by Thomas Wolfe
"education for the good life," seemed to boil down in practice to a non-drinking, non-smoking, non-gambling, non-card-playing, non-fornicating state of single blessedness, leading up eventually to "the life of service and of leadership for which Pine Rock prepares a man"--namely, the eventual sacrament of matrimony with a spotless female, variously referred to in the lexicon of idealism as "a fine woman," or "a pure, sweet girl."
"An intelligent and liberal interest in the affairs of government and politics" seemed to mean supporting the Democratic or Republican tickets and voting for the candidates which the political machines that dominated these two parties put up at election time.
"A serious and enlightened attitude towards religion" did not mean hide-bound fundamentalism, for Pine Rock under its idealistic president prided itself on the liberalism of its thought. God, for example, might be understood as "a great idea," or "an ocean of consciousness," instead of the usual old gentleman with the long beard--but one went to church on Sunday just the same.
In fact, in spite of all this high-sounding talk about "service,"
"ideals of leadership," and "democracy," one could not see that it made much actual difference in the way things were. Children still worked four teen hours a day in the cotton mills of the state. Tens of thousands of men and women and children were born, suffered, lived, and died in damnable poverty, bondage, and the exploitation of the tenant farm.
One million black inhabitants of the state, about a third of the entire population, were still denied the rights of free suffrage--even though "the second greatest man since Jesus Christ" frequently declared that that right was one of the proudest triumphs of Anglo-Saxon law, and of the nation's own great Constitution. One million black inhabitants of the state were denied the right to the blessings of the higher education--although "the second greatest man since Jesus Christ" often declared that it was for this ideal that Pine Rock College lived and had its being, and that the right of education would be denied to no fit person at old Pine Rock, "regardless of creed, color, race, or other distinction of any kind whatsoever." In spite of the sounding phrases, the idealism, the martyred look, the inspired assurances, and all the rest of it, life went on according to the old formula, and in the old way, pretty much as it had always done. Class after class of pure young idealists marched forth from Pine Rock bearing the torch, prepared to bare their breasts and to die nobly, if necessary, at the barricades, no matter what sinister influences menaced them, or what overwhelming forces out numbered them--in defense of monogamy, matrimony, pure sweet women, children, the Baptist Church, the Constitution, and the splendid ideals of the Democratic and Republican parties; aye, resolved furthermore, if they were challenged, so great was this, their devotion to the right, to die there at the barricades in the defense of the splendid institution of child labor, cotton mills, tenant farmers, poverty, misery, squalor, damnation, death, and all the rest of it--rather than recant for a moment, be recreant for a single second to the pure ideals that had been fostered in them, the shining star of conduct to which their youthful gaze had been directed by "the second greatest man since Jesus Christ."
And in the idolatry of this reverence, Gerald Alsop, like his distinguished predecessor, Adhem, led all the rest.
"The third greatest man since Jesus Christ" was a clergyman, pastor of the Pine Rock Episcopal Church, affectionately known to the boys as "Preacher" Reed. It was a name he had encouraged them to use himself. In a way, Jerry Alsop always looked upon Preacher as one of his own private discoveries. He certainly regarded him as another proof of his own liberalism, for Pine Rock was admittedly and professionally Baptist in its sympathies, but Jerry had been big enough to leap across the wall of orthodoxy and to fold the new Messiah to his breast.
Not that Preacher would not have done very nicely for himself had he been left solely to his own devices. For his own devices were unusual ones. To the boys they seemed at first amazing, then sensational, finally enchanting--until there was hardly a student in the college who had not enthusiastically succumbed to them.
At the outset, one would have said that the odds were a thousand to one against Preacher's getting anywhere. He was an Episcopalian--no one seemed to know quite what that was, but it sounded risky. He had just a little church, and almost no congregation. In addition to this, he was "a Northern man." The situation looked hopeless, and yet before six months were out Preacher had the whole campus eating from his hand, and black looks and angry mutterings from every other preacher in the town.
No one knew exactly how he did it; he went about it all so quietly that the thing was done before they knew that it was done. But prob ably the greatest asset that he had was that from the very beginning no one thought of him as a preacher. And the proof of this was that they called him one. They would not have dared to take such liberties with any other clergyman in town. Besides this, Preacher didn't preach to them; he didn't sermonize in hour-long harangues; he didn't pray for them in twenty-minute invocations; he did not thunder at them from the pulpit, nor did he work all the stops upon his ministerial vocal chords: he did not coo like a dove, roar like a lion, or bleat like a lamb. He had a trick worth six or eight of these.
He began to drop in to see the boys in their rooms. There was some thing so casual and so friendly in his visits that he put everyone at ease at once. In the most pleasant way he managed to convey to them that he was one of them. He was a well-conditioned man of fifty years, with sandy hair, and a lean face that had great dignity, but also a quality that was very friendly and attractive. In addition to this, he dressed in rather casual-looking clothes--rough, shaggy tweeds, grey flannel trousers, thick-soled shoes--all somewhat worn-looking, but making the boys wish vaguely that they knew where he got them, and wonder if they could get some like them. He would come by and sing out cheerfully: "Working? I'll not stay if you are. I was just passing by."
At this, there would be an instant scraping of chairs, the scramble of feet, and a chorus of voices assuring him most earnestly that no one was working, and would he please sit down.
Upon receiving these assurances, he would sit down, tossing his hat as he did so upon the top tier of the double-decker cot, tilt back comfortably against the wall in an old creaking chair, one foot hinged on the bottom round, and produce his pipe--a blackened old briar that seemed to have been seasoned in the forge of Vulcan--load it with fragrant tobacco from an oil--skin pouch, strike a match, and begin to puff contentedly, speaking in between the puffs: "Now I--I--like--a pipe!"--puff, puff--"You--younger--blades"- puff, puff--"can--have--your--cigarettes"--puff, puff, puff--"but as for me"--he puffed vigorously for a moment--"there's--nothing--that- can--give me"--puff, puff, puff--"quite the comfort--of this--old- briar--pipe!"
Oh, the gusto of it! The appeasement of it! The deep, fragrant, pungent, and soul-filling contentment of it! Could anyone think that such a man as this would fail? Or doubt that within a week half the boys would be smoking pipes?
So Preacher would have got along anyway without Jerry Alsop's help, and yet Jerry surely played a part in it. It was Jerry who had largely inaugurated the series of friendly meetings in students' rooms, in which Preacher took the leading and most honored role. Preacher, in fact, was one of those men who at the time were so busily engaged in the work of "relating the Church to modern life"--in his own more pungent phrase, of "bringing God to the campus." His methods of doing so were, as Jerry said, "perfectly delightful."
"Christ," Preacher would begin in one of those charming gatherings in student rooms, which found eight or ten eager youths sprawled around the floor in various postures, a half-dozen more perched up on the rickety tiers of a double-decker cot, a few more hanging out the windows, eagerly drinking in the whole pungent brew of wit, of humor, of good-natured practicality, life, and Christianity, through shifting planes of pipe and cigarette smoke--"'Christ," Preacher would continue, puffing on his pipe in that delightfully whimsical way of his, "was a fellow who never made a Six in philosophy. He was
a fellow who started out on the scrub team, and wound up playing quarter back on the Varsity. But if He'd had to go on playing with the scrubs"--this was thrown out perhaps, as a kind of sop of encouragement to certain potentially permanent scrubs who might be within the range of hearing--"if Christ had had to go on playing with the scrubs, why," said Preacher Reed, "He would have made a go of it. You see"--here he puffed thoughtfully on his seasoned pipe for a moment-
"the point is, fellows--that's the thing I want you to understand-
Christ was a fellow who always made a go of everything. Now Paul"- for a moment more Preacher puffed meditatively on his blackened briar, and then, chuckling suddenly in his delightful way, he shook his head and cried--"now Paul! Ah-hah-hah--that's a different story!
Paul was a bird of a different feather! There's a horse of quite another color! Paul was a fellow who flunked out."
By this time the eager young faces were fairly hanging on these inspired words.
" Paul was a fellow who started out on the scrub team, and should have stayed there," said Preacher Reed. "But he couldn't stand the gaff!
He was eating his heart out all the time because he couldn't make the Varsity--and when there was a vacancy--when they needed a new quarterback, because, you see, fellows," said Preacher quietly, "the Old One had died"--he paused for a moment to let this subtle bit sink in-
"they put Paul in his place. And he couldn't make the grade! He simply couldn't make the grade. And in the end--what did he do?
Well, fellows, I'll tell you," said Preacher. "When he found he couldn't make the grade--he invented a new game. The old one was too tough.
Paul couldn't play it--it was too much for him! And so he invented a new one he could play--and that's where Paul flunked out. You see, fellows, Paul was a fellow who made a Six where Christ always made a One. That's the whole difference between them," Preacher said with the easy and informative manner of "Now it can be told," and then was silent for a moment, sucking vigorously and reflectively on his old briar pipe.
"In othah words, Preachah," Jerry, who had made a One in Logic and was accounted no slouch himself in the Hegelian metaphysic, now took respectful advantage of the silence that had fallen--"in othah words, Paul was a man who was defeated by his own Moment of Negation. He failed to absawb it."
"Exactly, Jerry!" Preacher cried out instantly and heartily, with the manner of one saying, "You take the words right out of my mouth!"-
"That's it exactly! Paul was a man who got licked by his own Moment of Negation. He couldn't absorb it. When he found himself among the scrubs, he didn't want to play. Instead of using his Moment of Negation--realizing that the Moment of Negation is really the greatest friend and ally that a man can have--Paul let it get him down. He flunked. Now, Christ," Preacher went on, paused a moment to suck reflectively at his pipe, and then abruptly--"You see, fellows, that's the Whole Thing about Jesus. Christ never flunked. He always made his One. It was first down with him every time whether he was playing with the scrubs or with the Varsity. He was just as happy playing with one side as with the other. It didn't matter to Him where he played... and if Christ had been there," Preacher Reed went on, "everything would have been all right, no matter where He played."
And again Preacher puffed vigorously on his pipe before he spoke: "You see, Jesus would have kept Paul from making that Six. He'd have said to him, 'Now, see here, Paul, if you want to play quarterback on the Varsity, that's all right with Me. It doesn't matter to Me where I play--all I'm interested in is the Game.'" Preacher paused here just perceptibly to let this sink in. "'I'd just as lief--'" Preacher was noted for his gift of homely phrase--"'I'd just as lief play with the scrubs as with the Varsity. So let's change places if you want to. The only thing, Paul, let's have a good Game.'" Preacher puffed a moment. "'Lets play according to the rules.'" He puffed again. "'You may think you can change them, Paul--but, uh-uh, no you can't--ah-hah-hah--'" again Preacher shook his head with a sharp, short movement, with a sharp, short laugh--"'you can't do it, Paul. It won't work. You can't change the rules. That's not playing the Game. If the rules are changed, Paul, that's not up to us--that's up to Someone Else--so let's all get together now, no matter which team we're on, and play the game the way it should be played.'... But," his fine lean face was grave now, he paused and sucked his pipe a moment longer--then: "that didn't happen, did it?... Alas, alas, the real Quarterback was gone!"
And in the awed hush that followed, he knocked his pipe out smartly on his heel, then straightened briskly, and got up, saying jauntily: "Well! So silent, gentlemen? Come, come! For lusty fellows of our kidney this is very sad!"
So signified, the whole gathering would break up in general discussion, excited voices, laughter, young figures shifting through the smoke, plates of sandwiches, and lemonade. And in the center of it all stood Preacher Reed, his spare figure splendidly erect, his lean face finely and attentively aware, the clamor of the younger voices broken by his deeper resonance, his sandy and engaging warmth, the jolly brevity of his short and sudden laugh. And like moths infatuated by a shining light, all these moving and gesticulating groups would return inevitably to the magic ring of which he was himself the center.
Monk didn't know what it was, but they all felt happy and elated and excited and raised up and inspired, and liberal and enlightened and in touch with life and the high truth; and getting at last what they had come to college for.
As for Jerry Alsop, he was simply content to wait and watch, his fat chuckle sounding out occasionally from one corner of the room, where he, too, would be engaged in conversation with a group of freshmen, and yet betraying just perceptibly, by the shadow of a little smile, a little moisture in the eye, an occasional quiet but observant glance out towards the center of the room, that he knew his beloved master was still there and functioning, and that this was all the glory he himself could ask.
And as Alsop would himself say later, when the last reluctant foot steps died away, and there were the last "good nights" upon the cam pus, and he stood there in the now deserted room, polishing his misty glasses, and a little husky in the throat: "... It was puffectly delightful! Puffectly God-damned delightful!
Yes, suh! That's the only word for it!"
And it was.
12
The Torch
ALSOP HAD TAKEN MONK WEBBER UNDER HIS PROTECTIVE WING WHEN the younger boy had arrived at Pine Rock in his freshman year, and for a period the association between them was pretty close. The younger one had quickly become a member of the coterie of devoted freshmen who clustered about their leader like chicks around a mother hen. For some months, definitely he was sealed of the tribe of Alsop.
Evidences of what journalists call a "rift" began to appear, however, before the end of the first year--began to appear when the younger student began to look around him and ask questions of this small but new and comparatively liberal world in which, for the first time in his life, he began to feel himself untrammeled, free, the beginning of a man. The questions multiplied themselves furiously.
Monk had heard the president of the college, the late Hunter Gris wold McCoy, described by Alsop not only as "the second greatest man since Jesus Christ," but as a thinker and philosopher of the first water, a speaker of the most eloquent persuasion, and the master of a literary style which, along with that of Woodrow Wilson, by which he was undoubtedly strongly influenced, was unsurpassed in the whole range of English literature. Now, having, as most boys of that age do have, a very active and questioning mind, he began to feel distinctly uncomfortable when Alsop said these things, to squirm uneasily in his chair, to keep silence, or to mumble respectful agreements, while all the time he asked himself rather desperately what was wrong with him. Because, the truth of the matter was that "the second greatest man since Jesus Christ" bored him passionately, even at the tender age of seventeen.
And as for that triumphant style which Alsop assured him was practically unsurpassed in the whole field of English letters, he had
made repeated attempts to read it and digest it--it had been fittingly embalmed in a volume which bore the title of Democracy and Leader ship--and he simply could not get through it. As for the famous Chapel talks, which were considered masterpieces of simple eloquence and gems of philosophy, he hated them. He would rather have taken a bitter laxative than sit through one of them; but sit through them he did, hundreds of times, and endured them, until he came to have a positive dislike for Hunter Griswold McCoy. His pale, pure face, some what gaunt and emaciated, a subtle air he conveyed always of bearing some deep, secret sorrow, and of suffering in some subtle, complicated way for humanity, began to afflict Monk with a sensation that was akin to, and in fact was scarcely distinguishable from, the less acute stages of nausea. And when Alsop assured him, and the rest of the reverent clique, that Hunter Griswold McCoy was and had always been "as pure and sweet as a fine, sweet gul--yes, suh!"--his dislike for Hunter Griswold McCoy became miserably acute. He disliked him because Hunter Griswold McCoy made him feel so unworthy, like the bird that fouls its own nest, and because he felt miserably and doggedly that there must be something monstrously wicked and base and per verse in his own life if he could not see the shining virtue of this perfect man, and because he realized that he could never be in any way like him.
In addition to this, the glittering phrases of Hunter Griswold McCoy, which, Alsop assured him, were not only pearls of eloquence and poetry, but the very sounding board of life itself--and that whoever was fortunate enough to hear one of these Chapel talks was not only being told about truth and reality, but was given a kind of magic pass key to the whole mystery of life and the complex problem of humanity which he could use forevermore--well, Monk sat miserably in his seat in Chapel day after day and week after week, and the blunt and bitter truth was, he could make nothing out of it. If the wine of life was here, he squeezed the grape desperately, and it shattered in his fingers like a rusty pod. "Democracy and leadership,"