This Side of Innocence

by Taylor Caldwell

  “There was Mr. Alfred’s lawyers here, too, sir, shut up with him, like, in the library. That was last night.”

  Jerome looked at the door. He pushed Jim aside. He went out of the room, he went into the hall, he ran quickly down the stairs, making no effort to hush his steps. He reached the library door, and flung it open.

  There was a fire here also. And there was Alfred, standing before it, with bent head. He had been out, for his tall hat, his gloves and cane, were laid on a table nearby.

  He heard Jerome enter. He watched him close the door behind him. His face was ashen, heavily furrowed. But when he looked at Jerome his hazel eyes burned and flashed with hatred, though he did not move nor speak.

  “Where is Amalie?” asked Jerome, and he advanced towards his cousin.

  Then he stopped, and the two men looked at each other in a silence which grew more frightful with every slow second.

  Mr. Lindsey, lying weakly on his pillows, suddenly lifted his head. He had heard Jerome’s hurrying footsteps; he had heard the closing of the library door. He let his head drop back. But something began to thrill and tremble in him, and he could hear his own heart, like a strong and heavy drum. He threw aside the covers, and, with a most enormous effort, thrust his feet into his slippers and put on his robe.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Alfred’s lawyers had advised him well and with realistic shrewdness, and Alfred, after the first bitter rebellion and frustrated rage, had listened. “Remember, Alfred,” one of them had said quietly, “that Jerome Lindsey is the old gentleman’s son, and that blood is still thicker than water. Go cautiously. Young Lindsey has succeeded in ingratiating himself with his father; it’s town gossip. He is firmly affixed to the Bank now, and he has powerful friends, not only in Riversend but in New York. Didn’t you tell us once yourself that Mr. Jay Regan is one? And didn’t you say that Mr. Regan expressed deep interest in him, when you were in New York? Go cautiously.

  “You’ve had the worst provocation that any man can have, and if you forgot yourself completely, you’d have considerable sympathy. But sympathy doesn’t last long. If, after all your years of work, you lose your place in the Bank, your sympathetic friends will dwindle away. This woman, your wife, has betrayed you. Granted. But she hasn’t ‘shamed’ you, as you keep repeating. She has only shamed herself. The sooner you forget her, the better. The less violence and recrimination, the less you will get the old gentleman’s back up. Keep remembering Jerome Lindsey is his son. We aren’t advising you to stay on amiable relations with the man who cuckolded you; that’s beyond human nature. But the adjustment, the new arrangement, will come later. There is always the strong possibility, too, that he will find his position in this community untenable, and if you control yourself, it is very likely that the old gentleman will send him away immediately. After all, he has wronged you, and Mr. Lindsey is a man of honor. Your forte is dignity and silence. This is your home, your community. If you exercise restraint, you will command the admiration of your friends.”

  Alfred’s strong if hidden egotism, his natural caution, his dominating ambition, warned him that his lawyers spoke wisely. He expressed impatience for his divorce. He would give Amalie money, a small but sound sum, on the condition that she leave the community immediately after the divorce. The lawyers settled on the sum of five hundred dollars. The divorce would be expedited. There would be as little food as possible for gossip. Of course, there would be talk. But, the lawyers reiterated, he himself had only to maintain a proud silence.

  They, and Alfred, left out of consideration the results of his first meeting with Jerome.

  The lawyers, usually so astute, also left out of their calculations the fact that Alfred had for his wife the deep and phlegmatic passion and love which only a silent and restrained man can possess, and which he cannot overcome. They knew nothing of Alfred’s compassion for Amalie, his tearing anguish at the very thought of her; they did not know that he had developed a theory, born both of his love and his egotistic self-protectiveness, that Amalie had been more guiltless than guilty, that she had been the seduced, rather than a willing accomplice in his shame.

  Nevertheless, the lawyers’ advice had been received by him with more reason than they had expected. If Jerome had not returned, if, indeed, he had not burst in upon his cousin with the open challenge of his demand for Amalie, Alfred might have acted to the entire approval of his lawyers.

  But when he now saw Jerome, when he saw that dark and arrogant face, those infuriated eyes, that attitude of contemptuous rage and brutal disregard for the man he had wronged, all the advice of the lawyers was lost.

  For in one flashing and terrible moment Alfred saw the essence of all his years with his cousin. He felt, in one vivid condensation, his old secret jealousy and envy, the tortures which the light and disdainful Jerome had endlessly inflicted upon him, the chronic fears which had dogged these last few months. A thousand sharp scenes shifted before him, and he heard Jerome’s old laughter echoing from their very youth together, laughter cruel and merciless and completely genuine. He remembered all the taunts, all the stinging jests, all the glances of amused contempt, all the delicately vicious words and ridicule.

  But all these things were only the backdrop to the fiery and disordered thoughts which raced through his mind now, all the male and lustful thoughts, all the male jealousy and murderous hatred. This was the hated man who had made him, Alfred, a contemptible and laughable figure; this was the man who had put his hands on Amalie’s bare flesh, had kissed her, and lain with her—Amalie, his wife! This was the man who had inflicted the worst and most hideous wrong any man can inflict upon another, a wrong which struck lethally at all that makes a prideful human being: his dignity, his self-respect, his sense of property, his protected individualism, his integrity, his wholeness.

  There was no reason left in Alfred now, no caution. The primordial man, rising heavily and fiercely from under all the stones of civilization and convention and self-interest which had been heaped carefully over him, stood naked and terrible in Alfred’s person. And it was this atavistic creature, clearly seen, which had caused Jerome to stop suddenly, and to look at his cousin in a sharpening and ascending awareness of the presence of something which would most probably try to kill him.

  Yes, a voice said clearly in Jerome’s mind, he will kill you, if possible. Jerome’s first emotion was incredulity. He had, absurdly enough, hardly thought of Alfred at all, except as a lumbering and faintly ridiculous figure, the unimaginative business man, immune to the passions of those with more quicksilver natures. Alfred was only a tiresome obstacle. He saw now, with increasing incredulousness, that he, Jerome, was a fool, and that his folly might cost him his life, ludicrous as the very idea might be. It really was possible, he said to himself, that this heavy-faced but wild-eyed man had loved and cherished Amalie with an abominable, but very powerful, passion, and that he was quite capable of strong male lustfulness, and the excesses which that lustfulness held in potentiality.

  And so they looked at each other across the little space that divided them in this lamplit room, and Jerome thought: He is mad. The thought was cold and clear and quick. Other thoughts followed swiftly: He is stronger than I, and heavier, even though he is older. Besides, there is my leg.

  He forgot Amalie in the pure instinct that awakens in a man when his very existence is threatened. He could only stare at Alfred with intense awareness and calculation. Alfred had not moved. Yet every nerve in Jerome’s body was thrilling and singing in the knowledge that possible death stood only five feet from him. Alfred’s face, for all its ashen look, was almost expressionless. It was his eyes that held his cousin’s fascinated attention, and it was those eyes that made Jerome feel the first real terror of his life.

  He still could not believe it. He could not make himself accept the fact that in this room where he had spent his childhood and his youth he might die at the hands of a man he had always despised. He recognized the leaping terror in himself, in a
ll its vital freshness and newness, for not even in war had he known real fear, nor ever before.

  Alfred, in turn, looked at Jerome. He did not know of his cousin’s pure animal fear. He saw only that slightly lifted face, the stiff outthrust chin, those narrowed and penetrating eyes which did not leave his own face for an instant. He saw that the muscles about that insolent mouth had sprung out in thin cords. And then, suddenly, he knew that Jerome was afraid.

  He was afraid, this blackguard, this wretch, this evil and despicable man! He was afraid, for the first time, of him, Alfred Lindsey!

  Alfred said: “She is going to have a child, your child.”

  Jerome did not speak. He was not deceived by Alfred’s voice, dull and quiet. Suddenly his eye leapt aside, looking for a weapon with which to defend himself. Alfred’s words had not reached his complete consciousness. In fact, he hardly heard them.

  Alfred saw the swift side glance. He followed it with his own eye. He saw his heavy cane on the table near him. His hand darted out, seized it. Before Jerome could move, or even lift an arm, Alfred had struck him savagely and heavily across the face.

  Jerome staggered back, raising his arm to shield his face. He did not feel the pain, but the stunning force of the blow sent him reeling. He heard a roaring in his ears; his vision was clouded, and through fog he saw Alfred looming over him. He saw his cousin’s arm lifted again and again, and yet he did not feel the blows that battered him. He had only one thought: escape. For now he knew, completely, that if he could not get away, if help did not come, he would surely die.

  Far off, in the dim reaches of space, he heard a cry, a multitude of cries. He no longer saw Alfred. He was floating in semi-darkness, and he was conscious for the first time of an unbearable agony. He felt himself tossed and thrown off, sailing, swimming, and he saw before him a cloud of darkness which rushed closer and closer, spreading out and about him. Finally, it engulfed him, and he sped into it, far from the pursuing agony of his own flesh.

  It was not until late the next day, when he awakened, that he learned that his father, impelled by some mysterious instinct, had left his bed and come downstairs, that he had, in fact, by his appearance, by his cries, saved his son’s life.

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  Even had Amalie been physically able to stroll about the Hobson farm, the weather would have prevented such excursions. The first days of August were unseasonably chill and wet, filled with a green and sepulchral gloom. The tenebrous sky was all gray folds, marbled with dark veins, and the earth dripped constantly.

  Amalie, from her low little windows, could see the soaking meadows, the melancholy cattle huddling under drowned trees, the cloudlike outlines of distant hills. But, for her, the days were all the same. She was counting them, one by one. And as each day passed, she grew more feverish, more sleepless, more taut with extreme nervousness. She was only faintly aware of the Hobsons, though she smiled at Mrs. Hobson and the children whenever she saw them. She was given her meals in her room. Had she been less emotionally intense, straining all her thoughts and senses beyond the farm, she would have discerned that she lived in virtual isolation, and that the Hobsons avoided contact with her. They had been given their orders: Mrs. Lindsey was to be kept apart, allowed no visitors, not to leave the farm, and not to be engaged in conversation. Her presence amid this family was to be a secret from the whole community. No one must know that she was here.

  If the Hobsons had feared that Amalie might do some questioning herself, or might prove restless or intractable, she gave no grounds for this. She only sat by the windows, not reading, not drowsing, her eyes fixed on the swimming countryside and the long winding road that led to the town.

  She was counting. The days went by. Today, she said to herself, Jerome has returned to Riversend. What is happening there? He will know; he will be told. She shuddered away from that scene, and feverishly turned her mind beyond it. Tomorrow he will come. Or the next day, at the most.

  It did not occur to her that Jerome might not be told of her whereabouts.

  Friday came. It expired on the dark evening horizon in a tremendous rainstorm. Amalie did not even doze that night. She lay in her bed, trembling, her aching eyes fixed on the shadowy windows; she listened to the wind and the rain and the far wailing cry of a midnight train. When the white dawn came, she was prostrated. But she forced herself to dress, arranged her thick braids about her head, and seated herself again at the window. Today he would surely come.

  But the day passed, hour by streaming hour. Her trays stood untouched on the dresser. The room was very cold, but Amalie did not feel it. Her breath steamed the window; as it formed she rubbed away the mist with her fingers. The road was a river of brown and running mud. It remained empty. When twilight came, she was still there, staring. Farmer Hobson, going to the barns, saw her white, fixed face, gazing beyond him, unaware of him, and it “gave him a start.” It was like a ghost’s face, he said to his wife, with sullen anxiety. He and Mrs. Hobson began to whisper together in the kitchen. They had-not dared to question, even among themselves. But now the faint slow indignation of the country-folk began to awaken in them. Something was wrong. Something had happened to Miz Lindsey. They did not get to town very often, and they had been warned not to talk. Alfred was paying them twenty dollars a week for harboring his wife; that was an enormous sum, and a man did not quarrel with enormous sums even when old loyalties and old affections began to stir uneasily in him.

  But the Hobsons owed Amalie a great deal; she had nursed them in illness, had prevented their farm from being foreclosed; she had given nearly half of her small salary to them when they needed medical aid and clothing. She had sat with them in their poor clean parlor, had coached their one intelligent boy, had helped Mrs. Hobson with the younger children, and had sewn for her and them. They recalled how bright her strong face had appeared in the light of the fire and the kerosene lamps. They remembered how she had gone to the bams with Mr. Hobson, singing, helping him milk when his wife was “poorly.” She had ridden their horses; she had helped with the plowing, for she was as vigorous as a young and healthy man. She had hoed the potatoes, assisted in the haying, helped in the kitchen at harvest. They had loved her, and she had loved them.

  And now she sat like a dumb white desperation in her room, not speaking, only looking at them with dazed and sunken eyes from which the purple tint, once so ardent and sparkling, was fading. When she spoke, it was hardly more than a whisper. They knew that she remained by the window, staring out of it for hours at a time. For whom was she waiting? Her husband? They hated Alfred, did the Hobsons, and were terrified of him. They recalled his lowering expression, his harsh voice, his peremptory commands. Yes, something was wrong with Miz Lindsey, and she was dying in that little room with the sloping roof. But they did not know what to do.

  On Saturday afternoon, Mr. Hobson went to town. He returned earlier than usual, and called to his wife, horror-stricken. They crept to their own room, and whispered together for over an hour. Once or twice Mrs. Hobson exclaimed feebly and pitifully. But Amalie did not hear, and these friends did not dare tell her.

  “And so, she’s got to stay here till he rids hisself of her,” Mr. Hobson said to his wife. “And after all this! It’s a mercy that feller wasn’t murdered—And his poor father, and all.”

  Mrs. Hobson was aghast. She felt some natural, countrywoman’s aversion for Amalie’s “sin.” But this was swallowed up in the more dreadful news that had followed her husband’s revelations.

  “I guess she’s waitin’ for him up there, all the time,” said the good woman, shaking her head. “And he don’t know, and he couldn’t come—now. Not for a while, anyways. Could be we could tell her?”

  “No. We can’t tell her nothin’. Not in her state. Better let things take their course.”

  But Mr. Hobson, who was a slow, taciturn man, began to form his own plans.

  Amalie sat by her window again on Sunday. The first pale sun for many days fell in thin and sh
allow light over the meadows and the hills. She heard the dim clanging of the town bells. She saw the road, hung over with a faint bright mist, winding down to Riversend. But no one came down the road. She remained there all night, watching and waiting, not knowing that Mrs. Hobson hovered, wringing her hands, outside her door.

  A dark fog fell over Amalie’s eyes. She could not rid herself of it for a long time. When she finally emerged, she was numbly astonished to see that the sun was shining, while only a few moments ago it had been twilight. Monday morning had come.

  Mrs. Hobson came in with a pitcher of hot water and fresh towels. Amalie turned her head slowly towards her. Mrs. Hobson looked at that ghastly face, at the sunken cheeks where a mauve shadow had been deepening day by day, at the empty and swollen eyes. She could not restrain herself. “Miz Lindsey!” she cried. “You’ve not to take on so! He’ll come! You’ll see!” And then she put her hand over her mouth, in terror at her own words.

  Amalie shook her head. “No,” she murmured. “He’ll not come. I know it.”

  She forced herself to her feet, swaying like an old sick woman. Mrs. Hobson caught her arm, compassionately. She helped Amalie to the bed. She washed her tenderly; tears ran down the sun-darkened face of the farmer’s wife. “He’ll come; you’ll see,” she said, over and over, in a hushed voice. But Amalie only smiled mournfully, pushing back her black hair with her thin hands.

  She refused to stay in bed. Mrs. Hobson helped her to dress in her brown alpaca frock, and to brush and braid her hair. It was at her desperate insistence that Amalie compelled herself to eat a little bread and drink some hot coffee. Then she sat again at the window, her face pressed against the glass, her arms folded on the window-sill. Her eyes were fixed unwaveringly on the road.

  She did not think. All the pressure of her bruised mind was fixed on Jerome, and on the road by which he must come. She thought of nothing else. She was like Hero watching for Leander. She was not conscious of the passage of the hours, nor of the low voices of the farmer and his wife. Nothing existed for her but the road that led to Riversend.