Part 9 (2/2)

”Well, he wouldn't have found us so easily,” my mother resumed weakly.

”It was an accident that he found you at all. The fact is, he didn't find you; he found her.”

”Her?” murmured my mother irresolutely, although it was plain she understood him exactly. ”You don't seriously mean Anneke?”

”Anneke,” Enoch reiterated. ”Precisely Anneke.”

”It wasn't Anneke he was interested in.” Apprehensively my mother watched her husband indulge in one of his leisurely dictatorial shrugs. ”Well, you don't think he would bother with her for her own sake? His taste used to be better than that!” she a.s.serted after a moment. ”He knew she was the child's governess-he took up with her only to get near us,” my mother said with a soft and wavering emphasis.

”Just as you please then.” Enoch's tumid cheeks drew his under-eyes down as though by concealed weights; it made his face look sharper than it was, and older. ”But it isn't in character for him to have schemes, you know.”

”You're not excusing him!” my mother exclaimed.

”I only say that he's too unstable to be relied on.”

”No, I wouldn't rely on him,” my mother said coldly.

”He never was one of the schemers,” Enoch declared. ”It was the feel of it he cared for, not the dialectics, do you remember? I used to think it awfully ign.o.ble of him. He would always go off on his own hook-he had that sort of flair. When everyone else was bankrupt he could always think of things to do on the spur of the moment. He knew how to make them turn around in those days!” he reflected serenely.

”I don't remember,” my mother replied, without the note of truth.

But Enoch seemed not to expect truth just then. ”He wasn't consistent. He had the imagination of disaster.”

”That's just a phrase,” my mother said scornfully.

”But you see the schemers have it to their credit that they're consistent. They can be trusted, in their own terms. I mean the stages in their campaigns can be antic.i.p.ated-at least one can rely on there being stages. It's possible to comprehend and distinguish their aims. The point is they have motives,” he concluded.

My mother almost sneered. ”And he doesn't have motives? I'd like to believe that! If he didn't have motives he wouldn't be coming here today,” she stated, springing up from the bed.

”All right, but there's a difference.”

”I don't see any difference. He's coming for a purpose.”

”Oh, I'm certain of it.”

”Then how can you say he's not a schemer?” said my mother, exasperated.

”Because a schemer begins with motives, and his motives produce a situation. But with him, it's the situation that produces the motive-”

”How I hate when you talk abstractions!” my mother wailed. ”I don't know what you're saying, not a single word.”

Enoch smiled slightly. ”If you like I'll put it ... nakedly. Take that as a pun if you want-he saw this girl and he made up to her. Nothing more. It was a question of one night's need.”

My mother flushed, but not with delicacy. Her nose turned dangerously rosy, pinched by anger. ”He's, not so cheap as all that!”

”Then say he's not. Say it's she who is. But it wasn't an intrigue, I'll swear to that. He had no more idea, to begin with, of her being in your employ than the man in the moon. It wasn't a case of machination--does that distress you?” he asked, but it was rhetoric merely; he went straight on, still with his small, hinting, ironic smile. ”He didn't invite her to his room simply in order to pick up news, that's clear!”

”Nevertheless he picked up quite a bit.”

”I don't deny it. He's an opportunist. More than that, he's an improviser-that's the main thing. He plays by ear, according to whom he finds next to him in bed on any given morning.”

”Ah, don't.” It was unmistakably a moan. She came slowly round, sick with distaste, visibly detaching herself from his words. Her glance fell on me and automatically stiffened-”How can you, with the child listening,” she developed it, but she was not thinking of me and had seized on my presence there as she would that moment have grasped for any convention or piece of etiquette. Nothing tempers suffering so much as ritual, and it was altogether according to some ceremonial of purity that she rubbed her knuckles along her lip-line, frowning at her husband.

”That's only by way of ill.u.s.tration,” Enoch pursued, unwilling to admit to any transgression: he gave me a long, elaborate look, as though I were a set of sums. Sprawled there on the square of carpet I felt transparent, easily susceptible of solution. ”All I mean to say is that he doesn't dream things up-not out of the air, anyway. He wakes up into a situation, and the situation dictates the motive: it's what I've already described. He could have, right now, any number of possible intentions toward you.”

She echoed, unconvinced, ”Any number?”

”He's not singleminded, if you follow me.”

”He's a crook,” my mother said flatly.

”Oh, well. For that matter-” Enoch renewed his clinical, almost scholarly posture; his head strained forward after some dangling omniscient lens, telescopic: his manner brought all far moons near. ”None of us is singleminded,” he stated, peering for confirmation through his invisible hanging gla.s.s as though he had my mother's agitation quite in perspective.

She succ.u.mbed to a startled diminutive shudder, quick as a blink. ”You're not thinking of giving in!” she cried.

”How can we talk of giving in till we know what he wants?” he said reasonably.

”Whatever he wants he won't get it.”

”He may want one thing now, and another thing later,” Enoch observed.

”I don't see,” said my mother, going to her bureau. ”He can't want anything but money.”

”It's what he wants it for that counts. That's the danger. It's what I say, he's not consistent.”

”It doesn't matter-he won't get it in any case.”

”Not in any case,” Enoch experimentally repeated. ”And if he tells you he's starving?”

My mother's arms, thrust in the drawers, whipped derisively through a foam of silk. ”Let him starve!”

”Ah, the Christian temperament,” he noted.

”I don't care. He won't get a penny out of me.”

”Not as mere largess, no.”

”Not as mere anything,” she retorted. ”It's my habit to sympathize with organized charities only. On that principle you don't, get taken in.”

”Oh, I agree the fellow's disorganized.” He gave a mournful little laugh. ”I suppose it's his nature.”

”Never mind his nature,” my mother bit off.

”Still, it's not a question of sympathy.”

She swooped up a pile of underwear and tossed it into an open valise waiting in the corner. ”If I don't give alms out of sympathy I don't give it at all.”

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