The Accused - Harold R. Daniels (best novels for students TXT) 📗

don’t give a damn,” she said bitterly. “I cook his meals and keep his house clean and all he does is sit there with his damn books.” The fact that she neither kept the house clean nor went to any pains to cook a decent meal, Louise considered beside the point. Nevertheless, during the two-week period she carefully left the bar in time to be home when Morlock arrived. She let it be known that she did this out of fear of her husband, getting satisfaction out of the stature this impression of her as an abused wife gave.

One day she didn’t bother to leave in time to be home when Morlock arrived. She had been engrossed in a gin rummy game in which she had won heavily, and she had been drinking whisky rather than her usual beer.

She came in the house an hour after Morlock had arrived. Before she opened the door she armed herself with a defensive anger in case he chose to make something of her lateness.

Morlock was sitting at the kitchen table. Hearing her, not looking up, he said mildly, “Hello, Lolly. Been to a movie?”

She stood in the doorway, swaying slightly. After a moment she said something so obscene that Morlock was briefly stunned. When he did not immediately respond, she repeated the phrase. This time he rose from his chair, his face pale.

“You’re drunk,” he said.

“What if I am, professor?” she said, raising her voice. “You’re too good to get drunk, I suppose. What about that night in Providence when you puked all over your bed?”

“Lolly,” he said. “For God’s sake.”

She stared vaguely at him, remembering that she was furious but completely unable to recall what she was furious about or if there was anything to be furious about. She clutched at the first thing that came into her mind. “Books,” she said. She made it sound as if she had spat. “You and your books. You want me to tell you what you can do with your damn books?”

Morlock, defenseless in the face of her irrational anger, said, “That’s enough, Lolly. Let me help you to bed now and we’ll talk about it in the morning.”

She was slightly appeased now that she had his attention. She held up another grievance, selecting it like a candy from a box. “A movie,” she said bitterly. “That’s what we do around here for a big time. Why don’t anyone ever come to see us? Your fat friend Dodson, he’s the only one you bring home. Well—him.”

“Lolly,” he pleaded, “keep your voice down. Let me help you to bed. I’ll make you some coffee and bring it to you.”

Her mood suddenly changed. “All right,” she said. She giggled. “You’ll have to help me off with my clothes.”

*In the bedroom she lay deliberately limp on the bed while he tugged and hauled to undress her and to get her nightgown on. When he was finished, she pulled him to her and kissed him wetly. Morlock pulled away, and then, fearing that she would sense his revulsion and become furious again, looked for an excuse.

“I’ll go make the coffee,” he said. “We’ll have a cup of coffee and a cigarette together first.” He hated himself for the hypocrisy, but when he had gone to the kitchen he moved as deliberately as he could, hoping that she would fall asleep.

This was the second of their quarrels. Thereafter they were repeated almost weekly. On the occasion of a later quarrel Morlock became furious himself; a mistake he did not repeat. Her coarseness, the obscenity of the accusations she made, completely shattered him. He could not match her in either volume or vileness. After that quarrel they made no pretense of making up.

She began to go out in the evenings, usually pretending that she was going to a movie with Anna Carofano. Morlock was not fooled by the pretense, but he did not particularly care. After three months of marriage, he preferred solitude. As an escape from the sordid atmosphere of the tenement, he began to dwell more and more in the past. He became aware of a longing to return to the scenes of his boyhood.

After the humiliating time with the Dean and the appliance company and the loan agency, he decided to implement the longing. On the next Sunday he arose early. Lolly was still asleep; he dressed quietly and went out to have coffee in a restaurant. In the afternoon, after they had had dinner, he decided, he would try once more to talk with Lolly. Their marriage, on its present basis, was impossible. He considered divorce or separation only as remote extremes. He had not married Lolly for love. He could not exactly define now why he had married her. There had been the flattery of her attention on those long evenings in the three-decker house on the Hill. There had been the warmth, after the empty years, of being expected and wanted. There is some Pygmalion in every person. He had recognized her lack of culture and wanted the egotistic satisfaction of developing her mind. The cliche was repugnant but it was a part of the marriage. There had been sex, of course. And still another part of the marriage was—sympathy? Knowing these things and admitting them, he could not now divorce her or leave her when she seemed so badly in need of help.

He finished his coffee and left the restaurant to walk through streets, dozing in Sunday somnolence, to Dodson’s rooming house. Dodson’s bedraggled convertible was parked at the curb. He knocked at the door and entered. Inside the building he walked through the old-fashioned, high-ceilinged hall to Dodson’s room.

Dodson was asleep. He woke him. “Tom,” he said, “I’d like to borrow your car for a couple of hours.”

Dodson said sleepily, “Go ahead. The keys are on the dresser.” He asked more alertly, “Anything wrong, Al?”

“No. I just want to take a little drive and do some thinking.”

Dodson turned over and went back to sleep. Morlock took the keys and went out to the old LaSalle. Dodson kept the engine in good running order and it started easily. Morlock headed out of War field on the road to South Danville, the town where he had been born, where he had been a boy, and where he had not returned in fifteen years although it was only a short ride from Warfield.

He had a half-formed idea of driving through the town and seeing how much of it he remembered. He did not intend to visit Abram’s Rock until he stopped at a filling station for gas; then, remembering that it was only half a mile away, he had a tremendous urge to see it again.

The filling station attendant was helpful. “Sure,” he said. “There’s still a road leading right up close to the rock; but you’d better not try to make it in the car. The mud would be right up to the axles.”

Could he, Morlock asked, park in back of the station and walk in? He could. He got out of the old LaSalle and started walking toward the great gray boulder. He felt an odd excitement as he entered the grove surrounding the rock. The air was warm and turbulent with the promise of spring. Abram’s Rock seemed as awesomely solid, as overwhelmingly huge as it had in the vanished years. Morlock, slowly climbing its flank, remembered the solace he had found here as a child. Even now the rock had that power. Here he had played with Marianna Cruz. Here he had come when he was troubled. Here he had made plans and dreamed dreams. The plans had been fruitless and the dreams had been just dreams. But on Abram’s Rock this seemed of little importance.