The Listener by Taylor Caldwell Page A

can’t afford now. Someone said to him, ‘What’s become of Clive Summers, your partner? He was your partner, wasn’t he?’
     
    “And he said, ‘Clive Summers? Clive Summers? Oh, Clive Summers. I don’t know’. And then he walked away. That’s what someone told me. He didn’t even know me, after all these years, and after what I’d done for him! He actually implied he hadn’t even known me!” Mr. Summers again beat the arms of his chair with his fists. “He hadn’t even known me, the man he betrayed!”
     
    He stood up and shouted: “Do you think they believed him? No! One of my old friends — he doesn’t know me now — said, ‘Why, you and Clive were in partnership for years! Wherever I saw you, I saw him’. And he denied it. We weren’t friends; it was just a loose business association. Only an association, in passing. Who did he think he was deceiving? Henry Fellowes. Why, I loved him as if he’d been my brother; we couldn’t have been closer.” He said in a lower voice, almost whispering, “We couldn’t have been closer.”
     
    Mr. Summers walked almost within touching distance of the immovable curtains. “But what do you know about betrayal?” he challenged. “Oh, in an academic sense, no doubt. As one of the facets of the human personality. But did anyone betray you? Do you think it was just the money he defrauded me of? No. It was his denial of me, his desertion. That was the worst, the most terrible thing. He’d not even known me!”
     
    The curtains did not stir. The room seemed to smile deeply in its whiteness. Mr. Summers cried, “What do you know? About betrayal? Who ever betrayed you, you, smug behind that curtain?”
     
    He plunged his finger on the button, and the curtains whirled aside in the overwhelming light. Mr. Summers stepped back, staring, and then he bent, as if broken. He could not look away from what he saw.
     
    After a long time he said, “Yes. Yes, of course. You know all about betrayal. Who, more than you, should know? Forgive me.”
     
    His legs felt boneless and weak, and he fell to his knees and covered his face with his hands. Another long time passed. He could feel the light all about him. Then he spoke again, whisperingly, and with pauses.
     
    “I’m sorry for Henry. You see, I can ruin him now. I have the facts. At first I was too sick and stunned. Now I have the facts and the lawyers. I can have him prosecuted, thrown into jail, for fraud and misappropriation of funds, and a dozen other things. But I am not going to do it.
     
    “He has another wife, and I’ve heard she is worse than all the others, and he’s desperate, even with the money he took from me by fraud and manipulation. He’s almost out of his mind. Perhaps he’s remorseful. After all, he is as old as I am. A man doesn’t get younger. He must be lonely. He must be as lonely as Celia and George.
     
    “Whatever Henry did, he must live with it. At least I’m clean of anything like that.” Mr. Summers took his hands from his eyes. “Are you still listening?” he asked humbly. “But you always listen, don’t you? Aren’t you ever tired?
     
    “ ‘As lonely as Celia and George’. That’s a strange thing to think of, isn’t it? I am beginning to remember Celia before we built that house. She used to laugh and sing in our little flat. She would agree with me that it would be wonderful to have that big house — someday. Do you know? I don’t think she cared; she was just kind, and she went into the dream with me because she thought that was what I wanted too. Perhaps I did, when I was younger. And then I had it.
     
    But I didn’t see Celia any longer. I didn’t even miss her. Until everything I had was gone. I didn’t notice my son, with his governess and his tutor, and then his boarding schools, and then his university. I was proud of his reports, yes. But I never really saw him. I buried my one talent in the ground. I wonder if it is still there.”
     
    He dropped