The Night Travellers

5. Ethan Marbell

5 Ethan Marbell In the early March evening, winter fading, they were talking quietly, on into the darkness, the way they had been doing for some weeks now. They were Mary Harbison, Jeff Blaise, and Ethan Marbell. Jeff had wanted her there, more and more positively, until she finally went with him. "His importance to me—well, I can't exaggerate it," Jeff had said. "Except for him, I wouldn't even be here." The job was what he meant, but the relationship, she knew, went back to his earlier student days, up in Baltimore. "He's like a father," Jeff had said, capping it. She gave in. Ethan's study was lined with books, set about with worn, overstuffed easy chairs, one with flat wooden armrests. Through mullioned windows heavy foliage was visible as shadows, just one hour ago strongly outlined when lightning flashed behind them, noisy when the wind had blown them, leaves clacking, audible still from the dripping rain. Ethan's chair arm held one of his numerous ashtrays made from fabric pouches filled with shot. He was talking, puffing at intervals. His pipe pointed. "Some new reports now coming out have already drawn up the statistics. The Oriental is multiplying faster than we are. If we don't kill them off now, it is suggested, they will overtake us early in the next century. My God, and this was a nation with human values once." Mary could hear Jeff answering. The good dialogue was picking up. His timing fit with Ethan's snugly as follower and leader. Step by step. "You're Mary Kerr, aren't you?" Ethan had smiled when she first came. 35 3 6 T H E N I G H T T R A V E L L E R S "Jeff just says Mary/' "The family had a branch of Kerrs," Ethan had observed. He had once gone out with Aunt Jane, she remembered then. "Let's leak all these secrets to the public," Jeff suggested now. "The shocking thought is, would they care? We're turning so indifferent it isn't real." She stirred to leave. Others would arrive here late, bringing wine and peanuts, coffee and pizza. Long, stirring talks would begin. "Her mother expects her for something," Jeff explained. "You'll miss the Wyndhams, the Taylors, George Lewis. . . ." "I know. It's too bad." "Her Highness is waiting," Jeff said. He was dry and superior, and Mary wondered if she liked it. How could he put himself so separate from, so above, the Harbison affairs? Yet he thought nothing of doing so. He stood beside her, not such a lot taller than she, his hair still (as it had been two summers before) a blond tangle, his shoulders strong, just missing too much muscle. Ethan regarded the pair through his smoke cloud. "Congress is by no means united," he began. Jeff sank down on a chair arm and the talk sprang up again. Mary had never exactly wanted to be one of them. Just to be thought of as Jeff's girl was what she wanted. Once when she was alone with him, Ethan had put his arm around her. "Look at this." Some article: OURHIDDEN GOALS IN SOUTHEAST ASIA. "Take it home," he suggested. "I'm too busy right now. Anyway, I just come here with Jeff." A dumb "Southern-girl" answer, she thought, made for dodging questions . Why take up with their ideas? Jefferson Blaise had sprung up in her life again out of the campus paths at Royal's. "Mary! It is you, isn't it? I couldn't be wrong." "Jeff!" Her heart did triple backsprings and several pulsing leaps in various directions. "Yes, it's me," she managed. He was teaching there, twice weekly. "What happened to you that summer? No one seemed to know why you left." "They made me. I was . . . just too young, I guess." She stammered it out. He laughed, and she remembered he had said that, about her being too young. Fifteen then; would he think the same of seventeen? He touched her shoulder, pushing at it a little, back, then forward. A thrill tracked down her arm. "Then you're so much older now?" He was going to be the same as before. She could tell it already. The Home Scene 37 You don't know anything about him, they had said. She didn't...