All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [126]
But all at once the laughter was gone. It was as though someone had pulled a shade in front of her face. I felt as you do when you pass down a dark street and look up to see a lighted window and in the bright room people talking and singing and laughing with the firelight splashing and undulating over them and the sound of the music drifts out to the street while you watch; and then a hand, you will never know whose hand, pulls down the shade. And there you are, outside.
And there I was, outside.
Maybe I should have done it anyway, put my arm around her. But I didn’t. She had looked up at me and had laughed that way. But not for me. Because she was happy to be there again in the room which held the past time–of which I had been a part, indeed, but was no longer a part–and to be kneeling on the hearth with the new heat of the fire laid on her face like a hand.
It had not been meant for me. So I dropped her hand which I had been holding and stepped back and asked, “Was Judge Irwin ever broke–bad broke?”
I asked quick and sharp, for if you ask something quick and sharp out of a clear sky you may get an answer you never would get otherwise. If the person you ask has forgotten the thing, the quick, sharp question may spear it up from the deep mud, and if the person has not forgotten but does not want to tell you, the quick, sharp question may surprise the answer out of him before he thinks.
But it didn’t work. Either she didn’t know or she wasn’t to be surprised out of herself. I ought to have guessed that a person like her–a person who you could tell had a deep inner certitude of self which comes from being all of one piece, of not being shreds and patches and old cogwheels held together with pieces of rusty barbed wire and spit and bits of string, like most of us–I ought to have guessed that that kind of a person would not be surprised into answering a question she didn’t want to answer. Even if she did know the answer. But maybe she didn’t.
But she was surprised a little. “What?” she asked.
So I said it again.
She turned her back to me and went to sit on the couch, to light a cigarette and face me again, looking levelly at me. “Why do you want to know?” she asked.
I looked right back at her and said, “I don’t want to know. It is a pal wants to know. He is my best pal. He hands it to me on the first of the month.”
“Oh, Jack–” she cried, and flung her newly lit cigarette across to the hearth, and stood up from the couch. “Oh, why do you have to spoil everything! We had that time back here. But you want to spoil it. We–”
“We?” I said.
“–had something then and you want to spoil it, you want to help him spoil it–that man–he–”
“We?” I said again.
“–want to do something bad–”
“We,” I said, “if we had such a damned fine time why was it you turned me down?”
“That hasn’t anything to do with it. What I mean is–”
“What you mean is that is was fine, beautiful time back then, but I mean that if it was such a God-damned fine, beautiful time, why did it turn into this time which is not so damned fine and beautiful if there wasn’t something in that time which wasn’t fine and beautiful? Answer that one.”
“Hush,” she said, “hush, Jack!”
“Yeah, answer me that one. For you certainly aren’t going to say this time is fine and beautiful. This time came out of that time, and now you’re near thirty-five years old and you creep out here as a special treat to yourself and sit in the middle of a lot of sheet-wrapped, dust-catching furniture in a house with the electricity cut off, and Adam