The eventual aim, he felt sure, must be a world state. But of what nature? He plowed through Clarence Streit and Ely Culbertson and everything else he could lay hands on, rejecting Culbertson’s overemphasis on the nation as a unit and Streit’s narrow definition of what constitutes democracy, but finding in each essential points that had to be fitted into the whole.
MacVeagh’s desk was heavy with books and notes and card indexes, but he was not thinking of any of these things. He was thinking of Laura.
The breaking point had come that night they went out with Molly and the Gman. (Odd episode, that. Why a G-man here in peaceful Grover? And so secretive about his mission and so abrupt in his departure.) It might have been the picture that brought it on, a teary opus in which Bette Davis suffered nobly.
It was funny that he couldn’t remember the words of the scene. According to all tradition, they should be indelibly engraved on the tablets, et cetera. But he didn’t remember the words, just the general pain and torture.
Laura crying, crying with that helpless quiet desperation that is a woman’s way of drowning her sorrows. Himself, puzzled, hurt, trying to help and comfort her. Laura shuddering away from his touch. Laura talking in little gasps between her sobs about how he was nice and she liked him and he was so good to her, but she didn’t understand, she never had understood how she made up her mind to marry him and she would try to be a good wife, she did want to, but—
He remembered those words. They were the only ones that stayed indelible: “—I just don’t love you.”
He had quieted her finally and left her red-eyed but sleeping. He had slept that night, and all the nights since then, in the guest room that some day was to be converted into a nursery.
Was to have been converted.
There’s a catch, Molly said. Always a catch. You can make your marriage true, but your wife’s love—
A man isn’t fit to be God. A woman who cannot love you is so infinitely more important than the relation of Soviet Russia to Western Europe.
MacVeagh almost barked at Lucretius Sellers when he came in. The old printer was a regular visitor at the Sentinel. He wasn’t needed any longer, of course, with the new presses and the new staff that tended them. But he’d appointed himself an unofficial member of the Sentinel’s forces, and MacVeagh was glad, though sometimes wondering how much of the truth about the truth Luke Sellers might guess.
Tonight Luke glanced at the laden desk and grinned. “Hard at it, Johnny?” He was sober, and there was worry in his eyes behind the grin.
MacVeagh snapped his thoughts back from their desolate wanderings. “Quite a job I’ve got,” he said.
“I know. But if you’ve got a minute, Johnny—”
MacVeagh made a symbolic gesture of pushing books aside. “Sure, Luke. What’s on your mind?”
Luke Sellers was silent a little. Then, “I don’t like to talk like this, Johnny. I wouldn’t if I wasn’t afraid you’d hear it somewhere else. And Molly, even she thinks I ought to tell you. It’s getting her. She slapped Mrs. Manson’s face at the Ladies’ Aid last meeting. Not but what that’s sensible enough, but she’s generally acting funny. Sometimes I’m almost afraid maybe—”
He bogged down.
“That’s a heck of a preamble, Luke. What’s it leading up to? Here—want to oil up your larynx?”
“Thanks, Johnny. Haven’t had a drink all day—wanted to have my head clear to— But maybe this might help— Well, peace forever! Thanks.”
“OK. Now what?”
“It’s— Johnny, you’re going to kick me out of this office on my tail. But it’s about Mrs. MacVeagh.”
“Laura?”
“Now, hold on, Johnny. Hold your horses. I know there’s nothing in it, Molly knows there’s nothing in it, but it’s the way people around town are talking. She’s been seeing a lot of that manager out at the plant, what’s-his-name, Johansen. You work here late at nights, and— Phil Rogers, he saw them out at Cardotti’s roadhouse. So did Jake Willis another night. And I just wanted— Well, Johnny, I’d rather you heard it from me than down at Clem’s barber shop.”
MacVeagh’s face was taut. “It’s no news to me, Luke. I know she’s lonely when I work here. Fact is, I asked Johansen to show her a little fun. He’s a good guy. You might tell that to Mrs. Manson and the boys at Clem’s.”
Luke Sellers stood looking at MacVeagh. Then he took another drink. “I’ll spread it around, Johnny.”
“Thanks, Luke.”
“And I hope I can make it sound more convincing than you did.”
He left. John MacVeagh sat silent, and the room was full of voices.
“How does it feel, MacVeagh? What’s it like to know that your wife— No, MacVeagh, don’t rub your forehead. You’ll prick yourself on the horns—”
“Don’t listen, MacVeagh. It’s just people. People talk. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Where there’s smoke, MacVeagh— Remember? You didn’t think there was any fire in Laura, did you? But where there’s smoke there’s—”
“You could fix it, you know. You could fix it, the way you fix everything. Something could happen to Johansen.”
“Or if you haven’t the heart for that, MacVeagh, you could send him away. Have him called to Washington. That’d be a break for him too.”
“But it wouldn’t solve the problem, would it, MacVeagh? She still wouldn’t love you.”
“You don’t believe it, do you, MacVeagh? She can’t help not loving you, but she wouldn’t deceive you. You trust her, don’t you?”
“MacVeagh.”
It was some seconds before John MacVeagh realized that this last voice was not also inside his head. He looked up to see Phil Rogers, the perfect profile as hyperpale as it had been on the night of his aunt’s murder. His white hand held an automatic.
“Yes?” MacVeagh asked casually. He tensed his body and calculated positions and distances with his eyes, while he wondered furiously what this meant.
“MacVeagh, I’m going to send you to meet God.”
“My.
