Silas Timberman Read Free

you to be an air raid warden or anything else of that sort. If Cabot wants to cut up and make a big thing out of this, why let him. It doesn’t involve you.”
    â€œIt involves my common sense,” Ike Amsterdam replied.
    â€œI don’t see that at all,” from Myra.
    â€œIf I think a thing, believe a thing, and then remain silent, that’s a prime matter of conscience,” the old man said, rather primly. “I’m disappointed in both of you—disappointed,” he repeated. “Now, if you will permit me, I will escort these two young ladies in the direction of their school.”
    * * *
    After the children had left with the old man and Brian had gone out to play before kindergarten, Silas still had better than an hour until his first class, and he helped Myra get through the breakfast dishes. At this point, neither of them was unduly disturbed by what the old man had said, for it was quite plainly the kind of thing Ike Amsterdam would say and had been saying for a long time. It did not mean, they decided, that he was for the war or against the war, for civil defense or against civil defense; it simply meant that he considered his intelligence to have been insulted on a matter of simple logic. All the rest, all the talk about conscience, they decided, was window dressing.
    â€œThen I wonder,” Myra asked, “why it depresses me so?”
    â€œYou felt that way before he came,” Silas observed.
    â€œWhy? Because I didn’t wake up laughing and singing, as you did? Can’t you get used to the idea that not everybody reacts to everything the way Silas Timberman does?”
    â€œMyra, I’m not going to walk into a silly argument.”
    â€œWhatever comes from me is silly—is that it?”
    â€œDid I say that, Myra?”
    â€œAll right—all right, I’m sorry. I feel rotten this morning. I’ll be all right later. It’s nothing for you to get disturbed about.”
    She kissed him before he left, and reminded him of cocktails with the Lundfests late that afternoon, about five-thirty.
    * * *
    When they had the pleasure of Professor Amsterdam’s company, the two girls took the long way to school, up the hill and across the entire campus to Science Hall and then back down, instead of cutting down the dirt path through the scrub woods behind their house to Whittier Road. The distance was doubled, but the girls considered it fair exchange, and they always pretended that they used no other way than this, regardless of whether the old man was with them or not. He, in turn, knew what was expected of him, and his own secret of success lay in the charm and thoughtfulness he exercised during these walks—whether it was banter precisely on their level, stories he spent hours devising, comments on the students and faculty members they passed, tales out of history, social as well as his own, or solemn and serious advice concerning their own problems. They spoke of many things, subjects as far apart as the Indian Wars fought once in the neighborhood of Clemington, and the present divorce actions of two of the faculty members. The children were just at that age to accept him without qualification and with complete trust, and he in turn looked upon this friendship as a precious and pleasant matter.
    He had always told himself that he knew nothing at all about children, and he was inordinately pleased to discover otherwise; yet he never presumed, never took liberties, never condescended. He never turned away questions and he never attempted to answer something he was incapable of answering properly.
    In other words, with them he was an entirely different person than he was with anyone else, but very much the person he desired to be.
    This morning, as they turned into Oak Common, the park of magnificent oaks in the very center of the campus, he reflected again on the great beauty of Clemington. It seemed to him that as he grew older, as he came