Matters of Chance Read online

  Matters of Chance

  A Novel

  Jeannette Haien

  For Ernest Ballard

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Afterwards

  Part One

  1 The Beginning

  2 The Handspike

  3 Unto Nations Wide

  4 Giving Rise to…

  5 The Dominions of Memory and Expectation

  6 Over and Out

  7 Shifts of the Shoreline Sands

  8 Running Through a Decade

  9 Soaring

  10 Suddenly

  11 Eclipse

  Part Two

  1 Prologue

  2 That Singular Summer, into Autumn

  3 Adjacent Destinies

  4 Now

  About the Author

  Praise

  Other Books by Jeannette Haien

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Author’s Note

  I want to name the four inspiriters who stood by me during the long time it took to write this book. They are Ernest Ballard and Mark Strand and Robert S. Jones and Peter Matson.

  Matters of Chance is a work of fiction. All the characters who appear on the book’s pages are imagined.

  Insofar as the lives of the imagined people were profoundly influenced by the events of World War II, History looms large in the narrative, and speaks for itself.

  As for that part of the book’s action relating to the Liberty ship SS John T. Stubbins—to her missioned wartime voyage from Tacoma, Washington, to Port Said—I gratefully acknowledge the counselings given me by Captain Rnn Maurice Henderson.

  Afterwards

  When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,

  And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,

  Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,

  ‘He was a man who used to notice such things’?

  If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid’s soundless blink,

  The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight

  Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think,

  ‘To him this must have been a familiar sight.’

  If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm,

  When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,

  One may say, ‘He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm,

  But he could do little for them; and now he is gone.’

  If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the door,

  Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees,

  Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more,

  ‘He was one who had an eye for such mysteries’?

  And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom,

  And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings,

  Till they swell again, as they were a new bell’s boom,

  ‘He hears it not now, but used to notice such things’?

  —THOMAS HARDY

  Part One

  1 The Beginning

  November: 1925

  Away from home for the first time at a boarding school he did not (then) much like, Morgan Shurtliff was a shy, lonely, fourteen-year-old dreamer, a bright though erratic student, a passionate reader.

  “Shurtliff!”

  He was seated in the back row of the classroom, his Latin book open on his desk but his eyes cast down, lower, into the region of his lap, where another book resided. “Sir?” he answered, looking up, forward, toward the lectern where Mr. Scudder, the Latin master, was standing.

  “Are you with us, Shurtliff?”

  “Yes, sir, I am.”

  “And just where do you think we are?”

  “On page sixty-six, sir.”

  Mr. Scudder cleared his throat, then: “That was some time ago, Shurtliff. Since then, we, with Caesar and his legions, have trudged on. We are now encamped page sixty-eight.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Tell me the name of the book on your lap.”

  “The Arrow of Gold, by Joseph Conrad, sir.”

  “Come forward, please, Shurtliff. Bring Mr. Conrad’s book with you.”

  The silence in the room as he walked toward Mr. Scudder was of the weighted kind which precedes great moments.

  He put the book in Mr. Scudder’s outstretched hand.

  “This page, Shurtliff—this one that’s been dog-eared: look at it, please.”

  He did.

  “Is it the page you were reading when I intruded upon your covert pleasure?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And now, Shurtliff, as there are but a few minutes left in our class hour, and as we, even as you, enjoy a work of fiction, might you be so kind as to read aloud to us a paragraph or two of Mr. Conrad’s prose?—starting, please, at the precise place you left off when I recalled you to the real world?”

  “Yes, sir.” He took The Arrow of Gold from Mr. Scudder.

  “The precise place, Shurtliff—”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Oh…I almost forgot…When the bell rings, you won’t mind staying on for a chat with me, will you?”

  “Yes, sir. I mean, no, sir, of course I will.”

  “Good.” Mr. Scudder folded his body into a reclining position against his lectern. “Proceed, Shurtliff.”

  And so he began:

  “The upward cast in the eyes of Mills who was facing the staircase made us both, Blunt and I, turn around. The woman of whom I had heard so much, in a sort of way in which I had never heard a woman spoken of before, was coming down the stairs, and my first sensation was that of profound astonishment at this evidence that she really did exist. And even then the visual impression was more of color in a picture than of the forms of actual life. She was wearing a wrapper, a sort of dressing-gown of pale blue silk embroidered with black and gold designs round the neck and down the front, lapped round her and held together by a broad belt of the same material. Her slippers were of the same color, with black bows at the instep. The white stairs, the deep crimson of the carpet, and the light blue of the dress made an effective combination of color to set off the delicate carnation of that face, which, after the first glance given to the whole person, drew irresistibly your gaze to itself by an indefinable quality of charm beyond all analysis and made you think of remote races, of strange generations, of the faces of women sculptured on immemorial monuments and of those lying unsung in their tombs. While she moved downward from step to step with slightly lowered eyes there flashed upon me suddenly the recollection of words heard at night, of Allegre’s words about her, of there being in her ‘something of the women of all time.’”

  His throat being dry, Morgan paused to swallow.

  All eyes shifted from him to Mr. Scudder, who, amazingly, was seen to be smiling. Furthermore, zephyr-like, there came forth from between his lips a low, drawn-out “Ahh—” which, as the exhaled breath of it ran out, was followed by the astonishing words: “Helen of Troy…Cleopatra…Petrarch’s Laura…fair Beatrix…the eternal girl next door…” uttered slowly, in a milking, ruminative way. Then, still looking off, out the window, Mr. Scudder lapsed into silence.

  The room, along with its transfixed occupants, waited.

  The bell rang: a shattering trill.

  At the sound, instantly, Mr. Scudder reacted with his usual master-to-dog look in the door’s direction and the curt, unleashing words: “Class dismissed.”

  There ensued the noise and movement of departure.

  Only Morgan remained in place. He stood, still as a statue, The Arrow of Gold clasped to his chest, the awful moment of censure upon him.

  “W
ell, Shurtliff,” Mr. Scudder began, “here we are, the two of us, left with Allegre’s words echoing in our ears.”

  Morgan managed a weak: “Yes, sir.”

  “Relax,” Mr. Scudder said.

  In the circumstance, Morgan, though, could not.

  “Let us agree, Shurtliff,” Mr. Scudder recommenced, “that in future you will bring only your Latin book to this class.”

  Morgan nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “I have your word on it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s all then. You may go.”

  He could go! Had been told that he might. Yet he remained.

  “What’s your problem, Shurtliff?”

  “I don’t understand, sir.”

  “What, that I’ve let you off the hook?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah,” Mr. Scudder murmured, “I see.” Then, with an abstract smile: “Someday you’ll understand, Shurtliff. Meanwhile, chalk it up to luck.”

  “If you say so, sir…Thank you.”

  “My pleasure.”

  In that seemingly unreal way, for the time being, the episode, as a portent, rested.

  1937

  He met her in early January at a noontime ice-skating party given by Lucy Blackett. Her name, Lucy told him, was Maud Leigh.

  When he first saw her, she was skating alone, fast and rapt and hatless, straight down the middle of the long, narrow pond. Abetted by a strong following wind, she was all but flying, or so she appeared to be, and as she neared the pond’s far end he began to fear for her—that she would not be able to stop herself—that she would slam headlong into the spearing branches of a low-lying clump of ice-bound alders. But just short of the hazard, as he held his breath, she dug the tip of her left skate blade hard into the ice and performed—angel of excitement—a most beautiful about-face jump, after which, without so much as a glance around, she shot off again, back, over the pond’s gleaming reach, headed, as if he had called to her, straight toward him. She wore a coat of royal blue; her scarf and gloves were scarlet; the sun made a blaze of her fair hair. With an amazed heart he watched her, and—without knowing that her eyes were brown, flecked with motes of gold, and that her voice was low and alluring and as pliant as a divining Gypsy’s—all in a moment, immemorially rejoicing, he became a man in love.

  The most miraculous aspect of that fateful moment was that after the fact of it, Maud Leigh let him court her: first with small sprays of flowers; next, with a volume of Shakespeare’s sonnets on whose fly-leaf, with a trembling pen, he wrote: “For Maud—Valentine’s Day 1937” then, in early March, with a first burning touch to her hand, followed quickly by the beginning kiss of a million lingering others whose glories left him awed and pale and Maud his own to marry in June.

  During that six-month courtship, he existed on a plane at a height untouched before by the foot of any man and breathed of an air unknown but to gods. Life was Maud, lived in the changing weather of her eyes, in the tropical warmth of her holding arms, in her hair, freed of a hat, cascading over his hands like lit water, in the murred sounds she made of happiness, in the final, intent way she walked at his side as she led him through a gauze of rain across a field to a patch of blue and in it knelt to pick the first cold violets of spring, and handed to him one by one the fragile blooms and with each one, with a shyness so undone she dared not look at him, said, “I love you, I love you,” bloom after bloom. Day and night, he drifted on a sea of desire deeper and vaster than his reason could chart or his soul comprehend….

  Where, in the realm of the actual, did these makings of memories take place?

  —In Hatherton, Ohio, a flourishing, affluent county-seat community about thirty-five miles southwest of Cleveland.

  And where, during the courtship, was Maud’s beauty and witchery domiciled?

  —In her father’s house, large and solid and elaborately Victorian—it—the place where Doctor Leigh, sitting as straight and keen-eyed as a perched hawk, watched Morgan’s pursuit of his adored only child, noting Morgan’s suitable neckties, his habit of punctuality, his agreeable smile, his tact as regards to Mrs. Leigh’s hypochondria (cause of her nervosity), his ease with a teacup, his young virility, the decent hour of his departure after evenings spent in Maud’s company; and—on the afternoon Morgan came to seek his permission to marry Maud—he took in, with a physician’s calibrate gaze, the death-like pallor of Morgan’s face as, standing in the center of the rust-and-blue medallion of the Oriental rug that covered the floor of the front parlor, Morgan formally declared: “I love your daughter, Doctor Leigh; I wish to marry her”—the words charged with determination, barring of refusal. “I love her—” repeated deeply, hands calm, but eyes desperate.

  Over his cruelly starched collar, Doctor Leigh listened and nodded his encouragement as Morgan continued his appeal. He was already satisfied of Morgan’s qualifications as a husband to Maud: he knew all about Morgan’s rising reputation as a lawyer, and his well-established family—that the Shurtliff name was held in high social and business esteem in Cincinnati and Cleveland; that Morgan’s maternal grandfather had served for two terms as United States senator from Ohio and at the time of his death was a federal judge; that Morgan’s father was the majority stockholder and president of the family’s lucrative salt refinery and that he was, too, an orchardist (his apple plantation was famous), which fact verified the Shurtliff temperament as being a pastoral one—a trait Doctor Leigh valued as an indicator of a man’s long-range resolve and durability. And so, at the end of Morgan’s appeal for Maud’s hand in marriage, Doctor Leigh told him: “You have my entire consent and warmest blessings,” then held out his hand to be shaken and watched the speed with which the color of life flooded back into Morgan’s cheeks.

  The June wedding was in the Leighs’ garden on a day graced by sunlight and birdsong. Beneath an ivy-covered trellis, Morgan, barely breathing, waited with his best man and the minister. On Doctor Leigh’s arm, over a carpet of new-mown grass, Maud advanced toward him. A light breeze that smelled of apple blossoms stirred the long, filmy skirt of her white dress. Her face was golden.

  Oh God!—Morgan thought as if outside himself—make me worthy.

  2 The Handspike

  1938

  Somewhere, there is an old photograph on the back of which is written in Maud’s handwriting, “The Stanton’s party—June 9, 1938”—a date just three days shy of her and Morgan’s first wedding anniversary. In the photo’s background there are a few shadowy figures who have taken on the gray coloration of a garden wall. In the immediate foreground, Maud stands, gazing, in an assured, serene, almost confiding way, straight at the camera. She is compellingly beautiful…. It seems reasonable to suppose that whoever took the picture really meant it to be just of her, yet, there, haunting the picture’s extreme right edge, barely in the frame of it, Morgan can be seen, standing very erect and absolutely oblivious to everything and everyone but Maud, on whose person his eyes are concentrated, sharp and intending and positively glittering with lust. When Maud, laughing, showed the photograph to him, Morgan stared at it with disbelief, then gleefully gave it the out-loud title: “Venus Being Ogled by a Sexually Insane Man.”

  In the most blatant way, the photograph tells the story of the first year of their marriage, a period marked, as Morgan came to remember it, by a kind of blind indifference toward and about everything but the pursuit of their own physical pleasures—entwinements of prolonged carnality performed thriftlessly on a sovereign amatory bed in a fragrant, still room so removed from the heat and stress of the outside world as to cause them to feel forever exempted from its touch…. (Once, very late, on a black, wind-driven winter night, they heard the whetting bark of a dog on the track of prey and Maud, in a whisper, asked: “Will it find us?…” “No,” he whispered back, holding her: “Never. We’re beyond discovery.”)

  1939

  In June, at the very beginning of the third year of their marriage, they were at breakfast on a Sunday mo
rning, outdoors, still in their bathrobes and slippers, idling on the terrace that abutted Maud’s cutting garden. The day’s beauty claimed Morgan’s attention. “We should take a picnic to the lake,” he said.

  To which Maud replied: “I want to have a baby.”

  He would always remember how his lack of surprise, surprised him. It occurred to him to wonder if, perhaps, his lack thereof had to do with the very day itself, long risen in its beauty, advancing now with a steady increase of perfection toward noon. Against the sun’s march, he half closed his eyes. “How long,” he asked, as much to the iridescent air as to Maud, “have you known you want to have a—” he stumbled for some strange reason on the word “baby,” and used instead—“child?”

  “Long enough to be certain,” she replied. Then: “What about you? Has the idea crossed your mind?”

  He told the truth: “Yes and no,” he said. “No, because not in so complete a way as it obviously has yours; but—yes. Yes. As a feeling. Especially lately.” As a feeling (he qualified to himself) which had something to do with Time as currency—gold in his pockets, so to speak—but spendable only in an other, larger world than the one he had lived in with such unabated happiness for the past twenty-four months, and which, now, (this extraordinary moment made it so) seemed already legendary.

  “So?” Maud asked.

  Over the rim of his coffee cup, he met her eyes. “Yes,” he said. “Let’s do it. Let’s have a child.”