She will have to admit that.) He could see them, the two of them, Rittenmeyer in the double-breasted suit (it might be flannel now but it would be dark flannel, obtruding smoothly its unobtrusive cut and cost); the four of them, Charlotte here and the three others yonder, the two children who were unremarkable, the daughters, the one with the mother’s hair but nothing else, the other, the younger one, with nothing, the younger sitting perhaps on the father’s knee, the other, the older, leaning against him; the three faces, the one impeccable, the two of them invincible and irrevocable, the second cold and unwinking, the third merely unwinking; he could see them, he could hear them:
‘Go speak to your mother, Charlotte. Take Ann with you.’
‘I dont want to.’
‘Go. Take Ann’s hand.’ He could hear, see them: Rittenmeyer setting the little one onto the floor, the older one takes her hand and they approach. And now she will take the little one onto her lap, it staring at her still with that intent absolutely blank detachment of infants, the older one leans to her, obedient, cold, suffering the caress, already withdrawing before the kiss is completed, and returns to her father; an instant later Charlotte sees her beckoning, gesturing in violent surreptitious pantomime to the little one. So Charlotte sets the little one onto the floor again and it returns to the father, turning against his knee and already hunching one buttock toward its father’s lap as children do, still staring at Charlotte with that detachment empty even of curiosity.
‘Let them go,’ Charlotte says.
‘You want them sent away?’
‘Yes. They want to go.’ The children depart. And now he hears her; it is not Charlotte; he knows that as Rittenmeyer never will: ‘So that’s what you have taught them.’
‘I? I taught them? I taught them nothing!’ he cries. ‘Nothing! It wasn’t me who—’
‘I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I have not—Have they been well?’
‘Yes. As I wrote you. If you will recall, for several months I had no address. The letters were returned. You may have them when and if you like. You dont look well yourself. Is that why you came back home? Or have you come back home?’
‘To see the children. And to give you this.’ She produces the check, double-signed and perforated against any tampering, the slip of paper more than a year old, creased and intact and only a little worn.
‘You came home on his money then. Then it belongs to him.’
‘No. It’s yours.’
‘I refuse to accept it.’
‘So would he.’
‘Then burn it. Destroy it.’
‘Why? Why do you wish to hurt yourself? Why do you like suffering, when there is so much of it that has to be done, so damned much? Give it to the children. A bequest. If not from me, from Ralph then. He is still their uncle. He has not harmed you.’
‘A bequest?’ he says. Then she tells him. Oh, yes, Wilbourne told himself, she will tell him; he could see it, hear it—the two people between whom something like love must have existed once, or who at least had known together the physical striving with which alone the flesh can try to capture what little it is ever to know of love. Oh, she will tell him; he could see and hear her as she lays the check upon the table at her hand and tells him:
‘It was a month ago. It was all right, only I kept on losing blood and it got to be pretty bad. Then all of a sudden two days ago the blood stopped and so there is something wrong, which might be something badder still—what do they call it? toxemia, septicemia? It doesn’t matter—that we are watching for. Waiting for.’
The men who passed the bench he sat on walked in linen suits, and now he began to notice a general exodus from the park—the negro nursemaids who managed to lend a quality bizarre and dazzling even to their starched white-crossed blue, the children moving with thin cries in bright random like blown petals, across the green. It was near noon; Charlotte would have been in the house more than half an hour. Because it will take that long, he thought seeing and hearing them: He is trying to persuade her to go to a hospital at once, the best, the best doctors; he will assume all blame, tell all the lies; he insists, calm, not at all importunate and not to be denied.
‘No. H— he knows a place. On the Mississippi coast. We are going there. We will get a doctor there if necessary.’
‘The Mississippi coast? Why in God’s name the Mississippi coast? A country doctor in a little lost Mississippi shrimping village when in New Orleans there are the best, the very best—’
‘We may not need a doctor after all. And we can live cheaper there until we find out.’
‘You have money for coast vacations then.’
‘We have money.’ It was dead noon now; the air fell still, the stippled shadows unmoving upon his lap, upon the six bills in his hand, the two twenties, the five, the three ones, hearing them, seeing them:
‘Take up the check again. It is not mine.’
‘Nor mine. Let me go my way, Francis. A year ago you let me choose and I chose. I will stick to it. I wont have you retract, break your oath to yourself. But I want to ask one thing of you.’
‘Of me? A favor?’
‘If you like. I dont ask a promise. Maybe what I am trying to express is just a wish. Not hope; wish. If anything happens to me.’
‘If anything happens to you. What am I to do?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing?’
‘Yes. Against him. I dont ask it for his sake nor even for mine. I ask it for the sake of—of—I dont even know what I am trying to say. For the sake of all the men and women who ever lived and blundered but meant the best and all that ever will live and blunder but mean the best. For your sake maybe, since yours is suffering too—if there is any such thing as suffering, if any of us ever did, if any of us were ever born strong enough and good enough to be worthy to love or suffer either. Maybe what I am trying to say is justice.’
‘Justice?’ And now he could hear Rittenmeyer laughing, who had never laughed since laughter is the yesterday’s slight beard, the negligee among emotions. ‘Justice? This, to me? Justice?’ Now she rises; he too: they face one another.
‘I didn’t ask a promise,’ she says. ‘That would have been too much to ask.’
‘Of me.’
‘Of anyone. Any man or woman. Not only you.’
‘But it is I who give none. Remember. Remember. I said you could come back home when you wished, and I would take you back, into my house at least. But can you expect that again? from any man? Tell me; you spoke once of justice; tell me that.’
‘I don’t expect it. I told you before that maybe what I was trying to say was hope.’ She will turn now, he told himself, approaching the door, and they will stand looking at one another and maybe it will be like McCord and me in the Chicago station that night last—He stopped. He was about to say ‘last year’ and he ceased and sat perfectly still and said aloud in quiet amazement, “That night was not five months ago.”—And they will both know they will never see one another again and neither of them will say it. ‘Good-bye, Rat,’ she says.
And he will not answer, he thought. No. He will not answer, this man of ultimatums, upon whom for the rest of his life will yearly devolve the necessity for decrees which he knows beforehand he cannot support, who would have denied the promise she did not ask yet would perform the act and she to know this well, too well, too well—this face impeccable and invincible upon which all existing light in the room will have seemed to gather as though in benediction, affirmation not of righteousness but rightness, having been consistently and incontrovertibly right; and withal tragic too since in the being right there was nothing of consolation nor of peace.
Now it would be time. He rose from the bench and followed the curve of blanched oyster shells between the massy bloom of oleander and wygelia, jasmine japonica and orange, toward the exit and the street, beneath the noon. The cab came up, slowing into the curb; the driver opened the door. “Station,” Wilbourne said.
“Union Station?”
“No. The one for Mobile. The coast.” He got in. The door closed, the cab went on; the scaling palm trunks began to flee past. “They were both well?” he said.
“Listen,” she said. “If we’re going to get it.”
“Get it?”
“You’ll know in time, won’t you?”
“We’re not going to get anything. I’m going to hold you. Haven’t I held you so far?”
“Dont be a fool now. There’s no time now. You’ll know in time. Get to hell out, do you hear?”
“Out?”
“Promise me. Dont you know what they’ll do to you? You cant lie to anybody, even if you would. And you couldn’t help me. But you’ll know in time. Just telephone an ambulance or the police or something and wire Rat and get to hell out fast. Promise me.”
“I’m going to hold
