White Narcissus (11 page)

“Are you sure now that it wouldn’t be necessary to make Carson over for that, as well as, perhaps, yourself?” Richard enjoyed abominably and delicately the brightening and the fall in the old man’s look.

“Of course, to come right down to it at once, it’s us, our own fault. You can blame us both. It’s his way, and it’s my being what I am. But still there is no need of things coming to such a pass….”

“Between neighbours, eh?” The tone was ironical almost to bitterness, but the bitterness was half with Richard’s own perversity, for in that moment he recalled the way – romantic it seemed to the real of the present – in which his writing had glossed over such differences, with all the life of which they formed part.

The old man glanced at him. “Yes, between neighbours. When we’ve always got along, I may say, perfectly. When I first settled here as a young man I used to compliment myself on having such good neighbours. They were kind of backward about associating, but awfully obliging, lend you anything you asked for. My father used to say it was worthwhile living here just to have such good neighbours. Then things changed little by little, the younger fellows came along, like Carson, and somehow they seemed to see things differently. They kept away more than ever. Not shy, they weren’t. They seemed to take pride in being independent, I suppose they called it.”

“In other words, their fathers had to swallow your learning and possibly your manner and means, and the sons’ teeth are edged with an inferiority complex. But to what pass is it that things, as you say, are coming?”

“Things couldn’t go much farther between neighbours,” Mr. Lethen assured him again. “I had to go in to see my lawyer, the other day, and he says it’s nothing which should go to court.”

Milne’s impatience began to escape him. “Apparently you are sure you want trouble, or you would not go to a lawyer. If matters have gone to that stage, I’m sure I can’t see there’s anything but for you to go ahead until you both get your fill of dissension, and the costs connected with it –” He stopped abruptly. Words seemed to burn his tongue for utterance, but he would hold his peace until the man had shot his bolt. Then for an accounting, an understanding from first to last.

“But you see I had to go to see my lawyer, since Hymerson has filed a suit against me. The only thing now is to try to get it settled out of court. It puzzles me – it puzzles me still. I can’t see what he should have against me.”

“And, if you care to tell me, what is he suing you for?”

“For my land.”

The old man spoke with such simplicity, as though expecting his hearer to comprehend, that Milne wondered whether he had heard correctly.

“Your land!” he exclaimed, surprised out of his posing. “What title has Carson Hymerson to your land?”

“None that will stand in court. But that is another matter, scarcely relevant. There’s a mortgage – I’ve had one for years – against the farm. He has got hold of the mortgage, and he has always wanted the farm.”

“And your lawyer tells you that his claim won’t stand.
That is most fortunate for you.” The sedate blandness of incomprehension was part of his design; the unhappy are the most cruel of people.

Mr. Lethen went on with a patience which ignored this. His brows rose into wrinkles in his hair. “No, it only postpones my difficulty. It’s not necessary for him to win. The expense if I lose will be enough to put me where I can’t wiggle – as Carson himself told me. I guess it’s true enough. After the lawsuit, even if the court doesn’t give him judgement, holding the mortgage, he’ll be able to sell me out. He could now, if he only knew. I might as well tell him that.” The voice rose in bitterness. “But after the lawsuit there won’t even be public opinion to hinder him. That goes by the board when you get into trouble. Then he can say that I’d do as much to him if I could, that I tried, and so on. People that don’t know me would believe it. He has his standing as an officer in farmers’ organizations and the like.”

“Well,” intervened Milne in strong, deliberate tones, “that is not as it may be assumed now. It would not appear safe to generalize until after the event.” He said this as gravely as though he more than half meant it.

“I tell you, Mr. Milne,” the thin-faced man cried in sudden passion, “it has got me going. I don’t know what I am going to do. There must be something, some way. I thought at first it’s not possible that such a thing could happen. But it appears to be possible all right. I guess I’ll have to admit I’ve been worrying about it….” His manner made the young man think of Ada Lethen – strangely, since never had there been this fire of instancy in the speech of the daughter. And after there came her gentle smile, in a way which appeared to expect that no one knew he had had any other cause for worry throughout his life.

Richard Milne’s hand stilled the lines upon the backs of his horses, and he plunged into reflection. It was only after a moment that he recalled the wisdom of not being hasty of belief in everything told him. There should be limits to the recognized irresponsibility of Carson. And it was strange that the old man Lethen should appeal to him, to one so far – and in such manner – from being a stranger. Perhaps it was an attempt at forestalling him. Was it merely a grotesque manner of broaching acquaintanceship on the part of this weird old man with the haunted eyes? Yes, those eyes had seen trouble enough in this life, Milne knew, more than is usually given in the lot of man. More, it occurred to him, strangely, than his own were likely to see; his own trouble seemed temporary and simple. But perhaps those eyes had learned cunning.

These things flashed through his mind without leaving an impress or meeting with question or the certainty of assent. His thoughts became impersonal, and thence he inclined to pity, to mercy, or at least the putting aside of his own quarrel with this unhappy man who obviously was speaking the truth. In hurried tones, automatically, he began reassuring him.

“No, of course, there’s no use worrying about it. Carson would make the most of that.” He only needed to speak to reveal the direction of his sympathy now. At once there was a brightening appreciation in Mr. Lethen’s manner. “Instead, everything should be done to get at the root of the trouble. … Does Arvin know about it?”

“Yes, but that was in the early part. He kind of laughed when I brought it up, and said that his father had queer notions – trying to hush it up as though it didn’t amount to anything. He said his father wouldn’t really sue when it came to the point. I think Arvin means well. … But he’s got into the way of giving way to everything his father says.”

“Yes. No matter how absurd. And what about Carson himself? Have you actually spoken to him directly about the matter recently?”

An embarrassing hesitancy seemed to shape an answer otherwise in the same tones of melancholy. “Just half an hour ago, or less. He was in his oats field pulling mustard when I went to see whether we couldn’t come to some understanding. He didn’t want to listen to me at all,” said the old man with a sheepish smile. “Finally, I told him I didn’t think it would pay to go ahead; I guessed the world hadn’t got so bad but what the public opinion would make it hot for him. Then he did get started! He said – why, he went right up in the air, and talked so fast you couldn’t hear yourself think. I’d see how much people thought of me, he said. They’d forgotten I was alive, long ago. Years ago, he said, I used to strut around like a lord. We’d see the way public opinion regarded me! Why, I didn’t deserve to own a farm, the way I go on. That’s what makes it right for him to do me out of my property. He wouldn’t let me tell him that though; he was going at such a rate that one couldn’t hear himself think. The things he didn’t think up weren’t very many! There’s no use trying to repeat them all.” Mr. Lethen winced. “And perhaps he’s right, and people are really indifferent. A new generation. … I am a back number. What he told me were private affairs which couldn’t concern him at all – personal matters, you understand. Then he wound up by telling me he’d do his worst; he’d put me on the road, bag and baggage, if I tried to stop him. Unusual logic. They’d been easy with me on the mortgage, he said, and as for that it’s true some of these hard years I’ve only been able to pay the interest. But now he wants to make that right by taking the farm away from me. He put that quite plainly, without even saying, ‘If you don’t pay me
what you owe me.’ He thinks there’s no likelihood of that. He thinks I can’t, and he’ll just take it. Oh, I never saw such a man!”

The listener had been lost in thought while the voice went on, reaching him almost unwittingly. It was to him as if the ghost of some lost part of himself were speaking. An angleworm twisted in a shiny clod of the freshly-turned earth, its two halves separate. He looked up, as though coming to himself, but without words, and Mr. Lethen lifted his arms from the rail, as though about to turn away.

“Well, I’m sorry to have stopped you this way. If Carson notices it won’t make things any better. … I hope you won’t think I stop anybody like this and pour out a tale of woe. It seemed to me that I knew you, after knowing your people. Just the same it does a man good to talk about his troubles, you know….”

“Of course,” Richard Milne murmured. “It’s an easy service.”

“But not a small one. … And how have things been going with you since you left this part of the country?”

The old man obviously wanted to make conversation, as though unwillingly but inevitably impelled toward further confidences. Or perhaps to delay as long as possible going away, and abandonment to his own misgiving and despair, his solitude. He talked and made mild replies about the weather and the crops, with a look of solicitude about his dimmed green-grey eyes, his fallen face, and grey temples, stringy grey moustache. Yet it was all as though this were an old ritual with which he had many times cajoled despair, tried to warm his heart, made cold by a contact of most searching and intimate hatred. Perhaps alone with Ada Lethen he had talked thus, while she listened with a still
look, gazing across the country, replying with far-off echoes of sympathy. … He was like a grey, unhappy, little boy, this withered man.

Richard made sympathetic interjections, and at length, without transition, he said, almost in spite of himself, “I’ll see what I can do, Mr. Lethen. I’m sorry more than I can tell you to see such troubles here. I’ll probably see you, or let you know what can be done. Don’t worry in the meantime. Such things as he talks about don’t very often really come to pass, fortunately. And I’m sure not this time if I can help it.” Richard fixed his dark eyes upon the other, while his firm voice with continuity deepened, the voice of one who knew his mind, and in most cases was accustomed to acting accordingly.

The old man’s eyes filled with tears. “I hope not. I’ll – hope not. You don’t know what it would mean. Well!” he cried desperately. “It simply can’t happen, that’s all. Not to me.” His desperation spoke a word which his trembling lips tried to conceal. No, he would not live. Mrs. Lethen would never know before. … He turned away and was gone, with braced steps twisting across the clearing toward the sound of cowbells.

Richard Milne turned his team about, lowered the levers of the cultivator, and took his way back along another row of corn. The trouble, he recognized, was real enough, if only a peril in the old man’s imagination. For as many years as he had dwelt in his mortifications he was inured to them, and he would not have come with this appeal to a comparative stranger unless by an actual compulsion. The security of a lifetime on one plane was upset, and, since on the side of his relation with his wife he lived in chaos, he would seem to be left with nothing to which he could hold.

Richard Milne’s mood softened to pity, passed through reasoning to a hardened resolve to get at the bottom of the affair, to have it out with Carson Hymerson.

The latter had treated him lately with an insistent deference, irritating because it was dictated by the consciousness of possessing the services of a hired man without paying him wages. In spite of the contempt beneath for one so lax, this attitude was contrasted with the indifferently veiled acrimony he accorded his son. Carson’s conscience, galvanized within him by thousands of such little calculations (he felt roughly like a big boy taking candy from a kid), made him muster contempt for people who would so willingly serve his needs.

The two young men were linked in this. He felt that he was over-reaching both. Milne recalled his speech to a neighbour, who complained of the flightiness of hired help. “My boys stay right by me!” Then Carson looked around to see whether Milne, splitting wood at the dooryard, had heard – almost hopefully.

Even his humour did not seem winning. One rainy day they hauled manure, burnt dry and acid-white. The load steamed rankly. “This’ll loosen up your colds!” Carson’s thick, short mouth had pursed.

The horses reached the rail line-fence again, the rustling through the corn ceased, and there was a cry from just before him. For a moment he could see nothing, then Ada came into view between the heads of the horses. Her face seemed blanched, with surprise reflected from his own face, he thought at first. She almost ran toward him. Haste increased her natural, long-limbed grace.

“Did you see my father?” she gasped. “Quick, tell me, did you see him?”

Dread surmise constricted him. “Why, Ada!” His voice
made it seem as though he spoke to remind both himself and her that she was that Ada Lethen of his world. But her distraught, listening face turned to him made him reply.

“Yes, your father was here not half an hour ago. Surely nothing’s happened –”

“Thank God! No, perhaps not.” She was turning away, as it were automatically, on the satisfactory reply to her burning anxiety, then glanced at him again. “Oh, I was afraid!”

“But, Ada! Tell me –” He had leaped from the cultivator and was leaning over the fence.

“It would take too long – too long a story, and I must go and look for him.”

“He was here, and told me about it. Carson Hymerson says he is going to –”

“Put us on the road! Yes. He has been so subdued of late, and I wondered what it could be – as if he hadn’t enough to bear already!” Her voice broke. “And to-day he told me, and something about the way – something in his manner – I began to think about it this afternoon, and I came out to talk it over with him. I looked all over the farm and I can’t find him. You’re sure then? Which way did he go?” Uncertainty gathered on her brow again.