Of Time and the River (11 page)

He knew that next day he must meet his brother and his father, he knew that the dreaded pause and interruption of his flight would last but two short days, and that in this brief time he might see and know for the last time all that was living of his father, and yet the knowledge of this hated meeting filled him with loathing, a terrible desire to get away from it as quickly as possible, to forget it, to escape from it for ever.

He knew in his heart that for the wretched, feeble, whining old man whom he must meet next day, he felt no love whatever. He knew, indeed, that he felt instead a kind of hate—the wretched kind of hatred that comes from intolerable pity without love, from suffering and disgust, from the agony of heart and brain and nerves, the poisonous and morbid infection of our own lives, which a man dying of a loathsome disease awakes in us, and from the self- hate, the self-loathing that it makes us feel because of our terrible desire to escape him, to desert him, to blot out the horrible memory we have for him, utterly to forget him.

Now the three men remaining in the compartment were rising to depart. Old Flood got up with a painful grunt, carefully dropped the chewed butt of his cigar into the brass spittoon, and walked tenderly with a gouty and flat-footed shuffle across the little room to the mirrored door of the latrine. He opened it, entered, and closed it behind him. The pompous swarthy little man got up, stretched his short fat arms out stiffly, and said, “Well, I’ll be turning in. I’ll see you in the morning, won’t I, Jim?”

The man with the thin, tight, palely freckled face, to whom these words had been addressed, looked up quickly from the magazine he was reading, and said sharply, in a rather cold, surprised and distant tone:

“What? . . . Oh! Yes. Good night, Wade.”

He got up then, carefully detached the horn-rimmed spectacles from his long, pointed nose, folded them carefully and put them in the breast pocket of his coat, and then took up the brief-case at his side. At this moment, a man, accompanied by Robert Weaver and by another youth who was about the same age as the boy, entered the smoking-room.

The man, who was in his middle thirties, was a tall lean Englishman, already bald, with bitten and incisive features, a cropped moustache, and the high hard flush of the steady drinker.

His name was John Hugh William Macpherson Marriott. He was the youngest son of an ancient family of the English nobility and just a year or two before he had married the great heiress, Virginia Willets. To the boy, and to all the other men in the train, except the man with the cold thin face and pointed nose, the Englishman was known only by sight and rumour, and his sudden entrance into the smoking-room had much the same effect as would the appearance of a figure from some legendary world of which they had often heard, but which they had never seen.

The reason for this feeling was that the Englishman and his wife lived on the great estate near town which her father had built and left to her. All the people in the town had seen this immense estate, had driven over some of its 90,000 acres, had seen its farms, its fields, its pastures, and its forests, its dairies, buildings, and its ranges of wild, smoke-blue mountains. And finally they had all seen from a distance its great mansion house, the gables, roof, and spires of a huge stone structure modelled on one of the great châteaux of France. But few of them had ever been inside the place or known the wonderful people who lived there.

All the lives of these fortunate people had become, therefore, as strange and wonderful to the people of the town as the lives of legendary heroes. And in a curious way that great estate had shaped the whole life of the town. To be a part of that life, to be admitted there, to know the people who belonged to it would have been the highest success, the greatest triumph that most of the people in the town could imagine. They could not admit it, but it was the truth. At the heart of the town’s desire was the life of that great house.

The Englishman had entered the smoking compartment with the driving movement of a man who has been drinking hard, but is used to it. The moment that he entered, however, and saw the other people there he stopped short, with a kind of stunned abruptness. In a moment, after an astounded silence, he spoke to them, greeting them with the rough, brief, blurted-out friendliness of a shy and reticent man:

“Hello! . . . Oh, hello! . . . How do?” He grinned formally and suddenly began to stare with an astounded expression at the gouty figure of old Flood who at just this moment had opened the door of the latrine and was shuffling painfully out into the compartment. Mr. Flood stopped and returned his look in kind, with his bulging and bejowled stare of comic stupefaction.

In a moment more the Englishman recovered himself, grimaced with his shy, quick, toothy grin, and blurted out at Flood, as to the other men:

“Oh, hello! Hello! How d’ye do?”

“I’m pretty good, thank you!” old Flood said hoarsely and slowly, after a heavy pause. “How are you?” and continued to stare heavily and stupidly at him.

But already the Englishman had turned abruptly from him, his face and lean neck reddening instantly and fiercely with the angry embarrassment of a shy man. And with the same air of astonished discovery he now addressed himself to the man with the long thin nose and palely freckled face, blurting his words out rapidly and by rushes as before, but somehow conveying to the others the sense of his intimacy and friendship with this man and of their own exclusion.

“Oh! . . . There you are, Jim!” he was saying in his astounded and explosive fashion. “Where the devil have you been all night? . . . I say!” he went on rapidly without waiting for an answer, “won’t you come in and have a spot with me before you turn in?”

Every suggestion of the disdain and cold aloofness which had characterized the other man’s manner towards his fellow-passengers had now vanished at the Englishman’s words. Indeed, in the way he now came forward, smiling, and put his hand in a friendly manner on the Englishman’s arm, there was something almost scrambling in its effusive eagerness. “Why yes, Hugh,” he said hastily. “I’d be delighted, of course! . . . Just a minute,” he said in an almost confused tone of voice, “till I get my brief-case. . . . Where did I leave it? Oh, here it is!” he cried, picking it up, and making for the door with his companion, “I’m all ready now! Let’s go!”

“Hugh! Hugh!” cried Robert who had accompanied the Englishman when he entered the compartment, and whom the Englishman now seemed to have forgotten entirely, “will I see you to-morrow before you get off?” The words were spoken in a deep, rapid, eager tone of voice, and in the tone and manner of the youth who spoke them there was the same suggestion of almost fawning eagerness that had characterized the older man.

“Eh! What’s that?” the Englishman cried in a startled tone, turning abruptly and staring at the young man who had addressed him. “Oh! Yes, Robert! I’m stopping at Washington! Look in for a moment, won’t you, if you’re up!”

Something in his tone and manner plainly and definitely said that the young man’s company was no longer wanted for the evening, but the youth immediately nodded his head energetically and decisively, saying in a satisfied manner:

“Good! Good! I’ll do that! I’ll be in to say good-bye to-morrow morning.”

“Right!” the Englishman said curtly. “Good night! . . . Good night! . . . Good night!” he blurted out, turning round and addressing every one, yet seeing no one, in a series of toothy grimaces. “Oh—good night!” he said suddenly, before going out, grinning and shaking hands briefly, in a gesture of permanent dismissal, with the other young man, who was a blond insignificant- looking youth, obviously a “hanger-on,” with whom the Englishman evidently cared to have no further acquaintance. Then, pushing his companion before him through the green curtain, he went out suddenly with the same desperate shy abruptness, and in a moment the other men, saying good night all around, had followed him, and the three young men were left alone in the compartment. It was now after one o’clock. Outside, the moon was up, flooding the dark earth of Virginia with a haunting light. That grand, moon-haunted earth stroked calmly past and, through the media of its changeless and unceasing change, the recession and recurrent movement of the enchanted scene, the train made on for ever its tremendous monotone that was itself the rhythm of suspended time, the sound of silence and for ever.

For a moment, after the men had gone, Robert stared down sternly and quizzically at the boy, with an expression of mock gravity, and then, in his rapid, eager, deep-toned and rather engaging voice, said:

“Well, Colonel? . . . What have you to say for yourself? . . . Was there grass on the back of her back, or was the foul deed perpetrated in your Hudson Super Six? . . . Come, sir! Explain yourself! Were you drunk or sober?” And suddenly lifting his thin, young, yet almost tortured-looking face and his restless eyes, which were inflamed with drink, and in whose haggard depths the incipient flashes of the madness which later would destroy him were already visible, he laughed suddenly, a strange, small, hoarsely falsetto kind of laugh, jerking his head towards the boy, and saying in an annoying and indefinite way:

“Crazy! Crazy! Crazy! . . . The craziest man I ever saw!” He stopped suddenly and, looking down at the boy for a moment with this same expression of haggard, over-driven restlessness, demanded impatiently:

“What have you been doing by yourself all night? Just sitting there all alone and doing nothing? . . . I’ll swear, I don’t see how you do it! . . . I’d go crazy sitting in one place like that without any one to talk to!” he said in an accusing and impatient tone of voice, as if the other youth had really done some extraordinary and unreasonable thing. He thrust one hand quickly and impatiently into the trousers pocket of his well-cut clothes in such a way that his Delta Kappa Epsilon pin was for a moment visible. Then he stood there, jingling some coins about in his pocket and looking at the boy with his inflamed, restless, furiously desperate eyes. Turning away suddenly, with a movement of impatience, he shook his head in a gesture of astounded disbelief, laughed his little hoarse falsetto laugh again, and said:

“It beats me! . . . Don’t see how he does it! . . . Damnedest man I ever saw! . . . It’d drive me crazy to be alone like that!”

He turned abruptly again, thrust both hands into his pockets, and for a moment stood looking at the boy with the old expression of mock gravity, and with a faintly malicious smile hovering about the edges of his thin, nervous, strongly modelled mouth.

“Do you know what they’re saying about you at home? . . . Do you know what those people think of you? . . . Do you know what all those old women up there are doing now?” he said hoarsely and accusingly, in his deep, sonorous, and rapid tone.

“Now, Robert!” the boy suddenly shouted, in a choking and furious tone, getting to his feet. “Don’t you start that stuff! I’m not going to listen to it! You can’t fool me! They’re not saying anything!”

Robert lifted his thin, finely drawn face and laughed again, his little annoying hoarse falsetto laugh, in which a note of malice and triumph was audible.

“Why, they ARE!” he said solemnly. “It’s the truth! . . . I think you ought to know about it! . . . I heard it everywhere, all over town!”

“Oh, Robert, you’re a liar!” the boy cried furiously. “WHAT did you hear all over town? You heard nothing!”

“Why, I DID!” said Robert solemnly, as before. “I’ll swear it to you. . . . Do you know what I heard the other day?” he went on in a blunt, accusing tone. “I heard that one of those women up there— some old sister in the Baptist Church—said she grew up with your mother and has known her all her life—well, she’s praying for you!” said Robert solemnly. “I’ll swear she is!”

“Praying for me!” the boy cried in an exasperated tone, but at the same time, feeling the numb white nauseous sickness of the heart which the intolerable thought that people are talking in a disparaging manner about him, his talents, or the success or failure of his life, can always bring to a young man. “Praying for me!” he fiercely shouted. “Why the hell should any one pray for me?”

“I know! I know!” said Robert, nodding his head vigorously, and speaking with grave agreement. “That’s what I told them. That’s just the way I felt about it! . . . But some of those people down there think you’ve gone to hell for good. . . . Do you know what I heard a woman say the other day? She said that Eugene Gant had gone straight to the devil since he went away to the State University—”

“Robert, I don’t believe you!” the boy shouted. “You’re making all this up!”

“Why, she did! So help me, God! I heard her say it, as sure as I’m standing here,” swore Robert solemnly. “She said you’d gone down there and taken Vergil Weldon’s courses in philosophy and that you were ruined for life! She said you had turned into a regular infidel—didn’t believe in God or anything any more. . . . Said she certainly did feel sorry for your mother,” said Robert maliciously.

“Feel sorry for my mother!” the boy fairly howled, dancing around now like a maniac. “Why the hell should the old bitch feel sorry for my mother! My mother can take care of herself; she doesn’t need any one to feel sorry for her! . . . All right, then!” he cried bitterly, with sudden acceptation of the other’s story. “Let ‘em pray! If that’s the way they feel, let ‘em pray till they wear corns on their God-damned knees! The dirty hypocrites!” he cried bitterly. “I’ll show them! Sneaking around behind your back to tell their rotten lies about you—and their talk of praying for your soul! I’m glad I’m out of that damned town! The two-faced bastards! I wouldn’t trust any of them as far as I could throw an elephant by his tail!”

“I know! I know!” said Robert, wagging his head in solemn agreement. “I agree with you absolutely. It’s awful—that’s what it is.”

It was extraordinary that this absurd story, whether true or not, should have had such a violent effect on the emotions of the boy. Yet now that he had been told of some unknown woman’s concern for the salvation of his soul, and that certain people of the praying sort already thought that he was “lost,” the words were fastened in his flesh like rankling and envenomed barbs. And instantly, the moment that he heard this story and had cursed it, he thought that it was true. Now, his mind could no longer remember the time just a moment before when Robert’s words had seemed only an idle and malicious fabrication, probably designed to goad him, or, even if true, of no great importance.