The Flying Goat by H.E. Bates Read Free Book Online

and the direction it had lacked and shot off, before she could do anything, straight to Bronson. It seemed to hit Bronson with its extraordinary charge of suspicion, and then recoil back, leaving Mrs. Harris with the hot shell of staggered conviction in her hands.
    It was Mr. Bronson. Not Mrs. Bronson. Mr. Bronson. Bronson! Her mind juggled with the red-hot conviction as a man juggles with the potato too hot to hold. Tossing it up and down, lacking the nerve to hold it, she was too distraught, that night, to do anything about it, and she kept up her distressed juggling performance all night, not knowing whether to be ashamed for Irma or enraged with Bronson, or both.
    In the morning she had decided. For various reasons she would speak to Irma. There was the reason of money, the necessity of not offendingthe Bronsons. Then there was the reason that was much nearer Irma. Something had happened to Irma and it was very likely that Irma, a young girl, did not fully understand it.
    â€˜Irma,’ she said. ‘I want to speak to you.’ Then at the moment of crisis she felt her courage crumble. She felt that she could not say what she had to say in bare words, all pat, like a speech.
    At this moment she remembered Harris. He, like the Lord, had had a weakness for speaking in parables. She would speak in a parable, and her idea of a parable was to say:
    â€˜Irma, you want to keep yourself to yourself.’
    Distress unexpectedly charged her voice with passion. The girl was wide-eyed, not understanding. She did not speak.
    Mrs. Harris took silence for guilt. Her mind seized the hot charge of conviction and held it painfully but in spite of pain.
    â€˜Irma! Irma!’
    â€˜But mother, what’s the matter?’
    â€˜What’s the matter! That’s a nice thing. As if you don’t know. Oh! Irma, Irma. After all I’ve done for you, after the way I’ve brought you up.’ And then suddenly the plain accusation, final andincontrovertible, as if she needed nothing more than the two hats, Irma’s and Bronson’s, on a chair, and the girl’s silence.
    â€˜Irma, you’re running after Lieutenant Bronson! I won’t have it. I’ve seen it! I know. I won’t have it!’
    The girl was still silent. To Mrs. Harris it seemed only like a confession, and in a way she was glad that it was all over so simply.
    â€˜That’s all I’ve got to say – now. But I’d be ashamed of myself, Irma Harris. I would. I’d be utterly ashamed of myself.’
    Irma began to go about vaguely, for the first time in her life caught up by a dream of substantial reality. Up to that time she had not thought of Bronson. It was only Mrs. Bronson. She felt excitably affectionate towards Mrs. Bronson, virginally, tenderly, longing to be like her. Bronson had not touched her.
    She began now to think of Bronson. What had her mother seen? She must have seen something. Knowing that she had never looked at Bronson, the girl could only wonder if Bronson had looked at her.
    She began to try to figure it out for herself, inbed at night. She took the false premise of her mother, the accusation, and built up about it the arguments for one side and another, singling out the moments when she felt that there might have been something in Bronson’s way of looking at her. She tried to argue it out impartially with herself, trying to prove there was nothing in it. And gradually, all the time, she was aware of an increasing feeling that it would be nice if it could be proved the other way. Then she wanted it proved the other way. She wanted to feel that Bronson had looked at her. She wanted to know, and even if necessary against all reason, that there was something in it after all.
    Then all at once she thought of the things Bronson had said about her hair. Said jokingly, they suddenly took on the weight of great importance. She was staggered by them. Where they had seemed very trivial, not to be taken