OF TIME AND THE RIVER. Thomas Wolfe
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sir!” Bascom said in an annoyed tone, “I have told you all along — we are going to the modest but excellent establishment in the basement of this very building.”
“Why, Reverend,” Brill said in a protesting tone, “you ain’t goin’ to take your nephew THERE, are you? I thought you said you was goin’ to git somethin’ to EAT.”
“I had supposed,” Bascom said with bitter sarcasm, “that one went there for that purpose. I had not supposed that one went there to get shaved.”
“Well,” said Brill, “if you go there you’ll git shaved, all right. You’ll not only git SHAVED, you’ll git SKINNED alive. But you won’t git anything to eat.” And he hurled himself back again, roaring with laughter.
“Pay no attention to him!” Bascom said to the boy in a tone of bitter repugnance. “I have long known that his low and vulgar mind attempts to make a joke of everything, even the most sacred matters. I assure you, my boy, the place is excellent in every way:— do you suppose,” he said now, addressing Brill and all the others, with a howl of fury —“do you suppose, if it were not, that I should for a single moment DREAM of taking him there? Do you suppose that I would for an instant CONTEMPLATE taking my own nephew, my sister’s son, to any place in which I did not repose the fullest confidence? Not on your life!” he howled. “Not on your life!”
And they departed, followed by Brill’s great bellow, and a farewell invitation which he shouted after the young man. “Don’t worry, son! When you git through with that cockroach stew, come back an’ I’ll take you out to lunch with ME!”
time_
Although Brill delighted in teasing and baiting his partner in this fashion, there was, at the bottom of his heart, a feeling of deep humility, of genuine respect and admiration for him: he respected Uncle Bascom’s intelligence, he was secretly and profoundly impressed by the fact that the old man had been a minister of the gospel and had preached in many churches.
Moreover, in the respect and awe with which Brill greeted these evidences of Bascom’s superior education, in the eagerness he showed when he boasted to visitors, as he often did, of his partner’s learning, there was a quality of pride that was profoundly touching and paternal: it was as if Bascom had been his son and as if he wanted at every opportunity to display his talents to the world. And this, in fact, was exactly what he did want to do. Much to Bascom’s annoyance, Brill was constantly speaking of his erudition to strangers who had come into the office for the first time, and constantly urging him to perform for them, to “say some of them big words, Reverend.” And even when the old man answered him, as he frequently did, in terms of scorn, anger, and contempt, Brill was completely satisfied if Uncle Bascom would only use a few of the “big words” in doing it. Thus, one day, when one of his boyhood friends, a New Hampshire man whom he had not seen in thirty-five years, had come in to renew their acquaintance Brill, in describing the accomplishments of his partner, said with an air of solemn affirmation: “Why, hell yes, Jim! It’d take a college perfesser to know what the Reverend is talkin’ about half the time! No ordinary son of a bitch is able to understand him! So help me God, it’s true!” he swore solemnly, as Jim looked incredulous. “The Reverend knows words the average man ain’t never heard. He knows words that ain’t even in the dictionary. Yes, sir! — an’ uses ’em, too — all the time!” he concluded triumphantly.
“Why, my dear sir!” Bascom answered in a tone of exacerbated contempt, “What on earth are you talking about? Such a man as you describe would be a monstrosity, a heinous perversion of natural law! A man so wise that no one could understand him:— so literate that he could not communicate with his fellow-creatures:— so erudite that he led the inarticulate and incoherent life of a beast or a savage!”— here Uncle Bascom squinted his eyes tightly shut, and laughed sneeringly down his nose: “Phuh! phuh! phuh! phuh! phuh! — Why, you consum-mate fool!” he sneered, “I have long known that your ignorance was bottomless — but I had never hoped to see it equalled — Nay, surpassed!” he howled, “by your asininity.”
“There you are!” said Brill exultantly to his visitor, “What did I tell you? There’s one of them words, Jim: ‘asserninity,’ why, damn it, the Reverend’s the only one who knows what that word means — you won’t even find it in the dictionary!”
“Not find it in the dictionary!” Bascom yelled. “Almighty God, come down and give this ass a tongue as Thou didst once before in Balaam’s time!”
Again, Brill was seated at his desk one day engaged with a client in those intimate, cautious, and confidential preliminaries that mark the consummation of a “deal” in real estate. On this occasion the prospective buyer was an Italian: the man sat awkwardly and nervously in a chair beside Brill’s desk while the great man bent his huge weight ponderously and persuasively toward him. From time to time the Italian’s voice, sullen, cautious, disparaging, interrupted Brill’s ponderous and coaxing drone. The Italian sat stiffly, his thick, clumsy body awkwardly clad in his “good” clothes of heavy black, his thick, hairy, blunt-nailed hands cupped nervously upon his knees, his black eyes glittering with suspicion under his knitted inch of brow. At length, he shifted nervously, rubbed his paws tentatively across his knees and then, with a smile mixed of ingratiation and mistrust, said: “How mucha you want, eh?”
“How mucha we want?” Brill repeated vulgarly as the burble began to play about within his throat. “Why, how mucha you got? . . . You know we’ll take every damn thing you got! It’s not how mucha we want, it’s how mucha you got!” And he hurled himself backward, bellowing with laughter. “By God, Reverend,” he yelled as Uncle Bascom entered, “ain’t that right? It’s not how mucha we want, it’s how mucha you got! ‘od damn! We ought to take that as our motter. I’ve got a good mind to git it printed on our letterheads. What do you think, Reverend?”
“Hey?” howled Uncle Bascom absently, as he prepared to enter his own office.
“I say we ought to use it for our motter.”
“Your what?” said Uncle Bascom scornfully, pausing as if he did not understand.
“Our motter,” Brill said.
“Not your MOTTER,” Bascom howled derisively. “The word is NOT motter,” he said contemptuously. “Nobody of any refinement would say MOTTER. MOTTER is NOT correct!” he howled finally. “Only an ig-no-RAM-us would say MOTTER. No!” he yelled with final conclusiveness. “That is NOT the way to pronounce it! That is abso-lute-ly and emphat-ic-ally NOT the way to pronounce it!”
“All right, then, Reverend,” said Brill, submissively. “You’re the doctor. What is the word?”
“The word is MOTTO,” Uncle Bascom snarled. “Of course! Any fool knows that!”
“Why, hell,” Mr. Brill protested in a hurt tone. “That’s what I said, ain’t it?”
“No-o!” Uncle Bascom howled derisively. “No-o! By no means, by no means, by no means! You said MOTTER. The word is NOT motter. The word is motto: m-o-t-t-o! M-O-T-T-O does NOT spell motter,” he remarked with vicious decision.
“What does it spell?” said Mr. Brill.
“It spells MOTTO,” Uncle Bascom howled. “It HAS always spelled motto! It WILL always spell motto! As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: A-a-men!” he howled huskily in his most evangelical fashion. Then, immensely pleased at his wit, he closed his eyes, stamped at the floor, and snarled and snuffled down his nose with laughter.
“Well, anyway,” said Brill, “no matter how you spell it, it’s not how mucha we want, it’s how mucha you got! That’s the way we feel about it!”
And this, in fact, without concealment, without pretence, without evasion, was just how Brill DID feel about it. He wanted everything that was his and, in addition, he wanted as much as he could get. And this rapacity, this brutal and unadorned gluttony, so far from making men wary of him, attracted them to him, inspired them with unshakable confidence in his integrity, his business honesty. Perhaps the