Glenway Wescott

“ The officer kept looking at Evan as if to tell him to go.
Evan's arms lay very heavily on the dirty table; inside his stiff boots his heels were asleep, and tingled. He foresaw, with the extravagance of an innocent mind, the rest of the night on the narrow bed without sheets in the back room. Disgusted at the way another man succeeded in doing what he had wanted to do, he realized that his disgust was jealousy and his jealousy was mixed with shame. Shame of Americans—he was an American; this was war—he was a soldier; love—an hour ago he had been making love to the same girl. ”

“ Evan settled his body, suddenly heavy, into the sofa cushions. The fire throbbed in an enviable exhaustion. He was not even tired enough to sleep, but felt instead that false weariness by virtue of which, in the midst of passion, one is able to consider the next step. The next step according to Gabrielle: "Now you will marry and go to America ." He had promised; and as a lover, like a fool, he had sealed his promise. Now that it was too late, he could think—of the short past and the long future ahead. ”

“ I have run away from the army. I can't explain it. I will be in a foreign country by the time you get this. I don't know when I can come back to America, if I ever can. I suppose you'll be ashamed of me. Try to think that I am still the same.
Your loving son.
And as the four-master staggered with infinite patience toward Europe, a sharp sadness took possession of him. Wisconsin with its crops of every color, its hickory-nut trees, its white sunrises and red sunsets—he would never see them again; no one would love him so faithfully, so intimately, as even his hard father had done. ”

“ For he would always be a deserter. A boy hiding inside a man, an outlaw hiding inside a man who at last, at least, would abide by the law. If he liked, a homeless, lonely man in a foreign land might wear his disgrace as if it were nothing more than a shirt or a coat out of fashion. A lonely man surrounded by friends and family, a naturally homeless man at home, an expatriate resident in his own country, would have to wear it next the skin, like a tattooed rose, or star, or Marbury's blue heart in a circle. ”

“ Scarcely remembering the weeks at sea, he felt as if he had fallen out of Cuba through a trapdoor into a cellar containing millions of people.
He went into a pub to get warm, wondered what his father would say if he came through the swinging door and found him there drinking whisky, and was amused as if it were an idle fancy, as if in reality he had no father. When he went out again, his sense of direction told him that he was going away from the lodging house in Wapping; but he thought of Marbury as if he were a man he had known years ago, as if, that night, he had not a friend in the world. ”

“ Sooner or later the rebels would prefer to be governed by their own kind rather than by foreigners; their mothers and sweethearts would have preferred it then. Handsome women who seemed to have been fasting came to look at the lists of dead and wounded; they shuddered in their fine veils without making a sound; and Evan believed that they wept not only because their sons were dead, but because they had died as rebels. Old mothers were behind the crumbling walls, praying to the God of Spain for the Spanish army, and kneeling beside them perhaps there were rows of black-eyed girls. ”

“ America is mine. His mind on fire because of her angry beauty, Evan rejoiced without thinking of the consequences.
Then she stood quietly in the center of the room and wrung her hands. "We will go back to America. We will hide. We, we alone, will not get caught. The army is nothing. No one will know. We dare to do it. You love me; you do not dare be afraid. ”

“ The rest of their lives would be a monument to it—a monument having on the outside an appearance of solidity, but hollow within, where, like the few breaths of air which are imprisoned inside a bronze, the bitter-sweet of youth, passion, and disgrace would be secreted. . . .
Outside in the fog London drew up its enormous knees and shifted its enormous shoulders.
Youth and passion—he saw more clearly than before what they were; he could see through them to the future, which would not be young and in which there would not be much passion ”

“ There on the Embankment lay many men, wrapped in rags, in newspapers, in one another's arms; and a few women lean and shameless as men. Evan was comforted by the sight of that painful bed full of derelicts, equality and sleep their only comforts. They were his countrymen; his fatherland, like theirs, was disgrace, and this was its very capital. ”

“ She would never cease to reproach him for having endangered her immortal soul by his love before marriage, nor forget why she had married him, nor overlook any of his failures. Others would excuse him for being a deserter—by never discovering the fact, or by forgetting it. She would go through the motions of forgiveness, and as long as he loved her keep him. from forgiving himself. Perhaps she would not blame him, but instead think of him as a fool, not worldly-wise enough to deserve her respect. A man's madness, nipped in the bud; love itself was a man's madness. ”

“ After his grandmother's death he went to New Mexico, and his uncle John Craig became a more intimate friend than his father had been able to be. This fact amused and touched the lonely, extraordinary man, for he himself had loved his uncle Leander more than his father.
During Evan's boyhood—before anyone had dreamed of such a man as John Craig, though his father often prophesied for him a disgraceful future—Leander Tower, in the "old bachelor's wing" of the house, led an idle and, to everyone but his youngest nephew, insignificant existence. ”

“ Leander had talked a long time, somewhat like an old schoolmaster. Before going back to the barracks, Evan wanted to remember all he had said. "Well, maybe it's good-by altogether for us. I'm getting old and my usefulness is over. You'll live to see great days, the twentieth century—maybe everything will be different then. Be friendly, but not too friendly, and keep strong. And don't get to doing things you don't really want to do. And when you've made a mistake, and things go against you, and you can't help it, don't be ashamed to run away and leave them. ”

“ Then he had heard newspaper men say that America wanted Cuba for the sugar and tobacco, and that ammunition had been smuggled in to the rebels before our government had had any reason to take sides. One who had been drinking had declared that the Maine had been blown up from the inside, blown up by Americans to make America declare war. Evan did not know what to believe, but he was sick with suspicion.
Coming as a soldier to a foreign land, he learned, as soldiers often do, how little he loved his own. ”

“ This meant the total disappearance of Evan Tower, that happy, unhappy boy who had done as he liked, and the rise of John Craig, an Englishman married to a French wife, neither happy nor unhappy, but growing rich in America. So with the passage of time, the soul of a man loses itself in his life. ”

“ Gabrielle nursed her father as she would have to do until the end of his life. Susanne kept the shop. There was nothing for Evan to do. The sudden well-being changed him overnight; a clean body and clean clothes, warmth, good food, friendliness. . . . Pride. in having endured hardships all alone, and as it were by choice, made of the memory of his misery the rarest sort of pleasure. Then he told himself that he had been happier since he had come to London than hunger, cold, and fatigue had permitted him to realize; he was certainly happier than he had ever been in Wisconsin. ”

“ His uncle muttered, "Don't you let him go, Henry."
His father answered, "You ought to be ashamed, Leander. A boy can't do a finer thing than serve his country. We need him on the farm, but we'll have to get along."
Evan did enlist. He enjoyed the months of novelty and excitement before they disembarked in a Cuban harbor. There the stale-smelling sea splashed over rocks and rotten wood. The large vegetation which was on top kept swelling while that which was underneath rotted. ”

“ On that last morning in Wisconsin, Leander had preferred not to stand with the others around the horse and buggy; so Evan had gone to his room to say good-by. "Well, my boy," he had said, "now you're a soldier, as I was. It's a good thing that you're going alone, not with one of your brothers, the way I did. Write to your father sometimes as well as to your mother; it'll be hard on him while you're away, thinking maybe he hasn't been a good father to you. ”

“ The tears came to Flora's vague, affectionate eyes, and Alwyn's grandmother clapped her hands together. "I declare," she cried, "he does beat all! Evan, your father is a hard man."
"I guess, mother," John Craig said, "hardness runs in the family. At any rate, it ought to—we need it, the way we live." ”

“ Leander and Evan, those two were his real family, and their souls had passed into his life—that is, John Craig's life. He had thought that he was tired of it; but he was a strong man, and had no other to live. So in Wisconsin he realized how precious it was—perhaps that was what he had come for. The spirits of his uncle and his boyhood having passed into it, he ought to be content with their dwelling place. ”

“ Many of his neighbors as well were suspicious of his past, but it seemed as natural in the Far West for a man to be followed by an unpleasant story as by a shadow. He kept out of politics, and made those who did not wish him well fear him, stopping their mouths at first by well-chosen threats, and then good-naturedly letting them forget why they did not gossip about him any more. Gradually he became an influential citizen, with whom even his wife's powerful friends had to reckon. ”

“ He could not regret what he had done, any more than a dead man can regret having died. He said to himself, "It can't be helped; I'll have to make the best of it, and the best will be bad enough"; and by thinking that he had made peace with the past—in a measure, and in the manner of young, ignorant, unlucky men—he made his peace with the future.
The Amber went up the Thames to the city of London, and docked in the Pool. The sailors emptied the hold; the captain secured a cargo for Rio de Janeiro, and they put it on board.
Evan shared a bed with Marbury in a lodging house in Wapping. ”

“ To condemn the man he would have liked to be to increasing obscurity, and make a self he did not like more and more prominent. To strip his genuine character little by little of its reality, and turn a disguise into an actual man. ”

“ He can't go back to the ship; she's the Amber, freight, for London. Can't even sit up. And we sail tonight. Hard luck. He's to blame. Drunk, he was. A man hadn't ought to fight with foreigners. That Eye-talian put his knee on his chest and hammered him. . . ."
Evan had laughed a little. A Cuban, scarcely human, kneeling on a man named Pigeon—a Cuban rather like an angel, Jacob's angel in the Bible. . . . Marbury had given a long, foolish account of the affair at least twice. Evan had listened with great interest, without realizing as yet that he was going to desert. ”

“ Only Evan took refuge in that shadow from the pain of being misunderstood, the fatigue of adolescence which is more painful though less serious than a man's fatigue, and from his other troubles as they arose.
When Evan entered his room, interrupting his melancholy recollections, the old bachelor looked up with tender interest but no more eagerness. Another unhappy boy coming into the room, a third youngster coming into his life—he wanted neither to shut this one out nor to keep him there. "Sit down, my boy. ”

“ Probably Evan had answered that he hated the war, that he was sick of the heat, and the Americans were going to lose the war, anyway—answered not very intellibly; for Marbury admitted now that he had not believed him. A man would be crazy to desert just because he wanted to; there must have been some trouble that he would not talk about.
Marbury had interrupted him. "Damn! You'd better come with me. Come to sea. Make an English sailor of you." He had continued to drink, wiping his mouth (which looked younger than the rest of his face) on the back of his hand, and watching Evan. ”

“ The farm work always made him unhappy, and sometimes made him sick; he had to run away to the woods, for example, at butchering time. Whenever he spoke of running away altogether, he was pleased and tempted by the fact that his father looked afraid, grew more gentle, and talked of the evil and hardship of great cities. Their anger sobered the whole family for days at a time, as if it were sickness in the house. His mother whipped him once or twice, but he would not cry out, and said, "Why don't you let him do his own whipping?" which took away her courage. ”

“ To give no one cause to be ashamed of him again, but to be ashamed of himself, in order to be able to be discreet mechanically. To make more friends than he wanted, and not to like any of the sort of people who resembled him, lest he should have to live down their disgraces as well as his own. ”

“ Soldiers running back and forth, shooting in the sunlight. Somebody's blood, perhaps his own, soaking through a uniform like sweat, with sweat. . . . It was not the fear of death which overcame him when he thought of these things, but the fear of a loathsome disease—from time to time the fear of going mad. ”

“ He thought of the leave-taking in Wisconsin before he had gone off to join that other, actual regiment; for now he was taking leave of himself—he was going to be married and return to America as John Craig, and John Craig was saying good-by to Evan Tower. "Don't make promises," his uncle Leander had said in Wisconsin, "that'll be your trouble. Don't get started doing what you don't like to do, because you're not the kind of man who keeps at it. You needn't, as long as you're alone in the world. You'd better keep alone. ”