Of Time and the River (127 page)

“You did?” she said curtly. “I wonder where. I’m sure you didn’t spend any of it while you were with US.”

He could have strangled her. The veins stood out upon his forehead like cords, his face was brick-red, and for a moment he went blind with the rush of hot, choking blood to his head. He tried to speak, his throat worked convulsively, but no words came: he just stood there goggling at her stupidly with an inflamed face, uttering a few incoherent croaks. Before he could think of anything to say, she had escaped again: Starwick and Ann were coming out of the pension, and she was speaking to them swiftly, telling them to make haste.

No one spoke during the ride to the station. He sat on the back seat beside Ann and the big Alsatian dog; Starwick and Elinor were in front. When they got to the station, the clock still lacked more than five minutes to train-time. He and Starwick bought third-class fares, and went outside where the women were still waiting for them. Starwick and Elinor walked away a few yards and began their quarrel again; Ann said nothing, but looked at him dumbly, miserably, a look that tore at him with pity and wild regret, and that made him weak and hollow with his blind, impossible desire.

They looked at each other with angry, sullen eyes, tormented with the perverse and headstrong pride of youth, unwilling to make concessions or relent, even when each desperately wanted the other to do so.

“Good-bye,” he said, and held out his hand. “Good-bye, Ann.”

“What do you mean—?” she began angrily. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m saying good-bye,” he said doggedly.

“You mean you’re not coming with us?”

For a moment he did not answer and then, nodding towards Elinor, he said bitterly:

“Your lady friend there doesn’t seem to want me very much. She doesn’t seem to think I bear my fair share of the expenses.”

“What did she say to you?” the girl asked.

“Oh, nothing,” he said in a quiet, choking tone of fury. “Nothing in particular. Just one of those friendly little things I’ve come to look for. She just said she didn’t know what I’d done with my money—that I hadn’t spent any of it while I was with you.”

Her face got brick-red with a heavy, smouldering flush, she looked towards Elinor with angry eyes, and then muttered:

“It was a rotten thing to say!” Turning towards him again, she said in a low tone:

“Do you mean, then, that you’ve given up the trip? You’re not coming with us?”

“That’s what I’ve told you, isn’t it?” he said harshly. “What else do you expect?”

She looked at him sullenly, angrily, a moment longer; and suddenly her eyes were wet with tears.

“It’s going to be a fine trip for me, isn’t it?” she muttered. “I’ve got a lot to look forward to, haven’t I?”

“Oh, you’ll get along, I guess,” he jeered. “I don’t think you’re going to miss MY company very much.” And felt a desperate hope that she would.

“Oh, it’s going to be charming, charming, isn’t it?” she said bitterly. “Nothing to do but hold down the back seat alone with the dog—while THEY”—she nodded towards Elinor and Starwick—“are up there having their wonderful talks together—leaving me alone to watch the dog while they stay out all night together—oh, it’s going to be simply wonderful, isn’t it?” she said with an infuriated sarcasm.

“So that’s the reason I was wanted?” he said. “To keep you company on the back seat! To take the place of the dog! To make it look good, eh?—to make the party look a little more respectable back in Boston when they hear of Mr. Starwick and his two lady friends! That’s why you wanted me, is it? To fill in extra space—to be a kind of damned male nurse and chaperon to you and Elinor and Frank Starwick—”

She took a step towards him and stopped, her hands clenched beside her, her eyes shot with tears, her big body trembling for a moment with baffled anger and despair.

“God-damn you!” she said in a small, choked voice; and, her hands still clenched, she turned away abruptly to hide her tears.

At this moment Starwick approached and, his ruddy face flushing as he spoke, he said quietly, casually:

“Ann, look! Will you let me have a thousand francs?”

She turned round, glared at Starwick for a moment with angry, reddened eyes and then, to his astonishment and her own, boomed out comically and in an enraged tone:

“No—o!”

His face went crimson with embarrassment, but after looking at her steadily for a moment, he turned, and walked back to Elinor. In a moment she could be heard saying coldly:

“. . . I am sorry, Francis, but I cannot! . . . You should have thought about all that before! . . . If you won’t stay out here and go in with us tomorrow, you’ll have to do the best you can by yourself. . . . No, sir, I cannot . . . if you want to put it that way, yes; I WON’T then! . . . I do not LIKE the man. . . . I THOROUGHLY disapprove of what you’re doing. . . . I WILL not help you!”

Some low, excited words passed between them, and in a moment Starwick said:

“You have no right to say that! I RESENT that VERY much!”

His ruddy face was deeply flushed with anger and humiliation: he turned abruptly on his heel and walked away without farewell. At this moment the guards could be heard calling, “En voiture! En voiture, messieurs!” and Elinor, glancing towards Ann and Eugene, said curtly:

“If you’re going to catch that train, you’ll have to hurry!”

Eugene turned to say good-bye to Ann; she paid no attention to his outstretched hand but stood, her hands clenched, glaring angrily at him with wet eyes.

“Good-bye!” he said roughly. “Aren’t you going to say good-bye?” She made no answer, but just stood glaring at him, and then turned away.

“All right,” he said angrily. “Do as you like!”

Without a word to Elinor, he picked up his valise, ran into the station and got through the gates just as the little suburban train began to move. Starwick was climbing up into a compartment, Eugene followed him, flung his valise inside, and clambered in, breathless, just as the guard with a remonstrant face slammed the door behind him.

LXXXVIII

During the journey back to Paris, Eugene and Starwick said little. The two young men were the sole occupants of the compartment, they sat facing each other, looking out through the windows with gloomy eyes. The grey light of the short winter’s day was fading rapidly: when they entered Paris dusk had come; as the train rattled over the switchpoints in the yard-approaches to the Gare St. Lazare, they could see lights and life and sometimes faces in the windows of the high, faded buildings near the tracks. Through one window, in a moment’s glimpse, Eugene saw a room with a round table with a dark cloth upon it, and with the light of a shaded chandelier falling on it, and a dark-haired boy of ten or twelve leaning on the table, reading a book, with his face propped in his hands, and a woman moving busily about the table laying it with plates and knives and forks. And as the train slackened speed, he saw, high up in the topmost floor of an old house that rose straight up from the tracks, a woman come to the window, look for a moment at a canary-bird cage which was hanging in the window, reach up and take it from its hook. She had the rough, blowsy, and somewhat old- fashioned look of a demi-monde of the Renoir period; and yet she was like someone he had known all his life.

They passed long strings of silent, darkened railway compartments, and as they neared the station, several suburban trains steamed past them, loaded with people going home. Some of the trains were the queer little double-deckers that one sees in France: Eugene felt like laughing every time he saw them and yet, with their loads of Frenchmen going home, they too were like something he had always known. As the train came into the station, and slowed down to its halt, he could see a boat-train ready for departure on another track. Sleek as a panther, groomed, opulent, ready, purring softly as a cat, the train waited there like a luxurious projectile, evoking perfectly, and at once, the whole structure of the world of power and wealth and pleasure that had created it. Beyond it one saw the whole universe of pleasure—a world of great hotels and famed resorts, the thrilling structure of the huge, white-breasted liners, and the slanting race and drive of their terrific stacks. One saw behind it the dark coast of France, the flash of beacons, the grey, fortressed harbour walls, the bracelet of their hard, spare lights, and beyond, beyond, one saw the infinite beat and swell of stormy seas, the huge nocturnal slant and blaze of liners racing through immensity, and for ever beyond, beyond, one saw the faint, pale coasts of morning and America, and then the spires and ramparts of the enfabled isle, the legendary and aerial smoke, the stone and steel, of the terrific city.

Now their own train had come to a full stop, and he and Starwick were walking up the quay among the buzzing crowd of people.

Starwick turned and, flushing painfully, said in a constrained and mannered tone:

“Look! Shall I being seeing you again?”

Eugene answered curtly: “I don’t know. If you want to find me, I suppose I shall be at the same place, for a time.”

“And after that?—Where will you go?”

“I don’t know,” he answered brusquely again. “I haven’t thought about it yet. I’ve got to wait until I get money to go away on.”

The flush in Starwick’s ruddy face deepened perceptibly, and, after another pause, and with obvious embarrassment, he continued as before:

“Look! Where are you going now?”

“I don’t know, Francis,” he said curtly. “To the hotel, I suppose, to leave my suitcase and see if they’ve still got a room for me. If I don’t see you again, I’ll say good-bye to you now.”

Starwick’s embarrassment had become painful to watch; he did not speak for another moment, then said:

“Look! Do you mind if I come along with you?”

He did mind; he wanted to be alone; to get away as soon as he could from Starwick’s presence and all the hateful memories it evoked, but he said shortly:

“You can come along if you like, of course, but I see no reason why you should. If you’re going to the studio we can take a taxi and you can drop me at the hotel. But if you’re meeting somebody over on this side later on, why don’t you wait over here for him?”

Starwick’s face was flaming with shame and humiliation; he seemed to have difficulty in pronouncing his words and when he finally turned to speak, the other youth was shocked to see in his eyes a kind of frantic, naked desperation.

“Then, look!” he said, and moistened his dry lips. “Could you let me have some—some money, please?”

Something strangely like terror and entreaty looked out of his eyes:

“I’ve GOT to have it,” he said desperately.

“How much do you want?”

Starwick was silent, and then muttered:

“I could get along with 500 francs.”

The other calculated swiftly: the sum amounted at the time to about thirty dollars. It was almost half his total remaining funds but— one look at the desperate humiliation and entreaty of Starwick’s face, and a surge of savage, vindictive joy swept through him—it would be worth it.

“All right,” he nodded briefly, and started to walk forward again.

“You come with me while I leave this stuff at the hotel and later on we’ll see if we can’t get these cheques cashed.”

Starwick consented eagerly. From that time on, Eugene played with him as a cat plays with a mouse. They got a taxi and were driven across the Seine to his little hotel, he left Starwick below while he went upstairs with his valise, promising to “be down in a minute, after I’ve washed up a bit,” and took a full and lesiurely three-quarters of an hour. When he got downstairs, Starwick’s restless manner had increased perceptibly: he was pacing up and down, smoking one cigarette after another. In the same leisurely and maddening manner they left the hotel. Starwick asked where they were going: Eugene replied cheerfully that they were going to dinner at a modest little restaurant across the Seine. By the time they had walked across the bridge, and through the enormous arches of the Louvre, Starwick was gnawing his lips with chagrin. In the restaurant Eugene ordered dinner and a bottle of wine; Starwick refused to eat, Eugene expressed regret and pursued his meal deliberately. By the time he had finished, and was cracking nuts, Starwick was almost frantic. He demanded impatiently to know where they were going, and the other answered chidingly:

“Now, Frank, what’s the hurry? You’ve got the whole night ahead of you: there’s no rush at all. . . . Besides, why not stay here a while? It’s a good place. Don’t you think so? I discovered it all by myself!”

Starwick looked about him, and said:

“Yes, the place is all right, I suppose, the food looks good—it really does, you know—but GOD!” he snarled bitterly, “how dull! how dull!”

“DULL?” Eugene said chidingly, and with an air of fine astonishment. “Frank, Frank, such language—and from YOU! Is this the poet and the artist, the man of feeling and of understanding, the lover of humanity? Is this GRAND, is this FINE, is this SWELL?” he jeered. “Is this the lover of the French—the man who’s more at home here than he is at home? Why, Frank, this is unworthy of you: I thought that every breath you drew was saturated with the love of France. I thought that every pulse-beat of your artist’s soul beat in sympathy with the people of this noble country. I thought that you would love this place—find it SIMPLY SWELL,” he sneered, “and VERY grand and MOST amusing—and here you turn your nose up at the people and call them dull—as if they were a lot of damned Americans! DULL! How can they be DULL, Frank? Don’t you see they’re FRENCH? . . . Now this boy here, for example,” he pointed to a bus-boy of eighteen years who was noisily busy piling dishes from a table on to a tray.—“Isn’t he a SWEET person, Frank?” he went on with an evil, jeering mimicry—“and there’s something VERY grand and ENORMOUSLY moving about the way he piles those dishes on a tray,” he continued with a deliberate parody of Starwick’s mannered accent. “—I MEAN, the whole thing’s there—it really is, you know—it’s like that painting by Cimabue in the Louvre that we both like so much—you know the one of the Madonna with the little madonnas all around her.—I mean the way he uses his hands—Look!” he crooned rapturously as the bus-boy took a thick, blunt finger and vigorously wiped his rheumy nose with it. “—Now where, WHERE, Frank,” he said ecstatically, “could you find anything like that in America? I MEAN, the GRACE, the DIGNITY, the complete unselfconsciousness with which that boy just wiped his nose across his finger—or his finger across his nose—Hah! hah! hah!—I get all confused, Frank—REALLY!—the movement is so beautiful and fluid—it’s hard to say just which is which—which does the WIPING—nose or finger—I mean, the whole thing’s QUITE incredible—and MOST astonishing—the way it comes back on itself: it’s like a FUGUE, you know,” and looking at the other earnestly, he said deeply: “You see what I mean, don’t you?”