All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren [207]
But my mother was in the living room and called to me. It was a strange place for her to be at that time of the day, but there she was. She had waited to waylay me, I decided. I stepped inside and leaned against the wall, waiting for her to speak.
“You’re going down to the Judge’s” she asked.
I said, yes, I was.
She was holding up her right hand, the back to her, the fingers spread, to inspect the polish on her red nails. Then with her brow ruffled as though the inspection were not satisfactory, she asked, “Oh, politics, I suppose?”
“Sort of,” I said.
“Why don’t you go later on?” she asked. “He hates to be bothered this time of day.”
“There isn’t any time, day or night, when he wouldn’t hate to hear what I’m going to tell him.”
She looked sharply at me, her hand with the spread fingers forgotten in the air.
Then she said, “He is not very well. Why do you have to bother him? He isn’t at all well now.”
“I can’t help that,” I said, feeling the stubbornness grow inside me.
“He’s not well.”
“I cant’ help it.”
“You at least might wait till alter.”
“No, I’m not waiting,” I said. I felt that I couldn’t wait. I had to go on and get it done. The obstacle, the resistance, had confirmed me in that. I had to know. Quick.
“I wish you wouldn’t,” she said, and lowered the hand which she had held up, forgotten, in the air the time we had been talking.
“I can’t help it.”
“I wish you wouldn’t get mixed up in–in things,” she complained
“I’m not the one mixed up in this something.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll know when I’ve put it up to Irwin,” I told her, and went out of the room, and the house, and walked up the Row toward the Irwin place. At least, I would walk, hot as it was, and that would give the old bugger a little extra time before I popped the question to him. He deserved the extra few minutes, I reckoned.
The old bugger was upstairs lying down when I got there.
That was what the black boy in the white coat said. “The Jedge, he upstairs layen on the baid, he resten,” he said, and seemed to think that that settled something.
“All right,” I said, “I’ll wait till he comes down.” An without invitation I drew open the screen door, and entered into the shadowy gracious coolness of the hall, like the perfect depth of time, where the mirrors and the great hurricane glasses glittered like ice, and my image was caught as noiselessly as velvet or recollection in all the reflecting surfaces.
“The Jedge, he–” the black boy began again to protest.
I walked right past him saying. “I’ll sit in the library. Till he comes down.”
So I walked past the eyes of which the whites were like peeled hard-boiled eggs and past the sad big mouth which didn’t know what to say now and just hung open to show the pink, and walked on back to the library, and entered into the deep, shuttered shadow which depended from the high ceiling and the walls of books laid close like stone and which lay on the deep-red Turkey carpet like a great dog asleep and scarcely breathing. I sat down in one of the big leather chairs, dropped by the chair the big manila envelope I had brought, and lay back. I got the notion that all the books were staring meaninglessly down at me like sculptured stone closed eyes, in a gallery. I noticed, as before, that all the old calf-bound law books there gave the room the faint odor of cheese.
After a while, there was some movement upstairs, then the tinkle of a bell in the back of the house. I guessed that the Judge had rung for the boy. A moment later I heard the boy’s soft feet padding in the hall, and guessed that he was headed upstairs.
In about ten minutes the Judge came down. His firm tread came toward the library door. He paused an instant at the threshold, a tall head above a black bowtie and white coat, as though to adjust his eyes to the shadow, then moved toward me with his hand out. “Hello, Jack,” he was saying, in the voice I had always known, “damned glad you came by. I didn’t know you were at the Landing. Just get in?”
“Last night,” I said briefly, and rose to take the hand.
He gave me a firm grasp, then waved me back into the chair.