All the king's men

So there we sat for a while, and the minutes sifted and wavered down around us, one by one, like leaves dropping in still autumn air. Then, after a space of silence, she excused herself and I was left alone to watch the leaves drift down.

But she came back, carrying now a tray on which was a pitcher of iced tea, two glasses with sprigs of mint stuck in them, and a large devil's-food cake. That is what they give you in the country in a little white house like that when you make a visit, iced tea and devil's-food cake. She had made the cake that morning, no doubt, in preparation for my visit.

Well, eating the cake would be something to do. Nobody expects you to talk with your mouth full of cake.

In the end, however, she said something. Perhaps having the cake on the table beside her, seeing somebody eat her cake, which she knew was a good cake, as people had sat on Sunday afternoons and eaten cake in that room for years, made it possible for her to say something.

She said, "You knew Tom was dead."

She said it perfectly matter-of-factly, and that was a comfort.

"Yes," I replied, "I knew it."

I had seen it in the paper, back in February. I hadn't gone to the funeral. I figured I had been to enough funerals. And I hadn't written her a letter. I couldn't very well write a letter and say I was sorry, and I couldn't very well write her a letter of congratulations.

"It was pneumonia," she said.

I remembered Adam's saying that that was what often got such cases.

"He died very quickly," she continued. "Just three days."

"Yes," I said.

She was silent for a moment, then said, "I am resigned now. I am resigned to it all now, Jack. A time comes when you think you ca

I didn't make any answer.

"Then after I was resigned, God gave me something so I could live."

I murmured something inarticulate.

She rose abruptly from her chair, and thinking I was being dismissed, I rose, too, clumsily, and started to say something by way of a good-bye. I was ready and anxious to go. I had been a fool to come. But she reached to touch my sleeve, and said, "I want to show you something." She moved away, toward the door. "Come with me," she said.

I followed her into the little hall, down it, and into a back room. She went across the room briskly. I didn't take it in at first, but there by the window was a crib and in the crib was a baby.

She was standing on the far side of the crib looking across at me at the instant when I really saw what was there. I guess my face was a study. Anyway, she said, "It's Tom's baby. It's my little grandbaby. It's Tom's baby."

She leaned over the crib, touching the baby here and there the way women do. Then she picked it up, holding it up with one hand behind its head to prop the head. She joggled it slightly and looked directly in its face. The baby's mouth opened in a yawn, and its eyes squinched and unsquinched, and then with the joggling and clucking it was getting it gave a moist and pink and toothless smile, like an advertisement. Lucy Stark's face had exactly the kind of expression on it which you would expect, and that expression said everything there was to say on the subject in hand.

She came around the crib, holding the baby up for my inspection.

"It's a pretty baby," I said, and put out a forefinger for the baby to clutch, the way you are supposed to do.

"It looks like Tom," she said. "Don't you think so?"

Then before I could get an answer ready that wouldn't be too horrendous a lie, she went on. "But that's silly to ask you. You wouldn't know. I mean he looks like Tom when he was a baby." She paused to inspect the baby again. "It looks like Tom," she said, more to herself than to me. Then she looked directly at me. "I know it's Tom's," she declared fiercely to me, "it's got to be Tom's, it looks like him."

I looked critically at the baby, and nodded. "It favors him, all right," I agreed.

"To think," she said, "there was a time I prayed to God it wasn't Tom's baby. So an injustice wouldn't be Tom's." The baby bounced a little in her arms. It was a husky, good-looking baby, all right. She gave the baby an encouraging jiggle, and then looked back at me. "And now," she continued, "I have prayed to God that it is Tom's. And I know now."

I nodded.

"I knew in my heart," she said. "And then, do you think that poor girl–the mother–would have given it to me if she hadn't known it was Tom's. No matter what that girl did–even what they said–don't you think a mother would know? She would just know."

"Yes," I said.

"But I knew, too. In my heart. So I wrote her a letter. I went to see her, I saw the baby and held him. I persuaded her to let me adopt him."

"You've got it fixed for a legal adoption?" I asked. "So she won't–" I stopped before I could say, "be bleeding you for years."

"Oh, yes," she said, apparently not reading my mind. "I got a lawyer to see her and fix everything. I gave her some money, too. The poor girl wanted to go to California and get away. Willie didn't have much money–he spent almost everything he made–but I gave her what I could. I gave her six thousand dollars."

So Sibyl had made a good thing out of it after all, I reflected.

 "Don't you want to hold him?" Lucy asked me in an excess of generosity, thrusting out the expensive baby in my direction.

"Sure," I said, and took him. I hefted him, while I carefully tried to keep him from falling apart. "How much does he weigh?" I asked, and suddenly realized that I had the tone of a man about to buy something.

"Fifteen pounds and three ounces," she answered promptly; and added, "that is very good for three months."

"Sure," I said, "that's a lot."

She relieved me of the baby, gave him a sort of quick snuggle to her bosom, bending her head down so her face was against the baby's head, and then replaced him in the crib.

"What's his name?" I asked.

She straightened up and came around to my side of the crib. "At first," she said, "I thought I'd name him for Tom. I thought that for quite a while. Then it came to me. I would name him for Willie. His name is Willie–Willie Stark."

She led the way out into the little hall again. We walked up toward the table where my hat lay. Then she turned around and scrutinized my face as though the light weren't very good in the hall.

"You know," she said, "I named him for Willie because–"

She was still scrutinizing my face.

"–because," she continued, "because Willie was a great man."

I nodded, I suppose.

"Oh, I know he made mistakes," she said, and lifted up her chin as though facing something, "bad mistakes. Maybe he did bad things, like they say. But inside–in here, deep down–" and she laid her hand to her bosom–"he was a great man."

She wasn't bothering with my face any more, with trying to read it. For the moment, she wasn't bothering with me. I might as well not have been there.

"He was a great man," she affirmed again, in a voice nearly a whisper. Then she looked again at me, calmly. "You see, Jack," she said, "I have to believe that."

Yes, Lucy, you have to believe that. You have to believe that to live. I know that you must believe that. And I would not have you believe otherwise. It must be that way, and I understand the fact. For you see, Lucy. I must believe that, too. I must believe that Willie Stark was a great man. What happened to his greatness is not the question. Perhaps he spilled it on the ground the way you spill a liquid when the bottle breaks. Perhaps he piled up his greatness and burnt it in one great blaze in the dark like a bonfire and then there wasn't anything but dark and the embers winking. Perhaps he could not tell his greatness from ungreatness and so mixed them together that what was adulterated was lost. But he had it. I must believe that.