Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe (30 page)

I am, he thought, a part of all that I have touched
and that has touched me, which, having for me no existence save that
which I gave to it, became other than itself by being mixed with what
I then was, and is now still otherwise, having fused with what I now
am, which is itself a cumulation of what I have been becoming. 
Why here?  Why there?  Why now?  Why then?

The fusion of the two strong egotisms, Eliza's
inbrooding and Gant's expanding outward, made of him a fanatical
zealot in the religion of Chance.  Beyond all misuse, waste,
pain, tragedy, death, confusion, unswerving necessity was on the
rails; not a sparrow fell through the air but that its repercussion
acted on his life, and the lonely light that fell upon the viscous
and interminable seas at dawn awoke sea-changes washing life to him.
The fish swam upward from the depth.
 
 

The seed of our destruction will blossom in the
desert, the alexin of our cure grows by a mountain rock, and our
lives are haunted by a Georgia slattern because a London cut-purse
went unhung.  Through Chance, we are each a ghost to all the
others, and our only reality; through Chance, the huge hinge of the
world, and a grain of dust; the stone that starts an avalanche, the
pebble whose concentric circles widen across the seas.
 
 

He believed himself thus at the centre of life; he
believed the mountains rimmed the heart of the world; he believed
that from all the chaos of accident the inevitable event came at the
inexorable moment to add to the sum of his life.

Against the hidden other flanks of the immutable
hills the world washed like a vast and shadowy sea, alive with the
great fish of his imagining.  Variety, in this unvisited world,
was unending, but order and purpose certain: there would be no
wastage in adventure--courage would be regarded with beauty, talent
with success, all merit with its true deserving.  There would be
peril, there would be toil, there would be struggle.  But there
would not be confusion and waste.  There would not be groping. 
For collected Fate would fall, on its chosen moment, like a plum. 
There was no disorder in enchantment.
 
 

Spring lay abroad through all the garden of this
world.  Beyond the hills the land bayed out to other hills, to
golden cities, to rich meadows, to deep forests, to the sea. 
Forever and forever.

Beyond the hills were the mines of King Solomon, the
toy republics of Central America, and little tinkling fountains in a
court; beyond, the moonlit roofs of Bagdad, the little grated blinds
of Samarkand, the moonlit camels of Bythinia, the Spanish ranch-house
of the Triple Z, and J. B. Montgomery and his lovely daughter
stepping from their private car upon a western track; and the
castle-haunted crags of Graustark; the fortune-yielding casino of
Monte Carlo; and the blue eternal Mediterranean, mother of empires.
And instant wealth ticked out upon a tape, and the first stage of the
Eiffel Tower where the restaurant was, and Frenchmen setting fire to
their whiskers, and a farm in Devon, white cream, brown ale, the
winter's chimney merriment, and Lorna Doone; and the hanging gardens
of Babylon, and supper in the sunset with the queens, and the slow
slide of the barge upon the Nile, or the wise rich bodies of Egyptian
women couched on moonlit balustrades, and the thunder of the chariots
of great kings, and tomb-treasure sought at midnight, and the
wine-rich chateau land of France, and calico warm legs in hay.

Upon a field in Thrace Queen Helen lay, her lovely
body dappled in the sun.
 
 

Meanwhile, business had been fairly good. 
Eliza's earning power the first few years at Dixieland had been
injured by her illnesses. Now, however, she had recovered, and had
paid off the last installment on the house.  It was entirely
hers.  The property at this time was worth perhaps $12,000. 
In addition she had borrowed $3,500 on a twenty-year $5,000 life
insurance policy that had only two years more to run, and had made
extensive alterations: she had added a large sleeping-porch upstairs,
tacked on two rooms, a bath, and a hallway on one side, and extended
a hallway, adding three bedrooms, two baths, and a water-closet, on
the other.  Downstairs she had widened the veranda, put in a
large sun-parlor under the sleeping-porch, knocked out the archway in
the dining-room, which she prepared to use as a big bedroom in the
slack season, scooped out a small pantry in which the family was to
eat, and added a tiny room beside the kitchen for her own occupancy.

The construction was after her own plans, and of the
cheapest material: it never lost the smell of raw wood, cheap
varnish, and flimsy rough plastering, but she had added eight or ten
rooms at a cost of only $3,000.  The year before she had banked
almost $2,000--her bank account was almost $5,000.  In addition,
she owned jointly with Gant the shop on the Square, which had thirty
feet of frontage, and was valued at $20,000, from which he got $65 a
month in rent; $20 from Jannadeau, $25 from the McLean Plumbing
Company in the basement, and $20 from the J. N. Gillespie Printing
Co., which occupied all of the second story.  There were,
besides, three good building-lots on Merrion Avenue valued at $2,000
apiece, or at $5,500 for all three; the house on Woodson Street
valued at $5,000; 110 acres of wooded mountainside with a farm-house,
several hundred peach, apple and cherry trees, and a few acres of
arable ground for which Gant received $120 a year in rent, and which
they valued at $50 an acre, $5,500; two houses, one on Carter Street,
and one on Duncan, rented to railway people, for which they received
$25 a month apiece, and which they valued together at $4,500;
forty-eight acres of land two miles above Biltburn, and four from
Altamont, upon the important Reynoldsville Road, which they valued at
$210 an acre, or $10,000; three houses in Niggertown--one on lower
Valley Street, one on Beaumont Crescent, just below the negro
Johnson's  big house, and one on Short Oak, valued at $600,
$900, and $1,600 respectively, and drawing a room-rental of $8, $12,
and $17 a month (total: $3,100 and $37 rental); two houses across the
river, four miles away in West Altamont, valued at $2,750 and at
$3,500, drawing a rental of $22 and $30 a month; three lots, lost in
the growth of a rough hillside, a mile from the main highway through
West Altamont, $500; and a house, unoccupied, object of Gantian
anathema, on Lower Hatton Avenue, $4,500.

In addition, Gant held 10 shares, which were already
worth $200 each ($2,000), in the newly organized Fidelity Bank; his
stock of stones, monuments, and fly-specked angels represented an
investment of $2,700, although he could not have sold them outright
for so much; and he had about $3,000 deposited in the Fidelity, the
Merchants, and the Battery Hill banks.

Thus, at the beginning of 1912, before the rapid and
intensive development of Southern industry, and the consequent
tripling of Altamont's population, and before the multiplication of
her land values, the wealth of Gant and Eliza amounted to about
$100,000, the great bulk of which was solidly founded in juicy well
chosen pieces of property of Eliza's selection, yielding them a
monthly rental of more than $200, which, added to their own earning
capacities at the shop and Dixieland, gave them a combined yearly
income of $8,000 or $10,000.  Although Gant often cried out
bitterly against his business and declared, when he was not attacking
property, that he had never made even a bare living from  his
tombstones, he was rarely short of ready money: he usually hadone or
two small commissions from country people, and he always carried a
well-filled purse, containing $150 or $200 in five- and ten-dollar
bills, which he allowed Eugene to count out frequently, enjoying his
son's delight, and the feel of abundance.

Eliza had suffered one or two losses in her
investments, led astray by a strain of wild romanticism which
destroyed for the moment her shrewd caution.  She invested
$1,200 in the Missouri Utopia of a colonizer, and received nothing
for her money but a weakly copy of the man's newspaper, several
beautiful prospectuses of the look of things when finished, and a
piece of clay sculpture, eight inches in height, showing Big Brother
with his little sisters Jenny and Kate, the last with thumb in her
mouth.

"By God," said Gant, who made savage fun of
the proceeding, "she ought to have it on her nose."

And Ben sneered, jerking his head toward it, saying:

"There's her $1,200."

But Eliza was preparing to go on by herself. 
She saw that co-operation with Gant in the purchase of land was
becoming more difficult each year.  And with something like
pain, something assuredly like hunger, she saw various rich plums
fall into other hands or go unbought.  She realized that in a
very short time land values would soar beyond her present means. 
And she proposed to be on hand when the pie was cut.

Across the street from Dixieland was the Brunswick, a
well-built red brick house of twenty rooms.  The marble facings
had been done by Gant himself twenty years before, the hardwood
floors and oak timbering by Will Pentland.  It was an ugly
gabled Victorian house, the marriage gift of a rich Northerner to his
daughter, who died of tuberculosis.

"Not a better built house in town," said
Gant.

Nevertheless he refused to buy it with Eliza, and
with an aching heart she saw it go to St. Greenberg, the rich
junk-man, for $8,500.  Within a year he had sold off five lots
at the back, on the Yancy Street side, for $1,000 each, and was
holding the house for $20,000.

"We could have had our money back by now three
times over," Eliza fretted.

She did not have enough money at the time for any
important investment.  She saved and she waited.

Will Pentland's fortune at this time was vaguely
estimated at from $500,000 to $700,000.  It was mainly in
property, a great deal of which was situated--warehouses and
buildings--near the passenger depot of the railway.

Sometimes Altamont people, particularly the young men
who loafed about Collister's drug-store, and who spent long dreamy
hours estimating the wealth of the native plutocracy, called Will
Pentland a millionaire.  At this time it was a distinction in
American life to be a millionaire.  There were only six or eight
thousand.  But Will Pentland wasn't one.  He was really
worth only a half million.

Mr. Goulderbilt was a millionaire.  He was
driven into town in a big Packard, but he got out and went along the
streets like other men.

One time Gant pointed him out to Eugene.  He was
about to enter a bank.

"There he is," whispered Gant.  "Do
you see him?"

Eugene nodded, wagging his head mechanically. 
He was unable to speak.  Mr. Goulderbilt was a small dapper man,
with black hair, black clothes, and a black mustache.  His hands
and feet were small.

"He's got over $50,000,000," said Gant. 
"You'd never think it to look at him, would you?"

And Eugene dreamed of these money princes living in a
princely fashion.  He wanted to see them riding down a street in
a crested coach around which rode a teetering guard of liveried
outriders. He wanted their fingers to be heavily gemmed, their
clothes trimmed with ermine, their women coroneted with flashing
mosaics of amethyst, beryl, ruby, topaz, sapphire, opal, emerald, and
wearing thick ropes of pearls.  And he wanted to see them living
in palaces of alabaster columns, eating in vast halls upon an immense
creamy table from vessels of old silver--eating strange fabulous
foods--swelling unctuous paps of a fat pregnant sow, oiled mushrooms,
calvered salmon, jugged hare, the beards of barbels dressed with an
exquisite and poignant sauce, carps' tongues, dormice and camels'
heels, with spoons of amber headed with diamond and carbuncle, and
cups of agate, studded with emeralds, hyacinths, and
rubies--everything, in fact, for which Epicure Mammon wished.

Eugene met only one millionaire whose performances in
public satisfied him, and he, unhappily, was crazy.  His name
was Simon.

Simon, when Eugene first saw him, was a man of almost
fifty years. He had a strong, rather heavy figure of middling height,
a lean brown face, with shadowy hollows across the cheeks, always
closely shaven, but sometimes badly scarred by his gouging
fingernails, and a long thin mouth that curved slightly downward,
subtle, sensitive,lighting his whole face at times with blazing
demoniac glee.  He had straight abundant hair, heavily grayed,
which he kept smartly brushed and flattened at the sides.  His
clothing was loose and well cut: he wore a dark coat above baggy gray
flannels, silk shirt rayed with broad stripes, a collar to match, and
a generous loosely knotted tie.  His waistcoats were of a
ruddy-brown chequered pattern.  He had an appearance of great
distinction.

Simon and his two keepers first came to Dixieland
when difficulties with several of the Altamont hotels forced them to
look for private quarters.  The men took two rooms and a
sleeping-porch, and paid generously.

"Why, pshaw!" said Eliza persuasively to
Helen.  "I don't believe there's a thing wrong with him. 
He's as quiet and well-behaved as you please."

At this moment there was a piercing yell upstairs,
followed by a long peal of diabolical laughter.  Eugene bounded
up and down the hall in his exultancy and delight, producing little
squealing noises in his throat.  Ben, scowling, with a quick
flicker of his mouth, drew back his hard white hand swiftly as if to
cuff his brother.  Instead, he jerked his head sideways to
Eliza, and said with a soft, scornful laugh:  "By God,
mama, I don't see why you have to take them in.  You've got
enough of them in the family already."