They walked slowly to the car and got in, Tom taking the wheel. For a moment they sat still, listening to the rain on the roof. It was raining harder than ever, a steady drumming. Kit lay back and shut his eyes, still breathing rather quickly. Then he began to laugh.
“What damned fools we are,” he said. “What idiots! Do you think you’re sober enough to drive?”
Tom suddenly put his hand on Kit’s shoulder.
“Kit, old man, I’m horribly sorry.… Do you know why it was?”
“Sure I know why it was!”
“Well—you’re a good egg.”
He began to laugh himself, a little hysterically, and then abruptly stopped, feeling that in another moment he would be crying.
“That’s no good,” he said, his voice breaking slightly. “Let’s go! I’m going to spend the night on your sofa.”
He touched the starter, switched on the windshield wiper, and the car began to move.… What an astonishing business—what an astonishing business. Thank God, it was finished.… And then he thought of Gay; and at once a queer deep feeling of exultation came over him, as if everything were again for the best, in the best of all possible worlds.
BOW DOWN, ISAAC!
I made my first visit to Hackley Falls when I was twelve years old. My mother had died in that year, and my widowed father could think of no better thing to do with me in the school holidays than to send me to visit my two maiden aunts, Julia and Jenny (his elder sisters), who still lived on the family farm, where he himself had been born; and it was here that he had met and married my mother. It was natural enough that he should send me to “Witch Elms”; and I confess that, after a childhood almost all of which had been spent in New York, I looked upon the adventure as a treat. My father impressed upon me that I should have to be helpful—I was given a clear understanding, in strictest New England fashion, of my duties. I was to get the mail twice a day, to fetch the kindling, to go to the village for groceries whenever requested by Aunt Julia or Aunt Jenny, to help old Jim with the livestock—which merely meant chivying the one cow to and from the pasture, or feeding the two pigs which lived in the barn cellar—and to keep my room tidy. If I was very good I might be allowed to drive the horse now and then. And I could help Jim pump the water up to the tank in the attic, which was done by hand.
All of these things I did and, surprisingly enough, didn’t find them in the least like duties. I was happier than I’d ever been in my life. With a farm of two hundred acres to run over, with woods to explore, the Mill River to bathe in, and mountains to climb—and summer, too, just beginning—it may be assumed that I didn’t find things very irksome. “Witch Elms” stood in the midst of a green valley-meadow, about a quarter of a mile from the river, which we could see from the front porch. The road crossed the river just there by means of an old-fashioned covered bridge, which was painted a raw scarlet; some of the planking was gone from its floor, and I used to love to lie on my belly and look down at the shallow brawling water, in which one could see every pebble and minnow.
Beyond the bridge rose Hateful Mountain, covered with sugar-maples, and along the flank of this the road climbed steeply eastward, eventually, after a mile or so, passing the white farmhouse (perched quite high on a spur of Hateful) which belonged to Captain Phippen, who was a distant connection of ours, and our only frequent visitor. He had been a sea captain, in the coastwise trade, and now lived with his son and daughter-in-law. He could almost invariably be seen on his porch with a powerful spyglass in his hand—he used to tell me that with that spyglass he knew everything that was done in the valley. He knew just which orchard Jim was picking, and how many bushels he got, and even pretended (with a twinkle in his eye) to know the size of the apples. He once told me that in summer, if the light was right, and the church windows were open in Hackley Falls, he could tell whether the Crazy Willards put ten cents or a nickel into the offertory box; but this I knew was apocryphal. I had looked many times through the spyglass myself, and knew that all one could see of the little white town of Hackley Falls was the church steeple, with a golden fish for a weather vane, and the little red cupola of the grammar school, with a black bell in it. Elms and maples completely hid the rest of the town; and in fact, from Captain Phippen’s porch, as from our own, the only other human habitation which could be seen was the Crazy Willards’, which stood halfway between our house and Hackley Falls—about a mile and a half westward and (looking from “Witch Elms”) on the opposite side of the river. This was a low, square colonial farmhouse, which must at one time have been rather fine, but was now collapsing with neglect and old age, and black as pitch with rain-rot. Through Captain Phippen’s glass one could make out easily enough the untrimmed trumpet-vine, which covered the western gable with scarlet blossom, and the foul cow-yard which adjoined the house on the east. One could also see the horns of the cattle over the unpainted fence.… But I am getting ahead of my story, for this sinister house is really my theme.
With a small boy’s love of the abnormal—haunted houses, demon-murderers, crime, violence, and so on—it is not unnatural that the Willard farm should from the first have fascinated me. Nothing, for example, could have kindled my imagination about it more than the fact that I was from the outset warned against it. It was on my very first drive from Hackley Falls to “Witch Elms” that old Jim had first called my attention to the place—he pointed to it, sidelong, with his folded whip.
“See that?” And on my assenting, he added, “Keep away from there. That’s the Crazy Willards’. Old Crazy Willard.”
He chewed tobacco slowly, not turning his face toward the house. I looked at it, and it seemed then harmless enough.
“Who’s Crazy Willard?” I asked.
“He’s the very devil. The very devil himself in flesh! If you touched him with a wet finger, it would hiss.”
This metaphor so impressed me at the time that I made no further inquiry. Too much had been presented to me all at once; and it was some days before I myself, one evening at milking time, when Jim was squirting the warm white froth into a resonant pail, his knees under Lemon’s belly, again brought up the subject. I had passed the house daily—eying it across the little river, of course—but had only once seen any sign of life there. It had been a tall young woman, wearing a poke bonnet, who was rather fiercely raking the grass on the front lawn or yard and who, seeing me (I was taking home the mail), had turned for a moment, resting her hands on the rake handle, and shot at me a look of discomfiting intensity. I at once pretended that I was merely looking at the river.
“What does Old Crazy Willard look like?” I said. “And why is he crazy?”
Jim took so long to answer me that I thought he wasn’t going to answer me at all. His rusty old bowler hat was tilted back on his forehead by Lemon’s belly, and he chewed his cud of tobacco. The tiny white threads of milk shot into the pail on alternate sides, sping—spong—sping—spong, and Lemon now and then tossed her head to shake off flies.
“Why is he crazy?” Sping—spong—sping—spong. “Well, I guess because the Lord meant him to be. Him and his wife, and Lydia, too.”
“Who is Lydia?”
“Lydia? She’s his daughter.”
I reflected on this.
“But what does he look like?”
“Well, he’s tall and white-haired and kind of stringy, and he has a lot of teeth.”
“Does he do crazy things?”
“You leave your mind off him, Billy.”