This Side of Innocence

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  He was accustomed to taking his meals whenever he desired. But in this house, if he did not appear decorously for breakfast at eight o’clock, he was served by tray through the medium of Jim, who had dismayingly become a part of the household and who was very enthusiastic about it. (Jerome found this defection quite infuriating, but could do nothing.) Jerome had his tray. And then the house settled about him in its self-sufficient and impersonal business, and he had nothing to do. Worst of all, his late breakfasts and lunches unfitted him for dinner, not to speak of the fact that he could not compass tea. As Mr. Lindsey had an excellent cook, and the dinners were really quite remarkable, Jerome was faced with the unpleasant prospect of either giving up lunch, and thus arriving too faint at the table to enjoy the dinner, or of eating meals at the regular time. He was reduced to the latter. This made the day longer and emptier than ever, and the morning light was not agreeable to his eyes. His health improved in consequence, but his ennui of spirit was like a drug, and he began to feel slothful.

  He read, he played the piano, he brooded, he wandered through the warm and quiet house, he tried to paint. And he yawned constantly. I’m like a damned ghost around here, he would think, vaguely moving from room to room. I might as well not be present at all.

  He was temporarily enlivened by the preparations that were afoot for the Christmas Eve party and the wedding, which was to take place on December 28th. He lounged in the doorways of the two great drawing-rooms, which were not used by the family except at holidays and when guests in any number were present. He watched the servants sweeping, dusting, polishing, making the floors gleam, the furniture shine. He watched the hearths being garnished, logs laid, mistletoe being fastened over the doorways, holly being distributed here and yon. The tree already stood in the east windows, green and dark and cold, but still naked of ornament. It filled the active air with the scent of pine and wild loneliness. Jerome offered to trim the tree, and the servants turned rebuking and shocked eyes on him, or furtively disdainful ones. He was not to be allowed to do anything, apparently. So he lounged in the doorways, and yawned, and watched, and sipped a tall glass of whiskey and soda, which the servants apparently found reprehensible during full daylight.

  He saw big boxes and trunks being brought down from the attics and carried briskly into Alfred’s and Amalie’s rooms. Activity was all about him, more and more, and he was increasingly left on the high beach in a state that closely resembled rotting flotsam. I’m growing mold, he thought. I’ll soon be plucking fungi off myself. He drank more and more, to keep from falling asleep. So, finally, he moved in a mist through, the house, but it was an abandoned mist.

  At last, he became aware that the very walls, the servants, the portraits, the furniture, the thick Aubusson carpets on the floors, the books in the library, the shining daylight outside thoroughly disapproved of him. It was a courteous, and slightly wounded, disapproval, like the manner of a solid relative who did not like the conversation of a spoiled and useless little boy. The house was telling him that it had no tolerance of useless gentlemen who had no reason for living, that “there was work to do,” and that if he had any sense at all he would be out doing it. The house was no place, during the day, for creatures of the masculine persuasion. Jerome, in angry self-defense, conducted long arguments with the house. Curse it, Europeans did not believe that the sole end of the masculine creature was to spend his life bending over ledgers or shop counters or in offices. Rather, Europe was all for gracious and stimulating leisure, the enjoyment of the arts, gay conversation and the love of living, for itself alone. It was all for happy companionship at prolonged luncheon tables, over bottles of brandy or good wine. What was wrong with America?

  But this is not Europe, said the house, with inexorable gentleness. This is America, and we have work to do. What work? queried Jerome, contemptuously. Work, replied the house, blandly. What else is there for a human creature to do? Work! swore Jerome, with loathing. He had never found work his enemy before; it was just something unpleasant that was avoided by the true aristocrat, the truly civilized man. But now work was his active foe, and he smelled it all about him, and was appalled by its presence.

  There was no place for enlightened men in America, and that was very sad. Something most valuable was being lost, in all this welter of activity. He thought of the whole of his country as a bustling hive of ants, sexless and absorbed, busy bringing more and more food for more and more ants, who would then emerge as full adults and start bringing in food for other generations of automatic insects, ad nauseam. What was the end result of ant-activity, anyway? The flourishing of more ants, who never noticed the sun or the moon, or the smell of the earth and the mystery of the night, who never knew God, and merely crumbled into fragments when their business was done.

  The house apparently found this argument too subtle for its stolid realism. It blandly forsook Jerome. He argued in a vacuum. The house went about its affairs.

  At times, he could not endure it. He often began to pack his clothing, while the constantly absent Jim was in the stables or down teasing the girls in the kitchens. And then he would remember and, setting his jaw, unpack again. He would go out into the blazing sterility of the winter days, alone except for his dog, who showed a wistful propensity for the stables, and who stayed with Jerome only out of a sense of duty. At last he sent the dog away, and watched the little beast scuttle off to the stables, and he would laugh and swear to himself.

  He would listen to the shining white silence all about him. He would resume his wandering through the house, his reading, his attempts to paint. He walked a great deal, sometimes wading through snow to his knees. His color improved. His ennui became unendurable. He must escape this accursed house, or die on one last yawn.

  So it was that, at dinner one night, he announced to Alfred that he “thought he might as well make himself a little familiar with the Bank, before the holidays,” and before Alfred went away to Saratoga on his honeymoon.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Jerome looked back at Hilltop. “I never noticed it before,” he remarked to Alfred, “but the house has a smug look, as if it had just won a point.”

  Alfred followed his cousin’s eyes. “Smug look? I think it is very substantial, and has an air of security and strength not to be found in other houses of the township. I never cared for the bizarre or rococo in architecture.”

  Jerome smiled, but made no other comment. He began to shiver, and pulled the fur robes closer towards his chin and chest. The blaze of light on the snow made his eyes sting and a vague ache start through his temples. Most definitely, early morning did not agree with his constitution. Nevertheless, it would have to submit to such outrages.

  The cutter, driven smartly by the strong and competent Alfred, carved the bright snow with a razor’s edge as it wound smoothly down the long and rambling slope to the valley. The horse, young and coal-black, had a hide like watered silk, and his warm breath floated over his shoulders in a cloud of vapor. He flung up his maned head, almost prancing with pleasure at the pure and stimulating air, and apparently enjoying the musical jingling of the bells on his harness. White spume flew backwards from his hooves, from the runners of the cutter, and Jerome winced as the sharp and tinsel spray stung his face. His cheeks felt numb and thick from the lashing of the thin and radiant wind, and despite the robes his toes were beginning to acquire an unpleasant lack of sensation. I am certainly effete, he thought, and glanced at Alfred.

  He was much annoyed by what he saw. Alfred wore a thick gray greatcoat with a fur collar. Dorothea had knitted him a sober dark blue scarf, which, wound about his neck, doubtless was very comfortable though it did not add a fashionable note to his costume. Alfred also wore a round warm cap of silver fur, with ear-laps, and his big hands were enclosed in mittens of the same fur. Alfred was too obviously enjoying the air and the burning sun; his shoulders were as hard and firm as rock under the coat. The young horse might prance, and wish to cavort, but Alfred controlled him expertly,
and with such evident satisfaction as to make Jerome stare at him disagreeably and think: Why, he likes to control, to impose his will! It gives him a sense of puerile power, the ass! So it isn’t always ‘duty’ and righteousness with him, but something much more obscene and dangerous. Jerome understood the lust for power that lies in men, and shrewdly guessed that his own elegant languor and pretence of civilized nonchalance came from his belief that he could not excel spectacularly in any particular field and thus acquire overwhelming power of his own. But he felt only a disgust for those so malformed of soul that they experienced a sadistic pleasure in the imposition of their will on even so lowly a creature as a dog or a horse, as well as on more potent and human personalities.

  I’ve both underestimated and overestimated him, he thought, looking sideways at his cousin. And that is sinister. Yes, there is something ominous about him, and menacing. But he’ll not subjugate me, now that I understand.

  To the casual observer, Alfred did not appear either ominous or menacing this morning. His profile was somewhat rocklike, blunt and harsh of outline, it is true, and his pale skin and pale eyes gave him an aspect of brutal strength and a lack of warm and human sensibility. But to the casual observer these were only the marks of a strong and healthy man in early middle age, who had been guilty of no excesses and no profligacy. He was all well-preserved and weighty virility, all big and masculine angles. However, Jerome’s new or reawakened sensitivity saw something implacable under all this, something threateningly self-centered and dull and malignant. Again Jerome said to himself: He is dangerous.

  At this thought, he felt an unfamiliar tingling in himself, an excitement. He stared at Alfred with furtive curiosity and intent wonder.

  The valley road, full of ruts of black ice, powdered with snow, wound down to Riversend. The town rose up to meet them. They passed a straggling settlement of workmen’s shacks, indecently ugly in the morning’s pure and radiant light. They were built of gray clapboards, and leaned at discouraged angles, their windows tired and dirty, their broken eaves trailing scarves of smoke. All about them, the snow had become dingy and trampled. Jerome saw a group of slatternly shawled women waiting patiently at the communal pump, while two other women attempted to work the frozen apparatus. Wan and ragged children surrounded the women; they were silent and still, possessed of none of that robust and noisy vitality which marks the lucky children who are well-fed and warmly housed. These were the families of the soiled and half-starved men who worked on the local railroad and in the local brewery.

  The women did not chatter or laugh; they stood like so many exhausted and dazed animals in the snow, their gaunt bodies whipped by the wind. Jerome saw their pallid faces, their hungry and hopeless eyes, as they turned to look at the passing cutter.

  Jerome closed his own eyes briefly. “My God, haven’t they done anything about these people yet?” he asked. “Increased their pay or mended their houses?”

  Alfred looked back at the shacks and the women and children, and his harsh face became ugly with repulsion and disgust. “They never save a penny,” he said. After a moment, he added: “Besides, the houses are surrounded by fields of wildflowers, in the summer. It’s quite pretty, then.”

  Jerome was acridly delighted. He laughed. Alfred stared at him briefly, then shrugged his massive shoulders slightly.

  Jerome had what he considered a very brilliant and revolutionary idea. He even pushed aside the robes a trifle. “Look here, something could be done. For instance, if the railroads paid their men decently, and the other local industries, and the owners of the big estates, and what not, these people could buy houses! The Bank could finance them, on long-term mortgages! Architects could be engaged to draft plans for small but neat buildings, with some air of originality and quaintness. Something appetizing, and pleasant to the eye, agreeable as English village homes, but with more soundness of roof and more windows. The grounds could be landscaped prettily. Give the poor devils some self-respect, some pride in their community, some hope for the future—”

  Alfred reined in the gay young horse with an almost vicious strength, so that the animal, frightened and hurt, reared, then pursued his way at a slower pace. Jerome wiped the white spume from his face automatically and turned hopefully to his cousin. Alfred was regarding him with dark and somber repudiation.

  “Jerome, that is a mad idea. Please do not give voice to such ideas among our friends, and depositors. It might annoy, or even alarm, them. I should not dare to prophesy the consequences.” He paused. “But, of course, you were only joking.”

  Jerome was silent. He turned his head over his shoulder to look back at the shacks, which were like a broken ulcer on the long white slope of the foot of the hill. His eyes narrowed in his thin brown face.

  “Yes,” he said slowly, “I was only joking.”

  Alfred was visibly relieved, but still affronted. He flicked his whip cuttingly at the horse’s flanks. “You don’t understand these people, I am afraid. Idealists speak of slums as if they were an act of God. They aren’t. Slums do not make the misery of these people; it is the people who make the slums, and create an ugly and repellent atmosphere about them. If they had any spirit, or the slightest decency, they would mend their houses, clear the weed-infested and filthy grounds, and generally improve themselves.”

  “Nevertheless,” said Jerome, gently, “if a man is constantly conscious of his unfilled belly, his coldness and hopelessness, his poverty and despair, he cannot force himself to plant roses and vines and put little flower plots about his hovel. One must first give the poor adequate pay.”

  “A dangerous idea!” exclaimed Alfred, with cold violence, and now his big features were congested with outrage. “A nihilistic idea! Once give these wretches more money and the taverns will only become more prosperous! As it is, they spend much of their wages on drink. Moreover, if the poor receive ‘adequate pay,’ as you so heedlessly call it, they would become boastful and uncontrollable and increasingly arrogant. They would attempt to rise above their stations, and society would become chaotic and disorganized. They would lose that proper respect for their superiors so commended in the Bible, and what little piety they now possess, and they would demand a larger and larger share in the business of government, thus rendering precarious the position of those who were born to rule and guide them.”

  Jerome regarded the horse’s back reflectively. “Dear me, I always thought America was a republic. It seems I am mistaken. And Mr. Lincoln was mistaken, also. If I remember, he ill-advisedly mentioned something about democracy—”

  “He, too, was a revolutionary, and a most dangerous one.” Alfred’s voice was pent, more than a little stifled. “Heaven alone knows what might have happened to America, had he lived. You will find nothing about democracy in the Constitution, Jerome.”

  Jerome’s expression became dreamy. “‘We hold these truths to be self-evident—’” he murmured. He said more audibly: “It appears that the pursuit of happiness is the prerogative of those who can afford to pay for it.”

  “Rather, of those who are worthy of it,” said Alfred vigorously.

  He whipped the horse again. His face steadily darkened. “Jerome, what you say is mischievous. It can cause untold damage. Again, I must remind you to keep your perilous ideas to yourself. Besides, I do not believe your emotions are involved in the least. You cannot convince me that the ‘plight’ of the poor touches your heart. I know you too well. You merely love mischief for its own sake.”

  He spoke coldly, even malignantly, and the glance he gave his cousin was both warning and full of open dislike.

  Again, Jerome felt that unfamiliar and dangerous tingling through his flesh. He thought: I was a fool. He is not in the least stupid. He is really deadly. He hates me, though he would never admit it even to himself.

  Now Jerome was wide awake, all his genteel languor gone. His blood tingled and fumed. He felt alive, as if all his muscles were hardening, flexing.

  “I feel something in the ai
r, in America,” he said thoughtfully. “I felt it in Europe, too, only in a heavier and more sluggish fashion. I think we are inevitably passing from the ‘rule of the superior,’ the ‘God-appointed.’ I think the dream of the Greek philosophers is fermenting under the misery and the hopelessness of the world. Socrates walks the earth like a brightening ghost. The Parthenon is full of strong and spectral voices. And there is nothing you can do about it, my dear Alfred. It is your kind of idea which is perishing.”

  Alfred smiled grimly. “You truly surprise me, Jerome. And so, will you kindly tell me what you have been doing all these years in New York and in Europe? What heroic movement have you set afoot? To what cause have you donated your efforts and your money? It seems I have underestimated you.”

  Jerome burst out laughing, but did not answer.

  Alfred’s smile was even more grim. “I like to think of you following the ghost of Socrates, perhaps carrying a banner. The thought is edifying.”

  Jerome only laughed.

  “I still believe, Jerome, that you are only mischievous. You delight in being provocative, out of sheer malice. I am both alarmed and assuaged by the thought. And so I can only warn you again: Do not speak of things, in which you, yourself, do not truly believe, to those who might misunderstand.”

  He added, in a lower and more threatening tone: “I have determined to guard what your father, my uncle, has built in wisdom and prudence.”

  “Doubtless,” said Jerome, agreeably.

  They were approaching the gates of a beautiful estate. A mansion of rosy brick stood nobly in the snow, its great chimneys smoldering against the sparkling blue sky. Spruces and firs, heavy with whiteness, were scattered about the grounds. The wall about them was low, built of brick, cushioned with snow. A very tall and lean gentleman, several inches above six feet in height, was standing outside the iron gates with a brace of formidable dogs, who now set up a wild barking at the approach of the cutter.