Mary was thoughtful. If she was at all disturbed by her father’s savage pallor, and by the way the scars showed bright red on his cheek and forehead, she betrayed no signs of it. She had never seen him this way; he had never looked at her like this. But she was still calm.
“Of course,” she said reflectively, “I need not have told you of Mama at all. But I think that would have been wrong. There is no sense in being dishonest and sneaky.”
Jeromehad never struck his daughter in all her life. Now he had the most brutal desire to do so. But he still did not move.
He only said thickly: “You little slut. You knew I did not want you to go down there, ever. It was made very plain to you. But you deliberately disobeyed.”
Mary winced. For the first time in her life she was frightened of her father. She lifted her chin high, but her color was gone.
Jerome felt a tautness, a burning, in his scars. This incensed him even more against Mary. He stood up now, went to the girl, and struck her violently across the face.
Mary did not cry out, nor cringe, nor throw up her arm. She merely lifted her head higher. The imprints of Jerome’s hand sprang out in crimson on her white cheek. She regarded Jerome steadily, and her blue eyes were huge unafraid wells of light now, quite inscrutable.
That look gave Jerome pause. It was his father’s own expression. Suddenly he hated himself for that blow. But his voice, though unsteady, was still thick when he spoke:
“I want you to understand this, my girl. You must never go down there again. If you do, it will be at your own peril.”
Mary said in a still tone: “There is something here I don’t understand, Papa. If anyone should be angry, it is Uncle Alfred, not you. You took Mama away from him.”
Was that contempt that shone so brilliantly from those young eyes? Jerome’s rage made his head hum.
“Your mother is a fool for telling you,” he said, with hoarseness. “She ought to have known that you would not understand, that you should not be told anything.” He was almost beside himself. He touched the scars on his face. “Look at these, you little imbecile. Your kind ‘Uncle Alfred’ did this to me.”
Mary was rising from her chair, unable to look away from him. She was whiter than ever. She whispered: “When he—knew—about you and Mama?”
“Yes!” Jerome was almost shouting.
“How silly,” said Mary, still in that whispering tone. “He ought to have known that you and Mama couldn’t help it.” She put her hand to the flaming imprint on her cheek, and again her eyes shone brilliantly. “Just as you, Papa, ought to have known better.”
Her dignity silenced him, overcame him with shame. He bit his lip. Then he put out his hand to his daughter. She took it without hesitation.
“Mary,” he said, “you are too young to understand everything. Some day perhaps you will. Then you will know why I must ask you never to go down to that house again.” He added: “I’m sorry, my darling.”
He had always had complete control over Mary. The sympathy between them had been absolute. Now, in some instinctive way, he knew that something that had run between them like a strong nerve had been cut. It was almost like an umbilical cord, he thought confusedly and he was filled with pain.
“If that is your express command, Papa, then I shall obey,” said Mary. She had the dignity and pride of a woman now. Yes, that was contempt in her eyes. But it was contempt for him that he could forget himself and behave childishly and unpardonably.
“Thank you, my dear,” said Jerome. He went away and left her now. He had intended to call Amalie to him and to upbraid her viciously. But now he felt only misery and an increasing sense of loss.
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
When Philip went to Hilltop for dinner the following evening, he looked swiftly for signs of constraint. To his regret, and with some apprehension, he saw that Amalie, though she was gracious as always, appeared too controlled, and that there was an inimical spark in Jerome’s eye whenever he glanced at his wife. But his manner towards Philip was as easy and as welcoming as ever.
Philip showed them a package which he had brought with him. “A book of Shelley, and a volume of some airs from Brahms,” he said. “For Mary. I promised the child the Shelley, and forgot it for a few days.” He laughed gently. “But Mary didn’t forget. She came after it yesterday.”
Amalie smiled uncomfortably. Jerome said, with a smile: “Mary is impatient. She is also very rigorous about promises. We’ve discovered that. A whiskey before dinner, Philip?”
Philip was grateful for this diplomacy. By nature adroit in human relationships, and possessed of considerable finesse in managing those inevitable awkwardnesses that occur in the smoothest society, he hated all roughnesses and gauche encounters. This was partly because he was the soul of discretion, and partly because he was so innately kind. He used graceful lies and gentle hypocrisies when necessary to salve the sensibilities of others and to create good will where only animosity had lived before. To him, a ruthless man who spoke bluntly and “truthfully” upon the slightest provocation was like an uncouth bull who charged with pointed horns and slashing hoofs, and there was no excuse for him in the delicate relationships between human beings. Philip maintained the grace of a polite minuet in his own encounters with others; he glided about stumbling dancers on the universal ballroom floor with the serene unconcern that assumes everyone is equally adept. His very presence prevented acute embarrassment from reaching the heights of distressing hostility, and the elegance and consideration of his manners had a very salutary and inhibiting effect on chronic “truth-tellers” and those who loved argument and discord for their own sakes.
Philip had always admired Jerome because the latter possessed, in a large measure, the ability to overlay the rough sand of threatening irritants with the pearly substance of good manners and civilized deportment.
He and Jerome drank their whiskey, while Amalie sipped at her sherry. The warm summer evening, still and bland, soothed spirits that had suffered from the daytime heat. Philip, dismissing the subject of Mary, complimented Amalie on the arrangement of flowers in bowls and low painted trays.
“You are the perfect hostess, Amalie,” he said. “There is never a false note about you anywhere.”
Jerome’s eye, as it rested on his wife now, was slightly less inimical.
Philip enlarged: “At the risk of appearing disloyal to dear Aunt Dorothea, I must admit that Hilltop, under your hand, Amalie, has taken on a new and brighter air. But it is not a false air. It is as if all the old dull surfaces of the house had been burnished. You seem to accomplish the mechanics of household management with aplomb and smoothness. Do you have the trouble with servants that Aunt Dorothea has?”
“Amalie has a way with servants,” said Jerome. He was not in the least deceived by all these lavish compliments, and not in the dark as to their intention. Nevertheless, because they contained truth, and because he was proud of his wife, he did not mind. “She knows how to treat them. She never argues with them, but she never allows them to take liberties. Also, we pay them very well.”
Philip saw Amalie’s lip tremble. So, he thought, the poor darling has had a bad time with this devil since yesterday.
“You are so kind, Philip,” Amalie said. Her smile was less unnatural now.
“Aunt Dorothea believes in sternness and the rod,” Philip continued. “I try to tell her that that day has passed, for servants. It is no use, of course. We haven’t a servant who has been with us for over five months. Well, after fifty it is impossible to change an attitude. One becomes encased in one’s habits as a snail in its shell.”
He inclined his head at Jerome. “I believe you, however, are the exception, my friend. Your nature becomes more flexible and understanding as you approach that nasty half-century line.”
Jerome laughed with delight. “Is this your night for passing out verbal Christmas presents, Philip?” he asked. He refilled his and Philip’s glass. His eyes danced.
But Ph
ilip was very serious. “No. I am merely expressing my gratitude for the fact that I am permitted to come to this house and to know you and Amalie.”
Amalie said impulsively: “And we are grateful that we have you, Philip.” She hesitated and looked at Jerome. “That is true, isn’t it, love?”
“Oh, yes, indeed, my pet.” Jerome was standing near his wife. He touched her cheek carelessly. Amalie’s full red mouth became tremulous. “We couldn’t get along without Philip,” Jerome added, more and more delighted. “He is the only man I can talk to in all Riversend. A diplomatic scoundrel, but he has his worth.”
They went in to dinner. Philip saw at once that Amalie had been at her old task of trying to placate Jerome. His favorite dishes were served. Philip complimented his hostess on their excellence. “Where do you get such beef?” he asked.
Jerome was immediately interested. “I buy it from one of the machinists in Munsey’s factory,” he said. “He bought four more acres from me, and he has a cow or two, there.”
He enlarged on a new experiment of his, which had, in fact, been discreetly advanced by Philip. Prize bulls had been bought by this particular worker and others. Their female offspring had won State Fair prizes for milk. The farmers, dour and skeptical, had finally succumbed to the idea of scientific breeding.
The men then centered their attention on the always absorbing subject of the Riversend Community. The Community had been in full swing now for over a year. Industrialists, bankers, large landowners and those philanthropists who were concerned with human welfare had come in troops to Riversend, at first doubtful and suspicious, and then amazed. Philip, though now assistant manager at his father’s Bank, had found time after his hours there to plan the whole project and to help direct it. In the past three years as many as six substantial buildings had risen on the large plot of land which Jerome had bought near the railroad. Philip had a corps of able assistants.
The land immediately about Riversend had, to quote an ebullient reporter, “bloomed like the rose.” Neat acres devoted to farming, chicken raising or floriculture, had replaced the wild grazing land which for years had been lying fallow. On holidays and on Sundays, after the day’s work, the hundreds of workers and their families could be seen on their way to their acres, standing, sitting, singing, in great farm wagons, sunbonneted women, sunburned children, brawny men, all with that look of deep serenity and satisfaction which comes to those who have something to live for besides their daily toil.
The quiet countryside on these occasions became alive and vivacious with voices, with the strong figures of those who dug, watered and cultivated. Owners of neighboring plots discussed fertilizers and produce, argued good-naturedly. After sundown, there was a community feast, spread out on immense wooden tables surrounded by benches. Campfires were lit. Some men had caught fish in the nearby stream; the women had brought huge pots of baked beans, boiled and roasted hams, pies, cakes, warm home-made bread. Coffeepots spluttered on the fires, and barbecued spareribs and beef. Children ran about, tired but hungry and full of health. A guitar or two struck sweet chords on the sweeter air of night, and voices sang, and dark shapes moved vigorously about the fires. Afterwards, some of the younger people danced, while their elders sat about and kept time with clapping hands. Babies, replete, slept in the plump arms of their mothers. Later, the wagons went homeward, their occupants weary but still laughing and singing, while a great golden moon swung over the trees.
In the winter, the Community houses were filled. The products of these houses had already acquired a widespread fame. Buyers from New York and Chicago and Philadelphia and Boston came for the excellent lace bedspreads, the quilts, the pottery, the painted glass, the fine woodwork and small articles of furniture, and other products. Good teachers had offered their services, but Jerome and Philip had insisted upon paying them. Now there was a permanent winter staff. In the summer, the teachers assisted on the land. There was a greenhouse, too, and in the winter the churches were as fragrant and sweet with flowers as they were in the summer.
Best of all, the factory owners discovered that they rarely lost a good worker. They discovered also that the men took more interest, even in their monotonous tasks, and that they did them better. More and more workers were buying the small neat houses in which they lived. Many of them actually built the houses themselves, as they had built the Community buildings.
All this had not been accomplished by the planners without struggle, without anxiety, without apprehension. The workers, at first amazed and suspicious, had been won over only by prolonged argument. It had been hard to convince them that anyone was really interested in their welfare, really concerned with their happiness as well as with the work of their hands.
The Riversend Community became famous all over the industrial East.
Hard as the winning over of the workers themselves had been, even harder was the winning over of the local industrialists. They had been joined in their angry protests by their brother industrialists over nearly all the country. The experiment had been decried as “dangerous, pampering, anarchistic, revolutionary, full of impractical visions.” Some clergymen had denounced the Community. The newspapers had laughed at it and had filled their pages with derisive cartoons.
Then, with pomp and with dark suspicion, the Governor of the State had come.
He stayed three days, as Jerome’s guest. He left full of the most extravagant enthusiasm. “Mr. Jerome Lindsey, founder of the Community, has demonstrated to the leaders of America not only the Christian character of such a project, but the healthy material advantages of it,” he had said, addressing the State Senate.
No less than four books had been written about the Community. Social leaders, both men and women, came from Chicago and New York to study this revolutionary idea and, returning, attempted to persuade the people of their own cities to imitate it. The newspapers, abandoning their derision, carried large editorials about the Community.
But the fight was not yet won, and Jerome and Philip knew it. They knew that the struggle for human justice and decency and dignity will never be ended.
They talked of this struggle, tonight, over their port.
“Sometimes I think that you yourself, Philip, have taken on too much,” said Jerome. “You never have a moment to call your own.”
“It is my life,” protested Philip. And then was silent. It was not his “life,” there in his father’s conservative Bank with its dull ledgers. He did his work there well, and Alfred was grateful and proud. But Philip escaped from the Bank as early as possible. He and Alfred never indulged in arguments about the Community. Philip was beginning to believe hopefully that his father was at least slightly interested.
Alfred’s Bank was benefiting, too, from the Community. In the last few years Riversend had trebled its population. It could not be called a city; it was no longer a town. There were four extra cashiers on duty now in Alfred’s Bank. Once, on a weekend, when Alfred could be certain that Jerome was not about, he had accompanied his son through the Community buildings, and had allowed himself a glimpse of the workers cultivating their land.
“You see, Father,” Philip had said on this happy occasion, “we are preventing the concentration of industry and the complete urbanization of workers, before they can even begin to threaten this area.”
“I have always denounced the divorcing of men from the land,” Alfred had informed him, with dignity. “I am glad to find that others agree with me.”
Philip had smiled to himself, but with affection.
A week later, Alfred had given Philip his personal check for three thousand dollars to help towards the building of a small medical clinic of which Philip had told him. “However,” said Alfred, stiffly, “I wish the gift to remain anonymous.”
Philip had been poignantly touched by this. He accepted the gift with a few casual words in a matter-of-fact tone. Alfred was grateful for this tact.
After dinner, Jerome requested that Philip play for himself and Amalie, a
nd Philip consented with pleasure. They sat in the music room while Philip played a few selections from Chopin, a nocturne or two. Outside, the dark, moonless night was silent and warm. Crickets and tree-toads chirped and sang a melancholy accompaniment to the music. Once, a breeze sprang up momentarily, and the trees murmured sonorously. Now Philip could feel that a temporary measure of peace had come to Jerome and Amalie. They sat side by side, listening; Jerome stretched out his hand and took his wife’s. Her eyes filled with tears, but she looked only at Philip.
A little later, Philip announced that he wished to give Mary the books. Amalie was about to call the girl, but Philip said: “Please don’t, Amalie. I’ll go up to her sitting-room, as usual. We like to have our little talk together alone, as you know. I haven’t seen the child for days.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Philip opened the door of Mary’s small sitting-room and said brightly: “May I come in, please?”
Mary was at her rosewood desk, writing precisely in her diary. She rose at once, smiling faintly. “Oh, Philip.” Her young voice was restrained, but calm as always. The lamp on the desk threw a soft shadow over her face. She indicated a chair for Philip, who sat down. He held his package on his knee. Mary sat down again, more slowly than she had risen.
“I’ve brought the Shelley for you, my dear,” he said. “And also some airs of Brahms. A copy, signed, it is alleged, by the composer himself. It is in vellum. I bought it in New York a month ago, and it did not arrive until today, with some other things. When I played the airs over this morning, I decided that you must have the book.”
He held out the package to her, scrutinizing her earnestly but without apparently looking at her too closely. It was then that he saw the several small bruises on her cheek. Though he still smiled, he went cold with shock. He hardly felt her eager hands taking the package from him. The coldness on his flesh increased, but there was a stern burning in him stronger than mere anger.