Thomas Wolfe, page 168
The foul words thickened to a swelter of blind hate and murder in his heart, and would not give him ease, or phrase the choking and intolerable burden of his hate; the light of hate and murder burned in his naked eye, curled his hands into two rending paws of savage power in which he seemed to feel the substance of that warm, soft throat between the strangling grip of his long fingers; and all the time he felt hopelessly tricked, outwitted, beaten by the very nakedness of his surrender to his hate, beaten by something too subtle, soft and cunning for him ever to grasp, by something which, for so it now seemed, would always beat him, by something whose impossible good fortune it would always be to take from him the thing he wanted most.
A thousand times he had foreseen this thing. A thousand times, he had foreseen, as young men will foresee, the coming of the enemy—and always he had pictured him in a definite form and guise. Always he had come, armed in insolence and power, badged with the open menace of the jeering word, the sneering tongue, the brandished fist. Always he had come to strike terror to the heart with naked threat and open brag, to try to break the heart and courage of another man, to win his jeering domination of another’s life, by violence and brutal courage. He had never come by stealth but always by the frontal attack, and the youth, like every youth alive, had sworn that he would be ready for him when he came, would meet him fiercely and without retreat, and would either conquer him or most desperately lie dead before he yielded to the inexpiable shame of foul dishonor.
And now the enemy had come, but in no way that he had ever known, in no guise that he had ever pictured. The enemy had come, not armed in brutal might and open brag and from the front, but subtle, soft, and infinitely cunning, and from a place, and in a way that he had never foreseen. The enemy had come behind the mask of friendship, he had come with words of praise, with avowals of proud belief and noble confidence, in an attitude of admiration and humility—had come in such a way, and even as he spoke the words of praise and proud belief in him, had taken from him what he wanted most in life, and had not seemed to take it, or to want it, or to care.
Starwick and Elinor had quarrelled again: this time it was because he too had decided to go back to Paris that afternoon. No one but Elinor knew the purpose of his going; and that purpose, whatever it was, did not please her. When Eugene entered the dining-room for his last meal with them, they were at it hammer and tongs, totally oblivious of the sensation they were causing among the whispering and conspiring old men and women all about them. Or, if not oblivious, they were indifferent to it: even in their quarrels they kept their grand and rare and special manner—a manner which more and more conceived the universe as an appropriate backdrop for the subtle and romantic complications of their own lives, and which, in its remote and lofty detachment from the common run of man, said that here was an intercourse of souls that was far too deep and rare for the dull conscience of the world to apprehend.
Elinor was talking earnestly, positively, an accent rich, yet sharp, cultivated, yet formidably assured, a well-mannered authority, positive with denial and the conviction of experience.
“You cannot do it! I tell you that you cannot do it! You will come a cropper if you do!”
Starwick’s face was flushed deeply with anger; he answered quietly in a mannered tone filled with a sense of outrage and indignation:
“I resent that very much,” he said. “It is very wrong, and very unfair of you to speak that way! I resent it!” he said quietly, but with stern reproof.
“Sorry!” she clipped the word out curt and brusque, the way the English say it. “If you resent it, you resent it—and that’s that! But after all, my dear, what else do you expect? If you insist on bringing any little cut-throat you pick up in a Montmartre bistro along with you everywhere you go, your friends are going to complain about it! And they’ve a right to!”
“I resent that very much!” he said again, in his mannered tone.
“Sorry!” she said crisply, curtly, as before. “But that’s the way I feel about it!” She looked at him for a moment, and then, suddenly shaking her head in a short and powerful movement, she said in a whispering shudder of revulsion and disgust:
“No good, Frank! . . . I’m willing to make all the allowances I can . . . but the man’s no good—no good! . . . He just won’t do!” Her tone was the tone of a powerful New Englander, of “fibre,” character and breeding, putting the final dogma of his judgment upon an inferior person who “just won’t do.”
And again, Starwick, two spots of bright color burning in his cheeks, said coldly, quietly, and with an inflexible obstinacy:
“I resent that very much!”
He had apparently decided that Alec, the Frenchman they had met in a Montmartre bar one night, and who had accompanied them on most of their expeditions since, should be their guest in their forthcoming travels over France. Moreover, with that arrogant secretiveness that was characteristic of him, Frank had made an appointment to meet the Frenchman in Paris that evening, and had not until that morning informed any one of his intentions. This was the cause of the quarrel.
As Eugene entered, they looked up at him indifferently, and resumed their quarrel; Ann came in a little later, sat down without speaking, and began to eat in sullen silence. It was an unpleasant meal. Elinor assumed her customary manner of gay, light raillery, but this time, in powerful contrast to her hilarious good spirits of the night before, she was full of spite and malice—the angry desire of her tormented spirit to sting and wound as if, by causing pain to others, she could in some measure assuage her own.
“Darling,” she said to Eugene, in her deft, malicious way, “I do hope you’re not going to forget all about me now that you’re deserting me? . . . Won’t you write me now and then to cheer me up? . . . Or is this going to be good-bye forever! . . . Because, darling, if it is, I want you to say so right out . . . no matter how it hurts, I’d rather know the worst right now, so that I can go out in the garden and eat worms, or howl, or beat my head against the wall, or something,” she said drolly, but with a glint of spiteful motive in her eyes and in her smooth tone that left no doubt of her intention.—“Won’t you say it ain’t so, darling? . . . I mean, won’t you remember me long enough sometime just to write a letter to me . . . I don’t care how short it is if you’ll just write and let me know that you still care,” she said maliciously. “. . . Come on, darling,” she added coaxingly, leaning towards him, “say you will. . . . Promise to write me just a little letter . . . just a teeny-weeny little one like that,” she measured drolly between two fingers, and then, while he glared at her with a hot face and angry eyes, she got in the instant, deft, decisive stroke before he could think up an answer; and so concluded it:
“Good!” she said swiftly, and patted him quickly, decisively, on the arm: “God bless you, darling! I knew you would!”
They finished lunch in a sullen and unhappy silence. After lunch, Eugene went upstairs, packed and closed his valise and came down and paid his bill. When he got outside, Elinor was sitting in the car, waiting for him. Starwick had not yet come down.
“Put your suitcase in behind,” she said curtly, “and do tell Frank to hurry if he’s coming. There’s not much time.”
“Where’s Ann?” he said. “Is she coming with us to the station?”
“My dear,” she said coldly, “I haven’t the remotest idea. Why don’t you ask her yourself if you want to know?”
He flushed again; and then with a feeling of painful embarrassment and constraint, said:
“Elinor—if you don’t mind—that is—I’d like——”
“What?” she said curtly, impatiently, and sharply, turning in her seat and looking at him. “You’d like what?”
“If you don’t mind,” he said, gulping with embarrassment, and at the same moment enraged that he should feel so——
“—My money!” he blurted out.
“What? . . . What?” she demanded again, in a brusque, puzzled tone. “Oh!” she cried with a sudden air of enlightenment. “Your money! . . . You mean those express checks you gave me to keep for you?”
“Yes,” he said miserably, feeling an inexplicable shame and embarrassment at having to ask for his own money, and inwardly cursing the folly which, in the rush of affection that followed their recent reconciliation, had caused him to give every cent he had into her keeping—“if you don’t mind—that is——”
“But of course, my child!” cried Elinor, with a fine air of astonishment. “You shall have it at once!”—and opening her purse she took out the thin little, black folder that contained all the money he had left—three express checks of twenty-dollar denomination. “Here you are, sir!” she said, and gave it to him in such a way that he felt again a sense of guilt and shame as if he were acting meanly towards her, or were taking something that did not belong to him.
“I’m sorry,” he stammered apologetically, “—sorry to have to ask you for it, Elinor—but you see it’s all I’ve got left.”
“It is?” she said curtly. “What did you do with all the rest that you had when we met you?”
“I—I guess I spent it,” he stammered.
The answer came, and buried itself in his heart, as quick, as cold, as poisonous as a striking snake:
“You did?” she said curtly. “I wonder where. I’m sure you didn’t spend any of it while you were with us.”
He could have strangled her. The veins stood out upon his forehead like cords, his face was brick-red, and for a moment he went blind with the rush of hot, choking blood to his head. He tried to speak, his throat worked convulsively, but no words came: he just stood there goggling at her stupidly with an inflamed face, uttering a few incoherent croaks. Before he could think of anything to say, she had escaped again: Starwick and Ann were coming out of the pension, and she was speaking to them swiftly, telling them to make haste.
No one spoke during the ride to the station. He sat on the back seat beside Ann and the big Alsatian dog; Starwick and Elinor were in front. When they got to the station, the clock still lacked more than five minutes to train-time. He and Starwick bought third-class fares, and went outside where the women were still waiting for them. Starwick and Elinor walked away a few yards and began their quarrel again; Ann said nothing, but looked at him dumbly, miserably, a look that tore at him with pity and wild regret, and that made him weak and hollow with his blind, impossible desire.
They looked at each other with angry, sullen eyes, tormented with the perverse and headstrong pride of youth, unwilling to make concessions or relent, even when each desperately wanted the other to do so.
“Good-bye,” he said, and held out his hand. “Good-bye, Ann.”
“What do you mean—?” she began angrily. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m saying good-bye,” he said doggedly.
“You mean you’re not coming with us?”
For a moment he did not answer and then, nodding towards Elinor, he said bitterly:
“Your lady friend there doesn’t seem to want me very much. She doesn’t seem to think I bear my fair share of the expense.”
“What did she say to you?” the girl asked.
“Oh, nothing,” he said in a quiet, choking tone of fury. “Nothing in particular. Just one of those friendly little things I’ve come to look for. She just said she didn’t know what I’d done with my money—that I hadn’t spent any of it while I was with you.”
Her face got brick-red with a heavy, smoldering flush, she looked towards Elinor with angry eyes, and then muttered:
“It was a rotten thing to say!” Turning towards him again, she said in a low tone:
“Do you mean then that you’ve given up the trip? You’re not coming with us?”
“That’s what I’ve told you, isn’t it?” he said harshly. “What else do you expect?”
She looked at him sullenly, angrily, a moment longer; and suddenly her eyes were wet with tears.
“It’s going to be a fine trip for me, isn’t it?” she muttered. “I’ve got a lot to look forward to, haven’t I?”
“Oh, you’ll get along, I guess,” he jeered. “I don’t think you’re going to miss my company very much.” And felt a desperate hope that she would.
“Oh, it’s going to be charming, charming, isn’t it!” she said bitterly. “Nothing to do but hold down the back seat alone with the dog—while they,” she nodded towards Elinor and Starwick—“are up there having their wonderful talks together—leaving me alone to watch the dog while they stay out all night together—oh, it’s going to be simply wonderful, isn’t it!” she said with an infuriated sarcasm.
“So that’s the reason I was wanted?” he said. “To keep you company on the back seat! To take the place of the dog! To make it look good, eh—to make the party look a little more respectable back in Boston when they hear of Mr. Starwick and his two lady friends! That’s why you wanted me, is it? To fill in extra space—to be a kind of damned male nurse and chaperon to you and Elinor and Frank Starwick——”
She took a step towards him and stopped, her hands clenched beside her, her eyes shot with tears, her big body trembling for a moment with baffled anger and despair:
“God-damn you!” she said in a small, choked voice; and, her hands still clenched, she turned away abruptly to hide her tears.
At this moment Starwick approached and, his ruddy face flushing as he spoke, he said quietly, casually:
“Ann, look! Will you let me have a thousand francs?”
She turned around, glared at Starwick for a moment with angry, reddened eyes and then, to his astonishment and her own, boomed out comically, and in an enraged tone:
“No—o!”
His face went crimson with embarrassment, but after looking at her steadily for a moment, he turned, and walked back to Elinor. In a moment she could be heard saying coldly, positively:
“. . . I am sorry, Francis, but I cannot! . . . You should have thought about all that before! . . . If you won’t stay out here and go in with us tomorrow, you’ll have to do the best you can by yourself. . . . No, sir, I cannot . . . if you want to put it that way, yes; I won’t, then! . . . I do not like the man. . . . I thoroughly disapprove of what you’re doing. . . . I will not help you!”
Some low, excited words passed between them, and in a moment Starwick said:
“You have no right to say that! I resent that very much!”
His ruddy face was deeply flushed with anger and humiliation; he turned abruptly on his heel and walked away without farewell. At this moment the guards could be heard calling, “En voiture! En voiture, messieurs!” and Elinor, glancing towards Ann and Eugene, said curtly:
“If you’re going to catch that train, you’ll have to hurry!”
Eugene turned to say good-bye to Ann; she paid no attention to his outstretched hand but stood, her hands clenched, glaring angrily at him with wet eyes.
“Good-bye!” he said roughly. “Aren’t you going to say good-bye?”
She made no answer, but just stood glaring at him, and then turned away.
“All right,” he said angrily. “Do as you like!”
Without a word to Elinor, he picked up his valise, ran into the station and got through the gates just as the little suburban train began to move. Starwick was climbing up into a compartment, Eugene followed him, flung his valise inside, and clambered in, breathless, just as a guard with a remonstrant face slammed the door behind him.
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LXXXVIII
During the journey back to Paris, Eugene and Starwick said little. The two young men were the sole occupants of the compartment, they sat facing each other, looking out through the windows with gloomy eyes. The gray light of the short, winter’s day was fading rapidly: when they entered Paris dusk had come; as the train rattled over the switchpoints in the yard-approaches to the Gare St. Lazare, they could see lights and life and sometimes faces in the windows of the high, faded buildings near the tracks. Through one window, in a moment’s glimpse, Eugene saw a room with a round table with a dark cloth upon it, and with the light of a shaded chandelier falling on it, and a dark-haired boy of ten or twelve leaning on the table, reading a book, with his face propped in his hands, and a woman moving busily about the table, laying it with plates and knives and forks. And as the train slackened speed, he saw, high up in the topmost floor of an old house that rose straight up from the tracks, a woman come to the window, look for a moment at a canary-bird cage which was hanging in the window, reach up and take it from its hook. She had the rough, blowsy, and somewhat old-fashioned look of a whore of the Renoir period; and yet she was like some one he had known all his life.
They passed long strings of silent, darkened railway compartments, and as they neared the station, several suburban trains steamed past them, loaded with people going home. Some of the trains were the queer little double-deckers that one sees in France: Eugene felt like laughing every time he saw them and yet, with their loads of Frenchmen going home, they too were like something he had always known. As the train came into the station, and slowed down to its halt, he could see a boat-train ready for departure on another track. Sleek as a panther, groomed, opulent, ready, purring softly as a cat, the train waited there like a luxurious projectile, evoking perfectly, and at once, the whole structure of the world of power and wealth and pleasure that had created it. Beyond it one saw the whole universe of pleasure—a world of great hotels, and famed resorts, the thrilling structure of the huge, white-breasted liners, and the slanting race and drive of their terrific stacks. One saw behind it the dark coast of France, the flash of beacons, the gray, fortressed harbor walls, the bracelet of their hard, spare lights, and beyond, beyond, one saw the infinite beat and swell of stormy seas, the huge nocturnal slant and blaze of liners racing through immensity, and forever beyond, beyond, one saw the faint, pale coasts of morning and America, and then the spires and ramparts of the enfabled isle, the legendary and aerial smoke, the stone and steel, of the terrific city.
