OF TIME AND THE RIVER. Thomas Wolfe
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of Hegel, Carlyle, and Matthew Arnold, whom he worshipped, or some question in the daily papers.
Uncle Bascom, seated, his fine gaunt face grave, magnificently composed now above his arched gnarled hands, spoke with eloquent deliberation. He became triumphant reasoning mind: he talked with superb balanced judgment. All the tumult and insanity of his life had been forgotten: no question of money or of self was involved. Meanwhile, from the kitchen Aunt Louise kept up a constant snuffling laughter, punctuated momently by faint whoops. She was convinced, of course, that her husband was mad and all his opinions nonsensical. Yet she had not listened to a word of what he was saying, but only to the sound of his heavily accented, precise, and particular speech. From time to time, snuffling to herself, she would look in on Eugene, trembling with laughter, and shake her head at him in pitying mirth.
“BEYOND a doubt! Beyond a DOUBT!” Uncle Bascom would say. “The quality of the best writing in the books of the Old Testament may take rank with the best writing that has ever been done, but you are right in believing, too, the amount of great writing is less than it is commonly supposed to be. There are passages, nay! BOOKS”— his voice rising strangely to a husky howl —“of the vilest rubbish — Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth — O vile! vile!” he cried. . . . “And Azariah begat Amariah and Amariah begat Ahitub (Phuh! Phuh! Phuh!). AHITUB!” he sneered. “And Azariah begat Seraiah, and Seraiah begat Jehozadak (Phuh! Phuh! Phuh!) JEHOZADAK”— he sneered with his precise articulation, finally letting out the last syllable with a kind of snarling contempt. “Can you IMAGINE, can you even DREAM,” he howled, “of calling anyone a name like that! ‘And Jehozadak went into captivity’— as, indeed, he ought! (phuh! phuh! phuh!)— his VERY name would constitute a PENAL offence! (Phuh! Phuh! Phuh!) JeHOZadak!” Uncle Bascom sneered. “But,” he proceeded deliberately in a moment, as he stared calmly over his great arched hands, “— but — the quality of some of the language is God-intoxicated: the noblest poetry ever chanted in the service of eternity.”
“The Book of Wevelations,” cried Aunt Louise, suddenly rushing out of the kitchen with a carving-knife in her hand, having returned to earth for a moment to hear him. “The Book of Wevelations!” she said in a hoarse whisper, her mouth puckered with disgust. “EUGENE! A WICKED, bloo-o-edy, kwu-u-el monument to supahstition. Twibute to an avenging and MUH-DUH-WOUS GAWD!” The last word uttered in a hoarse almost inaudible whisper would find his aunt bent double, clutching a knife in one hand, with her small bright eyes glaring madly at us.
“Oh no, my dear, oh no,” said Uncle Bascom, with astonishing, unaccustomed sadness, with almost exquisite gentleness. And, his vibrant passionate voice thrilling suddenly with emotion, he added:
“The triumphant music of one of the mightiest of earth’s poets: the sublime utterance of a man for whom God had opened the mysteries of heaven and hell.”
He paused a moment, then quietly in a remote voice — in that remote and magnificent voice which could thrill men so deeply when it uttered poetry, he continued: “‘I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end’— the mightiest line, my dear boy, the most magnificent poetry, that was ever written.” And suddenly Uncle Bascom threw his gaunt hands before his face, and wept in strong hoarse sobs: “Oh, my God, my God! — the beauty, the pity of it all! . . . You must pardon me,” he whispered after a moment, drawing his faded sweater sleeve across his eyes. “You must pardon me. It brought back — memories.”
Aunt Louise, who had been stricken with a kind of fear and horror when he began to weep, now looked at Eugene with an expression of strong physical disgust, almost of nausea, shaking her head slightly in an affronted and ladylike manner as might one who, having achieved healthy and courageous discipline over all the excesses of emotion, feels only contempt for him who gives way to them.
She retired now with exaggerated dignity to the kitchen, served the meal, and addressed Eugene for some time thereafter with absurd quietness and restraint of manner, and a kind of stiff primness about her backbone. She was an excellent cook; there was magic in her treatment of food, and on the occasions when Eugene was coming out, she insisted that Bascom get her a decent piece of meat to work with.
There would be a juicy fragrant piece of lamb, or a boiled leg of mutton with currant jelly, or perhaps a small crisply browned roast of beef, with small flaky biscuits, smoking hot, two or three vegetables, and rich coffee. Uncle Bascom, quite unperturbed by his outbreak, would stamp into the kitchen, where he could be heard swearing and muttering to himself, as he searched for various things. Later he would appear at the table bearing a platter filled with some revolting mess of his own concoction — a mixture of raw vegetables, chopped up — onions, carrots, beans, and raw potatoes — for he had the full strength of his family’s mania concerning food, violent prejudices about its preparation, and deep-seated distrust of everybody’s cleanliness but his own.
“Have some, my boy. Have some!” he would yell huskily, seating himself and lunging toward Eugene with the awful mess, in a gesture of violent invitation.
“Thank you, no.” Eugene would try to keep his eyes averted from the mess and focus on the good food heaping his plate.
“You may eat that slop if you want to,” Uncle Bascom would exclaim with a scornful and sneering laugh. “It would give ME my death of dyspepsia.” And the silence of their eating would be broken by the recurrent snuffling whoops of Aunt Louise, accompanied by many pitying looks and head-shakes as she trembled with laughter and hid her mouth.
Or, suddenly, in the full rich progress of the meal, Eugene would be shocked out of his pleasure in the food by the mad bright eyes of Aunt Louise bearing fiercely down upon him:
“Eugene! — don’t bwood, boy! Don’t bwood! You’ve got it in you — it’s in the blood! You’re one of them. You’re one of THEM! — a PENTLAND,” she croaked fatally.
“Ah-h — you DON’T know what you’re talking about”— thus suddenly in fierce distemper Uncle Bascom. “SCOTCH! SCOTCH-Irish! Finest people on earth! No question about it whatever.”
“Fugitive ideation! Fugitive ideation!” she chattered like a monkey over a nut. “Mind goes off in all diwections. Can’t stick to anything five minutes at a time. The same thing that’s wong with the moduhn decadents. Wead Nordau’s book, Eugene. It will open yoah eyes,” and she whispered hoarsely again: “You’re OVAH-SEXED— ALL of you!”
“Bosh! Bosh!” growled Uncle Bascom. “Some more of your psychology — the BASTARD of superstition and quackery: the black magic of little minds — the effort of a blind man (phuh! phuh! phuh!) crawling about in a dark room (phuh! phuh!) looking for a BLACK CAT (phuh! phuh!) that ISN’T THERE,” he yelled triumphantly, and closed his eyes and snarled and snuffled down his nose with laughter.
He knew nothing about it: occasionally he still read Kant, and he could be as deep in absolute categories, moments of negation, and definitions of a concept as she with all of her complicated and extensive paraphernalia of phobias, complexes, fixations, and repressions.
“Well, Eugene,” thus Aunt Louise with light raillery and yet with eager curiosity, “have you found you a nice wosy-cheeked New England gul yet? You had bettah watch OUT, boy! I tell you, you had bettah watch OUT!” she declared, kittenishly, wagging her finger at him, before he had time to answer.
“If he has,” said Uncle Bascom grimly, “he will find her sadly lacking in the qualities of delicacy, breeding, and womanly decorum that the Southern girl has. Oh, yes! No question about that whatever!” for Uncle Bascom still had the passionate loyalty and sentimental affection for the South that many Southerners have who could not be induced, under any circumstances, to return.
“Take a Nawthun gul, Eugene.” Aunt Louise became at once combative. “They’re bettah for you! They are BETTAH. They are BETTAH!” she declared, shaking her head in an obdurate manner, as if further argument was useless. “Moah independence! Bettah minds! They won’t choke yoah life out by hanging awound yoah neck,” she concluded crisply.
“I will tell you a story,” Uncle Bascom continued deliberately