Thomas Wolfe, page 416
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Again, he meditated gravely with lost stare across the apex of his great joined hands, and I noticed again, as I had noticed so often, the great dignity of his head in thought—a head that was highbrowed, lean and lonely, a head that not only in its cast of thought but even in its physical contour, and in its profound and lonely earnestness, bore an astonishing resemblance to that of Emerson—it was, at times, like these, as grand a head as I had ever seen, and on it was legible the history of man’s loneliness, his dignity, his grandeur and despair.
“Yes, sir!” he said, in a moment. “He is, of course, a vulgar fellow and some of the things he says at times are O! vile! vile! vile!” my uncle cried, closing his eyes and laughing. “O vile! most vile! . . . but (phuh! phuh! phuh!) you can’t help laughing at the fellow at times because he is so . . . O, I could tell you things, my boy! . . . O Vile! vile!” he cried, shaking his head downwards. “What coarseness! . . . What in-vect-ive!” he whispered, in a kind of ecstasy.
And this invective, I know, he cherished in his secret heart so dearly that on at least one notable occasion he had invoked it, and lamented that he did not have it by him as an aid. What Uncle Bascom had said on that occasion, lifting his arms to heaven, and crying out a confession of his own inadequacy in a tone of passionate supplication, was: “O, that J. T. were here at this moment!—or that I had his tongue!—that he might aid me with his scathing invective!”
The occasion was this: a few years before my uncle had taken his wife to Florida for the winter, and had rented there a cottage. The place he chose was small and modest, it was several miles away from one of the larger and more fashionable towns, it was not on the coast, but set a few miles inland, and it had the advantages of a river, or peninsular inlet which rose and fell with the recurrence of the tides. This modest winter colony was so small that it could afford only one small church and one minister, himself a member of the colony. During the winter this man was taken ill: he was unable to continue his services at the church, and his little following, in looking around for a substitute, learned that Uncle Bascom had formerly been a minister. They came to him, therefore, and asked if he would serve.
“Oh, Lord, no!” Bascom howled derisively. “Good heavens, no! I shouldn’t dream of such a thing! I shouldn’t for a moment contemplate such a thing! I am a total—for twenty years I have been a complete—agnostic.”
The flock looked at him with a dazed expression. “Wal,” said one of the leading parishioners, a lean Down-Easter, “most of us here are Presbyterians, but I don’t know that that would make any difference. The way I see it, we’re all met here to worship the Lord, and we need a preacher no matter what his denomination is. When all’s said and done,” he concluded comfortably, “I don’t guess there’s much difference between any of us in the long run.”
“Why, my dear sir!” my uncle said, with a slight sneer. “If you think there is no difference between an agnostic and a Presbyterian you had better have your head examined by a doctor without further delay. No-o!” he howled faintly. “I cannot profess belief in what I do not know! I cannot simulate conviction when I have none! I cannot preach a faith I have not got! There, sir, you have my whole position in a nut-shell!”
Here, people in the group began to stir restlessly, to mutter uneasily, and to draw away: suddenly Uncle Bascom caught the muttered word “atheist.”
“No-o!” he shouted, his ptotic eye beginning to glitter with the light of combat. “By no means! By no means! You only show your ignorance when you say a thing like that. They are not the same! They are ab-so-lute-ly and em-phat-i-cal-ly not the same! An atheist is not an agnostic and an agnostic is not an atheist! Why!” he yelled, “the mere sound of the words would teach you that if you had an atom of intelligence. An atheist is a man who does not believe in God!—it is composed of the Greek prefix ‘a’—meaning not, and the noun ‘the-os,’ meaning God: an atheist therefore says there is no God! Now,” he continued, licking his lips for joy, “we come to the word agnostic. Is the sound the same? No-o! Is the meaning the same? By no means! Are the parts the same? Not on your life! The word is agnostic: a-g-n-o-s-t-i-c! From what language is it derived? From Greek, of course—as any fool should know! From what words? From the vowel of negation ‘a’ again, and from ‘gnostikos’—the word for knowing. An agnostic therefore is what?” he demanded, glaring around at their mute faces. “Why!” he said impatiently, as no one answered, “Any schoolboy knows that much! A not-knowing man! A man who does not know! Not a man who denies! Oh, by no means!”—his great hand rose impatiently—“An atheist is a man who denies! An agnostic is simply a man who does not know!”
“I can’t see there’s any difference,” some one muttered. “They both sound like a couple of godless heathen to me!”
“No difference!” Bascom howled. “My dear sir, hold your tongue before you bring down lasting shame upon your progeny! . . . They are as different as night from day, as black from white, as the sneering irreverence of the cynic from the calm, temperate, and judicial spirit of the philosopher! Why!” he declared impressively, “Some of the finest spirits of our times have been agnostics. Yes, sir! Some of the grandest people that ever lived! . . . The great Matthew Arnold was an agnostic!” he yelled. “Does that sound as if there was no difference? Not on your life!”
He paused, and as there was no response from his involuntary congregation, he began, after a moment, to fumble at the inside pocket of his coat with his big fingers.
“I have here a poem,” he said, taking it out of his pocket, “of my own composition”—here he coughed modestly—“although it may show traces, I admit, of the influence of the great man whose name I have just mentioned, and whom I am proud to call my master: Matthew Arnold. It will, I believe, illustrate my position better than anything I could say to you.” He held up his great forefinger to command attention, and then began to read.
“The title of the poem,” Uncle Bascom said, “is—‘My Creed.’” After a short silence, he began:
“‘Is there a land beyond the stars
Where we may find eternal day,
Life after death, peace after wars?
Is there? I can not say.
Shall we find there a happier life,
All joy that here we never know,
Love in all things, an end of strife?
Perhaps: it may be so.’”
There were seventeen other stanzas which Uncle Bascom read to them deliberately and with telling enunciation, after which he folded the paper and looked about him with a sneer: “I think,” he said, “that I have made my meaning clear. Now you know what an agnostic is.”
—
They did. His meaning was so clear that they had no language to oppose to it: they turned, they went away like men who had been stunned. Among them, however, was one who did not yield so easily, a daughter of the Lord who had often won by persuasion and the soft violence of her beaming eye what others failed to win by harsher means. This lady was a widow, a Southern woman in her middle years: her charms were ripe, she had a gentle, loving touch, a soft and fruity unction in her voice. This lady had been able to resist few ministers and few ministers had been able to resist this lady. Now, as the others retreated, the lady advanced: she came forward with a practised sidling movement of her hips and Uncle Bascom, who was standing triumphantly in the midst of a receding host, suddenly found himself confronted by her gentle and importunate face.
“Oh, Mr. Hawke!” she crooned sweetly, with a kind of abdominal rapture in her voice (thus, the way she pronounced his name was—Mis-tah Haw-uk!). “I jus’ know that you must’ve been a won-da-ful preach-ah! I can tell by yo’ face that you’ah such a g-o-o-d man—” Again she grunted sweetly with this ecstatic abdominal expiration.
“Why, madame! Why—” Uncle Bascom began, decidedly in a confused tone, but taking her abundance in with a sharp appraising eye.
“I was jus’ thrilled to death all the time that you was tawkin’, Mistah Haw-uk” the widow said. “I was a-sittin’ theah an’ sittin’ theah, just a-drinkin’ it all in, just a-baskin’ in the rays of yo’ wisdom, Mistah Haw-uk! All the time you was readin’ that wonderful poem, I was just a-sayin’ to myse’f: What a wondaful thing it is that a man like this has been chosen fo’ the Suvvice of the Lawd, what a wondaful thing it is to know that this man is one o’ Gawd’s Suvvants!”
“Why, madame!” Bascom cried, his gaunt face flushed with pleasure. “Why, madame, I assure you I am deeply grateful . . . deeply honored to think that a lady of your obvious . . . your undoubted intelligence . . . should feel that way about me! But, madame!——”
“Oh, Mistah Haw-uk!” the widow groaned. “I jus’ love to heah you tawk! I jus’ love the way you handle langwidge! You heah so much po’ shoddy, good-fo’-nothin’ tawk nowadays—all full o’ slang an’ bad grammah an’ I don’t know whatall: I don’t know what fokes ah comin’ to—it’s a real pleasuah—yes, suh! a real sho’ nuff treat—to heah a man who can express himse’f the way you can. The minute I saw you I said to myse’f: I jus’ know that that man can tawk! I know it! I know it! I know it!” The widow cried, shaking her head from side to side vigorously. “Theah’s a man, I said,” the widow continued, “theah’s a man who kin do anything he likes with me—yes, suh! just anything!—I said that just as soon as you opened yo’ mouf to speak!”
“Oh, madame, madame!” cried Bascom fervently, bowing with real dignity. “I thank you. I thank you sincerely and gratefully from the bottom of my heart!”
“Yes, suh! I could just enjoy myse’f—(I said)—just a-lookin’ at his haid.”
“At my what?” yelled Bascom, jumping as if he had received an electric shock.
“At yo’ haid,” the widow answered.
“Oh!” howled Bascom. “At my head! My head!”—and he began to laugh foolishly.
“Yes, suh, Mistah Haw-uk,” the widow continued. “I jus’ thought you had the grandest haid I evah saw. The moment you began to read that poem I said, ‘Only a man with a haid like that could a-written that poem. O thank Gawd! (I said) that he has dedicated his wondaful haid to the Lawd’s Wuk!”
“Why, madame,” Bascom cried again. “You have paid me the greatest honor! I cannot sufficiently thank you! But I am afraid—in justice, in fairness, I must admit,” he said with some difficulty, “that you may not have entirely understood—that you are not quite clear—that, perhaps I did not make the meaning, the general purpose of that poem—O! it’s my own fault, I know! Beyond a doubt! Beyond a doubt!—but perhaps I did not make its meaning wholly plain!”
“Yes, you did!” the widow protested. “Every word of it was jus’ as plain as day to me! I kep’ sayin’ to myse’f: That’s jus’ the way I’ve always felt, but I nevah could express myse’f befo’: I nevah met any one befo’ that I could tawk to about it. An’ now (I said), this wondaful man comes along an’ puts the whole thing straight in my haid! O! (I said) if I could just sit at his feet, an’ listen all day long, if I could jus’ sit an’ drink in all he had to say, if I could just listen to him tawk—I’d nevah ask fo’ anything bettah!”
“Why, madame!” Bascom cried, deeply, genuinely moved. “I assure you I’d like nothing better! Yes, indeed! I assure you I’d be delighted! O, at any time! At any time!” he howled. “It is rare that one meets to-day—O, most rare!—a woman of your intelligence and perspicacity! We must have another talk!” he said. “Oh, by all means, by all means!”
“Uh-huh!” the widow grunted sweetly.
Bascom looked around craftily to see if my Aunt Louise was anywhere within sight or hearing. “Perhaps,” he said, smacking his lips together, “we might meet and have a quiet walk together. Nothing is more conducive to contemplation than the tranquil peace of nature. There’s no question about it.”
“Uh-huh,” the widow said.
“To-morrow,” Bascom whispered.
“Uh-huh,” the widow crooned viscerally.
Thus, there began between Uncle Bascom and the widow a series of promenades, in which he expounded his views liberally, and in which she was able, by the harmonious adjustment of her nature, to find herself in complete agreement. Again and again, my Aunt Louise watched them depart, she peered after them through her bright mad eyes, snuffling with angry laughter, and muttering, as she had muttered many times before: “The old fool! . . . The misable old skinflint! . . . Too poor to buy his own wife a dwess . . . while he spends faw-chuns, faw-chuns on them! . . . It’s in the blood . . . the blood!” she whispered hoarsely. “They’re mad . . . mad! His family’s ovah-sexed, all of them!”
—
One evening, as Bascom and the widow were returning from one of these walks, they found themselves toward sunset a mile or so from town. It was a desolate spot: their road wound on through fringes of scrub pine and stunted palm along the edges of the inlet: the tide was out, the water lay in shallow puddles across the bed of viscous mud, a few birds wheeled with creaking eery cries above this loneliness of earth and water, and there was the smell of shelled waste, sea-scum—the potent, magical, and exultant smell of the sea in harbors. The air and the sky were sweet with incomparable clarity, with an immense delicacy of light, and the sun, which now burned like a vast orange-colored ball, without violence or heat, was resting against the lonely and desolate space of the western horizon. The widow and Bascom paused for a moment to watch this scene, and then she said triumphantly: “Now, Mistah Haw-uk, you know that Somebody must’ve done all that. You know it jus’ didn’t go an’ happen by itse’f. You know, when you see a beautiful sunset like that that nobody but Gawd himse’f could’ve made it. Now, you know you do, Mistah Haw-uk!”
“The question of its beauty,” said my uncle precisely, “is debatable. The philosopher Hegel, for example, so far from seeing beauty in a sunset, remarked that it looked to him as if the sky had small-pox!” Here Bascom closed his eyes, and snuffled with laughter.
“Oh, Mistah Haw-uk!” the widow said reproachfully. “I know you don’t feel that way about it. A man with a haid like yoah’s could nevah believe a thing like that!”
“Oh!” Bascom shouted, immensely tickled for some reason. “By no means! By no means!” And he stamped violently at the earth, blind with his strange forced snarl of laughter.
For a moment they were silent: a vast and exuberant elation, an exultant vitality, was alive in Uncle Bascom. He looked at the shallow waters, he looked at the setting sun, he looked at the widow, and when he tried to speak, exultant mirth possessed him, and he could not.
“Shall we?—” he began at length inquiringly, but here a whimsy of humor seized him, he stopped short, contorted his face, stamped at the earth ecstatically, and snuffled down his nose—“shall we go in wa-ding?” There was a deliberate, a luscious nasality in his precise enunciation of the last word.
“Oh, Mistah Haw-uk! Why-y!” the widow exclaimed fruitily. “Wading! For what?”
“For . . . oysters!” said Uncle Bascom lusciously and gently.
“For . . . oysters!” the widow cried. “But I didn’t know there were any oysters!”
Bascom pondered this statement for a moment, and the more he considered it, the funnier it became to him. He bit his rubbery lip, closed his eyes, and began to snuffle down his nose with laughter. “O yes!” he howled. “O my yes! There are always . . . oysters! There are plenty of. . . oysters!”
So the widow, without much more than a half-hearted and decorous protest, and a cautious glance around to make sure that pine and palm gave shelter to no watchers, sat down beside my uncle and took off her shoes and stockings. Then, hand in hand, they advanced across the shallows and through water that rarely came above their knees, the widow tentatively, with a balancing movement and little abdominal cries of alarm, Uncle Bascom more boldly, and with confident assurances: “My dear girl!” he said, grasping her hand more tightly. “You are in no danger whatsoever! Oh, not the slightest!” he yelled. “You are as safe as you would be in your mother’s arms. Yes, sir! You may rest assured on that score! There’s no question of it!”
The widow held her skirts kilted up and knotted in one hand, midway along her milky thighs, while Uncle Bascom had rolled his trousers high above his bony knees and stringy calves, which now advanced through the shallow water with a storky and tentative step. At length, about the middle of the stream, they reached a bar of hard-packed sand, and here they stood for a while looking at the setting sun, pacing along their little beach, so absorbed in their contemplation of coming dark, of solitude, and of themselves that neither noticed that the tide was coming in.
