U.S.A_ - John Dos Passos [199]
-85-world, a travel er on his own, but underneath it al was the memory of that man's trembling white hurt face, the way held walked up the area steps that day. The restaurant gradual y emptied. The waiter must be thinking it was funny his sitting there that long. He paid his check, and before he wanted to found himself on the train for Trenton.
At Aunt Beatrice's house everything looked and smelt the same. His mother was lying on the bed with the shades down and a handkerchief soaked in eau de cologne on her forehead. She showed him a photograph that he'd sent from Havana, a withered man who looked too smal for. his palm beach suit and panama hat. He'd been working in the consulate as a clerk and had left a ten thousand dol ar life insurance in her favor. While they were talking Henry came in looking worried and sore. The two of them went out in the back yard and smoked cigarettes together. Henry said he was going to take Mother to live with him in Philadelphia, get her away from Aunt Beatrice's nagging and this damn boardinghouse. He wanted Dick to come too and go to the U. of P. Dick said no, he was going to Harvard. Henry asked him how he was going
to get the money. Dick said he'd make out al right, he didn't want any of the damned insurance. Henry said he wasn't going to touch it, that was Mother's, and they went back upstairs feeling about ready to sock each other in the jaw. Dick felt better though, he could tel the fel ows at school that his father had been consul at Havana and had died of a tropical fever.
That summer Dick worked for Mr. Cooper at $25 a
week getting up a prospectus for an art museum he wanted to found in Jersey City and delighted him so by dedicating to him a verse translation of Horace's poem about Maecenas that he worked up with the help of the trot, that Mr. Cooper made him a present of a thousand dol ars to take him through col ege; for the sake of form and so that
-86-Dick should feel his responsibilities he put it in the form of a note maturing in five years at four percent interest. He spent his two weeks' vacation with the Thurlows at Bay Head. He'd hardly been able to wait going down on the train to see how Hilda would be, but everything was different. Edwin didn't have the paperwhite look he used to have; he'd had a cal as assistant in a rich church on Long Island where the only thing that worried him was that part of the congregation was low and wouldn't al ow chanting or incense. He was comforting himself with the thought that they did al ow candles on the altar. Hilda was changed too. Dick was worried to see that she and Edwin held hands during supper. When they got alone she told him that she and Edwin were very happy now and that she was going to have a baby and that bygones must be bygones. Dick stalked up and down and ran his hands through his hair and talked darkly about death and hel onearth and going to the devil as fast as he could but Hilda just laughed and told him not to be sil y, that he was a goodlooking attractive boy and would find many nice girls crazy to fal in love with him. Before he left they had a long talk about religion and Dick told them with a bitter stare at Hilda, that he'd lost his faith and only be-lieved in Pan and Bacchus, the old gods of lust and drink. Edwin was quite startled, but Hilda said it was al non-sense and only growing pains. After he'd left he wrote a very obscure poem ful of classical references that he la-bel ed, To a Common Prostitute and sent to Hilda, add-ing a postscript that he was dedicating his life to Beauty and Sin. Dick had an exam to repeat in Geometry which he'd
flunked in the spring and one in Advanced Latin that he was taking for extra credits, so he went up to Cambridge a week before col ege opened. He sent his trunk and suitcase out by the transfer company from the South Station and went out on the subway. He had on a new grey suit and a
-87-new grey felt hat and was afraid of losing the certified cheque he had in his pocket for deposit in the Cambridge bank. The glimpse of redbrick Boston and the state house with its gold dome beyond the slatecolored Charles as the train came out into the air to cross the bridge looked like the places in foreign countries he and Hilda had talked about going to. Kendal Square . . . Central Square . . . Harvard Square. The train didn't go any further; he had to get out. Something about the sign on the turnstile Out To The College Yard sent a chil down his spine. He hadn't been in Cambridge two hours before he discovered that his felt hat ought to have been brown and old instead of new and that getting a room in the Yard had been a grave mistake for a freshman.