Lena Hackley
Chapter I
At the end of the second World War, a young man returned to our small town to find his sweetheart had gotten into trouble, and was going to have a child. She had said nothing of this in their correspondence, which had never slackened in frequency all the four years he had been away, and her tone in the last few letters had been jubilant at his impending return. They were both very young. He had enlisted at eighteen, and she had spent her sixteenth birthday in tears over the news he was soon to be gone.
At twenty this girl had enough youthful enthusiasm left, to believe her mistake would be easily and wholeheartedly forgiven. For the other man was, of course, a mistake—it was Walter Hackley she loved, and wanted to marry—or, perhaps more accurately, the idea of Walter Hackley she had received from his letters, and had attached to the one photograph he had had taken and sent to her from Marseilles in ’42.
I am sorry to say both these young people were unpleasantly surprised on Walter’s return home. The horrors of the front had by no means softened an implacable streak in young Hackley’s makeup. Indeed, they had only hardened this streak into a foundational ore, and the same quality which had earned him a medal on D-Day, ensured his complete lack of sympathy for his erring girlfriend. He abandoned her utterly, and without an ounce of regret.
I need hardly say this made the young lady very unhappy, and may even have contributed to the shortening of her life—for it is an indisputable fact, that a mere two months later, she went into an early and difficult labor, in which she lost first her child and, after a few miserable, drawn-out days, her own life.
Walter Hackley’s behavior on this occasion was singular. That he went to the funeral at all was enough to be remarked on. He had maintained absolute silence on the subject of his former love and her predicament. Some of our romantics suspected him of a latent tenderness, because he would not engage in the spiteful tittle-tattle which must attend any lamb’s straying from the strict laws of the fold, and when any such talk was once begun, he would leave the room where her shame was discussed. All such ideas were dashed at her graveside where, in front of her grieving family, Walter approached the new-dug earth, and spat on her coffin, as though it belonged to an enemy German.
In truth, to Walter’s psychology they were the same, the wayward girl and the SS officer. When once he had been betrayed, or taught to hate, he did not take the trouble to sort his enemies into degrees, but treated them all with the same ruthlessness.
It was a sad business, and one I would hardly care to mention, if its discovery did not show a difference in Walter Hackley’s two sons. For Walter did marry, though it was not for another ten years, once he had fairly made his fortune by starting a company for fertilizers and other agricultural products; and I do not know but that his marriage was just another investment to increase this wealth. The chosen companion of his bosom was incapable of storing up happiness for anyone, including herself. Gloria Hackley, née Ashforth, was very able to pity her own misfortunes, but her ability stopped there, and she seemed even to take a perverse delight in pestering and wheedling others at their weakest seams. She was, however, very rich, and bore two sons, the only things of flesh and blood Walter Hackley coveted. By this measure, he considered his marriage a success.
The boys, Walter Jr. and George, were born two years apart; and it was incredible the differences between these two, who grew up with the same financial cornucopia, and the same emotional deprivation. Walter Hackley, delighted to have sons, was yet incapable of loving them, and Gloria ignored her children as much as possible, devoting herself to Bridge or Parcheesi, as the mood struck her.
Such barren conditions produced variable fruit. The eldest, Walter Jr., even seemed to thrive—as a boy, he already showed signs of a mind and heart elastic and effortlessly finding in everyone and every situation some good. Some of the more religious members of our town said he was blessed by Heaven—and indeed I have rarely heard of anyone as incapable of malice or as forgetful of a grudge. Nor was he blind to the miseries of the world. He simply accepted, from the age of understanding, where this same understanding must falter. He knew instinctively what he could not change, and brought to such disappointments a native serenity.
George, by contrast, seemed even to glean the seeds of misery lying dormant from his brother’s field, and to take these greedily to his own soul, where they grew into stout thorns, strangling the sun. Suffering in all its forms distressed him. He cried over the mice caught in the basement’s traps as if each was a long-lost cousin. As a child his life was almost a purgatory. As he became aware of man’s capability of inhumanity to man, he started to obsessively seek out examples—he devoured at twelve accounts of the Holocaust and the gulags that would have disturbed any adult, incapable of stopping himself, endlessly seeking understanding, fruitlessly searching after the certainty of an explanation. His sleep was disturbed by the eyes of starving men, staring at him angrily, reproachfully…in the throes of this torment, his brother’s nature became incomprehensible to him, even vile in its seeming lack of concern. How could Walter Jr sit through their history lessons at school, learning about slavery and genocide, and then go off whistling to play football in the sun?
Naturally Walter Hackley did not tell his sons about his first love. George found out about his ruthless act through a friend, a nosy boy called Ed Farley, who was as good a gossip as any old woman. The two were out fishing and a dispute arose over how their spoils should be divided. Neither boy was very brave with his fists, so they had to resort to unkind words. At last Ed Farley sneered.
“Boy, you’re Walter Hackley’s son, alright! Always out for yourself, always ready to cut someone, even your best friend—even a woman!”
Ed had a gossip’s delight in his eye, and George knew this look very well—it was the thrill Ed got from knowing something dreadful about anyone, when that person was in blissful ignorance of evil.
“What the hell are you talking about?” George could not help himself, though he instantly wished he had.
“What! You mean you don’t know?” Ed’s sneer widened. “You don’t know your dad had a sweetheart before the war? Oh, sure, he did. He found out she was going to have a kid, and do you know what he did? He dropped her, and she died of a broken heart, and her kid died, too. Some guy, your dad!”
George was white and trembling. “I don’t believe you.” He said; but belief was written in every line of his face. Ed saw this belief, and pressed his advantage with gleeful cruelty.
“And then he went to her funeral, and spat on her grave! How do you like your dad now, huh? And you’re just like him—you’re like him to a tee—and if you don’t let me take five perch, I’ll tell everyone at school what a good, forgiving man your dad is!”
George hesitated—his trembling increased—and then, in a spasm, he took hold of the bucket of perch they had caught, dumped it into the water, and ran away, pursued by Ed Farley’s enraged cries.