Chapter V: Part 5

I swallowed my annoyance and started out. The girl jumped up and pressed close to my side. Outdoors the air was crisp; I felt her suppress a slight shiver. “Now I suppose I’ll have to take you where it’s warm or find a wrap for you,” I scolded irritably. “I don’t know why I have to be your nursemaid.”

She whimpered very softly and I was remorseful. None erf this was her fault; my callousness was inexcusable. But if she could only attach herself to some other protector and leave me alone....

As one about to be banished I tried to cram everything into short days. I realized that these autumn weeks, spent in casual conversation or joining the familiar preparations for rural winter, were a period of thorough and critical probation. There was little I could do to sway the decision beyond the exhibition of an honest willingness to turn to whatever work needed doing, and to repeat, whenever the opportunity offered, that Haggershaven was literally a revelation to me, an island of civilization in the midst of a chaotic and savage sea. My dream was to make a landfall there.

Certainly my meager background and scraps of reading would not persuade the men and women of the haven; I could only hope they might divine some promise in me. Against this hope I put Barbara’s enmity, a hostility now exacerbated by rage at Oliver Midbin for daring to devote to another, particularly another woman, the attention which had been her due, and the very technique used for her. I knew her persistence and I could not doubt she would move enough of the fellows to insure my rejection.

The gang which had been operating in the vicinity, presumably the same one I had encountered, moved on. At least no further crimes were attributed to it. Once they were gone, Deputy Sheriff Beasley finally found time to visit Haggershaven in response to the telegram. He had evidently been there before without attaining much respect on either side. I got the distinct impression he would have preferred a more formal examination than the one which took place in Mr Haggerwells’ study, with fellows drifting in and out, interrupting the proceedings with comments of their own.

I think he doubted the girl’s dumbness. He barked his questions so loudly and brusquely they would have terrified a far more securely poised individual. She promptly went into dry hysterics, whereupon he turned his attention to me.

I was apprehensive lest his questions explore my life with Tyss and my connection with the Grand Army, but apparently mere presence at Haggershaven indicated an innocence not unrelated to idiocy, at least so far as the more popular crimes were concerned. My passage of the York road and all the events leading up to it were outside his interest; he wanted only a succinct story of the holdup, reminding me of the late Colonel Tolliburr in his assumption that the lay eye ought normally to be photographic of the minutest detail.

He was clearly dissatisfied with my account and left grumbling that it would be more to the point if bookworms learned to identify a man properly, instead of logarithms or trigonometry. I didn’t see exactly how this applied to me, since I was laudably ignorant of both subjects.

If Officer Beasley was disappointed, Midbin was enchanted. Of course he had heard my narrative before, but this was the first time he’d savored its possible impact on the girl.

“You see, her pseudo-aphonia is neither congenital nor of long standing. All logic leads to the conclusion that it’s the result of her terror during the experience. She must have wanted to scream, it must have been almost impossible for her not to scream, but for her very life she dared not. The instinctive, automatic reaction was the one she could not allow herself. She had to remain mute while she watched the murders.”

For the first time it seemed possible there was more to Midbin than his garrulity.

“She crushed back that natural, overwhelming impulse,” he went on. “She had to; her life depended on it. It was an enormous effort and the effect on her was in proportion; she achieved her object too well; when it was safe for her to speak again she couldnt.”

It all sounded so plausible it was some time before I thought to ask him why she didnt appear to understand what we said, or why she didnt write anything when she was handed pencil and paper.

“Communication,” he answered. “She had to cut off communication, and once cut off it’s not easy to restore. At least that’s one aspect. Another is more tricky. The holdup happened more than a month ago, but do you suppose the affected mind reckons so precisely? Is a precise reckoning possible? Duration may, for all we know, be an entirely subjective thing. Yesterday for you may be today for me. We recognize this to some extent when we speak of hours passing slowly or quickly. The girl may still be undergoing the agony of repressing her screams; the holdup, the murders, are not in the past for her, but the present. They are taking place in a long drawn out instant of time which may never end during her life. And if this is so, is it any wonder she is unable to relax, to let down her guard long enough to realize that the present is present and the crisis is past?”

He pressed his middle thoughtfully. “Now, if it is possible to recreate in her mind by stimulus from without rather than by evocation from within the conditions leading up to and through the climacteric, she would have a chance to vent the emotions she was forced to swallow. She might, I don’t say she would, she might speak again.”

I understood such a process would necessarily be lengthy, but as time passed I saw no indication he was reaching her at all, much less that he was getting any results. One of the Spanish-speaking fellows, a botanist who came and went from the haven at erratic intervals, translated my account of our meeting and read parts of it to the recumbent girl, following Midbin’s excited stage directions and interpolations. Nothing happened.

Outside the futile duty of coaxing the girl to participate in Midbin’s sessions I had no obligations except those I took upon myself or could persuade others to delegate to me. Hiro Agati declared me hopelessly incompetent to help him in the kiln he had set up to make “hard glass,” a thick substance he hoped might take the place of cast iron in such things as woodstoves, or clay tile in flues. He conceded I was not entirely useless in the small garden surrounding their cottage where he, Mrs Agati—an architect, much younger than her husband and extremely diminutive—and their three children spent their spare time transplanting, rearranging, or preparing for the following season.

Dr Agati was not only the first American Japanese I had ever met; his was the first family I had known who broke the unwritten rule of having only one child. Both he and Kimi Agati seemed unaware of the stern injunctions by Whigs and Populists alike that disaster would follow if the population of the country increased too fast. Fumio and Eiko didnt care, while Yoshio, at two, was just not interested.

The Agatis represented for me one more pang at the thought of banishment from the haven. Since I knew neither chemistry nor architecture, our conversation had limits, but this was no drawback to the pleasure I took in their company. Often, after I was assured I was welcome there, I sat reading or simply silent while Hiro worked, the children ran in and out, and Kimi, who was conservative and didnt care for chairs, sat comfortably on the floor and sketched or calculated stresses.

Gradually I progressed from the stage where I wanted decision on my application postponed as long as possible to one where I was impatient to have it over and done with. “Why?” asked Hiro. “Suspense is the condition we live in all our lives.”

“Well, but there are degrees. You know about what you will be doing next year.”

“Do I? What guarantees have I? The future is happily veiled. When I was your age I despaired because no one would accept the indentures of a Japanese. (We are still called Japanese even though our ancestors migrated at the time of the abortive attempt to overthrow the Shogunate and restore the Mikado in 1868.) Suspense instead of certainty would have been a pleasure.”

“Anyway,” said Kimi practically, “it may be months before the next meeting.”

“What do you mean? Isnt there a set time for such business?” Sure there must be, I had never dared ask the exact date.

Hiro shook his head. “Why should there be? The next time the fellows pass on an appropriation or a project, we’ll decide whether there’s room for an historian.”

“But ... as Kimi says, it might not be for months.”

“Or it might be tomorrow,” replied Hiro.

“Don’t worry, Hodge,” said Fumio, “Papa will vote for you, and Mother too.”

Hiro grunted.

When it did come it was anticlimactic. Hiro, Midbin, and several others with whom I’d scarcely exchanged a word recommended me, and Barbara simply ignored my existence. I was a full fellow of Haggershaven, with all the duties and privileges appertaining. I was also securely at home for the first time since I left Wappinger Falls more than six years before. I knew that in all its history few had ever cut themselves off from the haven, still fewer had ever been asked to resign.

At a modest celebration in the big kitchen that night, the haven revealed more of the talents it harbored. Hiro produced a gallon of liquor he had distilled from sawdust and called cellusaki. Mr Haggerwells pronounced it fit for a cultivated palate, following with an impromptu discourse on drinking through the ages. Midbin sampled enough of it to imitate Mr. Haggerwells’ lecture and then, as an inspired afterthought, to demonstrate how Mr Haggerwells might mimic Midbin’s parody. Ace and three others sang ballads; even the dumb girl, persuaded to sip a little of the cellusaki under the disapproving eyes of her self-appointed guardians, seemed to become faintly animated. If anyone noted the absence of Barbara Haggerwells, no one commented on it.

Fall became winter. Surplus timber was hauled in from the woodlots and the lignin extracted by compressed air, a method perfected by one of the fellows. Lignin was the fuel used in our hot water furnaces and provided the gas for the reflecting jets which magnified a tiny flame into strong illumination. All of us took part in this work, but just as I had not been able to help Hiro to his satisfaction in the laboratory, so here too my ineptness with things mechanical soon caused me to be set to more congenial tasks in the stables.

I did not repine at this, for though I was delighted with the society of the others, I found it pleasurable to be alone, to sort out my thoughts, to slow down to the rhythm of the heavy percherons or enjoy the antics of the two young foals. The world and time were somewhere shut outside; I felt contentment so strong as to be beyond satisfaction or any active emotion.

I was currying a dappled mare one afternoon and reflecting how the steam-plow used on the great wheat ranches of British America deprived the farmers not merely of fertilizer but also of companionship, when Barbara, her breath still cloudy from the cold outside, came in and stood behind me. I made an artificial cowlick on the mare’s flank, then brushed it glossy smooth again.

“Hello,” she said.

“Uh ... hello, Miss Haggerwells.”

“Must you, Hodge?”

I roughed up the mare’s flank once more. “Must I what? I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

She came close, as close as she had in the bookstore, and I felt my breath quicken. “I think you do. Why do you avoid me? And call me ‘Miss Haggerwells’ in that prim tone? Do I look so old and ugly and forbidding?”

This, I thought, is going to hurt Ace. Poor Ace, befuddled by a Jezebel; why can’t he attach himself to a nice quiet girl who won’t tear him in pieces every time she follows her inclinations?

I smoothed the mare’s side for the last time and put down the currycomb.

“I think you are the most exciting woman Ive ever met, Barbara,” I said.

_13._ _TIME_

“Hodge.”

“Barbara?”

“Is it really true youve never written your mother since you left home?”

“Why should I write her? What could I say? Perhaps if my first plans had come to something, I might have. But to tell her I worked for six years for nothing would only confirm her opinion of my lack of gumption.”

“I wonder if your ambitions in the end don’t amount to a wish to prove her wrong.”

“Now you sound like Midbin,” I said, but I wasnt annoyed. I much preferred her present questions to those I’d heard from her in the past weeks: Do you love me? Are you sure? Really love, I mean; more than any other woman? Why?

“Oliver has had accidental flashes of insight.”

“Arent you substituting your own for what you think might be my motives?”

“My mother hated me,” she stated flatly.

“Well, it isnt a world where love is abundant; substitutes are cheap and available. But hate—that’s a strong word. How do you know?” “I know. What does it matter how? I’m not unfeeling, like you.”

“Me? Now what have I done?”

“You don’t care about anyone. Not me or anyone else. You don’t want me; just any woman would do.”

I considered this. “I don’t think so, Barbara—” “See! You don’t think so. Youre not sure, and anyway you wouldnt hurt my feelings needlessly. Why don’t you be honest and tell the truth. You’d just as soon it was that streetwalker in New York. Maybe you’d rather. You miss her, don’t you?”

“Barbara, Ive told you a dozen times I never—” “And Ive told you a dozen times youre a liar! I don’t care. I really don’t care.”

“All right.”

“How can you be so phlegmatic? So unfeeling? Nothing means anything to you. Youre a real, stolid peasant. And you smell like one too, always reeking of the stable.”

“I’m sorry,” I said mildly; “I’ll try to bathe more often.”

Her taunts and jealous fits, her insistent demands did not ruffle me. I was too pleased with the wonders of life to be disturbed. All I’d dreamed Haggershaven could mean when I was sure I would never be part of it was fulfilled and more than fulfilled. Haggershaven and Barbara; Eden and Lilith.

At first it seemed the bookstore years were wasted, but I soon realized the value of that catholic and serendipitous reading as a preparation for this time. I was momentarily disappointed that there was no one at the haven to whom I could turn for that personal, face-to-face, student-teacher relationship on which I’d set so great a store, but if there was no historical scholar among the fellows to tutor me, I was surrounded by those who had learned the discipline of study. There was none to discuss the details of the industrial revolution or the failure of the Ultramontane Movement in Catholicism and the policies of Popes Adrian VII, VIII and IX, but all could show me scheme and method. I began to understand what thorough exploration of a subject meant as opposed to sciolism, and I threw myself into my chosen work with furious zest.

I also began to understand the central mystery of historical theory. When and what and how and where, but the when is the least. Not chronology but relationship is ultimately what the historian deals in. The element of time, so vital at first glance, assumes a constantly more subordinate character. That the past is past becomes ever less important. Except for perspective it might as well be the present or the future or, if one can conceive it, a parallel time. I was not investigating a petrification but a fluid. Were it possible to know fully the what and how and where one might learn the why, and assuredly if one grasped the why he could place the when at will.

During that winter I read philosophy, psychology, archaeology, anthropology. My energy and appetite were prodigious, as they needed to be. I saw the field of knowledge, not knowledge in the abstract, but things I wanted to know, things I had to know, expanding in front of me with dizzying speed while I crawled and crept and stumbled over ground I should have covered years before.

Yet if I had studied more conventionally I would never have had the Haven or Barbara. Novelists speak lightly of gusts of passion, but it was nothing less than irresistible force which drove me to her, day after day. Looking back on what I had felt for Tirzah Vame with the condescension twenty-four has toward twenty, I saw my younger self only as callow, boyish and slightly obtuse. I was embarrassed by the torments I had suffered.

With Barbara I lived only in the present, shutting out past and future. This was only partly due to the intensity, the fierceness of our desire; much came from Barbara’s own troubled spirit. She herself was so avid, so demanding, that yesterday and tomorrow were irrelevant to the insistent moment. The only thing saving me from enslavement like poor Ace was the belief, correct or incorrect I am to this day not certain, that to yield the last vestige of detachment and objectivity would make me helpless, not just before her, but to accomplish my ever more urgent ambitions.

Still I know much of my reserve was unnecessary, a product of fear, not prudence. I denied much I could have given freely and without harm; my guard protected what was essentially empty. My fancied advantage over Ace, based on my having always had an easy, perhaps too easy way with women, was no advantage at all. I foolishly thought myself master of the situation because her infidelities, if such a word can be used where faithfulness is explicitly ruled out, did not bother me. I believed I had grown immensely wise since the time when the prospect of Tirzah’s rejection had made me miserable. I was wrong; my sophistication was a lack, not an achievement

Do I need to say that Barbara was no wanton, moved by light and fickle voluptuousness? The puritanism of our time, expressing itself in condemnations and denials, molded her as it molded our civilization. She was driven by urges deeper and darker than sensuality; her mad jealousies were provoked by an unappeasable need for constant reassurance. She had to be dominant, she had to be courted by more than one man; she had to be told constantly what she could never truly believe: that she was uniquely desired.

I wondered that she did not burn herself out, not only with conflicting passions, but with her fury of work. Sleep was a weakness she despised, yet she craved far more of it than she allowed herself; she rationed her hours of unconsciousness and drove herself relentlessly. Ace’s panegyrics on her importance as a physicist I discounted, but older and more objective colleagues spoke of her mathematical concepts, not merely with respect, but with awe.

She did not discuss her work with me; our intimacy stopped short of such exchanges. I got the impression she was seeking the principles of heavier-than-air flight, a chimera which had long intrigued inventors. It seemed a pointless pursuit, for it was manifest such levitation could no more replace our safe, comfortable guided balloons than minibiles could replace the horse.

Spring made all of us single-minded farmers until the fields were plowed and sown. No one grudged these days, for the Haven’s economic life was based first of all on its land, and we were happy in the work itself. Not until the most feverish competition with time began to slacken could we return to our regular activities.

I say “all of us,” but I must except the dumb girl. She greeted the spring with the nearest approach to cheerfulness she had displayed; there was a distinct lifting of her apathy. Unexpectedly she revealed a talent which had survived the shock to her personality or had been resurrected like the pussywillows and crocuses by the warm sun. She was a craftsman with needle and thread. Timidly at first, but gradually growing bolder, she contrived dresses of gayer and gayer colors in place of the drab school uniform; always, on the completion of a new creation, running to me as though to solicit my approval.

This innocent if embarrassing custom could hardly escape Barbara’s notice, but her anger was directed at me, not the girl. My “devotion” was not only absurd, she told me, it was also conspicuous and degrading. My taste was inexplicable, running as it did to immature, deranged cripples.

Naturally when the girl took up the habit of coming to the edge of the field where I was plowing, waiting gravely motionless for me to drive the furrow toward her, I anticipated still further punishment from Barbara’s tongue. The girl was not to be swayed from her practice; at least I did not have the heart to speak roughly to her, and so she daily continued to stand through the long hours watching me plow, bringing me a lunch at noon and docilely sharing a small portion of it.

The planting done, Midbin began the use of a new technique, showing her drawings of successive stages of the holdup, again nagging and pumping me for details to sharpen their accuracy. Her reactions pleased him immensely, for she responded to the first ones with nods and the throaty sounds we recognized as understanding or agreement. The scenes of the assault itself, of the shooting of the coachman, the flight of the footman, and her own concealment in the cornfield evoked whimpers, while the brutal depiction of the Escobars’ murder made her cower and cover her eyes.

I suppose I am not particularly tactful; still I had been careful not to mention any of this to Barbara. Midbin, however, after a very gratifying reaction to one of the drawings, said casually, “Barbara hasnt been here for a long time. I wish she would come back.”

When I repeated this she stormed at me. “How dare you discuss me with that ridiculous fool?”

“Youve got it all wrong. There wasnt any discussion. Midbin only said—” “I know what Oliver said. I know his whole silly vocabulary.”

“He only wants to help you.”

“Help me? Help _me_? What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing, Barbara. Nothing.”

“Am I dumb or blind or stupid?”

“Please, Barbara.”

“Just unattractive. I know. Ive seen you with that creature. How you must hate me to flaunt her before everyone!”

“You know I only go with her to Midbin’s because he insists.”

“What about your little lovers’ meetings in the woodlot when you were supposed to be plowing? Do you think I didnt know about them?”

“Barbara, I assure you they were perfectly harmless. She—” “Youre a liar. More than that, youre a sneak and a hypocrite. Yes, and a mean, crawling sycophant as well. I know you must detest me, but it suits you to suffer me because of the haven. I’m not blind; youve used me, deliberately and calculatedly for your own selfish ends.”

Midbin could explain and excuse her outbursts by his “emotional pathology.” Ace accepted and suffered them as inescapable, so did her father, but I saw no necessity of being always subject to her tantrums. I told her so, adding, not too heatedly I think, “Maybe we shouldn’t see each other alone after this.”

She stood perfectly immobile and silent, as if I were still speaking. “All right,” she said at last. “All right; yes ... yes. Don’t.”

Her apparent calm deceived me completely; I smiled with relief.

“That’s right, laugh. Why shouldnt you? You have no feelings, no more than you have an intelligence. You are an oaf, a clod, a real bumpkin. Standing there with a silly grin on your face. Oh I hate you! How I hate you!”

She wept, she shrilled, she rushed at me and then turned away, crying she hadnt meant it, not a word of it. She cajoled, begging forgiveness for all she’d said, tearfully promising to control herself after this, moaning that she needed me, and finally, when I didnt repulse her, exclaiming it was her love for me which tormented her so and drove her to such scenes. It was a wretched, degrading moment, and not the least of its wretchedness and degradation was that I recognized the erotic value of her abjection. Detachedly I might pity, fear or be repelled; at the same time I had to admit her sudden humility was exciting.

Perhaps this storm changed our relationship for the better, or at least eased the constraint between us. At any rate it was after this she began speaking to me of her work, putting us on a friendlier, less furious plane. I learned now how completely garbled was my notion of what she was doing.

“Heavier-than-air flying-machines!” she cried. “How utterly absurd!”

“All right. I didnt know.”

“My work is theoretical. I’m not a vulgar mechanic.”

“All right, all right.”

“I’m going to show that time and space are aspects of the same entity.”

“All right,” I said, thinking of something else.

“What is time?”

“Uh?... Dear Barbara, since I don’t know anything I can slide gracefully out of that one. I couldnt even begin to define time.”

“Oh, you could probably define it all right—in terms of itself. I’m not dealing with definitions but concepts.”

“All right, conceive.”

“Hodge, like all stuffy people your levity is ponderous.”

“Excuse me. Go ahead.”

“Time is an aspect.”

“So you mentioned. I once knew a man who said it was an illusion. And another who said it was a serpent with its tail in its mouth.”

“Mysticism.” The contempt with which she spoke the word brought a sudden image of Roger Tyss saying “metaphysics” with much the same inflection. “Time, matter, space and energy are all aspects of the cosmic entity. Interchangeable aspects. Theoretically it should be possible to translate matter into terms of energy and space into terms of time; matter-energy into space-time.”

“It sounds so simple I’m ashamed of myself.”

“To put it so crudely the explanation is misleading: suppose matter is resolved into its component....”

“Atoms?” I suggested, since she seemed at loss for a word.

“No, atoms are already too individualized, too separate. Something more fundamental than atoms. We have no word because we can’t quite grasp the concept yet. Essence, perhaps, or the theological ‘spirit.’ If matter....”

“A man?”

“Man, turnip or chemical compound,” she answered impatiently; “if resolved into its essence it can presumably be reassembled, another wrong word, at another point of the time-space fabric.”

“You mean ... like yesterday?”

“No—and yes. What is ‘yesterday’? A thing? An aspect? An idea? Or a relationship? Oh, words are useless things; even with mathematical symbols you can hardly.... But someday I’ll establish it. Or lay the groundwork for my successors. Or the successors of my successors.” I nodded. Midbin was at least half right; Barbara was emotionally sick. For what was this “theory” of hers but the rationalization of a daydream, the daydream of discovering a process for reaching back through time to injure her dead mother and so steal all of her father’s affections?

_14._ _MIDBIN’S EXPERIMENT_

At the next meeting of the fellows Midbin asked an appropriation for experimental work and the help of haven members in the project. Since the extent of both requests was modest, their granting would ordinarily have been a formality. But Barbara asked politely if Dr Midbin wouldnt like to elaborate a little on the purposes of his experiment.

I knew her manner was a danger signal. Nevertheless Midbin merely answered goodhumoredly that he proposed to test a theory of whether an emotionally induced physical handicap could be cured by recreating in the subject’s mind the shock which had caused—to use a loose, inaccurate term—the impediment.

“I thought so. He wants to waste the haven’s money and time on a little tart he’s having an affair with while important work is held up for lack of funds.”

One of the women called out, “Oh, Barbara, no,” and there were exclamations of disapproval. I saw Kimi Agati look steadfastly down in embarrassment. Mr Haggerwells, after trying unsuccessfully to hold Barbara’s eye, said, “I must apologize for my daughter—” “It’s all right,” interrupted Midbin. “I understand Barbara’s notions. I’m sure no one here really thinks there is anything improper between the girl and me. Outside of this, Barbara’s original question seems quite in order. Quite in order. Briefly, as most of you know, I’ve been trying to restore speech to a subject who lost it—again I use an inaccurate term for convenience—during an afflicting experience. Preliminary explorations indicate good probability of satisfactory response to my proposed method, which is simply to employ a kinematic camera like those making entertainment photinugraphs—”

“He wants to turn the haven into a tinugraph mill with the fellows as mummers!”

“Only this once, Barbara, only this once. Not regularly; not as routine.”

At this point her father insisted the request be voted on without any more discussion. I was tempted to vote with Barbara, the only dissident, for I foresaw Midbin’s tinugraph would undoubtedly rely heavily on cooperation from me, but I didnt have the courage. Instead I merely abstained, like Midbin himself and Ace.

The first effect of Midbin’s program was to free me from obligation, for he decided there was no point continuing the sessions with the dumb girl as before. All his time was taken up anyway with photography—no one at the haven had specialized in it—kinematic theory, the art of pantomime, and the relative merit of different makes of cameras, all manufactured abroad.

The girl, who had never lost her tenseness and apprehension during the interviews, nevertheless clung to the habit of being escorted to Midbin’s workroom. Since it was impossible to convey to her that the sessions were temporarily suspended, she appeared regularly, always in a dress with which she had taken manifest pains, and there was little I could do but walk her to Midbin’s and back. I was acutely conscious of the ridiculousness of these parades and expectant of retribution from Barbara afterward, so I was to some extent relieved when Midbin finally made his decision and procured camera and film.

Now I had to set the exact scene where the holdup had taken place, not an easy thing to do, for one rise looks much like another at twilight and all look differently in daylight. Then I had to approximate the original conditions as nearly as possible. Here Midbin was partially foiled by the limitations of his medium, being forced to use the camera in full sunlight instead of at dusk.

I dressed and instructed the actors in their parts, rehearsing and directing them throughout. The only immunity I got was Midbin’s concession that I neednt play the role of myself, since in my early part of spectator I would be hidden anyway, and the succor was omitted as irrelevant to the therapeutic purpose. Midbin himself did nothing but tend the camera.

Any tinugraph mill would have snorted at our final product and certainly no tinugraph lyceum would have condescended to show it. After some hesitation Midbin had decided not to make a phonoto, feeling the use of sound would add no value and considerable expense, so the film didnt even have this feature to recommend it. Fortunately for whatever involuntary professional pride was involved, no one was present at the first showing but the girl and me, Ace to work the magic-lantern, and Midbin.

In the darkened room the pictures on the screen gave—after the first minutes—such an astonishing illusion that when one of the horsemen rode toward the camera we all reflexively shrank back. Despite its amateurishness the tinugraph seemed an artistic success to us, but it was no triumph in justifying its existence. The girl reacted no differently than she had toward the drawings; if anything her response was less satisfactory. The inarticulate noises ran the same scale from dismay to terror; nothing new was added. Nevertheless Midbin, his adamsapple working joyously up and down, slapped Ace and me on the back, predicting he’d have her talking like a politician before the year was out.

I suppose the process was imperceptible; certainly there was no discernible difference between one showing and the next. The boring routine continued day after day and so absolute was Midbin’s confidence that we were not too astonished after some weeks when, at the moment “Don Jaime” folded in simulated death, she fainted and remained unconscious for some time.

After this we expected—at least Ace and I did, Midbin only rubbed his palms together—that the constraint on her tongue would be suddenly and entirely lifted. It wasnt, but a few showings later, at the same crucial point, she screamed. It was a genuine scream, clear and piercing, bearing small resemblance to the strangling noises we were accustomed to. Midbin had been vindicated; no mute could have voiced that full, shrill cry.

Pursuing another of his theories, he soon gave up the idea of helping her express the words in her mind in Spanish. Instead he concentrated on teaching her English. His method was primitive, consisting of pointing solemnly to objects and repeating their names in an artificial monotone.

“She’ll have an odd way of speaking,” remarked Ace; “all nouns, singular nouns at that, said with a mouthful of pebbles. I can just imagine the happy day: ‘Man chair wall girl floor;’ and you bubbling back, ‘Carpet ceiling earth grass.’”

“I’ll supply the verbs as needed,” said Midbin; “first things first.”

She must have been paying at least as much attention to our conversation as to his instruction for, unexpectedly, one day she pointed to me and said quite clearly, “Hodge ... Hodge ...”

I was discomposed, but not with the same vexation I had felt at her habit of seeking me out and following me around. There was a faint, bashful pleasure, and a feeling of gratitude for such steadfastness.

She must have had some grounding in English, for while she utilized the nouns Midbin had supplied, she soon added, tentatively and questioningly, a verb or adjective here and there. “I ... walk ...?” Ace’s fear of her acquiring Midbin’s dead inflection was groundless; her voice was low and charmingly modulated; we were enchanted listening to her elementary groping among words.

Conversation or questioning was as yet impossible. Midbin’s, “What is your name?” brought forth no response save a puzzled look and a momentary sinking back into dullness. But several weeks later she touched her breast and said shyly, “Catalina.”

Her memory then, was not impaired, at least not totally. There was no way of telling yet what she remembered and what self-protection had forced her to forget, for direct questions seldom brought satisfactory answers at this stage. Facts concerning herself she gave out sporadically and without relation to our curiosity.

Her name was Catalina García; she was the much younger sister of Doña Maria Escobar, with whom she lived. So far as she knew she had no other relatives. She did not want to go back to school; they had taught her to sew, they had been kind, but she had not been happy there. Please—we would not send her away from Haggershaven, would we?

Midbin acted now like a fond parent who was both proud of his child’s accomplishments and fearful lest she be not quite ready to leave his solicitous care. He was far from satisfied at restoring her speech; he probed and searched, seeking to know what she had thought and felt during the long months of muteness.

“I do not know, truly I do not know,” she protested toward the end of one of these examinations. “I would say, yes; sometimes I knew you were talking to me, or Hodge.” Here she looked at me steadily for an instant, to make me feel both remorseful and proud. “But it was like someone talking a long way off, so I never quite understood, nor was even sure it was I who was being spoken to. Often—at least it seemed often, perhaps it was not—often, I tried to speak, to beg you to tell me if you were real people talking to me, or just part of a dream. That was very bad, because when no words came I was more afraid than ever, and when I was afraid the dream became darker and darker.” Afterward, looking cool and fresh and strangely assured, she came upon me while I was cultivating young corn. A few weeks earlier I would have known she had sought me out; now it might be an accident.

“But I knew more surely when it was you who spoke, Hodge,” she said abruptly. “In my dream you were the most real.” Then she walked tranquilly away.

Barbara, who had studiedly said nothing further about what Midbin was doing, commented one day, apparently without rancor, “So Oliver appears to have proved a theory. How nice for you.”

“What do you mean?” I inquired guardedly; “How is it nice for me?”

“Why, you won’t have to chaperone the silly girl all over any more. She can ask her way around now.”

“Oh yes; that’s right,” I mumbled.

“And we won’t have to quarrel over her any more,” she concluded.

“Sure,” I said. “That’s right.”

Mr Haggerwells again communicated with the Spanish diplomats, recalling his original telegram and mentioning the aloof reply. He was answered in person by an official who acted as though he himself had composed the disclaiming response. Perhaps he had, for he made it quite clear that only devotion to duty made it possible to deal at all with such savages as inhabited the United States.

He confirmed the existence of one Catalina García and consulted a photograph, carefully shielded in his hand, comparing it with the features of our Catalina, at last satisfying himself they were the same. This formality finished, he spoke rapidly to Catalina in Spanish. She shook her head and looked confused. “Tell him I can hardly understand, Hodge; ask him to speak in English, please.”

The diplomat looked furious. Midbin explained hastily that the shock which had caused her muteness had not entirely worn off. Unquestionably she would recover her full memory in time, but for the present there were still areas of forgetfulness. Her native language was part of the past, he went on, happy with a new audience, and the past was something to be pushed away since it contained the terrible moment. English on the other hand—”

“I understand,” said the diplomat stiffly, resolutely addressing none of us. “It is clear. Very well then. The Señorita García is heir—heiress to an estate. Not a very big one, I regret to say. A moderate estate.”

“You mean land and houses?” I asked curiously.

“A moderate estate,” he repeated, looking attentively at his gloved hand. “Some shares of stock, some bonds, some cash. The details will be available to the señorita.”

“It doesnt matter,” said Catalina timidly.

Having put us all, and particularly me, in our place as rude and nosey barbarians, he went on more pleasantly, “According to the records of the embassy, the señorita is not yet eighteen. As an orphan living in foreign lands she is a ward of the Spanish Crown. The señorita will return with me to Philadelphia where she will be suitably accommodated until repatriation can be arranged. I feel certain that in the proper surroundings, hearing her natural tongue, she will soon regain its use. The—ah—institution may submit a bill for board and lodging during her stay.”

“Does he mean—take me away from here? For always?” Catalina, who had seemed so mature a moment before, suddenly acted like a frightened child.

“He only wants to make you comfortable and take you among your own people,” said Mr Haggerwells. “Perhaps it is a bit sudden....”

“I can’t. Do not let him take me away. Hodge, Hodge—do not let him take me away.”

“Señorita, you do not understand—” “No, no. I won’t. Hodge, Mr Haggerwells, do not let him!”

“But my dear—” It was Midbin who cut Mr Haggerwells off. “I cannot guarantee against a relapse, even a reversion to the pseudo-aphonia if this emotional tension is maintained. I must insist that Catalina is not to continue the conversation now.”

“No one’s going to take you away by force,” I assured her, finally finding my courage once Midbin had asserted himself.

The official shrugged, managing to intimate in the gesture his opinion that the haven was of a very shady character indeed and had quite possibly engineered the holdup itself.

“If the señorita genuinely wishes to remain for the present—” a lifted eyebrow loaded the “genuinely” with meaning “—I have no authority at the moment to inquire into influences that have persuaded her. No, none at all. Nor can I remove her by—ah—I will not insist. No. Not at all.” “That is very understanding of you, sir,” said Mr Haggerwells. “I’m sure everything will be all right eventually.”

The diplomat bowed stiffly. “Of course the—ah—institution understands it can hope for no further compensation—”

“None has been given or asked for. None will be,” said Mr Haggerwells in what was, for him, a sharp tone.

The gentleman from the legation bowed. “The señorita will naturally be visited from time to time by an official. Without note—notification. She may be removed whenever His Most Catholic Majesty sees fit. And of course none of her estate will be released before the eighteenth birthday. The whole affair is entirely irregular.”

After he left I reproached myself for not asking what Don Jaime’s mission had been that fateful evening, or at least for not trying to find out what his function with the Spanish legation was. Probably he could in no way be connected with the counterfeiting of the pesetas. By making no attempt to learn any facts which might have lessened the old feeling of guilty responsibility I kept it uneasily alive.

These reproaches were pushed aside when Catalina put her head against my collarbone, sobbing with relief. “There, there,” I said, “there, there.”

“Uncouth,” reflected Mr Haggerwells. “Compensation indeed!”

“Dealing with natives,” said Midbin. “Probably courteous enough to Frenchmen or Afrikanders.”

I patted Catalina’s quivering shoulders. Child or not, now she was able to talk I had to admit I no longer found her devotion so tiresome. Though I was definitely uneasy lest Barbara discover us in this attitude.

_15._ _GOOD YEARS_

And now I come to the period of my life which stands in such sharp contrast to what had gone before. Was it really eight years I spent at Haggershaven? The arithmetic is indisputable: I arrived in 1944 at the age of twenty-three; I left in 1952 at the age of thirty-one. Indisputable, but not quite believable; as with the happy countries which are supposed to have no history I find it hard to go over those eight years and divide them by remarkable events. They blended too smoothly, too contentedly into one another.

Crops were harvested, stored or marketed; the fields were plowed in the fall and again in the spring and sown anew. Three of the older fellows died, another became bedridden. Five new fellows were accepted; two biologists, a chemist, a poet, a philologist. It was to the last I played the same part Ace had to me, introducing him to the sanctuary of the haven, seeing its security and refuge afresh and deeply thankful for the fortune that had brought me to it.

There was no question about success in my chosen profession, not even the expected alternation of achievement and disappointment. Once started on the road I kept on going at an even, steady pace. For what would have been my doctoral thesis I wrote a paper on _The Timing of General Stuart’s Maneuvers During August 1863 in Pennsylvania_. This received flattering comment from scholars as far away as the Universities of Lima and Cambridge; because of it I was offered instructorships at highly respectable schools.

I could not think of leaving the haven. The world into which I had been born had never been fully revealed for what it was until I had escaped from it. Secrecy and ugliness; greed, fear and callousness; meanness, avarice, cunning, deceit and self-worship were as close around as the nearest farmhouses. The idea of returning to that world and of entering into daily competition with other underpaid, overdriven drudges striving fruitlessly to apply a dilute coating of culture to the unresponsive surface of unwilling students had little attraction.

In those eight years, as I broadened my knowledge I narrowed my field. Undoubtedly it was presumptuous to take the War of Southron Independence as my specialty when there were already so many comprehensive works on the subject and so many celebrated historians engaged with this special event. However, my choice was made not out of self-importance but fascination, and undoubtedly it was the proximity of the scene which influenced the selection of my goal, the last thirteen months of the war, from General Lee’s invasion of Pennsylvania to the capitulation at Reading. I saw the whole vast design: Gettysburg, Lancaster, the siege of Philadelphia, the disastrous Union counter-thrust in Tennessee, the evacuation of Washington, and finally the desperate effort to break out of Lee’s trap which ended at Reading. I could spend profitable years filling in the details.

My monographs were published in learned Confederate and British journals—there were none in the United States—and I rejoiced when they brought attention, not so much to me as to Haggershaven. I could contribute only this notice and my physical labor; on the other hand I asked little beyond food, clothing and shelter—just books. My field trips I took on foot, often earning my keep by casual labor for farmers, paying for access to private collections of letters or documents by indexing and arranging them.

The time devoted to scholarship did not alone distinguish those eight years, nor even the security of the haven. I have spoken of the simple, easy manner in which the Agatis admitted me to their friendship, but they were not the only ones with whom there grew ties of affection and understanding. With very few exceptions the fellows of Haggershaven quickly learned to shed the suspicion and aloofness, so necessary a protection elsewhere, and substitute acceptance. The result was a tranquillity I had never experienced before, so that I think of those years as set apart, a golden period, a time of perpetual warm sunshine.

Between Barbara and me the turbulent, ambivalent passion swept back and forth, the periods of estrangement seemingly only a generating force to bring us together again. Hate and love, admiration and distaste, impatience and pity were present on both sides. Only on hers there was jealousy as well; perhaps if I had not been indifferent whenever she chose to respond to some other man she might not have felt the errant desire so strongly. Perhaps not; there was a moral urge behind her behavior. She sneered at women who yielded to such temptations. To her they were not temptations but just rewards; she did not yield, she took them as her due.

Sometimes I wondered if her neurosis did not verge on insanity; I’m sure for her part she must often have stood off and appraised me as a mistake. I know there were many times when I wished there would be no more reconciliation between us.

Yet no amount of thinking could cancel the swift hunger I felt in her presence or the deep mutual satisfaction of physical union. Frequently we were lovers for as long as a month before the inevitable quarrel, followed by varying periods of coolness. During the weeks of distance I remembered how she could be tender and gracious as well as ardent, just as during our intimacy I remembered her ruthlessness and dominance.

It was not only her temperamental outbursts nor even her unappeasable craving for love and affection which thrust us apart. Impediments which, in the beginning, had appeared inconsequential assumed more importance all the time. It was increasingly hard for her to leave her work behind even for moments. She was never allowed to forget, either by her own insatiable drive or by outside acknowledgment that she was already one of the foremost physicists in the world. She had been granted so many honorary degrees she no longer traveled to receive them; offers from foreign governments of well-paid jobs connected with their munitions industries were common. Articles were written about her equation of matter, energy, space and time, acclaiming her as a revolutionary thinker; though she dismissed them as evaluation of elementary work, they nevertheless added to her isolation and curtailed her freedom.

Midbin was, in his way, as much under her spell as Ace or myself. His triumph over Catalina’s dumbness he took lightly now it was accomplished; stabilizing Barbara’s emotions was the victory he wanted. She, on her side, had lost whatever respect she must have had for him in the days when she had submitted to his treatment. On the very rare occasions when the whim moved her to listen to his entreaties—usually relayed through Ace or me—and grant him time, it seemed to be only for the opportunity of making fun of his efforts. Patiently he tried new techniques of exploration and expression.

“But it’s not much use,” he said once, dolefully; “she doesnt _want_ to be helped.”

“Wanting seemed to have little to do with making Catty talk,” I pointed out. “Couldnt you....”

“Make a tinugraph of Barbara’s traumatic shock? If I had the materials there would be no necessity.”

Perhaps there was less malice in her mockery now Catty was no longer the focus of his theories about emotional pathology; perhaps she forgave him for her temporary displacement, but she did not withhold her contempt. “Oliver, you should have been a woman,” she told him; “you would have been impossible as a mother, but what a grandmother you would have made!”

That Catty herself had in her own way as strong a will as Barbara was demonstrated in her determination to become part of Haggershaven. Her reaction to the visit of the Spanish official was translated into an unyielding program. She had gone resolutely to Thomas Haggerwells, telling him she knew quite well she had neither the aptitudes nor qualifications for admission to fellowship, nor did she ask it. All she wanted was to live in what she regarded as her only home. She would gladly do any work from washing dishes to making clothes—anything she was asked. When she came of age she would turn over whatever money she inherited to the haven without conditions.

He had patiently pointed out that a Spanish subject was a citizen of a far wealthier and more powerful nation than the United States; as an heiress she could enjoy the luxuries and distractions of Madrid or Havana and eventually make a suitable marriage. How silly it would be to give up all these advantages to become an unnoticed, penniless drudge for a group of cranks near York, Pennsylvania.

“He was quite right you know, Catty,” I said when she told me about the interview.

She shook her head vigorously, so the loose black curls swirled back and forth. “You think so, Hodge, because you are a hard, prudent Yankee.”

I opened my eyes rather wide; this was certainly not the description I would have applied to myself.

“And also because you have Anglo-Saxon chivalry, always rescuing maidens in distress and thinking they must sit on a cushion after that and sew a fine seam. Well, I can sew a fine seam, but sitting on cushions would bore me. Women are not as delicate as you think, Hodge. Nor as terrifying.”

Was this last directed toward Barbara? Perhaps Catty had claws. “There’s a difference,” I said, “between cushion-sitting and living where books and pictures and music are not regarded with suspicion.”

“That’s right,” she agreed; “Haggershaven.”

“No, Haggershaven is an anomaly in the United States and in spite of everything it cannot help but be infected by the rest of the country. I meant the great, successful nations who can afford the breathing-spaces for culture.”

“But you do not go to them.”

“No. This is my country.”

“And it will be mine too. After all it was made in the first place by people willing to give up luxuries. Besides you are contradicting yourself: if Haggershaven cannot avoid being infected by what is outside it, neither can any other spot. Part of the world cannot be civilized if another part is backward.”

There was no doubt her demure expression hid stern resolution. Whatever else it hid was not so certain. Evidently Mr Haggerwells realized the quality of her determination for eventually he proposed to the fellows that she be allowed to stay and the offer of her money be rejected. The motion was carried, with only Barbara, who spoke long and bitterly against it, voting “no.”