But the Crooms, oddly enough, did not feel as he did about the article. They certainly did not like it. “There’s an awful lot of sheer garbage in it,” Arthur said. “I never thought Giff would go off on that quasi-religious line. I thought he’d organize a splinter group or go over to the Trotskyites.” And Nancy said, “That mystical nonsense, it’s disgusting.” But they did not quite see eye to eye with Laskell when he spoke of the piece as reactionary.
“If you think about it,” said Nancy, “you see that it is really quite applicable to the Moscow trials. Even if those men were subjectively innocent—I mean even if they had good motives for what they did, like Budd—I don’t believe that’s so, but even if it were so—they may have had to be executed for the sake of what he calls Law in the world of Necessity. And you remember how they all concurred in their punishment and seemed almost to want it. Certainly before they died they had a proper appreciation of Law. They realized that the dictatorship of the proletariat represented Law. Of course, God wasn’t mentioned, but it was the same thing in effect and they said that their punishment was necessary. No, I think you’re wrong, John, in the way you’ve read the article. Don’t misunderstand me—I’m sure he’s insane, but that makes it all the more surprising how much insight he still has.”
And Nancy’s voice had now a touch of sorrow, a touch of pity for Maxim that she had not been able to muster before.
Arthur said, “Yes, there’s a certain amount of real insight in it. I don’t mean that business about God or all that talk about tragedy and love. But if you read the article without letting that come to the fore, it makes some real sense. You find a good many people these days who think things can be made perfect overnight, that a revolution insures a Utopia in an instant, without difficulty and trouble, without compromise and without the use of force. Mind you, I haven’t any sympathy with the article, but it does have a core of realism. The great danger to the progressive movement these days, as I see it, is that liberals are going to confuse their dreams and ideals with the possible realities. You see that happening already—people become disappointed and disaffected because everything isn’t the way they would like to have it. They see economic democracy developing over there and that doesn’t satisfy them—they begin shouting for immediate political democracy, forgetting the realities of the historical situation. Yes, Maxim in this respect has more sense in him than I thought he would have. People who break usually don’t have that much sense.”
Laskell thought that perhaps, some time, he would read the piece again. He did not defend his own reading of it. “Perhaps you’re right,” he said. He thought too that some time he would consider why Arthur had looked at him with a special, personal intensity as he made that rather long speech of his and a certain stubbornness that Arthur’s whole body seemed to be expressing.
7
“AND DID those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?”
When she mentioned feet Susan Caldwell’s hand swept down to indicate her feet. When she referred to mountains, it swept upward and suggested a mountain.
“‘And was the holy Lamb of God’”—and now with cradling arms and downward gazing eyes she indicated a lamb and its tender care—“‘On England’s pleasant pastures seen?’” Her widely separating hands suggested both the extent of the pastures and the breadth of the question.
Laskell, holding the book, was appalled.
But he had already questioned her twice and did not like to do it again. He had been writing in his room that afternoon and had seen her drifting vaguely up and down the Folgers’ lawn, looking at the upper windows, carrying in her arms—in much the same way she was to “carry” the Lamb—the big book. He came down to her, thinking that she might possibly want him, and it turned out that she had come on a visit to him. The visit was not wholly social. Or at least she did not present it as wholly social. She wanted Laskell to “hear” the poem she was to recite at the Bazaar. But her intention to make use of him did not diminish and even increased the odd little flattery of the visit. They sat down on the lawn together and Laskell addressed himself very seriously to the duty she had imposed upon him.
She handed him the book. It was a big college anthology of English literature. She opened to the place marked by a slip of paper and gave him the volume at a double page of Blake’s songs.
“Which one is it?” he said.
She stood over him and pointed to one of the poems on the page. It was not a Song of Innocence or a Song of Experience, but the four stanzas that Blake had prefixed to Milton.
“Why are you reciting this one?” Laskell asked.
“Is it wrong?” said Susan, her eyes wide.
“Wrong? Oh, no. I just wanted to know why.”
She explained. “For the entertainment we can each do anything we want. It’s a very informal entertainment. One of the girls is going to play the piano and render the ‘Parade of the Wooden Soldiers.’ Did you ever hear that piece?”
“Yes, I have,” Laskell said.
“And one is going to sing. And I’m going to recite this poem. Mother read me a lot of poems and I liked this one. She said I could choose one I liked. I liked this one. So I chose it.” The logic could not have been clearer. She went beyond logic to explain. “It’s an easy poem to recite because of the gestures. It has a lot of gestures.”
“Gestures?” But Laskell was not so young that he could pretend to ignorance of the tradition of recitation with expression and gestures. He said, “Oh, I see.”
And now Susan took her stance. But first she shook herself from the shoulders, her wrists loose. She agitated them violently and very seriously, as if she were giving herself over to the uncontrollable spasms of a dreadful neurological disorder.
“Goodness, Susan!” said Laskell. “Why are you doing that?”
“It’s so my arms will hang loose and naturally by my sides. Mother taught me to do it.”
“But you won’t do it in public, when you recite?”
“Of course not,” said Susan, mildly surprised by his stupidity. “I’m just practicing.”
She thrust her left foot forward and put her weight on it. She tried her arms for looseness and naturalness and seemed satisfied with their condition.
When she had finished the first stanza, she said, “Was that right?”
“Yes,” said Laskell. “Perfect.” He meant that she was word-perfect. He was not referring to the larger aesthetic question.
She undertook the second stanza on the same system of gesture.
“And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic Mills?”
She made a graceful reference to her own face to suggest the Countenance Divine. Her hands came forth in a wide delta to indicate the Countenance in the act of shining forth upon the clouded hills. There was a complex upward movement of two hands to show Jerusalem being builded here. And then there was an even more complex flutter to indicate not only the Mills but also her revulsion from their dark Satanic quality. This time she did not interrupt herself at the end of the stanza, but, having paused weightily, went on.
“Bring me my Bow of Burning gold:
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire.”
With each “Bring” she reached out like a stage magician, snatching things from the air to astonish her audience. She grasped the bow and arrows appropriately, and in the very act of grasping them, fitted at least one arrow to the bow. She seized the spear and, still holding it in her right hand, well out from her body in warlike fashion, she seized the reins of the chariot of fire in her left hand and leaned forward to meet the wind of the chariot’s speed. She was now fully equipped to utter her declaration of war. She came out of the crouch that was necessary for the control of the speeding chariot and stood upright.
“‘I will not cease from Mental Fight’”— And she stamped her foot in a passion of refusal.
“Hold it!” said Laskell.
She stopped and looked at him. “Did I get it wrong?”
“Why do you stamp your foot?”
“To show I mean it.”
“I don’t think you ought to do that.”
“Why not?” she said in reasonable surprise.
“Because it’s as if you were a child being stubborn. And I don’t think you ought to say, ‘I will not cease’—you ought to say, ‘I will not cease,’ all on a level: ‘I will not cease.’”
She fully considered the criticism and also the really great compliment that was bound up with it. Then she said, “But I am a child, really.”
It was certainly a point. Laskell thought about it. “Yes,” he said. “But you haven’t said any other part of the poem as if you were a child, and then suddenly, just at the end, when the poem gets so determined, you change the character of the speaker.”
She took it in very thoughtfully and was on the point of coming to agreement. But Laskell was now sorry he had raised any objection at all. The manner she had devised—or more likely, been taught—was of course absurd, but he had no right to correct it. Elocution with expression would scarcely be under the same reprobation at this country function that it might have been in other circumstances. And yet Susan was so simple and so alight with intelligence that he did not want her to diminish herself by this absurd manner.
“I’m sorry, Susan,” Laskell said. “I shouldn’t have interfered. You go on and do it your own way.”
“No,” said Susan. “If it isn’t right, it isn’t right.”
“No, really. It’s all right. Just go ahead and say it the way you always do.”
“No,” said Susan with a final firmness. “Let me try.” She took her public stance again, her left foot forward, her knee slightly bent, her weight on the left leg. “‘I will not cease.’ No. Wrong! ‘I will not cease. I will not cease.’ There! ‘I will not cease from Mental Fight.’ Is that right?”
“Yes. Fine.”
“‘I will not cease from Mental Fight.’” She smiled at him and he smiled back.
“Good,” he said with an odd little satisfaction. “Now go on.”
“‘I will not cease from Mental Fight.’” A little frown appeared on her forehead. “‘And’”—she began and cast about for the next line.
“‘Nor,’” Laskell prompted. “‘Nor shall my Sword’”—
She looked blank for a moment. “Oh, yes. ‘Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand.’” She held her hand forward and to the side, clutching the unsleeping sword. Then she raised it before her, reaching it high.
“Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant Land.”
And she brought the dedicated sword down in conclusion.
She looked to Laskell for his word. “Very good,” he said. “Very good indeed.”
“You really think so?” she said with the artist’s ever-lasting dubiety which, when voiced, is half real and half insincere.
“Oh, beautiful,” he said. His sincerity came not from his admiration of the “rendition” of the poem but from the amusement he felt at her puckered and hesitant face as she canvassed the true value of her performance.
“Beautiful!” she said with the childish scorn that expresses childish embarrassment at a really big word of praise.
“Truly,” he said.
“Oh pooh!” was her answer, with an awkward movement of her shoulders to fight off the voluptuous sensations of sudden praise. “Beautiful—pooh!” And she sat down.
He lightly tapped her twice on the head with the big book. “Don’t you make fun of me,” he said.
“Don’t you make fun of me,” she said and giggled freely. She had come for a particular purpose, to have him hear her rehearse, but now that her purpose was accomplished, she did not go.
“What poems do you know?” she said. She simply assumed that if she knew poems by heart, he must know poems by heart. And, as it happened, she was not wrong. He had once been made to memorize ten sonnets in a course in college. He was perfectly willing to recite them for her. He recited “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments,” and “When to the sessions of sweet silent thought,” finding them in the book so that she could check on his accuracy. He recited “Since there’s no help, come let us kiss and part,” and “When I consider how my light is spent,” and “The world is too much with us,” and “Earth has not anything to show more fair.” She followed each of them carefully and corrected him gravely when he slipped.
“Why, you know everything,” she said when he stopped.
“Well, not so much as that,” he said with a modesty that was wholly fatuous. He said, “Aren’t you going swimming today?” He had often seen Susan and Emily coming up the road on clear afternoons with towels and wet hair.
“No,” she said, a little bitterly. “Mother decided not to.”
“Where is your mother?” The question was really a rude one, but Susan and her mother were almost always seen together, like a foal and a mare. The question of where Susan’s mother was was not quite so important as where her father was, for Duck Caldwell had vanished for the past three days. This was not so unusual as to cause concern, but it made some trouble for the Crooms, for Duck had left a job of plastering half done.
“Mother’s getting water at the Korzinskis’,” Susan said.
“You usually go with her,” Laskell said.
“Yes, but today she said I shouldn’t. She said I should come and have you hear my poem.”
It took something from the pleasure of Susan’s visit that she had not thought of it herself, but it did not take as much from it as Laskell might have expected.
“I can speak some Polish. The Korzinskis taught me.” She spoke some Polish. “Good-by, thank you very much for your kindness.”
“Good-by, Susan. You’re very welcome.”
“No—that’s what it means, that’s what the Polish means. Then they say to me, ‘Panyenka’—that means young lady—” She said a sentence in Polish. “And that means ‘You’re welcome.’”
“Is it far to the Korzinskis?”
“Not very. Mr. Croom asked us to get the water at his house, but Mother says it would hurt the Korzinskis’ feelings. Anyway, Mother says that she and Mrs. Croom are unsympathetic.” She said it as if being unsympathetic were a cozy relationship possible only to adults.
After this first visit with its particular purpose, Susan paid Laskell several visits with no purpose at all. He would look out of his window when he was working on the planned cities of antiquity and see her on the Folgers’ lawn, walking slowly up and down, or sitting with her legs tucked under her. He understood, recollecting it from his boyhood, that she was in a terrible state of children—she “had nothing to do”—and he would come down to talk to her. When the friendship had progressed a little, she ventured beyond waiting to be noticed and took to calling up to his window, “Mr. Laskell, are you busy?”
They played a good deal of mumblety-peg. The three hounds, with their impulse to sociability, always came to sit close to them during Susan’s visits and had to be safe-guarded from any mischance of the knife. Laskell and Susan thought it unfriendly to chase the hounds and before they began a game, Susan would seize one after another by the scruff of his neck and urge and drag him to a safe distance. They used Laskell’s old-stag-handled pocket-knife. Susan knew the first passages of the game and was fairly good at them—the knife thrown from its cradled position in the clenched fist, the knife tossed up from the open palm. She knew the finger-flips but she did not know over-the-fence. Laskell taught it to her and she became quite good at it. From there on it became pretty much Laskell’s game. Susan conceived a great admiration for his skill, and she herself acquired a growing adeptness. She read a good deal. For all her devotion to the life of art and her choice of the Blake poem, she
read chiefly comic books. She said that her mother did not approve of her reading them. She could not have been given as many dimes as she had books, but despite the scarcity of children in the neighborhood and Susan’s rather unhappy distance from the few who were within reach, she seemed to be a member of some invisible circle of the young which saw to it that these documents were circulated and fell into the right hands. She herself had no great respect for these books but she had an addiction.
The growing friendship with Susan naturally developed the acquaintanceship with Susan’s mother. He often met the two on the road or before their house, and since now he had to stop to chat with Susan, he had also to chat with Emily Caldwell. These more frequent meetings dimmed his recollection of how she had first appeared to him, as well as his sense of her foolishness that evening at the Crooms’. She began to take her place in the commonplace, the quite pleasant commonplace, as the mother of a little girl he was fond of. And through Susan, as it were, the same thing happened to her father. Laskell met Duck face to face one day after one of the visits had come to an end and he was walking to the Crooms’. Susan was walking with him to her own house. Duck came toward them. Laskell felt strange, even a little guilty, walking with the man’s own child, but it made a condition of friendliness that had to be recognized and he said, “Hello!” and Duck answered, “Hi!”
The Middle of the Journey Page 22