LOOK HOMEWARD, ANGEL. Thomas Wolfe
old man, strike him, throw him out on the street: he’s no good any more. He’s no longer able to provide for the family — send him over the hill to the poorhouse. That’s where he belongs. Rattle his bones over the stones. Honor thy father that thy days may be long. Ah, Lord!
“‘Look, in this place ran Cassius’ dagger through;
See what a rent the envious Casca made;
Through this the well-beloved Brutus stabbed;
And, as he plucked his cursèd steel away,
Mark how the blood of Cæsar followed it —’”
“Jeemy,” said Mrs. Duncan at this moment to her husband, “ye’d better go over. He’s loose agin, an’ she’s wi’ chile.”
The Scotchman thrust back his chair, moved strongly out of the ordered ritual of his life, and the warm fragrance of new-baked bread.
At the gate, outside Gant’s, he found patient Jannadeau, fetched down by Ben. They spoke matter-of-factly, and hastened up the steps as they heard a crash upstairs, and a woman’s cry. Eliza, in only her night-dress, opened the door.
“Come quick!” she whispered. “Come quick!”
“By God, I’ll kill her,” Gant screamed, plunging down the stairs at greater peril to his own life than to any other. “I’ll kill her now, and put an end to my misery.”
He had a heavy poker in his hand. The two men seized him; the burly jeweller took the poker from his hand with quiet strength.
“He cut his head on the bed-rail, mama,” said Steve descending. It was true: Gant bled.
“Go for your Uncle Will, son. Quick!” He was off like a hound.
“I think he meant it that time,” she whispered.
Duncan shut the door against the gaping line of neighbors beyond the gate.
“Ye’ll be gettin’ a cheel like that, Mrs. Gant.”
“Keep him away from me! Keep him away!” she cried out strongly.
“Aye, I will that!” he answered in quiet Scotch.
She turned to go up the stairs, but on the second step she fell heavily to her knees. The country nurse, returning from the bathroom, in which she had locked herself, ran to her aid. She went up slowly then between the woman and Grover. Outside Ben dropped nimbly from the low eave on to the lily beds: Seth Tarkinton, clinging to fence wires, shouted greetings.
Gant went off docilely, somewhat dazed, between his two guardians: as his huge limbs sprawled brokenly in his rocker, they undressed him. Helen had already been busy in the kitchen for some time: she appeared now with boiling soup.
Gant’s dead eyes lit with recognition as he saw her.
“Why baby,” he roared, making a vast maudlin circle with his arms, “how are you?” She put the soup down; he swept her thin body crushingly against him, brushing her cheek and neck with his stiff-bristled mustache, breathing upon her the foul rank odor of rye whisky.
“Oh, he’s cut himself!” The little girl thought she was going to cry.
“Look what they did to me, baby,” he pointed to his wound and whimpered.
Will Pentland, true son of that clan who forgot one another never, and who saw one another only in times of death, pestilence, and terror, came in.
“Good evening, Mr. Pentland,” said Duncan.
“Jus’ tolable,” he said, with his bird-like nod and wink, taking in both men good-naturedly. He stood in front of the fire, paring meditatively at his blunt nails with a dull knife. It was his familiar gesture when in company: no one, he felt, could see what you thought about anything, if you pared your nails.
The sight of him drew Gant instantly from his lethargy: he remembered the dissolved partnership; the familiar attitude of Will Pentland, as he stood before the fire, evoked all the markings he so heartily loathed in the clan — its pert complacency, its incessant punning, its success.
“Mountain Grills!” he roared. “Mountain Grills! The lowest of the low! The vilest of the vile!”
“Mr. Gant! Mr. Gant!” pleaded Jannadeau.
“What’s the matter with you, W. O.?” asked Will Pentland, looking up innocently from his fingers. “Had something to eat that didn’t agree with you?”— he winked pertly at Duncan, and went back to his fingers.
“Your miserable old father,” howled Gant, “was horsewhipped on the public square for not paying his debts.” This was a purely imaginative insult, which had secured itself as truth, however, in Gant’s mind, as had so many other stock epithets, because it gave him heart-cockle satisfaction.
“Horsewhipped upon his public square, was he?” Will winked again, unable to resist the opening. “They kept it mighty quiet, didn’t they?” But behind the intense good-humored posture of his face, his eyes were hard. He pursed his lips meditatively as he worked upon his fingers.
“But I’ll tell you something about him, W. O.,” he continued after a moment, with calm but boding judiciousness. “He let his wife die a natural death in her own bed. He didn’t try to kill her.”
“No, by God!” Gant rejoined. “He let her starve to death. If the old woman ever got a square meal in her life she got it under my roof. There’s one thing sure: she could have gone to Hell and back, twice over, before she got it from old Tom Pentland, or any of his sons.”
Will Pentland closed his blunt knife and put it in his pocket.
“Old Major Pentland never did an honest day’s work in his life,” Gant yelled, as a happy afterthought.
“Come now, Mr. Gant!” said Duncan reproachfully.
“Hush! Hush!” whispered the girl fiercely, coming before him closely with the soup. She thrust a smoking ladle at his mouth, but he turned his head away to hurl another insult. She slapped him sharply across the mouth.
“You DRINK this!” she whispered. And grinning meekly as his eyes rested upon her, he began to swallow soup.
Will Pentland looked at the girl attentively for a moment, then glanced at Duncan and Jannadeau with a nod and wink. Without saying another word, he left the room, and mounted the stairs. His sister lay quietly extended on her back.
“How do you feel, Eliza?” The room was heavy with the rich odor of mellowing pears; an unaccustomed fire of pine sticks burned in the grate: he took up his place before it, and began to pare his nails.
“Nobody knows — nobody knows,” she began, bursting quickly into a rapid flow of tears, “what I’ve been through.” She wiped her eyes in a moment on a corner of the coverlid: her broad powerful nose, founded redly on her white face, was like flame.
“What you got good to eat?” he said, winking at her with a comic gluttony.
“There are some pears in there on the shelf, Will. I put them there last week to mellow.”
He went into the big closet and returned in a moment with a large yellow pear; he came back to the hearth and opened the smaller blade of his knife.
“I’ll vow, Will,” she said quietly after a moment. “I’ve had all I can put up with. I don’t know what’s got into him. But you can bet your bottom dollar I won’t stand much more of it. I know how to shift for myself,” she said, nodding her head smartly. He recognized the tone.
He almost forgot himself: “See here, Eliza,” he began, “if you were thinking of building somewhere, I”— but he recovered himself in time —“I’ll make you the best price you can get on the material,” he concluded. He thrust a slice of pear quickly into his mouth.
She pursed her mouth rapidly for some moments.
“No,”