He sat down again, while Amalie looked at him, fuming and crimson.
“One such episode is enough,” Jerome went on. “Let that end it.”
Amalie’s temper was fast surging over its boundaries of caution.
“That is not so easy, Jerome. He wishes to visit Hilltop occasionally.”
Now Jerome’s eyes turned vicious. “He does, eh? And I say no.”
“You forget that he too has an interest in this house.”
Jerome was silent. He regarded his wife blackly, and the scars were now a vivid scarlet. Then he said: “So. He wishes to come up here and spy.”
“Philip? Spy?” Amalie was outraged. “If you have the slightest knowledge of him how can you say that of Philip? You seem to forget that this was Philip’s home, also that he might have some affectionate memories of it.” She paused; her breath was coming fast. “You can’t keep Philip away, Jerome. Unless you ask him not to come. He will not come, if you ask him not to. You know that. Are you going to do that?”
Jerome put down his glass, reached for a cigar on the table beside him, and lit it. He did all these things with deliberation.
“He will respect your wishes, I know,” Amalie went on, her voice faltering. “He was always so fond of you. You have only to tell him not to come, to say you prefer that he keep away. Will you be that small, that cruel?”
Jerome said: “When I cut away a certain part of my life, I make a clean job of it. I don’t want messy details and frayed rags blowing about.”
Amalie’s distress suddenly lightened at his words. She scrutinized him closely. “We have no quarrel with Philip,” she said, with gentleness. “You two have always liked each other. But he is very sensitive, and I know he won’t come when you are here, if you wish it that way.”
She waited for him to speak, but he did not. Amalie’s temper threatened to rise again. “I did not think that you lacked perception, Jerome. I am disappointed in you.”
She did not know why he laughed without any preliminary indications of amusement. “At least twice a week you tell me you are disappointed in me,” he said. “You women always want to mould men to your heart’s desire. I made an honest woman of you, and you made a paterfamilias of me. But that doesn’t satisfy you, does it?”
She was about to make a furious reply, then was silent. For she saw that Jerome was thinking, and that his thoughts amused him, and that he smiled to himself unpleasantly.
He said, with deceptive lightness: “Well, if he wishes to come, he is within his legal rights, I suppose. Let him come, poor devil. I imagine he finds life in that dank mausoleum pretty trying. Who am I to deny him a little pleasure?” He smiled again, still unpleasantly.
“Have you arranged another meeting, my pet?” he added.
“Oh, don’t be abominable, Jerome. You can be so petty. Philip may not come at all, though he isn’t a prig, and he wouldn’t remain away just because he thought it might offend his father. He is too sensible.”
The dinner gong boomed softly through the house. Jerome rose. He held out his hand to Amalie and pulled her playfully to her feet, dragged her to him, and kissed her soundly. “I love you, even if you are a fool,” he said, rubbing his chin in her hair.
Again hand in hand, they went downstairs to dinner.
But Amalie was depressed. She had wanted, sought, prayed for security all her life. In her seeking for it she had made a tragic mistake. She was now mistress of this solid old house, the wife of its owner, the mother of children. She had her own carriage, her rich gowns, her jewels. Her portrait and the portraits of her children hung on the old panelled walls. She walked, mistress of everything, through the gardens, and sat under the ancient trees. But still she was not secure. She would never feel secure. Perhaps it was because she lacked, in herself, the capacity to attract security, or even to acquire it. It was like a desperate hunger in her, but when she eagerly lifted the cup of security to her lips she discovered it was empty.
Always she was aware of the winds of instability about her, a certain transience of atmosphere.. Contentment, apparently, would never be hers. Was it because she, like Jerome, was too restless, too seeking, too unsatisfied? But why, when she so ardently craved permanence and roots?
They reached the lower hall together. Jerome glanced in at the library. They stood and listened to the grandfather clock, ticking away as it had ticked for over one hundred years. “There’s a definite advantage in having tradition,” he said.
And then Amalie knew that Jerome also felt insecure, that he, too, felt that the slightest wind might blow his rootless self out of these very walls and into bodiless space.
They went into the dining-room, where for a century nothing had been changed. They sat down and looked at the old silver, the old Limoges plates, the flowers. And then it came to Amalie that the fault was not only in herself and Jerome but in the very air of America. Tradition was going, slowly but surely. Permanence and security were dissolving. Religion was giving way to materialism, to objectivity. The roots of America were stirring in friable soil.
Jerome said: “I went through the factories today, with Munsey and the others. Things are moving fast. Sometimes I think they move too fast. I have a feeling that something is growing enormously in this country, and that it may get away from us. And that ‘something’ may be good or it may be bad. I don’t know.”
Amalie gazed at him with deep gratitude, but without surprise. She and Jerome frequently had these telepathic interludes together, when each simultaneously spoke aloud what the other was thinking. She was very moved. She put out her hand to her husband, and he took it, and they looked at each other with bright eyes.
“It is all nonsense, of course,” said Jerome, “but I think these rascals of ours ought to go to some church, and get some religious instruction. All mumbo-jumbo, and quite unscientific, but still—Oh, hell! I don’t know.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
Jerome’s depressed mood did not lighten, either that night or the next day.
His depressive states were invariably accompanied by a kind of disgust for himself, a kind of furious impatience. It always seemed effeminate to him to be the victim of moods, and especially alarming that these moods were increasing in intensity and frequency. His attempts to apply logic to them appeared, even to himself, as puerile. It was the naïve young, the inexperienced, who adored logic, who were ponderous, who sought common-sense reasons for the sickening malaise which seized on the human spirit and turned it into a mass of collapsing and painful inertia.
Sometimes it needed only a certain light in the sky, a certain whitening of a tree, a certain intonation in the voice of a friend, to throw him into a misery which was apparently causeless. Then it was that he could not think at all. He could only endure, with what little natural patience he had, or drink rapidly, or find some petty reason to become enraged.
There were, he knew, peaceful men who had an air of timelessness and tranquillity. He began in this connection to have a notion of the relativity of time. Time, for him, was rushing, pouring, cataracting, a roaring stream of rapids. But to the peaceful men time was without peril, a natural element like air, which flowed about them without eroding their personalities or splintering their lives. What secret did these peaceful men possess which made them go about their duties calmly, accomplishing, too, a great deal, and that with solidity and permanence? Calamity ran by them on another road to the sea. Their lives were without alarums; their families smiled serenely. They sat by their fires and sipped their whiskeys and their eyes were without heat. Much of the time, Jerome envied them. He might have felt much better had he discovered that their existence was without significance. But he was too intelligent to believe that.
There was something in him which was wrong. He did not know what it was. It was some pattern of personality. He had in his life been elated, disturbed, infuriated, downcast, exultant, despairing. But he had never been happy. Why? He had a wife and a family whom he loved. But sometimes the very sigh
t of them increased his wild wretchedness. Sometimes he was sorry for them, that they had to be afflicted with him. Sometimes he thought of leaving everything, and running away, and losing himself forever. But he would always, he knew, carry himself with him.
He was always seeking evidence that he was “accomplishing something.” This, he began to realize, was part of the nameless disease from which he suffered. He would think: A man must accept himself, and all he is, before he can have a single moment’s peace. At one moment this would seem a very clever epigram. But the next moment, the epigram was only a collection of words, without meaning and clothed with preciousness.
He remembered his earlier life, when he had been rootless and languid and irresponsible. He understood now that he had only been afraid. He would always be afraid. Of what? He would always hate. Whom? And why? He did not know.
Tonight, as he rolled home in his carriage, his thoughts were dark and confused, and he recognized the signs of a particularly bad mood. He reached the slope that rose to Hilltop, and he saw nothing of the countryside; he did not even see Alfred’s house. The road rose up gently, rounded a sharp curve. Philip was strolling along the side, frolicking with a small white dog.
Jerome’s first impulse was to drive on, looking straight ahead. Then a second impulse came, and he ordered the coachman to stop. Hearing his voice, Philip turned; then, seeing the occupant of the carriage, he smiled with natural and genuine pleasure, whistled to the dog, and turned back.
“Jerome!” he exclaimed, reaching the carriage.
“Well, Philip,” said Jerome, slightly embarrassed. He stepped out of the carriage and extended his hand to the younger man. Philip took his hand warmly and smiled up at him.
“It’s been a long time, Jerome,” he said.
“Yes, hasn’t it?”
“I’m so glad to see you,” said Philip, after a moment, and with deep and sincere simplicity.
Jerome was suddenly surprised and taken aback. He was glad to see Philip! He looked at his cousin with a sort of astonishment. Philip had become a man. He stood on equal ground with Jerome. He was no longer a pathetic boy. He regarded Jerome steadfastly, and with a gentle smile, and there was something in that smile which mysteriously lightened the blackness of Jerome’s mood and alleviated his pain. He pressed Philip’s hand hard before releasing it.
“You’ve grown up, Philip,” he said. Then, quite irrelevantly, he added: “I’m glad to see you!” To be with Philip like this was like coming in out of a storm into a safe quiet place. Of course, the sensation was absurd, but Jerome held to it.
“You are back home for good?”
“Yes. Yes, I am sure of that.”
“I am glad.”
Again they looked at each other intently. Something is wrong with Jerome, thought Philip. The old restlessness and impatience are stronger in him than ever. Physically, he hasn’t aged much. It is something else. It is something which is incurable, I suspect. He is afraid of something. I have a feeling he is bedevilled by fear, and doesn’t know what he fears. What does he want? What is he running away from?
The silence was becoming a little awkward. But still, Jerome did not want to leave Philip. He said: “Amalie has told me that you intend to visit Hilltop. Could you have dinner with us tomorrow evening?”
Philip hesitated. Then he said, quietly: “Yes. Yes, I think I can. Thank you.”
There was no embarrassment in his look, or in his words, and Jerome thought: But he never was a fool. You could always rely upon Philip to do the natural and reasonable thing.
A most peculiar warmth and friendliness brightened in him.
“I’d like you to see my bank,” he said, “and the factories. We’ve made progress in these years, Philip.”
Philip smiled again. He eyed Jerome with searching but compassionate curiosity.
“Thank you. I accept your invitation at once. In fact, I intended to write to you for permission.”
“You’ve been away so much you could hardly know what has been going on,” said Jerome. Philip detected a kind of pathetic boastfulness in his voice.
“Yes, I see there have been many changes. I want to know about them.”
Philip’s face was polite and interested, but there was a quizzical gleam in his dark eyes which suddenly brought William Lindsey to Jerome’s mind. Yes, it was true: Philip, for all his darker coloring, startlingly resembled his great-uncle in character. There was a quietness about him, a balance, a humor, a profound thoughtfulness, which made Jerome conscious of an aching sadness in himself, and a deeper attraction warmed in him towards the younger man.
Jerome laughed a little. “Tell me, Philip, do you quote a great deal?”
Philip was not puzzled or confused by this extraordinary remark. He understood at once. His smile made his eyes sparkle. He turned a little and glanced down at the valley, where the chimneys of the factories still smoked restlessly against the sky.
“Yes. Sometimes. In fact, I could quote something now. I was just thinking of something which Benjamin Franklin once said about natural wealth: ‘There seem to be but three ways for a nation to acquire wealth. The first is by war, as the Romans did, in plundering their conquered neighbors. This is robbery. The second by commerce, which is generally cheating. The third by agriculture, the only honest way, wherein man receives a real increase of the seed thrown into the ground, in a kind of continual miracle wrought by the hand of God in his favor, as a reward for his innocent life and his virtuous industry.’”
His voice was casual, easy, and pleasant. But Jerome slowly flushed. He said: “I often wondered how it was possible for my father to memorize so many quotations. You seem to have acquired the gift. Is it a prodigious memory, or an inability to form original thoughts? After all, something must fill a void.”
Philip burst out laughing. And Jerome, who had begun to boil with anger, suddenly found himself laughing too.
“Old Ben was still caught in the last retreating wave of feudalism,” said Jerome.
“I never liked feudalism. But it had its points,” said Philip. “However, if you don’t care for Franklin, I could regale you with a little Thoreau and Emerson.”
Jerome lifted his hand in mock alarm. “My God, no. I can quote them myself. Ad nauseam.” He paused. “I hear you’re going into the old bank, Philip.”
“Yes. In September.” Philip’s tone was tranquil.
Jerome was embarrassed again. “You look well,” he remarked.
“Oh, I am. My constitution is really very sturdy, in spite of the loving convictions of my friends.”
Philip was all poise. It was Jerome whose embarrassment was becoming acute. And yet, he did not want to leave Philip. He glanced at his carriage. “We can expect you, then, tomorrow night?”
Philip nodded. “And, if you don’t mind too much, I’d like to make a tour of your fine bank, and of the factories, too, tomorrow. Unless you are busy.”
“I want you to see them.” Jerome climbed into the carriage. “Until tomorrow.” He touched the brim of his hat and was driven on. It was only by a strong effort that he prevented himself from looking back. It seemed to him that he was leaving behind him a warm quiet spot, where he had momentarily been safe and at rest.
Philip watched him go, thoughtfully, all the pleasantness ebbing from his face. He sighed, rubbed his chin with William Lindsey’s old gesture, whistled to his dog, and continued his walk.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Philip created a minor furore when he entered the marble precincts of Jerome’s bank the next morning. But his manner was dignified and natural, and his voice was calm when he requested a clerk to inform Mr. Lindsey that Mr. Philip Lindsey wished to see him.
Speculation buzzed among the few customers at the bank when Philip disappeared within the doors of Jerome’s offices. It rose to excitement when Jerome and Philip appeared together with every evidence of simple amity and friendliness. Every eye followed the two men as they toured the bank. Philip was very interested,
and apparently unaware of the excitement he and his cousin were creating or the winds of gossip which they were stirring up with such a vengeance.
The final stupefaction came when Jerome was heard to call for his carriage and the two finally went away together.
At two o’clock they were seen together at the hotel, where they settled down at Jerome’s established table and ordered luncheon. The other diners stared at them furtively, tried to overhear their conversation. But Jerome and Philip drank a preliminary glass of whiskey-and-soda before dining, and their air was excessively interested, their absorption in each other complete. It was as if they were entirely alone. By half-past two, Alfred had heard the whole incredible story. He received the news impassively and apparently without interest Philip had informed him that morning of his intention to visit the factories and the glaring new bank, and of the dinner invitation that evening. And Alfred, as usual, had made no comment, had only regarded his son somberly. However, his faith in Philip was very great; he knew his son too well to suspect any ulterior motives in all this.
“Well, now,” said Jerome buoyantly, “what do you think of it all?”
Philip smiled. “I think Napoleon was a very clever man, when he spoke about the ease with which he could build up a new army. He said, if you remember, that all he had to do was to offer escape from button factories.”
Jerome frowned. “Button factories?” His frown deepened. He shook his head, pretended not to understand. “I thought you’d be impressed by what you have seen, Philip. Can’t you get a glimpse of it? The future of America is illimitable. The expansion of our industrial empire will eventually liberate man from stultifying labor, give him leisure in which to enjoy himself, educate himself and consider his position under government, free him from insecurity, and fill his home with comforts and pleasures.”
He waited. Philip did not speak. He sipped his drink thoughtfully. Jerome’s impatience heightened. Then Philip said: “I have often walked of late, through the prettified sections where the workers in those factories live. I see the workers sitting vacantly on their stoops, gazing into space. You could say that even if they, themselves, are incapable of mental evolution, having hardened into a stagnant mold under the pressure of their former life, their children will advance, become more aware.”