All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [203]
I stepped gingerly up that patch of concrete walk, as though I were treading on dozens of eggs laid by all those white leghorns back in the chicken run.
Lucy led me into the parlor, which was just the place I had known it would be, the carved black-walnut furniture upholstered in red plush, with a few tassels still left hanging here and there, the Bible and the stereoscope and the neat pile of cards for the stereoscope on the carved black-walnut table, a flowered carpet, with little rag rugs laid over the places most worn, the big walnut and gilt frames on the wall enclosing the stern, malarial, Calvinistic faces whose eyes fixed you with little sympathy. The windows of the room were closed, and the curtains drawn to give a shadowy, aqueous light in which we sat silently for a minute as though at a funeral. The palm of my hand laid down on the plush prickled drily.
She sat there as though I hadn’t come, not looking at me but down at the floral figure in the carpet. The abundant dark-brown hair which, when I first met Lucy out at the Stark place, had been massacred off at the neck and marcelled by the beauty operator of Mason City, had long since grown back to its proper length. The auburn luster was still in it, maybe, but I couldn’t see it in the dim light of the parlor. I had, however, noticed the few touches of gray, when I met her at the door. She sat across from me on the red plush seat of a stiff, carved, walnut chair, with her still good ankles crossed in front of her, and her waist, not so little now, still straight, and her bosom full but not shapeless under the blue summer cloth. The soft soothing contours of her face weren’t girlish any more, as they had been on that first evening back in Old Man Stark’s house, for now there was a hint of weight, of the infinitesimal downward drag, in the flesh, the early curse and certain end of those soft, soothing faces which, especially when very young, appeal to all our natural goodness and make us think of the sanctity of motherhood. Yes, that is the kind of face you would put on the United States Madonna if you were going to paint her. But you aren’t, and meanwhile it is the kind of face they try to put on advertisements of ready-mix cake flour and patented diapers and whole-wheat bread–good, honest, wholesome, trusting, courageous, tender, and with the glow of youth. The glow of youth wasn’t on the particular face any more, but when Lucy Stark lifted her head to speak, I saw that the large, deep-brown eyes hadn’t changed much. Time and trouble had shaded and deepened them some, but that was all.
She said, “It’s about Tom.”
“Yes,” I said.
She said, “I know something is wrong.”
I nodded
She said, “Tell me.”
I inhaled the dry air and the faint closed-parlor odor of furniture polish, which is the odor of decency and care and modest hopes, and squirmed on my seat while the red plush prickled my pressed-down palm like a nettle.
She said, “Jack, tell me the truth. I’ve got to know the truth, Jack. You will tell me the truth. You’ve always been a good friend. You were a good friend to Willie and me–back yonder–back yonder–when–”
Her voice trailed off.
So I told her the truth. About Marvin Frey’s visit.
Her hands twisted in her lap while I spoke, and then clenched and lay still. Then she said, “There’s just one thing fro him to do.”
“There might be a–a settlement–you know, a–”
But she broke in. “There’s just one right thing,” she said.
I waited.
“He’ll–he’ll marry her,” she said, and held her head up very straight.
I squirmed a little, then said, “Well–well, you see–it looks like–like there might have been–some others–other friends of Sibyl–others who–”
“Oh, God,” she breathed so softly I could scarcely tell it was more than a breath she uttered, and I saw the hands clench and unclench on her lap again.
“And,” I went on, now I was in it, “there’s another angle to it, too. There’s some politics mixed up, too. You see–MacMurfee wants–”
“Oh, God,