I See You Read online

  Then she heard a motor start. Were they going? She would not look. Then she heard a scream of brakes. A car had come. Then she heard a voice crying in concern for her, “Hey, lady! Gee—I’m sorry! Look, I’m getting you out right away! Gee, what a shame!”

  She looked then and saw a man beyond the glass who had a tool in his hands. She struggled to her feet, feeling weary and soiled, and she heard the wonderful crunching of breaking wood, and then she was free.

  The man owned the gas station. “Say, listen, that’s a mean thing to happen,” he said, supporting her with his kind strong arm. “How long were you in there? I got here as soon as I could. I had to put some clothes on, and I hadda come all the way across town. Guess it took me about twenty minutes … Well, I’m sorry.”

  Miss Murphy, standing in the air, looked toward the laundry building. No convertible was there. They had vanished.

  She heard him say, “The minute the girl called me I came as fast as I could …”

  “The minute … who … called … you?”

  “Some girl … name of Ivy Voll …”

  “Called you! Twenty minutes ago!”

  “That’s right. Say, are you O.K.?” He thought she might feel faint. He led her to his car. “I wanna wedge this door so as nobody else gets into trouble. Then I’ll take you home,” he promised.

  “Yes, my sister … Her medicine … you see …?”

  Miss Murphy got weakly into the man’s car and sat there and the cold air sharpened the cold of the sweat at her hairline. Then they had learned how to do that. They had conformed. They had acted to save her. And the group would so reckon—that they had saved her. Then, if they sat and watched for twenty minutes and did not tell her so … but watched her suffering … it was too subtle and refined a cruelty to count. And it was not because they were so cold and so callous that they did not recognize her suffering. Nor that they were too young, too self-centered … or too ignorant. On the contrary. They not only recognized it, they prolonged it deliberately. And they enjoyed it.

  This was the basic wrong and rotten thing.

  When she reached home, her sister Daphne looked up from the novel in which she had become lost. “What kept you, Delphine?” asked Daphne, lazily. And then jealousy, “I suppose it’s nice out.”

  “Very nice,” said Miss Murphy, whose legs were like water.

  In the morning, soon after the first bell rang, a message came that called Miss Murphy into Mr. Madden’s office. When she got there, she found his room was full. There was a man who could be nothing on earth but a police officer. And standing in formation, but like culprits before judgment, were the four.

  Miss Murphy’s lumpy little face was very pale this morning. She felt no new shock to see the four of them, for the basic shock that had rocked her whole system was still operating. Now she seemed to look all the way through them with cold green eyes.

  “Last night,” said Mr. Madden, in a voice of well-reined-in anger and excitement, “this office was wrecked, as you can see.”

  Then Miss Murphy saw … saw the torn papers, the broken drawers, the ink on the wall.

  “These four students, as you know, have done this sort of thing before. They were forgiven, last year. This time Police Officer Davis here and I feel that something a bit different is going to have to be done about them. Now, I called you in, Miss Murphy, because they say”—in Mr. Madden’s thin cultivated voice there was a small but distinct sneer—“that you can give them an alibi.”

  “I?” she said.

  The eyes of the four were on her. For once she stood in the range of their eye-beams and was solid and seen.

  “You know—” began Stan.

  “Quiet,” snapped Mr. Madden. A wave of something like alarm went through the phalanx. Mr. Madden was on the warpath. No one could doubt it.

  “These four,” he said ostensibly to Miss Murphy but really to the policeman, “have gotten away with just about enough. We cannot help them here at school with the measures at our command. And they need help … and they need it from experts and they will someday know that they are very fortunate to be getting it right now.” Mr. Madden glanced about him. “This handkerchief,” he said “was found here in my office. And it gives them away. Now, let’s get past this nonsense about an alibi and get on with it.”

  Miss Murphy looked at the handkerchief, a grimy scrap of cotton with I.V. upon the corner in some black ink. I.V. For Ivy Voll. For Ivy. And the Roman way to write a four. She brooded on symbolism.

  “Better let me put this to her,” said the man Davis, courteously, for Mr. Madden was obviously not quite objective this morning. “Now, Miss Murphy, it seems that last night, up until close to 9 P.M., there was somebody in the building.”

  “Adult education class. About 9:02,” snapped Mr. Madden. “Mr. Collins locked up after it. No trouble then. But when I came here, after something I found I needed at home, I walked right into the activities. They were at work, all right. In the dark. One of them hit me.…”

  Miss Murphy now saw the slight bruise upon his face.

  “That,” said Madden with satisfaction, “will make it enough of a crime so that we can really—”

  “Let’s—er—get at this alibi business,” said Davis, clearing his throat. “Now, Miss Murphy. Mr. Madden came here and caught them … although of course they got away in the dark … at about 9:20. Where were you at that time? Do you know?”

  Miss Murphy did not speak. But she knew. She remembered.

  “They say you were locked in a phone booth,” said Davis. “They say that they called the man to come and let you out. They say they stayed by you …”

  “Is that what they say?” There was a sick chill in her voice. The four rippled slightly—like a sensitive plant recoiling from a touch.

  “We have checked with the man,” said Davis in his calm voice, “and he corroborates so much of their story. The girl called him close after nine. Now he let you out at 9:25 or a few moments later but says these four were not there. Then.”

  Miss Murphy said nothing. The times marched stately in her mind. She recalled reading her watch in the poor light, with her knees on the dirty floor.

  “You see how it stands, Miss Murphy?” Davis said. “They could have come here to the school after phoning.…”

  “They did,” said Madden positively.

  “Somebody—” began Ivy.

  “Be still,” the principal said. “Miss Murphy, I can only warn you very carefully. Don’t make a mistake about this.”

  Miss Murphy stood there with power.

  “You saw us,” Stan said accusingly.

  “Sure she did,” said Ross.

  The eyes of the girl, Ivy, bored into Miss Murphy’s. Well? they said. There was even a little scorn in them. You are trapped, they said. You have to speak true and you know it.

  Miss Murphy smiled and spoke true. “Yes, they were there. All four. They stood by me.” She said this without bitterness as if she spoke in a not unpleasant dream. “So,” she continued, “they couldn’t have done this damage. Not between 9 and 9:25. Is that what you wanted of me?”

  “Gee, thanks,” she heard one say. Was it Tentor?

  “If she gives them the alibi …” Davis said and opened his hands.

  “Miss Murphy,” said the principal in a tired voice, “if this is mercy, if you mistakenly think that they ought to be let off again …”

  “No, sir,” she said placidly.

  “Get back to your classes,” he snapped at them.

  The four, with a certain scurry of feet, went away.

  “If you are trying to be friendly and lying for them … Oh, I know you have had a certain sneaking fondness …” Mr. Madden’s mouth looked as if it might froth and Davis had his ears pricked. “Then you are so wrong,” said Madden fiercely. “This was our last chance to save them. Don’t you know that? They’ll lie low, now, till the end of the year.”

  “I know it was the last chance,” Miss Murphy said coolly. “B
ut the truth is true. And it doesn’t much matter. They are trash.”

  Both men looked at her a little shocked and startled, and then they let her go.

  A little later she sat at her own desk and heard them knock and called “Come in.” They came in and arranged themselves before her. She knew at once what they had come to do. They were conforming. They’d throw a sop to civilization. They had grown shrewd. They would, in cold blood and on the surface, pretend to conform. So they would thank her. She felt quite cool and free.

  “Gee, Miss Murphy,” Stan said to her, “we wanted to tell you we think it was swell of you.”

  “To tell the truth?” said Miss Murphy lightly.

  “Somebody just put my handkerchief there,” said Ivy in her small whine. “On purpose. Because we get blamed anyway.”

  “Trying to frame us,” Ross said.

  Tentor smiled, but his puffy eyes were sleepless in evil.

  “Oh yes, you have been framed,” Miss Murphy said. Her green eyes looked them over indifferently from under her dusty lashes. “You may go now,” she said and her mouth curved slightly. She might as well have said Go on to hell.

  The icy mystery of her cruelty … for she saw where they were going and did not care … this intrigued them. They blinked at her, their eyes shifted, puzzled. But they left. Outside they fell into formation. The girl, Ivy, put her small feet proudly down and drew on that sleepwalker’s look, and Stan seemed fierce as ever, and the greyhounds ranged on the flanks, defying anyone to touch them or teach them, as they walked away.

  Miss Murphy could see them in her mind’s eye. She watched for the last time. She thought, What waste! Born, raised, grown so high, and lost already. Too late. Good-bye.

  5.

  Motto Day

  Elyot was speaking. He usually was. He had a high, pleasant voice that rippled along eagerly. They were in Elyot’s room on the second floor. They often were. He had an old-fashioned fireplace, and a large box that he managed to keep filled with odds and ends of wood so that there could be a fire in the evenings. It was never much of a fire but it worked the old magic and they all gathered there.

  The girls from the top floor were business girls. Helen, who would have liked to be taken out by young men, was not much asked. Sonia, who was asked more often, had a streak of inertia that made the whole idea of getting dressed up and playing desirable female too much of a bother. Running down to Elyot’s room was different. His room was their club. Mrs. MacCleery, who owned the house, raised no objections. Indeed, twice (since her son Kevin had taken to joining them) she had brought up coffee and cookies, embarrassing them. For, after all, they were modern young people. They took turns bringing more sophisticated refreshment.

  This evening, the fire was going and they had settled down. Helen Fielding was sitting on a cushion on the floor and was staring into the fire. Sonia Jones was in the armchair with both plump legs swung over one arm of it. She was eating salted almonds, as complacent and comfortable as a cat. Kevin MacCleery sat where he always sat, in the chair with the wooden arms, his head tilted to listen.

  Elyot—James Elyot—was a tall young man about as wide as a stick, with a large head balanced on a thin neck like a heavy blossom on an inadequate stem. He wore glasses, fiercely framed in black, on his pale, slightly beaked nose. He was restless. Sometimes he paced. Sometimes he perched. He liked to poke at the fire. He was full of sound and theory. He had a drop or two of preacher’s blood. He was serious and he was moral and didn’t try to conceal this.

  “I have something to present to you,” he was saying. “I have an idea.”

  “What’s all this?” asked Sonia in her soft, lazy voice.

  “It has occurred to me,” pronounced Elyot, “that the trouble with us is very simple.”

  “Nothing is very simple,” said Helen in a melancholy way. She was a small tense girl with a suffering heart.

  “Perfectly clear and perfectly simple, as I see it,” said Elyot severely. “Listen to this. Every single one of us knows some of the rules for the good life. We all know at least one or two things that, without any question, we ought to be doing, but we don’t do them. That is where we fail.”

  “Who’s failing?” drawled Sonia. “And in what way, Elyot dear?” She had green eyes and a mop of fair unkempt hair. Everybody liked Sonia; she was big, good-natured, easygoing.

  Elyot turned his glasses upon her. “Shall I put it into words?” he challenged in his donnish way. “We all left school some time ago. We are still young, although not as young as we once were. And time is creeping on. True, we have jobs. We earn. We eat.”

  Kevin MacCleery didn’t move in his chair. He was only the listener. This was understood. Everyone knew that Elyot was not including him.

  “But not one of us,” continued Elyot, “is on the path. I am not speaking materially. I speak of our growth toward being successful human beings. Which of us is what he ought to be? Who, when you get down to it, does not know better than he does?”

  “Go on,” said Helen.

  “Very well,” said Elyot. “Therefore, I propose an experiment. I propose that we have a Motto Day.”

  “A what?” Sonia let her voice squeak.

  “I am serious,” said Elyot unnecessarily. He always was. It made him a misfit in the office. “And I have worked out the procedure, in detail. If you agree to this, I think it might be very interesting.”

  “You want us to do something?”

  “Exactly.” He relished the stunned silence. Then he perched on the edge of his divan and inclined his big head. “Suppose the three of us—” continued Elyot in his eager, earnest way. “Let’s see. Tonight is Friday—Suppose we take the weekend to think this over, very carefully. Then, sometime during this weekend, each of us will put down on pieces of paper as many mottoes—I mean rules, suggestions, sayings—that we can think of, in which we really believe. Mottoes to live by.”

  Sonia groaned and rolled her eyes in humorous comment.

  Elyot went on: “Now, type them out so that they will all be alike. Use my machine. I never lock my door. And I’ll leave some pennies on my desk. Wrap each motto round a penny and drop it into that empty tobacco tin. Understood?”

  “You must have been lying awake all night, dreaming this up,” said Sonia. “And then what?”

  “Then, on Monday morning, we’ll meet here, before work. We’ll draw. And we’ll promise. Each of us will take a vow to live by whatever motto he draws out of the tin. Just one. And live by it from say, eight o’clock on Monday morning to eight o’clock that evening. That’s twelve hours, only half a day. Not long. But I mean live by it. I mean, for once in our lives, do it.”

  The room was silent except for the fire which spat at them.

  Sonia swung her legs. “You mean like ‘Honesty is the best policy’?” She grinned.

  “If you believe that,” snapped Elyot, “put it down.”

  “I don’t know whether I believe it,” said Sonia. “I never gave it a thought, frankly.”

  “What do you mean, exactly?” inquired Helen. She tipped up her small face with her crooked teeth showing too much in the mouth that was too big for the width of the jaw. She was a young woman who was not good-looking, and she couldn’t think, offhand, of a saying that could help. “A family motto—like semper fidelis?” she asked.

  “That’s more like it.” Elyot asked.

  “I don’t understand, Elyot. Why doesn’t each of us use his own? Why should we draw lots?” Helen said.

  “Because—” Elyot leapt up and began to pace. “Because I think we ought to commit ourselves blindly. I think that is the way to do it. I think that is the way to be shaken up.”

  “Why should we be shaken up?” drawled Sonia. “I don’t know that I want to be shaken up particularly.”

  “Of course, if you are satisfied.” Elyots’ light voice had a sting in it.

  “I don’t mean that,” said Sonia dryly. Her plump face looked momentarily thinner.

&nb
sp; Helen was gazing into the fire. “We are practicing to be failures all right,” she said with romantic sadness. “We aren’t what we ought to be. I see what Elyot means. We are all fairly young, and fairly precious, to ourselves, but we do seem to have stopped. I know I am not on the way to anything. Isn’t that what you mean, Elyot?”

  “He doesn’t know what he means,” chided Sonia fondly. “Just a brainstorm. Ignore it. It will go away.”

  “No, I think I’d like to go through with this experiment,” said Helen vigorously. “What have I got to lose?”

  Elyot said, “Good. Now, come on, Sonia. You could try it for twelve hours, couldn’t you? What about it?”

  “It’s childish,” Sonia said. “Anyway, suppose I drew semper fidelis? Look, I go to the office. I do the filing and type a few letters. There’s not a lot of opportunity, see? It wouldn’t mean anything.”

  “You’d have to try living out whatever it means,” said Elyot. “That’s the whole point. We’d have to commit ourselves totally. I say that’s what’s the matter. We never do. How many nights have we sat here talking and analyzing and stating that this is right and that is wrong? But what has happened? Where is any result? We don’t even evolve anything consistent out of the conglomeration. Now, I am simply saying: Take one rule. One idea. One that somebody believes in. And just try it, for half a day.”

  Sonia was silent.

  “Somebody!” burst out Helen, swiveling on her small haunches. “What if I drew a motto that I don’t believe in?”

  “So much the better,” cried Elyot. “You wouldn’t have to believe in it. You would simply try it. In order to make this an experiment, it would be best if you didn’t get your own. That is why we need to be three. With three of us, the chances would be that none would get his own. None of us would know exactly where his motto came from, either. Nor could it possibly have been tailored for one of us, especially. Now don’t you see? Come on, Sonia,” he wheedled.

  “You mean this seriously, Elyot?” said Sonia.

  “What would be the point, otherwise?” said Elyot innocently. “The fact is, we had all better think hard before we type out these things. One of us might have to live by anything we put down. That should give us pause. Of course, don’t do it if you are afraid.” His sudden drop in pressure was effective.