The Last Adam
Authors: James Gould Cozzens
The Last Adam
by James Gould Cozzens
(UK Edition titled "A Cure of Flesh")
PENGUIN BOOKS
HARMONDSWORTH MIDDLESEX ENGLAND 245 FIFTH AVENUE NEW YORK U.S.A.
First Published in Great Britain
1933
Published in Penguin Books
1945
MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN FOR PENGUIN BOOKS LIMITED BY C. NICHOLLS AND CO. LTD. LONDON, MANCHESTER, READING
CONTENTS
ONE
1
The snow-storm, which began at dawn on Tuesday, February 17th, and did not stop when darkness came, extended over all New England. It covered the state of Connecticut with more than a foot of snow. As early as noon, Tuesday, United States Highway No. 6W, passing through New Winton, had become practically impassable. Wednesday morning the snow-ploughs were out. Thursday was warmer. The thin coat of snow left by the big scrapers melted off. Thursday night the wind went around west while the surface dried. Friday, under clear, intensely cold skies, US6W's three lane concrete was clean again from Long Island Sound to the Massachusetts line.
With the storm had come a necessary halt in motor traffic. Both Wednesday and Thursday it was scanty and uncertain. Friday, fine and sunny, all the main roads were crowded by the delayed appearance of heavy vehicles; 150 h.p. tank trucks distributing gasolene crawled out from their depots; the five-ton truck-and-trailer combinations supplying chain grocery stores took the road. Although the day was one of the coldest of the winter, a remarkable number of private cars came out, too.
Through the wide bay window to her right, May Tupping could find a moment from time to time to watch, across the corner of the New Winton green, this never quite ceasing procession. She could amuse herself by noticing the number-plates. Bound north went plate after yellow New York plate. Bound south passed the frequent green plates of Massachusetts, the dingy ultramarine of Vermont. From both directions appeared a scattering of white number-plates; presumably from New Hampshire when they came down, and from Rhode Island when they came up. She saw one which she knew was Maine's black and white; and one which was probably New Jersey, but the colours happened that year to be practically the same as Connecticut's own.
Two of the gasolene trucks paused at Weems' garage, thrust their hoses into the buried storage tanks for a few minutes before moving on, but most of the traffic had no business in New Winton. Cars going through as fast as they could flickered behind the bare elms on the west side of the green all afternoon. At the south corner the rigid batteries of pointed arrows turned a few west to cross the river; but, as a rule, May could make a safe bet with herself. She knew what each south-bound driver was going to do before he did. Abreast of the white board, suspended from a neat signpost arm and carrying the black inscription,
New Winton,
1701, a discovery would be made. At that point, driving, one saw both that the bridge road was deserted, and that US6W, leaving New Winton, dipped gently, stretched a level, exhilaratingly straight two miles to the river bend. Each car suddenly went much faster. Given the book on her lap, the various colours of the number-plates, and this little ingenuous trick practised so faithfully by driver after driver, May Tupping managed to pass the time.
"I'm sorry, Mrs. Talbot," May Tupping said, "Doctor Bull does not answer."
Her right hand twitched the plug from 11. On the other line there was a halt, a sort of silent whine, while Mrs. Talbot's harassed mind wrestled the vain little it could with her worry. "Well," she said in necessary surrender, "well, all right, May —"
May released the key, dropped the plug back. Looking away from the electric glow shining off the complex surface of the switchboard, she saw three New York plates succeed each other, but abstractedly, concerned about Mamie Talbot. She wished that she could be surer that these calls of Mrs. Talbot's were just Mrs. Talbot's nervousness. Whether by nature, or because of the amazingly bad luck she had, Mrs. Talbot was always upset, apprehensive, hysterically expecting the worst. You couldn't tell what she really meant by Mamie having a bad turn. In Mrs. Talbot's words, Mamie didn't rouse. A person with pneumonia was naturally pretty sick; might not feel like rousing every time Mrs. Talbot had a mind to rouse her.
Still, with nothing else to do, May presently plugged in 11 again. (Doctor Bull's house was at the other end of the green, and if she were looking she could see his car arrive. But she might not be looking; he could have come while she had her eyes on the number-plates. Then, too, car or no car, Mrs. Cole might have got back from wherever she was. Or she might even have been in the house all the time. Mrs. Cole was very absent-minded, and if she happened to have a door closed, she might not realize that the telephone bell meant anything. It was even possible, May thought privately, that Mrs. Cole would simply decide to be deaf. Though she seemed quite able to keep house for the doctor, who was her nephew, and to go unescorted to the motion pictures in Sansbury, people said that she was ninety years old. Perhaps at that incredible age you ceased to see the use of answering telephones if you had anything better to do.
Whether the old lady was at Sansbury in a motion picture theatre, or merely letting the phone ring while she philosophically puttered about the kitchen, made very little difference. Soon, tired of the throb of the futile ringing, May disconnected, sat passive again, regarding the book in her lap. It was the sixteenth volume of a set of books in the library. The set was said to contain everything ever written with which an educated person should be familiar, and volume by volume May was getting through it. She let her eyes focus, reading again, for she was not yet tired of it: "—
My marks and scars I carry with me to be a witness for me, that I have fought his battles who now will be my rewarder. When the day that he must go hence was come, many accompanied him to the river-side, into which as he went he said, Death where is thy sting? And as he went down deeper, he said, Grave, where is thy victory? So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side."
How Mrs. Talbot got on at all, May didn't know. Mrs. Talbot took in a certain amount of laundry work, but most of what money they had Mamie made laboriously in the Bannings' kitchen, washing dishes and doing things that the cook and the maid did not care to do. May doubted if she were paid very much, especially when Mamie got her keep and clothes which Virginia Banning no longer wanted. Of course, it let Mamie get away from her mother, but May was astonished that Mamie could stand it, even so. Mrs. Banning made her go to the Episcopal church. Mrs. Banning also told her that she would lose her job if she went out evenings with a man.
The man, May learned from Doris Clark, who had Morning on the switchboard, had been Donald Maxwell. Donald worked for Miss Cardmaker on the hill. Very coarse in moments of intimacy, Doris said that she would eat her hat if Mamie (the phrase was Doris's) hadn't been laid. "Listen, I
know
Donald," she explained.
May didn't doubt that anything Mamie might have been, Doris had been first. Both the Clarks and the Maxwells lived in the handful of houses a mile or so west of the river known as Truro. It wasn't that Doris resented it; she seemed to take a personal pride in Donald's achievements. Like her sister, Clara, who had 2nd Night on the switchboard, Doris showed a quality which May Tupping could only describe as horrid. A good sample of it was the brazen use both of them made of a building company's calendar on the far wall and minute pencil checks for a calculation which May felt violated decent reticences.
Disquieted, not liking her thoughts, either of the Clark girls or of Mamie's illness, or Mrs. Talbot's misery, May looked down now, read once more: "—
though with great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am
—" A kind of courage and sober cheerfulness seemed to come to her out of the fine plain words in simple succession. Looking through the window, she could see over the veranda rail, down the short slope of lawn under snow; then, the packed, soiled snow of the uncleared side-road; the snow, clean again, deep and undisturbed, blanketing the elongated trapezoid of the green. At the far corner, diagonally across from the carefully kept high hedges of the Bannings' place, was the old Congregational church, standing on the green itself. It was all white, with six tall multiple-paned windows on this side; four plain white columns on the front; and a steeple rising beautifully from two polygon lanterns. Down at this end was only a pedestal, lonely; and more lonely still, on top of it stood the stiff, a little less than life-size, figure of a Civil War soldier.
While May looked now, into sight at the corner came a low grey car, travelling north very fast. Its top was down. It was occupied by a single fur-coated driver. Guy Banning, she recognized, up from college for the Washington's Birthday week-end. He must have been going some, for two hours ago he was still in New Haven, telephoning his mother that he was coming. May watched the grey car pass all the way up the green, turn into the Bannings' hidden drive. Though Guy would probably have to think a minute to be sure of her name, it pleased May to consider how much she knew about him. She even knew all about the grey car. Although it had been built in Europe and had cost ten thousand dollars, Guy had managed to buy it from another Yale boy for only a few hundred. Getting gas at the garage, he told Harry Weems about it, and Harry told Joe, and Joe told her. Harry had gone over the engine and was ready to admit that it was a fine car; he'd never seen one to touch it. It was five or six years old, but it was so well made that it was just as good as new.
Her reflection was interrupted. Turning off US6W to pass right in front of her came a big scarlet truck. The closed doors of its cab bore the gold words
Interstate Light
&
Power Company.
May reached and plugged in 145. "Mr. Snyder," she said, over the bend of the Cobble to the power line construction camp, "that truck of yours is just going by now . . . you're welcome."
She had hardly finished speaking when, distinct even indoors here, she heard the long, arrogant whistle of a locomotive, warning motors which might be approaching the bad crossing US6W made a half mile north. That must be a freight train; and she concluded, glad to have something more to think about, that they had better side-track it. The evening train, upbound, ought to be already at Sansbury. She waited a minute, still looking out, and presently she saw the locomotive's voluminous plumes of steam jetting above the bare tree-tops, an intenser white on the sharp snowy slope of the Cobble behind. The train itself she could not see because of the houses, the hedges and trees on the rise of ground to the east of the green. Very dimly, peals from a swinging bell reached her. Yes, she decided, relieved; they were going to side-track it. The puffing crash of steam expelled in new, laborious movement sounded. The round white plumes went back past the station roof.
Presently it would be dusk. At some point the western hill shadow, coming silently up the fields from the river, had reached the green. The slanting flood of sun diminished, finally was gone. It was perfectly light still, a sunless, lucid light with no direct source. The sky was a hard northern blue; sun itself shone a bright, sad orange on the rest of the Cobble. Increasing cold could be guessed from an elusive, fragile clarity of air in the valley shadows. By contrast, the heat about her permeated May; it seemed to sink to her bones, pleasurably, the way cold painfully does. She hoped it would stay there, that she could absorb it and carry it home and keep it in the cold of the kitchen. The kitchen floor was practically on the ground, and the inside of the walls had never been finished, so you couldn't expect an oil cooking stove to help much. All the while she worked May's hands were either aching with cold or seared with heat. She only hoped it would be warm in the living-room where Joe had his bed.
On the switchboard the first position pilot light awoke. She cut off the buzzing, noted that it was 44. "Oh," said a surprised voice, "that you, May? Well, May, would you ring Doc Bull? Pa"—it was Sal Peters, down the river, and she seemed exasperated—"ain't a bit well —"
The plug went into 11, and, ringing, May listened, suddenly hopeful, meaning to mention Mrs. Talbot too, if he answered; or if Mrs. Cole had come back and knew where the doctor was. She rang it for a full minute. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Peters," she said. "Doctor Bull isn't there."
Now it was really dusk. New Winton's street lights would any minute now wink on. May could imagine a man in the power plant, miles and miles away down the next valley, looking out of a window and saying: "It must be getting pretty dark in New Winton." He would throw a switch. At once, all around the green here, lights jumped up. In New Winton itself you couldn't do anything about it. Forty miles away they decided whether you needed light or not. Or perhaps a machine took care of it all, turning itself on by a clock, with nobody paying any attention. May wasn't, actually, much interested in that event. Purely mechanical things didn't interest her. At least, not in the real sense of interest, as when she said that she was interested in books. Once or twice she had tried to understand the telephone system more completely.