American Beauty

I

Old True Baldwin and his daughter Candace were whirling up the brisk little hills and swooping down into the rich green valleys of that spectacular part of Connecticut through which the Still River flows, and the storied Housatonic. They had started from New York at eight, for old True had never lost his farm-boy habit of early rising. Up through the pleasant Parkway at a smart clip, flashing into Westchester and out like a streak of green light, past New England villages whose prim clapboard houses, grayed by the two centuries that had passed over them, shrank in withered dismay from the vulgar red stare of gas filling stations, now become their neighbors.

Candy Baldwin drove with that relaxed insolence which marks the expert. Her father, after preliminary panic, had learned years ago that he could sit at ease beside her, serene in the knowledge that, though the car just ahead threatened hideous oblivion, it would always next instant fade meekly into the background.

The monster in which they now pounced upon Connecticut was inadequately advertised as a super roadster phaëton. That negligible portion of it occupied by Candy’s slim body and True’s old hulk seemed but an afterthought on the part of its designer. Its voracious maw swallowed a hill at a gulp. One hawk-like swoop, and a meadow lay inert behind it. The rubbled country by-roads, built more than two hundred years ago for rude ox carts and the iron-shod hoofs of horses, bit at its plump tires in vain.

All about them, brilliant emerald in the summer sunshine, lay the tobacco fields of the Housatonic, a rich and heartening sight. True Baldwin, who had been sitting slumped and inert, the wrinkled crêpe of his eyelids half closed over his lack-luster eyes, now slowly began to stir and look about him, this way and that, like a weary and ageless reptile who, feeling the good warm sun on his clammy skin, slowly uncoils, muscle by muscle, and regards with unblinking and disillusioned gaze a world which he well knows and has, in his wisdom rejected.

From time to time, as they sped along, Candace had flashed at her father, out of the corner of her eye, a look meant to be searching, though secret. This, finally, irked him.

God’s sake, Candy, stop hovering! D’you expect I’m going to have a stroke?

Why you ungrateful old party, you! I was just being companionable. Looking to see if you were liking it. I never knew this part of Connecticut was so lovely.

Certainly wasn’t, as I remember it, nearly fifty years back. Can’t understand it. Look at those fields! Tropical, darned if they’re not.

Oh, call them lush, Mr. B. There’s a word I’ve always wanted to use. The Connecticut landscape is lush—would you believe it?—and that’s very odd, because I’d always been told it was grim and barren as a New England spinster.

New England spinster yourself, her father retorted, gallantly, once removed. But you’re certainly right about its being surprising. Time I was sixteen I pulled rocks out of those fields till my back—– Then, suddenly, sitting up very straight, Holy mackerel! He leaned forward. His eyes took on the alertness of the days before his illness. They swept the fields hedged in by the old stone fences so painfully built out of the back-breaking rocks of the fields themselves. He waved his arms. Look at that, will you!

Look at what?

Women. They’ve got women working in the fields.

Over the vivid green of the young tobacco plants in the fields there bent, not only the sturdy figures of men, but the broad, petticoated backs of women, the less bulky forms of young girls, and even the spindling shanks of children scarcely taller than the plants they tended.

Candace beheld this undismayed. Well, why not? It can’t be harder than washing clothes or scrubbing floors, and those have always been considered nice womanly occupations.

Women working in the fields, like men! It’s Russia, I tell you. Black Russia.

Red’s the color you use with Russia now, darling. And anyway, not Russia. Poland, remember. For she had tried to call his indifferent attention to the strange names painted crookedly on rural mail delivery boxes as they flashed past the roadside posts outside each old farmhouse. Markiewicz, in crazy lettering. Krupa. Halicki. Borek. Wroblewski. The Poles seem to have bought up a lot of the old places, don’t they? I must say they’ve done well by the farms. Now, do sit back and relax, Dad. You know what the doctor said.

Doctor be damned! Women working in the fields of New England like cattle. It’s these Polacks. What right have they got in New England, anyway? Shades of John Winthrop and Roger Conant and Orrange Oakes!

But, dear, the Poles must have paid their hard-earned dollars for them. And anyway, when you come right down to it, how did you precious Puritans get your land? Grabbed it from the Indians, that’s how.

Talk like a fool, Candy. Any child with a primer knows they went through the hardships of hell for this land. Cleared it and planted it and reaped it—–

And beat it. Beat it, as fast as they could, for Ohio or Texas.

Well, suppose they did. It shows the spirit of adventure in ’em. Pioneers.

Tell you what I think, Dad: I think those early New Englanders hated New England. They weren’t farmers by nature, poor darlings, but from necessity. They didn’t really love what the dreary writers call the Soil.

Didn’t, huh! And where did you get all that?

Book larnin’.

And to herself Candace thought, Well, I’ve managed to get him interested, at any rate, a little. That’s something. Oh God, I hope it works!

Certainly, for the first time in a year, something of the old force seemed to animate True Baldwin. You and your flip generation! You wouldn’t have lasted a week, living the lives those women had. Cooking and spinning and soap-making and Indian-fighting and child-bearing.

Isn’t it so! Candy exclaimed, with mischievous meekness. And withal, how genteel and re-fined. Look at the pictures. Always going to church in the snow—capes, flat collars, and a prayer book. Or sitting dreamily in a draught with a spinning wheel. Me, I don’t believe it.

The flower of America, trumpeted old True, now thoroughly aroused, sprang from New England.

Gone to seed now, darling, you must admit. They certainly let the farms go back to the primal ooze or thereabouts.

True Baldwin, with a wave of his arms, included the entire landscape. Primal ooze, huh! Look at that garden spot.

But that isn’t Yankee. That’s Polack. Whole families digging their toes into the dirt. Why, look at you! You’re a runaway farm boy yourself, True.

True Baldwin pushed the hat back from his forehead. I’ll show you who New England belongs to, by God, if I have to buy up the whole state of Connecticut.

Three cheers! cried Candace.  ’At a boy! Now you’re talking!

True Baldwin, a year before, had been one of those lean, wiry, and seemingly indestructible old Chicago millionaires who make a point of walking a brisk mile or so on their way downtown to business, mornings, the Rolls drawn up at the curb to meet them at the corner of, say, Michigan and Scott. The physical collapse of this fine old structure had been as swift and inevitable as the Wall Street debacle by which it was timed. He became, suddenly, a shrunken and wattled old man who seemed mistakenly to have donned the garments of someone twenty pounds heavier than he.

Science took him in hand. By the time the specialists had finished with him he had aged ten years, which had made him appear a good seventy-six. They stood him in front of a glass-faced thing mellifluously called a fluoroscope and resembling an oversized public telephone booth. This revealed to the world such portions of his inside as had not already come under the X-ray’s godlike eye. He was stood up and slapped; sat down and pounded; laid down and poked. They analyzed his most intimate mental, psychic, and physical functions. They delved into his private and anatomical past. They counted his blood cells, red and white (he said he boasted no blue); gauged his metabolism, ascertained his blood pressure, weighed him, measured him, fed him test meals of which later they indelicately deprived him.

Death, he demanded, not very humorously, when they had quite finished, where is thy sting!

Death—nothing! retorted the paternal young super-specialist who had ordered a flock of sub-specialists (all his seniors) throughout the performance. You’re at least twenty years ahead of it, with that cast-iron constitution of yours. Only—

Only, echoed old Baldwin, grimly. I knew there was a catch in it.

No, my dear Mr. Baldwin, there’s no catch in it. You’ve got to live more quietly, that’s all. No more Wall street. That’s out. And this commuting between Chicago and New York, and juggling millions in a compartment on the Century, that’s out, too. I want you to promise me you’ll get away.

A trip, you mean?

No. I mean get away and stay away. Live where it’s quiet and peaceful.

Rot on the Riviera, I suppose. Go and bleach my bones in that damned sunshine with the other old cadavers.

The south of France isn’t the only place that has sunshine.

I hate southern California! snorted True Baldwin, with more venom than the statement seemed to demand.

The young specialist had a singularly soothing way with him. It was this, perhaps that accounted largely for the fact that he had, at thirty-five, the medical practice of a man of fifty. He did not chide, he did not bully, he did not threaten. He used no Latin phrases. When in deep thought he sometimes moved the blotter, penholder, prescription pad, and cigarette box from the right-hand side of his desk to the left. The disturbing problem solved, he moved them back again. The first he now did, quietly and thoughtfully.

You told me you used to be a farm boy, born on a farm. Have you never thought of going back to it?

You’re crazy.

The young man laughed as though True Baldwin had said something pleasantly witty. No, I’m not. If I were you I’d buy a farm in the region I grew up in. Not a toy farm—a big one. I’d make a business of farming. George Washington did it, after the most important career this country has ever known. He rode over his farm every day, overseeing everything.

Yes, and what happened to him! Got his feet wet, took pneumonia and died.

Dear Mr. Baldwin, I’m serious about this. You’re a builder and a worker. You could travel, but idling is no good for an active man like you. If you want to travel and play around part of the time, all right. But living in the city—Chicago or New York—that’s no good for you. For that matter, no one lives in big cities any more unless they have to. If you start putting things into the ground and watching them come up, you’ll find there’s as much thrill in that as in watching the tape come out of the ticker.

"That’s right. Bring that up."

Oh, now. Forget you’ve only got a miserable two millions—or is it three?—left from the smash. I promise you that if you go back to the Illinois farm where you were born you’ll get a thrill—

Illinois! Me! Why, you young fool, I’m no Sucker! I’m a Yank—a Nutmeg. I was born in Connecticut, up in the hills way back of Stonefield.

Really! Well, that’s interesting. Hardly a two-hours’ run from New York. You’ve probably been back often on your trips East.

True Baldwin slumped a little in his chair. Into his eyes there came an odd look. One might almost have said it was a look of defeat. He spoke in a tired voice and spiritless.

I’ve never been back. Funny. I’m not even sure I could find the house I was born in, if it’s still standing. My daughter Candace gets up around New England a good deal, because of her work. Interested in those old houses, of course, being an architect. She says the Polacks, Hungarians, and so on have swarmed in there and bought up the whole north end of the state. Massachusetts, too. She says they’re raising tobacco and getting rich. Candy says some of the old New Englanders are even working for them as hired men now, and glad to get this job. I can’t believe it. That couldn’t happen in New England.

Take a run up and see for yourself.

What for?

Reclaim it. Lots of people are buying Connecticut farms. They’re glad to get away from the city. I have some friends whose ancestors came from there; and now they’re going back.

After almost fifty years, back where I started from! There’s defeat for you.

Not at all. You’ll have made the complete circle. Then as True Baldwin made an impatient sound preliminary to departure, Just why did you leave the farm when you were a boy? How did it happen?

Baldwin rose. I’m not going all over that again. You’ve got it down on those papers you fellows were always scribbling at when you put me through that third degree—why was I born; did I hate my father; did I love my wife. You said you had to know in order to cure me. Well, now you know, and I feel worse than ever.

The young specialist gravely transferred his desk gadgets from the left-hand side back to the right. Tell me again, won’t you? he asked coaxingly. Let me see—you ran away, wasn’t that it? Why?

True Baldwin seated himself again, reluctantly, yet with that air of complaisance usually worn by one who is asked to tell the story of his life.

Why does any boy leave the farm? To make his fortune, of course. Though I guess maybe that wasn’t all. I ran away when I was eighteen because I was as poor as the dirt of our farm and crazy in love with the Oakes girl—Jude Oakes. The Oakes were aristocracy. They lived in a big brick house—falling to pieces—up toward the end of Oakesfield. The district was named after them. It was the only brick house for miles around, and it looked like a palace to me. They say that back in 1700 old Orrange Oakes built that house out of bricks made from the clay of the farm itself. He must have been quite a fellow. Judy’s family were high and mighty and gave themselves airs—though by that time they were as dirt poor as the rest of us. They had that house, and the land—originally I guess it was a thousand acres, or nearly, but it had dwindled down to three or four hundred. No one to work it properly, and gone to seed. The Oakes crowd traced their family back to some English lord or other, and beyond. Anyway, he was the original Orrange Oakes, and they were always bragging that he was beheaded by Cromwell. They had a picture of him in the hall. Funny thing to brag about. Nowadays you don’t hear people bragging because somebody in the family was hanged.

Was she pretty?

Pretty? Oh, Judy. Well, no, I don’t suppose you’d have called her pretty. No, pretty isn’t a word you’d ever have used for Jude. She must have been two, three years older than I. I don’t know what it was. Something kind of, uh, stormy about her, and what you’d call magnetic, I suppose. Black hair, thick and vigorous, and strong black brows, and gray eyes that didn’t go with black hair and yet did. And a kind of wide mouth. I kept thinking about it. I was only eighteen. Funny how I remember it, or how I ever got a good look at her in the first place. I hardly ever saw her, except in church. The old church had a colored glass window in it, with saints and so forth. They say old Orrange Oakes had it sent from England, piece by piece, as if it was jewelry. I suppose it was, in a way. Red and yellow and blue and purple. The colors used to make a kind of halo around Jude’s head as she sat in the Oakes pew. They sat way forward, and my folks sat way back. There’s the caste system for you, in America. I’d look at her and worship her instead of God. I remember she used to wear a velvet hat kind of thing with a bunch of currants on the side, to church. She looked like the Queen of Sheba to me. Once she must have felt me staring—they say you do—and turned her head, all of a sudden, and caught me. It was as if I’d got an electric shock of a million volts. I guess I got red, but by gosh, she did, too, way down to where her collar covered her neck. That made me feel good, I don’t know why.

He paused. The young specialist sat very still. And then, what? he finally said, gently.

True Baldwin gave a little start. Then? Then nothing. Jude’s younger sister skipped out one day with a peddler named Ping or Pring or something like that, who used to come by once a month with notions and gimcracks for the housewives to buy. No wonder she went. There wasn’t a man for miles around except young farm louts like myself, and this girl—Rilly, they called her, I remember—short for Amaryllis—was a pretty little foolish thing with a pointed face and lots of kind of light-colored hair blowing around, and little freckles like gold. Not a bit like her sister, Jude. Well, sir, the mother carried on like crazy. They seemed to breed mostly daughters, the Oakes family. After that happened Judy might just as well have been a Turkish girl in a harem. Her mother wouldn’t let her out of the house, scarcely. I used to walk miles out of my way just to go past the Oakes place, but I hardly ever saw her. I got desperate. I planned to run away from the farm—and did—and make my fortune—did that, too—and come back for Jude Oakes in a carriage with two black horses, and a gold watch and chain across my middle, and shiny boots.

Dear Mr. Baldwin, why don’t you do it now?

Old True flushed like a boy. He rose, heavily, picked up his gloves from where they lay on the doctor’s desk. I wear a wrist watch. The only carriage I know of is the one in the exhibition gallery at the Grand Central station. And I haven’t seen a carriage horse in years, black or white. He stood a moment, looking down at the gloves in his hand. Funny, isn’t it, how your whole life goes by while you think you’re only planning the way you’re going to live it? She’ll be an old dried-up New England spinster of nearly seventy now—or, more likely, a mound in the Oakes lot. He held out his hand in farewell. So, Doctor, if all that’s any use to you, put it down in one of your charts, and I hope it’ll do you more good than it has me.

The young specialist laid a fatherly hand on old True’s shoulder. It’s going to do you a lot of good. You wait. You’ll see. And promise me you’ll take a run up there into Connecticut with Candace some time this summer, won’t you? And look around?

No, snapped True Baldwin. If I’m going to die, I’ll die right here in Chicago with my spats on.

But no sooner had he gone than the young doctor said, in the telephone, to his secretary in the anteroom, Get me Miss Candace Baldwin, of Barnes & Halperin, architects. And, a moment later, Candy, this is David. He has just left.… Well, no, he didn’t exactly promise. But I’m inclined to think that if you’ll talk to him from time to time, and make a trip to New York with him when he goes East … He talked a great deal about that Oakes girl and the brick house.… If it’s still standing, and you can find it and get him to look at it and perhaps even buy it, and the land, he’ll probably live a long …

He and Candace Baldwin had had confidential talks before ever True Baldwin was put through the medical mill. To Candace, in fact, belonged credit for the Connecticut farm idea. She was almost as glib with her psychiatric terms as the young specialist himself.

That old brick house has been in his mind all his life, hasn’t it? It represents frustration—that and his love for Jude Oakes. Poor darling. He probably piled up all those millions simply as compensation and doesn’t know it.

The young doctor had listened politely. He and Candace liked each other in a cool friendly way. Candace Baldwin, at twenty-six, was unmarried. She was the type of American girl that came into fashion after the War—chic, but not pretty. Paradoxically, she was said to have the most beautiful head in Chicago, which was perhaps, faint praise. You saw it pictured even in New York magazines that told you where people were during February. Certainly that fine head gave this girl an air of distinction that frequently made a roomful of authentic beauties look commonplace. She was, by profession, an architect, which people thought odd.

Women, she said, somewhat bitterly, don’t want women to plan or build their houses. Isn’t that cockeyed! They use a house more than men do. They entertain in it, they bring up their children in it, and run it. Closets and bathrooms and kitchens and bedrooms are all planned for women. But they want men to build their houses.

Still, she had persisted. At school she had worked with a kind of ferocity; later, had served as apprentice draughtsman in the hive-like offices of Barnes & Halperin; had predicted that Chicago’s near North Side would be reclaimed; and got into all the New York papers by stating that within ten years Negro Harlem would be transformed into the smart residence district of New York. Candy’s clothes were audacious and simple; she had beautiful teeth, fine eyes, a sallow skin; was angular, graceful, warm-hearted, and extremely adult. She practised few conscious wiles. Men rarely fell in love with her. Those who did carried scars.

In her talks with the young specialist on the subject of her father she had been rather revealing about herself. She was not, however, plaintive.

Woe, she said, "is me. I am the child of a loveless marriage. Mother was plain and powerful and had a lot of old Chicago family behind her. I inherit my plainness