CHAPTER XIV
When Neale turned out his Welsbach burner and rolled into bed, he encountered a strange, new sensation, an immense relief just to lay himself down, and to have darkness about him. For the first time in his life he was consciously very tired, for the first time he knew the adult sensation of having lived to the point of weariness, for the first time he felt the passive sweetness of the resigned adult welcome of repose which is perhaps a premonition of our ultimate weariness and our ultimate welcome to death.
For a moment Neale lay there, drowned in astonishment at this new, unguessed-at pleasure. Then, without warning, the thick cloud of a boy's sleep dropped over him like black velvet.
The next morning, his father, passing on the way to his cold bath, looked in and saw the boy, sunk fathoms deep in sleep, the bright new sunlight of the early morning shining full on his face. Heavens! How can children sleep so soundly! His father stepped into the room, walking silently on bare feet, and drew down the shades. The shadowing of the room did not waken the sleeper. He still lay profoundly at rest and yet profoundly alive, one long, big-boned arm thrown over his head on the pillow, as he always had slept when he was a child.
"As he had when he was a child!" His father was struck by the phrase and looked again at the tall, rather gaunt young body flung on the bed. That was no child who lay there, nor was that a child's face, for all the pure, childlike curves of the young lips, firmly held together even in this utter abandon to sleep. The older man stood by the bed for a moment, looking down on his son, his own face grave and observant. He would be a fine-looking fellow, Neale, with those honest eyes, wide apart under his good, square forehead. Yes, Neale's father had always known the extreme satisfaction of being able to respect his son, there was no doubt about that. But there was something else, the something that had always baffled him, that he had never been able to penetrate, the closed look, locked tight over … what? Was it locked tight over something, or nothing? Did Neale have a real personal life? Would he ever have? Would there ever be anything, anybody who would have the key to unlock and set free what was there, before it died of its imprisonment?
For an instant the face of Neale's father was unlocked as he stood looking down on his son. Then, with a long breath, he stepped back into the hall-way, silent on his bare feet, and went on to shave, and to take his cold bath.
It was after ten when Neale awakened and the day had sunk from its first fresh hopefulness into the resigned apathy of a hot mid-morning, with the stale smell of dusty, sun-baked pavements, the slow, unimportant jog, jog, jog of the horse hauling the grocer's delivery-cart, and the distant, jingling of the scissors-grinder's bell.
Neale came slowly to himself and rolled over, a very bad taste in his mouth, both physically and mentally. He had not noticed it at the time, but he now thought, scraping his coated tongue against his teeth, that melted cheese and cake and nut-fudge and ginger-ale were a darned bad combination to be swallowing of an evening. And as for the rest … oh, gosh! Never again!
He turned his big, strong feet out of bed and sat sunk together for a moment, recalling it all, and steeping his soul in wormwood once more. Now what?
The telephone rang; he heard Katie answer, and clump up the stairs to see if he were awake.
"Somebody to talk to you, Neale," she said, seeing him sitting up. Neale's father might note he was no longer a child, Neale's mother might keep her hands from fussing over him, but for Katie he would always be the little boy she had helped to bring up. She laid her hand on his head now, and Neale did not mind.
"You answer," he said stolidly.
"It's him that's always telephonin'," she explained. "He's after wantin' you to go and play tennis."
"You tell him I can't go," Neale repeated.
Katie retreated astonished. Neale heard the sound of her voice at the telephone two flights below. Then she shouted up, "Neale!"
He went to the stairs and answered crossly, "What?"
"He wants to know will you be goin' this afternoon?"
"No!" shouted Neale, leaning over the banisters.
In a moment she cried again, "He wants to know will you be goin' to-morrow morning?"
"NO!" shouted Neale again, and going into the bathroom locked the door behind him.
When rather damp as to hair, he came out, silence and the smell of frying bacon told him that Katie had left the telephone to get his breakfast ready. Gee Whiz! He didn't want any breakfast, not with a taste like that in his mouth.
To act the part of a lone wolf of sixteen, one must read poetry. He had never read much poetry except some of Milton's Paradise Lost, for a specially loathed English Literature course at Hadley. But there were plenty of poetry books in the library at home. After some false starts, Neale began to know his way among them, concentrating on the slim volumes with paste-board covers and paper backs.
"Beneath the bludgeonings of chance …"
Yes, Neale too would hold up an unbowed, bloody head.
"… without fear, without wish,
Insensate save of a dull crushed ache in my heart.…"
… "Just to reach the dreaming,
And the sleep."
Sitting alone in the darkened library how Neale soaked himself in this sort of thing, hunting up one page and down another till he found the voice that spoke to him.
"The irresponsive silence of the lands
The irresponsive sounding of the sea
Breathe but one language and one voice to me
Aloof, aloof, we stand aloof!"
When Katie's carpet-sweeper and feather-duster and kind, gossiping voice sounded too close, he escaped out of doors, but not on his bicycle. That, like his tennis-racket brought up painful memories. Every evening he walked to the Boulevard, and gazed over the Hackensack meadows till the sun set.
"No sweet thing left to savor; no sad thing left to fear.…"
On the evening of the third day, a letter from West Adams arrived, announcing that Jenny was up and around, and the farm-house was ready for Neale. The evening after that, Neale was undressing in the slant-ceilinged big-beamed, whitewashed bedroom, as familiar to him as his room at Union Hill—but uncontaminated with any of the new, troubling sensations. The air of the hills blew in at the window. Neale felt that it was a different air. He began to feel a difference in himself, but fell asleep in the midst of this perception. The next morning, scorning the mill, the barn-yard, the brook, he climbed to the highest back-pasture where the young white birches and quivering aspens, skirmishers of the unconquered forest, were leading the way in the reconquest of the fields man had taken from them. Here he lay down and prepared to nurse his sorrow.…
"Pain gnaws at my heart like a rat that gnaws in a drain. …"
But what was this? What was this? As unexpectedly as the impudent little mick had sprung out of the ground to carry off his shinny ball, so did a cheerful little imp of high spirits spring up in his heart, leaping and skipping to meet the glory of the great sun pouring down its mellow gold upon him through the flickering, tricksy aspen leaves. He lay back on the soft, deep moss, his hands clasped under his head. Huge, jovial-looking clouds floated, piled up in strong, rounded masses against the summer sky. Miles off in the valley he could see the Hoosick River winding its way among the green, green hills. He was warmed, cool, alive … and, oh, yes, there was no use in pretending otherwise, mighty well pleased to be alive.
The ten-year-old Neale when suddenly the glamor had faded from his lead soldiers, had never wasted time in pretending that it was there. He had risen at once, left the little heap of clumsily-made mannequins to lie foolish in their flaking paint, and sliding down the banisters, had gone out of doors in a great hurry. Well, he wasted no time now. He looked with an ironic eye upon the glamorless lost illusion, with the paint flaking off, and hurriedly turning his back on it all, he went, metaphorically, out of doors.
What had happened after all? He'd thought the world of Don Roberts, who had turned out a four-flusher. Well, he'd been stung. But why holler so about it? And whose fault was it? His own, for not knowing better. Don hadn't ever pretended to be any less of a four-flusher than he was. It was just that he, Neale, had been taken in by a cheap, flashy guy when any kid ought to have had enough sense to see through him, and those would-be smart college-man airs and manners.
But anyhow if that was a false scent, it had put him on a true one. There was a lot inside those slim, paste-board covered books beside rats gnawing in drains, and twilight and all-goneness. You bet your life there was. Neale had never dreamed what was inside them, poems that stood up to a glorious day like this, and called it brother, poems of foot-free wanderings and high-hearted scorn of prosperity and conventions.
"I tell you that we,
While you are smirking
And lying and shirking
Life's duty of duties,
Honest sincerity.
We are in verity
Free!
Free as the word
Of the sun to the sea;
Free!"
Neale's voice quavered with another sort of emotion … that was the doctrine! "Off with the fetters!" He pictured himself in a blue flannel shirt and flowing neckerchief, alone, or with some perfect comrade, knowing reality, sneering at railway trains and cities.
It was a gorgeous dream … but of course the first Tuesday in September found him back at a desk at Hadley with all the grinding and polishing wheels of that well-appointed educational mill at work on the corners of his individuality, bent on turning out the fifty young Seniors smooth and identical, the perfection of the Hadley type. And since this was the last year, the faculty speeded up the hunt and all the pack put their noses to the ground and ran their legs off in pursuit of mathematics and science. The pace was cruelly hot, and it was specially hard for Neale because he had yielded to the captain's entreaties and had come out for the football team. He made left tackle with little competition and through October and November practised almost without coaching (Hadley permitted athletics but was too busy to encourage anything so childish), and played and was beaten with painful regularity.
Neale found himself dropping far below the rating he had maintained in the lower classes. He began to pant and strain as he had the first year. It was a gruelling race; but temperamentally he liked races and his wind got better as the months went by. He cut out all superfluities—no dancing—no reading for amusement except on Sunday mornings, and then only short poems about Vagabondia and the Open Road. Work, work, work through every waking hour. By April he had risen to sixth in his class, and felt grimly sure of holding his stride to the end.
On the night of Easter Monday, Neale was bent over his desk with a green eye-shade, trying various combinations to solve a problem in analytical geometry, when his father knocked at the door, walked in and sat down on the bed. This was, so remarkable that Neale knew something was up. One of the things that Neale had always taken for granted in his home-life was that his room was practically inviolate when he was in it. His father and his mother respected his privacy in this as in other things with scrupulous exactitude. It was a little corner of the world which was his, where he could come out from his tightly-clutched shell, and move about freely with no fear of intruders spying on his nakedness. The security of this privacy had been one of the well-squared stones Neale had found ready to his hand, when slowly, rather later than most boys, he began to build. Hence it was now apparent to him that Father must have something on his chest. He looked up, nodded and greeted him with, "Hello, Dad."
"Hello, Neale," said Father quite as casually. "Don't want to interrupt your studies. How late do you expect to keep at them?"
"Sometime between eleven and twelve, I guess. His Nibs gave us some stinkers, and I haven't touched the German prose yet."
"That would be pretty late for me. We'd better take a few minutes now. The fact is, Neale, we mustn't let you slide along any more without some sort of an idea what you are going to do next."
Neale having no idea beyond that night's work, said nothing.
"The work you're doing this year has given your mother and me a great deal of pleasure," Father went on. "Your marks are getting better and better. I did think of putting you through an engineering school, but I notice you seem to do better at the liberal subjects. Have you set your heart on any college in particular?"
"I'm not sure I want to go to any college."
Oh, now for a break into the Open Road, and a flaming neckerchief and far lands!
Mr. Crittenden looked thoughtful.
"I'll admit it's a waste of time for some, but I don't think it would be for you. I understand your wish to get to work, and begin to make your own way, but it's wiser not to start with too little preparation. And there's no need for it yet. It's no hardship for me. It's a real pleasure for us to be able to help you to an education.…"
Neale chewed his pen hard. How hard it was to have things out with a father! When a man takes it for granted that if you don't want to go to college you must want to be a bank-clerk or sell shoes, how are you to make him understand anything about Freedom and the Open Road and Comradeship and Vagabondia, distant countries and ships that smell of tar and salt like the wharves. How could a man in a three-button, pepper-and-salt cut-away understand? A man who wore a derby hat and went to his office in the city every day? And Father was getting fat, too, the three-button cut-away was heavily rounded. No—all that was in another world. There weren't any words to express any of it to a Father. So he said nothing, jabbing his pen into the blotting paper. Presently Father went on, "Of course, I should like to have you go to my old college, Williams, but Mother feels—we both feel—that it would be a pity to break up the family circle. What would you think of Columbia? They say since it has moved up to Morningside Heights there is more college life—and of course it's one of the leading Universities.…"
Another pause, so long that Neale felt bound to say something.
"Oh, I guess I would like Columbia as well as any," he finally brought out.
Father looked at him several minutes. Then he stood up, "We needn't settle it to-night, of course. Think it over; we'll talk it over again."
But of course they never did. They never talked anything over. The subject was not raised again. Nevertheless it was somehow understood in the family that Neale was going to enter Columbia. And Neale made no protest. To tell the truth, as spring advanced and all his classmates began talking over their plans for next year, the uniformity of having a recognized respectable destination was not disagreeable. It saved talk, and useless talk about his affairs was one of the things Neale detested. Till he could be really independent and do as he liked without suffering the ignominy of having people know about it and talk him over, it might be better just to slide along the grooves provided, get the usual labels stuck on you. It couldn't do you any harm. They'd soak off easy enough, later on.