The Middle of the Journey

by Lionel Trilling

  For a moment Maxim did not answer. Then he said, “An innocent man speaks!”

  He looked at Laskell with an ironic curiosity. But it was not perfectly clear just how much ironic force the statement was meant to have. It must have had a good deal, but Laskell was not sure that it was wholly ironic, for Maxim was looking at him with a sort of kindness. It was exactly the ambiguity in Maxim’s intention that gave his remark its power to disturb and unsettle Laskell. If Maxim had wholly meant that he was not innocent, had wholly sneered at the idea, he could have met the remark with resistance. What shook him was the possibility that Maxim in part meant that he really was innocent. It occurred to him that to be innocent or to be thought innocent was an insupportable thing.

  Maxim said, “You think it is as simple as that, John? I assure you it is not. It is much more complicated.”

  He paused for a moment and then said, with an air of resolution, as if he were going to say something in the face of prudence, “I said I was guilty because I was a member of the Party. You think that is absurd. You think it is only less absurd than that I should think myself guilty because I am a member of the human race. I think neither of those statements is absurd. But since you have your own ideas of guilt, and since they seem to involve a measurable closeness to the victim, then I will tell you that I had that closeness. In the chain of circumstances that led up to certain acts I was closer to the end than many people, though not so close as some. If it pleases you to think of it so, you can think of my guilt like Chinese boxes or Russian eggs—as a member of the human race, as a member of the Party, and as a—because my work was—”

  “‘Special and secret.’ Is that it?”

  Maxim grinned. “Yes, John,” he said. He seemed much more composed. One would scarcely guess that he was talking about guilt. “But I assure you,” he went on, “even if I had not been special and secret, I would consider myself guilty. The immediacy of the responsibility would be less, but I would still have the responsibility. You are right—I do think we are members of each other’s guilt. My work became special and secret because I was a member of the Party. I became a member of the Party because I was a member of the human race and because the human race is what it is.”

  “And this explains your new attitude?—your religion?”

  “It began to explain it,” Maxim said carelessly. Then he said, looking in a very intent but friendly way at Laskell, “I recognize what your interest is in resisting my effort, John—your refusal to be, as you say, implicated in my guilt. You have been sitting there opposite me with a little core of safety, a little center of moral certainty because of what you did this evening. You ran after Caldwell, not in rage but in charity. I’ve mentioned Paul once and I’ll take the chance of mentioning him again, if you don’t mind too much—do you know his text for Pharisees and revolutionaries? ‘Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing.’ Do you know what charity means?—caritas, dearness, the sense of how costly and valuable a human life is. Even that fellow Caldwell’s—what’s his name?—Duck?—even his life. You think you performed an act of charity—you ran after him to tell him the truth about his act of violence. But even that, your act of charity, was it not an act of guilt, did it not have its roots in guilt? Was it not the act of a man so fearful of his wish to destroy that he had to hide it from himself in an act of charity? I found that out about myself. My sense of guilt as a human being drove me to the Party, and my sense of guilt as a member of the Party drove me to work that was special and secret. Now I will not stay any longer in the system of Chinese boxes and Russian eggs. And I will get out of the system,” and now Maxim’s eyes flashed and he lifted his head very nobly. “John, I will get out of the system by admitting my guilt.”

  Maxim might not have had any success at all in his attack on Laskell if he had not been right about the little core of safety, the little center of moral certainty. Laskell had had it, but he had not been aware of it until Maxim spoke of it. As soon as it was spoken of, it vanished from Laskell’s heart. Could no one in these days trust or know his own motives? He sat there, deprived, hating the self of a moment ago as a smug, preening prig of a self. But he hated Maxim even more than that. He hated Maxim for having pointed out that he had been cherishing his innocence, his act of charity. He said in a still, cold voice, “You’re probably right. Men being what they are, you’re probably right. But thank you, I will not step into your particular system of innocence and guilt. It was very thoughtful of you to invite me—but thank you, no, I can’t accept.” He had nothing to resist with except his anger at Maxim and his will to resist.

  “You’re very bitter,” Maxim said.

  Laskell did not answer and they sat silent, deadlocked, having no more to say until Kermit’s step was heard outside and Kermit came heavily into the trailer. Kermit was full of the tragedy. It was very difficult for him to grasp the reality of certain kinds of misfortune that came to people, but he tried very hard. Over and over again he said, “That poor child, that poor child.” And again and again he said, “That poor woman, that poor woman.”

  Kermit had brought the four painted bowls, the one that Laskell had bought early in the afternoon and the three that Kermit had bought for Maxim and the Crooms and himself. He had given what help he could in the sad confusion, and then, when there was nothing more to do, had tidily remembered to collect the bowls. They lay on the settee beside him, nested together. He looked at them and said to Laskell, “She has a strange quality, that woman. It was terrible to see her grief.”

  He gave it as a piece of information to Laskell. Maxim, with his genius for intrigue, had almost immediately seen the connection between Laskell and Emily. Kermit, with his impenetrable innocence, would scarcely believe it if he were told. He spoke to Laskell as if Emily were a person better known to himself than to Laskell. And perhaps she was, for Kermit had seen her in her grief. Laskell could not go to her, it was the one thing he could not do. But do something he must, and when Kermit said, “They are very poor, aren’t they?” he knew what it was.

  With Kermit here, Maxim would not be continuing his complex transaction with guilt. Much as Laskell did not want to talk to Maxim, or to look at him, he could not have left him alone with that business. Now he said good night and left.

  When he was outside, on the road, out of earshot of the trailer, and when the idea of paying for Susan’s funeral was established in his mind and, with it, the idea of Susan’s death, he began to weep. He continued to walk, but every now and then he stopped and stood still in the road because he could not both walk and sob at the same time, and at last he sat down on a large stone by the side of the road and put his face in his hands and cried. Later, when he was in bed, he knew that he had cried not only for Susan, and for Emily, but for himself and his friends—for the pain of the time they all lived in and the time to come.

  Laskell was not allowed to bear the whole expense of the burial of Susan Caldwell, as he would have wished to. For Kermit had been musing on the Caldwells’ poverty overnight and was unable to sustain it. He said to Laskell the next morning, “I must see what I can do about helping with the costs of the funeral.” Out of the habit of self-protection, he spoke as if he would first have to consult his lawyer who would then consult his trustees. And then, partly out of canniness, partly out of a sincere desire to share his generosity, he said to Laskell, “Perhaps you’d like to come in with me, John?”

  Laskell checked the emotion of being forestalled. He thought that this was not the time for the exclusive possession of anything, whether ideas or funerals or generosity. In the ideal life of Bohemia which Susan had learned about from her mother, everything was shared by the generous friends, even the cost of funerals, especially the cost of funerals. He said, “Yes, I would, Kermit.”

  Kermit said, “Of course there’s old Julia Walker. She seems to be a cousin somehow. And she has plenty of money.”

  “
A very distant cousin, and they’re not on good terms.”

  “Yes, I gathered they weren’t. Still, she might be offended if we interfered.”

  “Let’s take that chance,” said Laskell.

  So the burial was arranged quite without any vexation or strain for Emily Caldwell. The Caldwells had little enough, and of course a grave plot was not one of their possessions.

  “A single plot,” said the chairman of the cemetery committee. “Well now, we don’t usually sell in single plots.”

  He was the hardware merchant in the little town of Crannock and they sat in his cubicle of an office, he in his desk chair, Kermit on a box, Laskell on the ledge of the open window, and Maxim in a corner. Through the open window Laskell could see the tiny common around which the town of Crannock was built.

  “A sad business, a sad business,” said the chairman. Then he said at once shyly and knowingly, “You gentlemen are arranging this business between you. On your own instance, as it were?” His shyness came from confronting an action which he believed to be generous, his knowingness came from his certainty that there was more here than met the eye. He looked from Kermit Simpson to John Laskell, but not to Gifford Maxim, for he had soon seen that Maxim was not concerned in this affair.

  “Well, let’s not have it talked about,” said Kermit.

  The chairman of the committee looked mildly offended. “It’s nobody’s business but your own. And her own. Of course I understand. But a single grave now, that’s hard. We have them in twos and fours. Or sixes and eights. Though not so many eights these days. Smaller families.

  “No threes?” said Laskell.

  “Well, for three we usually sell fours. By rights, really, a four is a three. For four you should by rights have six. You know what I mean? You can get four into a four, but just about, it measures pretty close. For three I would strongly advise four.”

  Laskell was very glad that Kermit was there, his handsome face attentive and thoughtful, showing no sign that there was anything in the situation except ordinary business. For Laskell there was so much more, more even than when he had planned it with Kermit in the morning, for now there was in it his misery at passing by the Caldwell house, seeing through the window the tiny room crowded with female heads, and being unable to go in. And now to make him even less effective as a negotiator, he had the sense that it was mad that he should be dickering—as he was, now that a single grave seemed out of the question—for the grave not only of the dead child but also of his mistress and of her husband, a man who had tried to kill him.

  Kermit said, “What do you think, John?”

  Laskell was on the point of saying, “Let me do this myself.” For if they did buy a plot of four graves, then Emily would come to lie in one and Duck in the other, and it became a matter for him alone.

  But then he thought that the local legend had better be about two rich men from New York, the name of one of them scarcely known, rather than about a single man named John Laskell. It would be better for Emily. “Whatever you say, Kermit,” he said. “I suppose four would be a good idea.”

  “Now I have here,” the chairman said, and he spread out the map of the cemetery. “I have here a really choice spot. It’s on high ground and very well drained. That’s a consideration, you know. And then the view—very pretty view from here.”

  He spoke of the detail of the drainage with natural simplicity, but a note of insincerity came into his voice as he spoke of the view, which was a thing he supposed city people would take into consideration. Perhaps he too would take it into consideration, although he would never believe it of himself. The city people no doubt did, for this was the plot they chose.

  “It’s certainly a big thing you men are doing,” the chairman said. “Certainly is. Now who should I make the deed out to?”

  “Deed?” said Kermit.

  The chairman smiled understandingly. “It’s real estate, gentlemen. Just like any other acreage, no matter what you use it for.”

  It was the chairman’s tempered joke. He looked from one to the other.

  “Mrs. Caldwell. Make it to her, I guess,” said Kermit. “Don’t you think so, John?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course,” said the chairman, looking intelligently from one to the other, “of course I could make it out so one of you men—or both of you—could have ownership, with provision to—”

  “No,” Laskell said.

  “Mrs. Caldwell, then,” said the chairman. “Now: care of the grave. Most families around here do it themselves. But for perpetual care, in the case of those who bury here but don’t live here themselves and don’t have the opportunity to come back—”

  “Another time,” said Laskell. “We’ll talk about it another time.”

  “Now: setting the stone. If you want to arrange for a stone—”

  “Another time.”

  The chairman had no more to offer. “Mr. Gurney, the minister, you talked to him?”

  Kermit said, “Yes, he sent us here to you.”

  “Yes, sure. And Vic Harker, the undertaker. Hell of a name for an undertaker—Hark from the Tomb we call him.”

  It was pretty clear that nobody did call the undertaker Hark from the Tomb. That was only the chairman’s own joke.

  “Then I’ll have the grave opened today. Funeral’s tomorrow?”

  “Yes, in the morning.”

  “Poor little thing. So bright too, I hear.”

  Kermit had his checkbook out and was drawing the check. He looked up and said, “How shall I make it out?”

  “You make it out to Walter Burt, Treasurer. B u-r-t. And put treasurer after it. Terrible thing to happen. And you know, the person it’s worst for— Maybe you’ll think this is a funny thing to say. But the person it’s worst for is not the little girl. After all, what does she know now? She’s out of it. I always say to my wife, it isn’t the dead you should feel sorry for. They’re beyond feeling sorry for.”

  They listened to the chairman giving voice to the solid, popular reliance on the bedrock of death, and they all saw him for the first time as a person, Walter Burt, who said such things to his wife, a thoughtful man, businesslike and shrewd, with a large round face and a compact bulky body. All three of them looked at him with more attention. And as Laskell heard Walter Burt speak of death with so comfortable a belief in its finality, he thought how firmly people held that faith and how it appeared in the popular language—how the truest, surest, most reliable things were dead, dead-shot, dead-right, dead-center, dead-certainty, dead-ahead.

  “The person I feel sorriest for,” said Walter Burt, “maybe it will surprise you, is Duck Caldwell. I can’t say much for Duck, he’s pretty shiftless. But he’s the one that’s got to live with it. I mean, got to live with what he did. Of course, the little girl had a weak heart, so they tell me. But even so. Even so, he’s the one that did it, if you know what I mean, and he’s got to live with it. And he’s the one I feel sorriest for.”

  Kermit Simpson and John Laskell stood in the silent consideration which men give to solemn ideas which they wish neither to agree nor disagree with. It was Gifford Maxim who spoke. “What about the mother, Mr. Burt?” he said.

  “The mother, yes, I grant you. Terrible. Terrible. But even the mother—”

  “You think that guilt is worse than grief, Mr. Burt?”

  Mr. Burt was not used to hearing ideas put in so summary a form and he was a little startled. He looked at Maxim, taking real notice of him for the first time. Then he said, his face alight in response, “Mr.—er—”

  “Maxim.”

  “Mr. Maxim, you put it just right. In my considered opinion, guilt is worse than grief. Much worse.” He was delighted by this way of putting it.

  “We must be getting on,” Laskell said.

  They saw the undertaker and spent two hundred and fifty dollars on his end of things. They had the impression that the undertaker did not overcharge them but merely bent all his effort to interest them in the most expe
nsive casket, and this they did not mind. When they had finished with the undertaker they had nothing more to do.

  But they had done wrong, it seemed. The news of what they had done was now general and Mrs. Folger spoke to Laskell about the mistake they had made, spoke firmly and with authority, but gently.

  She was putting supper on the table for Laskell when she opened the matter. “Mrs. Bradley’s here,” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Emily Caldwell’s half-sister, her sister by her father’s first marriage. She’s here. And I think I ought to tell you, Mr. Laskell, that she is vexed. And so is Miss Walker. They are both very vexed.”

  “Vexed, are they?” Laskell said and with his fork cut a piece of process cheese that lay beside a piece of cold meat on his plate. “That’s quite a thing for them to be, Mrs. Folger. All things considered.”

  “It’s you they’re vexed at, Mr. Laskell,” Mrs. Folger said.

  They were addressing each other suddenly in a rather high stiff tone. It was not hostility, but a very stiff meeting of wills in full panoply. Something had changed in their relationship. Mrs. Folger was no longer treating him like a naughty boy. He no longer treated Mrs. Folger as if she were a piece of rural antiquity, all simplicity and virtue. They suspected each other. Laskell found that in the light of his suspicion Mrs. Folger seemed suddenly more tangible than she had ever been. He wondered if she too saw a change in the way he looked.

  In the former relationship he would have helped Mrs. Folger in her next step in the conversation. But now he sat tight. He let her make her own way out of the difficulty. He did not say, “And why are they vexed with me?” He knew why they were vexed.

  “It’s you they’re vexed at. Because of the cemetery plot and the funeral arrangements. I had a talk with them, and Mrs. Bradley and Miss Walker said that the family cannot be beholden to strangers. They were prepared to take care of everything.”

  Laskell looked at Mrs. Folger very openly. He said, “Is that all? Well, that can be taken care of very simply. They have only to pay back Mr. Simpson and me. They needn’t be beholden—I’ll send then an itemized account at once. Will you please tell them from Mr. Simpson and me that there will be no embarrassment about it?”