He walked over to Fifth Avenue, dodging the blind, black menace of umbrellas, and standing in front of Delmonico's hailed an auto-bus. Buttoning his coat closely around him he climbed to the roof, where he rode in solitary state through the thin, persistent rain, stung into alertness by the cool moisture perpetually reborn on his cheek. Somewhere in his mind a conversation began, rather resumed its place in his attention. It was composed not of two voices, but of one, which acted alike as questioner and answerer:
Question. Well-what's the situation?
Answer.That I have about twenty-four dollars to my name.
Q.You have the Lake Geneva estate.
A.But I intend to keep it.
Q.Can you live?
A.I can't imagine not being able to. People make money in books and I've found that I can always do the things that people do in books. Really they are the only things I can do.
Q.Be definite.
A.I don't know what I'll donor have I much curiosity. To-morrow I'm going to leave New York for good. It's a bad town unless you're on top of it.
Q.Do you want a lot of money?
A.No. I am merely afraid of being poor.
Q.Very afraid?
A.Just passively afraid.
Q.Where are you drifting?
A.Don't ask me!
Q.Don't you care?
A.Rather. I don't want to commit moral suicide.
Q.Have you no interests left?
A.None. I've no more virtue to lose. Just as a cooling pot gives off heat, so all through youth and adolescence we give off calories of virtue. That's what's called ingenuousness.
Q.An interesting idea.
A.That's why a "good man going wrong" attracts people. They stand around and literally warm themselves at the calories of virtue he gives off. Sarah makes an unsophisticated remark and the faces simper in delight"How innocent the poor child is!" They're warming themselves at her virtue. But Sarah sees the simper and never makes that remark again. Only she feels a little colder after that.
Q.All your calories gone?
A.All of them. I'm beginning to warm myself at other people's virtue.
Q.Are you corrupt?
A.I think so. I'm not sure. I'm not sure about good and evil at all any more.
Q.Is that a bad sign in itself?
A.Not necessarily.
Q.What would be the test of corruption?
A.Becoming really insincerecalling myself "not such a bad fellow," thinking I regretted my lost youth when I only envy the delights of losing it. Youth is like having a big plate of candy.
Sentimentalists think they want to be in the pure, simple state they were in before they ate the candy. They don't. They just want the fun of eating it all over again. The matron doesn't want to repeat her girlhoodshe wants to repeat her honeymoon. I don't want to repeat my innocence. I want the pleasure of losing it again.
Q.Where are you drifting?
This dialogue merged grotesquely into his mind's most familiar statea grotesque blending of desires, worries, exterior impressions and physical reactions.
One Hundred and Twenty-seventh Streetor One Hundred and Thirty-seventh Street.... Two and three look alikeno, not much.
Seat damp ... are clothes absorbing wetness from seat, or seat absorbing dryness from clothes?... Sitting on wet substance gave appendicitis, so Froggy Parker's mother said. Well, he'd had itI'll sue the steamboat company, Beatrice said, and my uncle has a quarter interestdid Beatrice go to heaven?... probably not He represented Beatrice's immortality, also love-affairs of numerous dead men who surely had never thought of him ... if it wasn't appendicitis, influenza maybe. What? One Hundred and Twentieth Street? That must have been One Hundred and Twelfth back there.
One O Two instead of One Two Seven. Rosalind not like Beatrice, Eleanor like Beatrice, only wilder and brainier. Apartments along here expensiveprobably hundred and fifty a monthmaybe two hundred. Uncle had only paid hundred a month for whole great big house in Minneapolis. Question-were the stairs on the left or right as you came in? Anyway, in 12 Univee they were straight back and to the left. What a dirty riverwant to go down there and see if it's dirtyFrench rivers all brown or black, so were Southern rivers. Twenty-four dollars meant four hundred and eighty doughnuts. He could live on it three months and sleep in the park. Wonder where Jill wasJill Bayne, Fayne, Saynewhat the devilneck hurts, darned uncomfortable seat. No desire to sleep with Jill, what could Alec see in her? Alec had a coarse taste in women. Own taste the best; Isabelle, Clara, Rosalind, Eleanor, were all-American. Eleanor would pitch, probably southpaw.
Rosalind was outfield, wonderful hitter, Clara first base, maybe.
Wonder what Humbird's body looked like now. If he himself hadn't been bayonet instructor he'd have gone up to line three months sooner, probably been killed. Where's the darned bell-The street numbers of Riverside Drive were obscured by the mist and dripping trees from anything but the swiftest scrutiny, but Amory had finally caught sight of One One Hundred and Twenty-seventh Street. He got off and with no distinct destination followed a winding, descending sidewalk and came out facing the river, in particular a long pier and a partitioned litter of shipyards for miniature craft: small launches, canoes, rowboats, and catboats. He turned northward and followed the shore, jumped a small wire fence and found himself in a great disorderly yard adjoining a dock. The hulls of many boats in various stages of repair were around him; he smelled sawdust and paint and the scarcely distinguishable fiat odor of the Hudson. A man approached through the heavy gloom.
"Hello," said Amory.
"Got a pass?"
"No. Is this private?"
"This is the Hudson River Sporting and Yacht Club."
"Oh! I didn't know. I'm just resting."
"Well" began the man dubiously.
"I'll go if you want me to."
The man made non-committal noises in his throat and passed on.
Amory seated himself on an overturned boat and leaned forward thoughtfully until his chin rested in his hand.
"Misfortune is liable to make me a damn bad man," he said slowly.
IN THE DROOPING HOURS
