The Collected Stories of Louis Auchincloss (41 page)

“Oh, I don't mean that, dear fellow. I mean: was Annie's true and free consent given at the altar? I am speaking, mind you, of a woman's psyche. The greatest lawyer in the world need not be ashamed to have failed to plumb
those
murky depths.”

Winthrop was shocked that so respected a member of the community should not devote even a passing glance to the moral aspects of what confronted them. “Even assuming that there was a chance for some respectable separation,” he countered, “surely it is jeopardized by the presence of such a cad as Bleecher.”

“Oh, come now, Bleecher's not as bad as all that. He's not the first man in our society to make up to a flirtatious wife. Carrie and I have found him an agreeable extra man for dinner parties, and even you will admit that he has an eye for a picture. Did you see his
Toilette of the Odalisque
at the Beaux Arts show last winter? Many people preferred it to
The Abbess Detected
, which took first prize.”

Winthrop stifled the impulse to parade his opinion of the immorality of last winter's Beaux Arts show. He recollected that Andros's own
Halt of Cavaliers
had been the runner-up. “Bleecher's taste in art is not going to help matters if he runs off with Annie. He has already implicated Jane King in their friendship. If you and Mrs. Andros receive him in Yonkers, he will not hesitate to tell the world you have taken his side.”

“His side? How can a man in his position have a side?”

“You will forgive me, sir, if I am totally frank. To me the facts are too grave for parlor manners. It is my conviction that Bleecher is not even the decent simulacrum of a gentleman. He hopes to become your nephew-in-law and to force you to champion him in society.”

Andros was suddenly very still. “Force me, you say? How?”

“By implicating you and Mrs. Andros as accomplices in his adultery.”

How was it that Andros managed to quicken the air about him? He did not so much as twitch an eyeball or stir a muscle, yet Winthrop felt a throb in the atmosphere, as if, deep within the older man, some heavy cylinder had started to revolve.

“Mr. Bleecher will find that he has mistaken his party,” Andros said dryly. “What steps do you propose?”

“I propose that you keep Annie at Yonkers this week and see that Bleecher is not allowed on the grounds.”

Andros's shaggy head went up and down several times. “The latter is simple enough. But my niece is a grown woman and married. I can't force her, Winthrop.”

“We all know how Annie looks up to you. You've been a father and mother to her, as well as an uncle. She'll do as you say.”

“You have more confidence in my power over young ladies than I do.”

“I have utter confidence in your powers!” Winthrop exclaimed, feeling that it was the opportune time for a show of emotion that was only half feigned. “And the day we New Yorkers lose faith in Lewis Andros, we'll have faith in nobody!”

This was a bit strong, and Winthrop feared that he might have gone too far. But no. Andros rose, and Winthrop rose with him. Once again the big hand gripped his shoulder.

“Winthrop, my friend, you may count on me. I shall lie before Annie's door like an Indian servant and guard her with my life. As for Mr. Bleecher, I shall not soil my hands with the likes of him. But I have some strong young men on the place—not to speak of two Russian wolfhounds—who may be less fastidious. You had better warn him to stay in the city!”

“I knew I could count on you. With your permission I shall drive out to see Annie in the morning. And in the meantime I guarantee Charley's good conduct. The matter may yet be contained.”

At breakfast the next day in Union Square, Rosalie lingered at the table after the boys had gone off to school.

“Don't you think it might be better if I went to see Annie with you? Or even if I went in your place?”

“I'd rather not have you mixed up in this, my dear.”

“Oh, Winthrop, I know all your theories about sparing the gentler sex. But you and I must occasionally deal with particulars and not always with generalities. I know as much about this situation as you do. That is, if you've told me the whole story.”

“I've told you all I know. A man, of course, may have his own insights.”

“And a woman hers. In such a case a couple would be better than one.”

“Listen to me, Rosalie. I am not claiming any masculine superiority. I recognize that you might handle Annie quite as competently as I. It is not you, Rosalie Ward, whom I wish to keep clear of this sordid affair. It is you, Mrs. Winthrop Ward, the mother of my sons.”

Rosalie raised her hands in mock surprise. “Men make such interesting distinctions. A woman would never have thought of that!”

Winthrop looked down at his newspaper and tried to read about President Buchanan's diplomatic reception. It proved impossible. Would Rosalie never give up? His tense fingers crumpled the journal.

“If you only didn't enjoy it so much,” Rosalie continued, “I think I might mind the whole thing less.”

“Enjoy it! Charley's humiliation?” As Winthrop stared across the table at his impassive tormentor, he felt his eyelids suddenly smart with angry tears.

“I didn't mean to imply that you enjoy Charley's humiliation. I meant that you enjoy the prospect of correcting Annie.”

“I have always been devoted to Annie!”

“Oh, I know
that
.” Rosalie's face hardened as she moved to a more direct offensive. “Where do you think I've been for the last seven years not to know that? You're obviously jealous of Jules Bleecher.”

Winthrop felt the sudden drop of anger in his heart. So that was it. So like a woman. So rather touching, really. He should have anticipated that Rosalie, like any good, loving wife—and who was a better, a more loving one?—was quite incapable of the smallest objectivity with respect to any member of his family. She was jealous, quite naturally, of anything that presented a potential wedge between her and him. She had always resented his love of Charley, always despised Annie . . . wasn't it really better that way? How else could he be sure that she loved him?

“I am certainly not going to try to rebut your last statement,” he said with what he intended to be an air of amiable dignity. “At the risk of appearing stuffy and self-complacent—if that be not giving myself the benefit of
your
doubt—I should say it would be beneath my dignity. I confine my defense to this: if I get any pleasure, as you aver, out of this whole sorry affair, it is the pleasure—and a very mild one, I assure you—that every man is entided to derive from the sense that he is doing his duty.”

“Oh, go to see Annie, for heaven's sakes,” his wife retorted brusquely. “I don't even want to come with you after
that
.”

Winthrop had been looking forward to the drive up to Yonkers, well muffled, on that cold but pleasant December day in his new runabout with two fast trotters. There might have been in it some of the excitement of an unexpected holiday. But now all was made as bleak as the winter sky by Rosalie's relendess denigrations. Why was it so necessary to her contentment—or to at least the lessening of her perennial discontent—to pull him down so? She was always quick to flare the egotistical motive under the seemingly generous actions in
him
. But when it came to some ranting, bushy-bearded abolitionist who wanted to blow up the world to cover his own failures—did she flare any ego? Oh, no! Then Mr. Bushy-beard was a saint, a prophet!

The sight of “Oaklawn,” one of the last summer residences in Yonkers, always made him sit up. To Winthrop it was a thing of peerless beauty, Richard Upjohn's masterpiece, and he would have liked nothing better than to recreate it in Newport. The approach was down a long straight avenue, soft even in winter, under two brown Gothic archways, at the end of which was the glazed brown multi-turreted, castellated structure with tiny windows in the turrets and painted tin awnings over the larger windows of the main floor. A groom waiting at the front door took his carriage, and Winthrop was ushered at once into a small study with wicker furniture, lamps with beaded shades and several small dark examples of the seventeenth-century Italian school.

“Mrs. Ward will be with you in a moment, sir.”

And indeed Winthrop already heard the rusde of her skirts. Annie came hurrying in and threw her arms around his neck.

“Oh, Winthrop, sweety, at last! I've been dying to see you!”

She was dressed in black, as if in mourning. It perfectly suited the pallor of her complexion and served as a sepulchral setting for her long raven hair and thick eyebrows, her thin long figure, her flat chest. Yet for all of this Annie was the antithesis—and herein, as Winthrop well knew, lay the secret of her immense charm—of the death look in her garb and complexion. For she was all movement, all life, all gaiety. Even now, as she took in his effort to assemble his features into a becoming sternness, she burst into a peal of high laughter, too infectious to be as mocking as she may have meant it to be.

“Oh, Winthrop, that
look
. Please, not that look. You're going to make me die of giggles when I want to be so serious. When, really, I've got to be serious. This is no time to play the Puritan ancestor. We have things to discuss. Things to decide.”

“I don't know what we can have to discuss but your promise never again to see or communicate with Mr. Bleecher.”

“Not to see Jules!” Annie stepped back and stared at him as if he had said something ridiculous. “But, of course, I can't give up Jules. He's the only man who's made life tolerable for me in the past year. Jules
amuses
me, Winthrop!”

“Will he amuse you enough to make it up to you if Charley repudiates you?”

Annie uttered another high peal of laughter. “Oh, quite enough! Would Charley really do that? Repudiate me. What a beautiful word!”

“I doubt that you'd find it so beautiful if it happened. What would become of you, Annie?”

“I suppose I'd have to go to Paris. Isn't that what fallen women do?”

“And what would you live on?”

“What would I live on? Why, what do I live on now? My own income, thank you very much. Or would the law
—your
law—give that to Charley?”

“No, that would not go to Charley. But may I remind you that your money's all in trust, and that your trustees have a certain discretion about the payment of income. If you were living in Paris with a man not your husband . . .”

“With a paramour!”

“With a paramour, then. Your trustees might see fit to accumulate the income until you came to your senses.”

Again that laugh! Winthrop reflected that his ancestor, Wait Winthrop, would probably have hanged this girl in Salem.

“Confess you're bluffing!” Annie challenged him. “Trustees may be afraid of sin, but they're much more afraid of lawsuits. And I'd sue them. Believe me, I'd sue!”

“Well, even
with
your income,” Winthrop retorted, with a touch of impatience, “what sort of future would you have in Paris? No respectable people would receive you.”

“How terrible!”

“And Bleecher, cad that he is, would desert you the moment he felt like it.”

“Ah, that he wouldn't.” Annie did not laugh now, and her eyes had a sudden gleam. “I might leave Jules, for
I
am a bit of a cad, but he would not leave me. You underestimate my charms.”

“I have never underestimated your charms. But what I think you have underestimated is the difference it would make to Bleecher if he found you a social liability instead of a social asset.”

Annie paced the length of the little room. She stood for a moment, her back to him, before turning. “You're playing a role, the family friend, the family lawyer, the guardian of morals. I wish you'd stop. I want to talk to you seriously.”

“What about?”

“Well, in the first place, Jules is not what you think him at all. He loves me dearly, faithfully. I should trust him implicitly, even in Paris. I know when a man is not to be trusted. Charley is not to be trusted. Besides, he hates me.”

“He's your husband. He's the father of your child.”

“Oh, Winthrop, be reasonable. Are you trying to tell me that Charley gives a hoot about me?”

“Deep down, yes.”

Annie laughed again. “Angels save us from that ‘deep down'!”

“But you can't give up your marriage just because you and Charley have a misunderstanding!”

“A misunderstanding or an understanding?”

“Either.” Winthrop tried to look his most earnest. “A marriage must be worked on. Even if you don't believe it's a sacrament, you should recognize that our society is based on it. And your child—how can you abandon her? A court, you know, would give her to Charley.”

“Then I'd hardly be abandoning her.”

“Tell her that when she's grown up!”

Annie at this looked grave. “Ah, yes, I can imagine what you Wards would have done to her. Even you, Winthrop.” She sat down on a plush stool and folded her hands soberly in her lap. Winthrop remained standing. “Yet you were my best friend after my marriage,” she continued wistfully. “You were all kindness and sympathy and understanding. At first I thought you were too stiff, too moral, too much older, and, of course, I knew that Rosalie disliked me. She hates feminine women. But then, gradually, I came to recognize that you loved Charley and, through him, me. I loved Charley, too, in those days, but as I began to understand his weaker side, I became frightened. And then I saw that you understood it, too, and were trying to help me. I accepted your help, perhaps too greedily. It was naughty of me, but Rosalie's anger made it such fun.”

Winthrop had turned away, pained by what she had said about Rosalie hating feminine women. It was true, of course. “Go on,” he muttered. “But leave Rosalie out of it, please.”