OF TIME AND THE RIVER. Thomas Wolfe
a pair of feet like that?”
George Pentland looked at the boy’s big feet for a moment, shaking his head slowly in much wonderment.
“Hell, no!” he said at length. “He’d never get off the ground! . . . But if you cut ’em off,” he said, “he’d go right up like a balloon, wouldn’t he? Haw! Haw! Haw! Haw!” The great guffaw burst from him, and grinning with his solid teeth, he dug blindly at his thigh.
“Hi, hi, hi, hi, hi,” the sister jeered, seeing the boy’s flushed and angry face and prodding him derisively in the ribs —“This is our Harvard boy! k, k, k, k!”
“Don’t let ’em kid you, son,” said George now in an amiable and friendly manner. “Good luck to you! Give ’em hell when you get up there! . . . You’re the only one of us who ever had guts enough to go through college, and we’re proud of you! . . . Tell Uncle Bascom and Aunt Louise and all the rest of ’em hello for me when you get to Boston. . . . And remember me to your father and Luke when you get to Baltimore. . . . Good-bye, Gene — I’ve got to leave you now. Good luck, son,” and with a friendly grip of his powerful hand he turned to go. “You folks come over sometime — all of you,” he said in parting. “We’d like to see you.” And he went away.
At this moment, all up and down the platform, people had turned to listen to the deep excited voice of a young man who was saying in a staccato tone of astounded discovery:
“You DON’T mean it! . . . You SWEAR she did! . . . And YOU were there and saw it with your OWN eyes! . . . Well, if that don’t beat all I ever heard of! . . . I’ll be DAMNED!” after which ejaculation, with an astounded falsetto laugh, he looked about him in an abstracted and unseeing manner, thrust one hand quickly and nervously into his trousers pocket in such a way that his fine brown coat came back, and the large diamond-shaped pin of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity was revealed, and at the same time passing one thin nervous hand repeatedly over the lank brown hair that covered his small and well-shaped head, and still muttering in tones of stupefied disbelief —“Lord! Lord! . . . What do you know about that?” suddenly espied the woman and her two children at the other end of the platform, and without a moment’s pause, turned on his heel, and walked towards them, at the same time muttering to his astonished friends:
“Wait a minute! . . . Some one over here I’ve got to speak to! . . . Back in a minute!”
He approached the mother and her children rapidly, at his stiff, prim and somewhat lunging stride, his thin face fixed eagerly upon them, bearing towards them with a driving intensity of purpose as if the whole interest and energy of his life were focussed on them, as if some matter of the most vital consequence depended on his reaching them as soon as possible. Arrived, he immediately began to address the other youth without a word of greeting or explanation, bursting out with the sudden fragmentary explosiveness that was part of him:
“Are you taking this train, too? . . . Are you going today? . . . Well, what did you decide to do?” he demanded mysteriously in an accusing and challenging fashion. “Have you made up your mind yet? . . . Pett Barnes says you’ve decided on Harvard. Is that it?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Lord, Lord!” said the youth, laughing his falsetto laugh again. “I don’t see how you can! . . . You’d better come on with me. . . . What ever got into your head to do a thing like that?” he said in a challenging tone. “Why do you want to go to a place like that?”
“Hah? What say?” The mother who had been looking from one to the other of the two boys with the quick and startled attentiveness of an animal, now broke in:
“You know each other. . . . Hah? . . . You’re taking this train, too, you say?” she said sharply.
“Ah-hah-hah!” the young man laughed abruptly, nervously; grinned, made a quick stiff little bow, and said with nervous engaging respectfulness: “Yes, Ma’am! . . . Ah-hah-hah! . . . How d’ye do? . . . How d’ye do, Mrs. Gant?” He shook hands with her quickly, still laughing his broken and nervous “ah-hah-hah”—“How d’ye do?” he said, grinning nervously at the younger woman and at Barton. “Ah-hah-hah. How d’ye do?”
The older woman still holding his hand in her rough worn clasp looked up at him a moment calmly, her lips puckered in tranquil meditation:
“Now,” she said quietly, in the tone of a person who refuses to admit failure, “I know you. I know your face. Just give me a moment and I’ll call you by your name.”
The young man grinned quickly, nervously, and then said respectfully in his staccato speech:
“Yes, Ma’am. . . . Ah-hah-hah. . . . Robert Weaver.”
“AH-H, that’s SO!” she cried, and shook his hands with sudden warmth. “You’re Robert Weaver’s boy, of course.”
“Ah-hah-hah!” said Robert, with his quick nervous laugh. “Yes, Ma’am. . . . That’s right. . . . Ah-hah-hah. . . . Gene and I went to school together. We were in the same class at the University.”
“Why, of course!” she cried in a tone of complete enlightenment, and then went on in a rather vexed manner, “I’ll VOW! I knew you all along! I knew that I’d seen you just as soon as I saw your face! Your name just slipped my mind a moment — and then, of course, it all flashed over me. . . . You’re Robert Weaver’s boy! . . . And you ARE,” she still held his hand in her strong, motherly and friendly clasp, and looking at him with a little sly smile hovering about the corners of her mouth, she was silent a moment, regarding him quizzically —“now, boy,” she said quietly, “you may think I’ve got a pretty poor memory for names and faces — but I want to tell you something that may surprise you. . . . I know more about you than you think I do. Now,” she said, “I’m going to tell you something and you can tell me if I’m right.”
“Ah-hah-hah!” said Robert respectfully. “Yes, Ma’am.”
“You were born,” she went on slowly and deliberately, “on September 2nd, 1898, and you are just two years and one month and one day older than this boy here —” she nodded to her own son. “Now you can tell me if I’m right or wrong.”
“Ah-hah-hah!” said Robert. “Yes, Ma’am. . . . That’s right. . . . You’re absolutely right,” he cried, and then in an astounded and admiring tone, he said: “Well, I’ll declare. . . . If that don’t beat all! . . . How on earth did you ever remember it!” he cried in an astonished tone that obviously was very gratifying to her vanity.
“Well, now, I’ll tell you,” she said with a little complacent smile —“I’ll tell you how I KNOW. . . . I remember the day you were born, boy — because it was on that very day that one of my own children — my son, Luke — was allowed to get up out of bed after havin’ typhoid fever. . . . That very day, sir, when Mr. Gant came home to dinner, he said —‘Well, I was just talking to Robert Weaver on the street and everything’s all right. His wife gave birth to a baby boy this morning and he says she’s out of danger.’ And I know I said to him, ‘Well, then, it’s been a lucky day for both of us. McGuire was here this morning and he said Luke is now well enough to be up and about. He’s out of danger.’— And I reckon,” she went on quietly, “that’s why the date made such an impression on me — of course, Luke had been awfully sick,” she said gravely, and shook her head, “we thought he was goin’ to die more than once — so when the doctor came and told me he was out of danger — well, it was a day of rejoicin’ for me, sure enough. But that’s how I know — September 2nd, 1898 — that’s when it was, all right, the very day when you were born.”
“Ah-hah-hah!” said Robert. “That is certainly right. . . . Well, if that don’t beat all!” he cried with his astounded and engaging air of surprise. “The most remarkable thing I ever heard of!” he said solemnly.
“So the next time you see your father,” the woman said, with the tranquil satisfaction of omniscience, “you tell him that you met Eliza Pentland — he’ll know who I am, boy — I can assure you — for