The Just And The Unjust (12 page)

Since that was exactly, to the word, his thought of a few minutes ago, Abner nearly laughed, and so nearly choked. He swallowed and said, 'But, you mean, you aren't.'

'Oh!' said Annette. She had her father's blue eyes, and bridling, they took that same glinting cast that Abner had seen a hundred times directed from the bench on counsel or a witness. 'Men are all alike!' she said. 'You don't think I could possibly be serious, do you? It's so tiresome! That's what I mean. I keep hoping that maybe the reason boys are so boring is that they aren't grown-up —you can't imagine how tired I get of them. All they want to do is go dancing in stupid dives, or drink too much, or paw you —'

'You don't mean out at the Black Cat, do you?' Abner said.

She looked at him, surprised, very wide eyed (her tragic look, no doubt). 'Yes,' she said, lowering her voice. 'I don't know how you knew. I went once or twice because I thought it might be amusing.' She lifted her shoulders and looked away past him toward the canal bank in the twilight. 'Well, what can you do? Don't imagine I like it.'

'Then you ought not to do it,' Abner said.

She said reproachfully, 'Don't you ever do anything you shouldn't?' She managed to imply that, beset with temptations, her sensual nature often betrayed her; and so, if you wanted to tempt her, too, you would not necessarily be wasting your time.

Abner said, 'It wouldn't be very nice for your father if something happened out there and you got subpoenaed.'

She was disconcerted; but she said lightly, 'Oh, surely father would fix that! What's the use of being the Judge's daughter if you can't get away with anything?'

Abner was inclined to answer, 'You don't know your father very well.' But, of course, she was right; except that it wouldn't be her father. The use of being the Judge's daughter was that the district attorney's office would make sure before any officers were sent to the Black Cat, that Annette was not there; or if she were, that she got out first.

Annette said, 'Anyway, how thrilling! Think of the scandal! Is Mr. Bunting going to raid it — like the movies? If I were Mrs. Bunting, I'd go, too. I wouldn't let him get that Dagmar, that fan dancer, alone for a good grilling. I mean that as a joke. She is the most revolting creature, in case you haven't seen her.'

From across the board table, Dorothy Nyce said, 'What are you two so absorbed in?'

Abner said, 'Miss Vredenburgh is discussing local conditions with me.' Dorothy Nyce, known then as Dotty Wellman, had been at school with him; and, now Abner thought about it, had enjoyed a popularity probably not unlike Annette's. That had been, say, fifteen years ago, when Annette was an infant. Now that Abner thought further about it, he could remember, excited by what other boys told him, himself pursuing Dotty. He had not got much for his pains; but he wondered if Dotty ever thought of things like that; and whether it embarrassed her to be able to guess — she must be able to, by now — what her 'admirers' had really thought of her; in short, whether she despised herself, or just despised them. Abner guessed it was the latter. She had had several drinks, and she said with an intentional leer, 'And how are conditions, fair and warmer? Dick's having a birthday party to-morrow night. Come?'

'Try to,' said Abner, who had no such intention. He saw Dick Nyce, her husband, down at the table's end where he and Harry Wurts and Mark Irwin had their heads together over the littered table, singing softly against the babble of voices and the continuing radio music: '... but his mind was weak and low; he was wild and woolly and full of fleas —'

Adelaide Maurer brought up a chocolate layer cake. Annette took a piece; but Abner shook his head. 'How'd your story go?' he said.

'Oh, they only wanted half a column! I think they're mean! I tried to give them your speech; but they didn't want it.'

'They've got a nerve!' Abner said.

He heard Cousin Mary's raised voice crying, 'Why don't some of you men light the lanterns? Harry Wurts, why don't you stop singing that disgusting song and — where's Ab? I saw him just sitting there, stuffing himself.'

'I'll do it,' Abner called back, getting up with relief.

Farther down the table, Joe Jackman got up, too. While Abner lifted down the coloured paper lanterns and held them collapsed, Joe struck matches and lit the candles inside. He said, 'What are you trying to do, rob the cradle?'

Abner said, 'Robbery is the felonious and forcible taking from the person of another, goods or money to any value, by violence or putting in fear. It won't stick.'

'Somebody ought to put her in fear,' Joe said. 'If I were her father, I'd warm her little bottom.'

The Chinese lanterns, replaced one after another along the frame of the awning support, brightened softly as the candle flames increased and steadied. The fragile shapes glowed pink and yellow and green in the dusk under the dark masses of the canal-side elms. Surrounded, half overhung and canopied by these tree shadows, the gliding barge, its coloured lanterns, its sounds of music and voices, seemed to float in pure twilight, midway between the water and the sky.

Doctor Mosher had been sitting near the bow with Mr. Schaeffer, their red cigar ends burning together. He got up and came over to Abner as the last lantern was lighted. Doctor Mosher's stocky figure with its firm little belly was clothed in a white linen suit. His short grey hair was mussed up, his square pugnacious face down in the mouth. 'Ab,' he said, drawing him aside, 'why the devil don't you do something about your father? Can't you see what he needs? He says you don't tell him things.'

'Well,' said Abner, surprised, 'there's nothing much to tell him.'

'It doesn't have to be much,' Doctor Mosher said. 'God Almighty, boy, what do you suppose a man thinks of, sitting there all day? Well, maybe you aren't old enough to know.'

'I can see he'd naturally get pretty low in his mind,' Abner said, 'but —'

'Pretty low in his mind!' said Doctor Mosher. He shook overboard ashes from the cigar between his blunt fingers, 'Well, that'll do, that'll do; until you find out for yourself. Get after him, Ab! Don't do it so any fool can see what you're doing; but tell him about what's going on in court, ask him things, make him talk. When you see him sitting there, not saying anything, do you know what he's thinking about half the time? He's thinking about dying. The human mind doesn't like that. Pitch in and break it up!' He put a hand against Abner's shoulder, half patting him, half pushing him away, turned and went back to the camp stool next to Mr. Schaeffer.

Silently rounding a long bend, the barge rounded a rise of ground, too; and there, just on the treetops, above the humped frame of an approaching wagon bridge, the vast dusky full moon floated clear, floated mirrored in the unstirred lane of silent water. 'Hurray!' shouted Harry Wurts. 'Soft o'er the fountain —' He swept out an arm, clasping the first female within reach, who happened to be Bonnie, and seated her on his knee. 'What beauty!' he said, 'what romance! What-'

Bonnie said, 'Unhand me, you souse!' and got up.

Abner walked down and said, 'You don't need protection, do you?'

'A lot I'd get from you!' Bonnie said. She undid a flowered apron she had been wearing and tossed it folded into a hamper. 'Now, maybe I can eat,' she said. 'Ab, get some coffee for me, will you? Mother has a pot over there.'

Abner brought the cup down to her and sat at the corner of the table. 'Haven't you had anything to eat?' he said. 'I tried to save a place for you —'

'I saw you trying.'

'You mean my new girl-friend?' Abner murmured. 'Don't you like her?'

'She isn't such a fool as you think,' Bonnie said. 'She isn't after you.'

'Well, who is she after? You wound me.'

'I could tell you that, too. If you weren't so wrapped up in yourself, you could see.'

'Say, are you mad?' said Abner, advancing his elbow to slouch across the corner of the table. 'Say, who made that chicken salad? It's good.'

'I made it,' said Bonnie.'

'I knew you did. That's why I said it. You mustn't be mad because all the girls like me. I can't help it.'

Bonnie's clear face had clouded, and she looked at her plate, entirely engaged in eating, Abner took a drinking straw from the package beside the iced tea pitcher and poked her cheek with it. 'Don't be such a clown, Ab,' she said; 'it doesn't suit you.'

'Now, wait a minute,' Abner said, 'you were all right before supper. What don't you like? My elbow on the table?'

'You thought I was all right. You always think I am.'

'No, I don't,' said Abner. 'I'll tell you how I tell. There is your all-right voice, and your not-all-right voice, if you follow me — O.K. I'm sorry. But tell me sometime, will you?'

He stood up. Harry Wurts dropped an arm over his shoulder and affected to hang on him. 'Let her eat!' he said. 'Never argue with women on an empty stomach. You need exercise. I see someone tapping a beer keg. I must prepare. I mean, there is a little tapping — er, excuse me, m'am! It's time we stretched our legs, Counsellor. Carry me ashore!'

2

At Locktown, in the basin below the old locks, Ben Wister turned the barge around. The whitewashed fieldstone walls of the Locktown Inn, a big place with long sheds and stables built when traffic on the canal was heavy, still stood above the basin. Most of the building had now fallen into disrepair. Nobody had stopped or eaten there for years; but the Inn bar still did business, and it had other accommodations, not all that could be desired, but, by arrangement of the Club's secretary with the proprietor's wife, prepared as well as possible, and better than nothing.

While Ben swore at his mules and worked with a pole, a number of women went up for a minute, and a number of men visited the taproom to see whether the beer there was as bad as what they had on board, or worse. Abner, who had stayed with Joe Jackman to give Ben a hand with the boat, thought that he couldn't remember a more beautiful night. The beauty, helped perhaps by beer, seemed to swell the heart and stretch the nerves until they rang with pleasure. Abner sat with Joe Jackman against the low stern bulwark by the tiller while moonlight bright enough to read by fell on them. The tops of the great trees above the locks were frosted grey. On the tow path the waiting mules cast exact black shadows. The Inn's moonlit stone walls were intensely white, a chalky candescence brighter than the yellow squares of the taproom windows. Under the deep shade of the awning Abner could hear the quiet voices, see the moving cigarette ends, of the people still on board. Over the water a delicious breeze stirred. 'Pretty nice,' he said to Joe.

'Yeah,' said Joe, 'and not even any mosquitoes.' He got up. 'Want some beer?' he said.

'If you get it.'

Sitting alone, Abner looked at the moon. Up in the awning shadow someone picked the strings of a musical instrument — Adelaide Maurer, since the instrument was a mandolin — and the thin, tinkling notes began to arrange themselves, trying for a tune, while one or two voices helped, singing tentatively: 'Every time my honey leaves me, I get the blues —' Then, dissatisfied, they broke off, arguing about how it really went.

Abner listened, surprised, not sure how old that song was, but remembering it perfectly. During his childhood there had been a phonograph record of it, among a number of records which, with pleasure in the noise but little interest, he often played, trying to kill some of the endless time of those days —vacant hours of a rainy morning or a winter afternoon, or the too long pause after supper on a summer evening before it finally got dark. From the corner of the living-room the mahogany veneer victrola, almost as tall as, and bigger than, Abner, poured out the rapid tinny music, against which a voice, rapid and tinny, too, suddenly sang; while Abner fidgeted, looking around the room in the greyness of the rainy day, or watching the light reflected on the ceiling from the snowy lawn, or staring through the screened windows at the June dusk. Adelaide, who was older, might remember the tune as one they played at the first dances she went to; and, recalling it, she thought of — what?

Bill Maurer, if he had been Adelaide's honey, left her, all right; but, by then, Bill's leaving was a relief and even a joy; and Adelaide wanted nothing so much as the divorce that would finally rid her of him. As counsel Abner had handled one or two divorces; and sat as Master in one or two more, so patterns of the change from wanting to not wanting, from attraction to revulsion, and the budget of sorrows — first quarrels, disappointments, humiliations, idle tears, bitter speeches — implicit in the change, were known to him. The primary trouble was the same. Differences were only in detail. When Adelaide married Bill Maurer, when Cousin Mary married Jared Wacker, when what was to be the petitioner in any action sub sur divorce married what was to be the respondent, someone had married someone that he or she (usually she) did not really know. Ruling out occasional cool moves to get money or deliberate resolves to take a last or only chance, it would seem that those about to marry avoided rather than sought real knowledge; and were content to investigate nothing but their own feelings; and were satisfied if, among their feelings, they discovered some truth, such as: every time my honey leaves me, I get the blues.

Abner did not mean to make fun of such truths. He had experienced thuir impact. Long ago at law school when he tried — how callowly, how fervently! — to work into the hard schedule of his last year time enough for a Boston girl named Eunice Stockton, the incontinent force of those truths had surprised and tormented him; and their irremediable ache had filled him with despair when he began to realize that it was all coming to nothing.

Of course, all having come to nothing, and a nothing so absolute, and reached so long ago that Eunice Stockton's name, out of mind since he did not know when, made him start, Abner could be sure now that those forces would spend themselves and that those aches could be remedied. This was wisdom, the eschatology of what is true in the long run, and better than rubies; but things Abner knew now could not affect what Abner had felt then, and the feeling made it no thanks to him, nor to his prudence, nor to his common sense, that he was not to-day married to Eunice Stockton.