Of Time and the River Read Online Free PDF Page A

passing one thin nervous hand repeatedly over the lank brown hair that covered his small and well-shaped head, and still muttering in tones of stupefied disbelief—“Lord! Lord! . . . What do you know about that?” suddenly espied the woman and her two children at the other end of the platform, and without a moment’s pause, turned on his heel, and walked towards them, at the same time muttering to his astonished friends:
    “Wait a minute! . . . Some one over here I’ve got to speak to! . . . Back in a minute!”
    He approached the mother and her children rapidly, at his stiff, prim and somewhat lunging stride, his thin face fixed eagerly upon them, bearing towards them with a driving intensity of purpose as if the whole interest and energy of his life were focussed on them, as if some matter of the most vital consequence depended on his reaching them as soon as possible. Arrived, he immediately began to address the other youth without a word of greeting or explanation, bursting out with the sudden fragmentary explosiveness that was part of him:
    “Are you taking this train, too? . . . Are you going today? . . . Well, what did you decide to do?” he demanded mysteriously in an accusing and challenging fashion. “Have you made up your mind yet? . . . Pett Barnes says you’ve decided on Harvard. Is that it?”
    “Yes, it is.”
    “Lord, Lord!” said the youth, laughing his falsetto laugh again. “I don’t see how you can! . . . You’d better come on with me. . . . What ever got into your head to do a thing like that?” he said in a challenging tone. “Why do you want to go to a place like that?”
    “Hah? What say?” The mother who had been looking from one to the other of the two boys with the quick and startled attentiveness of an animal, now broke in:
    “You know each other. . . . Hah? . . . You’re taking this train, too, you say?” she said sharply.
    “Ah-hah-hah!” the young man laughed abruptly, nervously; grinned, made a quick stiff little bow, and said with nervous engaging respectfulness: “Yes, Ma’am! . . . Ah-hah-hah! . . . How d’ye do? . . . How d’ye do, Mrs. Gant?” He shook hands with her quickly, still laughing his broken and nervous “ah-hah-hah”—“How d’ye do?” he said, grinning nervously at the younger woman and at Barton. “Ah-hah-hah. How d’ye do?”
    The older woman still holding his hand in her rough worn clasp looked up at him a moment calmly, her lips puckered in tranquil meditation:
    “Now,” she said quietly, in the tone of a person who refuses to admit failure, “I know you. I know your face. Just give me a moment and I’ll call you by your name.”
    The young man grinned quickly, nervously, and then said respectfully in his staccato speech:
    “Yes, Ma’am. . . . Ah-hah-hah. . . . Robert Weaver.”
    “AH-H, that’s SO!” she cried, and shook his hands with sudden warmth. “You’re Robert Weaver’s boy, of course.”
    “Ah-hah-hah!” said Robert, with his quick nervous laugh. “Yes, Ma’am. . . . That’s right. . . . Ah-hah-hah. . . . Gene and I went to school together. We were in the same class at the University.”
    “Why, of course!” she cried in a tone of complete enlightenment, and then went on in a rather vexed manner, “I’ll VOW! I knew you all along! I knew that I’d seen you just as soon as I saw your face! Your name just slipped my mind a moment—and then, of course, it all flashed over me. . . . You’re Robert Weaver’s boy! . . . And you ARE,” she still held his hand in her strong, motherly and friendly clasp, and looking at him with a little sly smile hovering about the corners of her mouth, she was silent a moment, regarding him quizzically—“now, boy,” she said quietly, “you may think I’ve got a pretty poor memory for names and faces— but I want to tell you something that may surprise you. . . . I know more about you than you think I do. Now,” she said, “I’m going to tell you something and you can