Of Time and the River (97 page)
Everything had the same familiar quality of America that he had always remembered and known as a child. It brought back to him again the quiet voices of people on their summer porches, the street-car grinding to a halt on the corner of the hill above his father’s house, his father’s voice in darkness on the porch, and the red lifted flare of his cigar, and those Thursday nights in summer when his father took him on the street-car to the little park along the river three miles away, where there were outdoor moving-pictures on an island; later, fireworks and across the river the great flare, the receding thunder of a train. Now, curiously, that whole memory came back to him with all its vivid and unutterable poignancy: he could remember the little artificial lake there at the park—that lake just three feet deep that had seemed so vast and thrilling to him, and the boat-house with lake-water lapping at the piers, the clank of oarlocks and the dull bump and dry knocking of the boats together as they collided in the darkness, and the people, gathered there in darkness, with their dim faces upturned to the great silver dance and flicker of the moving-picture screen which was set on a little island on the lake— an island that was dense with trees and foliage, and that had seemed to him as mysterious and illimitable as the jungle. And opposite the island, on the shore, looking over the heads of the people in the boats, the greater part of the audience sat on wooden benches, all thirsty, silent, and insatiate, the petals of five hundred dim white faces all lifted to the flickering magic of the screen.
It all came back to him now as he sat there on the porch of this splendid mansion with Mrs. Pierce and Joel and the other guests, and though the place was splendid, wealthy and luxurious beyond dreams, the happy, warm, and friendly gaiety of the people, their eager looking-forward to fireworks and the Fourth of July, something free and warm and simple in their relation, recalled again those glorious expeditions of his youth to the little park upon the river, and the crowded streetcars going home, and friendly voices, laughter, and the slamming of a door, and then his father’s voice upon the porch and sleep and silence—it all came back now in tones of unutterable brightness, and the Hudson River lay below him in the great fall and hush of evening light that fell across America, and even as he thought these things, a train rushed by below them on the bank of the river, was hurled instantly past in a projectile flight—a thunderbolted speed, was hurled past them citywards, and was gone at once, leaving nothing behind it but the sound of its departure, a handful of lost echoes in the hills, and the river, the mysterious river, the Hudson River in the great fall and hush of evening light, and all somehow was just as it had always been, and just as he had known he would find it, as it would always be.
LXVI
Later that night, when the other people in the house had gone upstairs to bed, and as he was in the quiet library, making a final, longing, hungrily regretful survey of the treasure-hoard of noble books that walled the great room in their rich and mellow hues from floor to ceiling, Joel came in.
“Look,” he whispered, in his abrupt and casual way, “I’m going to bed now: stay up as long as you please and sleep as late as you like tomorrow morning. . . . And look,” he whispered casually—and quickly again—“what are you going to do? Do you think you have to go back to the city tomorrow?”
“Yes, Joel: I think I’ll have to—I have an early class the first thing Monday morning, and if I’m going to meet it, I ought to be back by tomorrow night: I think that will be best.”
“It’s been nice having you,” Joel whispered. “It was swell that you could come. And if you really like the place,” he said simply, “I’m glad. . . . I think it’s a grand place, too. . . . And look!” he whispered quickly, casually, looking away “—I meant what I said yesterday—about that house, the gatekeeper’s lodge, I mean— If you like the place, and think you’d care to live there, or come up whenever you feel like it, I wish you’d take it,” he whispered. “I really do—It’s no use to anyone the way it stands, and we’d all be delighted if you’d come and live in it. . . . Just let me know when you are coming, just say the word, and I’ll have everything ready for you—And we WISH you would,” he whispered earnestly, with his radiant smile, as if asking the other youth to do him a favour— “it would be swell.”
“It’s—it’s pretty fine of you, Joel, too—”
“All right, sir,” Joel whispered quickly, hastily, with a smile, avoiding skilfully the embarrassment of thanks: “And look, Eugene— of course I’ll see you Tuesday when I get back to town—I’ll be right there at the hotel the rest of the summer—except for week- ends when I come up here—but I wanted to ask you if you had made up your mind yet about going to Europe?”
“Yes, I have, Joel. At least, that’s what I want to do—what I’d like to do. If I can manage it, I intend to set sail—” the two words had a glorious magic sound to him, and his pulse beat hot and hard with joy and hope as he spoke them—“to set sail in September when my work at the university is over!”
“Gosh! That’s swell!” Joel whispered enthusiastically, his face lighting with radiant eagerness as if the news had given him some great and unexpected happiness—“And Frank Starwick will be glad go hear it, too. You know, he’s going over at the end of August; I had a letter from him just the other day.”
“Yes, I know: he wrote me too.”
“And he’ll want to see you when he comes to town: we must all try to get together before he goes. . . . And look,” he said quickly, abruptly, casually again—“if you go, how long will you be gone? How long do you intend to stay away?”
“I don’t know, Joel. I’d like to go for a whole year, but I don’t know if I can manage it. They’ve offered me an appointment for another year at the university. They want me to come back for the new term that begins in February, and maybe that’s what I’ll have to do. But I’d like to stay away a year!”
“I hope you can,” Joel whispered. “You ought to spend a whole year over there! It would be a swell thing if you could.”
“Yes; I think so, too. But I don’t know how I’m going to manage it: at the present time I don’t quite see how I can. . . . You see, all I’ve got to live on at the present time is what I earn as an instructor at the university—they pay me eighteen hundred dollars a year—”
“Gosh!” Joel whispered, arching his eyebrows in polite astonishment— “That’s a lot, isn’t it?”
“It’s not much, Joel: it amounts to $150 a month; you can get along on that, but you’re not going to paint New York red on it, the way things are today, especially if you’ve got a healthy appetite and love to eat, the way I do.”
“Yes,” Joel whispered, laughing his beautiful, radiant, and almost soundless laugh. “I can see that—that belly of yours is going to cost you a lot of money before you get through with it. A man who loves food the way you do ought to be a millionaire. But you see, don’t you,” he said, with a flash of his rare and gentle malice— “that’s what you get for not being a vegetarian like Bernard Shaw and me. . . . Eugene,” he cried softly, laughing, after a moment’s brief reflection, “—you’ll love France—the food is wonderful—but Lord!” and he laughed again his radiant soundless laugh “—how you’re going to hate England!”
“Why? Is the food bad?”
“It’s unspeakable!” Joel whispered—“that is for anyone who loves food the way you do: they go through the tortures of the damned . . . of course, for me it doesn’t matter. I can eat anything—anything, that is, so long as it’s vegetables—it all tastes alike to me— but YOU’LL hate it . . . of course,” he whispered earnestly, “you really won’t: you’ll love the country and you’ll like the English. They’re swell.”
“Have you been there much, Joel?”
“Only once,” he whispered. “When Mums and Rosalind were there. We had a house out in the country and we stayed there for fifteen months. And it was grand! You’ll love it. . . . Gosh! I hope you can stay over there a whole year!” he went on eagerly. “Don’t you think you can?”
“I don’t think so: you see, as I was telling you, I have only $150 a month; when I finish up in September I’ll have about five pay- cheques coming to me: that’s only $750. So I figure I can get over there on that and live for several months, but unless I can get money from my mother—I think perhaps she’ll help me—I don’t see how I can get along for a whole year.”
“Then look,” said Joel, speaking swiftly, and casually, and looking away as if he were making the most matter-of-fact proposal in the world—“Why don’t you let me help you? . . . I mean,” he went on hastily, and showing his embarrassment only by two spots of colour in his gaunt face—“I’d love to do it if you’d let me—it’d be no trouble at all—and you could pay it back whenever you like—just as soon as your play goes on: you’ll have plenty of money then, so I wish you’d take it now when you need it. . . . You see,” he whispered quickly, with a smile, “I have loads of money—more than I can ever POSSIBLY use—I have no need for it—I was twenty-one this spring, you know,—and now I’m AWFULLY rich,” he whispered humorously, and then concluded in a quickly apologetic whisper— “not REALLY, of course—not compared to most people—but rich, for ME,” he whispered, smiling. “—I’ve got MUCH more than I need—so I really wish you’d let me help you if you need it—Frank said he’d let me know if he needed anything and I wish you’d do the same. . . . I think you ought to go for a whole year since you’re going— it’s your first trip, and GOSH!” he whispered enthusiastically, “how I envy you! How I wish
I
were going for the first time! It’s going to be a swell thing for you, you’re going to have a grand time—and you’ve simply GOT to stay for a whole year—so I wish you’d let me help you if I can.”
He had made this astoundingly generous proposal with a quick, hurried matter-of-factness that seemed to be eagerly begging for a favour, instead of magnificently and nobly giving it. And for a moment the other could not answer, and when he did he did not know the reason for his reply, for his refusal. It was as generous, as selfless, and spontaneous an act of liberal and noble friendship as he had ever known or experienced, and for a moment, as he thought of his longed-for trip, his dire need of money, it all seemed so magically easy, good, and wonderfully right to him that there seemed nothing to do except instantly, gratefully and jubilantly to accept. Yet, when he opened his mouth to speak, he found himself, to his surprise, refusing this miraculous and generous good fortune. And he never knew exactly the reason why: there was, perhaps, the growing sense of something alien and irreconcilable in the design and purpose of their separate lives, a growing feeling of regret, a conviction enhanced by his conversation with Joel in the studio that morning that their lives would be lived out in separate worlds, wrought to separate purposes, and shaped by separate beliefs, and with that knowledge a feeling—a feeling of loneliness and finality and farewell—as if a great door had swung for ever closed between them, as if there was something secret, buried, and essential in the soul of each which now could never be revealed. And, to his surprise, he heard himself saying:
“Thanks, Joel—it’s mighty fine of you—about as fine as anything I ever heard—but I don’t need help now. If I need it later—”
“If you do,” said Joel very quickly, “I wish you’d let me know—I’d like it if you would. . . . And gosh! it’s great to know that you are going,” he whispered again with radiant enthusiasm. “I envy you!”
“Then I wish to God you’d come along! . . . Joel,” the other burst out excitedly, with a sudden surge of eager warm conviction. “Why can’t you? We’d have a great time of it—go everywhere—see everything! It would be a wonderful thing—a great experience—for you and me both. You’ve never seen Europe that way before, have you?—the way that you and I could see it?—you’ve always been with your family, your mother, haven’t you?—Come on!” he cried, seizing his friend by the arm, as if they were ready to go that instant. “Let’s go! We’ll have the grandest trip you ever heard about!”
But Joel, laughing his radiant soundless laugh, and shaking his head with gentle but inflexible denial, said:
“No, Eugene! . . . Not for me! . . . I can’t do it! I’m going to stay right here and keep on with the work I’m doing . . . Besides,” he added gravely, “Mums needs me. No one knows what’s going to happen here in the family,” he said quietly—“I mean—that thing tonight—you saw—about Mums and Pups”—he said with painful difficulty. The other nodded, and Joel concluded simply: “I’ve got to stay.” For a moment he was silent, and suddenly the other youth noticed something starved and lonely, and almost desperately forsaken and resigned, that he had never observed in the boy’s gaunt face and eyes before, and when Joel spoke again, although there was a faint smile on his face, there was something old and sad and weary in his voice that the other youth had never heard before. He said quietly:
“Perhaps you’re right. . . . Perhaps you and I do belong in different worlds . . . must go different ways. . . . If that is true,” Joel turned and looked directly at his friend and in his eyes there was an infinite quiet depth of regret and acceptance “—if that is true, I’m sorry. . . . At any rate, it was good to have known you. . . . And now, good-bye, Eugene—Good night, I mean,” he hastily concluded, in his former whispered, quick and casual tones, “I’ll see you in the morning.”
With these words he turned quickly and left him.
He stayed there long into the night in that rich room, while the great house sank to sleep and silence all around him. And at first he moved there quietly like a man living in an enchanted dream, almost afraid to draw a breath lest he dispel the glory and the magic of enchantment, and all the time the voices of the living books around him seemed to speak to him, to say to him: “Now it is night and silence and the sleep-time of the earth, the all-exultant time of youth and loneliness, and of your spirit’s proud accession. Now take us, plunder us, and take us, for you are alone and living in the world tonight while all the sleepers sleep, immortal knowledge will be yours tonight, the secrets of an everlasting and triumphal wisdom; the huge compacted treasure of the earth speaks to you from these storeyed shelves, and it is yours, you are the richest man in all the earth if you will take us, only take us, we have waited for you long, dear friend, tonight the world is yours, and will be yours for ever, if you will only take us, take us, take us.”