This Side of Innocence

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  Alfred became almost excited. “An economy based on the soil is an economy of natural rhythm. It is stable. It inspires confidence in the continuity of government, the continuity of personal and family life. It is an affirmation of the future.”

  Good, thought Philip again. He is really thinking. He has thought this out over long years. Do I agree? I don’t know. I really don’t know.

  Philip said: “Remember, again, Father, I am only repeating the arguments of others. I am merely asking you for your own opinion. It is a fact, though, that America is tending to centralization and urbanization. It is inevitable, they say, that the economy based on soil must pass. We must, I believe, look elsewhere for permanence and continuity and for our terribly necessary security.”

  Alfred said strongly: “Where? In factories? In overgrown, rootless cities.”

  Philip shook his head. “I don’t know. But perhaps men must create an economy of stable, spiritual values, of intellectualized virtues. At best, that will be dry bread, I admit, and could be digested by only a few. We’ll have to find something else—I feel that the increasing rootlessness might lead to frightful cycles of panics, depressions, even to world wars. Yes, we shall have to find something—I don’t know what.”

  He looked at his father compassionately. Alfred was thinking again. His face, if resistant, was despondent. He knows his era is passing, thought Philip, and he is afraid.

  Alfred said: “I will do my best to maintain the old economy based on the soil. I am afraid that my kind is going under. But we’ll go down fighting.”

  He stood up. Now his massive figure seemed somewhat blurred. He put his hand to his cheek, and slowly rubbed it with his palm. The disquiet in his eyes deepened, so that he had a melancholy if determined expression. He said quietly:

  “You see it here now in Riversend, since—since—Jerome. The well-paid workers in those abominable industrial works don’t know what to do with themselves. They have nothing but their pay!”

  Philip’s own eyes quickened, brightened, as he looked intently at his father. “‘Nothing but their pay!’” Yes, he thought, my father has begun to think, thank God, And this time, he is right. But I wonder if he knows how right, and how profound, is that statement of his, and how full of sinister potentialities?

  Sometimes, he reflected, simple men utter prophetic words which are quite beyond their own comprehension. The whole world of ominous possibilities which had opened before Philip at his father’s last words sobered him. But he doubted, with wonder, whether Alfred saw that complete and brawling and hungry world, that roaming and homeless world, that dangerous and seeking world, without stability or faith or individual responsibility.

  Philip thought: Both my father and Jerome are right. And both of them are wrong also.

  The dinner gong sounded. Alfred had been so sunk in thought that he started. He turned to Philip bemusedly. “Dinner,” he said, as if only he had heard the gong.

  They went in together. The cold and austere dining-room was filled with wan evening light, for it faced the east. The atmosphere was whitish and dusky, and its somberness was enhanced by the narrow china closets of black walnut, which stretched from floor to high, dim ceiling. The round table, with its stiff linen cloth, glimmered, as did the silver. The tall, thin windows looked out on gardens already mauve with twilight, already faint with dying color. In an unseen tree, a robin dropped his far and melancholy notes into the breathless silence.

  The dinner was excellent, hearty, and quite unimaginative. If Philip sometimes longed for delicate broiled lobster, for clams baked with herbs and bacon, for meats with wine sauces, all of which he had enjoyed at Delmonico’s on his frequent visits to New York, he was courteous enough not to mention it. He did not like the heavy port which was served with Alfred’s dinners, but Alfred insisted that he drink it, for “blood.” Philip invariably winced at the word. He saw the thin elegance of his vital fluid thickened by this abominable wine, so that it flowed more sluggishly, and his brain became smug and self-satisfied under its fumes. He drank the port sparingly. No wonder the British loved the status quo so inexorably! Red-running beef and soporific port were enough to make the most volatile man both brutal and dull. Philip thought longingly of the light, gay Latin wines he had drunk. Ah, that was the wine for sparkling literature, for leaping statues, for grace in living and versatility in government! He recalled that he had heard it said that the Portuguese did not drink their ponderous port themselves, but exported it. He commended their perspicacity.

  He waited until both Dorothea and Alfred had been surfeited, and their sensibilities lowered by the very specific gravity of their weighty meal, before he threw a lighted taper on the port-dampened wood of their reactions.

  He said: “It was pleasant and quite lovely in the cemetery today. Your lilies were exquisite, Aunt Dorothea.”

  Dorothea said uncompromisingly: “I only grow them because you like them, Philip.”

  He inclined his head towards her, with a smile. “I know. And that is very thoughtful of you.”

  Dorothea, sternly pleased, said: “I know I should have gone myself. But I had too much to do, and besides, I cannot convince myself that my father is there, anyway.”

  Her gaunt face, dry and faintly lined, saddened.

  Philip nodded. “I wish you had gone, Aunt Dorothea. I had the pleaure of seeing Jerome’s little girl there. A beautiful child. She looks like her grandfather.”

  The port-dampened wood, he found, was very capable of being ignited. For both Dorothea and Alfred turned to him with an almost violent quickness, both their faces tightening, becoming overcast with a cloud of emotions. Philip calmly sipped his coffee, affecting to be unaware of the profound disturbance he had created.

  “I trust,” said Dorothea, in a stifled voice, her hand trembling on her spoon, “that you did not speak, Philip.”

  Philip raised his eyebrows in artless bewilderment. “Not speak? Why not? Such a pretty, fairy-like child. It would have been impossible not to talk to her. I was sitting in the shade of one of the willows, and she found me there.”

  Dorothea threw herself stiffly against the back of her chair. She glanced at Alfred. She expected to see anger in his eyes, cold fury on his mouth. But he was regarding Philip with a strange and waiting expression, his big head thrust forward slightly as if to see his son the better.

  “Was—was anyone else there, Philip?” he asked, and his voice was oddly muted, as if without body.

  Philip put down his cup. He said, with great naturalness: “Yes. Her mother.”

  Dorothea sucked in her breath. She still stared fixedly at Alfred.

  Alfred turned away from his son. He ran his finger abstractedly over the edge of his saucer, and said nothing. His head was bent, his face lost in the growing obscurity of the room.

  Dorothea, seeing that Alfred would not speak, cried loudly and angrily: “Philip! Do not tell me that you talked to that horrid creature, that you had any traffic with—her!”

  Philip gazed at her as if intensely surprised. “Yes, I did, Aunt Dorothea. And why not? She was very kind to me when I was a boy. I have no quarrel with her.”

  Dorothea gaped at him with stunned incredulity. She could hardly speak, so overwhelming was her sense of outrage. Then she exclaimed rapidly: “‘No quarrel with her’! Philip, are you mad?” She turned toward Alfred, but Alfred’s head still was bent. His finger still traced the edge of the saucer. Dorothea could not believe it! She turned again to Philip. She was vibrating with passion, her dark eyes furiously dilated.

  “Are you mad?” she repeated harshly. “Have you forgotten what she did—to all of us? Do I need to recount it all, injury after injury? Philip, this is not like you! How can you be so insensible, so obdurate, so blind, so without decency and self-respect?”

  Philip was calm. “I don’t see where ‘decency’ enters into the matter. The lady spoke to me first, after the child found me. Should I have left them, discourteously, awkwardly? I trust I am somew
hat civilized.”

  Out of the corner of his bland eye he watched his father closely.

  Dorothea thrust her chair back from the table. “If you are so lacking in sensibility, in personal honor, in pride, then I have nothing further to say to you! I can only say that you have disappointed me profoundly.” She was breathing irregularly, her pale face ablaze with wrath and suppressed violence.

  She glanced at Alfred again. Why did he not speak? She continued, in a voice increasingly breathless with wild emotion: “Have you no consideration for your father? Have you no respect for him? Have you forgotten what that Jezebel did to him, the disgrace she brought to all of us? Have you forgotten that she was the cause of my father’s death—the direct cause?”

  Philip was very calm. “I only know that there was a series of unhappy but quite inevitable events. Events flow out of character, and character is fixed. What happened was bound to happen. I don’t see where I have been guilty of any lack of consideration for my father, or lack of respect for him. He knows me too well to believe that I would deliberately humiliate him.”

  He paused. Alfred did not move or speak. He sat in his chair as if he were asleep.

  “I do not think that Amalie was the cause of Uncle William’s death. It was inevitable that he would die soon. And I don’t think he held any bitterness against either Jerome or Amalie. I distinctly remember that he did not.

  “In any event, Amalie was kind to me, and I loved her. Common decency demanded that I speak to her when she saw me there.” He shrugged. “After all, it was a long time ago, and I believe it was for the best.”

  “You don’t know—!” Dorothea almost screamed. She had been about to cry out the hideous fact of adultery, but caught it back. Philip was twenty-four, but she was positive that he was absolutely innocent of the darker aspects of human villainy. To her, he was still a young boy, chaste, pure and unaware of these disgusting physical aberrations.

  Philip read her thoughts, and he could hardly repress a smile. He thought Dorothea naïve and pathetically absurd. It was she who knew nothing of passion and the heavy tides of irresistible lust and desire. Moreover, he was annoyed that she repudiated his manhood.

  He kept his voice quiet and reasonable: “I have always been sorry that things happened as they did. But, I repeat, they were inevitable. And again, it was a long time ago. I am not suggesting that we all indulge in an orgy of forgiveness and kisses and tears. But I do believe that civilized decency demands courtesy, and that it is ludicrous to maintain an attitude of eternal hostility.”

  “‘Eternal hostility!’” Dorothea’s voice was practically a shriek. “And who, pray, is keeping up that hostility? Your father? No! One has only to look at that huge monstrosity of a bank which that—that man—has built, hardly three streets away from our own Bank! Riversend Bank of Commerce, indeed! A grinning horror, a direct affront and challenge to all of us! Year after year, he has injured your father, reduced our Bank to second place in the community, inflicted insignificance upon us, mortified us, brought dreadful creatures into our town, dirtied up whole sections! With malice aforethought!”

  Philip smiled indulgently. “Now, Aunt Dorothea, that is silly. Jerome was after money and what he thought was progress. He considered our Bank stuffy and unprogressive. He built his own. He does not interfere with us—”

  “‘Not interfere with us’!” Dorothea was almost stupefied at this enormity. “He has only taken away your father’s wealthiest depositors, and the richest retired farmers, and left us with the small farmers and little business men!”

  Alfred’s face, in the dimness of the room, flushed, swelled.

  “With malice aforethought!” repeated Dorothea, with vehemence. “It was done, all of it, to humiliate your father, to ruin him, if possible.”

  “Men don’t build up great commercial banking houses out of sheer pique,” said Philip coldly. “That is purely feminine reasoning, utterly illogical. And stupid.”

  Dorothea gasped. Her voice choked in her throat.

  Alfred slowly lifted his head. He spoke huskily: “Philip is right about that. He—Jerome—” he uttered the name in a stifled tone, “had had his ideas all along. They had nothing to do with personalities.”

  “I don’t understand you, Alfred,” said Dorothea, close to bitter tears.

  He regarded her with somber gentleness. “Let us be fair, Dorothea. I had many arguments with Jerome before—before—He was always convinced that I was wrong. I knew for months that something was brewing in his mind. I knew that he had had long talks with his father. I suspected, after a little while, that he was convincing Uncle William. I did not interfere. That would have been unjust, wrong.

  “When Uncle William’s will was read, I was not disturbed, nor angered. It was only just. After all, Jerome was his son, and I had my suspicions that the will had been changed, several months before—before—I said nothing. It was Uncle William’s money, and Jerome was his son. Uncle William was always just, and I realized it. You had your separate fund, established by your father, to take care of you as long as you lived. Twenty thousand dollars to Philip, and the fortune his grandmother left, to be his on his majority. Jerome and I to divide all the assets of the Bank, the—the house, the other liquid and real assets.”

  Dorothea interrupted passionately and illogically: “He would not sell you his share of the house, nor his share in the Bank! He even had the effrontery, after all your work, to demand that you step aside and let him become president!”

  Alfred smiled somberly. “But I did not step aside, and I did not sell him my share of the house. Perhaps I was malicious. I don’t know.

  “Through our mutual attorneys we came to a very satisfactory agreement, and I must admit that Jerome was considerate. He might have been much more vicious, had he so desired. Let us be fair. He agreed to take half of all the liquid assets of the Bank, as soon as convenient for me, through notes, maturing at very reasonable and considerate intervals, covering his share of the investments, real estate and other assets. He might have-demanded it all immediately, and then I should indeed have been ruined, and completely. During the panic, he did not press for payment, and only took what I could spare. He has no hold on the Bank now. He could have retained it, and could have driven me out eventually. He did not.”

  Dorothea stared at him, speechless. She had known nothing of this. But her mortification, and her hatred of her brother, only increased at these revelations. That such a man as Alfred had been at the mercy of such a scoundrel, such a blackguard, such a villain! The very fact that Jerome had been “fair” only intensified her humiliation. That monster might have ruined Alfred, and his magnanimity was loathsome.

  Her mouth twisted, as if it had tasted something intolerably vile and disgusting. She felt stifled with repulsion.

  She stammered, waving her hand and arm stiffly as if to brush away what she could not bear to see: “And he built that horrible monstrosity to insult your eyes every day!”

  Alfred smiled again wearily. “Jerome has his own taste in architecture, and even if I don’t admire it, I understand he has a right to his own choice.”

  “Riversend Bank of Commerce!” exclaimed Dorothea, with profound loathing.

  “Well, it is a commercial bank,” said Alfred. He sighed. He seemed exhausted. He stood up. He looked at both of them, Dorothea and Philip, with depleted and overcast eyes. Philip stood up also.

  “Philip,” said Alfred, almost inaudibly, “I should like to talk to you for a few minutes. In your room.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  They went together into Philip’s handsome and comfortable room, where Philip had done his best to soften the starkness and astringency of Dorothea’s original taste. As Philip had a deep love for flowers, every bowl and vase in the room was filled with bright blooms and thick green leaves. The windows looked out upon the gardens, and were framed in colorful prints.

  Philip courteously drew forward a comfortable chair for his father, then sat do
wn near him. He opened a silver box and helped himself to a long neat cigarette. Alfred said: “Machinemade?” Philip smiled and nodded. Alfred said: “But one never knows what they put into those things—made in factories. When a man fashioned his own, he could be certain that they contained nothing deleterious.” To which Philip replied: “Their taste is excellent. If they have included old shoes and rags, or, as some detractors say, an occasional finger or two from the hand of an operator, these have only added to the flavor!”

  Some years ago, thought Philip, seeing Alfred’s sudden slight smile, his father would have frowned reprovingly at such a statement. He saw Alfred’s smile, but he saw its tired somberness also.

  “Try one, Father,” he suggested.

  Alfred, with slow reluctance, but with some curiosity also, accepted a cigarette and allowed Philip to light it. During the past two or three years he had begun to smoke an occasional cigar, though he never seemed to derive much pleasure from it. He puffed cautiously on Philip’s cigarette, raised his whitened eyebrows. “Mild, not bad at all,” he said, as if somewhat surprised. “These are flavored with rum,” said Philip. “Rum?” Alfred was astonished. “What is wrong with the flavor of the pure leaf? Have Americans become so effeminate that they cannot endure tobacco as it is grown?” Philip shrugged. “Perhaps as man becomes more prosperous his taste becomes more esthetic.”

  He waited. But Alfred smoked with heavy thoughtfulness, looking unseeingly through the windows. Then, after several long moments, he said: “Philip, your Aunt sometimes speaks hastily, from her heart. Her words, then, are sometimes more violent than is—necessary. You understand that?”

  Philip nodded gravely.

  “She means no harm, Philip. But her sensibilities and loyalties are very acute. And we owe her so very much.”

  “I know, Father. I have never deprecated Aunt Dorothea’s contributions to our comfort and her devotion to us.”

  Alfred sighed. “She did not mean to offend you.”