Read Of Time and the River for Free Online

stranger among strange people.—It may be a long, long time,” she whispered in an old husky tone, her eyes tear-wet as she shook her head mysteriously with a brave pathetic smile that suddenly filled the boy with rending pity, anguish of the soul, and a choking sense of exasperation and of woman’s unfairness—“I hope we are all here when you come back again. . . . I hope you find us all alive. . . .” She smiled bravely, mysteriously, tearfully. “You never know,” she whispered, “you never know.”
    “Mama,” he could hear his voice sound hoarsely and remotely in his throat, choked with anguish and exasperation at her easy fluency of sorrow, “—Mama—in Christ’s name! Why do you have to act like this every time someone goes away! . . . I beg of you, for God’s sake, not to do it!”
    “Oh, stop it! Stop it!” his sister said in a rough, peremptory and yet kindly tone to the mother, her eyes grave and troubled, but with a faint rough smile about the edges of her generous mouth. “He’s not going away for ever! Why, good heavens, you act as if someone is dead! Boston’s not so far away you’ll never see him again! The trains are running every day, you know. . . . Besides,” she said abruptly and with an assurance that infuriated the boy, “he’s not going today, anyway. Why, you haven’t any intention of going today, you know you haven’t,” she said to him. “He’s been fooling you all along,” she now said, turning to the mother with an air of maddening assurance. “He has no idea of taking that train. He’s going to wait over until tomorrow. I’ve known it all along.”
    The boy went stamping away from them up the platform, and then came stamping back at them while the other people on the platform grinned and stared.
    “Helen, in God’s name!” he croaked frantically. “Why do you start that when I’m all packed up and waiting here at the God-damned station for the train? You KNOW I’m going away today!” he yelled, with a sudden sick desperate terror in his heart as he thought that something might now come in the way of going. “You KNOW I am! Why did we come here? What in Christ’s name are we waiting for if you don’t think I’m going?”
    The young woman laughed her high, husky laugh which was almost deliberately irritating and derisive—“Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi!”— and plodded him in the ribs with her large stiff fingers. Then, almost wearily, she turned away, plucking at her large chin absently, and said: “Well, have it your own way! It’s your own funeral! If you’re determined to go today, no one can stop you. But I don’t see why you can’t just as well wait over till tomorrow.”
    “Why, yes!” the mother now said briskly and confidently. “That’s exactly what I’d do if I were you! . . . Now, it’s not going to do a bit of harm to anyone if you’re a day or so late in gettin’ there. . . . Now I’ve never been there myself,” she went on in her tone of tranquil sarcasm, “but I’ve always heard that Harvard University was a good big sort of place—and I’ll bet you’ll find,” the mother now said gravely, with a strong slow nod of conviction— “I’ll bet you’ll find that it’s right there where it always was when you get there. I’ll bet you find they haven’t moved a foot,” she said, “and let me tell you something, boy,” she now continued, looking at him almost sternly, but with a ghost of a smile about her powerful and delicate mouth—“now I haven’t had your education and I reckon I don’t know as much about universities as you do—but I’ve never heard of one yet that would run a feller away for bein’ a day late as long as he’s got money enough to pay his tuition. . . . Now you’ll find ‘em waitin’ for you when you get there—and YOU’LL GET IN,” she said slowly and powerfully. “You don’t have to worry about that—they’ll be glad to see you, and they’ll take you in a hurry when they see