The last hour of Richard Honoré

WILLIAM HARLAN HALE

Downcast and absent, he started at the clatter. In swaying green, the hits loomed up before him and came rattling to a stop. He climbed aboard: the conductor's name, conspicuously posted on a metal badge, was McCoole. He climbed to the upper deck; the driver threw the gear into low, there was a moment of sharp stresses, an aching heave, and Number 3014 of the Coach company sped off northward.

Incorporated under the laws of the State of New York, thought Richard Honoré. And very flashing in its spring green. A company was not just a machine on paper; it was an organism almost as real and as alive as a human being. Here all these green units were rushing uptown, turning and rushing down-town, turning and rushing back, with no purpose except to maintain the company's schedule: they were corpuscles in the blood-stream of the great corporation, fulfilling a scientific, irrevocable destiny. And so it is with life, my friends.

Richard Honoré looked around the bus. A part of a living system, yes. But emotions? Pangs of the heart? It seemed rather doubtful. A bus might be moody, might break down, might sideswipe a taxicab, but oh, nothing in the world could make it tour up Sixth Avenue when it was directed to drive on Fifth Avenue, and especially when it was conspicuously labelled to do such. Nothing, thought Richard Honoré, could make it do that. Oh, to be a corporate bus! It would be so much simpler. And then he looked up startled at having thought of such an idea. Put away childish things!

■ Putting away things, unwanted things, was the need of the present hour. One ought, now, to be able to put away a girl by the name of Lucile. Lucile! The name was so obvious in its intentions; it ought not to be hard. Well, actually he had just put her away. This luncheon in her apartment had settled matters, ended them for once and all. Besides, she had served chicken. He hated chicken. She knew that. Had she served chicken on purpose, as a parting gesture, a token of her final disregard? Oh, Lucile! That could not have been possible. You loved me once. You could not have ended it that way! No, you ended it by telling me that you were going with someone else to the Catskills. And telling me so calmly.

Number 3014 whirled up the empty blocks of lower Fifth Avenue: a sharp crosswind swept the top as it passed seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth streets, once leading business corners, now dark gray lofts, importers' offices, wholesalers, chainless drugstores. Some radical party headquarters stood down the street; but no people seemed to be going to them. That was all as usual. It was all the same as when he was riding down three hours ago for that luncheon. Nothing had changed whatever. Except that it was cooler under the buildings in the afternoon. Conductor McCoole came up to the top, found no new passenger, and went down.

I tried so hard, thought Richard Honoré, to make things go. I was never moody or changeable, as you were; I was always full of the same intensity, constant in my passion for you. And often, I am afraid, all you did was to consent to my being there. The week in the fall in Maryland was different, of course. Lucile, you must have loved me then. I am sure of it. If it was not love, it was something very complete and perfect that the yacht and Chesapeake Bay gave us. I wonder if that is often the case: love on Chesapeake Bay, loss in New York City? But we did not lose each other, exactly. You invited me, Lucile, you held me; and when you began to let me go it was done so subtly, by degrees, that I did not know what had happened. And always I was hoping, thinking that all sorts of passing things might be at fault—such as the bitter weather. But the idea of being so busy with all those stage designs last month that you couldn't see me at night, not even once! And at the same time saying you would see me, that you were always thinking of me intimately, and that I should wait until the time came. What time? All the flowers I sent! Good God, enough for the biggest garden in England, say Hampton Court. (Come down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac-time.) How I pleaded and begged! That was all wrong. I know it now. I should have left right away.

There was the time when I tried that, hut in a week I was back with a healthy sinful plan for a long week in the Catskills: I had figured it out, it could he done for a hundred dollars or so. You did not turn my idea down, and you didn't go into the next room to pack your bag. You postponed it. We have never taken that trip. I should never have let things drag on that way. And now—why must you go with him to the Catskills, of all places?

■ As a red light stopped the bus, Richard Honore looked to his left: on the downtown side of the street waited a bus plainly marked "Washington Square." Lucile's square! Supposing . . . just supposing he dashed off this bus and across into that one, and rushed back down to Lucile, and said, in a great burst. Oh hell, it's no use! A twinge ran through Richard Honoré; his knees snapped tight: he would run. But no, there never would be time enough. The light would change. And the light did change. The gears ground. Conductor McCoole let the dimes ring into his little machine. They were passing flower shops. (Come down to Kew ... it isn't far from London.

And then there were furniture shops. The windows grew more fashionable as the street-numbers swelled. The antiques sped past. Louis XIII, Louis XIV, Louis XV, and then Louis XVI. The whole line of kings, right in a row. You could learn so much. It was all really a matter of education. Lucile, too, was intelligent.

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That was the trouble, Lucile. I have it now: we knew too much. We planned and postponed and dreamed and evaded. We neither grasped love nor put it away, and then in our very hands it withered. We thought too much. We were always conscious of our separate aims. If only we could have been simpler! Oh, the blight of this knowledge, this clear, constraining knowledge, which keeps us from losing ourselves and gaining each other!

And lo! Here in a great show window was a whole room in the style of the First Empire. It followed the others so correctly, historically. There were the strange decorative motifs brought home from the campaign in Egypt. Richard Honoré smiled. He looked upon the dense crowds passing the window. All the young women had the same kind of ridiculous little hats perched on the top of their heads. And not one of those heads could tell you when, or why, Napoleon went to war in Egypt. Thank God for that! And their men didn't know either, possibly with one or two exceptions. And they were very happy with their men, surely.

Do you suppose we could ever have returned again, Lucile, returned nearer to the fountain, to the source of our being? Could anything have been powerful enough to lift us out of the prison of our too mature understanding? To rescue us from the chamber of our consciousness, and to bring us back to a simpler life? Where feeling was free, and the soil near at hand, and the moment glorious in itself? Yes, could we have recovered our early sacred lack of intelligence?

• Rising steeply over their set-backs the office buildings of the 'fifties gathered above him. Turning from the jammed traffic, Richard Honoré looked up at the precise tiers of life insurance headquarters, investment securities, travel in Canada, advertising, lawyers, import, construction, production, collection, receivers in bankruptcy. He looked up to a corner window on the fortieth or fiftieth floor —or perhaps it was nearer the sixtieth floor. He put himself inside that window. He became Richard Honoré, assistant consulting agent for western merchandising dep't. No, his office was nothing swell, no "Private" sign, and— good heavens!—nothing in the way of a mahogany desk. But he would handle summaries of this week's western shipments, proposed economies in the transfer dep't, new prices on packing supplies, recommendations in re west-coast sales territory. It would at least bring him closer to men and materials, to the flow of business in America, handling things that you could count and touch. It would all be clear—and. compared to 'this at present—it would be fairly simple. "We are most gratified. Mr. Honoré. to note that your department has effected a 19% decrease in overhead as against the same period in 1932."

■ There, in the windy square at the corner of Central Park, General Sherman rode horseback, and the sun stuck to the stale gilt. The only trouble, Richard Honoré remembered, was that General Sherman never really did say "War is Hell." As a matter of fact, war is not hell, so long as it gives you an equestrian statue in the best position in New York, with honest-to-god gilt on it. And really, this business of uniforms is a pretty glamorous one indeed. Europe, Potsdam, the old times! The out-of-door life! Discipline and codes of honor and early hours in the barracks and the glimpse of royalty! I could promenade the streets in the smart blue uniform of the Third Regiment of Footguards—Hindenburg's regiment, a great history. Red facings and silver woven shoulder-straps for the rank of Major; the elegant great-coat for winter, white gloves, hand correctly placed on sword-hilt. The life of doing and commanding! But then, early in August, 1914, the regiment changed into field-grey, marched out of the city with bands playing. and in the attacks in Dixmuiden it was practically wiped out. The outdoor life. . . .

Well, then, let me get hack to the open, the free, the simple, by going into our own land, getting the morning wetness of farms, the stamping and whinnying in the stalls, the warm heavy odor of new ploughing. Anything to get near the ripe wheat rustling on a windy day, to follow the reaper and hinder, to see the belts and the chaff of the threshing machinery, to weigh, load, cart, and reap again! 1 should like to be in the northern hills (not far from that place in the Catskills where I was going to take Lucile, and never did); there I should like to drill my well, bring down my own timber, blow out my rock, pour my own cement into the moulds for cellar and foundation; I should like to saw my own lengths of wood, set my own joists, posts, sills, rafters; to plane and bore, notch and join and chisel. Anything—to build! And get the sweet pungent smell of fresh-hewn trees, and the sharp drier aroma of the sawmill; the undisturbed heat and rest of the middle of the country day. To he away, back, back to the unclouded and the thoughtless! To break through this web of mine, to recover from this ill health of knowledge!

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Richard Honoré shifted restlessly in the seat. The splendor of Fifth Avenue of the apartment houses lay behind him, and ahead, above 110th Street, was the sudden transformation to the Fifth Avenue of the Negroes. The 1ms, avoiding it, veered crosstown to the west. At higher speed it rumbled by cheap apartment houses, garages, billboards, and the squalid corners where the Elevated structure shadowed down over the street. Roar from overhead; clatter underneath. Richard Honoré, in the speed and the noise, began to speak to himself half aloud.

Oh. let's go hack to Grigsby station, said he, where we were so happy and so poor. Those words were in a song I used to hear, it must have been a very long time ago. And never dine in tbe east fifties again; never again opening nights, nor white ties at the Casino. No more gardenias and steel chairs from Vienna. No more of your dark, bewildering sea of bair, Lucile, and nothing of your delicate knowing arms and the secret warmth of you when we woke up! To Indiana, the Whitewater River—anywhere, but not here! I shall do it! 1 must! I shall go north, and find work in a lumber camp. I shall travel across the country hitch-hiking and riding the freights and eating out of tin pots in the shanties. I shall go to the west, as my fathers did—who, I understand, were strong men. I shall see Winnipeg and Seattle, I shall wander down across the plains, from the hemlock to the sagebrush and, further south, to the cactus. I shall know the small towns and the dust of a thousand general stores, and their litter behind the gas pumps. I shall go up into Wyoming, and there will be trout waiting for me. I shall take my clothes off and swim in clear pools by the cold roar of the falls. And then, do you suppose, I shall still think of all these things here in the eastern corner—the night, the dress, the talking? The books, the talking, the history? My God—if I do—if I get homesick—if I can't maintain it?

The unconscious peace. Maybe I've never bad it. I must have it now! Maybe as a child I had it. If I had children, I'd want as 1 died to give them only this: closeness to the ground, a new beginning, a chance to be simple in spirit, and unashamed. To be without complications and without art. I'd make my will and testament something that would help them recover that warm unconscious peace, to find once more the earlier fountain.

Oh!—With a wide rush the bus had swung into Riverside Drive, and down below were the scattered barges and river craft, a small freighter at anchor, the water crisp tinder a sharp breeze from the north.

Oh! thought Richard Honoré. Now I have it! The sea, of course, the sea. Why hadn't I thought of it? I shall ship aboard that freighter there as an able seaman (Able! my God!) and man the winches, batten down the tarpaulins, paint, scrub, Stand by! Stand by! We may be off to Calcutta; or machinery to Buenos Aires, then in ballast to Rio, then with coffee home to haven. That is it! The seas will take us, between crest and crest, as whitecaps break and from close under the bows the white sheets of spray come sousing up over the deck. We shall have an end, then, of all of these things (I almost begin to forget them); I shall get out of them, and be home.

Reaching quickly past Grant's Tomb, the bus swept toward tbe long viaduct that passed over the dock-streets and ferry squares far below.

Oh! Richard Honoré drew sudden breath. There she lay! At last! A sailing ship with a white hull lay tied up to a bare pier down there near the ferry-slip. Her masts stood tall and rakish: the yards reached out in soaring breadth: she was a full-rigged ship. On the pier swarmed small crowds of onlookers, gazing up at her.

Richard Honoré stood up on the deck of the careening bus. The wind carried off his hat and tossed his hair. He looked down to the river, off to the side ahead of him, at the white ship. The sun shone upon her; the water lay black around her.

My ship! he called, now speaking aloud. See the shrouds and the stays, and the canvas all furled close to the yards! See the marvellous line of the bowsprit, and the sweep of the stern! I shall sail in her, I shall stand there in the rigging when the call comes to reef foretopsails in a rising storm. I shall go up there into the crosstrees; and then I shall climb to the slender pole of the skysail, soaring out above the sea. I shall not falter now, not be dizzy! There will he a music up there, all my own, in the driving wind. I shall not let go! Quick! I must go to her. Now! Not wait until we get away to the end of this viaduct. She'll be long past by then. Off here!

He rang the passengers' bell and rushed down the steps to the platform. The bus rushed on at high speed. Conductor McCoole called to him that they never stopped on the viaduct. Richard Honoré, hair flying in the wind, stared over to the ship which was fast falling behind. He rang again. Still the bus rushed. And with one gigantic burst he jumped forward to the sidewalk and the railing.

He saw for an instant the conductor shout and throw out his arm: he felt a quick, sickening crack as his foot, overturned, struck the asphalt. He felt himself catapulted toward the iron railing. Way below, the street and the pier. And suddenly his mind flashed: No! Do not stop! No delay! Over, to the ship! The middle of his body hit hard against the railing: his hands grasped tight upon the iron, and then in a moment they relaxed; the body balanced, was poised? slipped, and went over.