Down in the engine room something was burring and churning. The water rose along the ship's side with a hiss of faint motion, and descended again as if in stealthy silence. Nothing but the lap, lap of tiny waves succeeding one another. As if the sun's rays had woven a net about it, the water was caught again in stillness. It was a transfixed glory like the end of the world.
I shall die. I shall never come back. Inside Paul was like a light growing dim to itself, going on forever in invisible distance. When he contemplated leaving everything he knew, he followed the disappearing light, and when it died away he belonged to the strange lands which wanted him like dreams. The river and the city, dim and harsh at the same time, had the indefiniteness which allowed him to give himself to them. He was in them, in smoke and endless distance. He listened to the hoarse startling whistles of tugs, the shrill whistles of factories blowing the noon hour on land, the confusion of voices that rose from the small boats clustered about the ship's stern.
Going away. Dying. I shall be dead of light, not known. Fear of the unknown. There is only fear of the known, he said to himself, the known outside. The unknown is in me. He wondered what he was saying, growing up. Mature. He felt as if he had already gone far, far away, beyond the touch of the familiar things one never understood. The strange was close. It was his.
May felt herself lost in pale endless beauty of which Aunt Julia was a part. Love in the darkness. Love in her own room at night when she was alone and hugged her pillow to her wet face. Through the window she saw the trees in the street leaning together and mingling their odd shadows. An arc light was a blurred circle through the branches and the stiff leaves shaking and dropping occasionally to earth. When she was unseen she could give herself. If they saw her, they shut her in. Now she was everywhere, wanted, dark in the dark street. She could see a star above the roof and she was in the star filled with thin light. She felt as if she were dying of love, dying of happiness. Happy over a world which was beautiful because she loved it. She loved Paul, but he was only a part of the secret city—a part of everything. She did not want to think of him too much. Jesus, everything, she said. I'm Jesus. She shivered at her blasphemy, and was glad. I'm Jesus! I'm Jesus! The leaves rattled against the window pane and fell into the dark street. It was too bright. She drew herself up in a knot and hid her face.
It was a hot night. Bobby was excited and cross. He was going away to school the next day. His two trunks stood open on the floor of his room. Outside the windows the dry leaves rustled in the murky night. Some rain drops splattered against the lifted glass. Then there was silence, save for the occasional rattle of twigs in the darkness. An automobile slipped by with the long soft sound of rubber tires sucking damp asphalt. When the branches of the trees parted, the lights in the house opposite seemed to draw nearer. Bobby disliked their spying.
He clattered up and down the stairs and through the halls in the still house where one could hear the clocks tick.
Depressed and resentful, Julia had kept herself from the boy and his preparations. He encountered her outside his door. She was passing quietly, trying not to be seen. "Gee whizz, Aunt Julia, I haven't got anybody to help me!" Julia realized that she was hypocritical in her determination to keep away from him. "I don't see why you can't help me, Aunt Julia."
Julia clasped her long pale fingers together in front of her black dress. She smiled. Bobby doesn't know! Oh, Laurence, how can you! "Hadn't you better do it alone, Bobby? Then you'll know where everything is." She was thinking how proud his throat looked above his open collar. His sun-burned neck was full and slender like a flower calyx. She found something pathetic in his small hard face: his short straight nose, his sulky mouth, his round chin, his eyes that saw nothing but their own desires. She loved him. He hurt her so, hard beautiful little beast. She walked through the door, into his domain that recalled his school pennants and baseball bats. "What a trunk! You haven't left room for clothes, child."