Thomas Wolfe - Thomas Wolfe - Of Time and the River, You Can't Go Home Again & Look Homeward, Angel

The Christmas was gray and chill. Helen was not there to give it warmth. Gant and Eliza felt the depression of her absence. Ben came and went like a ghost. Luke was not coming home. And he himself was sick with shame and loss.

He did not know where to turn. He paced his chill room at night, muttering, until Eliza’s troubled face appeared above her wrapper. His father was gentler, older than he had ever seen him; his pain had returned on him. He was absent and sorrowful. He talked perfunctorily with his son about college. Speech choked in Eugene’s throat. He stammered a few answers and fled from the house and the vacant fear in Gant’s eyes. He walked prodigiously, day and night, in an effort to command his own fear. He believed himself to be rotting with a leprosy. And there was nothing to do but rot. There was no cure. For such had been the instruction of the moralists of his youth.

He walked with aimless desperation, unable to quiet for a moment his restless limbs. He went up on the eastern hills that rose behind Niggertown. A winter’s sun labored through the mist. Low on the meadows, and high on the hills, the sunlight lay on the earth like milk.

He stood looking. A shaft of hope cut through the blackness of his spirit. I will go to my brother, he thought.

He found Ben still in bed at Woodson Street, smoking. He closed the door, then spun wildly about as if caged.

“In God’s name!” Ben cried angrily. “Have you gone crazy? What’s wrong with you?”

“I’m — I’m sick!” he gasped.

“What’s the matter? Where’ve you been?” asked Ben sharply. He sat up in bed.

“I’ve been with a woman,” said Eugene.

“Sit down, ‘Gene,” said Ben quietly, after a moment. “Don’t be a little idiot. You’re not going to die, you know. When did this happen?”

The boy blurted out his confession.

Ben got up and put on his clothes.

“Come on,” said he, “we’ll go to see McGuire.”

As they walked townward, he tried to talk, explaining himself in babbling incoherent spurts.

“It was like this,” he began, “if I had known, but at that time I didn’t — of course I know it was my own fault for —”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” said Ben impatiently. “Dry up! I don’t want to hear about it. I’m not your damned Guardian Angel.”

The news was comforting. So many people, after our fall from grace, are.

They mounted to the wide dark corridor of the Doctors’ and Surgeons’, with its sharp excitement of medical smells. McGuire’s anteroom was empty. Ben rapped at the inner door. McGuire opened it: he pulled away the wet cigarette that was plastered on his heavy lip, to greet them.

“Hello, Ben. Hello, son!” he barked, seeing Eugene. “When’d you get back?”

“He thinks he’s dying of galloping consumption, McGuire,” said Ben, with a jerk of the head. “You may be able to do something to prolong his life.”

“What’s the matter, son?” said McGuire.

Eugene gulped dryly, craning his livid face.

“If you don’t mind,” he croaked. “See you alone.” He turned desperately upon his brother. “You stay here. Don’t want you with me.”

“I don’t want to go with you,” said Ben surlily. “I’ve got troubles enough of my own.”

Eugene followed McGuire’s burly figure into the office; McGuire closed the door, and sat down heavily at his littered desk.

“Sit down, son,” he commanded, “and tell me about it.” He lit a cigarette and stuck it deftly on his sag wet lip. He glanced keenly at the boy, noting his contorted face.

“Take your time, son,” he said kindly, “and control yourself. Whatever it is, it’s probably not as bad as you think.”

“It was this way,” Eugene began in a low voice. “I’ve made a mistake. I know that. I’m willing to take my medicine. I’m not making any excuses for what has happened,” his voice rose sharply; he got half-way out of his chair, and began to pound fiercely upon the untidy desk. “I’m putting the blame on no one. Do you understand that?”

McGuire turned a bloated bewildered face slowly upon his patient. His wet cigarette sagged comically from his half-opened mouth.

“Do I understand what?” he said. “See here, ‘Gene: what the hell are you driving at? I’m no Sherlock Holmes, you know. I’m your doctor. Spit it out.”

“What I’ve done,” he said dramatically, “thousands have done. Oh, I know they may pretend not to. But they do! You’re a doctor — you know that. People high-up in society, too. I’m one of the unlucky ones. I got caught. Why am I any worse than they are? Why —” he continued rhetorically.

“I think I catch your drift,” said McGuire dryly. “Let’s have a look, son.”

Eugene obeyed feverishly, still declaiming.

“Why should I bear the stigma for what others get away with? Hypocrites — a crowd of damned, dirty, whining hypocrites, that’s what they are. The Double–Standard! Hah! Where’s the justice, where’s the honor of that? Why should I be blamed for what people in High Society —”

McGuire lifted his big head from its critical stare, and barked comically.

“Who’s blaming you? You don’t think you’re the first one who ever had this sort of trouble, do you? There’s nothing wrong with you, anyway.”

“Can — can you cure me?” Eugene asked.

“No. You’re incurable, son!” said McGuire. He scrawled a few hieroglyphics on a prescription pad. “Give this to the druggist,” he said, “and be a little more careful hereafter of the company you keep. People in High Society, eh?” he grinned. “So that’s where you’ve been?”

The great weight of blood and tears had lifted completely out of the boy’s heart, leaving him dizzily buoyant, wild, half-conscious only of his rushing words.

He opened the door and went into the outer room. Ben got up quickly and nervously.

“Well,” he said, “how much longer has he got to live?” Seriously, in a low voice, he added: “There’s nothing wrong with him, is there?”

“No,” said McGuire, “I think he’s a little off his nut. But, then, you all are.”

When they came out on the street again, Ben said:

“Have you had anything to eat?”

“No,” said Eugene.

“When did you eat last?”

“Some time yesterday,” said Eugene. “I don’t remember.”

“You damned fool!” Ben muttered. “Come on — let’s eat.”

The idea became very attractive. The world was washed pleasantly in the milky winter sunshine. The town, under the stimulus of the holidays and the returning students, had wakened momentarily from its winter torpor: warm brisk currents of life seethed over the pavements. He walked along at Ben’s side with a great bounding stride, unable to govern the expanding joy that rose yeastily in him. Finally, as he turned in on the busy avenue, he could restrain himself no longer: he leaped high in the air, with a yelp of ecstasy:

“Squee-ee!”

“You little idiot!” Ben cried sharply. “Are you crazy!”

He scowled fiercely, then turned to the roaring passersby, with a thin smile.

“Hang on to him, Ben!” yelled Jim Pollock. He was a deadly little man, waxen and smiling under a black mustache, the chief compositor, a Socialist.

“If you cut off his damned big feet,” said Ben, “he’d go up like a balloon.”

They went into the big new lunch-room and sat at one of the tables.

“What’s yours?” said the waiter.

“A cup of coffee and a piece of mince pie,” said Ben.

“I’ll take the same,” said Eugene.

“Eat!” said Ben fiercely. “Eat!”

Eugene studied the card thoughtfully.

“Bring me some veal cutlets breaded with tomato sauce,” he said, “with a side-order of hash-brown potatoes, a dish of creamed carrots and peas, and a plate of hot biscuits. Also a cup of coffee.”