The Lockwood Concern (19 page)

went into the woods, and when they were in deep enough he took her in his arms. She had not spoken during the ride across the dam, and she went with him into the woods as if in obedience to a command. She kissed him eagerly, pressing her hands at places on his shoulders and down his back, always bringing him close to her and turning her head from side to side while holding his lips with her kiss. She took off her skirt and made a rug of it on the ground and sat on it while he helped her with the rest of her underclothes. Then he stripped and there was no time for tenderness or discoveries or sensuality but only the demand of each to possess the other before the world came to an end. Nothing that one said was heard by the other, and not by intent but by the speed of urgency they reached quick, very nearly simultaneous climax. Her dampened hair streaked down over her forehead and she kissed him many times while he was tired. Now they could hear voices, wafted from the opposite shore, some speeches quite distinctly. A rusty oar-lock in a passing rowboat very near their shore. The music puffing out of the carrousel in the casino at the eastern end of the dam. The bell on the large launch that was about to make its hourly tour of the dam. The air whistle on the electric railway car from Gibbsville echoing down the valley. "I didn't hear anything before," she said. "You'd better put your things on. You never can tell when there may be picnickers." "Why didn't you think of that before?" she asked, not crossly. "Why didn't you hear anything before?" "I'd like to go in for a swim, just the way I am. And you with me. I'd love to swim all the way down to the breast and back. And then maybe we could lie here together." "All right, let's." "Don't tease me. I just might. Oh, that was lovely, Abraham Lockwood. Think how far away we are from the other side of the dam." "A quarter of a mile." "No! No! Turn your back to the other side and you'd walk all the way around the world before you got to it." "All the way around the world, less a quarter of a mile." "Exactly. I'm glad our first time was in the woods like this. The Garden of Eden." "Speaking of the Garden of Eden, there are serpents over on this side. I don't mean picnickers, either." "Why didn't you think of that before?" "I can only think of one thing at a time." "I wish there was more to see here. How many times are you going to be able to take me sightseeing?" "Not many, I guess." "Shall we pick some berries to take back to your wife?" "No. I'll tell her we looked for some but saw a copperhead. Sometimes you do see a copperhead where there are huckleberries. Don't ever walk through these woods without a stick." "I'm not afraid of snakes, I rather like them." "Yes, but they don't know that, and don't try to convince them. "Do you care what happens to me?" "Yes." "Do you know what has happened to me?" "What?" "Everything. I love you." "I love you." "Yes, in your way you do." "Why is my way different from yours?" "It's man's love. Mine is woman's love, and no other man will ever have me again, as long as I live. I swear it. You will have to go with your wife, but I'll never have to go with another man. You won't mind going with your wife, but I could never bear to have another man. I'm surprised, too. I didn't expect to feel this way. But I do. I began when we got in the launch. I didn't want you to talk, and you didn't. Anything you said might have been wrong, but you didn't say anything. As though you knew how much I wanted you. Oh, I'm chattering so nervously because I'm still shaking inside. Next week I must go to Philadelphia, and you and I can spend the night in my room. Would that be nice?" "Yes," he said. "What were you smiling at that day, you wouldn't tell me." "Oh. It's embarrassing to tell you, but I can't refuse you anything now, so I guess I'll have to tell you. When Harry and I were first married he told me a lot of things. And he told me about you. That you were known as the Stud Horse. I'm sorry, but I've never been able to look at you without thinking of that. Until today. I don't know why, but in the launch I never thought of it. If I had, I might have been afraid. And I wasn't afraid, was I?" "No. But I'm nearly thirty years older than I was then, Some women have bigger teats than others, too. Some people have bigger noses, or ears. Adelaide never heard about me and never saw another man - well, she did, come to think of it - but she never seemed to think I was out of the ordinary. Did you ever stop to think of how many tiny little women are married to big men? And how many big women marry little men? I think the whole thing is exaggerated. It's a man and a woman getting together that counts." "Well, now you know why I smiled," she said. "Why are you smiling?" "I was thinking how quickly a million years can pass," he said. Adelaide Lockwood had never seen her husband walk across the street with another woman; now, in a fortnight at The Run, he had twice gone off alone with Martha Downs, on the pretext of showing her about the resort; but with Adelaide Lockwood life was extremely simple, and a man who went off alone with a woman, a woman who went off alone with a man, and the two gone together for hours at a time - that man and that woman wanted to be together to the exclusion of all others, and if they desired no other company, they desired each other. Desiring each other, given the opportunity, they would have each other. Thus her reasoning. "What is there between you and Mrs. Downs?" she said, in their third week at The Run. "You know what there is between me and Mrs. Downs. Nothing. She's Harry's widow, and I've been showing her around.' "I don't believe you." "Suit yourself." "It stops, right now." "You can't stop something that never began." "Yes you can. You can stop something before it begins." "She only has another week here." "Then you don't have to show her around anymore. She shouldn't have come here. This is no place for her kind." "You're talking nonsense. George and her son are going to be roommates next year, and her husband was an old friend of mine, and partner." "Such a friend you didn't need, that stole money from you and never invited you to his home. I don't want you to see this woman anymore." "Who's giving orders around here?" "I never did, but I will now. I don't want my home broken up. You've been with this woman, it's no use lying to me. I can tell by looking at the both of you. And there's other ways to tell. I'm twenty years married to you, don't forget. Twenty years in the same bed with a man, a person isn't easy to fool." "If that's all you have to go on, you're making a lot out of nothing. The first year we were married we did it every night." "Ah, stop your lying. I can always tell that, too, when you're lying to me. I don't know many men, but I know two. You, and my father. These two I know." Adelaide had not believed his lies and had left no doubt of her disbelief, so that in consequence her accusation stood undenied, the charge became the truth, accepted and in a sense acknowledged by them as the truth; the acceptance and the acknowledgement became a condition, and the condition was the cessation of their relations as man and wife. Although they had slept in the same bed throughout their married life, now after a few nights of the new coldness she put a cot on the porch and lay there. "Why did you do that?" he said. "I don't want you in bed with me, wet from her." "You want to let everybody know. The servants, the children?" "Before was when you should have thought of that," said Adelaide. "Very well, then we'll never sleep in the same bed again." "I the same as told you that, didn't I?" "I guess you did." "What if I have a man?" "I'll divorce you. Have you got one?" "No, but I wanted to hear what you'd say." "Then you heard. Don't have a man, or I'll sue you for divorce." "You won't always be here, Abraham. Think that over," she smiled in a way that was extremely unpleasant for the absence of unpleasantness in the smile. "Who would you have?" "It could be anybody, Abraham. Just as long as he had a cock to give me." He slapped her. "A cock to go in me," she repeated, and he slapped her again. "Hit me as much as you want to, but now I got you worried." She held her hands over her face to protect herself, but he did not again strike her. "I'm not worried, but you'd better be," he said. "All the same, I'm not. You're going to see how it feels for a change. Every time I talk to any man. Every time you go away. 'Who is she with?,' you'll say to yourself. I know who you're with, but you'll never know. Friends of yours, or the grocery boy. I could be doing the same things to the grocery boy while you're with Mrs. Downs. If I go visit my father in Richterville, who am I with? You won't know. Maybe I'll be out in the back alley, Abraham. Do you remember me telling you about that? Maybe I'll be like your younger sister." "You know where she died. In the crazy-house." "Put me there, I dare you. You don't want any more disgrace. Disgrace you'd be afraid of. You started it, Abraham, but I know you. I know what you want. I know your weakness. The boys. The sons. Disgrace me, divorce me in the courthouse, but I'm not dumb, Abraham. You want everything for the sons, and that's why you'll never do anything else to me. Don't ever hit me again, either. You did that for the last time." He went upstairs to their bedroom, where he kept his pistol in a locked drawer, but in the time it took to find the key his impulse to murder her subsided. To find the key, he had to think; and before he could think he had to regain some self-control. He sat on the edge of their bed, out of breath from fury and the dash up the stairs. He saw that his hand was shaking, making odd shadows on the floor under the weak light from the bracketed kerosene lamp. One of the sons -Penrose - was snoring in the boys' room, and down under the boat landing the bullfrogs were grunting. A woman laughed in a nearby boathouse and her laugh was answered by a dog at the far end of the dam. For the moment he forgot why he was in the bedroom, then remembered again when he became aware that he was gazing at a tintype of his father, made three-quarter face so that the mutilated ear would not show. Moses Lockwood, who had killed two men. Who had killed more than two men, but was remembered only for those two. Now Abraham Lockwood knew where he had hidden the key, hidden it so that his sons would not play with the pistol. He got the key from its hiding place behind his father's tintype, unlocked the drawer, unloaded the pistol, put the cartridges in a different drawer, locked both drawers and returned the key to its hiding place. A little delay had saved him once from committing murder; a longer delay might save him again. He blew out the lamp and lay in his bed. She had escaped death, she would never again be in danger of it from him, but she would never again delight him or be delighted by him, by touch, by word of mouth, by a smile of welcome understanding, by gladness seen or heard. Let her live that way; that could kill her, for her to deny love or for love to be denied her. She was not one to be sustained by hate. Let her waste, wither, die, and let her stay out of the way of The Concern. They had put their sons on the train to Boston, and now, for a change, they could walk together publicly, for a few minutes, without causing suspicion. "I didn't realize you had such a handsome son," she said. "You'd seen him before," he said. "Barely, and not dressed up. At that age they don't look like anything till they've put on their best. Then you can begin to tell how they'll look when they're grown. He's going to be a ladies' man. Imagine wearing a buttonhole at his age. "Why not?" "No reason why not, but Sterling never would have thought to. George looks fully twenty years old. Sterling looks sixteen." "I don't want him to grow up too fast." "You can't stop it," she said. "We have all day to ourselves, but we can't go just anywhere. Would you like to meet a cousin of mine?" "It's pretty hard not to, in Philadelphia." "This one is very unusual. An odd bird called Alice Sterling. She has a salon. She's getting along in years, but she's still one of the most interesting women I know. She likes me because I'm almost as independent as she is." "I've heard of her. She's the queen bee of a bunch of artists and bohemians, isn't she? I don't want to meet her." "Very well, you won't have to, but take me to her house, please. That's my headquarters for the day. You're coming out tonight, aren't you?" "Of course." "Well, take me to Alice's now. I have some things to talk about that I don't want to put off." They took a hansom to Alice Sterling's house near Rittenhouse Square. The sitting-room in this house that seemed so dark from the outside was made bright by the floor-to-ceiling windows, washed to a sparkle, and by dozens of small objects - statuettes, figurines, china, pictures and frames - that picked up the light and relayed it from one shiny thing to another. "A cheerful room," said Abraham Lockwood. "She needs it. She's an unhappy woman." "Where is she now?" "In her room. She stays in bed all morning. The rest of the day she just steadily imbibes her whiskey, sip by sip." "Why is she unhappy?" "Too long a story. I'll go up and say hello to her and be right down. You don't want to stay for lunch? We can have it alone. She won't be coming down." "No, I have a lot of things to attend to." She was back in five minutes. "My cousin wants to know if you ever knew someone named Robert Millhouser, lives in your part of the world." "It's a Lyons name. Nesquehela County. No, I don't know the party." "Just as well. She didn't try to hide her distaste for Mr. Millhouser. Sit down, my dear, and don't kiss me. This is a sinful house, but not our kind. Here women kiss women and men kiss men." "Do you know, I remember hearing that a long time ago. And this is such a cheerful room. Do you know where I heard it? In Washington, when I was a young army officer. That was one of the first times I heard of Mrs. Sterling. Is she your cousin, or her husband?" "She's a double cousin, by blood and by marriage to another cousin." "It won't be long before brothers and sisters marry in this town." She laughed. "I don't know if they'll ever marry, but that explains why some of them never marry anyone else. Please sit down now and let's have our talk." "Very well." "We've avoided this, but I can't put it off any longer. Are you going to settle some money on me? Is that what you intend to do, or are you planning to give it to me quarterly? I really have to know." "I didn't realize you were in difficulty. How much do you want?" "That isn't answering my question, and I know you must have thought about it." "I'd rather do it quarterly." "How much can I count on?" "Well - fifteen hundred a quarter? That's five hundred a