This Side of Innocence

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  Mr. Lindsey extended the portrait to his daughter. “Your mother, my dear,” he said a little hoarsely. Dorothea stared at the portrait. “Very like,” she muttered. “But too frivolous of expression. Dear Mama was never frivolous.”

  “She loved everything,” said Mr. Lindsey, not hearing her. “She was gay, gay as a butterfly, gay as a little spring cloud. There was something too fair about her, too delicate, too delightful. When she died, all the color went out of the sky, and out of this house, and never returned.”

  He held the canvas as one holds something dearly beloved. He said to his son: “My dear boy. My dear boy. Thank you.” He cleared his throat. “But you were so young. How could you have remembered her so? How could you have captured what she was?”

  “He could not,” said Dorothea, in a loud and hectoring tone. “He imagines it all. And I still think it very frivolous. I think it insulting.”

  Mr. Lindsey’s brows knotted, and his features became stern. But he said, controlling himself, forcing himself to speak gently: “My dear, you and your mother were not very congenial.”

  “I adored her!” cried Dorothea, and now something long buried in her memory rose up to choke and embitter her with its unfairness. “But she never understood me! I tried so hard; I was as dutiful as one can be. I took every task from her. But she was never grateful. She only laughed. But I loved her so!”

  Mr. Lindsey’s heart contracted with pity. “And she loved you too, my dear. When she—when she was dying, it was you to whom she turned, to your strength and goodness.”

  Dorothea reached for her kerchief, and buried her face abruptly in its depths.

  Mr. Lindsey sighed. Then, hesitatingly, he stretched out his hand and patted his daughter’s arm. “There, there, my love, we all know your worth, and we are not ungrateful.”

  “Indeed not,” said Jerome, promptly. He was beginning to be bored, and he was alarmed. Good God, if he was to be bored like this, constantly, it would be unendurable. He lifted the other canvas from his father’s knee, gazed at it, then extended it for general view. “The wedding present,” he said, with an open and smiling look.

  Mr. Lindsey was too shaken, at first, to grasp the subject of the canvas, and then when he did so, he uttered a small and uncertain exclamation.

  The subject was a stereotyped one, but the execution was original, to say the least. It was the Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, and though in miniature, every detail was worked out vividly, and with a sardonic and even licentious deliberation. The Garden, in the background, swam in too languid and banal a light, every distant tree too perfect, too conventional, too dull. The figures of Adam and Eve were as white and gleaming as porcelain, exquisitely beautiful and graceful, shining out from the tangled darkness which surrounded them like bright new ivory. Adam walked briskly ahead, his face frightened yet curious, his hand grasping the hand of his lagging spouse. He seemed in considerable of a hurry, as a man does who has something on his mind. He wore a series of decorous fig-leaves, tactfully disposed. He appeared to be saying: “Now, then, all that nonsense is over, so let us get down to common sense immediately.” His grasp was very tight and purposeful on Eve’s little hand. One could see that the problem obsessing him at the moment was to find shelter and establish a business as soon as possible.

  But the reluctant Eve trailed behind, despite the firm grasp on her hand. She was delicately painted, all silver faintly flushed with rose, and was apparently very young. But it was a knowing and sly sort of youth, and a coquettishly libidinous one. Her golden hair floated about her, but was so arranged as not to conceal one swelling breast, rise of hip or curve of seductive thigh. One saw her smiling profile, the red underlip thrust out invitingly. Her face was directed backwards at the very manly, very handsome, and very interested angel who guarded the gate. She did not wear fig-leaves, nor any leaves at all. Where the fig-leaves ought decorously to have been disposed, her hand lay instead, and with a definitely wanton gesture.

  The angel, instead of standing upright, holding his flaming sword high above him and wearing a most stern and casting-out expression, was decidedly taken by Eve. His sword was a fierce affair, but he had thrust its point into the ground, and he was leaning on its hilt with an air of engrossment. He was smiling; one almost suspected he was about to wink. He was much more enchanting than Adam. He was taller, darker, and ever so much more muscular, and had the alert grace of a soldier at ease. His black locks framed an excessively masculine and vital face, and his smiling mouth was sensual and full. His wings were not feathery and pure; rather, they were mere bright outlines of light. The hands that leaned on the sword were strong and hard. His garments, though shining, were the garments of a vibrant warrior.

  The whole painting made one wonder whether it was, perhaps, the angel who had had that interesting conversation with Eve under the apple tree, rather than the serpent. For there was a most promising look about the angel, as though he were murmuring: “We shall meet again, my pet, when I am off duty, if you can get rid of him.”

  There was something about Mr. Lindsey’s attitude, too silent, too prolonged, which aroused the curiosity of Dorothea and Alfred. They strained forward to see the painting. Amalie leaned over the arm of her chair. Jerome, with the shy and bashful air of a boy who displays his first “masterpiece,” stood among them, smiling diffidently, eagerly and touchingly awaiting applause.

  Then, all at once, Mr. Lindsey’s dry and sunken face broke into a hundred wrinkles of sparkling laughter. “Good heavens!” he murmured, and rubbed his nose.

  He looked at Amalie Maxwell. Her mouth was repressed. But a dozen heretofore unsuspected dimples had spilled out all about it, and her eyes were dancing like violet lights. She was biting her lower lip very hard; her breast was convulsed with little fine tremors.

  Alfred stared doggedly at the beautiful and enthralling painting. He said frigidly: “I see. The Garden of Eden. I didn’t think you went in for Biblical subjects, Jerome.” Then he colored, embarrassed, eyeing Eve’s unchaste nakedness, and unable to look away. He cleared his throat. “Hardly a picture for ladies,” he muttered. “Too—er—too—”

  Dorothea recoiled in her chair, her face quite crimson.

  Jerome regarded Alfred seriously. “Do you think so?” he said, in an anxious tone. “I thought everything in the Bible was only too fit for females.”

  Mr. Lindsey could control himself no longer. He burst into violent and delighted laughter. Helpless, he lay back in his chair, and there was a suspicion of moisture about his eyelids. He tried to inhibit himself, but, at each glance at Alfred, he went into fresh convulsions. These increased when Alfred began to stare at him in utter bewilderment and offense. For Alfred had the picture on his knee, now, and did not quite know what to do with it.

  Then Alfred spoke awkwardly: “Thank you, Jerome. It is—is very edifying. I never cared for religious subjects, myself, and I repeat that it is surprising to me that you have painted this one.”

  Jerome inclined his head gravely. “I hope you will enjoy it,” he said, in the humble voice of an inferior gratified at the praise of a superior. “You could hang it on your bedroom wall.”

  Mr. Lindsey was still laughing, but with the strained and gasping sound of one who is suffering pain from his mirth. At Jerome’s words, he put his hand over his eyes and said, simply: “Merciful Lord!”

  Alfred judiciously considered what Jerome had said. He remarked, finally: “Well, it is hardly the thing for—”

  “Oh, most appropriate,” said Jerome, enthusiastically.

  Alfred cast his eye painfully on the library walls. “Perhaps here,” he said, with uncertainty.

  “Indeed, by all means,” agreed Mr. Lindsey, in the weak voice of one spent with laughter.

  Jerome removed the canvas from Alfred’s stony knee and laid it on a table. For the first time he looked at Amalie.

  She met his eyes fully, then turned her head aside abruptly, but not before he saw her secret laughter and complete,
if unwilling, enjoyment.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Even Jerome’s natural and cardinal, if apparently languid, awareness of living sagged noticeably during the last few days before Christmas. At first he believed it was because Hilltop had subsided into its usual tranquil routine. But later, and not too much later, he began to suspect that it was being overplayed. Quite subtly, he was being shown what life at Hilltop was in its essence, and the lesson was pointed. In the beginning, he had thought: How had I forgotten how unbearably tedious it is? In three days, he thought: So, they are showing me, and they are watching me, to see how I will respond to this rigid beatitude, this timelessness,‘ this studied peace.

  He was amused, maliciously and without anger. He noticed that he slept better, and without the sedatives which his physician in New York had prescribed. He found more enjoyment in drinking, however, and it no longer had that deleterious effect on him which he had stoically begun to accept as the price of his brief enhancement of consciousness. He explored the countryside, on foot and by sleigh, feeling a faint but pleasant nostalgia as he recalled his boyhood and youth. He was not overly fond of horses, but, as Jim could often be found in the stables vehemently agreeing or disagreeing with the stable-boys about the care of the animals, Jerome would join him there to listen to the pungent conversations and to add asinine opinions of his own. This would result in Jim and the lads stopping to stare at him pityingly.

  Jerome rediscovered his father’s library, and spent many solid hours of pleasure in reading by the fire. It had been a long time since he had been able to sit quietly for more than half an hour, and for months it had been impossible for him to focus his attention upon a book. He was delighted to find that Mr. Lindsey had kept abreast of all current literature, and that the volumes were not covered with moss, as he had suspected. Here were Mr. Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, and Mr. Thomas Huxley’s essays, both daring examples of the new ferment which was foaming through scientific and politely religious society. Jerome had heard much of Mr. Darwin’s sacrilegious theories, and he knew that Mr. Huxley was being damned thoroughly in the more intellectual pulpits, but he had not bothered to enlighten himself in the matter. When he had so attempted, once or twice, his exhausted yet feverish mind had conjured up the most distracting and sickening thoughts, or had simply thrown up its hands in complete numbness. Now he settled down to reading the two blasphemous gentlemen, and though he found it heavy going at first, he was soon caught up in the excitement and the implications which they communicated to him. Mr. Lindsey, with his careful habit of compromise and his tiresome habit of “hearing both sides,” had included a report of the controversy between Mr. Huxley and Bishop Wilberforce at the British Association of Oxford, in 1860. All through the latter volume, which included the opinions of many other gentlemen of the bishop’s cloth and bent of mind, Mr. Lindsey had made his neat and spidery comments in blacklead, which ended up like this: “Note: Page 47, Origin.” Jerome enjoyed himself skipping back and forth between Bishop Wilberforce and Mr. Darwin, ending up with the clinching of the argument by Mr. Huxley. All in all, however (and he felt quite irritated with his father) it seemed to sum up that no one was right, or that much could be said for both sides. Damn these compromisers, anyway! They took all the life out of a thesis, so that the bystander became wearily convinced that no one should do anything about anything, but should only sit back in a genteel inertia and sip port wine. Mr. Lindsey did not reproach or criticize; he merely presided as an aristocratic referee and let the boys argue, and was quite impartial, and most exasperating, and entirely noncommittal.

  Compromise, thought Jerome, is the senility of the mind, the arteriosclerosis of the soul. Compromise was the spiritual arthritis which eventually afflicted those who had murdered all private opinion. Judges inevitably became stiff of joint and fossilized. Only the plaintiffs and the defendants remained young and vigorous. I’d rather be wrong, and in the fight, he thought, than sit back and say, “There are always two sides, you know.” When he became too irritated, he went in search of his father, to argue it out with him, his finger tucked in a particularly provocative section of Mr. Darwin or Mr. Huxley.

  It was then that it dawned on him that something peculiar was afoot. He rarely found his father. Mr. Lindsey was “out for a short drive, sir,” or “Mr. Lindsey is resting, according to doctor’s orders, sir,” or, simply, Mr. Lindsey was incommunicado. Jerome accepted this artlessly for the first day or two, then he began to have his suspicions. His father was avoiding him. He was demonstrating very subtly to his son that the latter must not depend on him for companionship and amusement, and that the day of stimulating conversation (which had been part of Jerome’s rare visits home) was gone and past, and the amenities and entertainment accorded a visitor could not be indefinitely offered to a permanent resident.

  Even on the fifth day, Jerome was still amused, but slowly he began to be exasperated and affronted. He saw his father, now, only in the evenings, in company with the others. Then Mr. Lindsey would greet his son with bland affection which Jerome found faintly infuriating.

  Young Philip, with his intense dark eyes, was not available, even if Jerome had been reduced to seeking his companionship. Philip was engaged in concentrated study, in preparation for his school in the autumn. Sometimes Jerome heard him practicing in the music room, and once or twice he had heard Amalie’s clear deep voice praising or criticizing the rendition of a particular passage, but the door of the room was firmly closed and there was a look of denial about it that Jerome could not overcome.

  As for Dorothea, Jerome had only remote glimpses of her on the business of the household, her keys jingling at her waist, and very often she was in the company of Amalie, whom she was instructing in housewifely duties. Jerome caught fleeting whisks of their skirts along the corridors, heard them discussing the contents of the linen room and the blanket closets, heard their busy and absorbed steps on the back stairs. Dorothea, who had apparently, and inflexibly, accepted the inevitable, was coaching Amalie with grim and intense energy. Once, when passing Dorothea’s apartments, Jerome had discovered that the door was open, and he saw the two women with their heads together over Dorothea’s ledgers and accounts. He found the vision dreary.

  He tried to waylay Amalie several times, but desisted when he saw that a servant, or Dorothea, or Philip, was usually only a foot or two behind her. She was never going to be caught alone, he saw. When she passed him, on these busy excursions, he would lift his hand to his forehead in an ironic salute, but she would go by with only the briefest glance or the coldest word of greeting.

  However, these glimpses of her increased his restlessness and inner ferment. It became a necessity for him to see her; he haunted halls and stairways; he listened for the rustle of her skirts, the sound of her step. He rarely heard them. He said to himself: Damn the trollop! And plotted her discomfiture. When he finally discovered that too much of his waking thoughts, and even his sleeping ones, were engrossed with her, his fury became a definite if torturing hatred. She had told him that he could not hurt her, that she would not allow him to hurt her, that she had planned what she wanted, and that he was impotent. He believed he saw a contemptuous and triumphant gleam in her eye on the few occasions when they passed each other in the corridors, Amalie always with her bodyguard.

  Yes, he was impotent. He could do nothing. He was confronted with one as ruthless as himself, and she had won. But he consoled himself malevolently with the reflection that though the first round in the battle had gone to her, there were other rounds, extending into the coming years, when he would have his own day. He spent hours on his plots, and they gave him comfort.

  His only pleasure was in the evenings, when, for a short while before dinner, and an hour or less afterwards, he could bait Alfred. But Alfred, whether particularly obtuse, or whether he had come in his stony mind to some compromise with regard to Jerome, did not rise to the goad. He turned aside even the most outrageous of Jerome’s sallies with a bla
nk steadfastness, or a heavy change of subject. It did not amuse Jerome on these occasions to see that Mr. Lindsey was smiling faintly, or that Amalie was openly enjoying herself, or that Dorothea regarded him with weary scorn. Worst of all was when Alfred attempted to instruct Jerome informally about the Bank, at the dinner table or in the library. At these times, Jerome was seized with such a powerful ennui as to feel that in some way he had inadvertently swallowed one of his forgotten sedatives.

  All in all, then, he came to the conclusion that the family had placed him in a neat niche in the house, and were determined that he fit in there, and be damned to him. He was a member of the household, now; he had his place. He could not disturb it unless by taking his departure or making a general fool of himself. He was prepared to do neither.

  In sheer desperate self-defense, he began to paint again, but he found his inspiration sluggish, his hand without creativeness. The weight of the house, its tranquillity, silent warmth, individual concerns, routine and pleasant order, bore down upon him. I’m the damned speck of grit that got into the shell of the oyster, he thought, and the whole infernal house is busy covering me with solidifying slime. I’m to work myself out, if I can, or consent to become one of the pearls, with layer upon layer of polite opalescence hardening around me.

  He found the prospect horrendous. He was enraged. But his own reason wryly assured him that he had made his choice, and he must conform or leave. He was the insurgent minority, and minorities who attempted to create disturbances and who pricked the complacency of the established majority, had a rough time of it. This is how I am, said the house and the occupants, with smooth smiles, and you may take me or leave me. In any event, I am too busy to concern myself with you.