They went toward the River. Black houses were lost among masts of ships. Black herded houses crawled towards the wharves. Men were nervous like rats feeding on grain.
David walked on Wall Street. Walked toward his uncle’s office that was to swallow him up. Walked down to where it waited him, a block from Wall Street. Life was sea-yearning. Shops sold sails and compasses and binnacles. In the smart of the salt a scent and a sense of spices. Coffee and wines were at home here in the grime of the North, had brought with them the linger of their homes. Tobacco. Musty housings for jagged yellow leaves. A brooding, reeking, murmurous street.
David fell down the funnel of a world. The waters touched him that touched far lands. Pregnant waters. He had been like a virgin whose lips trembled with fear. He was like a virgin whose lips tremble with desire.
He stepped into a doorway, behind his uncle....
The Deanes returned from the mountains in a body. Mr. Deane, despite his virtues, was taking a vacation. A few days after David’s mustering into service, he had gone to join his wife and daughters. David was alone in the barren house, with Anne to cook his breakfasts and make his bed.
David was alone with Anne in the house. But in the house was the spirit of its owners and more really David was alone with that.
He moved uneasy through the City, he lay uneasy in this house that was his only home. He tried to win a certain temporary comfort. He was helpless against the press of the Deanes, thwarting his rest as he sat eating his food; against the press of the City as he worked at his desk downtown, earning his food. It was beyond his reason. The days were fire. The nights were fume of heated stone and brick. And, within the stone and brick, restless spirits marring his own. The City gasped out the heat of the day by night. David was seared between alternate fires.
The heat of business dulled his will, depleted his body, aroused his nerves. A new equation. At the hour of closing, he was tired and yet only partly tired. The discrepancy gave accent to his fatigue. The rounded, gentle weariness that he had often known, which took him whole in encompassing arms and lowered him to sleep, was not this. The City worked on him with an uneven spite. There he was, with the low sun hot in the west above the lurid Hudson: limp and moist and spirit-dead, but with senses leaping and a hunger ranging his veins.
In this state, David took his supper—trying to stifle the heat with iced tea and iced coffee. In this state he tried to sleep.
He lay naked in bed. The sheets clung to his flesh. His skin prickled with irritation.