The Road Through the Wall Page 5

  James Donald privately regarded his younger brother as an imperfect copy of himself, and was as irritated by Tod as he might have been by any cruel, pointed parody. Much of James’s athletic sense of good and evil was invested in Tod; Tod was inefficient and a bad sport, which was evil; he was smaller, and could not be struck, which was a delineation of good. Consequently, James never required himself to include any form of evil in his own personality; such things belonged naturally to Tod, and were accepted numbly by Tod as his portion.

  Much more, however, of Tod’s lack of independent existence was due to his sister Virginia, who was a year older than Tod and his contemporary in a narrower sense than James—she played with the same children, and she hated Tod as she hated everyone upon whom it was not necessary to intrude her ingratiating personality. Tod was used to having his sister ignore him before the other children, and to hearing her say, “Don’t let Toddie play, he does everything wrong.”

  The other children followed Virginia’s example, because she was tacitly assumed to know, being Tod’s sister. If Virginia had called Tod names, or refused to play with him, he would have gained prestige as a participant in a family fight, but when she seemed to believe sincerely that he had never wholly existed, he was lost. If he had been able to do any single thing better than either his brother or sister, he might have won some small place in the neighborhood hierarchy, or perhaps even in school; as long as he was the patient, desperately-clinging minority of the family, he had to be content with the opinion his family were known to have of him.

  However, one day during the early summer he came close to winning a foothold. The older children were lying in the heat on the Donalds’ front lawn, the only spot where Tod could rightfully assume a position anywhere near the heart of the circle. Helen Williams was holding forth on her father; she had just sent her baby sister home crying, and she was saying, “And when I go to live with my father, Mildred will have to be in a nunnery.”

  “What’s wrong with a nunnery?” demanded Mary Byrne. She looked for her brother, her support on all theological questions, but he was in the street playing catch with George Martin. “Why do you say a nunnery like it was a punishment sort of?”

  “A nunnery,” Helen explained patiently, “is a place where they put you and you never get out as long as you live. And sometimes they starve you,” she added convincingly.

  “That isn’t true at all,” Mary said with the conviction of inside information.

  Helen turned the corners of her mouth down and looked around at her audience. “Let’s hear you say what a nunnery is.”

  “It isn’t like that at all,” Mary said. “I bet your sister would like it in a nunnery even.”

  “Where they starve you?” Helen said. “Not Mildred, not Mildred at all. She eats like a pig.”

  “I eat like a pig too,” Virginia Donald said dreamily. “I ate almost a whole apple pie once. You should have seen me eat a whole apple pie.”

  Tod was on his own front lawn. “I ate a whole mince pie once,” he said, giggling.

  According to neighborhood ethics, there was only one person who could lead the attack on Tod on his own land. His sister turned slowly to look at him and then back to the other children. “He never does anything really,” she said.

  “You never did it,” Helen said. “Your sister says so.”

  “I did so,” Tod began weakly, but Mary Byrne said, “I don’t believe you could eat even one piece of mince pie.”

  “Even a piece as big as a ant,” Hallie Martin said.

  Having nine-year-old Hallie join in against him was the lowest indignity. Tod stood up, said, “Guess I’ll get in the ball game,” and walked down to the street while his sister said, “Tell more about nunneries, Willie.”

  Tod stood for a few minutes waiting to be asked to play ball, but neither George nor Pat offered to include him. As an indication that he would play if asked, Tod picked up a handful of stones from the gravel driveway and began tossing them into the bushes. After a minute he tossed one at George’s foot and laughed weakly when George said, “Cut it out, Toddie.”

  He threw another so that it landed about a foot from George, and George looked at him crossly and hesitated for a minute before throwing the ball, as though debating whether or not to walk over and give Tod a lesson in interference. When he decided against it and went back to the game, Tod was afraid to throw any more pebbles in that direction and faced directly around to throw at the girls. He was possessed of as strong a desire for punishment as he had ever achieved, but he wanted more for his penalties than tapping George Martin on the ankles with a pebble. He threw a pebble at his sister and hit her in the arm, and she said, “Hey,” and looked around; if it had been any of the other boys who threw it she would have been in a fantastic exaggerated rage and would have stood up, most likely, and found rocks of her own, but she only said, “Oh, run along, will you, Toddie?”

  Tod threw his next pebble at Hallie Martin because she had spoken up against him, but he missed her and she laughed at him.

  “Toddie,” Virginia said sharply, “if you don’t cut it out you can just go and stay in the house.”

  His sister had no right to give him orders, particularly not in a tone indicating that she expected them to be obeyed. Possessed by a sort of frenzy, Tod threw a handful of pebbles together, as hard as he could, into the group of girls on the lawn, and Mary Byrne howled and fell over backward, her hands over her face.

  “Tod Donald,” Virginia shouted, “I’ll tell Mother on you!”

  It was glory of a sort, and Tod ran up to Mary and stood next to her while she lay on the ground crying. “I’m sorry, Mary,” he said. “I’m awfully sorry.”

  Pat Byrne pushed him aside and said impatiently, “What’s the matter now?” and Helen Williams said, “Tod put Mary’s eye out with a rock, that’s all,” and Hallie began to wail, and someone went running for Mary’s mother, and Pat said, “Toddie did?” and George Martin said, “Golly,” over and over again.

  Mrs. Byrne came running across the street, and the children stood silently while she knelt down beside Mary on the grass and pulled Mary’s hands away from her face. Tod, wondering vaguely what happened to people who put other people’s eyes out with rocks, said, “I’m sorry,” again, and Mrs. Byrne let her hands drop in relief and said, “She’s got a little scratch on her cheek; she’s no more hurt than a fly.”

  “Someone was throwing rocks, and she got in the way,” Pat said.

  “You children shouldn’t be throwing rocks,” Mrs. Byrne said, standing up. Mary sat up and wiped the tears off her face. “You’d think she’d been killed.”

  She started back across the street, and Pat said, “Come on, George,” and they went back to their ball game. “I knew she wasn’t much hurt,” Pat said, “when I heard how she was hollering.”

  “I’m certainly glad you weren’t really hurt,” Virginia said to Mary.

  “I’m sorry, Mary,” Tod said.

  She looked up at him, surprised. “That’s all right, Toddie,” she said. “You didn’t mean to do it.”

  “What were you aiming at?” Virginia asked cruelly. “A window?”

  • • •

  “I only wish,” Mrs. Roberts said crossly, “that the summer was over and school was starting again. Sometimes I think—” Her voice trailed off as she leaned over her workbox to choose a thread.

  “I don’t know,” Mrs. Desmond said gently.

  “Well, Caroline,” Mrs. Merriam said. She looked sweetly down at Caroline, who sat on a small stool between Mrs. Merriam and her mother, absorbed in a collection of bright scraps of ribbon she was cutting into pieces. “Caroline is simply an angel.”

  “She loves to come here,” Mrs. Desmond said to Mrs. Merriam. “You treat her as though she were grown-up.”

  “No need for you to worry about school for a while,” Mrs. Robert
s said.

  Mrs. Desmond laughed and let her embroidery lie on her lap. “I don’t know what I’ll do when Caroline goes to school,” she said. Mrs. Desmond always did embroidery while Mrs. Roberts and Mrs. Merriam darned socks and mended torn sweaters; it would have been incongruous for Mrs. Desmond, with her small delicate hands always so near Caroline’s blond head, and her pale face so like Caroline’s, to sit with great socks or spools of darning cotton on her lap. Mrs. Desmond brought her sewing in a lacquer box, and Caroline had a miniature lacquer box filled with her bright ribbons. Mrs. Roberts and Mrs. Merriam had no objection to seeing their own sufficiently ladylike hands dealing competently with heavy mending, but either of them would have been faintly surprised at Mrs. Desmond’s doing it; it was an unexplained aristocratic principle.

  “Caroline is just an angel,” Mrs. Merriam repeated. “Aren’t you, darling?” Caroline looked up gravely, and Mrs. Merriam said, “She’s an angel.”

  “Boys, now—” Mrs. Roberts said, holding up a middle-sized brown sock, fearfully torn at heel and toe.

  “I don’t know,” Mrs. Merriam said. “Harriet’s almost as bad. Sometimes I worry about her,” she went on confidentially, “about her being so heavy, I mean. It’s very hard on a girl.”

  “Harriet’s a nice girl, Josephine,” Mrs. Desmond said. “She’ll outgrow it in time.” Her soft voice made Harriet sound slimmer.

  “I was very heavy at Harriet’s age,” Mrs. Roberts said. She straightened her shoulders and took one hand away from her sewing to pull down the front of her dress where it had a tendency to blouse. “I can’t say I completely outgrew it—” she laughed richly “—but I guess I tamed it.”

  Mrs. Desmond and Mrs. Merriam smiled, and Mrs. Desmond said, “I always used to admire girls who could really wear clothes. Caroline and I will always have to go around in pale colors and ruffles.” She made a small face and looked fondly down at her daughter.

  “But Harriet is getting to an age where it’s really important to her,” Mrs. Merriam said.

  “When she gets interested in boys, Josephine,” Mrs. Roberts said emphatically, “it won’t take her long before she starts cutting out candy and potatoes and begins to watch her figure. I know,” and she laughed again.

  “Did you girls,” Mrs. Merriam said carefully, looking down at her sewing, “did either of you girls hear anything about this silly business?” She looked at Mrs. Desmond and Mrs. Roberts, and said, “I mean, the letters the girls were writing to some of the boys?”

  “Artie was in on it,” Mrs. Roberts said, with a note that sounded like pride. “One of the girls had a crush on Artie. Can you imagine, Marguerite,” she went on, looking helplessly at Mrs. Desmond, “Artie?”

  “Some day Artie is going to surprise you,” Mrs. Desmond said. “He’s a very quiet boy, but that type usually turns out well.”

  “Well, you don’t need to worry,” Mrs. Merriam said unhappily. “I was never so shocked.”

  “These things happen,” Mrs. Roberts said philosophically.

  “I really couldn’t believe it of Harriet,” Mrs. Merriam said. “Those letters—I saw one—they were disgusting.”

  “The ones Artie got were silly,” Mrs. Roberts said, “but I wouldn’t have called them exactly disgusting.”

  “Who wrote them?” Mrs. Merriam asked quickly.

  Mrs. Roberts shrugged. “The Donald girl,” she said.

  “I’m not surprised.” Mrs. Merriam set her sewing aside and leaned forward earnestly. “I don’t know what you think of that girl,” she said, “but I think she has more to do with these things than anyone knows.”

  “There’s no real harm in Virginia,” Mrs. Desmond said.

  “Well, I know her,” Mrs. Merriam said, and tossed her head angrily. “I’d be the last person to defend Harriet—I think her conduct was absolutely disgusting—but I’d be inclined to think that nothing at all would have happened if certain young ladies around this neighborhood weren’t a good deal too mature for their own good.”

  “Well, Helen Williams—” Mrs. Roberts said.

  Mrs. Desmond snipped off a long length of blue embroidery thread and held it out to Caroline. “Here you are, darling,” she said. Then she said to Mrs. Merriam, “I don’t know very much about Helen, of course, but I think that kind of person is very often more sinned against than sinning.”

  “I don’t think she’s done anything really bad,” Mrs. Merriam said, shocked.

  “It’s just that she’s so much older, mentally, Marguerite, than the other girls,” Mrs. Roberts said. “It’s a shame they’ve gotten to know her so well.”

  “Well, Harriet won’t know her any longer,” Mrs. Merriam said.

  “I don’t think it’s entirely wise,” Mrs. Desmond murmured, “to keep girls apart. As soon as they know someone is bad for them—”

  “I didn’t even mention it to Artie,” Mrs. Roberts said.

  “Well, a boy. . . .” Mrs. Merriam stood up. “How about some tea?”

  “Oh, don’t bother,” Mrs. Desmond said.

  “Really,” Mrs. Roberts added.

  “No trouble,” Mrs. Merriam said, as though she had not planned anything. “It’s all ready.”

  She went into the kitchen, and Mrs. Roberts said, “I think she’s a little hard on Harriet sometimes.”

  “I suppose she takes it very seriously,” Mrs. Desmond agreed.

  “You know,” Mrs. Merriam said, coming busily in from the kitchen with a full tray which had obviously been sitting out there waiting, “You know, it seems strange to have only the three of us this week.”

  “Sylvia Donald had to take Virginia to the dentist,” Mrs. Roberts said. “I don’t know what happened to Dinah.”

  “Probably that poor woman had another spell,” Mrs. Desmond said. “It must be a terrible thing to have to take care of an invalid like that.”

  “Worse than children,” Mrs. Roberts said heartily. She threw her sewing aside and came over to Mrs. Merriam’s tea tray, which she inspected critically. “Those wonderful sandwiches, Josephine.”

  “Next week you’ll all come to my house,” Mrs. Desmond said. “Aren’t you nice?” as Mrs. Merriam presented a slim glass of milk to Caroline.

  “The sweet child,” Mrs. Merriam said. “She sits there so quietly and never says a word.”

  “One thing about you,” Mrs. Roberts said enthusiastically to Mrs. Merriam. “You always have the most wonderful sandwiches.”

  “They’re only cream cheese with a little sherry,” Mrs. Merriam said. “I’ll write it down for you.”

  • • •

  “Are you sure you’ll be all right, sweetie?” Mrs. Ransom-Jones asked earnestly. “I can very easily—”

  “Not at all,” her sister said. “I wouldn’t dream of it. I’ll be fine.”

  “But I just feel so sort of guilty,” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said. “You so much worse and all.”

  “I’ll be perfectly all right,” her sister said. “You go right ahead.”

  Mrs. Ransom-Jones smoothed the long black skirt of her evening dress; her dark hair was pulled up on top of her head instead of gathered at the back of her neck, and she looked very dignified and sure. She put her hand on her sister’s forehead and said, “I’m sure you’ll be all right. If we hadn’t planned it for so long.”

  “You couldn’t know I’d be worse,” her sister argued. “Don’t give me a single thought, dear.”

  “Brad would be terribly disappointed,” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said. “If he were only coming home instead of meeting me in town.”

  “You look perfectly lovely,” her sister said. “He’ll be proud of you.”

  Mrs. Ransom-Jones touched her earrings. “The Roberts boy is very reliable. You know him.”

  “Of course, dear,” her sister said. “Just don’t worry.”

  “I’ve left t
he doctor’s name and telephone number on the hall table,” Mrs. Ransom-Jones went on, counting on her fingers, “and your emergency medicine is right beside it. And he can always call his mother and father if there’s anything.”

  “And the Donalds are home right next door,” her sister said.

  “I’ll call during the evening,” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said. “We can get home at any time in less than half an hour.”

  “You’ll be late, dear,” her sister said. “You don’t have to wait till the boy comes.”

  “I’d feel better,” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said vaguely. “Now are you sure—”

  The doorbell rang, and she took up her evening bag and gloves as she went to the hall. “Hello, Arthur,” her sister heard her say. “You’re very nice to come.”

  “That’s all right, Mrs. Ransom-Jones,” Artie said. “I was just going to read anyway.”

  “It’s just that my sister had another attack two days ago.” Mrs. Ransom-Jones dropped her voice, but her sister could still hear her. “She has to be very quiet, and I just wanted someone here in case anything should—” She hesitated slightly. “In case anything should happen,” she repeated.

  “I see,” Artie said.

  “Here’s the doctor’s name and telephone number, and Lillian’s medicine, which she gets if she should happen to have another attack, and the telephone number where we’ll be, and—”

  “I can tell him all about it, dear,” Lillian said, raising her voice. “Don’t you bother.”

  Mrs. Ransom-Jones came in, bringing perfume and the sound of black velvet moving softly. “Well, sweetie,” she said.

  “Good night, dear,” Lillian said, raising her face. “I’ll most likely be asleep when you come in.”

  “Good night,” Mrs. Ransom-Jones said. “I’m sure everything will be fine,” she said to Artie in the doorway.