At Iris's suggestion, we left the problem of Christianity itself completely alone. Cave's truth was sufficient cause for battle. There was no reason, she felt, for antagonizing the ultimate enemy at the very beginning.
"Let them attack you, John. You must be above quarreling; you must act as if they are too much in error even to notice."
"I reckon I am above it," said Cave and he sounded almost cheerful for the first time since my arrival. "I want no trouble, but if trouble comes I don't intend to back down. I'll just go on saying what I know."
At midnight, Cave excused himself and went to bed. Iris and I sat silently before the last red embers on the hearth. I sensed that something had gone wrong but I could not tell then what it was.
When she spoke, her manner was abrupt: "Do you really want to go on with this?"
"What an odd time to ask me that. Of course I do. Tonight's the first time I really saw what it was Cave meant, what it was I'd always felt but never before known, consciously, that is. I couldn't be more enthusiastic."
"I hope you don't change."
"Why so glum? What are you trying to say? After all you got me into this."
"I know I did and I think I was right. It's only that this evening I felt… well, I don't know. Perhaps I'm getting a bit on edge." She smiled and, through all the youth and health, I saw that she was anxious and ill-at-ease.
"That business about the accident?"
"Mainly, yes. The lawyers say that now that the old man's all right he'll try to collect damages. He'll sue Cave."
"Nasty publicity."
"The worst. It's upset John terribly… he almost feels it's an omen."
"I thought we were dispensing with all that, with miracles and omens." I smiled but she did not.
"Speak for yourself." She got up and pushed at the coals with the fire shovel. "Paul says he'll handle everything but I don't see how. There's no way he can stop a lawsuit." But I was tired of this one problem which was, all things considered, out of our hands in any case. I asked her about herself and Cave.
"Is it wise my being up here with John, alone? No, I'm afraid not but that's the way it is." Her voice was hard and her back which was turned to me grew stiff, her movements with the fire shovel angry and abrupt.
"People will use it against both of you. It may hurt him, and all of us."
She turned suddenly, her face flushed. "I can't help it, Gene. I swear I can't. I've tried to keep away. I almost flew East with Clarissa but when he asked me to join him here, I did. I couldn't leave him."
"Will marriage be a part of the new order?"
"Don't joke." She sat down angrily in a noise of skirts crumpling. "Cave must never marry. Besides it's… it isn't like that."
"Really? I must confess I…"
"Thought we were having an affair? Well, it's not true."
The rigidity left her as suddenly as it had possessed her. She grew visibly passive, even helpless, in the worn upholstered chair, her eyes on me, the anger gone and only weakness left. "What can I do?" It was a cry from the heart… all the more touching because, obviously, she had not intended to tell me this. She'd turned to me because there was no one else to whom she could talk.
"You… love him?" That word which whenever I spoke it in those days always stuck in my throat like a diminutive sob.
"More, more," she said distractedly. "But I can't do anything or be anything. He's complete. He doesn't need anyone. He doesn't want me except as… a companion, and advisor like you or Paul… it's all the same to him."
"I don't see that it's hopeless."
"Hopeless!" The word shot from her like a desperate deed. She buried her face in her hands but she did not weep. I sat awkwardly, inadequately watching her. The noise of a clock alone separated us: its dry ticking kept the silence from falling in about our heads.
Finally, she dropped her hands and turned toward me with her usual grace. "You musn't take me too seriously," she said. "Or I mustn't take myself too seriously which is more to the point. Cave doesn't really need me or anyone and we… I, perhaps you, certainly others, need him. It's best no one try to claim him all as a woman would do, as I might, given the chance." She rose. "It's late and you must be tired. Don't ever mention to anyone what I've told you tonight… especially to John. If he knew the way I felt…" She left it at that. I gave my promise and we went to our rooms.
I stayed two days at the farm, listening to Cave who continually referred to the accident: he was almost petulant, as though the whole business were an irrelevant, gratuitous trick played on him by a malicious old man.
His days were spent reading his mail (there was quite a bit of it even then), composing answers which Iris typed out for him, and walking in the wooded hills which surrounded the farm on two sides.
The weather was sharp and bright and the wind, when it blew, tasted of ice from the glaciers in the vivid mountains: winter was nearly with us and red leaves decorated the wind, so many ribbons for so much summer color. Only the firs remained unchanged, warm and dark in the bright chill days. Cave and I would walk together while Iris remained indoors, working. He was a good walker, calm, unhurried, sure-footed, and he knew all the trails beneath the yellow and red leaves fallen.
Cave agreed with me on most of my ideas concerning the introduction; and I promised to send him my first draft as soon as I'd got it done. He was genuinely indifferent to the philosophic aspect of what he preached. He acted almost as if he did not want to hear of those others who had approached the great matter in a similar way. When I talked to him of the fourth-century Donatists who detested life and loved heaven so much that they would request strangers to kill them, magistrates to execute them for no crime, he stopped me: "I don't want to hear all that. That's finished. All that's over. We want new things now."
Iris, too, seemed uninterested in any formalizing of Cave's thought though she saw its necessity and wished me well, suggesting that I not ever intimate derivation since, in fact, there had been none: what he was, he had become on his own, uninstructed.
During our walks, I got to know Cave as well as I was ever to know him. He was indifferent, I think, to everyone. He gave one his private time in precise ratio to one's belief in him and importance to his work. With groups, with the masses, he was another creature: warm, intoxicating, human, yet transcendent… a part of each human being who beheld him at such times, the longed-for complement to the common soul. Yet though I found him, as a human being, without much warmth or intellectual interest I nevertheless identified him with the release I'd known in his presence and, for this new certainty of life's value and of death's irrelevance, I loved him. On the third day I made up my mind to go back East and do the necessary writing in New York, away from Paul's hectic influence and Cave's advice. Cave asked me to stay with him for the rest of the week but I could see that Iris regarded me now as a potential danger, a keeper of secrets who might, despite promises, prove to be disloyal; and so, to set her mind at ease as well as to suit my own new plans, I told her after lunch on the third day, when we were for a moment alone in the study, that I had said nothing to Cave, that I was ready to go back that evening if she would drive me to Spokane.
"You're a good friend," she said. "I made a fool of myself the other night. I wish you'd forget it… forget everything I said."
"I'll never mention it. Now, the problem is how I can leave here gracefully. Cave just asked me this morning to stay on and…"
But I was given a perfect means of escape. Cave came running into the room, his eyes shining. "Paul! I've just talked to Paul in L.A. It's all over! No heirs, nothing, no lawsuit. No damages to pay."