Murder by Reflection

by H. F. Heard

  With a domestic staff heartily willing to back his mother, he could not hold against the steady, inevitable development. With a costumed body-servant zealously determined that his body should be a period piece, he felt with a mixture of content and resignation that his mother had him reduced to boyhood. And if that were so, there was a second reason for carrying on as he found himself. Why should he not be a boy with no care but to dress as he was told and obey the instructions which his personal servant was told to give him. Mrs. Heron, too, was always in cheerful spirits now, which was worth paying for. He felt that he could not stand her resentful gloom.

  His whole day was now mapped and went on rails. He was waked at eight-thirty by chocolate brought him by Joe. His bath was turned on for him and, while he had it, Joe put out his underclothes and a silk robe. These he was helped into, and then, sitting back in a high-backed chair, he was shaved. He had hardly ever been shaved before. The curious sense of someone else first smothering his face in lather, working it into his skin, and then fingering and feeling his flesh as though it were a piece of soft leather that needed brushing, helped further the sense that this body of his was no longer a strictly private and personal part of him, but part of the furniture of the house which they were jointly concerned to keep dusted and polished and properly covered. A gentle pressure of suggestion was always making him take part in this charade and at the same time assuring him that all he had to do was just to hand over and, as it were, lend his figure to fill out the interior decoration of the house.

  “Being dressed by Joe is just like dreaming of dressing,” he remarked once to Irene. “You seem to find the clothes slipping on you of themselves.”

  But unless he was going out riding before breakfast Joe would omit the coat. Instead, the silk robe was brought back and, with that donned, he was led downstairs to breakfast. His mother sometimes came down, sometimes not. If not, Joe would talk to him while he ate, take away the dishes as he was done with them, and when he had finished announce, “As soon, Massa, you’s ready for your riding, ring for me to get you ready.”

  Once or twice Arnoldo tried to get himself prepared, a last faint effort to resist the voluntary helplessness which was being forced on him; but Joe was so deeply hurt that he surrendered. For Joe, when he was hurt, had a number of ways of being politely unpleasant. When shaving Arnoldo—whom of course he shaved in the period manner with a great saber of an un-safety razor—he would give him a number of disconcerting pinches, pinches which couldn’t be resented because they were given under the guise of perfect servitude and obviously, also, with a certain kind of high spirits. Joe would take Arnoldo’s ear by the lobe, ostensibly to draw it away from the lather, and give it a sharp nip. Or, feeling whether he should give the second shave “against the set of the hair,” he would gather the cheek into a fold and pinch it vigorously. But the revenge he loved best was when shaving Arnoldo’s upper lip, and the slightest movement of the patient’s face was out of the question. Joe, who had taken his “Massa’s” nose-tip between the thumb and finger of his left hand, would take a secure grip of the point just beyond the nostrils and twist it back, remarking as he bent close and plied the razor, “The hair is the very mischief, if, as with you, Massa, it will grow the mustache almost into the nose. Only if I can get the skin taut can I secure that it is shaved and not razed.” On peace days Joe did somehow manage to give a silk-smooth shave without torture, but nothing would induce him, when he was offended, to stop until he had given his regulation number of pinches and nose-wrings. However, as the only thing that offended him really was Arnoldo’s refusal to play his respective part of “Massa” to Joe’s part of the faithful retainer, Arnoldo’s surrender was easily secured. One more adhesion had strapped the house’s “master” into the house.

  Indeed, after a couple of months, Joe never had to punish his disobedient charge. As soon as he wished to go out, Arnoldo would ring and Joe would appear, attire him, and lead him to the large side door where the mare would be waiting for him. There Joe handed him his hat, but not before it had been inspected, the brim brushed, the nap smoothed. He might then go out and be met by the stable boy, another bronze period piece, complete with brown leggings, wide-flared riding breeches, vivid red-and-yellow stripe-sleeved waistcoat, and white stock. This attendant took “the master’s” boot in his hand and shot him into the saddle. Arnoldo would give the horse a tickle with his ivory-headed crop and go off at that gallop which he felt his audience demanded of him and which made him even imagine for a moment that he was really a Southern squire off for a morning’s ride round his plantations. Half an hour before lunch he would return, be met at the door, his hat and crop received like insignia. Then he must stand while Joe brushed down the coat from collar to tails, and, producing a cloth, polished the boots back to their morning gloss. “Mrs. Heron, she is in the morning room,” Joe would recite. It was not information; it was an antiphonal to which the response was also ordered: “I will be ready in a moment.” Then he might go and wash his hands for himself. But on his returning to publicity Joe was waiting to lead him to the morning-room door and throw it open with a bow, saying, “Massa’s just in from his ride, ma’am.” She would be waiting.

  He was now almost at his ease, so completely had the performance been stylized, so completely had his role enveloped him. They would lunch together and he would tell her any small incident of his ride which might amuse her. But she did not seem to listen. She liked to hear him talking; it was the sound-track necessary to give the perfect verisimilitude to the moving picture—it did not matter what was said. Her enjoyment, in which she seemed to become more and more engrossed, was just to sit and watch the picture, the reel, played over and over again, unwound and wound and unwound again.

  “She is already in a trance state,” he often thought. “I have mesmerized her, or rather she has mesmerized herself with the image she has made of me. She could hardly be more out of the world if she were in a cataleptic state. I’m half asleep, too, but she is gone deeper. The only ones who are awake are the darkies. They can play, and, because they are children, always know, in spite of all their verve, what is play and what is real. They are real animals; we are dead under our clothes.”

  Perhaps these doubts would have worked on him as pins-and-needles in a numb foot may rouse one to rub back the circulation. Events, however, once more played into her hands, or at least to where her fate lay. He was feeling that now she and he were living a life which must finally use up all its air in the crystal globe they were sealed within—only the colored people would be able to endure it. No white person, no one who kept contact with the world outside and in that world, was treated as an equal, could so play with Time and remain fully physically alive. Whether the world of today was mistaken or no, it was making something, if only a mistake; it was going somewhere, if only to perdition. In the house he and she were making nothing, going nowhere—simply marking time.

  “The American scene,” he found himself repeating, “that is going on all around. At least it has drive and is going forward—we are arrested, fossilized.”

  And it was precisely then that Aumic decided on a fiesta, to go “early settler,” Spanish and Mexican. The town was to have a whole week’s fiesta. It was prepared for as seriously as for summer maneuvers. There was to be nothing impromptu or extemporaneous about it.

  Doc quite approved. “Good for the city,” he said. “Why, all the buildings are fine period stuff. We could have put up homely frame houses. We chose to have traditional stuff. And everyone sees it’s fine. We should then, now and then, at least give ourselves time off to live up to our surroundings. We’re not dour New Englanders afraid of a fine bit of color or of doing things in style.”

  So, for weeks ahead, carefully trimmed whiskers began to be grown by the males, and small moustaches such as the first Douglas Fairbanks wore at his most dashing. And during the week flat-brimmed, stiff black hats, short silk jackets, white frilled shirts, broad-seamed trousers, and high-he
eled boots became almost a uniform in the city. The only people excused were those who were too old for such active civic service, or already in uniform, such as Doc.

  It was Joe who said, “Why not jest ride down Main Street at noon when they’s all out? The town’ll like it. They’ll feel you’re living up to their fiesta.”

  Here, then, was the answer to his doubt. He had said to himself that with all its muddle at least America was going forward. And here at his door it was announcing that as soon as it had a moment off from getting settled, it, too, would go back, back to the romantic past.

  He had just mounted for his morning ride when Joe, who had been urging the course on him while he dressed, said, “Jest take one turn down the street and see. You’ll be the modern one!”

  Joe was right. The street was full of people, most on horseback and most in Spanish dress.

  “So I’m the true American,” he reflected as he rode, better mounted and better dressed than any of the “period” crowd around him. They admired his costume, too. It was taken as a pretty little compliment to the city’s “housewarming.”

  As he rode back he reflected, “I wouldn’t let her have her housewarming party because I was afraid we should be thought of as museum pieces, and here is this new little town only longing to be put back into the past and not knowing how to dress itself up but certainly not ashamed to try.”

  The effect of seeing this fiesta and taking part in it destroyed, for the time being, all thought of escape. He had looked out into the outer world and lo! it, too, only wanted to get away from the present, to give up seeking for a future and to find pleasure and rest in romance. His worst and most powerful fear, that the outer world was against him, that his whole life was simply a hole-in-the-corner conspiracy of his mother and himself, was driven back, if not destroyed. Joe, too, was quick to capitalize the advantage. As he shaved his master the next day he left a little line of foam just by each ear and did not quite sweep away all the lather on the upper lip. He observed this habit for a week.

  Nothing was said until Arnoldo at last remarked, “But the fiesta’s over.”

  “But now you’ll be ready for next year’s,” Joe grinned.

  Arnoldo looked in the glass. He had been afraid of his hands pulling him back into the present. But wasn’t his face a far more serious reminder? Now, with these touches of camouflage, the small, diffident face seemed to be masked. The sharp black lines running out toward the cheekbones and across the lip, how they hardened and masculined the features! That weak little droop at the corners of the mouth was gone. The sag at the cheek was crossed out. He set his mouth, and instead of the effect’s being pathetically mulish, a quite creditable appearance of strong will looked out at him.

  “My figure has at last swallowed up my face,” he said to himself, but aloud.

  At his shoulder came Joe’s soft, blarneying, impudent voice, “No, Massa, your face has come up with your figure; you suit your suit.”

  This final, facial change made a double difference. It brought his appearance completely into the style of the past. There was nothing left of the former Arnoldo. He need never recognize his old self again. It was dead and buried. The weak, vacillating Arnoldo was gone. The die was cast. There would never how be any need to peek at the opposed mirrors through a mask of books and hope for a figure of the past to appear far down the corridor of repeated reflections. He had gone into the mirror and down that repeated aisle; and he was the figure which he had hoped he might one day see.

  But the new mask did something more to him. It made him feel older, no longer a child. He began to hold, no longer that he was a boy being dressed by his mother but that he himself had deliberately chosen this style and that she had simply carried out his wishes.

  Chapter IX

  Mrs. Heron noticed the change in his character that followed this final change in his appearance. That relieved the tension that had been growing, but not her caution. She was quite content that he should give the orders, provided they were for the carrying out of the plan she had made. But she did not trust, even now, that the change would last and that the crust which now had formed over the whole of his appearance and conduct would never show flaw or crack. She was determined to leave nothing neglected which might suggest to him his past and that he might break out of her encirclement.

  One of her attempts, however, to rid him of such possible reminders nearly produced another revolt. It began with a very small incident. He had made a note about some measurements for bedroom drapes and could not find where he had put the slip of paper. Streamlined dress may be efficient in many ways but not as a traveling desk. Pockets bulge, and therefore tailors have never liked them. It occurred to Arnoldo that the paper might be in one of his old jackets which he still sometimes put on when doing small household chores. He went to the built-in wardrobe, where, with his other “old-modern” clothes, it had been laid away. When he opened the cedar-lined drawer it was empty. He drew out the drawer under that, the one in which the trousers should have been—empty also. The one under that, where the tuxedo suit had had its place—empty again.

  For a moment he thought they might be at the cleaners. Then the truth of it dawned on him. “So that’s it,” he said, carefully shutting all the drawers and closing the door that masked them. On its other side was a full-length mirror. As the door shut, he swung into view. He looked at the smartly neat, streamlined garments. The close, sensible fit, the clean lines—yes, it would certainly be chosen by a committee on dress-reform looking for a rational and shapely uniform.

  “I’m like a convict; I’m the inmate of an institution. I couldn’t run away if I wanted to. I’ve no clothes to escape in. This suit, though it’s too streamlined to have pockets in it, yet has hooked me firmly.”

  These mirror soliloquies generally ended in the usual Hamlet-like procrastination. As he looked at himself the hypnotic effect began to work on him. He had often spoken his protest in this way and then, free of that responsibility, was able to go back to enjoy his irresponsibility. But this taking away of his clothes was too much, too much for the masterfully mustached face that frowned out at him. His sense of being puerilized couldn’t end with his little address to his mirror-image; his very reflection forbade it.

  He strode out of the room. Of course, as he entered the corridor outside, a handsome figure, in perfect keeping with the beautiful house, strode toward him. As he ran down the stairs the same figure ran downstairs in the staircase mirror. Each moving picture acted as a certain distractant of his purpose—to scold Mrs. Heron. His original impetus was sent, like an electric charge, through these series of “resistances,” until what had started by being a flash was no more than a prickle of small sparks.

  However, his “Where have you had my clothes put?” was sufficiently tart to warn Mrs. Heron not to delay the issue by asking, “What clothes?”

  She remarked quietly that they had been sent to the cleaners and were still wrapped up to keep them from the moths. “I have never seen a worse place for moths,” permitted her a small complaint at the expense of the climate and to appear quite at her ease.

  “Well, I had a memo in one of my pockets,” he went on, and then, gaining impetus, “Are you treating me like a cured drunkard who may relapse if the bottle is left in his sight? Do you fear that in the glimpses of the moon I might don the old rig, or even get into blue jeans and a sweater and lounge smoking and spitting on the great hall carpet?” He laughed, but now he was bitter enough to make her resolve on her next step, which she had been thinking over against this, his next struggle in the net. He went on, “You’ve caught me in a web spun of the past. I’m a living, shapely mummy!”

  While she saw his eye wander to where she knew he could see his figure in one of the mirrors, she remarked detachedly, “No, you’re not the past. Quite the reverse, in actual fact. You are, literally, the mold of form. All that slack stuff out there is the slack of the tide. The fiesta showed that it is on the turn. Look at how they are wan
ting something which has real style about it, real sense. Look at the way they are always dressing up, trying to get out of their miserable slops and slacks. And when they try to get out of their muddle, look at what they do! Why should they be third-rate Spanish when they have a really fine fashion of their own?”

  He knew the line, but her voice repeating his arguments was like the mirror reflecting his figure—he had to attend. She had, however, no intention of just quelling revolt.

  After a pause he replied, “But I’ve a mind; I can’t just be a well-groomed animal.”

  “No,” she answered, using the same reflective tone, as though discussing for the first time an abstract but interesting question. “The new age can’t be just the past brought alive again. All I want to suggest is that you don’t, just because of old routine, fall back into the old stylelessness. The present is just not rational. It is just a pause, an entr’acte. I agree that you should have, if you have time, as well as looking after the place”—she knew how little he did—“some art work or scientific research.”

  The idea of once again being at abstract work, of forgetting for a time style and self-presentation, gave him suddenly a great relief. She had guessed that he would choose science instead of art. She was prepared to “move him in” at once.

  “That big upper north room would do either as a studio or as a laboratory.”

  “That would be grand.”

  His response made her sure she had been right.