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

Tears flowed quietly from Margaret Leonard’s eyes. Her face was wet. She could not speak. They were all deeply moved.

“She won’t go,” said John Dorsey Leonard. “We’ll have a word to say to that! She won’t go! You wait!”

In Eugene’s fantasy there burned the fixed vision of the great hands clasped across the sea, the flowering of green fields, and the developing convolutions of a faery London — mighty, elfin, old, a romantic labyrinth of ancient crowded ways, tall, leaning houses, Lucullan food and drink, and the mad imperial eyes of genius burning among the swarm of quaint originality.

As the war developed, and the literature of war-enchantment began to appear, Margaret Leonard gave him book after book to read. They were the books of the young men — the young men who fought to blot out the evil of the world with their blood. In her trembling voice she read to him Rupert Brooke’s sonnet —“If I should die, think only this of me”— and she put a copy of Donald Hankey’s A Student in Arms into his hand, saying:

“Read this, boy. It will stir you as you’ve never been stirred before. Those boys have seen the vision!”

He read it. He read many others. He saw the vision. He became a member of this legion of chivalry — young Galahad–Eugene — a spearhead of righteousness. He had gone a-Grailing. He composed dozens of personal memoirs, into which quietly, humorously, with fine-tempered English restraint, he poured the full measure of his pure crusading heart. Sometimes, he came through to the piping times of peace minus an arm, a leg, or an eye, diminished but ennobled; sometimes his last radiant words were penned on the eve of the attack that took his life. With glistening eyes, he read his own epilogue, enjoyed his post-mortem glory, as his last words were recorded and explained by his editor. Then, witness of his own martyrdom, he dropped two smoking tears upon his young slain body. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

Ben loped along, scowling, by Wood’s pharmacy. As he passed the idling group at the tiled entrance, he cast on them a look of sudden fierce contempt. Then he laughed quietly, savagely.

“Oh, my God!” he said.

At the corner, scowling, he waited for Mrs. Pert to cross from the Post Office. She came over slowly, reeling.

Having arranged to meet her later in the pharmacy, he crossed over, and turned angularly down Federal Street behind the Post Office. At the second entrance to the Doctors’ and Surgeons’ Building, he turned in, and began to mount the dark creaking stairs. Somewhere, with punctual developing monotony, a single drop of water was falling into the wet black basin of a sink. He paused in the wide corridor of the first floor to control the nervous thudding of his heart. Then he walked half-way down and entered the waiting-room of Dr. J. H. Coker. It was vacant. Frowning, he sniffed the air. The whole building was sharp with the clean nervous odor of antiseptics. A litter of magazines — Life, Judge, The Literary Digest, and The American — on the black mission table, told its story of weary and distressed fumbling. The inner door opened and the doctor’s assistant, Miss Ray, came out. She had on her hat. She was ready to depart.

“Do you want to see the doctor?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Ben, “is he busy?”

“Come on in, Ben,” said Coker, coming to the door. He took his long wet cigar from his mouth, grinning yellowly. “That’s all for today, Laura. You can go.”

“Good-bye,” said Miss Laura Ray, departing.

Ben went into Coker’s office. Coker closed the door and sat down at his untidy desk.

“You’ll be more comfortable if you lie down on that table,” he said grinning.

Ben gave the doctor’s table a look of nausea.

“How many have died on that thing?” he asked. He sat down nervously in a chair by the desk, and lighted a cigarette, holding the flame to the charred end of cigar Coker thrust forward.

“Well, what can I do for you, son?” he asked.

“I’m tired of pushing daisies here,” said Ben. “I want to push them somewhere else.”

“What do you mean, Ben?”

“I suppose you’ve heard, Coker,” said Ben quietly and insultingly, “that there’s a war going on in Europe. That is, if you’ve learned to read the papers.”

“No, I hadn’t heard about it, son,” said Coker, puffing slowly and deeply. “I read a paper — the one that comes out in the morning. I suppose they haven’t got the news yet.” He grinned maliciously. “What do you want, Ben?”

“I’m thinking of going to Canada and enlisting,” said Ben. “I want you to tell me if I can get in.”

Coker was silent a moment. He took the long chewed weed from his mouth and looked at it thoughtfully.

“What do you want to do that for, Ben?” he said.

Ben got up suddenly, and went to the window. He cast his cigarette away into the court. It struck the cement well with a small dry plop. When he turned around, his sallow face had gone white and passionate.

“In Christ’s name, Coker,” he said, “what’s it all about? Are you able to tell me? What in heaven’s name are we here for? You’re a doctor — you ought to know something.”

Coker continued to look at his cigar. It had gone out again.

“Why?” he said deliberately. “Why should I know anything?”

“Where do we come from? Where do we go to? What are we here for? What the hell is it all about?” Ben cried out furiously in a rising voice. He turned bitterly, accusingly, on the older man. “For God’s sake, speak up, Coker. Don’t sit there like a damned tailor’s dummy. Say something, won’t you?”

“What do you want me to say?” said Coker. “What am I? a mindreader? A spiritualist? I’m your physician, not your priest. I’ve seen them born, and I’ve seen them die. What happens to them before or after, I can’t say.”

“Damn that!” said Ben. “What happens to them in between?”

“You’re as great an authority on that as I am, Ben,” said Coker. “What you want, son, is not a doctor, but a prophet.”

“They come to you when they’re sick, don’t they?” said Ben. “They all want to get well, don’t they? You do your best to cure them, don’t you?”

“No,” said Coker. “Not always. But I’ll grant that I’m supposed to. What of it?”

“You must all think that it’s about something,” said Ben, “or you wouldn’t do it!”

“A man must live, mustn’t he?” said Coker with a grin.

“That’s what I’m asking you, Coker. Why must he?”

“Why,” said Coker, “in order to work nine hours a day in a newspaper office, sleep nine hours, and enjoy the other six in washing, shaving, dressing, eating at the Greasy Spoon, loafing in front of Wood’s, and occasionally taking the Merry Widow to see Francis X. Bushman. Isn’t that reason enough for any man? If a man’s hard-working and decent, and invests his money in the Building and Loan every week, instead of squandering it on cigarettes, coca-cola, and Kuppenheimer clothes, he may own a little home some day.” Coker’s voice sank to a hush of reverence. “He may even have his own car, Ben. Think of that! He can get in it, and ride, and ride, and ride. He can ride all over these damned mountains. He can be very, very happy. He can take exercise regularly in the Y. M. C. A. and think only clean thoughts. He can marry a good pure woman and have any number of fine sons and daughters, all of whom may be brought up in the Baptist, Methodist, or Presbyterian faiths, and given splendid courses in Economics, Commercial Law, and the Fine Arts, at the State university. There’s plenty to live for, Ben. There’s something to keep you busy every moment.”

“You’re a great wit, Coker,” Ben said, scowling. “You’re as funny as a crutch.” He straightened his humped shoulders self-consciously, and filled his lungs with air.