OF TIME AND THE RIVER

by Thomas Wolfe

  "We can't leave him here. We've got to get him back to Paris somehow."

  After two ghastly hours in which they tried to revive him, persuade him to gird up his fainting limbs for final effort, they got him back into the car. Ann covered him with blankets and held him to her for the remainder of the night, as a mother might hold a child. In the faint ghost-gleam of light her face shone dark and sombre, her eyes were dark, moveless, looking straight ahead.

  Armed with instructions from an anxious waiter, they set out again on the presumptive road to Paris. The interminable night wore on; the white blanket of the fog grew thicker, they passed through more ghost-villages, sheer and sudden as a dream, sheeted in the strange numb silence of that ghostly nightmare of a fog. The old red crater of the moon vanished in a ruined helve at length behind a rise of earth. They could no longer see anything, the road before was utterly blotted out, the car-lights burned against an impenetrable white wall, they groped their way in utter blindness, they crawled at a snail's pace.

  Finally, they felt their way along, inch by inch and foot by foot. Eugene stood on the running-board of the car, peering blindly into that blank wall of fog, trying only to define the edges of the road. The bitter penetration of raw cold struck through the fog and pierced them like a nail. From time to time Elinor stopped the car, while he stepped down and stamped numb feet upon the road, swung frozen arms and lustily blew warmth back into numb fingers. Then that infinite groping patience of snail's progress would begin again.

  Somewhere, somehow, through that blind sea of fog, there was a sense of morning in the air. The ghosts of towns and villages grew more frequent--the towns were larger now, occasionally Elinor bumped over phantom curbs before the warning shouts of her look-out could prevent her. Twice they banged into trees along unknown pavements. There was a car-track now, the bump of cobbles, the sense of greater complications in the world about them.

  Suddenly they heard the most thrilling and evocative of all earth's sounds at morning--the lonely clopping of shod hooves upon the cobbles. In the dim and ghostly sheeting of that light they saw the horse, the market cart balanced between its two high creaking wheels, laden with sweet clean green-and-gold of carrot bunches, each neatly trimmed as a bouquet.

  They could discern the faint ghost-glimmer of the driver's face, the big slow-footed animal, dappled grey, and clopping steadily towards the central markets.

  They were entering Paris and the fog was lifting. In its huge shroud of mist dispersing, the old buildings of the city emerged ghostly haggard, pallidly nascent in the dim grey light. A man was walking rapidly along a terraced pavement, with bent head, hands thrust in pockets--the figure of the worker since the world began. They saw at morning, in grey waking light, a waiter, his apron-ends tucked up, lifting racked chairs from the tables of a café, and on light mapled fronts of bars and shops, the signs Bière--Pâtisserie--Tabac. Suddenly, the huge winged masses of the Louvre swept upon them, and it was grey light now, and Eugene heard Elinor's low, fervent "Thank God!"

  And now the bridge, the Seine again, the frontal blank of the old buildings on the quays, faced haggardly towards light, the narrow lane of the Rue Bonaparte, and in the silent empty street at length, his own hotel.

  They said good-bye quickly, hurriedly, abstractedly, as he got out; and drove away. The women were thinking of nothing, no one now, but Starwick, life's fortunate darling, the rare, the precious, the all-favoured one. In the grey light, unconscious, completely swaddled in the heavy rugs, Starwick still lay pillowed on Ann's shoulder.

  LXXXIV

  All day Eugene slept the dreamless, soundless sleep of a man who has been drugged. When he awoke, night had come again. And this concatenation of night to night, of dreamless and exhausted sleep upon the strange terrific nightmare of the night before, the swift kaleidoscope of moving action which had filled his life for the past two days, now gave to that recent period a haunting and disturbing distance, and to the events that had gone before the sad finality of irrevocable time. Suddenly he felt as if his life with Ann, Elinor, and Starwick was finished, done; for some strangely troubling reason he could not define, he felt that he would never see them again.

  He got up, dressed, and went downstairs. He saw old Gely and his wife, his daughters, Marie the maid, and the little concierge: it seemed to him that they looked at him strangely, curiously, with some sorrowful sad knowledge in their eyes, and a nameless numb excitement gripped him, dulled his heart. He felt the nameless apprehension that he always felt--that perhaps all men feel--when they have been away a day or two. It was a premonition of bad news, of some unknown misfortune: he wanted to ask them if someone had come for him--without knowing who could come--if they had a message for him--not knowing who might send him one--an almost feverish energy to demand that they tell him at once what unknown calamity had befallen him in his absence. But he said nothing, but still haunted by what he thought was the strange and troubling look in their eyes--a look he had often thought he observed in people, which seemed to tell of a secret knowledge, an inhuman chemistry, a communion in men's lives to which his own life was a stranger--he hurried out into the street.

  Outside the streets were wet with mist, the old cobbles shone with a dull wet gleam, through the mist the lamps burned dimly, and through the fog he heard the swift and unseen passing of the taxi-cabs, the shrill tooting of their little horns.

  Yet everything was ghost-like and phantasmal--the streets of Paris had the unfamiliar reality of streets that one revisits after many years of absence, or walks again after the confinement of a long and serious illness.

  He ate at a little restaurant in the Rue de la Seine, and troubled by the dismal lights, the high old houses, and the empty streets of the Latin Quarter sounding only with the brief passage of some furious little taxi drilling through those narrow lanes towards the bridge of the Seine and the great blaze and gaiety of night, he finally forsook that dark quarter, which seemed to be the image of the unquiet loneliness that beset him, and crossing the bridge, he spent the remainder of the evening reading in one of the cafés near Les Magasins du Louvre.

  The next morning, when he awoke, a pneumatique was waiting for him. It was from Elinor, and read:

  "Darling, where are you? Are you still recovering from the great debauch, or have you given us the go-by, or what? The suspense is awful--won't you say it ain't so, and come to lunch with us today at half-past twelve? We'll be waiting for you at the studio.--ELINOR"--Below this in a round and almost childish hand, was written: "We want to see you. We missed you yesterday.--ANN."

  He read this brief and casual little note over again and again, he laughed exultantly, and smote his fist into the air and read again. All of the old impossible joy was revived in him. He went to the window and looked out: a lemony sunlight was falling on the old pale walls and roofs and chimney-pots of Paris: everything sparkled with health and hope and work and morning--and all because two girls from Boston in New England had written him a note.

  He held the flimsy paper of the pneumatique tenderly, as if it were a sacred parchment too old and precious for rough handling; he even lifted it to his nose and smelled it. It seemed to him that all the subtle, sensuous femininity of the two women was in it--the seductive and thrilling fragrance, impalpable and glorious as the fragrance of a flower, which their lives seemed to irradiate and to give to everything, to everyone they touched, a sense of triumph, joy and tenderness. He read the one blunt line that Ann had written him as if it were poetry of haunting magic: the level, blunt and toneless inflexibility of her voice sounded in the line as if she had spoken; he read into her simple words a thousand buried meanings--the tenderness of a profound, simple and inarticulate spirit, whose feelings were too deep for language, who had no words for them.

  When he got to the studio he found the two women waiting, but Starwick was not there. Ann was quietly, bluntly matter of fact as usual; Elinor almost hilariously gay, but beneath her gaiety he sensed at once a deep and worried per
turbation, a worn anxiety that shone nakedly from her troubled eyes.

  They told him that on their return from Rheims, Starwick had left the studio to meet Alec and had not been seen since. No word from him had they had that night or the day before, and now, on the second day since his disappearance, their anxiety was evident.

  But during lunch--they ate at a small restaurant in the neighbourhood, near the Montparnasse railway station--Elinor kept up a gay and rapid conversation, and persisted in speaking of Starwick's disappearance as a great lark--the kind of thing to be expected from him.

  "Perfectly insane, of course!" she cried, with a gay laugh. "But then, it's typical of him: it's just the kind of thing that kind would do. Oh, he'll turn up, of course," she said, with quiet confidence, "--he'll turn up in a day or two, after some wild adventure that no one in the world but Francis Starwick could have had. . . . I mean!" she cried, "picking that Frenchman--Alec--up the way he did the other night. Utterly mad, of course!" she said gaily. "--But then, there you are! It wouldn't be Frank if he didn't!"

  "I see nothing very funny about it," said Ann bluntly. "It looks like a pretty rotten mess to me. We know nothing at all about that Frenchman--who he is, what he does; we don't even know his name. For all you know he may be one of the worst thugs or criminals in Paris."

  "Oh, I know, my dear--but don't be absurd!" Elinor protested. "The man's all right--Frank's always picking up these people--it always turns out all right in the end--oh, but of course!" she cried, as if dispelling a troubling thought from her mind--"Of course it will! It's too ridiculous to allow yourself to be upset like this!"

  But in spite of her vigorous assurance, her eyes were full of care and of something painful and baffled, an almost naked anguish.

  He left them after lunch, promising to meet them again for dinner. Starwick had not come back. When they had finished dinner, the two women went back to the studio to wait for Starwick's possible return, and Eugene went to look for him in Montmartre, promising to let them know at once if he found Starwick or got news of him. When he got to Montmartre, he made a round first of all the resorts which Starwick had liked best and frequented most, as Eugene remembered them, of course; but no one had seen him since they had last been there all together. Finally, he went to the bistro in the Rue Montmartre, where they had first encountered Alec, and asked the soiled barman with the dark mistrustful eye if he had seen either Alec or Starwick in the past three days. The man eyed him suspiciously for a moment before answering. Then he surlily replied that he had seen neither of them. In spite of the man's denial, he stayed on, drinking one cognac after another at the bar, while it filled up, ebbed and flowed, with the mysterious rout and rabble of the night. He waited until four o'clock in the morning: neither Starwick nor Alec had appeared. He got into a taxi and was driven back across Paris to Montparnasse. When he got to the studio, the two women were still awake, waiting, and he gave them his disappointing news. Then he departed, promising to return at noon.

  All through that day they waited: the apprehension of the two women was now painfully evident, and Ann spoke bluntly of calling in the police. Towards six o'clock that evening, while they were engaged in vigorous debate concerning their course of action, there were steps along the alley-way outside, and Starwick entered the studio, followed by the Frenchman, Alec.

  Starwick was in excellent spirits, his eyes were clear, his ruddy face looked fresh, and had a healthy glow. In response to all their excited greetings and inquiries, he laughed gleefully, teasingly, and refused to answer. When they tried to find out from Alec where Starwick had been, he too smiled an engaging but malicious smile, shrugged his shoulders politely, and said: "I do not know, I s'ink he tells you if he v'ants--if not!" again he smiled, and shrugged politely. And this moody and secretive silence was never broken. Starwick never told them where he had been. Once or twice, during dinner, which was a hilarious one, he made casual and mysteriously hinting references to Brussels, but, in response to all of Elinor's deft, ironic cross-examination, he only laughed his burbling laugh, and refused to answer.

  And she, finally defeated, laughed suddenly, a laugh of rich astonishment, crying: "Perfectly insane, of course! But then, what did I tell you? It's just the sort of thing that Frank would do!"

  But, in spite of all her high light spirits, her gay swift laughter, her distinguished ease, there was in the woman's eyes something the boy had never seen before: a horrible, baffled anguish of torment and frustration. And although her manner towards the Frenchman, Alec, was gracious, gay, and charming--although she now accepted him as "one of us," and frequently said with warm enthusiasm that he was "a per-fectly swell person--I like him so much!" there was often something in her eyes when she looked at him that it was not good to see.

  Alec was their guest, and Starwick's constant companion, everywhere they went thereafter. And everywhere, in every way, he proved himself to be a droll, kind, courteous, witty and urbanely cynical person: a man of charming and engaging qualities and delightful company. They never asked his name, nor inquired about his birth, his family, or his occupation. They seemed to accept his curious fellowship with Starwick as a matter of course: they took him on their daily round of café's, restaurants, night-clubs, and resorts, as if he were a lifelong friend of the family. And he accepted all their favours gracefully, politely, with wit and grace and charm, with a natural and distinguished dignity and ease. He, too, never asked disturbing questions; he was a diplomat by nature, a superb tactician from his birth. Nevertheless, the puzzled, doubting and inquiring expression in his eyes grew deeper day by day; his tongue was eloquently silent, but the question in his puzzled eyes could not be hidden, and constantly sought speech.

  As for Eugene, he now felt for the first time an ugly, disquieting doubt: suddenly he remembered many things--words and phrases and allusions, swift, casual darts and flashes of memory that went all the way back to the Cambridge years, that had long since been forgotten--but that now returned to fill his mind. And sometimes when he looked at Starwick, he had the weird and unpleasant sensation of looking at someone he had never seen before.

  LXXXV

  At the last moment, when it seemed that the argosy of their battered friendship was bound to sink, it was Elinor who saved it again. Ann, in a state of sullen fury, had announced that she was sailing for home the next week; Eugene, that he was going South to "some quiet little place where"--so did his mind comfortably phrase it--"he could settle down and write." As for Starwick, he remained coldly, wearily, sorrowfully impassive; he accepted this bitter dissolution of their plans with a weary resignation at once sad and yet profoundly indifferent; his own plans were more wrapped in a mantle of mysterious and tragic secretiveness than ever before. And seeing the desperate state which their affairs had come to, and that she could not look for help from these three gloomy secessionists, Elinor instantly took charge of things again and became the woman who had driven an ambulance in the war.

  "Listen, my darlings," she said with a sweet, crisp frivolity, that was as fine, as friendly, as comforting, and as instantly authoritative as the words of a capable mother to her contrary children--"no one is going away; no one is going back home; no one is going anywhere except on the wonderful trip we've planned from the beginning. We're going to start out next week, Ann and I will do the driving, you two boys can loaf and invite your souls to your hearts' content, and when you see a place that looks like a good place to work in, we'll stop and stay until you're tired of working. Then we'll go on again."

  "Where?" said Starwick in a dead and toneless voice. "Go on where?"

  "Why, my dear child!" Elinor cried in a gay tone. "Anywhere! Wherever you like! That's the beauty of it! We're not going to be bound down by any programme, any schedule: we shall stay where we like and go anywhere our sweet selves desire.

  "I thought, however," she continued in a more matter-of-fact way, "that we would go first to Chartres and then on to Touraine, stopping off at Orléans or Blois or Tours--anywhe
re we like, and staying as long as we care to. After that, we could do the Pyrenees and all that part of France: we might stop a few days at Biarritz and then strike off into the Basque country. I know incredible little places we could stop at."

  "Could we see Spain?" asked Starwick for the first time with a note of interest in his voice.

  "But, of course!" she cried. "My dear child, we can see anything, everything, go anywhere your heart desires. That's the beauty of the whole arrangement. If you feel like writing, if you want to run down to Spain to get a little writing done--why, presto! chango! Alacazam!" she said gaily, snapping her fingers, "--the thing is done! There's nothing simpler!"

  For a moment, no one spoke. They all sat entranced in a kind of unwilling but magical spell of wonder and delight. Elinor, with her power to make everything seem delightfully easy, and magically simple and exciting, had clothed that fantastic programme with all the garments of naturalness and reason. Everything now seemed not only possible, but beautifully, persuasively practicable--even that ludicrous project of "running down to Spain to do a little writing," that hopeless delusion of "stopping off and working, anywhere you like, until you are ready to go on again"--she gave to the whole impossible adventure not only the thrilling colours of sensuous delight and happiness, but also the conviction of a serious purpose, a reasonable design.

  And in a moment, Starwick, rousing himself from his abstracted and fascinated reverie, turned to Eugene and, with the old gleeful burble of laughter in his throat, remarked simply in his strangely fibred voice: