Then Miriam stepped in behind me and said: “Oh.”
I waved my hand, a foggy human gesture that tried to say this wasn’t my doing. At the sound of Miriam’s exclamation Abraham looked around but didn’t rise at once, only stared in shock. When he did stand up Sharon laced her fingers in his, and I could see he wanted that. Sharon was intent, outwardly cool. So is a good artilleryman getting ready for a big one.
Miriam had probably never looked prettier herself. She had won her small brush with tears: they only swam in her eyes without falling. Trim and exquisite in her blue trousers, white fur jacket, a little sparkling something-or-other of a hat on the white shining of her hair, she was a gentle pin-up deeply wronged. Sharon said neutrally: “Miss Dane, I think?”
Miriam tried to dismiss her with one contemptuous flickering glance. “Abe, don’t on any account let me disturb anything, but Bill Keller wants to see you, I do mean right away.”
“I’m sorry.” Abraham spoke evenly; painfully conscious of his own words, but there was quiet in him; I knew it. “I don’t want to see him.”
“What!”
“I’m sorry, Miriam. That’s how it is.” I leaned back feebly against the wall, an old man obscurely minding his own business. That would do, what Abraham had said. The next few minutes were not going to be nice, but the boy needed no help. “If you see Bill, you might as well tell him that. I’m not going back there, Miriam, not seeing any of them again.”
I don’t believe Miriam had been braced for anything like that. She had come looking for a confused, easily managed boy. She stared into her hands, flushed and paled, unable to conceal her growing sense of defeat and a growing panic which, I sensed, had little to do with her relation to Abraham. After a few false starts she said softly: “Abe, there’s such a thing as loyalty. Or wouldn’t you know?”
Abraham nodded. “They’ll have to think of me as a heel, Bill and Mr. Nicholas and the rest. That’s all right. I do myself, but for a different reason: I gave my loyalty where I should’ve known it couldn’t remain. I’m not going back, Miriam.”
Sharon said: “There are other loyalties, Miss Dane. Your leader Joseph Max is what I’d have to call disloyal to his fellow men.”
I didn’t think Miriam’s policy of ignoring Sharon would work much longer. But she went on trying it. Staring at Abraham and then at the ring on her left hand, she whispered: “None even to me, apparently….”
Sharon said: “People change.”
Even that did not make Miriam look at her. It was like another answer to the same thing when Abraham said: “Dr. Hodding was already broken when the Party bought him — wasn’t he, Miriam? Sick, turning to alcohol dreams for escape because even the good work he did at the Wales Foundation had alarmed him, alarmed part of him anyway. Miriam, tell me this: why did a thing supposed to be an openly registered political party want to subsidize a man to invent a new disease—”
“That’s a lie! It wasn’t like that, Abe!”
“It’s what happened.” Abraham shook his head. I could see pain growing in the deep shadow of his eyes, pain and perhaps a hint of uncertainty. “You were there on the roof garden, Miriam. Once you told me yourself that nothing happens in the Party without your knowing all about it.”
“But you don’t understand. We didn’t know what Hodding
“Didn’t know!”
“No, we did not. He — I could tell you — all right, I will tell you, though I wasn’t supposed to….”
Sharon noticed her free hand had become a fist. She relaxed it carefully. She said: “Yes, do.” And still Miriam managed to ignore her.
“Abe, Max has only just found out what Hodding really was, only just this morning. That’s why you’ve got to come back. Nicholas says you were alone with Hodding, heard some of his talk. Max has got to see you, hear about it directly from you — you owe us that much, seems to me. And Bill, Bill Keller is sick, Abe. He broke down. We didn’t have any sleep, any of us, and Bill is sick, can’t get hold of himself, keeps asking for you….”
She could see as well as I did that it made him waver. Perhaps she didn’t see Sharon’s hand, which was saying more than I could have said with any verbal interference. “Why, Bill’s never sick—”
“But he is! I just came from him. Oh, Abe, he’s done so much for you — and nobody’s asking you to do any Party work, just to come and see him, talk to him. Did he ever ask you for any help before—”
“Miriam, if he’s sick it’s not going to help him to see me, when I’ve rejected the things he believes in. And you haven’t told me what you started to…. What is Dr. Hodding, as of this morning?”
“That’s a nasty thing to say.” Miriam had dignity when she wanted to use it. “I don’t think your present company’s improved you, Abe, do you mind my mentioning it? Hodding’s what he always was, only we didn’t know it. All right — and you’d better listen. You won’t like it, maybe you’ll refuse to believe what we finally got out of that poor crazy old man—”
Sharon said to no one in particular: “Methods?”
Miriam swung toward her at last. “I beg your pardon?”
“Interested in the methods used, for getting information from a poor crazy old man.”
It was war of course, and Sharon had chosen a moment when a little goading might sweep Miriam toward revealing hysteria. It didn’t quite work. Miriam stared, and sputtered, and turned back to Abraham. “Abe, if you can get your mind off your imaginative friends long enough to listen: we haven’t done a single thing that wasn’t justified by the emergency. A man like Hodding can’t be handled with gloves. I’m trying to tell you what he is. We found out.” Her voice was rising. “Never mind how — you’ve got that weak, soft streak — it doesn’t matter anyway. Abe, Hodding has been in the pay of China for the last three years.” I believe I laughed; Abraham didn’t. “He’s been using our American facilities to work up something to use in Asia. And fooling us with talk of abstract research, research that might have a humanitarian purpose — Max went for that, naturally — Max thought Hodding was working on a — a—”
Abraham had gone very white. He understood her hesitation too, I think. He said: “Is that going to be given to the press? Like that?”
“Certainly!” Miriam cried, and the high edge of hysteria was there. “Certainly, when we’re ready.”
Sharon cocked her head at her little stockinged feet and dropped them softly. She started to speak, but Abraham checked her. He said: “All you need now is a written confession from Hodding? Something like that?”
“We have it already,” she snapped.
“Then you don’t need me. Miriam, it stinks.”
She pressed her hand to her forehead with the pathos of weariness. “So you can’t see. Like a spoiled child. With a new toy too.” She studied Sharon with the same show of weariness, dazed indifference: “Just who are you, or aren’t I supposed to ask?”
“A junior member of the Federalist Party.”
“Oh. One of those. I might’ve known. And this cheap clumsy spy” — she looked me up and down; I let it ride — “what do you pay him, may one ask? Not that it matters. Well, Miss — Miss—”
“Brand. Sharon Brand.”
“Oh yes. Thought I’d seen your picture somewhere. You write children’s books or something, don’t you?”
Sharon chuckled. “Uh-huh. Nice big ones.”
“Well, you might tell your nigger boss in the Federalist Party that, as a spy, friend Meisel is a flop—”