BOOKS
105
Howe gave him. The boy leaned on his cane. The broadbrimmed hat,
canting jauntily over his eye, confused the image of his face that Howe
had established, suppressed the rigid lines of the ascetic and brought
out the baroque curves. It made an effect of perverse majesty.
"Instruments of precision," said Tertan for the last time, addressing
no one, making a casual comment to the universe. And it occurred to
Howe that Tertan might not be referring to Hilda's equipment. The
sense of the thrice·woven circle of the boy's loneliness smote
him
fiercely.
Tertan stood in majestic jauntiness, superior to all the scene, but his
isolation made Howe ache with a pity of which Tertan was more the
cause than the object, so general and indiscriminate was it.
Whether in his sorrow he made some unintended movement toward
Tertan which the Dean checked or whether the suddenly tightened grip
on his arm was the Dean's own sorrow and fear, he did not know. Tertan
watched them in the incurious way people watch a photograph being
taken and suddenly the thought that, to the boy, it must seem that the
three were posing for a picture together made Howe detach himself
almost rudely from the Dean's grasp.
"I promised Hilda another picture," he announced-needlessly, for
Tertan was no longer there, he had vanished in the last sudden flux of
visitors who, now that the band had struck up, were rushing nervously
to find seats.
"You'd better hurry," the Dean said. "I'll go along, it's getting
late for me." He departed and Blackburn walked stately by his side.
Howe again took his position under the little tree which cast
~ts
shadow over his face and gown. "Just hurry, Hilda, won't you?" he
said. Hilda held the cable at arm's length, her other arm crooked and
her fingers crisped. She rose on her toes and said "Ready," and pressed
the release. "Thank you," she said gravely and began to dismantle her
camera as he hurried off to join the procession.
Books
A Rousseau for the N.A.M.
The Future of Industrial Man. By Peter F. Drucker. John Day. $2.50.
If
I had not once met Mr. Drucker, I'd
be
tempted to think that
"Peter F. Drucker" is a pseudonym for Don
Coriolan~or
perhaps Don
Achille? or Don Marcantonio?-anyway, for one of those provincial
orators whose eloquence Silone reproduces so wonderfully in his new
novel. Like Don Coriolano, Drucker can go on for hours-or pages–
ringing rhetorical changes on a half dozen undefined concepts. This
kind of oratory demands that everything
be
stated in the most extreme
terms, without qualifications or documentation, so as to permit that
dramatic cla&h of artificial antitheses on a pure conceptual plane which
