Thomas Wolfe: Of Time and the River, You Can't Go Home Again & Look Homeward, Angel. Thomas Wolfe

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ he could hide his state from any one who saw him. He straddled the line that ran down the middle of the concrete sidewalk, keeping his eyes fixed on it and coming back to it quickly when he lurched away from it. When he got into the town the streets were thronged with late shoppers. An air of completion was on everything. The people were streaming home to Christmas. He plunged down from the Square into the narrow avenue, going in among the staring passersby. He kept his eye hotly on the line before him. He did not know where to go. He did not know what to buy.

      As he reached the entrance to Wood’s pharmacy, a shout of laughter went up from the lounging beaux. The next instant he was staring into the friendly grinning faces of Julius Arthur and Van Yeats.

      “Where the hell do you think you’re going?” said Julius Arthur.

      He tried to explain; a thick jargon broke from his lips.

      “He’s cock-eyed drunk,” said Van Yeats.

      “You look out for him, Van,” said Julius. “Get him in a doorway, so none of his folks will see him. I’ll get the car.”

      Van Yeats propped him carefully against the wall; Julius Arthur ran swiftly into Church Street, and drew up in a moment at the curb. Eugene had a vast inclination to slump carelessly upon the nearest support. He placed his arms around their shoulders and collapsed. They wedged him between them on the front seat; somewhere bells were ringing.

      “Ding-dong!” he said, very cheerfully. “Cris-muss!”

      They answered with a wild yell of laughter.

      The house was still empty when they came to it. They got him out of the car, and staggered up the steps with him. He was sorry enough that their fellowship was broken.

      “Where’s your room, ‘Gene?” said Julius Arthur, panting, as they entered the hall.

      “This one’s as good as any,” said Van Yeats.

      The door of the front bed-room, opposite the parlor, was open. They took him in and put him on the bed.

      “Let’s take off his shoes,” said Julius Arthur. They unlaced them and pulled them off.

      “Is there anything else you want, son?” said Julius.

      He tried to tell them to undress him, put him below the covers, and close the door, in order to conceal his defection from his family, but he had lost the power of speech. After looking and grinning at him for a moment, they went out without closing the door.

      When they had gone he lay upon the bed, unable to move. He had no sense of time, but his mind worked very clearly. He knew that he should rise, fasten the door, and undress. But he was paralyzed.

      Presently the Gants came home. Eliza alone was still in town, pondering over gifts. It was after eleven o’clock. Gant, his daughter, and his two sons came into the room and stared at him. When they spoke to him, he burned helplessly.

      “Speak! Speak!” yelled Luke, rushing at him and choking him vigorously. “Are you dumb, idiot?”

      I shall remember that, he thought.

      “Have you no pride? Have you no honor? Has it come to this?” the sailor roared dramatically, striding around the room.

      Doesn’t he think he’s hell, though? Eugene thought. He could not fashion words, but he could make sounds, ironically, in the rhythm of his brother’s moralizing. “Tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh! Tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh! Tuh-tuh-tuh-tuh!” he said, with accurate mimicry. Helen, loosening his collar, bent over him laughing. Ben grinned swiftly under a cleft scowl.

      Have you no this? Have you no that? Have you no this? Have you no that? — he was cradled in their rhythm. No, ma’am. We’ve run out of honor today, but we have a nice fresh lot of self-respect.

      “Ah, be quiet,” Ben muttered. “No one’s dead, you know.”

      “Go heat some water,” said Gant professionally, “he’s got to get it off his stomach.” He no longer seemed old. His life in a marvellous instant came from its wasting shadow; it took on a hale sinew of health and action.

      “Save the fireworks,” said Helen to Luke, as she left the room. “Close the door. For heaven’s sake, try to keep it from mama, if you can.”

      This is a great moral issue, thought Eugene. He began to feel sick.

      Helen returned in a very few minutes with a kettle of hot water, a glass, and a box of soda. Gant fed him the solution mercilessly until he began to vomit. At the summit of his convulsion Eliza appeared. He lifted his sick head dumbly from the bowl, and saw her white face at the door, and her weak brown eyes, that could take on so much sharpness and sparkle when her suspicion was awakened.

      “Hah? Huh? What is it?” said Eliza.

      But she knew, of course, instantly, what it was.

      “What say?” she asked sharply. No one had said anything. He grinned feebly at her, tickled, above his nausea and grief, at the palpable assumption of blind innocence which always heralded her discoveries. Seeing her thus, they all laughed.

      “Oh, my Lord!” said Helen. “Here she is. We were hoping you wouldn’t get here till it was over. Come and look at your Baby,” she said, with a good-humored snicker, keeping his head comfortably supported on the palm of her hand.

      “How do you feel now, son?” Gant asked kindly.

      “Better,” he mumbled, discovering, with some elation, that his vocal paralysis was not permanent.

      “Well, you see!” Helen began, kindly enough, but with a brooding satisfaction. “It only goes to show we’re all alike. We all like it. It’s in our blood.”

      “That awful curse!” Eliza said. “I had hoped that I might have one son who might escape it. It seems,” she said, bursting into tears, “as if a Judgment were on us. The sins of the fathers —”

      “Oh! for heaven’s sake!” Helen cried angrily. “Stop it! It’s not going to kill him: he’ll learn a lesson from it.”

      Gant gnawed his thin lip, and wetted his great thumb in the old manner.

      “You might know,” he said, “that I’d get the blame for it. Yes — if one of them broke a leg it would be the same.”

      “There’s one thing sure!” said Eliza. “None of them ever got it from my side of the house. Say what you will, his grandfather, Major Pentland, never in his life allowed a drop in his house.”

      “Major Pentland be damned!” said Gant. “If you’d depended on him for anything you’d have gone hungry.”

      Certainly, thought Eugene, you’d have gone thirsty.

      “Forget it!” said Helen. “It’s Christmas. Let’s try to have a little peace and quiet once a year.”

      When they had left him, the boy tried to picture them lulled in the dulcet tranquillity they so often invoked. Its effects, he thought, would be more disastrous than any amount of warfare.

      In the darkness, everything around and within him swam СКАЧАТЬ