But as she listened she received the impression that Mr. Tuffett’s were general remarks directed more to the student body than to her, they were an echo of his early morning feelings. He was concluding with a précis on the unhealthy attitudes engendered by Maycomb County when she interrupted:
“Mr. Tuffett, I just want to say everybody’s not to blame for what I did—you don’t have to take it out on everybody.”
Mr. Tuffett gripped the edge of his desk and said between clenched teeth, “For that bit of impudence you may remain one hour after school, young lady!”
She took a deep breath. “Mr. Tuffett,” she said, “I think there’s been a mistake. I really don’t quite—”
“You don’t, do you? Then I’ll show you!”
Mr. Tuffett snatched up a thick pile of loose-leaf notebook paper and waved it at her.
“You, Miss, are the hundred and fifth!”
Jean Louise examined the sheets of paper. They were all alike. On each was written “Dear Mr. Tuffett. They look like mine,” and signed by every girl in the school from the ninth grade upward.
She stood for a moment in deep thought; unable to think of anything to say to help Mr. Tuffett, she stole quietly out of his office.
“He’s a beaten man,” said Jem, when they were riding home to dinner. Jean Louise sat between her brother and Henry, who had listened soberly to her account of Mr. Tuffett’s state of mind.
“Hank, you are an absolute genius,” she said. “What ever gave you the idea?”
Henry inhaled deeply on his cigarette and flicked it out the window. “I consulted my lawyer,” he said grandly.
Jean Louise put her hands to her mouth.
“Naturally,” said Henry. “You know he’s been looking after my business since I was knee-high, so I just went to town and explained it to him. I simply asked him for advice.”
“Did Atticus put you up to it?” asked Jean Louise in awe.
“No, he didn’t put me up to it. It was my own idea. He balked around for a while, said it was all a question of balancin’ the equities or something, that I was in an interesting but tenuous position. He swung around in his chair and looked out the window and said he always tried to put himself in his clients’ shoes….” Henry paused.
“Keep on.”
“Well, he said owin’ to the extreme delicacy of my problem, and since there was no evidence of criminal intent, he wouldn’t be above throwin’ a little dust in a juryman’s eyes—whatever that means—and then, oh I don’t know.”
“Oh Hank, you do know.”
“Well, he said something about safety in numbers and if he were me he wouldn’t dream of connivin’ at perjury but so far as he knew all falsies looked alike, and that was about all he could do for me. He said he’d bill me at the end of the month. I wasn’t out of the office good before I got the idea!”
Jean Louise said, “Hank—did he say anything about what he was going to say to me?”
“Say to you?” Henry turned to her. “He won’t say a darn thing to you. He can’t. Don’t you know everything anybody tells his lawyer’s confidential?”
THOCK. SHE FLATTENED the paper cup into the table, shattering their images. The sun stood at two o’clock, as it had stood yesterday and would stand tomorrow.
Hell is eternal apartness. What had she done that she must spend the rest of her years reaching out with yearning for them, making secret trips to long ago, making no journey to the present? I am their blood and bones, I have dug in this ground, this is my home. But I am not their blood, the ground doesn’t care who digs it, I am a stranger at a cocktail party.
16
“HANK, WHERE’S ATTICUS?”
Henry looked up from his desk. “Hi, sweetie. He’s at the post office. It’s about coffee-time for me. Comin’ along?”
The same thing that compelled her to leave Mr. Cunningham’s and go to the office caused her to follow Henry to the sidewalk: she wished to look furtively at them again and again, to assure herself that they had not undergone some alarming physical metamorphosis as well, yet she did not wish to speak to them, to touch them, lest she cause them to commit further outrage in her presence.
As she and Henry walked side by side to the drugstore, she wondered if Maycomb was planning a fall or winter wedding for them. I’m peculiar, she thought. I cannot get into bed with a man unless I’m in some state of accord with him. Right now I can’t even speak to him. Cannot speak to my oldest friend.
They sat facing each other in a booth, and Jean Louise studied the napkin container, the sugar bowl, the salt and pepper shakers.
“You’re quiet,” said Henry. “How was the Coffee?”
“Atrocious.”
“Hester there?”
“Yes. She’s about yours and Jem’s age, isn’t she?”
“Yeah, same class. Bill told me this morning she was pilin’ on the warpaint for it.”
“Hank, Bill Sinclair must be a gloomy party.”
“Why?”
“All that guff he’s put in Hester’s head—”
“What guff?”
“Oh, the Catholics and the Communists and Lord knows what else. It seems to have run all together in her mind.”
Henry laughed and said, “Honey, the sun rises and sets with that Bill of hers. Everything he says is Gospel. She loves her man.”
“Is that what loving your man is?”
“Has a lot to do with it.”
Jean Louise said, “You mean losing your own identity, don’t you?”
“In a way, yes,” said Henry.
“Then I doubt if I shall ever marry. I never met a man—”
“You’re gonna marry me, remember?”
“Hank, I may as well tell you now and get it over with: I’m not going to marry you. Period and that’s that.”
She had not intended to say it but she could not stop herself.
“I’ve heard that before.”
“Well, I’m telling you now that if you ever want to marry”—was it she who was talking?—“you’d best start looking around. I’ve never been in love with you, but you’ve always known I’ve loved you. I thought we could make a marriage with me loving you on that basis, but—”
“But what?”