Of Time and the River Read Online Free PDF Page B

implications—“He’s a good-looking all-right sort of a boy. . . . And he certainly seems to be intelligent enough.” She was silent for a moment, pursing her lips thoughtfully and then concluded with a little nod—“Well, now, the boy may be all right. . . . I’m not saying that he isn’t. . . . He may turn out all right, after all.”
    “All right?” her daughter said, frowning a little and showing a little annoyance, but with a faint lewd grin around the corners of her mouth—“what do you mean by all right, Mama? Why, of course he’s all right. . . . What makes you think he’s not?”
    The other woman was silent for another moment: when she spoke again, her manner was tinged with portent, and she turned and looked at her daughter a moment in a sudden, straight and deadly fashion before she spoke:
    “Now, child,” she said, “I’m going to tell you: perhaps everything will turn out all right for that boy—I hope it does—but—”
    “Oh, my God!” the younger woman laughed hoarsely but with a shade of anger, and turning, prodded her brother stiffly in the ribs. “Now we’ll get it!” she sniggered, prodding him, “k-k-k-k-k! What do you call it?” she said with a lewd frowning grin that was indescribably comic in its evocations of coarse humour—“the low down?—the dirt?—Did you ever know it to fail?—The moment that you meet any one, and up comes the family corpse.”
    “—Well, now, child, I’m not saying anything against the boy— perhaps it won’t touch him—maybe he’ll be the one to escape—to turn out all right—but—”
    “Oh, my God!” the younger woman groaned, rolling her eyes around in a comical and imploring fashion. “Here it comes.”
    “You are too young to know about it yourself,” the other went on gravely—“you belong to another generation—you don’t know about it—but I DO.” She paused again, shook her pursed lips with a convulsive pucker of distaste, and then, looking at her daughter again in her straight and deadly fashion, said slowly, with a powerful movement of the hand:
    “There’s been insanity in that boy’s family for generations back!”
    “Oh, my God! I knew it!” the other groaned.
    “Yes, sir!” the mother said implacably—“and two of his aunts— Robert Weaver’s own sisters died raving maniacs—and Robert Weaver’s mother herself was insane for the last twenty years of her life up to the hour of her death—and I’ve heard tell that it went back—”
    “Well, deliver me,” the younger woman checked her, frowning, speaking almost sullenly. “I don’t want to hear any more about it. . . . It’s a mighty funny thing that they all seem to get along now—better than we do . . . so let’s let bygones be bygones . . . don’t dig up the past.”
    Turning to her brother with a little frowning smile, she said wearily: “Did you ever know it to fail? . . . They know it all, don’t they?” she said mysteriously. “The minute you meet any one you like, they spill the dirt. . . . Well, I don’t care,” she muttered. “You stick to people like that. . . . He looks like a nice boy and—” with an impressed look over towards Robert’s friends, she concluded, “he goes with a nice crowd. . . . You stick to that kind of people. I’m all for him.”
    Now the mother was talking again: the boy could see her powerful and delicate mouth convolving with astonishing rapidity in a series of pursed thoughtful lips, tremulous smiles, bantering and quizzical jocosities, old sorrow and memory, quiet gravity, the swift easy fluency of tears that the coming of a train always induced in her, thoughtful seriousness, and sudden hopeful speculation.
    “Well, boy,” she was now saying gravely, “you are going—as the sayin’ goes—” here she shook her head slightly, strongly, rapidly with powerful puckered lips, and instantly her weak worn eyes of brown were wet with tears—“as the sayin’ goes—to a strange land— a