The Last Gentleman

obscurely scandalized. He didn’t like her much.
    â€œHow long does Jamie have?”
    â€œEh? To live— Oh, Rita said months, four months I think she said. But I think longer. Actually he is much better.”
    â€œJamie tells me you and he are good friends.” Her gaze was still fixed on the tiny amber eye of the towhee, which crouched with its head cocked, paralyzed.
    â€œYes.”
    â€œHe says that you and he may go somewhere together.”
    â€œJamie changes his mind about that. He was talking earlier about living with Sutter or going down to stay with you.”
    â€œWell, now he wants to go somewhere with you.”
    â€œDo you mean, leave school?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œHe knows I’m ready to go any time.” Presently he added: “I can understand him wanting to go away.”
    â€œYes. That was what I want to speak to you about.”
    He waited.
    â€œMr. Barrett—”
    â€œYes ma’am.”
    â€œIt may well happen that it will be you and not one of us who will be with Jamie during the last days of his life and even at his death.”
    â€œI suppose that is true,” said the engineer, taking note of a warning tingle between his shoulder blades.
    â€œEveryone thinks very highly of you—though for strangely diverse, even contradictory reasons. I can’t help noticing. You are evidently quite a fellow. That’s hardly surprising, considering whose son you are.”
    â€œAh—” began the engineer, frowning and scratching his head.
    â€œThough I can’t say that I agree with your father on his reasons for treating Negroes well rather than beating them up, still I’d rather that he’d won over the current scoundrels even if he’d won for the wrong reasons.”
    â€œPerhaps,” said the engineer uneasily, not wanting to discuss either his father’s “reasons” or her even more exotic reasons.
    â€œBut in any case I too can perceive that you are a complex and prescient young man.”
    â€œI certainly appreciate—” began the engineer gloomily.
    â€œClearly you would do right by Jamie even if you had no affection for him, which I have reason to believe you do have.”
    â€œYes,” said the other warily. It was still impossible to get a fix on her. He had known very few Catholics and no nuns at all.
    â€œMr. Barrett, I don’t want Jamie to die an unprovided death.”
    â€œUnprovided?”
    â€œI don’t want him to die without knowing why he came here, what he is doing here, and why he is leaving.”
    â€œMa’am?” The engineer felt like wringing out his ear but he did not.
    â€œIt may fall to you to tell him.”
    â€œTell him what?”
    â€œAbout the economy of salvation.”
    â€œWhy don’t you tell him?” He was watching her as intently as the towhee watched her. There was no telling what she might do.
    She sighed and sat down. The towhee, released from its spell, flew away. “I have told him.”
    The engineer, though standing erect, began to lean about five degrees away from her.
    â€œIt is curious, Mr. Barrett, but what I told him was absolutely the last thing on earth he would listen to. It was not simply one of a great number of things he might have listened to more or less indifferently. It was, of all things, absolutely the last thing. Doesn’t that strike you as strange?”
    â€œI couldn’t say. But if you can’t tell him what you believe, you his sister, how do you expect me to tell him what I don’t believe?”
    But she was at it again, her trick of engaging him then slipping away. “They didn’t ride in carts the last time I was here,” she said, gazing past him at the golfers. Do all nuns banter about salvation? “And yet, there he was, reading all that guff with relish.”
    â€œWhat guff?”
    â€œThat book about radio noise from the galaxies, noise which might not be noise. Did you give it to him?”
    â€œNo.”
    She ignored his irritation. “I’ve noticed,” she said gloomily and not especially to him, “that it is usually a bad sign when dying people become interested in communication with other worlds, and especially when they become spiritual in a certain sense.”
    â€œDon’t you believe in other worlds and, ah, spirits?”
    â€œIt is strange, but I’ve always distrusted so-called spiritual