Rough-Hewn Part 30

When Neale got back to his room, the Gang was not there in full force, only Robertson, the knowing little Soph. and Gregg, drinking beer and smoking their pipes. Neale kept back a grimace of distaste at seeing Robertson, his broad boy's face set in its usual expression of solemn, self-conscious wiseness in the ways of the world. The rest of the Gang found Robertson comic and enjoyed having him around to laugh at, as many people enjoy a visit to the monkey-house in a zoo, and see nothing but the comic in the humanness of simian antics. But he disquieted Neale to his very soul, as another set of people are disquieted and troubled by a visit to the monkey-house and see nothing to laugh at in simian antics.

One evening of little Robertson and his loud-proclaimed disillusion with the world and the human race moved the rest of the Gang to delighted howls of laughter for days afterwards; but though Neale laughed with the rest (n.o.body could help laughing at Robertson, he was such an owl!), it rather took the shine off Schopenhauer and pessimism, and that was a real privation for a Senior.

As he came in, Gregg was quoting,

"But sweet as the rind was, the core is; We are fain of thee still, we are fain, O sanguine and subtle Dolores, Our Lady of Pain."

Neale lifted a stein from its hook, poured it full from the pitcher and took a long drink.

"Go ahead, Johnny," he said, "sounds lovely--like any other fairy tale."

"Fairy tale!" cried little Robertson. "Fairy tale, you blue-nosed Puritan! That's all _you_ know. You've been neglecting your opportunities."

Neale answered sharply, "Puritan be d.a.m.ned! I'm no Earl Hall Christer! I know Swinburne enough sight better than you do."

At the sight of Robertson's round eyes goggling at him under his bulging forehead, he was amused at his own annoyance, and taking another drink went on indifferently, "All I'm saying is, maybe prost.i.tution was a dainty art in Ancient Greece, or maybe Swinburne knew some high cla.s.s pract.i.tioners, but here in New York, on the Heights--maybe the thought of Becky Blumenthal without her shimmy gives you an aesthetic thrill, but if it does, you've got a stronger stomach than I have. Take it from me, kid, if you want any poetry out of all that, you'd better stick to Swinburne."

"Yep," agreed Gregg, "I'm with you, Crit. I don't like the professionals. They're a mercenary crew. They're 'out for the stuff, and if you ain't got enough, biff, kerslap, out you go!' Why doesn't some gay little lady just looking for a good time give us the high sign, the way they do in books. Does she? She does not!"

The subject of the discussion pleased Robertson immensely, of course, but he was outraged at the middle-cla.s.s narrowness of his elders' views.

He got up languidly, put on his cap, and standing by the door, p.r.o.nounced judgment.

"All women," said little Robertson the Soph., "belong to the Trade, more or less, in one way or the other. I won't go so far as to say that every woman has her price, only _I_ have never met one who hadn't!"

Neale and Gregg gazed at him spell-bound. He turned away, calling airily over his shoulder, "Well, ta! ta! A May night's no time for debates. I'm going out for a stroll on Morningside to prove my theory."

After they had had their laugh out, Gregg said, "Doesn't he think he's a h.e.l.ler?"

"Wants _us_ to think so," grunted Neale. "Where's all the Gang?"

"Oh, some of them are boning for the exams, and some are chasing chippies, and Billy Peters is off on some of his usual footless fussing.

Been calling on a girl all winter and I don't believe he's even had his arm around her yet, except at dances. The kid!"

Neale filled his pipe, held the match over it and puffed gently until the tobacco glowed an even red all over the top. What would Gregg say, he wondered, to his att.i.tude towards Miss Wentworth? And Gregg himself!

Neale knew perfectly well Gregg wrote long, weekly letters to that innocent-faced up-state girl whose picture stood on the dresser over there. He also knew perfectly well that Gregg was a regular Sir Galahad when it came to her. Oh, Lord! How like that blatant idiot Robertson, they were! It made him feel like a fool kid himself, the bluff they always kept up. Weren't they getting grown-up enough to drop this inside-out hypocrisy?

He kept all this to himself, smoking in thoughtful silence. When the pipe was finished, he yawned and stretched, "Guess I'll turn in. Going to read all night?"

Gregg looked up from his book, "I'll put the shade over the light so you can get to sleep. I want to finish this Philosophy A stuff, Plato's Republic. Have you read the last book yet? It's great dope!"

The next day Neale and Miss Wentworth were sitting by their little gipsy fire in a nook among the Palisades, overlooking the river. Luncheon had long been finished, the dishes packed away, and they continued to sit still, Miss Wentworth looking at the view, Neale looking at her and turning over in his mind the problem, "How can a man with no money, and no prospects of ever earning any, ask a girl to marry him? He can't. But suppose there's a chance that the girl ... well, no matter what she may be thinking, wouldn't it be the decent thing to let her know how he feels? Of course he ought to! What's the answer, then? There isn't any answer."

"A penny for your thoughts, Mr. Crittenden."

"I was wondering," Neale lied glibly, "whether you didn't know me well enough to stop calling me Mr. Crittenden."

She met his eyes squarely, "All right, I'll call you Neale, if you'll call me Martha. I hate formality between friends."

He weighed her intonation carefully. Had she accented the word, "friends"? Did she mean it as a warning? Well, whether or not she meant it, that was the only line he could decently take.

As they started on the five-mile walk back to the ferry, their talk dodged personalities. They talked about the trees and rocks and wild-flowers and books and music--the music to which Martha had been introducing Neale that winter, the music which, little by little, was beginning to speak to his heart more powerfully, more directly even than poetry. Then, gradually, with a deep sense of tranquil comradeship, they stopped dodging personalities, no longer felt any need to talk, strode forward side by side, silent, each sure of the other. Neale felt quiet and happy and at the same time miserable and uncertain. Could he find words to tell her? Must he in honor wait till he had a place in the world to offer?

At the end of their long march, they came to the edge of the cliff and stood for a long time staring down at the great river, shimmering and iridescent far below them in the spring haze. Only a few miles further south along these cliffs and only a few years ago, the little Neale had sat alone and swung his feet and dreamed. How simple life had been for him then!

Still without a word, they went down the zig-zag path to the ferry landing, and stood waiting for the boat. It was very still, except for the water splashing on the stony beach. Without thought, without planning it, the fullness of Neale's heart unsealed his lips. He began to speak in a low tone, his voice rough and uneven with emotion.

"Listen! you hear the grating roar Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling, At their return, up the high strand."

He was aware that the girl was very still, listening with bent head.

"Sophocles long ago Heard it on the aegean, and it brought Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow Of human misery; we...."

his breath failed him and he was silent. Over there beyond that wide expanse of lapping water lay the world with its houses and railways, its business, its spider-web of human relations. Here in the shadow they were alone together.

"But now I only hear Its melancholy, long withdrawing roar, Retreating to the breath Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear And naked shingles of the world."

He stopped. Now that he had come to what he wished to say, he dared not.

"Don't you know the rest?" asked the girl softly.

"Yes," said Neale huskily, "I know it."

She waited for him to go on, and when he did not, she said, "Well, no matter. I know it too."

She stood beside him in the blue twilight, her fair head raised, her eyes looking far over the water. Neale was certain that she too was silently repeating,

"Ah, love, let us be true To one another! for the world, which seems To lie before us like a land of dreams, So various, so beautiful, so new, Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, Nor cert.i.tude, nor peace, nor help for pain; And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night."

The great day was over. The Yew Tree had been planted and orated over.

The scared Valedictorian had stumbled through as much of his speech as he could remember. Neale, with a hundred other Seniors had stood up and received the degree of Bachelor of Arts, which the President, "By-the-authority-in-him-vested" scattered broadcast over them. Neale was through with college. College was through with Neale.

Father and Mother were there, come up specially from the other side of the Equator, though Father tried to pretend that business had brought him north. They strolled about the campus, went downtown and had luncheon together, all three outwardly calm in the traditional Crittenden manner, in spite of the emotion boiling under the surface of their little family party.

What boiled hardest under Neale's surface was a great haste to find his place in the business-world, to begin to make money, to have something to offer Martha. Before he had met Martha he had had dreams of asking to go back to college for a Master's Degree--in anything, just to go on with the studies he had found so interesting, to play football again, to sit, care-free, smoking his pipe and talking philosophy with Gregg. But even in his dreams he had felt that all that was only a little boy's scheme to dodge real life. And now he felt no sympathy with dreams. He wanted to get out and tackle real life with all his strength. He smarted under the feeling that he had no right to speak to Martha.

So when Mother went up to her room to rest from the strain of throttling her feelings down to her men-folks' standard of outward calm, and he and Father went into the lobby to light cigars, he said at once, "Father, I want to start in to-morrow to hustle for a job."

Father looked pleased. It even occurred to Neale that Father looked relieved. "Anything special in sight?" he asked.

"No, I'm just going to knock at all the office doors till I find one where they don't throw me out."

Father puffed awhile. "Naturally I'd like to have you with me, but I couldn't offer you anything but a clerkship. And I'm convinced that the opportunities to rise are greater here at the center of things. Now I've worked a good many years for the firm and I believe Gates would give you a job on my recommendation. Want to try it?"

"I'll try anything that'll give me a start."

"To-morrow too soon, if I can make an appointment for you?"