Of Time and the River (135 page)

And later, the feeling was more strong and strange than ever, as he lay in his sumptuous bed in the hotel, reading the clippings in the Countess’s books—those incredible explosions of Yankee journalese that this old woman had inspired in a thousand little towns across America—brought back here, read here now, in the midnight stillness of this ancient town as the great cathedral bells thronged through the air—the miraculous weavings of dark chance and destiny, all near as his heart and farther off than heaven, familiar as his life, and stranger than a dream.

XCIII

In the weeks that followed, the boy discovered in the totally absurd, yet curiously persuasive illogic of the woman’s mind a revealing illustration of the psychology of fraud, the self- hypnosis of the impostor. When he would protest to her at the effrontery of her representations, the staggering fiction she had now woven about him, his family, his wealth, his power, his influence, and his profession, which made an open, barefaced use of great names and institutions of which he had no knowledge and to which he could make no claim, the old woman would answer him at once with a series of arguments so ingeniously persuasive that for a moment he would find himself almost conquered by their hypnotic power, absurdly false though he knew them to be.

“Look here,” he would say resentfully. “What do you mean by telling all these people that I represent The New York Times? What if The New York Times should hear about it and have me thrown in jail for fraud—for using their name when I had no right to do it?— You’d be safe—you would,” he said bitterly. “I’d be the one to suffer—YOU could always get out of it by saying that you acted in good faith, that you really thought I DID work for The Times.”

“But you DO, don’t you?” She looked at him with a surprised and puzzled face.

“No!” he shouted. “Of course I don’t! And I never told you so, either! It’s something you made up out of your own head five minutes after I met you, and nothing I could say would stop you.— Now you’ve told people all over the town that I’m writing stories about Orléans for The New York Times, and am going to put THEM in the stories. We’ve accepted favours, got things at reduced prices and been entertained by these people all because you told them I am working for The Times and that they are going to get some free publicity out of it. Don’t you realize what that is?” he said angrily, glaring at her. “That’s fraud. That’s getting something by false pretence. You can be put in jail for that! . . . Why, the next thing I know you’ll be getting money from them—collecting a commission from them for getting me to write them up. Perhaps you have already, for all I know,” he concluded bitterly.

“But you did tell me that you were a journalist, my boy,” the old woman said gently. “You told me that, you know.”

“Well—yes,” he sullenly admitted. “I did tell you that. I said that because I want to be a writer, and I’ve done nothing yet—and somehow it didn’t seem so big to say I was a journalist. . . . Besides,” he blundered on uncertainly, “I thought the word had a kind of different meaning here from what it has at home—”

She nodded her head briskly with a satisfied air:

“Exactly. . . . A journalist is one who contributes articles and sketches on timely subjects to current publications. . . . And you’ve done that, haven’t you?”

“Well,” he conceded, “I wrote some pieces for the university magazine when I was at college—”

“Ah-h! Exactly!”—this with an air of triumph.

“And I was editor of the college newspaper.”

“But of course! Just as I say!”

“And I suppose I did write news stories about the university once in a while and send them to the paper back home.”

“Of course you did, my boy! Of course!”

“And I did write what they call a feature article one time and sold it to a paper. . . . And I wrote a one-act play and it was published in a book and I’ve had so far eight dollars royalty on it,” he concluded his recital with a meagre glow of hope, a lame belief that his journalistic pretensions were not wholly fraudulent.

“But—” the Countess lifted astounded eyebrows and looked about her with a fine gesture of the hands expressive of bewilderment—“just as I SAY, my boy! Just as I SAY. From what you tell me there’s no doubt of it! You are a journalist.”

“Well,” he conceded gloomily, “I guess if you can establish my reputation from that, I could swear to what I’ve told you. . . . Oh, yes,” he added ironically, “and I forgot to tell you that I got up early in the morning and delivered papers when I was a kid.”

“Exactly! Exactly!” she nodded seriously—“you showed a talent for your present work right from the start. You have been trained in your profession since childhood.”

“Oh, my God!” he groaned. “What’s the use? Have it your own way, then. I can’t argue with you. . . . Only, for God’s sake, Countess, stop telling people around here that I am working for The New York Times.”

“Now, my boy, see here; you mustn’t be so modest about things. If you don’t learn to blow your own trumpet a little no one else will do it for you. As clever and brilliant as you are, you mustn’t be so self-effacing. What if you are not yet editor of The New York Times—?”

“Editor! Editor, hell! I’m not even office-boy!”

“But, of COURSE, my dear!” she said patiently. “You will be some day. But at the present time you are a rising young journalist of great gifts, for whom all of your confrčres of The Times are expecting a brilliant career—”

“Now, Countess, you look here—”

She waved her hand tolerantly with a dismissing gesture, and went on:

“All that will come,” she said. “You are still young—no one expects you to be editor yet.”

“You’ll have me editor if you talk much longer,” he said sarcastically. “I wouldn’t put it past you. But if you’re determined to tell people I’m a journalist, why drag in The New York Times? After all, I could pretend to be a journalist without feeling an utter fraud. So why drag in The Times?”

“Ah,” she said. “The Times is a great newspaper. People have heard of The Times. To say you are connected with The Times means something, carries prestige.”

“Well, if it’s prestige you want, why don’t you tell them I’m a college professor? You know, I did work as an instructor for a year in New York. If you told them I’m a professor I could at least feel a little less guilty.”

“Oh,” she said seriously, “but no one here would believe such a story as that. You are too young to be a professor. Besides,” she added practically, “it is much better, anyway, to tell them you are working for The Times.”

“Why?”

“Because,” she patiently explained, “they can see some value in that. The power of the press is great. A professor could do nothing for them. A clever young man writing articles for The Times might do much.”

“But, damn it,” he cried, in an exasperated tone, “I’ve never written articles for The Times. Can’t you understand that?”

“Now, see here, my boy,” she said quietly. “Try to be reasonable about this thing. What’s the use of confusing these people here with needless explanations? What does it matter if you haven’t written articles for The Times? You ARE writing them now—”

“Oh, hell, Countess!”

“You are going to write these very brilliant and interesting articles about Orléans,” she went on calmly, “and they will be published in The New York Times, because they will be so very clever that The New York Times will want to publish them. So why tell these simple people here anything more than that? It would only confuse them. I have told them nothing but the truth,” she said virtuously, “I have told them you are writing a series of articles about Orléans for the great newspaper, The New York Times, and that, my boy, is all they need to know.” She smiled tranquilly at him. He gave up.

“All right,” he said. “You win. Have it your own way. I’m anything you like—the white-haired boy, the prize performer, the crown jewel of The New York Times.”

She nodded with approval.

The farce grew more extravagant day by day. And because this fantastic chance had somewhat dulled the smothering ache that had been almost constant since his parting with Ann, Elinor, and Starwick, he stayed on from day to day, not knowing why he stayed or why he should depart, but held with a kind of hypnotic interest by this web of absurd circumstance in which he had so swiftly been involved.

In the morning, when he came downstairs, the old woman would be waiting for him and would sharply and eagerly catechize him about his conduct the night before.

“Did you go to the café last night, my dear? . . . How much did you have to drink? Eh? . . . A Pernod, four cognacs, coffee, a packet of cigarettes. . . . What did that come to, eh? . . . How much did you spend? . . . Twenty-one francs! . . . Ah, my dear, too much, too much!” she clucked sadly and regretfully. “You will spend all your money in café‘s and have nothing to go on with! . . . Tell me, now, my dear,” her old eyes had an eager glint of curiosity, “were there many people there? . . . Was the place crowded? . . . Were there many women? . . . You didn’t talk to any of the girls, did you?” she said sharply.

He said that he had.

“You should not have done that!” she said reproachfully. “And what did she want? She wanted you to come with her, eh?”

“No; we didn’t get that far. She asked me for a cigarette.”

“And did you give it to her?”

“Yes, of course.”

“But no money! You didn’t give her any money?” she said feverishly.

“No.”

“Did you buy her a drink? . . . Was that what all the cognac was for?”

“No. It was for me.”

“How much money have you left, my boy? . . . Are you keeping track of your expenses? . . . Did you get another of those express cheques cashed yesterday?”

“Yes, I did.”

“What kind? A ten-dollar one?”

“Yes.”

“Ah, you shouldn’t have done that,” she said regretfully. “Once you cash it, it goes quickly.” She snapped her fingers, “like that! Ça file! Ça file!—You do not watch your money as you should. You do not keep track of what you spend. . . . My boy, promise me something, will you?” she went on in a low, earnest tone. “Promise me you won’t spend all your money and get stranded here. . . . You won’t do that, will you? . . . How much money have you left? . . . Tell me,” she said eagerly. “How many of those express cheques have you left? . . . Count it, count it,” she demanded greedily. “Take the book out and let me see what you have left.”

He took out the little leather folder of express cheques and opened it. It was getting very thin. Then he thumbed rapidly through the little sheaf of cheques, trying to get it over as quickly as he could because of its distasteful reminder of a harsh reality he wanted to forget. He not only lacked by nature the sense of money, he was also at the blissful period in a young man’s life when one hundred dollars is as good as a million. In fact, with twenty dollars in bright, flimsy fifty-franc notes in his pocket, the pleasant terrace of a good café, a drink, the knowledge of delicious food and wine within, and the slow, sensual meditations of desire, he felt as rich as any millionaire on earth. At such a time, the whole earth lay before him in winding vistas of pleasure, joy, and mystery: in the huge unreason of this enchantment he was sure that there was nothing ahead of him but a beautiful and fortunate life, filled with success and happiness, and if by any chance he thought of money, it was only to dismiss the thought impatiently with the irrational conviction that it would always be ready when he needed it, that it would come to him miraculously and wonderfully like manna out of heaven, that he could get great sums of money, in many strange, delightful ways, at any time he wanted it.

Now the Countess, by the harsh worldliness of her insistence, had jarred him back to a disquieting reality for which he had no relish. While the old woman followed every movement with greedy, avaricious eyes glued on the cheques, he thumbed them over quickly and sullenly, told her curtly their amount, and thrust the book brusquely back into his pocket.

When he had finished, she shook her head at him with sad reproach.

“Ah!” she said, “what extravagance! A French family could have lived comfortably for a month on what you have spent here in the last week.”

He winced and stirred restlessly, pierced suddenly with a nameless sense of guilt and shame, and personal unworthiness, a sudden evocation of the infinite toil and minute saving of his mother’s life. And he felt this despite the fact that his mother had now acquired a considerable estate, a large sum of money, and, in spite of her parsimonious economies in innumerable small ways, displayed in her real estate investments a riotous extravagance that far surpassed any of his own on the sensual pleasures of food and drink and books, on voyages and women. And this curious and irrational sense of guilt and shame was, he knew, not peculiar to himself, but rooted somehow in the structure of the lives of most of the Americans he had known. It was something that went back almost past time and memory, that they had always had, that was distilled out of their blood and drawn from the very air they breathed: a feeling that any life not based on gainful labour, any life devoted openly and nakedly to pleasure, idleness and leisure, and the gratification of one’s own desires, was, somehow, an ignoble and shameful life.

Now, suddenly torn with this old and irremediable sense of guilt, he scowled suddenly, fidgeted restlessly in his chair, and then spoke sharply and angrily to the old woman, who sat with her sad, reproachful gaze upon him.

“Well, it’s spent now, it’s gone, it can’t be helped. What do you expect people to do with money, anyway?” he said irritably. “Count it and kiss it and say good night to it every time they go to sleep—and kiss it and count it over again every time they wake up, to see none of it has got away from them in the night? What’s it for, anyway, if it’s not to spend? What are you living for?” he said bitterly. “What are you waiting for? Are you saving your money so you can have a nice coffin when they bury you?”

“Yes, my boy, but you spend so much on food and drink and on the girls,” the old woman said in a sad tone. “So much of it goes on things like that.”