The Middle of the Journey

by Lionel Trilling

  “He told you! He told you!” Nancy cried. And then she said bitterly, “Of course, how like him.”

  “No,” he said. “He did not tell me. He was very careful to tell me nothing.”

  “Then who told you? How do you know?”

  He could recognize that she was a woman for whom he had love, but he felt no affection for her. He said, “I saw it the evening I told you about him.”

  “You saw it? What do you mean, you saw it?”

  He said irritably, “Saw it—something in your manner. It just came to me. I don’t know how I knew. I just knew.”

  She made a puzzled impatient gesture such as a child makes to whom something is incomprehensible, letting her lack of comprehension stand as a comment on the foolishness of the thing. “Intuition,” she said with a slighting dryness.

  “Call it intuition. It doesn’t matter how I knew, does it?”

  The impatience in her face again changed to fear. But Laskell continued, “Why did you do it? And what did you think you were doing?”

  “Why did I do it? Because nobody else did it. I suppose I did it because you can ask that question.” Fear did not make her timid. It never would.

  “Or because Arthur said no?”

  He did not quite know why he had asked that question.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Nancy said. “What do you think I am?” But then her face cleared and she said in a frank, puzzled way, “Maybe. Maybe because Arthur didn’t.”

  “What did you think you were doing? What made the great secrecy, all the mysterious flummery?”

  She did not answer.

  Laskell said, “Then you do know? Maxim refused to let me ask any questions. He refused to let Arthur ask any questions. Did he let you ask questions? How do you know?”

  “I didn’t say I knew.”

  “But you know.”

  “Is this the intuition again?”

  “Did Maxim tell you?”

  “Oh,” she said, “I don’t really know. I only know in a general way. I know more or less why they were important.”

  “But you won’t say?”

  “No, I won’t say.”

  There was so much of a note of tragic, conscious heroism in the way she said it, that there jumped to Laskell’s mind the possibility that it was to be accounted for by a love affair with Gifford Maxim. But then another clandestine possibility came to his mind—something clandestine must account for the high intensity of her dedication—and it was this second possibility that he chose, rejecting the first. “Nancy,” he said, “are you a Party member?”

  “It’s not exactly a crime, you know. There’s no law against it that you should ask in that tone of voice.”

  “Then you are?”

  “No!” she cried desperately. “No, I’m not. But is it such a horror to contemplate? No, I’m not exactly a Party member.”

  “Not exactly! What does that mean? Do you have a card or don’t you?”

  “No. Of course I don’t!” After all she had said, it was not clear on what ground she was repelling the imputation as if it were a slur upon her. “Of course I haven’t got a card. But I’m considering it, I’m so tired of all this liberal shilly-shallying talk. I want to do something real. I’m so damned tired of the Kermit Simpsons with their civil liberties and their Jeffersonian democracies.”

  “And the John Laskells?” He said it gently and in joke, but his voice was weary. He had an image of the world’s misery, of what was to be faced, and he did not know who was strong enough to resist it.

  But Nancy’s voice was wearier than his. “Oh, John—no,” she said. “It’s just that in all this world, with things so terrible and moving so fast, it’s just that some action, something positive—” And she made a sad little gesture of helplessness. “I don’t know. It’s so frightening. I want to do what I can.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I did something foolish. You think I’m wrong?”

  “Somehow, yes.”

  She said nothing for a moment. Then she said, “He really didn’t tell you about the letters? You really knew without his telling you?”

  “No, he didn’t tell me.”

  “I’m glad you know,” she said. “Somehow, I’m glad you know.” She looked at him ruefully, but he could see that she was really glad. Her face looked tired, but it had a freshness of genuine relief in it. “Probably Arthur should know too,” she said. And then she looked at him with great appeal and said, “What’s the matter?”

  “Matter? Nothing’s the matter.”

  “You looked so— Are we not friends?”

  She had seen the look on his face from his fresh full knowledge of what he had to escape in Nancy, of what this charming and moral woman friend of his could do to him, and was willing to do, until he asserted his own will consciously against her intention of which she had no awareness.

  Laskell, looking at the hand she stretched out to him tentatively, for she was not sure it would be taken, could say, as he took the hand and held it between his, “Yes. We are very good friends.” He could say it firmly and surely. But he could not tell her how sad he was for his friend, and not only for his friend but for the world. And yet it was a calm sadness, and they were truly friends, and to show her that this was so, when Duck came out with Arthur, Laskell said to Duck, “I wonder if you could show me the stream some morning. The fish don’t rise much this time of summer, but I’d like to try anyway.”

  8

  IT WAS FOUR days later that Duck Caldwell and John Laskell went to the stream together. They walked on a little way beyond the Korzinskis’ house and then turned off and cut across a stubble field.

  It was a misty morning and the mist made ten o’clock seem early and even adventurous. Laskell had two sandwiches in the khaki tackle-bag on his shoulder. The sandwiches and all the paraphernalia of fishing made the occasion yet more adventurous, and so, in a way, did his feeling about Duck. He could not say that he liked Duck any better than he ever had but he felt reconciled to him, and he thought how weak the human imagination is because it so dully represents peace and brotherhood. A careful, shabby Hindu student and a skinny Methodist student shake hands and agree that there are no real differences between people that cannot be overcome by mutual understanding and education and the cider and doughnuts they will presently be offered by the religious director. The world’s imagination of strife was surely much more attractive. It allowed men their force and their selfhood as well as their evil. Yet in actual fact, Laskell thought, the true emotion of reconciliation is an heroic one. Hamlet never appears in fuller virility than when he offers Laertes his hand, and nothing he says rings with a sweeter and graver note of masculinity than his “Give me your pardon, sir. I have done you wrong.”

  They were crossing the field and Duck was walking a little ahead of Laskell. The lurch and swagger of his walk were to be seen and disliked. But Laskell knew that he did not have to like Duck in any usual way to feel the warm pleasure of reconciliation. A true image of peace, like the world’s false image of strife, also allowed a man his force and selfhood, and if force and selfhood involved a little malice, the true image of peace allowed that too. Duck had his little malice, but it was not always easy to maintain the self in its force without the help of a little malice. This was the heroism of true peace, that it was not frightened by what force and self might involve.

  Yet how precarious peace was. How difficult it was for men to keep in comradeship. Duck turned around to say, “This walk being too hard for you, Mr. Laskell? You got to remember you been sick.”

  Laskell said, “I’m fine,” very sharp in his answer because it seemed to him that Duck took pleasure in reminding him of his illness.

  “Sure. Sure you are,” Duck said soothingly. “But you got to be careful after you been sick.”

  “I’ve been careful long enough,” Laskell said dryly.

  “Sure. Maybe so,” Duck said.

  Laskell felt ashamed. It w
as not Duck who had broken the peace but he himself with his quick defensive response to the malice he had heard in Duck’s tone. But then Laskell put aside the impulse to blame himself. If malice is to be permitted, he thought, it must be met, and he had met it with his sharp answer. They could be at peace again. Perhaps peace between men is a series of reconciled conflicts between equals. And suddenly Laskell felt how truly Duck was his equal. As they walked together, Laskell saw the pattern of the other man’s life and understood that it was by that pattern that Duck was to be judged, that it was the pattern that was Duck’s true personality, much rather than the things Duck said out of some false notion of how to represent his self and his force to the world. Judged by that pattern, Duck was perhaps not only Laskell’s equal but even his superior. He had refused the usual claims of society, the whole absurd contest that modern life invited him to. It was no mere laziness that kept him in the little house that he had made of two sheds, doing odd jobs when he chose or needed to; it was rather a response to something he saw in life that he did not want for himself. Perhaps it was something he had seen at first hand in the career of his grandfather, the Senator, with his fine horse and buggy and his living on the rural fat of the land, or something he had seen in the career of his father, who speculated. At any rate, by his own pattern, he had done well, he had done better by a good bit than John Laskell.

  And he had more. If one were to judge Duck Caldwell, there was his daughter Susan to take into account. Duck’s quick and subtle intelligence showed itself not only in his malicious perceptions of human weakness, but also in his child. In any estimate of Duck, it had to be taken into account that he was Susan’s father. And, really, it had also to be taken into account that he was Emily’s husband. It was perhaps no small thing to be, Laskell suddenly saw, as he thought of Emily, not as she was in her mind with its rather foolish, dated ideas, but as she was in her body.

  Laskell had sometimes thought that people in their imposed functions were rather better than the same people when they stepped outside their functions. The girls in the office who were notable for the simplicity and directness in their characters, for the pleasures they took and gave in being efficient, might, at the Christmas party, when they were talked to only in a social way and about things in general, become rather petulant and self-pitying people with no firmness of character at all. The colleague whose sense of performance organized him so well when he was being professional, became, when you had cocktails with him, in the effort to get to “know” him, as soggy as a soul could be. And now that Laskell had lately begun to see Emily Caldwell as a mother and even as a wife he had to modify the not very high opinion of her that he had originally made. As Susan and he had become more and more friendly it seemed more and more natural that he should stop to talk with Susan’s mother. They did not talk about very much, such things as gardening and Susan and Susan’s education and the Bazaar. Once his first mythological view of Emily Caldwell had been dispelled, Laskell had not found her very interesting either as an intellectual or as a rebel. She really did not have the gift for being either. But in her function as Susan’s mother with her worry about Susan’s education, in her function as housekeeper with her little prides in the midst of poverty, in her not at all striking talk about ordinary things, Laskell had found her more and more impressive. She had a womanly dignity that did not depend on intellect—a kind of biological intelligence. Laskell did not like to admit it, but he had to admit it—Duck Caldwell had chosen a woman who was, if you got to know her, at least of full size. Mrs. Folger had seen in Duck what there was for a woman to see, and probably Emily had responded to that when she had chosen Duck. It was much the same thing Nancy had seen when she had made her remark about Duck’s resemblance to the gamekeeper in Lady Chatterley. Laskell had heard their female judgment with irony—naturally enough, any man would. But now didn’t he have to admit that their female judgment was right?

  From the field they had struck into woods. It was very hot and damp in the woods and Laskell found that he was breathing hard in the steamy air. He had put on his waders on Duck’s assurance that the stream was not far off. They made his legs and thighs feel sweaty and pneumatic. Laskell had snapped at Duck for suggesting that the illness had had a continuing effect on him, but the fact was that he was not in very good shape. He heard the sound of water with relief.

  “Is that the stream?” he asked.

  “Yes. But you wouldn’t want to fish it here.”

  “Why not?”

  Duck shook his head. “You’ll see,” he said.

  What Laskell saw, when they came to it, was a deep gorge. The walls were very steep and the little river came fast into the dark pool. It came in noisily over a bed of large stones, breaking on the boulders at the mouth of the gorge. The black surface of the pool was laced with long streamers of white foam. The air here was cool, almost chill. The pool looked very promising.

  “This looks very good,” Laskell said.

  “Not bad,” said Duck. “But if you fish them dry flies upstream, you better start further up.” He looked at Laskell and then at the water. “You’d have a hard time working up from here.”

  Laskell saw that Duck was right. The stretch of rocky footing would be rather too much for him today. He had fished water as difficult as this, but when he had been in better shape. On his first day out it would be better to start farther up. And on the whole he was glad that it was not here that he would part with Duck. There was something frightening about the gorge.

  They stood looking into the chasm together. Duck said, “I call this Cherry Gorge.”

  “Is that its name?” said Laskell.

  “No. It hasn’t got a name. But my name for it is Cherry Gorge. This is where all the girls around here lose it. The boys take them for a ride and the road comes in close by the other side. He says, ‘Would you like to look at the gorge, Mamie?’ And she says, ‘Why that would be just lovely.’” In the voice of Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Duck acted out the false casualness of the boy and the false innocence of the girl. “‘Why that would be just too sweet,’ she says, and down they go and lucky if they don’t break their necks over some couple that’s got there first. Maybe the noise makes the girls scared and shivery and they’re willing for you to get close. Anyway, they don’t come up like they went down.”

  It was the old freebooting sexual camaraderie of men, and the embarrassment it precipitated in Laskell made him angry at himself for being so cut off from the simplicity and directness. Duck looked down, spat out into the gorge, and prepared to leave. “I’d like to get me that Eunie Folger down here some night and see how she’s made. I wish I had your chances, sleeping right near her every night.”

  There must be something to answer. Laskell hated his stiff inability to respond in the same tone as Duck’s. But he could find nothing to say. And Duck knew it.

  “I guess,” said Duck, and looked at Laskell with his clever eyes, “I guess you think I’ve got a dirty mind, kind of low. But the way I figure is that we got just about enough hypocrisy. I work it out like this, a man’s made a certain way, a woman’s made a certain way, the natural result is they got a need for each other. A woman’s got just as much need for a man as a man’s got for a woman. I don’t care what they tell us different, it’s so. That Eunie Folger, for instance, I bet she’s not so cold if you could just once put your hand where it would do the most good. The women make believe it’s not so, but it is. They carry their heads high and they carry their tails proud, but it’s so. Am I right?”

  “Oh, sure,” said Laskell.

  “Sure!” Duck nodded firmly. “Let me tell you—we got cat-houses for men, if we had cat-houses for women, they’d do just as good business. Just as good. And then comes in religion and a bunch of hypocrites and it’s no business of theirs but they make it their business and they interfere. It’s none of their god-damned business. It’s just nature. Am I right? And if it’s just nature and just a personal matter, who are they to interfere? Let m
e tell you a thing. If you got yourself up one night and had an inspiration and went into Eunie’s room and give her a couple of pokes, you’d be doing her a favor. I don’t care how tight she goes around looking. You’re a man got a good education. You tell me—am I wrong?”

  “No of course you’re not wrong,” said Laskell. “I mean, I don’t know about Eunice—”

  “So there you are, just like I said. And mark my words, the day will come when people going to get some sense. That’s my way of thinking about it.”

  Duck turned full to Laskell and said, “And I want to tell you another thing, Mr. Laskell.” He paused to arouse curiosity about the other thing he was going to tell. He stood with his mouth poised to speak. Then he said, “You may think I got a low mind. But I ain’t talking like a young kid that wants his first piece and can’t wait till he gets it. I mean to say: there’s just so many apples on a tree. A man’s got just so much in him and no more. And believe me, I didn’t spare none of mine. Maybe you know how that is. Guess maybe I’m older than you but maybe you live the same way, not sparing yourself, and maybe now you’re pretty pooped out. What you got you got, and what you lose you don’t get back.” And Duck opened his mouth and pointed to the gap in his upper teeth. “Even if I got me some store teeth, they might look good, but they wouldn’t be my teeth. What’s gone is gone. Well. Anyway. What I was saying, what you lose, you lose, so I’m talking from my head.” Duck covered his brow with the palm of his hand. “It comes from here,” he said, “and not from you-know-where.” And Duck clutched you-know-where. “So it ain’t a crazy hot idea,” he concluded. Then he added, “Yet still,” and he grinned, “yet still I’d like to have me a poke at that Eunie Folger.”

  They left the gorge and cut a wide circle and came to the stream again. It was strong and rapid even now in August, but it ran more tamely here between soft banks. “You can follow up from here easy enough,” Duck said. “And when you want to find your way back, you’ll see where it cuts in close to the road and that’s only a mile on the road from the Folgers’ house.”