Роберт Уоррен - All the king's men

So Anne looked up at me with the glittering eyes and laughed that way while the firelight glowed on her cheek. Then I laughed, too, looking down at her. She reached up her hand to me, and I took it and helped her as she rose easy and supple–God, how I hate a woman who scrambles up off things–and I still held her hand as she swayed at the instant of reaching her full height. She was very close to me, with the laughter still on her face–and echoing somehow deep inside me–and I was holding her hand, as I had held her up to stand swaying for an instant in front of me before I could put my arm around her and feel her waist surrender supplely to the cup of my hand. It had been that way. So now I must have leaned toward her and for an instant the trace of the laughter was still on her face, and her head dropped a little back the way a girl's head does when she expects you to put your arm around her and doesn't care if you do.

But all at once the laughter was gone. It was as though someone had pulled a shade in front of her face. I felt as you do when you pass down a dark street and look up to see a lighted window and in the bright room people talking and singing and laughing with the firelight splashing and undulating over them and the sound of the music drifts out to the street while you watch; and then a hand, you will never know whose hand, pulls down the shade. And there you are, outside.

And there I was, outside.

Maybe I should have done it anyway, put my arm around her. But I didn't. She had looked up at me and had laughed that way. But not for me. Because she was happy to be there again in the room which held the past time–of which I had been a part, indeed, but was no longer a part–and to be kneeling on the hearth with the new heat of the fire laid on her face like a hand.

It had not been meant for me. So I dropped her hand which I had been holding and stepped back and asked, "Was Judge Irwin ever broke–bad broke?"

I asked quick and sharp, for if you ask something quick and sharp out of a clear sky you may get an answer you never would get otherwise. If the person you ask has forgotten the thing, the quick, sharp question may spear it up from the deep mud, and if the person has not forgotten but does not want to tell you, the quick, sharp question may surprise the answer out of him before he thinks.

But it didn't work. Either she didn't know or she wasn't to be surprised out of herself. I ought to have guessed that a person like her–a person who you could tell had a deep inner certitude of self which comes from being all of one piece, of not being shreds and patches and old cogwheels held together with pieces of rusty barbed wire and spit and bits of string, like most of us–I ought to have guessed that that kind of a person would not be surprised into answering a question she didn't want to answer. Even if she did know the answer. But maybe she didn't.

But she was surprised a little. "What?" she asked.

So I said it again.

She turned her back to me and went to sit on the couch, to light a cigarette and face me again, looking levelly at me. "Why do you want to know?" she asked.

I looked right back at her and said, "I don't want to know. It is a pal wants to know. He is my best pal. He hands it to me on the first of the month."

"Oh, Jack–" she cried, and flung her newly lit cigarette across to the hearth, and stood up from the couch. "Oh, why do you have to spoil everything! We had that time back here. But you want to spoil it. We–"

"We?" I said.

"–had something then and you want to spoil it, you want to help him spoil it–that man–he–"

"We?" I said again.

"–want to do something bad–"

"We," I said, "if we had such a damned fine time why was it you turned me down?"

"That hasn't anything to do with it. What I mean is–"

"What you mean is that is was fine, beautiful time back then, but I mean that if it was such a God-damned fine, beautiful time, why did it turn into this time which is not so damned fine and beautiful if there wasn't something in that time which wasn't fine and beautiful? Answer that one."

"Hush," she said, "hush, Jack!"

"Yeah, answer me that one. For you certainly aren't going to say this time is fine and beautiful. This time came out of that time, and now you're near thirty-five years old and you creep out here as a special treat to yourself and sit in the middle of a lot of sheet-wrapped, dust-catching furniture in a house with the electricity cut off, and Adam–he's got a hell of a life, cutting on people all day till he can's stand up, and him tied up in knots himself inside and–"

"Leave Adam out of it, leave him out–" she said, and thrust her hands, palms out as though to press me off, but I wasn't in ten feet of her–"he does something anyway–something–"

"–and Irwin down there playing with his toys, and my mother up there with that Theodore, and me–"

"Yes, you," she said, "you."

"All right," I said, "me."

"Yes, you. With that man."

"That man, that man," I mimicked, "that's what all the people round here call him, what that Patton calls him, all those people who got pushed out of the trough. Well, he does something. He does as much as Adam. More. He's going to build a medical center will take care of this state. He's–"

"I know," she said, wearily, not looking at me now, and sank down on the couch, which was covered by a sheet.

"You know, but you take the same snobbish attitude all the rest take. You're like the rest."

"All right," she said, still not looking at me. "I'm snobbish, I'm so snobbish I had lunch with him last week."

Well, if grandfather's clock in the corner hadn't been stopped already, that would have stopped it. It stopped me. I heard the flame hum on the logs, gnawing in. Then the hum stopped and there wasn't anything.

Then I said, "For Christ's sake," And the absorbent silence sucked up the words like blotting paper.

"All right," she said, "for Christ's sake."

"My, my," I said, "but the picture of the daughter of Governor Stanton at lunch with Governor Stark would certainly throw the society editor of the _Chronicle__ into a tizzy. Your frock, my dear–what frock did you wear? And flowers? Did you drink champagne cocktails? Did–"

"I drank a Coca Cola, and I ate a cheese sandwich. In the cafeteria in the basement of the Capitol."

"Pardon my curiosity, but–"

"–but you want to know how I got there. I'll tell you. I went to see Governor Stark about getting state money for the Children's Home. And I–"

"Does Adam know?" I asked.

"–and I'm going to get it, too. I'm to prepare a detailed report and–"

"Does Adam know?"

"It doesn't matter whether Adam knows or not–and I'm to take the report back to–"

"I can imagine what Adam would say," I remarked grimly.

"I guess I can manage my own affairs," she said with some heat.

"Gee," I said, and noticed that the blood had mounted a little in her cheeks, "I thought you and Adam were always just like that." And I held my right hand up with forefinger and the next one side by side.

"We are," she said, "but I don't care what–"

"–and you don't care what _he–__" and I jerked a thumb toward the high, unperturbed, marmoreal face which gazed from the massy gold frame in the shadow–"would say about it either, huh?

"Oh, Jack–" and she rose from the couch, almost fretful in her motion, which wasn't like her–"what makes you talk like that? Can't you see? I'm just getting the money for the Home. It's a piece of business. Just business." She jerked her chin up with a look that was supposed to settle the matter, but succeeded in unsettling me.

"Listen," I said, and felt myself getting hot under the collar, "business or not, it's worth your reputation to be caught running round with–"