Thomas Wolfe, page 54
“You never know,” said Eliza mysteriously. “You never know who’ll be the first one to go. Only last week, there was Mr. Cosgrave, as fine a looking man as——”
“They’re off!” Eugene screamed with a crazy laugh, stamping up and down the kitchen in a frenzy. “By God! They’re off!”
At this moment, one of the aged harpies, of whom the house always sheltered two or three during the grim winter, lurched from the hall back into the door-space. She was a large raw-boned hag, a confirmed drug-eater, who moved by a violent and dissonant jerking of her gaunt limbs, pawing abruptly at the air with a gnarled hand.
“Mrs. Gant,” said she, writhing her loose gray lips horribly before she could speak. “Did I get a letter? Have you seen him?”
“Seen who? Go on!” said Eliza fretfully. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t believe you do, either.”
Smiling hideously at them all, and pawing the air, the monster got under way again, disappearing like an old wagon with loose wheels. Helen began to laugh, hoarsely, as Eugene’s face hung forward with mouth half-open in an expression of sullen stupefaction. Eliza laughed, too, slily, rubbing her nosewing with a finger.
“I’ll vow!” she said. “I believe she’s crazy. She takes dope of some sort—that’s certain. It makes my flesh crawl when she comes around.”
“Then why do you keep her in the house?” said Helen resentfully. “Good heavens, mama! You could get rid of her if you wanted to. Poor old ’Gene!” she said, beginning to laugh again. “You always catch it, don’t you?”
“The time draws near the birth of Christ,” said he, piously.
She laughed; then, with abstracted eyes, plucked vaguely at her large chin.
His father spent most of the day staring vacantly into the parlor fire. Miss Florry Mangle, the nurse, gave him the morbid comfort of her silence: she rocked incessantly before the fire, thirty heel-taps to the minute, with arms tight-folded on her limp breasts. Occasionally she talked of death and disease. Gant had aged and wasted shockingly. His heavy clothes wound round his feeble shanks: his face was waxen and transparent—it was like a great beak. He looked clean and fragile. The cancer, Eugene thought, flowered in him like some terrible but beautiful plant. His mind was very clear, not doting, but sad and old. He spoke little, with almost comical gentleness, but he ceased to listen almost as soon as one answered.
“How have you been, son?” he asked. “Are you getting along all right?”
“Yes. I am a reporter on the paper now; I may be managing editor next year. I have been elected to several organizations,” he went on eagerly, glad of the rare chance to speak to one of them about his life. But when he looked up again, his father’s stare was fixed sadly in the fire. The boy stopped in confusion, pierced with a bitter pain.
“That’s good,” said Gant, hearing him speak no more. “Be a good boy, son. We’re proud of you.”
Ben came home two days before Christmas: he prowled through the house like a familiar ghost. He had left the town early in the autumn, after his return from Baltimore. For three months he had wandered alone through the South, selling to the merchants in small towns space for advertisements upon laundry cards. How well this curious business succeeded he did not say: he was scrupulously neat, but threadbare and haggard, and more fiercely secretive than ever. He had found employment at length upon a newspaper in a rich tobacco town of the Piedmont. He was going there after Christmas.
He had come to them, as always, bearing gifts.
Luke came in from the naval school at Newport, on Christmas eve. They heard his sonorous tenor shouting greetings to people in the street; he entered the house upon a blast of air. Everyone began to grin.
“Well, here we are! The Admiral’s back! Papa, how’s the boy! Well, for God’s sake!” he cried, embracing Gant, and slapping his back. “I thought I was coming to see a sick man! You’re looking like the flowers that bloom in the Spring.”
“Pretty well, my boy. How are you?” said Gant, with a pleased grin.
“Couldn’t be better, Colonel. ’Gene, how are you, Old Scout? Good!” he said, without waiting for an answer. “Well, well, if it isn’t Old Baldy,” he cried, pumping Ben’s hand. “I didn’t know whether you’d be here or not. Mama, old girl,” he said, as he embraced her, “how’re they going? Still hitting on all six. Fine!” he yelled, before any one could reply to anything.
“Why, son,—what on earth!” cried Eliza, stepping back to look at him. “What have you done to yourself? You walk as if you are lame.”
He laughed idiotically at sight of her troubled face and prodded her.
“Whah—whah! I got torpedoed by a submarine,” he said. “Oh, it’s nothing,” he added modestly. “I gave a little skin to help out a fellow in the electrical school.”
“What!” Eliza screamed. “How much did you give?”
“Oh, only a little six-inch strip,” he said carelessly. “The boy was badly burned: a bunch of us got together and chipped in with a little hide.”
“Mercy!” said Eliza. “You’ll be lame for life. It’s a wonder you can walk.”
“He always thinks of others—that boy!” said Gant proudly. “He’d give you his heart’s-blood.”
The sailor had secured an extra valise, and stocked it on the way home with a great variety of beverages for his father. There were several bottles of Scotch and rye whiskies, two of gin, one of rum, and one each of port and sherry wine.
Every one grew mildly convivial before the evening meal.
Let’s give the poor kid a drink,” said Helen. “It won’t hurt him.”
“What! My ba-a-by! Why, son, you wouldn’t drink, would you?” Eliza said playfully.
“Wouldn’t he!” said Helen, prodding him. “Ho! ho! ho!”
She poured him out a stiff draught of Scotch whiskey.
“There!” she said cheerfully. “That’s not going to hurt him.”
“Son,” said Eliza gravely, balancing her wine-glass, “I don’t want you ever to acquire a taste for it.” She was still loyal to the doctrine of the good Major.
“No,” said Gant. “It’ll ruin you quicker than anything in the world, if you do.”
“You’re a goner, boy, if that stuff ever gets you,” said Luke. “Take a fool’s advice.”
They lavished fair warnings on him as he lifted his glass. He choked as the fiery stuff caught in his young throat, stopping his breath for a moment and making him tearful. He had drunk a few times before—minute quantities that his sister had given him at Woodson Street. Once, with Jim Trivett, he had fancied himself tipsy.
When they had eaten, they drank again. He was allowed a small one. Then they all departed for town to complete their belated shopping. He was left alone in the house.
What he had drunk beat pleasantly through his veins in warm pulses, bathing the tips of ragged nerves, giving to him a feeling of power and tranquillity he had never known. Presently, he went to the pantry where the liquor was stored. He took a water tumbler and filled it experimentally with equal portions of whiskey, gin, and rum. Then, seating himself at the kitchen table, he began to drink the mixture slowly.
The terrible draught smote him with the speed and power of a man’s fist. He was made instantly drunken, and he knew instantly why men drank. It was, he knew, one of the great moments in his life—he lay, greedily watching the mastery of the grape over his virgin flesh, like a girl for the first time in the embrace of her lover. And suddenly, he knew how completely he was his father’s son—how completely, and with what added power and exquisite refinement of sensation, was he Gantian. He exulted in the great length of his limbs and his body, through which the mighty liquor could better work its wizardry. In all the earth there was no other like him, no other fitted to be so sublimely and magnificently drunken. It was greater than all the music he had ever heard; it was as great as the highest poetry. Why had he never been told? Why had no one ever written adequately about it? Why, when it was possible to buy a god in a bottle, and drink him off, and become a god oneself, were men not forever drunken?
He had a moment of great wonder—the magnificent wonder with which we discover the simple and unspeakable things that lie buried and known, but unconfessed, in us. So might a man feel if he wakened after death and found himself in Heaven.
Then a divine paralysis crept through his flesh. His limbs were numb; his tongue thickened until he could not bend it to the cunning sounds of words. He spoke aloud, repeating difficult phrases over and over, filled with wild laughter and delight at his effort. Behind his drunken body his brain hung poised like a falcon, looking on him with scorn, with tenderness, looking on all laughter with grief and pity. There lay in him something that could not be seen and could not be touched, which was above and beyond him—an eye within an eye, a brain above a brain, the Stranger that dwelt in him and regarded him and was him, and that he did not know. But, thought he, I am alone now in this house; if I can come to know him, I will.
He got up, and reeled out of the alien presences of light and warmth in the kitchen; he went out into the hall where a dim light burned and the high walls gave back their grave-damp chill. This, he thought, is the house.
He sat down upon the hard mission settle, and listened to the cold drip of silence. This is the house in which I have been an exile. There is a stranger in the house, and there’s a stranger in me.
O house of Admetus, in whom (although I was a god) I have endured so many things. Now, house, I am not afraid. No ghost need fear come by me. If there’s a door in silence, let it open. My silence can be greater than your own. And you who are in me, and who I am, come forth beyond this quiet shell of flesh that makes no posture to deny you. There is none to look at us: O come, my brother and my lord, with unbent face. If I had 40,000 years, I should give all but the ninety last to silence. I should grow to the earth like a hill or a rock. Unweave the fabric of nights and days; unwind my life back to my birth; subtract me into nakedness again, and build me back with all the sums I have not counted. Or let me look upon the living face of darkness; let me hear the terrible sentence of your voice.
There was nothing but the living silence of the house: no doors were opened.
Presently, he got up and left the house. He wore no hat or coat; he could not find them. The night was blanketed in a thick steam of mist: sounds came faintly and cheerfully. Already the earth was full of Christmas. He remembered that he had bought no gifts. He had a few dollars in his pocket; before the shops closed he must get presents for the family. Bareheaded he set off for the town. He knew that he was drunk and that he staggered; but he believed that with care and control he could hide his state from any one who saw him. He straddled the line that ran down the middle of the concrete sidewalk, keeping his eyes fixed on it and coming back to it quickly when he lurched away from it. When he got into the town the streets were thronged with late shoppers. An air of completion was on everything. The people were streaming home to Christmas. He plunged down from the Square into the narrow avenue, going in among the staring passersby. He kept his eye hotly on the line before him. He did not know where to go. He did not know what to buy.
As he reached the entrance to Wood’s pharmacy, a shout of laughter went up from the lounging beaux. The next instant he was staring into the friendly grinning faces of Julius Arthur and Van Yeats.
“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” said Julius Arthur.
He tried to explain; a thick jargon broke from his lips.
“He’s cock-eyed drunk,” said Van Yeats.
“You look out for him, Van,” said Julius. “Get him in a doorway, so none of his folks will see him. I’ll get the car.”
Van Yeats propped him carefully against the wall; Julius Arthur ran swiftly into Church Street, and drew up in a moment at the curb. Eugene had a vast inclination to slump carelessly upon the nearest support. He placed his arms around their shoulders and collapsed. They wedged him between them on the front seat; somewhere bells were ringing.
“Ding-dong!” he said, very cheerfully. “Cris-muss!”
They answered with a wild yell of laughter.
The house was still empty when they came to it. They got him out of the car, and staggered up the steps with him. He was sorry enough that their fellowship was broken.
“Where’s your room, ’Gene?” said Julius Arthur, panting, as they entered the hall.
“This one’s as good as any,” said Van Yeats.
The door of the front bed-room, opposite the parlor, was open. They took him in and put him on the bed.
“Let’s take off his shoes,” said Julius Arthur. They unlaced them and pulled them off.
“Is there anything else you want, son?” said Julius.
He tried to tell them to undress him, put him below the covers, and close the door, in order to conceal his defection from his family, but he had lost the power of speech. After looking and grinning at him for a moment, they went out without closing the door.
When they had gone he lay upon the bed, unable to move. He had no sense of time, but his mind worked very clearly. He knew that he should rise, fasten the door, and undress. But he was paralyzed.
Presently the Gants came home. Eliza alone was still in town, pondering over gifts. It was after eleven o’clock. Gant, his daughter, and his two sons came into the room and stared at him. When they spoke to him, he burned helplessly.
“Speak! Speak!” yelled Luke, rushing at him and choking him vigorously. “Are you dumb, idiot?”
I shall remember that, he thought.
“Have you no pride? Have you no honor? Has it come to this?” the sailor roared dramatically, striding around the room.
Doesn’t he think he’s hell, though? Eugene thought. He could not fashion words, but he could make sounds, ironically, in the rhythm of his brother’s moralizing. “Tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh! Tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh! Tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh!” he said, with accurate mimicry. Helen, loosening his collar, bent over him laughing. Ben grinned swiftly under a cleft scowl.
Have you no this? Have you no that? Have you no this? Have you no that?—he was cradled in their rhythm. No, ma’am. We’ve run out of honor to-day, but we have a nice fresh lot of self-respect.
“Ah, be quiet,” Ben muttered. “No one’s dead, you know.”
“Go heat some water,” said Gant professionally, “he’s got to get it off his stomach.” He no longer seemed old. His life in a marvellous instant came from its wasting shadow; it took on a hale sinew of health and action.
“Save the fireworks,” said Helen to Luke, as she left the room. “Close the door. For heaven’s sake, try to keep it from mama, if you can.”
This is a great moral issue, thought Eugene. He began to feel sick.
Helen returned in a very few minutes with a kettle of hot water, a glass, and a box of soda. Gant fed him the solution mercilessly until he began to vomit. At the summit of his convulsion Eliza appeared. He lifted his sick head dumbly from the bowl, and saw her white face at the door, and her weak brown eyes, that could take on so much sharpness and sparkle when her suspicion was awakened.
“Hah? Huh? What is it?” said Eliza.
But she knew, of course, instantly, what it was.
“What say?” she asked sharply. No one had said anything. He grinned feebly at her, tickled, above his nausea and grief, at the palpable assumption of blind innocence which always heralded her discoveries. Seeing her thus, they all laughed.
“Oh, my Lord!” said Helen. “Here she is. We were hoping you wouldn’t get here till it was over. Come and look at your Baby,” she said, with a good-humored snicker, keeping his head comfortably supported on the palm of her hand.
“How do you feel now, son?” Gant asked kindly.
“Better,” he mumbled, discovering, with some elation, that his vocal paralysis was not permanent.
“Well, you see!” Helen began, kindly enough, but with a brooding satisfaction. “It only goes to show we’re all alike. We all like it. It’s in our blood.”
“That awful curse!” Eliza said. “I had hoped that I might have one son who might escape it. It seems,” she said, bursting into tears, “as if a Judgment were on us. The sins of the fathers——”
“Oh! for heaven’s sake!” Helen cried angrily. “Stop it! It’s not going to kill him: he’ll learn a lesson from it.”
Gant gnawed his thin lip, and wetted his great thumb in the old manner.
“You might know,” he said, “that I’d get the blame for it. Yes—if one of them broke a leg it would be the same.”
“There’s one thing sure!” said Eliza. “None of them ever got it from my side of the house. Say what you will, his grandfather, Major Pentland, never in his life allowed a drop in his house.”
“Major Pentland be damned!” said Gant. “If you’d depended on him for anything you’d have gone hungry.”
Certainly, thought Eugene, you’d have gone thirsty.
“Forget it!” said Helen. “It’s Christmas. Let’s try to have a little peace and quiet once a year.”
When they had left him, the boy tried to picture them lulled in the dulcet tranquillity they so often invoked. Its effects, he thought, would be more disastrous than any amount of warfare.
In the darkness, everything around and within him swam hideously. But presently he slid down into a pit of distressed sleep.
Every one had agreed on a studious forgiveness. They stepped with obtrusive care around his fault, filled pleasantly with Christmas and mercy. Ben scowled at him quite naturally, Helen grinned and prodded him, Eliza and Luke surrendered themselves to sweetness, sorrow, and silence. Their forgiveness made a loud noise in his ears.
During the morning his father asked him to come for a walk. Gant was embarrassed and hang-dog; a duty of gentle admonishment devolved upon him—he had been counselled to it by Helen and Eliza. Now, no man in his time could carry on in the big, Bow-wow style better than Gant, but none was less fitted to scatter the blossoms of sweetness and light. His wrath was sudden, his invective sprang from the moment, but he had for this occasion no thunder-bolts in his quiver, and no relish for the business before him. He had a feeling of personal guilt; he felt like a magistrate fining for intoxication a culprit with whom he has been on a spree the night before. Besides—what if the Bacchic strain in him had been passed on to his son?
