Джеймс Кейн - The Moth

“Such as?”

“What’s happened at the hotel?”

“Just felt like a little rest, that’s all.”

“Have you quit your job down there?”

“... Yes, I guess so.”

“What about Margaret?”’

“I haven’t seen her.”

“Is the engagement still on?”

“I’d say it was off.”

“May I ask why?”

“I changed my mind.”

“In other words, it’s none of my business?”

“The way I hear it, a marriage concerns two people.”

“That may be true or it may not be true.”

“Since when?”

“It involves two people provided he’s his own man and she’s her own woman. If not, it concerns, or can concern, quite a few more. And in this case, as Legg is responsible for his daughter and I’m responsible for you, the degree of your independence may not be quite as great as you think.”

“I’m free, white, and twenty-two.”

“You’re also broke, or nearly so.”

“I wouldn’t bring that up if I were you. But since you do bring it up, we can go into this question of your responsibility. You had quite a lot to say about that once before and you may remember I had quite a lot to say about it too, all opposite to your idea about it. And the way you discharged your responsibility was to lose me every cent I had, that I’d earned with no help from you, and that I’d pleaded with you to let me keep. Now, since there’s nothing you can do about your responsibility, no job that you can give me, no restitution of any kind you can make me for what your previous decision cost me, I’d say minding your own business for once in your life would be a very good idea.”

I wasn’t looking for trouble, and didn’t go in there with anything all learned up to shoot at him. But I guess it was in me and had to come out. It surprised me, the amount of pressure there was back of it, but nothing like as much as it surprised me, the way he took it. He held up his hand to stop me, but in a patient, calm way, as though he’d been all over that a good many times in his mind, and had maybe got a little further, figuring on it, than I had. “Jack, you’re wholly right, but you’ve got things backwards. You’re hacking at the general, that’s in the past, that nobody can do anything about, and overlooking the particular, that lies in the future, or could at least, and that might be of help, in your case... Of course it’s unconscionable, what we’ve done to you. But don’t get the idea you’re an exception.”

“Who is ‘we’?”

“This generation. My generation. I’m not the only one. We’re all in it. We thought the laws of sense had been repealed, back there in the 1920’s, and we went hog-wild. We squandered your heritage and there’s nothing left, nothing, but what you and millions of other boys like you can salvage out of it, and perhaps rebuild, when things get going again. In your case, you hold it especially against me that you earned the money I lost on Sam Shreve’s advice. Is that five thousand dollars any better, would it have bought you any more, than the five thousand dollars I could portion you with, in view of your impending marriage—”

“My cancelled marriage.”

“I’ll not admit it! I still have hopes for it!”

“Go on.”

“Of my own money, which would be partly yours now, and all yours when I’m gone, I lost much more than I lost for you. I’d hate to tell you what I lost. But am I an exception? I tell you, we’re a legion, a host. We live on every block of every city and every town and every village of this country. And you live on every block. You’re one of a million, ten million, boys who must be cheated, now, because their fathers were fools. But there’s nothing to do about them. Do you hear me, Jack? Some day they’ll have it, some day they’ll rebuild what was lost for them, but until then why stew up a corpse for the glue that isn’t in it? Let’s talk about you.”

“All right, then, talk.”

“What’s gone wrong with your marriage?”

“That I can’t discuss with you.”

“Is it what I think?”

“I don’t know what you think.”

“Have you picked up some disease?”

“I have not.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I have no disease.”

“Does the hotel irk you?”

“Possibly, but that wasn’t the reason.”

“Have you rowed with Legg?”

“No.”

“Mrs. Legg?”

“No.”

“Margaret?”

“No.”

“Then there can be but one reason.”

“Which is?”

“Another woman.”

I said: “There doesn’t have to be another woman. It could be such a thing as waking up to the fact you’ve made a mistake, and don’t want to get married, and especially don’t want to get married to this particular woman and this particular job, and then bringing the ax down before it’s too late.”

“And there’s such a thing as grand, tragic folly.”

“How would a fool know?”

That stopped him, but it sounded so mean and his face got so white I apologized, and he said it was all right and made two more drinks. But as I watched him it kept talking to me, a hunch that there was something more to it than he had said, something personal to him, and pretty soon I said: “What’s the rest of it?”

“Nothing, I guess, that concerns you.”

“I think there’s something.”

“I... had a deal.”

“With Mr. Legg?”

“About the hotel basement. He — approached me. About the possibility of converting it into a garage. I went into it pretty thoroughly, figured what I could pay for a lease, made him my offer, and it was agreeable to him. I think he’s concerned, over that girl, to head her away from this career he thinks pretty silly, and wants to sew her up, and you up, and me up, as many ways as he can. However, it would be an excellent arrangement. I could put Kratzer in charge, and have a backlog, as they call it, that would carry my own overhead, and Legg, on his side, would do well too.”

“And?”

“He’s suddenly cool to it.”

“Since — I took my powder on him?”

“After dinner, when I called him.”

I felt sorry to be the cause of one more thing gone wrong, but to make a human sacrifice out of myself and go through with it anyway, knowing what would be facing me and the way it would have to come out, was more than I could do. I mumbled something about being sorry, and didn’t go any further with it. All of a sudden he wheeled on me and said: “Jack, love is not all of marriage.”

“It’s a big part of it.”

“All right, but in every country except this one they give it a chance. They help love, with dots and dowries and portions and whatever each family can do in the way of the connections that make life easy to live and love worth having. In that way they at least escape the crazy divorce rate that prevails only in this land of the free — especially the recently free grass widow. I’ve rarely seen such promising auspices for a marriage: a lovely girl, easy work, comfortable pay, beautiful quarters, fine connections, and the certainty that eventually you’ll come into a property as valuable as most men dare to hope for.”

“I don’t want it.”

“I hope you know what you’re doing.”

“Anyway, it’s me that’s doing it.”

“What are you doing, by the way?”

“...”

“I supposed it was something like that.”

One afternoon, a week or two later, I started down to Ocean City. It was a couple hundred miles, but the spot I was in, the further the better. But around Elkton it started to rain, and a few miles down the Shore I started back. I ate dinner in Havre de Grace and got back to town around nine o’clock. But on Mt. Royal Terrace I noticed a big Packard that looked like the Legg’s. Then I noticed the house all lit up, or anyway, lights on in the living room, which hadn’t been used that hour of night for a couple of years. I kept right on, and when I got to the park I took a turn around the lake to think it over. When I came back, instead of going down the street I went down the alley, pulled to one side, and parked. The garage was open. I went through to the yard and slipped around the house to the living-room windows. It was coming down pretty hard by now, but at least that meant there was no chance of my being heard. When I made sure the nearest window was open, I leaned my head so close I could smell the wet screen and peeped. Mr. and Mrs. Legg were there, and Margaret and Sheila and Nancy, but I couldn’t see any sign of Helen or my father. Nancy was crying, and right while I was looking at her Sheila pulled a sofa pillow up to her face, stretched out and began to bawl triple forte. Then Margaret began blotting at her eyes with her handkerchief, and Mrs. Legg began patting her. Mr. Legg kept staring straight in front of him, shaking his head. After a long while my father came in from the hall, and from the way he wandered around, looking at pictures and stuff, I knew he’d been taking a little stroll through the back of the house to think things over. Pretty soon he said: “Legg, I simply can’t believe it.”