This Side of Innocence

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  She lifted her head finally. Her eyes were moist with tears. But with much briskness and archness she opened her bag and produced a small box covered with gold-colored velvet. She held it high for Philip to see. “You have no idea what this is!” she cried. “But you must guess. I will allow you three guesses, only.”

  His eyes sparkled with young anticipation. “A ring! A set of cufflinks! Oh—Mama, I can’t think! Please let me see it!”

  She put the box into his hands, and he raised himself on his pillows. His fingers shook as he opened the box, while she watched him, smiling. Then he gave a loud cry of delight. Revealed on white velvet was a beautiful gold watch, a repeater. Moreover, the face showed the phases of the moon, the days of the week, the months of the year. While he held it, dazed and awed, the tiny golden bell inside sounded the quarter hour on a series of fairy notes. He could not speak. He could only raise his eyes slowly and look at Amalie with an expression of ecstasy.

  “Look at the back, Philip,” she whispered.

  He turned it over, almost stupidly, so great was his joy. There was some elegant engraving on the smooth gold: “To Philip from his loving mother, January 29, 1869.”

  The boy read the inscription; then, with touching simplicity, he put his parched lips to it. He trembled. Tears ran down his cheeks. Amalie felt a quivering pang in her breast. She caught Philip in her arms and held him to her, her face pressed strongly to the top of his head. “My dear, my love, my darling,” she whispered.

  When the maid brought Philip’s tea, she informed Amalie that the gentlemen were awaiting her. But Amalie, expressing her regrets, ordered that tea be brought for her in Philip’s room.

  Amalie fastened the emerald earrings carefully in her ears. She looked into her mirror. She saw her pale face, framed in its glistening waves of black hair, her long pale neck rising from the lace collar of her green velvet gown. She reached into the depths of a drawer, withdrew a scrap of red flannel, moistened it at her lips, and rubbed the flannel quickly and deftly on her cheeks. She was rewarded by a faint glow, which, however, only increased the dark hollowness of her violet eyes. She then rubbed her lips quickly, replaced the flannel in her drawer. She stood away from the candle-lighted mirror and carefully studied her slender firm figure. Her gown, with its heavy drapes and folds, was becoming and demure, yet she mysteriously imparted to it a kind of drama and excitement.

  The dim, fire-lit room behind her was warm and still. Alfred was completing his evening dressing in the small room adjoining. Amalie turned from the mirror and looked long and slowly at the room. It was large, and had been Alfred’s alone. The great four-poster bed lay smoothly under its white silk quilt. The Turkey-red carpet was thick and deep. The large mahogany chairs, covered with dark blue or red plush or damask, were touched fretfully but quietly by the rosy streamers from the hearth. A desk of rosewood stood between the windows, which were framed in crimson velvet, heavy with gold fringe. Two chairs, covered with dull tapestry, and garnished with footstools, stood on each side of the marble fireplace. The mirrored wardrobe flung back firelight and candlelight in cosy gleams. Amalie’s dressing-table, which had been Jerome’s mother’s, sparkled with cut glass and gilt. Amalie’s perfume mingled with the warm fresh smell of the room, which was compounded of wax and soap and fire. There was a bouquet of roses on a table near one of the chairs by the hearth, and it added its lovely and languorous fragrance to the others.

  Alfred was humming tonelessly behind the closed door of the dressing-room. The sleet had turned to a lashing rain. Amalie went to the windows and pushed aside the draperies. She could see nothing, not even a twinkling light from the valley. She saw only the reflection of her tired still face on the dark glass. She started back, suddenly, then smiled at her nervousness. There had been a thin tapping at the window, but now she identified it as the bare, twigs of a tree which stood just outside. She stood and listened to the tapping and the restless wind and rain. She heard nothing else but these, and Alfred’s humming. The house had settled down to a pre-dinner hush.

  This is how it would always be, these quiet relentless evenings, the long dull relentless days. But she had known it before, for weeks. However, that had been prior to the wedding, when a certain excitement had pervaded the house. Now she was part of this house, its massive stillness, its inexorable routine, its changelessness. She would watch the changing seasons, but she, herself, would not change, except to grow older, more quiet, like the others. Yes, she was part of this house. She was part of—Alfred.

  Her hands tightened on the draperies, and a sick wave of heat ran over her flesh. Memories of the last four weeks flashed through her mind. She had been everything that Alfred had desired; she had been much admired at the fine hotel at which they had stayed. She thought of the nights she had endured. Endured. She could not free herself from the thought. She said to herself: What a fool I was, to deceive myself that his solid quiet and composure extended to—all things I How jejune she had been, she who had prided herself on not possessing any illusions at all, who had congratulated herself that she was immune to shock, disgust, fear, dread. She had told herself, in her fatuous ignorance, that she was a worldly woman who had made a bargain, and that passion was the least important of the things she would have to endure to gain that which was so vastly more important.

  I knew everything, and I knew nothing, she thought, with profound and loathing ridicule of herself. She looked back at the self before the marriage, and laughed aloud at the spectacle of the disingenuous and open-eyed girl she had believed that self to be. What a smirking and odious imbecile, making her “bargain”! She would give so-and-so for so-and-so, all extremely matter-of-fact, and undeluded.

  But she had known nothing of Alfred. She had known nothing of passion. For all her boldness and her cynical conversation, she had been as inexperienced and as innocent as any of the simpering young ladies she had despised. She had looked at men openly, had laughed and joked with them, had flirted with them outrageously, and without reticence—and had known nothing whatsoever about them.

  Her sick terror and loathing increased. But she fixed her thoughts decisively on Alfred’s virtues, his truly deep love for her, the comfort and security he had given her with his name. And that name, she reminded herself, was an honorable and a good one. He had given her sanctuary and peace, the strong walls of this house, a lofty position. She glanced at the emeralds in the bracelet on her wrist, the flashing diamond on her finger.

  She was a wife, protected and unthreatened. Never again for her terror of hunger, the constant threat of miserable and ugly days, the hideous existence of the poor and the undefended. No longer, for her, that precarious life of the unprotected woman, the dread of the years, the cold stark bedrooms of the moneyless, the dirt of the hopeless. The menace had retreated from her forever, and all the ugliness and pain and uncertainty. Fortune had given her this face, and this figure, and with them she had purchased all the enviable things she had dreamed of, and had desired, while she had lain under ragged blankets or had eaten the drab meals of poverty.

  She thought: It ought not to be so for women, who are human beings in a world of humanity. We ought not to be so undefended, so helpless. We ought not to have to wonder if our faces and our bodies are of sufficient pleasantness to attract security and food and shelter to us, in the form of a man. This is a refutation of our dignity as part of humanity, a degradation of our deepest instincts, a denial of our right to live. Have we not hearts that beat, and blood that flows, and emotions that are subject to the same laws and the same tides and instincts that govern men? Women are the daughters of men; they share the identical passions and longings and hopes that are a part of their fathers. Yet, we are debased to mere chattels, relegated to the ranks of the sub-human, dependent on the whims of the masters, denied the right to dispose of our own lives and climb to any heights we desire, to live and laugh in self-made security and dignity. We must please—or we do not eat, or, if we eat, we eat the bread of charity or
of menial work. We cannot choose the men with whom we must lie, and to whom we must submit, whether in indifference or in loathing or in terror.

  A sudden hot rage engulfed her. She closed her hand about her bracelet, as if to wrench it off. And then she said to herself: He is good, he is kind, he is almost always gentle, except—I can offer him no reproach. It is I who am the fool. But there is no choice for women but folly.

  She looked at herself in the mirror again, and deliberately stroked the velvet of her gown. She began to smile. I am being dramatic, she thought, over her tumultuous misery. I have made a most excellent bargain. I am even fond of him. I have gained more than he has, and must make the greater concession. For what he has given me, I have only to please. Her smile became bitter.

  She heard soft footsteps in the hall outside, passing her door. And then, without any warning at all, her heart bounded up in her breast and all her flesh trembled and quaked. She stood rigid, while the footsteps retreated. Even after they had gone completely, she stood like that, one hand pressed hard on her dressing table, her face turned to the door.

  So Alfred found her, coming out of the dressing-room. He thought she was listening. He stopped, and listened, too. But he heard nothing. He saw her green-clad figure leaning against the dressing-table, her white and beautiful profile. He smiled contentedly. Then he frowned a little.

  “My love,” he said, “is not that dress just a trifle—extreme?”

  She started, then turned slowly towards him. But she made herself smile. “Extreme?” she asked, glancing at the mirror. “I think not. It has such a high neck, and long sleeves.” Her own words wearied her; she had had to repeat them so often these past weeks.

  Alfred considered her acutely. The gown was indeed quite respectable, with its conservative bodice trimmed with crystal buttons, its modest bustle and flowing lines and white lace collar and cuffs. He was puzzled, as usual. Such a gown on Dorothea would have appeared drab and refined and nondescript. Yet, his wife gave it a most curious air, almost theatrical. It was unfortunate that Alfred did not recognize style when he saw it. He thought it “unrefined.”

  He studied her face and her hair. A faint sharp thrill ran through him. But he held his mind sternly to his consideration of her. Her hair was not twirled and curled and twisted in an extreme dress. Its bright black waves were very sleek, the chignon neat and controlled. But still, that hair was not demure and meek and matronly. And her face was too vivid, perhaps, too seeking, too alive. He did not think of it in these terms; he thought only that it lacked reticence and decorousness.

  “You are charming, my love,” he said, and drew her to him and kissed her cheek with a properly husbandlike dignity. “But those emerald earrings: I confess they give you a rather bold air. Would you please me, and remove them?”

  She withdrew herself from his arms, trying to control the rigidity of her flesh. Without a word, she removed the jewelry. Alfred watched, pleased. “There, that is much better. We have a certain decorum to uphold, in Riversend.”

  “Are we to have guests tonight?” she asked indifferently, putting the jewlery in its padded box.

  “No. I think not. There will be only Uncle William and ourselves for late dinner. The weather is too inclement for Sunday visitors.” He examined his tall strong figure in the wardrobe mirrors. “Jerome, I understand, will not be here. He is dining with General Tayntor tonight.” He smiled. “I was given more than a hint by Dorothea that a match is in the making there. With Miss Sally.”

  He did not see how still Amalie’s hands had become on the jewelry box. He did not see the whiteness of her knuckles, the sudden dropping of her head. He only heard her voice: “Miss Sally? The little girl with the big black eyes?”

  “Yes. A lovely child, and very lively. A trifle too lively, perhaps. But with a considerable fortune. If it is true, and I pray it is, Jerome has done excellently for himself.”

  Amalie closed the drawer. She said, in her strangely dull voice: “Will they live here, also?”

  Alfred adjusted his cravat. His face was serious. “Yes. I believe so. The house is large enough. Besides, I always remember that he is, after all, Uncle William’s son, and has prior claims.” He paused. “Though I am given to understand that the house will be mine, eventually. However, even under those conditions, Jerome’s wishes must be considered.”

  Amalie said, almost inaudibly: “Alfred, cannot we leave here? Cannot we have a home of our own, alone? Just you, and I, and Philip? I should not care if it were less grand. Only so we can be alone.”

  Alfred was startled, then tremendously pleased. He came to his wife and took her in his arms again, and kissed her on the mouth with sudden passion. Then he held her off from him and regarded her with delight. Her lips were parched and white, even under the stain of the flannel. He said: “Would you really like that, my darling?”

  “Yes,” she said, faintly.

  He put his hand on the back of her head and pressed her face into his shoulder. He said, in a low voice: “It would please me more than anything else, my dearest. But we must subordinate our own wishes. There is Uncle William to consider.” She stood quietly in the circle of his big arms and tried to restrain the violence of her old repulsion at the sound of his “sanctimonious” and “consciously upright sentiments.” With what derision she had heard them so often before, and with what cynical contempt! She had detested them as hypocrisy, the righteous dissimulation of complete egotism.

  And then, in the very midst of her derision and scorn, it came to her with passionate amazement and self-hatred and humility that she had been wrong. Alfred had spoken honestly, partly out of a narrow but profound depth of honor and partly out of stern justice. If he saw that injustice might be closing in upon him, he was reminding himself resolutely that he had been accorded a great deal and had no right to ask more. If his natural human bitterness taunted him, he told himself that it was only fair that Mr. Lindsey’s real son should be first in his favor. Alfred was a realist, then, even against himself, and he accepted the inevitable, if not without heart-burnings, at least with understanding. If he lacked flamboyant imagination and subtlety, and lived inexorably in the small tight house of his nature, that house was clean and bright with integrity.

  Amalie stood within his arms, and hated herself, and felt herself to be soiled and mean and sordid beyond the endurance of her vanity. She lifted her head and said, with involuntary vehemence: “It is not fair! No one considers you! You are so good, Alfred, so very, very good! Yet that goodness means nothing, now that a dissolute and dishonorable man has returned to the house you have earned, and to enjoy the work that you have done!”

  He looked down at her, dumfounded, and saw the purplish blaze of her infuriated eyes. For an instant, and an instant only, she in turn saw the pale hazel of his own eyes flash with uncontrollable and responsive anger and human revolt. She felt the tightening of his arms about her, as if in wrathful gratitude and despairing acknowledgment of her sympathy.

  Then he was putting her aside quietly, and saying, even more quietly: “Amalie, my dear, you do not understand. Whatever I have done is only a fair exchange for what Uncle William has done for me. He took me in when there was no hope for me, and gave me his fatherhood in adoption and opened doors for me which I might never have entered by myself. My father was not fond of me, but Uncle William has given me affection and consideration and a home. I can never repay him.

  “I cannot see that a reasonable man is justified in demanding more when so much has been given him.” He paused. He fixed his eyes steadily upon hers with grave penetration. “I am no hypocrite, and I will not say that Jerome’s return, and his expressed desire to enter the Bank, has not been a shock to me. For several days I was considerably—tormented. For several days I hoped it was only a whim. When I saw it was not, I hated him.”

  Now Alfred smiled, but it was a sad and curiously defenseless smile, and she knew, instinctively, that he was telling her things he would never have told another, a
nd with a sense of release and loving gratitude to her that he could so tell them.

  “You see, I am not so good. I am really not good at all. I hate Jerome. I hate him, in spite of the fact that I know Uncle William could not really do anything but what he is doing. I think, in my heart, that I have always hated Jerome, because he is so much cleverer than I, and inspires so much more admiration and affection. There is something about him which draws others to him. You see, my darling, I have always been so lonely.”

  He took her hand, and she saw him through a haze of tears. He led her to the bed, and he sat down beside her, still holding her hand. But he did not look at her; he looked into space, and his expression was very sad and heavy and quite bitter.

  “They say such men as Jerome are ‘enchanting’ or ‘fascinating,’ and imply that these men deserve the fondness or admiration they excite, by reason of some peculiar inherent virtue. They believe that fondness and admiration are only the just dues of such as Jerome. Perversely, they believe that such as I neither desire affection, nor miss it. We are ‘remote’ or ‘uninteresting’ to our lukewarm friends, or repellent to our enemies. They do not know how lonely we are, and how we long, with real passion, for gentleness and understanding.”

  He glanced at her now and smiled ruefully. “I am afraid I am speaking in quite detestable self-pity or sentimentality, and I know you despise such things.”

  Her tears were thicker, and she gazed at him with speechless astonishment and deeper humility. He was not so unimaginative then, not so insensitive as she had thought, and she hated herself afresh. He understood so many things with silent perception, like life stirring unseen and unsuspected in the deep earth. Her hand tightened about his.

  “Do not have any illusions about me, Amalie,” he was saying, with extreme quietness. “I am not a resigned man by nature, nor really a good one. My thoughts are uncharitable and I am ambitious. And is there not a saying that ambitious men are dangerous? Yes. I am dangerous. And I hate Jerome. I have always hated him. Perhaps I am envious, though I see nothing attractive in the life he has led, or in what he is. Perhaps my envy springs from my own realization that there is nothing in me which inspires the admiration and fondness which follow him naturally. But do not believe I am humble. I know I am the better man, and I intend that others shall recognize that also. You see, now, that I am not kind or forbearing, though I try to understand and try to be just.”