Hangsaman (20 page)

“We have to be at the Clarks' at six,” Elizabeth was reminding Arthur.

Arthur nodded. “Plenty of time,” he said.

“I'm so sorry,” Anne said to Arthur. “We hoped you'd go into town later and have dinner with us.”

“Our engagement for tonight is of several weeks' standing,” Elizabeth said grandly, sipping then at her drink with her eyes on Anne. “Naturally we can't disappoint the Clarks, but I told Arthur you girls would be so unhappy if we didn't come here first, even for just a few minutes; I really had to persuade him to come.”

“So glad you did,” Vicki said. “Another drink?”

Elizabeth looked again into her glass, and again at Arthur.

“I thought I'd
never
stop laughing, this morning in class,” Anne said to Arthur at that moment.

Vicki said quickly to Elizabeth, “They're terribly weak.”

“Weak?” Elizabeth said. “Weak. They
are
weak.” She made the word sound comic, and she handed over her glass. Vicki filled it quickly and brought it back, and then sat down next to Elizabeth, on the floor with her legs crossed. Natalie, who was sitting on the floor with her legs crossed on the other side of Elizabeth's chair, moved to sit at precisely the angle Vicki adopted, and Vicki clearly and deliberately nodded at her, as though to say: We're doing beautifully; good work.

“I
love
that pin,” Vicki said to Elizabeth lavishly.

“Thank you,” Elizabeth said coldly; it was to be clearly understood that she did not like Vicki and she did not court flattery.

“Will you
look
at the colors in that pin?” Vicki said to Natalie. “Have you ever seen anything so
lovely?
”

“Beautiful,” said Natalie. “Enamel, isn't it?”

“I believe it is,” Elizabeth said to Natalie. It was to be clearly understood that while she did very likely regard Natalie with some favor, she was not prepared to commit herself until she found out exactly how far Natalie was in turn committed to Vicki.

“I wish I could make you understand how much we all admire you,” Vicki said to Elizabeth. “All the things you do—taking care of your husband and your house, and keeping up with classes, and still somehow managing to look so lovely all the time, and everything.”

Natalie, thinking, She surely cannot accept this seriously, heard with surprise Elizabeth saying with modesty, “Well, of course, I don't really . . .” and Vicki interrupting smoothly, saying, “Another drink?”

*   *   *

At six-thirty, then, Elizabeth sat up suddenly in her chair and said, “Arthur, what time is it? We have to go to the Clarks'.”

“Plenty of time,” Arthur said.

“We have to go the Clarks' for dinner,” Elizabeth explained to Vicki and Natalie. “They must be expecting us because they're expecting us for dinner.”

“It's very early,” Vicki said.

“Plenty of time,” Natalie said.

“Have another drink,” Anne said, and giggled.

Natalie was reciting to herself, softly, “Around the campus and double quick, Have a drink with Annie and Vick; Vick's the butcher, Anne's the thief, And Langdon the boy who buys the beef.” She thought she had better not copy this out to send to her father; she was not, at this point precisely sure of the metre. It seemed to her that she had spent too long sitting in one position, and she got up and stretched lazily.

“Where
you
going?” Elizabeth demanded immediately. “
We've
got to go to the Clarks'. Arthur?”

He turned. “Plenty of time,” he said.

“No,” Elizabeth said insistently. “What time
is
it? Anyone know what time it is? Because we've
got
to go to the
Clarks
'.”

“I know,” Arthur said. “We've got to go to the Clarks'. But we can be a little bit late, can't we?”

“Are we
late?
” Elizabeth said. She appealed to Natalie, “Are we late for the Clarks'?”

“Not at all,” said Vicki. “You have plenty of time.”

“Time for another drink, anyway,” Arthur said. “Only across campus, after all,” he told Natalie.

“You've had too much to drink now,” Elizabeth said. “You can't go to the Clarks' drunk, Arthur darling. You know,” she said to Natalie, “we shouldn't have come here at all. I wanted to call you and say we couldn't
possibly
make it, but he told me, ‘Elizabeth,' he said, ‘they've gone to great trouble and expense just for us,' he said. And so we came here first, but now we've really
got
to be getting along to the Clarks'.”

“Suppose I call them and say you'll be a minute or so late?” Vicki asked brightly. “That way they surely wouldn't mind.”

Elizabeth looked at Vicki and then uncertainly at Arthur. “Will we be late?” she asked. “Because the Clarks have gone to great trouble and—”

“Only a minute or so late,” Vicki said.

“Time for one for the road,” Arthur said.

*   *   *

At about eight-thirty it became pressingly necessary to dispose of Elizabeth. Arthur Langdon, who seemed to notice only suddenly, got up from the couch and crossed the room to where Elizabeth had been sitting ever since she first came in, and, looking down at her without expression, said, “Why in God's name does she
always
have to do this? Can't we ever go
any
where?”

“She's probably just tired,” Anne said tenderly. “Should we take her home?”

“Nothing else
to
do,” Arthur said. His voice had become a little bit shrill, and Natalie, watching him as he stood between Vicki and Anne, wondered how she could ever have admired him, or thought of him together with her father. “
Why
does this
always
happen?” he demanded.

“We can see that she gets home,” Vicki said. She glanced at Natalie and Natalie nodded, and said, “Certainly.”

“
Would
you?” Arthur said, relieved. “Because I'm really
too
angry with her to care.”

“I'm sure she'd go with Nat,” Vicki said. “She's very fond of Nat.”

“Who isn't?” Anne said fondly. “Nat, see if you can get her to stand up.”

With the infinite superiority and tolerance that comes to a moderately sober person addressing a very drunken one, Natalie said to Elizabeth, “Elizabeth, are you ready to go home?”

It is really an instinct, the knack of dealing with irrational people, Natalie was thinking; I suppose that any mind like mine, which is so close, actually, to the irrational and so tempted by it, is able easily to pass the dividing line between rational and irrational and communicate with someone drunk, or insane, or asleep. “Elizabeth,” she said severely, “wake up, Elizabeth.”

“Why does she
always
have to do this?” Arthur said. He appealed to Anne. “Why?” he insisted.

“I think she just has no head for liquor,” Vicki said wisely. “It affects some people that way, of course.”

“But
always
,” Arthur said, looking as though he were about to cry. “I
never
have a good time because she's always doing
some
thing like this.”

“Elizabeth, wake
up
.” ( . . . and, bending over the maniac, writhing in his bonds, Natalie spoke softly, only a word or two, and he, ceasing at that moment his struggles, opened his eyes and looked lucidly and gratefully up into her face . . . ) “Elizabeth,
wake
up.”

“Golly,” said Anne. “She could sleep here. I mean, she could have my bed, and I could take the couch.”

“She doesn't
deserve
a bed,” Arthur said. “She ought to be in a gutter somewhere.”

“Arthur!” Anne said reproachfully. “Please don't be so bitter; remember who she is and—”

“Let's be sensible,” said Vicki quickly. “If we can't wake her or get her home, she's got to sleep here, that's only common sense. But I really think we can wake her and I know she'll go home with Natalie because she's really
terribly
fond of Natalie.”

“I don't remember ever seeing her do
this
before, after all,” Anne said.

“Elizabeth,” Natalie said, and Vicki said, “Elizabeth,” and Arthur, his voice at its firmest, repeated, “Elizabeth.”

Finally, stirring, Elizabeth muttered, and moved, and opened her eyes. “Arthur?” she said.

“Listen,” Arthur said, leaning down to speak more forcefully. With his face close to hers, he said, “Elizabeth, we're going to take you home. Now wake up and behave yourself, because we're going to take you home.”

“I'm awake,” Elizabeth said crossly. “What's the matter?”

“You're going home,” Arthur said.

“All right,” Elizabeth said contentedly. She held up her arms to him, and he stepped aside and let Natalie take her. At the touch of Elizabeth's full, fumbling hands on her arms Natalie recoiled for a minute, but Arthur gave her an ungentlemanly push, and she took Elizabeth around the shoulders and with Vicki's help hoisted her out of the armchair in which she had sat all evening. Elizabeth stood, speaking incoherently, and reaching her hands toward Arthur. Vicki took one of Elizabeth's arms and swung it over her shoulder; Elizabeth's whole weight fell against Natalie, and Natalie, shivering under the pressure of Elizabeth's legs against her, began half to pull, half to carry Elizabeth.

“I'd help you,” Arthur said nervously, “if I didn't think she'd make a scene when she woke up and saw I was here.”

With Arthur and Anne helping from behind, where they were sure they would not be seen, Vicki and Natalie got Elizabeth out the door and down the stairs. How inglorious, Natalie thought, going down the stairs with the heavy weight of Elizabeth against her, how perfectly abominable it is to be the receiver of such a thing, how dreadful and horrifying it is to have no choice at all about the swinging arms and legs that enwrap you, how sickening to be aware and to know that the unconscious one does not even see that it is you she is embracing, how horrid, how nauseating, how weak . . . Could I let go of her now? Natalie wondered, rounding the curve in the stairs, could I let her fall and kill herself, die perhaps, because I could not bear the holding of her? What obligation do I have toward her, what call has she upon me, that she should be leaning intimately against me, and never knowing it? How does she think I can bear it? Will I ever lean so upon her? Would she care, then, or let me fall?

“
There
we are,” Arthur said, at the foot of the stairs. Elizabeth was draped, half-conscious, over the stairpost. “Can you get her home?” he asked Natalie. “I know how fond of you she is.”

“I'm sure I can,” Natalie said. “She seems to recognize my voice.”

“She heard Nat when she didn't even move for the rest of us,” Anne added.

It was suddenly apparent to Natalie that she was, alone, to get Elizabeth home. “Listen,” she said anxiously, “I'm not sure I can do it without—”

“She'll listen to
you
,” said Vicki over her shoulder; she did not smile, but she was following Anne and Arthur up the stairs. “She
likes
you,” Vicki said, and disappeared around the turn in the staircase.

It was obviously impossible to leave Elizabeth. Even as Natalie turned in dismay to look at her, Elizabeth sagged, and began to slip gracefully to the floor. “Elizabeth,” Natalie said, wanting to cry, “oh,
damn
it.” She remembered, or tried hard to remember clearly, how Elizabeth had been the first person to speak to her kindly on this campus, and how it would be impossible in any case to leave Elizabeth here and join the others, because they would surely ask where Elizabeth had gotten to; and how Elizabeth had told her unmentionable, or almost unmentionable, secrets alone in her house in the afternoons, and how everyone owed it to Vicki and Anne to get Elizabeth home and out of their way, because Vicki and Anne were friends too, and it would be hardly kind of Natalie to ignore such an obligation they had left her, and if she left Elizabeth here it would mean possibly never seeing Vicki and Anne again, and surely not going back to them tonight, and so she might go alone to her own room if she chose, and, after all, she told herself, everyone was mortal and everyone was faulty and everyone was all together in one great world where only one life was vouchsafed to any of us, and there was never enough time to reflect on whether to do a thing or not to do a thing, because when you looked at someone it was someone no more or no less than another mortal, and, after all, who could deny another mortal some small solace in a life on this world, and, in the last analysis, Elizabeth . . .

“Arthur?” Elizabeth said.

“It's me, Natalie,” Natalie said, thinking at last how she should describe this to her father and tell him not to tell her mother.

“Natalie?” said Elizabeth. She moved a little away, and said again, “Natalie?”

“Elizabeth,” Natalie said gently. She put her arms around Elizabeth, and Elizabeth's head fell against her shoulder and Elizabeth said, “Natalie,” softly, and Natalie was jubilantly glad that she had not said, “Arthur,” again.

“Natalie, I want to die,” Elizabeth said.

“We're going home,” Natalie said.

“I want to die,” Elizabeth said.

“I know you do,” Natalie said tenderly. “Come along home.”

“Home?” said Elizabeth.

She was able to walk by herself, although Natalie had to guide her. As they went through the doorway out onto the campus Natalie was thinking, for some reason she never knew, of the trees ahead, of how she and Elizabeth could go from tree to tree across the campus, holding onto each one until they recovered themselves. Once out in the open air, however, Elizabeth recovered amazingly and walked alone, without even help from Natalie.