, the lavish salads, the New York ice cream (all of which they would regret later), the club members settled down to bridge, with their hats on and their shoes pushed off under the card table, their voices rising higher and higher, their short-range view of human events becoming crueller and more malicious as they doubled and redoubled one another’s bids, made grand slams, and quarrelled over the scoring. No reputation was safe with them, and only by being present every time could they hope to preserve their own. The innocent were thrown to the wolves, the kind made fun of, the old stripped of the dignity that belonged to their years. They say was the phrase invariably used when a good name was about to be auctioned off at the block. They say that before Dr. Seymour married her she was running around with … They say the old lady made him promise before she died that he’d never … They say she has cancer of the breast.…

  If you come upon footprints and blood on the snow, all you have to do is turn and follow the pink trail back into the woods. You may have to walk miles, but eventually you will come to the clearing where hoofprints and footprints, moving in a circle, tell of the premeditated murder of a deer. You can follow a brook to the spring that is its source. But there is no tracing They say back to the person who said it originally.

  They say Ed came home one afternoon when he was not expected and found her and Mr. Trimbull … They say old Mr. Green went to him and said either you marry Esther or … They say that Harvey had a brother who was in an institution in Fairfield and that he kept it from Irene until their second child was born.…

  The flayed landscape of the western prairie does little to remind the people who live there of the covenant of works or the covenant of grace. The sky, visible right down to the horizon, has a diminishing effect upon everything in the foreground, and the distance is as featureless and remote as the possibility of punishment for slander. The roads run straight, with death and old age intersecting at right angles, and the harvest is stored in cemeteries.

  They say Tom went right over and made her pack up her things and leave. They haven’t any of them spoken to Lucile since.… They say he drinks like a fish.… They say it was all Mr. Tierney’s fault. He came home with a mild case of diphtheria and their little girl—such a pretty child—caught it from him.

  By December, the historians had gathered together all the relevant facts about Austin King’s young cousin from Mississippi, knew that she was madly in love with him, and were not surprised when he took her into his office. The historians called on Mrs. Beach with gifts of wine jelly and beef broth, and when they met Nora on the street with the children, they stopped her and asked questions that appeared to be friendly but that were set and ready to spring, like a steel trap. The historians were kind to Miss Ewing, and they remembered that Martha King (on whose side they were) was very careless about repaying social obligations and when asked to join the Women’s Club had declined on the grounds that she didn’t have time. This ancient border skirmish, nearly forgotten in the light of more recent improprieties, was resurrected detail by detail with appropriate comments (If I have time, with three children, and Sam’s mother living with us …) as fresh as if it had happened yesterday.

  What is the chief end of Man? the historians might well have asked over the bridge tables, but they didn’t. When they met as a group, they slipped all pity off under the table with their too-tight shoes, and became destroyers, enemies of society and of their neighbours, bent on finding out what went on behind the blinds that were drawn to the window-sill.

  They say … they say … from quarter to one till five o’clock, when the scores were tallied; the prize brought out, unwrapped, and admired; and Jess Burton, Bertha Rupp, Alma Hinkley, Ruth Troxell, Elsie Hubbard, Genevieve Wilkinson, Irma Seifert, and Leona McLain tucked their hand-painted scorecards into their pocket-books to give to their children, slipped on their torturesome pumps, and went home full of news to tell their husbands at the supper table.

  2

  “What?” Nora asked, looking up from Province of Jurisprudence Determined.

  “I said I hope my typewriter doesn’t disturb you,” Miss Ewing said.

  “Oh, no,” Nora said. “I wasn’t even aware of it. Please, you mustn’t worry about me, or I’ll feel I oughtn’t to be here.”

  “Some people find it very disturbing until they get accustomed to the sound,” Miss Ewing said. “Do you find jurisprudence interesting?”

  “What?” Nora asked, looking up once more. “Oh yes. Very.”

  “I noticed you’re wearing a sweater today. It’s a good idea if you’re going to sit so near the window. With an old building like this, there are always all kinds of draughts, and if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a draught down the back of my neck. The janitor said he’d do something about stuffing the cracks with paper, but of course he hasn’t. I’ll have to speak to him again about it.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” Nora said, “but please don’t bother. I’m quite comfortable, really I am. All I need is a good light to read by.”

  “You find the light all right there?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “These dark winter days, I usually turn the lights on at three-thirty or quarter to four, but if you’d prefer to have it earlier, just say so.”

  “I will,” Nora said, without looking up this time.

  “You don’t want to strain your pretty eyes, reading that fine print,” Miss Ewing said, as the typewriter commenced thrashing.

  The telephone rang, clients came and went, with a curious glance for the desk at the window, where a red-haired girl sat reading with her chin resting in her hand. The mailman walked in, on his afternoon rounds, handed the bundle of mail to Miss Ewing, and said, “I see they’ve finally taken pity on you and given you an assistant.”

  “Not exactly,” Miss Ewing said, as she paid him two cents postage due on a long thin letter. Though she usually took the mail from him and sent him on his way, this afternoon she kept him for five minutes with questions about his mother, who was ailing, of what disease neither the doctor nor the mailman could say. The ancient filing cabinet made a grinding noise every time Miss Ewing pulled out one of the drawers.

  At three-thirty Miss Ewing said, “I’m going to take Mr. Holby’s dictation. Do you think you can manage all right?”

  “Yes, thank you,” Nora said.

  While Miss Ewing was in Mr. Holby’s office, a man came in, looked around hesitantly, coughed, and said, “I beg your pardon, Miss——”

  Nora looked up and said. “Oh, excuse me. Did you want to see Mr. King?”

  “Well, as a matter of fact,” the man said, “I came to see Mr. Holby. On business.”

  “Just a minute,” Nora said. “I’ll see if he——”

  “You’re new around here, aren’t you? I’m Will Avery.”

  “I’ll tell him you’re here, Mr. Avery,” Nora said. She knocked timidly on Mr. Holby’s door and Miss Ewing opened it, with her notebook in her hand.

  “There’s someone who——” Nora began.

  “Mr. Holby doesn’t like to be interrupted when he’s giving dictation,” Miss Ewing said. “Oh, hello, Mr. Avery. Would you like to see Mr. Holby? Just go right in.”

  As she sat down at her desk Nora said, “He asked to see Mr. Holby, and I didn’t know what to do, so I——”

  “It’s quite all right,” Miss Ewing said. “There’s bound to be some confusion at first. I just thought I’d better tell you so you’d know, after this, not to interrupt him.”

  Will Avery left the door open, as he went in, and Nora was able to hear the entire discussion of whether Mr. Holby should sla
p a sheriff’s notice on the family who lived over the billiard parlour and were three months in arrears with their rent. When Will Avery got up to go, Mr. Holby accompanied him as far as the stairs, and then came over to see what Nora was reading.

  “An extremely important subject for you to grasp,” Mr. Holby said. “It involves the larger concepts of the Law, which all of us must keep straight in our minds, even when we are dealing with the most petty concerns. The human race—suppose we conceive of it in this way—the human race is parcelled out into a number of distinct groups or societies, differing greatly in—shall we say—circumstances, in physical and moral characteristics of all kinds. But you will find that they all resemble each other in that they reveal, on closer examination, certain rules of—if you like—conduct, in accordance with which the relations of the members inter se are governed. Each society naturally has its own laws, its own system of laws, its own code as we say. And all the systems, so far as they are known, constitute the appropriate subject matter of jurisprudence.

  “The jurist may deal with it in the following ways: He may first of all examine the main conceptions found in all the systems, or in other words …” Mr. Holby raised his voice so that it would carry above the sound of the typewriter. “… define the leading terms common to them all. For example, the terms law, right, duty, property, crime, and so on, and so forth, which, or their equivalents, may …” The filing cabinet slammed shut. “… may, notwithstanding certain delicate differences of connotation, be regarded as common terms in all systems. That kind of inquiry is known as analytical jurisprudence. It regards the conceptions we’ve been talking about as fixed or stationary, and aims at expressing them clearly and distinctly and showing their logical relations with each other. What do we really mean by a right and by a duty——” The harsh overhead light went on. Mr. Holby, startled, turned and looked at the light fixture, and then, turning back to Nora, he said, “Where was I?—oh yes—what is really meant by a right and by a duty, and what is the underlying connection between a right and a duty are types of questions proper to this inquiry. Now suppose we shift our point of view. Regarding systems of law in the mass—do you follow me?” Nora nodded. “—we may consider them not as stationary but as changeable and changing. If we do that we may ask what general features are exhibited by the record of the change. This, somewhat crudely put, may serve to indicate the field of historical or comparative jurisprudence. In its ideal condition it would require—Come into the office, my dear, where we won’t disturb Miss Ewing.”

  3

  Martha King, her movements heavy and slow, went back and forth between the dining-room and the kitchen, stacking the breakfast dishes. This can’t go on, she said to herself. I’m going to have it out with her when she comes. She can either turn up in the morning when she’s supposed to, or——

  There were footsteps outside, and Rachel pushed the back door open. Her eyes were bloodshot and doleful. She looked around at the confusion in the kitchen without seeing it, and then took her coat and stocking cap off and hung them on a nail beside the door.

  “Now don’t you worry about me being late, Mrs. King. I’ll just do these dishes and get to the upstairs.”

  Martha’s anger had deserted her at the sight of Rachel’s face. In a helpless silence she turned and lit the gas under the coffeepot and then said, “Are you sick, Rachel?”

  “No’m,” Rachel said, “I’m not.”

  “You’d better have a cup of coffee with me. It may make you feel better.”

  Sitting across the kitchen table from her, Martha said nothing and let Rachel drink her coffee in peace. Day after day when she looked around her and found nowhere the strength to begin, it was Rachel who gave her a push—by encouragement, by example, by insisting (just as she was being sucked down in a whirlpool of things undone) Now you leave that to me. In exchange for four dollars a week, Rachel took the mop out of her hand and sometimes the weight off her heart. When the house seemed large and lonely, all she had to do was to go to the kitchen. Rachel was never disapproving, never surprised by anything that Martha King said or did. Her occasional bad moods had nothing to do with the woman she worked for, any more than Martha King’s moods had anything to do with Rachel. But in spite of the freedom which they allowed each other, Rachel could say, Now don’t you feel blue, Mrs. King, or You’re making things out worse than they are, and Martha King could not.

  “I won’t ask you if you’re in trouble,” she said aloud. “I don’t need to ask. I’ve never pried into your affairs, but you know that you can come to me, don’t you, if you need help?”

  “I know,” Rachel said, but she did not explain why she sat with her shoulders hanging limp and heavy and her feet twisted under the chair, or why she looked old and frightened.

  “There’s been many a time,” Martha said, turning and looking out of the window, “when you’ve helped me.”

  “It’s not that kind of trouble,” Rachel said.

  Martha King finished her coffee in silence. Rachel got up and carried the cups and saucers to the sink, and began to dispose of the orange peels and eggshells that Martha had left there in the hurry of getting Austin to his office and Ab ready for kindergarten. Martha pushed her chair back and started for the pantry door.

  “Would it be all right,” Rachel said, above the sound of the running water, “if I was to keep Thelma here when she’s not in school?”

  This request ought to have made the whole thing as clear as daylight, and perhaps would have, if it hadn’t been for the great pane of glass, which kept one part of Elm Street from knowing what the other part was up to. Even so, the gulf that separated Rachel and Martha King was not a simple matter. It was more than the difference between the front and back door. Rachel’s trouble was something that Martha King would never have to cope with. She was protected by the thousand and one provisions in the code of respectability, and had been, from the moment she was born. Her husband took out his anger against her by straightening pictures and turning off lights that had been left burning in empty rooms. He carried a pearl-handled pocket-knife, not a razor, and he used it to sharpen pencils with.

  And it was not fear of the razor that made Rachel look old. She had been born and raised in the knowledge of it. It was the way his eyes followed Thelma, the fact that his cuffs and kicks were for the boys, never for her; the thick softness in his voice when he spoke to her; the idea that had formed in that low black skull, as simple and easy as death.

  “Why, yes,” Martha King said. “Of course it’ll be all right. Keep her here as much as you like.” And pushing the door open, she went on into the front part of the house.

  4

  “Here, puss.… Here, puss, puss, puss.… Here puss …”

  Leaning over the railing of her second story porch, Miss Ewing looked up and then down the alley. Though she called and called, the big yellow tomcat did not come. “I can’t wait any longer,” she said to herself out loud. “I’m late enough as it is,” and went back into the kitchen, locked and bolted the back door, and put the saucer of milk in the icebox. This was not the first time that the cat had failed to come when she called, and it could just look after itself until she got home.

  Left to her own devices, Miss Ewing would never have taken on the care and responsibility of an animal. This one had adopted her. One autumn night when she got home from work, the cat, half-starved, was sitting on her front steps. She stopped to stroke it and the cat purred at her touch. It sat so quiet, so gentle, and so trustful that she toyed with the idea of keeping it, and then after a moment said, “Go home, pussy!” and went on up the stairs to her flat. Ten minutes later she hurried down and opened the street door. The cat was still there, and bounded up the steps after her as lightly and eagerly as a kitten.

  She let the cat out every morning when she left for work and when she got home in the evening it was there waiting for her. She learned (or thought she learned) its habits and the cat learned hers. It was company, it was someone to
talk to and worry over, and it was, in spite of its condition when she found it, a very superior creature. After she had fed it a few weeks it filled out and became quite handsome. But then it took to wandering, so that she never knew whether it would be there or not when she was hurrying home. Sometimes it was gone for two or three days. And one morning when she opened the back door, she saw something that caused her to let out a low moan. What she took at first sight to be the pieces of a cat—though not her cat—proved to be something else; a section of bloody fur, a piece of raw red flesh, and the hideous dismembered tail of a rat. The cat, having eaten all the rest, had left these three pieces on Miss Ewing’s porch in front of her back door, to chill her with horror (or perhaps as a mark of friendship and favour). And after that terrible and instructive sight Miss Ewing could not pet the cat or hold it on her lap or feel towards it as she had before. She continued to feed it, and the cat, accepting the change in her, came and went as it pleased.

  Miss Ewing’s flat was in a row of identical two-story buildings a block from the railroad. It was dark in the daytime and larger than she needed. It would have been too large for her except that she had crammed into it most of the furniture that had once been scattered through a house on Fourth Street, leaving herself barely enough room to move around in. As an only child, Miss Ewing had inherited everything, including, for about fifteen years, the problem of supporting her parents, both of whom were now dead. In the front room there were two large, oval, tinted photographs under convex glass of her mother as a young woman and of her father before he took to drink.

  Ordinarily, it was easy for her to get to the office of Holby and King, dust and arrange the two desks in the inner offices, and be at her typewriter when Austin King walked in. But for over a week now, she had found it harder and harder to get up in the morning. She heard the alarm clock go off and lay in bed unable to move, unable to lift her head from the pillow, exhausted by the effort of producing plays and parts of plays in which the characters changed roles with one another and spoke lines that were intended to make the audience laugh (although the play was a tragedy), and the dead came back to life, and everything took place in a half-real, half-mythical kingdom against a backdrop of pastel sorrow. The cat figured frequently in Miss Ewing’s dreams. So did her mother. And so, in one disguise or another, did Nora Potter.