As Eugene watched, the old fatality of place returned.
Each day, he thought, we pass the spot where some day we must die; or shall I, too, ride dead to some mean building yet unknown?
Shall this bright clay, the hill-bound, die in lodgings yet unbuilt?
Shall these eyes, drenched with visions yet unseen, stored with the viscous and interminable seas at dawn, with the sad comfort of unfulfilled Arcadias, seal up their cold dead dreams upon a tick, as this, in time, in some hot village of the plains?
He caught and fixed the instant.
A telegraph messenger wheeled vigorously in from the avenue with pumping feet, curved widely into the alley at his right, jerking his wheel up sharply as he took the curb and coasted down to the delivery boy’s entrance.
And post o’er land and ocean without rest.
Milton, thou shouldst be living at this hour.
Descending the dark stairs of the Medical Building slowly, Mrs. Thomas Hewitt, the comely wife of the prominent attorney (of Arthur, Hewitt, and Grey), turned out into the light, and advanced slowly toward the avenue.
She was greeted with flourishing gestures of the hat by Henry T.
Merriman (Merriman and Merriman), and Judge Robert C.
Allan, professional colleagues of her husband.
She smiled and shot each quickly with a glance.
Pleasant is this flesh.
When she had passed they looked after her a moment.
Then they continued their discussion of the courts.
On the third floor of the First National Bank building on the right hand corner, Fergus Paston, fifty-six, a thin lecherous mouth between iron-gray dundrearies, leaned his cocked leg upon his open window, and followed the movements of Miss Bernie Powers, twenty-two, crossing the street.
Even in our ashes live their wonted fires.
On the opposite corner, Mrs. Roland Rawls, whose husband was manager of the Peerless Pulp Company (Plant No.
3), and whose father owned it, emerged from the rich seclusion of Arthur N.
Wright, jeweller.
She clasped her silver mesh-bag and stepped into her attendant Packard.
She was a tall black-haired woman of thirty-three with a good figure: her face was dull, flat, and Mid-western.
“She’s the one with the money,” said George Graves.
“He hasn’t a damn thing.
It’s all in her name.
She wants to be an opera singer.”
“Can she sing?”
“Not worth a damn,” said George Graves.
“I’ve heard her.
There’s your chance, ‘Gene.
She’s got a daughter about your age.”
“What does she do?” said Eugene.
“She wants to be an actress,” said George Graves, laughing throatily.
“You have to work too damn hard for your money,” said Eugene.
They had reached the corner by the Bank, and now halted, indecisively, looking up the cool gulch of afternoon.
The street buzzed with a light gay swarm of idlers: the faces of the virgins bloomed in and out like petals on a bough.
Advancing upon him, an inch to the second, Eugene saw, ten feet away, the heavy paralyzed body of old Mr. Avery. He was a very great scholar, stone-deaf, and seventy-eight years old.
He lived alone in a room above the Public Library.
He had neither friends nor connections.
He was a myth.
“Oh, my God!” said Eugene.
“Here he comes!”
It was too late for escape.
Gasping a welcome, Mr. Avery bore down on him, with a violent shuffle of his feet and a palsied tattoo of his heavy stick which brought him over the intervening three yards in forty seconds.
“Well, young fellow,” he panted, “how’s Latin?”
“Fine,” Eugene screamed into his pink ear.
“Poeta nascitur, non fit,” said Mr. Avery, and went off into a silent wheeze of laughter which brought on a fit of coughing strangulation.
His eyes bulged, his tender pink skin grew crimson, he roared his terror out in a phlegmy rattle, while his goose-white hand trembled frantically for his handkerchief.
A crowd gathered.