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

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СКАЧАТЬ said George Graves absently, “a little bit. I don’t like it.” He lifted his brooding eyes.

      “Say, ‘Gene,” he said, “how much do you think Dr. Von Zeck is worth?”

      He answered Eugene’s laughter with a puzzled sheepish grin.

      “Come on,” said Eugene. “I’ll match you for a drink.”

      They dodged nimbly across the narrow street, amid the thickening afternoon traffic.

      “It’s getting worse all the time,” said George Graves. “The people who laid the town out didn’t have any vision. What’s it going to be like, ten years from now?”

      “They could widen the streets, couldn’t they?” said Eugene.

      “No. Not now. You’d have to move all the buildings back. Wonder how much it would cost?” said George Graves thoughtfully.

      “And if we don’t,” Professor L. B. Dunn’s precise voice sounded its cold warning, “their next move will be directed against us. You may yet live to see the day when the iron heel of militarism is on your neck, and the armed forces of the Kaiser do the goose-step up and down this street. When that day comes —”

      “I don’t put any stock in those stories,” said Mr. Bob Webster rudely and irreverently. He was a small man, with a gray, mean face, violent and bitter. A chronic intestinal sourness seemed to have left its print upon his features. “In my opinion, it’s all propaganda. Those Germans are too damn good for them, that’s all. They’re beginning to call for calf-rope.”

      “When that day comes,” Professor Dunn implacably continued, “remember what I told you. The German government has imperialistic designs upon the whole of the world. It is looking to the day when it shall have all mankind under the yoke of Krupp and Kultur. The fate of civilization is hanging in the balance. Mankind is at the crossroads. I pray God it shall not be said that we were found wanting. I pray God that this free people may never suffer as little Belgium suffered, that our wives and daughters may not be led off into slavery or shame, our children maimed and slaughtered.”

      “It’s not our fight,” said Mr. Bob Webster. “I don’t want to send my boys three thousand miles across the sea to get shot for those foreigners. If they come over here, I’ll shoulder a gun with the best of them, but until they do they can fight it out among themselves. Isn’t that right, Judge?” he said, turning toward the party of the third part, Judge Walter C. Jeter, of the Federal Circuit, who had fortunately been a close friend of Grover Cleveland. Ancestral voices prophesying war.

      “Did you know the Wheeler boys?” Eugene asked George Graves. “Paul and Clifton?”

      “Yes,” said George Graves. “They went away and joined the French army. They’re in the Foreign Legion.”

      “They’re in the aviation part of it,” said Eugene. “The Lafayette Eskydrill. Clifton Wheeler has shot down more than six Germans.”

      “The boys around here didn’t like him,” said George Graves. “They thought he was a sissy.”

      Eugene winced slightly at the sound of the word.

      “How old was he?” he asked.

      “He was a grown man,” said George. “Twenty-two or three.”

      Disappointed, Eugene considered his chance of glory. (Ich bin ja noch ein Kind.)

      “— But fortunately,” continued Judge Walter C. Jeter deliberately, “we have a man in the White House on whose far-seeing statesmanship we can safely rely. Let us trust to the wisdom of his leadership, obeying, in word and spirit, the principles of strict neutrality, accepting only as a last resort a course that would lead this great nation again into the suffering and tragedy of war, which,” his voice sank to a whisper, “God forbid!”

      Thinking of a more ancient war, in which he had borne himself gallantly, Colonel James Buchanan Pettigrew, head of the Pettigrew Military Academy (Est. 1789), rode by in his open victoria, behind an old negro driver and two well-nourished brown mares. There was a good brown smell of horse and sweat-cured leather. The old negro snaked his whip gently across the sleek trotting rumps, growling softly.

      Colonel Pettigrew was wrapped to his waist in a heavy rug, his shoulders were covered with a gray Confederate cape. He bent forward, leaning his old weight upon a heavy polished stick, which his freckled hand gripped upon the silver knob. Muttering, his proud powerful old head turned shakily from side to side, darting fierce splintered glances at the drifting crowd. He was a very parfit gentil knight.

      He muttered.

      “Suh?” said the negro, pulling in on his reins, and turning around.

      “Go on! Go on, you scoundrel!” said Colonel Pettigrew.

      “Yes, suh,” said the negro. They drove on.

      In the crowd of loafing youngsters that stood across the threshold of Wood’s pharmacy, Colonel Pettigrew’s darting eyes saw two of his own cadets. They were pimply youths, with slack jaws and a sloppy carriage.

      He muttered his disgust. Not the same! Not the same! Nothing the same! In his proud youth, in the only war that mattered, Colonel Pettigrew had marched at the head of his own cadets. There were 117, sir, all under nineteen. They stepped forward to a man . . . until not a single commissioned officer was left . . . 36 came back . . . since 1789 . . . it must go on! . . . 19, sir — all under one hundred and seventeen . . . must . . . go . . . on!

      His sagging cheek-flanks trembled gently. The horses trotted out of sight around the corner, with a smooth-spoked rumble of rubber tires.

      George Graves and Eugene entered Wood’s pharmacy and stood up to the counter. The elder soda-jerker, scowling, drew a sopping rag across a puddle of slop upon the marble slab.

      “What’s yours?” he said irritably.

      “I want a chock-lut milk,” said Eugene.

      “Make it two,” added George Graves.

      O for a draught of vintage that hath been cooled a long age in the deep-delvèd earth!

      25

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      Yes. The enormous crime had been committed. And, for almost a year, Eugene had been maintaining a desperate neutrality. His heart, however, was not neutral. The fate of civilization, it appeared, hung in the balance.

      The war had begun at the peak of the summer season. Dixieland was full. His closest friend at the time was a sharp old spinstress with frayed nerves, who had been for thirty years a teacher of English in a New York City public school. Day by day, after the murder of the Grand Duke, they watched the tides of blood and desolation mount through the world. Miss Crane’s thin red nostrils quivered with indignation. Her old gray eyes were sharp with anger. The idea! The idea!

      For, of all the English, none can show a loftier or more inspired love for Albion’s Isle than American ladies who teach its noble tongue.

      Eugene was also СКАЧАТЬ