Of Time and the River (59 page)

“Hm!” she said, making the bantering and humming noise in her throat as she looked at him. “WHA-A-A-T! Why, you’re my BA-A-A- BY!” she said with jesting earnestness, as she laid her strong worn hand loosely on his shoulder. “No, sir!” she said quickly and quietly, shaking her head in a swift sideways movement. “I’d be AFRA-A-ID, afraid,” she whispered.

“Mama, afraid of what?”

“Why, child,” she said gravely, “I’d be afraid you’d go and hurt yourself. Uh-uh!” she shook her head quickly and shortly. “I’d be afraid to let you try it—well, we’ll see,” she said, turning it off easily in an evasive and conciliatory tone. “We’ll see about it. I’d like to study about it a little first.”

After that there was nothing to do except to curse and beat their fists into the wall. And after that there was nothing to do at all. She had beaten them all, and they knew it. Their curses, prayers, oaths, persuasions and strangled cries availed them nothing. She had beaten them all, and finally they spoke no more to her or to themselves about her motor car: the gigantic folly of that mad wastefulness evoked for them all memories so painful, desolate and tragic—a memory of the fatality of blood and nature which could not be altered, of the done which could be undone never, and of the web of fate in which their lives were meshed— that they knew there was no guilt, no innocence, no victory, and no change. They were what they were, and they had no more to say.

So was it now as she stood planted there before her house. As she had grown older, her body had grown clumsier with the shapeless heaviness of age: as she stood there with her hands clasped in this attitude of ruminant relish, she seemed to be planted solidly on the pavement and somehow to own, inhabit, and possess the very bricks she walked on. She owned the street, the pavement, and finally her terrific ownership of the house was as apparent as if the house were living and could speak to her. For the rest of them that old bleak house had now so many memories of grief and death and intolerable, incurable regret that in their hearts they hated it; but although she had seen a son strangle to death in one of its bleak rooms, she loved the house as if it were a part of her own life—as it was—and her love for it was greater than her love for anyone or anything else on earth.

And yet, for her, even if that house, the whole world, fell in ruins around her, there could be no ruin—her spirit was as everlasting as the earth on which she walked, and could not be touched—no matter what catastrophes of grief, death, tragic loss, and unfulfilment might break the lives of other men—she was triumphant over the ravages of time and accident, and would be triumphant to her death. For there was only the inevitable fulfilment of her own destiny—and ruin, loss, and death availed not—she would be fulfilled. She had lived ten lives, and now she was embarked upon another one, and so it had been ordered in the beginning: this was all that mattered in the end.

But now, Luke, seeing her, as she stood planted there in all- engulfing rumination, thrust his hands distractedly through his shining hair again, and cried to her with exasperated entreaty:

“W-w-w-wy, Mama, if you PLEASE! I b-b-b-beg of you and BESEECH you, if you PLEASE!”

“I’m READY!” Eliza cried, starting and turning from her powerful contemplation of her house. “This very minute, sir! Come on!”

“Wy, if you p-p-p-PLEASE!” he muttered, thrusting at his hair.

They walked towards his car, which he had halted in the alley-way beside the house. A few leaves, sere and yellow, from the maples in the yard were drifting slowly to the ground.

XLI

During all that time, when he was waiting with a desperate hope that rose each day to the frenzy of a madman’s certitude, and sank each day to the abyss of his despair, for the magic letter which was coming to him from the city, and which would instantly give him all the fortune, fame, and triumph for which his soul was panting, his family looked at him with troubled question in their eyes. His enthusiastic hopes and assurances of the great success that he would have from writing plays seemed visionary and remote to them. Perhaps they were right about this, although the reason that they had for thinking so was wrong.

Thus, although they said little to Eugene at this time about his plans for the future, and what they did say was meant to hearten him, their doubt and disbelief were evident, and sometimes when he came into the house he could hear them talking in a troubled way about him.

“Mama,” he heard his sister say one day, as she sat talking with his mother in the kitchen, “what does Gene intend to do? Have you heard him say yet?”

“Why, no-o-o!” his mother answered slowly, in a puzzled and meditative tone. “He hasn’t said. At least he says he’s goin’ to write plays,—of course, I reckon he’s waiting to hear from those people in New York about that play he’s written,” she added quickly.

“Well, I know,” his sister answered wearily. “That’s all very fine—if he can do it. But, good heavens, Mama!” she cried furiously—“you can’t live on hope like that! Gene’s only one out of a million! Can’t you realize that?—Why, they used to think I had some talent as a singer”—here she laughed ironically, a husky high falsetto, “I used to think so myself—but you don’t notice that it ever got me anywhere, do you? No, sir!” she said positively. “There are thousands more just like Gene, who are trying to get ahead and make a name for themselves. Why should he think he’s any better than the rest of them? Why, it might be years before he got a play produced—and even then, how can he tell that it would be a success?—What’s he going to live on? How’s he going to keep going until all this happens? What’s he going to do?—You know, Mama, Gene’s no little boy any more. Please get that into your head,” she said sharply, as if her mother had questioned the accuracy of her remark. “No, sir! No, sir!” she laughed ironically and huskily. “Your baby is a grown man, and it’s time he waked up to the fact that he’s got to support himself from now on.—Mama, do you realize that it has been over four months since Gene left Harvard and, so far as I can see, he has made no effort yet to get a job? What does he intend to do?” she said angrily. “You know, he just can’t mope around like this ALL his days! Sooner or later he’s got to find some work to do!”

In all these words there was apparent not so much hostility and antagonism as the driving fury and unrest of Helen’s nervous, exacerbated, dissonant, and unhappy character, which could lavish kindness and affection one moment and abuse and criticism the next. These were really only signs of the frenzy and unrest in her large, tortured, but immensely generous spirit. Thus, she would rage and storm at her husband at one moment for “moping about the house,” telling him, “for heaven’s sake am I never to be left alone? Am I never to get a moment’s peace or quiet? Must I have you around me every moment of my life? In God’s name, Hugh—go! go! go!—Leave me alone for a few minutes, I beg of you!”—and by this time his sister’s voice would be cracked and strident, her breath coming hoarsely and almost with a sob of hysteria. And yet, she could be just as violent in her sense of wrong and injustice done to her if she thought he was giving too much time to business, rushing through his meals, reading a book when he should be listening to her tirade, or staying away from home too much.

Poor, tortured, and unhappy spirit, with all the grandeur, valour, and affection that Eugene knew so well, it had found, since her father’s death, no medicine for the huge and constant frenzy of its own unrest, no guide or saviour to work for it the miracle of salvation it must work itself, and it turned and lashed out at the world, demanding a loneliness which it could not have endured for three days running, a peace and quiet from its own fury, a release from its own injustice. And it was for this reason—because her own unrest and frenzy made her lash out constantly against the world, praising one week, condemning the next, accusing life and people of doing her some injury or wrong that she had done herself— it was for this reason, more than for any other, that Helen now lashed out about Eugene to their mother.

And because Eugene was strung on the same wires, shaped from the same clay, cut from the same kind and plan and quality, he stood there in the hall as he heard her, his face convulsed and livid, his limbs trembling with rage, his bowels and his heart sick and trembling with a hideous grey nausea of hopelessness and despair, his throat choking with an intolerable anguish of resentment and wrong, as he heard Helen’s voice, and before he rushed back into the kitchen to quarrel with her and his mother.

“Well, now,” he heard his mother say in a diplomatic and hopeful tone that somehow only served to increase his feeling of rage and exasperation—“well, now—well, now,” she said, “let’s wait and see! Let’s wait and see what happens with this play. Perhaps he’ll hear tomorrow that they have taken it. Maybe it’s going to be all right, after all!”

“Going to be all right!” Eugene fairly screamed at this juncture, rushing in upon them in the kitchen. “You’re God-damned right it’s going to be all right. I’ll tell you what’s all right!” he panted, because his breath was labouring against his ribs as if he had run up a steep hill—“if it was some damned real-estate man, that would be all right! If it’s some cheap low-down lawyer, that would be all right! If it was some damned rascal sitting on his tail up here in the bank, cheating you out of all you’ve got, that would be all right—hey?” he snarled, conscious that his words had no meaning or coherence, but unable to utter any of the things he wished to say and that welled up in that wave of hot and choking resentment. “O yes! The big man! The great man! The big deacon— Mr. Scroop Pegram—the big bank president—that would be all right, wouldn’t it?” he cried in a choked and trembling voice. “You’d get down on your hands and knees, and crawl if he spoke to you, wouldn’t you?—‘O thank you, Mr. Pegram, for letting me put my money in your bank so you can loan it out to a bunch of God-damn real-estate crooks,’” he sneered, in an infuriated parody of whining servility. “‘Thank you, sir,’” he said, and in spite of the fact that these words made almost no coherent meaning, his mother began to purse her lips rapidly in an excited fashion, and his sister’s big-boned face reddened with anger.

“Now,” his mother said sternly, as she levelled her index finger at him, “I want to tell you something! You may sneer all you please, sir, at Scroop Pegram, but he’s a man who has worked all his life for everything he has—”

“Yes,” Eugene said bitterly, “and for everything YOU have, too—for that’s where it’s going in the end.”

“He has made his OWN way since his childhood,” Eliza continued sternly and deliberately—“no one ever did anything for him, for there’s one thing sure:—there was no one in his family who was in a position to do it.—What he’s done he’s done for himself, without assistance and,” his mother said in a stern and telling voice, “without education—for he never had three months’ schoolin’ in his life—and today he’s got the respect of the community as much as any man I know.”

“Yes! And most of their money, too,” Eugene cried.

“You’d better not talk!” Helen said. “If I were you I wouldn’t talk! Don’t criticize other people until you show you’ve got it in you to do something for yourself,” she said.

“You! You!” Eugene panted. “I’ll show you! Talking about me when my back is turned, hey? That’s the kind you are! All right! You wait and see! I’ll show you!” he said, in a choked and trembling whisper of fury and resentment.

“All right,” Helen said in a hard and hostile voice. “I’ll wait and see. I hope you do. But you’ve got to show me that you’ve got it in you. It’s time for you to quit this foolishness and get a job! Don’t criticize other people until you show you’ve got it in you to support yourself,” she said.

“No,” said Eliza, “for we’ve done as much for you as we are able to. You’ve had as good an education as anyone could want—and now the rest is up to you,” she said sternly. “I’ve got no more money to pay out on you, so you can make your mind up to it from now on,” she said. “You’ve got to shift for yourself.”

And in the warm and living silence of the kitchen they looked at one another for a moment, all three, breathing heavily, and with hard and bitter eyes.

“Well, Gene,” Helen said, “I know. Try to forget about it. You’ll change as you grow older,” she said wearily. “We’ve all been like that. We all have these wonderful ambitions to be somebody famous, but that all changes. I had them, too,” she said. “I was going to be a great singer, and have a career in opera, but that’s all over now, and I know I never will. You forget about it,” she said quietly and wearily. “It all seems wonderful to you, and you think that you can’t live without it, but you forget about it. Oh, of course you will!” she muttered, “of course! Why!” she cried, shaking Eugene furiously, and now her voice had its old hearty and commanding ring, “I’m going to beat you if you act like this! What if they don’t take your play! I’ll bet that has happened to plenty of people—Yes, sir!” she cried. “I’ll bet that has happened to all of them when they started out—and then they went on and made a big success of it later! Why, if those people didn’t take my play,” she said, “I’d sit down and write another one so good they’d be ashamed of themselves! Why, you’re only a kid yet!” she cried furiously, shaking Eugene, and frowning fiercely but with her tongue stuck out a little and a kind of grin on her big-boned liberal-looking face. “Don’t you know that! You’ve got LOADS of time yet! Your life’s ahead of you! Of course you will! Of course you will!” she cried, shaking him. “Don’t let a thing like this get you down! In ten years’ time you’ll look back on all this and laugh to think you were ever such a fool! Of course you will!”—and then as her husband, who had driven up before their mother’s house, now sounded on the horn for her, she said again, in the quiet and weary tone: “Well, Gene, forget about it! Life’s too short! I know,” she said mysteriously, “I know!”

Then, as she started to go, she added casually: “Honey, come on over for supper, if you want to.—Now it’s up to you. You can suit yourself!—You can do exactly as you please,” she said in the almost hard, deliberately indifferent tone with which she usually accompanied these invitations: