Роберт Уоррен - All the king's men

Her voice trailed off.

So I told her the truth. About Marvin Frey's visit.

Her hands twisted in her lap while I spoke, and then clenched and lay still. Then she said, "There's just one thing fro him to do."

"There might be a–a settlement–you know, a–"

But she broke in. "There's just one right thing," she said.

I waited.

"He'll–he'll marry her," she said, and held her head up very straight.

I squirmed a little, then said, "Well–well, you see–it looks like–like there might have been–some others–other friends of Sibyl–others who–"

"Oh, God," she breathed so softly I could scarcely tell it was more than a breath she uttered, and I saw the hands clench and unclench on her lap again.

"And," I went on, now I was in it, "there's another angle to it, too. There's some politics mixed up, too. You see–MacMurfee wants–"

"Oh, God," she breathed again, and rose abruptly from the chair, and pressed her clenched hand together in front of her bosom. "Oh, God, politics," she whispered, and took a distracted step or two away from me, and said again, "Politics." Then she swung toward me, and said, out loud now, "Oh, God, in this too."

"Yes," I nodded, "like most things."

She went to one of the windows, where she stood with her back to me and the parlor and peered through a crack between the curtains out into the hot, sun-dazzled world outside, where everything happened.

After a minute she said, "Go on, tell me what you were going to tell."

So not looking at her as she peered out the crack into the world but looking at the empty chair where she had been sitting, I told her about the MacMurfee proposition and how things were.

My voice stopped. Then there was another minute of silence. Then, I heard her voice back over by the window, "It had to be this way, I guess. I have tried to do right but it had to be this way, I guess. Oh, Jack–" I heard the rustle as she turned from the window, and swung my head toward her, as she said–"Oh, Jack, I tried to do right. I loved my boy and tried to raise him right. I loved my husband and tried to do my duty. And they love me. I think they love me. After everything I have to think that, Jack. I have to."

I sat there and sweated on the red plush, while the large, deep-brown eyes fixed on me in a mixture of appeal and affirmation.

Then she said, very quietly now, "I have to think that. And think that it will be all right in the end."

"Listen," I said, "the Boss stalled them off, he'll think of something, it'll be all right."

"Oh, I didn't mean that, I meant–" but she stopped.

But I knew what she had meant, even as her voice, lower and steadier now, and at the same time more resigned, resumed to say, "Yes, he'll think of something. It will be all right."

There wasn't any use to hang round longer. I got up, rescued my old Panama off the carved walnut table, where the Bible and stereoscope were, walked across to Lucy, put out my hand to her, and said, "It'll be all right."

She looked at my hand as though she didn't know why it was there. Then she looked at me. "It's just a baby," she almost whispered. "It's just a little baby. It's a little baby in the dark. It's not even born yet, and it doesn't know about what's happened. About money and politics and somebody wanting to be a senator. It doesn't know about anything–about how it came to be–about what that girl did–or why–or why the father–why he–" She stopped, and the large brown eyes kept looking at me with appeal and what might have been accusation. Then she said, "Oh, Jack, it's a little baby, and nothing's its fault."

I almost burst out that it wasn't my fault, either, but I didn't.

Then she added, "It may be my grandbaby. It may be my boy's baby."

Then, after a moment, "I would love it."

Her hands, which had been clenched into fists and pressed together at the level of her breast, opened slowly at the words, and reached out, supine and slightly cupped, but with the wrists still against her own body as though expectation were humble or hopeless.

She noticed me looking down at the hands, then quickly let them drop.

"Good-bye," I said, and moved toward the door.

"Thank you, Jack," she said, but didn't follow me. Which suited me down to the ground, for I was really on my way out.

I walked out into the dazzling world and down the prideful patch of concrete and got into my car and headed back to town, where, no doubt, I belonged.

The Boss did think up something.

First, he thought that it might be a good idea to get in touch with Marvin Frey, directly and not through MacMurfee, to feel out the situation there. But MacMurfee was too smart for that. He didn't trust Frey or the Boss, either, and Marvin had been whisked off, nobody knew where exactly. But, as it developed later, Marvin and Sibyl had been carried off into Arkansas, which was probably the last place they wanted to be, on a farm up in Arkansas, where the only horses were mules and the brightest light came from a patented gasoline pressure lamp on the parlor table and there weren't any fast cars and people went to bed to sleep at eight-thirty and got up at dawn. Of course, they had some company along, and could play three-handed poker and rummy, for MacMurfee had sent along one of his boys, who, I was to learn, kept the car keys in his pants pocket by day and under his pillow by night, and practically stood outside the door of the backhouse, leaning on the trellis of honeysuckle, with a derby on the side of his head, when one of them went there, just to be sure there weren't any shenanigans like cutting across the back lot in the direction of the railroad ten miles off. He was also one who thumbed through the mail first, for Marvin and Sibyl weren't supposed to be getting any mail. Nobody was supposed to know where they were. And we didn't find out. Not until a long time after.

Second, the Boss thought about Judge Irwin. If MacMurfee would listen to sense at al, he would listen to sense from Judge Irwin. He owed Irwin a lot, and there weren't so many legs left to MacMurfee's stool he could afford to loose one. So, the Boss thought, there was Judge Irwin.

He called me in and said, "I told you to dig on Irwin. What did you get?"

"I got something," I said.

"What?"

"Boss," I said, "I'm going to give Irwin a break. If he can prove to me it isn't true, I won't spill it."

"God damn it," he began, "I told you–"

"I'm giving Irwin a break," I said. "I promised two people I would do it."

"Who?"

"Well, I promised myself, for one. The other doesn't matter."

"You promised yourself, huh?" He looked hard at me.

"Yeah, I did."

"O. K.," he said. "Do it your way. If it'll stick, you know what I want." He surveyed me glumly, then added, "And it better stick."

"Boss," I said, "I'm afraid it will."

"Afraid?" he said "Yeah."

"Who you working for? Him or me?"

"Well, I'm not framing Judge Irwin."

He kept on studying me. "Boy," he said then, "I'm not asking you to frame him. I never asked you to frame anybody. Did I?"

"No."

"I never did ask you to frame anybody. And you know why?"

"No."

"Because it ain't ever necessary. You don't ever have to frame anybody, because the truth is always sufficient."

"You sure take a high view of human nature," I said.

"Boy," he said, "I went to a Presbyterian Sunday school back in the days when they still had some theology, and that much of it stuck. And–" he grinned suddenly–"I have found it very valuable."

So our conversation ended, and I got into my car and headed for Burden's Landing.

The next morning, as soon as I had my breakfast, which I ate alone, for the Young Executive had left for town and my mother wouldn't get up till pushing noon, I strolled down the beach. It was a fine morning, but not as hot as usual. The beach was deserted at that hour, except for some kids playing in the bright shallows a quarter of a mile off, thin-legged little kids like sandpipers. I wandered on down past them, and as I passed they paused an instant in their leaping and splashing and gyration to favor me with an indifferent stare from their brown, water-slick faces. But it was only for an instant, for I obviously belonged to that dull and purblind race which wears shoes and trousers. You do not even walk on the sand and get sand in your shoes if you can avoid it. But at least I was walking on the sand and getting it liberally into my shoes. I wasn't too old for that. I reflected on that with satisfaction, and moved on toward the cluster of pines and the big oak and the mimosas and myrtles, just back from the beach, where the tennis courts were. There were some benches there in the shade, and I had the unread morning paper in my hand. After I had read the paper, I would begin to think about what would happen later on the day. But I wasn't even thinking about it yet.