Fear Read online

  “The function of the scholar has nothing to do with this, Lowry. Nothing whatever to do with this! Why, this wretched rag is a brand! It is trash and humbug! It is stuffed with lies under the name of scientific fact . And,” he stated, ominously lowering his tone, “this morning I was confronted with the name of Atworthy in such a place! If a student had not brought it to me I might never have seen it at all. There it is, ‘By Professor James Lowry, Ethnologist, Atworthy College.’”

  “I saw no reason to sign anything else—”

  “You had no right to inscribe it originally ‘Professor Lowry of Atworthy College.’ It is cheap. It is a wretched attempt at notoriety. It demeans the very name and purpose of education. But then,” he added with a sniff, “I suppose one cannot expect anything else from a man whose whole life has been highly irregular.”

  “I beg your pardon?” said Lowry.

  “Oh, I have been here long enough to know the record of every man on our staff. I know you were expelled—”

  “That matter was all cleared!” cried Lowry, blushing scarlet and twisted with the pain of the memory.

  “Perhaps. Perhaps. But that is beside the point. This article is cheap and idiotic and by being cheap and idiotic it has demeaned the name of Atworthy.” Jebson bent over it and adjusted his glasses upon the thin bridge of his nose. “‘Mankind’s mental ills might in part be due to the phantoms of the witch doctors of yesterday!’ Humph! ‘By Professor James Lowry, Ethnologist, Atworthy College.’ You will be writing about demonology next as something which one and all should believe! This is disgraceful. The entire town will be talking about it—”

  Lowry had managed to control his shaking hands and now erased the quiver from his throat which sought to block his voice. “That is not an article about demonology, sir. It is an attempt to show people that their superstitions and many of their fears grew out of yesterday’s erroneous beliefs. I have sought to show that demons and devils were invented to allow some cunning member of the tribe to gain control of his fellows by the process of inventing something for them to fear and then offering to act as interpreter—”

  “I have read it,” said Jebson. “I have read it and I can see more in it than you would like me to see. Prating of demons and devils and the placating of gods of fear— By your very inference, sir, I suddenly conceive you to mean religion itself! Next, I suppose, you will attack Christianity as an invention to overthrow the Roman capitalistic state!”

  “But—” began Lowry and then, turning red again, held his tongue and retreated even further into himself.

  “This wild beration of demons and devils,” said Jebson, “reads like a protest of your own mind against a belief which association with the ungodly and unwashed of far lands might have instilled in you yourself. You have made yourself ludicrous. You have brought mockery upon Atworthy. I am afraid I can not readily forgive this, Lowry. In view of circumstances, I can find no saving excuse for you except that you desired money and gained it at the expense of the honor and esteem in which this institution is held. There are just two months left of this school year. We cannot dispense with you until the year is done. But after that,” said Jebson, crumpling up the paper and tossing it into the wastebasket, “I am afraid you will have to look for other employment.”

  Lowry started up. “But—”

  “With a better record, I might have forgiven. But your record has never been good, Lowry. Go back to the forgotten parts of the world, Lowry, and resume your commune with the ungodly. Good day.”

  Lowry walked out, not even seeing the girl who opened the doors for him; he forgot to replace his hat until he was on the walk; he had wandered several blocks before he came to himself. Dully he wondered if he had a class and then recalled that it was Saturday and that he had no Saturday classes. Vaguely he remembered having been on his way to attend a meeting or to have luncheon—no, it could not be luncheon, for it was evidently about two, according to the sun. And then the nudge of thought itself was swallowed in the wave of recollection.

  He was shivering and it brought him around to thinking about himself for a moment. He mustn’t shiver just because this world, for him, had come to an abrupt end; there were other colleges which might be glad to have him; there were millionaires who had offered to finance him, seeing that his traveling returned the investment and more. No, he should not feel so badly. And yet he shivered as though stripped naked to a winter’s blast.

  The racing clouds above darkened the street for whole seconds at a time; but there was something dead now in the sound of last year’s leaves getting chased out of corners and there was something ugly in the nakedness of these elms. He strove to locate the source of his chill.

  It was Mary.

  Poor Mary. She loved this world of teas and respect; she had been brought up in this town and all her memories and friendships were here. It was enough that he would be talked about. It was too much that she leave everything that was life to her. Her friends would shake their heads barely in her sight.

  No, she wouldn’t want to stay here, where everyone would speculate on why he was ousted, where everyone would have no more reason to ask her to teas.

  And the big scholarly mansion—she loved that old place.

  He failed to understand Jebson, for he was too generous to be able to run the gamut of Jebson’s thought process, starting with a little man’s desire to injure a big one, and envy for Lowry’s rather romantic and mysterious aspect, passing through indirect insult to the college, and, finally, coming to light as a challenge to Christianity itself in some weird and half-understood way. Lowry was left floundering with only one fact on which to work: this was the culmination of a disgrace for which he had suffered acutely and innocently nearly twenty-one years before. And that pain and this pain were all entangled in his mind and driven hard home with the ache which was all through him, an ache he had forgotten was malaria.

  Poor Mary.

  Poor, beautiful, sweet Mary.

  He had always wanted to appear grand to her, to make up somehow for being so many years older than she. And now he had brought her disgrace and separation from that which she knew best. She would take it well; she would follow him; she would be sorry and never once mention that she felt badly on her own account. Yes. Yes, she would do that, he knew. And he would not be able to prevent, nor even be able to tell her, how badly he felt for her.

  Again he had the recollection of having an appointment somewhere, but again he could not remember. The wind was chill now and tugged at his hat, and the clouds which swept their shadows over the pavement were darker still.

  He looked about him and found that he was within sight of an old house with iron deer before it, the home of Professor Tommy Williams, who, for all his bachelorhood, maintained his family place alone.

  Feeling strangely as though all had not yet happened to him and experiencing the need of shelter and company, he walked swiftly to the place and turned up the walk. The mansion seemed to repel him as he stared at it, for the two gable windows were uncommonly like a pince-nez sitting upon the nose of a moldering judge; for an instant he hesitated, almost turned around and went away.

  And then he had a mental image of Tommy, the one man in this world to whom he could talk, having been the one kid with whom he had associated as a boy. But if he had come out of his boyhood with a shy reticence, Tommy had chosen another lane, for Tommy Williams was the joy of his students and the campus; he had traveled much in the old countries and therefore brought to this place an air of the cosmopolitan, a gay disregard for convention and frumpy thought. Tommy Williams loved to dabble with the exotic and fringe the forbidden, to drink special teas with weird foreign names and read cabalistic books; he told fortunes out of crystal balls at the charity affairs and loved to eye his client afterward with a sly, sideways look as though outwardly this must all be in fun, but inwardly—inwardly, mightn’t it be true? Tommy was all laughter, froth and lightness, with London styles and Parisian wit, a man too clever to hav
e any enemies—or very many friends.

  No. He need not pause here on the threshold of Tommy’s home. It would do him good to talk to Tommy. Tommy would cheer him and tell him that old Jebson was, at his finest, a pompous old ass. He mounted the steps and let the knocker drop.

  Some dead leaves on the porch were going around in a harassed dance, making a dry and crackly music of their own; and then inanely they sped out across the lawn as though trying to catch up with a cloud shadow and so save themselves from an eventual bonfire. Nervous leaves, running away from inevitable decay, unable to cope with the rival buds which were pushing tenderly forth all unknowing that those things which fled had once been bright and green, coyly flirting with the wind. This was Lowry’s thought and he did not like it, for it made him feel ancient and decayed, abandoned in favor of the fresh and green that had no flaws, who were too young to be anything but innocent; how many days would it be before another had his job? Some youthful other, preaching, perhaps, from Lowry’s own books?

  He dropped the knocker again, more anxious than before to be admitted to the warmths of fire and friendship; his teeth were beginning to chatter and he had a sick, all-gone sensation where his stomach should have been. Malaria? he asked himself. Yes, he had just come from Chalmers, who had called these chills malaria. He had not two hours ago peered into a microscope where his basically stained blood was spread out so that they could see the little globes inside some of the red corpuscles. Malaria wasn’t dangerous, merely uncomfortable. Yes, this must be a malarial chill and shortly it would pass.

  Again he dropped the knocker and felt the sound go booming through the high-ceilinged rooms within; he wanted to go away from there, but he would not bring himself to leave just as Tommy came to the door. He shivered and turned up his collar. Very soon he would begin to burn; not unlike a leaf, he told himself. He peered through the side windows which flanked the door.

  He had once more the idea that he had an engagement somewhere and pondered for an instant, trying to pull forth the reluctant fact from a stubborn recess.

  No, he wouldn’t keep standing here. Houses were never locked in this town, and Tommy, even if he was not home, would welcome him eagerly when he did return; he pushed open the door and closed it behind him.

  It was dim in the hall; dim with collected years and forgotten events, with crêpe long crumbled and bridal bouquets withered to dust and smoky with childish shouts and the coughing of old men. Somewhere there was a scurrying sound as though a scholarly rat had been annoyed while gnawing upon some learned tome. To the right the double doors opened portentously upon the living room, and Lowry, sensing a fire there, approached, hat in hand.

  He was astonished.

  Tommy Williams lay upon the sofa, one arm dangling, one foot higher than the other and both feet higher than his head; his shirt was open and he wore neither tie nor coat. For an instant Lowry thought he must be dead.

  And then Tommy yawned and started a stretch; but in the middle of the action he sensed his visitor and came groggily to his feet, blinking and massaging his eyes and looking again.

  “Heavens, man,” said Tommy, “you gave me a start for a moment. I was sound asleep.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Lowry, feeling unnecessary. “I thought you were gone and that I might wait until you—”

  “Of course!” said Tommy. “I’ve slept too long anyway. What time is it?”

  Lowry glanced at the great hall clock. “Five minutes after two.”

  “Well! That shows you what all play and no sleep will do to a fellow. Here, give me your hat and get warm by the fire. Lord, I’ve never seen a man look quite so blue. Is it as cold as that out?”

  “I seem to be a little cold,” said Lowry. “Malaria, I guess.” He felt a little better—Tommy seemed so glad to see him—and he moved across the room to where two logs smoldered upon the grate. Tommy came by him and stirred them into a cheerful glow and then busied himself by the liquor cabinet, putting a drink together.

  “You’ve got to take better care of yourself, old fellow,” said Tommy. “We’ve only one Professor Lowry at Atworthy and we can’t run the risk of losing him. Here, take this and you’ll feel better.” Lowry took the drink in his hand, but he did not immediately partake of it; he was looking around the room at the old glass-fronted cases and the china figures on the stand in the corner. When he had been little he and Tommy had never been allowed to come into this place except when there was company and they were to be presented; and then, scour-faced and feeling guilty of some crime, they had been allowed to sit stiffly in a stiffer chair and gradually relapse into suffering stupidity.

  How different was that Tommy from this one! Still, there was the same winning grin, the same shining head of black hair, always slightly awry in an artistically careless way, the same classic face, startlingly pale against the blackness of the hair, the same graceful slenderness and the quick dancer movements with which he had always done things. Tommy, thought Lowry with a sudden clarity, was pretty; maybe that was what Lowry saw in him, something which complemented his own blunt ruggedness. Lowry sipped at the drink and felt the warmth of it spread pleasingly out to meet the glow from the brightly snapping flames.

  Tommy was sitting on the edge of the sofa now; he always sat as though expecting to arise in another instant. He was lighting a cigarette, but he stared so long at Lowry that the match burned his fingers and he dropped it and placed the tips in his mouth. Presently he forgot about the sting and succeeded in applying the fire.

  “Something is wrong, Jim.”

  Lowry looked at him and drank again. “It’s Jebson. He found an article of mine in the Newspaper Weekly and he’s raving mad about it.”

  “He’ll recover,” said Tommy with a rather loud laugh.

  “He’ll recover,” said Lowry, “but just now I’m wondering if I will.”

  “What’s this?”

  “I’m being ousted at the end of the term.”

  “Why . . . why, the old fool! Jim, he can’t mean that. It will take an order from the board—”

  “He controls the board and he can do that. I’ve got to find another job.”

  “Jim! You’ve got to straighten this thing out. Jebson has never liked you, true, and he has muttered a great deal about you behind your back; you are too blunt, Jim. But he can’t let you go this way. Why, everyone will be furious!”

  They discussed the matter for a little while and then, at last, a sort of hopelessness began to enter their tones and their sentences became desultory to finally drop into a silence marked only by the occasional pop of the wood.

  Tommy walked around the room with a restive grace, pausing by the whatnot stand to pick up a china elephant; tossing the fragile beast with a quick, nervous motion, he turned back to Lowry; there was a queer, strained grin on Tommy’s lips but bleakness in his eyes.

  “It would seem,” said Tommy, “that your article has begun to catch up with you.”

  “That is rather obvious.”

  “No, no. Don’t ever accuse me of being obvious, Jim. I meant the article was about demons and devils and tended to mock them as having any power—”

  “Tommy,” said Lowry with one of his occasional smiles, “they should put you to teaching demonology. You almost believe in it.”

  “When creeds fail, one must turn somewhere,” said Tommy jokingly—or was it jokingly? “You say that the gods of luck are false; you wrote that it is silly to seek the aid of gods beyond the aid of the one supreme God; you said that demons and devils were the manufacture of Machiavellian witch doctors and that men could only be herded by the fear of those things they could not see; you said that men thought they found a truly good world to be an evil world in their blindness and so built a hideous structure of phantoms to people their nightmares.”

  “And what if I did?” said Lowry. “It is true. The world is not evil; the air and water and earth are not peopled with jealous beings anxious to undermine the happiness of man.”

 
Tommy put the elephant back and perched himself on the edge of the couch; he was visibly agitated and kept his eyes down, pretending to inspect his immaculate nails. “No man knows, Jim.”

  Lowry rumbled out a short laugh and said, “Tell me now that you are so studied in these things that you actually credit a possibility of their existence.”

  “Jim, the world to you has always been a good place; that’s a sort of mechanical reaction by which you like to forget all the ghastly things the world has done to you. You should be more like me, Jim. I know the world is an evil, capricious place and that men are basically bad and so, knowing that, I am always pleased to find some atom of goodness and only bored to see something evil. You, on the other hand, march forward relentlessly into sorrow and disappointment; to you all things are good, and when you find something which is mean and black and slimy you are revolted—and you’ve come to me today shivering with ague, racked by a treacherous turn done you by a man you should initially have thought good. That view of yours, Jim, will never bring you anything but misery and tears. Phantoms or not, that man is the safest who knows that all is really evil and that the air and earth and water are peopled by fantastic demons and devils who lurk to grin at and increase the sad state of man.”

  “And so,” said Lowry, “I am to bow low to superstition and reinherit all the gloomy thoughts of my benighted ancestors. Devil take your devils, Tommy Williams, for I’ll have nothing of them.”

  “But it would appear,” said Tommy in a quiet, even, ominous way, “that they will have something of you.”

  “How can you arrive at that?”

  “It would appear,” said Tommy, “that the devils and demons have won their first round.”

  “Bah,” said Lowry, but a chill coursed through him.

  “You say they do not exist, in an article in the Newspaper Weekly. That same article arouses the rage of a vindictive fool and thereby causes your scheduled dismissal from Atworthy.”