get it over with. She was innocent of any wrongdoing, after all; there was no doubt of that. How could there be any doubt of that?
Augustine got to his feet and went out of the study without bothering to shut off the train board. Most of the lights were on, but the house was quiet except for the faint creeks and groans of settling timbers. Almost like the White House, he thought. Almost as if there were ghosts here too-the ghosts of his father and all the years of his life, whispering to him unintelligibly in the night.
Claire was not in the master bedroom, not in the library or the parlor. He heard crackling noises in the family room, and when he entered he saw her bending before the hearth, feeding pine logs heavy with pitch into a blazing fire.
She straightened around as she heard the sound of his footsteps, the orange firelight dancing on her face. She had changed clothes since he’d last seen her: wearing a blue sheath dress now, blonde hair combed out and brushed into waves that clung to her shoulders. When he came up to her he saw that her eyes were solemn-and the illusion that he could plunge into them, become absorbed by them, came over him again. But it was neither an uneasy sensation nor a sexual one this time; it was one of longing, because in absorption there would be escape.
He said, “That’s a nice fire,” but he was only making words.
A wan smile. “Yes. Are you hungry, Nicholas? I can have Mrs. Peterson fix you something-”
“No,” Augustine said. He had skipped dinner because he had no appetite and because he hadn’t wanted to talk to her; he still had no appetite, the thought of food made him ill. “I want to ask you something, Claire.”
“All right.”
He took a breath. “I saw you with Maxwell this afternoon,” he said. “The two of you in the south garden.”
Her face paled. “You… saw us?” in a whisper.
“Yes. I came out for a little air and I saw him touching you, I saw you run away from him. I want to know what happened out there.”
Moistness glistened in her eyes. Tears? She didn’t speak. “Tell me what happened, Claire. Why was he touching you? What did he say to you?”
“He said… Nicholas, I don’t want to-”
“Tell me!”
“He said he had deeper feelings than any of us imagined, that he was a human being and not a machine.” Her throat worked. “He acted… strange, different; it frightened me and I ran.”
Dully Augustine said, “There’s more to it than that.”
“No…”
“Yes. Yes there is. He said something else, didn’t he.”
“All right. All right. He said he… he said he was in love with me.”
Augustine flinched. Betrayal-again and again and again. Even Maxwell Harper, of all people. Even him. But there was no anger in him; he was beyond the capacity for any emotion as intense as rage. “I see,” he said. “Was that the first time he told you how he felt?”
“Yes.”
“You had no idea of it before today?”
“I can’t lie to you. I… suspected.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“There was no point in it. Nothing ever happened.”
Nothing ever happened, Augustine thought. “Is that why you’ve been reluctant to talk about him lately?”
She nodded. “Nicholas, what are you going to do?”
“Do?”
“About Maxwell. About the incident in the garden.”
“I don’t know yet,” he said.
Claire said abruptly, “Fire him.”
“What?”
“Fire him. Get him away from here right now, tonight.”
He was silent for a time; then he said, “You’re sure that’s what you want?”
“I’m not sure of anything anymore. Nicholas, I-”
She broke off again. And reached up, touched his cheek with the tips of her fingers. And then almost convulsively pushed past him and hurried across the room.
Augustine stood looking after her, watching her hips move under the blue dress, the blue dress John Henry had a little woman,
And the dress she wore it was blue;
She went walkin’ down the track and never looked back,
Said, “John Henry I’ve been true to you,
Lawd, Lawd, John Henry I’ve been true to you.”
Fifteen
Moonshine.
The night is radiant with it as we make our way through the gardens. It paints the darkness with luminous yellows and golds, it softens the shadows and gives them a velvet gloss, it creates an almost religious aura of beauty and peace. It touches us, bathes us with its brilliance, and yet it does not reach us at all. Beauty and peace are strangers to us now. We knew them once, but no more-no more.
There is no moonshine in our soul; there is only warm black.
When we near the southernmost guest cottage we see that there are lights showing faintly behind drawn front-window shades. But of course we have expected to find him awake; it is only a few minutes past eight o’clock. Is he alone? We will have to take the chance that he is, and return later if he is not.
We walk through the moonshine to the door, putting our hand in our coat pocket to conceal the bulge of the heavy glass ashtray we have placed there. A moment after we knock the door opens, and he peers out at us with listless eyes: the cool Harvard intellectual is gone and in his place stands a derelict. Is it because his sins weigh heavily on his mind? No matter. Treason is treason; remorse means nothing.
“What do you want?” Harper says in a wooden voice.
Behind him we can see most of the room, and it is empty. “We… that is, I’d like to talk to you,” we say.
“Talk about what?”
“May I come in?”
It is obvious that he does not want to be alone with us, and just as obvious that he does not care enough to refuse. He shrugs finally and says, “I suppose so, if you make it brief.”
“Oh I will. Very brief.”
He steps aside, and we enter past him and walk three careful paces into the room. We turn as he closes the door. He stands with his back to it and hides his hands inside the slash pockets of the dressing gown he wears. The dressing gown is rust-hued, the color of dried blood. We wet our lips; the ashtray is warm against our palm.
Harper says, “Well? What is it you came to say?”
We move over in front of him, close enough so that we can smell the faint sour odor of his breath. He avoids our eyes. “Just good-bye,” we say. “Good-bye, Maxwell.”
And we bring the ashtray out of our coat and club him with it across the bridge of the nose.
But it is a glancing blow, a sharp corner penetrates the skin and brings a spurt of blood, we have attacked with too much haste this time-and he screams. The others did not scream but Harper shrieks in a thin shrill voice, like a woman, and the sound of it-God, the awful sound of it! — fills us with a kind of wild desperate confusion. We hit him again as he staggers, but his hands are clapped to his forehead, blood streaming over the hands, and the ashtray strikes only his knuckles and he screams again, reels off a table and falls to his knees, screaming, still screaming. We know we have to shut off that sound before someone is alerted, before the pitch of it shatters our
