by Thomas Wolfe
Yes, all these people looked at one another with untelling eyes. Their speech was casual, quick, and witty. But they did not say the things they knew. And they knew everything. They had seen everything. They had accepted everything. And they received every new intelligence now with a cynical and amused look in their untelling eyes. Nothing shocked them any more. It was the way things were. It was what they had come to expect of life.
Just the same, they were an honored group. They had stolen no man’s ox or ass. Their gifts were valuable and many, and had won for them the world’s grateful applause.
Was not the great captain of finance and industry, Lawrence Hirsch, a patron of the arts as well, and a leader and advanced supporter of The Federalist, the nation’s leading “journal of ideas,” the leader everywhere of advanced—nay! radical opinion? And this gentlemen’s own opinions on child labor, share cropping, the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, and other questions that had stirred the indignation of the intellectual world—were they not well known everywhere, and was there any flaw in them? Were they not celebrated for their liberality, the advanced and leftward trend of their enlightenment?
Of what then to utter the blunt truth?—which was that Lawrence Hirsch derived a portion of his enormous income from the work of children in the textile factories of the South?—that another part of it was derived from the labor of share-croppers in the tobacco fields of North Carolina?—that another came from steel mills in the Middle West where armed thugs had been employed and used to shoot into the ranks of striking workers?—and that this man’s enormous combining and financing and directing cunning was being called into use everywhere by great corporations of which he was a member, to betray the rights of labor, and to protect the powers of wealth?
Of what use, then, to criticize in ways like these? What useful purpose could it serve? Had Mr. Hirsch’s life and work, the sources of his mighty wealth, been seriously called to an accounting, there was scarcely a skilled young liberal—hardly a well trained revolutionary on the staff of Mr. Hirsch’s Federalist—who could not have leaped to the defense of his employer, who could not have pointed out at once that criticism of this sort was childish—elementary, Watson! Elementary!—That the sources of Mr. Hirsch’s wealth and power and income were quite accidental and beside the point—and that his position as an enlightened liberal, “a friend of Russia,” a leader in advanced social thought, a scathing critic of—God save the mark!—the Capitalist class!—was so well known as to place him in the very brain and forehead of enlightened thought, secure beyond the reach of envious and incondite carping of this sort.
And, as for the others of that brilliant and that celebrated company—did one cry “privilege?” Privilege? Which one of these had ever said, “Let them eat cake?” When the poor had starved, had these not suffered? When the children toiled, had these not bled? When the oppressed, the weak, the stricken and betrayed of men had been falsely accused and put to death, had these tongues not lifted in indignant protest—if only the issue had been fashionable? Had these not written letters to the press? Carried placards upon Beacon Hill? Joined parades, made contributions, gave the prestige of their names to form committees of defense?
Had they not done all these things? Were they not well known for these acts? Was their position in all questions that demanded an enlightened stand not known in advance? And were their names not known with honor everywhere among enlightened men?
Of what use then to say that such as these might lift their voices and parade their placards to the crack of doom, but in the secret and entrenched resources of their life they had all battened on the blood of common man, and wrung their profits from the sweat of slaves, like any common overseer of money and of privilege that ever lived.
Of what use to point out that the whole issue of these princely lives, the dense and costly web of all these lesbic, all these pederastic loves, and these adulterous intrigues, the perverse and evil pattern of this magic fabric, hung there athwart the beetling ramparts of the city, and spun like gossamer across the sky-flung faery of the night, had been spun from man’s common dust of sweating clay, derived out of the exploitation of his life, and sustained in midair now, floating on the face of night like a starred veil, had, none the less, been unwound out of the entrails of man’s agony.
Such thoughts as these came from the baffled and inchoate bitterness of youth. And youth? A thorny paradox, to be so stretched out on the rack of this tough world and here to ache with so much beauty, so much pain. To see the starred face of the night with a high soul of exaltation and of noble aspiration, to dream great dreams, to think great thoughts. And in that instant have the selfless grandeur turn to dust, and to see great night itself, a reptile coiled and waiting in the nocturnal blood of life.
And these! And these! Great God! To know such love, such longing, and such hatred all together—and to find no ear or utterance anywhere for all the blazing baffled certitudes of youth! To find man’s faith betrayed and his betrayers throned in honor, themselves the idols of his bartered faith. To find truth false and falsehood truth, good evil, evil good, and the swarming web of life so changing, so mercurial. To find even love suspect of whoredom, even whoredom touched with love!
A thorny paradox, to find it all so changing, so unfixed, so baffling to our certain judgments and our hard necessity for certitude; so different from the way we thought that it would be. Was there no other end than this hard road, for all the anguish, sorrow, disappointment of man’s baffled innocence then the resigned dejection of the Russian’s summing up: “Prince Andrey turned away—His heart was heavy and full of melancholy. It was all so strange, so different than what he had anticipated.”
Well, there they were then, anyway. And, paradox or not, it would be hard to find another group of people comparable to this one in achievement, beauty, or in talent, in any other place save here, where it had assembled to such brilliant consummation as it had to-night—at Jack’s.
The party was now moving in a magic inter-flux. Lawrence Hirsch, having made his greetings to his hostess, now turned away and took his place among the crowd. Polished, imperturbable, his face just like his moustache and his hair, close cropped and packed and perfectly contained, a little worn but assured, vested with huge authorities of wealth, in its unconscious arrogance, it was a perfect visage of great Croesus and Maecenas, both conjoined with all the complex fusions of the modern world. He moved, this weary, able son of man, among the crowd and took his place assuming, without knowing he assumed, his full authorities.
Meanwhile, Lily Mandell, who had gone away to take off her wraps, returned to the big room. The tall smouldering beauty swung sensually along the hall and entering wove her way along towards Mrs. Jack with a languid naked undulance.
The heir of Midas wealth, child of a merchant emperor and a hoard amassed by nameless myriads of slave sweat, this voluptuous absentee of bargain basements in huge department stores which she had never visited, was a voluptuary of esthetics arts as well. She was an adept of obscurities, William Beckford’s Vathek, T. S. Eliot, and the works of Marcel Proust.
She was a tall, dark beauty, shockingly arrayed, a woman of great height and of sensual and yet delicate massivity. She had a shock of wild dark hair, a face too eloquent in its sleepy arrogance, and heavy lidded eyes whose most naked living qualities were the qualities of her insolence and pride.
Everything about this tall and stunning woman was sensational and startling. In the sleepy insolence of her dark smouldering face, in the languorous arrogance of her rich and throaty voice, even in the lazy undulance of her voluptuous figure there was a quality of naked indifference and contempt for life that barely escaped brutality.
Moreover, in the sensational way in which she exhibited and displayed herself there was an insolent immodesty that was so shameless that it left people dazed and gasping. The dress she wore was a magnificent gown made from a single piece of some dull old golden cloth. But that gown had been so made and so contrived to di
splay her charms that her tall voluptuous figure seemed literally to have been poured into it. It was a miracle of sheer carnality, a masterpiece of insolent sensuality. If she had walked into that room stark naked the impact of her sex, the deliberate emphasis of physical allure could not have been so arrogantly and shamelessly signified as it was now as she wove her way through the crowd with sleepy undulance, bent over the smaller figure of her hostess, kissed her and in a yolky voice in which affection and arrogance were curiously commingled, said: “Darling, how are you?”
The guests were now moving freely around, greeting one another and talking together. Groups were already forming here and there. Stephen Hook had come in with his sister Mary, and greeted his hostess by holding out to her a frail limp hand. At the same time he turned half away from her with an air of exaggerated boredom and indifference, an almost weary disdain, as he murmured: “Oh, hello, Esther. … Look—” he half turned toward her again, almost as if this were an after thought—“I brought this to you.” He handed her a book and turned away again. “I thought it was rather interesting,” he said in a bored tone. “You might like to look at it.”
What he had given her was a magnificent book of Peter Brueghel’s drawings—a book that she knew well of, whose costliness had frightened even her. She looked quickly at the flyleaf and saw that in his fine hand, he had written there primly: “For Esther—from Stephen Hook.” And suddenly she remembered that she had mentioned to him casually, a week or two before, her interest in this book, and she understood now that this act, which in a characteristic way he was trying to conceal under a mask of labored boredom and indifference, had come swift and shining as a beam of light out of the depths of the man’s fine and generous spirit. Her little face turned crimson, something choked her in the throat, and for a moment, she could not say why, her eyes were hot with tears.
“Oh, Steve!” she gasped—“This is simply the most beautiful—the most wonderful—”
He seemed fairly to shrink away from her in horror, fairly to shrink away into the fat envelope of his unhealthy body. His white, flabby face took on a gesture of disdainful boredom and aloof indifference that was so exaggerated it would have seemed comical if it had not been for the look of naked pleading terror in his hazel eyes—a look swift, frightened, lacerated-the look of a proud, noble, strangely twisted and tormented man—the look really almost of a frightened child, which, even while it shrank away from the life, the companionship, the security, it so desperately needed and wanted, was also pleading pitifully for help—which almost said: “For God’s sake—help me if you can! I am afraid!”
She saw that look of naked pleading terror in his eyes as he turned pompously away from her with a look of such exaggerated boredom on his pursed face as would have made Pooh Bah look like an exuberant sophomore by the comparison. And the look went through her like a knife and in a moment’s flash of stabbing pity she felt also the wonder, the strangeness and the miracle of living. “Oh, you poor tormented creature,” she was thinking—“What is wrong with you? What are you afraid of? What’s eating on you anyway? What a strange man he is,” she thought more tranquilly. “And How fine and good and high.”
At this moment, as if reading her own thoughts, her daughter, Alma, came to the rescue. Cool, poised, lovely, perfectly chiseled and rather cold, the girl came across the room, moved up to Hook, and said coolly:
“Oh, Hello, Steve. Can I get you a drink?”
The question was a godsend. He was extremely fond of the girl—He liked her polished style, her faultless elegance, her cool, hard, friendly, yet perfectly impenetrable manner. It gave him just the foil, the kind of protection that he so desperately needed. He answered her at once hiding his enormous relief in turning away from her disdainfully with an air of elaborately mannered boredom. “You,” he said. “What you have to say quite fascinates me—” he murmured in a bored tone and moved over to the mantle, where he leaned as spectator and turned his face three-quarters away from the room as if the sight of so many appallingly dull and stupid people was something more than he could endure.
All this was not only completely characteristic of Hook, it was really almost the man’s whole history. Even the elaborately mannered indirection of his answer when the girl had asked him if he wanted a drink was completely characteristic of Stephen Hook, and provided a key to his literary style. “What you have to say really fascinates me”—contained the kernel of Hook’s literary style and the books he wrote. He was the author of a great many stories which he sold mostly to magazines and from which he derived the income with which he supported himself and his family. And in addition he was the author of two or three very fine distinguished books on which his considerable reputation had been established but which had had almost no sale. And yet he was famous not for his stories but for these books: As he himself had ironically pointed out, almost everyone, apparently, had read his books and no one had bought them. In these books, also the curious complex of Hook’s strange, frightened, desperately shy personality were fully revealed. And here also, in these books he tried to mask this shyness and timidity by an air of boredom and disdain, by the intricate artifice and circumlocution of an elaborately mannered style. In other words, what Hook was always saying in his books when someone asked him if he’d have a drink was half turning away and looking passionately bored—“What you have to say quite fascinates me.”
Mrs. Jack, after staring rather helplessly at this paunchy image of disdain turned to his sister, a red-haired spinsteress with twinkling eyes and an infectious laugh who shared her brother’s charm, but lacked his tormented spirit, and whispered: “What’s wrong with Steve tonight, anyway? He looks as if he’s been seeing ghosts.”
“No—just another monster,” Mary Hook replied, and laughed. “He had a pimple on his nose last week and he stared at it so much in the mirror that he became convinced it was a tumor. Mother was almost crazy. He locked himself in his room and refused to come out or talk to anyone for days and days. Four days ago he sent her a note leaving minute instructions for his funeral and burial: he has a horror of being cremated. Three days ago he came out in his pajamas and said good-bye to all of us. He said life was over—all was ended. Tonight he thought better of it and decided to dress and come to your party.”
Then laughing, with the twinkle of wise infectious humor in her blue eyes, Mary Hook glanced shrewdly in the direction of her brother, whose paunchy figure was now leaning on the mantle, turned indifferently away, like some plump Mandarin, with a pursy and disdainful face, and answered Mrs. Jack’s perturbed glance with a humorous shrug of the shoulders. Mrs. Jack’s rosy face colored richly, and suddenly she laughed an involuntary and astounded laugh, crying:
“God! Isn’t it the most!—” while she continued to stare helplessly at Mary Hook. Mary Hook, laughing good naturedly with a humorous shrug and a shake of her head, moved away into the crowd. And Mrs. Jack, still with an earnest and rather troubled little face, turned to talk to old Jake Abramson, who had been holding her hand and gently stroking it during this whole puzzled interlude.
The mark of the fleshpots was plain upon Jake Abramson. He was an old, subtle, sensual, weary Jew and he had the face of a vulture. Curiously enough, for all its vulturesque quality, his face was a strangely attractive one. It had so much weariness and patience, and a kind of wise cynicism, and a weary humor. There was something kind and understanding about him. Even his evening clothes sat on him with a kind of casual weariness as if he were a kind of immensely old and tired ambassador of life who had lived so long, who had seen so much, who had been so many places, and who had worn evening clothes so many times that the garments themselves were as habitual as his breath and hung on him with a kind of weary and accustomed grace as if he had been born in them.
He had taken off his heavy coat and his silk hat and given them to the maid, and then had come wearily into the room and greeted Mrs. Jack. He was evidently very fond of her. While she had been talking to Mary Hook he remained s
ilent and he brooded above her like a benevolent vulture. He smiled beneath his great nose and kept his eyes intently on her face; then he took her small strong hand in his weary old clasp and, as he continued to gaze at her intently, and to talk, he stroked her smooth arm. It was a gesture frankly old and sensual, jaded, and yet strangely fatherly and gentle. It was the gesture of a man who had known and possessed many pretty women and who still knew how to admire and appreciate them, but whose strong lust had passed over into a kind of paternal benevolence.
And in the same way he now spoke to her, continuing to talk to her all the time with a weary, coarse, old humor which also had in it a quality that was fatherly and kind.
“Momma,” he said as he kept stroking her arm with his old hand and looking intently at her with his weary eyes—
“You’re looking nice! You’re looking pretty!” He kept smiling vulturesquely at her and stroking her arm—“Just like a rose she is!” the old man said, and never took his old, beady stare from her.
“Oh! Jake!” she cried excitedly and in a surprised tone, as if she had not known before that he was there. “How nice of you to come! I never knew you were back! I thought you were still in Europe!—”
“Momma,” the old man said, still smiling fixedly at her and stroking her smooth arm,—“I’ve been and went. I’ve gone and come. I was away but now I’ve come back already yet,” he declared humorously.
“You’re looking awfully well, Jake,” she declared earnestly. “The trip did you lots of good. You’ve lost a lot of flesh. You took the cure at Carlsbad, didn’t you?”
“Momma,” the old man solemnly declared, “I didn’t take the cure. I took the diet—” Deliberately he mispronounced the word to “die-ett.” And instantly Mrs. Jack’s rosy face was suffused with crimson; her shoulders began to shake hysterically. At the same moment she turned to Roberta Heilprinn, seized her helplessly by the arm, and clung to her, and shrieked faintly: “Did you hear him? He’s been on a diet! God! I bet it almost killed him! The way he loves to eat!”