Title: You Can't Go Home Again (1947)
Author: Thomas Wolfe
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Title: You Can't Go Home Again (1947)
Author: Thomas Wolfe




_There came to him an image of man's whole life upon the earth. It
seemed to him that all man's life was like a tiny spurt of flame that
blazed out briefly in an illimitable and terrifying darkness, and that
all man's grandeur, tragic dignity, his heroic glory, came from the
brevity and smallness of this flame. He knew his life was little and
would be extinguished, and that only darkness was immense and
everlasting. And he knew that he would die with defiance on his lips, and
that the shout of his denial would ring with the last pulsing of his
heart into the maw of all-engulfing night._



CONTENTS

BOOK 1. THE NATIVE'S RETURN

1. The Drunken Beggar on Horseback
2. Fame's First Wooing
3. The Microscopic Gentleman from Japan
4. Some Things Will Never Change
5. The Hidden Terror
6. The Home-coming
7. Boom Town
8. The Company
9. The City of Lost Men

BOOK II THE WORLD THAT JACK BUILT

10. Jack at Morn
11. Mrs. Jack Awake
12. Downtown
13. Service Entrance
14. Zero Hour
15. The Party at Jack's
16. A Moment of Decision
17. Mr. Hirsch Could Wait
18. Piggy Logan's Circus
19. Unscheduled Climax
20. Out of Control
21. Love Is Not Enough

BOOK III. AN END AND A BEGINNING

22. A Question of Guilt
23. The Lion Hunters
24. Man-Creating and Man-Alive
25. The Catastrophe
26. The Wounded Faun

BOOK IV. THE QUEST OF THE FAIR MEDUSA

27. The Locusts Have No King
28. The Fox
29. "The Hollow Men"
30. The Anodyne
31. The Promise of America

BOOK V. EXILE AND DISCOVERY

32. The Universe of Daisy Purvis
33. Enter Mr. Lloyd McHarg
34. The Two Visitors
35. A Guest in Spite of Himself
36. The House in the Country
37. The Morning After

BOOK VI. "I HAVE A THING TO TELL YOU"

38. The Dark Messiah
39. "One Big Fool"
40. Last Farewell
41. Five Passengers for Paris
42. The Family of Earth
43. The Capture
44. The Way of No Return

BOOK VII. A WIND IS RISING, AND THE RIVERS FLOW

45. Young Icarus
46. Even Two Angels Not Enough
47. Ecclesiasticus
48. Credo




BOOK I THE NATIVE'S RETURN



1. The Drunken Beggar on Horseback


It was the hour of twilight on a soft spring day towards the end of April
in the year of Our Lord 1929, and George Webber leaned his elbows on the
sill of his back window and looked out at what he could see of New York.
His eye took in the towering mass of the new hospital at the end of the
block, its upper floors set back in terraces, the soaring walls salmon
coloured in the evening light. This side of the hospital, and directly
opposite, was the lower structure of the annexe, where the nurses and the
waitresses lived. In the rest of the block half a dozen old brick houses,
squeezed together in a solid row, leaned wearily against each other and
showed their backsides to him.

The air was strangely quiet. All the noises of the city were muted here
into a distant hum, so unceasing that it seemed to belong to silence.
Suddenly, through the open windows at the front of the house came the
raucous splutter of a truck starting up at the loading platform of the
warehouse across the street. The heavy motor warmed up with a
full-throated roar, then there was a grinding clash of gears, and George
felt the old house tremble under him as the truck swung out into the
street and thundered off. The noise receded, grew fainter, then faded
into the general hum, and all was quiet as before.

As George leaned looking out of his back window a nameless happiness
welled within, him and he shouted over to the waitresses in the hospital
annexe, who were ironing out as usual their two pairs of drawers and
their flimsy little dresses. He heard, as from a great distance, the
faint shouts of children playing in the streets, and, near at hand, the
low voices of the people in the houses. He watched the cool, steep
shadows, and saw how the evening light was moving in the little squares
of yards, each of which had in it something intimate, familiar, and
revealing--a patch of earth in which a pretty woman had been setting out
flowers, working earnestly for hours and wearing a big straw hat and
canvas gloves; a little plot of new-sown grass, solemnly watered every
evening by a man with a square red face and a bald head; a little shed or
playhouse or workshop for some business man's spare-time hobby; or a
gay-painted table, some easy lounging chairs, and a huge bright-striped
garden parasol to cover it, and a good-looking girl who had been sitting
there all afternoon reading, with a coat thrown over her shoulders and a
tall drink at her side.

Through some enchantment of the quiet and the westering light and the
smell of April in the air, it seemed to George that he knew these people
all around him. He loved this old house on Twelfth Street, its red brick
walls, its rooms of noble height and spaciousness, its old dark woods and
floors that creaked; and in the magic of the moment it seemed to be
enriched and given a profound and lonely dignity by all the human beings
it had sheltered in its ninety years. The house became like a living
presence. Every object seemed to have an animate vitality of its
own--walls, rooms, chairs, tables, even a half-wet bath towel hanging
from the shower ring above the tub, a coat thrown down upon a chair, and
his papers, manuscripts, and books scattered about the room in wild
confusion.

The simple joy he felt at being once more a part of such familiar things
also contained an element of strangeness and unreality. With a sharp stab
of wonder he reminded himself, as he had done a hundred times in the last
few weeks, that he had really come home again--home to America, home to
Manhattan's swarming rock, and home again to love; and his happiness was
faintly edged with guilt when he remembered that less than a year before
he had gone abroad in anger and despair, seeking to escape what now he
had returned to.

In his bitter resolution of that spring a year ago, he had wanted most of
all to get away from the woman he loved. Esther Jack was much older than
he, married and living with her husband and grown daughter. But she had
given George her love, and given it so deeply, so exclusively, that he
had come to feel himself caught as in a trap. It was from that that he
had wanted to escape--that and the shameful memory of their savage
quarrels, and a growing madness in himself which had increased in
violence as she had tried to hold him. So he had finally left her and
fled to Europe. He had gone away to forget her, only to find that he
could not; he had done nothing but think of her all the time. The memory
of her rosy, jolly face, her essential goodness, her sure and certain
talent, and all the hours that they had spent together returned to
torture him with new desire and longing for her.

Thus, fleeing from a love that still pursued him, he had become a
wanderer in strange countries. He had travelled through England, France,
and Germany, had seen countless new sights and people, and--cursing,
whoring, drinking, brawling his way across the continent--had had his
head bashed in, some teeth knocked out, and his nose broken in a
beer-hall fight. And then, in the solitude of convalescence in a Munich
hospital, lying in bed upon his back with his ruined face turned upwards
towards the ceiling, he had had nothing else to do but think. There, at
last, he had learned a little sense. There his madness had gone out of
him, and for the first time in many years he had felt at peace within
himself.

For he had learned some of the things that every man must find out for
himself, and he had found out about them as one has to find out--through
error and through trial, through fantasy and illusion, through falsehood
and his own damn foolishness, through being mistaken and wrong and an
idiot and egotistical and aspiring and hopeful and believing and
confused. As he lay there in the hospital he had gone back over his life,
and, bit by bit, had extracted from it some of the hard lessons of
experience. Each thing he learned was so simple and obvious, once he
grasped it, that he wondered why he had not always known it. All
together, they wove into a kind of leading thread, trailing backwards
through his past, and out into the future. And he thought that now,
perhaps, he could begin to shape his life to mastery, for he felt a sense
of new direction deep within him, but whither it would take him he could
not say.

And what had he learned? A philosopher would not think it much, perhaps,
yet in a simple human way it was a good deal. Just by living, by making
the thousand little daily choices that his whole complex of heredity,
environment, conscious thought, and deep emotion had driven him to make,
and by taking the consequences, he had learned that he could not eat his
cake and have it, too. He had learned that-in spite of his strange body,
so much off scale that it had often made him think himself a creature set
apart, he was still the son and brother of all men living. He had learned
that he could not devour the earth, that he must know and accept his
limitations. He realised that much of his torment of the years past had
been self-inflicted, and an inevitable part of growing up. And, most
important of all for one who had taken so long to grow up, he thought be
had learned not to be the slave of his emotions.

Most of the trouble he had brought upon himself, he saw, had come from
leaping down the throat of things. Very well, he would look before he
leaped hereafter. The trick was to get his reason and his emotions
pulling together in double harness, instead of letting them fly off in
opposite directions, tearing him apart between them. He would try to give
his head command and see what happened: then if head said, "Leap!"--he'd
leap with all his heart.

And that was where Esther came in, for he had really not meant to come
back to her. His head had told him it was better to let their affair end
as it had ended. But no sooner had he arrived in New York than his heart
told him to call her up--and he had done it. Then they had met again, and
after that things followed their own course.

So here he was, back with Esther--the one thing he had once been sure
would never happen. Yes, and very happy to be back. That was the queerest
part of it. It seemed, perversely, that he ought to be unhappy to be
doing what his reason had told him not to do. But he was not. And that
was why, as he leaned there musing on his window-sill while the last
light faded and the April night came on, a subtle worm was gnawing at his
conscience and he wondered darkly at how great a lag there was between
his thinking and his actions.

He was twenty-eight years old now, and wise enough to know that there are
sometimes reasons of which the reason knows nothing, and that the
emotional pattern of one's life, formed and set by years of living, is
not to be discarded quite as easily as one may throw away a battered hat
or worn-out shoe. Well, he was not the first man to be caught on the
horns of this dilemma. Had not even the philosophers themselves been
similarly caught? Yes--and then written sage words about it:

"A foolish consistency," Emerson had said, "is the hobgoblin of little
minds."

And great Goethe, accepting the inevitable truth that human growth does
not proceed in a straight line to its goal, had compared the development
and progress of mankind to the reelings of a drunken beggar on horseback.

What was important, perhaps, was not that the beggar was drunk and
reeling, but that he was mounted on his horse, and, however unsteadily,
was going somewhere.

This thought was comforting to George, and he pondered it for some time,
yet it did not altogether remove the edge of guilt that faintly tinged
his contentment. There was still a possible flaw in the argument: His
inconsistency in coming back-to Esther--was it wise or foolish?...Must
the beggar on horseback for ever reel?

Esther awoke as quick and sudden as a bird. She lay upon her back and
stared up at the ceiling straight and wide. This was her body and her
flesh, she was alive and ready in a moment.

She thought at once of George. Their reunion had been a joyous
re-discovery of love, and all things were made new again. They had taken
up the broken fragments of their life and joined them together with all
the intensity and beauty that they had known in the best days before he
went away. The madness that bad nearly wrecked them both had now gone out
of him entirely. He was' still full of his, unpredictable moods and
fancies, but she had not seen a trace of the old black fury that used to
make him lash about and beat his knuckles bloody against the wall. Since
he returned he had seemed quieter, surer, in better control of himself,
and in everything he did he acted as if he wanted to show her that he
loved her. She had never known such perfect happiness. Life was good.

Outside, on Park Avenue, the people had begun to move along the pavements
once more, the streets of the city began to fill and thicken. Upon the
table by her bed the little dock ticked eagerly its pulse of time as if
it hurried forward for ever like a child towards some imagined joy, and a
clock struck slowly in the house with a measured, solemn chime. The
morning sun steeped each object in her room with casual light, and in her
heart she said, "It is now."

Nora brought coffee and hot rolls, and Esther read the paper. She read
the gossip of the theatre, and she read the names of the cast that had
been engaged for the new German play that the Community Guild was going
to do in the autumn, and she read that "Miss Esther Jack has been engaged
to design the show". She laughed because they called her "Miss", and
because she could see the horrified look on _his_ face when he read
it, and because she remembered his expression when the little tailor
thought she was his wife, and because it gave her so much pleasure to see
her name in the paper--"Miss Esther Jack, whose work has won her
recognition as one of the foremost modern designers."

She was feeling gay and happy and pleased with herself, so she put the
paper in her bag, together with some other clippings she had saved, and
took them with her when she went down-town to Twelfth Street for her
daily visit to George. She handed them to him, and sat opposite to watch
his face as he read them. She remembered all the things they had written
about her work:

"...subtle, searching, and hushed, with a wry and rueful humour of its
own..."

"...made these old eyes shine by its deft, sure touch of whimsey as
nothing else in this prodigal season of dramatic husks has done..."

"...the gay insouciance of her unmannered settings, touched with those
qualities which we have come to expect in all her ardent services to that
sometimes too ungrateful jade, the drama..."

"...the excellent fooling that is implicit in these droll sets, elvishly
sly, mocking, and, need we add or make apology for adding, expert?..."

She could hardly keep from laughing at the scornful twist of his mouth
and the mocking tone of his comment as he bit off the phrases.

"'Elvishly sly!' Now isn't that too God-damned delightful!" he said with
mincing precision. "'Made these old eyes shine!' Why, the quaint little
bastard!...'That sometimes too ungrateful jade!' Oh, deary me,
now!...'And need we add--!' I am swooning, sweetheart: pass the garlic!"

He threw the papers on the floor with an air of disgust and turned to her
with a look of mock sternness that crinkled the corners of his eyes.

"Well," he said, "do I get fed, or must I starve here while you wallow in
this bilge?"

She could control herself no longer and shrieked with glee. "I didn't do
it!" she gasped. "I didn't write it! I can't help it if they write like
that! Isn't it awful?"

"Yes, and you hate it, don't you?" he said. "You lap it up! You arc
sitting there licking your lips over it now, gloating on it, and on my
hunger! Don't you know, woman, that I haven't had a bite to eat all day?
Do I get fed, or not? Will you put your deft whimsey in a steak?"

"Yes," she said. "Would you like a steak?"

"Will you make these old eyes shine with a chop and a delicate dressing
of young onions?"

"Yes," she said. "Yes."

He came over and put his arms about her, his eyes searching hers in a
look of love and hunger. "Will you make me one of your causes that is
subtle, searching, and hushed?"

"Yes," she said. "Whatever you like, I will make it for you."

"Why will you make it for me?" he asked.

It was like a ritual that both of them knew, and they fastened upon each
word and answer because they were so eager to hear it from each other.

"Because I love you. Because I want to feed you and to love you."

"Will it be good?" he said.

"It will be so good that there will be no words to tell its goodness,"
she said. "It will be good because I am so good and beautiful, and
because I can do everything better than any other woman you will ever
know, and because I love you with all my heart and soul, and want to be a
part of you."

"Will this great love get into the food you cook for me?"

"It will be in every morsel that you eat. It will feed your hunger as
you've never been fed before. It will be like a living miracle, and will
make you better and richer as long as you live. You will never forget it.
It will be a glory and a triumph."

"Then this will be such food as no one ever ate before," he said. "Yes,"
she said.-"It will be."

And it was so. There was never anything like it in the world before.
April had come back again.

So now they were together. But things were not quite the same between
them as they had once been. Even on the surface they were different. No
longer now for them was there a single tenement and dwelling place. From
the first day of his return he had flatly refused to go back to the house
on Waverly Place which the two of them had previously shared for work and
love and living. Instead, he had taken these two large rooms on Twelfth
Street, which occupied the whole second floor of the house and could be
made into one enormous room by opening the sliding doors between them.
There was also a tiny kitchen, just big enough to turn around in. The
whole arrangement suited George perfectly because it gave him both space
and privacy. Here Esther could come and go as she liked; here they could
be alone together whenever they wished; here they could feed at the heart
of love.

The most important thing about it, however, was that this was his place,
not _theirs_, and that fact re-established their relations on a
different level. Henceforth he was determined not to let his life and
love be one. She had her world of the theatre and of her rich friends
which he did not want to belong to, and he had his world of writing which
he would have to manage alone. He would keep love a thing apart, and
safeguard to himself the mastery of his life, his separate soul, his own
integrity.

Would she accept this compromise? Would she take his love, but leave him
free to live his life and do his work? That was the way he told her it
must be, and she said yes, she understood. But could she do it? Was it in
a woman's nature to be content with all that a man could give her, and
not for ever want what was not his to give? Already there were little
portents that made him begin to doubt it.

One morning when she came to see him and was telling him with spirit and
great good humour about a little comedy she had witnessed in the street,
suddenly she stopped short in the middle of it, a cloud passed over her
face, her eyes became troubled, and she turned to him and said:

"You do love me, don't you, George?"

"Yes," he said. "Of course. You know I do."

"Will you never leave me again?" she asked, a little breathless. "Will
you go on loving me for ever?"

Her abrupt change of mood and her easy assumption that he or any human
being could honestly pledge himself to anyone or anything for ever struck
him as ludicrous, and he laughed.

She made an impatient gesture with her hand. "Don't laugh, George," she
said. "I need to know. Tell me. Will you go on loving me for ever?"

Her seriousness, and the impossibility of giving her an answer annoyed
him now, and he rose from his chair, stared down blankly at her for a
moment, and then began pacing back and forth across the room. He paused
once or twice and turned to her as if to speak, but, finding it hard to
say what he wanted to say, he resumed his nervous pacing.

Esther followed him with her eyes; their expression betraying her mixed
feelings, in which amusement and exasperation were giving way to alarm.

"What have I done now?" she thought. "God, was there ever anybody like
him! You never can tell what he'll do! All I did was ask him a simple
question and he acts like this! Still, it's better than the way he used
to act. He used to blow up and call me vile names. Now he just stews in
his own juice and I can't tell what he's thinking. Look at him--pacing
like a wild animal in a cage, like a temperamental and introspective
monkey!"

As a matter of fact, in moments of excitement George did look rather like
a monkey. Barrel-chested, with broad, heavy shoulders, he walked with a
slight stoop, letting his arms swing loosely, and they were so long that
they dangled almost to the knees, the big hands and spatulate fingers
curving deeply in like paws. His head, set down solidly upon a short
neck, was carried somewhat forward with a thrusting movement, so that his
whole figure had a prowling and half-crouching posture. He looked even
shorter than he was, for, although he was an inch or two above the middle
height, around five feet nine or ten, his legs were not quite
proportionate to the upper part of his body. Moreover, his features were
small--somewhat pug-nosed, the eyes set very deep in beneath heavy brows,
the forehead rather low, the hair beginning not far above the brows. And
when he was agitated or interested in something, he had the trick of
peering upward with a kind of packed attentiveness, and this, together
with his general posture, the head thrust forward, the body prowling
downwards, gave him a distinctly simian appearance. It was easy to see
why some of his friends called him Monk.

Esther watched him a minute or two, feeling disappointed and hurt that he
had not answered her. He stopped by the front window and stood looking
out, and she went over to him and quietly put her arm through his. She
saw the vein swell in his temple, and knew there was no use in speaking.

Outside, the little Jewish tailors were coming from the office of their
union next door and were standing in the street. They were pale, dirty,
and greasy, and very much alive. They shouted and gesticulated at one
another, they stroked each other gently on the cheek in mounting fury,
saying tenderly in a throttled voice: "Nah! Nah! Nah!" Then, still
smiling in their rage, they began to slap each other gently in the face
with itching finger-tips. At length they screamed and dealt each other
stinging slaps. Others cursed and shouted, some laughed, and a few said
nothing, but stood darkly, sombrely apart, feeding upon their entrails.

Then the young Irish cops charged in among them. There was something
bought and corrupt about their look. They had brutal and brainless faces,
full of pride. Their jaws were loose and coarse, they chewed gum
constantly as they shoved and thrust their way along, and they kept
saying:

"Break it up, now! Break it up! All right! Keep movin'!"

The motors roared by like projectiles, and people were passing along the
pavement. There were the faces George and Esther had never seen before,
and there were the faces they had always seen, everywhere: always
different, they never changed; they welled up from the sourceless springs
of life with unending fecundity, with limitless variety, with incessant
movement, and with the monotony of everlasting repetition. There were the
three girl-friends who pass along the streets of life for ever. One had a
cruel and sensual face, she wore glasses, and her mouth was hard and
vulgar. Another had the great nose and the little bony features of a rat.
The face of the third was full and loose, jeering with fat rouged lips
and oily volutes of the nostrils. And when they laughed, there was no
warmth or joy in the sound: high, shrill, ugly, and hysterical, their
laughter only asked the earth to notice them.

In the street the children played. They were dark and strong and violent,
aping talk and toughness from their elders. They leaped on one another
and hurled the weakest to the pavement. The policemen herded the noisy
little tailors along before them, and they went away. The sky was blue
and young and vital, there were no clouds in it; the trees were budding
into leaf; the sunlight fell into the street, upon all the people there,
with an innocent and fearless life.

Esther glanced at George and saw his face grow twisted as he looked. He
wanted to say to her that we are all savage, foolish, violent, and
mistaken; that, full of our fear and confusion, we walk in ignorance upon
the living and beautiful earth, breathing young, vital air and bathing in
the light of morning, seeing it not because of the murder in our hearts.

But he did not say these things. Wearily he turned away from the window.

"There's for ever," he said. "There's your for ever."



2. FAME'S FIRST WOOING


In spite of the colourings of guilt that often tinged his brighter moods,
George was happier than he had ever been. There can be no doubt about
that. He exulted in the fact. The old madness had gone out of him, and
for long stretches at a time he was now buoyed up by the glorious
belief--not by any means a new one with him, though it was much stronger
now than it had ever been before--that he was at last in triumphant
control of his destiny. From his early childhood, when he was living like
an orphan with his Joyner relatives back in Libya Hill, he had dreamed
that one day he would go to New York and there find love and fame and
fortune. For several years New York had been the place that he called
home, and love was his already; and now he felt, with the assurance of
deep conviction, that the time for fame and fortune was at hand.

Anyone is happy who confidently awaits the fulfilment of his highest
dreams, and in that way George Was happy. And, like most of us when
things are going well, he took the credit wholly to himself. It was not
chance or luck or any blind confluence of events that had produced the
change in his spirits: his contentment and sense of mastery were the
reward of his own singular and peculiar merit, and no more than his just
due. Nevertheless fortune had played a central part in his transformation.
A most incredible thing had happened.

He had been back in New York only a few days when Lulu Scudder, the
literary agent, telephoned him in great excitement. The publishing house
of James Rodney & Co. was interested in his manuscript, and Foxhall
Edwards, the distinguished editor of this great house, wanted to talk to
him about it. Of course, you couldn't tell about these things, but it was
always a good idea to strike while the iron was hot. Could he go over
right away to see Edwards?

As he made his way uptown George told himself that it was silly to be
excited, that probably nothing would come of it. Hadn't one publisher
already turned the book down, saying that it was no novel? That publisher
had even written---and the words of his rejection had seared themselves
in. George's brain--"The novel form is not adapted to such talents, as
you have." And it was still the same manuscript. Not a line of it had
been changed, not a word cut, in spite of hints from Esther and Miss
Scudder that it was too long for any publisher to handle. He had
stubbornly refused to alter it, insisting that it would have to be
printed as it was or not at all. And he had left the manuscript with Miss
Scudder and gone away to Europe, convinced that her efforts to find a
publisher would prove futile.

All the time he was abroad it had nauseated him to think of his
manuscript, of the years of work and sleepless nights, he had put into
it, and of the high hopes that bad sustained him through it; and he had
tried, not to think of it, convinced now that it was no good, that he
himself was no good, and that all his hot ambitions and his dreams of
fame were the vapourings of a shoddy aesthete without talent. In this, he
told himself, he was just like most of the other piddling instructors at
the School for Utility Cultures, from which he had fled, and to which he
would return to resume his classes in English composition when his leave
of absence expired. They talked for ever about the great books they were
writing, or were going to write, because, like him, they needed so
desperately to find some avenue of escape from the dreary round of
teaching, reading themes, grading papers, and trying to strike a spark in
minds that had no flint in them. He had stayed in Europe almost nine
months, and no word had come from Miss Scudder, so he had felt confirmed
in all his darkest forebodings.

But now she said the Rodney people were interested. Well, they had taken
their time about it. And what did "interested" mean? Very likely they
would tell him they had detected in the book some slight traces of a
talent which, with careful nursing, could be schooled to produce, in
time, a publishable book. He had heard that publishers sometimes had a
weather eye for this sort of thing and that they would often string an
aspiring author along for years, giving him just the necessary degree, of
encouragement to keep him from abandoning hope altogether and to make him
think that they had faith in his great future if only he would go on
writing book after rejected book until he "found himself". Well, he'd
show them that he was not their fool! Not by so much as a flicker of an
eyelash would he betray his disappointment, and he would commit himself
to nothing!

If the traffic policeman on the corner noticed a strange young man in
front of the office of James Rodney & Co. that morning, he would never
have guessed at the core of firm resolution with which this young man had
tried to steel himself for the interview that lay before him. If the
policeman saw him at all, he probably observed him with misgiving,
wondering whether he ought not to intervene to prevent the commission of
a felony, or at any rate whether he ought not to speak to the young man
and hold him in conversation until the ambulance could arrive and take
him to Bellevue for observation.

For, as the young man approached the building at a rapid, loping stride,
a stern scowl upon his face and his lips set in a grim line, he had
hardly crossed the street and set his foot upon the kerb before the
publisher's building when his step faltered, he stopped and looked about
him as if not knowing what to do, and then, in evident confusion, forced
himself to go on. 'But now his movements were uncertain; as if his legs
obeyed his will with great reluctance. He lunged ahead, then stopped,
then lunged again and made for the door, only to halt again in a paroxysm
of indecision as he came up to it. He stood there facing the door for a
moment, clenching and unclenching his hands, then looked about him
quickly, suspiciously, as though he expected to find somebody watching
him. At last, with a slight shudder of resolution, he thrust his hands
deep into his pockets, turned deliberately, and walked on past the door.

And now he moved slowly, the line of his mouth set grimmer than before,
and his head was carried stiffly forward from the shoulders as if he were
trying to hold himself to the course he had decided upon by focusing on
some distant object straight before him. But all the while, as he went
along before the entrance and the show windows filled with books which
flanked it on both sides, he peered sharply out of the corner of his eye
like a spy who had to find out what was going on inside the building
without letting the passers-by observe his interest. He walked to the end
of the block and turned about and then came back, and again as he passed
in front of the publishing house he kept his face fixed straight ahead
and looked stealthily out of the corner of his eye. For fifteen or twenty
minutes he repeated this strange manoeuvred, and each time as he
approached the door he-would hesitate and half turn as if about to enter,
and then abruptly go on as before.

Finally, as he came abreast of the entrance for perhaps the fiftieth
time, he quickened his stride and seized the door-knob--but at once, as
though it had given him an electric shock, he snatched his hand away and
backed off, and stood on the kerb looking up at the house of James Rodney
& Co. For several minutes more he stood there, shifting uneasily on his
feet and watching all the upper windows as for a sign. Then, suddenly,
his jaw muscles tightened, he stuck out his under lip in desperate
resolve, and he bolted across the pavement, hurled himself against the
door, and disappeared inside.

An hour later, if the policeman was still on duty at the corner, he was
no doubt as puzzled and mystified as before by the young man's behaviour
as he emerged from the building. He came out slowly, walking
mechanically, a dazed look on his face, and in one of his hands, which
dangled loosely at his sides, he held a crumpled slip of yellow paper. He
emerged from the office of James Rodney & Co. like a man walking in a
trance. With the slow and thoughtless movements of an automaton, he
turned his steps uptown, and, still with the rapt and dazed look upon his
face, he headed north and disappeared into the crowd..

It was, late afternoon and the shadows were slanting swiftly eastwards
when George Webber came to his senses somewhere in the wilds of the upper
Bronx. How he got there he never knew. All he could remember was that
suddenly he felt hungry and stopped and looked about him and realized
where he was. His dazed look gave way to one of amazement and
incredulity, and his mouth began W stretch in a broad grin. In his hand
he still held the rectangular slip of crisp yellow paper, and slowly he
smoothed out the wrinkles and examined it carefully.

It was a cheque for five hundred dollars. His book bad been accepted, and
this was an advance against his royalties.

So he was happier than he had ever been in all his life. Fame, at last,
was knocking at his door and wooing him with her sweet blandishments, and
he lived in a kind of glorious delirium. The next weeks and months were
filled with the excitement of the impending event. The book would not be
published till the autumn, but meanwhile there was much work to do.
Foxhall Edwards had made some suggestions for cutting and revising the
manuscript, and, although George at first objected, he surprised himself
in the end by agreeing with Edwards, and he undertook to do what Edwards
wanted.

George had called his novel, _Home to Our Mountains_, and in it he
had packed everything he knew about his home town in Old Catawba and the
people there. He had distilled every line of it out of his own experience
of life. And, now that the issue was decided, he sometimes trembled when
he thought that it would be only a matter of months before the whole
world knew what he had written. He loathed the thought of giving pain to
anyone, and that he might do so had never occurred to him till now. But
now it was out of his hands, and he began to feel uneasy. Of course it
was fiction, but it was made as all honest fiction must be, from the
stuff of human life. Some people might recognize themselves, and be
offended, and then what would he do? Would he have to go around in smoked
glasses and false whiskers? He comforted himself with the hope that his
characterisations were not so true as, in another mood, he liked to think
they, were, and he thought that perhaps no one would notice anything.

_Rodney's Magazine_, too, had become interested in the young author
and was going to publish a story, a chapter from the book, in their next
number. This news added immensely to his excitement. He was eager to see
his name in print, and in the happy interval of expectancy he felt like a
kind of universal Don Juan, for he literally loved everybody--his fellow
instructors at the school, his drab students, the little shopkeepers in
all the stores, even the nameless hordes that thronged the streets.
Rodney's, of course, was the greatest and the finest publishing house in
all the world, and Foxhall Edwards was the greatest editor and the finest
man that ever was. George had liked him instinctively from the first, and
now, like an old and intimate friend, he was calling him Fox. George knew
that Fox believed in him, and the editor's faith and confidence, coming
as it had come, at a time when George had given up all hope, restored his
self-respect and charged him with energy for new work.

Already his next novel was begun and was beginning to take shape within
him. He would soon have to get it out of him. He dreaded the prospect of
buckling down in earnest to write it, for he knew the agony of it. It was
like demoniacal possession, driving him with an alien force much greater
than his own. While the fury of creation was upon him, it meant sixty
cigarettes a day, twenty cups of coffee, meals snatched anyhow and
anywhere and at whatever time of day or night he happened to remember he
was hungry. It meant sleeplessness, and miles of walking to bring on the
physical fatigue without which he could not sleep, then nightmares,
nerves, and exhaustion in the morning. As he said to Fox:

"There are better ways to write a book, but this, God help me, is mine,
and you'll have to learn to put up with it."

When _Rodney's Magazine_ came out with the story, George fully
expected convulsions of the earth, falling meteors, suspension of traffic
in the streets, and a general strike. But nothing happened. A few of his
friends mentioned it, but that was all. For several days he felt let
down, but then his common sense reassured him that people couldn't really
tell much about a new author from a short piece in a magazine. The book
would show them who he was and what he could do. It would be different
then. He could afford to wait a little longer for the fame which he was
certain would soon be his.

It was not until later, after the first excitement had worn off and
George had become accustomed to the novelty of being an author whose book
was actually going to be published, that he began to learn a little about
the unknown world of publishing and the people who inhabit it--and not
till then did he begin to understand and appreciate the teal quality of
Fox Edwards. And it was through Otto Hauser--so much like Fox in his
essential integrity, so sharply contrasted to him in other respects--that
George got his first real insight into the character of his editor.

Hausa Was a reader at Rodney's, and probably the best publisher's reader
in America. He might have been a publisher's editor--a rare and good
one--had he been driven forward by ambition, enthusiasm, daring,
tenacious resolution, and that eagerness to seek and find the best which
a great editor must have. But Hauser was content to spend his days
reading ridiculous manuscripts written by ridiculous people on all sorts
of ridiculous subjects "The Breast Stroke," "Rock Gardens for Everybody,"
"The Life and Times of Lydia Pinkham," "The New Age of Plenty"--and once
in a while something that had the fire of passion, the spark of genius,
the glow of truth.

Otto Hauser lived in a tiny apartment near First Avenue, and he invited
George to drop in one evening. George went, and they spent the evening
talking. After that he returned again and again because he liked Otto,
and also because he was puzzled by the contradictions of his qualities,
especially by something aloof, impersonal, and withdrawing in his nature
which seemed so out of place beside the clear and positive elements in
his character.

Otto did all the housekeeping himself. He had tried having cleaning women
in from time to time, but eventually he had dispensed entirely with their
services. 'They were not clean and tidy enough to suit him, and their
casual and haphazard disarrangements of objects that had been placed
exactly where he wanted them annoyed his order-loving soul. He hated
clutter. He had only a few books--a shelf or two--most of them the latest
publications of the house of Rodney, and a few volumes sent him by other
publishers. Usually he gave his books away as soon as he finished reading
them because he hated clutter, and books made clutter. Sometimes he
wondered if he didn't hate books, too. Certainly he didn't like to have
many of them around: the sight of them irritated him.

George found him a curious enigma. Otto Hauser was possessed of
remarkable gifts, yet he was almost wholly lacking in those qualities
which cause a man to "get on" in the world. In fact, he didn't want to
"get on". He had a horror of "getting on", of going any further than he
bad already gone. He wanted to be a publisher's reader, and nothing more.
At James Rodney & Co. he did the work they put into his hands. He did
punctiliously what he was required to do. He gave his word, when he was
asked to give it, with the complete integrity of his quiet soul, the
unerring rightness of his judgment, the utter finality of his Germanic
spirit. But beyond that he would not go.

When one of the editors at Rodney's, of whom there were several besides
Foxhall Edwards, asked Hauser for his opinion, the ensuing conversation
would go something like this:

"You have read the manuscript?"

"Yes," said Hauser, "I have read it."

"What did you think of it?"

"I thought it was without merit."

"Then you do not recommend its publication?"

"No, I do not think it is worth publishing."

Or:

"Did you read that manuscript?"

"Yes," Hauser would say. "I read it."

"Well, what did you think of it? (Confound it, can't the fellow say what
he thinks without having to be asked all the timer)"

"I think it is a work of genius."

Incredulously: "You _do!_"

"I do, yes. To my mind there is no question about it."

"But look here, Hauser--" excitedly--"if what you say is true, this
boy--the fellow who wrote it--why, he's just a kid--no one ever heard of
him before--comes from somewhere out West--Nebraska, Iowa, one of those
places--never been anywhere, apparently--if what you say is true, we've
made a discovery!"

"I suppose you have. Yes. The book is a work of genius."

"But--(Damn it
all, what's wrong with the man anyway? Here he makes a discovery like
this--an astounding statement of this sort--and shows no more enthusiasm
than if he were discussing a cabbage head!)--but, see here, then!
You--you mean there's something wrong with it?"

"No, I don't think there's anything wrong with it. I think it is a
magnificent piece of writing."

"But--(Good Lord, the fellow is a queer fish!)--but you mean to say
that--that perhaps it's not suitable for publication in its present
form?"

"No. I think it's eminently publishable."

"But it's overwritten, isn't it?"

"It _is_ overwritten. Yes."

"I thought so, too," said the editor shrewdly. "Of course, the fellow
shows he knows very little about writing. He doesn't know how he does it,
he repeats himself continually, he is childish and exuberant and
extravagant, and he does ten times too much of everything.. We have a
hundred other writers who know more about writing than he does."

"I suppose we have, yes," Hauser agreed. "Nevertheless, he is a man of
genius, and they are not. His, book is a work of genius, and theirs are
not."

"Then you think we ought to publish him?"

"I think so, yes."

"But--(Ah, here's the catch, maybe--the thing he's holding back on!)--but
you think this is all he has to say?--that he's written himself out in
this one book?--that he'll never be able to write another?"

"No. I think nothing of the sort. I can't say, of course. They may kill
him, as they often do----"

"(God, what a gloomy Gus the fellow is!)"

"--but on the basis of this book, I should say there's no danger of his
running dry. He should have fifty books in him."

"But--(Good Lord! What _is_ the catch?)--but then you mean you don't
think it's time for such a book as this in America yet?"

"No, I don't mean that. I think it _is_ time."

"Why?"

"Because it has happened. Iris always time when it happens."

"But some of our best critics say it's not time."

"I know they do. However, they are wrong. It is simply not their time,
that's all."

"How do you mean?"

"I mean, their time is critic's time. The book is creator's time. The two
times are not the same."

"You think, then, that the critics are behind the time?"

"They are behind creator's time, yes."

"Then they may not see this book as the work of genius which you say it
is. Do you think they will?"

"I can't say. Perhaps not. However, it doesn't matter."

"Doesn't _matter!_ Why, what do you mean?"

"I mean that the thing is good, and cannot be destroyed. Therefore it
doesn't matter what anyone says."

"Then--Good Lord, Hauser!--if what you say is true, we've made a great
discovery!"

"I think you have. Yes."

"But--but--is that _all_ you have to say?"

"I think so, yes. What else _is_ there to say?"

Baffled: "Nothing--only, I should think _you_ would be excited about
it!" Then, completely defeated and resigned: "Oh, _all_ right!
_All_ right, Hauser! Thanks very much!"

The people at Rodney's couldn't understand it. They didn't know what to
make of it. Finally, they had given up trying, all except Fox
Edwards--and Fox would never give up trying to understand anything. Fox
still came by Hauser's office--his little cell--and looked in on him.
Fox's old grey hat would be pushed back on his head, for he never took it
off when he worked, and there would be a look of troubled wonder in his
sea-pale eyes as he bent over and stooped and craned and stared at
Hauser, as if he were regarding for the first time some fantastic monster
from the marine jungles of the ocean. Then he would turn and walk away,
hands hanging to his coat lapels, and in his eyes there would be a look
of utter astonishment.

Fox couldn't understand it yet. As for Hauser himself, he had no answers,
nothing to tell them.

It was not until George Webber had become well acquainted with both men
that be began to penetrate the mystery. Foxhall Edwards and Otto
Hauser--to know them both, to see them working in the same office, each
in his own way, was to understand them both as perhaps neither could have
been understood completely by himself. Each man, by being what he was,
revealed to George the secret springs of character which had made the two
of them so much alike--and so utterly different.

There may have been a time when an intense and steady flame had been
alive in the quiet depths of Otto Hauser's spirit. But that was before he
knew what it was like to be a great editor. Now he had seen it for
himself, and he wanted none of it. For ten years he had watched Fox
Edwards, and he well knew what was needed: the pure flame living in the
midst of darkness; the constant, quiet, and relentless effort of the will
to accomplish what the pure flame burned for, what the spirit knew; the
unspoken agony of that constant effort as it fought to win through to its
clear purpose and somehow to subdue the world's blind and brutal force of
ignorance, hostility, prejudice, and intolerance which were opposed to
it--the fools of age, the fools of prudery, the fools of genteelness,
fogyism, and nice-Nellyism, the fools of bigotry, Philistinism, jealousy,
and envy, and, worst of all, the utter, sheer damn fools of nature!

Oh, to burn so, so to be consumed, exhausted, spent by the passion
of this constant flame! And for what? For _what?_ And _why?_
Because some obscure kid from Tennessee, some tenant farmer's son from
Georgia, or some country doctor's boy in North Dakota--untitled,
unpedigreed, unhallowed by fools' standards--had been touched with
genius, and so had striven to give a tongue to the high passion of his
loneliness, to wrest from his locked spirit his soul's language and a
portion of the tongue of his unuttered brothers, to find a channel in the
blind immensity of this harsh land for the pent tides of his creation,
and to make, perhaps, in this howling wilderness of life some carving and
some dwelling of his own--all this before the world's fool-bigotry,
fool-ignorance, fool-cowardice, fool-faddism, fool-mockery, fool-stylism,
and fool-hatred for anyone who was not corrupted, beaten, and a fool had
either quenched the hot, burning passion with ridicule, contempt, denial,
and oblivion, or else corrupted the strong will with the pollutions of
fool-success. It was for this that such as Fox must burn and suffer--to
keep that flame' of agony alive in the spirit of some inspired and
stricken boy until the world of fools had taken it into their custody,
and betrayed it!

Otto Hauser had seen it all.

And in the end what was the reward for such a one as Fox? To achieve the
lonely and unhoped-for victories one by one, and to see the very fools
who had denied them acclaim them as their own. To lapse again to search,
to silence, and to waiting while fools greedily pocketed as their own the
coin of one man's spirit, proudly hailed as their discovery the treasure
of another's exploration, loudly celebrated their own vision as they took
unto themselves the fulfilment of another's prophecy. Ah, the heart must
break at last--the heart of Fox, as well as the heart of genius, the lost
boy; the frail, small heart of man must falter, stop at last from
beating; but the heart of folly would beat on for ever.

So Otto Hauser would have none of it. He would grow hot over nothing. He
would try to see the truth for himself, and let it go at that.

This was Otto Hauser as George came to know him. In the confidence of
friendship Otto held up a mirror to his own soul, affording a clear,
unposed reflection of his quiet, unassuming, and baffling integrity; but
in the same mirror he also revealed, without quite being aware of it, the
stronger and more shining image of Fox Edwards.

George knew how fortunate he was to have as his editor a man like Fox.
And as time went on, and his respect and admiration for the older man
warmed to deep affection, he realized that Fox had become for him much
more than editor and friend. Little by little it seemed to George that he
had found in Fox the father he had lost and had long been looking for.
And so it was that Fox became a second father to him--the father of his
spirit.



3. The Microscopic Gentleman from Japan


In the old house where George lived that year Mr. Katamoto occupied the
ground floor just below him, and in a little while they got to know each
other very well. It might be said that their friendship began in
mystification and went on to a state of security and staunch
understanding.

Not that Mr. Katamoto ever forgave George when he erred. He was always
instantly ready to inform him that he had taken a false step again (the
word is used advisedly), but he was so infinitely patient, so
unflaggingly hopeful of George's improvement, so unfailingly good-natured
and courteous, that no one could possibly have been angry or failed to
try to mend his ways. What saved the situation was Katamoto's gleeful,
childlike sense of humour. He was one of those microscopic gentlemen from
Japan, scarcely five feet tall, thin and very wiry in his build, and
George's barrel chest, broad shoulders, long, dangling arms, and large
feet seemed to inspire his comic risibilities from the beginning. The
first time they met, as they were just passing each other in the hall,
Katamoto began to giggle when he saw George coming; and as they came
abreast, the little man flashed a great expanse of gleaming teeth, wagged
a finger roguishly, and said:

"Tramp-ling! Tramp-ling!"

For several days, whenever they passed each other in the hall, this same
performance was repeated. George thought the words were very mysterious,
and at first could not fathom their recondite meaning or understand why
the sound of them was enough to set Katamoto off in a paroxysm of mirth.
And yet when he would utter them and George would look at him in a
surprised, inquiring kind of way, Katamoto would bend double with
convulsive laughter and would stamp at the floor like a child with a tiny
foot, shrieking hysterically! "Yis--yis--yis! You are tramp-ling!"--after
which he would flee away.

George inferred that these mysterious references to "tramp-ling" which
always set Katamoto off in such a fit of laughter had something to do
with the bigness of his feet, for Katamoto would look at them quickly and
slyly as he passed, and then giggle. However, a fuller explanation was
soon provided. Katamoto came upstairs one afternoon and knocked at
George's door. When it was opened, he giggled and flashed his teeth and
looked somewhat embarrassed.. After a moment, with evident hesitancy, he
grinned painfully and said:

"If you ple-e-eze, sir! Will you--have some tea--with me--yis?" He spoke
the words very slowly, with a deliberate formality, after which he
flashed a quick, eager, and ingratiating smile.

George told him he would be glad to, and got his coat and started
downstairs with him. Katamoto padded swiftly on ahead, his little feet
shod in felt slippers that made no sound. Half-way down the stairs, as if
the noise of George's heavy tread had touched his funny-bone again,
Katamoto stopped quickly, turned and pointed at George's feet, and
giggled coyly: "Tramp-ling! You are trampling!" Then he turned and fairly
fled away down the stairs and down the hall, shrieking like a gleeful
child. He waited at the door to usher his guest in, introduced him to the
slender, agile little Japanese girl who seemed to stay there all the
time, and finally brought George back into his studio and served him tea.

It was an amazing place. Katamoto bad redecorated the fine old rooms and
fitted them up according to the whims of his curious taste. The big back
room was very crowded, intricate, and partitioned off into several small
compartments with beautiful Japanese screens. He had also constructed a
flight of stairs and a balcony that extended around three sides of the
room, and on this balcony George could see a couch. The room was crowded
with tiny chairs and tables, and there was an opulent-looking sofa and
cushions. There were a great many small carved objects and bric-à-brac,
and a strong smell of incense.

The centre of the room, however, had been left entirely bare save for a
big strip of spattered canvas and an enormous plaster figure. George
gathered that he did a thriving business turning out sculptures for
expensive speak-easies, or immense fifteen-foot statues of native
politicians which were to decorate public squares in little towns, or in
the state capitals of Arkansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Wyoming. Where and
how he had learned this curious profession George never found out, but he
had mastered it with true Japanese fidelity, and so well that his
products were apparently in greater demand than those of American
sculptors. In spite of his small size and fragile build, the man was a
dynamo of energy and could perform the labours of a Titan. God knows how
he did it--where he found the strength.

George asked a question about the big plaster cast in the centre of the
room, and Katamoto took him over and showed it to him, remarking as he
pointed to the creature's huge feet:

"He is--like you!...He is tramp-ling!...Yis!...He is tramp-ling!"

Then he took George up the stairs on to the balcony, which George
dutifully admired.

"Yis?--You like?" He smiled at George eagerly, a little doubtfully, then
pointed at his couch and said: "I sleep here!" Then he pointed to the
ceiling, which was so low that George had to stoop. "You sleep there?"
said Katamoto eagerly.

George nodded.

Katamoto went on again with a quick smile, but with embarrassed hesitancy
and a painful difficulty in his tone that had not been there before:

"I here," he said, pointing, "you there--yis?"

He looked at George almost pleadingly, a little desperately--and suddenly
George began to catch on.

"Oh! You mean I am right above you--" Katamoto nodded with instant
relief--"and sometimes when I stay up late you hear me?"

"Yis! Yis!" He kept nodding his head vigorously. "Sometimes--" he smiled
a little painfully--"sometimes--you will be tramp-ling!" He shook his
finger at George with coy reproof and giggled.

"I'm awfully sorry," George said. "Of course, I didn't know you slept
so near--so near the ceiling. When I work late I pace the floor. It's a
bad habit. I'll do what I can to stop it."

"Oh, no-o!" he cried, genuinely distressed. "I not want--how you say
it?--change your life!...If you ple-e-ese, sir! Just little thing--not
wear shoes at night!" He pointed at his own small felt-shod feet and
smiled up at George hopefully. "You like slippers yis?" And he smiled
persuasively again.

After that, of course, George wore slippers. But sometimes he would
forget, and the next morning Katamoto would be rapping at his door
again. He was never angry, he was always patient and good-humoured,
he was always beautifully courteous--but he would always call
George to account. "You were tramp-ling!" he would cry. "Last
night--again--tramp-ling!" And George would tell him he was sorry and
would try not to do it again, and Katamoto would go away giggling,
pausing to turn and wag his finger roguishly and call out once more,
"Tramp-ling!"--after which he would flee downstairs, shrieking with
laughter.

They were good friends.

In the months that followed, again and again George would come in the
house to find the hall below full of sweating, panting movers, over whom
Katamoto, covered from head to foot with clots and lumps of plaster,
would hover prayerfully and with a fearful, pleading grin lest they mar
his work, twisting his small hands together convulsively, aiding the work
along by slight shudders, quick darts of breathless terror, writhing and
shrinking movements of the body, and saying all the while with an
elaborate, strained, and beseeching courtesy:

"Now, if--_you_--gentleman--a little!..._You_...yis--yis--yis-s!" with a
convulsive grin. "_Oh-h-h_! Yis--yis-s! If you _ple-e-ese_, sir!...If
you would down--a little--yis-s!--yis-s!--yis-s!" he hissed softly with
that prayerful and pleading grin.

And the movers would carry out of the house and stow into their van the
enormous piecemeal fragments of some North Dakota Pericles, whose size
was so great that one wondered how this dapper, fragile little man could
possibly have fashioned such a leviathan.

Then the movers would depart, and for a space Mr. Katamoto would loaf and
invite his soul. He would come out in the backyard with his girl, the
slender, agile little Japanese--who looked as, if she had some Italian
blood in her as well--and for hours at a time they would play at
handball. Mr. Katamoto would knock the ball up against the projecting
brick wall of the house next door, and every time he scored a point he
would scream with laughter, clapping his small hands together, bending
over weakly and pressing his hand against his stomach, and staggering
about with delight and merriment. Choking with laughter, he would cry out
in a high, delirious voice as rapidly as he could:

"Yis, yis, yis! Yis, yis, yis! Yis, yis, yis!"

Then he would catch sight of George looking at him from the window, and
this would set him off again, for he would wag his finger and fairly
scream:

"You were tramp-ling!...Yis, yis, yis!...Last night--again tramp-ling!"

This would reduce him to such a paroxysm of mirth that he would stagger
across the court and lean against the wall, all caved in, holding his
narrow stomach and shrieking faintly.

It was now the full height of steaming summer, and one day early in
August George came home to find the movers in the house again. This time
it was obvious that a work of more than usual magnitude was in transit.
Mr. Katamoto, spattered with plaster, was of course hovering about in the
hall, grinning nervously and fluttering prayerfully around the husky
truckmen. As George came in, two of the men were backing slowly down the
hall, carrying between them an immense head, monstrously jowled and set
in an expression of farseeing statesmanship. A moment later three more
men backed out of the studio, panting and cursing as they grunted
painfully around the flowing fragment of a long frock coat and the vested
splendour of a bulging belly. The first pair had now gone back in the
studio, and when they came out again they were staggering beneath the
trousered shank of a mighty leg and a booted Atlantean hoof, and as they
passed, one of the other men, now returning for more of the statesman's
parts, pressed himself against the wall to let them by and said:

"Jesus! If the son-of-a-bitch stepped on you with that foot, he wouldn't
leave a grease spot, would he, Joe?"

The last piece of all was an immense fragment of the Solon's arm and
fist, with one huge forefinger pointed upwards in an attitude of solemn
objurgation and avowal.

That figure was Katamoto's masterpiece; and George felt as he saw it pass
that the enormous upraised finger was the summit of his art and the
consummation of his life: Certainly it was the apple of his eye. George
had never seen him before in such a state of extreme agitation. He fairly
prayed above the sweating men: It was obvious that the coarse indelicacy
of their touch made him shudder. The grin was frozen on his face in an
expression of congealed terror. He writhed, he wriggled, he wrung his
little hands, he crooned to them. And if anything had happened to that
fat, pointed finger, George felt sure that he would have dropped dead on
the spot.

At length, however, they got everything stowed away in their big van
without mishap and drove off with their Ozymandias, leaving Mr. Katamoto,
frail, haggard, and utterly exhausted, looking at the kerb. He came back
into the house and saw George standing there and smiled wanly at him.

"Tramp-ling," he said feebly, and shook his finger, and for the first
time there was no mirth or energy in him.

George had never seen him tired before. It had never occurred to him that
he could get tired. The little man had always been so full of
inexhaustible life. And now, somehow, George felt an unaccountable
sadness to see him so weary and so strangely grey. Katamoto was silent
for a moment, and then he lifted his face and said, almost tonelessly,
yet with a shade of wistful eagerness:

"You see statue--yis?"

"Yes, Kato, I saw it."

"And you like?"

"Yes, very much."

"And--" he giggled a little and made a shaking movement with his
hands--"you see foot?"

"Yes."

"I sink," he said, "he will be tramp-ling--yis?"--and he made laughing
sound.

"He ought to," George said, "with a hoof like that. It's almost as big as
mine," he added, as an afterthought.

Katamoto seemed delighted with this observation, for he laughed shrilly
and said: "Yis! Yis!"--nodding his head emphatically. He was silent for
another moment, then hesitantly, but with an eagerness that he could not
conceal, he said:

"And you see finger?"

"Yes, Kato."

"And you like?"--quickly, earnestly.

"Very much."

"Big finger--yis?"--with a note of rising triumph in his "Very big,
Kato."

"And _pointing_--yis?" he said ecstatically, grinning from ear to
ear and pointing his own small finger heavenward.


"Yes, pointing."

He sighed contentedly. "Well, zen," he said, with the appeased' air of a
child, "I'm glad you like."

For a week or so after that George did not see Katamoto again or even
think of him. This was the vacation period at the School for Utility
Cultures, and George was devoting every minute of his time, day and,
night, to a fury of new writing. Then one afternoon; a long passage
completed and the almost illegible pages of his swift scrawl tossed in a
careless heap upon the floor, he sat relaxed, looking out of his back
window, and suddenly he thought of Katamoto again. He remembered that he
had not seen him recently, and it seemed strange that he had not even
heard the familiar thud of the little ball against the wall outside or
the sound of his high, shrill laughter. This realisation, with its sense
of loss, so troubled him that he went downstairs immediately and pressed
Katamoto's bell.

There was no answer. All was silent. He waited, and no one came. Then he
went down to the basement and found the janitor and spoke to him. He said
that Mr. Katamoto had been ill, No, it was not serious, he thought, but
the doctor had advised a rest, a brief period of relaxation from his
exhausting labours, and had sent him for care and observation to the
near-by hospital.

George meant to go to see him, but he was busy with his writing and kept
putting it off. Then one morning, some ten days later, coming back home
after breakfast in a restaurant, he found a moving van backed up before
the house. Katamoto's door was open, and when he looked inside the moving
people had already stripped the apartment almost bare. In the centre of
the once fantastic room, now empty, where Katamoto had performed his
prodigies of work, stood a young Japanese, an acquaintance of the
sculptor, whom George had seen there several times before. He was
supervising the removal of the last furnishings.

The young Japanese looked up quickly, politely, with a toothy grin of
frozen courtesy as George came in. He did not speak until George asked
him how Mr. Katamoto was. And then, with the same toothy, frozen grin
upon his face, the same impenetrable courtesy, he said that Mr. Katamoto
was dead.

George was shocked, and stood there for a moment, knowing there was
nothing more to say, and yet feeling somehow, as people always feel on
these occasions, that there was something that, he _ought_ to say.
He looked at the young Japanese and started to speak, and found himself
looking into the inscrutable, polite, untelling eyes of Asia.

So he said nothing more. He just thanked the young man and went out.



4. Some Things Will Never Change


Out of his front windows George could see nothing except the sombre bulk
of the warehouse across the street. It was an old building, with a bleak
and ugly front of rusty, indurated brown and a harsh webbing of
fire-escapes, and across the whole width of the facade stretched a
battered wooden sign on which, in faded letters, one could make out the
name--"The Security Distributing Corp." George did not know what a
distributing corporation was, but every day since he had come into this
street to live, enormous motor-vans had driven up before this dingy
building and had backed snugly against the worn plankings of the loading
platform, which ended with a sharp, sheared emptiness four feet above the
pavement. The drivers and their helpers would leap from their seats, and
instantly the quiet depths of the old building would burst into a furious
energy of work, and the air would be filled with harsh cries:

"Back it up, deh! Back it up! Cuh-_mahn_! Cuh-_mahn_! Givvus a
hand, youse guys! Hey-y! _You!_"

They looked at one another with hard faces of smiling derision, quietly
saying "Jesus!" out of the corners of their mouths. Surly, they stood
upon their rights, defending truculently the narrow frontier of their
duty:

"Wadda I care where it goes! Dat's yoeh look-out! Wat t'hell's it got to
do wit _me?_"

They worked with speed and power and splendid aptness, furiously,
unamiably, with high, exacerbated voices, spurred and goaded by their
harsh unrest.

The city was their stony-hearted mother, and from her breast they had
drawn a bitter nurture. Born to brick and asphalt, to crowded tenements
and swarming streets, stunned into sleep as children beneath the sudden
slamming racket of the elevated trains, taught to fight, to menace, and
to struggle in a world of savage violence and incessant din, they had had
the city's qualities stamped into their flesh and movements, distilled
through all their tissues, etched with the city's acid into their tongue
and brain and vision. Their faces were tough and seamed, the skin thick,
dry, without a hue of freshness or of colour. Their pulse beat with the
furious rhythm of the city's stroke: ready in an instant with a curse,
metallic clangours sounded from their twisted lips, and their hearts were
filled with a dark, immense, and secret pride.

Their souls were like the asphalt visages of city streets. Each day the
violent colours of a thousand new sensations swept across them, and each
day all sound and sight and fury were erased from their unyielding
surfaces. Ten thousand furious days had passed about them, and they had
no memory. They lived like creatures born full-grown into present time,
shedding the whole accumulation of the past with every breath, and all
their lives were written in the passing of each actual moment.

And they were sure and certain, for ever wrong, but always confident.
They had no hesitation, they confessed no ignorance or error, and they
knew no doubts. They began each morning with a gibe, a shout, an oath of
hard impatience, eager for the tumult of the day. At noon they sat
strongly in their seats and, through fumes of oil and hot machinery,
addressed their curses to the public at the tricks and strategies of
cunning rivals, the tyranny of the police, the stupidity of pedestrians,
and the errors of less skilful men than they. Each day they faced the
perils of the streets with hearts as calm as if they were alone upon a
country road. Each day, with minds untroubled, they embarked upon
adventures from which the bravest men bred in the wilderness would have
recoiled in terror and desolation.

In the raw days of early spring they had worn shirts of thick black wool
and leather jackets, but now, in summer, their arms were naked, tattooed,
brown, and lean with the play of whipcord muscles. The power and
precision with which they worked stirred in George a deep emotion of
respect, and also touched him with humility. For whenever he saw it, his
own life, with its conflicting desires, its uncertain projects and
designs, its labours begun in hope and so often ended in incompletion, by
comparison with the lives of these men who, had learned to use their
strength and talents perfectly, seemed faltering, blind, and baffled.

At night, too, five times a week, the mighty vans would line up at the
kerb in an immense and waiting caravan. They were covered now with great
tarpaulins, small green lamps were burning on each side, and the drivers,
their faces faintly lit with the glowing points of cigarettes, would be
talking quietly in the shadows of their huge machines. Once George had
asked one of the drivers the destination of these nightly journeys, and
the man had told him that they went to Philadelphia, and would return
again by morning.

The sight of these great vans at night, sombre, silent, yet alive with
powerful expectancy as their drivers waited for the word to start, gave
George a sense of mystery and joy. These men were part of that great
company who love the night, and he felt a bond of union with them. For he
had always loved the night more dearly than the day, and the energies of
his life had risen to their greatest strength in the secret and exultant
heart of darkness.

He knew the joys and labours of such men as these. He could see the
shadowy procession of their vans lumbering through the sleeping towns,
and feel the darkness, the cool fragrance of the country, on his face. He
could see the drivers hunched behind the wheels, their senses all alert
in the lilac dark, their eyes fixed hard upon the road to curtain off
the loneliness of the land at night. And he knew the places where they
stopped to eat, the little all-night lunch-rooms warm with greasy light,
now empty save for the dozing authority of the aproned Greek behind the
counter, and now filled with the heavy shuffle of the drivers' feet, the
hard and casual intrusions of their voices.

They came in, flung themselves upon the row of stools, and gave their
orders. And as they waited, their hunger drawn into sharp focus by the
male smells of boiling coffee, frying eggs and onions, and sizzling
hamburgers, they took the pungent, priceless, and uncostly solace of a
cigarette, lit between cupped hand and strong-seamed mouth, drawn deep
and then exhaled in slow fumes from the nostrils. They poured great gobs
and gluts of thick tomato ketchup on their hamburgers, tore with
blackened fingers at the slabs of fragrant bread, and ate with jungle
lust, thrusting at plate and cup with quick and savage gulpings.

Oh, he was with them, of them, for them, blood brother of their joy and
hunger to the last hard swallow, the last deep, ease of sated bellies,
the last slow coil of blue expiring from their grateful lungs. Their
lives seemed glorious to him in the magic dark of summer. They swept
cleanly through the night into the first light and bird song of the
morning, into the morning of new joy upon the earth; and as he thought of
this it seemed to him that the secret, wild, and lonely heart of man was
young and living in the darkness, and could never die.

* * * * *

Before him, all that summer of 1929, in the broad window of the
warehouse, a man sat at a desk and looked out into the street, in a
posture that never changed. George saw him there whenever he glanced
across, yet he never saw him do anything but look out of the window with
a fixed, abstracted stare. At first the man had been such an unobtrusive
part of his surroundings that he had seemed to fade into' them, and had
gone almost unnoticed. Then Esther, having observed him there, pointed to
him one day and said merrily:

"There's our friend in the Distributing Corp again! What do you suppose
he distributes? I've never seen him do anything! Have you noticed
him--hah?" she cried eagerly. "God! It's the strangest thing I ever saw!"
She laughed richly, made a shrug of bewildered protest, and, after a
moment, said with serious wonder: "Isn't it queer? What do you suppose a
man like that can do? What do you suppose he's thinking of?"

"Oh, I don't know," George said indifferently. "Of nothing, I suppose."

Then they forgot the man and turned to talk of other things, yet from
that moment the man's singular presence was pricked out in George's mind
and he began to watch him with hypnotic fascination, puzzled by the
mystery of his immobility and his stare.

And after that, as soon as Esther came in every day, she would glance
across the street and cry out in a jolly voice which had in it the note
of affectionate satisfaction and assurance that people have when they see
some familiar and expected object:

"Well, I see our old friend, The Distributing Corp, is still looking out
of his window! I wonder what he's thinking of to-day."

She would turn away, laughing. Then, for a moment, with her childlike
fascination for words and rhythms, she gravely meditated their strange
beat, silently framing and pronouncing with her lips a series of
meaningless sounds--"Corp-Borp-Forp-Dorp-Torp"--and at length singing out
in a gleeful chant, and with an air of triumphant discovery:

"The Distributing Corp, the Distributing Corp,
He sits all day and he does no Worp!"

George protested that her rhyme made no sense, but she threw back her
encrimsoned face and screamed with laughter.

But after a while they stopped laughing about the man. For, obscure as
his employment seemed, incredible and comical as his indolence had been
when they first noticed it, there came to be something impressive,
immense, and formidable in the quality of that fixed stare. Day by day, a
thronging traffic of life and business passed before him in the street;
day by day, the great vans came, the drivers, handlers, and packers
swarmed before his eyes, filling, the air with their oaths and cries,
irritably intent upon their labour but the man in the window never looked
at them, never gave any, sign that he heard them, never seemed to be
aware of their existence--he just sat there and looked out, his eyes
fixed in an abstracted stare.

In the course of George Webber's life, many things of no great importance
in themselves had become deeply embedded in his memory, stuck there like
burs in a scottie's tail; and always they were little things which, in an
instant of clear perception, had riven his heart with some poignant flash
of meaning. Thus he remembered, and would remember for ever, the sight of
Esther's radiant, earnest face when, unexpectedly one night, he caught
sight of it as it flamed and 'vanished in a crowd of grey, faceless faces
in Times Square. So, too, he remembered two deaf mutes he had seen
talking on their fingers in a subway train; and a ringing peal of
children's laughter in a desolate street at sunset; and the waitresses in
their dingy little rooms across the backyard, washing, ironing, and
rewashing day after day the few adornments of their shabby finery, in
endless preparations for a visitor who never came.

And now, to his store of treasured trivia was added the memory of this
man's face--thick, white, expressionless, set in its stolid and sorrowful
stare. Immutable, calm, impassive, it became for him the symbol of a kind
of permanence in the rush and sweep of chaos in the city, where all
things come and go and pass and are so soon forgotten. For, day after
day, as he watched the man and tried to penetrate his mystery, at last it
seemed to him that he had found the answer.

And after that, in later years, whenever he remembered the man's face,
the time was fixed at the end of a day in late summer. Without-violence
or heat, the last rays of the sun fell on the warm brick of the building
and painted it with a sad, unearthly light. In the window the man sat,
always looking out. He never wavered in his gaze, his eyes were calm and
sorrowful, and on his face was legible the exile of an imprisoned spirit.

That man's face became for him the face of. Darkness and of Time. It
never spoke, and yet it had a voice--a voice that seemed to have the
whole earth in it. It was the voice of evening and of night, and in it
were the blended tongues of all those men who have passed through the
heat and fury of the day, and who now lean quietly upon the sills of
evening. In it was the whole vast hush and weariness that comes upon the
city at the hour of dusk, when the chaos of another day is ended, and
when everything--streets, buildings, and eight million people--breathe
slowly, with a tired and sorrowful joy. And in that single tongueless
voice was the knowledge of all their tongues.

"Child, child," it said, "have patience and belief, for life is many
days, and each present hour will pass away. Son, son, you have been mad
and drunken, furious and wild, filled with hatred and despair, and all
the dark confusions of the soul--but so have we. You found the earth too
great for your one life, you found your brain and sinew smaller than the
hunger and desire that fed on them--but it has been this way with all
men. You have stumbled on in darkness, you have been pulled in opposite
directions, you have faltered, you have missed the way--but, child, this
is the chronicle of the earth. And now, because you have known madness
and despair, and because you will grow desperate again before you come to
evening, we who have stormed the ramparts of the furious earth and been
hurled back, we who have been maddened by the unknowable and bitter
mystery of love, we who have hungered after fame and savoured all of
life, the tumult, pain, and frenzy, and now sit quietly by our windows
watching all that henceforth never more shall touch us--we call upon you
to take heart, for we can swear to you that these things pass.

"We have outlived the shift and glitter of so many fashions, we have seen
so many things that come and go, so many words forgotten, so many flames
that flared and were destroyed; yet we know now we are strangers whose
footfalls have not left a print upon the endless streets of life. We
shall not go into the dark again, nor suffer madness, nor admit despair:
we have built a wall about us now. We shall not hear the docks of time
strike out on foreign air, nor wake at morning in some alien land to
think of home: our wandering is over, and our hunger fed. 0 brother, son,
and comrade, because we have lived so long and seen so much, we are
content to make our own a few things now, letting millions pass.

"Some things will never change. Some things will always be the same. Lean
down your ear upon the earth, and listen.

"The voice of forest water in the night, a woman's laughter in the dark,
the clean, hard rattle of raked gravel, the cricketing stitch of midday
in hot meadows, the delicate web of children's voices in bright
air--these things will never change.

"The glitter of sunlight on roughened water, the glory of the stars, the
innocence of morning, the smell of the sea in harbours, the feathery blur
and smoky buddings of young boughs, and something there that comes and
goes and never can be captured, the thorn of spring, the sharp and
tongueless cry--these things will always be the same.

"All things belonging to the earth will never change--the leaf, the
blade, the flower, the wind that cries and sleeps and wakes again, the
trees whose stiff arms clash and tremble in the dark, and the dust of
lovers long since buried in the earth--all things proceeding from the
earth to seasons, all things that lapse and change and come again upon
the earth--these things will always be the same, for they come up from
the earth that never changes, they go back into the earth that lasts for
ever. Only the earth endures, but it endures for ever.

"The tarantula, the adder, and the asp will also never change. Pain and
death will always be the same. But under the pavements trembling like a
pulse, under the buildings trembling like a cry, under the waste of time,
under the hoof of the beast above the broken bones of cities, there will
be something growing like a flower, something bursting from the earth
again, for ever deathless, faithful, coming into life again like April."



5. The Hidden Terror


Hand looked at the yellow envelope curiously and turned it over and over
in his hand. It gave him a feeling of uneasiness and suppressed
excitement to see his name through the transparent front. He was not used
to receiving telegrams. Instinctively he delayed opening it because he
dreaded what it might contain. Some forgotten incident in his childhood
made him associate telegrams with bad news. Who could have sent it? And
what could it be about? Well, open it, you fool, and find out!

He ripped off the flap and took out the message. He read it quickly,
first glancing at the signature. It was from his Uncle Mark Joyner:

"YOUR AUNT MAW DIED LAST NIGHT STOP FUNERAL THURSDAY IN LIBYA HILL STOP
COME HOME IF YOU CAN."

That was all. No explanation of what she had died of. Old age, most
likely. Nothing else could have killed her. She hadn't been sick or' they
would have let him know before this.

The news shook him profoundly. But it was not grief he felt so much as a
deep sense of loss, almost impersonal in its quality--a sense of loss and
unbelief such as one might feel to discover suddenly that some great
force 'in nature had ceased to operate. He couldn't take it in. Ever
since his mother had died when he was only eight years old, Aunt Maw had
been the most solid and permanent fixture in his boy's universe. She was
a spinster, the older sister of his mother and of his Uncle Mark, and she
had taken charge of him and brought him up with all the inflexible zeal
of her puritanical nature. She had done her best to make a Joyner of him
and a credit to the narrow, provincial, mountain clan to which she
belonged.-In this she had failed, and his defection from the ways of
Joyner righteousness had caused her deep pain. He had known this for a
long time; but now he realised, too, more clearly than he had, ever done
before, that she had never faltered in her duty to him as she saw it. As
he thought about her life the felt an inexpressible pity for her, and a
surge of tenderness and affection almost choked him.

As far back as he could remember, Aunt Maw had seemed to him an ageless
crone, as old as God. He could still hear her voice--that croaking
monotone which had gone on and on in endless stories of her past,
peopling his childhood world with the whole host of Joyners dead and
buried in the hills of Zebulon in ancient days before the Civil War. And
almost every tale she had told him was a chronicle of sickness, death,
and sorrow. She had known about all the Joyners for the last hundred
years, and whether they had died of consumption, typhoid fever,
pneumonia, meningitis, or pellagra, and she had relived each incident in
their lives with an air of croaking relish. From her he had got a picture
of his mountain kinsmen that was constantly dark with the terrors of
misery and sudden death, a picture made ghostly at frequent intervals by
supernatural revelations. The Joyners, so she thought, had been endowed
with occult powers by the Almighty, and weft for ever popping up on
country roads and speaking to people as they passed, only to have it turn
out later that they had been fifty miles away at the time. They were for
ever hearing voices and receiving premonitions. If a neighbour died
suddenly, the Joyners would flock from miles around 'to sit up with the
corpse, and in the flickering light of pine logs on the hearth they would
talk unceasingly through the night, their droning voices punctuated by
the crumbling of the ash as they told how they had received intimations
of the impending death a week before it happened.

This was the image of the Joyner world which Aunt Maw's tireless memories
had built up in the mind and spirit of the boy. And he had felt somehow
that although other men would live their day and die, the Joyners were a
race apart, not subject to this law. They fed on death and were
triumphant over it, and the Joyners would go on for ever. But now Aunt
Maw the oldest and most death-triumphant Joyner of them all, was dead...

The funeral was to be on Thursday. This was Tuesday. If he took the train
to-day, he would arrive to-morrow. He knew that all the Joyners from the
hills of Zebulon County in Old Catawba would be gathering even now to
hold their tribal rites of death and sorrow, and if he got there so soon
he would not be able to escape the horror of their brooding talk. It
would be better to wait a day and turn up just before the funeral.

It was now early September. The new term at the School for Utility
Cultures would not begin until after the middle of the month, George had
not been back to Libya Hill in several years, and he thought he might
remain a week or so to see the town again. But he dreaded the prospect of
staying with his Joyner relatives, especially at a time like this. Then
he remembered Randy Shepperton, who lived next door. Mr. and Mrs.
Shepperton were both dead now, and the older girl had married and moved
away. Randy had a good job in the town and lived on in the family place
with his sister Margaret, who kept house for him. Perhaps they could put
him up. They would understand his feelings. So he sent a telegram to
Randy, asking for his hospitality, and telling what train he would arrive
on.

By the next afternoon, when George went to Pennsylvania Station to catch
his train, he had recovered from the first shock of Aunt Maw's death. The
human mind is a fearful instrument of adaptation, and in nothing is this
more clearly shown than in its mysterious powers of resilience,
self-protection, and self-healing. Unless an event completely shatters
the order of one's life, the mind, if it has youth and health and time
enough, accepts the inevitable and gets itself ready for the next
happening like a grimly dutiful American tourist who, on arriving at a
new town, looks around him, takes his bearings, and says, "Well, where do
I go from here?" So it was with George. The prospect of the funeral
filled him with dread, but that was still a day off; meanwhile he had a
long train ride ahead of him, and he pushed his sombre feelings into the
background and allowed himself to savour freely the eager excitement
which any journey by train always gave him.

The station, as he entered it, was murmurous with the immense and distant
sound of time. Great; slant beams of mottled light fell ponderously
athwart the station's floor, and the calm voice of time hovered along the
walls and ceiling of that mighty room, distilled out of the voices and
movements of the people who swarmed beneath. It had the murmur of a
distant sea, the languorous lapse and flow of waters on a beach. It was
elemental, detached, indifferent to the lives of men. They contributed to
it as drops of rain contribute to a river that draws its flood and
movement majestically from great depths, out of purple hills at evening.

Few buildings are vast enough to hold the sound of time, and now it
seemed to George that there was a superb fitness in the fact that the one
which held it better than all others should be a railway station. For
here, as nowhere else on earth, men were brought together for a moment at
the beginning or end of their innumerable journeys, here one saw their
greetings and farewells, here, in a single instant, one got the entire
picture of the human destiny. Men came and went, they passed and
vanished, and all were moving through the moments of their lives to
death, all made small tickings in the sound of time--but the voice of
time remained aloof and unperturbed, a drowsy and eternal murmur below
the immense and distant roof.

Each man and woman was full of his own journey. He had one way' to go,
one end to reach, through all the shifting complexities of the crowd. For
each it was his journey, and he cared nothing about the journeys of the
others. Here, as George waited, was a traveller who was afraid that he
would miss his train. He was excited, his movements were feverish and
abrupt, he shouted to his porter, he went to the window to buy his
ticket, he had to wait in line, he fairly pranced with nervousness and
kept looking at the clock. Then his wife came quickly towards him over
the polished floor. When she was still some distance off, she shouted:

"Have you got the tickets? We haven't much time! We'll miss the train!"

"Don't I know it?" he shouted back in an annoyed tone. "I'm doing the
best I can!"' Then he added bitterly and loudly: "We may make it if this
man in front of me ever gets done buying his ticket!"

The man in front turned on him menacingly. "Now wait a minute,
_wait_ a minute!" he said. "You're not the only one who has to make
a train, you know! I was here before you were! You'll have to wait your
tarn like everybody else!"

A quarrel now developed between them. The other travellers who were
waiting for their tickets grew angry and began to mutter. The ticket
agent drummed impatiently on his window and peered out at them with a
sour visage. Finally some young tough down the line called out in tones
of whining irritation:

"Aw, take it outside f' Chris' sake! Give the rest of us a chance! You
guys are holdin' up the line!"

At last the man got his tickets and rushed towards his porter, hot and
excited. The negro waited suave and smiling, full of easy reassurance:

"You folks don't need to hurry now. You got lotsa time to make that
train. It ain't goin' away without you."

Who were these travellers for whom time lay coiled in delicate twists of
blue steel wire in each man's pocket? Here were a few of them: a homesick
nigger going back to Georgia; a rich young man from an estate on the
Hudson who was going to visit his mother in Washington; a district
superintendent, and three of his agents, of a farm machinery company, who
had been attending a convention of district leaders in the city; the
president of a bank in an Old Catawba town which was tottering on the
edge of ruin, who had come desperately, accompanied by two local
politicians, to petition New York bankers for a loan; a Greek with tan
shoes, a cardboard valise; a swarthy face, and eyes glittering with
mistrust, who had peered in through the ticket seller's window, saying:
"How mucha you want to go to Pittsburgh, eh?"; an effeminate young man
from one of the city universities who was going to make his weekly
lecture on the arts of the theatre to a dub of ladies in Trenton, New
Jersey; a lady poetess from a town in Indiana who had been to New York
for her yearly spree of "bohemianism"; a prize-fighter and his manager on
their way to a fight in St. Louis; some Princeton boys just back from a
summer in Europe, on their way home for a short visit before returning to
college; a private soldier in the United States army, with the cheap,
tough, and slovenly appearance of a private soldier in the United States
army; the president of a state university in the Middle West who had just
made an eloquent appeal for funds to the New York alumni; a young married
couple from Mississippi, with everything new--new clothes, new
baggage--and a shy, hostile, and bewildered look; two little Filipinos,
brown as berries and with the delicate bones of birds, dressed with the
foppish perfection of manikins; women from the suburban towns of New
Jersey who had come to the city to shop; women and girls from small towns
in the South and West, who had come for holidays, sprees, or visits; the
managers and agents of clothing stores in little towns all over the
country who had come to the city to buy new styles and fashions; New
Yorkers of a certain class, flashily dressed, sensual, and with a high,
hard finish, knowing and assured, on their way to vacations in Atlantic
City; jaded, faded, bedraggled women, scolding and jerking viciously at
the puny arms of dirty children; swarthy, scowling, and dominant-looking
Italian men with their dark, greasy, and flabby-looking women, sullen but
submissive both to lust and beatings; and smartly-dressed American women,
obedient to neither bed nor whip, who had assertive, harsh voices, bold
glances, and the good figures but not the living curves, either of body
or of spirit, of love, lust, tenderness, or any female fullness of the
earth whatever.

There were all sorts and conditions of men and travellers: poor people
with the hard, sterile faces of all New Jerseys of the flesh and spirit;
shabby and beaten-looking devils with cheap suitcases containing a tie, a
collar, and a shirt, who had a look of having dropped for ever off of
passing trains into the dirty cinders of new towns and the hope of some
new fortune; the shabby floaters and drifters of the nation; suave,
wealthy, and experienced people who had been too far, too often, on too
many costly trains and ships, and who never looked out of windows any
more; old men and women from the country on first visits to their
children in the city, who looked about them constantly and suspiciously
with the quick eyes of birds and animals, alert, mistrustful, and afraid.
There were people who saw everything, and people who saw nothing; people
who were weary, sullen, sour, and people who laughed, shouted, and were
exultant with the thrill of the voyage; people who thrust and jostled,
and people who stood quietly and watched and waited; people with amused,
superior looks, and people who glared and bristled pugnaciously. Young,
old, rich, poor, Jews, Gentiles, Negroes, Italians, Greeks,
Americans--they were all there in the station, their infinitely varied
destinies suddenly harmonised and given a moment of intense and sombre
meaning as they were gathered into the murmurous, all-taking unity of
time.

George had a berth in car K19. It was not really different in any respect
from any other pullman car, yet for George it had a very special quality
and meaning. For every day K19 bound together two points upon the
continent--the great city and the small town of Libya Hill where he had
been born, eight hundred miles away. It left New York at one-thirty-five
each afternoon, and it arrived in Libya Hill at eleven-twenty the next
morning.

The moment he entered the pullman he was transported instantly from the
vast allness of general humanity in the station into the familiar
geography of his home town. One might have been away for years and never
have seen 'an old familiar face; one might have wandered to the far ends
of the earth; one might have got with child a mandrake root, or heard
mermaids singing, or known the words and music of what songs the Sirens
sang; one might have lived and worked alone for ages in the canyons of
Manhattan until the very memory of home was lost and far as in a dream:
yet the moment that he entered K19 it all came back again, his feet
touched earth, and he was home.

It was uncanny. And what was most wonderful and mysterious about it was
that one could come here to this appointed meeting each day at
thirty-five minutes after one o'clock, one could come here through the
humming traffic of the city to the gigantic portals of the mighty
station, one could walk through the concourse for ever swarming with its
bustle of arrival and departure, one could traverse the great expanses of
the station, peopled with Everybody and haunted by the voice of time--and
then, down those steep stairs, there in the tunnel's depth, underneath
this hive-like universe of life, waiting in its proper place, no whit
different outwardly from all its other grimy brethren, was K19.

The beaming porter took his bag with a cheerful greeting: "Yes, suh,
Mistah Webbah! Glad to see you, suh! Comin' down to see de folks?"

And as they made their way down the green aisle to his seat, George told
him that he was going home to his aunt's funeral. Instantly the negro's
smile was blotted out, and his face took on an expression of deep
solemnity and respect.

"I'se sorry to hear dat, Mistah Webbah," he said, shaking his head. "Yes,
suh, I'se pow'ful sorry to hear you say dat."

Even before these words, were out of mind, another voice from the seat
behind was raised in greeting, and George did not have to turn to know
who it was. It was Sol Isaacs, of The Toggery, and George knew that he
had been up to the city on a buying trip, a pilgrimage that he made four
times a year. Somehow the knowledge of this commercial punctuality warmed
the young man's heart, as did the friendly beak-nosed face, the gaudy
shirt, the bright neck-tie, and the dapper smartness of the light grey
suit--for Sol was what is known as "a snappy dresser".

George looked around him now to see if there were any others that he
knew. Yes, there was the tall, spare, brittle, sandy-complexioned figure
of the banker, Jarvis Riggs, and on the seat opposite, engaged in
conversation with him, were two other local dignitaries. He recognized
the round-featured, weak amiability of the Mayor, Baxter Kennedy; and,
sprawled beside him, his long, heavy shanks thrust out into the aisle,
the bald crown of his head with its tonsured fringe of black hair thrown
back against the top of the seat, his loose-jowled face hanging heavy as
he talked, was the large, well-oiled beefiness of Pa on Flack, who
manipulated the politics of Libya Hill and was called "Parson" because he
never missed a prayer-meeting at the Campbellite Church. They were
talking earnestly and loudly, and George could overhear fragments of
their conversation:

"Market Street--oh, give me Market Street any day!"

"Gay Rudd is asking two thousand a front foot for his. He'll get it, too.
I wouldn't take a cent less than twenty-five, and I'm not selling
anyway."

"You mark my word, she'll go to three before another year is out! And
that's not Al! That's only the beginning!"

Could this be Libya Hill that they were talking about? It didn't sound at
all like the sleepy little mountain town he had known all his life. He
rose from his seat and went over to the group.

"Why, hello, Webber! Hello, son!" Parson Flack screwed up his face into
something that was meant for an ingratiating smile and showed his big
yellow teeth. "Glad to see you. How are you, son?"

George shook hands all round and stood beside them a moment.

"We heard you speaking to the porter when you came in," said the Mayor,
with a look of solemn commiseration on his weak face. "Sorry, son. We
didn't know about it. We've been away a week. Happen suddenly?...Yes,
yes, of course. Well, your aunt was pretty old. Got to expect that sort
of thing at her time of life. She was a good woman, a good woman. Sorry,
son, that such a sad occasion brings you home."

There was a short silence after this, as if the others wished it
understood that the Mayor had voiced their sentiments, too. Then, this
mark of respect to the dead being accomplished, Jarvis Riggs spoke up
heartily:

"You ought to stay around a while, Webber. You wouldn't know the town.
Things are booming down our way. Why, only the other day Mack Judson paid
three hundred thousand for the Draper Block. The building is a dump, of
course--what he paid for was the land. That's five thousand a foot.
Pretty good for Libya Hill, eh? The Reeves estate has bought up all the
land on Parker Street below Parker Hill. They're going to build the whole
thing up with business property. That's the way it is all over town.
Within a few years Libya Hill is going to be the largest and most
beautiful city in the state. You mark my words."

"Yes," agreed Parson Flack, nodding his head ponderously, knowingly, "and
I hear they've been trying to buy your uncle's property on South Main
Street, there at the corner of the Square. A syndicate wants to tear down
the hardware store and put up a big hotel. Your uncle wouldn't sell. He's
smart."

George returned to his seat feeling confused and bewildered. He was going
back home for the first time in several years, and he wanted to see the
town as he remembered it. Evidently he would find it considerably
changed. But what was this that was happening to it? He couldn't make it
out. It disturbed him vaguely, as one is always disturbed and shaken by
the sudden realisation of Time's changes in something that one has known
all one's life.

The train had hurtled like a projectile through its tube beneath the
Hudson River to emerge in the dazzling sunlight of a September afternoon,
and now it was racing across the flat desolation of the Jersey meadows.
George sat by the window and saw the smouldering dumps, the bogs, the
blackened factories slide past, and felt that one of the most wonderful
things in the world is the experience of being on a train. It is so
different from watching a train go by. To anyone outside, a speeding
train is a thunderbolt of driving rods, a hot hiss of steam, a blurred
flash of coaches, a wall of movement and of noise, a shriek, a wail, and
then just emptiness and absence, with a feeling of "There goes
everybody!" without knowing who anybody is. And all of a sudden the
watcher feels the vastness and loneliness of America, and the nothingness
of all those little lives burled past upon the immensity of the
continent. But if one is _inside_ the train, everything is
different. The train itself is a miracle of man's handiwork, and
everything about it is eloquent of human purpose and direction. One feels
the brakes go on when the train is coming to a river, and one knows that
the old gloved hand of cunning is at the throttle. One's own sense of
manhood and of mastery is heightened by being on a train. And all the
other people, how real they are! One sees the fat black porter with his
ivory teeth and the great swollen gland on the back of his neck, and one
warms with friendship for him. One looks at all the pretty girls with a
sharpened eye and an awakened pulse. One observes all the other
passengers with lively interest, and feels that he has known them for
ever. In the morning most of them will be gone out of his life; some will
drop out silently at night through the dark, drugged snoring of the
sleepers; but now all are caught upon the wing and held for a moment in
the peculiar intimacy of this pullman-car which has become their common
home for a night.

Two travelling salesmen have struck up a chance acquaintance in the
smoking-room, entering immediately the vast confraternity of their trade,
and in a moment they are laying out the continent as familiarly as if it
were their own backyard. They tell about running into So-and-So in St.
Paul last July, and----

"Who do you suppose I met coming out of Brown's Hotel in Denver just a
week ago?"

"You don't mean it! I haven't seen old Joe in years!"

"And Jim Withers--they've transferred him to the Atlanta office!"

"Going to New Orleans?"

"No, I'll make it this trip. I was there in May."

With such talk as this one grows instantly familiar. One enters naturally
into the lives of all these people, caught here for just a night and
hurtled down together across the continent at sixty miles an hour, and
one becomes a member of the whole huge family of the earth.

Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox here in America--that we
are fixed and certain only when we are in movement. At any rate, that is
how it seemed to young George Webber, who was never so assured of his
purpose as when he was going somewhere on a train. And he never had the
sense of home so much as when he felt that he was going there. It was
only when he got there that his homelessness began.

At the far end of the car a man stood up and started back down the aisle
towards the washroom. He walked with a slight limp and leaned upon a
cane, and with his free hand he held on to the backs of the seats to
brace himself against the lurching of the train. As he came abreast of
George, who sat there gazing out the window, the man stopped abruptly. A
strong, good-natured voice, warm, easy, bantering, unafraid,
unchanged--exactly as it was when it was fourteen years of age--broke
like a flood of living light upon his consciousness:

"Well I'll be dogged! Hi, there, Monkus! Where you goin'?"

At the sound of the old jesting nickname George looked up quickly. It was
Nebraska Crane. The square, freckled, sunburned visage had the same
humorous friendliness it had always had, and the tar-black Cherokee eyes
looked out with the same straight, deadly fearlessness. The big brown paw
came out and they clasped each other firmly. And, instantly, it was like
coming home to a strong and friendly place. In another moment they were
seated together, talking with the familiarity of people whom no gulf of
years and distance could alter or separate.

George had seen Nebraska Crane only once in all the years since he
himself had first left Libya Hill and gone away to college. But he had
not lost sight of him. Nobody had lost sight of Nebraska Crane. That
wiry, fearless little figure of the Cherokee boy who used to comedown the
hill on Locust Street with the bat slung over his shoulder and the
well-oiled fielder's mitt protruding from his hip-pocket had been
prophetic of a greater destiny, for Nebraska had become a professional
baseball player, he had crashed into the big leagues, and his name had
been emblazoned in the papers every day.

The newspapers had had a lot to do with his seeing Nebraska that other
time. It was in August 1925, just after George had returned to New York
from his first trip abroad. That very night, in fact, a little before
midnight, as he was seated in a Childs Restaurant with smoking
wheatcakes, coffee, and an ink-fresh copy of next morning's
_Herald-Tribune_ before him, the headline jumped out at him: "Crane
Slams Another Homer". He read the account of the game eagerly, and felt a
strong desire to see Nebraska again and to get back in his blood once
more the honest tang of America. Acting on a sudden impulse, he decided
to call him up. Sure enough, his name was in the book, with an address
way up in the Bronx. He gave the number and waited. A man's voice
answered the phone, but at first he didn't recognise it.

"Hello!...Hello!...Is Mr. Crane there?...Is that you, Bras?"

"Hello." Nebraska's voice was hesitant, slow, a little hostile, touched
with the caution and suspicion of mountain people when speaking to a
stranger. "Who is that?...Who?...Is that _you_, Monk?"--suddenly and
quickly, as he recognised who it was. "Well I'll be dogged!" he cried.
His tone was delighted, astounded, warm with friendly greeting now, and
had the somewhat high and faintly howling quality that mountain people's
voices often have when they are talking to someone over the telephone:
the tone was full, sonorous, countrified, and a little puzzled, as if he
were yelling to someone on an adjoining mountain peak on a gusty day in
autumn when the wind was thrashing through the trees. "Where'd you come
from? How the hell are you, boy?" he yelled before George could answer.
"Where you been all this time, anyway?"

"I've been in Europe. I just got back this morning."

"Well I'll be dogged!"--still astounded, delighted, full of howling
friendliness. "When am I gonna see you? How about comin' to the game
to-morrow? I'll fix you up. And say," he went on rapidly, "if you can
stick aroun' after the game, I'll take you home to meet the wife and kid.
How about it?"

So it was agreed. George went to the game and saw Nebraska knock another
home run, but he remembered best what happened afterwards. When the
player had had his shower and had dressed, the two friends left the ball
park, and as they went out a crowd of young boys who had been waiting at
the gate rushed upon them. They were those dark-faced, dark-eyed,
dark-haired little urchins who spring up like dragon seed from the grim
pavements of New York, but in whose tough little faces and raucous voices
there still remains, curiously, the innocence and faith of children
everywhere.

"It's Bras!" the children cried. "Hi, Bras! Hey, Bras!" In a moment they
were pressing round him in a swarming horde, deafening the ears with
their shrill cries, begging, shouting, tugging at his sleeves, doing
everything they could to attract his attention, holding dirty little
scraps of paper towards him, stubs of pencils, battered little
note-books, asking him to sign his autograph.

He behaved with the spontaneous warmth and kindliness of his character.
He scrawled his name out rapidly on a dozen grimy bits of paper,
skilfully working his way along through the yelling, pushing, jumping
group, and all the time keeping up a rapid fire of banter, badinage, and
good-natured reproof:

"All right--give it here, then!...Why don't you fellahs pick on somebody
else once in a while?...Say, boy!" he said suddenly, turning to look down
at one unfortunate child, and pointing an accusing finger at him--"What
you doin' aroun' here again, to-day? I signed my name fer you at least a
dozen times!"

"No sir, Misteh Crane!" the urchin earnestly replied. "Honest--not me!"

"Ain't that right?" Nebraska said, appealing to the other children.
"Don't this boy keep comin' back here every day?"

They grinned, delighted at the chagrin of their fellow petitioner. "Dat's
right, Misteh Crane! Dat guy's got a whole book wit' nuttin' but yoeh
name in it!"

"Ah-h!" the victim cried, and turned upon his betrayers bitterly. "What
youse guys tryin' to do--get wise or somep'n? Honest, Misteh Crane!"--he
looked up earnestly again at Nebraska--"Don't believe 'em! I jest want
yoeh ottygraph! Please, Misteh Crane, it'll only take a minute!"

For a moment more Nebraska stood looking down at the child with an
expression of mock sternness; at last he took the outstretched note-book,
rapidly scratched his name across a page, and handed it back. And as he
did so, he put his big paw on the urchin's head and gave it a clumsy pat;
then, gently and playfully, he shoved it from him, and walked off down
the street.

The apartment where Nebraska lived was like a hundred thousand others in
the Bronx. The ugly yellow brick building had a false front, with
meaningless little turrets at the corners of the roof, and a general air
of spurious luxury about it. The rooms were rather small and cramped, and
were made even more so by the heavy, over-stuffed Grand Rapids furniture.
The walls of the living-room, painted a mottled, rusty cream, were bare
except for a couple of sentimental coloured prints, while the place of
honour over the mantel was reserved for an enlarged and garishly tinted
photograph of Nebraska's little son at the age of two, looking straight
and solemnly out at all comers from a gilded oval frame.

Myrtle, Nebraska's wife, was small and plump, and pretty in a doll-like
way. Her corn-silk hair was frizzled in a halo about her face, and her
chubby features were heavily accented by rouge and lipstick. But she was
simple and natural in her talk and bearing, and George liked her at once.
She welcomed him with a warm and friendly smile and said she had heard a
lot about him.

They all sat down. The child, who was three or four years old by this
time, and who had been shy, holding on to his mother's dress and peeping
out from behind her, now ran across the room to his father and began
climbing all over him. Nebraska and Myrtle asked George a lot of
questions about himself, what he had been doing, where he had been, and
especially what countries he had visited in Europe. They seemed to think
of Europe as a place so far away that anyone who had actually been there
was touched with an unbelievable aura of strangeness and romance.

"Whereall did you go over there, anyway?" asked Nebraska.

"Oh, everywhere, Bras," George said--"France, England, Holland, Germany,
Denmark, Sweden, Italy--all over the place."

"Well I'll be dogged!"--in frank astonishment. "You sure do git aroun',
don't you?"

"Not the way _you_ do, Bras. You're travelling most of the time."

"_Who--me?_ Oh, hell, I don't git anywhere--just the same ole
places. Chicago, St. Looie, Philly--I seen 'em all so often I could find
my way blindfolded!" He waved them aside with a gesture of his hand.
Then, suddenly, he looked at George as though he were just seeing him for
the first time, and he reached over and slapped him on the knee and
exclaimed: "Well I'll be dogged! Hot+ you doin', anyway, Monkus?"

"Oh, can't complain. How about you? But I don't need to ask that. I've
been reading all about you in the papers."

"Yes, Monkus," he said. "I been havin' a good year. But, boy!"--he shook
his head suddenly and grinned--"Do the ole dogs feel it!" He was silent a
moment, then he went on quietly:

"I been up here since 1919--that's seven years, and it's a long time in
this game. Not many of 'em stay much longer. When you been shaggin' flies
as long as that you may lose count, but you don't need to count--your
legs'll tell you."

"But, good Lord, Bras, _you're_ all right! Why, the way you got
around out there to-day you looked like a colt!"

"Yeah," Nebraska said, "maybe I _looked_ like a colt, but I felt
like a plough horse." He fell silent again, then he tapped his friend
gently on the knee with his brown hand and said abruptly: "No, Monkus.
When you been in this business as long as I have, you know it."

"Oh, come on, Bras, quit your kidding!" said George, remembering that the
player was only two years older than himself. "You're still a young man.
Why, you're only twenty-seven!"

"Sure, sure," Nebraska answered quietly. "But it's like I say. You cain't
stay in this business much longer than I have. Of course, Cobb an'
Speaker an' a few like that--they was up here a long time. But eight
years is about the average, an' I been here seven already. So if I can
hang on a few years more, I won't have no kick to make...Hell!" he said
in a moment, with the old hearty ring in his voice, "I ain't got no kick
to make, no-way. If I got my release to-morrow, I'd still feel I done all
right...Ain't that so, Buzz?" he cried genially to the child, who had
settled down on his knee, at the same time seizing the boy and cradling
him comfortably in his strong arm. "Ole Bras has done all right, ain't
he?"

"That's the way me an' Bras feel about it," remarked Myrtle, who during
this conversation had been rocking back and forth, placidly ruminating on
a wad of gum. "Along there last year it looked once or twice as if Bras
might git traded. He said to me one day before the game, 'Well, ole lady,
if I don't git some hits to-day somethin' tells me you an' me is goin' to
take a trip.' So I says, 'Trip where?' An' he says, 'I don't know, but
they're goin' to sell me down the river if I don't git goin', an'
somethin' tells me it's now or never!' So I just looks at him," continued
Myrtle placidly, "an' I says, 'Well, what do you want me to do? Do you
want me to come to-day or not?' You know, gener'ly, Bras won't let me
come when he ain't hittin'--he says it's bad luck. But he just looks at
me a minute, an' I can see him sort of studyin' it over, an' all of a
sudden he makes up his mind an' says, 'Yes, come on if you want to; I
couldn't have no more bad luck than I been havin', no-way, an' maybe it's
come time fer things to change, so you come on.' Well, I went--an' I
don't know whether I brought him luck or not, but somethin' did," said
Myrtle, rocking in her chair complacently.

"Dogged if she didn't!" Nebraska chuckled. "I got three hits out of four
times up that day, an' two of 'em was home runs!"

"Yeah," Myrtle agreed, "an' that Philadelphia fast-ball thrower was
throwin' 'em, too."

"He sure was!" said Nebraska.

"I know," went on Myrtle, chewing placidly, "because I heard some of the
boys say later that it was like he was throwin' 'em up there from out of
the bleachers, with all them men in shirt-sleeves right behind him, an'
the boys said half the time they couldn't even see the ball. But Bras
must of saw it--or been lucky--because he hit two home runs off of him,
an' that pitcher didn't like it, either. The second one Bras got, he went
stompin' an' tearin' around out there like a wild bull. He sure did look
mad," said Myrtle in her customary placid tone.

"Maddest man I ever seen!" Nebraska cried delightedly. "I thought he was
goin' to dig a hole plumb through to China...But that's the way it was.
She's right about it. That was the day I got goin'. I know one of the
boys said to me later, 'Bras,' he says, 'we all thought you was goin' to
take a ride, but you sure dug in, didn't you?' That's the way it is in
this game. I seen Babe Ruth go fer weeks when he couldn't hit a balloon,
an' all of a sudden he lams into it. Seems like he just cain't miss from
then on."

All this had happened four years ago. Now the two friends had met again,
and were seated side by side in the speeding train, talking and catching
up on one another. When George explained the reason for his going home,
Nebraska turned to him with open-mouthed astonishment, genuine concern
written in the frown upon his brown and homely face.

"Well, what d'you know about that!" he said. "I sure am sorry, Monk." He
was silent while he thought about it, and embarrassed, not knowing what
to say. Then, after a moment: "Gee!"--he shook his head--"your aunt was
one swell cook! I never will fergit it! Remember how she used to feed us
kids--every danged one of us in the whole neighbourhood?" He paused, then
grinned up shyly at his friend: "I sure wish I had a fistful of them good
ole cookies of hers right this minute!"

Nebraska's right ankle was taped and bandaged; a heavy cane rested
between his knees. George asked him what had happened.

"I pulled a tendon," Nebraska said, "an' got laid off. So I thought I
might as well run down an' see the folks. Myrtle, she couldn't come--the
kid's got to git ready fer school."

"How are they?" George asked.

"Oh, fine, fine. All wool an' a yard wide, both of 'em!" He was silent
for a moment, then he looked at his friend with a tolerant Cherokee grin
and said: "But I'm crackin' up, Monkus. Guess I cain't stan' the gaff
much more."

Nebraska was only thirty-one now, and George was incredulous. Nebraska
smiled good-naturedly again:

"That's an ole man in baseball, Monk. I went up when I was twenty-one. I
been aroun' a long time."

The quiet resignation of the player touched his friend with sadness. It
was hard and painful for him to face the fact that this strong and
fearless creature, who had stood in his life always for courage and for
victory, should now be speaking with such ready acceptance of defeat.

"But, Bras," he protested, "you've been hitting just as well this season
as you ever did! I've read about you in the papers, and the reporters
have all said the same thing."

"Oh, I can still hit 'em," Nebraska quietly agreed. "It ain't the hittin'
that bothers me. That's the last thing you lose, anyway. Leastways, it's
goin' to be that way with me, an' I talked to other fellahs who said it
was that way with them." After a pause he went on in a low tone: "If this
ole leg heals up in time, I'll go on back an' git in the game again an'
finish out the season. An' if I'm lucky, maybe they'll keep me on a
couple more years, because they know I can still hit. But, hell," he
added quietly, "they know I'm through. They already got me all tied up
with string."

As Nebraska talked, George saw that the Cherokee in him was the same now
as it had been when he was a boy. His cheerful fatalism had always been
the source of his great strength and courage. That was why he had never
been afraid of anything, not even death. But, seeing the look of regret
on George's face, Nebraska smiled again and went on lightly:

"That's the way it is, Monk. You're good up there as long as you're good.
After that they sell you down the river. Hell, I ain't kickin'. I been
lucky. I had ten years of it already, an' that's more than most. An' I
been in three World's Serious. If I can hold on fer another year or
two--if they don't let me go or trade me--I think maybe we'll be in
again. Me an' Myrtle has figgered it all out. I had to help her people
some, an' I bought a farm fer Mama an' the Ole Man--that's where they
always wanted to be. An' I got three hundred acres of my own in
Zebulon--all paid fer, too!--an' if I git a good price this year fer my
tobacco, I Stan' to clear two thousand dollars. So if I can git two years
more in the League an' one more good World's Serious, why"--he turned his
square face towards his friend and grinned his brown and freckled grin,
just as he used to as a boy--"we'll be all set."

"And--you mean you'll be satisfied?"

"Huh? Satisfied?" Nebraska turned to him with a puzzled look. "How do you
mean?"

"I mean after all you've seen and done, Bras--the big cities and the
crowds, and all the people shouting--and the newspapers, and the
headlines, and the World's Series--and--and--the first of March, and St.
Petersburg, and meeting all the fellows again, and spring training----"

Nebraska groaned.

"Why, what's the matter?"

"Spring trainin'."

"You mean you don't like it?"

"Like it! Them first three weeks is just plain hell. It ain't bad when
you're a kid. You don't put on much weight durin' the winter, an' when
you come down in the spring it only takes a few days to loosen up an' git
the kinks out. In two weeks' time you're loose as ashes. But wait till
you been aroun' as long as I have!" He laughed loudly and shook his head.
"Boy! The first time you go after a grounder you can hear your joints
creak. After a while you begin to limber up--you work into it an' git the
soreness out of your muscles. By the time the season starts, along in
April, you feel pretty good. By May you're goin' like a house a-fire, an'
you tell yourself you're good as you ever was. You're still goin' strong
along in June. An' then you hit July, an' you git them double-headers in
St. Looie! Boy, oh boy!" Again he shook his head and laughed, baring big
square teeth. "Monkus," he said quietly, turning to his companion, and
now his face was serious and he had his black Indian look--"you ever been
in St. Looie in July?"

"No."

"All right, then," he said very softly and scornfully. "An' you ain't
played _ball_ there in July. You come up to bat with sweat bustin'
from your ears. You step up an' look out there to where the pitcher ought
to be, an' you see four of him. The crowd in the bleachers is out there
roastin' in their shirt-sleeves, an' when the pitcher throws the ball it
just comes from nowheres--it comes right out of all them shirt-sleeves in
the bleachers. It's on top of you before you know it. Well, anyway, you
dig in an' git a toe-hold, take your cut, an' maybe you connect. You
straighten out a fast one. It's good fer two bases if you hustle. In the
old days you could've made it standin' up. But now--boy!" He shook his
head slowly. "You cain't tell me nothin' about that ball park in St.
Looie in July! They got it all growed out in grass in April, but after
July first"--he gave a short laugh--"hell!--it's paved with concrete! An'
when you git to first, them dogs is sayin', 'Boy, let's stay here!' But
you gotta keep on goin'--you know the manager is watchin' you--you're
gonna ketch hell if you don't take that extra base, it may mean the game.
An' the boys up in the press-box, they got their eyes glued on you,
too--they've begun to say old Crane is playin' on a dime--an' you're
thinkin' about next year an' maybe gittin' in another Serious--an' you
hope to God you don't git traded to St. Looie. So you take it on the lam,
you slide into second like the Twentieth Century comin' into the Chicago
yards--an' when you git up an' feel yourself all over to see if any of
your parts is missin', you gotta listen to one of that second baseman's
wisecracks: 'What's the hurry, Bras? Afraid you'll be late fer the
Veterans' Reunion?'"

"I begin to see what you mean, all right," said George.

"See what I mean? Why, say! One day this season I ast one of the boys
what month it was, an' when he told me it was just the middle of July, I
says to him: 'July, hell! If it ain't September I'll eat your hat!' 'Go
ahead, then,' he says, 'an' eat it, because it ain't September,
Bras--it's July.' 'Well,' I says, 'they must be havin' sixty days a month
this year--it's the longest damn July I ever felt!' An' lemme tell you, I
didn't miss it fer, either--I'll be dogged if I did! When you git old in
this business, it may be only July, but you think it's September." He was
silent for a moment. "But they'll keep you in there, gener'ly, as long as
you can hit. If you can smack th