Dr. Miller: Once more, Lennard; I’m more sorry than I can say that this happened.
Blake: Yes, sir, good-bye, sir.
Here, at the exit, his mind was most tiresome of all. Just here at the original performance Blake had slipped while making his exit. He had done his best to leave that part out of the repetitions, but the more he struggled the more ridiculous became the by-play. Today the stumble was worse than it had ever been: he slipped on the rug at the door, waved wildly about as he tried to catch his balance, and ultimately, after the most ludicrous contortions, landed on his neck in a Charles Chaplin abandon. All of this went on just as the limousine turned from the Lamy cut-off to the main road. Writhing in an agony of embarrassment, Blake forgot where he was and said aloud, in protest to the tyrannical stage-manager, “No, I didn’t!”
The chauffeur cocked an ear and Blake burrowed down hastily behind a suit-case. He left the charade with relief and began to look at the mountains. Up ahead there was a group of buildings that looked as if it might be the outpost of Santa Fé. It occurred to him that he might ask the chauffeur to point things out to him. On second thought he decided to wait and pick up his knowledge in a different way. The effort of breaking silence would be terrific.
So in silence they rode down the hill into town, past the first little adobe houses and then by way of the outskirts to his mother’s house. He liked the outside of it: irregular and old-looking, with a wall that started at the side and enclosed—imperfectly—a garden. Mary heard the car and came to the door, in quite a hurry. That was nice of her and it made Blake feel better. He had expected to find the door locked.
She kissed him and didn’t mention school. She asked after his aunt in New York, disapproved of his tie, and sent him to his room to get acquainted. There were three pieces of furniture in it: a low bed with straight brown posts, a light dressing-table, and a wardrobe. The walls were painted a light yellow and he walked all the way around wondering how to decorate them with murals. He would need a bookcase: he could paint it himself, purple to match the mountains. But now as he looked from the window the mountains were not purple. They were blue, a deep expressionless color. They were like pieces of passe-partout about the edge of the valley, cut out in great rolling curves and pasted over the disorderly meeting of sky and land. He leaned out of the window and sniffed. His nose expected an odor of pine and wet ground; instead there was a faint parched perfume of burning wood and sunburnt clay. It was almost dark. He changed his tie and went in to tea.
Bob Stuart had come to welcome him. Sitting on the edge of a chair, talking fast and gesticulating with his free hand while he steadied his tea-cup on his knee, he looked all wrong out here. He was practically an uncle and he belonged to another world. He was embarrassing to Blake; he took from the adventure and the new world its exclusive adventurous quality. Still, he had changed. A funny little man with all his ideas coming in rushes, bubbling over in sudden gestures and rapid words, his orange hair had gained a dignity and he was not just an amusing little person. He was unique. After forty-some years of managing to hold his own, Bob had become independent. It was as if he had waked one day and stood in front of the mirror, probably with his stiff hair leaning the wrong way and his nose comically pink and small above the striped pajamas. Perhaps he had suddenly said to himself:
“Well, that’s the way I am. What are they going to do about it? I am I. That’s that.”
It must have been something like that. At any rate, immediately thereafter other people saw a change in Bob. He had put on a velvet shirt of vivid purple, white Mexican trousers, and brown sandals that exposed his big toes to friends and enemies, and to hell with them. He walked the streets of Santa Fé with his nose up, neither seeking nor shunning mirrors. It was not at all the same old Bob who now shook hands with Blake.
“Well, well, well,” he said as the hands went up and down. “And how’s the young rebel?”