OF TIME AND THE RIVER

by Thomas Wolfe

  They walked towards his car, which he had halted in the alley-way beside the house. A few leaves, sere and yellow, from the maples in the yard were drifting slowly to the ground.

  XLI

  During all that time, when he was waiting with a desperate hope that rose each day to the frenzy of a madman's certitude, and sank each day to the abyss of his despair, for the magic letter which was coming to him from the city, and which would instantly give him all the fortune, fame, and triumph for which his soul was panting, his family looked at him with troubled question in their eyes. His enthusiastic hopes and assurances of the great success that he would have from writing plays seemed visionary and remote to them. Perhaps they were right about this, although the reason that they had for thinking so was wrong.

  Thus, although they said little to Eugene at this time about his plans for the future, and what they did say was meant to hearten him, their doubt and disbelief were evident, and sometimes when he came into the house he could hear them talking in a troubled way about him.

  "Mama," he heard his sister say one day, as she sat talking with his mother in the kitchen, "what does Gene intend to do? Have you heard him say yet?"

  "Why, no-o-o!" his mother answered slowly, in a puzzled and meditative tone. "He hasn't said. At least he says he's goin' to write plays,--of course, I reckon he's waiting to hear from those people in New York about that play he's written," she added quickly.

  "Well, I know," his sister answered wearily. "That's all very fine--if he can do it. But, good heavens, Mama!" she cried furiously--"you can't live on hope like that! Gene's only one out of a million! Can't you realize that?--Why, they used to think I had some talent as a singer"--here she laughed ironically, a husky high falsetto, "I used to think so myself--but you don't notice that it ever got me anywhere, do you? No, sir!" she said positively. "There are thousands more just like Gene, who are trying to get ahead and make a name for themselves. Why should he think he's any better than the rest of them? Why, it might be years before he got a play produced--and even then, how can he tell that it would be a success?--What's he going to live on? How's he going to keep going until all this happens? What's he going to do?--You know, Mama, Gene's no little boy any more. Please get that into your head," she said sharply, as if her mother had questioned the accuracy of her remark. "No, sir! No, sir!" she laughed ironically and huskily. "Your baby is a grown man, and it's time he waked up to the fact that he's got to support himself from now on.--Mama, do you realize that it has been over four months since Gene left Harvard and, so far as I can see, he has made no effort yet to get a job? What does he intend to do?" she said angrily. "You know, he just can't mope around like this all his days! Sooner or later he's got to find some work to do!"

  In all these words there was apparent not so much hostility and antagonism as the driving fury and unrest of Helen's nervous, exacerbated, dissonant, and unhappy character, which could lavish kindness and affection one moment and abuse and criticism the next. These were really only signs of the frenzy and unrest in her large, tortured, but immensely generous spirit. Thus, she would rage and storm at her husband at one moment for "moping about the house," telling him, "for heaven's sake am I never to be left alone? Am I never to get a moment's peace or quiet? Must I have you around me every moment of my life? In God's name, Hugh--go! go! go!--Leave me alone for a few minutes, I beg of you!"--and by this time his sister's voice would be cracked and strident, her breath coming hoarsely and almost with a sob of hysteria. And yet, she could be just as violent in her sense of wrong and injustice done to her if she thought he was giving too much time to business, rushing through his meals, reading a book when he should be listening to her tirade, or staying away from home too much.

  Poor, tortured, and unhappy spirit, with all the grandeur, valour, and affection that Eugene knew so well, it had found, since her father's death, no medicine for the huge and constant frenzy of its own unrest, no guide or saviour to work for it the miracle of salvation it must work itself, and it turned and lashed out at the world, demanding a loneliness which it could not have endured for three days running, a peace and quiet from its own fury, a release from its own injustice. And it was for this reason--because her own unrest and frenzy made her lash out constantly against the world, praising one week, condemning the next, accusing life and people of doing her some injury or wrong that she had done herself--it was for this reason, more than for any other, that Helen now lashed out about Eugene to their mother.

  And because Eugene was strung on the same wires, shaped from the same clay, cut from the same kind and plan and quality, he stood there in the hall as he heard her, his face convulsed and livid, his limbs trembling with rage, his bowels and his heart sick and trembling with a hideous grey nausea of hopelessness and despair, his throat choking with an intolerable anguish of resentment and wrong, as he heard Helen's voice, and before he rushed back into the kitchen to quarrel with her and his mother.

  "Well, now," he heard his mother say in a diplomatic and hopeful tone that somehow only served to increase his feeling of rage and exasperation--"well, now--well, now," she said, "let's wait and see! Let's wait and see what happens with this play. Perhaps he'll hear tomorrow that they have taken it. Maybe it's going to be all right, after all!"

  "Going to be all right!" Eugene fairly screamed at this juncture, rushing in upon them in the kitchen. "You're God-damned right it's going to be all right. I'll tell you what's all right!" he panted, because his breath was labouring against his ribs as if he had run up a steep hill--"if it was some damned real-estate man, that would be all right! If it's some cheap low-down lawyer, that would be all right! If it was some damned rascal sitting on his tail up here in the bank, cheating you out of all you've got, that would be all right--hey?" he snarled, conscious that his words had no meaning or coherence, but unable to utter any of the things he wished to say and that welled up in that wave of hot and choking resentment. "O yes! The big man! The great man! The big deacon--Mr. Scroop Pegram--the big bank president--that would be all right, wouldn't it?" he cried in a choked and trembling voice. "You'd get down on your hands and knees, and crawl if he spoke to you, wouldn't you?--'O thank you, Mr. Pegram, for letting me put my money in your bank so you can loan it out to a bunch of God-damn real-estate crooks,'" he sneered, in an infuriated parody of whining servility. "'Thank you, sir,'" he said, and in spite of the fact that these words made almost no coherent meaning, his mother began to purse her lips rapidly in an excited fashion, and his sister's big-boned face reddened with anger.

  "Now," his mother said sternly, as she levelled her index finger at him, "I want to tell you something! You may sneer all you please, sir, at Scroop Pegram, but he's a man who has worked all his life for everything he has--"

  "Yes," Eugene said bitterly, "and for everything you have, too--for that's where it's going in the end."

  "He has made his own way since his childhood," Eliza continued sternly and deliberately--"no one ever did anything for him, for there's one thing sure:--there was no one in his family who was in a position to do it.--What he's done he's done for himself, without assistance and," his mother said in a stern and telling voice, "without education--for he never had three months' schoolin' in his life--and today he's got the respect of the community as much as any man I know."

  "Yes! And most of their money, too," Eugene cried.

  "You'd better not talk!" Helen said. "If I were you I wouldn't talk! Don't criticize other people until you show you've got it in you to do something for yourself," she said.

  "You! You!" Eugene panted. "I'll show you! Talking about me when my back is turned, hey? That's the kind you are! All right! You wait and see! I'll show you!" he said, in a choked and trembling whisper of fury and resentment.

  "All right," Helen said in a hard and hostile voice. "I'll wait and see. I hope you do. But you've got to show me that you've got it in you. It's time for you to quit this foolishness and get a job! Don't criticize other people until you show you've
got it in you to support yourself," she said.

  "No," said Eliza, "for we've done as much for you as we are able to. You've had as good an education as anyone could want--and now the rest is up to you," she said sternly. "I've got no more money to pay out on you, so you can make your mind up to it from now on," she said. "You've got to shift for yourself."

  And in the warm and living silence of the kitchen they looked at one another for a moment, all three, breathing heavily, and with hard and bitter eyes.

  "Well, Gene," Helen said, "I know. Try to forget about it. You'll change as you grow older," she said wearily. "We've all been like that. We all have these wonderful ambitions to be somebody famous, but that all changes. I had them, too," she said. "I was going to be a great singer, and have a career in opera, but that's all over now, and I know I never will. You forget about it," she said quietly and wearily. "It all seems wonderful to you, and you think that you can't live without it, but you forget about it. Oh, of course you will!" she muttered, "of course! Why!" she cried, shaking Eugene furiously, and now her voice had its old hearty and commanding ring, "I'm going to beat you if you act like this! What if they don't take your play! I'll bet that has happened to plenty of people--Yes, sir!" she cried. "I'll bet that has happened to all of them when they started out--and then they went on and made a big success of it later! Why, if those people didn't take my play," she said, "I'd sit down and write another one so good they'd be ashamed of themselves! Why, you're only a kid yet!" she cried furiously, shaking Eugene, and frowning fiercely but with her tongue stuck out a little and a kind of grin on her big-boned liberal-looking face. "Don't you know that! You've got loads of time yet! Your life's ahead of you! Of course you will! Of course you will!" she cried, shaking him. "Don't let a thing like this get you down! In ten years' time you'll look back on all this and laugh to think you were ever such a fool! Of course you will!"--and then as her husband, who had driven up before their mother's house, now sounded on the horn for her, she said again, in the quiet and weary tone: "Well, Gene, forget about it! Life's too short! I know," she said mysteriously, "I know!"

  Then, as she started to go, she added casually: "Honey, come on over for supper, if you want to.--Now it's up to you. You can suit yourself!--You can do exactly as you please," she said in the almost hard, deliberately indifferent tone with which she usually accompanied these invitations:

  "What would you like to eat?" she now said meditatively. "How about a nice thick steak?" she said juicily, as she winked at him. "I've got the whole half of a fried chicken left over from last night, that you can have if you come over!--Now it's up to you!" she cried out again in that almost hard challenging tone, as if he had shown signs of unwillingness or refusal. "I'm not going to urge you, but you're welcome to it if you want to come.--How about a big dish full of string beans--some mashed potatoes--some stewed corn, and asparagus? How'd you like some great big wonderful sliced tomatoes with mayonnaise?--I've got a big deep peach and apple pie in the oven--do you think that'd go good smoking hot with a piece of butter and a hunk of American cheese?" she said, winking at him and smacking her lips comically. "Would that hit the spot? Hey?" she said, prodding him in the ribs with her big stiff fingers and then saying in a hoarse, burlesque, and nasal tone, in extravagant imitation of a girl they knew who had gone to New York and had come back talking with the knowing, cock-sure nasal tone of the New Yorker.

  "Ah, fine, boys!" Helen said, in this burlesque tone. "Fine! Just like they give you in New York!" she said. Then turning away indifferently, she went down the steps, and across the walk towards her husband's car, calling back in an almost hard and aggressive tone:

  "Well, you can do exactly as you like! No one is going to urge you to come if you don't want to!"

  Then she got into the car and they drove swiftly off down-hill, turned the corner and vanished.

  The reason, in fact, which argued in Eugene's family's mind against his succeeding in the work he wished to do was the very thing that should have been all in his favour. But neither he nor his family thought so. It was this: a writer, they thought, should be a wonderful, mysterious, and remote sort of person--someone they had never known, like Irvin S. Cobb. "Now, this boy," they argued in their minds, "our son and brother, is neither wonderful, mysterious, nor remote. We know all about him, we all grew up together here, and there's no use talking--he's the same kind of people that we are. His father was a stone-cutter--a man who was born on a farm and had to work all his life with his hands. And five of his father's brothers were also stone-cutters, and had to earn their living in the same way--by the sweat of their brow. And his mother is a hard-working woman who brought up a big family, runs a boarding-house and has had to scrape and save and labour all her life. Everyone in this part of the country knows her family: her brothers are respected business men in town here, and there are hundreds of her kinsfolk--farmers, storekeepers, carpenters, lumber-dealers, and the like--all through this section. Now, they're all good, honest, decent, self-respecting people--no one can say they're not--but there's never been a writer in the crowd. No--and no doctors or lawyers either. Now there may have been a preacher or two--his Uncle Bascom was a preacher and a highly educated man too, always poking his nose into a book and went to Harvard, and all--yes, and now that we remember, always had queer notions like this boy--had to leave the Church, you know, for being an agnostic, and was always writing poems, and all such as that. Well, this fellow is one of the same kind--a great book-reader but with no practical business sense--and it seems to us he ought to get a job somewhere teaching school, or maybe some newspaper work--which he could do--or, perhaps, he should have studied law."

  So did their minds work on this subject. Yet the very argument they made--that he was the same kind of person as the rest of them, and not remote, wonderful, or mysterious--should have been the chief thing in his favour. But none of them could see this. For where they thought there was nothing wonderful or mysterious about them, he thought that there was; and none of them could see that his greatest asset, his greatest advantage, if he had any, was that he was made out of the same earth--the same blood, bone, character, and fury--as the rest of them. For, could they only have known it, the reason he read all the books was not, as they all thought, because he was a bookish person, for he was not, but for the same reason that his mother was mad about property--talked, thought, felt, and dreamed about real estate all the time, and wanted to own the earth just as he wanted to devour it. Again, the fury that had made him read the books was the same thing that drove his brothers and his sisters around incessantly, feeding the huge fury of their own unrest, and making them talk constantly and to everyone, until they knew all about the lives of all the butchers, bakers, merchants, lawyers, doctors, Greek restaurant owners, and Italian fruit-dealers in the community.

  If they had understood this--that he had the same thing in him that they all had in them--they would have understood about his wanting to be a writer, and even the trouble in which presently he would involve himself, and that seemed so catastrophic and disgraceful to him at that time, would not have seemed so bad to them, for his father, one of his brothers, and several of his kinsmen had been in this same trouble--and it had caused no astonishment at all. But now that he had done this thing--now that the one they looked on as the scholar, and the bookish person, had done it--it was as if the leading deacon of the Church had been caught in a raid on a bawdy-house.

  Finally, there was to be some irony for Eugene later in the fact that, had he only known it and grasped it, there was ready to his use in that one conflict all of the substance and energy of the human drama, and that the only thing that was wonderful or important was that they were all full of the passion, stupidity, energy, hope, and folly of living men--fools, angels, guiltless and guilty all together, not to be praised or blamed, but just blood, bone, marrow, passion, feeling--the whole swarming web of life and error in full play and magnificently alive. As for the fancied woes and hardships of the young artist in
conflict with the dull and brutal Philistines,--that, he saw later, had had nothing to do with it, and was not worth a damn, any more than the plays that had been written in Professor Hatcher's class, and in which a theatrical formula for living was presented in place of life. No; the conflict, the comedy, the tragedy,--the pain, the pride, the folly and the error--might have been just the same had Eugene wanted to be an aviator, a deep-sea diver, a bridge-builder, a professional pall-bearer, or a locomotive engineer. And the study of life was there in all its overwhelming richness, was right there in his grasp, but he could not see it, and would not use it. Instead he went snooping and prowling around the sterile old brothels of the stage, mistaking the glib concoctions of a counterfeit emotion for the very flesh and figure of reality. And this also has been true of every youth that ever walked the earth.

  The letter came at length one grey day in late October; and instantly, when he had opened it, and read the first words "We regret," his life went grey as that grey day, and he thought that he would never have heart or hope nor know the living joy of work again. His flesh went dead and cold and sick, yet he read the smooth lying phrases in the letter with the stolid face with which people usually receive bad news, and even tried to insinuate a thread of hope, to suck a kind of meagre and hopeless comfort from the hard, yet oily, words, "We are looking forward with great interest to reading your next play, and we hope you will send it to us as soon as it is completed." . . . "Our members were divided in their opinion, four voting to reconsider it and five for rejection . . . although all were agreed on the freshness and vitality of the writing . . . while the power of some of the scenes is undeniable . . . we must reluctantly. . . . You are one of the young men whose work we are watching with the greatest interest . . ." and so on.