784
PARTISAN REVIEW
be
worse to stay, that I might blow up and drag the whole dinner
to the floor in the table cloth, for I had the pain in my chest like a
hot wire stuck through the collarbones, but I stood there grinning
my teeth and saying that I couldn't miss the appointment, and let
them think the worst. I was grateful for the sickness; I couldn't stay
if
I was sick. So that was how it was, and Mrs. Neff was decent; I
appreciated that."
"But not enough to change your mind."
"I couldn't. I knew that nothing could be worse than to accept
considerate treatment. I had to go.
So
I took my coat. I was still
polite... . "
When he spoke of his politeness, Scampi was aware that a change
of phase had occurred. He had then tried to be polite as, now, he was
trying to give an orderly account, and he was moving into something
necessitous and compulsive, that air-storm vehemence, the obscurely
motivated push that Reger and Marchak called "blowing
his
top."
Only the other day he had himself offered an explanation, strange
enough in itself. He had said, "The last few years I've been just as
dumb as a tree-trunk," he had said. "Too weighed down to open my
mouth. Once I used to talk a lot, and now I'm beginning to again.
A month in the hospital probably has done it. Too much. But I feel
specially lucky to have you to talk to." He took an affectionate grip on
Scampi's arm, and Scampi felt a similar affection for him, too. For
after
all,
there was something attaching about this young man. It
was there even when he seemed contrary or for that matter when he
appeared to be conniving. And no matter how candid, western, and
outspoken, he gave you still a sense of an ultimate reserve, of a spon–
taneity which an enormous shadowy difficulty was riding; of something
he was trying to unseat. And now Scampi expected something truly
extraordinary, and this expectancy was bodily, nervous, so that he
felt the need of more solid support than he could find in the rods
of the fire escape and moved a little toward the brick wall.
"My sister took me to the station," Weyl said. "She wouldn't let
anybody else come. She had things to say to me, and of course she
was partly in the right, but I couldn't let her attack me without hitting
back, and I told her what I thought of her fiance, that he was a
stuffed shirt. Which he is. He won a suit for a British family that
contested the will of an American millionaire uncle-that gave him
