Murder by Reflection (11 page)

The riding, too, soothed him. Out of that still house of mirrors where he could not help watching himself—to see the anxious eyes peering through the vizor—and knowing that she watched him, away from it and with the large, inhuman country moving around him and the big, unconscious animal moving under him, he could, if not forget himself, be far less self-conscious.

One day, however, his ride brought him back to his old self with sudden shock. He was cantering down a trail and, rounding a clump of trees, saw unmistakably Miss Gayton walking ahead. He could turn, but she must have heard horse's hooves and would glance back and see him, in his stylized riding clothes, running away. He would see it through. As he caught up with her, she turned, showed no surprise, and as he drew rein, patted the horse's neck. Dumb animals have a fourth use, beside being pets, slaves, and food-victims—they are often admirable bridges, tactful hyphens between two of the creatures of speech temporarily deprived of the use of their tongues. He swung easily out of the saddle, the advantage of being able to act the horseman almost compensating for the disconcertingness of appearing suddenly as a fashion-plate rider out of another century. They walked side by side for a while, trying to chat about natural-history subjects as though they had been meeting as usual. But he was unable to get rid of his self-consciousness. He felt his polished boots with their wedge-heels slip and stumble on the ground. His mother was right: this was not walking country. The horse, too, pulled at the reins and dragged him.

He was grateful to her when she remarked, “Your lovely mare wants to finish her gallop. We poor little creatures who totter on our hind legs are no company for the speed-makers.”

“The mare does need exercise,” he allowed, springing into the saddle. “She keeps me pretty busy,” he called out, as a kind of parting excuse, as he bowed to her and cantered off.

He was thankful that she had let him go, sent him off. True, for the very first second when he had recognized her, as he was in self-forgetful ease then, he had felt real pleasure. But the moment after, he had remembered what he was, what he had become. He had accepted a part to play, had allowed himself to become an actor in an act in which she had no part. She could not come up on that stage without bringing the performance to a standstill. You had to choose, and, surely after sufficient consideration, after weighing which of the two women he ought to please, he had chosen. Any shilly-shallying now, any hesitant return, or even daydreaming of the past, even for an odd half-hour out in the woods, could only be fatal. It would bring back all the old conflicts and miseries and quarrels and almost hatreds. No; he had chosen his bed; it was certainly the most comfortable he could have picked. On any other he would simply be restless, longing to get back to the down pillows and silk sheets. No; he would lie on it and, if he kept quiet, soon he would fall asleep; soon he would forget there was any other life but this.

Chapter VIII

Certainly their life appeared stabilized, arrested. A routine, as daily identical as a recurring decimal, seemed to have established itself. The colored servants aided the curious conspiracy. Like children, they loved the fantasy and supported it in a number of ingeniously childish ways. They liked their liveries and yet understood that in a way they were taking part in a secret of which the town should be kept in ignorance, or at least not be fully informed. They felt a loyalty to the queer couple who had taken them out of the “labor market” and put them back into the world of personal relations. They began to play, with the enthusiasm of born actors, the part of retainers.

This was Mrs. Heron's final triumph. Arnoldo was completely surrounded—more, she had carried him off his feet. He now no longer had any purchase on, no contact with the contemporary world which went its way outside the grounds of Plantation House, beyond the grill of its tall gates. The house was now not merely a pure period piece, a museum.

She had said when she was beginning her attack on him to reduce his stubborn and discordant appearance to his surroundings, “We can't be caretakers of domestic decrepitude. However well the face is lifted, the eyes, the old eyes, give away the real age—and we are the eyes of this lovely oval. If we don't come up to its standards we ourselves would only become shadowy ancients. But if we live up to the house we shall share in its rejuvenation, for its style is certainly more vital than ours today, and the style you live is the most powerful autosuggestion, either for health or decrepitude.”

She believed what she said and so did her staff. For in the period house were moving period servants, living with delighted conviction the life the house evoked. There could be no doubt that they believed such a way of living to be sensible, pleasant, rational; and if they did so and his mother believed it to be, why should he not consent—how could he continue to demur, to hold out? He still sometimes felt a sudden, unexpected shudder as he would, approaching it, catch sight of the stately house emerging from the trees, a congealed dream.

“The beautiful sarcophagus,” he would say over to himself; “the eater of flesh,” he translated the stately Greek word for
coffin
into its real terms. “The whited sepulcher, in which I have been persuaded to inter myself.” Then he would add, “These are my cerements”—with a histrionic self-pity he would look down at his severely artistic clothes or study a pose of himself in one of the long mirrors, as though a Romney or a Lawrence had come to life. So, adding a romantic overtone to his classic style, he was able still to have a double life, without his self-pity ever stirring him to revolt.

He knew that all these phrases he said over to himself were mere phrases, not equal in worth to one gilt button on his clothes. The words were the theatrical things, far more than the perfectly consistent construction of the past in which his “mother” had framed and suited him. He had only to think of the actual life outside the gates—the shoddy, sloppy life of the contemporary world that called itself actual but had not a touch of real originality—its decayed convention of dress, of manners, of romance, its drugstore instead of the coffeehouse, its cars instead of blood-stock, its cinema instead of the salon, its radio instead of conversation. Why, out there, there was nothing but starved, tattered remnants, decayed fragments of the age and life which he was actually living. The vigor and flower of that great century of reason, good sense, good taste—which had given rise to the United States as one of its “potting out” experiments—that splendid tradition was now in decay everywhere but in this one house. Perhaps nowhere else in the whole world was this splendid convention still in bloom. Maybe he was doing his duty, like a uniformed sentry keeping a watch. Anyhow, was he not making a center, a pivot for the life of some half-dozen persons who, if he failed to play his part, could not live their lives as it was clear they were happier living than they could otherwise be? Yes, he would check any revolt in himself with the sense that he was sacrificing himself that others might be happy.

Of course it did not stay still. That is the nature of true life. A perfect restoration keeps as it is, until once more it goes back to the formless material out of which it was first shaped. But life goes on. Life is far more destructive than death. The life they were living was shaping them. If they had revived the life of five generations ago then it must start once again developing itself. It might not lead again to the twentieth century but it must develop into something further. As usual, it was Irene who went ahead and he followed—after a hesitation.

When first Mrs. Heron said in front of him, “When the master wants his coffee,” he had started and felt that this was going too far. But when he received no support, when it was quite obvious that the staff felt that this was quite right, he began to feel that it was he who was wrong. Even strong-minded missionaries have left it on record that when they had lived for a number of years alone among African Negroes who had never mixed with whites and who therefore still took for granted that the world was alive and not dead, the solitary modern mind began to weaken in its unsupported convictions and it soon became natural to assume that events were caused always, not by blind laws but by conscious, if unseen, intelligences. Arnoldo was anything but a strong-minded missionary. So, soon, when Joe the valet slipped in a “Massa” behind the short, abrupt “Yes,” he felt it sounded amusing enough to be let pass.

With a domestic staff heartily willing to back his mother, he could not hold against the steady, inevitable development. With a costumed body-servant zealously determined that his body should be a period piece, he felt with a mixture of content and resignation that his mother had him reduced to boyhood. And if that were so, there was a second reason for carrying on as he found himself. Why should he not be a boy with no care but to dress as he was told and obey the instructions which his personal servant was told to give him. Mrs. Heron, too, was always in cheerful spirits now, which was worth paying for. He felt that he could not stand her resentful gloom.

His whole day was now mapped and went on rails. He was waked at eight-thirty by chocolate brought him by Joe. His bath was turned on for him and, while he had it, Joe put out his underclothes and a silk robe. These he was helped into, and then, sitting back in a high-backed chair, he was shaved. He had hardly ever been shaved before. The curious sense of someone else first smothering his face in lather, working it into his skin, and then fingering and feeling his flesh as though it were a piece of soft leather that needed brushing, helped further the sense that this body of his was no longer a strictly private and personal part of him, but part of the furniture of the house which they were jointly concerned to keep dusted and polished and properly covered. A gentle pressure of suggestion was always making him take part in this charade and at the same time assuring him that all he had to do was just to hand over and, as it were, lend his figure to fill out the interior decoration of the house.

“Being dressed by Joe is just like dreaming of dressing,” he remarked once to Irene. “You seem to find the clothes slipping on you of themselves.”

But unless he was going out riding before breakfast Joe would omit the coat. Instead, the silk robe was brought back and, with that donned, he was led downstairs to breakfast. His mother sometimes came down, sometimes not. If not, Joe would talk to him while he ate, take away the dishes as he was done with them, and when he had finished announce, “As soon, Massa, you's ready for your riding, ring for me to get you ready.”

Once or twice Arnoldo tried to get himself prepared, a last faint effort to resist the voluntary helplessness which was being forced on him; but Joe was so deeply hurt that he surrendered. For Joe, when he was hurt, had a number of ways of being politely unpleasant. When shaving Arnoldo—whom of course he shaved in the period manner with a great saber of an un-safety razor—he would give him a number of disconcerting pinches, pinches which couldn't be resented because they were given under the guise of perfect servitude and obviously, also, with a certain kind of high spirits. Joe would take Arnoldo's ear by the lobe, ostensibly to draw it away from the lather, and give it a sharp nip. Or, feeling whether he should give the second shave “against the set of the hair,” he would gather the cheek into a fold and pinch it vigorously. But the revenge he loved best was when shaving Arnoldo's upper lip, and the slightest movement of the patient's face was out of the question. Joe, who had taken his “Massa's” nose-tip between the thumb and finger of his left hand, would take a secure grip of the point just beyond the nostrils and twist it back, remarking as he bent close and plied the razor, “The hair is the very mischief, if, as with you, Massa, it will grow the mustache almost into the nose. Only if I can get the skin taut can I secure that it is shaved and not razed.” On peace days Joe did somehow manage to give a silk-smooth shave without torture, but nothing would induce him, when he was offended, to stop until he had given his regulation number of pinches and nose-wrings. However, as the only thing that offended him really was Arnoldo's refusal to play his respective part of “Massa” to Joe's part of the faithful retainer, Arnoldo's surrender was easily secured. One more adhesion had strapped the house's “master” into the house.

Indeed, after a couple of months, Joe never had to punish his disobedient charge. As soon as he wished to go out, Arnoldo would ring and Joe would appear, attire him, and lead him to the large side door where the mare would be waiting for him. There Joe handed him his hat, but not before it had been inspected, the brim brushed, the nap smoothed. He might then go out and be met by the stable boy, another bronze period piece, complete with brown leggings, wide-flared riding breeches, vivid red-and-yellow stripe-sleeved waistcoat, and white stock. This attendant took “the master's” boot in his hand and shot him into the saddle. Arnoldo would give the horse a tickle with his ivory-headed crop and go off at that gallop which he felt his audience demanded of him and which made him even imagine for a moment that he was really a Southern squire off for a morning's ride round his plantations. Half an hour before lunch he would return, be met at the door, his hat and crop received like insignia. Then he must stand while Joe brushed down the coat from collar to tails, and, producing a cloth, polished the boots back to their morning gloss. “Mrs. Heron, she is in the morning room,” Joe would recite. It was not information; it was an antiphonal to which the response was also ordered: “I will be ready in a moment.” Then he might go and wash his hands for himself. But on his returning to publicity Joe was waiting to lead him to the morning-room door and throw it open with a bow, saying, “Massa's just in from his ride, ma'am.” She would be waiting.

He was now almost at his ease, so completely had the performance been stylized, so completely had his role enveloped him. They would lunch together and he would tell her any small incident of his ride which might amuse her. But she did not seem to listen. She liked to hear him talking; it was the sound-track necessary to give the perfect verisimilitude to the moving picture—it did not matter what was said. Her enjoyment, in which she seemed to become more and more engrossed, was just to sit and watch the picture, the reel, played over and over again, unwound and wound and unwound again.