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

Spring lay abroad through all the garden of this world. Beyond the hills the land bayed out to other hills, to golden cities, to rich meadows, to deep forests, to the sea. Forever and forever.

Beyond the hills were the mines of King Solomon, the toy republics of Central America, and little tinkling fountains in a court; beyond, the moonlit roofs of Bagdad, the little grated blinds of Samarkand, the moonlit camels of Bythinia, the Spanish ranch-house of the Triple Z, and J. B. Montgomery and his lovely daughter stepping from their private car upon a western track; and the castle-haunted crags of Graustark; the fortune-yielding casino of Monte Carlo; and the blue eternal Mediterranean, mother of empires. And instant wealth ticked out upon a tape, and the first stage of the Eiffel Tower where the restaurant was, and Frenchmen setting fire to their whiskers, and a farm in Devon, white cream, brown ale, the winter’s chimney merriment, and Lorna Doone; and the hanging gardens of Babylon, and supper in the sunset with the queens, and the slow slide of the barge upon the Nile, or the wise rich bodies of Egyptian women couched on moonlit balustrades, and the thunder of the chariots of great kings, and tomb-treasure sought at midnight, and the wine-rich chateau land of France, and calico warm legs in hay.

Upon a field in Thrace Queen Helen lay, her lovely body dappled in the sun.

Meanwhile, business had been fairly good. Eliza’s earning power the first few years at Dixieland had been injured by her illnesses. Now, however, she had recovered, and had paid off the last installment on the house. It was entirely hers. The property at this time was worth perhaps $12,000. In addition she had borrowed $3,500 on a twenty-year $5,000 life insurance policy that had only two years more to run, and had made extensive alterations: she had added a large sleeping-porch upstairs, tacked on two rooms, a bath, and a hallway on one side, and extended a hallway, adding three bedrooms, two baths, and a water-closet, on the other. Downstairs she had widened the veranda, put in a large sun-parlor under the sleeping-porch, knocked out the archway in the dining-room, which she prepared to use as a big bedroom in the slack season, scooped out a small pantry in which the family was to eat, and added a tiny room beside the kitchen for her own occupancy.

The construction was after her own plans, and of the cheapest material: it never lost the smell of raw wood, cheap varnish, and flimsy rough plastering, but she had added eight or ten rooms at a cost of only $3,000. The year before she had banked almost $2,000 — her bank account was almost $5,000. In addition, she owned jointly with Gant the shop on the Square, which had thirty feet of frontage, and was valued at $20,000, from which he got $65 a month in rent; $20 from Jannadeau, $25 from the McLean Plumbing Company in the basement, and $20 from the J. N. Gillespie Printing Co., which occupied all of the second story. There were, besides, three good building-lots on Merrion Avenue valued at $2,000 apiece, or at $5,500 for all three; the house on Woodson Street valued at $5,000; 110 acres of wooded mountainside with a farm-house, several hundred peach, apple and cherry trees, and a few acres of arable ground for which Gant received $120 a year in rent, and which they valued at $50 an acre, $5,500; two houses, one on Carter Street, and one on Duncan, rented to railway people, for which they received $25 a month apiece, and which they valued together at $4,500; forty-eight acres of land two miles above Biltburn, and four from Altamont, upon the important Reynoldsville Road, which they valued at $210 an acre, or $10,000; three houses in Niggertown — one on lower Valley Street, one on Beaumont Crescent, just below the negro Johnson’s big house, and one on Short Oak, valued at $600, $900, and $1,600 respectively, and drawing a room-rental of $8, $12, and $17 a month (total: $3,100 and $37 rental); two houses across the river, four miles away in West Altamont, valued at $2,750 and at $3,500, drawing a rental of $22 and $30 a month; three lots, lost in the growth of a rough hillside, a mile from the main highway through West Altamont, $500; and a house, unoccupied, object of Gantian anathema, on Lower Hatton Avenue, $4,500.

In addition, Gant held 10 shares, which were already worth $200 each ($2,000), in the newly organized Fidelity Bank; his stock of stones, monuments, and fly-specked angels represented an investment of $2,700, although he could not have sold them outright for so much; and he had about $3,000 deposited in the Fidelity, the Merchants, and the Battery Hill banks.

Thus, at the beginning of 1912, before the rapid and intensive development of Southern industry, and the consequent tripling of Altamont’s population, and before the multiplication of her land values, the wealth of Gant and Eliza amounted to about $100,000, the great bulk of which was solidly founded in juicy well chosen pieces of property of Eliza’s selection, yielding them a monthly rental of more than $200, which, added to their own earning capacities at the shop and Dixieland, gave them a combined yearly income of $8,000 or $10,000. Although Gant often cried out bitterly against his business and declared, when he was not attacking property, that he had never made even a bare living from his tombstones, he was rarely short of ready money: he usually had one or two small commissions from country people, and he always carried a well-filled purse, containing $150 or $200 in five — and ten-dollar bills, which he allowed Eugene to count out frequently, enjoying his son’s delight, and the feel of abundance.

Eliza had suffered one or two losses in her investments, led astray by a strain of wild romanticism which destroyed for the moment her shrewd caution. She invested $1,200 in the Missouri Utopia of a colonizer, and received nothing for her money but a weakly copy of the man’s newspaper, several beautiful prospectuses of the look of things when finished, and a piece of clay sculpture, eight inches in height, showing Big Brother with his little sisters Jenny and Kate, the last with thumb in her mouth.

“By God,” said Gant, who made savage fun of the proceeding, “she ought to have it on her nose.”

And Ben sneered, jerking his head toward it, saying:

“There’s her $1,200.”

But Eliza was preparing to go on by herself. She saw that cooperation with Gant in the purchase of land was becoming more difficult each year. And with something like pain, something assuredly like hunger, she saw various rich plums fall into other hands or go unbought. She realized that in a very short time land values would soar beyond her present means. And she proposed to be on hand when the pie was cut.

Across the street from Dixieland was the Brunswick, a well-built red brick house of twenty rooms. The marble facings had been done by Gant himself twenty years before, the hardwood floors and oak timbering by Will Pentland. It was an ugly gabled Victorian house, the marriage gift of a rich Northerner to his daughter, who died of tuberculosis.

“Not a better built house in town,” said Gant.

Nevertheless he refused to buy it with Eliza, and with an aching heart she saw it go to St. Greenberg, the rich junk-man, for $8,500. Within a year he had sold off five lots at the back, on the Yancy Street side, for $1,000 each, and was holding the house for $20,000.

“We could have had our money back by now three times over,” Eliza fretted.

She did not have enough money at the time for any important investment. She saved and she waited.

Will Pentland’s fortune at this time was vaguely estimated at from $500,000 to $700,000. It was mainly in property, a great deal of which was situated — warehouses and buildings — near the passenger depot of the railway.

Sometimes Altamont people, particularly the young men who loafed about Collister’s drug-store, and who spent long dreamy hours estimating the wealth of the native plutocracy, called Will Pentland a millionaire. At this time it was a distinction in American life to be a millionaire. There were only six or eight thousand. But Will Pentland wasn’t one. He was really worth only a half million.