Part 9

How shall I write of Haggershaven as my eyes first saw it twenty-two years ago? Of the rolling acres of rich plowed land, interrupted here and there by stone outcroppings worn smooth and round by time, and trees in woodlots or standing alone strong and unperturbed? Of the main building, grown by fits and starts from the original farmhouse into a great, rambling eccentricity stopping short of monstrosity only by its complete innocence of pretense? Shall I describe the two dormitories, severely functional, escaping harshness because they had not been built by carpenters and though sturdy enough, betrayed the amateur touch in every line? Or the cottages and apartments, two, four, at most six rooms, for the married fellows and their families? These were scattered all over, some so avid for privacy that one could pass unknowing within feet of the concealing trees or shrubbery, others bold in the sunshine on knolls or in hollows.

I could tell of the small shops, the miniature laboratories, the inadequate observatory, the heterogeneous assortment of books which was both less and more than a library, the dozens of outbuildings. But these things were not the haven. They were merely the least of its possessions. For Haggershaven was not a material place at all, but a spiritual freedom. Its limits were only the limits of what its fellows could do or think or inquire. It was circumscribed only by the outside world, not by internal rules and taboos, competition or curriculum.

Most of this I could see for myself, much of it was explained by Ace. “But how can you afford the time to take me all around this way?” I asked; “I must be interfering with your own work.”

He grinned. “This is my period to be guide, counselor and friend to those whove strayed in here, wittingly or un. Don’t worry, after youre a fellow youll get told off for all the jobs, from shoveling manure to gilding weathercocks.”

I sighed. “The chances of my getting to be a fellow are minus nothing. Especially after last night.”

He didnt pretend to misunderstand. “Barbara’ll come out of it. She’s not always that way. As her father says, she’s high-strung, and she’s been working madly. And to tell the truth,” he went on in a burst of frankness, “she really doesnt get on too well with other women. She has a masculine mind.”

I have often noticed that men not strikingly brilliant themselves attribute masculine minds to intelligent women on the consoling assumption that feminine minds are normally inferior. Ace however was manifestly innocent of any attempt to patronize.

“Anyway,” he concluded, “she has only one vote.”

I didnt know whether to take this as a pledge of support or mere politeness. “Isnt it wasteful, assigning a chemist like Dr Agati to kitchen work? Or isnt he a good chemist?”

“Just about the best there is. His artificial tea and coffee would bring a fortune to the haven if there were a profitable market; even as it is it’ll bring a good piece of change. Wasteful? What would you have us do, hire cooks and servants?”

“Theyre cheap enough.”

“Or frightfully expensive. Specialization, the division of labor, is certainly not cheap in anything but dollars and cents, and not always then. And it’s unquestionably wasteful in terms of equality. And I don’t think there’s anyone at the haven who isn’t an egalitarian.”

“But you do specialize and divide labor. Don’t tell me you swap your physics for Agati’s chemistry.”

“In a way we do. Of course I don’t set up as an experimenter, any more than he does as a speculator. But there have been plenty of times Ive worked under his direction when he needed an assistant who didnt know anything but had a strong back.”

“All right,” I said; “but I still don’t see why you can’t hire a cook and some dishwashers.”

“Where would our equality be then? What would happen to our fellowship?”

Haggershaven’s history, which I got little by little, was more than a link with the past; it was a possible hint of what might have been if the War of Southron Independence had not interrupted the American pattern. Barbara’s great-great-grandfather, Herbert Haggerwells, had been a Confederate major from North Carolina who, as conquerors sometimes do, had fallen in love with the then fat Pennsylvania countryside. After the war he had put everything—not much by Southron standards, but a fortune in depreciated, soon to be repudiated, United States greenbacks—into the farm which later formed the nucleus of Haggershaven. Then he married a local girl and transformed himself into a Northerner.

Until I became too accustomed to notice it anymore I used to stare at his portrait in the library, picturing in idle fancy a possible meeting on the battlefield between this aristocratic gentleman with his curling mustache and daggerlike imperial and my own plebian Granpa Hodgins. But the chance of their ever having come face to face was much more than doubtful; I, who had studied both their likenesses, was the only link between them.

“Hard looking character, ay?” commented Ace. “This was painted when he was mellow; imagine him twenty years earlier. Pistols cocked and Juvenal or Horace or Seneca in the saddlebags.”

“He was a cavalry officer, then?”

“I don’t know. Don’t think so as a matter of fact. Saddlebags was just my artistic touch. They say he was a holy terror; discipline and all that—it sort of goes with a man on horseback. And the old Roman boys are pure deduction; he was that type. Patronized several writers and artists; you know: ‘Drop down to my estate and stay a while’ and they stayed five or ten years.”

But it was Major Haggerwells’ son who, seeing the deterioration of Northern colleges, had invited a few restive scholars to make their home with him. They were free to pursue their studies under an elastic arrangement which permitted them to be selfsupporting through work on the farm.

Thomas Haggerwells’ father had organized the scheme further, attracting a larger number of schoolmen who contributed greatly to the material progress of the haven. They patented inventions, marketless at home, which brought regular royalties from more industrialized countries. Agronomists improved the haven’s crops and took in a steady income from seed. Chemists found ways of utilizing otherwise wasted byproducts; proceeds from scholarly works—and one more popular than scholarly—added to the funds. In his will, Volney Haggerwells left the properties to the fellowship.

I suppose I expected there would be some uniformity, some basic type characterizing the fellows. Not that Barbara, or Ace, or Hiro Agati resembled a stereotype at any point, any more than I did myself, but then I was not one of the elect nor likely to be. Even after I had met more than half of them the notion persisted that there must be some stamp on them proclaiming what they were.

Yet as I wandered about the haven, alone or with Ace, the people I met were quite diverse, more so by far than in the everyday world. There were the ebullient and the glum, the talkative and the laconic, the bustling and the slow-moving. Some were part of a family, others lived ascetically, withdrawn from the pleasures of the flesh.

In the end I realized there was, if not a similarity, a strong bond. The fellows, conventional or eccentric, passionate or reserved, were all earnest, purposeful and, despite individual variations, tenacious. They were, though I hesitate to use so emotional a word, dedicated. The cruel struggle and suspicion, the frantic endeavor to improve one’s own financial, social, or political standing by maiming or destroying someone else intent on the same endeavor was either unknown or so subdued as to be imperceptible at the haven. Disagreements and jealousies existed, but they were different in kind rather than in degree from those to which I had been accustomed all my life. The pervasive fears which fostered the latter, the same fears which made lotteries and indenture frantic gambles to escape the wretchedness of life, could not circulate in the security of the haven.

After the scene at my arrival, I didnt see Barbara again for some ten days. Even then it was but a glimpse, caught as she hurried in one direction and I sauntered in another. She threw me a single frigid glance and went on. Later, I was talking with Mr Haggerwells, who had proved to be not quite an amateur of history but more than a dabbler, when, without knocking, she burst into the room.

“Father, I—” Then she caught sight of me. “Sorry. I didnt know you were entertaining.”

His tone was that of one found in a guilty act. “Come in, come in, Barbara. Backmaker is after all something of a protégé of yours. Urania, you know—if one may stretch the ascription a bit—encouraging Clio.”

“Really, Father!” She was regal. Wounded, scornful, but majestic. “I’m sure I don’t know enough about self-taught pundits to sponsor them. It seems too bad they have to waste your time—”

He flushed. “Please, Barbara. You must, you really must control....”

Her disapproval became open anger. “Must I? Must I? And stand by while every pretentious swindler usurps your attention? Oh, I don’t ask for any special favors as your daughter; I know too well I have none coming. But I should think at least the consideration due a fellow of the haven would prompt ordinary courtesy even where no natural affection exists!”

“Barbara, please.... Oh, my dear girl, how can you ...?”

But she was gone, leaving him distressed and me puzzled. Not at her lack of restraint but at her accusation that he lacked a father’s love for her. Nothing was clearer than his pride in her or his protective, baffled tenderness. It did not seem possible so willful a misunderstanding could be maintained.

“You can’t judge Barbara by ordinary standards,” insisted Ace uncomfortably, when I told him what had happened.

“I’m not judging her by any standards or at all,” I said; “I just don’t see how anyone could get things so wrong.”

“She.... Her nature needs sympathy. Lots of it. She’s never had the understanding and encouragement she ought to have.”

“It looks the other way around to me.”

“That’s because you don’t know the background. She’s always been lonely. From childhood. Her mother was impatient of children and never found time for her.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Why ... she told me, of course.”

“And you believed her. Without corroborative evidence. Is that what’s called the scientific attitude?”

He stopped stock-still. “Look here, Backmaker—” a moment before I had been Hodge to him—“Look here, Backmaker, I’m damned tired of all the things people say about Barbara; the jeers and sneers and gossip by people who just aren’t good enough to breathe the same air with her, much less have the faintest notion of her mind and spirit—” “Come off it, Ace,” I interrupted. “I havent got anything against Barbara. The shoe is on the other foot. Tell her I’m all right, will you? Don’t waste time trying to convince me; I’m just trying to get along.”

It was clear, not only from the slips which evaded Ace’s guard, but from less restrained remarks by other fellows, that Barbara’s tortured jealousy was a fixture of her character. She had created feuds, slandered and reviled fellows who had been guilty of nothing except trying to interest her father in some project in which she herself was not concerned. I learned much more also, much Ace had no desire to convey. But he was a poor hand at concealing anything, and it was clear he was helplessly subject to her, but without the usual kindly anesthetic of illusion. I guessed he had enjoyed her favors, but she evidently didnt bother to hide the fact that the privilege was not exclusive; perhaps indeed she insisted on his knowing. I gathered she was a fiercely moral polyandrist, demanding absolute fidelity without offering the slightest hope of reciprocal singlemindedness.

_12._ _MORE OF HAGGERSHAVEN_

Among the fellows was an Oliver Midbin, a student of what he chose to call the new and revolutionary science of Emotional Pathology. Tall and thin, with an incongruous little potbelly like an enlarged and far-slipped adamsapple, he pounced on me as a ready-made and captive audience for his theories.

“Now this case of pseudo-aphonia—” “He means the dumb girl,” explained Ace, aside.

“Nonsense. Dumbness is not even the statement of a symptom, but a very imperfect description. Pseudo-aphonia. Purely of an emotional nature. Of course if you take her to some medical quack he’ll convince himself and you and certainly her that there’s an impairment, or degeneration, or atrophy of the vocal cords—”

“I’m not the girl’s guardian, Mr Midbin—” “Doctor. Philosophiae, Göttingen. Trivial matter.”

“Excuse me, Dr Midbin. Anyway, I’m not her guardian so I’m not taking her anywhere. But, just as a theoretical question, suppose examination did reveal physical damage?”

He appeared delighted, and rubbed his hands together. “Oh, it would. I assure you it would. These fellows always find what theyre looking for. If your disposition is sour theyll find warts on your duodenum. In a postmortem. In a postmortem. Whereas Emotional Pathology deals with the sour disposition and lets the warts, if any, take care of themselves. Matter is a function of the mind. People are dumb or blind or deaf for a purpose. Now what purpose can the girl have for muteness?”

“No conversation?” I suggested. I didnt doubt Midbin was an authority, but his manner made flippancy almost irresistible.

“I shall find out,” he said firmly. “This is bound to be a simpler maladjustment than Barbara’s—”

“Aw, come on,” protested Ace.

“Nonsense, Dorn; obscurantic nonsense. Reticence is a necessary ingredient of those medical ethics by which the quacks conceal incompetence. Mumbo jumbo to keep the layman from asking annoying questions. Priestly, not scientific approach. Art and mystery of phlebotomy. Don’t hold back knowledge; publish it to the world.”

“I think Barbara wouldnt want her private thoughts published to the world. You have to draw the line somewhere.”

Midbin put his head on one side and looked at Ace as though he were difficult to see. “Now that’s interesting, Dorn,” he said; “I wonder what turns a seeker after knowledge into a censor.”

“Are you going to start exploring my emotional pathology now?”

“Not interesting enough; not nearly interesting enough. Diagnosis while you wait; treatment in a few easy instalments. Barbara now—there’s a really beautiful case. Beautiful case; years of treatment and little sign of improvement. Of course she wouldnt want her thoughts known. Why? Because she’s happy with her hatred for her dead mother. Shocking to Mrs Grundy; doubly ditto to Mister. Exaggerated possessiveness toward her father makes her miserable. Thoughts known, misery ventilated: shame, condemnation, fie, fie. Her fantasy—” “Midbin!”

“Her fantasy of going back to childhood (fascinating; adult employs infantile time-sequence, infantile magic, infantile hatreds) in order to injure her mother is a sick notion she cherishes the way a dog licks a wound. But without analogous therapy. Ventilate it. Ventilate it. Now this girl’s case is bound to be simpler. Younger if nothing else. And nice, overt symptoms. Bring her around tomorrow and we’ll begin.”

“Me?” I asked.

“Who else? Youre the only one she doesnt seem to distrust.”

It was annoying to have the girl’s puppylike devotion observed and commented on. I realized she saw me as the only connection, however tenuous, with a normal past; I had assumed she would turn naturally after a few days to the women who took such open pleasure in fussing over her affliction. However she merely suffered their attentions; no matter how I tried to avoid her she sought me out, running to me with muted cries which should have been touching but were only painful.

Mr Haggerwells’ telegram to the sheriff’s office at York had brought the reply that a deputy sheriff would visit the haven “when time permitted.” He had also telegraphed the Spanish legation who answered they knew no other Escobars than Don Jaime and his wife. The girl might be a servant or a stranger; it was no concern of His Most Catholic Majesty.

The school uniform made it unlikely she was a servant but beyond this, little was deducible. She did not respond to questions in either Spanish or English, and it was impossible to tell if she understood their meaning, for her blank expression remained unchanged. When offered pencil and paper she handled them curiously, then let them slide to the floor.

I wondered briefly if perhaps her intelligence was slightly subnormal, but this was met by a firm, even belligerent denial from Midbin, whose conclusion was confirmed, at least in my opinion, by her apparently excellent coordination, her personal neatness and fastidiousness which were far more delicate than any I’d been accustomed to.

Midbin’s method of treatment smacked of the mystical. His subjects were supposed to relax on a couch and say whatever came into their minds. At least this was the clearest part of the explanation he gave when I rebelliously escorted the girl to his “office,” a large, bare room decorated only by some old European calendars by the popular academician, Picasso. The couch was a cot which Midbin himself used more conventionally at night.

“All right,” I said; “just how are you going to manage?”

“Convince her everything’s all right and I’m not going to hurt her.”

“Sure,” I agreed. “Sure. Only: how?”

He gave me one of his head-on-shoulder looks and turned to the girl who waited apathetically, with downcast eyes. “You lie down,” he suggested.

“Me? I’m not dumb.”

“Pretend you are. Lie down, close your eyes, say the first thing on your tongue. Without stopping to think about it.”

“How can I say anything if I’m pretending to be dumb?” Grudgingly I complied, fancying a faint look of curiosity passing over the too-placid face. “‘No man bathes twice in the same stream,’” I muttered.

He made me repeat the performance several times, then by pantomime urged her to imitate me. It was doubtful if she understood; in the end we nudged her gently into the required position. There was no question of relaxation; she lay there warily, tense and stiff even with her eyes closed.

The whole business was so manifestly useless and absurd, to say nothing of being undignified, that I was tempted to walk out on it. Only ignoble calculation on Midbin’s voting for my acceptance in the haven kept me there.

Looking at the form stretched out so rigidly, I could not but admit again that the girl was beautiful. But the admission was dispassionate; the beauty was abstract and neutral, the lovely young lines evoked no lust. I felt only vexation because her plight kept me from the wonders of Haggershaven.

“What good can this possibly do?” I burst out after ten fruitless minutes. “Youre trying to find out why she can’t talk and she can’t talk to tell you why she can’t talk.”

“Science explores all methods of approach,” Midbin answered loftily; “I’m searching for a technique which will reach her. Bring her back tomorrow.”

I swallowed my annoyance and started out. The girl jumped up and pressed close to my side. Outdoors the air was crisp; I felt her suppress a slight shiver. “Now I suppose I’ll have to take you where it’s warm or find a wrap for you,” I scolded irritably. “I don’t know why I have to be your nursemaid.”

She whimpered very softly and I was remorseful. None erf this was her fault; my callousness was inexcusable. But if she could only attach herself to some other protector and leave me alone....

As one about to be banished I tried to cram everything into short days. I realized that these autumn weeks, spent in casual conversation or joining the familiar preparations for rural winter, were a period of thorough and critical probation. There was little I could do to sway the decision beyond the exhibition of an honest willingness to turn to whatever work needed doing, and to repeat, whenever the opportunity offered, that Haggershaven was literally a revelation to me, an island of civilization in the midst of a chaotic and savage sea. My dream was to make a landfall there.

Certainly my meager background and scraps of reading would not persuade the men and women of the haven; I could only hope they might divine some promise in me. Against this hope I put Barbara’s enmity, a hostility now exacerbated by rage at Oliver Midbin for daring to devote to another, particularly another woman, the attention which had been her due, and the very technique used for her. I knew her persistence and I could not doubt she would move enough of the fellows to insure my rejection.

The gang which had been operating in the vicinity, presumably the same one I had encountered, moved on. At least no further crimes were attributed to it. Once they were gone, Deputy Sheriff Beasley finally found time to visit Haggershaven in response to the telegram. He had evidently been there before without attaining much respect on either side. I got the distinct impression he would have preferred a more formal examination than the one which took place in Mr Haggerwells’ study, with fellows drifting in and out, interrupting the proceedings with comments of their own.

I think he doubted the girl’s dumbness. He barked his questions so loudly and brusquely they would have terrified a far more securely poised individual. She promptly went into dry hysterics, whereupon he turned his attention to me.

I was apprehensive lest his questions explore my life with Tyss and my connection with the Grand Army, but apparently mere presence at Haggershaven indicated an innocence not unrelated to idiocy, at least so far as the more popular crimes were concerned. My passage of the York road and all the events leading up to it were outside his interest; he wanted only a succinct story of the holdup, reminding me of the late Colonel Tolliburr in his assumption that the lay eye ought normally to be photographic of the minutest detail.

He was clearly dissatisfied with my account and left grumbling that it would be more to the point if bookworms learned to identify a man properly, instead of logarithms or trigonometry. I didn’t see exactly how this applied to me, since I was laudably ignorant of both subjects.

If Officer Beasley was disappointed, Midbin was enchanted. Of course he had heard my narrative before, but this was the first time he’d savored its possible impact on the girl.

“You see, her pseudo-aphonia is neither congenital nor of long standing. All logic leads to the conclusion that it’s the result of her terror during the experience. She must have wanted to scream, it must have been almost impossible for her not to scream, but for her very life she dared not. The instinctive, automatic reaction was the one she could not allow herself. She had to remain mute while she watched the murders.”

For the first time it seemed possible there was more to Midbin than his garrulity.

“She crushed back that natural, overwhelming impulse,” he went on. “She had to; her life depended on it. It was an enormous effort and the effect on her was in proportion; she achieved her object too well; when it was safe for her to speak again she couldnt.”

It all sounded so plausible it was some time before I thought to ask him why she didnt appear to understand what we said, or why she didnt write anything when she was handed pencil and paper.