To Look and Pass

by Taylor Caldwell

  “I heard you playing your violin one night recently,” I said.

  He looked at me again, raising his eyebrows in a friendly manner. “Did you? On the farm? Why didn’t you come in?”

  I stared at him somberly, trying to touch him. But his bland and questioning face, his smile, challenged me, warned me not to speak.

  “Oh, I was tired,” I answered lamely.

  “Tired,” said Mortimer. “As we grow older we get tired. It isn’t age. It’s because we know too much. Even our thoughts are too familiar. We are tired of them. They are like clothes we have worn too long, and they have become shabby. They hold no newness for us. We know every seam. It’s a chronic tiredness. Only death can cure it.”

  He got up and went to a little cupboard, and brought out a decanter and three small red glasses. He filled them carefully. He lifted one glass and held it upright.

  “Here’s the cure for knowing too much,” he said wryly. “Not a permanent cure, sad to say. Jim, why don’t you doctors discover a cure for mind-weariness? You fellows are always puttering around with bellies. Why don’t you try probing into souls? You’ll find all the ills of the world, the flesh, and the devil there.”

  “Well,” I said, “you hear a lot nowadays about psychology. Perhaps it will be your answer when more is known about it. But, somehow, I feel it’s sort of indecent to probe and pry into souls, to turn over intimate details with blunt fingers. I think more injury can be done than good. What’s hidden in a man should not be touched by another man.”

  “I agree with you,” Dan said quietly, and he looked at me squarely. Again I felt my face grow hot and angry. Damn you, I thought, I won’t touch you!

  The clock ticked loudly in a sudden silence. I glanced at it with a sense of escape. It was nine o’clock. I was just about to stand up and announce my departure when Dan rose, yawning and stretching.

  “Guess I’ll go for a ride,” he said. He looked kindly from me to Mortimer, and, taking the pipe from his mouth, he laid it carefully on the tray on the table and picked up his coat. “Too early to go home, yet. Bee’s been down on the farm with me for a couple of days, Jim,” he added, looking at me with the open eyes that told me nothing. “Drop in the next time you are around.”

  The coat hung on him carelessly, and he put on his hat. Trying to remember, now, I can say with all truthfulness that there was nothing then in his expression, his eyes, his smile, that gave a clue to any frightfulness. He bid us both goodnight with the utmost geniality, and went out.

  Mortimer and I sat in silence for a long time after he went. Then Mortimer shook his head slowly, as though trying to free it from a heavy weight.

  “There’s a lot there I don’t understand,” he muttered. “I expect none of us will ever understand. Behind any facile explanation is the dark continent of the human mind, hidden in fogs, sinister and unknown.”

  “I suppose so,” I said listlessly.

  Mortimer glanced about the room. “Dan’s left his pipe,” he said. He picked it up gingerly. “Hell’s bells! It’s hot, and heated right through the tray onto the table! Alice will raise the devil when she sees that.” He put the pipe down, and poured some more wine for me.

  I had no desire to go home. I was warm, relaxed by heat and wine. Mortimer and I talked desultorily. I smoked, and almost forgot my companion. Then I mentioned that I had seen his wife. He chuckled.

  “Yes, Alice stopped by the door on the way out. She wouldn’t come in. She knew Dan was here, and she hates his guts. She glared in the door at him for a moment, and didn’t speak to him. Then she slammed the door and went out the front way. Women are queer.”

  I must have dozed, for when I started awake it was after eleven, and Mortimer was dozing also. The fire had died down. I threw a scuttle of coal in on it, and the fuel spluttered and roared and threw out sparks. Mortimer sat up, blinking.

  “Eh? What time is it? Eleven? Ain’t Alice come back yet? Guess not; she would have stopped in. Hates to see me sit up late.” He ambled wearily to the door that led into the body of the house, and shouted into the dark hall. There was no reply. He shut the door again, yawning.

  “Expect old Mrs. Burnett must be pretty sick,” he commented. “Maybe Alice will stay all night, or Jack will bring her home. Beats all how much she thinks of the boy, almost as much as though he were her own son. Have another glass of wine, Jim, before you go. And smoke another pipe. You don’t come around often enough.”

  It was half past eleven before I reluctantly thought about going. There was nothing to return home to, nothing but the tedious company of my father, if he were still awake. He had an insatiable curiosity about my cases, and I had to relate all details to him. Mortimer was yawning again, and I waited for him to cease, and then said I must go. But he exclaimed eagerly and hurriedly that it wasn’t often that he could stay up late without his wife nagging him and coming into the study and bullying him into going to bed and taking his medicine.

  We heard the outside door open, the sound of goodbyes, and steps approached the study floor.

  “Alice,” groaned Mortimer softly, and I stood up. He kept the study door locked. He said that it gave him a feeling of privacy, that no one could lacerate his nerves by sudden, uninvited entries, and in this pathetic way I knew he had retained his identity. Now he glanced at the bolted door with prideful satisfaction. The handle turned, and his wife said crossly: “Mortimer! Are you still having company in there, at this time of night? You ought to be in bed.”

  Mortimer winked at me and shook his head slightly.

  “Yes, I’m still up, Alice. Dan’s still here. Want to come in and say hello to him?”

  I smiled. “No, I don’t!” replied Mrs. Rugby irritably. “Dan oughtn’t to keep you up. All decent folks are in bed. I’ll expect you upstairs in five minutes, Mortimer,” and she went away, muttering. I was sure she was tossing her head.

  “Why did you tell her Dan was still here, and not I?” I asked idly.

  “Well, I want to talk to you for a couple of minutes more and if she knew you were here, it would be the end. She’d bounce in and annoy you about her symptoms; funny thing, when women haven’t much brains and they grow old, symptoms are the only real things in their lives. Men have money to comfort them in their old age, and women have the creakings of their old bodies. Keeps their minds off their souls.” He grinned at me, shamelessly.

  “Well, anyway, she is right, and you ought to be in bed,” I said. I stood up, feeling lame and stiff, but not very tired any longer.

  The telephone suddenly trilled upstairs on the landing. Telephone calls are always frightening at midnight, but they were more so in those early days of the twentieth century, when not many had telephones and used them mostly for emergencies. We heard Mrs. Rugby’s footsteps upstairs, and heard her alarmed voice answering. Mortimer, in spite of his philosophy and bitterness, still had human curiosity, and he tiptoed to the door, unbolted it, and listened. Mrs. Rugby’s voice, loud with alarm, could be heard very clearly in the silence.

  “Jack? Is she worse? No? Then what is it?” There was a humming pause. Then Alice cried out, loudly, sharply: “No! Bee murdered? When, where? On the farm? Who did it? Oh! Oh! No, Jack, that’s wrong! Why, Dan Hendricks is still here, talking to your father! I just passed the study door and heard him talking, and your father asked me to come in to speak to him! Jack, you’ve got to go out and tell the folks that, that Dan is still here, and couldn’t have murdered poor Bee two hours ago! He couldn’t be two places at once! Mortimer!”

  I was paralyzed with horror. Through a haze I saw a white glare stand for a moment on Mortimer’s profile, and I saw him shut the door swiftly, shoot the bolt into its socket. I don’t know what must have passed through his mind with such lightninglike swiftness, but no one can measure the speed of the human thought processes in dire emergencies. I still marvel at it. A whole plan must have leapt into his brain in the space of three seconds.

  I stared, stupidly. He stood by the door,
turning on me a stern and dreadful face. His eyes glittered. He put his finger imperatively to his lips. His wife was almost at the door now, crying aloud. He leapt on me, seized me by the arm, rushed me to the outside door. He opened it noisily, talking loudly and rapidly about God knows what; I was too confused and overcome to think anything.

  “Goodnight, Dan, and come again, soon!” he shouted loudly and genially. I heard his wife’s hand rattling the knob, calling for both him and Dan Hendricks. He thrust me out, slammed the door crashingly after me. I fell down the stairs in my agitation and sprained my ankle. But I hardly felt the pain. A frightful nausea had gripped my stomach. I fumbled for my horse which I had hitched and blanketed, and mechanically, with another side of my brain, I mounted, and so weak and sick was I that I almost slipped off the other side. But that part of my brain which operated coldly and mechanically made me whip my horse, ride off with a great clatter of hoofs. Only when I was galloping down the road could I gather my disordered thoughts together. I slowed down my horse, and closed my eyes against my nausea.

  It was nine o’clock when Dan had left. Nine o’clock. It was now midnight. The town hall clock pealed out thinly on the frosty air.

  I could see it all now or at least a lot of it. Mortimer was forming an alibi for Dan. I don’t know, now and I didn’t know then, whether he thought Dan was guilty of a horrible murder or not, but that did not concern him. He knew that I would not speak against Dan. But I felt a sudden surge of wonder and gratitude towards him; he would involve himself in this, but he had delicately refrained from involving me. He could have opened that door and asked me to tell his wife that Dan had just gone, but he had not done that. Any lies that were to be told, he would tell. He would ask no other man to perjure himself. All he asked was my silence, and he knew I would keep it. Thinking back, now, I wonder, with grim amusement, if he doubted my ability to tell lies adequately.

  I had to go down Main Street to get home, and when I reached it, it was alive with running men, cursing, half-dressed, and with groups talking and gesticulating in the pale moonlight, full of threats of lynching. The wildest rumors were running along the street like thin fire. The town bell suddenly began to toll with what to my ears was a terrible sound, a bloodthirsty and insane sound. Recognizing me, a group of men seized my reins, and stood about me, panting and waving their arms, their faces ghastly in the moonlight.

  “He’s done it!” one man shouted. “Doc Jim, he’s done it! Dan Hendricks! He’s killed his wife. So, that’s what it’s come to, lettin’ him live here! But, we’ll get him, and tear the guts out of him before we lynch him!”

  I felt such an awful giddiness come over me that for a few moments I could not speak. I did not know what to say, anyway. But after awhile I stammered: “Say, now, you mustn’t do anything rash. You don’t know he did it. I— he—”

  “He did it, all right,” said another one, ominously. “He did it. He’s skipped, seems like. But the constable phoned the sheriff, and they’re on the way here. Bloodhounds to find him, they got. We’ll get him this time,” he added, gritting his teeth.

  I looked down at their faces, glowing with savagery, white with satisfied rage. The Pack. Out at last after the hated fox. They’d run him to earth, they’d— Oh, God, what could I do? Where was Dan? What was it all about?

  I finally reached home. Every house along the way was lighted from top to bottom. Women shivered in shawls on the porches; men stood on the walks. From everyone came a hungry, subdued roar. A dozen times I was stopped to hear the news. When I arrived home, I was hysterical from the tolling of the bell that never ceased, from the wild-beast odor that seemed to blow through the town. I found my father sitting by the fire in his dressing robe, my mother, hastily dressed, crying. They both shouted to me as I came in.

  “Jim!” bellowed my father. “Where you been? Have you heard the news?”

  “Yes,” I replied. My tongue felt thick and dry in my mouth. “I don’t believe it. I just heard it on the street when I got into town from the Horlicks. I don’t believe it.”

  My father glared at me, outraged, turning in his chair. “What d’ye mean, believe it? Of course he did it! I knew he’d do something like that, some day, the goddamn so-and-so and so-and-so—”

  “Oh, it’s terrible!” sobbed my mother. “Poor Bee. Poor girl. This will kill Sarah—”

  I could not stay here. “Has anyone told Sarah?” I asked dully. I turned to the door. “I’ll tell her.”

  I found myself riding along the cold and windy street. The bell was still ringing, long and resonant. I put my hands suddenly to my ears. I found myself retching, and my thoughts began to spin in my head like wide rings of fire. When I reached Sarah’s house, a little group stood on the road near it. No one, I was informed, had had the courage to tell her. The house was dark. I went up the stairs and lifted the knocker. I had to knock several times until I heard Sarah’s sleepy voice in the room above the small porch.

  “Mrs. Faire,” I said urgently, hoarsely. “It’s Jim Marcy. Let me in, Sarah.”

  I heard her exclaim feebly; I heard her slow steps, and then her descent down the stairs. She opened the door for me, a thick garment over her nightgown, her red-gray hair tumbling over her shoulders. She looked sick and dazed.

  “Jim,” she faltered, holding the candle she held high. “Come in. What’s the matter?” She led me into the cold and dusty little parlor, and set the candle on the table. She stared at me, her face pinched and fallen in the wan light. I wrung my hands together impotently.

  “Mrs. Faire,” I said imploringly. I glanced at the shut door over my shoulder. “Bee’s been hurt. Quite badly. You’ve got to try to understand—”

  I looked at her. A strange and frightful smile stood on her lips. “She’s dead,” she whispered softly.

  Her eyes dilated. When I dropped my lifted hand, she was still smiling. She did not remove her gaze from me. She began to speak, softly still, like a child memorizing a lesson.

  “Dan didn’t do it.” She clutched me suddenly, the smile gone, mad terror twisting her features, making them ghastly. “Jim! They can’t hurt him! They can’t hurt him! No! He didn’t do it! Not Dan! Don’t let them hurt him! He’s suffered so, he—”

  Her voice rose to a scream, and I felt with dreary satisfaction that that would satisfy the morbid listeners outside. Someone was already pounding on the door.

  “Listen,” I whispered urgently. “Don’t say anything. Here, lie down on the sofa. You are heartbroken, but you don’t believe Dan did it. You don’t know anything, see? You say, over and over to them, that Dan didn’t do it, you know he didn’t do it! You’re not to say anything against Bee, or they won’t believe what you say about Dan! Bee was your good daughter, and she had a good husband—”

  I threw her on the couch, and pulled her clothing smoothly about her. As I went to the door, I glanced back at her. Here eyes were closed, her face half covered by the heavy lengths of her fallen hair; she looked dead. I flung open the door, and looked down at the avid and sympathizing faces below.

  “Here, you, Mrs. Fitz, and you, Mrs. Simmons, both of you come in. Sarah’s fainted. You’d better stay with her tonight. I’ve told her.”

  I went home.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  But when I reached the house door, I could not go in. I went to the barn and unsaddled my horse, and then wandered out to the street again, in spite of my exhaustion and the burning heat which was rising in me. I felt really ill, physically as well as mentally. I ran, and soon arrived on Main Street. It was crowded. Men were carrying lanterns and screaming at the top of their lungs. Lights aobbed all over the square, and many women were out, shivering in shawls and coats. A dry snow had begun to fall, and its light haze made everything look unreal, the dancing lights, the flickering street lamps, the running men, the bare and empty trees.

  “They’ve got him!” a man shouted at me as he recognized me. “He’s in the jail! But he won’t stay there; we’ve got a rope and
we’re going to hang the son of a—”

  I fought my way through a congestion down to the side street, where a wilder crowd was gathered, their faces fierce and contorted. The congestion was thickest about our inadequate little jail, which looked frail and helpless with the crowd before it. I pushed my way through the crowd, and gained the steps. The jail was glaring within with gaslights, and the constable, who stood uneasily on guard reinforced by about ten sullen deputies, let me enter.

  “Sheriff’s here from Ripley, Doc Jim,” he muttered. “They’re questionin’ Dan in there. Old Mr. Rugby’s there, too, telling the sheriff that Dan left his house not half an hour or more ago. They got Dan ridin’ easy-like towards his farm, and hell’s bells! but we had a hard time gettin’ him in here without the folks here tearin’ him away and lynchin’ him.”

  In the bare and ugly little room, the office, with the gaslights flaring and stinking, were a group of agitated and madly smoking men. They stood about Dan, who was sitting easily and smilingly in a wooden chair. Beside him, his hand on his shoulder, stood Mortimer Rugby, holding in his hand the still-warm pipe that Dan had left behind in the study. Mortimer was not a smoker; what nausea he must have suffered to light up that pipe and smoke it furiously after I had left!

  The uproar stopped for a minute when I entered. They all looked at me. I stared for a long moment at Dan; he returned my regard almost indifferently. But Mortimer stopped in the middle of a vociferous sentence, the pipe held in mid-air, and looked at me. His old face was ghastly; his eyes fixed themselves on me. For the first time a flicker of fear agitated his eyelids. I advanced slowly into the room. Could I say anything? Could I help? I asked myself wretchedly. No, said Mortimer’s sunken and blazing eyes in reply, you must say nothing. That is the way to help. He turned from me to the burly sheriff. I saw his hand pressing Dan’s shoulder fiercely, so that his knuckles became white.