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

Then he lifted his beet-red face, and whispered tremulously, not knowing well what he said:

“You’re a nice girl, Louise. A pretty girl.”

She thrust her pink fingers slowly through his hair, drew back his face into her breasts again, moaned softly as he kissed her, and clutched his hair in an aching grip. He put his arms around her and drew her to him. They devoured each other with young wet kisses, insatiate, unhappy, trying to grow together in their embrace, draw out the last distillation of desire in a single kiss.

He lay sprawled, scattered and witless with passion, unable to collect and focus his heat. He heard the wild tongueless cries of desire, the inchoate ecstasy that knows no gateway of release. But he knew fear — not the social fear, but the fear of ignorance, of discovery. He feared his potency. He spoke to her thickly, wildly, not hearing himself speak.

“Do you want me to? Do you want me to, Louise?”

She drew his face down, murmuring:

“You won’t hurt me, ‘Gene? You wouldn’t do anything to hurt me, honey? If anything happens —” she said drowsily.

He seized the straw of her suggestion.

“I won’t be the first. I won’t be the one to begin you. I’ve never started a girl off,” he babbled, aware vaguely that he was voicing an approved doctrine of chivalry. “See here, Louise!” he shook her — she seemed drugged. “You’ve got to tell me before —. I won’t do THAT! I may be a bad fellow, but nobody can say I ever did that. Do you hear!” His voice rose shrilly; his face worked wildly; he was hardly able to speak.

“I say, do you hear? Am I the first one, or not? You’ve got to answer! Did you ever — before?”

She looked at him lazily. She smiled.

“No,” she said.

“I may be mad, but I won’t do that.” He had become inarticulate; his voice went off into a speechless jargon. Gasping, stammering, with contorted and writhing face, he sought for speech.

She rose suddenly, and put her warm arms comfortingly around him. Soothing and caressing him, she drew him down on her breast. She stroked his head, and talked quietly to him.

“I know you wouldn’t, honey. I know you wouldn’t. Don’t talk. Don’t say anything. Why, you’re all excited, dear. There. Why, you’re shaking like a leaf. You’re high-strung, honey. That’s what it is. You’re a bundle of nerves.”

He wept soundlessly into her arm.

He became quieter. She smiled, and kissed him softly.

“Put on your clothes,” said Louise. “We ought to get started if we’re going out there.”

In his confusion he tried to draw on a pair of Mrs. Bowden’s cast-off pumps. Louise laughed richly, and thrust her fingers through his hair.

At the Navy Yard, they could not find the Bowdens nor Max Isaacs. A young sailor took them over a destroyer. Louise went up a railed iron ladder with an emphatic rhythm of her shapely thighs. She showed her legs. She stared impudently at a picture of a chorus lady, cut from the Police Gazette. The young sailor rolled his eyes aloft with an expression of innocent debauchery. Then he winked heavily at Eugene.

The deck of the Oregon.

“What’s that for?” said Louise, pointing to the outline in nails of Admiral Dewey’s foot.

“That’s where he stood during the fight,” said the sailor.

Louise put her small foot within the print of the greater one. The sailor winked at Eugene. You may fire when you are ready, Gridley.

“She’s a nice girl,” said Eugene.

“Yeah,” said Max Isaacs. “She’s a nice lady.” He craned his neck awkwardly, and squinted. “About how old is she?”

“She’s eighteen,” said Eugene.

Malvin Bowden stared at him.

“You’re crazy!” said he. “She’s twenty-one.”

“No,” said Eugene, “she’s eighteen. She told me so.”

“I don’t care,” said Malvin Bowden, “she’s no such thing. She’s twenty-one. I reckon I ought to know. My folks have known her for five years. She had a baby when she was eighteen.”

“Aw!” said Max Isaacs.

“Yes,” said Malvin Bowden, “a travelling man got her in trouble. Then he ran away.”

“Aw!” said Max Isaacs. “Without marryin’ her or anything?”

“He didn’t do nothing for her. He ran away,” said Malvin Bowden. “Her people are raising the kid now.”

“Great Day!” said Max Isaacs slowly. Then, sternly, he added, “A man who’d do a thing like that ought to be shot.”

“You’re right!” said Malvin Bowden.

They loafed along the Battery, along the borders of ruined Camelot.

“Those are nice old places,” said Max Isaacs. “They’ve been good houses in their day.”

He looked greedily at wrought-iron gateways; the old lust of his childhood for iron-scraps awoke.

“Those are old Southern mansions,” said Eugene, reverently.

The bay was still: there was a green stench of warm standing water.

“They’ve let the place run down,” said Malvin. “It’s no bigger now than it was before the Civil War.”

No, sir, and, by heaven, so long as one true Southern heart is left alive to remember Appomattox, Reconstruction, and the Black parliaments, we will defend with our dearest blood our menaced, but sacred, traditions.

“They need some Northern capital,” said Max Isaacs sagely. They all did.

An old woman, wearing a tiny bonnet, was led out on a high veranda from one of the houses, by an attentive negress. She seated herself in a porch rocker and stared blindly into the sun. Eugene looked at her sympathetically. She had probably not been informed by her loyal children of the unsuccessful termination of the war. United in their brave deception, they stinted themselves daily, reining in on their proud stomachs in order that she might have all the luxury to which she had been accustomed. What did she eat? The wing of a chicken, no doubt, and a glass of dry sherry. Meanwhile, all the valuable heirlooms had been pawned or sold. Fortunately, she was almost blind, and could not see the wastage of their fortune. It was very sad. But did she not sometimes think of that old time of the wine and the roses? When knighthood was in flower?

“Look at that old lady,” whispered Malvin Bowden.

“You can TELL she’s a lady,” said Max Isaacs. “I bet she’s never turned her hand over.”

“An old family,” said Eugene gently. “The Southern aristocracy.”

An old negro came by, fringed benevolently by white whiskers. A good old man — an ante-bellum darkey. Dear Lord, their number was few in these unhappy days.

Eugene thought of the beautiful institution of human slavery, which his slaveless maternal ancestry had fought so valiantly to preserve. Bress de Lawd, Marse! Ole Mose doan’ wan’ to be free niggah. How he goan’ lib widout marse? He doan’ wan’ stahve wid free niggahs. Har, har, har!

Philanthropy. Pure philanthropy. He brushed a tear from his een.

They were going across the harbor to the Isle of Palms. As the boat churned past the round brick cylinder of Fort Sumter, Malvin Bowden said:

“They had the most men. If things had been even, we’d have beaten them.”

“They didn’t beat us,” said Max Isaacs. “We wore ourselves out beating them.”

“We were defeated,” said Eugene, quietly, “not beaten.”

Max Isaacs stared at him dumbly.

“Aw!” he said.

They left the little boat, and ground away toward the beach in a street-car. The land had grown dry and yellow in the enervation of the summer. The foliage was coated with dust: they rattled past cheap summer houses, baked and blistered, stogged drearily in the sand. They were small, flimsy, a multitudinous vermin — all with their little wooden sign of lodging. “The Ishkabibble,” “Seaview,” “Rest Haven,” “Atlantic Inn,”— Eugene looked at them, reading with weariness the bleached and jaded humor of their names.