Of Time and the River (90 page)

Joel opened the door of the bathroom—it was a miracle of shining tile and creamy porcelain and gleaming silver and heavy, robe-like towels. Then Joel raised the shades, drew the curtains apart and opened the window: the fragrance of the night came in slowly, sustaining gauzy curtains on its breath of coolness like a cloud of gossamer. And through the opened window was revealed anew the haunting loneliness of that enchanted landscape: the vast sweep of velvet-rounded lawn that slept in moonlight, and the sleeping and moon-haunted woods below and to each side, and down below them in the distance the great wink and scallop-dance and dark unceasing mystery of the lovely and immortal river—a landscape such as one might see in dreams, in dreams for ever haunted by the thought of home.

The feeling of happiness that filled the youth was so grand, so wonderful and so overpowering that he could not speak. It seemed that all his life he had dreamed of one day finding such a life as this, and now that he had found it, it seemed to him that all he had dreamed was but a poor and shabby counterfeit of this reality— all he had imaged as a boy in his unceasing visions of the shining city, and of the glamorous men and women, the fortunate, good, and happy life that he would find there, seemed nothing but a shadowy and dim prefigurement of the radiant miracle of this actuality.

It was not merely the wealth, the luxury and the comfort of the scene that filled his heart with a sense of joy and victory. Far more than this, it was the feeling that this life of wealth, and luxury and comfort was so beautiful and right and good. At the moment it seemed to him to be the life for which all men on the earth are seeking, about which all men living dream, toward which all the myriads of the earth aspire; and the thing, above all, which made this life seem so beautiful and good was the conviction that filled him at that moment of its essential incorruptible righteousness. It seemed to him to be the most wonderful and beautiful life on earth, not only because it existed for the comfort and the soul-enrichment of its choice few, but because it stood there as a beacon and a legend in the hearts of all men living—a symbol of what all life on earth should be, a promise of what every man on earth should have.

In that blind surge of youth and joy, the magic of that unbelievable discovery, he could not estimate the strange and bitter chance of destiny, nor ravel out that grievous web, that dense perplexity. He could not see how men had groped and toiled and mined, and grown blind and bent and grey, deep in the dark bowels of the earth, to wreak this moonlight loveliness upon a hill; nor know how men had sweated and women worked, how youth had struck its fire and grown old, how hope and faith and even love had died, how many nameless lives had laboured, grieved, and come to nought in order that this fragile image of compacted night, this priceless distillation of its rare and chosen loveliness, should blossom to a flower of moonlight beauty on a hill.

Joel took him downstairs to the kitchen before saying good night. They crossed the hall and passed through the great dining-room. It was also a noble gleaming room of white, as grand and spacious as a room in a château, but warm, and familiar, comforting as home. Then they passed through a service corridor that connected the kitchen and the pantry with the dining-room, and instantly he found himself in another part of this enchanted world—the part that cooked and served and with viewless grace, and magic stealth and instancy—performed the labours of this enchanted house.

It was such a kitchen as he had never seen before—a kitchen such as he had never dreamed possible. In its space, its order, its astounding cleanliness, it had the beauty of a great machine—a machine of tremendous power, fabulous richness and complexity— which in its ordered magnificence, its vast readiness, had the clear and glittering precision of a geometric pattern. Even the stove—a vast hooded range as large as those in a great restaurant— glittered with the groomed perfection of a racing motor. There was, as well, an enormous electric stove that was polished like a silver ornament, the pots and pans were hung in gleaming rows, in vast but orderly profusion ranging from great copper kettles big enough to roast an ox to little pans and skillets just large enough to poach an egg, but all hung there in regimented order, instant readiness, shining like mirrors, scrubbed and polished into gleaming discs, the battered cleanliness of well-used copper, seasoned iron and heavy steel.

The great cupboards were crowded with huge stacks of gleaming china ware and crockery, enough to serve the needs of a hotel. And the long kitchen table, as well as the chairs and woodwork of the rooms, was white and shining as a surgeon’s table: the sinks and drains were blocks of creamy porcelain, clean scrubbed copper, shining steel.

It would be impossible to describe in detail the lavish variety, the orderly complexity, the gleaming cleanliness of that great room, but the effect it wrought upon his senses was instant and overwhelming. It was one of the most beautiful, spacious, thrilling, and magnificently serviceable rooms that he had ever seen: everything in it was designed for use, and edged with instant readiness; there was not a single thing in the room that was not needed, and yet its total effect was to give one a feeling of power, space, comfort, rightness and abundant joy.

The pantry shelves were crowded to the ceiling with the growing treasure of a lavish victualling—an astounding variety and abundance of delicious foods, enough to stock a grocery store or to supply an Arctic expedition—but the like of which he had never seen, or dreamed of, in a country house before.

Everything was there, from the familiar staples of a cook’s necessities to every rare and toothsome dainty that the climates and the markets of the earth produce. There was food in cans, and food in tins, and food in crocks, and food in bottles. There were— in addition to such staple products of the canning art as corn, tomatoes, beans and peas, pears, plums and peaches—such rarer relishes, as herrings, sardines, olives, pickles, mustard, relishes, anchovies. There were boxes of glacéd crystalline fruits from California, and little wickered jars of sharp-spiced ginger fruit from China: there were expensive jellies green as emerald, red as rubies, smoother than whipped cream; there were fine oils and vinegars in bottles, and jars of pungent relishes of every sort and boxes of assorted spices. There was everything that one could think of, and everywhere there was evident the same scrubbed and gleaming cleanliness with which the kitchen shone, but here there was as well that pungent, haunting, spicy odour that pervades the atmosphere of pantries—a haunting and nostalgic fusion of delicious smells whose exact quality it is impossible to define, but which has in it the odours of cinnamon, pepper, cheese, smoked ham, and cloves.

When they got into the kitchen they found Rosalind there: she was standing by the long white table drinking a glass of milk. Joel, in the swift and correct manner with which he gave instructions, at once eager, gentle and decisive, began to show his guest round.

“And look,” he whispered with his soft and yet incisive slowness, as he opened the heavy shining doors of the refrigerator—“here’s the ice-box: if you find anything there you like, just help yourself—”

Food! Food, indeed! The great ice-box was crowded with such an assortment of delicious foods as he had not seen in many years: just to look at it made the mouth begin to water, and aroused the pangs of a hunger so ravenous and insatiate that it was almost more painful than the pangs of bitter want. One was so torn with desire and greedy gluttony as he looked at the maddening plenty of that feast that his will was rendered almost impotent. Even as the eye glistened and the mouth began to water at the sight of a noble roast of beef, all crisp and crackly in its cold brown succulence, the attention was diverted to a plump broiled chicken, whose brown and crackly tenderness fairly seemed to beg for the sweet and savage pillage of the tooth. But now a pungent and exciting fragrance would assail the nostrils: it was the smoked pink slices of an Austrian ham—should it be brawny bully beef, now, or the juicy breast of a white tender pullet, or should it be the smoky pungency, the half-nostalgic savour of the Austrian ham? Or that noble dish of green lima beans, now already beautifully congealed in their pervading film of melted butter; or that dish of tender stewed young cucumbers; or those tomato slices, red and thick and ripe, and heavy as a chop; or that dish of cold asparagus, say; or that dish of corn; or, say, one of those musty fragrant, deep- ribbed cantaloups, chilled to the heart, now, in all their pink- fleshed taste and ripeness; or a round thick slab cut from the red ripe heart of that great water-melon; or a bowl of those red raspberries, most luscious and most rich with sugar, and a bottle of that thick rich cream which filled one whole compartment of that treasure-chest of gluttony, or—

What shall it be now? What shall it be? A snack! A snack!— Before we prowl the meadows of the moon tonight and soak our hearts in the moonlight’s magic and the visions of our youth—what shall it be before we prowl the meadows of the moon? Oh, it shall be a snack, a snack—hah! hah!—it shall be nothing but a snack because— hah! hah!—you understand, we are not hungry and it is not well to eat too much before retiring—so we’ll just investigate the ice-box as we have done so oft at midnight in America—and we are the moon’s man, boys—and all that it will be, I do assure you, will be something swift and quick and ready, something instant and felicitous, and quite delicate and dainty—just a snack!

I think—now let me see—h’m, now!—well, perhaps I’ll have a slice or two of that pink Austrian ham that smells so sweet and pungent and looks so pretty and so delicate there in the crisp garlands of the parsley leaf!—and yes, perhaps, I’ll have a slice of this roast beef, as well—h’m now!—yes, I think that’s what I’m going to do—say a slice of red rare meat there at the centre—ah-h! there you are! yes, that’s the stuff, that does quite nicely, thank you—with just a trifle of that crisp brown crackling there to oil the lips and make its passage easy, and a little of that cold but brown and, oh!—most—brawny gravy—and, yes, sir! I think I WILL, now that it occurs to me, a slice of that plump chicken—some white meat, thank you, at the breast—ah, there it is!—how sweetly doth the noble fowl submit to the swift and keen persuasion of the knife—and now, perhaps, just for our diet’s healthy balance, a spoonful of those lima beans, as gay as April and as sweet as butter, a tomato slice or two, a speared forkful of those thin- sliced cucumbers—ah! what a delicate and toothsome pickle they do make—what sorcerer invented them—a little corn perhaps, a bottle of this milk, a pound of butter and that crusty loaf of bread—and even this moon-haunted wilderness were paradise enow—with just a snack—a snack—a snack—

He was aroused from this voluptuous and hypnotic reverie by the sound of Rosalind’s warm sweet laugh, her tender and caressing touch upon his arm, and Joel’s soundless and astonished mouth, the eager incandescence of his gleeful smile, his whole face uplifted in its fine and gentle smile, his voice cast in its frequent tone of whispering astonishment:

“SIMPLY incredible!” he was whispering to his sister. “I’ve never seen such an expression on ANY one’s face in all my life! It’s simply diabolical! When he sees food, he looks as if he’s just getting ready to rape a woman!”

“Do you, darling?” said the girl, with her warm, sweet tolerance of humour. “I’m so glad to know that someone else likes food. I like it, too,” she said with a warm plainness; “when I am married and start having babies I shall eat and eat and eat to my heart’s content—as much as I want to, all the things I ever wanted, till I’m satisfied. . . . It’s so wonderful to find someone who will eat! You don’t know how hard it is to have a brother who’s a vegetarian—and who tells me that I’m getting disgustingly fat—and what a horrible thing it is to eat dead animals—like eating corpses. . . . Wouldn’t Joel be wonderful if he ate roast beef,” she added with her warm and gentle humour, as she put her arm around her brother’s waist—“he looks so thin and starved, poor thing—like a religious ascetic—doesn’t he?—But then, he’s such a saint as he is—isn’t he?—if he liked food, as well, he’d just have everything—he’d be too perfect.”

“No, sir,” Joel whispered, shaking his head and laughing with his curiously boyish, almost clumsily naďve, but beautifully engaging good nature—“Not I! . . . The rest of you can eat all the dead animals you like—but you don’t catch me doing it! . . . I’ll stick to spinach,” he whispered radiantly. “That’s good enough for me.”

“I know, darling,” she said with a gentle and tolerant sarcasm. “You and Bernard Shaw: if he said baled hay was good for you, you’d believe him, wouldn’t you?”

He laughed in his soundless, enthusiastic and beautifully generous way, his gaunt starved face lighting up with the gleeful, almost diabolically brilliant radiance of his wonderful selfless good- nature.

Then, turning swiftly to his firmer manner of incisive severity— the direct and earnest concision with which he whispered his instructions—he said abruptly:

“And look, Gene . . . when you finish eating put the lights out: the switch is on the right hand by the door as you go out. . . . And stay up as long as you like, go wherever you like, do as you please—you’ll bother no one,” he whispered, “. . . and a good walk,” he continued abruptly after a moment’s pause, “—is down the road—the way you went with Ros’ tonight—except that you keep on—”

“Past the cows, darling,” said Rosalind gently. “Past all the lovely cows and barns and meadows of the moon.”

LXII

The two young people stopped talking instantly as Eugene came in, Joel got up and shut the door behind him, indicated an easy leather chair, where the author could read his play most comfortably, and sitting down again beside his sister, waited for the play to begin.

Eugene began to read haltingly, with the difficulty and embarrassed constraint of a young man just beginning to test his powers, exhibiting his talents to the public for the first time, and torn by all the anguish, hope, and fear, the proud incertitude of youth.

It was a play called “Mannerhouse,” a title which itself might reveal the whole nature of his error—and its subject was the decline and fall and ultimate extinction of a proud old family of the Southern aristocracy in the years that followed the Civil War, the ultimate decay of all its fortunes and the final acquisition of its proud estate, the grand old columned house that gave the play its name, by a vulgar, coarse and mean, but immensely able member of the rising “lower class.”