“Doing things!” That was another piece of youth, like the young ladies of his more romantic moments. He had never been able very narrowly to define them, the things. In that case he probably would have done them. But they were of a highly decorative order. They were also to prove of inestimable benefit to the World at large—with a large W. And the World’s gratitude, incidentally, would enable him to retire to private life on the proceeds. After which there would be an appropriate tablet up there in the Hall of Fame, and a column or two in future encyclopædias. Whereas now—
With the very impulse to smile indulgently at himself, there flashed on Jerry for the first time in his life the full sense of what it meant. For if he could smile at his youth and the vanities of his youth, it was because his youth was gone. And that was no smiling matter. That was what had hung over him all the afternoon. That was what he had been trying to get away from. But now he had to face it. It was all very well to tell himself that he was a fool to get into such a state for so preposterous a reason; that his calamity was by no means unique in the world; that he was not so old after all. The fact remained that his youth, his première jeunesse, his golden hour, was done for.
The sudden realisation of it filled him with a passionate bitterness. What under the sun had he been thinking of, that he had not seen that priceless thing slipping through his fingers? Where had it gone? What had he done with it? What had he to show for it? It seemed to him that the darkness which fell while his thoughts were turning in this hopeless round was symbolic of an obscurity that for him had crept into the sunlight of the earth. And the things he had lost were as fairylike and unattainable as the magic city glittering there in the distance, above those shadowy arches printed against a river of gold.
He scrambled to the parapet and sat staring down into the underlying chasm. The twinkle of the Speedway and the jewelry of the opposite switches just made visible the water between. How black it was, and how noiseless—like another Lethe! The word hung in his mind as it came back to him how casually one step had followed another this afternoon, yet how irresistibly, as if foreordained. And one step more would take him into oblivion.... After all, why not? Wouldn’t it be logical? Had he any real reason for turning around and going back to life—save sheer cowardice? The accepted reasons had always struck him as being childish attempts to decorate a raw animal impulse. If you faced the thing honestly, what was life, anyway, after the climacteric of youth? Nothing but a long drawn out decay of the body, a gradual dulling of the senses, an imperceptible slackening of the will—a slower and more humiliating death. For a man with someone to live for or something to create, it might be different. But for him—
“Well, Buddy,” uttered a cheerful voice behind him: “Thinkin’ o’ jumpin’ overboard?”
Jerry did jump, but not in the direction indicated; and his fingers caught instinctively at the inner edge of the parapet. In the dim light he discovered his interlocutor to be a policeman, built in the generous proportions of his kind and of the age that has yielded to the elderly spread.
“You don’t seem to be doing very much to stop it,” Jerry replied without hauteur.
“Looks that way, don’t it?” returned the guardian of the law genially, leaning with elbows on the parapet. “But you see if you really want to go, you’ll go; an’ if you don’t there ain’t no reason in natur’ why you shouldn’t enjoy yourself kickin’ your heels over Harlem Speedway. That’s how it strikes me. Only if you do go over, just do me the favour not to pick the road. You’d be surprised to see what a mess you’d make.”
Jerry, considering this view of his liberty, gave his attention to a train which swept in a blur of light down the opposite bank. As for the policeman, he gave his attention to Jerry:
“What’s the matter? Has she given you the go-by?”