“Oh, roses!” said Nancy, wrinkling her nose. “Queen of the flowers.”
“I could look at it for hours. I never knew what it meant when people talked about contemplation. But that’s what I did with that rose—I contemplated it. My nurse Paine said—”
“I liked that Paine. Not the other nurse, not at all. But Paine I liked a great deal.”
“She liked you too. She had a great admiration for both of you, you and Arthur. After I had been looking at that flower for days, she said, ‘You seem to be having quite a love affair with that flower.’ And I suppose she was right. It was a clever thing to say.”
“You were quite a Ferdinand,” Nancy said.
His eyes had been closed against the sun. Now he opened them and looked straight up into the sky. It was very blue, and the longer he looked the higher it became. He remembered that in Latin there was only one word for high and for deep. The Romans spoke of the heights of the sea and the depths of the sky. He tried to let this oddly remembered fact fill the whole of his mind.
But it would not fill the whole of his mind. It would not displace the strange, contracting pain he experienced at Nancy’s calling him by the name of the hero of that children’s book so popular with adults, about a young bull who liked to look at flowers and did not charge around like other bulls. When Ferdinand was sent to the bull-ring in Madrid, instead of resisting the matador and being hurt and killed, he sat down in the middle of the ring and enjoyed the flowers in the hair of the ladies who had come to see him fight. In consequence he was disgraced but safe, and he was sent back to the ranch where he spent the rest of his life looking at flowers. A good many political feelings became attached to the story and people chuckled over it as if it were a piece of folk-wisdom.
Laskell said, “Why do people like that story so much?” He was still looking deep into the sky.
“I do. I can’t wait for Micky to get old enough so I can read it to him.”
“Why do people like it? Why do you like it?”
“For its moral, I suppose.”
“They seem to like the idea of a bull going against the nature of bulls.”
“Oh, no, that’s not it. The moral is that if people just refused to fight there would be no more wars. I suppose Ferdinand is just simple human reason, the reason of simple human people refusing to cooperate in their own exploitation and slaughter. After all, Ferdinand wasn’t killed, the way all the other bulls were. He lived to enjoy himself.”
“Is that something?”
“Well, isn’t it?”
“If the Loyalists were to act like Ferdinand?”
“That’s different. They’re fighting for something.”
When Laskell spoke again, he spoke carefully. “When you said just now that I was quite a Ferdinand, you were teasing me, weren’t you, not praising me?”
“Why, John!” Nancy said. “Why, John Laskell!”
“No, I’m not being sensitive. But really, it’s serious. You say you admire Ferdinand. But when you want to make fun of me, you say I am quite a Ferdinand. That puzzles me. It’s like the people who give parties for Spain—they’re the same people who admire the sissy bull.”
Nancy was ruffling. “We have to make a distinction between immediate necessity and ultimate hope, don’t we? We have to hope that eventually we will be able to change man’s nature.”
“I’m not so sure.” But the conversation was becoming very heavily charged and Laskell felt tired. “I suppose,” he said, “the bull who smells flowers and doesn’t charge when he’s attacked is the modern version of the lion who lies down with the lamb.” Nancy made a gesture to show that she didn’t quite accept the parallel. He had not yet been able to look at Nancy, he was still looking deep into the sky. “I think the old version was nicer. The lion was still a lion and whenever he lay down with the lamb it was a fresh surprise. I don’t think we really admire Ferdinand, Nancy. I think we really despise him. What bothers me is that we praise something we really despise.” And then he said, “I wonder if we’re not developing a strange ambivalent kind of culture, people like us. I wonder if we don’t rather like the idea of safety by loss of bullhood. A kind of Kingdom-come by emasculation.”
He had successfully carried it away from himself. And the sudden pain he had felt when Nancy called him Ferdinand had sunk almost to nothing. He had talked very fast and he had headed, as the occasion seemed to require, toward generalities. He had talked with half his mind, loosely, and he was rather startled by the place he had come to. He had never before generalized in this adverse way about the people he lived with, the decent people, the people of good will. It frightened him a little. He wondered what Nancy would say.
Nancy had picked up her hand rake and was thoughtfully scratching the grass with it. For the life of him Laskell could not think of anything to say that would carry their conversation in a new direction. He felt that he had said something for which Nancy might not easily forgive him.
But Nancy chose not to deal with his generalization at all. She said, “I didn’t mean anything when I said that about Ferdinand. It was just a way of speaking. Anybody would have said it to a person who spoke about being devoted to a flower. Really, John, I wasn’t making fun of you!” And then she said with the rights of their friendship, “And since when, John Laskell, have you got so sensitive? Just you stop it. You’re acting spoiled—your illness has made you sensitive and spoiled. I won’t have it from you.”
She had justice on her side, and the right to command him. He sat up, grateful for the opportunity she gave him to accept defeat—and defeat on the basis of friendship. And then briskly looking for something to talk about, he thought to take out his wallet and he dug with his fingers into one of its pockets. Nancy was watching him with interest. There was really a good deal of the child about her and he had diverted her by making her curious about what he had to show. He drew out the snapshot that Maxim had given him in one of the absurd tactical moves of that mad visit. Maxim had laid it on the table between them with the explanation that he had come across it while destroying some papers.
“Who is it?” said Nancy as she reached out to take what she saw was a snapshot. She looked at it. “John, have you gone and—” Then understanding broke upon her, perhaps from the fashion of the dress in the photograph, and she said, “This is— Is this—?”
“Yes,” Laskell said. “It’s Elizabeth. I don’t think you’ve ever seen a picture of her.”
“No, never. I never have.”
She was examining the photograph carefully. She looked at it longer than she need have, even for a thorough examination. Then she seemed able to speak. She turned her gaze to Laskell. Her eyes were very wide and her face had paled beneath her tan. She was struggling with some emotion, she was trying to find the thing to say. Her face told him what he had done. He was horrified at himself. When Maxim had given him the photograph Laskell had understood the part it played in Maxim’s plan of manipulation. He had known that it had been intended by Maxim to flood his mind with emotions that would make him the more accessible to Maxim’s request for help. Specifically it was intended to remind him that people really did die. Elizabeth Fuess died, Maxim was saying, in the midst of our safe life—if you doubt that I too can die, let this picture remind you of her and convince you about me.
To show a snapshot of Elizabeth to Nancy at any time would be momentous. But to show it at this instant, with disagreement, and that particular disagreement, just behind them—no, his mind had not been innocent when he had done that. Had he not, in some way, wanted to tell her just what Maxim had wanted to tell him, that people really do die? And if he had, without thought, quite unconsciously, undertaken to give her that cruel lesson, what deep alienation had sprung up between them?
“She is— She was—” Nancy struggled with the tense. “There is something very attractive— Gifford Maxim once told me about her. He said she was very attractive—very pretty.”
“Never pretty.”
&nb
sp; Nancy looked at him to see what the denial meant. “Beautiful?”
“Sometimes. Not always. Seldom, really.”
“Giff seemed to admire her a good deal. But when I tried to get him to say why, he said he couldn’t explain. And the things he said about her didn’t seem to be the kind of things that would make him admire a woman. He said she never worked.”
“He liked her very much.”
“Did she like him?”
“Moderately.”
“Only moderately?”
“She never quite liked his relation to his ideas. It wasn’t the ideas themselves so much, but his relation to them, she used to say.”
“Oh?” said Nancy. “I don’t quite know what that means.” She said it without much inflection, not quarrelsomely, but it put her in opposition to Elizabeth’s expressed opinion. Laskell felt that there was no reason to come to the defense of Elizabeth’s opinion. It had been all too well confirmed by the facts. Elizabeth had been remarkably right about Maxim. Laskell remembered the indifferent interest with which she had listened that time to his own enthusiastic description of Maxim’s powers, the little shrug of her shoulders to depreciate not his estimate but hers as she said, “I somehow don’t quite like his relation to his ideas.”
Nancy gave back the snapshot. “You know,” she said, “when you showed me the picture, I first thought it was a girl you had met and got interested in. John, would you let me say something? It’s something I thought of while you were ill. I thought of you lying there with no one to take care of you except nurses, and I thought, ‘Oh, why doesn’t John get married?’ And now when I think of you living in the past—Somehow I never realized how much you must do that. I mean, like carrying that picture in your wallet. It isn’t like you, John. It’s not like you to be so morbid. Life makes demands on us— We have responsibilities, to others and ourselves. I’m younger than you, but maybe I have the right to remind you of that. You’re young and attractive and comfortable. John, do you mind my talking like this to you?”
He was putting the picture back into the wallet and the wallet back into his hip-pocket. He buttoned the pocket. “How could I mind?” he said.
“Are you sure? Do you think I’m right?”
He did not mind—had had no mind to mind with. He wished that Nancy were not looking into his face to see how he was taking it. He wished he had the sky to look into and lose himself in as when Nancy had said he was quite a Ferdinand.
“Are you sure you don’t mind? Do you think I’m right?” Nancy said again.
She surely could not have meant anything—was it not what at some time every married woman says to every unmarried young man she is fond of?—but she was terribly worried that her ordinary little sermon had hurt him, she was rather miserably looking into his face for evidences of hurt. And then he knew that he had hurt Nancy and that she had in some way meant to hurt him. Ferdinand and marriage were her answers to his mention of illness and death.
“Nancy,” he said with sudden clarity. “Nancy, why are you so scared of it?”
“Of what?” she said as if she would just like to hear him name the thing she was scared of.
“Of death. Why are you so scared of the word being said?”
He had no need to argue the point. She had gone white. “I have only to say the word and you turn the subject. I have not been able to say anything to you about my being ill—you and Arthur did everything for me while I was actually sick, but you jib like a pair of colts whenever I try to speak about it. You won’t have me say a word about it—either of you. I have only to show you a picture of Elizabeth and because she died you are thrown into confusion.” He did not go on to say, “And you respond by attacking as subtly and cruelly as possible.” But he did say, “You talk about morbidity and living in the past—as if you thought that death was politically reactionary.”
It was a great comfort to him to have said it at last. And it was some comfort to Nancy that he had uttered so many words, some of which she could reply to. She looked very stricken at his outburst and not quite comprehending. Her eyes filled with tears. She was a generous girl, for her voice as she spoke had clearly the intention of defending not herself but their friendship. “John,” she said, “you misunderstood. I wasn’t criticizing you. I didn’t mean to make you angry.”
The appeal was not to be resisted and Laskell put out his hand and rumpled her bright, sunburned hair. He was enormously grateful that at that moment Micky charged toward them over the lawn, followed by the watchful Eunice. Micky saw Laskell and stopped. He looked at Laskell with challenge in his eyes, and when Laskell, as slowly as possible and with large exaggerated movements, began to get into motion, showing that he accepted the challenge, Micky veered off and ran. They had developed a kind of tag in which, if Laskell ran slowly enough and Micky ran fast enough, the chase could go on for quite a way. At last the pursuit ended and Laskell brought Micky back on his shoulder.
Eunice said to Nancy, “He got himself all dirty.”
Laskell took the child from his shoulder and held him up for inspection. “Filthy!” He grinned.
Nancy said to Eunice very kindly, “A little boy has a right to get dirty. Don’t you think so, Eunice?” Eunice acknowledged the rule but did not answer the question.
Laskell put the boy down. The run had given Nancy a chance to recover herself and her face was almost cleared of its unhappiness.
“I’m going to lunch now, Nancy,” he said. “I’ll be coming in after dinner this evening. I have some news for you. It’s about Gifford Maxim. I should have told you before but at least I want to tell you now.”
“News? About Gifford Maxim? Tell me now—tell me now, John,” Nancy said.
“No, not now. I want Arthur to hear it too.”
“But I’ll tell Arthur if it’s interesting.”
“It’s interesting enough. More interesting than you might guess. And more important. And more disturbing. It’s a long story, I’ll tell you tonight.”
She looked at him, surprised by the gravity of his tone. She did not protest the postponement. She said, “Is it something bad?”
“I’ll tell you tonight.”
5
WALKING back to the Folgers’ for lunch, Laskell felt the great relief of having made up his mind to tell the Crooms about Gifford Maxim. In the natural course of things he should long ago have told them. But he had not been following the natural course of things. He had been trying to punish the Crooms. He had to see that and he felt the better for seeing it.
It was hot and still on the road. The light, dry dust rose with each step he took. There was not a breath stirring and the unmoving leaves of the trees were dusty. At a rise in the hill he stopped to look around him. He could see a fairish distance in two directions and, standing there with the hot, pictorial landscape before him, the quiet farms in the foreground, the little hills behind, he found it very difficult to remember his apartment and what had gone on in it the day before he had left to come here. Those city emotions seemed so far off in time, so uncertain in texture. But Laskell forced his mind to reconstitute the event detail by detail, for his account to the Crooms must be clear and circumstantial.
He remembered that he and Paine had been engaged in that pointless squabble about his fishing things when Maxim rang. And he remembered how Maxim, when he entered, was taken aback by the sight of Paine, although she must have explained her presence and function when he had telephoned. But it was Maxim’s business not to be dull about the unexpected. It was also his business to know how to deal with misfortune of every kind. He was, as it were, a technician in human suffering. His tone was full of accurate, firm sympathy. He said, “I’m sorry you’ve been so ill, John.”
The presence of Paine in her white uniform was a help to Laskell. It made it easier to bear the brunt of that great moral authority of Maxim’s.
Certain things were clear between Laskell and Maxim. It was established that Laskell accepted Maxim’s extreme commitment to
the future. It was understood between them that Laskell did not accept all of Maxim’s ideas. At the same time, Laskell did not oppose Maxim’s ideas. One could not oppose them without being illiberal, even reactionary. One would have to have something better to offer and Laskell had nothing better. He could not even imagine what the better ideas would be. He sometimes regretted this but, after all, although he was an intelligent man, he could scarcely set up as an original thinker. He was left very much exposed, not to Maxim’s arguments, for Maxim seldom argued, but to Maxim’s inner authority. This Laskell did not regret. Maxim never formulated an accusation in words, yet he did make an accusation. He made it by being what he was. This accusation was unlike any other—it was benign. It brought the guilt into the open, the guilt of being what one was, the guilt one shared with others of one’s comfortable class. There was a kind of relief in admitting the guilt to this huge dedicated man.
After the first surprise, the first shying away from Maxim’s great moral force, Laskell was not at all sorry to see his friend. In fact he was glad. He felt ready to greet the approach of life in its grimy tangibility and high hope.
Maxim looked at the packed bags and said, “And now you’re going to the country. That’s good. It will do you good, you need it.”
His voice was full of the direct sympathy he knew how to give. It was conscious but not insincere. Laskell had seen Maxim give his sympathy to overworked waiters or soda-clerks. Some of them responded happily to this gentling of their strained nerves. But some became restive under it. They were no doubt confused by this tone coming from this big man with the scarred face and the shabby clothes and the voice that was of another class than theirs.
The Middle of the Journey Page 16
