All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [181]
And as my home movie unrolled, as I drove west, I could not help but reflect that if I hadn’t been so noble–if it was nobility–everything would have been different. For certainly if Anne and I had been trapped in that room, my mother and Governor Stanton would have set us up in matrimony, even if grimly and grudgingly. And then whatever else might have happened, the thing that had happened to send me west would never have happened. So, I observed, my nobility (or whatever it was) had had in my world almost as dire a consequence as Cass Mastern’s sin had had in his. Which may tell something about the two worlds.
There was, as I was saying, the rest of the night after Anne had gone home. But there was also the next day. Anne, however, was busy packing and doing errands in the Landing during the day. I hung around her house, and tried to talk with her, but we never got more than a few words together, except when I drove her down to town. I tried to make her marry me right away, just to go home and get a bag and tear out. She was under age, and all that, but I figured we could get by–in so far as I figured anything. Then let the Governor and my mother raise hell. She only said, “Jackie-Boy, you know I’m going to marry you. Of course, I’m going to marry you forever and ever. But not today.” When I kept pestering her, she said, “You go on back to State and finish up and I’ll marry you. Even before you get your law degree.”
When she said “law degree,” I didn’t really remember right off what she was talking about. But I remembered in time not to express any surprise and had to be satisfied with that.
I helped her with the errands, took her home, and then went to my house for dinner. After dinner I went to see her early, going in the roadster with the hope, despite the lowering, gusty weather, that we could take a ride. But it was no soap. Some of the boys and girls we had played around with that summer were there to tell Anne good-bye, and some parents, two couples, were there too, to see the Governor (who wasn’t Governor any more, but to the Landing would always be the “Governor”) and give him a stirrup cup. The young people played a phonograph in the gallery, and the old people, who looked old to us anyway, sat inside and drank gin and tonic. The best I could do was to dance with Anne, who was sweet to me but, who, when I kept asking her to slip out with me, said she couldn’t just then, she couldn’t because of the guests and she’d try later. But then another storm blew up, for it was right at the equinox, and the parents came out to say they had better go home, and told their particular young ones in a loud voice that they ought to come too and let Anne get some sleep for the trip.
I hung around, but it didn’t do any good. Governor Stanton sat in the living room and had another drink by himself and looked over the evening paper. We clung together in the porch swing, and listen to his paper rattle when he turned the page, and whispered that we loved each other. Then we just clung without talking, for the words began to lose their meaning, and listened to the rain beat the trees.
When a little break came in the rain, I got up, went inside, and shook hands with the Governor, then came out, kissed Anne good-bye, and left. It was a stiff cold-lipped kiss, as though the summer never had been at all, or hadn