This Side of Innocence

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  She said: “Well. If you want one or two of the lilies, take them, for heaven’s sake!”

  Mary eagerly selected two and held them adoringly in her small arms. She buried her nose in the petals and it acquired a golden powder of pollen. “Grandpa won’t mind,” she said.

  “No,” replied Amalie seriously, “I don’t think he will. I think he’d like you to have them.”

  Mary gave her a quick strange look, as though surprised at these words. It was also a startled and grateful look. It was the look of one who is with strangers and then hears a familiar and understanding voice from an unexpected source. Amalie was both touched and annoyed. She did not consider herself without subtlety and sensibility; yet her child was not at ease with her, and was always faintly on the defensive. This was not flattering to one who had the gift of delicate perception, and Amalie’s vanity was injured. She recalled that, at times, Mary could be heard chattering volubly with Jim, and with her father, and with her brother. But Mary was always reserved with her mother. Why was this? Amalie frowned. Jerome was always accusing her of “not talking” to Mary. That was absurd. She could not understand Jerome in these moods.

  There had been another time when Jerome had said: “You are on the defensive with Mary, all the time. You never say what you mean. You think you should always be the ‘mother.’ Try to remember that Mary is a human being too, not just your child.”

  This was too subtle altogether, thought Amalie with exasperation. But she regarded her daughter intently. The wind lifted Mary’s silvery mane of hair and blew it across her head and face so wildly that she had a strange and unearthly look. Her small face was dreaming as she stared down at the lilies in her arms. She had withdrawn again into the hidden place where only Jerome could seem to go.

  Amalie said gently: “I wish you could have known your grandfather, Mary. He was more than a good man. He was a friend.”

  “Oh, yes,” said the child obediently, smelling the lilies again. “I know.”

  “Papa told you?”

  Mary shook her head. “No, I just know. I feel him here.”

  Amalie was silent. She knelt to rearrange the flowers she had brought. The roses were already wilting in the heat. She said: “I don’t think I’ll bring cut flowers any more. A plant, perhaps. Or ivy. Yes, it is a shame to leave these lovely things here to die.”

  “We could take them home,” suggested Mary, who, despite her dreaming face and shy eager eyes, was gifted with an odd practicality.

  Amalie was about to advise her again not to be silly, but she caught the words back with determination. So she merely shook her head, and after a moment said thoughtfully: “No. They’d be falling apart before we got there. Best to leave them.”

  Mary smiled contentedly. Then she pointed to the pool. “They’d live a little longer if we stuck them in there. In the wet mud.”

  Amalie, firmly compressing her mouth, took up the flowers and went to the pool with them, lilies and all. She thrust the long stems into the mud. The green water was faintly disturbed for a moment. Amalie felt foolish. She had brought flowers to a grave, to lie with death, and now she had given them a brief new lease on life, far from the grave. But when she saw Mary’s expression, she did not regret her act. Quite light-heartedly she looked down at the flowers. “The birds will like them,” said Mary, with her incomprehensible return to dreams. Amalie reflected that it was useless to try to understand Mary. But one could pretend.

  Had Alfred brought the lilies, or Dorothea? Did they grow these lovely things in their garden? But Dorothea had not cared for lilies—the “flowers of death” she had called them once, in Amalie’s hearing. And Alfred had never shown any partiality for flowers in any form.

  “I wonder who brought the lilies?” asked Amalie of her daughter.

  “I suppose he did,” said Mary calmly, pointing towards a bench standing deep in the shade of the willows.

  Startled, her heart leaping suddenly, Amalie turned and looked in the direction of Mary’s pointing finger. A shadowy, watching figure of a man sat on the bench. When he saw that Amalie had discovered him, he rose to a short, almost squat height, and came forward slowly and quietly.

  “Philip!” exclaimed Amalie, and colored deeply.

  “Amalie,” said Philip, with composure, and smiling. He held out his hand, and gazed up at her, searchingly but gently.

  Amalie hesitated, then she took Philip’s hand. His clasp was warm and kind. “I haven’t seen you for years,” she stammered, feeling the heat in her cheeks. “How are you, Philip? You are looking well. You have hardly changed.”

  But Philip had changed. He was a man of twenty-four now, and though his deformed height had just barely increased, his was the face of maturity. It was also Jerome’s face, but a kinder, more gentle, more thoughtful and subtle face, without Jerome’s dark arrogance and cold fierceness. It also possessed something which Jerome’s features lacked: a sort of tender but powerful reflectiveness, full of humor and sadness. His hair, thick and strong and short and black, might have been Jerome’s hair, in his youth, and the moulding of his narrow head suggested Jerome’s pride without his impatience. There was a steadfast calm and quiet about Philip, as if he had come a long way, not without sadness, but also with immovable and compassionate courage.

  “And you are just the same, Amalie,” said Philip softly, still holding her hand, still looking up at her with his dark and unwavering eyes.

  Amalie, still extremely embarrassed and confused, withdrew her hand. “And this is our daughter, Mary,” she said.

  Philip turned to the child, smiling. “Yes, I know.” His smile grew more sparkling, but he considerately did not glance at Amalie. “I have a pair of binoculars too.”

  Amalie drew in her breath, her face crimson. Then she laughed helplessly. “Oh, Philip!” she exclaimed. “Don’t tell me everyone—else—knows!”

  “No,” he reassured her, still not glancing in her direction, but only gazing at Mary with his kind smile.

  Mary was staring at him fully, her light-blue eyes candid and pleased. “You look like my papa,” she said frankly. “Do you know my papa?”

  “Yes, Mary,” he replied seriously, as to a respected equal. “I am your papa’s second cousin. My name is Philip. Philip Lindsey.”

  “Why don’t you come to visit us?” asked Mary. She took the hand which he had extended to her. “I think I’d like you.”

  Amalie waited for Philip’s answer. He said thoughtfully: “I have been away at school, Mary. I have just finished, this June. But now I shall be home. And if you want me to visit you, I shall be delighted.”

  “Where do you live?” asked Mary, pleased and interested.

  “Down on the hill, below you.”

  Mary’s silvery brows drew together. “You mean in ‘that house’?” she asked, while Amalie listened, appalled.

  Philip’s smile broke out irrepressibly, but again, with consideration, he did not glance at Amalie. “Is that what your papa calls it? Yes, I live in ‘that house.’”

  Mary, oblivious of her mother’s immense embarrassment, said: “Papa says I mustn’t go down there. He says gray stone men live down there, and they’ll freeze me up.” The child smiled at Philip, as though sharing an absurd confidence with him.

  “Mary!” exclaimed Amalie. “I never heard your father say that at all. You are just making it up, and you are very impolite to Philip!”

  Mary turned to her with a severe look. “Mama, I’m not making it up. You always tell me I make things up. But I don’t. Papa told me that. You ask him.”

  Amalie was silent. Philip considered the child with tenderness.

  “You look like your grandfather, my dear,” he said.

  Mary nodded confidingly. “Yes, I know. Papa and Mama told me. He must have been nice.”

  At this, Amalie and Philip burst out laughing together, while Mary studied them, bewildered. Then she said, with petulance: “Mama, Philip doesn’t look like gray stone, and you are all teasing
me.”

  “Never mind,” said Philip tactfully. “That’s just poetic license on your papa’s part. People sometimes use words to express something entirely different.”

  Mary nodded, pleased. “I know,” she said obscurely and gave her mother a curious swift look, which Amalie, now completely demoralized, mercifully did not see.

  “Let us sit down over there, Philip,” said Amalie. “There is so much I want to know about you.”

  The three went to the bench and sat down. Mary was plainly fascinated by this new relative. She sat beside him and stared at him with clear openness while he talked to her mother.

  Philip, speaking in that quiet voice she remembered, but which was now so much more mature and assured and strong, told Amalie of his years at school. He had now returned, he said, and his father wished him to go into the Bank.

  “But your music!” said Amalie, in distress. “And your writing, Philip!”

  Philip looked down at his small feet. “But my father has no other son, Amalie. If he—had married—again—and there had been other children, it might have been different. I might then have done what I wished.”

  Amalie’s eyes darkened. So here was another she had injured. She had injured him without intent, but there was a pain in her heart.

  “The Bank is not as important as you, Philip,” she said.

  Philip did not answer this. He was thinking of his father, stricken, hopeless, somber. Philip well knew that compassion frequently destroys him who feels it. But there had been nothing else to do, nothing else he could do.

  “You won’t like banking,” Amalie continued, her distress sharpening.

  Philip looked up at the soft moving fountain of the willow branches above them. “It won’t take all my whole life,” he said thoughtfully. “And I don’t particularly care for self-aggrandizement.”

  “No one has a right to bury his talents,” Amalie said pleadingly.

  Philip smiled at her consolingly. “I’m afraid I was just a dilettante, Amalie. Just pleasant accomplishments. I can still enjoy them. Dilettantes have their function in life, but it is not to convince others that they are geniuses.” His dark eye fixed itself on her, penetratingly. “Does Jerome still paint?”

  Amalie colored. “Only family portraits. He has painted me and the children.”

  “Well, then, if he had really been a genius, he could not have abandoned his talent,” said Philip. “That is the test of genius: drive. I lacked it, as Jerome lacked it. But that does not mean that we must abandon the pleasure, our slight gifts give us. We can enjoy them privately, without facing the humiliation and the heartbreak of a world’s indifference, or criticism.”

  Amalie’s hand lay beside his. He put his own on it, and pressed it firmly and affectionately. Amalie’s eyes filled with tears. She said: “You had more than a slight gift, Philip.”

  He took out his watch and glanced at the time. A frail fairy note issued from its golden depths. Mary was immediately entranced. “Oh, how pretty. Let me see it.” She took it in her thin white fingers, and studied it delightedly, while Philip watched with loving amusement. She turned the watch over, and read aloud: “To dear Philip, from his loving mother—. Oh,” she said, softly. “From your mother. Is she dead?”

  Philip took the watch from her and replaced it in his pocket. “Yes, love, she is dead.”

  Amalie gazed at him, moved. “You still keep the watch, Philip.”

  He looked at her strongly and deeply. “Yes, Amalie. And why not? I loved the one who gave it to me.” And then he added, almost inaudibly: “And I still love her.”

  “Oh, Philip,” she murmured.

  He was silent, considering. He knew that she wanted to hear of the others. So he began to speak, quietly: “My father is well. He, too, has hardly changed, except that his hair is almost gray now. And Aunt Dorothea is ageless. She grows more energetic all the time. And more devoted. I think they are quite content.”

  “I am glad,” whispered Amalie. “Oh, I am so glad.”

  He nodded gravely. “I thought you would be.”

  Mary had been listening to these incomprehensible remarks with profound curiosity. Her mama was so strange; her face had such a funny look. And this nice Philip seemed so kind. She said suddenly: “Can I go down to see you, Philip, in ‘that house’? Or won’t they like me?”

  Philip considered her with the adult thoughtfulness that so pleased her. “I am sure they would love you, Mary,” he said. “But they are old people. There are no children there, you see. I don’t think you would enjoy it.”

  “But I could see you,” the child insisted.

  Philip gave this due consideration also. “Well, then, how would it be if I came up to see you sometime?”

  Amalie’s distress returned. What would Jerome say to all this? But Jerome had never had any hostility for Philip. He had been kind, in his careless and selfish way.

  Mary was delighted. “Tomorrow?” she asked eagerly.

  Philip and Amalie rose together. Philip said: “Perhaps not tomorrow. But soon. Yes, I think it should be soon.” He turned to Amalie. “May it be soon, Amalie?”

  Amalie hesitated. Then she said clearly: “Yes. Yes.”

  They went slowly towards the gates together, Mary holding Philip’s hand. They did not speak until they had reached the gates. Then Amalie said suddenly and quickly: “Philip. Do—they—still hate me?”

  Philip dropped the bar into place. He said, without looking at Amalie: “I don’t think my father ever hated you, Amalie.” He wished she had not been so tactless. There were things better left unsaid. He remembered, however, that Amalie had never been notable for tact, and he smiled.

  He took Mary’s small flushed face in his hands and kissed her cheek. To Amalie’s surprise, the child did not resent it, as she usually resented familiarities from strangers. In fact, she kissed Philip in return, with touching simplicity.

  “I have another child, Philip,”, said Amalie. “A little boy. Named after Jerome’s father.”

  Philip suddenly thought of his father, who had no children but himself, and he, deformed. His eyes clouded.

  “It must be nice—for Jerome,” he said.

  And now there was something in his voice which was cold and formal. Amalie felt chilled and lonely; she knew that Philip had instinctively withdrawn from her, and despondency filled her. Did Philip blame her? Did he despise her? She wanted to know desperately.

  “You haven’t forgotten me, Philip?” she said, with more urgency in her tone than she knew.

  He was kind again. He laid his hand, that delicate fine hand, on her arm, and smiled at her fondly. He knew that she meant “forgiven” rather than the word she had used.

  “I never forgot you, Amalie. And nothing, nothing, would ever stop me from loving you,” he said.

  Jim, waiting in the carriage, saw them, and stared unbelievingly.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  “That house,” as Jerome called it, had been quite unimaginatively christened The Pines, and stood upon five acres of gradually rising and level land near the base of the hill. It had been built squarely and severely of bright red brick, and was decorated with four brilliantly white round columns of wood at the entrance, reaching to the very eaves. All the exterior woodwork, including the door with its brass hardware, was white also. But its heavy, scattered pines and its red roof mellowed what might have been a certain austere grimness, and its grounds, if uninspired, were excellent. Formal flower-beds, filled with pansies and geraniums and thick low plants, were laid, rather than scattered, upon the green lawns. Another wall of pines, at the rear of the gardens, formed a natural boundary line. There was ‘an appearance of clean angularity about the house and its surrounding acres, and there were no dark piazzas, no turrets and cupolas or fretwork, to destroy the clarity of line. The summer trees softened a certain uncompromising air, but in winter, when the evergreens had turned a darker green, and the foliage of the deciduous trees had been shed, there was a cold starknes
s and bleakness there which were forbidding.

  Despite adequate heating by fires and stoves, the interior, though well lighted by high narrow windows, had this cold starkness, this bleakness. Dorothea had attended to the draperies and furnishings, and here, too, the angularity of her taste, her aloofness, her natural impatience with all that was soft and blurred, were disconcertingly evident. She liked dark, hard woods, and despised anything in the way of cushioning; and the upholstery, stiff, dim and reserved in color, did not invite lounging and dozing. However, she had not succumbed to horse-hair, nor to balled, velvet draperies muffling the windows. The fireplaces were not draped; there were no corner vases filled with peacock feathers or plumes, a new fashion which she found hideous. Nor had she burdened every cold table and mantelpiece with bric-a-brac, and, while her friends thought the chill play of unshaded light and the wide empty spaces of rug very uninviting, the clean and ascetic atmosphere was, in an arctic way, refreshing. Her curtains were of lace, her draperies thin and of pale color, and summer sun and white winter shadows entered freely. Everything, in short, was uncluttered, cool, and without restfulness.

  If Alfred and Philip found no quiet and comfortable corners in which to read, no sense of seclusion and warmth, they were too grateful for Dorothea’s excellent ordering of the house, and for her competency, to complain.

  Philip at times considered the ménage to be very depressing, and when he finally returned from the university he quietly rearranged and refurnished his own apartments. Dorothea, in cold umbrage, complained that he was destroying the symmetry of her household and “making work” for the servants. But Philip, with a gentleness she could not resist, explained that he must have soft furniture and dimmed light, and warmth, for his health’s sake. This was, of course, the purest hypocrisy, but Philip preferred kind hypocrisy to open and wounding battle. In other words, he was the soul of tact.

  Philip knew that Dorothea adored him, as she might have adored the son of her own body. Much of her old devotion to Alfred passed to Alfred’s son. She was secretly delighted that he had returned for good, that his schooldays were over. She dreamt of his marriage to a satisfactory, obedient and well-dowered wife, who would not interfere with Dorothea’s management of the home. Some pale, soft, quiet girl, who would, at least, give Alfred grandsons. What if darling Philip were deformed? He had a fine face, he was an elegant gentleman, he was wealthy, he would inherit his share of the Bank, he was cultivated and travelled. He was a wonderful catch, in spite of his physical disability. Dorothea grew impatient for his marriage. Sally Tayntor had married the son of Mr. Kendricks, Alfred’s lawyer, rich in his own right, and she already had three bouncing little girls. One of them, surely, might marry Philip’s son, though they had two or three years’ handicaps.