It rained very hard that evening. Near midnight we were relieved of the last drenched dedication guests, some of them being taken away by their friends, slung across their saddle bows. It had now been dark for some time. I was at the farm door with a candle, hanging up some rags to dry; the rain drummed on the slabbed paving, and through the open door came the warm fermented smell of the hay, inseparable from the first shortened evenings. I had been hearing the dog barking busily for some time, but thought it was just the revellers being carried homewards down the valley; until all at once a man was standing in the doorway. First I heard his footsteps outside on the paving, then I felt him come nearer and gradually fill the doorway until all of him was there.
“Who’s there?” I said.
“Good evening,” he said.
I thought I was going to turn to stone where I stood, but then replied questioningly and angrily in the way one would address a burglar: “Good evening?”
“It’s me,” he said.
“And so what?” I said.
“Nothing.”
“What a fright you gave me, man.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s past midnight.”
“Yes,” he said, “I didn’t want to come during the daytime. I knew there were crowds of people here. But I wanted to see my daughter.”
“Come right in out of the doorway, man,” I said, and offered him my hand.
He made no attempt to kiss me or anything like that; caressing or coaxing was not in his nature. It was impossible to have anything but confidence in a man of his demeanor.
“Take off your things,” I said, “you’re soaking wet. How did you come?”
“The Cadillac’s at the other side of the gully,” he said.
“The Cadillac!” I said. “Are you a thief now too?”
“The vocation,” he said.
I told him he ought to explain this vocation, but he said it was impossible to explain a vocation.
“Have you left the police?” I asked; and he replied, “A long time ago.”
“And now?” I asked.
“Plenty of money,” he said.
“Plenty,” I echoed. “If there is plenty, then it has quite certainly not been well come by. But come into the parlor anyway, or come into the kitchen instead, perhaps, we’ll see if there’s any life left in the range. If not I’ll try to get a fire going; you’ll have to have some coffee even though I’m not sure if you’ll be allowed to stay the night.”
The kitchen was directly opposite the main door, with the parlor to the left and the living room to the right, where my parents slept.
“Where’s my daugher?” he asked.
The outcome was that I took him into the parlor and shone the candle on the girl sleeping beside the wall, in the spare bed, with my place just in front of her. He looked at her, and I at this unknown man, and found myself still in sympathy with those races that recognize no connection between father and child. For the moment I could in no way see nor understand that he could own this child any more than other men did, nor indeed that any man owns children generally. He stared at her for a long time without saying a word. I lifted up the bedclothes so that he could see all of her.
“Can you feel what a nice smell she has?” I asked.
“Smell?” he said.
“I thought they smelled of urine,” he said.
“That’s because you’re a pig,” I said.
He looked at me and asked solemnly, “Am I not her father?”
“Unless you want to deny it on oath,” I said, and added: “Thought I don’t really see how it matters.”
“It doesn’t matter?”
“We won’t go into that now,” I said. “Come into the kitchen. I’ll try to cheer the fire up a bit.”
When he had sat down I noticed that his clothes were made of expensive material and his hat was new; and that his footwear was ill-suited for walking: his thin brown shoes had got covered in mud on the way over from the car, and he had waded through the stream. But when I offered him dry things he flatly refused them. “Not even well-knitted homespun socks?” I said.
“No,” he said.
As usual, he had to be fed with conversational topics, he was reluctant to speak without prompting; but long after he had fallen silent the timbre of his voice would still tingle in one’s ears.
“What news is there from the south?” I asked.
“None,” he said.
“How is… our… organist?” I asked, and at the same moment was aware of the surrender implied in admitting our joint ownership of anything. And he was not slow to notice it either.
“Our organist,” he repeated. “His mother is dead. But he is raising seven new kinds of roses.”
I remarked how good it was to forget first and then die later, like that woman; and then I said that the world could not be utterly wicked, fundamentally, when there were so many varieties of roses in existence.
“And here’s some layer cake,” I added. “We inherited it from the Women’s Institute. Or would you rather have bread and butter with your coffee?”
Naturally he preferred bread and butter.
I could feel how he was watching me, even though I had my back turned to him as I busied myself with the food and coffee.
“And the gods?” I said, still searching in the corner cupboard.
“They have declared war on Pliers,” said my visitor. “They claim that he had given them a half share in the Cadillac while he still believed in them, and allege that they have it in writing. So Pliers got rid of the car cheap.”
“And you think it charitable to take the car off the poor creatures?” I said. “It was their pride and joy, after all, and I say for myself that I find it hard to imagine an atom poet without a Cadillac.”
“I don’t pity the gods,” he said. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.”
“And how is the Figures-Faking-Federation getting on at selling the country?” I asked.
“Very well,” he replied. “Pliers has flown to Denmark to buy the bones. The F.F.F. is going to hold a monstrous tile-hat funeral—for the people.”
We carried on talking about this and that for a while, until suddenly, while I was laying the table, he said, staring at my hands, “May I be with you tonight?”
“Leave me alone, I’m a reinstated virgin,” I said.
“What does that mean?” he asked.
“It’s a girl who becomes a virgin again after seven years if she is left alone,” I said, and hurried to the corner cupboard again so as not to let him see how I was blushing; it is really an act of sex to talk like that.
“We’ll get married this autumn,” he said.
“Are you mad, man? How can you get such nonsense into your head?”
He said: “It is expedient for us both; all of us; everyone.”
“Wouldn’t it be better for me to try to become a person first?” I said.
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“Can’t you understand that I’m nothing, man?” I said. “I know nothing, can do nothing, am nothing.”
“You are the ultimate thing in a northern valley,” he said.
“I think it enough to have a baby with the first one who offered, without making things worse by marrying him.”
“Why did you slam the door on me last year?” he asked.
“Why do you think?”
“Another man, maybe,” he said. “And myself fallen out of favor.”
“Of course,” I said. “Always another and another, a new one and another new one. I could scarcely cope with the numbers I slept with.”
“Why are you behaving like this?” he said.
“Tell me more of the south,” I said. “Tell me at least what you have become. I don’t even know whom I’m talking to.”