Роберт Уоррен - All the king's men

We came to an open pier which I remembered as the place where excursion boats picked up their crowds in summer afternoons for the moonlight ride up the river–big, jostling, yelling, baby-carrying, pop-and-likker-drinking, sweating crowds. But there wasn't any big side-wheeler there now, white as wedding cake, cranky and improbable, with red and gilt decorations, and no calliope was playing "Dixie" and no whistles blowing. The place was as still as a tomb and as blank as Gobi on a moonless night. We walked out to the end of the pier, leaned on the railing, and looked across the river.

"All right," I said.

She didn't answer.

"All right," I repeated, "I thought you wanted to talk."

"It's Adam," she said.

"What about Adam? I asked, evenly.

"You know–you know perfectly well–you went there and–"

"Look here," I said, and I felt my blood getting up and my voice taking on an edge, "I went there and made him a proposition. He's a grown man and if he doesn't like it he doesn't have to take it. There's no use blaming me and–"

"I'm not blaming you," she said.

"You just started to jump me," I said, "but if Adam can't make up his own mind and can't take care of himself, you needn't blame me."

"I'm not blaming you, Jack. You're so jumpy and touchy, Jack." She laid her hand on my arm, on the rail, and patted me, and I felt the head of steam in me drop a few pounds of pressure.

"If he can't take care of himself, then you–" I began.

But she cut in, quick and sharp, "He can't. That's the trouble."

"Now, look here, all I did was to offer him a proposition."

Her hand, which had been laid on my forearm to soothe me and pat down the steam pressure, suddenly clamped on me, driving the fingers damned near to the bone. I jumped, an even as I jumped, I heard her say, in a low, tense voice, almost a whisper, "You can make him take it."

"He's a grown man and he–" I began.

But she cut in again, "You've got to make him–you've got to!"

"For God's sake!" I said.

"You've got to," she repeated, in that same voice, and I was sure that the fingers clenched on my arm were bringing blood.

"You were just now giving me hell because I merely offered him the proposition," I said, "and now you say I've got to make him take it."

"I want him to take it," she said, and her fingers fell away from their grip.

"Well, I'm damned," I observed in the direction of the great interstellar darkness, and then peered into her face. There wasn't much light–I could see the face, an unnatural chalk-white, and the eyes were just dark gleams–but I could tell that she meant what she said. "So you want him to take it?" I said slowly. "And you're Governor Stanton's daughter and Adam Stanton's sister, and you want him to take it?"

"He's got to," she said, and I saw her small gloved hands clench on the railing, and felt sorry for the railing. She stared out over the coiling carpet of the river mist, as from the mountain out over the clouds hiding the dark world.

"Why?" I asked.

"I went up there," she said, still looking out over the river, "to talk to him about it. I wasn't sure he ought to when I went up. I wasn't sure then, but when I saw him I was."

Something about what she was saying disturbed me, like an offstage noise or something caught out of the tail of your eye or an itch that comes when your hands are full and you can't scratch. I was listening to what she was saying, and it wasn't that. It was something else. But I couldn't catch what. So I shoved it onto the back of the stove, and listened to what she was saying.

"When I saw how he was," she was saying, "I knew. I just knew. Oh, Jack, he was all worked up–it wasn't natural–just because he had been asked. He has cut himself off from everything–from everybody. Even from me. Not really, but it's not like it used to be."

"He's awful busy," I objected lamely.

"Busy," she echoed, "busy–yes, he's busy. Ever since he was in medical school, he has worked like a slave. There's just something driving him–driving him. It's not money and it's not reputation and it's not–I just don't know what–" Her voice drifted off.

"It is very simple," I said. "He wants to do good."

"Good," she echoed. Then, "I used to think so–oh, he does good–but–"

"But what?"

"Oh, I don't know–and I shouldn't say it–I shouldn't–but I almost think that the work–even the doing good–everything is just a way to cut himself off. Even from me–even me–"

Then she said, "Oh, Jack, we had an awful row. It was awful. I went home and cried all night. You know how we've always been. And to have a terrible row. You know how we've been? You know?" She insisted, and clutched my arm, as though to make me agree, to make me tell her how they had been.

"Yes," I said, "I know." I looked at her and was afraid for a second she was going to cry again, but she didn't, and I should have known it, for she was the kind that did her crying on the midnight pillow. If she did any.

"I told him," she was saying, "I told him that if he wanted to do any good–really do any good–here was the time. And the way. To see that the Medical Center was run right. And even expanded. And all that. But he just froze up and said he wouldn't touch the thing. And I accused him of being selfish–of being selfish and proud–of putting his pride before everything. Before doing good–before his duty. Then he just glared at me, and grabbed me by the wrist and said I couldn't understand anything, that a man owed himself something. I said it was his pride, just his pride, and he said he was proud not to touch filth, and if I wanted him to do that I could just–" She stopped, took a breath and, I guessed, a new grip on her nerve to say what she was about to say. "Well, what he was going to say was that I could get out. But he didn't say it. I'm glad–" she paused again–"I'm glad he didn't say it. At least, he didn't say it."

"He didn't mean it," I said.

"I don't know–I don't know. If you had seen his eyes blazing and his face all white and drawn. Oh, Jack–" she grabbed my arm again, and shook me as though I were holding back an answer–"why won't he do it? Why is he this way? Doesn't he see he ought to? That he's the man and he's got to? Why, Jack? Why?"

"To be perfectly brutal," I said, "it is because he is Adam Stanton, the son of Governor Stanton and grandson of Judge Peyton Stanton, and the great-grandson of General Morgan Stanton, and he has lived all his life in the idea that there was a time a long time back when everything was run by high-minded, handsome men wearing knee breeches and silver buckles or Continental blue or frock coats, or even buckskin and coonskin caps, as the case may be–for Adam Stanton isn't any snob–who sat around a table and candidly debated the good of the public thing. It is because he is a romantic, and he has a picture of the world in his head, and when the world doesn't conform in any respect to the picture, he wants to throw the world away. Even if that means throwing out the baby with the bath. Which," I added, "it always does mean."

That held her for a moment. She turned her face from me and looked out over the misty river again. The she murmured, "He ought to take it."

"Well," I said, "if you want him to do it, you've got to change the picture of the world inside his head. If I know Adam Stanton." And I did know Adam Stanton, and at that moment I could see his face with the skin drawn back tight over the bone and the strong mouth like the neatly healed wound and the deep-set blue eyes blazing like pale ice.

She hadn't answered me.

"That's the only way," I said, "and you might as well settle for that."

"He ought to do it," she whispered, looking over the river.

"How much do you want him to?"