This Side of Innocence

by Taylor Caldwell

  He shook his head. “I don’t think so, Jerome. Sorry. Something is lacking in all this. I’m not sure what it is. But increased leisure, better education, more money for—things—is not the answer. I think men like you are making a grave error, but I don’t know what the error-is. It is huge and frightening, but it eludes me just now.”

  He expected a contemptuous remark from Jerome, but to his surprise Jerome was regarding him searchingly, almost eagerly. Then Jerome said, with an attempt at flippancy: “You are going to be exactly like my father. Come on, now, you have reached some conclusion. What is it?”

  “You’ve felt it yourself, haven’t you, Jerome?” asked Philip shrewdly.

  “I don’t know what you are talking about.” Jerome looked at the steaks which had been placed before them. He ordered a bottle of wine. He informed Philip that he kept a stock of his own wine at the hotel, for his personal use.

  Philip said: “Let us get back to the button factories. Frankly, Jerome, do you think they contain in them all that a man needs for excitement, for his instinctive demand for elation and joyous unpredictability, for his primitive desire for adventure? They produce things in volume, yes. But I do not feel that producing ‘things’ will give man all that his nature basically craves. Somewhere, in that theory, I think, the whole error lies.

  “I only know that increasing invention, the mounting thunder of machines that one hears now all over America, robs man of something which is one of his most urgent needs, and I think you ignore that need at your peril, all of you who think that mere possessions and mere money can satisfy man’s subjective cravings.”

  “You are getting metaphysical,” said Jerome. But he listened acutely. “Go on. I will try to remember that you are a scholar, and not a practical banker yet.” He smiled.

  Philip had become more thoughtful than ever. “When we went on the tour of the factories this morning, you said, and with a great deal of truth, that the day of endless hand labor, of laborious individual work, has passed. I feel some misgivings when I think of that. For, say what you will, and with truth if you insist, I do believe that the worker in the old days had a personal pride in what he made with his hands, what he fashioned from his own peculiar imagination. Whatever he did, he stamped with his individuality; his work was the expression of his own spirit, and no matter what it was, it was his, whosoever the purchaser.

  “I have an uneasy fear that factories rob, and will continue increasingly to rob, man of his pride, his need, his needful sense of importance, his belief in his own value. I believe that it was this natural pride which made him, in the old days, endure unbroken hours of work, either on the land or in his workshop, and endure them without rebellion, sullenness, or bitter restlessness. Jerome, I noticed today that the workers seemed profoundly unhappy—”

  Jerome devoted himself to his dinner. “I ordered these steaks, especially,” he said.

  “Thank you,” said Philip gravely, his eyes twinkling. He looked at his cousin with affection. He knows, he thought. That is what is bothering him.

  Jerome glanced up. “Well, go on. The workers are profoundly unhappy—”

  “Yes. Jerome, I’ve travelled all over Continental Europe. Especially in the Latin countries. The people are dreadfully poor, yes. They are ignorant, yes. But, strange to say, they seemed happy. Materialism and factories haven’t touched these Catholic countries much, as yet. I think we have a clue there.

  “The Roman Catholic Church has a regard for the individual and acknowledges that he is more than his environment, that he is a distinct and prideful soul, as well as a pair of hands. The Guilds of the Middle Ages understood this, as the Church understood it. Whatever the quarrel we have with feudalism, and it is a valid quarrel, at least the worker was never bored. He made living things; his life was not occupied with dead matter. Our new industry, then, must borrow the premise of the Roman Church, that it is the individual that counts, and that his soul must never be put in jeopardy by machines, no matter how competently they work, nor how smoothly, whatever the mass of the things they grind out, hour by stifling hour.”

  “I still think you are metaphysical,” said Jerome. “Are you advocating dirt and ignorance and disease as against clean industrialization and enlightenment?”

  Philip laughed gently. “No. And you don’t misunderstand me, either. I like the sound of industry; I think you are quite right in your prophecies of the future, and I am glad of it. But I don’t think we need make a choice between individual happiness and pride, and mass production and objective materialism. I think the answer lies in combining both of them, and that is a tremendous task for the future.”

  Jerome accepted one of Philip’s cigarettes. He examined it with a smile. “Machine-made. You aren’t consistent, Philip.”

  “Oh, nonsense. Don’t try to deceive me, Jerome. You know what I’m getting at, for I feel it is in your own mind too. You know very well that the rising machine age is destroying the diversity of human life. And versatility is man’s most prominent characteristic. Materialism and its new apostle, the machine, will eventually destroy it, unless—”

  “Unless what?”

  Philip shrugged. “I don’t know yet. Now, I know there is no use in crying out against machines, in denouncing their contribution to the civilizing of the world. What I do fear is that we may never be able to inject into such mass production a sense of personal pride and worth, and the individualism which man must have, unless he is to become a mere servant to his own mechanisms. With that very dreadful potentiality, man might well embark on some madness, such as universal wars, to escape the mechanical life he has created.

  “Sometimes I don’t think we can inject individuality and pride into factories. It is incompatible. But somewhere, somehow, we must discover something outside the monotony of factories which will give man his necessary feeling of value, his necessity to believe that he is contributing to the world something peculiarly his own. Year by year, I feel, the immensity of the need will grow, in direct ratio to the expansion of the machine. The bigger the place the machine takes in life, the smaller will man be squeezed. But man is a spiritual explosive. It is most frightfully dangerous to compress explosives. They have a bursting point.”

  Jerome leaned his elbows on the table and stared with narrowed eyes at Philip through a haze of smoke. He said softly: “So, Philip, you too are joining the fight against the gray men? Good! The gray men have left the land; they are invading industry now, and I hate them wherever they are. I’ve felt this for a long time. I could not speak of it before to anyone. I’m damned grateful to you.”

  His voice, for all its softness, became more intense: “Contrary to what you may have heard, Philip, I am not ‘money-mad.’ I’ve gotten a lot of it, yes, but for money as a thing in itself I have never really cared. I got along very comfortably on quite a small sum in New York and in Europe. Don’t ever believe that my New England papa was lavish with the cash!”

  He paused. “Yes, I discovered that a great deal of money was not necessary to a man’s happiness, especially money that came to him easily. Money earned by individual effort is the only money that contains any element of personal satisfaction. That may be a pious aphorism, but it is still true.”

  Philip listened gravely, nodding his head. The rapport between the two men strengthened. Jerome was very excited. He looked at Philip with an expression that kindled his dark features.

  He said: “I, too, have been having my fears, Philip. I have felt, with you, that the expansion of the machine is lessening man’s sense of his innate integrity. I know that emotion is the basis of all men’s lives. And all their happiness and emotion and drama are being sucked out of them by mechanisms. My friends would think me a heretic. But they are gray men, without imagination. Well, what is the answer? Have you come to any conclusion?”

  Philip sighed. “I don’t know, either. Is it heightened activity of religion? Must religion be revitalized in America? Is it a deliberately quickened interest in po
litics, for every man? Is it an expansion of his mind, so that he may realize that the welfare of all other men is his personal responsibility? Is it increased education, an artificially stimulated pleasure in the arts? I still don’t know, I only know that man will now have to find an active life apart from his work, for his work has, in mass production, been necessarily robbed of all personal significance. Man’s emotions can’t be indefinitely suppressed. I think the first step must be greatly decreased hours of work in factories, so that the monotony won’t drive him mad.”

  “Yes. I know that. The men work in the Riversend factories nine hours a day. I put that through, myself. But you’ve seen their faces during their hours of leisure. It’s damnably confusing.”

  They finished their coffee in silence. Then Philip said: “I’m only a tyro. Perhaps I’m not a practical man. I really know very little about all this. I only feel something threatening in the air. I hope I haven’t disturbed you too much, Jerome.”

  “No,” said Jerome somberly. “You’ve only put into words what I’ve been suspecting subconsciously.”

  “I only know,” said Philip, “that man can’t live objectively all of the time, without danger to himself and to the whole world. There must be some outlet for his more powerful self, his subjective self. He must have some escape from the button factories. If he doesn’t find it, we’ll face catastrophe.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Philip looked about him slowly and penetratingly as he sat beside Jerome in the latter’s carriage, which was carrying them up to Hilltop.

  He had not come this way for ten years. He remembered this particular old Norwegian elm which stood by the road, its bearded trunk green with moss, its heavy limbs flung out like sinewy arms, massive with leaves. He saw how it had grown and thickened; it was a beloved friend. He remembered this small sunken depression ringed about with twisted oaks; he had lain in the thick grass there and watched the birds busy about their nests. Here was the spring from which he had drunk, holding the bright cold water in his hands and watching it run, like quicksilver, through his fingers. The carriage climbed higher and higher. There was the copse of pines, almost black against the red sunset, their forms solemn and still. And now there was Hilltop, gray and square, all the windows glittering with scarlet fire, the lawns vividly green about it. The ruddy roofs of the barn were as he remembered them, and the weathercock, and the old walls of the garden, shadowed by the drifting frail green of the willows. That might be Charlie barking in the rear. But Charlie, he knew, had been dead for several years.

  Home, he thought. He was suddenly profoundly grateful to his father that he had not sold Jerome his interest in this dear house. Jerome might think it sheer malice. But Philip knew it was not. The roots of all the Lindseys had driven deep into this earth; their thoughts had grown over it like the very ivy which covered the walls. Philip, in whom a sense of permanence lived as it did not live in either Amalie or Jerome, looked at the house with a passionate contentment. Some day, he felt with an instinctive intensity, he would live here again.

  Jerome, always so clairvoyant with regard to the thoughts of others, knew something of the emotion of the younger man beside him. He smiled, and now with sympathy. He let Philip look without disturbing him with so much as a word or the slightest gesture.

  Amalie, in soft gray silk taffeta, looped and braided and draped, was waiting for them with the children. She was slightly nervous. When Jerome had informed her last night that he had invited Philip for dinner, she had regarded him searchingly. Jerome was not given to doing things on impulse, and she suspected most of his motives.

  But she saw, though with faint apprehension, that as they descended from the carriage Jerome was all affability to Philip. She had warned Mary to behave sedately tonight, and she came forward slowly with the children, smiling, holding the two by their hands. Little Mary was dressed in her best frock of white muslin and lace, and was wearing white stockings, while a white ribbon tied back her silvery hair. Young William, fresh from his tub, was warm and sleepy and flushed, his dark curls a tangle on his round head.

  Philip thought: What a pretty picture they make! Mary, with her large blue eyes which seemed to fill her face, and the mass of smooth hair which fell to her waist, made him think of Alice in Wonderland. As for the boy, he reminded Philip of the miniature of Jerome at the age of six which had been one of Mr. Lindsey’s treasures.

  The children were presented to him, and he acknowledged their presence with grave courtesy. Little William, usually shy with strangers, peeped at him with interest, while Mary shook hands with him primly. Yes, it is a very prim miss, thought Philip, smiling to himself, but one capable of secret storms. New England storms, added Philip mentally, bleak and cold and glittering ice.

  He watched as Jerome kissed his daughter with great tenderness, his son with casual affection.

  “Philip, I’m so glad,” said Amalie simply, as she touched his hand. He knew she was sincere. Her purple eyes were quite brilliant in her strongly molded face. She sent the children away then, and she and Jerome and Philip entered the house through the heavy oaken door so clear in his memory. She engaged Jerome in light conversation in order that Philip might look his fill in the cool dimness of the hall.

  “Nothing has changed,” he said at last.

  Amalie glanced about vaguely. “Hasn’t it?” she murmured.

  The grandfather clock struck seven. Philip stood in silence and listened to every melodious note until it died away. How often he had heard those notes, and how many scenes they recreated in his memory! Here was the library, now. It would not have surprised him had he seen Mr. Lindsey’s tall and emaciated figure in that old red-leather chair and he heard his quiet cool voice.

  Everything was poignant to him: the tall French windows, which were only frames for outdoor scenes of gardens, trees and grass, the high shelves of books bound in blue and red morocco, the long oaken table with its old lamp, the immense fireplace, cold now, and surmounted by the portrait of Jerome’s mother. How strange it was that a mere set of andirons, the mere drape of a remembered curtain, the mere smell of flowers and earth and trees, the mere dull patina of panelled walls, could strike so passionately on a heart!

  He sat down on a chair where he had sat a thousand times, and all its contours were familiar to him. He drank sherry from a glass whose intricately cut surface, made him raise it, as he had done so often before, to catch the light on its prismatic facets. One of Mr. Lindsey’s books, a thin volume of Keats, lay open on the round oak table beside him. It might have been laid there by the old man only an hour ago. His rack of pipes was here still, burnished, dimly fragrant with his special brand of tobacco. Something perilously close to grief clouded Philip’s eyes for a moment. And so he missed the glance of understanding which passed between Amalie and Jerome.

  They talked together amicably and with laughter, and to Philip the past ten years seemed like a dream. At any moment now his father or Dorothea might enter. When he heard the dinner-gong he did not start. It was natural and right that he should hear it. He had never been away.

  It was Jim who opened the dining-room doors, and Philip stopped to speak to him, to shake hands with him. Jim, like oak, had merely darkened, become more weathered. “It’s good, that, to see you again, Mr. Philip,” said Jim. And Philip answered, with a strange smile: “Nothing has changed, Jim, not even you.”

  It seemed odd to him that only three places were set at the table, and a kind of psychic restlessness filled him. Jerome sat in old Mr. Lindsey’s place now, and Amalie in Dorothea’s. As for Philip, he sat where his father had sat; he wished they had set his place where once it had been. Then he could have seen the heavy mahogany sideboard with its remembered silver. Now he was depressed, for this was the first strangeness he had encountered, and it was wrong. But he fixed his attention on the old silver bowl in the center of the table, filled with roses. The same roses he had known; they had not withered nor dropped a leaf. He smiled.

 
Amalie, who had expected some constraint, was happy to discover that there was none between Jerome and Philip. But then, Philip had always been tactful and diplomatic; his manners had always been so gracious, so in command of the immediate moment. He is a gentleman, thought Amalie, with fond gratitude. She had never found Philip’s deformity repugnant; in truth, like all others who came to know him, she never saw it. She saw only the large, well-formed head with its thick dark hair, crisp with waves, as was her own son’s hair. She saw only the high broad forehead below it, a truly noble forehead, the black thoughtful eyes set deeply and strongly in their large sockets, the dark slender face and aquiline nose, the good firm mouth with its lines of humor and tolerance. If that head was settled too low in broad and crooked shoulders, it did not matter in the least. One saw only that fine face, which resembled Jerome’s so startlingly and yet was so much more mature, so much quieter and more reflective.

  Philip’s thoughtful nature, so gentle and yet so profound, his mind, so tolerant and so just and so subtle, filled Amalie with peace and contentment. She knew that he had depths of sternness in him, but no malice, no implacability. He would always understand rather than blame. He was a good man. It came to Amalie, with astonishment, that it was a strange and excellent thing to know a good man. Such a man was “the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.”

  Jerome, she saw, was not insensible to Philip’s qualities. He talked to Philip with a simplicity and sincerity she had not heard from him for a long time, if ever. He seemed to take pleasure in Philip’s company; some of the restlessness had left his eyes, the darting expression of seeking and dissatisfaction. She listened to their voices with contentment, and wished sadly that Philip might always sit at this table. It would be a boon to Jerome.