Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe (32 page)

He was a new principal.  Young Armstrong, who
had smelled the flower so delicately, and who had visited Daisy, and
who once had almost beaten Eugene because of the smutty rhymes, was
gone.  The new principal was older.  He was about
thirty-eight years old.  He was a strong rather heavy man a
little under six feet tall; he was one of a large family who had
grown up on a Tennessee farm.  His father was poor but he had
helped his children to get an education. All this Eugene knew
already, because the principal made long talks to them in the morning
and said he had never had their advantages. He pointed to himself
with some pride.  And he urged the little boys, playfully but
earnestly, to "be not like dumb, driven cattle, be a hero in the
strife."  That was poetry, Longfellow.

The principal had thick powerful shoulders; clumsy
white arms, knotted with big awkward country muscles.  Eugene
had seen him once hoeing in the schoolyard; each of them had been
given a plant to set out.  He got those muscles on the farm. 
The boys said he beat very hard.  He walked with a clumsy
stealthy tread--awkward and comical enough, it is true, but he could
be up at a boy's back before you knew it.  Otto Krause called
him Creeping Jesus.  The name stuck, among the tough crowd. 
Eugene was a little shocked by it.

The principal had a white face of waxen transparency,
with deep flat cheeks like the Pentlands, a pallid nose, a trifle
deeper in its color than his face, and a thin slightly-bowed mouth. 
His hair was coarse, black, and thick, but he never let it grow too
long. He had short dry hands, strong, and always coated deeply with
chalk.  When he passed near by, Eugene got the odor of chalk and
of the schoolhouse: his heart grew cold with excitement and fear. 
The sanctity of chalk and school hovered about the man's flesh. 
He was the one who could touch without being touched, beat without
being beaten.  Eugene had terrible fantasies of resistance,
shuddering with horror as he thought of the awful consequences of
fighting back: something like God's fist in lightning.  Then he
looked around cautiously to see if any one had noticed.

The principal's name was Leonard.  He made long
speeches to the children every morning, after a ten-minute prayer. 
He had a high sonorous countrified voice which often trailed off in a
comical drawl; he got lost very easily in revery, would pause in the
middle of a sentence, gaze absently off with his mouth half-open and
an expression of stupefaction on his face, and return presently to
the business before him, his mind still loose, with witless
distracted laugh.

He talked to the children aimlessly, pompously, dully
for twenty minutes every morning: the teachers yawned carefully
behind their hands, the students made furtive drawings, or passed
notes.  He spoke to them of "the higher life" and of
"the things of the mind." He assured them that they were
the leaders of to-morrow and the hope of the world.  Then he
quoted Longfellow.

He was a good man, a dull man, a man of honor. 
He had a broad streak of coarse earthy brutality in him.  He
loved a farm better than anything in the world except a school. 
He had rented a big dilapidated house in a grove of lordly oaks on
the outskirts of town: he lived there with his wife and his two
children.  He had a cow--he was never without a cow: he would go
out at night and morning to milk her, laughing his vacant silly
laugh, and giving her a good smacking kick in the belly to make her
come round into position.

He was a heavy-handed master.  He put down
rebellion with good cornfield violence.  If a boy was impudent
to him he would rip him powerfully from his seat, drag his wriggling
figure into his office, breathing stertorously as he walked along at
his clumsy rapid gait, and saying roundly, in tones of scathing
contempt: "Why, you young upstart, we'll just see who's master
here.  I'll show you, my sonny, if I'm to be dictated to by
every two-by-four whippersnapper who comes along."  And
once within the office, with the glazed door shut, he published the
stern warning of his justice by the loud exertion of his breathing,
the cutting swish of his rattan, and the yowls of pain and terror
that he exacted from his captive.

He had called the school together that day to command
it to write him a composition.  The children sat, staring dumbly
up at him as he made a rambling explanation of what he wanted. 
Finally he announced a prize.  He would give five dollars from
his own pocket to the student who wrote the best paper.  That
aroused them.  There was a rustle of interest.

They were to write a paper on the meaning of a French
picture called The Song of the Lark.  It represented a French
peasant girl, barefooted, with a sickle in one hand, and with face
upturned in the morning-light of the fields as she listened to the
bird-song. They were asked to describe what they saw in the
expression of the girl's face.  They were asked to tell what the
picture meant to them.  It had been reproduced in one of their
readers.  A larger print was now hung up on the platform for
their inspection.  Sheets of yellow paper were given them. 
They stared, thoughtfully masticating their pencils.  Finally,
the room was silent save for a minute scratching on paper.

The warm wind spouted about the eaves; the grasses
bent, whistling gently.

Eugene wrote:  "The girl is hearing the
song of the first lark. She knows that it means Spring has come. 
She is about seventeen oreighteen years old.  Her people are
very poor, she has never been anywhere.  In the winter she wears
wooden shoes.  She is making out as if she was going to
whistle.  But she doesn't let on to the bird that she has heard
him.  The rest of her people are behind her, coming down the
field, but we do not see them.  She has a father, a mother, and
two brothers.  They have worked hard all their life. The girl is
the youngest child.  She thinks she would like to go away
somewhere and see the world.  Sometimes she hears the whistle of
a train that is going to Paris.  She has never ridden on a train
in her life.  She would like to go to Paris.  She would
like to have some fine clothes, she would like to travel. 
Perhaps she would like to start life new in America, the Land of
Opportunity.The girl has had a hard time.  Her people do not
understand her. If they saw her listening to the lark they would poke
fun at her. She has never had the advantages of a good education, her
people are so poor, but she would profit by her opportunity if she
did, more than some people who have.  You can tell by looking at
her that she's intelligent."

It was early in May; examinations came in another two
weeks.  He thought of them with excitement and pleasure--he
liked the period of hard cramming, the long reviews, the delight of
emptying out abundantly on paper his stored knowledge.  The big
assembly room had about it the odor of completion, of sharp nervous
ecstasy.  All through the summer it would be drowsy-warm; if
only here, alone, with the big plaster cast of Minerva, himself and
Bessie Barnes, or  Miss--Miss--

"We want this boy," said Margaret Leonard. 
She handed Eugene's paper over to her husband.  They were
starting a private school for boys.  That was what the paper had
been for.

Leonard took the paper, pretended to read half a
page, looked off absently into eternity, and began to rub his chin
reflectively, leaving a slight coating of chalk-dust on his face. 
Then, catching her eye, he laughed idiotically, and said:  "Why,
that little rascal!  Huh?  Do you suppose--?"

Feeling delightfully scattered, he bent over with a
long suction of whining laughter, slapping his knee and leaving a
chalk print, making a slobbering noise in his mouth.

"The Lord have mercy!" he gasped.

"Here!  Never you mind about that,"
she said, laughing with tender sharp amusement.  "Pull
yourself together and see this boy's people."  She loved
the man dearly, and he loved her.

A few days later Leonard assembled the children a
second time.  He made a rambling speech, the purport of which
was to inform them that one of them had won the prize, but to conceal
the winner's name.  Then, after several divagations, which he
thoroughly enjoyed, he read Eugene's paper, announced his name, and
called him forward.

Chalkface took chalkhand.  The boy's heart
thundered against his ribs.  The proud horns blared, he tasted
glory.

Patiently, all through the summer, Leonard laid siege
to Gant and Eliza.  Gant fidgeted, spoke shiftily, finally said:

"You'll have to see his mother." 
Privately he was bitterly scornful, roared the merits of the public
school as an incubator of citizenship.  The family was
contemptuous.  Private school!  Mr. Vanderbilt!  Ruin
him for good!

Which made Eliza reflective.  She had a good
streak of snobbism. Mr. Vanderbilt?  She was as good as any of
them.  They'd just see.

"Who are you going to have?" she asked. 
"Have you drummed any one up yet?"

Leonard mentioned the sons of several fashionable and
wealthy people,--of Dr. Kitchen, the eye, ear, nose and throat man,
Mr. Arthur, the corporation lawyer, and Bishop Raper, of the
Episcopal diocese.

Eliza grew more reflective.  She thought of
Pett.  She needn't give herself airs.

"How much are you asking?" she said.

He told her the tuition was one hundred dollars a
year.  She pursed her lips lingeringly before she answered.

"Hm-m!" she began, with a bantering smile,
as she looked at Eugene. "That's a whole lot of money.  You
know," she continued with her tremulous smile, "as the
darkey says, we're pore-folks."

Eugene squirmed.

"Well what about it, boy?" said Eliza
banteringly.  "Do you think you're worth that much money?"

Mr. Leonard placed his white dry hand upon Eugene's
shoulders, affectionately sliding it down his back and across his
kidneys, leaving white chalk prints everywhere.  Then he clamped
his meaty palm tightly around the slender bracelet of boy-arm.

"That boy's worth it," he said, shaking him
gently to and fro. "Yes, sir!"

Eugene smiled painfully.  Eliza continued to
purse her lips.  She felt a strong psychic relation to Leonard. 
They both took time.

"Say," she said, rubbing her broad red
nose, and smiling slyly, "I used to be a school-teacher. 
You didn't know that, did you?  But I didn't get any such prices
as you're asking," she added.  "I thought myself
mighty lucky if I got my board and twenty dollars a month."

"Is that so, Mrs. Gant?" said Mr. Leonard
with great interest. "Well, sir!"  He began to laugh
in a vague whine, pulling Eugene about more violently and deadening
his arm under his crushing grip.

"Yes," said Eliza, "I remember my
father--it was long before you  were born, boy," she said
to Eugene, "for I hadn't laid eyes on your papa--as the feller
says, you were nothing but a dish-rag hanging out in heaven--I'd have
laughed at any one who suggested marriage then--Well, I tell you what
[she shook her head with a sad pursed deprecating mouth], we were
mighty poor at the time, I can tell you.--I was thinking about it the
other day--many's the time we didn't have food in the house for the
next meal.--Well, as I was saying, your grandfather [addressing
Eugene] came home one night and said--Look here, what about it?--Who
do you suppose I saw to-day?--I remember him just as plain as if I
saw him standing here?I had a feeling--[addressing Leonard with a
doubtful smile] I don't know what you'd call it but it's pretty
strange when you come to think about it, isn't it?--I had just
finished helping Aunt Jane set the table--she had come all the way
from Yancey County to visit your grandmother--when all of a sudden it
flashed over me--mind you [to Leonard] I never looked out the window
or anything but I knew just as well as I knew anything that he was
coming--mercy I cried--here comes--why what on earth are you talking
about, Eliza? Said your grandma--I remember she went to the door and
looked out down the path--there's no one there--He's acoming, I
said--wait and see--Who? said your grandmother--Why, father, I
said--he's carrying something on his shoulder--and sure enough--I had
no sooner got the words out of my mouth than there he was just
acoming it for all he was worth, up the path, with a tow-sack full of
apples on his back--you could tell by the way he walked that he had
news of some sort--well--sure enough--without stopping to say
howdy-do--I remembered he began to talk almost before he got into the
house--O father, I called out--you've brought the apples--it was the
year after I had almost died of pneumonia--I'd been spitting up blood
ever since--and having hemorrhages--and I asked him to bring me some
apples--Well sir, mother said to him, and she looked mighty queer, I
can tell you--that's the strangest thing I ever heard of--and she
told him what had happened--Well, he looked pretty serious and
said--Yes, I'll never forget the way he said it--I reckon she saw
me.  I wasn't there but I was thinking of being there and coming
up the path at that very moment--I've got news for you he said--who
do you suppose I saw to-day--why, I've no idea, I said--why old
Professor Truman--he came rushing up to me in town and said, see
here: where's Eliza--I've got a job for her if she wants it, teaching
school this winter out on Beaverdam--why, pshaw, said your
grandfather, she's never taught school a day in her life?and
Professor Truman laughed just as big as you please and said never you
mind about that--Eliza can do anything she sets her mind on--well
sir, that's the way it all came about."  High-sorrowful and
sad, she paused for a moment, adrift, her white face slanting her
life back through the aisled grove of years.