The Collected Stories of Louis Auchincloss (39 page)

Xenia's brief silence indicated some inner debate. “If ever I saw a man put his head in the noose, it was you. I tried to warn you off, but you stuck like a leech. Still, I admit, he treated your abominably. Even for him. Tell me something. What did you think of the novel? Other than the character of Gregory Blake?”

“I thought it first-class. First-class Dana Clyde, that is.”

“But is it a great novel? Is it that last great novel of manners of the western world?”

“It is not.”

“You say that very positively. Didn't you assure him it would be?”

“I was a fatuous ass. I was Gregory Blake.”

“I'm afraid you were worse than that, Leslie. You badgered Dana into writing that book. You never stopped to think it might hurt him. Well, it did. It hurt him terribly. That's what he can't forgive you.”

“But I never meant it to hurt him!”

“Of course, you didn't. You're not a sadist. But it still did. You see, Dana had a secret fantasy. He liked to think of himself as a genius, but a genius manqué. He liked to tell himself that if it hadn't been for his love of the good life—the
douceur de vivre
, as he always called it—he might have been another Flaubert. ‘Ah, if I could only work as he worked,' he used to say. Well, he worked at Málaga. He really did. And you see what he produced. He sees it, too. He can no longer kid himself that he could ever have written
Madame Bovary
. So he took his revenge.”

Leslie stared. “But can't he persuade himself that he simply started too late? That if he
had
worked hard enough, early enough, long enough, he
would
have been a Flaubert?”

“No.” Xenia laughed her dry little laugh. “Because a genius, even a genius manqué, could never have written anything as magnificently second-rate as
The Twilight of the Goddess
. But don't worry about Dana. He always gets through. It's you I'm worried about. I hope that my husband's silly book isn't going to ruin your young life.”

Leslie, looking at the tough little woman before him, felt the surge in his heart of liberation. For a moment he could not even articulate an answer to her suspicion that his life might be affected by so shallow a creature as Dana Clyde. He turned away from her and went to the window to look down on the Place de la Concorde and its eddies of darting traffic.

“No, I'm grateful to Dana. He was wrong about the novel of manners. It
does
still have a function. If only to prove to a poor thing like Leslie Carter that he doesn't want to write one anymore.”

 

 

 

 

1976

W
INTHROP WARD LIKED
to have his wife come downstairs for breakfast. He did not like to ask her to do so—that was not his way. He preferred to feel that she herself recognized the propriety of the mistress of the household and the mother of three sons joining with the latter in the initiation of a busy and useful day rather than—like so many women in Manhattan's “better” society of the eighteen-fifties—reclining in her bed till noon with a coffee cup and the fashion column. Rosalie and he had never brought the matter to specific debate, but he nonetheless feared that the billowing pink dressing gown in which she had recently chosen to appear, so suggestive of upper stories and closed doors, was somehow an indication of silent dissent, an “exception,” as he would have put it in court. It was fortunate that none of the laxity of the gown was transmuted into its wearer's face. Rosalie's features were as bland and flat as if she had worn more formal attire, and her small lips were pinched into her usual mien of reservation. Reservation of what? Reservation, Winthrop could only infer, of any general approval of himself.

No, breakfast was never quite what he yearned it should be: the friendly, even humorous conveyance by father to sons of useful precepts for a day that would be only too full of particular problems: the confirmation of family solidarity; the pleasant reminder, before the taking up of diurnal tasks, of such manifold blessings as the comfortable house on Union Square, the cozy dining room with its bay window opening onto a tree-filled yard, the smell of sizzling sausages and bacon passed by the smiling Irish girl in her yet unspotted uniform. Alas, no. Instead, the boys were disputatious, and Rosalie seemed always to be against him.

James, sixteen and earnest, began. “Andy Thayer says he has an uncle who helps runaway slaves to get to Canada. He runs a station in the Underground Railroad. Isn't that brave?” A small pause followed. “Well,
I
think it's brave!”

“His uncle's a fool to talk about it,” said Fred, fourteen and law-abiding. “He could go to prison, where he belongs.”

“I agree with Fred,” Alexander, the youngest, observed. “Slaves are private property. Father says so, and Father's a lawyer.”

“Oh, Winthrop, have you been telling the boys that?” Rosalie wailed.

“My dear, they are private property. You can't deny it. I never said they
should
be. That's another issue altogether. But I happen to believe in obeying the law of the land. At least until the Congress sees fit to change it.”

“You haven't lived in the South as I have, Winthrop!” she cried. “And that is why I must beg leave to differ with you, even before the children. You know, boys, I spent a winter in New Orleans with my Aunt Estelle . . .”

“We know it, Mum,” came the weary chorus.

“Well, know it again. And know that no matter what the law says, God's law says that no man can own another. It is because the Southerners have tried to make that a Christian principle that their society is rotten.”

“Do you mean,” demanded Fred, “that if they admitted slavery was wrong, they'd be all right?”

“They'd be better off. At least their creed would be pure. This way, slavery is in everything they think and do.”

Winthrop was impressed, in spite of himself. Rosalie undeniably had a strong mind. It was a pity that she made so little use of it. Or was it? He coughed loudly now, as was his habit before making a family pronouncement.

“In times as emotional as these I find that I must constantly reiterate my central position. Otherwise I am regarded as a Simon Legree in my own house. So, boys, pay attention. When we created our Union, we had to compromise with our Southern friends. Their price was the acceptance of slavery—at least in their states. We agreed to pay that price. We wrote it into our Constitution. How can we renege on our word now?”

“It's not reneging on our word to refuse to return their slaves!” James exclaimed hotly. “The slaves should be free the moment they set foot on free soil!”

“The Supreme Court has ruled against you, James.”

“The Supreme Court is packed by slaveholders!”

“If we are going to maintain the Union,” Winthrop argued, trying to hold on to his temper, “we must learn to recognize the other man's point of view. Do you claim, James, that the South is not entitled to be represented on the Court?”

“What do they know of justice? You've said yourself, Father, that they're blinded by arrogance. I've heard you!”

Winthrop found himself considering the surprising little fact that—for that moment at least—he actually disliked James. “God help us to preserve our nation if the young all feel as you do,” he said piously.

Rosalie sniffed. “There you go again, Winthrop, with your sacred Union. Why must we stay together? Why should we be shackled to people who beat women and children and separate families? Why not let them go? Why not let them stand up alone before the civilized world as the only nation where white men have slaves? They won't last long.”

“My dear, I must ask you to be silent!” Winthrop rose solemnly to his feet. “I cannot admit the advocation of dissolution of the Union. Even from my wife. That is one heresy I will not tolerate in this house. My great-grandfather fought and died for the Union. When I hear the call, I am ready to do the same. I only pray that civil war, if it must come, may come soon enough to spare you boys. And now, having finished my breakfast, I shall proceed to my office. A good day to all of you.”

There was a muffled, embarrassed murmur around the table of something that Winthrop decided to take for a general apology, but in which Rosalie obviously did not join. On the whole, however, he did not think badly of his exit. In the black, paneled hallway where Molly, the waitress, helped him into his fur coat, he listened to his heart and decided that his overexcitement was already ebbing. He chose a cane from the rack. Had he been absurdly dramatic in referring to a call to arms? Would anyone ever ask
him
to serve in the army? A lawyer, a family man, forty-three years old, with a heart murmur?

“Take the scarf, Mr. Ward. It's cold out.”

“Very seasonable, Molly. It's always mild between Christmas and New Year's. May the eighteen-sixties prove as mild!”

As the door closed behind him, and he gazed down from his brownstone stoop at Union Square, fresh and glittering in the diamond morning air, he adjusted the onyx pin in his cravat. Taking a deep cold breath, he went briskly down the steps and headed south for his daily hike to Wall Street. He counted on those thirty minutes, not only for his exercise—the only kind he took—but for the opportunity to review and settle the disturbing thoughts and emotions of the early morning so that he might arrive at his desk serene and ready for the day's work.

As he headed down Broadway, however, towards the happy Gothic conception of Grace Church, he was uncomfortably aware of continued tension in his chest. Damn the South for all the trouble they caused with their slaves! Triple damn them! He paused, as he habitually did, to admire the façade of the church and to speculate on what America might have been without the slave trade. What but a paradise, what but a simple Garden of Eden! He stamped his foot. Why had the first blithering idiot to bring a black man in irons to the New World not been hanged for his pains? He recalled now the condescending words of his neighbor in Newport, Colonel Pryor of Charleston:

“My dear Ward, what in the last analysis are we talking about? An issue that could only be settled by a war in which the Northern states couldn't possibly afford to engage. For where's your military tradition? Who would be your officers? Let us face the fact, my friend, that only a few families in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, such as your own, were reared in the aristocratic tradition. The rest are good burghers who are quite sensibly concerned with filling their pockets. All very well, my dear fellow, but you don't put burghers in a battlefield against Southern Gentlemen. At least I should never advise it! Leave us our peculiar institution, and we'll leave you all of yours. It's a better way to live, I promise you.”

Burghers! Winthrop snorted as he marched on downtown. It was all very well for Pryor to make a polite exception for the Wards, but Winthrop knew that it was only politeness. Pryor, of course, was sneering inwardly and lumping him with the other shysters and shopkeepers: Yankee trash, nigger lovers. Well, those slaveholders would see! They would see—that is, if they ever tried to break up the Union—how little a society of sportsmen dependent on surly blacks could prevail against millions of free men! They would be lucky if they did not live to behold their plantations burned and their sacred womenfolk raped by lusty niggers . . .

Winthrop paused, and rapped with his cane on the pavement. Really, he must control himself. What would all that adrenalin do to his heart? And, quite aside from his health, what about his eternal soul? Were those
Christian
visions? Even if the South should secede and God should then order the freeing of the slaves, would that be any reason for His holy army to indulge in scenes of rapine and murder? Never! They should go into battle like crusaders in white tunics with red crosses, singing hymns.

“Well, if it ain't Mr. Astor himself, in all his fur and feathers! Good day to ye, Mr. Astor. Have ye foreclosed any mortgages? Should I pray for a bit of snow to turn the widows and the bairns out into?” Winthrop paused in utter astonishment before the tattered, bearded inebriate who was sitting on the curbstone squinting up at him. In the shock of the onslaught he forgot his rule of ignoring such creatures.

“I shall instruct the next policeman I meet of your insolence and whereabouts! You had better get packing!”

Accelerating his pace as the brown square tower of Trinity Church came into view, he was now a senator, addressing a gravely attentive Senate:

“It is my painful duty to bring to the attention of this august chamber the dire consequences of our rash policy of unlimited immigration. It is rank folly, merely in order to boast that we are the refuge and haven of the poor and oppressed of old Europe, to fill our land with the refuse of a cynical continent delighted to slough off its human responsibilities. How long can America be strong, how long can America be pure, how long can America be free, if we continue to dilute the blood of our Anglo-Saxon and Dutch and German settlers with that of an Irish peasantry, stupefied by ignorance and superstition, the slaves of whiskey and Rome, whose only demonstrated skill is for worming into and corrupting our municipal governments?”

He slowed his pace to slap his clenched fist against his open hand and to stare defiantly at an old woman who hurried by, afraid that he might accost her. She probably deemed him a street preacher or similar harmless lunatic. Perhaps she was right! Smiling now at his own absurdity, refreshed by his eloquence, he proceeded in silence to Chambers Street, where he paused to consider the better view of Trinity Tower. A fit of dismay seized him. Was its sooty face reproaching him? He closed his eyes and prayed in a whisper:

“Dear God, only God, beloved father of us all, forgive thy servant, Winthrop Ward, for traducing thy other children. Help him to realize that the Irish, however misguided, are as dear to thee as he is, dearer perhaps, for they are not so puffed up. Help him to comprehend that it is no such great thing to descend from John Winthrop or to be a Ward, that his bit of money is a rag and his social position an illusion. Teach him humility, dear Lord, dear Christ, that he may come to thee and lose himself in thee.”