From his bosom he drew out a canvas wallet. It was roughly sewn by a clumsy hand and soiled with much usage. He opened it. But before he drew out the contents he looked at me again. “Do you ever make allowances?”
“Allowances?”
“For folks. For what folks think they see. Because nothing ever looks the same to two different people. Never looks the same to one person, depending on which side of it he looks at it from.”
“Oh,” I said. “Allowances. Yes. Yes.”
From the wallet he drew a folded sheet of newspaper. The page was yellow with age, the broken seams glued carefully with strips of soiled cloth. He opened it carefully, gingerly, and turned it and laid it on the table before me. “Dont try to pick it up,” he said. “It’s kind of old now, and it’s the only copy I have. Read it.”
I looked at it: the fading ink, the blurred page dated twenty-five years ago:
MANIAC AT LARGE IN VIRGINIA MOUNTAINS
PROMINENT NEW YORK SOCIETY WOMAN ATTACKED IN OWN GARDEN
Mrs. Carleton Van Dyming Of New York And Newport Attacked By Half Nude Madman And Maddened Bull In Garden Of Her Summer Lodge.
Maniac Escapes. Mrs. Van Dyming Prostrate
It went on from there, with pictures and diagrams, to tell how Mrs. Van Dyming, who was expecting a man from the office of her New York architect, was called from the dinner table to meet, as she supposed, the architect’s man. The story continued in Mrs. Van Dyming’s own words:
I went to the library, where I had directed that the architect’s man be brought, but there was no one there. I was about to ring for the footman when it occurred to me to go to the front door, since it is a local custom among these country people to come to the front and refuse to advance further or to retreat until the master or the mistress of the house appears. I went to the door. There was no one there.
I stepped out onto the porch. The light was on, but at first I could see no one. I started to re-enter the house but the footman had told me distinctly that the wagon had returned from the village, and I thought that the man had perhaps gone on to the edge of the lawn where he could see the theatre site, where the workmen had that day begun to prepare the ground by digging up the old grape vines. So I went in that direction. I had almost reached the end of the lawn when something caused me to turn. I saw, in relief between me and the lighted porch, a man bent over and hopping on one leg, who to my horror I realised to be in the act of removing his trousers.
I screamed for my husband. When I did so, the man freed his other leg and turned and came toward me running, clutching a knife (I could see the light from the porch gleaming on the long blade) in one hand, and a flat, square object in the other. I turned then and ran screaming toward the woods.
I had lost all sense of direction. I simply ran for my life. I found that I was inside the old vineyard, among the grape vines, running directly away from the house. I could hear the man running behind me and suddenly I heard him begin to make a strange noise. It sounded like a child trying to blow upon a penny whistle, then I realised that it was the sound of his breath whistling past the knifeblade clinched between his teeth.
Suddenly something overtook and passed me, making a tremendous uproar in the shrubbery. It rushed so near me that I could see its glaring eyes and the shape of a huge beast with horns, which I recognised a moment later as Carleton’s — Mr. Van Dyming’s — prize Durham bull; an animal so dangerous that Mr. Dyming is forced to keep it locked up. It was now free and it rushed past and on ahead, cutting off my advance, while the madman with the knife cut off my retreat. I was at bay; I stopped with my back to a tree, screaming for help.
“How did the bull get out?” I said.
He was watching my face while I read, like I might have been a teacher grading his school paper. “When I was a boy, I used to take subscriptions to the Police Gazette, for premiums. One of the premiums was a little machine guaranteed to open any lock. I dont use it anymore, but I still carry it in my pocket, like a charm or something, I guess. Anyway, I had it that night.” He looked down at the paper on the table. “I guess folks tell what they believe they saw. So you have to believe what they think they believe. But that paper dont tell how she kicked off her slippers (I nigh broke my neck over one of them) so she could run better, and how I could hear her going wump-wump-wump inside like a dray horse, and how when she would begin to slow up a little I would let out another toot on the whistle and off she would go again.
“I couldn’t even keep up with her, carrying that portfolio and trying to blow on that whistle too; seemed like I never would get the hang of it, somehow. But maybe that was because I had to start trying so quick, before I had time to kind of practice up, and running all the time too. So I threw the portfolio away and then I caught up with her where she was standing with her back against the tree, and that bull running round and round the tree, not bothering her, just running around the tree, making a right smart of fuss, and her leaning there whispering ‘Carleton. Carleton’ like she was afraid she would wake him up.”
The account continued:
I stood against the tree, believing that each circle which the bull made, it would discover my presence. That was why I ceased to scream. Then the man came up where I could see him plainly for the first time. He stopped before me; for one both horrid and joyful moment I thought he was Mr. Van Dyming. “Carleton!” I said.
He didn’t answer. He was stooped over again; then I saw that he was engaged with the knife in his hand. “Carleton!” I cried.
“ ‘Dang if I can get the hang of it, somehow,’ he kind of muttered, busy with the murderous knife.
“Carleton!” I cried. “Are you mad?”
He looked up then. I saw that it was not my husband, that I was at the mercy of a madman, a maniac, and a maddened bull. I saw the man raise the knife to his lips and blow again upon it that fearful shriek. Then I fainted.
IV
And that was all. The account merely went on to say how the madman had vanished, leaving no trace, and that Mrs. Van Dyming was under the care of her physician, with a special train waiting to transport her and her household, lock, stock, and barrel, back to New York; and that Mr. Van Dyming in a brief interview had informed the press that his plans about the improvement of the place had been definitely rescinded and that the place was now for sale.
I folded the paper as carefully as he would have. “Oh,” I said. “And so that’s all.”
“Yes. I waked up about daylight the next morning, in the woods. I didn’t know when I went to sleep nor where I was at first. I couldn’t remember at first what I had done. But that aint strange. I guess a man couldn’t lose a day out of his life and not know it. Do you think so?”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s what I think too.”
“Because I know I aint as evil to God as I guess I look to a lot of folks. And I guess that demons and such and even the devil himself aint quite as evil to God as lots of folks that claim to know a right smart about His business would make you believe. Dont you think that’s right?” The wallet lay on the table, open. But he did not at once return the newspaper to it.
Then he quit looking at me; at once his face became diffident, childlike again. He put his hand into the wallet; again he did not withdraw it at once.
“That aint exactly all,” he said, his hand inside the wallet, his eyes downcast, and his face: that mild, peaceful, nondescript face across which a mild moustache straggled. “I was a powerful reader, when I was a boy. Do you read much?”
“Yes. A good deal.”
But he was not listening. “I would read about pirates and cowboys, and I would be the head pirate or cowboy — me, a durn little tyke that never saw the ocean except at Coney Island or a tree except in Washington Square day in and out. But I read them, believing like every boy, that some day . . . that living wouldn’t play a trick on him like getting him alive and then. . . . When I went home that morning to get ready to take the train, Martha says, ‘You’re just as good a
s any of them Van Dymings, for all they get into the papers. If all the folks that deserved it got into the papers, Park Avenue wouldn’t hold them, or even Brooklyn,’ she says.” He drew his hand from the wallet. This time it was only a clipping, one column wide, which he handed me, yellow and faded too, and not long:
MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE
FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED
Wilfred Middleton, New York Architect, Disappears From Millionaire’s Country House
POSSE SEEKS BODY OF ARCHITECT BELIEVED SLAIN BY
MADMAN IN VIRGINIA MOUNTAINS
May Be Coupled With Mysterious Attack
On Mrs. Van Dyming
Mountain Neighborhood In State Of Terror
. . . . . . . . . ., Va. April 8, . . . . . Wilfred Middleton, 56, architect, of New York City, mysteriously disappeared sometime on April 6th, while en route to the country house of Mr. Carleton Van Dyming near here. He had in his possession some valuable drawings which were found this morning near the Van Dyming estate, thus furnishing the first clue. Chief of Police Elmer Harris has taken charge of the case, and is now awaiting the arrival of a squad of New York detectives, when he promises a speedy solution if it is in the power of skilled criminologists to do so.
MOST BAFFLING IN ALL HIS EXPERIENCE
“When I solve this disappearance,” Chief Harris is quoted, “I will also solve the attack on Mrs. Van Dyming on the same date.”
Middleton leaves a wife, Mrs. Martha Middleton, . . . . . . . . . . . . . .st., Brooklyn.
He was watching my face. “Only it’s one mistake in it,” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “They got your name wrong.”
“I was wondering if you’d see that. But that’s not the mistake. . . .” He had in his hand a second clipping which he now extended. It was like the other two; yellow, faint. I looked at it, the fading, peaceful print through which, like a thin, rotting net, the old violence had somehow escaped, leaving less than the dead gesture fallen to quiet dust. “Read this one. Only that’s not the mistake I was thinking about. But then, they couldn’t have known at that time. . . .”
I was reading, not listening to him. This was a reprinted letter, an ‘agony column’ letter:
New Orleans, La.
April 10, . . . .
To the Editor, New York Times
New York, N. Y.
Dear Sir
In your issue of April 8, this year you got the name of the party wrong. The name is Midgleston not Middleton. Would thank you to correct this error in local and metropolitan columns as the press a weapon of good & evil into every American home. And a power of that weight cannot afford mistakes even about people as good as any man or woman even if they dont get into the papers every day.
Thanking you again, beg to remain
A Friend
“Oh,” I said. “I see. You corrected it.”
“Yes. But that’s not the mistake. I just did that for her. You know how women are. Like as not she would rather not see it in the papers at all than to see it spelled wrong.”
“She?”
“My wife. Martha. The mistake was, if she got them or not.”
“I dont — Maybe you’d better tell me.”
“That’s what I am doing. I got two of the first one, the one about the disappearance, but I waited until the letter come out. Then I put them both into a piece of paper with A Friend on it, and put them into a envelope and mailed them to her. But I dont know if she got them or not. That was the mistake.”
“The mistake?”
“Yes. She moved. She moved to Park Avenue when the insurance was paid. I saw that in a paper after I come down here. It told about how Mrs. Martha Midgleston of Park Avenue was married to a young fellow he used to be associated with the Maison Payot on Fifth Avenue. It didn’t say when she moved, so I dont know if she got them or not.”
“Oh,” I said. He was putting the clippings carefully back into the canvas wallet.
“Yes, sir. Women are like that. It dont cost a man much to humor them now and then. Because they deserve it; they have a hard time. But it wasn’t me. I didn’t mind how they spelled it. What’s a name to a man that’s done and been something outside the lot and plan for mortal human man to do and be?”
The Leg
THE BOAT — IT was a yawl boat with a patched weathered sail — made two reaches below us while I sat with the sculls poised, watching her over my shoulder, and George clung to the pile, spouting Milton at Everbe Corinthia. When it made the final tack I looked back at George. But he was now but well into Comus’ second speech, his crooked face raised, and the afternoon bright on his close ruddy head.
“Give way, George,” I said. But he held us stationary at the pile, his glazed hat lifted, spouting his fine and cadenced folly as though the lock, the Thames, time and all, belonged to him, while Sabrina (or Hebe or Chloe or whatever name he happened to be calling Corinthia at the time) with her dairy-maid’s complexion and her hair like mead poured in sunlight stood above us in one of her endless succession of neat print dresses, her hand on the lever and one eye on George and the other on the yawl, saying “Yes, milord” dutifully whenever George paused for breath.
The yawl luffed and stood away; the helmsman shouted for the lock.
“Let go, George,” I said. But he clung to the pile in his fine and incongruous oblivion. Everbe Corinthia stood above us, her hand on the lever, bridling a little and beginning to reveal a certain concern, and looking from her to the yawl and back again I thought how much time she and I had both spent thus since that day three years ago when, coweyed and bridling, she had opened the lock for us for the first time, with George holding us stationary while he apostrophised her in the metaphor of Keats and Spenser.
Again the yawl’s crew shouted at us, the yawl aback and in stays. “Let go, you fool!” I said, digging the sculls. “Lock, Corinthia!”
George looked at me. Corinthia was now watching the yawl with both eyes. “What, Davy?” George said. “Must even thou help Circe’s droves into the sea? Pull, then, O Super-Gadarene!”
And he shoved us off. I had not meant to pull away. And even if I had, I could still have counteracted the movement if Everbe Corinthia hadn’t opened the lock. But open it she did, and looked once back to us and sat flat on the earth, crisp fresh dress and all. The skiff shot away under me; I had a fleeting picture of George still clinging with one arm around the pile, his knees drawn up to his chin and the hat in his lifted hand and of a long running shadow carrying the shadow of a boat-hook falling across the lock. Then I was too busy steering. I shot through the gates, carrying with me that picture of George, the glazed hat still gallantly aloft like the mastheaded pennant of a man-of-war, vanishing beneath the surface. Then I was floating quietly in slack water while the round eyes of two men stared quietly down at me from the yawl.
“Yer’ve lost yer mate, sir,” one of them said in a civil voice. Then they had drawn me alongside with a boat-hook and standing up in the skiff, I saw George. He was standing in the towpath now, and Simon, Everbe Corinthia’s father, and another man — he was the one with the boat-hook, whose shadow I had seen across the lock — were there too. But I saw only George with his ugly crooked face and his round head now dark in the sunlight. One of the watermen was still talking. “Steady, sir. Lend ’im a ‘and, Sam’l. There. ‘E’ll do now. Give ’im a turn, seeing ’is mate. . . .”
“You fool, you damned fool!” I said. George stooped beside me, wringing his sopping flannels, while Simon and the second man — Simon with his iron-gray face and his iron-gray whisker that made him look like nothing so much as an aged bull peering surlily and stupidly across a winter hedgerow, and the second man, younger, with a ruddy capable face, in a hard, boardlike, town-made suit — watched us. Corinthia sat on the ground, weeping hopelessly and quietly. “You damned fool. Oh, you damned fool.”
“Oxford young gentlemen,” Simon said in a harsh disgusted voice. “Oxford young gentlemen.”
“Eh, well,”
George said, “I daresay I haven’t damaged your lock over a farthing’s worth.” He rose, and saw Corinthia. “What, Circe!” he said, “tears over the accomplishment of your appointed destiny?” He went to her, trailing a thread of water across the packed earth, and took her arm. It moved willing enough, but she herself sat flat on the ground, looking up at him with streaming hopeless eyes. Her mouth was open a little and she sat in an attitude of patient despair, weeping tears of crystal purity. Simon watched them, the boat-hook — he had taken it from the second man, who was now busy at the lock mechanism, and I knew that he was the brother who worked in London, of whom Corinthia had once told us — clutched in his big knotty fist. The yawl was now in the lock, the two faces watching us across the parapet like two severed heads in a quiet row upon the footway. “Come, now,” George said. “You’ll soil your dress sitting there.”
“Up, lass,” Simon said, in that harsh voice of his which at the same time was without ill-nature, as though harshness were merely the medium through which he spoke. Corinthia rose obediently, still weeping, and went on toward the neat little dove-cote of a house in which they lived. The sunlight was slanting level across it and upon George’s ridiculous figure. He was watching me.
“Well, Davy,” he said, “if I didn’t know better, I’d say from your expression that you are envying me.”
“Am I?” I said. “You fool. You ghastly lunatic.”
Simon had gone to the lock. The two quiet heads rose slowly, as though they were being thrust gradually upward from out the earth, and Simon now stooped with the boat-hook over the lock. He rose, with the limp anonymity of George’s once gallant hat on the end of the boat-hook, and extended it. George took it as gravely. “Thanks,” he said. He dug into his pocket and gave Simon a coin. “For wear and tear on the boat-hook,” he said. “And perhaps a bit of balm for your justifiable disappointment, eh, Simon?” Simon grunted and turned back to the lock. The brother was still watching us. “And I am obliged to you,” George said. “Hope I’ll never have to return the favor in kind.” The brother said something, short and grave, in a slow pleasant voice. George looked at me again. “Well, Davy.”
Complete Works of William Faulkner Page 667