The Middle of the Journey

by Lionel Trilling

  With the irony of misery and desperation Nancy said, “I scarcely think a pint of whisky will ruin Kermit.”

  “Oh, scarcely,” said Maxim in hearty agreement.

  “I don’t care in the least,” Kermit said. “And I think what we ought to do is open one of the four bottles and have a drink.” He looked around at his friends hoping for cooperation toward sociability. “And I’ll get a lamp,” he said. For it was nearly dark.

  “No,” said Arthur. “We must go now, Kermit. Nancy has to get to bed early.”

  They left after brief farewells. Kermit went into the trailer to get the whisky, turning as he went to say to Laskell, “You’ll stay and have a drink, John?”

  “Yes, I’ll stay a while.” He felt an odd, dry balance of mind. He felt he would be equally alone whether he went or stayed and he liked the feeling.

  When he and Maxim were alone, Maxim said, “You read my essay, John?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “And you didn’t interpret it the same way, I gather?”

  “No.”

  “It seemed very explicit.” Here was Maxim asking questions again. But Laskell had no worry about his answers.

  “You said that this world was the field of Law and Necessity, not of Justice and Freedom. You denied in effect the possibility of the ultimate social aims of revolution. It seemed when I read it that you spoke from a religious point of view and that, as I gathered tonight, was correct.” He said it in a dry indifferent voice. Maxim had asked for the interpretation and he had given it. He was not interested.

  “Yes,” Maxim said. “That’s right, of course. And that view”—here Maxim’s voice became tentative, almost humble—“that view of things, does it interest you at all?”

  “No.”

  Laskell recognized Maxim’s recoil of disappointment. It was so out of the nature of things to have Maxim only disappointed that he almost added some words of explanation to blur his answer. Then he decided to say nothing more.

  For a moment they sat without speaking. Then Maxim said, “You’re having an affair with Caldwell’s wife, aren’t you?”

  Laskell’s apprehension and anger rose simultaneously. Then he thought that Maxim was very clever, and that what he saw would not necessarily be seen by anyone else, and he thought that Maxim needed to show how much power of cleverness he had. He said, “That’s none of your business, Maxim.”

  “I knew it from the way you spoke to the child.”

  Laskell did not answer.

  “I’m glad you are, John,” Maxim said with a touch of his old, almost natural tenderness. “She looks like a real woman.”

  There still seemed to Laskell no reason to answer.

  Maxim said, “What’s the matter, John? Have you decided to hate me?”

  “No,” Laskell said.

  “Just entirely finished with me? Is that it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And with a lot of other things too?”

  “That’s none of your business either.”

  Kermit came out with three highballs in his hand. He had things to say about the unfortunateness of political disputes when unity among people of good will was so necessary. He spoke about Nancy’s overweight state—“Though I confess,” he said, “that I never thought she had that good a mind”—and he chided Maxim gently for having let himself be provoked by Nancy and provoking her in return. But he soon discovered that he was speaking in monologue and fell silent with the others.

  Laskell drank half his drink and rose to go. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.

  Maxim said, “Don’t forget you asked Susan to come for tea.”

  “So I did. I’ll pick her up and bring her about three.”

  He had not gone far on the road to the Folgers’ when he heard a whistle and saw the butt of a beam of light on the trees on the road. He turned, holding his own flashlight to mark his place, and waited for Kermit Simpson to come up the road.

  “I’ll walk you to your place,” said Kermit. “Is it far? I need the exercise.”

  “Not very far. What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing’s the matter. I told Giff I wanted to ask you about fishing. But it’s pretty late in the season. What I wanted to ask you about is Giff. Don’t tell him, though.”

  “What about Giff?”

  “John, do you believe what he says?”

  “About God?”

  “No, that’s just his way of talking. He doesn’t mean it. No—about the Party. Do you think he’s telling the truth about his danger?”

  “Don’t you?”

  “I don’t know. He seems to be. But I just can’t believe such things. Think of the people we know. Do you believe it? You sent him to me, you must believe it.”

  Laskell walked on a way without saying anything. Then he said, “You took him on, you must believe it.”

  “I took him on because he was in trouble, or said he was. I didn’t make up my mind one way or the other. I’ve always admired Giff—his courage and his intelligence. And his commitment. He’s a terribly committed man. You haven’t said whether you believe it or not—you keep putting me off. Why can’t you give me a direct answer?”

  For a while Laskell gave him no answer at all. They passed the Caldwell house, which was all dark. Laskell did not let himself think of Duck and Emily. He did not know whether or not he believed Maxim’s story of his danger. Ever since Maxim had told it, he had suspended his answer and turned off the question. It did not seem a question for him. But now he supposed he had to answer. He had a certain responsibility to Kermit Simpson, for he had brought Kermit and Maxim together.

  He said, “Suppose it were true, Kermit? What then?”

  And Kermit’s answer came immediately and solemnly. “It would be terrible to contemplate. We would have lost one of our guide-posts, one of our guiding principles. The alternatives we face now would not be the same. In fact, John, I’d go so far as to say that it would make political thought as we now know it impossible.”

  Kermit’s flashlight was huge and its beam was so wide and white that Laskell had put out his own. In the intense white beam all the stones on the road stood clear and distinct and the dust rose brown and powdery up to the height of their knees.

  “Would it really?” Laskell asked.

  “Oh—impossible!” said Kermit.

  Laskell had asked his question, “Would it really?” with a certain irony. It was directed toward Kermit’s almost boyish innocence. He thought of himself at that moment as wise and scarred by experience. He became, as it were, the Maxim to Kermit’s Laskell, taking an instant’s cruel pleasure in his power to throw this good man beyond his habitual alternatives. But irony and cruelty passed. They yielded to the knowledge of Kermit’s wish to be a good man and to do his duty as he saw it. Kermit already knew the truth about Maxim, yet when Laskell would put it into words, Kermit would be pained by it. Laskell could anticipate no superiority in inflicting this pain—if he had learned nothing else this summer, surely he had learned a respect for the innocent heart. He said softly, “Kermit, I believe Maxim is telling the truth.”

  “You do? You really do?” And Kermit swung around, flashlight and all, so that the beam was directed at Laskell’s belly and lit up their faces and bodies grotesquely. “Oh—sorry.” Kermit turned away the light as Laskell’s hand went up to protect his eyes from the glare. “Sorry,” said Kermit again. “Then you really believe he’s telling the truth.” Laskell heard the heavy, sorry tone in Kermit’s voice.

  “Yes, I do.”

  “But what makes you believe it? After all, we only have Giff’s word for it.”

  “Look here, Kermit,” Laskell said. “If you think Maxim is lying, tell him to get the hell off your staff. You don’t owe him anything. If you thought he was lying, why did you take him on your magazine?”

  Kermit said ruefully, reluctantly, “Yes. That’s so, isn’t it? But he seemed to be in trouble, so I helped him.”

  “He was in a particular kind
of trouble and you gave him a particular kind of help. If you didn’t believe him, you could have helped him some other way—given him money maybe.” And then, because Kermit seemed to emanate a childlike bewilderment, Laskell said, “Look, Kermit. Belief is difficult and complicated. You believe this, but you don’t want to believe it.”

  “Can you blame me?” Kermit cried. “Do you want to believe it?” His voice was agonized.

  “Shush—you’ll wake the people.”

  “Sorry,” Kermit whispered. “Can you blame me?” he whispered. And in a whisper he said, “Not that I’ve ever considered myself a Communist, or even a fellow-traveler. Everybody knows that. But still, you know how one feels. I have to talk to you about this. Nothing has ever needed more thought.”

  “Perhaps not. But not now, Kermit.”

  “There are some things,” Kermit whispered, “some ideas that we can’t abandon. We will have to select very carefully.”

  “Very carefully,” said Laskell. “But we will make the selection tomorrow.”

  “Don’t joke about it, John,” said Kermit hoarsely.

  “It’s just that I’m sleepy.”

  “Sorry—I shouldn’t keep you.”

  “We’ll talk about it, Kermit. Don’t let it throw you.” There was now no teasing in his voice.

  “No. Well, good night.”

  Laskell watched the progress of his deprived friend as Kermit went off up the road, his bright light cutting the darkness ahead of him.

  10

  HAD KERMIT asked him what ground he had for believing Maxim, Laskell could not have given him the true answer. For he could not say, “I believe that Maxim is telling the truth because of what I have learned about the Crooms.” He could not tell Kermit that the summer had shown him a kind of passion in Nancy Croom—in his Nancy, whom he had so much admired—the ultimate consequence of which might logically be just such an act of destruction as Maxim feared for himself. When Maxim had first reported the danger in which he lived, it had seemed the fantasy of a corrupted intelligence or the contrivance of a malign one. But Laskell had come to Crannock and strange things had happened. Abysses of feeling had opened between him and his friends. He had seen in Nancy a passion of the mind and will so pure that, as it swept through her, she could not believe that anything that opposed it required consideration. When one had a reference as large as Nancy’s, when it was something as big as the future or reality to which one conceived oneself dedicated, nothing could possibly have the right to call it to account. Arthur’s dedication was not so absolute, yet even Arthur’s instinctive knowledge of the way of the world, his firm respect for fact and the paradoxes of power, which Laskell had always thought of as the armor of Arthur’s idealism, now presented themselves in a different light. Arthur did not flare into shining affirmations as Nancy did; he even mocked them in Nancy and spoke out to moderate their extravagance. Yet he needed Nancy’s absolute intransigence. He might tease his wife for the fierceness of her spirit, but he was charmed and excited by the feminine boldness with which she was ready to challenge the world. And he needed her extravagance and ardor as support to his own cooler idealism: it was as if his concern with fact and practicality was then a correction of her excess rather than a limitation of his own moral vision. Nancy made the affirmations—Arthur did not have to make them but only to be husband to the passion from which they came. It was thus that he assured both the masculinity and impersonality of his own more muted political attitude.

  Laskell had not thought of the Crooms when he gave Kermit his answer. The answer had come merely as the proper reply to the question. But when Kermit had gone off up the road with that excessive flashlight of his and Laskell was alone in his room, he had to ask himself why he had answered Kermit with so much certitude. And only then did the reason formulate itself clearly. What surprised him was that he had no unhappy emotions about this discovery, although it was not a very pleasant one. Nor did he have any unhappy emotions about his avowal to Kermit, although it was of the greatest importance. As soon as he made it, he was aware of a large vacancy in his thought—it was the place where the Party and the Movement had been. It was also the place where Nancy and Arthur had been. The Party represented what he would reach if he ever really developed in intelligence, virtue, and courage, and the Crooms had pointed out the way he must travel to reach this high estate. He had often thought that he would never reach it by following the path of his natural growth; he had sometimes conjectured, in his moral and political daydreams, that he might be the sort of man who needed street-fighting and barricades—the open crisis of political deterioration—in order to come to full political maturity. But now, where there had for so long been this strength of moral ambition, there was simply a vacancy. He did not feel the vacancy as a loss, only as a space through which the breezes of his mind blew very freely. He thought, “I am getting middle-aged, I am beginning not to care.” The accusation carried no conviction. He did not think it true and this in itself was surprising.

  He had no emotion about the loss of the Party, to which, of course, he had never been “committed,” and he had no emotion about the Crooms, to whom, of course, he was very much committed. He could scarcely believe that he had lost the Crooms so far as affection went, but certainly he had lost them in their function. They no longer showed him the right direction of moral and political development. There was nothing to blame them for in this. Directions are chosen by the traveler himself and signposts merely point them out once they have been chosen. And Laskell, now that he no longer required the Crooms to demand something of him, also did not need to blame them. That was the remarkable thing, the thing that surprised him most and really gave him pleasure—that he could know that the Crooms no longer had their old function in his mental life, and yet not judge or banish them.

  The very next morning Laskell had proof of how much free room in his cosmos he still was able to give the Crooms. He had come down to breakfast and, looking in at the kitchen door, he saw that Nancy was paying an unusually early call on Mrs. Folger. She did not hear him, nor did Mrs. Folger, and he had a moment in which to see that Nancy’s face was unhappy, even stricken, and that Mrs. Folger was busying herself about her work with the air of one who insists that everything has been said and settled and that now things had better be put on a sensible basis and go on as before. Obviously Nancy had suffered a defeat of some kind. She looked puzzled as at some injustice, and Laskell, seeing her sit there, so mute in her inability to understand how anyone could be firmer than she or to remember how fierce her own firmness could be, suddenly had a strange experience: it was as if he felt intelligent all over. It was an intelligence as suffusive as love. The memory of Nancy’s cold will the night before had not been erased, and he still hated it. But he did not hate the Nancy who could summon up that cold will. The sight of Nancy herself filled him with this almost erotic intelligence.

  Nancy sat with him at breakfast, saying nothing of what was making her unhappy. When Laskell had finished eating she invited him to walk home with her, and he knew that she wanted to tell him the reason for her frustrated morning visit to Mrs. Folger.

  She had indeed suffered an injustice. Eunice had appeared that morning with the information that she was to transfer her services to the Folgers’ Miss Walker. Nancy had called on Mrs. Folger to protest, for Eunice was clearly not a free agent in the choice, and Mrs. Folger had been very polite and very sorry, but had made it clear that if Miss Walker needed more help and Eunice was the help Miss Walker needed, then Nancy had to do without. And she had gone so far as to say that it was very considerate of Miss Walker not to require Eunice immediately but to offer to wait as much as four days until Nancy could find someone else who would accommodate her.

  “But there’s no one else to find!” Nancy cried. “It’s so unfair! And it’s so unfriendly.”

  It was the unfriendliness that seemed to rankle deepest, though the loss of Eunice to help her with Micky put Nancy to considerable inconvenience
.

  “You can’t think of it as a choice between two people, you and Miss Walker,” Laskell said. “You know the relation the Folgers have with Miss Walker.”

  “That’s just it. It’s degrading for them. She’s made them break their word to me—we agreed Eunice would work for me all summer.”

  When they arrived at the house Arthur was standing in the road with Kermit and Maxim, who were on their way to Crannock and had stopped to see if there were any errands they might do.

  “There’s no appeal,” Nancy said to Arthur. “Julia Walker commands and Eunice must go.” She was very bitter.

  “Julia Walker!” Kermit cried, and his face lighted up. “What Julia Walker is that? Is it Theron Walker’s Aunt Julia?”

  Arthur said, a bit impatiently, “We’ve never met her. She’s the local squiress.”

  “A bunchy little old lady, dresses in black? I’ll bet it’s Theron’s Aunt Julia.”

  “We’ve never met her, Kermit,” Nancy said.

  “Oh.” He was disappointed. “But you knew Theron, didn’t you?”

  “Who?”

  “Theron Walker, the poet.”

  Arthur shook his head. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of him.”

  “Never heard of him? Oh, come off! Of course you’ve heard of him.” Kermit kept up with literature very conscientiously and gave it considerable space in The New Era, even though he knew that it diminished his reputation for political seriousness. He was likely to think that everyone gave as much importance to literary events as he did and he looked at Arthur incredulously. But Arthur persisted in his ignorance of Theron Walker. Kermit turned to Maxim. “You know his work, don’t you, Giff? Why, you must have known him personally.”

  “Yes,” said Maxim dryly.

  “Why! You knew him very well,” Kermit said, suddenly remembering.

  “Yes,” said Maxim. “Very well.”

  “Of course,” said Kermit, as if it were absurd to have forgotten. “It was through you he went to Spain.”