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Back The Fall of Valor Save as PDF
Chapters (51)
  1. Introduction by Michael Bronski
  2. BEGINNING
  3. II
  4. III
  5. IV
  6. V
  7. VI
  8. VII
  9. VIII
  10. IX
  11. X
  12. XI
  13. XII
  14. XIII
  15. MIDDLE
  16. II
  17. III
  18. IV
  19. V
  20. VI
  21. VII
  22. VIII
  23. IX
  24. X
  25. XI
  26. XII
  27. XIII
  28. XIV
  29. XV
  30. XVI
  31. XVII
  32. XVIII
  33. XIX
  34. XX
  35. END
  36. II
  37. III
  38. IV
  39. V
  40. VI
  41. VII
  42. VIII
  43. IX
  44. X
  45. XI
  46. XII
  47. XIII
  48. XIV
  49. XV
  50. XVI
  51. About the Author

He attributed it to the war. Everywhere in the world the blow was falling. Safe in his study, with no connection whatever with what was going on abroad, it would yet reach him and fall. At times, hearing in the midnight quiet of the house the voice of his conscience, he would step to the door of his study to listen for the heavy sleepful reassuring breathing of Ethel in her bed, or go into the children’s room to see if they were all right or (absurd thought!) still there. Even as he felt in the dark to see if they were tucked in and covered, his fears vanished, he forgot the unfounded apprehensions, and he would tiptoe from the room with a sense of gratification keener and more moving than any other he had ever experienced in his life. Returned to his study, the sense of the blow that was yet to fall would also return; or it might hold itself off, to rise up again in an unguarded moment during the middle of a bright afternoon several days later, giving him no relief; for relief would only come when the secret was out (if secret it was), the nature of the crime named and accepted. There was nothing he had “done,” nothing to feel guilty about. Perhaps in the course of time, he thought, he would come through it and live it down.—But what in thunder had he to “live down”? Simply that he had been a better teacher, a deeper student, a more honest man than his fellows; and had striven for truth more than for success. It was a thought tainted with vanity, he could not have brought himself to express it in so many words, but all the same he knew in his heart that, though he had done little in his life and had little to show for it, he would take to his grave more than most people ever had.

He stepped into the hall and pulled the door to. As it slammed shut, he heard the firetongs fall with a bang again, a harsh clank that sounded all along the hall; but to hell with it now, he thought. He descended in the rickety cage of the lift and walked to the bus stop on the corner.

II

II

Ethel Grandin stood in the middle of the small low-ceilinged room which had been her bedroom during her childhood and which was furnished now with a double bed for those rare occasions when she came home to her parents’ house with her husband. Her bags were packed and she was ready to go, but still she remained in the room, frowning uncertainly as if there was something she had forgotten to do. She heard her father back the car out of the garage and sound the horn. She went to the window, called, “Just a minute, I’ll be right down,” and yet remained.