Warlock, since this morning, has been as silent as was the Citizens’ Committee when we heard his statement. I think I am, ashamedly, as disappointed as the rest, but I know I think better of Blaisedell than I have ever before. It was clear that he knew exactly what was our intention at the meeting, and, since he did not wish to do it, saw that he must resign. There was no reproach evident in his demeanor. We will reproach ourselves, however, for what was said of him the night before. And I respect him for not wishing to post his friend from Warlock; I think he has acted with honor and with dignity, and I have cause to wonder now if this town, and the Citizens’ Committee, has ever been worthy of the former Marshal of Warlock.
58. GANNON SPEAKS OF LOVE
GANNON lay fully clothed on his bed and contemplated the darkness that enclosed him, the barely visible square of vertical planes that were the walls marred here and there by huddled hanging bunches of his clothing, and the high ceiling that was not visible at all, so that the column of darkness beneath which he lay sprawled seemed topless and infinitely soaring. He had been forced out of the jail tonight not by any danger, but only because there were too many people there endlessly and repetitiously talking about Morgan and Blaisedell, Blaisedell and Morgan, and he did not want to hear any more of it.
Yet even now he could hear the excited murmur of voices from one of the rooms down the hall, and he knew that throughout Warlock it was the same, everyone talking it over and over and over, changing and fitting and rearranging it to suit themselves, or rather making it into something they could accept, angrily or puzzledly or sadly. Each time they would come to the conclusion that Blaisedell had better move on, but, having reached that conclusion, they would only start over again. He, the deputy, he thought, must not enter their minds at all; nor could he see in the black blank of his own mind what his part was. He had come, finally, almost to accept what Morgan had said to him — that it was not his business.
He heard the upward creaking of the stairs, and then Birch’s high voice: “Now watch your step, ma’am. It is kind of dark here on these steps.”
He started up, and groped his way to the table. His hand encountered the glass shade of the lamp; he caught it as it fell. He lit a match and the darkness retreated a little from the sulphur’s flame, retreated farther as the bright wedge mounted from the wick. As he replaced the chimney there was a knock. “Deputy!” Birch said.
He opened the door. Kate stood there in the thick shadows; he could smell the violet water she wore. “Here is Miss Dollar to see you,” Birch said, in an oily voice.
“Come in,” he said, and Kate entered. Birch faded into the darkness, and the steps creaked downward. The voices in the room down the hall were still. Kate closed the door and glanced around; at his cartridge belt hanging like a snakeskin from the peg beside the door, at the clothes hanging on their nails, at the pine table and chair and the cot with its sagging springs. Lamplight glowed in a warm streak upon her cheek. “Sit down, Kate,” he said.
She moved toward the chair, but instead of seating herself she put her hands on the back and leaned there. He saw her looking around a second time, with her chin lifted and her face as impassive as an Indian’s. “This is where you live,” she said finally.
“It isn’t much.”
She did not speak again for a long time, and he backed up and sat down on the edge of the bed. She turned a little to watch him; one side of her face was rosy from the lamp and the other half in shadow, so that it looked like only half a face. “I’m leaving tomorrow,” she said.
“You are?” he said numbly. “Why — why are you, Kate?”
“There is nothing here for me.”
He didn’t know what she meant, but he nodded. He felt relief and pain in equal portions as he watched her face, which he thought very beautiful with the light giving life to it. He had never known what she was, but he had known she was not for him. He had dreamed of her, but he had not even known how to do that; his dreams of her had just been a continuation of the sweet, vapid day and night dreams embodied once in Myra Burbage, not so much because Myra had been attractive to him as because she was the only girl there was near at hand; knowing then, as he knew now, that there would be no woman for him. He was too ugly, too poor, and there were too few women ever to reach down the list of unmarried men to his name.
“You’re going with Morgan?” he asked.
Her face looked suddenly angry, but her voice was not. “No, not Morgan. Or anybody.”
He almost asked her about Buck, but he had once and she had acted as though he were stupid. “By yourself?” he asked.
“By myself.”
She said that, too, as though it should mean something. But he felt numb. What had been said was only words, but now the realization of the actuality of her leaving came over him, and he began to grasp at the remembrance of those times he had seen her, as though he must hold them preciously to him so that they would not disappear with her. He had, he thought, the key to remember her by.
“When?” he said.
“Tomorrow or — Tomorrow.”
He nodded again, as though it were nothing. He could hear the roomers talking down the hall again. He rubbed his bandaged hand upon his thigh and nodded, and felt again, more intensely than he had ever felt it, his ineptness, his inadequacy, his incapacity with the words which should be spoken.
“I guess I didn’t expect anything,” Kate said harshly. “I guess you are sulking with the rest tonight.”
“Sulking?”
“About Blaisedell,” she said, and went on before he could speak. “I was the only one that thought it was wonderful to see,” she said in a bitter voice. “For I saw Tom Morgan try to do a decent thing. I think it must have been the first decent thing he had ever tried to do, and did it like he was doing a dirty trick. And had it fall apart on him. Because Blaisedell was too—” Her voice caught. “Too—” she said, and shook her head, and did not go on. Then she said, as though she were trying to hit him, “I’m sorry you feel cheated.”
“You think if Blaisedell had posted him he would have gone?”
“Of course he would have gone. He was trying to give Blaisedell that — so people would think Blaisedell had scared him out. I think it’s funny,” she said, but she did not sound as though she did.
They were talking about Blaisedell and Morgan like everyone else, and he knew she did not want to, and he did not want to.
He looked down at his hands in his lap and said, “I’d thought you might be going with Morgan.”
“Why?”
“Well, I talked to him. He said you’d been his girl but that you were through with each other. But I thought you might have—”
“I told you I’d been his girl,” Kate said. Then she said, “Did he tell you more? I told you more, too. I told you what I’d been.”
He closed his eyes; the darkness behind his eyes ached.
“I guess I am still,” her voice continued. “Though I don’t have to work at it any more, since I’ve got money. That came from men.” Again she spoke as though she were hitting him. She said, “I’m damned if I am ashamed of it. It is honest work and kills no one. What are you waiting for, a little country girl virgin?”
Now he tried to shake his head.
“Why, men marry whores,” she said. “Even here. But not you. And not me. There is nothing here at all for me, is there?” Her voice began to shake and he looked up at her and tried to speak, but she rushed on. “So I have been a whore by trade,” she said. “But I can love, and I can hate by nature. But you can’t. You just sit and stare in at yourself and worry everything every way so there is no time nor place for any of that. Is there?”