Honorable Men (21 page)

Basically, the project called for the erection of four glass wings, radiating out from the four corners of the present pavilion. The wings would be dedicated to different functions of glass: glass in architecture, glass in science, glass in history, glass in art.

Chip studied the blueprints for some fifteen minutes before he spoke.

“It's a great plan, Ted,” he said at last.

Ted could not forbear a look of premature triumph at his wife and mother-in-law. How quickly he anticipated victory! As if even such a materialist as Chip could hardly fail to succumb to his genius. But my heart seemed to lose a beat. I knew that forward thrust of my husband's chin.

“I thought you'd see it, Chip. You really couldn't not.”

“Wait a second, Ted. I said it was a great plan. It is. But for whom? General Motors?”

Ted frowned. “Meaning?”

“Meaning that it's far too grand for the likes of us. Do you know what percentage of our annual gross this would cost?”

“That's hardly my concern, Mr. Chairman. My task is to determine quality. Whether or not it pays is your concern.”

“Just so.”

“Except that I happen to believe that one can never lose with the best.”

“But that's not your responsibility, Ted, is it?”

“Of course, you know, Chip,” Matilda Benedict now put in, “I might be able to contribute a part of the cost.”

Chip turned at once to his mother. “I trust not by selling or pledging company stock.”

“Would that be my only recourse?”

“For any significant contribution, yes.” He turned abruptly back to his brother-in-law. “Let's not drag this out, Ted. The extensions that you propose are out of the question. The most that I'll consider is a small gallery devoted to glass in art.”

I watched Ted's eyes congeal as he took in the finality of this response. “Is that really all, Chip?”

“It's all I have to say.”

“Then I'll have to take it to the board.”

“That is your privilege. It hardly seems likely that the board will go against the recommendation of the chairman in such a matter. Still, you can try.”

As Ted now moved grimly to pick up his plans from the floor, Flossie turned furiously on her brother.

“You think you rule the roost, Chippy boy, but some of those chickens may have been counted before you know what! We'll see what Daddy has to say about this.”

“We certainly will,” Chip replied.

“You think you have Daddy sewn up, the way you do Mummie, don't you?”

“Please, Flossie!” Matilda Benedict remonstrated. “Don't be vulgar. Nobody's ever had me ‘sewn up.' ”

“Haven't they? You're as bad as Alida, in my books. All the man of the family has to do is crook his little finger, and you both come running.”

“While you, of course, are totally independent of Ted,” I retorted.

Flossie turned her big, red-shot eyes on me in bitter contempt. “You! What do you care what happens to a small-town company? What's it to you but a source of dough to spend on New York clothes and jewels? What do you care if we make the cheapest and ugliest glass in America so long as you get your share of the loot?”

“Oh, Flossie, go home,” Chip snapped at her, and Ted, the plans now under his arm, propelled his wife silently from the room. Mrs. Benedict, in her usual stately way, tried to pick up the broken pieces of our dissension.

“I apologize, Alida, for my daughter's rudeness. It was quite uncalled for. Nobody cares more for the company than you, my dear, or has done more to help out. Florence gets so engrossed with Ted's projects and ideals that she forgets herself. All this will blow over.”

“I'm afraid, Ma, it won't be as easy as you think.”

“Well, seriously, Chip, doesn't she have a bit of a point? When you get right down to it, must we condemn ourselves to mediocrity?”

“The times condemn us. Look, Ma. For a hundred years now every forward-looking person has been working for better conditions for labor, for more pensions and welfare and so forth. Well, all those things have come. We're up to our ears in them. I'm not complaining. I'm adjusting to the facts. It should be obvious that paying the wages and taxes that we have to pay, we must forgo some of the quality in our products. The finest workmanship in the future will have to be left to nations with less developed welfare programs. If you don't believe me, you and Alida, look about and see what's happening in the areas you most care about, the cultural areas. Ask your publishing friends how they feel about bringing out the first novel of an unknown. Ask your producer friends how they feel about that interesting, intellectual new play. And it's all just beginning, too, mind you. Inflation will continue to rise until the only public entertainment will be on TV, and that will be trash. Opera and ballet will follow drama into the bottomless pit. Oh, philanthropy may put it off a couple of decades with productions of old chestnuts like
Aïda
and
Carmen,
but the end is clear.”

“But you seem so enthusiastic about it!” I cried, appalled. “I'm not enthusiastic about it,” he retorted brusquely. “I see it, that's all. And I'm not going to have an ass like Ted, who can't see anything, look down his snotty nose at me!”

Ted Millbank, anyway, was ass enough to take his fight to nonfamily stockholders, and this proved a declaration of war, for the stock of Benedict was no longer solely owned by Benedicts. Chip, seeking greater capital for his business expansion, had “gone public,” with the result that the family now owned less than half the outstanding shares, but as the Benedicts voted in a block, and as the other stockholders were numerous and unorganized, control of the company had not been lost. The risk of a combination against the Benedicts, however, was always a dread possibility, and it was for this reason that any dalliance by a Benedict with unrelated shareholders was regarded as the direst treason.

When Alvin Barnes, Elaine's husband, called on Chip and me one night after dinner to report what he had heard about Ted's activities, it was like the discovery of an enemy atomic plant within national borders. Alvin's young face and middle-aged eyes struck me as almost comically grave.

“There's no question about it, I'm afraid. He's been in correspondence with every holder of more than two hundred shares. It's a campaign!”

“Very well.” Chip's features had frozen. “He must go. I'll see Dad and Ma tonight.”

Chip did not take me with him when he called on his parents, but when he came home late that night he was able to tell me that he had prevailed.

“It was pretty grim,” he said. “Flossie came storming over, without Ted, and made the most fearsome scene. Really, I've never seen such a Valkyrie! She howled and stormed. She said she'd leave Benedict and never come back. Ma wavered all over the place, but Dad was a rock. When I made it clear that it was Ted or me, he had no choice.”

“Oh, darling, couldn't you just give Ted a warning? One last chance?”

“With a guy like Ted that never works. He hates my guts, and he's determined to get me. Talk to Alvin. He agrees.”

“Oh, Alvin will do anything you say!”

“Alida, my dear, you're a wonderful wife, but you don't understand business. You must leave this decision to me.”

Well, what else could I do? Ted Millbank, after all, had dug his own grave. When he loomed the next morning, gray and somber, like some resurrected John the Baptist, at our breakfast table, I wanted to push him out of the house, get him out of my sight, anything to avoid the contemplation of his misery. I was hurrying from the room when Chip bade me stay.

“Yes, I too would just as soon you were a witness, Alida,” Ted volunteered. “All I really have to say to your husband is that I regard him as a man without vision in business affairs, without sensitivity in matters of art and without heart in his dealings with his fellow men. Flossie echoes my sentiments. We hope never to have to see him again.”

“How can you be so horrible, Ted?” I cried. “You know you were trying to stab Chip in the back!”

“If trying to bring a little beauty into the dull grays and browns of life in Benedict is stabbing Chip in the back, then indeed I have stabbed him.”

“Why don't you go now, Ted?” Chip asked in his coldest, most patient tone. “Now that you've made your little speech.”

“That's all you have to say?”

“There isn't any point saying anything more to a man like you. I have no wish to hurt you, and I know that your mind is unchangeable. You are determined to separate Flossie from her family. You are making a big mistake.”

“Why?” Ted demanded in surprise, almost in spite of himself.

“Because when she doesn't have us to turn on, she'll turn on you.

Which in fact was just what happened. Flossie left Ted within two years. But the poor man, unconscious of the second Benedict doom hanging over his head, now presented us with his back.

I wondered why Mrs. Benedict had given up so easily, but it was not long before the reason was clear. Like me, she was dominated by her husband. Not only did Mr. Benedict confirm the dismissal of his son-in-law; he arranged that Chip should have voting control over all the family stock, which placed the management of the company now squarely in his hands. Chip reigned as supremely over Benedict as the Sun King over Versailles.

When I tried to discuss the situation frankly with my mother-in-law, she presented her entire acceptance of it like a wall between us.

“I think we're on the path to a new job for Ted,” she told me blandly. “There may be an opening at the Boston Fine Arts. He'll be better off away from Benedict. Of course, Flossie may never forgive Chip, but as old age comes on, I'm learning that I have to face the fact that I can't control the affections or animosities between my children.”

“It surprises me that Mr. Benedict doesn't have more concern about Flossie.”

“Oh, he does. But shall I tell you something, Alida? My husband is basically what your daughter Ellie calls a male despot. The rack wouldn't get it out of him, but he believes in a male-dominated world. I've always known that he cared more for Chip than for all his three daughters. And when Chip came home to take over the company, Elihu was ready to chant his Nunc Dimittis. Ted and Flossie have been the victims. Let us hope they'll be the last. I wouldn't even bet on my humble self if I crossed swords with your glorious husband!”

I think it was at that moment that I became just the tiniest bit afraid of Chip. I wondered whether I could not detect a slight hardening in his features. Chip was almost as handsome as he had been when I first met him; he had lost no hair and gained no more than ten pounds. But there was something about his eyes ... how shall I put it? Well, I kept thinking of an idiotic cinematic trick in a film about King Arthur's Round Table, where the sapphire light in Lancelot's eyes had gone out after he had slept with Guinevere. Something not too unlike that seemed to have happened to Chip. And it wasn't just because of a woman, either.

W
HILE
C
HIP
was in the process of establishing himself in Benedict, he had to come to grips with the proposition that the development of his personality there was going to be a lonely process. He had chosen a life and a site that were barren of the deepest kind of human companionship, at least as he conceived it. That this was partly due to aspects of his own character he entirely accepted. After all, Benedict was made up not only of his family and their business; it was also made up of Charles Benedict.

The most important emotional result of his decision to settle in his home town had been the assimilation of Alida by her family-in-law. This had obviously been a needed step for her happiness, and he had even encouraged it, but it had nonetheless had the effect of uniting her with a group that, however loving, however admiring of their bright new leader, had still a watchful, and sometimes a faintly apprehensive eye fixed on his activities. Alida, together with his parents and sisters, constituted a kind of board of trustees who, if they quite properly left the management of affairs to their brilliant executive director, were still aware that they had placed all their eggs in a single basket, which this sometimes too innovative carrier might dangerously shake.

Yes, they were all a bit afraid of him, or afraid for him, if there was a difference. When he and Alida had been alone together, there might have been a kind of sex appeal to her in the very enigma of his personality, and one that it was easy and even agreeable for him occasionally to exploit, but now that she was allied with his parents and siblings and approaching the plain of middle years, she was less allured by mystery and more alerted to fact. Alida had begun to show an interest in his business trips and in his hobbies, but it was a suspicious interest; she was inclined to resent rather than to respect the areas of his life in which she had little or no part. He had hoped, when she at last discovered that his parents did not—as she had once jealously suspected they did—own a part of him not available to herself, that she would be content with what she had, as all that a wife could reasonably expect. But it had not turned out that way. When Alida discovered that he was with his family very much what he was with her, it seemed only to indicate to her that she, rather than he, had all along been right; that she, not he, was the one in step. She would urge him now, for example, to spend more time with the children, or to go more often to see his mother, or to be more available to the officers of the company, or to dance more with the Benedict wives on Saturday nights at the country club. He would demur, usually with a laugh, but at times there was a dryness in his mirth.

“When you married me you wanted Lancelot,” he told her, “and now you'll settle for George Babbitt. I suppose that's the story of the American wife.”