“And when I had sorted that out as well as I could, I came here, thinking I might find some way to live with my family here, I mean my wife and son. I have even thought it might be a pleasure to introduce Robert to my father. I would like him to know that I finally have something I can be proud of. He’s a beautiful child, very bright. And believe me, he’s being brought up in the church. He wants to be a preacher. But now I see how feeble my father is, and I don’t want to kill him. I really don’t. I have enough on my shoulders as it is.”
He said, “You will not tell me this is divine retribution.” “Furthest thing from my mind.”
“I was pretty sure I could trust you not to do that.” I said, “Thank you.”
He drew a long breath. He said, “You know my father so well.”
“But I can’t give you any assurances about this, one way or the other. I’d hate to be wrong. You’ll have to let me reflect on it.”
Then he said, “If it were you, and not my father—”
Now, I could see his point in putting that question, since Boughton and I are in general very much of one mind. But it was not so simple a question as he might have thought, and I paused over it.
He watched me for a minute, and then he smiled and said, “You have made a somewhat — unconventional marriage yourself. You know a little bit about being the object of scandal. Unequally yoked and so on. Of course, Delia is an educated woman.” Those were his very words.
Now, that was just like him. That meanness. His remark was not even entirely to the point. And I never felt there was anything the least bit scandalous about my marriage. In her own way, your mother is a woman of great refinement. If a few people did make remarks, I just forgave them so fast it was as if I never heard them, because it was wrong of them to judge and I knew it and they should have known it.
But then that look of utter weariness came over him and he covered his face with his hands. And I could only forgive him. My thought when I hesitated was that since I was so long in the habit of seeing meanness at the root of everything he did, I might well have doubted his motives in involving himself with this woman he did not marry, and bringing me this child. I’d have been wrong, I believe, but his question was not how I should react but how I would be liable to react. “With Boughton this could be completely different, since he thought so much better of Jack, or so I had always believed.
I said, “I would love to know the child. Especially if you explained everything to me the way you just did.” And then I said, “He certainly took to that other child.”
Young Boughton gave me such a look as I have never seen in my life before. He went stark white. Then he smiled and said, “Children’s children are the crown of old men.”
I said, “You have to forgive me for that. That was such a foolish thing to say. I’m tired. I’m old.”
“Yes,” he said, and his voice was very controlled. “And I have taken far too much of your time. Thank you. I know I can trust your pastoral discretion.”
I said, “We can’t let the conversation end here,” but I was just so weary and downhearted it was all I could do to get up from my chair. He stopped by the door and I went over to him and I put my arms around him. For a moment he actually let his head rest on my shoulder. “I am tired,” he said. I could just feel the loneliness in him. Here I was supposed to be a second father to him. I wanted to say something to him to that effect, but it seemed complicated, and I was too tired to think through its possible implications. It might sound as if I were trying to establish some sort of equivalency between his failings and mine, when in fact I would have meant he was a better man than I ever thought he could be. So I said, “You are a good man,” and he gave me a look, purely appraising, and laughed and said, “You can take my word for it, Reverend, there are worse.”
But then he said, “What about this town? If we came here and got married, could we live here? Would people leave us alone?”
Well, I didn’t know the answer to that one, either. I thought so.
He said, “There was a fire at the Negro church.”
“That was a little nuisance fire, and it happened many years ago.”
“And it has been many years since there was a Negro church.”
Of course there wasn’t much I could say to that. He said, “You have influence here.”
I said that might be true, but I couldn’t promise to
