“No.”
“Why?”
“Because I think it can be different than this. I think we can feel really close to each other. I want us to be really in love, Laura.”
I looked up at her face, which was flushed from the heat of the fire, her brown eyes shining darkly, the glow of the coals buried deeply in them. “Your eyes are so different from the rest of you,” I said. “You seem as if you had somebody else’s eyes.”
“I think you resent me,” Laura said, “because I’m not like the girl you always dreamed you would have. I’m not very beautiful, or talented, or witty, and you resent me for that. You feel as if you’d been cheated.”
I stared into the fire, flushing, for I think, with a sudden pang of remorse, I may have recognized the partial truth, at least, of what she said; and it made my protest and dissatisfaction seem suddenly ignoble and vindictive. And in the spasm of humility which followed this acknowledgment I saw also, with suddenly humbled vision, the vanity of my appeal for love, for a profundity of feeling that could be made to grow—slowly and surely, as it must grow—only by patience, devotion and selflessness.
“Well, I’m sorry you feel like that,” I said. “I don’t think it’s so, Laura; I certainly hope it isn’t.”
She leaned toward me and laid her hand on my shoulder. “I think it’s very nice, the way we are now,” she said. “I don’t want you to be all wild and impetuous and everything. I just want to make you calm, and more sure about things, and more peaceful. I think that’s what you need, Vincent.”
“I don’t want to be all wild, Laura. I only want us to feel really close to each other. I want us to be really in love. I think that’s the only way you can feel peaceful.”
“And then what would happen?”
“What do you mean?”
“What would happen if we were really in love?”
“I don’t know. We would be in love, that’s all. It would mean much more to us that way.”
She took the stalk of wheat from between her teeth and tossed it, like a little spear, onto the coals, watching it flare for a moment and then curl and blacken convulsively, almost instantly carbonized by the heat.
“I have to be the way I am, Vincent,” she said. “If it isn’t enough for you, I don’t know what to do. I said we could stop any time you wanted to.”
“I don’t want to stop,” I said. “I want to be in love with you, Laura. I have to be in love with somebody.”
“Does it have to be me?”
“I want it to be you. I couldn’t be in love with any of those other girls. They don’t think about anything but fraternity pins, and dances, and records, and things like that. I think you know more than they do, and I think you could give somebody more than they could. I guess it’s silly to say these things out loud, though. I guess it isn’t something you can ask for.”
She stood up, brushing her skirt with her palms, and stared into the fire for a moment, her hands laid still against her thighs. “We’ll just have to wait and see,” she said.
What Laura meant by this I did not inquire, for I felt, as always, chastened by her sobriety and also—perhaps more significantly—alarmed by the prospect of surrendering what we had, however insufficient it might seem; for hers was the single relationship I had, outside of my grandparents’, which was not merely social or conventional. And so our friendship continued in its muted, passionless way.
I CAN remember only one other instance of quarreling, or of open discontent between us; but it was far more distressing, far more crucial than this. It is, indeed, one of the bitterest memories of my life. It began with the terrible accident to my horse.
I have never forgotten the beauty of that day, for it was so in contrast to all that happened on it; perhaps it is for this reason that I still very often, on a day of brilliant sunlight, feel a sense of dread come over me, falling lightly and coldly, like a web woven of threads of ice. This was in the early spring of our last year together, a few months before I went away to war. It was a cool April day, very still, with a clear vivid blue sky, almost violet-colored, and pale, intense sunlight which made shadows of extraordinary sharpness, the color of steel. I took my horse out in the midafternoon and rode until evening through the rolling country north of Stonemont. The mare was eight years old at that time and tired easily if ridden hard; but she loved to ramble. I would drop the reins and let her wander at whatever pace she chose down country roads barred with shadow from the rows of tall cedars that lined them and along dirt lanes bordered with fences buried and sagging under clumps of matted honeysuckle.
On the way back I turned off the lane we had been following into open country so that the mare might drink from one of the shallow stony streams that run through the center of the gently sloped valleys between each pair of hills. I could see the water below us, glinting in the sunlight, between the thin poplars of the hillside. The mare stepped down daintily with nervous caution over the stony soil, lurching sometimes from the roughness of the inclined ground. It is excruciating to confess, but I think I was to blame for the dreadful thing that followed; I should have tightened the reins and guided her down the uneven slope, for she was always uncertain of footing on rough ground because of her blind eye. But I did not; I leaned back in the saddle, letting the reins fall loosely, and looked up, smiling, because the maple trees were budding. All above us they spread out a delicate pattern of scarlet buds, like a lady’s hat veil dotted with tiny balls of plush, exquisitely fragile against the clear blue sky. I reached up to touch one as the mare stumbled: a blood-colored, sticky, tender embryo, unclenching slowly in the spring sunlight. A patch of stony rubble slid under her rear hoofs; she lurched forward, stepped on a loose rock that rolled with her weight, and fell heavily sideways. As I hurtled out of the saddle I saw with horror, in that moment of brilliant vision which so often occurs in an emergency, that directly beneath her falling body there was a jaggedly pointed stump of poplar, as thick as a man’s arm and two feet tall, which would impale her. I struck the ground heavily, spinning violently across the stony soil, hearing the sickening blunt thud of the horse’s belly as it plunged down upon the pointed stump, and then, as I leapt to my feet, a second, intolerable sound: the animal’s long, ecstatic, quivering scream of pain. I shall never in my life hear such a sound again. I staggered about among the bare trees, cringing from the cry, my palms pressed hard against my ears to shut it out, running a few steps away from, and then back toward, the writhing, screaming mare in an anguish of shock and indecision. I wanted to run as quickly and as far as possible from that terrible sound, but I knew that I could not leave the horse to suffer. It would take me an hour, at least, to reach the town, and perhaps another half hour to return, by car or bicycle, with a rifle.
Let me recount this as quickly as possible: I found a heavy, jagged rock and bludgeoned the horse to death, crushing her skull until she lay shiveringly still. Then I rose and stood for a moment, shuddering, staring softly into the sunlight.
I began to walk away in stiff, lunging, automatic steps, then more and more quickly as my numbness passed, until finally I was running frantically as I entered the first streets of the town. I went immediately to Laura’s house. It was almost dusk, and I remember that, because of the warmth of the day, she had brought several pots of geraniums up from the cellar, where they were kept “sleeping” through the winter; she was carrying one up the front steps as I came into her walk, and, hearing my steps, she turned, clutching the heavy earthenware pot against her apron, staring at me with a look of growing bewilderment.
“Vincent, what on earth has happened to you?” she whispered.
“I killed my horse, Laura.”
“Oh, my goodness. You’re covered with blood.”
“I know. I had to kill my horse,” I said. “She fell down and got terribly hurt, and I had to kill her, because she was screaming.”
She set the pot down on the steps and came a little toward me down the walk. “I don’t know what to do.
I guess you’d better come in and get washed off. Do you feel all right?”
“I guess so. I feel kind of trembly, though.”
“Do you want some brandy? We have some brandy that Daddy takes.”
“I don’t know. I never had any.”
“Well, come on in the house.”
“All right.”
I followed her in through the front door and up the stairs toward the bathroom.
“Don’t touch the banisters.”
“No.”
In the bathroom I closed the toilet and sat down on it with my head in my hands.
“You look awfully pale,” Laura said.
“I know. My hands are all cold. I feel kind of sick.”
“Well, just wait a minute, and I’ll get you some brandy. I think it’ll make you feel better.”
“All right. Thank you.”
I sat with my face in my hands, fighting to suppress the waves of nausea that swept over me, until Laura returned. She brought me in a moment a clean cotton shirt and a tumbler of brandy which I held in trembling hands and drank without pausing. It made me gasp.
“Do you feel any better?” Laura said.
“I think so, yes. It certainly is hot.”
“I brought you one of Father’s shirts. You’d better take that one off; it’s all spattered with blood.”
“All right. Thank you.”
I unbuttoned and removed the blood-soaked shirt, which she dropped into the bathtub.
“I’ll wash it out and you can get it the next time you come,” she said.
“No, I don’t want it. Just throw it away, Laura.”
“All right. Let me wash you off a little. It’s all in your hair and everything. You’d better lean over the basin.”
She soaked a washcloth in hot water and, while I leaned over the white enamel bowl, bathed my arms, neck and shoulders gently, squeezing the cloth sometimes to let the water run in warm rivulets across my flesh. She bent a little over me while she did so, speaking with a softness that I had never heard in her voice before, her hands, when they touched me, expressing an intense and unfamiliar gentleness. I sat leaning across the basin, my arms resting on its edge, my eyes closed, drowsy with comfort, infinitely soothed by the cleanliness and coolness of the sparkling white enamel, the steam, the hot cloth upon my skin, the strong and tender touch of her hands and the nearness of her body. I had never felt such a physical attraction for her before. I was intensely aware of her loose fragrant hair and the warm redolence of her white flesh beneath her clean cotton dress. This idle, languorous sense of comfort grew slowly, then more swiftly, then with startling fierceness, into a passion such as I had never known. I was suddenly possessed with a flaming, trembling, almost demented desire for Laura that made my whole body ache, as if with fever, for contact with her. I raised my head from the basin and took her arm in my hand, pressing my face against the cool white flesh of her forearm. She stood very still.
“Do you feel any better?”
“Yes. It feels wonderful.”
“Do you want any more brandy?”
“No, thank you.”
“Vincent, what’s the matter?”
“Nothing. I just want to hold you. You feel so wonderful, Laura.”
I put my arms around her waist and drew her body against me. She yielded stilly for a moment, and then I felt her lean away from me, her body tensing in withdrawal.
“You’re all wet, Vincent. It’ll ruin my dress.”
“Please, let me just hold you for a minute.” I clenched her suddenly close in my arms and pressed my face, still stained with watery blood, against her waist. “Laura, I want to love you,” I whispered hoarsely. “Please. Please let me love you.”
She put her hands on my shoulders and twisted her body in my arms. “No. Don’t, Vincent. Don’t.”
“Please. I want to love you. I have to, Laura. Let me, please.”
“No. Let me go.”
I dropped down onto my knees before her on the bathroom floor, my aims locked fiercely about her, burying my face against the cleft of her groin, breathing the buried musk of her body through the crushed cotton of her skirt.
“No. Don’t, Vincent. Stop. I won’t. It isn’t decent. I won’t ever do that until I’m married. It isn’t decent.”
She took my wrists in her hands, twisting and wrenching them until she had broken free, and backed away from me against the wall.
“Why did you have to do that?” she said. “It’s just horrible. I never thought you’d do anything like that.”
I knelt in front of her, naked from the waist up, my hair still dripping with watery gore, my face flushed with the intensity of shame into which my violent feeling had been suddenly transposed by her revulsion, watching her gather her skirt away from me in very formal, involuntary, clutching movements of her hands, like the oppressed heroines of silent movies. From the end of the hall her father began to call with feeble impatience in his old, trembling voice: “Laura . . . Laura . . . Laura . . .” She turned away from me quickly and went out of the bathroom. I snatched up the clean shirt she had brought me and left the house, thrusting my arms into the sleeves as I ran down the stairs and out the front door into the quiet evening.
I have as much need for dignity as anyone, and I should like to understand better why I was led in such a wanton manner to bring that ugly day to its even uglier conclusion by an act of savage mortification with a woman who was perhaps as old as my grandmother. Because that is what I did. Hardly pausing in my flight from Laura’s house, I set out down the darkening streets toward the house of the Mrs. Hallworth to whom, a week before, I had delivered a box of groceries. I walked quickly, my jaws clenched with bitter resolution.
The sky had gone scarlet behind the black elms and rooftops of the street when I reached the front walk that led up to the dark veranda of her handsome clapboard house. Behind the glider and the white wicker rocking chairs of the front porch there was lamplight inside the windows of the living room. I went up the walk without pausing, mounted the wide steps to the veranda and tapped with the brass knocker on the paneled white door. The fanlight above the door cast a faint downward glow in which I spread my hands while I stood waiting with a fierce impatience. There was still blood between my fingers. I scrubbed the back of my hand across my thigh and knocked again.
In a moment the door opened and Mrs. Hallworth, clad in a blue silk negligee that was stained with scattered red spots, peered out at me. She stood unsteadily, her greying hair astray, peering out at me with a look of confusion that changed slowly to one of faintly amused congeniality.
“Well, my goodness,” she said. “It’s the grocery boy! If this isn’t a pleasant surprise.” She smiled at me, lifting her hand to brush back from her forehead the stray strands of her hair. “Now what could bring you here at this time of night? I don’t suppose you’ve got any more potatoes for me?”
“No, ma’am,” I said, my resolution faltering suddenly. “I was wondering—I was wondering if maybe I made a mistake on your order the other day. I was wondering if you still had your order slip.”
“Well, I don’t know,” she said. “Why don’t you come in, and I’ll see if I can find it somewhere.” She opened the door wider, clutching the knob to steady herself as she held it aside for me to enter. I went into the house and stood in the small foyer while she closed the door and stood for a moment with her laced hands dangling in front of her, regarding me with a look of curious, genial, concern.
“My goodness,” she said. “You look like you’re upset about something. You’ve got blood on your hands. Did you know that?”
I nodded abjectly. “I killed my horse,” I said. “He broke his leg and I had to kill him with a rock.”
“Oh, my Lord!” She clicked her tongue with dismay. “Oh, that must make you feel terrible! Why don’t you come on back in the kitchen and let me wash them off? It’ll make you feel a little better.”
“No, that’s okay,” I said. I looked dow
n at my hands and rubbed the bloodstain between my fingers with my thumb. “I’m sorry to trouble you like this. Maybe I ought to come back some other time.”
“It’s no trouble at all,” she said. “You come on here in the living room and sit down for a minute while I look for that order slip.” She laid her hand gently against my back and guided me into the living room. On a side table beside one of the overstuffed dark armchairs there was a decanter of wine and a half-empty glass.
“You sit right down there,” she said. “And I’ll just see if I can find that order slip.” She moved across the room to a mahogany secretary that stood against the wall and tugged open a drawer. “I keep most of my records in here. Let me just see now.” She took a sheaf of papers from the drawer and turned back to me. “What is your name, young man?”
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