Conrad Aiken - The Collected Short Stories of Conrad Aiken

“That was thunder,” said Kit. “ I know thunder when I hear it!”

“Who’s for a party, before it begins to rain?” said Roger Day. “I can call up Helen. Don’t all speak at once. There’s only room for six.”

He staggered to the window and looked out intently, holding the curtains aside with his two hands.

“It’s raining already,” he said. Then he shouted, “Look! There’s a fire! Say, kids, there’s a fire over there! Let’s go! What do you say!”

“Where? Let me see!”

There was a stampede to the window, followed by a terrific exodus into the hall. Everyone at once. Somebody was lying on the floor, moaning. Kit grabbed Tom by the arm and tried to pull him along.

“Come on,” he said.

“No. Let me alone. Get out. I’m going by myself and I’m going alone.”

“You’re drunk.”

“You’re drunk yourself. Let go my arm, Kit!”

“Don’t be a fool. You can’t drive in that state! This’ll give you a chance to get out of it.… Come on! Get up!”

Tom permitted himself to be pulled to his feet.

“You’re a bunch of lousy dirty little crabs,” he said. “All of you.”

“Shut up.”

Kit dragged him along the hall, found his hat and jammed it on his head for him, and then pushed him out into the street.

“You wait here,” he said. “Give me the key to the car.”

He took the key and ran off into the darkness. The rain was beginning to quicken. Tom watched the huge drops falling on the circle of illuminated sidewalk under a lamp. They were as big as pansies. He leaned down to watch them. Spat—spat—spat —they fell; and one or two plopped on his hat. A car drove off, and then another, their headlights hollowing bright swarms of raindrops out of the night. From the second car, a head was thrust forth and yelled, “Hurry up, Tom, you fool!”

“Go to hell!” he shouted back.

Let them all go to hell, the damned fools. He started to walk in the opposite direction from that which Kit had taken. There was another lightning flash. The rain began to fall harder. A good thing if he just walked away, and didn’t go back. But where would he go? He couldn’t go home like this—and there was nowhere else. What about the party at Helen’s? He had heard all about Helen from Kit. A “telephone” place. Kit had been there several times; he liked Helen, also a girl from St. Louis who had been there, a married girl who came up to Boston now and then for a “holiday.”… Or he might go to a movie, and sleep it off. Or the fire?… He looked up, and saw that the whole sky was red in the direction of the South Station, a wide glare against the clouds.… Kit suddenly seized him by the arm.

“Here! Where do you think you’re going?”

“Let me go, you damned fool!”

“The devil I will.… You get into that car.”

“Will you let me go?”

“No.”

He felt Kit’s hand closing hard about his wrist. Kit’s face was thrust near to his own, white and intense. A giddy wave of hate suddenly overwhelmed him; he struck the white face hard with his open hand, hard as he could, and felt the light spectacles smash. Kit staggered backward, lifted both hands to his eyes, bent his head over in a curious way, and stood perfectly still. Tom took a step toward him.

“Kit!”

“What in God’s name did you do that for!”

“Are you hurt? Let me see.”

Kit removed his hands, slowly, detaching the broken spectacles, and lifted his face. Blood was streaming down his left cheek from a gash below the eye.

“My God, Kit, I’m sorry! Is your eye hurt?”

“No.… Just a little flesh cut, I think.… Does it look bad? Try a handkerchief on it.”

They moved together into the ring of light under a street-lamp, and Tom began dabbing the wound with his handkerchief. Thank God—it wasn’t as bad as he had thought.

“It’s about half an inch,” he said. “I don’t think it’s very deep. You’d better hold the handkerchief against it.… Where’s the car?”

They walked slowly to the car and got in, Tom taking the wheel. For a moment they sat still, listening to the rain on the roof. It was raining harder than ever, a steady drumming. Kit lay back and shut his eyes, still breathing rather quickly. Then he began to laugh.

“What damned fools we are,” he said. “What idiots! Do you think you’re sober enough to drive?”

Tom suddenly put his hand on Kit’s shoulder.

“Kit, old man, I’m horribly sorry.… Do you know why it was?”

“Sure I know why it was!”

“Well—you’re a good egg.”

He began to laugh himself, a little hysterically, and then abruptly stopped, feeling that in another moment he would be crying.

“ That’s no good,” he said, his voice breaking slightly. “Let’s go! I’m going to spend the night on your sofa.”

He touched the starter, switched on the windshield wiper, and the car began to move.… What an astonishing business—what an astonishing business. Thank God, it was finished.… And then he thought of Gay; and at once a queer deep feeling of exultation came over him, as if everything were again for the best, in the best of all possible worlds.

I made my first visit to Hackley Falls when I was twelve years old. My mother had died in that year, and my widowed father could think of no better thing to do with me in the school holidays than to send me to visit my two maiden aunts, Julia and Jenny (his elder sisters), who still lived on the family farm, where he himself had been born; and it was here that he had met and married my mother. It was natural enough that he should send me to “Witch Elms”; and I confess that, after a childhood almost all of which had been spent in New York, I looked upon the adventure as a treat. My father impressed upon me that I should have to be helpful—I was given a clear understanding, in strictest New England fashion, of my duties. I was to get the mail twice a day, to fetch the kindling, to go to the village for groceries whenever requested by Aunt Julia or Aunt Jenny, to help old Jim with the livestock—which merely meant chivying the one cow to and from the pasture, or feeding the two pigs which lived in the barn cellar—and to keep my room tidy. If I was very good I might be allowed to drive the horse now and then. And I could help Jim pump the water up to the tank in the attic, which was done by hand.

All of these things I did and, surprisingly enough, didn’t find them in the least like duties. I was happier than I’d ever been in my life. With a farm of two hundred acres to run over, with woods to explore, the Mill River to bathe in, and mountains to climb—and summer, too, just beginning—it may be assumed that I didn’t find things very irksome. “Witch Elms” stood in the midst of a green valley-meadow, about a quarter of a mile from the river, which we could see from the front porch. The road crossed the river just there by means of an old-fashioned covered bridge, which was painted a raw scarlet; some of the planking was gone from its floor, and I used to love to lie on my belly and look down at the shallow brawling water, in which one could see every pebble and minnow.

Beyond the bridge rose Hateful Mountain, covered with sugar-maples, and along the flank of this the road climbed steeply eastward, eventually, after a mile or so, passing the white farmhouse (perched quite high on a spur of Hateful) which belonged to Captain Phippen, who was a distant connection of ours, and our only frequent visitor. He had been a sea captain, in the coastwise trade, and now lived with his son and daughter-in-law. He could almost invariably be seen on his porch with a powerful spyglass in his hand—he used to tell me that with that spyglass he knew everything that was done in the valley. He knew just which orchard Jim was picking, and how many bushels he got, and even pretended (with a twinkle in his eye) to know the size of the apples. He once told me that in summer, if the light was right, and the church windows were open in Hackley Falls, he could tell whether the Crazy Willards put ten cents or a nickel into the offertory box; but this I knew was apocryphal. I had looked many times through the spyglass myself, and knew that all one could see of the little white town of Hackley Falls was the church steeple, with a golden fish for a weather vane, and the little red cupola of the grammar school, with a black bell in it. Elms and maples completely hid the rest of the town; and in fact, from Captain Phippen’s porch, as from our own, the only other human habitation which could be seen was the Crazy Willards’, which stood halfway between our house and Hackley Falls—about a mile and a half westward and (looking from “Witch Elms”) on the opposite side of the river. This was a low, square colonial farmhouse, which must at one time have been rather fine, but was now collapsing with neglect and old age, and black as pitch with rain-rot. Through Captain Phippen’s glass one could make out easily enough the untrimmed trumpet-vine, which covered the western gable with scarlet blossom, and the foul cow-yard which adjoined the house on the east. One could also see the horns of the cattle over the unpainted fence.… But I am getting ahead of my story, for this sinister house is really my theme.