Джеймс Кейн - The Moth

All that time, free as he talked about women, my father never once brought up Helen, the girl in Charleston, or anything in connection with them, which I thought was funny, as they were the key to everything else. But then one day he said: “I’ve located your little friend Helen.”

“... Did I ask you to?”

“I took it upon myself.”

“Taking things upon yourself, you might have found out by now, isn’t always indicated. I appreciate your interest, but something has intervened.”

“The little lady in Charleston?”

“Finding her would have been a help.”

“I still bet on Helen.”

“Why, may I ask?”

“The context of your narrative. Over all that you’ve written she presides like some little divinity. She’s in your blood, she’s part of you. It’s the fool who doesn’t know when a woman is part of him, that lets specious things, small, meaningless things, come between.”

“It’s over. Try minding your business.”

“I won’t.”

I wrote on, and patched, and rewrote, as he corrected. And then one day I heard his bell. I came down from my workroom, crossed the back yard, and found him on the sun porch. He had me sit down, looked shifty, and fidgeted for several minutes. Then: “She’s in there waiting for you. You’d better see her.”

“Who?”

“The little one. Helen. In my study.”

“There it goes! Goddam it, why did you do this to me?”

I blew my top, but good. I wanted to know if he’d ever let my life alone, so I could live it, and not have it loused. “And especially as I’ve told you repeatedly, that’s over. If it wasn’t over, the Charleston thing would have killed it. Why did you do this?”

“I did what I thought best. She was away all winter, but at last she came home, and I got her on the phone. She holds things against you, most grievously. But, when I told her she was the only woman in your life, it seemed to me I’d made an impression. Then when I made a personal matter of it, explaining I was too feeble to visit her, she consented to visit me. And discuss it with me. Sheila and Nancy are out on an errand I arranged, and you, so far as she knows, are still in the Army, somewhere in the South. But, before I left her just now and wheeled myself out here, I made progress with her on a number of matters, and cleared up some things. I think, when you learn how I pieced them together, you’ll have some admiration for me.”

“My admiration could be sufficiently expressed with a poke in the jaw, and anything short of that comes under the head of a gentle caress.”

“Jack, I’m going to die, and I—”

“Shall I start Rock of Ages?”

“And I ask that you see her.”

“I heard of these cowards, that die a thousand times, the brave man only once, but they ought to see one of these Irish busybodies, that dies every hour and a half by the clock, with music — but unfortunately won’t stay dead.”

“That, as de Koven said to Gilbert, is something that time will cure.”

“I’m sorry.”

“There’s an element of truth in it, but there are other reasons, too. Because what, after all, has loused you, as you put it? Me? Yourself? Circumstances? All three, to some extent. But mostly the time in which you’ve lived — a calendar. Now, thank God, it’s shed its leaves, to kiss me out, to kiss you in — and her in if you’ll let it. As you observed, she was guilty of a crime, that she was twelve years old. Now she’s twenty-five, and a luscious twenty-five, at that.”

“I told you, there’s somebody else.”

“She may be in there, too.”

“She—? What are you talking about?”

“I’m not sure, I dared not ask something that might have straightened it out, but it could be — this is pure conjecture — that I have found that one for you, too. Ah, that makes it different, doesn’t it?”

I knocked, got no answer, opened the door, and went in. My heart skipped three beats when I saw her, as he said, the girl from Charleston, sitting behind his desk, in a dark dress, mink coat, and big floppy hat that made her hair look like it had been lit. I looked around for Helen, but nobody else was there. When I saw the glitter of tears I knew she still held her grievance, whatever it was, from the night she left me on the beach. So I picked it up where we’d left off. I closed the door, then marched over in front of her in the rough shoes, flannel pants, and sweat shirt I wore when I was working. I said: “I asked you if you didn’t think we should tell names. I thought that was a good idea then and I think it’s a good idea now. My name is Jack Dillon. Who the hell are you?”

“You don’t know?”

“No, but I’d like to.”

“Then I was just a girl you picked up?”

“I didn’t pick you up. You came to my table and asked if we shouldn’t speak, and as I’d been peeping at you a half hour I said yes, and asked you to sit down, and you did. Then we went driving, and I don’t know what you did, but I fell in love.”

“I was already in love.”

“So was I.”

She burst out crying and I pitched a handkerchief at her. She pressed it to her eyes. “Jack, I’m Helen Legg.”

I had to sit down quick, and did, and stared at her. Of the girl I had known before, when she was twelve and I was twenty-two, I couldn’t see a trace. But then I remembered the graceful walk, in Savannah, that had caught my eye first, and what my father had told me. After a long time I said: “Then if I was already in love with you, and fell in love all over again, all I can say is, it seems like something pretty terrific, that had to take over, no matter where we found it.”

“I don’t. It makes me just sick. I could hardly breathe, when I saw you there in Savannah, and supposed you didn’t quite know what to expect, so sent Drusilla on her way and came on over. I thought it was amusing to call you Major, and laughed when you called me Lieutenant. I didn’t talk about what had happened — it seemed better to make a fresh start, somehow. And then, when I found out you didn’t know me, that to you I was just a pick-up—”

“How did you find that out?”

“You said—”

“I said let’s put it on the line. And now—”

“I’m going home.”

“No, you’re not.”

She had got up, but I blocked the way. “We’re not talking about something, we’re talking about nothing, and I won’t have it. I found you and you’re mine. And at last we both found out how dumb you are. We—”

That did it, and she was in my arms, laughing, and her tears and mine were getting mixed and at last it was over, my long voyage home.

The Leggs, when I took her back that evening, were pretty meek, and didn’t put up much argument about our getting married. We saw each other morning, noon, and night then, while Mrs. Legg began getting ready in a big way, for the wedding, there at their new home, or what to me was their new home, on University Parkway, near Charles. Then Margaret was there, putting the fine touches on, specially the artistic points, like which orchestra. Then one night, in my father’s study, I began going over it, and said: “Listen, Helen, why the big show? Can’t we just get married?”

“But they want a wedding, like Margaret had, and—”

“Well, who’s getting married?”

“... What’s your idea?”

“My idea is, it’s one o’clock now, we get in the car, point her south, and head for this job, this pretty big job, I’ve picked out for myself. That we get married on the way, in whatever place we happen to be in around breakfast time, and—”

“But what about clothes?”

“Stores sell clothes.”