Why should I be there?
Can they not die alone?
Alone!
O God, is there no freedom on this earth?
With quick horror, he saw that such freedom lay a weary world away, and could be bought by such enduring courage as few men have.
He stayed in Richmond several days, living sumptuously in the splendid hotel, eating from silver dishes in the grill, and roaming pleasantly through the wide streets of the romantic old town, to which he had come once as a Freshman at Thanksgiving, when the university’s team had played Virginia there.
He spent three days trying to seduce a waitress in an ice-cream and candy-store: he lured her finally to a curtained booth in a chop-suey restaurant, only to have his efforts fail when the elaborate meal he had arranged for with the Chinaman aroused her distaste because it had onions in it.
Before he went home he wrote an enormous letter to Laura James at Norfolk, a pitiable and boasting letter which rose at its end to an insane crow:
“I was there all summer and I never looked you up.
You were not decent enough to answer my letters; I saw no reason why I should bother with you any more.
Besides, the world is full of women; I got my share and more this summer.”
He mailed the letter, with a sense of malevolent triumph.
But the moment the iron lid of the box clanged over it, his face was contorted by shame and remorse: he lay awake, writhing as he recalled the schoolboy folly of it.
She had beaten him again.
34
Eugene returned to Altamont two weeks before the term began at Pulpit Hill.
The town and the nation seethed in the yeasty ferment of war.
The country was turning into one huge camp.
The colleges and universities were being converted into training-camps for officers.
Every one was “doing his bit.”
It had been a poor season for tourists.
Eugene found Dixieland almost deserted, save for a glum handful of regular or semi-regular guests.
Mrs. Pert was there, sweet, gentle, a trifle more fuzzy than usual.
Miss Newton, a wrenny and neurotic old maid, with asthma, who had gradually become Eliza’s unofficial assistant in the management of the house, was there.
Miss Malone, the gaunt drug-eater with the loose gray lips, was there.
Fowler, a civil engineer with blond hair and a red face, who came and departed quietly, leaving a sodden stench of corn-whiskey in his wake, was there.
Gant, who had now moved definitely from the house on Woodson Street, which he had rented, to a big back room at Eliza’s, was there — a little more waxen, a little more petulant, a little feebler than he had been before.
And Ben was there.
He had been home for a week or two when Eugene arrived.
He had been rejected again by both army and navy examining boards, he had been rejected as unfit in the draft; he had left his work suddenly in the tobacco town and come quietly and sullenly home.
He was thinner and more like old ivory than ever.
He prowled softly about the house, smoking innumerable cigarettes, cursing in brief snarling fury, touched with despair and futility.
His old surly scowl was gone, his old angry mutter; his soft contemptuous laugh, touched with so much hidden tenderness, had given way to a contained but savage madness.
During the brief two weeks that Eugene remained at home before departing again for Pulpit Hill, he shared with Ben a little room and sleeping-porch upstairs.
And the quiet one talked — talked himself from a low fierce mutter into a howling anathema of bitterness and hate that carried his voice, high and passionate, across all the sleeping world of night and rustling autumn.
“What have you been doing to yourself, you little fool?” he began, looking at the boy’s starved ribs.
“You look like a scarecrow.”
“I’m all right,” said Eugene.
“I wasn’t eating for a while.
But I didn’t write them,” he added proudly.
“They thought I couldn’t hold out by myself.
But I did.
I didn’t ask for help.
And I came home with my own money.
See?”
He thrust his hand into his pocket and pulled out his soiled roll of banknotes, boastfully displaying it.
“Who wants to see your lousy little money?” Ben yelled furiously.
“Fool.
You come back, looking like a dead man, as if you’d done something to be proud of.
What’ve you done?