Thomas Wolfe: Of Time and the River, You Can't Go Home Again & Look Homeward, Angel. Thomas Wolfe
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had thick hair of an oaken color, evenly parted in the middle; her skin was pearl-pale, and transparently delicate; her jaw was long, full, and sensuous — her face was like that of one of the preRaphaelite women. She carried her tall graceful body with beautiful erectness, but with the slightly worn sensuousness of fragility and weariness: her lovely eyes were violet, always a little tired, but full of slow surprise and tenderness. She was like a Luini madonna, mixed of holiness and seduction, the world and heaven. He held her with reverent care, as one who would not come too near, who would not break a sacred image. Her exquisite and subtle perfume stole through him like a strange whisper, pagan and divine. He was afraid to touch her — and his hot palm sweated to her fingers.
Sometimes she coughed gently, smiling, holding a small crumpled handkerchief, edged with blue, before her mouth.
She had come to the hills not because of her own health, but because of her mother’s, a woman of sixty-five, rustily dressed, with the petulant hang-dog face of age and sickness. The old woman suffered from asthma and heart-disease. They had come from Florida. Irene Mallard was a very capable business woman; she was the chief bookkeeper of one of the Altamont banks. Every evening Randolph Gudger, the bank president, telephoned her.
Irene Mallard pressed her palm across the mouthpiece of the telephone, smiling at Eugene ironically, and rolling her eyes entreatingly aloft.
Sometimes Randolph Gudger drove by and asked her to go with him. The boy went sulkily away until the rich man should leave: the banker looked bitterly after him.
“He wants me to marry him, ‘Gene,” said Irene Mallard. “What am I going to do?”
“He’s old enough to be your grandfather,” said Eugene. “He has no hair on the top of his head; his teeth are false, and I don’t know what-all!” he said resentfully.
“He’s a rich man, ‘Gene,” said Irene, smiling. “Don’t forget that.”
“Go on, then! Go on!” he cried furiously. “Yes — go ahead. Marry him. It’s the right thing for you. Sell yourself. He’s an old man!” he said melodramatically. Randolph Gudger was almost forty-five.
But they danced there slowly in a gray light of dusk that was like pain and beauty; like the lost light undersea, in which his life, a lost merman, swam, remembering exile. And as they danced she, whom he dared not touch, yielded her body unto him, whispering softly to his ear, pressing with slender fingers his hot hand. And she, whom he would not touch, lay there, like a sheaf of grain, in the crook of his arm, token of the world’s remedy — the refuge from the one lost face out of all the faces, the anodyne against the wound named Laura — a thousand flitting shapes of beauty to bring him comfort and delight. The great pageantry of pain and pride and death hung through the dusk its awful vision, touching his sorrow with a lonely joy. He had lost; but all pilgrimage across the world was loss: a moment of cleaving, a moment of taking away, the thousand phantom shapes that beaconed, and the high impassionate grief of stars.
It was dark. Irene Mallard took him by the hand and led him out on the porch.
“Sit down here a moment, ‘Gene. I want to talk to you.” Her voice was serious, low-pitched. He sat beside her in the swing, obediently, with the sense of an impending lecture.
“I’ve been watching you these last few days,” said Irene Mallard. “I know what’s been going on.”
“What do you mean?” he said thickly, with thudding pulses.
“You know what I mean,” said Irene Mallard sternly. “Now you’re too fine a boy, ‘Gene, to waste yourself on that Woman. Any one can see what she is. Mother and I have both talked about it. A woman like that can ruin a young boy like you. You’ve got to stop it.”
“How did you know about it?” he muttered. He was frightened and ashamed. She took his trembling hand and held it between her cool palms until he grew quieter. But he drew no closer to her: he halted, afraid, before her loveliness. As with Laura James, she seemed too high for his passion. He was afraid of her flesh; he was not afraid of “Miss Brown’s.” But now he was tired of the woman and didn’t know how he could pay her. She had all his medals.
All through the waning summer he walked with Irene Mallard. They walked at night through the cool streets filled with the rustle of tired leaves. They went together to the hotel roof and danced; later “Pap” Rheinhart, kind and awkward and shy, and smelling of his horse, came to their little table, sitting and drinking with them. He had spent the years since Leonard’s at a military school, trying to straighten the wry twist of his neck. But he remained the same as ever — quizzical, dry, and humorous. Eugene looked at that good shy face, remembering the lost years, the lost faces. And there was sorrow in his heart for what would come no more. August ended.
September came, full of departing wings. The world was full of departures. It had heard the drums. The young men were going to the war. Ben had been rejected again in the draft. Now he was preparing to drift off in search of employment in other towns. Luke had given up his employment in a war-munitions factory at Dayton, Ohio, and had enlisted in the Navy. He had come home on a short leave before his departure for the training-school at Newport, Rhode Island. The street roared as he came down at his vulgar wide-legged stride, in flapping blues, his face all on the grin, thick curls of his unruly hair coiling below the band of his hat. He was the cartoon of a gob.
“Luke!” shouted Mr. Fawcett, the land-auctioneer, pulling him in from the street to Wood’s pharmacy, “by God, son, you’ve done your bit. I’m going to set you up. What are you going to have?”
“Make it a dope,” said Luke. “Colonel, yours truly!” He lifted the frosty glass in a violently palsied hand, and stood posed before the grinning counter. “F-f-f-forty years ago,” he began, in a hoarse voice, “I might have refused, but now I can’t, G-G-G-God help me! I c-c-c-c-can’t!”
Gant’s sickness had returned on him with increased virulence. His face was haggard and yellow: a tottering weakness crept into his limbs. It was decided that he must go again to Baltimore. Helen would go with him.
“Mr. Gant,” said Eliza persuasively, “why don’t you just give up everything and settle down to take things easy the rest of your days? You don’t feel good enough to tend to business any more; if I were you, I’d retire. We could get $20,000 for your shop without any trouble — If I had that much money to work with, I’d show them a thing or two.” She nodded pertly with a smart wink. “I could turn it over two or three times within two years’ time. You’ve got to trade quick to keep the ball a-rolling. That’s the way it’s done.”
“Merciful God,” he groaned. “That’s my last refuge on earth. Woman, have you no mercy? I beg of you, leave me to die in peace: it won’t be long now. You can do what you please with it after I’m gone, but give me a little peace now. In the name of Jesus, I ask it!” He sniffled affectedly.
“Pshaw!” said Eliza, thinking no doubt to encourage him. “There’s nothing wrong with you. Half of it’s only imagination.”
He groaned, turning his head away.
Summer died upon the hills. There was a hue, barely guessed, upon the foliage, of red rust. The streets at night were filled with sad lispings: all through the night, upon his porch, as in a coma, he heard the strange noise of autumn. And all the people who had given the town its light thronging gaiety were vanished strangely overnight. They had gone back into the vast South again. The solemn tension of the war gathered about the nation. A twilight of grim effort hovered around him, above him. He felt the death of joy; but the groping within him of wonder, of glory. Out of the huge sprawl of its first delirium, the nation was beginning to articulate the engines of war — engines to mill and print out hatred and falsehood, engines to pump up glory, engines to manacle and crush opposition, engines to drill and regiment men.
But something of true wonder had come upon the land — the flares and rockets of the battle-fields cast their light across the plains as well. Young men from Kansas were going to die in Picardy. In some foreign earth lay the iron, as yet unmoulded, that was to