Finch suddenly grinned, and the thought flashed across his mind that complacent husbands were often ill-treated by the world's opinion. "I can see what you're so shy about, but don't worry. Making a little hay while the Cat's away, huh?"
"No, I tol" you—"
"I say don't worry. I have no intention of cutting your liver out or expressing jealousy in any other dramatic fashion."
Terry heaved a sigh. "That's good, ef you mean it. Corse, it hain't rational to be jealous, nohow, but I been hearin' so much about this irrationality they're talkin' about you, I was almost beginning to believe it myself."
"All right, now you know."
"Well, me and Eulalie we didn't do nothin' but talk, and I was goin' to rub her up when jest then Orange Bill busts in. He's looking for Eulalie to beg her please to change her mind and go back with him and maybe go off to Alaska. And when he sees Eulalie lyin' there in a condition—a condition of disabilly, he jumps to conclusions—"
"Correct conclusions, apparently."
"Anyway, he jumps to 'em, and turns all red in the face, and starts calling me names. I guess he plumb had a seizure, and it was real serious. That's what I like about you Arthur, you take a sensible attitude—"
"Get back to the story."
"Okay. Bill picks up this big glass ash-tray to bung it at me, so naturally thinkin' he has a seizure and there ain't time to get no Proctors, I gotta sock him one. I didn't mean to bust him too hard though; I thought his jaw would of been stronger than that."
"So then what?"
"Oh, they take Bill to the hospital to mend his pore busted jaw, and me and Eulalie to jail. And Bill he sends for this Montague, seein' that a busted jaw like that is maybe bigger'n what a House Court can handle, and him and this Montague git their heads together. And then they find that enfeoffment agreement you and I got, so that makes you responsible for what I done, and they thought it would be a good chanct to git up some other charges, so they brought up innovation against you on account of that sonnet—"
"What the hell," said Finch. "Isn't that double jeopardy—being tried twice for the same tiling?"
"No, on account of the first time you was tried for advertising, not innovation."
"What's so terrible about innovation?"
Terry shook his head. "You know's well I do. They figger they got everything the way they want it, and trying to change it gits people disturbed or th'own out of their jobs. I did hear tell some of the engineers got plans for a machine that'll sure enough fly, but the authorities won't let 'em build it. Say hit'll be time enough in maybe a hundred years, when the effects of them automobiles all git absorbed."
"I see," said Finch. "Where's Eulalie?"
"She went to Sullivan and got him to trade her off to Los Angeles on account of she didn't want to live in Strawberry House no more with all that unpleasantness."
"Did she divorce me before she left?"
"I dunno. I reckon she most likely did, but I was in jail then, so I can't tell for shore."
"Haven't we—haven't any of our friends—any influence with this Montague?"
"Arthur, you just plumb don't seem to realize, you ain't got no friends any more. Excepting me, that is. Nobody will come 'round to see you, on account of they don't want to git mixed up with a District Politician and a man that's gonna be fertilized. Hit would look bad. Might even interfere with their gitting promoted some day."
"Oh, hell!" said Finch in heartfelt tones.
Terry said: "I feel right down sorry for you, Arthur, honest I do. Too bad I ain't a politician, or had a politician tied up somehow. I could fix all the jedges and examiners and things. Everybody knows it hain't reasonable to expec' them to enforce rules agin the men that control 'em." He sighed. "Nev' mind, Arthur. Here's a cigar I brought for you, and I'll be right there at the trial to be a witness."
He shook hands and departed gloomily. Finch sat down to whatever comfort the cigar could offer and to a set of thoughts that were anything but pleasant. He had doubtless wished himself into a perfectly rational frame of reference, but now that one examined it at close range, he thought he preferred an irrational individualism. These people had no responsibility, no guts; human limpets, each clinging to his little shred of Status, and afraid to budge for fear of being pried loose.
If he could only find that carnelian cube and use it to awake from this serial experience into a world where one-would have some freedom of personality ...
Something was decidedly queer about the flavor of the cigar. Finch knocked the ash off and looked at the end, probably the last thing he expected in the world was the actual discovery that a small and very hard file was embedded in the tobacco. Good old Terry!—his effusive friendship really meant something. Using it would be easy; the desk sergeant was at some distance from the cell, and these people were so rational that apparently it never occurred to them anyone legally arrested would wish to escape illegally, so there was no guard.
Forty-eight hours later, Arthur Finch wormed his bulk through the window and dropped to the grass below. It was a warm night and the moon, nearly full, was just rising.
"Terry?" he stage-whispered, in half expectation the athlete would be there. No answer.
The moonlight showed a square of paper, folded and stuck into a crack in the masonry. Finch took it out and stole to a little distance before finding shelter in a clump of trees, where he lit a match to read:
Dear Arthur, if you get out when 1 think you will, I will meet you in the woods haf a mile east and I will giv you some food and thengs for you to excape with. Nobody else would have the nerve but you are so difjernt I kno you will perfer to take your chances like you said before. Your pall.
No signature was necessary. Finch walked briskly along the edge of the gently winding roads toward the grove indicated. At the edge of the wood he whistled.
"Hurra up!" came Terry's whisper, and he was there. "I got your automobile on account of hits still yours, but I dunno ef I can drive it so good, so you better do it till we git toward morning. Go straight ahead down this road."
"Where are we bound for?" asked Finch, as the car moved along the smooth highway.
"This," said Terry, "is the road to Frankfort. Ef you turn off after about twenty miles, to the right, you git up in the hill country and by-and-by you come to Shelbyville House, where my old maw and paw live. Hit ain't what you'd call classy like Strawberry House, but they'll take care of you till you kin find somewhere else to go or maybe write to Sullivan to do something for you. You better drive this car in the woods somewhere and leave it before morning and nights you kin git there walking. The grub in this bag ought to last you out."
"Swell," said Finch, "and thanks."
After a period of silent progress, he remarked: "It's gradually beginning to dawn upon my limited intellect that in this world inventors and improvers are about as popular as the harpies were with Phineus."
"Naturally," said Terry. "Anybody kin figure that out. Any change you make is bound to hurt somebody. The professors got that figgered out long ago, so that any change you make, it's bound to upset something. So the only way to stop people gittin' hurt is to stop all them changes, ain't it?"
"Hmmm," said Finch. "How can you stand it?"
"Me?" said Terry in a surprised tone, "I git along.
Once in a while I git in trouble from bein' too sympathetic or shoorin' my mouth off too hard or poking somebody in the jaw or somethin', but that don't make no never-mind with me. I git along."