Of Time and the River & Look Homeward, Angel. Thomas Wolfe

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СКАЧАТЬ them, on the road, the crowded press loosened slowly, broke off in minute fragments, and disappeared into the hidden gulch of Dr. George Rockham’s receiving voice. With fat hammy sonority he welcomed them.

      But he had not come to Shakespeare. The pageant had opened with the Voices of Past and Present — voices a trifle out of harmony with the tenor of event — but necessary to the commercial success of the enterprise. These voices now moved voicelessly past — four frightened sales-ladies from Schwartzberg’s, clad decently in cheese-cloth and sandals, who came by bearing the banner of their concern. Or, as the doctor’s more eloquent iambics had it:

      “Fair Commerce, sister of the arts, thou, too,

       Shalt take thy lawful place upon our stage.”

      They came and passed: Ginsberg’s —“the glass of fashion and the mould of form”; Bradley the Grocer —“when first Pomona held her fruity horn”; The Buick Agency —“the chariots of Oxus and of Ind.”

      Came, passed — like pageantry of mist on an autumnal stream.

      Behind them, serried ranks of cherubim, the marshalled legions of Altamont’s Sunday schools, each in white arrayed and clutching grimly in tiny hands two thousand tiny flags of freedom, God’s small angels, and surely there for God knows what far-off event, began to move into the hollow. Their teachers nursed them gently into action, with tapping feet and palms.

      “One, two, THREE, four. One, two, THREE, four. Quickly, children!”

      A hidden orchestra, musical in the trees, greeted them, as they approached, with holy strains: the Baptists, with the simple doctrine of “It’s the Old-time Religion”; the Methodists, with “I’ll Be Waiting at the River”; the Presbyterians, with “Rock of Ages,” the Episcopalians, with “Jesus, Lover of My Soul”; and rising to lyrical climactic passion, the little Jews, with the nobly marching music of “Onward, Christian Soldiers.”

      They passed without laughter. There was a pause.

      “Well, thank God for that!” said Ralph Rolls coarsely in a solemn quiet. The Bard’s strewn host laughed, rustled noisily into line.

      “Sh-h! Sh-h!” hissed Miss Ida Nelson.

      “What the hell does she think she is?” said Julius Arthur, “a steam valve?”

      Eugene looked attentively at the shapely legs of the page, Viola.

      “Wow!” said Ralph Rolls, with his accustomed audibility. “Look who’s here!”

      She looked on them all with a pert impartial smile. But she never told her love.

      Miss Ida Nelson caught the doctor’s stealthy sign. Carefully, in slow twos, she fed them down to him.

      The Moor of Venice (Mr. George Graves), turned his broad back upon their jibes, and lurched down with sullen-sheepish grin, unable to conceal the massive embarrassment of his calves.

      “Tell him who you are, Villa,” said Doc Hines. “You look like Jack Johnson.”

      The town, in its first white shirting of Spring, sat on the turfy banks, and looked down gravely upon the bosky little comedy of errors; the encircling mountains, and the gods thereon, looked down upon the slightly larger theatre of the town; and, figuratively, from mountains that looked down on mountains, the last stronghold of philosophy, the author of this chronicle looked down on everything.

      “Here we go, Hal,” said Doc Hines, nudging Eugene.

      “Give ’em hell, son,” said Julius Arthur. “You’re dressed for the part.”

      “He looks it, you mean,” said Ralph Rolls. “Boy, you’ll knock ’em dead,” he added with an indecent laugh.

      They descended into the hollow, accompanied by a low but growing titter of amazement from the audience. Before them, the doctor had just disposed of Desdemona, who parted with a graceful obeisance. He was now engaged on Othello, who stood, bullish and shy, till his ordeal should finish. In a moment, he strode away, and the doctor turned to Falstaff, reading the man by his padded belly, briskly, with relief:

      “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 СКАЧАТЬ