Of Time and the River (108 page)

“Then why don’t you? I’ll take you there!—Look here—” his words were crazy and he knew it, but as he spoke them he believed all he said—“Look here! I haven’t got much money—but in America you can make it if you want to! I’m going back there. You come too—I’ll take you when I go!”

She had not tried to free herself; she just stood there passive, unresisting, as he poured that frenzied proposal in her ears. Now, with the same passive and unyielding movement, the bright armour of her young eyes, she stepped away, and stood looking at him silently for a moment. Then slowly, with an almost imperceptible movement, she shook her head. “Oh, you’ll forget all about us,” she said quietly. “You’ll forget about our lives here—buried in fog—and rain—and failure—and defeat.”

“Failure and defeat won’t last for ever.”

“Sometimes they do,” she said with a quiet finality that froze his heart.

“Not for you—they won’t!” Eugene said, and took her by the hand again with desperate entreaty. “Listen to me—” he blundered on incoherently, with the old feeling of nameless shame and horror. “You don’t need to tell me what it is—I don’t want to know—but whatever it is—for you, it doesn’t matter—you can get the best of it.”

She said nothing, but just looked at him through that hard bright armour of her eyes, the obdurate finality of her smile.

“Good-bye,” she said, “I’ll not forget you either.” She looked at him for a moment curiously before she spoke again. “I wonder,” she said slowly, “if you’ll ever understand just what it was you did for me by coming here?”

“What was it?”

“You opened a door that I thought had been closed for ever,” she said, “a door that let me look in on a world I thought I should never see again—a new bright world, a new life and a new beginning—for us all. And I thought that was something which would never happen to anyone in this house again.”

“It will to you,” Eugene said, and took her hand again with desperate eagerness. “It can happen to you whenever you want it to. It’s yours, I’ll swear it to you, if you’ll only speak.”

She looked at him, with an almost imperceptible movement of her head.

“I tell you I know what I’m talking about.”

Again she shook her head.

“You don’t know,” she said. “You’re young. You’re an American. There are some things you’ll never be old enough to know.—For some of us there’s no return.—Go back,” she said, “go back to the life you know—the life you understand—where there can always be a new beginning—a new life.”

“And you—” Eugene said dumbly, miserably.

“Good-bye, my dear,” she said so low and gently he could scarcely hear her. “Think of me sometimes, won’t you?—I’ll not forget you.” And before he could speak she kissed him once and was gone, so light and swift that he did not know it, until the door had closed behind her. And for some time, like a man in a stupor, he stood there looking out of the window at the grey wet light of England.

The next day he went away, and never saw any of them again, but he could not forget them. Although he had never passed beyond the armour of their hard bright eyes, or breached the wall of their crisp, friendly, and impersonal speech, or found out anything about them, he always thought of them with warmth, with a deep and tender affection, as if he had always known them—as if, somehow, he could have lived with them or made their lives his own had he only said a word or turned the handle of a door—a word he never knew, a door he never found.

LXXIV

The day before he went away, the Rhodes scholars invited Eugene to lunch. That was a fine meal: they ate together in their rooms in college, they had opened their purses to the college chef, and had told him not to spare himself but to go the limit. Before the meal they drank together a bottle of good sherry wine, and as they ate they drank the college ale, strong, brown, and mellow, and when they came to coffee, they all finished off on a bottle of port apiece.

There was a fine thick seasonable soup, of the colour of mahogany, and then a huge platter piled high with delicate brown-golden portions of filet of sole, and a roast of mutton, tender, fragrant, juicy and delicious as no other mutton that Eugene had ever eaten, with red currant jelly, well-seasoned sprouts, and boiled potatoes, to go with it, and at the end a fine apple-tart, thick cream, sharp cheese, and crackers.

It was a fine meal, and when they finished with it they were all happy and exultant. They were beautifully drunk and happy, with that golden, warm, full-bodied and most lovely drunkenness that can come only from good rich wine and mellow ale and glorious and abundant food—a state that we recognize instantly when it comes to us as one of the rare, the priceless, the unarguable joys of living, something stronger than philosophy, a treasure on which no price can be set, a sufficient reward for all the anguish, weariness, and disappointment of living, and a far better teacher than Aquinas ever was.

They were all young men and when they had finished they were drunk, glorious, and triumphant as only young men can be. It seemed to them now that they could do no wrong, or make no error, and that the whole earth was a pageantry of delight which had been shaped solely for their happiness, possession, and success. The Rhodes scholars no longer felt the old fear, confusion, loneliness, bitter inferiority and desolation of the soul which they had felt since coming there.

The beauty, age, and grandeur of the life about them were revealed as they had never been before, their own fortune in living in such a place seemed impossibly good and happy, nothing in this life around them now seemed strange or alien, and they all felt that they were going to win, and make their own, a life among the highest and most fortunate people on the earth.

As for Eugene, he now thought of his departure exultantly, and with intolerable desire, not from some joy of release, but because everything around him now seemed happy, glorious, and beautiful, and a token of unspeakable joys that were to come, a thousand images of trains, of the small rich-coloured joy and comfort and precision of their trains, of England, lost in fog, and swarming with its forty million lives, but suddenly not dreary, but impossibly small, and beautiful and near, to be taken at a stride, to be compassed at a bound, to enrich him, fill him, be his for ever in all its joy and mystery and magic smallness.

And he thought of the huge smoky web of London with this same joy: of the suave potent ale he could get in one place there, of its squares, and ancient courts, and age-grimed mysteries, and of the fog-numb strangeness of ten million passing men and women. He thought of the swift rich projectile of the channel train, the quays, the Channel boats, and darkness, night, the sudden onslaught of the savage choppy seas outside the harbour walls, and England fading, and the flashing beacon lights of France, the quays again, the little swarming figures, the excited tongues, the strange dark faces of the Frenchmen, the always-alien, magic, time-enchanted strangeness of the land, the people, and the faces; and then Paris, the nostalgic, subtle and incomparably exciting fabric of its life, its flavour, and its smell, the strange opiate of its time, the rediscovery of its food, its drink, the white, carnal, and luxurious bodies of the ladies of easy virtue.

They were all exultant, wild, full of joy and hope and invincible belief as they thought of all these things and all the glory and the mystery that the world held treasured for their taking in the depths of its illimitable resources; and they shouted, sang, shook hands and roared with laughter, and had no doubts, or fears, or dark confusions, as they had done in other, younger, and more certain times.

Then they started out across the fields behind the colleges, and the fields were wet and green, the trees smoky-grey and blurred in magic veils of bluish mist, and the worn path felt, looked, and seemed incredibly familiar, like a field they had crossed, a path they had trod, a million times. And at length they came to their little creek-wise river, their full, flowing little river of dark time and treasured history, their quiet, narrow, deeply flowing little river, uncanny in the small perfection of its size, as it went past soundlessly among the wet fresh green of the fields that hemmed it with a sweet, kept neatness of perfection.

Then, having crossed, they went up along the river path until they came to where the crews were waiting—the Merton crew before, another college crew behind, and the students of both colleges clustered eagerly on the path beside their boats, exhorting their comrades in the shell, waiting for the signal that would start the race.

Then, even as the Rhodes scholars pounded on Eugene’s back and roared at him with an exuberant affection that “You’ve got to run with us! You’ve got to root for us! You belong to Merton now!” the starting-gun cracked out, the crews bent furiously to their work, the long blades bit frantically the cold grey water, and the race was on. And they were racing lightly, nimbly now, two packs of young men running on the path, each yelping cries of sharp encouragement to his crew as he ran on beside it.

At first, as Eugene ran, he felt strong and lithe and eager. He was aware of an aerial buoyancy: his step was light, his stride was long and easy, his breath came softly, without labour, and the swift feet of the running boys thudded before, behind, around him, on the hard path, pleasantly, and he was secure in his strength and certitude again, and thought that he was one of them and could run with them to the end of the world and back and never feel it.

He thought he had recovered all the lean sinew and endurance of a boy, that the storm-swift flight, the speed, the hard condition, and resilient effort of a boy were his again, that he had never lost them, that they had never changed. Then a leaden heaviness began to steal along his limbs, he felt the weariness of effort for the first time, a thickening slowness in the muscles of his legs, a numb weight-like heaviness tingling at his finger-tips, and now he no longer looked so sharply and so smartly at the swinging crew below him, the nimbly running boys around him.

He began to pound ahead with dogged and deliberate effort, and his heart was pounding like a hammer at his ribs, his breath was labouring hoarsely in his throat and his tongue felt numb and thick and swollen in his mouth, and blind motes were swimming drunkenly before his eyes. He could hear his voice, unfamiliar and detached, weirdly unreal, as if someone else were speaking in him, as it panted hoarsely:

“Come on, Merton! . . . Come on, Merton! . . . Come on, Merton!”

And now the nimbler running footsteps all around him had passed, had gone ahead of him, had vanished. He could no longer see the crews nor know if they were there. He ran on blindly, desperately, hearing, seeing, saying nothing any longer, an anguished leaden creature, weighted down with a million leaden hours and weary efforts, pounding heavily, blindly, mindlessly along, beneath grey timeless skies of an immortal weariness, across the grey barren earth of some huge planetary vacancy—where there was neither shade nor stay nor shelter, where there would never be a resting-place, a room, nor any door which he could enter, and where he must pound blindly, wearily along, alone, through that huge vacancy for ever.

Then voices swarmed around him once again and he could feel strong hands on him. They seized him, stopped him, and familiar faces swarmed forward at him through those swimming motes of blind grey vacancy. He could hear again the hoarse ghost-unreality of his own voice panting: “Come on, Merton!” and see his friends again, now grinning, laughing, shouting, as they shook him. “Stop! The race is over! Merton won!”

LXXV

Their names were Octave Feuillet, Alfred Capus, and Maurice Donnay; their names were Hermant, Courteline, and René Bazin; their names were Jules Renard, Marcelle Tinayre, and André Theuriet; and Clarétie, and Frapié and Tristan Bernard; and de Régnier and Paul Reboux, and Lavedan; their names were Rosny, Gyp, Boylesve, and Richepin; their names were Bordeaux, Prévost, Margueritte, and Duvernois—their names, Great God! their names were countless as the sands upon the shore—and in the end, their names were only names and names and names—and nothing more.

Or, if their names were something more than names—if they sometimes shaped themselves in his mind as personalities—these personalities were faded, graceful, and phantasmal ones—each talented and secure in his position and curiously alike—each brave and good and gentle in his trade, like lesser-known knights of the Round Table. He knew that few of them had been the hero of a generation, the leader of a century; he knew that none of them had rivalled Balzac, surpassed Stendhal, outdone Flaubert. And for this reason, their vague, phantasmal company became more haunting- strange to him than if they had.

He knew, as well, that there must be among them great differences of talent, great differences of style. His reason told him that some were good, and some were fair, and some were only cheap; even his meagre understanding of their tongue showed him that there was a great range, every kind of difference in their choice and treatment of a subject—a range that swept from the gracefully ironic sentiment of Les Vacances d’un Jeune Homme Sage to the stern earth-and-peasant austerity of Le Blé qui lčve; from the dream nostalgia of Le Passé Vivant to the salty and difficult drolleries of Messieurs les Ronds-de-Cuir or Le Train de 8 heures 47.

He knew that each of these men must have had his own style, his special quality which would instantly be discerned and appraised by a French reader; he knew that some had written of the quiet life of the provinces, and that others wrote of the intrigue, the love affairs, the worldly and sophisticated gentry of Paris; he knew that some were writers of a graceful sentiment, some delicately ironic, some drolly comic, some savagely satiric, and some grimly tragic.

But all of them seemed to come from the same place, to have the same quality, to evoke the same perfume. They were the vague and shadowy figures of a charming, beautiful, and legendary kind of life—a life that was all the more legendary to him because he was constantly groping with half-meanings, filling in his faulty understanding of the language with painful intuitions, tearing desperately at the contents of unnumbered volumes, with a tortured hunger of frustration, an aching brain, a dictionary in one hand and one of these slick and flimsy little volumes in another.