OF TIME AND THE RIVER

by Thomas Wolfe

  But now there was a row of lights through the trees, the murmurous hum of many voices, the glittering shapes of parked machinery. They were approaching the Paston house: it was a rather gloomy-looking mansion of old brown stone, square in shape and immensely solid and imposing in its grimy magnificence, and of that style of architecture which was borrowed from France, but which went through curious and indefinable transformations on the way, so that any native grace and lightness which the style may once have had was lost: it was lumpish, ugly and involved, and somehow looked like one of the children of the New York Post Office.

  A broad veranda ran around the house on all four sides, and on the side that faced the river, a large number of the friends and guests of the Paston family were now assembled. Seated on the great lawns that swept away before the house on the riverside there was another larger audience composed of the people of the near-by town, and people employed on the Paston estate and the other great estates in the vicinity.

  But over both groups, not only the wealthier and smaller group upon the porch, but the larger one spread out upon the lawn, there was evident a spirit of gay, happy, eager and child-like elation and expectancy that united everyone in a curiously moving and high-hearted way. From the dark sweep and mystery of the lawn there rose the murmur of hundreds of excited and happy voices, all talking at once, and little bursts of laughter, sudden stirs and flurries of eager and mysterious interest.

  The same spirit, the same feeling--a spirit and a feeling of plain democracy, warm friendliness, simple, eager hope and expectancy--animated the people on the porch. They were, as a group, fine-looking people: many of the young men were tall, handsome, strong and comely-looking, the girls were lovely, and many of the women were beautiful. Most of them also had a look of dignity, assurance, and character. They represented, he knew, that small group of the fabulously wealthy whose names were household words throughout the nation--and yet, whether it was due to the innate democracy of the occasion, the almost childish pleasure and anticipation which the Fourth of July and its fireworks renewed in them, and the grand and natural warmth and spaciousness of the scene--their native earth, or whether the quality of their lives was really warm and free and friendly, there was nothing at all arrogant, haughty, cold or insolently "societyfied" about these people. Their gathering together here upon the front porch of this gloomy old Victorian house had exactly the same quality that these summer front-porch gatherings had always had for him everywhere in little towns; with a feeling of incredulous recognition he found that the scene was instantly familiar to him, and he almost expected to hear old familiar voices--his father's voice among them, as he had heard it on the porch at home so many times, and now so long ago.

  Everyone in the crowd knew the Pierce family and instantly welcomed them in an eager, laughing, and excited babel of affectionate greeting. Rosalind and Joel and Mrs. Pierce went about among the crowd shaking hands and greeting people all about them, and when the greetings were over, simply and naturally found their place among those persons to whom each was most akin by virtue of friendship, age, or temperament--Mrs. Pierce among men and women of her own generation and among the older people, and Joel, Rosalind, George Thornton, and Carl Seaholm among the younger people of the gathering.

  Joel introduced him quickly, casually, with his infinite grace and consideration, to several people--to several of his younger friends and to certain of the older ones who were obviously among the best-liked and most respected people there. He was introduced to Mrs. Paston, a tall and beautiful young woman, very slender, blond, and lovely-looking: a kind of exquisite blond icicle, and with no more human warmth or passion than an icicle of any sort would have. She gave him a few cool words of greeting, a swift cool clasp of her swift cool hand, a swift, glacial, yet not unfriendly smile, and so dismissed him, not unkindly, turning with the same cool, smiling and glacial detachment to her other guests.

  Suddenly the fireworks started. Far away, at the end of the great lawn, in the obscuring darkness of the night, and among the obscuring shadows of the shrubs and trees above the hill that swept down towards the river, there was a terrific detonation--the deafening bang and flare of a gigantic rocket that whizzed up into the air in a small hurtling point of light, and exploded, illuminating heaven with a constellation of enchanted falling stars. There was a long-drawn "Oh-h!" of excitement, eagerness, and expectant joy from the crowd gathered on the lawn, the same from the people gathered on the porch, who quickly scrambled into chairs; and instantly from all the people there was utter silence, a thrilled and fascinated attentiveness, broken now and then by gasps of wonder, joy, surprise and rapture, as one giant rocket followed another in unending series, in constantly growing magnificence, until the whole universe of night was blooming with flowers of fire, alive with constellations of enchanted stars--green, red, and yellow, blue and violet and gold--that burst softly in the night with spreading glory, falling slowly to the earth like some great parachuted blossom, and cracking, puffing, bursting softly, to flower, spread, again develop in great blooms of star-enchanted fire.

  Everything had the same familiar quality of America that he had always remembered and known as a child. It brought back to him again the quiet voices of people on their summer porches, the street-car grinding to a halt on the corner of the hill above his father's house, his father's voice in darkness on the porch, and the red lifted flare of his cigar, and those Thursday nights in summer when his father took him on the street-car to the little park along the river three miles away, where there were outdoor moving-pictures on an island; later, fireworks and across the river the great flare, the receding thunder of a train. Now, curiously, that whole memory came back to him with all its vivid and unutterable poignancy: he could remember the little artificial lake there at the park--that lake just three feet deep that had seemed so vast and thrilling to him, and the boat-house with lake-water lapping at the piers, the clank of oarlocks and the dull bump and dry knocking of the boats together as they collided in the darkness, and the people, gathered there in darkness, with their dim faces upturned to the great silver dance and flicker of the moving-picture screen which was set on a little island on the lake--an island that was dense with trees and foliage, and that had seemed to him as mysterious and illimitable as the jungle. And opposite the island, on the shore, looking over the heads of the people in the boats, the greater part of the audience sat on wooden benches, all thirsty, silent, and insatiate, the petals of five hundred dim white faces all lifted to the flickering magic of the screen.

  It all came back to him now as he sat there on the porch of this splendid mansion with Mrs. Pierce and Joel and the other guests, and though the place was splendid, wealthy and luxurious beyond dreams, the happy, warm, and friendly gaiety of the people, their eager looking-forward to fireworks and the Fourth of July, something free and warm and simple in their relation, recalled again those glorious expeditions of his youth to the little park upon the river, and the crowded streetcars going home, and friendly voices, laughter, and the slamming of a door, and then his father's voice upon the porch and sleep and silence--it all came back now in tones of unutterable brightness, and the Hudson River lay below him in the great fall and hush of evening light that fell across America, and even as he thought these things, a train rushed by below them on the bank of the river, was hurled instantly past in a projectile flight--a thunderbolted speed, was hurled past them citywards, and was gone at once, leaving nothing behind it but the sound of its departure, a handful of lost echoes in the hills, and the river, the mysterious river, the Hudson River in the great fall and hush of evening light, and all somehow was just as it had always been, and just as he had known he would find it, as it would always be.

  LXVI

  Later that night, when the other people in the house had gone upstairs to bed, and as he was in the quiet library, making a final, longing, hungrily regretful survey of the treasure-hoard of noble books that walled the great room in their rich and mellow hues from
floor to ceiling, Joel came in.

  "Look," he whispered, in his abrupt and casual way, "I'm going to bed now: stay up as long as you please and sleep as late as you like tomorrow morning. . . . And look," he whispered casually--and quickly again--"what are you going to do? Do you think you have to go back to the city tomorrow?"

  "Yes, Joel: I think I'll have to--I have an early class the first thing Monday morning, and if I'm going to meet it, I ought to be back by tomorrow night: I think that will be best."

  "It's been nice having you," Joel whispered. "It was swell that you could come. And if you really like the place," he said simply, "I'm glad. . . . I think it's a grand place, too. . . . And look!" he whispered quickly, casually, looking away "--I meant what I said yesterday--about that house, the gatekeeper's lodge, I mean--If you like the place, and think you'd care to live there, or come up whenever you feel like it, I wish you'd take it," he whispered. "I really do--It's no use to anyone the way it stands, and we'd all be delighted if you'd come and live in it. . . . Just let me know when you are coming, just say the word, and I'll have everything ready for you--And we wish you would," he whispered earnestly, with his radiant smile, as if asking the other youth to do him a favour--"it would be swell."

  "It's--it's pretty fine of you, Joel, too--"

  "All right, sir," Joel whispered quickly, hastily, with a smile, avoiding skilfully the embarrassment of thanks: "And look, Eugene--of course I'll see you Tuesday when I get back to town--I'll be right there at the hotel the rest of the summer--except for week-ends when I come up here--but I wanted to ask you if you had made up your mind yet about going to Europe?"

  "Yes, I have, Joel. At least, that's what I want to do--what I'd like to do. If I can manage it, I intend to set sail--" the two words had a glorious magic sound to him, and his pulse beat hot and hard with joy and hope as he spoke them--"to set sail in September when my work at the university is over!"

  "Gosh! That's swell!" Joel whispered enthusiastically, his face lighting with radiant eagerness as if the news had given him some great and unexpected happiness--"And Frank Starwick will be glad go hear it, too. You know, he's going over at the end of August; I had a letter from him just the other day."

  "Yes, I know: he wrote me too."

  "And he'll want to see you when he comes to town: we must all try to get together before he goes. . . . And look," he said quickly, abruptly, casually again--"if you go, how long will you be gone? How long do you intend to stay away?"

  "I don't know, Joel. I'd like to go for a whole year, but I don't know if I can manage it. They've offered me an appointment for another year at the university. They want me to come back for the new term that begins in February, and maybe that's what I'll have to do. But I'd like to stay away a year!"

  "I hope you can," Joel whispered. "You ought to spend a whole year over there! It would be a swell thing if you could."

  "Yes; I think so, too. But I don't know how I'm going to manage it: at the present time I don't quite see how I can. . . . You see, all I've got to live on at the present time is what I earn as an instructor at the university--they pay me eighteen hundred dollars a year--"

  "Gosh!" Joel whispered, arching his eyebrows in polite astonishment--"That's a lot, isn't it?"

  "It's not much, Joel: it amounts to $150 a month; you can get along on that, but you're not going to paint New York red on it, the way things are today, especially if you've got a healthy appetite and love to eat, the way I do."

  "Yes," Joel whispered, laughing his beautiful, radiant, and almost soundless laugh. "I can see that--that belly of yours is going to cost you a lot of money before you get through with it. A man who loves food the way you do ought to be a millionaire. But you see, don't you," he said, with a flash of his rare and gentle malice--"that's what you get for not being a vegetarian like Bernard Shaw and me. . . . Eugene," he cried softly, laughing, after a moment's brief reflection, "--you'll love France--the food is wonderful--but Lord!" and he laughed again his radiant soundless laugh "--how you're going to hate England!"

  "Why? Is the food bad?"

  "It's unspeakable!" Joel whispered--"that is for anyone who loves food the way you do: they go through the tortures of the damned . . . of course, for me it doesn't matter. I can eat anything--anything, that is, so long as it's vegetables--it all tastes alike to me--but you'll hate it . . . of course," he whispered earnestly, "you really won't: you'll love the country and you'll like the English. They're swell."

  "Have you been there much, Joel?"

  "Only once," he whispered. "When Mums and Rosalind were there. We had a house out in the country and we stayed there for fifteen months. And it was grand! You'll love it. . . . Gosh! I hope you can stay over there a whole year!" he went on eagerly. "Don't you think you can?"

  "I don't think so: you see, as I was telling you, I have only $150 a month; when I finish up in September I'll have about five pay-cheques coming to me: that's only $750. So I figure I can get over there on that and live for several months, but unless I can get money from my mother--I think perhaps she'll help me--I don't see how I can get along for a whole year."

  "Then look," said Joel, speaking swiftly, and casually, and looking away as if he were making the most matter-of-fact proposal in the world--"Why don't you let me help you? . . . I mean," he went on hastily, and showing his embarrassment only by two spots of colour in his gaunt face--"I'd love to do it if you'd let me--it'd be no trouble at all--and you could pay it back whenever you like--just as soon as your play goes on: you'll have plenty of money then, so I wish you'd take it now when you need it. . . . You see," he whispered quickly, with a smile, "I have loads of money--more than I can ever possibly use--I have no need for it--I was twenty-one this spring, you know,--and now I'm awfully rich," he whispered humorously, and then concluded in a quickly apologetic whisper--"not really, of course--not compared to most people--but rich, for me," he whispered, smiling. "--I've got much more than I need--so I really wish you'd let me help you if you need it--Frank said he'd let me know if he needed anything and I wish you'd do the same. . . . I think you ought to go for a whole year since you're going--it's your first trip, and gosh!" he whispered enthusiastically, "how I envy you! How I wish I were going for the first time! It's going to be a swell thing for you, you're going to have a grand time--and you've simply got to stay for a whole year--so I wish you'd let me help you if I can."

  He had made this astoundingly generous proposal with a quick, hurried matter-of-factness that seemed to be eagerly begging for a favour, instead of magnificently and nobly giving it. And for a moment the other could not answer, and when he did he did not know the reason for his reply, for his refusal. It was as generous, as selfless, and spontaneous an act of liberal and noble friendship as he had ever known or experienced, and for a moment, as he thought of his longed-for trip, his dire need of money, it all seemed so magically easy, good, and wonderfully right to him that there seemed nothing to do except instantly, gratefully and jubilantly to accept. Yet, when he opened his mouth to speak, he found himself, to his surprise, refusing this miraculous and generous good fortune. And he never knew exactly the reason why: there was, perhaps, the growing sense of something alien and irreconcilable in the design and purpose of their separate lives, a growing feeling of regret, a conviction enhanced by his conversation with Joel in the studio that morning that their lives would be lived out in separate worlds, wrought to separate purposes, and shaped by separate beliefs, and with that knowledge a feeling--a feeling of loneliness and finality and farewell--as if a great door had swung for ever closed between them, as if there was something secret, buried, and essential in the soul of each which now could never be revealed. And, to his surprise, he heard himself saying:

  "Thanks, Joel--it's mighty fine of you--about as fine as anything I ever heard--but I don't need help now. If I need it later--"

  "If you do," said Joel very quickly, "I wish you'd let me know--I'd like it if you would. . . . And gosh! it's great to know that you ar
e going," he whispered again with radiant enthusiasm. "I envy you!"

  "Then I wish to God you'd come along! . . . Joel," the other burst out excitedly, with a sudden surge of eager warm conviction. "Why can't you? We'd have a great time of it--go everywhere--see everything! It would be a wonderful thing--a great experience--for you and me both. You've never seen Europe that way before, have you?--the way that you and I could see it?--you've always been with your family, your mother, haven't you?--Come on!" he cried, seizing his friend by the arm, as if they were ready to go that instant. "Let's go! We'll have the grandest trip you ever heard about!"

  But Joel, laughing his radiant soundless laugh, and shaking his head with gentle but inflexible denial, said:

  "No, Eugene! . . . Not for me! . . . I can't do it! I'm going to stay right here and keep on with the work I'm doing . . . Besides," he added gravely, "Mums needs me. No one knows what's going to happen here in the family," he said quietly--"I mean--that thing tonight--you saw--about Mums and Pups"--he said with painful difficulty. The other nodded, and Joel concluded simply: "I've got to stay." For a moment he was silent, and suddenly the other youth noticed something starved and lonely, and almost desperately forsaken and resigned, that he had never observed in the boy's gaunt face and eyes before, and when Joel spoke again, although there was a faint smile on his face, there was something old and sad and weary in his voice that the other youth had never heard before. He said quietly: