‘It was an accident,’ Mr. Munn said. An accident, he thought. And the substance of that moment when he had stood speechless on the platform that day before all those people was powerfully and immediately in his mind: the enormous emptiness of the swinging, incandescent blue depth of the sky, the emptiness, tugging like an abyss, of all these faces lifted under the beating light, the dryness of his own throat. And the old man whose face he had seen below the platform. Yes, an accident. And an accident that I’m here now, he decided. And looking across the big, pleasant room with its soft carpet and fine furnishings and at the leaping firelight and the known faces, he was aware how strong accident was — how here he was, warmed and fed and surrounded by these people who, if he spoke a single word, would turn pleasantly to him, and how cold it was snowing outside, all the countryside filling up with snow that would blind all familiar contours, and how but for the accidents which were his history he might be out there, or elsewhere, miserable, lost, unbefriended. How anyone might be. That thought made the room, and all in it seem suddenly insubstantial, like a dream. The bottom might drop out; it was dropping out even while you looked, maybe. He shook his head, as though in a dismissal, and turning to the boy, repeated, ‘It was an accident.’

  ‘That’s not what people say. They’ve heard you make speeches since ——’

  Mr. Munn looked sharply at the boy. ‘There was an old man there,’ he began, ‘standing just at the edge of the platform. When I got up I saw him. I just saw him there. He was just an ordinary sort of old fellow, straw hat and overalls, nothing out of the way.’ Mr. Munn realized that he did not remember what he had actually said that day at the rally. Instead, he only remembered the face of that old man. That was what seemed important now, but it was hard to find words for the importance. He discovered that the boy was not really attending to him, that he was following his own thought, and so, somewhat embarrassedly, he said, ‘Well, you see, it was just sort of an accident.’

  ‘Yes, sir, I see,’ the boy replied, leaping on with his own idea; ‘but you know, about not going into Mr. Lightfoot’s office in Cincinnati and all. If I went up there, there’d just be a lot of desk work, making up briefs and so on. There wouldn’t be any chance for what you’re doing. Things like the rally. What you’re doing.’

  ‘If we win, it’ll be worth it,’ Mr. Munn said. ‘It’ll be something. If we don’t, it’ll be something else.’

  ‘You’ll win, all right,’ the boy rejoined, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped before him. They were long, brown, sinewy hands, and they sprang strongly from the brown wrists. ‘You’re bound to win. Everybody down round here’ll be better off. Everybody’ll see that.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Mr. Munn replied. It was all so simple to the boy. People just saw what was good for them, and did it. And he was all fired up about making speeches. Telling people what was good for them. Then Mr. Munn saw the boy watching Lucille Christian again, and added to himself: And he talks to that Christian girl a couple of hours and decides he’ll settle down here. It’s all surface to him yet. Everything. He’s not much better than a child. Getting older is breaking through the surfaces. Layer after layer. Peeling them off to find what’s inside. What’s inside. Mighty few seemed to know, and they never told. Captain Todd seemed to know. Then, with a flash of discovery as he remembered Matilda’s face, he decided that she knew, too. But there were few Captains and Matildas. The chances were you never knew. Just kept on peeling. Like skin off an onion. And if you stopped you died, or rather, you were dead already. ‘We may not win,’ he said meditatively, and sucked at his pipe, ‘but win or lose, we’re in up to our necks now.’

  The boy wasn’t listening now. He was looking across the room. The other women were standing, and Lucille Christian was getting to her feet. The boy got up and moved quickly across to her, and waited at her side while she told everyone good night. Then, when she went out with May and Matilda, he walked with her as far as the foot of the stairs. The Senator, who had escorted them all that far, returned immediately to the room, rubbing his hands together and saying, ‘Well, gentlemen, I propose another sample of the most glorious product of our glorious commonwealth.’ He poured the drinks, heavier this time, and turned to his guests.

  ‘I’ll have mine straight,’ Captain Todd said, ‘if you please. You know,’ he added, picking up a glass, ‘it’s the man who puts water in his whisky they say gets to be a chronic drunkard. A man drinks whisky straight and he knows what he’s doing. But whisky and water now, that’s downright insidious. I never allow myself but so much whisky and water, then I take me a straight one so I can get a grip on the facts of the case. To that, gentlemen, I attribute my success in not becoming a chronic drunkard in a world so liberally strewn, you might say, with temptation.’

  Mr. Christian squared off before the hearth, his legs spread apart and his feet dug solidly into the thick rug, and took a gulp from his glass. ‘Naw,’ he declared, ‘naw, I say ride it saddle or bareback. No matter if it’s a horse or a dog or whisky or a woman, I say a man’s got to wear the pants. All alike, they’ll all break over if they can. But I say, crow where you roost. A man’s got to do the riding. It’s me riding the whisky. Not the whisky riding me.’ Throwing his head back, he took another gulp, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down like a great red cork.

  ‘You’re right,’ the Senator said, ‘in a way. Whisky is like a woman. You get the best results if you handle it right. You build it up, you might say. Don’t just plunge in. You have to treat it like you loved it. A little coaxing and courting, that gives the best results, every time.’ He turned his glass gently in his hand, as though to illustrate his words, and his gaze seemed to draw deeply inward. For a moment he appeared to be oblivious to the men about him.

  Mr. Munn observed him. They say he’s hell with the women, he thought, when he’s off away from home. Not much chance for carrying on in this section, not for a prominent man. But Louisville and Washington, he made up for lost time when he got up there, they said.

  ‘— whisky,’ Mr. Christian was saying, ‘a great democratic institution. Next to the Declaration of Independence and Bunker Hill, damned if it ain’t the greatest. Why, whisky, it makes a rich man pore, like they say, and a pore man rich.’

  Mr. Munn was watching the Todd boy. He heard Mr. Christian’s voice pronounce the name ‘Sullins,’ and turned again toward him.

  ‘— and the Sullinses, I’ve known ’em all my life,’ Mr. Christian was saying, still standing on the rug before the hearth with his heels dug in. ‘I’ve known my bellyful of Sullinses. And this Ben Sullins, he’s like all the rest. Anything for money, and butter wouldn’t melt in their mouth. Why, old Ben Sullins — that’s Ben’s father, dead now and in hell sure as the good God put tail feathers on jaybirds to hide their ragged asses — for two dimes and a shinplaster he’d have sold his gray-haired mother to be boiled down for lye soap. And I’m not saying I’d blame him too much, for any woman in the Sullins family gets to be mighty nigh like an egg-sucking bitch ’fore she’s done. You just let a good, ordinary, God-fearing girl marry into them Sullinses, and in five years she’ll be just like ’em. I’ve seen it happen too often. Look at Ben Sullins’s wife. Come of good honest folks and looked human. But you let a woman get married with a Sullins and in five years you can’t tell ’em apart. The woman gets that sharp, gray look, like a she-rat with lard on her whiskers. That’s a way to tell a Sullins, male or female. Except when the wind’s right, and then you don’t have to look ——’

  ‘Now, now, Bill,’ Captain Todd said, ‘not bad as all that.’

  ‘You don’t know. You never made a study of Sullinses, like me. Years now, and I lay up in the bed some nights just studying about Sullinses. Somebody told me one time about a Sullins I never heard of. Lived down in Tennessee in Cheatham County, and I just took me a trip down to look at him. I just wanted to be sure he was like all the rest, and he was. I didn’t see him, but it didn’t turn out to be necessary. I saw his woman. I went up to the house where they lived and I said as polite as I could, “I’ll be mighty grateful, mam, to have a drink of water.” I’d rented me a rig just to ride out to their place, and I said, “I’m just traveling through and it’s a right warm day.” She got me the water all right. Not fresh, though, and a well right there in the side yard in plain sight. And when I got me a second dipperful, she got that Sullins look on and said, “You know, they say it promises a drouth in this section, and our well never does so good in a drouth.” So I just poured what was left in the dipper back in the bucket, and said, “Madam, I believe your name must be Sullins.” And she said it was, and asked me how I knew, did I read it on the mailbox? And I said no, it hadn’t been necessary somehow, and of course it was none of my business, but was she and her husband professing Christians? She said yes, professing Christians and Baptists. And I said I was glad to hear it, and did she know Saint Matthew, 10:42. And she said no, she didn’t know offhand. So I just said it to her: “Whoever gives to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward.” And she looked sort of funny, so I said: “Madam, I know I ain’t so little, but then your water ain’t so cold either. And please pay my respects to Mr. Sullins.” She was like all the Sullins women. They marry a Sullins, and it’s like a disease. It’s catching. A woman marries a Sullins and she’s ruined for life. It’s a disease, like the clap. And by God, it’s hereditary, too, and all the children get it, because they’re all Sullinses. Now, I tell you ——’

  Mr. Munn found that his mind was not following. And the room was close and hot. Too much likker, he thought, and then wondered how many drinks he had had that evening. Or not enough. He drained his glass, feeling the drink revive him a little. Then the Senator poured another for him, smiling at him, and Mr. Munn lifted it to his lips. Captain Todd was talking now. He saw the Captain sitting very erect in his chair and talking gravely to Mr. Christian. Mr. Christian still stood on the rug in front of the hearth, and his face and the great dome of his bald skull were a single, deep, unvariegated crimson.

  Much later they all went upstairs. Senator Tolliver showed Mr. Munn to his room, wished him a pleasant rest, and went off down the hall. When Mr. Munn entered, and closed the door as softly as possible behind him, the darkness leaped suddenly at him, like a live thing, and clutched him. In the total blackness he was aware only of a motion and a drumming in his head: a motion like the lift and swing of the horizon when one is at sea in a small boat, but all was blackness, both sea and sky. What I hear is my own blood beating in my head, he thought. He began to undress in the dark room so as not to disturb May, letting the garments fall to the floor at his feet. It was cold in the room, and he was aware of the cold, but as knowledge, as it were, not as sensation; and he thought of the snow, which must be falling outside, as falling on naked flesh, coldly and with loving gentleness. And then it came to him that all he knew was the blackness into which he stared and the swinging motion and the beat of the blood. But was he staring into blackness, a blackness external to him and circumambient, or was he the blackness, his own head of terrific circumference embracing, enclosing, defining the blackness, and the effort of staring into the blackness a staring inward into himself, into his own head which enclosed the blackness and everything? And enclosed the snow that gently fell in darkness.

  When he leaned over to untie and remove his shoes, the beating in his head grew more powerful, and accelerated until the separate beats merged into a pervasive, pulsing roar. He was aware of his hands doing their work, but aware as one is of a thought, not as of a fact of the body. Finishing, he straightened up, and the roaring ceased. Suddenly, as though by contrast, there was silence. Then he knew again the beating of the blood, but gently now, and more retarded. And then he was aware of another sound, scarcely audible, another rhythm. It was the breathing of May. He thought that he must be standing near the bed, and tried to recall its position in the room. Yes, near the door.

  He concentrated on that sound, straining in the darkness, and it seemed to become more pronounced. He tried to imagine her lying there, her posture, the expression on her face, remote and rapt, but could not. The image would not stick in his mind. It would flicker and be gone. But the almost inaudible breathing, that was steady, was real, was everything. Anonymous, nameless in the dark, it was the focus of the dark. There was nothing else.

  There was a stirring from the bed. ‘Perse?’ May’s voice said, questioningly, heavy with sleep.

  For a moment he did not answer. He felt cheated, angry, despairing, as one from whom revelation has been snatched away. ‘Yes,’ he managed to say. His desire had left him.

  When morning came, the snow lay evenly over the fields. The morning was unusually cold, and unusually bright. The very air seemed to exist as pure, icy brilliance, and the whole countryside, under the sun, returned that brilliance. Wrapped in that brilliance, the Senator, Captain Todd, Mr. Christian, Mr. Munn, and May walked slowly across the pasture. Ahead of them some twenty-five yards, their forms very precise in the pure light and their shadows sharp on the snow, walked Lucille Christian and Captain Todd’s son. The Senator nodded toward them, and said: ‘Well, it seems they’re getting along right well. Isn’t that right, Bill?’

  ‘It looks like she’s managing to put up with him,’ Mr. Christian admitted.

  ‘You can’t blame him,’ May said. ‘She is awfully pretty, Mr. Christian.’

  ‘Now ain’t it a wonder, looking at me,’ Mr. Christian rejoined. He was obviously pleased. He struck his gloved hands together in front of him, as though to stimulate the circulation, and then thrust them hard into the side pockets of his coat. ‘It’s sure a fine day!’ he exclaimed.

  ‘Beautiful,’ May said, ‘so beautiful! Only, why didn’t it snow in time for Christmas? It never does any more.’ She swept her glance around the gleaming horizon, and took a deep breath as though that act gave her a fuller possession of the distant scene.

  Mr. Munn recalled that those were the precise words she had used that morning on first looking out the window to see the snow over everything and the bright sun. And that, looking at her pleasure then, and thinking of standing in the dark the night before and listening to her breathing, he had been swept by shame and remorse, as though at an infidelity. Now, in the brilliant light, while she stood there delicately and swept her gaze over the pure and glittering fields, the incident of the night, even the shame of the morning, did not seem credible. He thrust the matter from his consciousness; but by an act of will. As she walked on ahead with Captain Todd and Mr. Christian, he continued to stare somberly after her.

  The Senator began to talk about the meeting of the day before, speaking fluently, confidentially, with his head bowed a little and his hands clasped behind his back. He was glad, he said, to see that Mr. Munn had backed Captain Todd’s motion to draw up a public statement condemning the anonymous letter to Mr. Sullins. He was glad that he felt so keenly the danger of engendering ill feeling and thoughtless passion in any controversial movement such as the Association was. ‘We must be reasonable,’ he asserted, ‘and must try to keep the extreme sentiment of the Association under control.’

  ‘I haven’t observed anything very extreme,’ Mr. Munn said almost diffidently. ‘That letter, now, I wonder how much that really means. Just a sort of accident, not a sentiment.’

  ‘Oh, not that kind of extremism, even. I don’t necessarily mean that. Though in any popular movement there is a tendency toward extreme action that you don’t see. That only needs a leader. They say a ship can burn for days and not much harm done until somebody opens a hatch and the air strikes. A leader is like that, he just opens a hatch. We must guard against the development of any such sentiment. We must keep the hatches down, so to speak. Now take Bill, for instance. I never knew a finer man than Bill Christian. Great sincerity and great strength of character. But he is sometimes given to violent speech. A kind of noble rage, you might say. But he speaks now, not as an individual but as a representative of something bigger than any individual, bigger than he is, or you, or I. He speaks with more than personal authority. And there is no telling what a chance word of random violence or exaggerated feeling might start, what train of thought that might in the end mean action to be regretted by all. And by him most of all, perhaps.’

  The Senator lifted his eyes and looked off across the slope toward the little group of figures. Mr. Christian and the rest were near the house now. ‘Of course, what I am saying is confidential,’ the Senator went on, ‘and I say it in all loyalty. I simply say it to you, my boy, because you are one of those who can best help to promote the successful growth of the Association along sound and reasonable lines. We must keep our main objective in view — not to make a fortune in tobacco this year, perhaps, but to be stronger next year and the next. Wars are won, history teaches, not by winning battles, but by winning the right battle. And that is something one must learn in the rough and tumble of politics. Which compromises to make, for all life is a compromise with the ideal, but at the same time to move always toward the ideal and never to lose sight of it or lose the grasp of it in one’s thoughts. God knows, I’ve made mistakes, I’ve made the wrong compromises sometimes and gone right down the line with the boys, but I’ve tried not to lose sight of the final objective’ — he lifted his head again and looked across the gleaming fields — ‘to be of some service to the people of my section. And you,’ he said, turning suddenly, as though, engaged in his own musings, he had become oblivious of Mr. Munn’s presence and but now recollected himself, ‘you have a great future before you. Your prestige is increasing every day. If the Association survives and prospers, there is no way to say how far you may go. You have youth. Energy. Intelligence. Sound legal training. There is no telling, my boy.’