This Side of Innocence

by Caldwell, Taylor;

  He looked about him, quickly, eagerly. So concentrated, so strong, was the influence of what was still unseen, that Alfred’s eyes darted urgently into every corner. Had Mr. William Lindsey suddenly appeared before him, Alfred would have felt no shock, no terror, but only joyful recognition.

  He felt kind laughter near him, though he could not hear it with his ears. He felt an increase in tenderness. A warming glow came over him, as if he had heard affectionate words promising happiness and comfort. “Yes, yes,” said Alfred softly. “How good of you, Uncle William. I am so glad you have come here.”

  Was that a sigh, a murmur, he had heard? He strained his ears. The personality was retreating from him. He followed its going. It had reached the stairs. Alfred moved too, involuntarily, as if hypnotized. Suddenly, the personality had gone. Alfred reached the stairway, tried to peer up into its dim height. Then something impelled him to race up the stairs with the speed of urgent youth.

  A maid, her arms filled with sheets, was just going into Alfred’s room. She turned and stared at Alfred with astonishment, frightened by his grim white face. Here was her master, coated and hatted, his case in his gloved hand, as she had seen him, only a few minutes ago, leaving the house. Now he was staring at her wildly.

  “Miss Dorothea!” he exclaimed. “How is Miss Dorothea?”

  The girl, taken aback, stammered: “Miss Dorothea? I took away her tray just a while ago, sir. She was sleeping. She hadn’t touched her breakfast.”

  Alfred swung about abruptly. He opened Dorothea’s door with urgent swiftness. Dorothea lay upon her pillows, very still, her eyes closed. There was no sound of her breathing. Her face was the color of wax, with greenish shadows.

  Alfred stood beside the bed and looked down upon her. He stood like that for a long time. Dorothea was smiling faintly; her gray braids were spread over the pillows, like the braids of a girl. A long time passed. Alfred could feel nothing but numbness and quietness.

  At last he became aware that Philip was beside him, his hand on his arm, speaking softly. Alfred turned to him dazed.

  “Uncle William was here,” he said. “He came for Dorothea.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  “You are surely going to the funeral, Jerome?” said Amalie.

  “No, I am not,” he said. “Why should I?”

  Amalie was stunned. She glanced at Mary, who sat at her mother’s right at the breakfast table. The girl was looking steadily at her father. She was quite pale, and her crimson wool frock enhanced that paleness.

  “Aunt Dorothea is your sister, Papa,” she murmured.

  Jerome, unperturbed, drank his coffee. But Amalie knew he was angry. He put down his cup. His dark eyes were narrowed and full of hard malice.

  “Look here, my girl,” he said roughly, “let’s not be sentimental. I haven’t seen ‘Aunt Dorothea’ for over eighteen years. I don’t care to see her now that she is dead. I’m no sanctimonious fool who goes blubbering to the funerals of enemies.”

  Amalie and Mary were silent. But they continued to regard him fixedly.

  “Moreover,” said Jerome, “I want no member of my family going down there either.”

  Mary said quietly: “She is Philip’s aunt, by adoption. We owe something to Philip. He was very fond of her.”

  Jerome struck his thin brown hand on the table. “Philip’s fondness has nothing to do with us. He isn’t a fool. He understands. Let that end it.”

  Amalie found her voice, but it came from her white lips trembling and muffled: “Your sister! She never harmed you, Jerome. She took the place of your mother. She tried to be fond of you, but you always hated her. Oh, what can I say? Is there no natural feeling in you, no kindness?”

  Jerome stood up. He stared at his wife almost malignantly. “Sentimental twaddle! Whimpering idiocy! ‘Natural feeling,’ by God! Because I refuse to be mawkish you come whining to me like an imbecile. I want to hear no more of this, do you understand? Both of you?”

  Mary rose silently and went out of the room. Jerome watched her go. Then he swung upon Amalie savagely.

  “So, you’ve finally succeeded in turning my daughter against me, haven’t you? That makes you feel very contented, I suppose. You’ve misrepresented me to her for years now, done all you could to separate us. I presume you are happy at last.”

  Amalie stood up also, and leaned against the table. “How can you say that, Jerome?” she whispered. “How can you be so cruel?”

  She stopped. Her purple eyes became very large and intense. “Cruel,” she repeated, still in a whisper.

  Bot Jerome was enraged. “You deny it, ma’am? You deny that you have poisoned my daughter’s mind against me, ever since she was fourteen years old? I’ve seen it, and watched it for years. I haven’t been so blind that I couldn’t see. And now you take this maudlin occasion to emphasize to her that I am a ‘cruel’ man, an insensible father, a bad brother. My God!” he added, with disgust and increasing rage.

  Amalie was paler than before. But she said steadily: “Your father would want you to go to your sister’s funeral.”

  “Don’t talk like a fool!”

  Amalie drew in a deep breath. She appeared weak. She said: “There is another thing. You can offend a community’s morals, if you wish, and can be forgiven. But you can’t offend its etiquette, its good manners. So—”

  “‘Morals’!” ejaculated Jerome viciously. “What do you know of ‘morals’?”

  Amalie shrank back.

  “You are an excellent one to talk of morals,” Jerome continued. “You haven’t any. If you had had the slightest moral sense you would not have gone treacherously behind my back and turned my daughter against me.”

  “You are wrong,” said Amalie. She was trembling. “I did not turn Mary against you. If she is not what she was to you, that is your own fault, not mine.”

  She was stupefied, incredulous. Was this Jerome, her husband, the man she loved, this evil-eyed stranger with the gray hair and tight dark face? Was this actually hatred for her which she saw in his eyes, a leaping and merciless hatred?

  How had she not known that he was cruel? Surely, she had known! But she had crushed down the knowledge. She could keep it down no longer.

  Her voice was steadier now, and she looked at him unmovingly: “You are a cruel man, Jerome. I don’t think I ever acknowledged it before, even to myself. I can forgive anything, Jerome, but cruelty. Anything.”

  Yes, that was true, she thought. She could not forgive cruelty, could find no justification for it. It was the most evil, the most wicked, the most unpardonable thing. A cruel man had no virtues at all. Cruelty prohibited them. A cruel man was dangerous, treacherous. He might have passions, but he could not truly know love.

  Amalie’s tortured mind, swift and sharp now, ran over the years. She thought of all that Jerome had accomplished for the good of thousands of desperate men and women. If he was really cruel, why had he done this? Then she knew. It had been because he had hated Alfred. Good had been the excellent fruit on a poisonous tree. Was that possible? It seemed that it was possible. What Jerome had done had not touched his heart. Because it had not come from his heart. It had come from his restless and unrelenting soul.

  She knew he was not happy, because he did not possess the capacity for happiness. He was restless because it was not possible for him ever to feel peace. There was something unresolved in Jerome. And that was because he was cruel.

  Amalie was terrified. How was it possible to live with Jerome in any sort of affection or amity, now that she knew he was cruel, now that she had acknowledged it?

  “So I am cruel, am I?” said Jerome, in a pent voice. “So that is what you have been telling Mary all these years, eh?”

  Amalie could not speak. There was a pain in her breast that was almost past enduring. There was a sickness in her throat.

  She thought: How naïve I am. How little I have known about the deviousness of the human soul! I don’t know anything—nothing at all.

  �
��No doubt,” Jerome went on, “you are thinking regretfully of the tender first husband you so easily betrayed and abandoned. Why not tell him? It would give him a great deal of satisfaction, I am sure.”

  His manner, his face, his glinting eyes, were filled with ugliness. And with mysterious fear.

  During all these years Amalie had believed that Alfred was the one beset by a secret knowledge of inner inferiority and insecurity. Yet now she understood with sudden illumination that, to a great extent, she had been wrong. Alfred’s insecurity had arisen from his sense of gratitude to his uncle, from his devotion to William Lindsey. Otherwise, he had been strong. He had acquired wisdom. This she had learned from Philip.

  But Jerome would never be wise. He would always be at odds with the world. He hated because he feared. He hated because he could never trust.

  Compassion rolled over Amalie like a smothering wave. She held out her hands to Jerome. “Oh, please don’t, darling!” she cried softly. “I am so sorry.”

  But Jerome could not be moved. He gave her another malevolent look. Then he turned and went out of the room.

  Amalie remained alone for a long time.

  It seemed to her that she had been alone for so long. She had been alone all her life. She was filled with desolation, the awful desolation that comes to one who understands with remorseless finality.

  I am tired, she thought. I am so tired of trying to understand, of trying to be happy. There is something unresolved in me too.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  Dorothea was buried on January seventh, in the family plot.

  The day was all crystal and white and glittering blue. The black pines of the cemetery blazed with icicles. The grave was a raw black gash in the pure earth. Scores of Dorothea’s friends had come here. She had never inspired much love, but she had inspired respect. Her life had been above reproach. These were cold virtues, but at the last they were appreciated.

  Some whispered that Alfred seemed very calm and resigned. He looked at the grave, at the heaps of ferns and hothouse flowers waiting on the brink. Some said he was stunned, numb, inconsolable. How else could he keep from betraying some grief at the sight of the coffin of the cousin, the sister, who had served him so faithfully, and with such affection?

  Philip, his son, stood beside him. Poor misshapen creature! thought the friends. Poor Alfred Lindsey. He had nothing at all in the world to comfort him, thought the sentimental. His first wife had died, his second wife had betrayed him. He had no strong sons, no pretty daughters, to give him consolation and hope.

  Philip could sense their commiserating thoughts quite clearly. “No consolation and hope.” But what consolation or hope was there in living? The only inevitable thing at all was man’s suffering and man’s death. Yet, when these came to him, the average man was stunned and incredulous and despairing. He had made no preparation for them in his life, as did the Chinese. He had no philosophy for the inevitables. They were catastrophes and calamities, the inexplicable, the events that ought not to have occurred. Yet man should know that he would suffer, that he would face death and lose to death all that was significant and dear to him. To prepare for agony, for parting, ought to be part of the education of every human being. Without this education, man lost his dignity, for in pain and loss he was revealed to others and to himself as a creature who was ill-prepared.

  Nor did religion so prepare a man, though the holy books spoke extensively of suffering and death. But the emphasis was always on life. Religion took no real stand on the negatives. Man cannot live by the positives alone, for they are only a portion of life. The moon, thought Philip, has a dark face and a bright one, but they are one and the same thing. No one emphasizes that. Thus man laments in bewildered agony at sight of the dark face, and can find no consolation and no hope.

  Alfred, dressed in black broadcloth, his head bared to the winter sun, leaned on his ebony cane and looked at the grave. Good-bye, dear Dorothea, he said in his heart. I know you are happy. I wish, my dear, that I might have been able to give you some happiness here. That wish is all I can send to you. How obtuse I was! There were so many times when I might have smiled at you, and laughed with you. But I did not. Why? I don’t know. I think it is because we never accept the fact that inevitably death must come, and that all the things unsaid and undone will stand beside and around us like closed graves.

  He remembered that Dorothea had wanted to plant yellow daffodils along the left side of the house, but that he had had one of his rare moods of obstinacy on the subject. Why, daffodils had only one blooming, bright and golden to be sure, but for such a little time, and then their seared foliage remained an eyesore for the rest of the summer. A blankness was left behind. But now, with deep poignancy, he wished that he had let Dorothea have those daffodils along the house. Poor Dorothea. He thought of the daffodils, and all at once he seemed to see Dorothea’s secret nature completely revealed. She had loved the flowers for their cool springtime blooming, for their vehement and passionate golden life, for their joyous affirmation in the renewal of summer hope. His bitterest grief came to him then. He ought to have let her have the daffodils. Well, he would have them planted where she had wished them. He would have them planted on her grave. The yellow cloud of them would dance in her memory.

  The minister had concluded his prayers. He threw a handful of mingled mud and snow onto the coffin that lay in the grave. The mourners moved restlessly. They instinctively did not like that gesture. They huddled closer together, and turned their eyes away. They will not look at the inevitable, thought Philip. They will pile up the fires higher when they go home, and many of them will order stiffer whiskeys-and-soda, and quite a few more will invite friends in for the evening, and they will talk and laugh a little louder than usual.

  Suddenly there was a murmur of surprise among the mourners, and a stir. A tall young girl in sealskin jacket and wearing a round sealskin hat was moving towards the grave. Her arms were filled with hothouse lilies and roses. Mary Lindsey! They stared at her in disbelief and active curiosity, and also with peculiar relief, as if she had saved them from the necessity of looking at the grave. But Mary did not return their stares. She looked steadily before her, her wide blue eyes lucid and quiet. She went directly to Alfred and Philip. She smiled at them tenderly.

  “Mary,” murmured Alfred.

  “My dear,” whispered Philip.

  She stood on tiptoe to kiss Alfred’s cheek, and then kissed Philip. She turned to the grave then, and dropped the flowers upon the coffin. “Good-bye, Aunt Dorothea,” she said softly. She stood between Alfred and Philip, her arms linked in theirs, and she smiled again.

  She went home with them, to the dark, quiet house. She stopped when Alfred stopped. He pointed to the left side of the house. “I’m going to plant daffodils there,” he said. “Dorothea wanted them.”

  Mary glanced at Philip. There were tears on her lashes. She took Alfred’s arm again, and the three of them went into the house.

  The servants had allowed the fires to burn low. Mary briskly tossed coal upon them. She lighted lamps. She moved about quickly and lightly. To Philip, at least, it appeared that she left a trail of frail brightness behind her. A maid hurriedly brought in tea and fresh hot biscuits and jam, and Mary served them. Philip and Alfred had sat down, overcome with heaviness and despondency, watching the girl, but now, as she poured their tea and laughed a little and spoke with casual cheerfulness, they forced themselves to respond, for very politeness’ sake.

  “It seems I’ll have to take care of you two,” she said, sitting on the edge of a chair and sipping her tea. “Aunt Dorothea would be much annoyed if she knew that you were sitting here in what she called ‘the dumps.’” She paused. “After all, one must go on living.” She glanced at them artlessly, then smiled. “The only question is: Why?”

  “Why?” repeated Alfred heavily.

  But Philip found himself smiling, in spite of himself.

  “I think Mary is laughing up her sleeve at us,�
� he said.

  Alfred tried to be shocked. But he failed. A renewed warmth was penetrating him. He began to feel some consolation and peace.

  “One must have some reverence for the dead,” he said uncertainly.

  “Reverence?” Mary’s eyebrows went up. “Why more so than when they were here? They’re probably just as nasty or nice or kind or foolish as before. They are just the same. Except that they are beginning to learn a few more things. It would be interesting to know what Aunt Dorothea is learning right at this moment.” She laughed a little. “Probably she is resisting some idea which doesn’t coincide with her preconceived beliefs, poor darling.”

  She added, a little more seriously: “Of course, we all miss her. She knows that. She knows we can’t help it. But she would think it very silly to weep and wail over her going. Aunt Dorothea had such character.”

  When a few friends came to sit and condole with the bereaved father and son, they were aghast to hear laughter in the drawing-room. They found Mary happily refilling teacups and plates. They found Alfred and Philip smoking, their expressions comforted and amused.

  “She is like her mother,” they said later, when, both shocked and discomfited, they had left the house. “She has no reverence or decency. I am surprised that Alfred encouraged her. As for Philip, he always seemed so proper and conventional. Yet, there he was, laughing at some foolish remark she made, and rising to greet us as if we were most unwelcome.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

  Quarrels between Jerome and Amalie were usually hot and brief, ending in reconciliation and laughter.

  But this quarrel, though apparently passing, did not end in laughter. It ended in a kind of queer silence, like a truce.

  Amalie, with her profound understanding, knew that she had struck deeply at Jerome with her accusation of cruelty. He could not forgive her because he knew that she had spoken the truth. She had made a breach between them which could never be healed.