Raintree County (119 page)

The hood of the carriage was thrown back. A river of cool air streaked with flame flowed over them.

They talked. Miss Laura Golden undertook to educate Mr. Shawnessy into certain ways of the City. She told him about the
haut monde
in which she moved, of balls, pomps, mad, bad parties, of roistering men and easy-virtued girls.

—You must have money, dear, she said in a grave, sweet way that she had assumed during this part of their conversation. Only money means anything in the City. Neither beauty nor intelligence dominates society. Most women of beauty are bought and sold like
objets d'art.
If I have managed to escape all that, it's only because I have money. Fabulously wealthy men are always leaving their cards and sending flowers and trying to buy the favors of my actresses—not to say myself. Of course, your friend Mr. Cassius Carney would give a hundred thousand dollars to be permitted to enter my bedroom door.

She looked directly at John Shawnessy.

—You didn't believe that, did you,
dear?
she said.

—I can't imagine any better way he could invest his money, dear, John Shawnessy came back gallantly.

—Well, it's true, dear, she said. He offered me that much as flatly as you or I would bid on some railroad stock. Poor man, he's asking for a full share of Unpacific Union. Of course he's quite mad about me. Do you think I ought to take his money?

—My dear Laura, your bedroom transactions are strictly your own affair.

She laughed.

—Aren't you tart! she said. I've been shocking you. You find me very, very shocking, don't you, dear?

—I find you very, very Centennial, Laura.

At the Centennial Ball that night in one of Philadelphia's biggest hotels, John Shawnessy and Laura Golden and a few hundred other celebrants danced away the declining hours of the first day of America's second century. There was a good deal of champagne flowing, and the Perfessor and Phoebe left the party early. Around midnight, Mr. Cassius Carney turned up and absentmindedly revolved twice around the floor with Miss Laura Golden and then disappeared as abruptly as he came, consulting a watch. Mr. John Shawnessy escorted Miss Laura Golden to the door of her room. There was a languid condescension in her manner.

—Don't worry, dear, she said. Mr. Stiles and I will take good care of you in the City. You come around and see me at the theatre and I'll introduce you to some little actresses.

—Thank you so much, dear.

—And when you get a hundred thousand dollars, you can come and see
me
at my place,
dear.

In the halflight of the hall, she leaned back against the door, cruelly conscious of her beauty. She seemed indeed to be couched like a great cat on beautifully muscled haunches. He was angry with her for this cynical, unmeant invitation.

—My dear Miss Golden, he said, not every man is trying to find his way into your famous bedroom.

—Famous? she said, bending her face proudly to one side on the slender neck. Pray—why famous?

Just then she gave a little shriek of surprise as the door opened and she almost fell inside. Professor Jerusalem Webster Stiles, indifferently put together, appeared with his arm around Phoebe.

—I trust you all perceive, he said, the object which I hold in my hand.

He disappeared in the corridor.

—I suppose Mr. Stiles has been telling stories about me, she said. Don't believe anything he says. I'm a very ladylike unlady. Good night, Johnny
dear.

She had said his name like a caress from deep in her throat, but the lovely disdainful mouth gave the last word a tinge of mockery all the same.

—Good night, Laura dear.

—You know, I love the way you say that, she said, stepping back out unexpectedly. You give it such a courteous sound in your precious Hoosier accent. Say it again,
dear.

—Laura dear.

As he said her name the second time, she watched his mouth, much amused, moving her lips with his. Tilting her chin, half-shutting her eyes, tipping her head sideways, she invited him to kiss her good night. Slowly, he approached the painted mouth in the moonpale, powdered face and barely touched its sultry outline with his lips, thinking of the scar. Even then, he was surprised by the softness and warmth of the mouth. But without responding, it withdrew into the darkness of the room, and silently the door closed. It had been a very imperfect kiss.

Lying in his lonely bed, John Shawnessy totted up the scattered statistics of the Centennial Day. A muggy dawn was breaking. The Republic had completed its first century of progress toward the goal of Social and Moral Perfection envisaged by her founders.

As for him, he had gone to the Centennial Exhibition, but he had not seen the most exciting of the Centennial Exhibits. He had, however, touched its mystery, couched and strange, a mystery of lives and years. He tried to imagine the face of a girl named Daphne Fountain, perhaps unscarred, as it might have been on that far-off April night when it waited for him in the wings of a theatre in the City of Washington, but instead there came to him the memory of another face in the wings of a theatre, the face of a girl who stood against unused sceneshifts of woodland and river scenery in an old Opera House.

I came to the City, a vagrant day,

In the bloom of my blithesome youth,

And I sought in the City great and gray

The beautiful bird of Truth.

I sought her along the wide, wide streets,

The glimmering parks and lawns,

Through all of the City's dim retreats

And under its lonely dawns.

Then he tried to remember Miss Laura Golden's face, as he had just seen it, but he couldn't do it. It had become as featureless as a sensual summer moon, nodding languidly upon his fevered meditations—a Centennial Summer moon.

So then it was a hundred years since America had begun. Yes, he would start all over and discover America again.

America was a city by a river, a city of gloomily eclectic buildings, confused unhappy domes and spires of buildings that were trying to be the most beautiful buildings that ever were but couldn't be because they hadn't any souls. America was faces in the Avenue of the Republic, eager, excited faces with mobile eyes. America was the place where all the world sent its third-rate art and gaudiest claptrap and where it was all piled up together and then became something hushed, exciting, wonderful because it was in America.

America was cities—cities that changed and faded overnight, pushed down and trampled under by other cities that had the same names, preposterous and arrogant cities, shooting from the fecund soil like the most fulsome flowers the world had ever seen. America was hotels filled with Centennial thousands; it was the saturnalia of the night-time city, the bodies of persuaded blondes bounding on beds with Centennial abandon. America was a thin bright rocket rising in the purple sky, a streak of force that hadn't yet arrived at its gentle, gradual curve and handsome fall. It was the biggest rocket of them all, obedient to the pressure in its tail. And it was much desire, young dreams, unshakable conviction, clenched hands in darkness beating upon pillows and reaching out for other hands and finding—

America was John Wickliff Shawnessy, and how he left Raintree County, and in the summer of the Republic's rededication to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, began to seek his fortune in the City of New York, where he was confident there awaited him the greatness and wisdom he had long been seeking, the consummation of a magic poem, and the vouchsafing of a love that was wholly of the City. But whether it would be like the City, sensual and self-indulgent,

OR, LIKE THE
C
lTY, PASSIONATE AND REAL,
HE HAD YET TO DISCOVER
IN

—L
ITTLE
O
LD
N
EW
Y
ORK
, the Perfessor was saying, has changed a lot since you were there in 76, John. You'd feel like Rip Van Winkle if you came back today.

—‘H
OT BOX ON
E
ASTBOUND
,' the telegraph key was clicking. D
ELAY FEW MORE MINUTES AT
R
OIVILLE.

—John, we stand on the threshold of immense changes, the Perfessor went on, gesticulating in his best classroom manner. America—our old America—is gone. The War killed it. The City killed it. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution never foresaw the Modern City. If Tom Jefferson were to come back today and walk through the sunlight and shadow of New York, he'd say, Good God, what's happened to the Republic?

Mr. Shawnessy got up and nervously smoothed his hair in the glass of the station window. He sat down and listened for the train.

—When you stand on a high roof, the Perfessor was saying, and look down at the canyons of one of our great modern cities, how can you resist the impression that you are looking into the welter and stench of the Great Swamp itself! The people look like frantic bugs going in and out of holes, the sharp angles of the City are softened, whole streets sink back into shadow while others shimmer with a hot radiance. Listen to the dungbed of it seething with a dirtiness called human life! Can you resist the feeling that this is the place where all souls are extinguished? Can any wisdom or love or beauty come out of the City?

Mr. Shawnessy felt an old feeling of revulsion mixed with a taste of bitter passion.

I came to the City a vagrant day in the bloom of my blithesome youth. And I sought in the City what all men seek, and I was lost in the City like one who wandered in a dream.

—Here in the City, the Perfessor was saying, Raintree County is utterly destroyed. The City destroys all the ancient values, prides, loyalties, convictions. The City has no everlasting values, being itself the creature of endless change.

—‘S
HE'S LEAVING
R
OIVILLE
,' the telegraph key was saying.

And I sought in the City, great and gray, the beautiful bird of truth. I sought her among the wide, wide streets, the glimmering parks and lawns, through all of the City's vague retreats, and under her lonely, under her lonely, under her lonely dawns.

—The supreme irony of it all, the Perfessor was saying, is that the creators of the Machine, believing it the fairest flower of human progress, have really made it the noxious weed that chokes out everything else and finally begins to choke itself out of room and means of sustenance. Thus with the Machine, his last brilliant contrivance, the Heir of all the Ages succeeds in hurling himself back into the Swamp and destroys all the beautiful, insubstantial dreams that made him think he had a home forever on this earth.

Listen! I hear a voice of prophecy in Raintree County. I hear the thunder of the hurrying wheels. Broad roads are built through Raintree County, and the ancient boundaries will dissolve. There is a banner of progress fast and far across the land. And who shall be the Hero of the County and who shall have the golden fruit?

—Gangway for the new man, the new American, John! the Perfessor was saying. You and I are nothing to him. He has dispensed with conscience and morality, those articles of excess baggage on the road to fame and riches. Gangway for Progress and Unlimited Expansion.

—Gangway for the Eastbound Express! Mr. Shawnessy said. Here it comes!

Just then the train broke small and far and fast from the realm of faith into the realm of fact. The black shape of it had been preceded by the sound of its panting breath. And now the whistle wailed.

And many a year I spent at last in the City's swallowing void, till I thought that my youthful dream was past and its delicate, delicate, delicate, delicate, delicate form destroyed. Till I thought . . . till I thought . . . till I thought

in the Centennial Summer, how he lived in the City from a summer to a summer, how he became lost in the City like one wandering in a dream.

He came to the City because he was always meant to come. It was as if a voice had spoken from the sky above his home in Raintree County, saying:

My child, you shall go to the City, because without the City you are incomplete. You shall go to the City and be sad, because you haven't yet been sad enough. You shall go to the City and know a love unlike any other, because you haven't yet loved enough. You shall go to the City, and the City will drench you in its liquorcolored lights, ravish you with its enormous beauty, wound you with its hard surfaces and pointed towers, and reject you from its million doors. Then perhaps some day if you are lucky, having tasted its red forbidden fruit, you will come back from the City to your home again.

What was the City to John Shawnessy?

The City was a street, any street taken at random in summer between the dense fronts of the buildings or valleying to distant parks. It was the dense tide of the faces in the street. For like a tide in those gilded years, the immigrant faces surged through the channels of the City. Surflike, they beat on the island stillness of the brownstone mansions of the rich in parklike yards.

The City was the meeting of the trains in marshalling yards, the changing of the cars, incessant arrivals and departures.

Often in his time within the City, the young man from Raintree County would go down and stand in one of the terminals and watch the ventricles expanding and contracting, the pale tide of the faces streaming in and out. Why did they come, the people of the City, the eager self-appointed heroes, the bewildered children of humanity? He saw their faces looking from the windows of the hollow, gaslit
cars, their million faces, tender, delicate, obtuse, deformed, eager, illusioned, cynical, depraved, desirous, a hundred thousand vagrant seeds blown down into this heaving swamp, the City. What other faces did they meet while they swam on the blind nocturnal tides? What faces yet unborn were imminent from faces that he saw? What millions of Americans were being spawned from the muck of seeding faces that lost themselves in chambers of the City? Good-by, they said, and waving left the City, or descending from the cars at evening rushed into waiting arms, were carried by cabs, walked with tired eyes into the shells of old hotels. Good-by! Hello! Hail and Farewell! The City was the place of all departure and arrival, meeting and farewell.