And I had to admit, as I watched, that I had a knot in my stomach. Because I wasn't out there on the court. With Anne Stanton. It was a terrific and fundamental injustice that I wasn't out there. What was that red-faced, crop-headed fellow doing there? What was the girl doing there? I suddenly didn't like them. I felt like going there and stopping the game and saying, "You think you'll be here playing tennis forever, don't you. Well, you wont."
"Why, no," the girl would say, "not forever."
"Hell, no," the fellow would say, "we're going swimming this afternoon, then tonight we're–"
"You don't get it," I would say. "Sure, I know you're going swimming, and you're going out somewhere tonight and you'll stop the car on the way home. But you think you'll be here this way forever."
"Hell, no," he would say, "I'm going back to college next week."
"I'm going off to school," she would shay, "but Thanksgiving I'll see Al, won't I, Al–and you'll take me to the big game–won't you, Al?"
They wouldn't get it worth a damn. There was no use in giving them the benefit of my wisdom. Not even of the great big piece of wisdom which I had learned on my trip to California. They didn't know the wisdom of the Great twitch, but they would have to find it out for themselves, for there was no use to tell them. They might listen politely, but they wouldn't believe a word of it. And watching the brown girl dance and flash over there against the myrtles and the brilliant sea, I wasn't so sure for the moment that I believed it myself.
But I did believe it, of course, for I had had my trip to California.
I didn't see out the first set. The score was five to two when I left, but it seemed that she might make it five-three, for the crop-headed fellow was feeding them to her, not too obviously, and grinning out of the freckles when she'd whang them back.
I went to the house, changed, and took a swim. I idled out a long way, and floated around in the bay, which is a corner of the Gulf of Mexico, which is a corner of the great, salt, unplumbed waters of the world, and got back in time for lunch.
My mother had lunch with me. She kept giving me a chance to tell her why I had come down, but I just skirted round the subject till we got to the desert. Then I asked her if Judge Irwin was at the Landing. I hadn't asked that yet. I could have found out the night before. But I hadn't asked. I had postponed finding out.
He was at the Landing, all right.
My mother and I went out on the side gallery and had coffee and cigarettes. After a while I went upstairs to lie down for a spell and digest. I lay up there in my old room for an hour or so. Then I figured I had better get on with my work. I eased downstairs and started out the front door.
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. "Damned glad you came by," he repeated, and smiled out of the high, tired, rust-colored old hawk's head up there in the shadow. "How long you been in the house? Why didn't you make that rascal rout me out instead of letting me sleep all afternoon? It's a long time since I've seen you, Jack."
"Yes," I agreed, "it is."
It had been a long time. The last time had been in the middle of the night. With the Boss. And in the silence after my remark I knew that he was remembering, too. He was remembering, but after he had said it. Then I knew that he had put the memory away. He was denying the memory. "Well, it is a long time," he said as he settled himself, as though he had remembered nothing, "but don't let it be as long next time. Aren't you ever coming to see the old fellow? We old ones like a little attention."