Death In The Family, A - James Agee [48]
“Poll?”
“Papa!” Relief and fear were equal in her. “Have you heard anything?”
“You’ve heard?”
“No. I said, ‘Have you heard from Andrew?’ ”
“No. Thought you might have by now.”
“No. Not yet. Not yet.”
“I must have frightened you.”
“Never mind, Papa. It’s all right.”
“Sony as hell, Poll, I shouldn’t have phoned.”
“Never mind.”
“Let us know, quick’s you hear anything.”
“Of course I will, Papa. I promise. Of course I will.”
“Shall we come up?”
“No, bless you, Papa, it’s better not, yet. No use getting all worked up till we know, is there?”
“That’s my girl!”
“My love to Mama.”
“Hers to you. Mine, too, needless to say. You let us know.”
“Certainly. Good-bye.”
“Poll.”
“Yes?”
“You know how I feel about this.”
“I do, Papa, and thank you. There’s no need to say it.”
“Couldn’t if I tried. Ever. And for Jay as much as you, and your mother too. You understand.”
“I do understand, Papa. Good-bye.”
“It’s only Papa,” she said, and sat down, heavily.
“Thought Andrew had phoned.”
“Yes ...” She drank tea. “He scared me half out of my wits.”
“He had no business phoning. He was a perfect fool to phone.”
“I don’t blame him. I think it’s even worse for them, sitting down there, than for us here.”
“I’ve no doubt it is hard.”
“Papa feels things a lot more than he shows.”
“I know. I’m glad you realize it.”
“I realize how very much he really does think of Jay.”
“Great—heavens, I should hope you do!”
“Well, for a long time there was no reason to be sure,” Mary retorted with spirit. “Or Mama either.” She waited a moment. “You and her, Aunt Hannah,” she said. “You know that. You tried not to show it, but I’ knew and you knew I did. It’s all right, it has been for a long time, but you do know that.”
Hannah continued to meet her eyes. “Yes, it’s true. Mary. There were all kinds of—terrible misgivings; and not without good reason, as you both came to know.”
“Plenty of good reasons,” Mary said. “But that didn’t make it any easier for us.”
“Not for any of us,” Hannah said. “Particularly you and Jay, but your mother and father too, you know. Anyone who loved you.”
“I know. I do know, Aunt Hannah. I don’t know how I got onto this tack. There’s nothing there to resent any more, or worry over, or be grieved by, for any of us, and hasn’t been for a long time, thank God. Why on earth did I get off on such a tangent! Let’s not say another word about it!”
“Just one word more, because I’m not sure you’ve ever quite known it. Have you ever realized how very highly your father always thought of Jay, right from the very beginning?”
Mary looked at her, sensitively and suspiciously. She thought carefully before she spoke. “I know he’s told me so. But every time he told me he was warning me, too. I know that, as time passed, he came to think a great deal of Jay.”
“He thinks the world of him,” Hannah rapped out.
“But, no, I never quite believed he really liked him, or respected him from the first and I never will. I think it was just some kind of soft soap.”
“Is Jay a man for soft soap?”
“No,” she smiled a little, “he certainly isn’t, ordinarily. But what am I to make of it? Here he was praising Jay to the skies on the one hand and on the other, why practically in the same breath, telling me one reason after another why it would be plain foolhardiness to marry him. What would you think!”
“Can’t you see that both things might be so—or that he might very sincerely have felt that both things were so, rather?”
Mary thought a moment. “I don’t know, Aunt Hannah. No, I don’t see quite how.”
“You learned how yourself, Mary.”
“Did I!”
“You learned there was a lot in what your father—in all our misgivings, but learning it never changed your essential opinion of him, did it? You found you could realize both things at once.”
“That’s true. Yes. I did.”
“We had to learn more and more that was good. You had to learn more and more that wasn’t so good.”
Mary looked at her