This Side of Innocence

by Taylor Caldwell

  Mr. Lindsey closed the book slowly, and replaced it on the table. He fixed his pale-blue eyes with a level look upon his son. “You have always hated Alfred. But you never resented him before. Are you jealous of Alfred now, Jerome?”

  Jerome shrugged. “Jealous? I was never jealous of anyone. Perhaps that is because I am an egotist. But, candidly, I have always found Alfred tiresome. He bores me to death. He has no conversation. I can forgive a man anything, if he has conversation. You might deny it, Father, but I know he bores you also. What can he discuss, beyond the Bank? During these long winter nights, with what talk has he enlivened you? Philosophy, politics, taste, religion? If he has any ideas whatsoever about them, they are bound to be as dreary as death, and as vital. I think he has acquired them too from the Bank ledgers. What gay evenings you must have together!”

  Mr. Lindsey compressed his lips to prevent an involuntary smile which he felt was unjust and unkind.

  “On the contrary, Alfred and I have had many interesting talks.”

  “Oh, what a gentleman you are, sir! What tolerance! On what subject can you and Alfred possibly agree, or even disagree? You can’t use intellectual reason on Alfred. You must admit that, yourself. And now, a little quotation from a per of mine, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. You remember Coleridge? He speaks of men afflicted with inward blindness, and I apply that to Alfred, with no reservations. With such men, he says, ‘nothing is possible but a naked dissent, which implies a sort of unsocial contempt: or—what a man of kind disposition is very likely to fall into—a heartless tacit acquiescence, which borders too nearly on duplicity.’ I cannot accuse you, Father, of having contempt for any man. I can only accuse you of your ‘kind disposition.’”

  “And of duplicity,” added Mr. Lindsey. He could not repress his smile now.

  Jerome made a deprecating gesture. “How can a gentleman of intellect and reason talk for five minutes with Alfred and not be guilty of duplicity, of the violation of his deepest convictions, especially if he be a kind man?”

  “He might be charitable,” said Mr. Lindsey. “He might be tolerant, as well as guilty of dissimulation. Men like you often turn the world into a bloody battleground. I prefer peace. Especially in my own household.” His tone was tranquil. But Jerome smiled at him disagreeably.

  “You are warning me again,” he said, thoughtfully.

  Mr. Lindsey lifted the silver covers from his dishes. He began to eat, with real and new relish. “At any rate, I never accused you of being obtuse, Jerome.”

  Jerome stood up, thrust his hands into his trouser pockets, and began to walk restlessly up and down the room, staring at the rug. “I think I have made it clear that my nature is inclined to sweetness and light. I shall shed beams on Alfred. I shall be guilty of duplicity. Not a tone of my voice shalf disturb the holy and placid atmosphere of this house. Even if I choke to death.”

  Mr. Lindsey began to laugh. “Really, I see many happy months ahead!” he exclaimed.

  Jerome stopped his pacing to pour his father’s tea. He did it with an air of real affection and care. He dropped three lumps of sugar into the steaming liquid; he added cream. Mr. Lindsey watched him, with open fondness. “Thank you, my dear boy. You have not forgotten how much sugar I take. Dorothea thinks it bad for me. I often feel guilty.”

  “Dutiful people have that effect on the civilized,” remarked Jerome.

  Mr. Lindsey sipped his tea, and sighed contentedly. “I have the oddest feeling that this conversation of ours is very unkind. Even treacherous. My mother used to say that no conversation was worthy of the truly elegant man if it could not be heard without reproach or embarrassment by any eavesdropper.”

  They looked at each other, then burst out laughing. Jerome added an obscene remark, and the laughter became uncontrollable.

  So happy had Mr. Lindsey then become that he, himself, suggested that Jerome postpone his labors at the Bank until after the Christmas holidays. Jerome’s objections were faint. They parted, feeling soothed and most agreeable.

  Jerome then went to visit his sister, who was still in bed with her cold.

  The draperies were barely drawn from the windows, and by the dim light Dorothea was sitting up in bed reading the last pious issue of the “Gospel Trumpet,” an organ published by a missionary society for which she had much esteem. The smell of camphor, lavender and vinegar was even stronger in the room, and Jerome’s nostrils contracted. He no longer felt soothed and agreeable, but he greeted his sister with a grave question about her illness. She put aside the paper and looked at him with her old impatient imperiousness, touched with an eager hope.

  “Well?” she demanded, brushing away his query about her health. “Have you talked to Papa about that—woman? What have you done, Jerome? Please stop staring at the fire. It is quite hot enough!” For Jerome had shown indications that he intended to stir up the coals. “Do sit down, Jerome. I am all impatience.”

  Jerome sat down and regarded his sister somberly. “I am sorry, my dear. It is hopeless. I harangued Father for hours.” He fingered his watch-chain, “I even offered the lady in question a—a consideration if she would give up her obdurate and greedy plans. It is hopeless. We must reconcile ourselves to the inevitable.”

  Dorothea’s grim gray face immediately became pinched and desperate. Her hands trembled as they fumbled with her handkerchief. She tried to speak, then was silent. Her lips shook. Jerome watched her with an unusual pity, in spite of his first mean pleasure in her bitter disappointment and misery. He saw how she blinked her eyes to restrain her tears, how she swallowed convulsively. He felt a sudden admiration for her when she threw up her graying head with such resolution that her frilled cap was strongly agitated.

  “But you have not talked to Alfred,” she said, and her harsh voice was quite firm.

  “My dear! That is asking too much. As well ask a dog to give up a juicy piece of meat!” And he made a slight smacking sound.

  She colored-violently at his words, and the sound that had followed them. “Jerome! How disgusting of you! Give me my salts, if you please.”

  He brought them to her, and she held the pungent bottle firmly to her nostrils, and sniffed urgently. When she withdrew it, the water was thick in her eyes. It formed into tears, which spilled over her cheeks. “Really, too strong,” she murmured. “But everything has deteriorated, since the war.” She replaced the bottle on the table. The tears would not stop. She was, all at once, a shrunken if still indomitable woman, on her pillows.

  “I have only one last resource: to make things so unpleasant for the slut that she will leave voluntarily,” said Jerome. “Of course, that will not make Alfred love me more than he already does. Or, I might contrive to reveal her to him as she is. I have already made a good beginning in that direction, I think. But, you must not depend on this too much. A man who is determined to sl—, to marry a certain woman, is a man shut out from all reason. She has hypnotized him. She watched my efforts against her, and smiled like a smug and very replete cat. No, I cannot promise too much in that direction.”

  “He is bewitched!” cried Dorothea, hoarsely. She wiped her eyes again. “Oh, dear, those salts!”

  “Of course,” said Jerome, thoughtfully, “he might find out after marriage.”

  “But that would be too late.”

  Jerome pursued his thought. “Sometimes a jam pot is revealed to have turned sour. But that is only after it is sampled. And Alfred is determined to sample.”

  “Jerome!”

  “As for Father, he is inclined to find her refreshing.” He grinned, “I am happy that dear Papa has his arthritis, or we might discover ourselves with a stepmama considerably younger than ourselves, and equally rapacious.”.

  Dorothea was aghast. “Jerome! How can you be so unspeakable, so shameless!”

  Jerome shrugged. “Well, dear Papa is still a man, and he always was. Or do you believe we were begotten while he elegantly held Mama’s hand, and conversed of edifying matters? No, my dear Dotty, we mus
t consider that things might be worse. Many a man has forgotten his children while he dallied behind the bed-curtains with a strumpet.”

  Dorothea’s color became dark crimson. “You are not only odious, you are loathsome.” She shuddered involuntarily. “How can you speak so of Papa? But you never had any respect for him, or any decency.”

  Jerome rose, happy to escape. “Then I shall remove my contemptible presence from your room, darling Dotty, if you find it so insupportable.”

  Dorothea lifted her hand. “Wait! Are you confessing, now, that you can find no solution, you who were so assured last night?” She was still crimson, and she could not look at him without shame, but her urgency made her temporarily forget her emotions.

  “I said, the situation seems hopeless, but I have not entirely given up. I am merely warning you not to expect too much. That is only reasonable. There is another thing: we are having a Christmas party, I believe. Perhaps when Alfred sees her among his stuffed-duck and respectable friends, with their breeding and gentility and manners, the woman will suddenly seem impossible to him. Doubtless, too, those friends will convey to him their disapproval of the marriage, and their shock and outrage, and Alfred, who is always so sensitive to the opinions of others, might be impressed.”

  Dorothea was silent, pondering this. The gloom lifted slightly from her face. “Yes,” she murmured, at last. “There is some hope in that. Yes, I am inclined to think there is.” She sank deeper into thought. She saw all the elegant young ladies of her acquaintance, and their irreproachable mamas, and their solid papas. And she saw them staring haughtily at Amalie Maxwell, and listening to her shocking conversation.

  “As for the money,” said Jerome, “we have reason to hope substantially there. I am going to safeguard our interests. I am going into the Bank.”

  “Interesting,” murmured Dorothea, abstractedly, her busy thoughts continuing. Jerome moved towards the door. Then suddenly the impact of what he had said reached her. “What!” she exclaimed, galvanized. “What did you say about the Bank, Jerome? Did I hear aright? You are going into the Bank?”

  “That is what I said,” he agreed.

  She stared at him, overcome with amazement and incredulity. She blinked her eyes at him. Her mouth opened blankly.

  When she spoke, she stuttered: “I—I can’t believe it! Why should you go into the Bank, Jerome? You?”

  “I can’t see why it should stun you so,” said Jerome, disagreeably. “Our money is there, isn’t it? And where the mouse is, the cat hangs about.”

  “But you would be impossible in the Bank! It is not to be thought of!”

  “Thank you for the compliment, so gracefully and tactfully made.”

  “But you couldn’t go into the Bank! Papa and Alfred wouldn’t let you!” She was overcome, shocked at the very thought.

  “Papa will not only let me, he has already agreed. And Alfred is ‘pleased.’”

  She still stared at him, as though he were an incredible and appalling creature dropped from another sphere.

  “But you would be absolutely—impossible—in a bank! Our Bank. I cannot see you in the Bank!”

  “You will,” Jerome assured her, his hand on the door. “You will see my handsome countenance bent over the ledgers, and my graceful legs curled around a stool. It will be an uplifting sight, one to cheer the heart in your bosom. I shall sit next to the safes.”

  The idea stunned her more and more. If he had expressed his determination to occupy the pulpit of her favorite minister she could not have been more horrified and disbelieving. Even her misery was dissolved in her stupefaction.

  “If you are thinking that I shall probably make off with the money-bags, disabuse yourself of the idea, my love,” he said. “For, while on the surface it appears to have its certain attractions, I have no doubt that Alfred would have me pursued and thrown into gaol. All in a spirit of impartial justice and disinterested integrity.”

  “But, what would you do in the Bank?” She fell back against her pillows, weak with shock.

  “I told you: watch the money. Make myself such an infernally good banker that Papa will be impressed, and revise his will, and such. I’m a reformed character, Dotty. I itch for the ledgers. I pant for the cash. I’ll watch it as a vestal virgin watched the sacred flame. I’ll out-bank Alfred. You’ll see.”

  “The very idea is ludicrous! I shall speak to Papa—”

  “Thank you for the flattery. And, do speak to Papa. He is entranced with the idea. He drools with joy at the very thought of it. If he has any misgivings at all, your objections will dispel them. Damn it, I thought you’d be delighted.”

  “Don’t swear,” she said, faintly and mechanically, as usual. She lay back on the pillows and brought her distracted thoughts to play on the impossible thought of Jerome in the Bank. His arguments, however, impressed her. But she shook her head numbly. “You, in the Bank,” she murmured feebly. “No one would feel safe—if you were there.”

  Jerome threw back his head and shouted with laughter.

  She was suddenly overcome with alarm. “You will ruin the Bank! You will destroy its prestige, the people’s faith in it! They will take out their money! Oh, you are doing this to crush Alfred, to wreck him! You wicked, wicked man! To injure him so, to cover him with shame and ruination!”

  He grinned broadly. “All right, then, I’ll withdraw my offer. I shall return to New York. Then the strumpet will have everything, and you may meekly accede to being her upper servant, and then dear Papa will die, and you and I will be practically penniless. Does that attract you more, my pet?” She was dumfounded, completely shaken. He watched her mind digest this. He waited. He saw the struggle between her native rapacity and her love for Alfred, her bitter grief and disappointment, and her terror of what Jerome might do in the Bank. He nodded his head, as if delighted. Then, assured now of the outcome, he bowed ironically, and left the room.

  For sheer amusement for the spectators, he thought happily, there’s nothing like having a conscience and being a woman scorned.

  Quite exhilarated, he returned to his room, brought out his coat and swung it over his shoulders. The laughter and voices were still gay outside.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The air sparkled and glittered with sunlight. Chimney smoke arched and danced under a sky like a blue diamond. The large square old house, impregnably built of its heavy gray stone, was festooned with icicles, all incandescent. It stood on its hilltop, surveying the far valley below with amiable dignity and pride, and commanding its snowy slopes serenely. The firs still carried burdens of scalloped white on their black branches.

  It was a most exciting day, hinting of gay festivity, comfort and security. The stableboys had been busy in the early morning, and had shovelled the flagged walks free of snow, so that flashes of dull blue and terra-cotta red appeared regularly in the surrounding whiteness. The red brick wall which fenced off the garden in the rear of the house was cushioned with soft purity, and the branches of the fruit trees were alive with chattering and scolding sparrows. The runners of the sleigh which had conveyed Alfred to the town below had carved sharp tracks in the shining virginity of the circling drive, and here the boys were again busy with their shovels, their voices clear and imperative in the shining silence. Beyond the gardens, and the other grounds of the house, the dark woods blurred themselves massively against the sky, their tangled branches outlined with snow. From the stable came the neighing of horses, and from behind them, the clucking of fowl. Mr. Lindsey’s conservatory, adjoining the house, blazed from its glass walls and roof. Every sound echoed like music, bounding back from the hillside in bell-like notes.

  So incandescent was the air, so pristine, that the town below was distinct in all its detail, as were its paths and streets, irregular black veins between the houses and the other buildings. One could see the chimneys smoking, and even the minute crawling of sleds and wagons and carriages.

  Jerome stood just outside the front entrance of the house and sniffed t
he bitter pure air, so sterile and so fresh. His childhood and boyhood came back to him vividly. He wondered if his sleds and snowshoes still hung in one of the barns, and he had a sudden and pleasurable desire to coast down the gentle hill behind the house to the terraced level below. Was the fishpond still in the gardens, forming a glittering blue shield of ice, and excellent for skating? His skates must be rusty now.

  As for the hill stream which wound its way from some spring near the house: was it black and frozen now, stilled on its mossy rocks? He wanted to see all these things.

  He heard a fresh burst of laughter, and walked casually around the side of the house. Miss Maxwell and Philip were still playing with Charlie, who was beside himself with this new freedom and this strange white stuff that was so soft and yielding and cold. He kept hurling his taffy-colored body into the drifts headfirst, then, after some frenetic and subterranean churning, reappearing with a look of amazed bewilderment, his nose crowned with snow. He would bark wildly, pull himself from the drift, and leap upon his new and fascinating friends, who received him with laughing affection.

  He was the first to detect Jerome. Barking excitedly, he scrambled along the cleared flagstones, and flung himself upon his master, as if calling the latter’s attention to this enexplicable wonder. Jerome picked him up; the little dog was trembling with joy.

  The two others turned to him smilingly. “Uncle Jerome!” exclaimed Philip, shyly. He was a shrunken and misshapen gnome in his long brown coat and tall hat. But his pale face had acquired some color, and his eyes, so like Jerome’s, were sparkling and dancing.

  The flashing smile on Amalie’s face changed very subtly. It hardened, became frozen. She stood silently, looking at her enemy with full and inscrutable steadfastness. She had tied a shawl over her head, and it hid all but a wing of her black hair, which lay on her white forehead. She was more beautiful in this sharp and brilliant light than she had been the night before, and an immense vitality, an inner and healthy vibrancy, flowed from her. The cold had flushed her pale face, brightened her lips to pulsing color.