by Thomas Wolfe
—She! Why surely she had been a part of it with him—with Mallows—with all these times, these places—what?—
She had turned to listen to another group with Lawrence Hirsch, and he could see her rosy little face serious and attentive now, and saying earnestly:—
“Oh, yes, I knew Jack Reed. He used to come to Mabel Dodge’s place; we were great friends—That was when Alfred Stieglitz had started his salon—”
Ah, all these names! Had he not been with these as well? Or, was it but another shape—a seeming!—in this phantasmal and traumatic shadow-show of time! Had he not been beside her at the launching of the ship?—When they were captive among Thracian faces?—Or lighted tapers to the tent when she had come to charm remission from the lord of Macedon?—All these were ghosts—save she! And she—Circean she, this time-devouring child of time—had of this whole huge company of ghosts alone remained immortal and herself, had shed off the chrysalis of all these her former selves, as if each life that she had loved was nothing but an out-worn garment—and now stood here—here! Good God! Upon the burnt out candle-ends of time—with her jolly face of noon, as if she had just heard of this brave new world on Saturday—and would see if all of it was really true tomorrow!
Mrs. Jack had turned again at the sound of Amy’s eager and throat-husky tone and now beaming rosily, she had bent forward to listen to the girl’s disjointed monologue, one hand cupped to her ear, and an eager, childlike little smile upon her lips.
“I mean! You know! But Esther! What I mean to say is!—Darling, you’re the most!—It’s the most!—I mean, when I look at both of you, I simply can’t—I mean, there’s simply no comparison, that’s all!” cried Amy, with hoarse elation, her lovely face and head all sunning over with light, with eagerness, with generous enthusiasm and boyish animation. “Oh, what I mean to say is!” Amy cried, then shook her head with a short strong movement, tossed her cigarette away impatiently and cried with the expiration of a long sigh—“Gosh!”
Poor child! Poor Child!—Hook turned pompously and indifferently away to hide the naked anguish in his eyes—So soon to grow, to go, to be consumed and die like all of us—beyond this timeless breed, unlike them so unschooled, incautious, and so prone to peril and to go too far. Like him she was, he knew, unused to breathe the dangerous vapors of this most uncertain place; unlike these children of the furious street, so soon to feel unhoused, unhomed, unhearted, strangers and alone!
Never to walk as they, with certitude and hope, the stoney canyons of these cruel vertices, to speak with joy the babel of its strident tongues—like him, to deafen to strong steel,—alas! To want the nightingale, and to shrink beneath these monstrous and inhuman pyramids of Asiatic pride! She was, like him, too prone to die the death upon a single death; to live the life upon the single life; to love the love upon the single love—never to save out of anything, life, death, or love—a prudent remnant for the hour of peril or the day of ruin; but to use it all, to give it all, to be consumed, burnt out like last night’s moths upon a cluster of hard light!
Poor child! Poor child!—thought Hook—So quick and short and temporal, both you and I, the children of a younger kind! While she!—just for a moment, briefly, seeming-cold, he surveyed the innocence enrosed of Mrs. Jack. And these!—the sensual volutes of strong nostrils curved with scornful mirth: he looked at them—These others of this ancient chemistry—unmothed, reborn, and venturesome, yet wisely mindful of the flame—these others shall endure! Ah time!—Poor Child!
MR. HIRSCH WAS WOUNDED SORROWFULLY
• • •
Mr. Lawrence Hirsch was wounded sorrowfully, but he could wait.
He did not seem to follow her. It was just that one always knew he was there. She wove through the complications of that brilliant crowd the lavish undulation of her opulent behind. And Mr. Lawrence Hirsch—he did not follow her. But he was always there:
“Oh absolutely!”—the tone was matter-of-fact and undisturbed: It carried the authority of calm conviction—“We have positive proof of their innocence—evidence that was never allowed to come to light. The Federalist is publishing it in the next issue. It proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that Vanzetti could not have been within fifty miles of the crime—”
Mr. Lawrence Hirsch spoke quietly, and did not look at her.
“But how horrible!” cried Mrs. Jack with a flushed, indignant little face. “Isn’t it dreadful to know that things like that could happen in a country like this?”
She turned to Lawrence Hirsch with a flaming face and with round righteous anger blazing up in her: “I think the whole thing’s the most damnable—the most dastardly—the most disgraceful thing I ever heard!” she cried. “These—these miserable people who could be guilty of such a thing!—These despicable horrible rich people!—It’s enough to make you want a Revolution!” cried Mrs. Jack—
“Well, my dear,” said Mr. Hirsch with a cool irony—“you may have your wishes gratified—It’s not beyond the realm of possibility—and it if comes that case may still return to plague them yet. The trials, of course, were perfectly outrageous and the judge should have been instantly dismissed. The men were put to death without a fair trial.”
“But these terrible old men!” cried Mrs. Jack. “To know that there are people living who could do a thing like that!” At the bottom of her heart she had always been convinced that she was a “radical”—a revolutionary! As she now said, turning to another member of the group and speaking earnestly, and with a quiet pride: “You know I have always been a Socialist. I vote for Norman Thomas every time he runs—You see,” she spoke very simply and with honest self-respect, “I’ve always been a worker. All my sympathy is on their side.”
Suddenly she held her small strong hands out before her, looked at them and their firm swift shape with pride, turned them over with palms upward, turned them back again, and said quietly: “Look at those hands. You can see that they have worked. How strong and deft and sure they are!”
Mr. Hirsch did not seem to be following anybody. Not really. However, there was now a very strong sense—a feeling that he knew someone was there. His manner had become a trifle vague, detached, as if he were no longer paying strict attention.
“It is a cause célèbre,” said Mr. Lawrence Hirsch, and, as if rather liking the sound of the words he repeated them portentously: “A cause célèbre.” And, distinguished, polished, and contained, he moved away towards the next group and in the general direction of that lavish undulance, those weaving buttocks. And yet he did not seem to follow her.
For Mr. Lawrence Hirsch was wounded sorrowfully. But he could wait.
* * * * *
“Oh Beddoes! Beddoes!”
Miss Mandell had woven her undulant voluptuous charms toward Robert Ahrens, and his exultant words had been uttered in response to some remark of hers.
Mr. Ahrens was a connoisseur of books, a collector of editions, an aesthete of rare letters. Almost his whole time since he had entered the room with Miss Roberta Heilprinn and paid his cheerful duties to his hostess, Mrs. Jack, had been spent in a cherubic investigation of that lady’s books. And never before or since Erasmus’ time, was there a more cheerful, a more mellow investigator. Just to look at him as he browsed around—yes, that was the word for it!—Mr. Ahrens was a browser, if there ever was one—was enough to make one’s mouth water for a good book, a cheerful nook or corner by the blazing fire, a pipe—oh, by all means, a pipe! A pipe!—And a bottle of old port—or, a crusty flagon, say, of Nut Brown Ale. This was the effect Mr. Ahrens had on people when they saw him with a book. He made one think of bowered cottages in the English country-side—of the one we heard about last week in Sussex, which could be had for sixteen bob a week—(our informant was completely English)—and which was simply charming.
Mr. Ahrens revived man’s wistful yearnings for such a life, his desires to “get away from all of this,” to spend the remainder of his days in charming rustication, in peaceful gossip with the cook, the
maid, the vicar, and the old men at the pub, and his evenings in his cottage by the fire with a pipe, a bottle of old port, a shaggy dog, and a volume of Charles Lamb. Mr. Robert Ahrens thus became in the maelstrom of the vexed tormented city, a kind of living wish-fulfillment—if not the answer to a maiden’s prayer, at least a kind of embodiment of many a jaded mortal’s secret hope.
Miraculously, Mr. Robert Ahrens, in the feverish torment of the city’s life seemed to have achieved somehow for himself the things that other men think they will have to go to Sussex for—the pipe, the port, a collie, the charming cottage, and the book. Mr. Robert Ahrens seemed to carry these things around with him. Here, in the strident and uncertain life of this great city, among the brilliant glitter, the fine nerves, the complicated lives of this sophisticated gathering, Mr. Ahrens alone seemed to carry about with him the furniture of his own content. He was his pipe, his port, his collie, and his cheerful hearth, his English cottage and his volume of Charles Lamb. He didn’t need to travel anywhere to find them because he had them there inside him all the time.
He was a cheerful, pleasant, and distinguished looking man in his mid-forties, an engaging combination of gentleness and happy exuberance, of energy and gay good humor, of fastidiousness and of casual ease. Unlike the remainder of the gathering he was not in evening dress. He wore grey English flannels—“Oxford bags” as they were called by the more knowing kind—a shaggy coat of grey-brown tweed, thick English shoes with heavy soles, woollen socks, a soft white shirt and a red tie.
In appearance, he was fairly tall, something over middling height, in figure rather slight and graceful. He had fine hands and his face was very healthy looking. He was somewhat bald and his high forehead and bald head were pleasantly browned and freckled as if he had spent much time out of doors in the wind and sun. His face also was healthy, ruddy, and pleasant looking. His blue eyes twinkled with gaiety and good humor, and his pleasant face really did have a cherubic look, especially when his elated spirits would rise up in him and he would cry out exuberantly as he now did: “Oh Beddoes! Beddoes! By all means, you must read Beddoes!”
He had been looking at a book as Miss Mandell approached him, thumbing the pages with loving fingers, pausing from time to time to take a puff at an immensely long, fastidious, and very costly amber cigarette holder. His features suffused with a cherubic glow, he was as completely absorbed in his pleasant investigation, even in the midst of this brilliant and sophisticated throng, as if he had been in his study in an Oxford College. He seemed in fact to have just come in from a long walk across the country-side, or on the moors, and now to be quietly looking forward to an evening with his books—and with a pipe. As Miss Mandell approached him, he looked up, and in response to her question, “Have you ever read anything by a man named Beddoes?”—he but answered in the way, and in the tone, described.
It was, by the way, a habit of Miss Mandell’s always to preface a man’s name no matter how famous that name might be, by the qualifying phrase “a man named.” Why she did this is hard to say, unless she felt instinctively it was another sop to arrogance—a kind of concession to her own snobbishness and pride, a way of saying that if she was bending her stiff neck a little, she was doing it indifferently.
Thus, if she were discussing her literary acquaintanceship, particularly among the rarer coteries of precocity, which was large, she might say: “Did you ever read a book called ‘To the Lighthouse’ by a woman named Virginia Woolf. I know her rather well. I just wondered if you had read anything of hers and what you thought of it.”
Or, “I wonder if you’ve read a poem called The Waste Land’ by a man named T. S. Eliot. I used to see a good deal of him in London. I just wondered if you had never heard of him and what you thought of his work.”
Or, “I wonder if you ever read a piece called ‘Tender Buttons’ by a woman named Gertrude Stein. She lives in Paris. I used to see a lot of her while I was there. She’s quite a fascinating person—a good deal of a charlatan, but enormous charm. I just wondered if you’d ever read anything she’d written and what you thought of it.”
Or, more simply, sleepily, with a smouldering look of her dark face: “Have you read anything by a man named Proust?” This simpler method was even more effective. By not admitting anything herself, simply by asking such a question with a kind of casual indirection, and a smouldering look on her dark untelling face she managed to convey an impression not only of enormous erudition but of very superior critical reserve. It was as if she were accustomed to hold conversations with Mr. T. S. Eliot in which the greater part of knowledge—what the common cry of letterly mankind: the professors, Ph.D’s, book reviewers, and average critics spend a life-time in laboriously gathering and expanding—was a matter of such tedious commonplace, as to be regarded entirely in conversations of such succinct allusiveness and such connotative subtlety that the results were distillations of the rarest gold, to be revealed only at intervals of ten years in volumes of no more than forty pages at a time.
When she was in this vein there was an air of “more to this than meets the eye” to everything she said. And the impressed and flattered questionee would not only hastily blurt out that he not only had heard of a man named Proust but had actually read something that he had written, and would then proceed to lay out with great eloquence his critical opinion.
The manner in which this ill-timed outburst was received was decidedly depressing to the unhappy victim. For, at the conclusion of his harangue, Miss Mandell would just look at him searchingly for a moment with a kind of lingering contempt, murmur “um-m,” non-committally and then turn arrogantly away, weaving her way through the crowd with lavish undulance as if in search of some likelier material for her deep searchingness.
So stranded, the unfortunate person who had been duped into these critical loquacities would not only feel that he had made a fool of himself, but also that what he had to say must seem to be the most infantile and driveling stuff to an intelligence which, after he had done his best, could only look at him a long moment with a smouldering stare, murmur “Um,” and undulate away.
Mr. Robert Ahrens, however, was made of different stuff—if not of sterner stuff, at least of stuff too exuberantly assured, too cherubically concerned with its own interests to be very seriously perturbed by any look that Miss Mandell might give him, whether smouldering or not, or by anything she might or might not say. Besides, they had known each other for years; and they were both theatrical people, he in his actual practice and profession, she in the conduct of her life.
So when the lady approached and smouldered at him, and then said, “Have you ever read anything by a man named Beddoes?”—Mr. Ahrens immediately took the long amber holder from his mouth, looked up at her with a face fairly glowing with cherubic warmth, and elatedly cried: “Oh Beddoes! Beddoes!”—The name seemed to give him such exuberant satisfaction that he actually shook his head a little and chortled—“Ah, ha-ha-ha! Beddoes! Oh by all means, Beddoes!” cried Mr. Ahrens. “Everyone should be compelled to read him! I love Beddoes!”
And, with these words, he lifted his cherubic face which by this time was positively glowing with delight as if he had just consumed a whole quart bottle of port wine, put the enormously long amber holder in his mouth again and drew on it a long fastidious inhalation, let it trickle out in a long luxurious exhalation, and then shook his head again with a short strong movement and cried exultantly: “Oh Beddoes, by all means!”
“He was mad, wasn’t he?” inquired Mr. Lawrence Hirsch at this moment. He had just casually seemed to wander up, as if attracted by the noises of these cultural enthusiasms, and without appearing to follow anyone:—“I mean, didn’t he die in an asylum?—in Switzerland, I believe. Really a fascinating case of misplaced identity, wasn’t it?” Polished, casual, imperturbable, he turned for the first time toward Miss Mandell in an explanatory manner—“I mean, the man was really born out of his time. He should have been an Elizabethan, shouldn’t he?”
Miss Mandell said nothing for a moment. She just looked at Mr. Lawrence Hirsch with a long smouldering stare of lingering contempt. Then she murmured “Um-m,” in a non-committal tone, and moved undulantly away. And Mr. Hirsch did not follow her.
For Mr. Lawrence Hirsch was wounded sorrowfully—but he could wait.
He never seemed to follow her. Instead, he stayed there for some moments talking about—Beddoes! He was informed and imperturbable, authoritatively assured, on his aesthetic toes—the very model of what a distinguished leader of enlightened thought—a modern Federalist—should be. There was a little Sacco and Vanzetti here, a little first hand secrecy from Washington there, a sophisticated jest or so, an amusing anecdote of what happened only last week to the President, a little about Russia with a shrewd observation culled from the latest cry in Marxian economy and a little Beddoes now and then. And it was all so perfectly informed, all so suavely contained, all so alertly modern that it never for a moment slipped into a cliché, always represented the very latest mode in everything—art, letters, politics, and economics—and Beddoes!
It was a remarkable accomplishment!—An inspiring example of what the busy modern man of affairs, the great captain of finance, can really accomplish if he only applies himself—not for fifteen minutes, but for fifteen hours, a day.