The Middle of the Journey

by Lionel Trilling

  “It’s been years since I’ve done any work like that,” Emily said. “It’s nice to get back. What do you think I ought to charge? I thought fifty cents for the small ones and a dollar for the big one.”

  “Well,” said Nancy judiciously, “if you think people can pay that much.” And she added, as if Mrs. Caldwell were the summer visitor, “You know, cash is scarce in a farming community.”

  “Oh, for hand work!” Mrs. Caldwell said.

  And with that she rose to go. “Good night, Mr. Laskell,” she said. “I hope our air does you good.” The manner was good “social” manner and quite of the city. Then she said, “Good night, all,” and was again wholly of the country. She turned to go and was almost at the door when she cried, “Oh, the book!” and was back in the circle. “Isn’t that just like me?” she said. “I came to return the book and here I am going off with it in my hand.” And she reached out to Arthur the great black volume.

  “Thank you so much,” she said. “It’s a wonderful thing. It’s so much there.” She seemed to attach an importance to the adverb. “Are you acquainted with it, Mr. Laskell?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Don’t you think it’s wonderful?”

  How could he explain that for this book a vocabulary of discussion had existed a few years ago and had then died? For all intelligent people of good will, this book, once seductive in its vision of tragedy, now existed only as a curiosity or a bad example, the early symptom of a disease which was now a terrible reality. There had been a time when it had been attractive because it expressed the modern alienation in the largest possible way, but now it was known to be entirely reactionary because it cut off all hope of the future.

  Amused, the Crooms watched Laskell groping for an answer. Now he knew what it was like to have to deal with Emily Caldwell. Laskell’s first impulse was to dismiss the matter with irony, but he checked that. The Untergang des Abendlandes—the downgoing of the evening-land. He remembered all the political sins that Spengler had committed in his book, and then his later political declaration, ambiguous but sufficiently bad. And yet, he thought, perhaps we hate the book because it has so hideous a possibility of being true, and we hate the man who wrote it as in our hearts we would blame the physician who told us of our unknown but suspected disease.

  But while he was searching for the language in which to explain to Emily Caldwell the error of her admiration, she said, “Doom! A vision of doom!” She made the great syllable vibrate. And neither he nor anybody else could have anything to answer to that. She went on, “‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair.’ ‘The Lion and the Lizard keep the courts where Jamshyd gloried and drank deep.’ If ever there was a lesson to live your life, to snatch the moment, because the cycles just keep on and on, and in the end what does anyone ever have except just perhaps a little fleeting moment of happiness? How does it go?—“A little light in all this darkness, a little warmth in all this cold.’ Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter—we are in the Autumn cycle. And Megalopolis—the great grim city, how well do I know that!”

  There was nothing to say to her. She held them silent with her tags of poetry and her scraps from Spengler’s wicked book from which she had taken only what suited her small purpose. For a moment Laskell remembered how, at his first glimpse of her, she had appeared in a character which made it not inappropriate that she should speak of the cycles of the seasons, the seasons of decay and barrenness as well as the seasons of hope and fullness. And he thought of winter as he used to think of it when he was a boy and as he had been recalling it as he lay in bed in the morning at the Folgers’—with its meaning of adventure and courage and more and more awareness of the charms of safety and warmth than any other season, and, really, a surer though more brooding sense of himself.

  It was Arthur Croom, with his pedagogic tact, who came to their rescue. He looked at Emily Caldwell seriously, as he would at some eager but mistaken student who must be set right without hurt feelings. “Do you really, Emily, do you really believe with Spengler that man is nothing but a puppet of the cycles of culture? That man can never make his own fate and that he is passive to the will of forces which he can see but not control, and that his civilization rises only to reach decay?”

  He was so serious as he thrust forward his ugly face for his answer, and really so kind in his assumption of his professional role, that Emily Caldwell was not wholly confused by the extent of his challenge.

  “Well!” she said vigorously.

  It meant nothing more than her wish to indicate that she was still intellectually present and intended to cope with the question. She stood there, and Laskell could see her intellect struggling among emotions that were so much stronger than itself, trying to arrange them for an answer.

  “Well!” she said again. And then the recollection of an old trick of argument came to her help. “Just what,” she said craftily, “just what do you mean by ‘passive’?”

  So far as she herself was concerned, the trick worked—at any rate, no one answered her. She followed up her success with magnanimity. “Oh, why should I argue with you, Mr. Croom?—you’re so learned and all. I just say what I feel.”

  Nancy should not have interfered. It was not an intellectual situation, only a social one, and it seemed to have been settled. “When actually,” Nancy said, “history shows that man is dialectically developing and improving himself all the time. There is no limit to his potentialities.”

  Emily Caldwell did what always lends at least some dignity to a face—she lowered her eyes. She stood there for a moment with her eyes down and her face quiet. “But not for the individual person, Mrs. Croom. For mankind in general, I suppose you’re right. But for the individual— No, there I disagree with you. There it is dark. And any light and joy—”

  “But don’t you think,” said Nancy, and did not see Arthur’s frown to her, “but don’t you think, Mrs. Caldwell, that we should learn to think in terms of mankind in general?”

  “I suppose so,” Emily Caldwell said. Nancy’s proposition was so large that Emily’s indifference to it was monumental. “I suppose so. But my motto is, ‘Carpe diem.’” Having produced this new tag, she expounded it to them. “‘Snatch the day,’” she said, “‘and put very little trust in tomorrow.’” And then she said, “‘Carpe diem: quam minimum credula postera.’” It astonished them all, Emily Caldwell herself as much as the others, for she clapped her hand over her mouth as if she had uttered some small impropriety. “Goodness!” she said. “Latin! I used to love it when I was a girl. What a crazy thing I was! And here I am talking when I have so many things to do!”

  Then her eyes shone with mischief and she said, “‘Dum loquimur, fugerit invida aetas—even while we stand here talking, envious time is speeding on.’”

  She took up her raffia bag. “Good night, all,” she said again, prettily and rurally, and was gone.

  “Goodness!” said Nancy.

  She made a gesture of despair, turning up her open hands. “Now you see what I mean, John.”

  “It’s sort of touching.” And Laskell had been curiously touched. But he saw what Nancy meant. The woman was a fool. Certainly she was not what she had appeared on the road that first afternoon.

  “Touching? Oh, maybe. All that dated, foolish hedonism. It’s really awful.”

  Nancy got up and with her elbow on the low mantle stood looking down into the fire, glowing with a kind of moral passion, even with a political passion. The set of her strong young body, the clear line of her chin, the intense energy of her head were to Laskell at that moment full of promise for the world. He was glad to be at one with Nancy, young and hard and realistic.

  “With her scraps of Latin. And then when I think of her condescending to Duck, who’s so real—” And Nancy shook her head in exasperation and gave up the subject.

  Laskell wished that she had given it up a moment before. Her point had been entirely made without the mention of Duck to muddy th
e clear sense of futurity he had. But Duck or no Duck, the point had been sufficiently made.

  So that one morning, a few days later, when Laskell was walking from the Folgers’ to the Crooms’ and was greeted by Emily Caldwell and invited in to inspect her odd little house, he accepted because there was no way of refusing, but he accepted with the sense of somehow going back on a pledge to Nancy.

  Emily Caldwell had been crouching down at a flower bed in the dry soil. She stood up smiling, trowel in hand, her feet apart, and she looked strong and firmly rooted, yet her legs were slim. Laskell was struck again, quite against his will, by the illusion of dignity created by her coronet of copious braids. Her good morning was bright, with a rising, conscious inflection. “Did you sleep well?” she asked. “Can I give you a cup of coffee? I’d like you to see my house.” It was impossible to say no.

  The Caldwell house was a tiny thing, strangely shaped, apparently two sheds brought together. It was painted a rich thick green except for the window sashes and the door, which were a bright red. The color scheme did indeed suggest that Emily Caldwell had once had a connection with a tearoom. Yet Laskell had to admit that it was very gay.

  Emily held the screen door open for Laskell and he entered a little room. It narrowed to an alcove just large enough to hold a crude sink and a small stove. He had never seen so compact a place. There was something about the room that was very taking. It had the charm of a snug nest or hide-out, such living-nooks as Dickens describes, or a Pullman compartment.

  “I’m so proud of the house, I must show it to you. This was an old tool house, you know. Of course it had no windows except that one.” Emily pointed to a tiny window over the stove.

  “I had all the windows put high—like that.” And she made him look at the front wall. Laskell saw then what gave the room its strange distinction. The windows had been cut high, in a long narrow rank. They went across the top of the little wall with authority and elegance.

  “In that way,” she said, “I saved all the wall-space underneath for cupboards.” The cupboards rose to half the height of the wall and made a shelf on which were vases of flowers, a few books, a sewing basket, and three wooden bowls of the sort that Emily Caldwell had brought to the Crooms on her visit.

  “And beyond is the bedroom.” She darted through the little cooking space and opened a tiny box of a room. “And here is Susan’s room,” she said. “And now you’ve seen all my little castle.”

  “It’s charming,” Laskell said. And it was.

  “Do you like the windows? The windows are a scandal.”

  “Why, they’re not, they’re very well designed.”

  “So you think, and so I think.” Emily Caldwell was delighted. “So we think. But the neighbors don’t think so. Oh, dear, no. Who ever heard of windows put there? Windows were made to go up and down, like a guillotine, and they’re supposed to be low. I haven’t yet heard the end of it. The people around here are dear good people, but oh, they are so sot in their ways.”

  Laskell felt that an appeal was being made to him for some kind of partisanship. And he did not want to give it—the more because at that moment Emily Caldwell felt a strand of hair upon her cheek and put it back in place, using both hands and raising her arms in a full graceful movement which made Laskell suddenly aware of her physical and feminine existence.

  “Take for example,” she was saying, still at work on the strand of hair, “the whole business of diet. The oranges, for example. I brought up the matter in the Ladies’ Auxiliary. Well, of course, in a sense, I was the last person to bring up the matter of oranges, with us taking relief. I said that oranges for children were necessary and that I for one always saw to it that my Susan got one orange a day.”

  Laskell found that he was noting this example of sensible, practical, and communal activity and was referring it to Nancy on Emily Caldwell’s behalf.

  “The remarks,” she went on. “The remarks that were made about oranges! And strawberry jam!” Laskell knew something about the strawberry jam.

  “You see,” she explained, “I once bought myself a jar of strawberry jam and they’ve never gotten over it. It was an impulse.”

  And she looked at him with so much confidence that he would feel the whole explanatory force of this word that her face seemed suddenly full of innocence.

  “An impulse,” she repeated. “I suddenly wanted strawberry jam. What would life be like if you didn’t act on impulse now and then? Of course, if you’re on relief— Well, they made out that oranges and strawberry jam were on the same level and that it was pretty cheeky of me to go on preaching to them about luxuries. I told them that man cannot live on bread alone. They thought I meant that you had to have strawberry jam on your bread. But you can’t imagine how much farinaceous food they eat with no vitamins. Potatoes and rice and spaghetti, all at the same meal.”

  From his stay with Mrs. Folger, Laskell knew that this could be true.

  Emily Caldwell, before she dropped the subject, said, “And the way they cook the spaghetti!”

  She was remembering the ritualistic spaghetti of her past. It came after the antipasto and soup and before the veal scallopine at some Guido’s or Neapolitan Gardens, all thick and rich with tomato sauce, the whole cheap, decent Italian dinner that maintained the life of art.

  The door was suddenly thrown open and his hostess’s daughter stood on the threshold. She surveyed the visitor with calm surprise. Emily Caldwell’s eyes brightened. She reached out a hand to the child and said, “Susan dear, this is Mr. Laskell.”

  Susan paused for a moment, put her hand in her mother’s, and, moving a step forward, laid the other in Laskell’s. The movement was like that of a dancer in a chain-figure. She looked straight into Laskell’s eyes and searched them and said, “How do you do, Mr. Laskell.”

  Her thin face was tan and lightly freckled and she held her head high on her long neck. If there was a kind of shyness in her manner, it was the shyness of an animal, impersonal. It had nothing to do with anything she thought either about herself or about Laskell. And the shyness played but a small part in her deportment, for Laskell was suddenly aware of a happy feeling, and, looking for its cause, he saw that Susan was regarding him not merely with curiosity but with pleasure. He was confused, for the child’s regard was very direct and he did not know how to respond to it. The force of the grave eyes was more than he could sustain with grace, and he acted falsely. He said, “How do you do, Susan?” with a kind of teasing severity which somehow made her own poised air a little ridiculous.

  “I promised Mr. Laskell a cup of coffee, Susan,” said Emily. “Go get it for him, there’s a dear.”

  Laskell, caught for a longer visit, sat down. Susan went back into the little galley and returned with a great cup of black coffee on a tin tray with a bowl of sugar and a can of evaporated milk.

  “Do you mind evaporated milk? We have no cream,” Emily said.

  “I take it black,” Laskell said, and helped himself to sugar.

  “I might have known!” Emily Caldwell cried. “Just like me. Coffee is my nectar and ambrosia, my great dissipation. I drink cups and cups. And black, black.”

  It was a bore to have the coffee made into another symbol of the free life, but it was strong and fragrant coffee. Laskell took out his cigarettes and offered them to Mrs. Caldwell. Now that he was here, he might as well make the best of it. A look passed between the mother and the daughter as Emily Caldwell took a cigarette. Susan’s eyes shone with excitement. Emily tapped the cigarette with determination on the arm of her wicker chair. Susan was ready with a match and her mother drew a deep inhalation and let it out slowly while the daughter watched each movement with pleasure and suspense. She said, “Oh, you do it wonderfully, mother.”

  Emily Caldwell was pleased and flustered by her daughter’s praise. She looked young and Laskell saw that she was quite young—certainly far younger than she was made to seem by her addiction to the outworn attitudes and symbols of her youth, now so
thoroughly passed by in the march of events.

  Suddenly Susan said to Laskell, “Are you a writer?”

  Laskell checked the adult facetiousness that was about to color his answer. He also checked any modification that might confuse the young questioner. He said, simply and casually, “Yes, I am.”

  “Do you starve?”

  The question came as a surprise, but Laskell quickly understood. “Do you think all writers starve?” he asked. For it was apparent that the child did think something like that. “No, I’m afraid I eat with great regularity.”

  Susan looked dashed and puzzled. “Mother says that all the best writers starve. It’s good for them, then they can never become satisfied.”

  She turned her head to take in her mother’s face, and Emily Caldwell looked guilty. But Laskell came to her support. “There’s a good deal in what your mother says,” he said seriously. “Very often it’s true. But I’m lucky, you see. I inherited some money, and then I make money from the other work I do. You see, I’m not only a writer. I don’t really think of myself as entirely a writer.”

  “Are you satisfied?”

  “Do you mean, so that I don’t try to do better? No, I think not.”

  The answer seemed to give Susan reassurance. She said expansively, “And then you can help the others. The poor ones who don’t have any money or a job, like you.”

  “Oh,” said Laskell. “Of course.” At the moment he could wish that a little of the money that had gone to committees and leagues had gone to some individual Marcel, to some Rudolph for his ailing Mimi with cold hands.