Chapter 5
The Egotist Bees a Personage
A fathom deep in sleep I lie
With old desires, restrained before,
To clamor lifeward with a cry,
As dark flies out the greying door;
And so i of creeds to share
I seek assertive day again....
But old monotony is there:
Endless avenues of rain.
Oh, might I rise again! Might I
Throw off the heat of that old wine,
See the new m mass the sky
With fairy towers, line on line;
Find each mirage in the high air
A symbol, not a dream again....
But old monotony is the
re:
Endless avenues of rain.
Uhe glass portcullis of a theatre Amory stood, watg the first great drops of rain splatter down and flatten to dark stains on the sidewalk. The air became gray and opalest; a solitary light suddenly outlined a window over the way; then anht; then a hundred more danced and glimmered into vision. Under his feet a thick, iron-studded skylight turned yellow; ireet the lamps of the taxi-cabs sent out glistening sheens along the already black pa
vement. The unwele November rain had perversely stolen the day’s last hour and paw with that a fehe night. The silence of the theatre behind him ended with a curious snapping sound, followed by the heavy r of a rising crowd and the interlaced clatter of many voices. The matinee was over.
He stood aside, edged a little into the rain to let the throng pass. A small boy rushed out, sniffed in the damp, fresh air and turned up the collar of his coat; came three or four coup
les in a great hurry; came a further scattering of people whose eyes as they emerged glanced invariably, first at the wet street, then at the rain-filled air, finally at the dismal sky; last a derolling mass that depressed him with its heavy odor pounded of the tobaell of the men and the fetid sensuousness of stale powder on women. After the thick crowd came another scattering; a stray half-dozen; a man on crutches; finally the rattling bang of foldis inside annouhat
the ushers were at work.
New York seemed not so much awakening as turning over in its bed. Pallid men rushed by, ping together their coat-collars; a great swarm of tired, magpie girls from a department-store crowded along with shrieks of strident laughter, three to an umbrella; a squad of marg poli passed, already miraculously protected by oilskin capes.
The rain gave Amory a feeling of detat, and the numerous unpleasant aspects of city life without money occurred to him in thre
atening procession. There was the ghastly, stinking crush of the subway—the car cards thrusting themselves at one, leering out like dull bores who grab your arm with aory; the querulous worry as to whether some one isn’t leaning on you; a man deg not to give his seat to a woman, hating her for it; the woman hating him for not doing it; at worst a squalid phantasmagoria of breath, and old cloth on human bodies and the smells of the food me best just people—too hot or too col
d, tired, worried.
He pictured the rooms where these people lived—where the patterns of the blistered apers were heavy reiterated sunflowers on green and yellow backgrounds, where there were tin bathtubs and gloomy hallways and verdureless, unnamable spaces in back of the buildings; where even love dressed as sedu—a sordid murder around the er, illicit motherhood in the flat above. And always there was the eical stuffiness of indoor winter, and the long summers, nightmares of
perspiratioween sticky enveloping walls.... dirty restaurants where careless, tired people helped themselves to sugar with their own used coffee-spoons, leaving hard brown deposits in the bowl.
It was not so bad where there were only men or else only women; it was when they were vilely herded that it all seemed so rotten. It was some shame that women gave off at having mehem tired and poor—it was some disgust that men had for women who were tired and poor. It was dirtier than any batt
le-field he had seen, harder to plate than any actual hardship moulded of mire and sweat and danger, it was an atmosphere wherein birth and marriage ah were loathsome, secret things.
He remembered one day in the subway when a delivery boy had brought in a great funeral wreath of fresh flowers, how the smell of it had suddenly cleared the air and given every one in the car a momentary glow.
“I detest poor people,”thought Amory suddenly. “I hate them for being poor. Poverty may have bee
iful once, but it’s rotten now. It’s the ugliest thing in the world. It’s essentially er to be corrupt and rich than it is to be i and poor.”He seemed to see again a figure whose significe had once impressed him—a well-dressed young man gazing from a club window on Fifth Avenue and saying something to his panion with a look of utter disgust. Probably, thought Amory, what he said was: “My God! Aren’t people horrible!”
Never before in his life had Amory sidered poor peop
le. He thought ically how pletely he was lag in all human sympathy. O.Henry had found in these people romance, pathos, love, hate—Amory saw only coarseness, physical filth, and stupidity. He made no self-accusations: never any more did he reproach himself for feelings that were natural and sincere. He accepted all his reas as a part of him, ungeable, unmoral. This problem of poverty transformed, magnified, attached to some grander, more digtitude might some day even b
e his problem; at present it roused only his profound distaste.
He walked over to Fifth Avenue, dodging the blind, black menabrellas, and standing in front of Delmonico’s hailed an auto-bus. Buttoning his coat closely around him he climbed to the roof, where he rode in solitary state through the thin, persistent rain, stung into alertness by the oisture perpetually reborn on his cheek. Somewhere in his mind a versation began, rather resumed its pla his attention. It was p
osed not of two voices, but of one, which acted alike as questioner and answerer:
Question.—Well—what’s the situation?
Ahat I have about twenty-four dollars to my name.
Q.—You have the Lake Geneva estate.
A.—But I io keep it.
Q.— you live?
A.—I ’t imagi being able to. People make money in books and I’ve found that I always do the things that people do in books. Really they are the only things I do.
Q.—Be definite.
A.—I don’t know what I’ll do—nor have I much curiosity.
To-morrow I’m going to leave New York food.
It’s a bad town unless you’re on top of it.
Q.—Do you want a lot of money?
A.—No. I am merely afraid of being poor.
Q.—Very afraid?
A.—Just passively afraid.
Q.—Where are you drifting?
A.—Don’t ask me!
Q.—Don’t you care?
A.—Rather. I don’t want to it moral suicide.
Q.—Have you no is left?
A.—None. I’ve no more virtue to lose. Just as a cooling pot gives off heat, so all through youth and adolesce we give off calories of virtue. That’s what’s ca
lled ingenuousness.
Q.—An iing idea.
A.—That’s why a “good man going wrong”attracts people. They stand around and literally warm themselves at the calories of virtue he gives off. Sarah makes an unsophisticated remark and the faces simper in delight—“How ihe poor child is!”They’re warming themselves at her virtue. But Sarah sees the simper and never makes that remark again. Only she feels a little colder after that.
Q.—All your calories gone?
A.—All of them. I’m beginning to warm mys
elf at other people’s virtue.
Q.—Are you corrupt?
A.—I think so. I’m not sure. I’m not sure about good and evil at all any more.
Q.—Is that a bad sign in itself?
A.—Not necessarily.
Q.—What would be the test of corruption?
A.—Being really insincere—calling myself “not such a bad fellow,”thinking I regretted my lost youth when I only envy the delights of losing it. Youth is like having a big plate of dy. Sealists think they want to be in the pure, simple state they were in before they ate
the dy. They don’t. They just want the fun of eating it all ain. The matro want to repeat her girlhood—she wants to repeat her honeymoon. I don’t want to repeat my innoce. I want the pleasure of losing it again.
Q.—Where are you drifting?
This dialogue merged grotesquely into his mind’s most familiar state—a grotesque blending of desires, worries, exterior impressions and physical reas.
One Hundred and Twenty-seventh Street—or One Hundred and Thirty-seventh Street.... Two
and three look alike—no, not much. Seat damp.... are clothes abs wetness from seat, or seat abs dryness from clothes?.... Sitting o substance gave appendicitis, sy Parker’s mother said. Well, he’d had it—I’ll sue the steamboat pany, Beatrice said, and my uncle has a quarter i—did Beatrice go to heaven?.... probably not—He represented Beatrice’s immortality, also love-affairs of numerous dead men who surely had hought of him.... if it wasn’t appendicitis,
influenza maybe. What?One Hundred and Tweh Street?That must have been One Hundred and Twelfth back there. Owo instead of Owo Seven. Rosalind not like Beatrice, Eleanor like Beatrice, only wilder and brainier. Apartments along here expensive—probably hundred and fifty a month—maybe two hundred. Uncle had only paid hundred a month for whole great big house in Minneapolis. Questiohe stairs on the left ht as you came in?Anyway, in 12 Uhey were straight bad t
o the left. What a dirty river—want to go down there and see if it’s dirty—French rivers all brown or black, so were Southern rivers. Twenty-four dollars meant four hundred ay doughnuts. He could live on it three months and sleep in the park. Wonder where Jill was—Jill Bayne, Fayne, Sayne—what the devil—neck hurts, darned unfortable seat. No desire to sleep with Jill, what could Alec see in her?Alec had a coarse taste in women. Own taste the best; Isabelle, Clara, Rosalind, Eleanor, w
ere all-Ameri. Eleanor would pitch, probably southpaw. Rosalind was outfield, wonderful hitter, Clara first base, maybe. Wonder what Humbird’s body looked like now. If he himself hadn’t been bayo instructor he’d have gone up to lihree months sooner, probably been killed. Where’s the darned bell—
The street numbers of Riverside Drive were obscured by the mist and dripping trees from anything but the swiftest scrutiny, but Amory had finally caught sight of one—One Hundred and Twenty-seven
th Street. He got off and with no distinct destination followed a winding, desding sidewalk and came out fag the river, in particular a long pier and a partitioned litter of shipyards for miniature craft: small launches, oes, rowboats, and catboats. He turned northward and followed the shore, jumped a small wire fend found himself in a great disorderly yard adjoining a dock. The hulls of many boats in various stages of repair were around him; he smelled sawdust and paint and the sc
arcely distinguishable fiat odor of the Hudson. A man approached through the heavy gloom.
“Hello,”said Amory.
“Got a pass?”
“No. Is this private?”
“This is the Hudson River Sp and Yacht Club.”
“Oh! I didn’t know. I’m just resting.”
“Well—”began the man dubiously.
“I’ll go if you wao.”
The man made non-ittal noises in his throat and passed on. Amory seated himself on aurned boat and leaned forward thoughtfully until his rested in his hand.
“Misfortune is liable to make me a da
mn bad man,”he said slowly.
*****
In the Drooping Hours
While the rain drizzled on Amory looked futilely back at the stream of his life, all its glitterings and dirty shallows. To begin with, he was still afraid—not physically afraid any more, but afraid of people and prejudid misery and monotony. Yet, deep in his bitter heart, he wondered if he was after all worse than this man or the . He khat he could sophisticate himself finally into saying that his own weakness was just the resul
t of circumstances and enviro; that often when he raged at himself as aist something would whisper ingratiatingly: “No. Genius!”That was one maion of fear, that voice which whispered that he could not be both great and good, that genius was the exabination of those inexplicable grooves and twists in his mind, that any discipline would curb it to mediocrity. Probably more than any crete vice or failing Amory despised his own personality—he loathed knowing that to-morro
w and the thousand days after he would swell pompously at a pliment and sulk at an ill word like a third-rate musi or a first-class actor. He was ashamed of the fact that very simple and ho people usually distrusted him; that he had been cruel, often, to those who had sunk their personalities in him—several girls, and a man here and there through college, that he had been an evil influen; people who had followed him here and there into mental adventures from which he alone reboun
ded unscathed.
Usually, on nights like this, for there had been many lately, he could escape from this ing introspe by thinking of children and the infinite possibilities of children—he leaned and listened and he heard a startled baby awake in a house across the street and lend a tiny whimper to the still night. Quick as a flash he turned away, w with a touch of panic whether something in the brooding despair of his mood had made a darkness in its tiny soul. He shivered. What i
f some day the balance was overturned, and he became a thing that frightened children and crept into rooms in the dark, approached dim union with those phantoms who whispered shadowy secrets to the mad of that dark ti upon the moon....
Amory smiled a bit.
“You’re too much ed up in yourself,”he heard some one say. And again—
“Get out and do some real work—”
“Stop w—”
He fancied a possible future ent of his own.
“Yes—I erhaps aist in youth, but I soon found it made
me morbid to think too much about myself.”
Suddenly he felt an overwhelming desire to let himself go to the devil—not to go violently as a gentleman should, but to sink safely and sensuously out of sight. He pictured himself in an adobe house in Mexico, half-reing on a rug-covered couch, his slender, artistigers closed on a cigarette while he listeo guitars strumming melancholy uoo an age-old dirge of Castile and an olive-skinned, carmine-lipped girl caressed his hair. Her
e he might live a straany, delivered frht and wrong and from the hound of heaven and from every God (except the exotic Mexi one who retty slack himself and rather addicted to Oriental sts)—delivered from success and hope and poverty into that long chute of indulgence which led, after all, only to the artificial lake of death.
There were so many places where one might deteriorate pleasantly: Port Said, Shanghai, parts of Turkestan, stantihe South Seas—all lands o
f sad, haunting musid many odors, where lust could be a mode and expression of life, where the shades of night skies and sus would seem to reflely moods of passion: the colors of lips and poppies.
*****
Still Weeding
Once he had been miraculously able to st evil as a horse detects a broken bridge at night, but the man with the queer feet in Phoebe’s room had dimio the aura over Jill. His instinct perceived the fetidness of poverty, but no longer ferreted out the deeper evils
in pride and sensuality.
There were no more wise men; there were no more heroes; Burne Holiday was sunk from sight as though he had never lived; Monsignor was dead. Amory had grown up to a thousand books, a thousand lies; he had listened eagerly to people who preteo know, who knew nothing. The mystical reveries of saints that had once filled him with awe iill hours of night, now vaguely repelled him. The Byrons and Brookes who had defied life from mountain tops were in the end but
flaneurs and poseurs, at best mistaking the shadow of ce for the substance of wisdom. The pageantry of his disillusion took shape in a world-old procession of Prophets, Athenians, Martyrs, Saints, Stists, Don Juans, Jesuits, Puritans, Fausts, Poets, Pacifists; like ed alumni at a college reunioreamed before him as their dreams, personalities, and creeds had in turn thrown colored lights on his soul; each had tried to express the glory of life and the tremendous signifi
an; each had boasted of synizing what had gone before into his own rickety generalities; each had depended after all o stage and the vention of the theatre, which is that man in his hunger for faith will feed his mind with the and most ve food.
Women—of whom he had expected so much; whose beauty he had hoped to transmute into modes of art; whose unfathomable instincts, marvellously i and inarticulate, he had thought to perpetuate in terms of experi
ence—had beerely secrations to their own posterity. Isabelle, Clara, Rosalind, Eleanor, were all removed by their very beauty, around which men had swarmed, from the possibility of tributing anything but a sick heart and a page of puzzled words to write.
Amory based his loss of faith in help from others on several sweeping syllogisms. Grahat his geion, however bruised and decimated from this Victorian war, were the heirs ress. Waving aside petty differences of clu