Nothing That Meets the Eye Read Free

scope of his imagination startled him, and springing up, he pressed his fist hard against his breast. He bent his intense face toward the town, and believed with all his heart that the course of his life would reveal itself within Clement. He felt like one of the figures in a heroic and documentary painting, his posture governed by determination and nobility of purpose.
    â€œHello,” a small voice said.
    He turned around, flustered. It was a skinny, barefoot little girl in a dark dress that the wind snapped against her thighs. Even in the dimness, he could discern a big pattern in the hem which did not seem to belong to the dress. He remembered her. She was the little girl he had seen leaning against the tree that afternoon on the way to Mrs. Hopley’s.
    â€œWho are you?” she asked.
    Slowly he brought his fist down from his chest. “Who are you?” he retorted, adopting a playful adult tone.
    â€œFreya.”
    â€œFreya who?”
    â€œFreya Wolstnom.”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œFreya Wolstnom.”
    â€œWhat?”
    She took a deep breath. “Wolstnom. W-o-l-s-t-e-n-h-o-l-m-e.”
    He pieced together the first few letters, but the rest merely fell on his ears. As had happened many times in New York, when his fares had given him addresses, his mind refused to collect what he had heard. The memory of those times, of questionings, repeatings, final mistakes, the blare of horns as he turned the cab, rose about him and he writhed in the darkness. He passed the thumb of one hand near his mouth and brought it down again.
    â€œWho are you?” she repeated.
    â€œAaron Bentley.”
    After a moment the child turned and walked slowly about the hillside, between him and the town. She held back with both hands the lank black hair that the wind blew over her eyes, and looked at the ground as though she sought something.
    Aaron sat down and clasped his hands over his knees, thinking she was on her way to the town. But as she lingered, he called out, mainly to restore his own confidence, “Where do you live?”
    She did not look up, but merely brought her arm back. “Over there.”
    He could see only black forest. He looked back at her.
    She was lifting her feet and parting the high grass with graceful sidewise motions like those of a slow dance. There was a stiffness in her figure, not of self-consciousness but of concentration. He felt that she noticed his least movement.
    Finally, she advanced circuitously toward him up the hill. When she stopped, their heads were almost on a level. He returned her glance smilingly, then, straining his eyes in the darkness, he was surprised to see the straight line of her mouth. It seemed sad and tense and old. Behind the moving strands of her hair, her eyes were mere grayish areas, but he felt they regarded him with hostility. A sudden swimming dismay and sense of inferiority came over him, akin to that he had felt in New York, but now intensified and focused upon him by the child and the town behind her. He felt she was too contemptuous to put to him such questions as Mrs. Hopley had, that instead she faced him as an intruder upon her property.
    He fumbled to open the paper bag between his feet. “I don’t suppose you’d like to share some cake with me, would you?”
    â€œNope,” she said. “I got to go.” She walked slowly around the ­hillside.
    He stood up and watched her until her figure, then the pale hem disappeared into the darkness. “Good-bye!” he called out hopefully.
    There was no answer.
    He pushed the cake back into the bag, and made his way toward the asylum of his room.
    II
    H e washed and dressed with a frenzied impatience, for the mightiest morning he had ever seen was thrusting through his windows.
    He rushed again to the window and, gripping the sill, looked out across a green earth to the ponderous sun that staggered throbbingly upward. It blazed on the tops of trees, the ridges of