He heard the trapdoor open and shut. He stood the shoes together, and, looking at them there, felt sorry for Sally. Life here below, no matter how much you might wish it other-wise, was shoes — not champagne, but shoes, and not dirt, but shoes, and this, roughly speaking, was the mind of the Church.
He heard the diving board rumble overhead. Baroomph! said the lake. He heard splashing, and then he heard nothing. She could be climbing the rungs set in the wall of the castle. No, she was still in the water.
Was it too much to hope that she’d return to him chastened in spirit? Water perhaps the best therapy known to man. Listen for sounds of drowning, and hope for the best, and try to make it up to her somehow. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Not scorned. Not a-tall. Lovely woman. Tell her so, if need be. Play it down, way down. Oh, I understand. You just wanted to pull up the shrubbery and throw stones at the tigers, but that’s all past now. Why, who lives here? The door’s open! Say, why don’t you wait inside while I… that’s it, while I see if I can find some bananas. Snap!
Putt-putt. No! Oh yes. Putt-putt-putt. And putt-putt-putt-putt-putt.
“Hey!” yelled Father Urban, shooting out the door, and almost killing himself in the dark. “Hey!”
Father Urban stood on the stone pier, where the launch had been berthed, and hoped that Sally would return for him and her clothes, but after a few minutes of this, he went back into the castle, only hoping that she’d manage to slip into the house and up to her room unseen. There was little reason to believe that she’d rescue him later that night, and morning didn’t strike him as a very good bet either. In any case, he preferred not to spend the night in the castle. Too much had already happened there. If he had to swim for it sooner or later, the best time was now, in the cover of night.
So he placed the screen in front of the fire, extinguished the lamp, and checked out of the castle. At the end of the stone pier, he sat down and removed his shoes and socks. No stars, only a cloudy half-assed moon, and the lake more or less invisible. It was very definitely there, though, in motion, noisy with waves, waiting for him. After tying his shoes together, and then to his belt, he slipped down into the cold, cold water, and struck out for the mainland. It was perhaps fifty yards away.
He soon discovered that the wind, like everything else that day, was against him. Somewhere between the island and the mainland, when he could see neither very well, and the waves seemed to shove him down, he sensed the beginnings of a cramp, panicked, and, feeling that it was him or them, he got rid of his shoes. He did go along better after that, but when he reached the other shore — when this was no longer his only objective in life — he knew what he’d done. Even as a child, he hadn’t liked going barefooted, and what he’d felt then, the innate cruelty of sticks and stones, he felt again. This, though, was nothing now. Wet and woebegone and shivering, he sat on a fallen birch and put on his socks and hid the whiteness of his feet from himself.
He was down the shore about two hundred yards from the Thwaites house. He was tempted to head for the main road, to go on without his bag, and hope that it would somehow reach him later, but this, he realized, could be a bad mistake, the same kind of mistake he’d made when he’d jettisoned his shoes. He would just be letting himself in for more trouble, trouble that could easily be avoided — easily, that is, if all his instincts weren’t for getting off Mrs Thwaites’s property before something worse happened to him.
But he did go to the car and he did get his bag out of the trunk. Then he thought of his collar, left on the front seat, but it wasn’t there. He felt around on the floor. Not there, either. So he went on without it. If Sally had taken it, he was afraid that more was wrong with her than he’d thought.
On the main road, cars passed him by. He didn’t blame them. When he came to a filling station, with a nice warm stove in it, and a pay telephone, he didn’t blame the attendant for looking at him as he did: Think he’d sell his bag before his shoes. “Use this one,” the attendant said, pointing to the telephone on the desk. “It won’t cost you.”
“Well, I must say that’s nice of you,” said Father Urban. There was only one person he could call, once he really thought about it, and fortunately that one was in. “And don’t send anybody else,” Father Urban said. “Come yourself.”
“Holy Paul!” said Monsignor Renton when he saw what he’d come for. “You look like you spent the day barking at the bottom of a well.”
15. ONE OF OUR BEST MEN
AFTER A DRINK at Monsignor Renton’s (“Bourbon, Red, and no ice”), Father Urban was driven back to the Hill in the Imperial. His bag was heavy with wet clothing — how much Monsignor Renton didn’t know, for Father Urban hadn’t mentioned his earlier mishap. He was wearing his own damp underwear, shirt and trousers from Monsignor Renton, socks and shoes from Cox’s room (Cox was away, attending a convention of youth specialists), and a suede jacket from Box, to whom Monsignor Renton had explained, “It wasn’t so cold when Father Urban left the cloister.”
“Well, of course, it was no way for her to act,” Monsignor Renton said, on the way to the Hill, “but if you ask me, she’s still the best of the lot.” “You may be right,” said Father Urban. He had told Monsignor Renton that Sally had left the castle in a huff, and, thinking of her honor as much as his own, he had let Monsignor Renton assume that Norris had been there at the time. Monsignor Renton was under the impression that Norris was still there. “You say there’s a place to sleep?” “Oh yes.” “Well, I suppose he’ll be all right then. She’ll cool off by morning.” “Oh yes.” “I wouldn’t take it so hard, if I were you. It may not have been your fault at all. In fact, I’d say it was a lovers’ quarrel, and you got caught in the middle.” “You may be right.” “If I’d been in your shoes, though, I would’ve stayed with Norris.” “Yes, well, I was in a hurry to get home.” “Good shoes, were they?” “Pretty good.” “Too bad. Say, I shot one of those Dunlop Maxfli’s today. Ever use ’em?” “I have, yes.” “Good ball.” “Yes.” “And how was the fishing up north?” “Not too good.” “I’m told you have to go farther north, almost to the Arctic Circle, if you want to catch anything.” “You may be right.” “Coming back to the other, though, I’d say the moral, if any, is stay away from people.”
Father Urban told Wilf that Billy and Paul had left rather suddenly, no more than that, but that was enough for Wilf. According to Wilf, traveling by car was faster than going by train, or even by plane, from remote points. When Wilf asked how the fishing had been, Father Urban said, “Lousy.” Wilf said it had been unusually good at home, that Brother Harold had frozen about seventy pounds in the past two days, including one walleye, an eight-pound lunker.
“You should’ve stayed here,” Wilf said.
Father Urban went around with a numb feeling, nursing a cold. He preached when asked, but not too well. He passed up an important funeral in Great Plains. In general, he neglected his contacts. Had there been any occasion to do so, he could not have said “Hello—hello!” with gusto. He wasn’t himself. He even stayed away from the course.
Naturally, he wondered what had become of the station wagon, and thought of various heartbreaking ways in which Billy might dispose of it, or render the Order’s title to it useless. For two weeks, though, he held Wilf off, with Wilf’s help. Traveling (Wilf said) was much faster by car than by train, or even by plane, from remote points, and “business,” which had made Billy hurry back to Chicago, was keeping him there and holding him incommunicado. Toward the end of this period, however, Wilf did say it was lucky they hadn’t traded in the pickup truck.