How long he sat there in this way he did not know, for time would pass in a hideous smear of brownish grey while all things reeled, mixed, and were fused drunkenly and shapelessly around him — and then for a moment time would burn in his mind like a small hard light of brilliant colour, and he would see everything with an exact and blazing vividness and hear the voices of his comrades in their cells.
The cell Eugene sat in was a little cubicle of space, perhaps eight feet deep and four or five feet wide. Its only furnishings were a black iron cot or bed which projected from the wall and could be turned up or out, and which had no springs or mattress on it, and a w.c. of dirty white enamel, which had no seat, and was broken and would not flush so that it had run over and spilled out upon the cement floor. The walls and ceilings of the cell were made of some hard slate-like substance of black-grey, scrawled with the familiar obscenities and pictures of its former occupants. Because of these solid walls, each cell was cut off from its neighbours and for this reason he could not see Emmet Blake, who had the cell next to him, nor Robert, who had the cell on the other side of Emmet, but now, as his mind swam from the stupor of its drunkenness, he could hear their voices and began to listen to their conversation.
Both were still quite drunk, and for a while they continued a kind of mournful drunken chant, each responding to the other with a repetition of his own misfortune.
“Yes, sir,” Robert would say, heaving a sigh and speaking in a hoarse, mournfully drunken voice, “this is certainly a hell of a way to treat a man who’s just been admitted to the bar six weeks ago! A hell of a thing!” he said.
And Blake would answer:
“Yes, sir! And I’ll tell YOU what IS a hell of a thing! This is a hell of a way to treat George Blake’s nephew! A hell of a way!” he said. “If my uncle knew about this he’d come down here and tear their damned little jail to pieces! He’d RUIN their town!” he cried. “Yes, sir! He’d wash ’em out and send ’em to the cleaners! Why!” Blake now said in a tone of drunken boastfulness, “there are 70,000 Blake dealers in the United States ALONE— and if they knew that I was here,” he said, “every damned one of them would be on his way here in five minutes to get us out!”
“Lord! Lord!” said Robert, in a kind of mournful brooding ululation, as if he had not heard Blake’s words at all. “Who’d have thought it? A young attorney just admitted to the bar six weeks ago and here he is in jail! The damnedest thing I ever heard of!” he declared.
“Yes, sir,” Blake declared, not by way of response, but with the same self-centred concentration on the indignity which had been visited on him. “If you told any Blake dealer in the country that George Blake’s nephew was down here in the Blackstone jail, he wouldn’t believe you. Uncle George will carry this thing to the Supreme Court when we get out,” he said. “It is certainly a hell of a thing to happen to George Blake’s nephew!”
“Yes, sir,” Robert answered, “a hell of a thing to happen is RIGHT— and here I’ve only had my licence to practise for six weeks. Why, it’s awful!” he said solemnly.
“Robert!” Blake cried suddenly, getting to his feet. —“Do you guess these damned Blackstone cops know who I am? Do you guess they realize they’ve got George Blake’s nephew here?” Here he went to the door of his cell, rattled it violently, and yelled: “Hey — y! I’m George Blake’s nephew! Do you know you’ve got George Blake’s nephew back here? Come and let me out!” he shouted. No one answered.
Then they would be silent for a while, and mournful, brooding drunken time would pass around them.
Then Blake would say:
“Robert?”
“What do you want?” said Robert mournfully.
“What time is it?”
“Hell, how do I know what time it is?” said Robert in a sullen and protesting tone. “You know they took my watch.” Then there would be silence for a moment more.
“Emmet?” Robert would then say.
“All right. What is it?”
“Did they take your watch, too?”
“Yes!” Blake shouted suddenly in an angry and excited tone. “And that was an eighteen carat, thirty-two jewel platinum-case watch that Uncle George bought for me in Switzerland. That watch is worth $225 and I’d better get it back when I get out of here!” he shouted rattling the door. “Do you hear? If those sons of bitches try to steal my watch, my Uncle George will put ’em ALL in jail! I want it back!” he shouted.
No one answered.
Then they were silent for another spell of time, and finally Robert said in a hoarse, brooding, and mournful tone:
“Eugene?”
“Well.”
“Are you there?”
“Where the hell do you think I am?” Eugene said bitterly. “You don’t see any holes in this place you can crawl out of, do you?”
Robert laughed his hoarse falsetto laugh, and then said with a kind of brooding wonder:
“Lord! Lord! Who’d have thought it? Who’d ever have thought Eugene and I would get put in jail together here in Blackstone, South Carolina. Here I am just out of Yale and admitted to the bar six weeks ago and you — boy!” he laughed suddenly his annoying falsetto laugh, and concluded —“Just got back from three years at Harvard and here you are in jail already! Lord! Lord! What are you going to tell your mother when she sees you? What’s she going to say when you tell her you’ve been in jail?”
“Oh, I don’t know!” the other said angrily. “Shut up!”
Robert laughed his annoying falsetto laugh again, and said:
“Boy! I’d hate to have to face her! I’m glad I’m not in YOUR shoes!”
“Not in MY shoes!” the other shouted in an exasperated tone. “You damned fool, you are in my shoes!”
Then they were silent for a spell, and grey time ticked wearily around them the slow remorseless sound of interminable minutes.
Presently Blake spoke, out of a drunken silence, saying:
“Gant?”
“What is it?”
“What time is it now?”
“I don’t know. They have my watch,” he said.
And grey time ticked around them.
“Robert,” Eugene said at length, straightening from his dejected stupor on the cot, “did you see that nigger?”
“What nigger?” Robert said stupidly.
“Why, the nigger they tried to put in here with me!” he said.
“Why, I didn’t see any nigger, Gene,” said Robert, in a hoarse and drunken tone of mild and melancholy protest. “When was this?”
“Why, Robert!” the other boy now cried in an excited voice and with a feeling of hideous dread inside him. “You were right here all the time! Didn’t you hear us?”
“Why no, Eugene,” Robert answered in a slow protesting voice that had dull wonder and surprise in it. “I didn’t hear anything,” he said.
“Why, my God, Robert!” Eugene now cried excitedly, and even with a kind of frenzy in his tone. “You must have heard us! Why, we were fighting here for ten minutes!” he said, for the time of the struggle now seemed at least that long to him.
“Who?” said Robert, dully and stupidly.
“Why, me and those two big cops!” he cried. “Good God, Robert, didn’t you see us? — didn’t you hear us? — butting and kicking like a goat — hitting me over the head, trying to make me turn a-loose!” he cried in an excited, almost incoherent tone.
“Who did?” Robert stupidly inquired.
“Why — those two big cops, Robert — that’s who! Good God, do you mean to tell me that you never heard us when we were cursing and butting away there right in front of you?”
“I didn’t hear anything — I thought you said a nigger,” he said in a stupid and confused tone.
“Why, Robert, that’s what I’m telling you!” Eugene shouted. “They had him in here —”
“Where?”
“Why, in the cell! They were trying to put me in here with him! That’s what the trouble was about!” he said.
“Why, Eugene,” Robert said with an uneasy and troubled laugh, which yet had a note of good-natured derision in it that was maddening, “I didn’t see any nigger. Did you, Emmet? I was right here all the time and I didn’t hear any trouble. . . . YOU’VE been dreaming,” Robert now said, with a conviction in his tone that goaded the other boy almost past endurance, and yet struck a knife of cold terror into his heart. And he began to laugh hoarsely his annoying and derisive laugh, as he shook his head, and said: “Lord! LORD! — He’s in there seeing niggers and policemen and I don’t know what-all.” And here he laughed hoarsely again, his derisive and falsetto laugh, and said: “BOY! You’ve got ’em! You’ve GOT ’em bad! You’ve been seeing things!”
“Robert, God-damn it!” Eugene now fairly screamed, “I tell you he was here! I tell you I saw him standing in the cell when I came in! I know what I’m talking about, Robert! — there was a nigger here when I came in!”
“Why, hell, Eugene!” Robert said more kindly, but with a hoarse derisive laugh, “you’ve just been seeing things, son. There was no one there; you just imagined it. I reckon you just passed out and dreamed it happened!”
“Dreamed! Dreamed!” Eugene shouted, “God-damn it, Robert, don’t you think I know when I’m dreaming? I’ll show you if it was a dream! I’ll prove it to you that it really happened! I can prove it by Blake!” he cried. “Ask Blake! . . . Blake! Blake! Blake!” he shouted.
And grey time slid with its slow sanded drop around them.
Blake did not answer: he had not heard their conversation and now they heard him talking softly, slowly, murderously to himself.
“Yes, sir,” he was saying, in a low, quiet, drunkenly intent soliloquy. “Yes, sir, I’ll kill him! . . . So help me, God, I’ll kill him dead, as sure as my name is Emmet Blake! . . . I’ll pull out my forty-five. . . . I’ll get my forty-five out when I go home . . . and I’ll go Ping! Ping! Ping! the minute that I see him. I’ll go Ping! Ping! Ping!” cried Blake. “I’ll kill him dead, so help me, God, if it’s the last thing that I ever do!”
“I’ll kill him!” Blake continued in a tone of dogged, drunken repetition, still talking to himself. “When I get home I’ll kill him if it’s the last thing I ever do!”
“And I’ll kill YOU, too,” Blake muttered in this same brooding and intent oblivion of drunken soliloquy. “You God-damned whore, I’ll kill you, too! I’ll kill the two of you together! . . . The bitch! The bitch! The dirty bitch!” the man now screamed, starting to his feet, and now really with a tortured note of agony and desperation in his voice. “I know where you are this minute! I know you’re with him! I know you’ll sleep with him tonight, you — dirty — low-down —”
“Emmet, you damned fool, shut up!” Robert now said, with a troubled and protesting laugh. “Do you want everyone in the whole damned place to hear you?” The dreadful shame and anguish in the man’s desperate life had burst nakedly through his drunkenness, and the hideous mutilation of his soul was suddenly stripped bare —“Don’t talk like that,” said Robert, with a troubled laugh —“you’ll be sorry tomorrow for what you said, you know you will: oh, Emmet, shut up!” Robert said again with a protesting and embarrassed laugh.
For Blake was now sobbing horribly in his cell: as Eugene stood leaning against the wall next to him, he could hear him sobbing and pounding his thin fist savagely into the grey-slate substance of the wall, while he went on:
“The whore! The dirty whore!” he wept. “I know that she’s just waiting for me to die! I know that’s what she wants! I know that’s all she’s waiting for! . . . That’s what you want, you bitch, isn’t it? You’d like that, wouldn’t you? That would just suit you, wouldn’t it? . . . Ah, I’ve fooled you! I’ve fooled you, haven’t I?” he panted, with a savage and vindictive triumph in his voice. “You’ve been waiting for it for the last two years, haven’t you? And I’ve fooled you every time,” he gasped. “And I’ll fool you yet — you bitch, you dirty bitch!”
And they sat there, saying nothing, listening with desolation in their hearts to the man’s naked shame, and now hearing nothing but his gasping sobs and the slow grey wear and waste of time around them. And then his sobbing breath grew quieter, they could hear him panting feebly, like an exhausted runner, and presently he went over and sat down upon his cot, and there was nothing but time and silence all about them.
Finally Blake spoke again, and now in a voice that was quiet, lifeless, and curiously sober, as if this outlet and easement of his grief had also quenched the drunkenness in him.
“Gant?” he said, in a quiet and lifeless tone that penetrated curiously the grey silence all around them.
“Yes,” said Eugene.
“I never met you till today,” said Blake, “and I want you to know I’ve got no grudge against you.”
“Why, Eugene never did anything to you, Emmet,” said Robert at this point, in a tone of protest. “Why should you have anything against him?”
“Now, WAIT a minute!” said Blake pugnaciously. “Eugene,” he went on in a maudlin tone of voice, “I’m friends with everyone, I haven’t got an enemy in the world. . . . There’s just one man in this world I hate,” he went on sombrely, “and I hate his guts — I hate his life — Goddamn him! I hate the air he breathes!” he snarled, and then was silent for a moment. “Eugene,” he went on in a moment, in a low voice, and with a tone of brooding drunken insinuation, “you know the man I mean, don’t you?”
Eugene made no answer, and in a moment he repeated the question, in a more insistent and pugnacious tone:
“DON’T you?” he demanded.
And Eugene said, “Yes.”
“You’re damned right you do,” he said in a low, ruminant, and brooding tone. “Everybody knows whom I mean. He’s a cousin of yours,” said Blake, and then began to mutter to himself:
“I’ll kill him! So help me, God, I’ll kill him!” And suddenly, starting from his cot with a scream of baffled misery and anguish, he began to beat his fist into the hard slate wall again, yelling:
“I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you! . . . You son of a bitch, I’ll kill the two of you! . . . I’ll send you both to hell where you belong, if it’s the last thing that I ever do!”
And he began to sob horribly and curse foully, and pounded his fist into the wall again until he was exhausted, and went back and sat down on his cot again, muttering his drunken and impotent threats.
And Eugene did not try to answer him, for there was nothing he could say. George Pentland was his cousin, and had taken Blake’s wife away from him, and got her love; and Blake was dying, and they knew it. And suddenly it seemed to Eugene that there was in this whole story something dark and hideously shameful which he had never clearly seen in life before, which could not be endured, and which yet suspended over every man who ever lived the menace of its intolerable humiliation and dishonour.
For to see a man — a manly-looking man, strong of body, fearless and bold of glance, deep of voice — physically humiliated and disgraced, slapped and whipped like a cur before his wife, his mistress, or his children, and forced to yield, retreat and slink away, to see his face turn white and the look of the coward shine through his mask of manhood, is not an easy thing to see.
Presently they heard steps coming along the corridor again, and they were so certain they belonged to a messenger bringing them release that they all arose instinctively, and stood before the barred doors of the cells, waiting to walk out into the air of freedom again. To their astonishment the visitor was Kitchin. They had forgotten him completely, and now as they saw him doing a gleeful caper before their cells, with a grin of triumphant satisfaction written wide across his face, they looked at him with the astounded recognition of men who see a face which they had known years before, but have forgotten — in the lapse of time and memory.
“Where? —” Robert began hoarsely and accusingly, in a tone of astounded stupefaction. “Where have YOU been all this time?”
“Out front!” said Kitchin exultantly. “Sitting in your car!”
“Out front!” cried Robert in a bewildered and resentful tone. “Didn’t they lock you up, too?”
“Hell, no!” cried Kitchin, fairly dancing about with gleeful satisfaction. “They never touched me! And I’d had as much to drink as any of you. I’ve been sittin’ out front all afternoon reading the paper! I guess they thought I was the only sober one of the crowd,” he said modestly. And this apparently was the reason for his astonishing freedom — this and another, more mercenary reason, which will presently be apparent.
“Why, what do they mean by keeping us locked up back here while you’re out front there reading the paper? Darnedest thing I ever heard of!” Robert barked. “Kitchin!” he now said angrily. “You go out there and tell them we want out of here!”
“I told ’em! I told ’em!” Kitchin said virtuously. “That’s what I’ve been telling them all afternoon.”
“Well, what do they say?” Robert demanded impatiently.
“Boys,” said Kitchin now, shaking his head regretfully, but unable to conceal his own elation and sense of triumph, “I’ve got news for you — and I’m afraid it’s not going to be good news, either. How much money you got?”
“Money!” Robert cried, in an astounded tone, as if the uses of this vile commodity had never occurred to him. “What’s money got to do with it? We want out of here!”
“I know you do,” said Kitchin coolly, “but you’re not going to get out unless you’ve got money enough to pay your fine.”
“Fine?” Robert repeated stupidly.
“Well, that’s what they call it, anyway. Fine or graft, or whatever the hell it is, you’ve got to pay it if you want to be let out.”
“How much is it?” said Robert. “How much do they want?”
“Boys,” said Kitchin, slowly and solemnly, “have you got seventy-three dollars?”
“Seventy-three dollars!” Robert shouted. “Kitchin, what are you talking about?”
“Well, don’t shout at me,” said Kitchin. “I can’t help it! I didn’t do it! But if you get out of here that’s what you’ve got to pay.”
“Seventy-three dollars!” Robert cried. “Seventy-three dollars for what?”
“Well, Robert,” said Kitchin patiently, “you’ve got to pay fifty dollars fine and one dollar costs. That’s because you were driving the car. That’s fifty-one. And Emmet and Eugene here have to pay ten dollars apiece and one dollar costs — that’s twenty-two dollars more. That figures up to seventy-three dollars. Have you got it?”
“Why, the dirty grafting sons of bitches!” Blake now cried. “Telling us that everything would be all right and that they had put us in here so we wouldn’t hurt ourselves! . . . All right, you cheap grafting bastards!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, rattling the barred door furiously as he spoke. “We’ll give you your dirty graft — but wait till I get out of here!” he cried threateningly. “Just wait till I get out! George Blake will tend to you!” he shouted. “It’ll be the worst day’s work YOU’VE ever done!”
But no one answered, although Blake and Robert cursed foully and shouted insults at the men. Meanwhile Kitchin waited patiently before their cells until the furious tumult should subside a little; when they were calmer he suggested that they pool their resources to see if they had enough to pay the total of the fines. But the sum of their combined funds was only a little more than forty dollars, of which Blake and Robert contributed the greater part and of which Eugene could contribute less than three dollars, which was all he had.
When it was apparent that their total funds would not be adequate to secure their release Blake, still furiously angry, began to talk in a loud and drunken tone of bravado about his famous uncle, scrawling out a cheque and instructing Kitchin to go at once to the local agent for his uncle’s motor cars and get the necessary money.
“Any Blake dealer in the country will cash my personal cheque for fifty thousand dollars any time I need it!” he cried with extravagant boast, as if he thought this threat of opulence would strike terror to the hearts of the police. “Yes, sir!” he said. “All you got to do is to walk into any Blake agency in the country and tell them George Blake’s nephew needs money — and they’ll give you everything they’ve got!” he cried. “Tell ’em you need ten thousand dollars,” he said, coming down in scale somewhat, “and they’ll have it for you in five minutes.”
“Why, Emmet,” said Kitchin quietly, and yet with a trace of mockery and ridicule on his dark, handsome, and rather sly face. “We don’t need fifty thousand dollars. You know, we’re not trying to buy the whole damned jail. Now, I thought,” he went on quietly and ironically, “that all we needed was about thirty or forty — say fifty dollars — to make up the fine and get us out of town.”
“Yes,” said Robert in a quick excited tone of vigorous agreement. “You’re absolutely right! That’s all we need, all right!”
“All RIGHT! All RIGHT! Go to the Blake dealer! Go to the Blake dealer! That’s what I’m telling you,” cried Blake with an arrogant impatience. “He’ll give you anything you want. — What are you waiting for?” he cried furiously. “Go ON! Go ON!”
“But Emmet,” said Kitchin quietly and reasonably, in his dark low voice, as he looked at the cheque which Blake had scrawled out for him. “This cheque you’ve given me is for five hundred dollars. Hadn’t you better make out another one for fifty? You know, we don’t need five hundred dollars, Emmet. And besides,” he suggested tactfully, “the man might not have that much on hand. Hadn’t you better give me one just made out for what we need?”
“He’ll have it! He’s got it! He’s GOT to have it!” said Blake with a dogmatic and unreasoning arrogance. “Tell him I sent you and you’ll get the money right away!”
Kitchin did not answer him: he thrust the cheque into his pocket and turned to Eugene, saying quietly:
“Didn’t you say your brother was waiting to meet you here at a hotel?”
“Yes: he expected to meet me at four o’clock when that service car came in.”
“At what hotel?”
“The Blackstone — listen, Kitchin,” he reached through the bar and grabbed him by the arm, with a feeling of cold horror in his heart. “For Christ’s sake, don’t drag my brother into this,” he whispered. “Kitchin — listen to me! If you can get this money from the Blake agent here, for God’s sake, do it! What’s the use of bringing my brother into it,” he pleaded, “when it’s all between the four of us, and can stay that way? I don’t want my family to know I ever got into any trouble like this. Kitchin, look here — I can get the money for my fine: I’ve got a little money in the bank, and I’ll pay Blake every cent I owe him if you get the money from the agent. Now, promise me you won’t go and tell my brother!”
He held him hard in the tension of desperation, and Kitchin promised. Then he went swiftly away, and they were left alone in their cells again. Robert, utterly cast down from his high exaltation, now cursed bitterly and morosely against the police and the injustice of his luck and destiny.
Meanwhile, Blake, whose final and chief resource, it had now become pitifully evident, was nothing in himself but just the accident of birth that had made him nephew to a powerful and wealthy man, kept declaring in a loud voice of arrogant bravado that “any Blake agent in the United States will cash my personal cheque for fifty thousand dollars any time I ask for it! Yes, sir, any of them — I don’t give a damn where it is! He’s on his way here now! You’ll see! We’ll be out of here in five minutes now!”— a boastful assurance that was hardly out of his mouth before they heard steps approaching rapidly along the corridor and, even as Blake cried out triumphantly, “What did I tell you?” and as Eugene leaped up and ran to the door of his cell, clutching the bars with both hands, and peering out with bloodshot eyes like a caged gorilla, Kitchin entered the cell-room, followed by a policeman, and — Eugene’s brother!
Luke looked at him for a moment with a troubled expression and said: “Why, how did you get in here? What’s happened to you?” he said, suddenly noticing his battered face. “Are you hurt, Eugene?”
The boy made no reply but looked at him with sullen desperation and jerked his head towards the cells where his two companions were imprisoned — a gesture that pleaded savagely for silence. And Luke, instantly reading the meaning of that gesture, turned and called out cheerfully:
“Now you boys just hold on a minute and I’ll have you out of here.”
Then he came up close to the barred door of the cell where his younger brother stood and, his face stern with care, he said in a low voice: “What happened? Who hit you? Did any of these bastards hit you? I want to know.”
A policeman was standing behind him looking at them with narrowed eyes, and the boy said desperately:
“Get us out of here. I’ll tell you later.”
Then Luke went away with the policeman to pay their fines. When he had gone, Eugene turned bitterly on Kitchin, who had remained with the boys, accusing him of breaking his word by going to Luke. Kitchin’s dark evasive eyes shifted nervously in his head as he answered:
“Well, what else could I do? I went to the Blake agent here —”
“Did you get the money?” Blake said. “Did he give it to you?”
“Give!” Kitchin said curtly, with a sneer. “He gave me nothing — not a damned cent! He said he’d never heard of you!”
There was silence for a moment.
“Well, I can’t understand that,” Blake said at length, feebly, and in a tone of dazed surprise. “That’s the first time anything like that has ever happened.”
At this moment Eugene’s brother returned with two policemen, who unlocked the cell doors and let them out. The feeling of coming from the cell into free space again was terrific in its physical intensity: never before had Eugene known the physical sensations of release as he knew them at that moment. The very light and air in the space outside the cell had a soaring buoyancy and freshness which, by comparison, gave to that within the cell a material and oppressive heaviness, a sense of walled and mortared space that had pressed upon his heart and spirit with a crushing weight. Now, suddenly, as if a cord that bound him had been cut, or a brutal hand that held his life in its compelling grip had been removed, the sensations of release and escape filled his body with a sense of aerial buoyancy and the power of wing-like flight.
With a desperate eagerness he had never felt before he wanted to feel the free light and air again: even the shocked solicitude of his companions when they saw his puffed lips and his blackened eye was drearily oppressive. He thrust past them, muttering, striding towards the door.
It was the first time in his life that he had ever been arrested and locked up, and for the first time now, he felt and understood the meaning of an immense and brutal authority in life, which he had seen before, but to which he had always believed himself to be immune. Until that day he had had all the pride and arrogance a young man knows. Since childhood no one had ever compelled him to do anything by force, and although he had seen the million evidences of force, privilege, and compulsion applied to the lives of people around him, so that like every other native of the land in which he lived, he had in his heart no belief in law whatever, and knew that legal justice, where it was achieved, was achieved by fortuitous accident rather than by intent, he had believed, as every young man believes, that his own life and body were fiercely immune to every indignity of force and compulsion.
Now this feeling was gone for ever. And having lost it irrecoverably, he had gained something of more value.
For now, he was conscious, even at the moment he came out of the cell, of a more earthly, common, and familiar union with the lives of other men than he had ever known. And this experience was to have another extraordinary effect upon his spirit and its understanding and love of poetry, which may seem ludicrous, but which certainly dated from these few hours of his first imprisonment. Up to this time in his life, the poet who had stirred him by his power and genius more than any other was the poet Shelley.
But in the years that followed, Shelley’s poetry came to have so little meaning for him that all the magic substance which his lines once had was lost, and Eugene seemed to look indifferently at the hollow shells and ghosts of words, from which all enchantment and belief had vanished. And he felt this way not because the words of this great poet now seemed false to him, but because, more than any other poet he had known, Shelley was the poet of that time of life when men feel most strongly the sense of proud and lonely inviolability, which is legible in everything he wrote, and when their spirits, like his, are also “tameless and swift and proud.” And this is a time of life and magic that, once gone, is gone for ever, and that may never be recaptured save by memory.
But in the years that followed, just as Eugene’s physical body grew coarser and more heavy, and his sensual appetites increased enormously, so also did the energy of his spirit, which in childhood had been wing-like, soaring, and direct in its aerial buoyancy, grow darker, slower, heavier, smouldering and slow in its beginning heat and densely woven and involved in all its web-like convolutions.
And as all the strength and passion of his life turned more and more away from its childhood thoughts of aerial flight and escape into some magic and unvisited domain, it seemed to him that the magic and unvisited domain was the earth itself, and all the life around him — that he must escape not out of life but into it, looking through walls he never had seen before, exploring the palpable and golden substance of this earth as it had never been explored, finding, somehow, the word, the key, the door, to the glory of a life more fortunate and happy than any man has ever known, and which yet incredibly, palpably, is his, even as the earth beneath his feet is his, if he could only take it.
And as he discovered this, Eugene turned more and more for food and comfort to those poets who have found it and who have left great pieces of that golden earth behind them in their verse, as deathless evidence that they were there:— those poets who wrote not of the air but of the earth, and in whose verse the gold and glory of the earth are treasured — their names are Shakespeare, Spenser, Chaucer, Herrick, Donne, and Herbert.
Their names are Milton (whom fools have called glacial and austere, and who wrote the most tremendous lines of earthly passion and sensuous magic that have ever yet been written), Wordsworth, Browning, Whitman, Keats, and Heine — their names are Job, Ecclesiastes, Homer, and The Song of Solomon.
These are their names, and if any man should think the glory of the earth has never been, let him live alone with them, as Eugene did, a thousand nights of solitude and wonder, and they will reveal to him again the golden glory of the earth, which is the only earth that is, and is for ever, and is the only earth that lives, the only one that will never die.