OF TIME AND THE RIVER. Thomas Wolfe
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One morning, a few days after his arrival in Cambridge, he had received a letter, written on plain but costly paper in a fine but almost feminine hand. The letter read as follows:
“Dear Sir: I should be pleased to have your company for dinner Wednesday evening at eight-thirty at the ‘Cock House Tavern’ on Brattle Street. In case of your acceptance will you kindly call at my rooms in Holyoke House, opposite the Widener Library, at seven-fifteen?
“Sincerely yours,
“FRANCIS STARWICK.”
He read that curt and cryptic note over and over with feelings mixed of astonishment and excitement. Who was Francis Starwick? Why should Francis Starwick, a stranger of whom he had never heard, invite him to dinner? And why was that laconic note not accompanied by a word of explanation?
It is likely he would have gone anyway, from sheer curiosity, and because of the desperate eagerness with which a young man, alone in a strange world for the first time, welcomes any hope of friendship. But before the day was over, he had learned from another student in Professor Hatcher’s celebrated course for dramatists, of which he himself was now a member, that Francis Starwick was Professor Hatcher’s assistant; and correctly inferring that the invitation had some connection with this circumstance, he resolved to go.
In this way, his acquaintance began with that rare and tragically gifted creature who was one of the most extraordinary figures of his generation and who, possessing almost every talent that an artist needs, was lacking in that one small grain of common earth that could have saved him, and brought his work to life.
No fatality rested on that casual meeting. He could not have foreseen in what strange and sorrowful ways his life would weave and interweave with this other one, nor could he have known from any circumstance of that first meeting that this other youth was destined to be that triune figure in his life, of which each man knows one and only one, in youth, and which belongs to the weather of man’s life, and to the fabric of his destiny: his friend, his brother — and his mortal enemy. Nor was there, in the boy he met that night, any prefigurement of the tragic fatality with which that brilliant life was starred, the horrible end toward which, perhaps, it even then was directed.
They were both young men, and both filled with all the vanity, anguish and hot pride of youth, and with its devotion and humility; they were both strong in their proud hope and faith and untried confidence; they both had shining gifts and powers and they were sure the world was theirs; they were splendid and fierce and weak and strong and foolish; the prescience of wild swelling joy was in them; and the goat cry was still torn from their wild young throats. They knew that the most fortunate, good and happy life that any man had ever known was theirs, if they would only take it; they knew that it impended instantly — the fortune, fame, and love for which their souls were panting; neither had yet turned the dark column, they knew that they were twenty, and that they could never die.
Francis Starwick, on first sight, was a youth of medium height and average weight, verging perhaps toward slenderness, with a pleasant ruddy face, brown eyes, a mass of curly auburn-reddish hair, and a cleft chin. The face in its pleasant cast and healthy tone, and spacious, quiet intelligence was strikingly like those faces of young Englishmen which were painted by Hoppner and Sir Henry Raeburn towards the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was an attractive, pleasant immensely sensitive and intelligent face, but when Starwick spoke this impression of warmth and friendliness was instantly destroyed.
He spoke in a strange and rather disturbing tone, the pitch and timbre of which it would be almost impossible to define, but which would haunt one who had heard it for ever after. His voice was neither very high nor low, it was a man’s voice and yet one felt it might almost have been a woman’s; but there was nothing at all effeminate about it. It was simply a strange voice compared to most American voices, which are rasping, nasal, brutally coarse or metallic. Starwick’s voice had a disturbing lurking resonance, an exotic, sensuous, and almost voluptuous quality. Moreover, the peculiar mannered affectation of his speech was so studied that it hardly escaped extravagance. If it had not been for the dignity, grace, and intelligence of his person, the affectation of his speech might have been ridiculous. As it was, the other youth felt the moment’s swift resentment and hostility that is instinctive with the American when he thinks some one is speaking in an affected manner.
As Starwick welcomed his guest his ruddy face flushed brick-red with the agonizing embarrassment of a shy and sensitive person to whom every new meeting is an ordeal; his greeting was almost repellently cold and formal, but this, too, with the studied affectation of his speech, was protective armour for his shyness.
“A-d’ye-do?” he said, shaking hands, the greeting coming from his throat through lips that scarcely seemed to move. “It was good of you to come.”
“It was good of you to ask me,” the other boy said awkwardly, fumbled desperately for a moment, and then blurted out —“I didn’t know who you were at first — when I got your note — but then somebody told me:— you’re Professor Hatcher’s assistant, aren’t you?”
“Ace,” said Starwick, this strange sound which was intended for “yes” coming through his lips in the same curious and almost motionless fashion. The brick-red hue of his ruddy face deepened painfully, and for a moment he was silent —“Look!” he said suddenly, yet with a casualness that was very warm and welcome after the stilted formality of his greeting, “would you like a drink? I have some whisky.”
“Why, yes — sure — certainly,” the other stammered, almost feverishly grateful for the diversion —“I’d like it.”
Starwick opened the doors of a small cupboard, took out a bottle, a siphon, and some glasses on a tray, and placed them on a table.
“Help yourself,” he said. “Do you like it with soda — or plain water — or how?”
“Why — any way you do,” the other youth stammered. “Aren’t you going to drink? I don’t want to unless you do.”
“Ace,” said Starwick again, “I’ll drink with you. I like the soda,” he added, and poured a drink for himself and filled it with the siphon. “Go on. Pour your own. . . . Look,” he said abruptly again, as the other youth was awkwardly manipulating the unaccustomed siphon. “Do you mind if I drink mine while I’m shaving? I just came in. I’d like to shave and change my shirt before we go out. Do you mind?”
“No, of course not,” the other said, grateful for the respite thus afforded. “Go ahead. Take all the time you like. I’ll drink my drink and have a look at your books, if you don’t mind.”
“Please do,” said Starwick, “if you find anything you like. I think this is the best chair.” He pushed a big chair up beneath a reading lamp and switched the light on. “There are cigarettes on the table,” he said in his strange mannered tone, and went into the bathroom, where, after a moment’s inspection of his ruddy face, he immediately began to lather himself and to prepare for shaving.
“This is a nice place you have here,” the visitor said presently, after another awkward pause, during which the only sound was the minute scrape of the razor blade on Starwick’s face.
“Quite,” he answered concisely, in his mannered tone, and with that blurred sound of people who try to talk while they are shaving. For a few moments the razor scraped on. “I’m glad you like it,” Starwick said presently, as he put the razor down and began to inspect his work in the mirror. “And what kind of place did you find for yourself? Do you like it?”
“Well, it will do, I guess,” the other boy said dubiously. “Of course, it’s nothing like this — it’s not an apartment; it’s just a room I rented.”
“Ace,” said Starwick from the bathroom. “And where is that?”
“It’s on a street called Buckingham Road. Do you know where that is?”
“Oh,” said Starwick