He found it infuriating that as three o'clock drew very near the whole thing seemed more and more like a fever. His breath was difficult; he looked into damp palms and thought: What the devil am I contemplating? Running away? From what? Good God, not from Uncle John Kenny, the soul of generosity! From what?... He watched the inexorable dwindling of the pie-slice made by the hour-hand and the minute-hand as ten minutes of three became five minutes of three. At three minutes of three he felt downright sick, and then jumped like a fool when the dry uncomprehended monologue of Mr. Hibbs ended with a quite familiar snap of a closed volume. He sat still, demoralized, watching Mr. Hibbs stride away; waited for inner quiet and was again grotesquely startled when Reuben, in one of those warm moods which Ben nowadays found almost as strange as his moods of withdrawal, came behind his desk and leaned over to lock thin arms under Ben's chin and murmur: "What's the matter, Mooncalf?"
"Nothing, Ru—nothing. I think I'll go into Boston."
"Oh." Reuben broke the contact; Ben had found it vaguely comforting as well as disturbing. Reuben came around the desk, and re-established nearness by placing his hands over Ben's, hands thinner and smaller, but harder, sometimes even stronger. "Would you," said Reuben presently, "care to take a creeping crawling student of medicine into your confidence, not that the ancient creature wishes to intrude, but——?"
It was not always possible to look directly at Reuben. He saw too much, or if he did not, his quiet intentness made it seem that he did. The faces of others were apt to make it plain enough that they were not so much concerned with you as with themselves; Reuben (who surely thought about himself as much as anyone) somehow could put that preoccupation aside, and make you believe that nothing mattered to him at the moment except that jumble of thought and image and desire which you had grown accustomed to calling your Self. And it was, Ben thought, no illusion: the boy did search, and he did care for what he found. Ben fumbled for an evasion: "Student of medicine for sure?"
This proved to be no evasion after all, for Reuben smiled, and used the question itself as a part of the effort to illuminate the self of Ben Cory. "Yes, truly, and I wish you could find the same kind of certainty, Ben, because it's good. Why, I almost think, Ben, that anything could happen to me now—anything, no matter what—and though I might be hurt as much as I would have been, say a year ago, I could defend myself against my trouble, whatever it was: I could go and study another page of Vesalius' Anatomy. Or the books you bought for me. They wouldn't fade, I think. They wouldn't betray me.... Find something like that, Ben. Suppose you did change your mind about it after a while, at least you'd have it for now."
"But when I search myself I don't find it. I only...."
"Only what?" Reuben tightened his hands, relentless.
"I only wish—oh, I wish to God Uncle John would allow me to sail with Artemis."
Reuben let go his hands, and perched on Mr. Hibbs' sacred desk, swinging his feet, drooping a little, boyish and old, perhaps no longer searching. "You put it to him a few days ago, did you not?"
"Mm—he wouldn't say ay or no."