Of Time and the River (64 page)

For Blake was now sobbing horribly in his cell: as Eugene stood leaning against the wall next to him, he could hear him sobbing and pounding his thin fist savagely into the grey-slate substance of the wall, while he went on:

“The whore! The dirty whore!” he wept. “I know that she’s just waiting for me to die! I know that’s what she wants! I know that’s all she’s waiting for! . . . That’s what you want, you bitch, isn’t it? You’d like that, wouldn’t you? That would just suit you, wouldn’t it? . . . Ah, I’ve fooled you! I’ve fooled you, haven’t I?” he panted, with a savage and vindictive triumph in his voice. “You’ve been waiting for it for the last two years, haven’t you? And I’ve fooled you every time,” he gasped. “And I’ll fool you yet—you bitch, you dirty bitch!”

And they sat there, saying nothing, listening with desolation in their hearts to the man’s naked shame, and now hearing nothing but his gasping sobs and the slow grey wear and waste of time around them. And then his sobbing breath grew quieter, they could hear him panting feebly, like an exhausted runner, and presently he went over and sat down upon his cot, and there was nothing but time and silence all about them.

Finally Blake spoke again, and now in a voice that was quiet, lifeless, and curiously sober, as if this outlet and easement of his grief had also quenched the drunkenness in him.

“Gant?” he said, in a quiet and lifeless tone that penetrated curiously the grey silence all around them.

“Yes,” said Eugene.

“I never met you till today,” said Blake, “and I want you to know I’ve got no grudge against you.”

“Why, Eugene never did anything to you, Emmet,” said Robert at this point, in a tone of protest. “Why should you have anything against him?”

“Now, WAIT a minute!” said Blake pugnaciously. “Eugene,” he went on in a maudlin tone of voice, “I’m friends with everyone, I haven’t got an enemy in the world. . . . There’s just one man in this world I hate,” he went on sombrely, “and I hate his guts—I hate his life—Goddamn him! I hate the air he breathes!” he snarled, and then was silent for a moment. “Eugene,” he went on in a moment, in a low voice, and with a tone of brooding drunken insinuation, “you know the man I mean, don’t you?”

Eugene made no answer, and in a moment he repeated the question, in a more insistent and pugnacious tone:

“DON’T you?” he demanded.

And Eugene said, “Yes.”

“You’re damned right you do,” he said in a low, ruminant, and brooding tone. “Everybody knows whom I mean. He’s a cousin of yours,” said Blake, and then began to mutter to himself:

“I’ll kill him! So help me, God, I’ll kill him!” And suddenly, starting from his cot with a scream of baffled misery and anguish, he began to beat his fist into the hard slate wall again, yelling:

“I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! . . . You son of a bitch, I’ll kill the two of you! . . . I’ll send you both to hell where you belong, if it’s the last thing that I ever do!”

And he began to sob horribly and curse foully, and pounded his fist into the wall again until he was exhausted, and went back and sat down on his cot again, muttering his drunken and impotent threats.

And Eugene did not try to answer him, for there was nothing he could say. George Pentland was his cousin, and had taken Blake’s wife away from him, and got her love; and Blake was dying, and they knew it. And suddenly it seemed to Eugene that there was in this whole story something dark and hideously shameful which he had never clearly seen in life before, which could not be endured, and which yet suspended over every man who ever lived the menace of its intolerable humiliation and dishonour.

For to see a man—a manly-looking man, strong of body, fearless and bold of glance, deep of voice—physically humiliated and disgraced, slapped and whipped like a cur before his wife, his mistress, or his children, and forced to yield, retreat and slink away, to see his face turn white and the look of the coward shine through his mask of manhood, is not an easy thing to see.

Presently they heard steps coming along the corridor again, and they were so certain they belonged to a messenger bringing them release that they all arose instinctively, and stood before the barred doors of the cells, waiting to walk out into the air of freedom again. To their astonishment the visitor was Kitchin. They had forgotten him completely, and now as they saw him doing a gleeful caper before their cells, with a grin of triumphant satisfaction written wide across his face, they looked at him with the astounded recognition of men who see a face which they had known years before, but have forgotten—in the lapse of time and memory.

“Where?—” Robert began hoarsely and accusingly, in a tone of astounded stupefaction. “Where have YOU been all this time?”

“Out front!” said Kitchin exultantly. “Sitting in your car!”

“Out front!” cried Robert in a bewildered and resentful tone. “Didn’t they lock you up, too?”

“Hell, no!” cried Kitchin, fairly dancing about with gleeful satisfaction. “They never touched me! And I’d had as much to drink as any of you. I’ve been sittin’ out front all afternoon reading the paper! I guess they thought I was the only sober one of the crowd,” he said modestly. And this apparently was the reason for his astonishing freedom—this and another, more mercenary reason, which will presently be apparent.

“Why, what do they mean by keeping us locked up back here while you’re out front there reading the paper? Darnedest thing I ever heard of!” Robert barked. “Kitchin!” he now said angrily. “You go out there and tell them we want out of here!”

“I told ‘em! I told ‘em!” Kitchin said virtuously. “That’s what I’ve been telling them all afternoon.”

“Well, what do they say?” Robert demanded impatiently.

“Boys,” said Kitchin now, shaking his head regretfully, but unable to conceal his own elation and sense of triumph, “I’ve got news for you—and I’m afraid it’s not going to be good news, either. How much money you got?”

“Money!” Robert cried, in an astounded tone, as if the uses of this vile commodity had never occurred to him. “What’s money got to do with it? We want out of here!”

“I know you do,” said Kitchin coolly, “but you’re not going to get out unless you’ve got money enough to pay your fine.”

“Fine?” Robert repeated stupidly.

“Well, that’s what they call it, anyway. Fine or graft, or whatever the hell it is, you’ve got to pay it if you want to be let out.”

“How much is it?” said Robert. “How much do they want?”

“Boys,” said Kitchin, slowly and solemnly, “have you got seventy- three dollars?”

“Seventy-three dollars!” Robert shouted. “Kitchin, what are you talking about?”

“Well, don’t shout at me,” said Kitchin. “I can’t help it! I didn’t do it! But if you get out of here that’s what you’ve got to pay.”

“Seventy-three dollars!” Robert cried. “Seventy-three dollars for what?”

“Well, Robert,” said Kitchin patiently, “you’ve got to pay fifty dollars fine and one dollar costs. That’s because you were driving the car. That’s fifty-one. And Emmet and Eugene here have to pay ten dollars apiece and one dollar costs—that’s twenty-two dollars more. That figures up to seventy-three dollars. Have you got it?”

“Why, the dirty grafting sons of bitches!” Blake now cried. “Telling us that everything would be all right and that they had put us in here so we wouldn’t hurt ourselves! . . . All right, you cheap grafting bastards!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, rattling the barred door furiously as he spoke. “We’ll give you your dirty graft—but wait till I get out of here!” he cried threateningly. “Just wait till I get out! George Blake will tend to you!” he shouted. “It’ll be the worst day’s work YOU’VE ever done!”

But no one answered, although Blake and Robert cursed foully and shouted insults at the men. Meanwhile Kitchin waited patiently before their cells until the furious tumult should subside a little; when they were calmer he suggested that they pool their resources to see if they had enough to pay the total of the fines. But the sum of their combined funds was only a little more than forty dollars, of which Blake and Robert contributed the greater part and of which Eugene could contribute less than three dollars, which was all he had.

When it was apparent that their total funds would not be adequate to secure their release Blake, still furiously angry, began to talk in a loud and drunken tone of bravado about his famous uncle, scrawling out a cheque and instructing Kitchin to go at once to the local agent for his uncle’s motor cars and get the necessary money.

“Any Blake dealer in the country will cash my personal cheque for fifty thousand dollars any time I need it!” he cried with extravagant boast, as if he thought this threat of opulence would strike terror to the hearts of the police. “Yes, sir!” he said. “All you got to do is to walk into any Blake agency in the country and tell them George Blake’s nephew needs money—and they’ll give you everything they’ve got!” he cried. “Tell ‘em you need ten thousand dollars,” he said, coming down in scale somewhat, “and they’ll have it for you in five minutes.”

“Why, Emmet,” said Kitchin quietly, and yet with a trace of mockery and ridicule on his dark, handsome, and rather sly face. “We don’t need fifty thousand dollars. You know, we’re not trying to buy the whole damned jail. Now, I thought,” he went on quietly and ironically, “that all we needed was about thirty or forty—say fifty dollars—to make up the fine and get us out of town.”

“Yes,” said Robert in a quick excited tone of vigorous agreement. “You’re absolutely right! That’s all we need, all right!”

“All RIGHT! All RIGHT! Go to the Blake dealer! Go to the Blake dealer! That’s what I’m telling you,” cried Blake with an arrogant impatience. “He’ll give you anything you want.—What are you waiting for?” he cried furiously. “Go ON! Go ON!”

“But Emmet,” said Kitchin quietly and reasonably, in his dark low voice, as he looked at the cheque which Blake had scrawled out for him. “This cheque you’ve given me is for five hundred dollars. Hadn’t you better make out another one for fifty? You know, we don’t need five hundred dollars, Emmet. And besides,” he suggested tactfully, “the man might not have that much on hand. Hadn’t you better give me one just made out for what we need?”

“He’ll have it! He’s got it! He’s GOT to have it!” said Blake with a dogmatic and unreasoning arrogance. “Tell him I sent you and you’ll get the money right away!”

Kitchin did not answer him: he thrust the cheque into his pocket and turned to Eugene, saying quietly:

“Didn’t you say your brother was waiting to meet you here at a hotel?”

“Yes: he expected to meet me at four o’clock when that service car came in.”

“At what hotel?”

“The Blackstone—listen, Kitchin,” he reached through the bar and grabbed him by the arm, with a feeling of cold horror in his heart. “For Christ’s sake, don’t drag my brother into this,” he whispered. “Kitchin—listen to me! If you can get this money from the Blake agent here, for God’s sake, do it! What’s the use of bringing my brother into it,” he pleaded, “when it’s all between the four of us, and can stay that way? I don’t want my family to know I ever got into any trouble like this. Kitchin, look here—I can get the money for my fine: I’ve got a little money in the bank, and I’ll pay Blake every cent I owe him if you get the money from the agent. Now, promise me you won’t go and tell my brother!”

He held him hard in the tension of desperation, and Kitchin promised. Then he went swiftly away, and they were left alone in their cells again. Robert, utterly cast down from his high exaltation, now cursed bitterly and morosely against the police and the injustice of his luck and destiny.

Meanwhile, Blake, whose final and chief resource, it had now become pitifully evident, was nothing in himself but just the accident of birth that had made him nephew to a powerful and wealthy man, kept declaring in a loud voice of arrogant bravado that “any Blake agent in the United States will cash my personal cheque for fifty thousand dollars any time I ask for it! Yes, sir, any of them—I don’t give a damn where it is! He’s on his way here now! You’ll see! We’ll be out of here in five minutes now!”—a boastful assurance that was hardly out of his mouth before they heard steps approaching rapidly along the corridor and, even as Blake cried out triumphantly, “What did I tell you?” and as Eugene leaped up and ran to the door of his cell, clutching the bars with both hands, and peering out with bloodshot eyes like a caged gorilla, Kitchin entered the cell-room, followed by a policeman, and—Eugene’s brother!

Luke looked at him for a moment with a troubled expression and said: “Why, how did you get in here? What’s happened to you?” he said, suddenly noticing his battered face. “Are you hurt, Eugene?”

The boy made no reply but looked at him with sullen desperation and jerked his head towards the cells where his two companions were imprisoned—a gesture that pleaded savagely for silence. And Luke, instantly reading the meaning of that gesture, turned and called out cheerfully:

“Now you boys just hold on a minute and I’ll have you out of here.”

Then he came up close to the barred door of the cell where his younger brother stood and, his face stern with care, he said in a low voice: “What happened? Who hit you? Did any of these bastards hit you? I want to know.”

A policeman was standing behind him looking at them with narrowed eyes, and the boy said desperately:

“Get us out of here. I’ll tell you later.”

Then Luke went away with the policeman to pay their fines. When he had gone, Eugene turned bitterly on Kitchin, who had remained with the boys, accusing him of breaking his word by going to Luke. Kitchin’s dark evasive eyes shifted nervously in his head as he answered:

“Well, what else could I do? I went to the Blake agent here—”

“Did you get the money?” Blake said. “Did he give it to you?”

“Give!” Kitchin said curtly, with a sneer. “He gave me nothing— not a damned cent! He said he’d never heard of you!”

There was silence for a moment.

“Well, I can’t understand that,” Blake said at length, feebly, and in a tone of dazed surprise. “That’s the first time anything like that has ever happened.”

At this moment Eugene’s brother returned with two policemen, who unlocked the cell doors and let them out. The feeling of coming from the cell into free space again was terrific in its physical intensity: never before had Eugene known the physical sensations of release as he knew them at that moment. The very light and air in the space outside the cell had a soaring buoyancy and freshness which, by comparison, gave to that within the cell a material and oppressive heaviness, a sense of walled and mortared space that had pressed upon his heart and spirit with a crushing weight. Now, suddenly, as if a cord that bound him had been cut, or a brutal hand that held his life in its compelling grip had been removed, the sensations of release and escape filled his body with a sense of aerial buoyancy and the power of wing-like flight.