Of Time and the River (53 page)

“You know me, kid. . . . You know how I like exercise, don’t you?”

“Well, then, if we can’t go along to hear the little birdies sing to Mr. Starwick and Eugene, I suppose we’ll have to say good-bye,” said Effie regretfully. “We’ve got no right to keep them from the little birdies any longer—have we, dear? And think what a treat it will be for all the little birdies. . . . And you, Eugene!” she cried out gaily and reproachfully, but now with real warmth and friendship in her voice. “We haven’t seen you at our home in a-a- ages! What’s WRONG with you? . . . You come up soon or I’ll be mad at you.”

“Sure,” Horton came out in his broad Iowa accent, putting his hand gently on the boy’s shoulder. “Come up to see us, kid. We’ll cook some grub and chew the rag a while. You know, I’m not coming back next year—” for a moment Horton’s eyes were clear, grey, luminous, deeply hurt, and full of pride and tenderness. “We’re going to New Hampshire with Jim Madden. So come up, kid, as soon as you can: we ought to have one more session before I go.”

And the boy, suddenly touched and moved, felt a genuine affection, the real friendliness—an animal-like warmth and kindliness and affection that was the truest and most attractive element in Horton’s personality.

And nodding his head, suddenly feeling affection for them both again, he said:

“All right, Ed. I’ll see you soon. So long, Effie. Good-bye. Goodbye, Ed.”

“Good-bye, kid. So long, Starwick,” Horton said in a kindly tone. “We’ll be looking for you, Gene—So long!”

Then they parted, in this friendly manner, and Starwick and Eugene continued their walk along the river. Starwick walked quietly, saying nothing; from time to time he called sharply to the little dog, commanding him to come to “heel” again.

The two young men had not seen each other for two months, save at Professor Hatcher’s class, and then their relations had been formal, cold, and strained. Now Starwick, with a quick friendly and generous spontaneity, had broken through the stubborn and resentful pride of the other youth, had made the first advance toward reconciliation, and, as he was able to do with everyone when and where he pleased, had instantly conquered his friend’s resentful feelings and won him back with the infinite grace, charm, and persuasiveness of his own personality.

Yet, during the first part of their walk along the river their conversation, while friendly, had almost been studiously detached and casual, and was the conversation of people still under the constraint of embarrassment and diffidence, who are waiting for the moment to speak things in which their lives and feelings are more intimately concerned.

At length they came to a bending in the river where there was a bank of green turf on which in the past they had often sat and smoked and talked while that small and lonely river flowed before them. Seated here again, and provided with cigarettes, a silence came between them, as if each was waiting for the other one to speak.

Presently when Eugene looked towards his companion, Starwick’s pleasant face with the cleft chin was turned towards the river in a set stare, and even as the other young man looked at him, his ruddy countenance was contorted by the animal-like grimace swift and instant, which the other boy had often seen before, and which had in it, somehow, a bestial and inarticulate quality, a kind of unspeakable animal anguish that could find no release.

In a moment, lowering his head, and staring away into the grassy turf, Starwick said quietly:

“Why have you not been in to see me these last two months?”

The other young man flushed, began to speak in a blundering and embarrassed tone and then, angered by his own confusion, burst out hotly:

“Look here, Frank—why have you got to be so damned mysterious and secretive in everything you do?”

“Am I?” said Starwick quietly.

“Yes, you are! You’ve been that way ever since I met you.”

“In what way?” Starwick asked.

“Do you remember the first time I met you?” the other one demanded.

“Perfectly,” Starwick said. “It was during your first year in Cambridge, a few days after you arrived. We met for dinner at the ‘Cock Horse Tavern’.”

“Yes,” the other said excitedly. “Exactly. You had written me a note inviting me to dinner, and asking me to meet you there. Do you remember what was in that note?”

“No. What was it?”

“Well, you said: ‘Dear Sir—I should be pleased if you will meet me for dinner at seven-thirty, Wednesday evening, at the “Cock Horse Tavern” on Brattle Street.’ And the note was signed, ‘Francis Starwick.’”

“Well?” Starwick demanded quietly. “And what was wrong with that?”

“Nothing!” the other young man cried, his face flushing to a darker hue and the excitement of his manner growing. “Nothing, Frank! Only, if you were going to invite a stranger—someone you had never met before—to dinner—why the hell couldn’t you have told him who you are and the purpose of the meeting?”

“I should think the purpose of the meeting was self-evident,” said Starwick calmly. “The purpose was to have dinner together. Does that demand a whole volume of explanation? No,” he said coldly, “I confess I see nothing extraordinary about that at all.”

“Of course there wasn’t!” the other youth exclaimed with vehement excitement. “Of course there was nothing extraordinary about it! Why, then, did you attempt, Frank, to make something extraordinary out of it?”

“It seems to me that you’re the one who’s doing that!” Starwick answered.

“Yes, but, damn it, man,” the other cried angrily “—don’t you see the point? You’re that way with everything you do! You try to surround the simplest act with this great air of mystery and secrecy,” he said bitterly. “Inviting me to dinner was all right— it was fine!” he shouted. “I was a green kid of twenty who knew no one here, and I was scared to death. It was wonderful to get an invitation from someone asking me to dinner. But when you sent the invitation, why couldn’t you have added just a word or two by way of explanation? Why couldn’t you have stated one or two simple facts that would have made the reason for your invitation clear?”

“For example?” Starwick said.

“Why, Frank, simply that you were Professor Hatcher’s assistant in the course, and that this thing of inviting people out to dinner was just a way you and Professor Hatcher had of getting acquainted with the new people,” the other youth said angrily. “After all, you can’t get an invitation to dinner from someone you don’t know without wondering what it’s all about.”

“And yet you came,” said Starwick.

“Yes, of course I came! I think I would have come if I had never heard of you before—I was so bewildered and rattled by this new life, and so overwhelmed by living in a big city for the first time in my life that I would have accepted any kind of invitation— jumped at the chance of meeting anyone! However, I already knew who you were when your invitation came. I had heard that a man named Starwick was Hatcher’s assistant. I figured therefore that the invitation had something to do with your connection with Professor Hatcher and the course—that you were inviting me to make me feel more at home up here, to establish a friendly relation, to give me what information you could, to help the new people out in any way you could. But when I met you, what happened?” he went on indignantly. “Never a word about the course, about Professor Hatcher, about your being his assistant—you pumped me with questions as if I were a prisoner in the dock and you the prosecuting lawyer. You told me nothing about yourself and asked a thousand questions about me—and then you shook hands coldly, and departed!—Always this air of secrecy and mystery, Frank!” the boy went on angrily. “That’s always the way it is with you—in everything you do! And yet you wonder why people are surprised at your behaviour! For weeks at a time I see you every day. We get together in your rooms and talk and argue about everything on earth. You come and yell for me in my place at midnight and then we walk all over Cambridge in the dead of night. We go over to Posillippo’s place in Boston and eat and drink and get drunk together, and when you pass out, I bring you home and carry you upstairs and put you to bed. Then the next day, when I come round again,” the boy cried bitterly, “what has happened? I ring the bell. Your voice comes through the place as cold as hell—‘Who is it?’ you say. ‘Why,’ I say, ‘it’s your old friend and drunken companion, Eugene Gant, who brought you home last night.’—‘I’m sorry,’ you say, in a tone that would freeze a polar bear—‘I can’t see you. I’m busy now’—and then you hang up in my face. The season of the great mystery has now begun,” he went on sarcastically. “The great man is closeted in his sanctum COMPOSING,” he sneered. “Not WRITING, mind you, but COMPOSING with a gold-tipped quill plucked from the wing of a Brazilian condor—so, out, out, damned spot—don’t bother me, Gant—begone, you low fellow—on your way, burn!—the great master, Signor Francis Starwick, is upstairs in a purple cloud, having a few immortal thoughts today with Amaryllis, his pet muse—”

“Gene! Gene!” said Starwick laughing, a trace of the old-mannered accent returning to his voice again. “You are MOST unfair! You really are, you know!”

“No—but, Frank, that’s just the way you act,” the other said. “You can’t see enough of someone for weeks at a time and then you slam the door in his face. You pump your friends dry and tell them nothing about yourself. You try to surround everything you do with this grand romantic air of mysterious secrecy—this there’s-more- to-this-than-meets-the-eye manner. Frank, who the hell do you think you are, anyway, with these grand airs and mysterious manners that you have? Is it that you’re not the same as other men?” he jeered. “Is it that, like Cćsar, you were from your mother’s womb untimely ripped? Is it that you are made from different stuff than the damned base clay of blood and agony from which the rest of us have been derived?”

“What have I ever done,” said Starwick flushing, “to give you the impression that I think of myself that way?”

“For one thing, Frank, you act sometimes as if the world exists solely for the purpose of being your oyster. You sometimes act as if friendship, the affection of your friends, is something that exists solely for your pleasure and convenience and may be turned on and off at will like a hot-water faucet—that you can use their time, their lives, their feelings when they amuse and interest you— and send them away like whipped dogs when you are bored, tired, indifferent, or have something else it suits you better to do.”

“I am not aware that I have ever done that,” said Starwick quietly. “I am sorry if you think I have.”

“No, but, Frank—what can you expect your friends to think? I have told you about my life, my family, the kind of place and people I came from—but you have told me nothing. You are the best friend I have here in Cambridge—I think,” the boy said slowly, flushing, and with some difficulty, “one of the best friends I have ever had. I have not had many friends—I have known no one like you—no one of my own age to whom I could talk as I have talked to you. I think I enjoy being with you and talking to you more than to anyone I have ever known. This friendship that I feel for you has now become a part of my whole life and has got into everything I do. And yet, at times, I run straight into a blank wall. I could no more separate my friendship for you from the other acts and meetings of my life than I could divide into two parts of my body my father’s and my mother’s blood. With you it’s different. You seem to have all your friends partitioned off and kept separate from one another in different cells and sections of your life. I know now that you have three or four sets of friends and yet these different groups of people never meet one another. You go about your life with all these different sets of people in this same secret and mysterious manner that characterizes everything you do. You have these aunts and cousins here in Cambridge that you see every week, and who, like everyone else, lay themselves out to do everything they can to make your life comfortable and pleasant. You know these swells over on Beacon Hill in Boston, and you have some grand, mysterious and wealthy kind of life with them. Then you have another group here at the university—people like Egan, and Hugh Dodd and myself. And at the end, Frank,” the boy said almost bitterly—“what is the purpose of all this secrecy and separation among your friends? There’s something so damned arrogant and cold and calculating about it—it’s almost as if you were one of these damned, wretched, self-centred fools who have their little time and place for everything—an hour for social recreation and an hour for useful reading, another hour for healthy exercise, and then four hours for business, an hour for the concert and an hour for the play, an hour for ‘business contracts’ and an hour for friendship—Surely to God, Frank, you of all people on earth are not one of these damned, smug, vain, self-centred egoists—who would milk this earth as if it were a great milk cow here solely for their enrichment, and who, at the end, in spite of all their damned, miserable, self-seeking profit for themselves remain nothing but the God-damned smug, sterile, misbegotten set of impotent and life-hating bastards that they are—Surely to God, you, of all people in the world, are not one of these,” he fairly yelled, and sat there panting, exhausted by the tirade, and glaring at the other youth with wild, resentful eyes.

“Eugene!” cried Starwick sharply, his ruddy features darkened with an angry glow. “You are being most unjust! What are you saying simply is not true.” He was silent a moment, his face red and angry-looking, as he stared out across the river—“If I had known that you felt this way,” he went on quietly, “I should have introduced you to my other friends—what you call these separate groups of people—long ago. You may meet them any time you wish,” he concluded. “It simply never occurred to me that you would be interested in knowing them.”

“Oh, Frank, I’m not!” the other boy cried impatiently, with a dismissing movement of the hand. “I don’t want to meet them—I don’t care who they are—or how rich and fashionable or ‘artistic’ they may be. The thing I was kicking about was what seemed to me to be your air of secrecy—the mysterious manner in which you go about things: it seemed to me that there was something deliberately calculating and secretive in the way you shut one part of your life off from the people who know and like you best.”