Of Time and the River (89 page)

He wanted to answer her with simple eloquence and grace and warmth, he wanted to paint a picture of his midnight wanderings that would hold her there in fascinated interest, but the glacial impersonality of the woman’s smile, the proud and haughty magnificence of her person, froze all the ardours of enthusiasm and conviction with which, he felt, he might have spoken; it even seemed to numb and thicken the muscles of his tongue, and he stood there gaping at her awkwardly, cutting a sorry figure, and flushing crimson with anger and vexation at his lame, stupid, halting tongue, and stammered out, replying:

“I—I walk,” he mumbled. “I—I take walks.”

“You—WHAT?” she said kindly enough, but sharply, with a kind of peremptory authority that told him that she must already be growing weary and impatient of his stammering, incoherent speech, his mumbling awkwardness.

“Oh—WALK!” she cried, with an air of swift enlightenment, as if her puzzled mind had just succeeded in translating his jargon. “Oh,” she said quietly, and looked at him for a moment steadily with her fixed and glacial smile, “you do.”

It seemed to him that those brief words were already pregnant with a cold indifferent dismissal: in them he seemed to feel the impregnable indifference of her cold detachment—the yawning gulf that separated her life from his. Already it seemed to him that she had turned away from him, dismissing him as not worthy even of such amused attention as she had given him. But after a moment, as she continued to look at him with her brilliant, glacial, detached, yet not unkindly smile, she continued:

“And what do you do on these walks? Where do you go?”

—Where? Where? Where indeed? His mind groped desperately over the whole nocturnal pattern of the city—over the lean, gaunt webbing of Manhattan with the barren angularity of its streets, the splintered, glacial soar of its terrific buildings, and the silent, frozen harshness of its streets of old brown houses, grimy brick and rusty, age-encrusted stone.

Oh, he thought that he could tell her all that could be told, that youth could know, that any man had ever known about night and time and darkness, and about the city’s dark and secret heart, and what lay buried in the dark and secret heart of all America. He thought that he could tell her all that any man could ever know about the huge, attentive secrecy of night, and of man’s silent heart of buried, waiting, and intolerable desire, about the thing that waits there in the night-time in America, that lies buried at the city’s secret heart of night, the mute and single tongue of man’s intolerable desire, the silence of his single heart in all its overwhelming eloquence, the great tide flowing in the hearts of men, as dark and as mysterious as the great, unceasing river, the thing that waits and does not speak and is for ever silent and that knows for ever, and that has no words to say, no tongue to speak, and that unites six million celled and lonely sleepers at the heart of night and silence, in the great dark tide of the unceasing river, and of all our buried songs of hope and joy and wild desire that live for ever in the heart of night and of America.

Yes, he thought that he could tell her all of this, but when he spoke, with thickened tongue, a numb and desperate constraint, all that he could mutter thickly was: “I—I walk.”

“But WHERE?” she said, a trifle more sharply, still looking at him with her glacial, curious smile. “That’s what I’d like to know. Where do you go? What do you see that’s so interesting? What do you find that’s worth staying up all night for? Where do you go when you make these expeditions?” she again demanded. “Up to Broadway?”

“Yes,” he mumbled thickly, “—sometimes—and—and sometimes—I go down town.”

“Down town?” the cool incisive inflection of the voice, the glacial grey-green of the eye bored through him like a steel-blue drill. “Downtown WHERE? To the Battery?”

“Y-y-yes—sometimes. . . . And—and along the East Side, too,” he mumbled.

“WHERE?” she cried sharply, smiling, but manifestly impatient with his mumbled, tongue-tied answers. “OH—the East Side!” she cried again, with the air of glacial enlightenment. “—In the tenement section!”

“Yes—yes,” he stumbled on desperately, “—and along Fourteenth Street and Second Avenue—and Grand Street—and—and Delancey—and— and the Bowery—and all the docks and piers and all,” he blurted out, conscious of Joel’s eager, radiant smile of hopeful kindness, and the miserable clown he was making of himself.

“But I should think you would find all that dreadfully boring.” Mrs. Pierce’s voice was now tinged with cool and mild surprise. “And awfully ugly, isn’t it? . . . I mean, if you’ve got to prowl around at night, you might hunt for something a little more attractive than the East Side, couldn’t you? . . . After all, we still have Riverside Drive—I suppose even that has changed a great deal, but in my childhood it was quite a lovely place. Or the Park?” she said, a little more kindly and persuasively. “If you want to take a walk before going to bed, why, wouldn’t it be better to take it in the Park—where you could see an occasional tree or a little grass? . . . Or even Fifth Avenue and around Washington Square—that used to be quite pleasant? But the East SIDE! Heavens! My dear boy, what on earth do you ever find in a place like that to interest you?”

He was absolutely speechless, congealed, actually terrified by the haughty magnificence, the glacial and almost inhuman detachment, of her person. His mouth gaped, he gulped, his lips quivered and made soundless efforts for a moment, and then he stammered:

“You—you find—you find—p-p-p-people there,” he said.

“PEOPLE?” Again her thin eyebrows arched in fine surprise. “But of course you find people there! You find people everywhere you go. . . . Only,” she added, “I shouldn’t think you’d find many people anywhere at two o’clock in the morning. I should think most of them would be in bed—even on the East Side.”

“They—they stay up late over there.”

“But why?” she now cried with a good-natured but frank impatience. “That’s just what I’m trying to find out! . . . What’s it all about? What’s all the SHOOTING for?” she said humorously, repeating a phrase which was in current use at that time. “—What’s the big attraction? What do they find to do that’s so interesting that it can keep them out of bed half through the night? . . . Really,” she cried, “if it’s so amusing as all that, I think I’ll go and have a look myself. What do they DO?” she again insisted. “That’s what I want to know.”

“They—they sit around and talk.”

“But WHERE? WHERE?” she now cried with frank despair. “My dear boy, that’s what I want you to tell me.”

“Oh, in—in lunch-rooms—and restaurants—and speak-easies—and— and places like that.”

“Yes,” she nodded with an air of satisfaction. “Good. At least, we have THAT settled. And you go to these places, too—and sit around—and watch—and listen to them. Is that it?”

“Yes,” he said helplessly, nodding, her words suddenly making all this restless and unceasing explanation of the night seem reasonless, foolish, pitifully absurd, “sometimes.”

“And what kind of people do you find in those places?” she said curiously. “I’ve often wondered what kind of people go there.”

Kind? He stared at her foolishly with gaping jaw, and gaped and muttered wordlessly, and could not find a word to say to her. Kind? Great God! what word could ever shape them, what phrase could ever utter the huge swarm and impact of just one moment, out of all those million swarming memories of kaleidoscopic night! Kind? Great God! the kind of all the earth, the kind of the whole world, the unnumbered, nameless, swarming, and illimitable kind that make all living! Kind? The mongrel compost of a hundred races—the Jews, the Irish, the Italians, and the niggers, the Swedes, the Germans, the Lithuanians and the Poles, the Russians, Czechs, and Greeks, the Syrians, Turks and Armenians, the nameless hodge-podge of the Balkans, as well as Chinese, Japs, and dapper little Filipinos—a hundred tongues, a thousand tribes, unnumbered colonies of life, all poured in through the lean gateways of the sea, all poured in upon that rock of life, to join the countless freightage of that ship of living stone, all nurtured and sustained upon the city’s strong breast,—a thousand kinds, a single substance, all fused and joined there at the heart of the night, all moving with that central, secret and dynamic energy, all wrought and woven in, with all their swarming variousness, into the great web of America—with all its clamour, naked struggle, blind and brutal strife, with all its violence, ignorance, and cruelty, and with its terror, joy, and mystery, its undying hope, its everlasting life.

All he could do was gape and mumble foolishly again, and stammer finally: “There—there are all kinds, I guess,” and plunge on desperately, “and then—and then—there are the wharves and piers and docks—the Battery and the City Hall—and then—and then,” he stumbled on, “—the Bridge—the Bridge is good.”

“The Bridge?” Again the pencilled brows of arched surprise, the glacial curiosity. “What bridge?”

What bridge? Great God! the only bridge, the bridge of power, life and joy, the bridge that was a span, a cry, an ecstasy—that was America. What bridge? The bridge whose wing-like sweep that was like space and joy and ecstasy was mixed like music in his blood, would beat like flight and joy and triumph through the conduits of his life for ever. What bridge? The bridge whereon at night he had walked and stood and watched a thousand times, until every fabric of its soaring web was inwrought in his memory, and every stone of its twin terrific arches was in his heart, and every living sinew of its million cabled nerves had throbbed and pulsed in his own spirit like his soul’s anatomy.

“The—the Brooklyn Bridge,” he mumbled. “The—the Bridge is good.”

“Good? How do you mean—good?” The glacial and amused inquiry pierced his consciousness again with confusion, numb paralysis of speech, and incoherence. And at this moment Joel, seeing his agonizing embarrassment, came to his rescue with the exquisite, radiant kindliness that was the constant evidence of his fine character.

“Um. Yes,” he could hear Joel whispering in a thoughtful and convinced way. “He’s dead right about it, Mums. I’ve gone with him once or twice—and the Bridge IS good! . . . And the East Side has good things in it, too,” he whispered generously. “I saw some good bits there—street corners, a store front, alleys—there’s good colour—I’d like to go back some time and paint it.”

For the first time Mrs. Pierce broke into a robust, free and hearty laugh.

“Joel!” she cried. “You can get the most insane notions in your head of any boy I ever knew! If I didn’t watch you, I believe you’d be painting ash-cans! . . . My dear boy,” she said, laughing, “you’d better stick to what you’re doing. I don’t think you’ve had much experience with low-life—if that’s what you want I’ll find plenty of it for you right here in Rhinekill or on the farm. . . . If you want low-life,” here she paused and laughed heartily again, “go down to Granny’s tomorrow and paint the expression of those nine maids of hers when she tells them she’s decided to bob their hair because it fits in so nicely with the new decoration—Hah! Hah! Hah! Hah! Hah!”—Mrs. Pierce cast back her head and laughed again, a full free hearty laugh of robust humour in which Joel joined enthusiastically, almost suddenly, with a face radiant with glee—“I’d just like to be there when she tells them, that’ll be low-life enough,” she said.

“SIMPLY incredible!” Joel whispered, his face still radiant with its gleeful merriment.

“But no,” his mother went on more casually, and with humorous tolerance. “—You finish what you’re doing first—finish those screens you’re doing for Madge Telfair—then we’ll talk about low- life. . . . But I hardly think your talent lies in that direction,” she said good-humouredly but with an ironically knowing smile. “I haven’t seen your mother all these years without finding out something about your abilities—and I hardly think they lie in that direction. So you must stick to what you’re doing for the present—and if there’s any low-life to be done, just let ME do the choosing. . . . Well, then, good night,” she said quietly, kindly, and good-naturedly to the young man, as she turned to go upstairs. “Joel has told me so much about your nocturnal habits that I was curious to meet you and find out what you did. I’m glad to get the mystery cleared up. . . . I suppose,” she said, with an idle and detached curiosity, “that when one is all alone and knows no one in the city, he is driven to do almost anything for amusement. . . . Where are you from?” she said curiously.

“From—from the South,” he answered.

“Oh,” she stared at him a moment longer with her cold, fixed smile. “Yes,” she said. “I can see you are. I thought so. . . . Well, children,” she said with an air of finality, “you can burn the candle at both ends if that’s what you want to do—go out and bay the moon if you like—but not too near the house,” she said good- naturedly. “Your MOTHER’S going to bed. . . . Joel,” she said quietly, “you’ll be in to see me, of course, before you turn in.”

“Yes, Mums,” he whispered, eager, radiant, his tall, thin figure bent forward reverentially as he looked up at her, his eyebrows arching with their characteristic expression of fine surprise.— “But of course!” he said.

“Very well,” she said quietly. “And now good night to all of you.”

Turning, she went swiftly up the stairs, a tall, magnificently haughty figure of a woman, holding rustling and luxurious skirts.

“And now,” Joel whispered, when his mother had departed, “I’ll show you your room—and how to find the kitchen—and tell you anything you want to know—and after THAT,” he whispered, laughing and stroking his head, “you can do as you please, stay up as long as you like—but I’M going to bed.”

With these words he took his guest’s valise and started up the stairs. The young man followed him: he had been given a room on the second floor on the river side of the house. It was a magnificent spacious room so richly, softly carpeted that the foot sank down with velvety firmness to a noiseless tread. The quality of the room was the quality of the whole house—a kind of château- like grandeur and solidity, combined with the warmth, comfort and simplicity of a country house. Joel pressed buttons, flooding the great room with light. The wide and snowy covers of the great bed had been drawn back for the night. It was a bed fit for a king, and long and spacious enough for a man of seven feet: it waited there with a kind of still embrace, a silent and yet animate invitation that was eloquent with the promise of a strange and sweet repose.