Look Homeward, Angel - Thomas Wolfe Read Free Page A

before she spoke; she liked to take her time, and
came to the point after interminable divagations down all the
lane-ends of memory and overtone, feasting upon the golden pageant of
all she had ever said, done, felt, thought, seen, or replied, with
egocentric delight.  Then, while he looked, she ceased speaking
abruptly, put her neat gloved hand to her chin, and stared off with a
thoughtful pursed mouth.
    "Well," she said after a moment, "if
you're getting your health back and spend a good part of your time
lying around you ought to have something to occupy your mind." 
She opened a leather portmanteau she was carrying and produced a
visiting card and two fat volumes.  "My name," she
said portentously, with slow emphasis, "is Eliza Pentland, and I
represent the Larkin Publishing Company."
    She spoke the words proudly, with dignified gusto. 
Merciful God! A book agent! thought Gant.
    "We are offering," said Eliza, opening a
huge yellow book with a fancy design of spears and flags and laurel
wreaths, "a book of poems called Gems of Verse for Hearth and
Fireside as well as Larkin's Domestic Doctor and Book of Household
Remedies, giving directions for the cure and prevention of over five
hundred diseases."
    "Well," said Gant, with a faint grin,
wetting his big thumb briefly, "I ought to find one that I've
got out of that."
    "Why, yes," said Eliza, nodding smartly,
"as the fellow says, youcan read poetry for the good of your
soul and Larkin for the good of your body."
    "I like poetry," said Gant, thumbing over
the pages, and pausing with interest at the section marked Songs of
the Spur and Sabre. "In my boyhood I could recite it by the
hour."
    He bought the books.  Eliza packed her samples,
and stood up looking sharply and curiously about the dusty little
shop.
    "Doing any business?" she said.
    "Very little," said Oliver sadly. 
"Hardly enough to keep body and soul together.  I'm a
stranger in a strange land."
    "Pshaw!" said Eliza cheerfully.  "You
ought to get out and meet more people.  You need something to
take your mind off yourself. If I were you, I'd pitch right in and
take an interest in the town's progress.  We've got everything
here it takes to make a big town--scenery, climate, and natural
resources, and we all ought to work together.  If I had a few
thousand dollars I know what I'd do,"--she winked smartly at
him, and began to speak with a curiously masculine gesture of the
hand--forefinger extended, fist loosely clenched.  "Do you
see this corner here--the one you're on? It'll double in value in the
next few years.  Now, here!" she gestured before her with
the loose masculine gesture.  "They're going to run a
street through there some day as sure as you live. And when they
do--" she pursed her lips reflectively, "that property is
going to be worth money."
    She continued to talk about property with a strange
meditative hunger.  The town seemed to be an enormous blueprint
to her: her head was stuffed uncannily with figures and
estimates--who owned a lot, who sold it, the sale-price, the real
value, the future value, first and second mortgages, and so on. 
When she had finished, Oliver said with the emphasis of strong
aversion, thinking of Sydney:
    "I hope I never own another piece of property as
long as I live--save a house to live in.  It is nothing but a
curse and a care, and the tax-collector gets it all in the end."
    Eliza looked at him with a startled expression, as if
he had uttered a damnable heresy.
    "Why, say!  That's no way to talk!"
she said.  "You want to lay something by for a rainy day,
don't you?"
    "I'm having my rainy day now," he said
gloomily.  "All the property I need is eight feet of earth
to be buried in."
    Then, talking more cheerfully, he walked with her to
the door of the shop, and watched her as she marched primly away
across the square, holding her skirts at the curbs with ladylike
nicety.  Then he turned back among his marbles again with a
stirring in him of a joy he thought