Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe (58 page)

    
"Now, Tragedy, begone,
and to our dell
     
Bring
antic Jollity with cap and bells:
     
Falstaff, thou prince of jesters, lewd old man
     
Who surfeited a royal
prince with mirth,
     
And
swayed a kingdom with his wanton quips--"
 

Embarrassed by the growing undertone of laughter, Doc
Hines squinted around with a tough grin, gave a comical hitch to his
padded figure, and whispered a hoarse aside to Eugene:  "Hear
that, Hal?  I'm hell on wheels, ain't I?"

Eugene saw him depart in a green blur, and presently
became aware that an unnatural silence had descended upon Doctor
George B. Rockham.  The Voice of History was, for the moment,
mute.  Its long jaw, in fact, had fallen ajar.

Dr. George B. Rockham looked wildly about him for
succor.  He rolled his eyes entreatingly upwards at Miss Ida
Nelson.  She turned her head away.

"Who are you?" he said hoarsely, holding a
hairy hand carefully beside his mouth.

"Prince Hal," said Eugene, likewise
hoarsely and behind his hand.

Dr. George B. Rockham staggered a little.  Their
speech had reached the stalls.  But firmly, before the tethered
chafing laughter, he began:
 

    
"Friend to the weak and
comrade of the wild,
     
By
folly sired to wisdom, dauntless Hal--"
 

Laughter, laughter unleashed and turbulent, laughter
that rose flood by flood upon itself, laughter wild, earth-shaking,
thunder-cuffing, drowned Dr. George B. Rockham and all he had to say.
Laughter!  Laughter!  Laughter!
 
 

Helen was married in the month of June--a month
sacred, it is said, to Hymen, but used so often for nuptials that the
god's blessing is probably not infallible.

She had returned to Altamont in May, from her last
singing engagement.  She had been in Atlanta for the week of
opera, and had come back by way of Henderson, where she had visited
Daisy and Mrs. Selborne.  There she had found her mate.
 
He was not a stranger to her.  She
had known him years before in Altamont, where he had lived for a
short time as district agent for the great and humane corporation
that employed him--the Federal Cash Register Company.  Since
that time he had gone to various parts of the country at his master's
bidding, carrying with him his great message of prosperity and
thrift.  At the present time, he lived with his sister and his
aged mother, whose ponderous infirmity of limb had not impaired her
appetite, in a South Carolina town.  He was devoted and generous
to them both.  And the Federal Cash Register Company, touched by
his devotion to duty, rewarded him with a good salary.  His name
was Barton.  The Bartons lived well.

Helen returned with the unexpectedness in which all
returning Gants delighted.  She came in on members of her
family, one afternoon, in the kitchen at Dixieland.

"Hello, everybody!" she said.

"Well, for G-g-god's sake," said Luke after
a moment.  "Look who's here!"

They embraced heartily,

"Why, what on earth!" cried Eliza, putting
her iron down on the board, and wavering on her feet, in an effort to
walk in two directions at once.  They kissed.

"I was just thinking to myself," said
Eliza, more calmly, "that it wouldn't surprise me a bit if you
should come walking in.  I had a premonition, I don't know what
else you'd call it--"

"Oh, my God!" groaned the girl,
good-humoredly, but with a shade of annoyance.  "Don't
start that Pentland spooky stuff!  It makes my flesh crawl."

She exchanged a glance of burlesque entreaty with
Luke.  Winking, he turned suddenly, and with an idiotic laugh,
tickled Eliza sharply.

"Get away!" she shrieked.

He chortled madly.

"I'll declare, boy!" she said fretfully. 
"I believe you're crazy. I'll vow I do!"

Helen laughed huskily.

"Well," said Eliza, "how'd you leave
Daisy and the children?"

"They're all right, I suppose," said Helen
wearily.  "Oh, my God! Deliver me!" she laughed. 
"You never saw such pests!  I spent fifty dollars on them
in toys and presents alone!  You'd never think it from the
thanks I get.  Daisy takes it all as her due! Selfish! 
Selfish!  Selfish!"

"For G-g-god's sake!" said Luke loyally.

She was one fine girl.

"I paid for everything I got at Daisy's, I can
assure you!" she said, sharply, challengingly.  "I
spent no more time there than I had to.  I was at Mrs.
Selborne's nearly all the time.  I had practically all my meals
there."

Her need for independence had become greater; her
hunger for dependents acute.  Her denial of obligation to others
was militant. She gave more than she received.

"Well, I'm in for it," she said presently,
trying to mask her strong eagerness.

"In for what?" asked Luke.

"I've gone and done it at last," she said.

"Mercy!" shrieked Eliza.  "You're
not married, are you?"

"Not yet," said Helen, "but I will be
soon."

Then she told them about Mr. Hugh T. Barton, the cash
register salesman.  She spoke loyally and kindly of him, without
great love.

"He's ten years older than I am," she said.

"Well," said Eliza thoughtfully, moulding
her lips.  "They sometimes make the best husbands." 
After a moment, she asked: "Has he got any property?"

"No," said Helen, "they live up all he
makes.  They live in style, I tell you.  There are two
servants in that house all the time.
The old
lady doesn't turn her hand over."

"Where are you going to live?" said Eliza
sharply.  "With his folks?"

"Well, I should say not!  I should say
not!" said Helen slowly and emphatically.  "Good
heavens, mama!" she continued irritably.  "I want a
home of my own.  Can't you realize that?  I've been doing
for others all my life.  Now I'm going to let them do for me. 
I want no in-laws about.  No, sir!" she said emphatically.

Luke bit his nails nervously.

"Well, he's g-g-getting a great g-g-girl,"
he said.  "I hope he has sense enough to realize that."

Moved, she laughed bigly, ironically.

"I've got one booster, haven't I?" she
said.  She looked at him seriously with clear affectionate
eyes.  "Well, thanks, Luke. You're one of the lot that's
always had the interests of the family at heart."

Her big face was for a moment tranquil and eager. 
A great calm lay there: the radiant decent beauty of dawn and
rainwater.  Her eyes were as luminous and believing as a
child's.  No evil dwelt in her. She had learned nothing.

"Have you told your papa?" said Eliza,
presently.

"No," she said, after a pause, "I
haven't."

They thought of Gant in silence, with wonder. 
Her going was a marvel.

"I have a right to my own life," said Helen
angrily, as if some one disputed that right, "as much as any
one.  Good heavens, mama!  You and papa have lived your
lives--don't you know that?  Do you think it's right that I
should go on forever looking after him?  Do you?" Her voice
rose under the stress of hysteria.

"Why, no-o.  I never said--" Eliza
began, flustered and conciliatory.

"You've spent your life f-f-finking of others
and not of yourself," said Luke.  "That's the
trouble.  They don't appreciate it."

"Well, I'm not going to any longer.  That's
one thing sure!  No, indeed!  I want a home and some
children.  I'm going to have them!" she said defiantly. 
In a moment, she added tenderly:

"Poor old papa!  I wonder what he's going
to say?"

He said very little.  The Gants, after initial
surprise, moulded new events very quickly into the texture of their
lives.  Abysmal change widened their souls out in a brooding
unconsciousness.
 
 

Mr. Hugh Barton came up into the hills to visit his
affianced kin. He came, to their huge delight, lounging in the long
racing chassis of a dusty brown 1911 Buick roadster.  He came,
in a gaseous coil, to the roaring explosion of great engines. 
He descended, a tall, elegant figure, dyspeptic, lean almost to
emaciation, very foppishly laundered and tailored.  He looked
the car over slowly, critically, a long cigar clamped in the corner
of his saturnine mouth, drawing his gauntlets off deliberately. 
Then, in the same unhurried fashion, he removed from his head the
ten-gallon gray sombrero--the only astonishing feature of his
otherwise undebatable costume--and shook each long thin leg
delicately for a moment to straighten out the wrinkles.  But
there were none.  Then, deliberately, he came up the walk to
Dixieland, where the Gants were assembled.  As he came,
unhurried, he took the cigar from his mouth calmly and held it in the
fingers of his lean, hairy, violently palsied hand.  His thin
black hair, fine spun, was fanned lightly from its elegance by a
wantoning breeze.  He espied his betrothed and grinned, with
dignity, sardonically, with big nuggets of gold teeth.  They
greeted and kissed.

"This is my mother, Hugh," said Helen.

Hugh Barton bent slowly, courteously, from his thin
waist.  He fastened on Eliza a keen penetrating stare that
discomposed her. His lips twisted again in an impressive sardonic
smile.  Every one felt he was going to say something very, very
important.

"How do you do?" he asked, and took her
hand.

Every one then felt that Hugh Barton had said
something very, very important.

With equal slow gravity he greeted each one. 
They were somewhat awed by his lordliness.  Luke, however, burst
out uncontrollably:

"You're g-g-getting a fine girl, Mr.
B-b-barton."

Hugh Barton turned on him slowly and fixed him with
his keen stare.

"I think so," he said gravely.  His
voice was deep, deliberate, with an impressive rasp.  He was
selling himself.

In an awkward silence he turned, grinning amiably, on
Eugene.

"Have a cigar?" he asked, taking three long
powerful weeds from his upper vest pocket, and holding them out in
his clean twitching fingers.

"Thanks," said Eugene with a dissipated
leer, "I'll smoke a Camel."

He took a package of cigarettes from his pocket. 
Gravely, Hugh Barton held a match for him.

"Why do you wear the big hat?" asked
Eugene.

"Psychology," he said.  "It makes
'em talk."

"I tell you what!" said Eliza, beginning to
laugh.  "That's pretty smart, isn't it?"

"Sure!" said Luke.  "That's
advertising!  It pays to advertise!"

"Yes," said Mr. Barton slowly, "you've
got to get the other fellow's psychology."

The phrase seemed to describe an action of modified
assault and restrained pillage.

They liked him very much.  They all went into
the house.
 
 

Hugh Barton's mother was in her seventy-fourth year,
but she had the strength of a healthy woman of fifty, and the
appetite of two of forty.  She was a powerful old lady, six feet
tall, with the big bones of a man, and a heavy full-jawed face,
sensuous and complacent, and excellently equipped with a champing
mill of strong yellow horse-teeth.  It was cake and pudding to
see her at work on corn on the cob.  A slight paralysis had
slowed her tongue and thickened her speech a little, so that she
spoke deliberately, with a ponderous enunciation of each word. 
This deformity, which she carefully hid, added to, rather than
subtracted from, the pontifical weight of her opinions: she was an
earnest Republican--in memory of her departed mate--and she took a
violent dislike to any one who opposed her political judgment. 
When thwarted or annoyed in any way, the heavy benevolence of her
face was dislodged by a thunder-cloud of petulance, and her wide
pouting underlip rolled out like a window-shade.  But, as she
barged slowly along, one big hand gripping a heavy stick on which she
leaned her massive weight, she was an impressive dowager.

"She's a lady--a real lady," said Helen
proudly.  "Any one can see that!  She goes out with
all the best people."

Hugh Barton's sister, Mrs. Genevieve Watson, was a
sallow woman of thirty-eight years, tall, wren-like and emaciated,
like her brother; dyspeptic, and very elegantly kept.  The
divorced Watson was conspicuous for his absence from all
conversations: there was once or twice a heavy flutter around his
name, a funereal hush, and a muttered suggestion of oriental
debauchery.

"He was a beast," said Hugh Barton, "a
low dog.  He treated sister very badly."

Mrs. Barton wagged her great head with the slow but
emphatic approval she accorded all her son's opinions.

"O-o-h!" she said.  "He was a
ter-rib-bul man."

He had, they inferred, been given to hellish
practices.  He had "gone after other women."

Sister Veve had a narrow discontented face, a
metallic vivacity, an effusive cordiality.  She was always very
smartly dressed.  She had somewhat vague connections in the real
estate business; she spoke grandly of obscure affairs; she was always
on the verge of an indefinite "Big Deal."