OF TIME AND THE RIVER

by Thomas Wolfe

  And it was this way with all of them--with Mrs. Coulson and the girl as well: their crisp, clipped friendly speech never deviated into intimacy, and never hinted at any melting into confidence and admission. Upon the woman's weathered face there hovered, when she talked, the same faint set grin that Captain Nicholl had, and her eyes were bright and hard, a little mad, impenetrable, as were his. And the girl, although young and very lovely, sometimes had this same look when she greeted anyone or paused to talk. In that look there was nothing truculent, bitter, or defiant: it was just the look of three people who had gone down together, and who felt for one another neither bitterness nor hate, but that strange companionship of a common disgrace, from which love has vanished, but which is more secret, silent, and impassively resigned to its fatal unity than love itself could be.

  And that hard bright look also said this plainly to the world: "We ask for nothing from you now, we want nothing that you offer us. What is ours is ours, what we are we are, you'll not intrude nor come closer than we let you see!"

  Coulson might have been a man who had been dishonoured and destroyed by his women, and who took it stolidly, saying nothing, and drank steadily from morning until night, and had nothing for it now but drink and silence and acceptance. Yet Eugene never knew for certain that this was so; it just seemed inescapable, and was somehow legible not only in the slow smouldering fire that burned out through his rugged weathered face, but also in the hard bright armour of the women's eyes, the fixed set grin around their lips when they were talking--a grin that was like armour, too. And Morison, who had referred to Coulson, chuckling, as a real "bottle-a-day-man," had added quietly, casually, in his brief, indefinite but blurted-out suggestiveness of speech:

  "I think the old girl's been a bit of a bitch in her day. . . . Don't know, of course, but has the look, hasn't she?" In a moment he said quietly, "Have you talked to the daughter yet?"

  "Once or twice. Not for long."

  "Ran into a chap at Magdalen the other day who knows her," he said casually. "He used to come out here to see her." He glanced swiftly, slyly at Eugene, his face reddening a little with laughter. "Pretty hot, I gather," he said quietly, smiling, and looked away. It was night: the fire burned cheerfully in the grate, the hot coals spurting in small gaseous flares from time to time. The house was very quiet all around them. Outside they could hear the stormy wind in the trees along the road. Morison flicked his cigarette into the fire, poured out a drink of whisky into a glass, saying as he did so: "I say, old chap, you don't mind if I take a spot of this before I go to bed, do you?" Then he shot some seltzer in the glass and drank. And Eugene sat there, without a word, staring sullenly into the fire, dumbly conscious of the flood of sick pain and horror which the casual foulness of the man's suggestion had aroused, stubbornly trying to deny now that he was thinking of the girl all the time.

  LXXIII

  One night, as Eugene was corning home along the dark road that went up past the playing field to the house, and that was bordered on each side by grand trees whose branches seemed to hold at night all the mysterious and demented cadences of storm, he came upon her suddenly standing in the shadow of a tree. It was one of the grand wild nights that seemed to come so often in the autumn of that year: the air was full of a fine stinging moisture, not quite rain, and above the stormy branches of the trees he could see the sky, wild, broken, full of scudding clouds through which at times the moon drove in and out with a kind of haggard loneliness. By that faint, wild, and broken light, he could see the small white oval of the girl's face--somehow even more lovely now just because he could not see it plainly. And he could see as well the rough gleaming bark of the tree against which she leaned.

  As he approached, he saw her thrust her hand into the pocket of her overcoat, a match flared, and for a moment he saw Edith plainly, the small flower of her face framed in the wavering light as she lowered her head to light her cigarette.

  The light went out, he saw the small respiring glow of her cigarette before the white blur of her face, he passed her swiftly, head bent, without speaking, his heart filled with the sense of strangeness and wonder which the family had roused in him.

  Then he walked on up the road, muttering to himself. The house was dark when he got there, but when he entered his sitting-room the place was still warmly and softly luminous with the glow of hot coals in the grate. He turned the lights on, shut the door behind him, and hurled several lumps of coal upon the bedded coals. In a moment the fire was blazing and crackling cheerfully, and getting a kind of comfort and satisfaction from this activity, he flung off his coat, went over to the sideboard, poured out a stiff drink of Scotch from a bottle there, and coming back to the fire, flung himself into a chair and began to stare sullenly into the dancing flames.

  How long he sat there in this stupor of sullen and nameless fury he did not know, but he was sharply roused at length by footsteps light and rapid on the gravel, shocked into a start of surprise by a figure that appeared suddenly at one of the French windows that opened directly from his sitting-room on to the level sward of velvet lawn before the house.

  He peered through the glass for a moment with an astonished stare before he recognized the face of Edith Coulson. He opened the doors at once, she came in quickly, smiling at his surprise and at the glass which he was holding foolishly, half-raised, in his hand.

  He continued to look at her with an expression of gape-mouthed astonishment and in a moment became conscious of her smiling glance, the cool sweet assurance of her young voice.

  "I say!" she was saying cheerfully, "what a lucky thing to find you up! I came away without any key--I should have had to wake the whole house up--so when I saw your light!" she concluded briskly, "--what luck! I hope you don't mind."

  "Why no-o, no," Eugene stammered foolishly, still staring dumbly at her. "No--no-o--not at all," he blundered on. Then suddenly coming to himself with a burst of galvanic energy, he shut the windows, pushed another chair before the fire, and said:

  "Won't you sit down and have a drink before you go?"

  "Thanks," she said crisply. "I will--yes. What a jolly fire you have." As she talked she took off her coat and hat swiftly and put them on a chair. Her face was flushed and rosy, beaded with small particles of rain, and for a moment she stood before the mirror arranging her hair, which had been tousled by the wind.

  The girl was slender, tall, and very lovely with the kind of beauty they have when they are beautiful--a beauty so fresh, fair, and delicate that it seems to be given to just a few of them to compensate for all the grimly weathered ugliness of the rest. Her voice was also lovely, sweet, and musical, and when she talked all the notes of tenderness and love were in it. But she had the same hard bright look in her eye that her mother had, the faint set smile around her mouth: as they stood there talking she was standing very close to him, and he could smell the fragrance of her hair, and felt an intolerable desire to put his hand upon hers and was almost certain she would not draw away. But the hard bright look was in her eye, the faint set smile around her mouth, and he did nothing.

  "What'll you have?" Eugene said. "Whisky?"

  "Yes, thank you," she said with the same sweet crisp assurance with which she always spoke, "and a splash of soda." He struck a match and held it for her while she lit the cigarette she was holding in her hand, and in a moment returned to her with the drink. Then she sat down, crossed her legs, and for a moment puffed thoughtfully at her cigarette as she stared into the fire. The storm wind moaned in the great trees along the road and near the house, and suddenly a swirl of rain and wind struck the windows with a rattling blast. The girl stirred a little in her chair, restlessly, shivered.

  "Listen!" she said. "What a night! Horrible weather we have here, isn't it?"

  "I don't know. I don't like the fog and rain so well. But this--the way it is tonight--" he nodded toward the window--"I like it."

  She looked at him for a moment.

  "Oh," she said non-committally. "You do.
" Then, as she sipped her drink, she looked curiously about the room, her reflective glance finally resting on his table, where there was a great stack of the ledgers in which he wrote.

  "I say," she cried again, "what are you doing with all those big books there?"

  "I write in them."

  "Really?" she said, in a surprised tone. "I should think it'd be an awful bother carrying them around when you travel?"

  "It is. But it's the best way I've found of keeping what I do together."

  "Oh," she said, as before, and continued to stare curiously at him with her fair, lovely young face, the curiously hard, bright, and unrevealing glance of her eye. "I see. . . . But why do you come to such a place as this to write?" she said presently. "Do you like it here?"

  "I do. As well as any place I've ever known."

  "Oh! . . . I should think a writer would want a different kind of place."

  "What kind?"

  "Oh--I don't know--Paris--London--some place like that, where there are lots of life--people--fun--I should think you'd work better in a place like that."

  "I work better here."

  "But don't you get awfully fed up sitting in here all day long and writing in these enormous books?"

  "I do, yes."

  "I should think you would . . . I should think you'd want to get away from it sometimes."

  "Yes. I do want to--every day--almost all the time."

  "Then why don't you?" she said crisply. "Why don't you go off some week-end for a little spree? I should think it'd buck you up no end."

  "It would--yes. Where should I go?"

  "Oh, Paris, I suppose. . . . Or London! London!" she cried. "London is quite jolly if you know it."

  "I'm afraid I don't know it."

  "But you've been to London," she said in a surprised tone.

  "Oh, yes. I lived there for several months."

  "Then you know London," she said impatiently. "Of course you do."

  "I'm afraid I don't know it very well. I don't know many people there--and after all, that's the thing that counts, isn't it?"

  She looked at Eugene curiously for a moment, with the faint hard smile around the edges of her lovely mouth.

  "--Should think that might be arranged," she said with a quiet, an enigmatic humour. Then, more directly, she added: "That shouldn't be difficult at all. Perhaps I could introduce you to some people."

  "That would be fine. Do you know many people there?"

  "Not many," she said. "I go there--whenever I can." She got up with a swift decisive movement, put her glass down on the mantelpiece and cast her cigarette into the fire. Then she faced Eugene, looking at him with a curiously bold, an almost defiant directness, and she fixed him with this glance for a full moment before she spoke.

  "Good night," she said. "Thanks awfully for letting me in--and for the drink."

  "Good night," Eugene said, and she was gone before he could say more, and he had closed the door behind her, and he could hear her light swift footsteps going down the hall and up the steps. And then there was nothing in the house but sleep and silence, and storm and darkness in the world around him.

  Mrs. Coulson came into Eugene's room just once or twice while he was there. One morning she came in, spoke crisply and cheerfully, and walked over to the window, looking out upon the velvet lawn and at the dreary, impenetrable grey of foggy air. Although the room was warm and there was a good fire burning in the grate, she clasped her arms together as she looked, and shivered a little.

  "Wretched weather, isn't it?" she said in her crisp tones, her gaunt weathered face and toothy mouth touched by the faint fixed grin as she looked out with her bright hard stare. "Don't you find it frightfully depressing? Most Americans do," she said, getting a sharp disquieting sound into the word.

  "Yes. I do, a little. We don't have this kind of weather very often. But this is the time of year you get it here, isn't it? I suppose you're used to it by now?"

  "Used to it?" she said crisply, turning her gaze upon him. "Not at all. I've known it all my life, but I'll never get used to it. It is a wretched climate."

  "Still, you wouldn't feel at home anywhere else, would you? You wouldn't want to live outside of England?"

  "No?" she said, staring at him with the faint set grin around her toothy mouth. "Why do you think so?"

  "Because your home is here."

  "My home? My home is where they have fine days and where the sun is always shining."

  "I wouldn't like that. I'd get tired of sunlight all the time. I'd want some grey days and some fog and snow."

  "Yes, I suppose you would. But then, you've been used to having fine days all your life, haven't you? With us, it's different. I'm so fed up with fog and rain that I could do without them nicely, thank you, if I never saw them again. . . . I don't think you could ever understand how much the sunlight means to us," she said slowly. She turned, and for a moment looked out of the window. "Sunlight--warmth--fine days for ever! Warmth everywhere--in the earth, the sky, in the lives of the people all around you, nothing but warmth and sunlight and fine days!"

  "And where would you go to find all that? Does it exist?"

  "Oh, of course!" she said crisply and good-naturedly, turning to him again. "There's only one place to live--only one country where I want to live."

  "Where is that?"

  "Italy," she said. "That's my real home. . . . I'd live the rest of my life there if I could." For a moment longer she looked out of the window, then turned briskly, saying:

  "Why don't you run over to Paris some week-end? After all, it's only seven hours from London: if you left here in the morning you'd be there in time for dinner. It would be a good change for you. I should think a little trip like that would buck you up tremendously."

  Her words gave him a wonderful feeling of confidence and hope: she had travelled a great deal, and she had the casual, assured way of speaking of a voyage that made it seem very easy and filled one with a sense of joy and adventure when she spoke about it. When Eugene tried to think of Paris by himself it had seemed very far away and hard to reach: London stood between it and him, and when he thought of the huge smoky web of London, the soft grey skies above him, and the enormous weight of lives that were hidden somewhere in that impenetrable fog, a grey desolation and weariness of the spirit filled him. It seemed to him that he must draw each breath of that soft grey air with heavy weary effort, and that every mile of his journey would be a ghastly struggle through some viscous and material substance, that weighted down his steps and filled his heart with desolation.

  But when Mrs. Coulson spoke to him about it, suddenly it all seemed wonderfully easy and good. England was magically small, the Channel to be taken in a stride, and all the thrill, the joy, the mystery of Paris his again--the moment that he chose to make it his.

  He looked at her gaunt weathered face, the hard bright armour of her eyes, and wondered how anything so clear, so sharp, so crisp, and so incisive could have been shaped and grown underneath these soft and humid skies that numbed him, mind and heart and body, with their thick dull substance of grey weariness and desolation.

  A day or two before he left, Edith came into his room one afternoon bearing a tray with tea and jam and buttered bread. He was sitting in his chair before the fire, and had his coat off: when she came in he scrambled to his feet, reached for the coat and started to put it on. In her young crisp voice she told him not to, and put the tray down on the table, saying that the maid was having her afternoon off.

  Then for a moment she stood looking at him with her faint and enigmatic smile.

  "So you're leaving us?" she said presently.

  "Yes. Tomorrow."

  "And where will you go from here?" she said.

  "To Germany, I think. Just for a short time--two or three weeks."

  "And after that?"

  "I'm going home."

  "Home?"

  "Back to America."

  "Oh," she said slowly. "I see." In a moment, she added,
"We shall miss you."

  He wanted to talk to her more than he had ever wanted to talk to anyone in his life, but when he spoke all that he could say, lamely, muttering, was:

  "I'll miss you, too."

  "Will you?" She spoke so quietly that he could scarcely hear her. "I wonder for how long?" she said.

  "For ever," he said, flushing miserably at the sound of the word, and yet not knowing any other word to say.

  The faint hard smile about her mouth was a little deeper when she spoke again.

  "For ever? That's a long time, when one is young as you," she said.

  "I mean it. I'll never forget you as long as I live."

  "We shall remember you," she said quietly. "And I hope you think of us some time--back here, buried, lost, in all the fog and rain and ruin of England. How good it must be to know that you are young in a young country--where nothing that you did yesterday matters very much. How wonderful it must be to know that none of the failure of the past can pull you down--that there will always be another day for you--a new beginning. I wonder if you Americans will ever know how fortunate you are," the girl said.

  "And yet you couldn't leave all this?" Eugene said with a kind of desperate hope. "This old country you've lived in, known all your life. A girl like you could never leave a place like this to live the kind of life we have in America."

  "Couldn't I?" she said with a quiet but unmistakable passion of conviction. "There's nothing I'd like better."

  Eugene stared at her blindly, dumbly for a moment; suddenly all that he wanted to say, and had not been able to say, found release in a movement of his hands. He gripped her by the shoulders and pulled her to him, and began to plead with her:

  "Then why don't you? I'll take you there!--Look here--" his words were crazy and he knew it, but as he spoke them he believed all he said--"Look here! I haven't got much money--but in America you can make it if you want to! I'm going back there. You come too--I'll take you when I go!"