That’s my signal, Charles thought. The time for decision. It is later than I think. I will now decide things, think out my problem.
But in order to think out a problem it was necessary first to define it, clearly and without any emotional trimmings. If he could define it like that, the problem might solve itself. The important thing was to present the facts without bias as if he were in a courtroom.
Your name?
My name is Charles Henry Pearson. I am thirty-six. I am on the board of directors of the Matson Trust Company, which should prove to the court that I am not without some intelligence.
Objection! Witness is prejudiced!
Sorry, Your Honor. Anyway, five years ago I was married to Martha Katherine Shaw. My reasons for so doing were manifold and manifest. I will now pass photographs among the jury.
Irrelevant, immaterial and irresistible!
But, Your Honor, I haven’t even started.
Case dismissed.
The hell with it. I refuse to leave until I have defined my problem.
Fifty dollars for contempt of court. Pay as you leave.
You won’t listen...
One hundred dollars.
But I haven’t even reached the important part yet. At the beginning of this month I came home from the office with a headache and Martha gave me two aspirin tablets.
One hundred and fifty!
But I nearly died...
It is the opinion of this court that the witness is guilty of prejudice and should be hanged by the neck until dead.
You can’t hang me!
But they could, of course. The rope grew taut around his neck and gradually choked off his breath.
When he woke up he found himself tangled in the sheets, and someone was knocking at the door.
“Charley?”
“Come in.”
The door opened and Martha’s mother came in.
“Brown told me you wanted to talk to me.”
Mrs. Shaw did not resemble either of her daughters, though there was a hint of Martha in her broad, strong forehead and her fair hair. She was an overweight, placid woman about fifty. When Charles had first met her, her husband was still alive. Their marriage was a happy one. They talked and acted like good companions, and no matter who was in the room, they were always exchanging smiling glances like lovers enjoying secret jokes. Charles watched them with envy and with a hope that some day he and Martha would catch each other’s eye in just the same way. Two weeks before he married Martha, Harry Shaw died suddenly from pneumonia. His wife took it calmly. She didn’t make a fuss. She merely withdrew from life, as a gambler who has lost steps out of the game. Whatever actions she took now were inspired by Martha. She herself didn’t care one way or another, whether she lived in this house or any other house, or whether she did her own washing and cooking or somebody else did it for her. Nothing seemed to bother her, and this was an admirable and totally incomprehensible trait to Charles, who was bothered by nearly everything.
He was, on the whole, rather fond of his mother-in-law, partly because she appeared to be fond of him, and partly because she came of an older generation of women who had been brought up to believe that men, simply because they were men, were something special. It was a welcome change from Martha, who managed, without moving a muscle, to convey the impression that men were a contemptible and ineffectual lot, a group of dilly-dalliers who had survived merely because no one had yet invented a way of continuing the race without them.
“I’m sorry I woke you up, Charley,” Mrs. Shaw said. “I’ll go away.”
“No, don’t. Sit down. I wasn’t sleeping. At least I don’t think I was. I was merely trying to figure things out.”
“You’re always trying to figure something out,” she said, smiling. She sat down without looking where she was sitting. Either she took it on trust that the chair was there waiting to receive her, or else she didn’t care whether it was there or not.
“What if the chair wasn’t there?” he asked.
She understood immediately. “But it always is. I remembered.”
“So it is,” Charles said, obscurely disappointed.
“You know, Charley, I think you’re looking better.”
“Am I?” He sat up in bed so he could see himself in the bureau mirror. “I think I look like hell.”
“Well, I never did consider you a beauty,” she said pleasantly. “So maybe you expect more of your own face than I do.”
“I’m not bald, anyway.”
“No, you’re not. Harry was as bald as an egg by the time he was thirty-six. It didn’t worry him any, though. I don’t remember that he ever bought a bottle of hair tonic in his life. He wasn’t a vain man.” She paused, allowing Harry time to come into the room, bald as an egg but with no hair tonic. “He had some little vanities but they weren’t connected with his appearance. He liked to believe, for instance, that he had complete control over the two girls, and that they obeyed everything he said.”
“And did they?”
“Well, no, they didn’t pay much attention to him, to me either, when I come to think of it. But they pretended quite nicely. Girls do that better than boys, and my girls have always been, not secretive, exactly, but self-contained.”
Secretive, Charles amended silently.
“I often wonder if it’s wise for people to have children when they’re as happily married as Harry and I were. We were complete in ourselves. We didn’t require children, I mean, the way some couples do. And I think the girls knew this and it made them feel out of things.” She added anxiously, “You see what I mean, Charley?”
“Yes.”
“It made them self-sufficient. They never confided in me, and maybe the reason is that subconsciously I didn’t want their confidences and they knew it even if I didn’t.” She turned away with a nervous little toss of her head. “I feel very guilty about it, as if I’d just found out that years and years ago I committed a crime.”
“Your conscience must be a sleepy little thing.”
She smiled. “Oh, dear, I don’t know what’s gotten into me this week. I’m getting as bad as you are, always figuring and figuring and never really accomplishing anything.”
“That’s what I do, eh?” Charles said blandly.
“Well, isn’t it?”
“I like to know why people do things, why everyone in this world does every single thing he does.”
“I wouldn’t like to know. It would frighten me.”
“It frightens me, too.”
They sat for a while in silence, contented in their fright, while a bumble bee flung himself in rhythmic frenzy against the screen.
Charles saw himself with a notebook in one hand and a crystal ball in the other, going out among the people of the world. When he returned, or when he died without returning, the answers would be all there in the notebook, and there would be no more war, no more famine, no more crime, no more poverty. The earth would be given back to the meek. By whom? By himself, Charles!
It was a childish and dangerous dream, and he recognized it as such. But he couldn’t destroy it. He kept it locked in his heart and took it out only when he was alone, like a miser counting his gold. No one would ever know...
“I don’t know what’s got into me today,” Mrs. Shaw repeated. “Maybe it’s the weather, do you think?”
“Possibly.”
“I feel...” She closed her eyes as if she could feel better when she couldn’t see. “I feel I should be doing something, I should be active about something, but I don’t really know what.”
He couldn’t recall her ever being so talkative before. Perhaps it was the weather, and she’d felt a sudden challenge in the spring that had brought to life her old energy and interest.