OF TIME AND THE RIVER. Thomas Wolfe
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some one tell you about the place?”
“Well — yes. I knew about it before I came. It’s a room in a house that some people I know have rented.”
“Oh,” said Starwick coldly, formally again, as he thrust his arms into a fresh shirt. “Then you do know people here in Cambridge?”
“Well, no: they are really people from home.”
“Home?”
“Yes — from my own state, the place I came from, where I went to school before I came here.”
“Oh,” said Starwick, buttoning his shirt, “I see. And where was that? What state are you from?”
“Catawba.”
“Oh. . . . And you went to school down there?”
“Yes. To the State University.”
“I see. . . . And these people who have the house where you are living now — what are they doing here?”
“Well, the man — he’s a professor at the State University down there — he’s up here getting some sort of degree in education.”
“In what?”
“In education.”
“Oh. I see. . . . And what does his wife do; has he got a wife?”
“Yes; and three children. . . . Well,” the other youth said uncertainly, and then laughed suddenly, “I haven’t seen her do anything yet but sit on her tail and talk.”
“Ace?” said Starwick, knotting his tie very carefully. “And what does she talk about?”
“Of people back home, mostly — the professors at the University, and their wives and families.”
“Oh,” said Starwick gravely, but there was now lurking in his voice an indefinable drollery of humour. “And does she say nice things about them?” He looked out towards his guest with a grave face, but a sly burble in his voice now escaped him and broke out in an infectious chuckling laugh. “Or is she —” for a moment he was silent, trembling a little with secret merriment, and his pleasant face reddened with laughter —“or is she,” he said with sly insinuation —“bitter?”
The other, somehow conquered by the sly yet broad and vulgar humour in Starwick’s tone, broke out into a loud guffaw, and said:
“God! she’s bitter — and nothing but! That’s just the word for it.”
“Has anyone escaped yet?” said Starwick slyly.
“Not a damned one of them,” the other roared. “She’s worked her way from the President and his family all the way down to the instructors. Now she’s started on the people of the town. I’ve heard about every miscarriage and every dirty pair of drawers that ever happened there. We’ve got a bet on, a friend of mine from home who’s also staying there — he’s in the Law School — whether she’s going to say anything good about anyone before the year is over.”
“And which side have you?” said Starwick.
“I say she won’t — but Billy Ingram says she will. He says that the last time she said anything good about anyone was when someone died during the influenza epidemic in 1917; and he claims she’s due again.”
“And what is the lady’s name?” said Starwick. He had now come out into the living room and was putting on his coat.
“Trotter,” the other said, feeling a strange convulsive humour swelling in him. “Mrs. Trotter.”
“What?” said Starwick, his face reddening and the sly burble appearing in his voice again. “Mrs. — who?”
“Mrs. Trotter!” the other choked, and the room rang suddenly with their wild laughter. When it had subsided, Starwick blew his nose vigorously, and his pleasant face still reddened with laughter, he asked smoothly:
“And what does Professor Trotter say while this is going on?”
“He doesn’t say anything,” the other laughed. “He can’t say anything. He just sits there and listens. . . . The man’s all right. Billy and I feel sorry for him. He’s got this damned old shrew of a wife who sits there talking ninety to the minute, and three of the meanest, dirtiest, noisiest little devils you ever saw falling over his feet and raising hell from morning to night, and this sloppy nigger wench they brought up with them from the South — the place looks like an earthquake hit it, and the poor devil is up here trying to study for a degree — it’s pretty hard on him. He’s a nice fellow, and he doesn’t deserve it.”
“God!” said Starwick frankly and gravely, “but it sounds dreary! Why did you ever go to such a place?”
“Well, you see, I didn’t know anyone in Cambridge — and I had known these people back home.”
“I should think that would have made you anxious to avoid them,” Starwick answered. “And it’s most important that you have a pleasant place to work in. It really is, you know,” he said earnestly and with a note of reproof in his mannered tone. “You really should be more careful about that,” he said.
“Yes, I suppose it is. You certainly have a good place here.”
“Ace,” said Starwick. “It is very pleasant. I’m glad you like it.”
He came out, with his drink in his hand, put the drink down on a table and sat down beside it, crossing his legs and reaching for one of the straw-tipped cigarettes in a small and curiously carved wooden box. The impression he made on the other youth was one of magnificence and luxury. The boy’s rooms seemed to fit his sensuous and elegant personality like a glove: he was only twenty-two years old, but his distinctive and incomparable quality was everywhere about him in these two rooms.
To the unaccustomed eyes of the younger boy, these modest rooms seemed to be the most magnificent apartment he had seen. For a moment he thought that Starwick must be an immensely wealthy person to live in such a way. The fact that a man so young should live in such splendid and luxurious independence — that he should “have his own place,” an apartment of his own, instead of a rented room, the thrilling solitudes of midnight privacy to himself, the freedom to come and go as he pleased, to do as he wished, to invite to his place whoever he chose, “to bring a girl there” whenever he wanted, without fear or the need for stealth — all these simple things which are just part of the grand and hopeful joy of youth, which the younger boy had never known, but to which he had aspired, as every youth aspires, in many a thrilling fantasy — now made Starwick’s life seem almost impossibly fortunate, happy and exciting.
And yet it was not merely his own inexperience that made Starwick seem so wealthy. Starwick, although he had no regular income save a thousand dollars a year which he received for his work as Professor Hatcher’s assistant, and small sums he got from time to time from his family — he was, incredibly enough, the youngest of a middle-western family of nine children, small business and farming people in modest circumstances — gave the impression of wealth because he really was a wealthy person: he had been born wealthy, endowed with wealth by nature. In everything he did and said and was, in all he touched, in the whole quality of his rare and sensuous personality there was an opulence of wealth and luxury such as could not be found in a hundred millionaires. He had that rare and priceless quality that is seldom found in anyone, and almost never in Americans, of being able to give to any simple act or incident a glamour of luxury, pleasure, excitement. Thus, when he smoked a cigarette, or drank a drink, or invited someone to go with him to the theatre, or ordered a meal in a shabby Italian restaurant, or made coffee in his rooms, or talked of something he had read in a book, or tied his neck-tie — all these things had a rare, wonderful and thrilling quality in them that the richest millionaire in the world could not have bought for money. And for this reason, people were instantly captivated by the infinite grace and persuasiveness of Starwick’s personality: he had the power, as few people in the world have ever had the power, instantly to conquer and command the devotion of people