Frank stared at the river.
“You know what I mean,” continued Paul, helplessly. “Look: this is my country. I want to do something for her. This is the only way I can do it. It—it is all I have to give.”
He waited again. Then he spoke desperately: “What’s the matter with you, Frank? You’ve changed. You don’t look like your old self. What’s wrong?”
Frank said: “Did you expect to find me a kid in knee-pants? Never mind. You’ve changed, too. Let’s not talk about me. How are you? Did you know I’m damned glad to see you again?” He smiled now, and something in Paul’s chest contracted with pain. It was like seeing the reflection of a well-remembered and beloved smile on the face of a cold stranger. It was like hearing a dead voice’s inflection in the voice of someone he did not know. It was like catching the face of an alien, in an alien crowd, that recalled someone who had vanished, and who had been more than a brother.
“Are you glad to see me?” asked Paul quietly, and glanced away.
He felt Frank’s hand on his shoulder. He was being shaken playfully. He did not know what made him speak out with quick sharpness: “Don’t do that!”
Frank dropped his hand. He stared steadily at his friend’s flushed face. Now it was the young Frank, disturbed, perplexed, volatile and hurt. But he was gone in a moment, almost before Paul had glimpsed him.
“I’m sorry. I had forgotten you were so touchy, Paul.”
It isn’t that, you know it isn’t that! cried Paul to himself. What is it? What has happened to you? He could only say lamely: “Why don’t you come with me? We could be together, as we were in the old days.”
Frank’s eyes became thoughtful and still. Then he said: “How about Gordon? Did he join up, too?”
Paul shrugged. “He couldn’t. His eyes were too bad. He’s studying for his Master’s now. He has been promised a job as instructor in the University when he is finished. It means a lot to him, and to Dad.”
How could he reach Frank? All that day, during the long ride, he had thought of nothing but his friend. How they would talk again, and laugh, and see the same things, and how eloquently Frank would interpret everything for him, so that once again he would have eyes and there would be beauty and significance and glory in the world! He felt as though he had been deprived of his sight, by one who could return it to him, deprived of hearing, by one who could lift cold dead hands from his ears.
Paul looked at the river. Now it was all shades of green and blue, full of vigor and vitality. But he could not feel it. The interpreter had gone away. He remembered his years of absence from his friend. He had lived in his memories. He had seen beautiful scenes, and he had talked them over in his mind with Frank. Frank would say this, of this incredible sunset. Frank would discern the meaning of a wheat field, a pale gilt under the moon. Frank would translate the sound of the river in winter. But Frank had gone, and the glory had passed away from the world with his going.
I was always only a mirror, his mirror, thought Paul. He made me see what he saw, made me hear what he heard. But now there is nothing left for me.
Frank was saying: “I’m getting twenty-five dollars a week. I’ll be getting more. I’ve started to go to night school. When I’ve finished my high school course, I’m going to college.”
Paul brightened; a faint warmth touched him. “That’s what you said before! I’m glad. But haven’t you gone before this? You said you were going.”
Frank’s flat cheeks became more flat. “No. I didn’t have the time. I lost interest in everything after you went away. I was a fool, I suppose. I had no ambition. But now I have.”
Paul was quiet for a long time. Then he asked softly: “What is your ambition?”
“Money. Only money.” The words were tranquil, but Paul felt the iron behind them. He tried to laugh.
“Well, that’s my idea, too. I’ve always wanted money. I hate to be poor. Not in the way that sounds, perhaps. But I wanted money so I could buy things. Books. Pictures. Is that what you mean, too?”
Frank turned his head and looked about him slowly, and Paul saw the hard line of his mouth. “No, that’s not what I mean. I just want money. Because I hate. Because money is all there is.”
Out of some insight, some anguished perception, Paul cried: “You are a coward!”
But Frank could not be aroused. Paul turned to him with a rare vehemence.
“What about your poetry? Your writing? What are you doing?”
Frank burst out laughing. “Oh, I’ve forgotten all that rot! I haven’t written anything for years.” He paused. He turned abruptly, to stare at his friend, and his blue eyes glittered briefly, reflectively. “What do you mean? There isn’t any money in writing. Writers die in garrets.” He waited. Paul did not answer. Frank repeated, almost urgently: “There isn’t any money in writing, is there? Did you ever read of a writer making money?”
Paul replied listlessly: “Why, certainly there is money in it. You never thought of the money end of it before, did you? It never occurred to you.” He sighed. “You wanted to do something for the world, you said. You wanted to give men something. That is what you said.” He was silent a moment, then continued in that lifeless voice: “I read, only recently, that E. Phillips Oppenheim and Rex Beach and a few others have made hundreds of thousands of dollars. Is that what you want? Do you want to write books like theirs?”
But an odd excitement had come into Frank’s face and eyes. He had turned on the bench. He was staring at Paul, almost crouching. He said: “If only I could write like them! I can! I will! I know I can still write! But I’ve got to go to school a long time first. I’ve got to learn. I don’t really know anything!”
Paul gazed at him, speechlessly. Then Frank laughed, abruptly.
“Look who’s talking about ‘giving men something’! You never wanted to give anything. You used to say you hated almost everybody. Why this conversion to sweetness and light, all at once?”
Paul drew away from him. Then he said steadily: “I still don’t like people. But you aren’t—weren’t—me. You had something else. You had something to give. I didn’t. Maybe that’s why I hated the world. I had nothing to give. You did. You had something priceless. Now you haven’t.” His pale green eyes dilated. “You’ve even taken away what you gave to me.”
Frank began to speak, then his mouth closed in a derisive smile. “Don’t tell me you are sentimental now!” he said at last. “You’re like everyone else. You are quite willing to have money for yourself, and will do anything to get it, and think of nothing else. But you think ‘those who serve the arts’ should live a dedicated and a starving life. You want them to serve you, while you money-grub yourself. Why should they serve you? Why? Are you so valuable, so heroic, so worthwhile?”
Paul tightened his hands together. He turned away from Frank. He looked at the green line of the Canadian shore. “You made me see—all this—once. You gave me something which made the world tolerable for me. You made it—beautiful—for me. Now you’ve taken it away.”
“Oh, hell!” and Frank contemptuously. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Paul’s face had become completely dead and lifeless. He felt all the color draining away from the scene about him. It was dead, dusty, painted in gray, and there was a gray sick taste in his mouth. The world was a wasteland; it was full of ashes and soundlessness.
He stood up. “I’d forgotten. There are a couple of other people I wanted to see before I went away.”
He looked down at Frank, and now his face was impassive, withdrawn, as frozen and rigid as it had been when Frank had first seen him. Frank was stunned by it and curiously shaken. He stood up.
Paul held out his hand, and after a moment Frank took it. It was an alien hand. It was the hand of a stranger who did not know him.
Paul walked away. Frank stood there and watched him go, as Paul had watched him go that terrible night so long in the past.
Then Frank, on one sudden and convulsive surge o
f pain, cired out: “Write to me! Don’t forget to write to me!”
But Paul did not turn or answer.
He had parted from Paul like this once before, and he had been the one to go and not look back. But once he had gone down a long empty driveway, and had turned his head, and someone had waved to him, someone like a small pink cloud. He shook his head impatiently. It had been one of his dreams, of course, and it was a dream that had mingled, long ago, with his fantasy of the woman in the mauve rain among the lilacs.
CHAPTER 32
Frank returned to the bench in a state of profound agitation. He sat and stared before him, blindly watching the play of light and shadow on the river. He had lately learned to smoke. He lit a cigarette, but it tasted bitter and acrid in his mouth. He held it, then, in his hand, until it burned down to ashes.
How could he have spoken so to Paul, for whom he had mourned so long? Why, that was Paul! It was his friend, and it was because of his friend that he had suffered so terribly; all the light had left the world with Paul’s going. He could not, even now, think of that hot August night, without depression and desolation.
The somberness and bereavement were there still, as dark and motionless and aching as ever. But they had enlarged themselves, diffused themselves. He mourned, as he sat on the bench in the waning sunlight. But it was no longer for Paul, and that seemed strange even to him. It had gone beyond Paul, had lost outline, embraced everything he saw and everything he touched and thought. It had begun on an August night. It now filled all the years. But it was not a sharp and personal grief. It was something he could not understand.
He thought: I ought to have asked him about himself. I ought to have talked. Just talked. Even if it had been hypocrisy, and I had not been there, really. I ought to have smiled and been pleasant and pretended. Pretended? Was it necessary for me to pretend?
Yes, he thought, with stern and suffering wonder, it would have been pretense.
Pretend with Paul! Pretend as with a stranger, for whom one cared nothing! He had dreamt of Paul’s return, and the dreams had been rapture and despair and tears. And now Paul had returned. And—there had been nothing. Nothing had moved or stirred in him. Once or twice there had been a twinge of impatience, irritation, tiredness. And only once there had been a turning, a sighing, as if someone dead had moved in his grave for an instant. That had been when he had first seen Paul, there in the factory. But the dead had become dead again, and he had walked away with someone whom he did not know.
You can’t go back, he thought. You can’t go back to joy, or to summer days, or to remembrance. You can go back to grief. Yes, always, you can go back to grief. And, in some ways, it is a larger grief, a sorrow that has filled a fallow field with weeds and stones. You can go back to agony, but even then it is a different agony. It has become not one dead soldier, but a whole battlefield of pain.
There was a numbness and a weariness all through him. He looked at the shining river, and was mute. Yes, he was mute. It was his muteness which had so dismayed Paul. But I had nothing to say to him. Nothing at all! I never have anything to say to myself, either, any more.
Once he had sat on this very bench in a violet spring twilight, with the trees dripping slow crystal drops all about him, and the murmur of the river below him. He had sat there and felt such exultation and such passion, and he had been filled with such love and tenderness! He had been alone, yet he had not really been alone. Not alone as he was now. He had looked at his hand, and had cried to himself: “In my hand! In my hand!” His empty palms lay on his knees now, and he stared down at them. They were empty. They were empty with a complete emptiness. And Paul had known. That is why he had not gone after Paul, had not called to him, and taken his arm. He could not go with such hands. They had had nothing to offer Paul, who had always come to him for life and meaning and insight and brightness.
He mourned, and his mourning was not for his friend. It was for himself and his emptiness and his desolation. He was impotent. He felt his impotence like a stifling in his chest.
He moved on the bench. I’m being sentimental, he thought. I’ve come awake now. I’m not a young, gibbering fool. I’m a man, and I have work to do—for myself.
The west was turning a delicate rose, the tint of a fresh petal in the morning. He looked at it. He watched it deepen. A flock of white gulls rose up from the river bank below, and blew against the sunset. He saw the rosiness on their wings; he heard their wild cries. The river turned a dark and brilliant blue. Beautiful, he thought, dully. But he did not feel it.
He could not look away. He had a habit, lately, of observing all lovely things intently, where once he had felt them and translated them into poetry and ecstasy. Now he only remembered them. He took the canvases of sunsets, of trees and skies and waters, and stored them in his memory. He knew now why he did so. He would write of them again, sometime, though it would be objectively, without feeling. But he would write of them, and the pictures he would recreate from his memory would bring him money.
This purpose must have been in his mind all the time, he thought, with surprise. It had been there, and he had not known it. It was a purpose without emotion, loveliness discerned without passion. Someday, he would even write about Paul, and it would be with understanding, with delicate discernment and deftness. But it would all be without tenderness and without love, without glory, without the sensation that for one instant even he had sensed the passing of God.
I have a lot to learn, he thought. I’m really ignorant. I’ve read a whole library, and I know nothing. I must learn, and as quickly as possible. What had Paul said? There was money in writing. But I must have known it all the time. It just never rose to my conscious mind before.
He sat there until the blazing orb of the sun sank into the far lake and the purple twilight came down. He saw it all with a clarity he had not known in his youth, for there had been a golden mist over everything, and there had been a quivering in his heart. Now it was as if a plane had shifted, ever so imperceptibly, and some deep dimension had flattened. All the colors were still there, and the outlines, but they were sharp and the light was just a little too stark. They were only static paintings of scenes he had once gazed at in their living reality, when the trees had been murmuring, and there had been the swell of actual life moving through them like wind. No matter how gifted the artist, his brush could produce only soundlessness, and the light on his trees and his landscapes and on the faces of his people was a motionless and depthless light. They remained, but the thing which the painter had seen, and had been unable to transfer fully to his canvas, was gone forever.
The gallery of his mind was filled with these static landscapes and portraits. But the emotion with which he had once seen them had departed, and had left only a voiceless grief, the very shadow, the very mist, of remembrance.
It was getting dark. The lamplighter was going his rounds. Yellow moons bloomed along The Front. There was a distant rumble, and Frank saw the round white light of a train approaching on the rails below. He tried to turn away. He could not. The train was now below him, and then suddenly he heard its wail, prolonged, despairing, melancholy. He listened to it. It echoed through every cell of his body, and it echoed in emptiness.
CHAPTER 33
The train had gone, its last echo drowned in silence. Now there was only the rustling of the dry autumn trees, the wild smell of the dark river, the scent of autumn grass. A wind blew up from the flying waters below, and the trees complained restlessly. Frank sat and smoked one cigarette after another, until his mouth was parched. But his mind was racing, turning, examining, with a new cold excitement and plotting.
It’s been so long since I’ve written anything, he thought. I might be out of practice, but it will come back. I’m like a pianist who has neglected his piano and must go back with stiff fingers and stiff mind. But I must go back. I can do it! I did it once, when I was a kid, and I can do it again. And for money! There was never anything so important as money.
He would return to school. He must see about that tomorrow. High school first, of course, and later, the evening sessions at the University of Bison. Years. That did not matter. If one was determined and had a goal, time passed, and became richer with the passing. “The race to the swift, and the battle to the strong.” He felt a surge of power in himself, and exultation and grimness. What did it matter if it was not the old sweet and lovely power, the old rapture? This was new, and yet it was old. It was the passion of a man, not that of a dreaming child. What had the child desired? Beauty, compassion, service—Service to what? Frank rubbed his forehead and smiled unpleasantly. He could not remember what it was he had desired to serve. It had been a terrible and splendid thing—but he could not remember. Puling stuff! “The glory and the freshness of a dream.” Wordsworth must have been approaching senility when he wrote that poem. There was a glory, and it was money. There was a freshness, and it was ambition. Everything else was rot.
While I go to school, I must write and practice. I must write. Of what? He knew nothing. He knew nothing at all of great cities, of exciting adventures, of strange places. Of these things writers wrote. What did he know, of what could he write? Whom did he know, whose life-story might be of enormous interest to the world? He knew nothing, he knew no one. If he wrote, he must write of insignificant things, of worthless and unimportant people. Who would be interested, for instance, in the story of his craven father, who knew nothing but fear and had wanted to be a great violinist and was now not even a “fiddler”? What sophisticated audience would be absorbed in Francis Clair’s weekly, half-running errand to the bank, and his gloating over the bank-books, and the way he had once stopped abruptly on the sidewalk of an evening to listen to someone playing a violin in a dimly lighted house? Frank remembered that night. It was a summer evening, and it had been raining, and the trees dripped with a hushed and musical sound. The abandoned streets gleamed like black mirrors in the yellow gaslight, and no one stepped along the silent walks. He and his father had been on a “message” for Maybelle, but they had not spoken, for there was nothing they could say to each other. Then, as they passed that house, they had heard that violin, and Francis had stopped as suddenly as though someone had struck him in the chest and he could not move. Young Frank could smell the sweet scent of wet grass, and could feel a raindrop on his cheek, as it fell from the thick dark trees. The violin had accosted them like a strange and mysterious voice out of nowhere, a calling, a gentle urging, a sweetness beyond all sweetness, a yearning beyond all understanding.
There Was a Time Page 26
