Thomas Wolfe, page 363
So they raced along, the wind whipping her dress close to her form. The wheels thundered in my ears and the thud of the horses’ hoofs upon the hard wet sand. I could see the wheel revolving on the axle. They passed by and soon had turned the promontory of land. She was gone. I felt a sense of irreparable loss, I have felt nothing like it before or since.
Then I became aware of the theatre full of people, I saw the scene on the stage again, and I heard a sound coming from my own throat. My father had taken my outstretched hands in his and was speaking gently to me. The vision, or whatever it was, seemed to me to have lasted fully five minutes, but in reality it must have been much less.
I wrenched my mind from my vision to watch the stage, the play was drawing to its magnificent close, but the dream stayed by me for many days, and for months I would feel that wonderful sense of recognition and love and smell the beach, the sea, the shore, and see everything as clearly as events that passed around me. Then, in [the] course of time, it faded, but from time to time in years to come it would return, as clearly as when first I saw it that night in the theatre.
What do you think it was?
—
“Long, long into the night I lay—” (One!). “Long, long into the night I lay awake—” (One, Two, Three, Four!). “Long, long into the night I lay awake, thinking how I should tell my story.” O how lovely those words are! They make a music in me just like bells. One, Two, Three, Four! One, Two, Three, Four! O, there are bells, and that is time: what time is that? That was the half hour that the bells were striking, and that was time, time, time! O that was time, dark time, strange tragic time, that hangs above our heads in lovely bells.
Time! Where are you now, and in what place, and at what time? Now in the dark I hear the boats there in the river: now I can hear the great horns blowing in the river. Great horns are baying at the harbor’s mouth, great horns are baying in the gulf of night, great boats are putting out to sea! O now I hear the whistles on the river! O now great ships are going down the river! O now I hear strange time, dark time, strange tragic time, as it flows down the river; and in the night-time, in the dark, in all the sleeping silence of the earth, the river, the dark rich river, full of strange tragic time, is flowing by me, by me, by me, to the sea!
—
When the show was over that night we went out onto the street and turned up Broadway. We were both so happy and excited that we fairly bounded along: when a wonderful thing happens it seems to make everything in the world look young and new again, and that was the way it was that night. It was one of the first fine days in Spring, the air was cool and delicate and yet soft, and the sky was of a velvety lilac texture, and it was glittering with great stars. The streets outside the theatre were swarming with hansoms, four-wheelers, private carriages and victorias; they kept driving up in front of the theatre all the time and people kept getting into them.
All of the men looked handsome, and all of the women were beautiful: everyone seemed to be as exultant and happy as we were, it seemed as if a new world and new people had burst out of the earth with the coming of Spring—everything ugly, dull, sour, and harsh had vanished—the streets were flashing with life and sparkle, I saw all of it, I felt myself a part of it all, I wanted to possess it all, and there was something I wanted to say so much it made my throat ache, and yet I could not say it because I could not find the words I wanted. I could not think of anything else to say—it sounded foolish, but suddenly I seized my father’s arm and cried: “O to be in April now that England’s there.”
“Yes,” he shouted. “Also in Paris, Naples, Rome and Dresden! O to be in Budapest!” cried Daddy. “Now that April’s here and the frost is on the pumpkin, and the dawn comes up like thunder out of the night that covers me.”
He seemed to have grown young again; he was the way he used to be when I was a little girl and I would knock at his study door and he would call out in a wonderful actor’s voice: “Enter, Daughter of Des-o-la-tion into this abode of mis-er-ee.”
His eyes sparkled, and he threw back his head and laughed his wild and happy laugh.
—
. . . . that year I think we were living with Bella; no we weren’t, I guess we were living with Auntie Kate—well, maybe we were staying with Bella: I don’t know, we moved around so much, and it’s so long ago. It gets all confused in my mind now. When Daddy was acting he was always on the go, he couldn’t be still a minute: sometimes he was playing in New York, and sometimes he went off on a tour with Mr. Mansfield and was gone for months.
I think that must have been the year before he died; I was about eighteen: I was a beauty. . . . I was like peaches and cream. . . .
In those days when he was acting I used to meet him after the theatre and we would go somewhere to eat. . . . There was a fellow after your heart:—the very best was just about good enough for him. . . . New York was awfully nice in those days. They had such nice places to go to—I don’t know, they didn’t have all this noise and confusion; it seems like another world sometimes. You could go to White’s or Martin’s or Delmonico’s—there were a lot of nice places. There was also a place called Mocks, I never went there. But one of the first things I remember as a child was hearing Daddy come home late at night and say he’d been to Mocks. When he came home, I would listen at the grating of the heater in my room and I could hear him and the other actors talking to my mother: it was fascinating; and sometimes it was all about Mocks. “O, have you been to Mocks?” I thought I heard my mother say. “O, yes! I have been to Mocks,” my father said. “And what did you have at Mocks?” my mother said. “O, I had some oysters and a glass of beer and some mock turtle soup at Mocks,” my father said.
We used to go to White’s almost every night after the show with two priests who were friends of Daddy’s: Father Dolan and Father Chris O’Rourke. Father Dolan was a big man with the bluest eyes I ever saw and Father Chris O’Rourke was a little man with a swarthy and greasy face: it was all full of black marks, it was one of the strangest faces I ever saw; it was greasy and almost black but there was something very powerful and sweet about it. He wore the thickest eyeglasses I have ever seen, he was very nearsighted. He was a great scholar, he knew the plays of Shakespeare almost by heart—he and Daddy used to tag each other’s lines, to see who knew the most: I never knew my father to catch him up but once and that was on a line from King Lear, “The Prince of Darkness is a gentleman”—Father Dolan said it came from As You Like It.
How those fellows loved to eat and drink: if one of them had to say Mass the next day we had to hurry because you can’t eat or drink after midnight if you are saying Mass the next day. Because of this, both these priests would immediately take out their watches and lay them on the table before them when they sat down: Father Chris O’Rourke drank nothing but beer and as soon as he sat down a waiter would bring him a half dozen glasses which he would drink at once. But if these two priests had a glass of beer on the table before them when midnight came, they left it: no matter what it was, no matter whether they’d finished eating or drinking or not, when the stroke of midnight came these fellows quit, if they were going to say Mass the morning after.
Father Chris O’Rourke would eat and drink for almost an hour as if his life depended on it: he was very nearsighted, he wore thick glasses, and from time to time he would seize his watch and bring it up right under his nose while he peered and squinted at it. Because of his own hurry to get through before twelve o’clock, he thought everyone else must be the same way: he was afraid someone would not get fed, and he was always urging and belaboring people to hurry up and eat. Father Dolan loved to eat too, but he was a great talker: sometimes he would get to talking to Daddy and forget to eat: when he did this Father Chris O’Rourke would almost go out of his head, he would keep nudging and poking at Father Dolan and pointing at his watch with a look of agony on his face, leaning over and muttering at him in an ominous sort of way: “You’re going to be late! It is almost twelve!”
“Bedad, then!” said Father Dolan. “I’ll be late!” He was a big man, but he had a funny little Irish voice, it was very crisp and jolly and had a little chuckling lilt in it, and it seemed to come from a long way off. “I never saw a man like ye, Chris, to be always thinkin’ of his belly: Did the great Saints of the Church spend their time guzzling and cramming, or did they spend it in meditatin’ and prayin’ an’ mortifyin’ their flesh? Did ye never hear of the sin of gluttony?”
“Yis!” said Father Chris O’Rourke, “that I have, an’ I’ve also heard of the wicked sin of wanton waste. Shame on ye, Dan Dolan, wit yer talk about the great Saints of the Church: there was niver a great Saint yit that would praise a man fer wastin’ what the Lord had set before him. Do ye think I’ll sit here an’ see good food go to waste whin there’s poor people all over the world tonight that’s goin’ wit out?”
“Well,” said Father Dolan, “I’ve read most of the argyments of the learned reasoners of the Church as well as the damnable heresies of the infidels, all the way from St. Thomas Aquinas to Spinozey, an’ in me young days I could split a hair meself wit the best of them, but in all me life I niver heard the beat of that one: it makes Aristotle look like Wordsworth’s Idiot Boy. Bedad, if ye can prove that what ye’re doin’ wit yer gorgin’ is feedin’ the poor all over the earth, I won’t put anything past yer powers of reasonin’, Chris—ye could show the Pope that Darwin was a Jesuit, an’ he’d believe ye!”
Father Dolan was a very fine, high sort of man: he was very kind and jolly, but he also had a fine mind and he was very outspoken and honest. He loved the theatre, he knew a great many actors, a great many of them went to his Church, and he loved my father. It was because of him that Daddy sent my sister Edith to the Convent of the Sacred Heart in the Bronx: although Father Dolan joked about it and said she was goin’ to get canonized some day as the first Jewish Saint, he gave orders that she should not be approached in any way about religion and the Sisters lived up to this to the letter. Daddy and I used to go up to see her every Monday—she was about fourteen at this time—and when we did Father Dolan would usually come along.
One day when we got up to the gate outside the Convent he had to stand for a long time pulling at the bell: it was old and rusty and wouldn’t work, presently it gave a rusty kind of jangle far away. The Sister who finally let us in that day was an old woman named Sister Fidelia, she was an old woman with a good face, there was something stern and very grey about her: when she got down to the gate and opened it Father Dolan spoke to her about the bell and told her they must get a new one.
“That is no bell, Father Dolan, as ye should know very well,” said Sister Fidelia.
“No, then?” said Father Dolan is his funny little voice. “And what is it, if it’s not a bell?”
“It is the Voice of God,” said Sister Fidelia.
“Bedad, then!” said Father Dolan as quick as a flash. “God’s Voice is gettin’ mighty rusty! I’m thinkin’ He’ll soon be needin’ a new one!”
This Convent was a wonderful place: it was a great brick building set up on a hill and it had trees around it: it took us a long time to get there, sometimes, we went up by train from the Grand Central depot, and sometimes we went uptown on the horse cars, we had to get off and change a great deal, and finally we had to climb the hill to the Convent. One time I went there in Winter when there had been a great fall of snow: all of the little girls and the nuns were out-of-doors and coasting down the hill on sleds—the nuns shot past me on a sled laughing, they had their knees drawn up and their skirts tucked in between their knees: it was one of the strangest sights I ever saw.
The Mother Superior at the Convent was named Mother Mary Ursula: she was an enormous woman, proportioned like an Amazon; she was one of the handsomest women I have ever seen and she had a magnificent figure. She was very proud of her figure, she went to see one of the most expensive dressmakers in New York and had corsets made which cost her seventy-five dollars apiece; she would take one or two of the girls with her, and sometimes my sister Edith went.
When we went to the Convent on visiting days we would often meet in the Mother Superior’s reception room and have tea—or rather chocolate—with her. She was very fond of Father Dolan and Daddy: when we had chocolate with her, the silver, the china and the linen was of the very finest and costliest money could buy—everything she had was like this—and the chocolate was so thick and rich that the silver spoons stood upright in it. She had come from a very rich Irish family in Brooklyn, I think her name had been Murphy, she had large luminous grey eyes of great depth and beauty; she was a very beautiful woman, and later I often thought of her and wondered what her life had been like.
Well, as I say, when we got to the restaurant the first thing Father Chris O’Rourke would do was to lay his watch upon the table and the first thing Daddy would do was to order two or three bottles of champagne: they used to know we were coming and it would be waiting for us in great silver buckets full of ice. Then Daddy would pick up the menu—it was a great big card simply covered with the most delicious things to eat, and he would frown and look serious and clear his throat, and say to Father Dolan: “What does the Pontifical Palate crave, Dan?”
After the play, that night, we went to Whites and these two priests were waiting for us when we got there. A little later Mr. Gates came in, he’s still alive, I saw him on the street the other day, he’s getting quite old. He was married to one of the most beautiful women you ever saw, and she was burned to death in an automobile accident. He saw the thing happen right under his eyes: isn’t that the most horrible thing you ever heard of? Well, you could tell by the way Mr. Gates walked that he was awfully excited about something: he was another of these great fat fellows, and you could see his old jowls quivering as he came.
“Good God!” said Daddy, “Here comes Bunny with a full head of steam on!”
Mr. Gates began to speak to Daddy half across the room; all of the people stopped and stared at him.
“Joe! Joe!” he said. He had a funny hoarse kind of voice, one of those foggy whiskey voices, I think he drank a good deal. “Joe, do you know what I’ve done? I’ve just bought a Horseless Carriage. Come on! You’re going for a ride with me!”
“Now wait! Wait! Wait!” said Daddy, holding up his hand just like an actor, “Not so fast, Bunny! Sit down and have a bite to eat first, and tell us about it. When did you do this Desperate Deed?”
“Today.” Mr. Gates said in a sort of hoarse whisper, “Do you suppose I’ve done right?”
He looked around at us with his old eyes simply bulging out of his head and with a sort of scared look on his face. O! We laughed so much about it: Father Dolan began to laugh, and Daddy had to pound him on his back, he got to coughing so!
Mr. Gates was an awfully nice man: he was a great fat fellow, but he was so handsome: there was something so delicate about him, his mouth kept trembling and twitching so when he was excited and wanted to say something, I think that was why they called him Bunny. He had the finest collection of Chinese things I have ever seen, the things he had in that house were simply priceless.
So Daddy said: “Sit down and have something to eat and then we’ll see.”
Mr. Gates said: “Say, Joe, I’ve got the mechanic outside here, and I don’t know what to do with him.”
“You mean you hired him for keeps?” Daddy said.
“Yes,” Mr. Gates said, “and I’m damned if I’m not embarrassed! I don’t know what to do with him. I mean, what is his social standing?”
“Does he wash?” Daddy said.
“Well,” said Mr. Gates, looking at Father Dolan, “I think he uses holy water.”
“O Mr. Gates!” I said, “How awful! Right before Father Dolan, too!”
But Father Dolan laughed just like I knew he would: he was a great fat fellow, he was an awfully nice man. Father Chris O’Rourke laughed too, but I don’t think he liked it so much.
“I mean,” Mr. Gates said, “I don’t know how to treat the man. Is he above me, or below me, or what?”
“It looks to me,” Daddy said, “as if he were on top of you. I think you’ve gone and got yourself saddled with a Black Elephant.”
Daddy was so wonderful like that, everybody loved him. Mr. Gates was so worried about the driver: it all seems so funny now to think back on it—he didn’t know whether the man was to eat at the table with his family, and be treated like one of them or what. There was something so delicate about Mr. Gates: he was big and fat, but a very sensitive, fine person.
“It looks like a neat little problem in social etiquette, Bunny.” Daddy said. “Well, let’s have him in here for a bite to eat. We’ll see what he looks like.”
So Mr. Gates went out and got him, and pretty soon he came back with him, and he was really an awfully nice young fellow: he had a little moustache, and he wore a Norfolk jacket and a flat cap, and everybody stared so, and nudged each other, he was awfully embarrassed. But Daddy was wonderful with people, he made him feel right at home. He said, “Sit down, young fellow. If we’re going to run an engine we’ve got to feed the driver.”
So he sat down, and we had a marvelous meal: you’d get great juicy chops in that place cooked in butter, and steaks an inch thick, and the most marvelous oysters and sea food.
