“What do you mean?”
“I mean it takes a certain kind of maturity to live in the South these days. You don’t have it yet, but you have a shadow of the beginnings of it. You haven’t the humbleness of mind—”
“I thought fear of the Lord was the beginning of wisdom.”
“It’s the same thing. Humility.”
They had come to his house. She stopped the car.
“Uncle Jack,” she said. “What am I going to do about Hank?”
“What you will eventually,” he said.
“Let him down easy?”
“Um hum.”
“Why?”
“He’s not your kind.”
Love whom you will, marry your own kind. “Look, I’m not going to argue with you over the relative merits of trash—”
“That has nothing to do with it. I’m tired of you. I want my supper.”
Dr. Finch put his hand out and pinched her chin. “Good afternoon, Miss,” he said.
“Why did you take so much trouble with me today? I know how you hate to move out of that house.”
“Because you’re my child. You and Jem were the children I never had. You two gave me something long ago, and I’m trying to pay my debts. You two helped me a—”
“How, sir?”
Dr. Finch’s eyebrows went up. “Didn’t you know? Hasn’t Atticus gotten around to telling you that? Why, I’m amazed at Zandra not … good heavens, I thought all of Maycomb knew that.”
“Knew what?”
“I was in love with your mother.”
“My mother?”
“Oh yes. When Atticus married her, and I’d come home from Nashville for Christmas and things like that, why I fell head over heels in love with her. I still am—didn’t you know that?”
Jean Louise put her head on the steering wheel. “Uncle Jack, I’m so ashamed of myself I don’t know what to do. Me yelling around like—oh, I could kill myself!”
“I shouldn’t do that. There’s been enough focal suicide for one day.”
“All that time, you—”
“Why sure, honey.”
“Did Atticus know it?”
“Certainly.”
“Uncle Jack, I feel one inch high.”
“Well, I didn’t mean to do that. You’re not by yourself, Jean Louise. You’re no special case. Now go get your father.”
“You can say all this, just like that?”
“Um hum. Just like that. As I said, you and Jem were very special to me—you were my dream-children, but as Kipling said, that’s another story … call on me tomorrow, and you’ll find me a grave man.”
He was the only person she ever knew who could paraphrase three authors into one sentence and have them all make sense.
“Thanks, Uncle Jack.”
“Thank you, Scout.”
Dr. Finch got out of the car and shut the door. He poked his head inside the window, elevated his eyebrows, and said in a decorous voice:
“I was once an exceedingly odd young lady—
Suffering much from spleen and vapors.”
Jean Louise was halfway to town when she remembered. She stepped on the brake, leaned out the window, and called to the spare figure in the distance:
“But we only cut respectable capers, don’t we, Uncle Jack?”
19
SHE WALKED INTO the foyer of the office. She saw Henry still at his desk. She went to him.
“Hank?”
“Hello,” he said.
“Seven-thirty tonight?” she said.
“Yes.”
As they made a date for their leave-taking, a tide was running, returning, and she ran to meet it. He was a part of her, as timeless as Finch’s Landing, as the Coninghams and Old Sarum. Maycomb and Maycomb County had taught him things she had never known, could never learn, and Maycomb had rendered her useless to him as anything other than his oldest friend.
“That you, Jean Louise?”
Her father’s voice frightened her.
“Yes sir.”
Atticus walked from his office to the foyer and took down his hat and stick from the hat rack. “Ready?” he said.
Ready. You can say ready to me. What are you, that I tried to obliterate and grind into the earth, and you say ready? I can’t beat you, I can’t join you. Don’t you know that?
She went to him. “Atticus,” she said. “I’m—”
“You may be sorry, but I’m proud of you.”
She looked up and saw her father beaming at her.
“What?”
“I said I’m proud of you.”
“I don’t understand you. I don’t understand men at all and I never will.”
“Well, I certainly hoped a daughter of mine’d hold her ground for what she thinks is right—stand up to me first of all.”
Jean Louise rubbed her nose. “I called you some pretty grim things,” she said.
Atticus said, “I can take anything anybody calls me so long as it’s not true. You don’t even know how to cuss, Jean Louise. By the way, where did you pick up the ring-tailed variety?”
“Right here in Maycomb.”
“Dear goodness, the things you learned.”
Dear goodness, the things I learned. I did not want my world disturbed, but I wanted to crush the man who’s trying to preserve it for me. I wanted to stamp out all the people like him. I guess it’s like an airplane: they’re the drag and we’re the thrust, together we make the thing fly. Too much of us and we’re nose-heavy, too much of them and we’re tail-heavy—it’s a matter of balance. I can’t beat him, and I can’t join him—
“Atticus?”
“Ma’am?”
“I think I love you very much.”
She saw her old enemy’s shoulders relax, and she watched him push his hat to the back of his head. “Let’s go home, Scout. It’s been a long day. Open the door for me.”
She stepped aside to let him pass. She followed him to the car and watched him get laboriously into the front seat. As she welcomed him silently to the human race, the stab of discovery made her tremble a little. Somebody walked over my grave, she thought, probably Jem on some idiotic errand.
She went around the car, and as she slipped under the steering wheel, this time she was careful not to bump her head.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Epub ISBN 9781473535404
Version 1.0
Published by William Heinemann 2015
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
Copyright © Harper Lee 2015
Harper Lee has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by William Heinemann
(First published in the United States of America by HarperCollins in 2015)
This is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
William Heinemann
The Random House Group Limited
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA
www.randomhouse.co.uk
William Heinemann is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
HB ISBN 9781785150289
