There Was a Time

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  While he waited for his call to be answered, he thought he would smother, that his trembling knees would not support him a moment longer. Why had he not done this before? Why had he not called Jessica, Jessica who waited, who would cry out when he told her, who would understand that soon he would come to her? He saw her face, the line of her throat, the black lustre of her hair, the dark light of her eyes. He heard her voice, the little catch in her breath. Why did she not answer? God, why did she not answer, now, when he needed her, when she needed to know?

  After a long time a pettish female voice answered the telephone. Miss Jessica wasn’t home, no. She was at her uncle’s country house, at the Lake Shore. You want the number? Well, you can have it. But say, listen, she wouldn’t be there today, after all. She was goin’ to drive down to Rochester today. Someone’s wedding.

  Someone’s wedding, some worthless, stupid, utterly meaningless wedding! It was someone’s wedding that pushed his clamoring cry back into his throat, stifled his heart, closed his lips. It was someone’s wedding that denied him, mocked him, told him that it was more important than he. Silly orange-blossoms, silly flowers, silly mating of unimportant idiots, empty laughter, defeated him with their raucous and senseless thrusting of themselves between him and Jessica. He crashed the receiver back on its hook.

  She ought to have known! Surely, she had known. But she had not waited. She had gone away. To someone’s wedding. She had told him that he must wait, that something more important than his affairs was transpiring now. He hated her.

  But he must speak, he must tell. Mr. Preston? He had not seen Mr. Preston for nearly three years. He found the number in the telephone book. But the burr was not answered, and again he flung the receiver back on its hook.

  There was no one to tell, no friend, no enemy. There was no one. There was no one to grasp his hand and cry congratulations while the eye filled with envy that belied the lying words. There was no one to rejoice with him, to plan eagerly with him, to laugh hysterically with him. No one, no one at all.

  He was thirty-six years old, and he had no friend and no enemy, not even an acquaintance.

  Where was Paul Hodge? Paul! Frank sat on the narrow ledge in the telephone booth and wiped his forehead. Paul Hodge. Where was Paul? He thumbed through the telephone book. A dozen Hodges, but not an Edward, a Gordon, or a Paul. What had happened to Paul, in all these years, Paul who would understand, who would exclaim with him, who would look at him with pride, and rejoice? There was only Paul, who would know, who would really wait. But Paul had been swallowed in the grave of the years, and there was no trace of him.

  Now, in the little security of the telephone booth, Frank was still and quiet. Paul. Why, I’ve never really forgotten him. He’s been with me all the time. Is he married? Does he remember me? We were nearer, closer, than any brothers. Surely, he hasn’t forgotten me. Where are you, Paul? I need you.

  Someone rapped impatiently on the glass door, and Frank got up and went out into the hot and noisy drugstore.

  CHAPTER 66

  He had never ridden in a Pullman before. He arrived at the New York Central Station a full hour before the train was due to leave. Confused by the narrow green corridors of the sleepers, he followed the porter to his berth. But he must, at any cost, pretend to be a seasoned traveller, bored by the necessity for a business trip. Though the night was hot, and the heat in the coaches was hardly lessened by fans, he found he was shivering. He lay rigid in his berth, feeling the stiff smoothness of the sheets on his body, his window-shade up, his eyes staring out onto the railroad yards with their searing lights and glittering tracks. All about him he heard the creaks and rustles, the sighs and snores, of those who slept above and across from him. A bell tinkled softly; the porter murmured to late-comers; baggage was shuffled. Behind his green curtains Frank lay, looking at the lights and the tracks.

  Never had he been so wide awake, so tense, with every nerve drawn taut, tingling and throbbing. A dozen times he shifted his pillows, threw back or pulled up the sheet, examined his suit anxiously to see if it was hanging so as not to produce wrinkles. He felt for his wallet under the pillow; he made certain that his hat was in its bag. The train became very quiet now, and the snores sounded louder in the silence.

  Sometimes he would rise on his elbow, turn on his light, and look at the time. Almost midnight. He was not prepared, when it came, for the smooth gliding into the night; dazzled, he watched lights flow by him, saw the faces of track workers, saw the silver moonlight on the roofs of shacks. Now he was on his way! Tomorrow he would sign a contract for the publishing of his book. Tomorrow he would be reborn. He would sleep now, so as to be “fresh.”

  But he could not sleep. He lay there, and the train flowed into darkness. The rails sang gently under him. He heard the purring of the wheels. The fans whirred. But sleep stood far from him, and he could not draw it nearer. He closed his eyes, lay rigid. His head was like a seething pot, and snatches of past scenes boiled up in it. Just when he thought he had made his mind empty, he began to tremble with a violent excitement, and he would clench his hands and open his burning eyes. Tomorrow—no, today, this morning!—he would sit in the publisher’s office, and he would sign a contract, and his life would begin. Tomorrow the world would begin to open its shining door, and he would be free. He saw himself talking to Mr. Hawkins. He must not appear a yokel to Mr. Hawkins. He must speak in very measured tones, and now he prayed blasphemously that he would not stammer, that his thick tongue would not helplessly go off into wild and uncontrollable repetitions. He must remember to talk slowly and carefully, to smile coolly, and be calm. He must take time to smother his faint English accent, in order not to arouse the antagonism of Mr. Hawkins, as the antagonism of his associates in Bison had always been aroused by the sound of his broader “a’s,” his clipped endings, and other shameful Britishisms. In his mind, he practiced subduing the accent. With care, he could pass as an American born. Americans, his father had always said, did not like the English; he must remember.

  New York! In a few hours, for the first time in his life, he would see New York. He would see the brilliant towers, the canyon-like streets, the great shops. He would set his feet on the pavements of New York.

  It was strange that in the very midst of his beating excitement and tense thrilling he remembered something he had forgotten for almost thirty years. All at once, he was standing in the muddy Common outside the green back door of the yard of the house on Mosston Street. It had been raining, and the sky loomed closely overhead, a rack of gray clouds with dark undersides. He could even feel the cold moistness of the wind in his face, his childish reaction to wind and cloud and muddy earth and the group of little children standing about him. He could not remember their names, but he remembered their faces, pinched, wan, hungry. One or two complained that they had no button-boots for Sunday school, and they looked down at their clogs dolefully. He looked down at his own feet, nicely encased in button-boots, and felt a thin pleasure. “That’s because you’re poor,” he had said.

  Poor. He had never uttered the word before. Suddenly, he turned and ran furiously into the house, and found his mother in the kitchen. A cold fright was upon him, and he clutched his mother’s skirts in vehement fear. “Mama!” he cried. “We’re not poor, are we? We aren’t poor like the Dobsons, are we, Mama?”

  He had clung to her skirts quite desperately. It was strange that just now, as he lay gently rocking in his berth, he could feel the texture of Maybelle’s apron in his hand. He could feel the dampness of dread between his shoulder blades, the ache of his fingernails as they dug frenziedly into his mother’s skirts.

  Maybelle was cross and preoccupied. She switched herself free from the terrified child. “Of course we’re poor!” she said. “And now, go wash your paddies and eat your tea.”

  How could he ever have forgotten the sheer cold horror that fell on him then, the sensation of vulnerablility, of defenselessness, of real panic? He was hardly six years old, but he was
stricken and thrown down, overcome with a very passion of hatred and agonized terror and rebellion. He would not be poor! Never, never, never!

  He had forgotten, but now, as he lay in his berth, it all came to him and a shadow of his childhood fell over him, and he was sick with depression. He could not stand this. Why had this memory returned to him just now, on the very day of his greatest triumph? He got out of his berth, found water, and swallowed a capsule of nembutal, which his doctor had given him some time ago.

  He must have slept, for when he became conscious of himself again the bleak hot dawn of a New York summer morning was blazing into his eyes.

  He sat up and looked out. He had missed the Palisades then, and the green Hudson under the sun. He watched the dreary, broken tenements running past his window. He saw the littered corridors of the streets. He saw bedraggled figures creeping below, and had his first sight of New York streetcars and billboards and the high flight of an “elevated.” Then a huge apartment house appeared, its hundreds of windows glittering in the sunlight, and another one, and another, until the tenements again streamed by him, unredeemed by a single tree, a single plot of grass. Sometimes filthy windows, blowing with dirty fragments of curtains, pressed almost upon the train, only to give way to a panorama of soot-stained brick walls the space between which was hung with ragged laundry. He could catch glimpses of the hot blue sky.

  The porter was fumbling at his curtains, and now he knew that it was time to get ready. His head pounded, and his stomach was nauseated. But the excitement had returned, until it seemed to him that he would burst the very bonds of his flesh.

  The train roared into the tunnel, and in Frank’s ears the sound was like the rumble of great triumphant drums.

  Out, now, into the station, where he was immediately assailed by a thousand rushing faces, a thousand blurrings of colored dresses and dark clothing, a thousand echoes of hurrying feet and the mutter of a multitude of voices, a very flood of humanity pouring in upon him from every direction as the commuters and the travellers flew by him, birds of passage intent on unaccountable different goals. Overwhelmed by them, choked, smothered, brushed and jostled by them, deafened by the sound and beat and thunder of them, he struggled to the side of the gigantic station and stopped to get his bearings. Incredulous, he watched the cataracts of men and women spewing from scores of different exits, while wan sunlight, through overhead acres of windows, seeped down upon blanched, rouged, intent, scowling, vapid and empty faces, floating and bobbing into infinity. He heard the rumbling shouts of train-callers, the low growl of trains beneath his feet; the stone floor under him trembled. There were ramps here, and ramps there, all seething. Where were they all going? And why? Did it matter? Why this raging and running and hastening? Why all these cross currents, as a river of humanity struck across a river gushing in another direction? They hurried, these ants, out of their labyrinths to their honey-combed nests, the gigantic nests which made canyons of their streets, and which even so early, must be beginning to hum with ant-activity. They hurried, as if they and their ant-lives were important. They hurried, with mass-egotism, into the sun, and never knew that ten thousand of them could be crushed under a toppling nest and the world would not be the poorer for their deaths.

  Suddenly Frank felt a clean shame for them, for their debasement, for their outrageous conviction that what they were and where they were going was of any significance at all. If all of them would only halt for a single instant and think: I am nothing, and what I am about to do will not change the current of life in the least, then, and then only, would they, in their humility, acquire a kind of dignity and grandeur, a kind of tragic truth. But they ran and they fled; they panted and they rushed, and in their belief that they were important they were only shameful. A man alone, thought Frank, has a kind of lonely splendor and mystery. But men in the mass lose their souls.

  Cold black depression fell on him, and he felt himself dwindling, some virtue drawn out of him and dissipated in the flood that roared by him. It was quite a long time before he came to himself and dully remembered that somewhere he had seen a string of lights leading to the Commodore Hotel. He picked up his suitcase and went on, vaguely wondering why he was so tired, when he had not been tired before, and why there was a kind of ashen dryness in his mouth, a flatness in the soles of his feet.

  CHAPTER 67

  He was given a pleasant room in the Commodore Hotel, where he could look out upon Forty-second Street, fifteen stories below. The quiet comfort of the room, its blending of green and russet tints, its wide, sun-dazzled window, its glittering white bath, lifted his spirits out of the dark pit into which they had fallen. Never had he been in such a room—and it was his for as long as he wished it, though the cost had momentarily staggered him. He examined the thick white towels in the bathroom, and studied the shower. He felt of the firm soft bed with its heavy green cover. He studied the fine prints on the ivory walls. He stood at the window and saw the seething traffic of men and vehicles below. So, this is what it meant to have money! This is what a man could buy, this dignity and retreat, these luxurious rugs, these massive white towels, this telephone beside the bed, these heavy dark doors! This key in his hand!

  His hands shook as he unpacked his few belongings. He glanced at his watch. It was hardly past nine. He went to the telephone and called the offices of Thomas Ingham’s Sons. Mr. Hawkins, he was informed, would not be in until ten-thirty. How could he endure it until ten-thirty? He treated himself to a shower, then went downstairs in the crowded elevator full of well-dressed men and women, and found the dining room. He could not get enough of the panelled walls, the Tudor décor, the wonderful rugs, the tablecloths like polished satin. But he could not eat when his breakfast was brought to him, though it was a breakfast of which he had dreamed. His excitement was too profound, too nerve-racking.

  It was this which made him think: I am almost thirty-seven years old. It ought to have come to me sooner. What if it is too late?

  He could not keep still; it was something in the nature of flight that sent him out into the thronging lobby, where he saw no brute face, no shabby, shapeless clothing, heard no empty brute laugh. These men and women were the creatures of whom he had dreamt in his deepest poverty. They talked softly and suavely; they smiled easily and stood about in casual attitudes. Their clothing was rich and of sharp angles, and even Frank’s inexperienced eyes could detect the quality. There was assurance about them, the calm acceptance and awareness of affluence. He moved among them, feeling the inferior quality of his own new suit, the poor leather of his polished black oxfords, the cheapness of his tie. Did they detect all this, as their smiling, wandering eyes touched him? Did they wonder how such as he had been allowed to appear among them? Did those bellboys glance at him with contempt and affront? He was sure of all this, and his face and heart burned with humiliation and anger. Well, a few more days, a few more weeks, and he would walk among them proudly, one of them, entitled to their smiles, permitted to dine with them. Only a little longer, and he could go boldly to Jessica’s home, and be admitted, not as a beggarly salesman but as an equal.

  He went out into the street, and was stunned afresh at the sight of this incredible city. He saw the colossal towers, the enormous walls, standing above him, their windows sparkling in the sun like countless mirrors. He heard the roar and crash of the traffic; he was jostled by the intent-faced racers on the sidewalks. A wind he had never known blew dust into his eyes. He gasped in the monstrous heat that rose in hot waves from the pavements. Vast shop windows moved beside him, filled with an unbelievable quantity of merchandise. He kept close to them, finding his way to Fifth Avenue. Policemen shrilled their whistles at the corners; busses and cars clattered, honked and bellowed all about him. And on every hand, wherever he looked, the brilliant towers sprang upwards to the burning blue sky and threw sharp black shadows over the streets.

  This was New York. He had seen photographs, movies and newsreels of the city. He had imagined he knew it. Bu
t imagination was beggared by the reality; imagination was a flat miniature in faded colors. He felt the power of the city, the huge and pounding energy, the fury and the tumult. He stared at the rushing masses of faces, and saw all the men in the world. He was stupefied into unthinking amazement. He walked down Fifth Avenue in a daze. He saw the great white lions of the Library. Masses flowed in and out of it, converged, were swallowed into other rivers. It did not seem possible to him that there were so many people. He saw how absorbed they were in their passionate aims and thoughts, how unaware of the incredibility of the city they had built and in which they lived and had their being. How tiny and insignificant they were, how vulnerable and meaningless. Yet—they had built this city, a city more impossible and more stunning than the Pyramids, more powerfully impressive than the Parthenon, more wild and colorful and violent than Bagdad, overlaid with more gaudy grandeur than Rome had known. Soft flesh and weak bones, small flaccid feet and little hands—but they had built this city. The terrible and heroic and invincible human spirit had built this city! The dreaming human mind in its frail bony shell had conceived this power and this splendor, this giant and astounding force, this white and shining majesty. It had struck these towers against the sky. It had carved these walls; the fragile hands had raised up these massive canyons of stone and concrete. Oh, dreaming mind of man that could set monuments and palaces in the wilderness and throw arches of magnificence across the desert place!

  Frank stood still, and now a furious ecstasy came to him as he thought these thoughts, an ecstasy which shouted from his exultant heart. The darkness which had crept on him that morning retreated at last. It only retreated, and did not vanish. But he could hold it back for an hour, and rejoice, and be exalted and awed by what his species had raised in the voiceless forest. Pride and passion flashed in his eyes. A curious something like love came to him, a love that rose from the walled garden of his childhood and sang all about him with faint but thrilling fervor. Some instinct implored him to hold fast to what he knew, to remember it, and never to forget it, lest he die, for it was a truth he had known and had forgotten.