There Was a Time

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  It was five o’clock. The exodus had begun, and the air was full of laughter and calling voices, the stamping of feet. The big doors at the end of the room had been opened, and the office force surged through them. A rush of icy air from the opened doors below gushed into the room. Frank was always the last to leave.

  He stood up, went to the rack near him, and put on his hat and coat and arctics. He felt in his vest pocket for his pay envelope. It was there, of course. But on the way home he would feel of it several times. He fished in his trousers pocket for a bus token, slipped it into his palm between his woolen glove and his skin.

  The big office building had emptied itself with remarkable speed. Frank was almost alone on the stairs. He could see the backs of the last of the workers, hurrying towards the last bus. He quickened his pace and got into the bus just before the door closed. He shivered, for the air and wind had been like a lash.

  He had to stand on the steps of the bus, someone’s shoulders pressing into his face. He was always the last, as he had always been the last to leave school. The old instinct for anonymity was still there, heightened during the past few years. “He kept to himself,” as Maybelle used to say. He looked at no one, shrinking bitterly and sullenly from any greetings which might come his way. But he was ignored. He was unpopular in the office, for he was reticent, unresponsive, stiff. And shabby.

  The girls would not have minded the shabbiness, for everyone knew that “things were tough,” and they had decided that Frank must, most probably, have dependents. A mother, maybe, or some kid brothers or sisters. Anyway, he was a man, wasn’t he? And why this “high-hat stuff”? Had he been unattractive physically, his reserve would not have irked the young ladies. But, as they said, he had “class.” He was “better-lookin’” than almost any other eligible man in the office. He was tall, perhaps too slender, and moved quickly and without any disagreeable awkwardness. How old was he? Looked about thirty, but was probably older, for his dark chestnut hair was touched at the temples with gray. But that did not revolt the girls, who thought the gray “distinguished.” No, it was not his shabbiness which had made the girls’ first excitement and pleasure in him turn to dislike and ridicule and hostility. It was his coldness, his contemptuous attitude towards everyone, man and woman alike, his avoidance of any social contact with his fellow-workers, his grimness and sullen manners. He attended to his work from morning until night, not speaking, lending his paper, if pressed, sometimes grudgingly extending a cigarette, if asked, but turning away at the slightest and most tentative offer of companionship.

  “He thinks he’s Mr. Big, the Boy Executive,” the girls giggled among themselves. Had he been successful, however, had he risen to a private cubicle along the eastern wall of the office, this, too, could have been forgiven and admired. But he was not successful. He was not “good” at his work. On quite a few occasions, the office manager had reprimanded him for carelessness. It was whispered, on irrefutable information from the pay department, that he had had only one “raise” in five years, and that a meagre one.

  Nor were the girls alone in their malicious ridicule and enmity. The men disliked Frank, even hated him. He never joined them at lunchtime for a glance at a racing form, nor was he interested in the Red Sox or the Green, Pink, Yellow, Scarlet or Lavender Sox. When everyone was in a fever of excitement over the autumn football games, and the lunch hour hummed with vehement or protesting opinions over one team or another, Frank sat alone at his desk, sometimes casting an involuntary but noticeably contemptuous glance at the others. Sometimes they caught his eyes, and quite a few shrank in a kind of dismay from the look in them and the glare of disgust which lighted them vividly. He never joined in the angry laughter against President Hoover and his obstinate conviction that “prosperity was just around the corner.”

  After nine years, no one knew anything more about him than on the first day he had sat at his desk. They did not like his voice, either, though it was low and coldly polite and meticulous as to pronunciation. They heard his faint English accent, and the second-generation Germans and Poles and Italians among the office workers resented it, finding their own slurred and gobbling speech preferable to the correct enunciation of the language. So he became “the Limey,” as, in his childhood, he had been “that bloody, bloomin’ Englishman.”

  He gave no sign that he knew of their hatred and hostility. But he was aware of it all. He did not care. He despised these hearty peasants of European stock; he loathed their walk, their voices, the smiles on their coarse features, the sound of their foreign names, their childish prejudices and opinions, their ignorance, their happy, ungrammatical phrases, their cheap slang, their very clothing. He knew that, despite their outward friendliness, there was a deep cleavage among the office workers. The Protestants had inevitably aligned themselves against the Catholics, and deeply suspected them. If a Catholic had a promotion, it was because the “boss” was a Catholic. A new arrival was discreetly cross-questioned until the fact of his religion had been established. If a Catholic, he mysteriously became part of their inner group. If a Protestant, he joined the larger and invisible organization.

  Only once had Frank even momentarily joined in a discussion. A group of young men, devouring their lunches, had begun to denounce Communism. They were vague about the principles of the doctrine, but they were vehement in their denunciations. Frank was walking back to his desk from the drinking fountain when he suddenly paused and said, in a mocking cold voice: “Say, what’s Communism?”

  They had stared at him, astonished at this uninvited interruption from someone they had learned to ignore. They saw his contemptuous smile, and they did not like the way his narrowed eyes danced. But they were willing to enlighten him. One said that Communism was the “nationalization of women.” Another said, uncertainly, that it was atheism. Another said, almost with longing, that it meant that the rich guys had all their money taken away from them None of them, it was instantly evident, knew anything about Communism, though they quoted their favorite newspaper copiously. However, they hated it, for one nebulous and erroneous reason or another.

  You, thought Frank, are a lot of damn fools. Why don’t you shut your mouths until you know what you are talking about? You ignoramuses. How long did you go to school, any of you? Where did you get your opinions? From the comics? From the movies? From your racing forms? From your churches? Wherever you got them, they are wrong, and just as stupid as you are. Why don’t you read a little, sometime? They call this a democracy. It’s too bad. None of you ought to be allowed to vote. If they used intelligence tests to determine the right to vote, not one of you would dare enter an election booth. I think democracy stinks. I always did think so, and now I know it.

  What he said was: “For God’s sake stop talking about something you know nothing about,” and he walked away from them, leaving them to stare in dumfounded outrage at his slender retreating back, set in such a posture of contempt. After that, he was “the Bolshie.” He was classified, at last. They knew his niche. Five years later, he was “a fascist.”

  The icy ruts in the road made the bus sway and lurch and tilt. The girls squealed and giggled coyly and staggered with quite unnecessary force against the young men beside them. Some of them, pretending to be too short for the straps overhead, clutched masculine arms. Frank, standing precariously on the step, flung against the door, could hear the shouted conversations beyond him. One of the girls was defending Gary Cooper from a ridiculing male attack. Another was devoted to Greta Garbo. Two masculine voices discussed the chances of the Cardinals next summer. A girl’s voice rose on the subject of the new styles. A man shouted his disgust for President Hoover. “I’ve always been a Republican, just like my dad. But this time I’m a-gonna vote Democratic. Don’t care if they put a nigger up. I’m a-gonna vote for him!”

  A girl squealed as a male hand gave a playful slap on her buttocks in the press of bodies. Another girl discussed the dance she had attended last night. “O boy, was it hot! There
was a dame there, looked like Claudette Colbert, and did she throw her weight around! You oughta seen the fellers go after her. Someone stepped on my new red dress.”

  A young man announced that he had discovered on Niagara Street a new speak-easy, where “anything goes.” He told the name, generously. A card game was arranged between three young men. The air in the bus became warm and fetid, overlaid with the stench of cheap perfume and powder. The lights flickered and flared, showing young, coarse, painted faces with loose reddened lips, and the innocent but gluttonous eyes of animals. Whenever the door opened, Frank had to step down, while girls and men brushed against him. He held himself taut, his nostrils drawn together in detestation. At times, his disgust was like a heady intoxication in his mind. If his eyes were caught by the eyes of another he looked away with open aversion.

  The voice of the people! The voice of democracy! This yowling, screaming, ignorant, brainless mob! This slangy, prejudiced, hating conglomeration of beasts, who never read, never thought, never had an idea, were devoid of dignity and humanity, unlettered, proud of their lack of knowledge! The bus steamed with their breath; it was the breath of oxen, of amorphic, castrated souls. These were the murderers of the prophets, the howling animals in a wilderness, male and female bodies that knew lust but never one heroic dream. There they were, hating one another, lusting for one another, bawling and howling to one another, this awful squirming conglomeration called the Masses!

  I hate them! thought Frank. Then he paused, held rigid and still. He hated again! Where had his cleansing, purifying, exciting rage hidden all these years? Where had it lurked, like a stunned thing? What had awakened it now? All at once the voices in the bus rushed loudly and with deafening sound into his ears. The lights became vividly bright. He felt the beating of his heart, the sudden pound of exultation in his pulses. Life quickened along his body; he felt the touch of his clothing on his flesh. He seemed to swell, to become strong, contained, invulnerable.

  His exultation was like a fire, warming his numbed arms and legs. He bent close to it, eagerly. He hated. He must escape from those he hated. He had endured them, all these faceless years, for he had had no choice. There had been no power in him. He had two thousand dollars in the bank. Never, if he lived fifty years, would he have saved enough to escape from this dreadful raucousness called the People. Even if he starved himself, hoarded every penny, it would not be enough. He must get away! He must escape from the profane touch of their bodies, from the effluvium of their dead minds, from the sound, sight, hearing, being, of them!

  But how? He remembered seeing the advertisements of correspondence schools. “Be a certified public accountant, a radio engineer; become an expert in banking, law, public relations—!” He wanted none of this. He knew his aversion for anything pertaining to the business world, mechanics, or finance. But there must be some way of escaping. A man wished to escape, and he found a way. What was his way?

  He clung to the handrail. His breath was hot and quick on his cold lips. He was caught up in the urgency and desperate necessity to escape. He repeated the words silently to himself: I must get away. I must find a way! But where, how? Where could he make sufficient money to put a high spiked wall between himself and these others, so that never again would he need to encounter them or look upon them, or be aware that they lived?

  My writing. His hand tightened on the rail. I was a writer once. I—I was good. They all said so. Once, I knew that I could make money, writing. Then something happened to me. What was it? I don’t remember. But it was gone, because my passion was gone, and I no longer hated ugliness, or saw it. I wish my head would stop roaring—I must think this out. Writing. I can go back to it. I can go back to the University and study. I’ll concentrate on English and English literature. There must be a way and this is the way. I can do it! Something has come back to me, some great power, some vehemence. I can feel it all through me. I shan’t lose it this time! My life depends upon it.

  The bus stopped at Forest Avenue, and Frank mechanically left it. The door closed behind him. The blizzard screamed down upon him, a flare of choking whiteness. The wind filled his mouth, his nose, his eyes. He struggled against it. On the sidewalk veils of snow flowed around and away from him. He narrowly avoided being run down by an automobile. He bent double, and found his way to the stinking cheap little restaurant where he ate his meals. Then he paused on the doorstep.

  No. ‘I’ll go to the Statler tonight! I’ll treat myself to a fine big dinner. I’ll sit in a big lighted room, where the tables are covered with white cloths, and there is music. I will sit among those who have money; I will look at them, and become even stronger and more powerful.

  It’s only December. I’ll go back to the University for the second semester. This time I shall not turn back. This time I’ll win my way through!

  CHAPTER 58

  In repose; Mr. Endicott Preston’s pale slender face resembled that of a tired and cynical camel, for his long nose with its splayed nostrils curved down to a wide and mobile mouth, crooked and bent. His chin retreated gently; he had large and melancholy eyes; the planes of his cheeks sloped backwards to big soft ears. Yet, paradoxically, he was a very handsome man, in his early forties, above average height and weight, his thick gray hair full of graceful and elegant waves. Those melancholy eyes were also large and full and blue, and when he smiled, his resemblance to a camel ceased, and he became all Puck, all humor, all skeptical kindness. His whole intelligent face sparkled, one subtle expression following another until it was sheer fascination to watch him. His voice, sonorous, flexible and full of sensitivity, enchanted the hearer, for nothing he ever said was dull, and his slightest phrase brimmed with color, wit, volatility and brilliance, expressive of the fine mind that glowed behind it like a changing opal.

  Like the other professors, his clothing was dun, of medium quality and tailoring, and was evidently bought from a rack in a local department store. He was one of the many wise and distinguished and perceptive instructors on the staff of the University of Bison. Though Frank was later to meet many splendid professors and instructors who taught in greater and more famous universities, it always seemed to him that none surpassed the devoted gentlemen on the campus of Bison’s university, none were more kind or understanding, none more eager to discover and help the exceptional student, none more faithful.

  This was Frank’s third semester, now, in Mr. Preston’s English class. Each semester, Mr. Preston would greet him without much surprise, with only a quizzical but pleased quirk of his left eyebrow. Frank was also studying ancient history, French, sociology and logic. He found history somewhat tedious, for dates and battles and events were, to him, dull, though there were moments when he “felt” something living and moving and vital under the dead brown leaves of the past. Dr. Riordon was sometimes a little puzzled and baffled at the sight of Frank coming suddenly alive, and offering an unorthodox opinion on the subject under discussion. Frank never appeared to read the reference books assigned; he returned to class with a look of excitement, and a paper on which he had written his own interpretation of some event, or of some historical personage. His interpretation, Dr. Riordan kindly pointed out, was somewhat unique, and had no accepted authority. Mr. Clair was using his “imagination,” and, in history, Dr. Riordan said somewhat drily, imagination was a dangerous thing.

  Frank did moderately well in French, though, as he had no high-school background in this language, he had to study and listen with desperate attention to achieve a B-minus each month. Dr. Bontelle, with sorrow, sometimes accused him of inventing a French phrase which, though colorful, would have perplexed a Frenchman.

  Frank disputed hotly with Dr. Grayson, who taught sociology. Dr. Grayson was an idealist, and Frank instinctively disliked idealists. Once Dr. Grayson remarked thoughtfully that he was afraid Frank had inadvertently absorbed some fascistic ideas, and that, after all, Mr. Clair, he, Dr. Grayson, was here to instruct and not to enter into furious disputations about ideologies. Dr. Gray
son was very anxious about Frank, and spent much time in an attempt to bend his mind to his own. Frank acquired another B-minus each month, and this was given him only by Dr. Grayson’s stretching his tender conscience, for Frank never answered any questions, but wrote page after page of philippics, insisting that men who did not understand liberty should not enjoy it, that the weak and the stupid should not be given equal opportunity with the brave and the intelligent, that a man’s worth, and not the fact that he had been born, must determine whether he should partake of the privileges of democracy. “Democracy,” Frank wrote vehemently, “does not mean that all men, regardless of their mental endowment or worth, shall have a place at the trough, but only that they shall be equal before the bar of legal justice.” Dr. Grayson was afraid that Mr. Clair had too narrow and too pragmatic a view, and that he did not quite understand the full meaning of democracy. Frank tired Dr. Grayson very much, for Dr. Grayson’s one great passion was his love, boundless and rather naïve, for his fellow-men.

  Frank fared a little better with Dr. Herbert Markson, who taught logic. But here, too, Frank failed to heed questions, and to reply to them in an orthodox manner. It annoyed him to discover that validity was not always truth, and he came to the conclusion that logic was a somewhat dreary sister to mathematics. Logic was too patterned, too rigid, to suit Frank. His mind was not the logician’s mind, and though he was angered when he was again reminded of his “imagination,” and when Dr. Markson hinted that he thought with his emotions rather than with his reason, he took pleasure in refuting logic with passion.

  Frank liked and admired them all. But he loved Mr. Endicott Preston. He came back to his class, semester after semester, and each session found him older than the new students. He did not care. In fact, he never saw the newcomers. He came to listen, to work, to feel excitement and joy when Mr. Preston spoke, and literally to tremble when Mr. Preston emphatically praised his writing.