You Can't Go Home Again by Thomas Wolfe
"--An' so help me God, by all the Blessed Saints, an' by the Holy Virgin, too!" she heard Nora's voice intoning; and, wearily, she turned to the maid again and spoke to her softly, with an almost pleading earnestness:
"Nora, for God's sake have a little sense," she said. "What is the use of all this swearing by the Virgin and the Saints, and getting up and going out to Mass, when all you do is come back home to swill down Mr. Jack's whisky? Yes, and deceive the people who have been the best friends you ever had!" she cried out bitterly. Then, seeing the old mutinous look flaring again in the maid's sullen and distempered eyes, she went on almost tearfully: "Nora, try to have a little wisdom. Is this all you've been able to get from life--to come in here and act this way and blow your stinking breath on me, when all we've ever done has been to help you?" Her voice was trembling with her pity and her sense of passionate outrage, yet her anger was more than personal. She felt that the maid had betrayed something decent and inviolable in life--a faith and integrity in human feeling that should be kept and honoured everywhere.
"Well, ma'am," said Nora with a toss of her black head, "as I was sayin', if it's me ye're accusing'----"
"No, Nora. Enough of that." Mrs. Jack's voice was sad, tired, dispirited, but its tone was also firm and final. She made a little dismissing gesture with her hand. "You may go now. I don't need anything more."
The maid marched to the door, her head held high, her stiff back and neck eloquently expressive of outraged innocence and suppressed fury. Then she paused, her hand upon the knob, and half-turned as she delivered her parting shot.
"About Miss Edith's dress"--she said with another toss of her head--"if it's not lost, I guess it'll turn up. Maybe one of the girls borrowed it, if ye know what I mean."
With this, she closed the door behind her and was gone.
Half an hour later Mr. Frederick Jack came walking down the hall with his copy of the Herald-Tribune under his arm. He was feeling in very good humour. By now he had completely forgotten his momentary annoyance at the telephone call that had awakened him in the middle of the night. He rapped lightly at his wife's door and waited. There was no answer. More faintly, listening, he rapped again.
"Are you there?" he said.
He opened the door and entered noiselessly.
She was already deeply absorbed in the first task of her day's work. On the other side of the room, with her back to him, she was seated at a small writing-desk between the windows with a little stack of bills, business letters, and personal correspondence on her left hand, and an open cheque-book on her right. She was vigorously scrawling off a note. As he advanced towards her she put down the pen, swiftly blotted the paper, and was preparing to fold it and thrust it in an envelope when he spoke.
"Good morning," he said in the pleasant, half-ironic tone that people use when they address someone who is not aware of their presence.
She jumped and turned round quickly.
"Oh, hello, Fritz!" she cried in her jolly voice. "How are youhah?"
He stooped in a somewhat formal fashion, planted a brief, friendly, and perfunctory kiss on her cheek, and straightened up, unconsciously shrugging his shoulders a little, and giving his sleeves and the bottom of his coat a tug to smooth out any wrinkle that might have appeared to disturb the faultless correctness of his appearance. While his wife's quick glance took in every detail of his costume for the day--his shoes, socks, trousers, coat, and tie, together with the perfection of his tailored form and the neat gardenia in his buttonhole--her face, now bent forward and held firmly in one cupped hand in an attitude of eager attentiveness, had a puzzled and good-natured look which seemed to say: "I can see that you are laughing at me about something. What have I done now?"
Mr. Jack stood before her, feet apart and arms akimbo, regarding her with an expression of mock gravity, in which, however, his good humour and elation were apparent.
"Well, what is it?" she cried excitedly.
In answer, Mr. Jack produced the newspaper which he had been holding folded back in one hand, and tapped it with his index finger, saying:
"Have you seen this?"
"No. Who is it?"
"It's Elliot in the Herald-Tribune. Like to hear it?"
"Yes. Read it. What does he say?"
Mr. Jack struck a pose, rattled the paper, frowned, cleared his throat in mock solemnity, and then began in a slightly ironic and affected tone, intended to conceal his own deep pleasure and satisfaction, to read the review.
"'Mr. Shulberg has brought to this, his latest production, the full artillery of his distinguished gifts for suave direction. He has paced it brilliantly, timed it--word, scene, and gesture--with some of the most subtly nuanced, deftly restrained, and quietly persuasive acting that this season has yet seen. He has a gift for silence that is eloquent--oh, devoutly eloquent!--among all the loud but for the most part meaningless vociferation of the current stage. All this your diligent observer is privileged to repeat with more than customary elation. Moreover, Mr. Shulberg has revealed to us in the person of Montgomery Mortimer the finest youthful talent that this season has discovered. Finally----'"
Mr. Jack cleared his throat solemnly--"Ahem, ahem!"--flourished his arms forward and rattled the paper expressively, and stared drolly at his wife over the top of it. Then he went on:
"'Finally, he has given us, with the distinguished aid of Miss Esther Jack, a faultless and unobtrusive décor which warmed these ancient bones as they have not been warmed for many a Broadway moon. In these three acts, Miss Jack contributes three of the most effective settings she has ever done for the stage. Hers is a talent that needs make obeisance to no one. She is, in fact, in the studied opinion of this humble but diligent observer, the first designer of her time.'"
Mr. Jack paused abruptly, looked at her with playful gravity, his head cocked over the edges of the paper and said: "Did you say something?"
"God!" she yelled, her happy face flushed with laughter and excitement. "Did you hear it? Vat is dees?" she said comically, making a Jewish gesture with her hands--"an ovation?--What else does he say--hah?" she asked, bending forward eagerly.
Mr. Jack proceeded:
"'It is therefore a pity that Miss Jack's brilliant talent should not have had better fare to feed on than was given it last evening at the Arlington. For the play itself, we must reluctantly admit, was neither----'"
"Well," said Mr. Jack, stopping abruptly and putting down the paper, "the rest of it is you know"--he shrugged slightly--"sort of soso. Neither good nor bad. He sort of pans it.--But say!" he cried, with jocular indignation. "I like the nerve of that guy! Where does he get this Miss Esther Jack stuff? Where do I come in?" he said. "Don't I get any credit at all for being your husband? You know," he said, "I'd like to get in somewhere if it's only a seat in the second balcony. Of course"--and now he began to speak in the impersonal manner that people often use when they are being heavily sarcastic, addressing himself to the vacant air as if some invisible auditor were there, and as if he himself were only a detached observer--"of course, he's nothing but her husband, anyway. What is he? Bah!" he said scornfully and contemptuously. "Nothing but a business man who doesn't deserve to have such a brilliant woman for his wife! What does be know about art? Can he appreciate her? Can he understand anything she does? Can he say--what is it this fellow says?" he demanded, suddenly looking at the paper with an intent stare and then reading from it again in an affected tone--"'a faultless and unobtrusive décor which warmed these ancient bones as they have not been warmed for many a Broadway moon.'"
"I know," she said with pitying contempt, as if the florid words of the reviewer aroused in her no other emotion, although the pleasure which the reviewer's praise had given her was still legible in her face. "I know. Isn't it pathetic? They're all so fancy, these fellows! They make me tired!"
"'Hers is a talent that needs make obeisance to no one,'" Mr. Jack continued. "Now that's a good one! Could her husband think of a thing like that? No!" he cried suddenl
She stared at him wonderingly, her face bent towards him in an expression of startled and protesting concern, but at the same moment she was feeling, as she had often felt; that there was something obscure and strange in life which she had never been able to find out about or to express. For she knew that this unexpected and reasonless display of strong feeling in her husband bore no relation whatever to the review in the paper. His chagrin at having the reviewer refer to her as "Miss" was nothing more than a playful and jocular pretence. She knew that he was really bursting with elation because of her success.
With a sudden poignant and wordless pity--for whom, for what, she could not say--she had an instant picture of the great chasms downtown where he would spend his day, and where, in the furious drive and turmoil of his business, excited, prosperous-looking men would seize his arm or clap him on the back and shout:
"Say, have you seen to-day's Herald-Tribune? Did you read what it had to say about your wife? Aren't you proud of her? Congratulations!"
She could also see his ruddy face beginning to blush and burn brick-red with pleasure as he received these tributes, and as he tried to answer them with an amused and tolerant smile, and a few casual words of acknowledgment as if to say:
"Yes, I think I did see some mention of her. But of course you can hardly expect me to be excited by a thing like that. That's an old story to us now. They've said that kind of thing so often that we're used to it."
When he came home that night he would repeat all that had been said to him, and although he would do it with an air of faintly cynical amusement, she knew that his satisfaction would be immense and solid. She knew, too, that his pride would be enhanced by the knowledge that the wives of these rich men--handsome Jewesses most of them, as material-minded in their quest for what was fashionable in the world of art as were their husbands for what was profitable in the world of business--would also read of her success, would straightway go to witness it themselves, and then would speak of it in brilliant chambers of the night, where the glowing air would take on an added spice of something exciting and erotic from their handsome and sensual-looking faces.
All this she thought of instantly as she stared at this plump, grey-haired, and faultlessly groomed man whose eyes had suddenly, and for no reason that she knew, filled with tears, and whose mouth now had the pouting, wounded look of a hurt child. And her heart was filled with a nameless and undefinable sense of compassion as she cried warmly, in a protesting voice:
"But, Fritz! You know I never felt like that! You know I never said a thing like that to you! You know I love it when you like anything I do! I'd rather have your opinion ten times over than that of these newspaper fellows! What do they know anyway?" she muttered scornfully.
Mr. Jack, having taken off his glasses and polished them, having blown his nose vigorously and put his glasses on again, now lowered his head, braced his thumb stiffly on his temple and put four plump fingers across his eyes in a comical shielding position, saying rapidly in a muffled, apologetic voice:
"I know! I know! It's all right! I was only joking," he said with an embarrassed smile. Then he blew his nose vigorously again, his face lost its expression of wounded feeling, and he began to talk in a completely natural, matter-of-fact tone, as if nothing he had done or said had been at all unusual. "Well," he said, "how do you feel? Are you pleased with the way things went last night?"
"Oh, I suppose so," she answered dubiously, feeling all at once the vague discontent that was customary with her when her work was finished and the almost hysterical tension of the last days before a theatrical opening was at an end. Then she continued: "I think it went off pretty well, don't you? I thought my sets were sort of good--or did you think so?" she asked eagerly. "No," she went on in the disparaging tone of a child talking to itself, "I guess they were just ordinary. A long way from my best--hah?" she demanded.
"You know what I think," he said. "I've told you. There's no one who can touch you. The best thing in the show!" he said strongly. "They were by far the best thing in the show--by far! by far!" Then, quietly, he added: "Well, I suppose you're glad it's over. That's the end of it for this season, isn't it?"
"Yes," she said, "except for some costumes that I promised Irene Morgenstein I'd do for one of her ballets. And I've got to meet some of the Arlington company for fittings again this morning," she concluded in a dispirited tone.
"What, again! Weren't you satisfied with the way they looked last night? What's the trouble?"
"Oh"--she said with disgust--"what do you think's the trouble, Fritz? There's only one trouble! It never changes! It's always the same! The trouble is that there are so many half-baked fools in the world who'll never do the thing you tell them to do! That's the trouble! God!" she said frankly, "I'm too good for it! I never should have given up my painting. It makes me sick sometimes!" she burst out with warm indignation. "Isn't it a shame that everything I do has to be wasted on those people?"
"What people?"
"Oh, you know," she muttered, "the kind of people that you get in the theatre. Of course there are some good ones--but God!" she exclaimed, "most of them are such trash! Did you see me in this, and did you read what they said about me in that, and wasn't I a knockout in the other thing?" she muttered resentfully. "God, Fritz, to listen to the way they talk you'd think the only reason a play ever gets produced is to give them a chance to strut around and show themselves off upon a stage! When it ought to be the most wonderful thing in the world! Oh, the magic you can make, the things you can do with people if you want to! It's like nothing else on earth!" she cried. "Isn't it a shame no more is done with it?"
She was silent for a moment; sunk in her own thoughts, then she said wearily:
"Well, I'm glad this job's at an end. I wish there was something else I could do. If I only knew how to do something else, I'd do it. Really, I would," she said earnestly. "I'm tired of it. I'm too good for it," she said simply, and for a moment she stared moodily into space.
Then, frowning in a sombre and perturbed way, she fumbled in a wooden box upon the desk, took from it a cigarette, and lighted it. She got up nervously and began to walk about the room with short steps, frowning intently while she puffed at the cigarette, and holding it in the rather clumsy but charming manner of a woman who rarely smokes.
"I wonder if I'll get any more shows to do next season," she muttered half to herself, as if scarcely aware of her husband's presence. "I wonder if there'll be anything more for me. No one has spoken to me yet," she said gloomily.
"Well, if you're so tired of it, I shouldn't think you'd care," he said ironically, and then added: "Why worry about it till the time comes?"
With that he stooped and planted another friendly and perfunctory kiss on her cheek, gave her shoulder a gentle little pat, and turned and left the room.
* * *
12. Downtown
Mr. Jack had listened to his wife's complaint with the serious attention which stories of her labours, trials, and adventures in the theatre always aroused in him. For, in addition to the immense pride which he took in his wife's talent and success, he was like most rich men of his race, and particularly those who were living every day, as he was, in the glamorous, unreal, and fantastic world of speculation, strongly attracted by the glitter of the theatre.
The progress of his career during the forty years since he first came to New York had been away from the quieter, more traditional, and, as it now seemed to him, duller forms of social and domestic life, to those forms which were more brilliant and gay, filled with the constant excitement of new pleasures and sensations, and touched with a spice of uncertainty and menace. The life
In New York he had moved on from speed to speed and from height to height, keeping pace with all the most magnificent developments in the furious city that roared in constantly increasing crescendo about him. Now, even in the world in which he lived by day, the feverish air of which he breathed into his lungs exultantly, there was a glittering, inflamed quality that was not unlike that of the night-time world of the theatre in which the actors lived.
At nine o'clock in the morning of every working day, Mr. Jack was hurled downtown to his office in a shining projectile of machinery, driven by a chauffeur who was a literal embodiment of New York in one of its most familiar aspects. As the driver prowled above his wheel, his dark and sallow face twisted bitterly by the sneer of his thin mouth, his dark eyes shining with an unnatural lustre like those of a man who is under the stimulation of a powerful drug, he seemed to be--and was--a creature which this furious city had created for its special uses. His tallowy flesh seemed to have been compacted, like that of millions of other men who wore grey hats and had faces of the same lifeless hue, out of a common city-substance--the universal grey stuff of pavements, buildings, towers, tunnels, and bridges. In his veins there seemed to flow and throb, instead of blood, the crackling electric current by which the whole city moved. It was legible in every act and gesture the man made. As his sinister figure prowled above the wheel, his eyes darting right and left, his hands guiding the powerful machine with skill and precision, grazing, cutting, flanking, shifting, insinuating, sneaking, and shooting the great car through all but impossible channels with murderous recklessness, it was evident that the unwholesome chemistry that raced in him was consonant with the great energy that was pulsing through all the arteries of the city.