How Like A God (eBook)

II

Just what is it you expect to accomplish? One of your favorite and best-articulated beliefs is the futility of anything we may do to other people. The things that are done to us are the only ones that matter, especially the things we do to ourselves. Of course our own acts mostly have a rebound, but not this fatal act you are now considering, knowing all the while that it cannot be consummated.

All the futility of Jane’s thrusts at you, for instance, did not arise from your antagonism and parade of independence. The futility was inherent in the material she was trying to work with. The question of motive need not enter. What considerations moved her are entirely beside the point as far as you are concerned.

The fact is that she is the woman for you. This is true in spite of society’s traditional attitude, first brought to you the day that red-haired boy (whose name you have forgotten) taunted you with being tied to your sister’s apron strings. And later shouted at you incessantly from across the street until the shocked neighbors made an issue of it:

“He drinks his sister’s milk, he drinks his sister’s milk, he drinks his sister’s milk!”

Very well, tied to your sister’s apron strings. That is worse then than being tied to the ribbons of Erma’s rue de la Paix robe de nuit, or chained with steel to the black and impenetrable armor of the woman upstairs? Bah. The world of course is thinking of incest and hasn’t even the courage to say so. The concern is authentic, physiologically, but who is talking of physiology? Not you. You are not responsible for what you may or may not have dreamed as an infant and a boy, but you know what you think as a man, and when you say that Jane is the woman for you, you mean that all the security and peace you have ever known, all the gentle hours of content, all the exciting assurances that the world was made for you too, have come from the touch of her hand and the sound of her voice. Anyone who tries to translate that into that which may be bought at any street corner for two dollars has very little to do.

But you’ve never thanked her for it, and it has always been futile. The time you went home from Cleveland for your things, having definitely agreed with Dick, Jane listened quietly to your grandiose plans and exaggerated enthusiasm, along with the rest of the family. She gave you your father’s old place at table that evening, and you noticed that your mother accepted the arrangement calmly and even with a mild pleasure, because it was Jane’s.

The following morning Jane came into your room while you were packing.

“Bill, I’m afraid you’re being driven into this by your feeling that you’ve got to do something for the family. You shouldn’t, really you shouldn’t. The store’s doing better than ever and I’m honestly having a lot of fun with it. You must come down this afternoon and see all the new stuff I’ve got. The fountain is a peach. I’m only twenty-five, and you don’t need to think I’m going to get covered with moss. The way this town’s growing we can sell the store for a lot of money in a few years.”

You wouldn’t admit anything. Superficially you were offended.

“Gosh, you might think I was taking a job cleaning streets. This is the real thing, Jane. Five thousand a year for a man of my age isn’t to be sneezed at.”

“It’s not your line. I’m glad and proud you’ve got the offer; I suppose it would rush nearly any boy off his feet. But I’m even prouder of that second story you wrote. I think it’s pretty darned good.”

This made you glow, but you protested:

“It was about the twentieth, and most of them were terrible.”

“I mean the second one published. Oh, Bill, don’t let yourself be gobbled up. I expect you think that it’s just that I want to manage things, but it isn’t. If you were older than me it would probably be the other way around. The store can keep all of us nicely. What if you don’t make much for two or three years, or even five?”

Futile. In your pocket was the five hundred dollars Dick had advanced, more than you had ever seen before. Most of it went to pay off ancient personal debts around town of which even Jane knew nothing.

She tried again four years later, when the store was sold and you went down to help take the sucker off the hook as Jane put it in her letter. In reality there was nothing for you to do but sign papers; Jane had made an impeccable deal. She was now mature, in full flower, radiant and assured. Her own future was perfectly indefinite, but not with the mist of doubt or hesitation.

“I’m going to New York and take Rose and Margaret along. Mother wants to stay here with Aunt Cora. Thanks to your generosity Larry can go to college next month without anything to worry about.”

As neat as that. The talk you had with Jane that night was the closest you and she had ever got to each other. You admitted your regrets and she appealed to you with tears in her lovely eyes. You longed inexpressibly to say:

“Take me to New York with you. Let’s be together. There’s no one but you anywhere that’s worth a damn. I’ll write or I’ll get a job or I’ll do anything. Maybe some day you will be proud of me.”

Well why not? Tied to your sister’s apron strings. No not entirely that. Drawn as you were to her, you were at the same time repulsed. Surrounding that seductive haven were difficult and dangerous shoals. Perhaps underneath all her tact and competence and beautiful strength you felt an avidity of power which would at length leave you a naked and pendent slave of her compassion and her will. Or perhaps it was something much less elaborate; some feeling deeper than anything you have words or thoughts for.

At any rate it was again futile. When you departed for Cleveland the next day everyone but Larry was in tears; this was different from other departures; it was the beginning of the end of the roof and that family.

Even more to the point by way of futility have been your own efforts at Larry. They have affected him of course in superficialities such as his place of being, his momentary companions and his intellectual opinions; once he even willingly followed your advice regarding the choice of a suit and you can’t get closer to a man than his clothes. But in no essential have you left a mark on him.

How differently from you did he pass from the morning twilight of college into the bright day. He bounded out of the west into New York like a calf confidently and arrogantly bumping its mother for a meal. This was only a week or so after Erma had returned from Europe widowed of the unlikely Pierre, and you had just had lunch with her. Larry was pleasantly impressed but not at all overawed by your elaborate office. Almost at once he was telling you that he had never properly thanked you for putting him through college, that he was really tremendously grateful, that he would pay you back as soon as he could, and that he was glad it was over.

“It’s mostly horseplay. They don’t really know any of the stuff they tell you, except football. That’s the only thing they’ve found out for themselves. I’m glad it’s over. Have you decided where I’m to start blowing up the buildings?”

He was leaving it all to you, and you were thrilled by this, unaware that it was only because to his youthful eagerness and ardor details were unimportant Also it had already been decided. Dick had been extremely decent about it, regretting that he hadn’t a younger brother of his own to start along the line, and welcoming Larry as a substitute.

He spent six months in the plant in Ohio, six more in the Michigan ore mines, some few weeks in New York, and then was suddenly interrupted by the war.

Larry’s letters to you and Jane were your only intimate contact with the insane ultimate consumers of the steel and iron toys which were causing the stock in Erma’s vault to increase in value at the rate of six thousand dollars a day. Being treasurer of the corporation, you were in a position to contemplate that insolent accretion with fitting ironic admiration. But for the censor Larry’s narratives from the trenches would have served excellently as frontispieces for the imposing rows of journals and ledgers which were locked each evening behind those massive steel doors on lower Broadway.

Back as a decorated captain, Larry returned to his desk as if nothing had happened. It was easy to see in his eyes the questions that had not been there before, but he left you to guess at them. Was that true of Jane also? You wonder about Larry and Jane.

He proved himself, young as he was he rose in importance by his own ability and force, but during all those months that became years you felt a vague uneasiness about him. All the time you wondered what it was and why it disturbed you so, not aware of the deep significance which his presence and progress in that environment had come to hold for you, as vindication of your own acceptance of it.

The explosion came at a difficult moment, and unexpectedly. Only the previous week Larry had won new laurels by bringing to a successful close the Cumberland bridge negotiations, down in Maryland. You had heard Dick offer him praise of a different character from any you had ever earned. The difficulty though had come through Erma, whose pretty teeth had shown themselves for the first time the night before in a most inelegant snarl. You didn’t feel like lunching with anyone and were annoyed at Larry’s persistence. When, immediately after you and he had been seated at the usual corner table in the Manufacturers’ Club, he announced that he was going to leave the Carr Corporation,...