OF TIME AND THE RIVER

by Thomas Wolfe

  "Still," suggested a young man named Howard, at this propitious moment, in his mincing, lisping, and effeminately mannered tone, "--as Irene Cartwright said, it was the only original thing that Ellen Rossiter ever did, and it was rather a pity to break the romance off. . . . I thought," he went on casually, "that the story they told about the ostler was rather touching--asking her to send his letters back, you know!"

  "No!" cried Mrs. Pierce in an astounded tone. "Did he? . . . Well!" she went on eagerly. "And did she send them? . . . Go on, Howard!"

  "But, of course," said Howard. "And the wedding-ring, and everything else that he had given her. . . . I read the letter that he wrote her: it was really too pathetic--he said he was going with another girl--a housemaid, I believe--and he didn't want it to get out that he had paid attentions to someone else. . . . 'I have spoke it all over with my mother,' he said," Howard quoted drolly, "'and she thinks the same as me, you ought to let me have them back'"--

  "Oh, Howard!" Mrs. Pierce shrieked faintly. "You know he didn't! Simply priceless!"

  For a moment her splendid, even teeth flashed brilliantly in the moonlight: she lifted the long cigarette-holder in her hand and took a long, deliberate puff: the fragrant, acrid smoke of Turkish tobacco coiled upward in the moonlight air like filings of light steel. Turning to the young man beside her, she addressed him with the somewhat patient and dutiful kindliness of a person receiving a strange guest in her home for the first time.

  "Well," she said, "and how did you find the trip up? Did Joel frighten you out of your wits by his driving? He does everyone else."

  "Well, he did go pretty fast," the youth admitted. "He had me hanging on once or twice--when we left the main road we took the curve on two wheels, but he seemed to know what he was doing."

  "I assure you," said Mrs. Pierce, with a stern laugh, "that he does not. I wish I could share your confidence, but I can't. I don't think he has the faintest notion what he's doing."

  "But, after all," the very quiet, pleasant, almost toneless voice of a young man whose name was George Thornton now took up the thread of the discussion--"after all, I should think that any reasonable man would be content with a speed of thirty-five or forty miles an hour. After all," he said very quietly again, "perhaps the most important things in life are not to be got at through speed--perhaps all the things that are most worth living for are not to be had if we always go a mile a minute."

  "That's just it, George!" Mrs. Pierce put in with decisive satisfaction. "That's just it! Any reasonable man would be content with thirty-five or forty miles an hour--but Joel is not reasonable. When he gets in a car he's like a child that's been given a new toy to play with for the first time."

  "The greatest things in life, the highest values," George Thornton went on in his quiet, pleasant, almost toneless voice, which now, despite the air of telling reasonableness with which he spoke--the air of temperance, moderation and control--was, somehow, indefinably tinged by a sombre fatality: the tone of a man whose extreme reasonableness comes from a fear of madness, whose temperance from some fatal impulse to insane excess--"the greatest things in life," he went on in his quiet, toneless voice, almost as if he were talking to himself and had not heard what Mrs. Pierce had said--"are not to be got from machinery or speed, or any material object in the world whatever. . . . Christ," he continued with his quiet, utterly reasonable, and implacable finality, "said that the greatest thing in life is love. Buddha said that the greatest thing in life is the illumination of the human spirit. Socrates found that man's highest duty was obedience to his country's laws. And Confucius, after weighing life and death against each other, found man's only reason for living in keeping as many of the conventions of society as he could. . . . And that, Joel, perhaps is the real reason, the only reason, why you should not drive your car at reckless speed. . . . You break your country's law by doing so . . . and you cause pain and worry and anxiety to other people who may love you. For that reason, if for nothing else, you ought not to do it."

  He delivered this judgment in his quiet and toneless voice, without vanity or arrogance, but with a finality that was almost prophetic and that left no room for argument. When he was done speaking there was a deep, impersonal silence for a moment, and then the voice of Joel's sister, Rosalind--a voice that was still the voice of a girl, but that was also sweet and low and womanly, full of noble tenderness and warmth--could be heard in all its affectionate young impulsiveness:

  "Oh, but, George!--you're an angel about everything! If everyone were like you, life would be heaven!" She took his hand between her strong, warm hands and squeezed it--an impulsive and natural gesture with her that revealed, as much as anything else, the deep and true affection of her nature. "--Darling," she said, "--you make all of us--everyone else--feel so mean--and small--and--so petty. . . . I mean," she went on with the earnest and naïve sincerity, the spontaneous admiration, of a generous and warm-spirited girl--"the way you live--the way you have spent your whole life, George, in helping other people--the way you have found out all these wonderful things about--about--Buddha and Confucius and Socrates--you know so much, George!" she cried enthusiastically--"you have learned so much, while the rest of us were just leading an idle, stupid, empty kind of life--and the way you give it all away to others--the way you give your money away to anyone who needs it--the--the--way," she faltered suddenly, and her voice was choked with tears--"the way you have looked after poor Dick all these years"--she blurted out.

  "Rosalind!" Mrs. Pierce cried out sharply and warningly, yet not with reproof so much as with apprehension.

  "I don't care!" cried Rosalind impulsively--"I--I think he's wonderful! George, you're a saint!" she said, and clasped his hand again.

  No one spoke for a moment: George sat quietly on the terrace step, his fine and small bronzed head, his very still eyes, in whose steady, quiet depths the fatal madness which would destroy him was already legible, turned out across the great sward of moon-drenched lawn towards the shine and wink and velvet mystery of the noble river far below. In the quality of silence that held all these people, there was a sense of profound emotion--the reference to "poor Dick" had touched some sorrowful fact that all of them knew about, and one could sense this deep feeling now in the stony silence that held all of them. It was broken in a moment by Mrs. Pierce, who betrayed, by the studied matter-of-factness of her tone, the emotion which she, too, had felt.

  "But it is an extraordinary thing, George--a simply astonishing thing--to find a young man of your age who has read and studied--and--and--prepared himself for life the way you have. It's simply astonishing!" she concluded, and then did what was perhaps an astonishing thing for her--quickly and vigorously she blew her nose. "But simply astonishing!" she said again, as she thrust the handkerchief away and put a cigarette into her eight-inch holder.

  "No, I think not," he said quietly, and without a trace of vanity or false modesty. "It would have been astonishing if I had not done it. After all, my debt to society for all that it has done for me is great enough as it is: I could not with any decency look the world in the face if I knew that I had not made some effort to repay it."

  "How few rich young men feel that way about it," said Mrs. Pierce quietly. "I wish more did!"

  The conversation was now turned to other, lighter channels of discussion: gossip, spirited but light debate. Mrs. Pierce renewed her conversation with Howard and Polly; farther away upon the steps Rosalind, Seaholm, a dark girl named Ruth, and George Thornton talked, gossiped and laughed together with the charming intimacy of youth, and Joel and Miss Telfair were engaged in eager and excited debate--Joel, for the most part, listening with the eager, respectful, bent-forward attentiveness, the devoted courtesy of reverence, that marked all of his relations with women, and Miss Telfair doing most of the talking. She talked the way she looked and dressed and acted, the way she was: a speech fragile, empty, nervous, brittle, artificial and incisive as one of the precious bits of china, the costly, rare, enamelled lit
tle trinkets that filled up her house, her life, her interest.

  "No, Joel!" she was saying with a voice that had a curious, shell-like penetration--a positive, brittle, but incisively certain voice--"you are absolutely wrong! You are completely mistaken about that! The thing cannot by any stretch of the imagination be called Sienese! It is pure Ravenna--perfect Ravenna--absolutely!" she cried, shaking her enamelled face with obdurate conviction. "It's nothing else on earth but the purest and most perfect Ravenna--and Fourteenth Century Ravenna at that! . . . No! No!" she cried incisively, cutting him off shortly, and shaking her head stubbornly as he tried to put in a smiling, whispered word of courteous doubt. "My dear child, you are dead wrong! You don't know what you're talking about! . . . I was an authority on these things before you were born. . . . I've forgotten more about Ravenna than you'll ever know! . . . No! . . . No! . . . Absolutely not! . . . You're all wrong!"

  He received this stubborn, arrogant and almost insulting rebuttal as he always did--with the whispered, gracious humility of his beautiful good nature: laughing softly and enthusiastically over her arrogant and contemptuous denial, as if he were merely the victim of the most tender and high-spirited raillery.

  At this moment, however, when, with a sense of resentment and displeasure he was listening to the naked and arrogant penetrations of Miss Telfair's voice, Rosalind Pierce rose from her seat on the terrace step, left the other young people there, came swiftly to where Eugene was seated, and sat down beside him.

  "Why are you sitting here all by yourself--so quiet and so alone?" she said in her warm, sweet, lovely, and affectionate young voice. "Can I sit here and talk to you?" she said, and even as she spoke these words, she slipped her arm through his and clasped him by the hand. The whole life and character of this beautiful, fine and lovely girl were in that simple, natural and spontaneous gesture. That gesture did what words could never do, explained what years of living with many people could not explain: in an instant she communicated to him the whole quality of her life, told him the kind of person she was. And the kind of person she was was unbelievably good and beautiful.

  "What have you been thinking of all the time you have been sitting here?" she whispered in her low, sweet voice. "I could see you sitting here, listening, looking at us, and all the time it was just as if you were a million miles away. What were you thinking?--that we are all an idle, shallow lot, with nothing to do except to chatter and gossip about other useless people like ourselves?"

  "Why--no--no," he stammered. "Why--not at all--" He looked at her with a red embarrassed face, but there was no guile or mockery in her. She was not clever enough for sarcasm or malice, not witty enough for irony: she was a creature full of innocence and ardour, without profound intelligence, but with a nature full of warmth, generous enthusiasm, and affection.

  "I--I--think you're all fine," he blurted out. "I think you're great."

  "Do you, darling?" she said softly. "Well, we're not." She pulled him towards her with a gesture of friendly intimacy, and said: "Come on: let's leave them all for a few minutes. I want to talk to you."

  They got up, and still with her warm hand clasped in his, they walked along the terrace and around the great, moon-whitened wings of the house on to the road that swept in an oval before it.

  "Do you really like us?" she said, as they walked on down the road away from the house under a deep, nocturnal mystery of great trees through which the moonlight shone and swarmed upon the earth in mottles of light. "Don't you like Joel? Don't you think he's grand?"

  "I--I think he's the best fellow in the world," he said. "He's--he's just too good!"

  "Oh, he's a saint," she said in her quiet, sweet voice. "There was never anyone like him: he's the loveliest person I've ever known. . . . Aren't people wonderful?" she said, and turned and paused in the moonlit road and looked at him. "I mean, there are a lot of mean ones . . . and useless ones . . . and sort of shabby ones like . . . like--well, like some of those people there tonight . . . but there's something good in all of them--even poor little Howard Martin has something sweet and good in him: he has a kind heart--he really has--he wants to be amusing and to entertain people, he wants everyone to be happy and have a good time. . . . And when you meet someone like Joel, it makes up for everything else, doesn't it? . . . Or George Thornton--don't you like him? Don't you think he's a grand person, too?"

  "He--seems fine," he answered with some difficulty. "I--I never met him till tonight."

  "Oh, you'll love him when you get to know him," the girl said earnestly. "--Everybody does. . . . He's another saint, just like Joel . . . and he's so brave, and kind, and good--and his life has been so terrible."

  "Terrible? I--I thought he said--"

  "Oh, he is, darling--he does have everything that way--money, I mean. He's terribly rich: one of the richest young men in the world. . . . Only he doesn't spend it on himself, he gives it all away and then . . . you see, darling, George has had an unhappy life of it from the beginning. . . . His father died a raving madman, there's been insanity in his family for generations back, his mother was a horrible woman who deserted him when he was a child and ran off with a man, and he was brought up by an aunt--his father's sister--who was half cracked herself. . . . Now he lives all alone on this big place that he's inherited--he has one brother, Dick, who is two years older than he is--and he has spent practically his whole life in looking after Dick."

  "Looking after him?"

  "Yes," the girl said quietly, "--Dick is insane too--a raving maniac; they have guards for him, they have to watch him every minute of the time--when George comes to see him, Dick tries to kill him. . . . And George loves him, he'd give his life for him, he does everything he can to make Dick happy--and Dick hates him so that he'd kill him if he could. . . . And George has this thing hanging over him all the time, he can't forget about it for a moment, it's made his whole life wretched, and yet you'd never know it when you talk to him: he never mentions it, he's always the same to people,--always kind and good and gentle, never thinking of himself."

  "I see. And is that the reason why he studies all these different philosophies--Christ and Socrates and Confucius?--"

  "Yes," she said quietly. "--And Buddha. I think so. . . . He would never admit it . . . he has never said so . . . and of course no one could ask him. . . . But I think that's the reason. . . . There's something . . . something desperate . . . lost . . . in his eyes sometimes," she said slowly, after a pause. ". . . It's . . . it's not good to look at . . . it's . . . I imagine it's like the look you would see in the eyes of a drowning man."

  "And you think that he may be afraid of . . . of insanity?"

  She was silent for a moment, and did not answer him directly.

  "He's been studying Buddhism for the last two years," she said. "He's had all kinds of people at the house to teach him. . . . Hindus, mystics, scholars--learned people . . . he's . . . he's become more and more . . . I don't know," she said in a puzzled tone. "--I don't know what you'd call it--sort of mystical." Again she was silent, and presently added matter-of-factly: "He's going to India next year."

  "To study?"

  "Yes, I think so," the girl said, and again was silent. "Somehow--it's a dreadful thought, isn't it?" she said in a low tone after a moment--"But sometimes I have wondered if George would ever come back. . . . Perhaps," she concluded quietly, ". . . perhaps that is why we all love him so much . . . it's like loving someone who is brave and good and gentle that you know has got to die."

  For some time they walked on slowly down the moon-white road without further speech.

  "I want you to know Carl, too," she said. "He seems very cold and strange at first--but that is just his foreign way. He is really one of the loveliest, sweetest people that ever lived. . . . You know," she said presently, "we are going to be married in October."

  "Yes, I know. Joel told me. . . . Will you live here--in this country?"

  "No. I'm afraid not. . . . You see, Carl is in the diplomatic service,
and they get moved around a great deal. They have to go where they get sent."

  "And where will you go first? Do you know?"

  "Yes, I think they are sending him to Paris next."

  "Will you like that? Do you think you'll like living in Paris?"

  "Of course," she said with her rich, warm, easy laugh. "I'm awfully easy to please--I like everything--I'm happy anywhere--wherever I am. Is that very bad of me?" she said with a kind and gently teasing smile.

  "No, that's very good of you. . . . Have you ever been to Paris?"

  "Yes," she cried in a rich, enthusiastic tone, "and I love it. I adore it. I studied music there. Mother and I lived there for two years before I came out."

  "But now you'll have to learn Swedish and German and Italian and Spanish and Russian--all those languages--now that you're getting married to a diplomat. Won't you?"

  "Yes," she said with her sweet and careless laugh--"Everything! One must become a regular little walking Berlitz school of languages--only I shan't mind very much: I'm very stupid, but my husband is so kind and clever I'm sure I'll learn in spite of everything."

  "And you'll live in Paris and Rome and London and Berlin--all those places? Won't you?"