Irving’s study books were piled at one end of the cherry table. He had spread out his notebooks and was busily making notes from his texts. He glanced up when he saw Miss Woods, and rose with slow and awkward courtesy. Silently, and with only a smile, he drew the rocker closer to the gas-heater, and brought his own chair to stand opposite.
“I hope I’m not disturbing you, Irving,” said Miss Woods. This was always the etiquette of her expected visit.
He answered, in formula: “Of course not. I was waiting for you, Miss Woods.”
She sat down, groaning slightly. She rubbed her knees. The black silk hissed under her be-ringed hands. She beamed upon the young man. She glanced at the little windows, and saw the savage veils of snow surging against them. “Isn’t this an appalling day?” she remarked. “I’ve lived seventy-two years in Bison, and I never get used to the winters.”
Irving looked at the snow. “I like it,” he said simply. “It—it sort of shuts me in. I feel safe in a storm, and happy.”
He spoke with shy ease, for he and Miss Woods were fast, if secret, friends. He regarded her with affection, and she returned it. “I declare, Irving, you look more like Abe Lincoln every day,” she said. “Well, how are the studies going?”
Now his dark and ugly face lighted up, almost with passion. “I can’t get enough of them. I hate to sleep, because I have to leave my books. Does that sound kind of precious?” he added, with a dark color on his sunken cheeks.
“Nonsense,” she replied, sturdily. “If you don’t have a passion for a thing you might as well let it go. Now me, I’ve always had a passion for living. That’s why I expect to live to be a hundred,” she went on, with a chuckle. “My father used to say that if a man had no passions he was more than half dead, and that a vice, if pursued vigorously enough, and with happy ardor, was more desirable than any of the milky virtues. He was a great drinker, but not a drunkard, and there was never a healthier or more charming man anywhere. You ought to have seen the cellar in this house when he was alive! He had the finest collection of brandies in the whole world, I do believe. That reminds me: how is the brandy? I don’t remember whether we drank it all last Sunday.”
Irving went to his dresser, a piece of furniture authentically a museum piece, which Miss Woods’ great-grandmother had brought with her from England a hundred years ago, a present from her own grandmother. He opened a lower drawer and brought out a bottle of Napoleon and two little crystal glasses, carefully wrapped in tissue paper. He poured out the golden liquid while Miss Woods watched intently. Then they gave each other a silent, friendly toast, and sniffed, and drank. “Um,” said Miss Woods, looking down lovingly at the glass in her hand. “That’s nectar. That’s divine elixir for the blood. A kind of transfusion from heaven. Didn’t Omar Khayyam say something about forgiving God because he had devised alcohol to help man endure the sorrows He had invented for him? Yes, it was something like that. And there is this crowd of sour, misbegotten women trying to inflict Prohibition on us! Do you know, Irving, I think they’ll succeed. Cranks find America quite a happy hunting ground. It’s because the great majority of Americans unfortunately are the children and grandchildren of superstitious peasants, and haven’t any wits. It’s too bad. We ought to have Immigration Laws which will admit only the middle class, the upper middle class, to this country. We’ve got too many sub-humans here, and this is true even of our so-called ‘old’ Americans.”
Irving smiled slightly, but said nothing.
Miss Woods narrowed her eyes at him shrewdly. “Now I’m not trying to offend you, Irving, God knows. You’re just the lovely exception to the rule. But look at what we’ve been getting for the past seventy years or so! Misshapen peasants from the starving areas of Europe! Mental illiterates. Now they’re talking about quotas. They’ll limit the quantity of immigrants, which is partly good, but our flannel-headed legislators aren’t doing anything about quality. A farm laborer has just as good a chance of coming here, and breeding steadily, as a professional man. Let’s raise the quality, I say. Make no quota restrictions on teachers, professional men, artists, thinkers, writers, sound little business men. Let ’em come in, in droves, say I. Keep out the peasants, the nasty grubbers. It don’t matter what country the better people come from: let ’em come, swarms of ’em, whether they’re Italians or Germans, Swedes or Jews, Poles or Turks. Just so we get the best, and keep out the peasants. Just so we skim the cream of Europe and exclude the dregs. But that’s beyond the comprehension of our law makers, who are just peasants and thick-headed bulls themselves.”
She sipped the brandy appreciatively. “Ethelinda Shaw’s a Prohibitionist. Rabid on the subject. That’s because her soul’s dried up, and she hates everybody, in spite of her passion for the suffragettes and her championing of what she calls ‘the common people.’ Have you noticed, Irving, that the champions of ‘the common people’ usually hate everybody? Dreary folk. Dangerous, too. Me, I love a few people, and I don’t care a fig for the rest, but I don’t hate them. Hate’s bad for the digestion anyway.”
She allowed Irving to add a little more brandy to her glass and smiled at him tenderly. “I suppose you don’t hate anybody, eh?”
Amusement passed like a ripple of light over Irving’s face. “I have a good digestion,” he said.
“Um. Well, then. It’s really very queer. I’ve noticed that kind of people in churches too—like Ethelinda. Every kind of face and nature. But they’ve got one strange thing in common: they hate people. I wonder why?”
Irving said, with a look at his books: “We have a new word for it, a word invented by a great German physician, Freud. He calls it ‘compensation.’ Those people feel guilty; they know what they really think and what they are. They know consciously or unconsciously, that they’re—evil. They don’t want the world to know; they don’t want themselves to know, sometimes. So they interfere with all human activity.”
He got up and lit an old pipe and puffed at it with reflection. “It’s now suspected that the reformers, the ones who want to pass laws to prohibit this, or outlaw that, to ‘protect’ the working people, to overthrow the established Government, to change the face of things, to pass what they call ‘good’ laws, are vicious.”
They sipped the brandy in companionable silence and listened to the storm groaning and lashing at the windows. Now the lamp and gas-heater grew brighter as the room steadily darkened. This was a cave under the eaves; rosy fingers moved over the sloping ceiling, with its pattern of nosegays. Miss Woods finally spoke again, somewhat restlessly and obscurely: “I don’t like the feel of the world these days. Something is wrong, really wrong, Irving. The calamities prophesied when we entered the war: the end of capitalism and individual liberty, universal starvation and ruin, haven’t materialized. Thank God for that. We still have a healthy capitalism, and we are still free, and we’ll manage to help the rest of the world to live. Europe will rebuild itself, with our help. So the calamities haven’t come, after all. But there is something else abroad, much worse. I don’t know what it is. Something prowling, something which might ruin us, I am afraid. What is it, Irving?”
She spoke as to an equal, this seventy-two-year-old woman speaking to a youth hardly twenty-two, and she spoke urgently.
He answered soberly: “I think we’re sick. Of course, I don’t know what the world was like when you were young—”
“Well, I do, my dear. It was a hard world, but a robust one. Nobody expected to eat, who didn’t work. And everyone worked, it seems to me, in America even the very rich. I don’t quite remember what it was for which they worked, but they were very enthusiastic about it, and not dreary the way they are now. I believe they felt they had something to work for, rich and poor alike. They don’t now. There is a kind of godlessness now—” She put down her glass and wiped her lips. “I didn’t believe, with everyone else, that a noble era would ensue after the war, when everybody would love his neighbor and there would be a new spiritual revelation. But I did think we’d lear
n our lesson, that if there was only one God there was only one world of men. Poor Mr. Wilson knows that. But he’s doomed to fail, and that’s what is so terrible. Perhaps I’m getting old, but I feel that if we don’t learn this now, and act upon our knowledge, we are going to see such frightful things, in ten, or twenty, or thirty years—Godlessness, that’s it. A sick world.”
“Yes,” said Irving Schulz. He looked at Miss Woods, and even in the dimness of the room she could see how his face had become intense and alive and passionate. “That is what Dr. Pembroke said when he spoke to us just after the war ended. He said that we’ve tried to find in ourselves a solution for all our problems, like a snail trying to find a world within its narrow shell, and only winding itself farther into its own convolutions. He said there was something else outside the shell, and we must find it. We must have a larger conception of ourselves than mere animalism and materialism, a belief that there is something significant in mankind, though, of course, that might sound ridiculous and metaphysical to those who call themselves sophisticated.”
“Or those who might find it agreeable, or profitable, to set every man against his neighbor,” added Miss Woods grimly.
Again there was silence between them, and now Irving appeared uneasy and awkward, engrossed in his thoughts. He said hesitatingly: “I’m sorry about breakfast today, Miss Woods. I’m afraid I stirred up something, somehow. You see,” and his voice became lower, “I wouldn’t want you to hold it against Frank Clair the way he jumped down Mrs. Crimmons’ throat.” He looked at Miss Woods appealingly, remembering her summary dismissal of those who disturbed the placidity of her home. “I knew Frank years ago. Just a little, but it was enough. He—he was miserable. I used to watch him, though we hardly ever spoke. I don’t think he has much self-control.”
Miss Woods was silent, watching him inscrutably.
He still pleaded with her, knotting his dark, heavily knuckled hands together.
“I know how you feel about keeping everything here pleasant and impersonal. I don’t know how to say it, Miss Woods, but I was glad when he spoke that way to that woman. I hoped he would say or do something. I suppose you can’t understand that. But, you see, I know Frank Clair. Yes, I was very glad.”
Miss Woods said quietly: “I knew you knew him. He told me when he first came here.”
Irving sat up eagerly. “He did? Well, I’m glad of that, too.”
He searched her great white face in the lamplight. Then he sighed. “I see,” he said, with sadness.
Then he added: “But I’m still glad. It’s very hard to put into words. But Frank used to write poetry and stories at school. My old teacher, Miss Bendy, would show them to me sometimes. Then he left school to go to work. It wasn’t that his parents were so poor—like mine. But he was sent to work, and I lost sight of him, and didn’t see him again until he came here. I saw immediately that he’d changed. It was—it was kind of terrible to me, Miss Woods. He’s younger than I am, but now he seems old, and sick and tired. Something must have happened to him. I couldn’t ask him, of course, because we’d never been more than just acquaintances.” Irving’s face had colored painfully. “I know I’m not making myself clear. It’s something I haven’t words for. So you couldn’t be expected to understand why I was glad he flared out like that, so savagely—”
“Yes,” said Miss Woods, “I think I understand.” She paused. “That is why I am going to give the Crimmonses their notice tomorrow. I never did like that woman, but I was sorry for her husband. He’s a fool.”
Irving regarded her incredulously and with joy. “You mean that, after all that, you will let Frank stay, and make the others go?”
“Of course,” said Miss Woods briskly. “After all, it would be embarrassing for Frank if they stayed, wouldn’t it?” She smiled at Irving with deep humor and tenderness. “I was getting just a little tired of Frank lately. I’m afraid if he hadn’t spoken up, I’d have told him to go. And, as you say, my dear, that is a thing I haven’t words for, either.”
She stood up, and he rose with her. She smoothed her black silk frankly over her great breasts and belly. “I hope, after this, that you boys may be friends. It will be very good for both of you, especially for Frank. He needs you, Irving. He really does. He hasn’t a single friend in the world. He isn’t like you; you have something more important than friends, But he hasn’t anything, poor child.”
CHAPTER 39
Frank let himself out into the storm, for his room had become intolerable to him in its small quiet. He had planned to study that afternoon, to work, to write the “composition” Mr. Mason had assigned to him. In the morning, he had anticipated that afternoon with pleasure. But as he sat in his room, on his bed, seething, his heart pounding with excitement and rage, he knew that it would be impossible to control himself and to devote himself to orderly work. He would go out. Perhaps, a little later, he would visit his grandmother and his mother, and have “tea” with them.
It came to him, with overwhelming bitterness, that he must resort to this call at the Porter Avenue rooming-house if he was to have any contact of any kind with human beings. He had stood up and looked about his room, and then for the first time he had realized his loneliness, his utter isolation, his lack of contact with his fellowmen. It had been years since he had felt this loneliness, and, strangely, while he experienced a kind of choking desolation, he was also enlivened by it. Always, since the going of Paul Hodge, he had lived in a narrow world of his own, where his own breath, the sound of his own heart, had been enough for him. But something had exploded into that tiny shell of a world, scattering the fragments, leaving him exposed. He was not certain whether this exposure was pleasurable or disagreeable. He only knew that he was oddly excited and restless now, and that he could not remain in his room. Also, he was, as yet, afraid to think. He was afraid to think of the consequences of his inexplicable outburst of the morning, and he did not want, just now, to examine the reasons for it. He took care that no one heard him slip out of the house, for he shrank from encountering Miss Woods, who was already on her way downstairs to talk to him.
Snow and wind poured down from a purplish sky, and engulfed him. Linwood Avenue was completely deserted. A smooth river of whiteness stretched from curb to curb; the street lamps were capped with snow; the cold icy mounds along the sidewalks had become miniature mountains of purity. Zero cold struck at Frank’s cheeks, nose and chin, and he turned up his collar and huddled in the frail warmth of his coat. He pulled down his hat, which soon became a wreath of heavy white. He plowed on, thankful for his buckled “arctics,” the woolen gloves on his hands. The snow reached to his knees; soon he was panting. But in spite of his struggles against the wind and blizzard, he did not grow warmer. Rather, the cold began to penetrate through the wool over his knees, and found every crevice in his clothing.
It was too early for tea at his grandmother’s, and he had had no dinner. He would walk for a while, then go to West Utica Street and eat a good meal at Louis’. That was the pleasure he always reserved for himself on Sunday. But it was still too early. He went on down Linwood Avenue, fighting the storm. Every house was plastered with patches of white; every window sill was heaped with it. Sometimes he could not see the houses for the snow, and he was plowing through a wilderness of wild gale and white snowstorm which cut his flesh. He walked on for fifteen minutes, and encountered no one, not even a vehicle, though occasionally he could hear the streetcars on Main Street groaning in muffled struggle as they fought their way down the heaped tracks. Occasionally he glimpsed a yellow rectangle through the swirling dark-and-white, and knew it for a lighted window. The great elms over his head cascaded avalanches of snow above and over him, and creaked with the cold. Their trunks, too, were swathed in bitter whiteness.
There was no sound, only that savage howling which roared down from the sky. Frank went on, breathing more painfully, a flap of his collar pulled over his breathless lips so that he might not be stifled.
All at once
, he felt a sudden upward surge of his heart, a sudden immense joy. He stopped abruptly, in order to feel it, in order not to miss this intense flow in himself. It brought such elation to him, such excitement. He had not felt like this since he had been fifteen years old, and the world had floated in colored dreams. Now all loneliness and anxiety left him, and he was warmed by a nameless fire of exultation, an expectation, a passionate release.
What had so suddenly released him from his grim misery and loneliness? What finger had torn the iron ring about his heart? He stood and thought, and he did not see or feel the storm. What had brought the old sweet tide to him again, flowing in from the darkness of the past four years? That old sweet tide of trembling promise and anticipation, of strength and power and tenderness! That old mysterious sense of communication with enormous things outside himself! Staggering a little under the weight of the wind, he moved to the trunk of a great elm and leaned against it, closing his eyes.
He remembered now that he had first sensed the movement of the incoming tide when he had listened to Irving Schultz. When he had stood up, and had shouted at Mrs. Crimmons, the tide had increased in strength and motion. It had lapped his feet and had given him that restlessness in his room, his desire to escape. He knew it now. And as the knowledge came to him, so the sense of courage and of faith and old joy grew stronger in him. He was still enormously confused, and there was an aching in his head. He could not understand. But all at once he saw that some profound conflict had been taking place in him these past years. If he waited only a few moments longer, he would know what that conflict was, and he would be free of it.
There Was a Time Page 34
