Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe
Then the mourners got back into their carriages and were driven briskly away. There was a fast indecent hurry about their escape. The long barbarism of burial was at an end. As they drove away, Eugene peered back through the little glass in the carriage. The two grave-diggers were already returning to their work. He watched until the first shovel of dirt had been thrown into the grave. He saw the raw new graves, the sere long grasses, noted how quickly the mourning wreaths had wilted. Then he looked at the wet gray sky. He hoped it would not rain that night.
It was over. The carriages split away from the procession. The men dropped off in the town at the newspaper office, the pharmacy, the cigar-store. The women went home. No more. No more.
Night came, the bare swept streets, the gaunt winds. Helen lay before a fire in Hugh Barton's home. She had a bottle of chloroform liniment in her hand. She brooded morbidly into the fire, reliving the death a hundred times, weeping bitterly and becoming calm again.
"When I think of it, I hate her. I shall never forget. And did you hear her? Did you? Already she's begun to pretend how much he loved her. But you can't fool me! I know! He wouldn't have her around. You saw that, didn't you? He kept calling for me. I was the only one he'd let come near him. You know that, don't you?"
"You're the one who always has to be the goat," said Hugh Barton sourly. "I'm getting tired of it. That's what has worn you out. If they don't leave you alone, I'm going to take you away from here."
Then he went back to his charts and pamphlets, frowning importantly over a cigar, and scrawling figures on an old envelope with a stub of pencil gripped between his fingers.
She has him trained, too, Eugene thought.
Then, hearing the sharp whine of the wind, she wept again.
"Poor old Ben," she said. "I can't bear to think of him out there to-night."
She was silent for a moment, staring at the fire.
"After this, I'm through," she said. "They can get along for themselves. Hugh and I have a right to our own lives. Don't you think so?"
"Yes," said Eugene. I'm merely the chorus, he thought.
"Papa's not going to die," she went on. "I've nursed him like a slave for six years, and he'll be here when I'm gone. Every one was expecting papa to die, but it was Ben who went. You never can tell. After this, I'm through."
Her voice had a note of exasperation in it. They all felt the grim trickery of Death, which had come in by the cellar while they waited at the window.
"Papa has no right to expect it of me!" she burst out resentfully. "He's had his life. He's an old man. We have a right to ours as well as any one. Good heavens! Can't they realize that! I'm married to Hugh Barton! I'm HIS wife!"
Are you? thought Eugene. Are you?
But Eliza sat before the fire at Dixieland with hands folded, reliving a past of tenderness and love that never had been. And as the wind howled in the bleak street, and Eliza wove a thousand fables of that lost and bitter spirit, the bright and stricken thing in the boy twisted about in horror, looking for escape from the house of death. No more! No more! (it said). You are alone now. You are lost. Go find yourself, lost boy, beyond the hills.
This little bright and stricken thing stood up on Eugene's heart and talked into his mouth.
O but I can't go now, said Eugene to it. (Why not? it whispered.) Because her face is so white, and her forehead is so broad and high, with the black hair drawn back from it, and when she sat there at the bed she looked like a little child. I can't go now and leave her here alone. (She is alone, it said, and so are you.) And when she purses up her mouth and stares, so grave and thoughtful, she is like a little child. (You are alone now, it said. You must escape, or you will die.) It is all like death: she fed me at her breast, I slept in the same bed with her, she took me on her trips. All of that is over now, and each time it was like a death. (And like a life, it said to him. Each time that you die, you will be born again. And you will die a hundred times before you become a man.) I can't! I can't! Not now--later, more slowly. (No. Now, it said.) I am afraid. I have nowhere to go. (You must find the place, it said.) I am lost. (You must hunt for yourself, it said.) I am alone. Where are you? (You must find me, it said.)
Then, as the bright thing twisted about in him, Eugene heard the whine of the bleak wind about the house that he must leave, and the voice of Eliza calling up from the past the beautiful lost things that never happened.
"--and I said, 'Why, what on earth, boy, you want to dress up warm around your neck or you'll catch your death of cold.'"
Eugene caught at his throat and plunged for the door.
"Here, boy! Where are you going?" said Eliza, looking up quickly.
"I've got to go," he said in a choking voice. "I've got to get away from here."
Then he saw the fear in her eyes, and the grave troubled child's stare. He rushed to where she sat and grasped her hand. She held him tightly and laid her face against his arm.
"Don't go yet," she said. "You've all your life ahead of you. Stay with me just a day or two."
"Yes, mama," he said, falling to his knees. "Yes, mama." He hugged her to him frantically. "Yes, mama. God bless you, mama. It's all right, mama. It's all right."
Eliza wept bitterly.
"I'm an old woman," she said, "and one by one I've lost you all. He's dead now, and I never got to know him. O son, don't leave me yet. You're the only one that's left: you were my baby. Don't go! Don't go." She laid her white face against his sleeve.
It is not hard to go (he thought). But when can we forget?
It was October and the leaves were quaking. Dusk was beginning. The sun had gone, the western ranges faded in chill purple mist, but the western sky still burned with ragged bands of orange. It was October.
Eugene walked swiftly along the sinuous paved curves of Rutledge Road. There was a smell of fog and supper in the air: a warm moist blur at window-panes, and the pungent sizzle of cookery. There were mist-far voices, and a smell of burning leaves, and a warm yellow blur of lights.
He turned into an unpaved road by the big wooden sanitarium. He heard the rich kitchen laughter of the negroes, the larded sizzle of food, the dry veranda coughing of the lungers.
He walked briskly along the lumpy road, with a dry scuffling of leaves. The air was a chill dusky pearl: above him a few pale stars were out. The town and the house were behind him. There was a singing in the great hill-pines.
Two women came down the road and passed him. He saw that they were country women. They were dressed rustily in black, and one of them was weeping. He thought of the men who had been laid in the earth that day, and of all the women who wept. Will they come again? He wondered.
When he came to the gate of the cemetery he found it open. He went in quickly and walked swiftly up the winding road that curved around the crest of the hill. The grasses were dry and sere; a wilted wreath of laurel lay upon a grave. As he approached the family plot, his pulse quickened a little. Some one was moving slowly, deliberately, in among the grave-stones. But as he came up he saw that it was Mrs. Pert.
"Good-evening, Mrs. Pert," said Eugene.
"Who is it?" she asked, peering murkily. She came to him with her grave unsteady step.
"It's 'Gene," he said.
"Oh, is it Old 'Gene?" she said. "How are you, 'Gene?"
"Pretty well," he said. He stood awkwardly, chilled, not knowing how to continue. It was getting dark. There were long lonely preludes to winter in the splendid pines, and a whistling of wind in the long grasses. Below them, in the gulch, night had come. There was a negro settlement there--Stumptown, it was called. The rich voices of Africa wailed up to them their jungle dirge.
But in the distance, away on their level and above, on other hills, they saw the town. Slowly, in twinkling nests, the lights of the town went up, and there were frost-far voices, and music, and the laughter of a girl.
"This is a nice place," said Eugene. "You get a nice view of the town from here."
"Yes," said Mrs. Pert. "And Ol
"No," said Eugene, "dandelions--and big flowers with a lot of thorns on them."
She stood looking about fuzzily for a moment, with the blurred gentle smile on her lips.
"It is getting dark, Mrs. Pert," said Eugene hesitantly. "Are you out here alone?"
"Alone? I've got Old 'Gene and Old Ben here, haven't I?" she said.
"Maybe we'd better go back, Mrs. Pert?" he said. "It's going to turn cold to-night. I'll go with you."
"Fatty can go by herself," she said with dignity. "Don't worry, 'Gene. I'll leave you alone."
"That's all right," said Eugene, confused. "We both came for the same reason, I suppose."
"Yes," said Mrs. Pert. "Who'll be coming here this time next year, I wonder? Will Old 'Gene come back then?"
"No," said Eugene. "No, Mrs. Pert. I shall never come here again."
"Nor I, 'Gene," she said. "When do you go back to school?"
"To-morrow," he said.
"Then Fatty will have to say good-bye," she said reproachfully. "I'm going away too."
"Where are you going?" he asked, surprised.
"I'm going to live with my daughter in Tennessee. You didn't know Fatty was a grandmother, did you?" she said, with her soft blurred smile. "I've a little grandson two years old."
"I'm sorry to see you go," Eugene said.
Mrs. Pert was silent a moment, rocking vaguely upon her feet.
"What did they say was wrong with Ben?" she asked.
"He had pneumonia, Mrs. Pert," said Eugene.
"Oh, pneumonia! That's it!" She nodded her head wisely as if satisfied. "My husband's a drug salesman, you know, but I never can remember all the things that people have. Pneumonia."
She was silent again, reflecting.
"And when they shut you up in a box and put you in the ground, the way they did Old Ben, what do they call that?" she asked with a soft inquiring smile.
He did not laugh.
"They call that death, Mrs. Pert."
"Death! Yes, that's it," said Mrs. Pert brightly, nodding her head in agreement. "That's one kind, 'Gene. There are some other lands, too. Did you know that?" She smiled at him.
"Yes," said Eugene. "I know that, Mrs. Pert."
She stretched out her hands suddenly to him, and clasped his cold fingers. She did not smile any more.
"Good-bye, my dear," she said. "We both knew Ben, didn't we? God bless you."
Then she turned and walked away down the road, at her portly uncertain gait, and was lost in the gathering dark.
The great stars rode proudly up into heaven. And just over him, just over the town, it seemed, there was one so rich and low he could have touched it. Ben's grave had been that day freshly sodded: there was a sharp cold smell of earth there. Eugene thought of Spring, and the poignant and wordless odor of the elvish dandelions that would be there. In the frosty dark, far-faint, there was the departing wail of a whistle.
And suddenly, as he watched the lights wink cheerfully up in the town, their warm message of the hived life of men brought to him a numb hunger for all the words and the faces. He heard the far voices and laughter. And on the distant road a powerful car, bending around the curve, cast over him for a second, over that lonely hill of the dead, its great shaft of light and life. In his numbed mind, which for days now had fumbled curiously with little things, with little things alone, as a child fumbles with blocks or with little things, a light was growing.
His mind gathered itself out of the wreckage of little things: out of all that the world had shown or taught him he could remember now only the great star above the town, and the light that had swung over the hill, and the fresh sod upon Ben's grave, and the wind, and far sounds and music, and Mrs. Pert.
Wind pressed the boughs, the withered leaves were shaking. It was October, but the leaves were shaking. A star was shaking. A light was waking. Wind was quaking. The star was far. The night, the light. The light was bright. A chant, a song, the slow dance of the little things within him. The star over the town, the light over the hill, the sod over Ben, night over all. His mind fumbled with little things. Over us all is something. Star, night, earth, light . . . light . . . O lost! . . . a stone . . . a leaf . . . a door . . . O ghost! . . . a light . . . a song . . . a light . . . a light swings over the hill . . . over us all . . . a star shines over the town . . . over us all . . . a light.
We shall not come again. We never shall come back again. But over us all, over us all, over us all is--something.
Wind pressed the boughs; the withered leaves were shaking. It was October, but some leaves were shaking.
A light swings over the hill. (We shall not come again.) And over the town a star. (Over us all, over us all that shall not come again.) And over the day the dark. But over the darkness--what?
We shall not come again. We never shall come back again.
Over the dawn a lark. (That shall not come again.) And wind and music far. O lost! (It shall not come again.) And over your mouth the earth. O ghost! But, over the darkness--what?
Wind pressed the boughs; the withered leaves were quaking.
We shall not come again. We never shall come back again. It was October, but we never shall come back again.
When will they come again? When will they come again?
The laurel, the lizard, and the stone will come no more. The women weeping at the gate have gone and will not come again. And pain and pride and death will pass, and will not come again. And light and dawn will pass, and the star and the cry of a lark will pass, and will not come again. And we shall pass, and shall not come again.
What things will come again? O Spring, the cruellest and fairest of the seasons, will come again. And the strange and buried men will come again, in flower and leaf the strange and buried men will come again, and death and the dust will never come again, for death and the dust will die. And Ben will come again, he will not die again, in flower and leaf, in wind and music far, he will come back again.
O lost, and by the wind grieved, ghost, come back again!
It had grown dark. The frosty night blazed with great brilliant stars. The lights in the town shone with sharp radiance. Presently, when he had lain upon the cold earth for some time, Eugene got up and went away toward the town.
Wind pressed the boughs; the withered leaves were shaking.
38
Three weeks after Eugene's return to the university the war ended. The students cursed and took off their uniforms. But they rang the great bronze bell, and built a bonfire on the campus, leaping around it like dervishes.
Life fell back into civilian patterns. The gray back of winter was broken: the Spring came through.
Eugene was a great man on the campus of the little university. He plunged exultantly into the life of the place. He cried out in his throat with his joy: all over the country, life was returning, reviving, awaking. The young men were coming back to the campus. The leaves were out in a tender green blur: the quilled jonquil spouted from the rich black earth, and peach-bloom fell upon the shrill young isles of grass. Everywhere life was returning, awaking, reviving. With victorious joy, Eugene thought of the flowers above Ben's grave.
He was wild with ecstasy because the Spring had beaten death. The grief of Ben sank to a forgotten depth in him. He was charged with the juice of life and motion. He did not walk: he bounded along. He joined everything he had not joined. He made funny speeches in chapel, at smokers, at meetings of all sorts. He edited the paper, he wrote poems and stories--he flung outward without pause or thought.
Sometimes at night he would rush across the country, beside a drunken driver, to Exeter and Sydney, and there seek out the women behind the chained lattices, calling to them in the fresh dawn-dusk of Spring his young goat-cry of desire and hunger.
Lily! Louise! Ruth! Ellen! O mot
Sometimes, when he walked softly by, he heard the young men talking in their rooms of Eugene Gant. Eugene Gant was crazy. Eugene Gant was mad. Oh, I (he thought) am Eugene Gant!
Then a voice said: "He didn't change his underwear for six weeks. One of his fraternity brothers told me so." And another: "He takes a bath once a month, whether he needs it or not." They laughed; one said then that he was "brilliant"; they all agreed.
He caught the claw of his hand into his lean throat. They are talking of me, of me! I am Eugene Gant--the conqueror of nations, lord of the earth, the Siva of a thousand beautiful forms.
In nakedness and loneliness of soul he paced along the streets. Nobody said, I know you. Nobody said, I am here.
The vast wheel of life, of which he was the hub, spun round.
Most of us think we're hell, thought Eugene. I do. I think I'm hell. Then, in the dark campus path, he heard the young men talking in their rooms, and he gouged at his face bloodily, with a snarl of hate against himself.
I think I am hell, and they say I stink because I have not had a bath. But I could not stink, even if I never had a bath. Only the others stink. My dirtiness is better than their cleanliness. The web of my flesh is finer; my blood is a subtle elixir; the hair of my head, the marrow of my spine, the cunning jointure of my bones, and all the combining jellies, fats, meats, oils, and sinews of my flesh, the spittle of my mouth, the sweat of my skin, is mixed with rarer elements, and is fairer and finer than their gross peasant beef.