On the train he took out his money and counted it again, though he knew quite definitely how much he had. But it was reassuring to feel the crisp bills in his hand. Well, he would not starve for three or four weeks anyway. He considered the advisability of putting away separately enough to pay his fare back home, but decided against it. “I am not going back home,” he said to himself.
He went over his plans once more. From the station he would go to a certain cheap hotel that Tom had suggested. Tom had stayed there once when he was nearly broke. Then he would look about for a cheap room. That secured, he would spend a day wandering about the city and familiarizing himself with its streets. The third day he would go to look for a job. And the fourth day—and all the other days—he would continue to look for a job: until he got one.
There was no use in going over his plans any more. He took a book from his suitcase to read.
He had taken along only one book.... He had smiled ironically when choosing it, remembering the old literary discussions as to what book one would choose to have along when cast away on a desert island. Here was a more practical problem: what book one should choose for solace when cast alone into the midst of a complex and difficult civilization. On a desert island one would want something to remind one of people, of civilization—perhaps Henry James; or more likely the Arabian Nights. But for his Chicago campaign he had chosen H. G. Wells’ “First and Last Things.”
He opened the book and began to read.... He discovered after a while that he had been reading the same sentence over and over:
“It seems to me one of the heedless errors of those who deal in philosophy, to suppose all things that have simple names or unified effects are in their nature simple and may be discovered and isolated as a sort of essence by analysis.”
Under ordinary circumstances that sentence was doubtless perfectly clear; but on the train to Chicago it was strangely hard to understand. And when he recalled his wandering thoughts, put aside his emotions of expectation and fear, and looked at the sentence again, its meaning was singularly comfortless. That simple things are not so simple after all—yes, that was just the trouble!
Going to Chicago, for instance. Thousands of young men did it every year; his journey was merely one of the items of those broad sociological generalizations which the university extension lecturers were fond of uttering. From the outside it was simple enough. It had apparently been taken for granted by his family and friends for the last two or three years that Felix would go to Chicago. Certain people, it seemed, inevitably went. Being one of those people, he had gone.
But why?
He restlessly put aside the book and stared out the window. Why? He hadn’t the least idea, and he rather wished he were back in Port Royal, with time and leisure to work out the answer to that question satisfactorily....