Turncoat

III

FROM the next room came the heady smell of boiling cabbage and pork and the clattering of cookery, punctuated by the voices of Dean Horrock’s wife and daughters. The Dean himself was dressed in his best, pinkly clean and reeking of Sunday cologne, but his manner was as unhurried and courteous as always.

“Take your time,” he said comfortably. He filled the pipe whose stench a campus tradition, tamped it with care, puffed it alight. His gray eyes, alert behind their bulwark of pouches and wrinkles, looked at Bass candidly.

Everyone liked and respected the Dean. It was not easy to maintain the appearance his rank demanded on a pedagogue’s salary; most of the University staff were a little shabby, and no one thought the worse of them for it, but the Dean was always immaculate. He had eight children, too; and over twenty grandchildren: a good man.

“Whatever it is,” he added, “if I can help you—um, um—you know I’d like nothing better. But if you decided you’d rather not tell me—um— after all, why, I’ll understand that too.”

Bass began haltingly, “In Store today I saw a possessed man, Dean. He cursed Salesman Leggett. The Guard came and took him away.”

Horrock nodded. “An upsetting experience,” he suggested quietly.

“Yes. Dean—”

Horrock waited attentively.

“Can you tell me why the Infinite lets people be possessed’?”

Horrock’s face writhed and twisted. A sudden spurt of meaningless syllables came out between his clenched teeth; then it cut off short. His features smoothed out; he stared upward past Bass’s shoulder, listening to an angelic voice. In a moment the fit was over, and Horrock was blinking calmly at his pipe-stem.

“That’s a question,” he said slowly, “that has, tormented men pf compassion for centuries, Arthur. Why does infinite good permit the existence of evil? Mm. I’m not surprised that you feel so strongly about it. At your—um—at your age, if one has any sensitivity at all, one does … um … and even beyond your age, for the matter of that. Some very great and good men—um, um—have spent their lives in the study of that question, and without reaching any answer, um, that will satisfy everyone. In a sense, it’s the core of the religious problem… .

“Let me put it this way,” he continued. “Can either of us say that, if it weren’t for the few men—um, um—and women whom the Infinite allows to be possessed, human vanity—um—and willfulness might not grow so strong, um, that we’d all cast out our angels?”

Bass was silent:

“A little evil, um, prevents a greater,” Horrock said. The tic in his left cheek pulsed slowly, regularly. “That’s only a suggestion, Arthur, a speculation. Mm., The only final answer, I’m afraid, um, is that we can’t know the answer. The ways of the Infinite are not our ways. How can we judge, who are judged?” His pipe had gone out; he lit it again with tremulous fingers.

“Yes, I see that,” Bass said stiffly, “I mean, it isn’t the general problem that bothers me so much as—that man Store today, for instance. What did he do to deserve what happened to him?”

“Well—” Horrock smiled a lopsided smile. “Who can say? A sin of omission here, um, another there—perhaps, um, um, over the course of years, they added up—um, um—on the Infinite’s balance-sheet, to—” He shrugged.

Bass said thoughtfully, “Yes, that’s’ right, he was a miser.” But not me, he thought unhappily; I never grudged the Store a credit, or even had an unorthodox thought, until this happened. What about me?

“Dean,” he said suddenly, “there are people who want to do worse things than that, but their angels stop them—they aren’t punished.” He stopped a moment, wrestling to express the unfamiliar thought. “What I mean is, why can’t the angels make people do the things they should, not only stop them from doing the things they shouldn’t?”

HORROCK smiled gently. “Well I can answer that in two ways, Arthur. Taking it on the—um—mundane level, there are certain purely technical difficulties in the way of it. The Mysteries are, um, beyond my sphere, of course, but my understanding is that the sacred machines can only give us a certain limited capacity for perceiving our angels, which — um — would be burned out, so to speak, if our contact with them were too frequent, um, um, or prolonged. On the spiritual level, where the true answer is generally to be found—um, you remember your nursery prayers, Arthur.

“We’re prevented from committing, um, positive sins—first because they tend to be so final—killing a man, for example—um—and second, paradoxically enough, because they’re relatively unimportant. If I want to cut someone’s throat every evening—um, I do, by the way—that’s a trivial matter, really, because the impulse has no duration and therefore no—ahem—no effect on my character. But if I want to buy less than I should, that’s a serious thing. It affects not one person a day, but all of us every day: through me, um, it strikes at the very foundations of society.

“The point is, Arthur, that the Infinite is not—ahem—profoundly interested in our, our transient passions. Um, our angels stand ‘twixt us and sin, just as a mother might stand between her child and—a pot that was about to fall off a shelf. The pot has nothing to do, um, with the child’s development, as long as it doesn’t hit him on the head. Moreover, the child—can’t be expected to guard himself against the danger; he’s too young.

“But the child is expected to learn to perform his, um, household duties, and the mother can’t very well stand over him every minute to see that he does them. Mm. Do you see? If. the child wants to shirk his duties, conscience—ahem—must guide him to the work—or he’ll, um, go without his supper. Conscience must guide the adult to his responsibilities, too—or he’ll go without salvation. And salvation, unearned, would be, um, to say the least, tasteless stuff, Arthur.”

“I think I understand now,” said Bass with a dry throat. “Thank you, Dean.”

BASS was a proper young man, with no previous experience of any but proper thoughts; but he was learning the other kind, now, with a facility that surprised him.

“Salvation,” the Dean had said, “would be tasteless stuff, unearned….” And damnation, unearned? Was that supposed to have a pleasant taste?

He had searched his memory, again and again, for any sin of omission, and found nothing in his whole adult life. Until he was ten, of course, he had been a child, and had committed childish errors. Was he being condemned for those? It was unreasonable; Bass had heard stories of saintly children who walked the road of righteousness before they could toddle, and communed with their angels only to receive praise, but he had never met one—they must be extremely rare.

Clearly, then, the Infinite had withdrawn its grace from him simply to make him serve as an example, so that “human vanity and wilfulness might not grow so strong that we’d all cast out our angels.” He had been, chosen at random, as an orchardman might prune one branch from a tree.

Something, he felt vaguely, was wrong with the notion of an Infinite power without justice … and he could not follow up that thought; there were frightening implications beyond it—but he had made a discovery about himself, and that, at least, he clung to.

Bass did not want to die, not even to please the Infinite or edify his fellowmen.

His plans were made. Beyond the Pacific were the picturesque lands, dotted here and there on the map, where brown-or yellow-skinned men still lived in a state of nature. The Store was always asking for contributions for its missionary work there; but there must be some places left where even the missionaries had not gone.

And Bass had plane reservations for Pasadena, which—as he had verified by looking it up in his grade-school geography—was a part of Los Angeles, which was a seaport. He couldn’t go to the College; he had fooled Laudermilk, but he couldn’t hope to fool the examiners there, the very place where Deacons were made. Neither could he stay in Glenbrook after being chosen for the College. But he could go to Pasadena, slip away quietly at the airport, and get aboard a ship bound for Thailand or Timbuctoo. With any luck, he would be clear off the map long before the chase caught up with him; he could spend the rest of his life hunting wild boars and drinking coconut milk.

He had called up the airport, verified his reservation, and had the date moved back to today. He had gone home, announced that he was leaving, and suffered through a half-hour’s leave-taking: his aunt’s tears, his uncle’s incoherent pride, his cousin’s excitement. It had been hard to lie to them, but not half so hard as it would have been if he had waited the full week. He had packed three trunks which he would abandon in Pasadena, and one light grip to take with him, and seen them carted off to the airport. Now there was only one thing left to do.

He crossed the yard, skirting the massive old elm, and walked back along the side of the house to the kitchen window. Inside, Gloria Andresson was stirring something in a bowl, flushed and vigorous, tendrils of golden hair loosed at her temples. On the far side of the room Mrs. Andresson was icing a cake, and the two younger daughters were watching her.

Bass scratched gently on the window-screen. Gloria looked up abstractedly, raising a round arm to brush the hair-back from her forehead. Then she saw him; her eyes widened: She glanced behind her, put down her mixing spoon and left the room. A moment later she was with him under the elm.

“Don’t you want to come in, Arthur?” she murmured.

“I can’t—I haven’t got time. I came to say good-by.”

Her lips shaped the word silently after him, her brows drawn down in puzzlement and dismay.

“I’ve been picked to go to Cal Mere,” he said. “I have to leave today—half an hour from now.”

“Oh,” she said slowly. “That’s wonderful for you, Arthur, but— How long will you be gone?”

“A long time. Seven years. And,” he lied harshly, “they won’t let me marry until I graduate.”

“Oh, Arthur!”

“I know. I’d rather stay here, even: if I had to go back to common labor, but there wasn’t anything I could do.”

She clenched her fists at her sides, then opened them again. “You mustn’t say that,” she said in a strained voice. “It’s a—wonderful opportunity.”

Her head was lowered, her eyes half-closed; he could see her dark lashes tangled with tears. He moved a step closer, involuntarily, and found himself breathing her perfume. He could see a tiny pulse beating in the hollow of her throat. Her breasts swelled against the dark wool, drew back, swelled again… .

“I’ll write to you,” she said faintly.

“No. It wouldn’t be any good. No for seven years… I’d better say good-by now.”

She turned her face up and made sudden convulsive motion toward him checked it as suddenly, while her eyes turned to look at something invisible over his shoulder. She stood listening—listening, Bass realized bitterly, to the angel telling her she mustn’t touch him because they weren’t married.

“Oh, please,” she said to that invisible shape. “Just this once—”

Bass made a strangling noise in his throat and stepped forward as if he had been shoved. For an instant his arms were around her; he bumped her nose with his, and their teeth grated jarringly. Then his arms were empty.

She was standing a yard away from him, jaw hanging open, eyes staring through a curtain of disordered hair. He took a step after her. “Gloria—”

“Get away from me,” she said breathlessly. She gulped, filled her lungs, and let out a healthy scream. Then she turned and ran.

Standing where she had left him, Bass listened to the slamming of the back door, the commotion inside the house, and Gloria’s voice overriding it, loud, excited and dramatic. She was telling her family all about it.

Ten minutes later, running along a back street, startled faces popping out of doors to watch him, he heard the sirens climbing the hill behind him.