The Collected Stories of Louis Auchincloss (60 page)

Lovat, a known gambler on the stock market, must have hypothecated trust assets to cover his personal loans and was now unable to replace them. Learning of his wife's proposed investigation, he had thrown himself on his knees before his soft-hearted aunt, and she had prevailed upon her husband to make good the loss.

Now this was certainly a new light on my great man, nor did I welcome the idea of any change in his iron character. He was not simply the major influence in my life; you might say he was the only one. I had liked to think of him as a cold man, but only in the sense that I too was cold: reason ruled our hearts. He was always just and fair in all his business dealings, and his word was his bond. And now was he compromising his standards? The ideal of virtue he had so loftily preached to me?

Surely this would be a relaxation of one of his greatest strengths. He had always stipulated for absolute honesty among his own partners and in his own dealings. Anyone who tried to take crooked advantage of him would never do business again with Dunbar, Leslie & Co. As with the dealers who sold him art, to be once caught in a lie was to be banished forever. He believed that American business could police itself, and he had nothing but contempt for reform politicians.

But now had the bell struck? I am still proud to say that I did not flinch before the challenge. Armed with my list of his recent market purchases, I marched into his office and laid it boldly on his desk.

He picked it up and read it slowly, as if for the first time. I was almost embarrassed for him, which made me even bolder, daring enough to put this reminder to him:

“You once asked me, sir, if your decision not to take a military part in the Civil War had been a virtuous one.”

How still he was! But he might have been crouching. “Yes, sir. And, as I recollect, you told me you believed it had been.”

“I was deeply impressed at how much you cared that any act of yours should be virtuous.”

He nodded. “And now you are wondering how much I still care.”

“Precisely.”

“You have perceived that I am preparing to make whole my wife's nephew's misappropriations.”

“Just so.”

“And you are questioning the virtue of what I am considering?”

“No, sir, I am not questioning it. I am condemning it.”

Oh, he liked that! He liked to be stood up to by one who knew what he was doing. “Condemning without a trial? Without considering all the facts? I am saving a man's wife from destitution, our firm from disgrace, himself from indictment. And I can police him in the future. I shall require his resignation from his fiduciary position. He will be no farther menace to society.”

“But you will have concealed a felony.
You
will know that in the future the word of Lees Dunbar will be good only when the circumstances are propitious.”

“My word, sir? What word?”

“You will be certifying to an accountant that a trust is in order.”

“And will it not be?”

“Only when you have doctored it.”

He grunted and now moved for the first time, shifting heavily in his chair. “Let us consider the consequences. Oliver will be a desperate man. He may even do himself in. He's just the type that does. Where will be the benefit to society?”

“Is that our criterion?”

“We? Are ‘we' so sure of our own motives? You, for example. Mightn't my nephew offer a possible obstruction to your own advancement in the firm? ‘The old boy is getting senile,' my partners may be already saying. ‘How many protégés do we have to put up with? First the incompetent Lovat and now this young fellow with whose family the old boy had such a curious intimacy? Isn't one enough?'”

I smiled inwardly. Surely I had achieved the ultimate union with him now. That he should even speak of the “curious intimacy”! “I'm not worried about Lovat, sir. I could lick him in the firm with one hand tied behind my back.”

Again that slow nod. “I believe you could. Very well. Let us probe even deeper. Mightn't we—and I do mean both of us—derive an actual satisfaction from the bloody sacrifice we would be making on the altar of our given word?”

“Should the pleasure of doing the right thing disqualify us from doing it?”

A ponderous silence. “Why are you doing this to me, George?”

“Because I believe in you, sir.”

“And because you believe in nothing else?”

I must confess, this took me aback. “That could be in it, I suppose.”

“That's what I'm afraid of.” His sigh, if deep, was final. “Very well. Obviously, I cannot now proceed with my little plan of rescue. But don't worry. I shall not hold it against you. I even sympathize with your point of view. Alas! I must tell the wretched Oliver to look elsewhere for his salvation. What a world! But I had no hand in the making of it.” Oliver Lovat's body was fished out of the East River the next morning. He had joined the army of those despairing souls who elect to solve their insoluble problems by a leap from Brooklyn Bridge. But there was no disgrace for the firm or destitution for the widow, as the real motive for the suicide was never discovered. His debts and disorderly love life provided adequate causes for the journals. And it was I who suggested to Mr. Dunbar that it would now be in order to replace the embezzled securities before the accountant's inspection. There was no longer an embezzler to be prosecuted. But I suspect that Mrs. Dunbar had somehow divined my role. The invitations to breakfast were rescinded on the excuse that she now took that meal in her room.

Her husband made up for the breakfasts by asking me regularly to lunch in his office. There was nothing at this point that he did not discuss with me, from his purchase of a still life to the merger of two railroads. And at the bank I was now universally treated as the established favorite. I did not trouble myself with how much envy and how much dislike might be concealed under the polite exteriors. I knew that none of the juniors would play any part in my rise or fall. I had staked my all on Mr. Dunbar, placing my eggs in a single basket, but having total faith in the reliability of that container. He might die—but a banker must be prepared to take
some
risk.

And indeed it was not long before he advised me that the time had come for me to extend myself socially in the firm.

“We'd better start thinking about a partnership for you. Twenty-seven is young in the eyes of the world, but you have the experience of a much older man. You must become better known to the partners. We'll start with John Leslie. He will ask you for a weekend on Long Island. He won't, of course, mention that I have suggested the invitation. You will be your discreet self about that.”

“Of course, sir.”

“And pay some attention to his daughter, Marion. Unless your heart is otherwise engaged?”

“Free as air, sir.”

“As I rather supposed. You work too hard, my boy. Marion's a fine girl. A bit on the athletic side, but handsome. Apparently she's had some sort of unhappy love affair which she claims she'll never get over. But women like to make a drama of these things. We know about that. There are two brothers in the London office, fine fellows, charming, but a bit on the playboy side. It's not a sure thing they're partnership material. Leslie might content himself with a partner son-in-law.
Verbum sapienti.”

I restrained a gasp. Had I really come
that
far? Like a papal nephew in the Renaissance marrying into the old Roman nobility? “But would a girl like that so much as look at a dreary bank clerk who doesn't even play polo?”

He shrugged scornfully. “You don't want me to tell you
how
to do it, do you? Go to. You're not a bad-looking fellow. A bit on the skinny and pale side, but even that can be attractive. Who knows? She may be tired of the brawny brainless. And her old man tells me that she's got a thing about the firm. Wishes she'd been a man so she could be a member of it. It's up to you, my boy!”

Mr. Leslie was as handsome, as suave and as unsurprising as his fine, purple brick Tudor mansion with its emerald lawns and shady elms and white-fenced fields and stables. He had thick black-gray hair, a strong, well-shaped nose, a square chin and gleaming white teeth. He had to have had brains to have achieved his position in the firm and his assistant secretaryship of the army under Theodore Roosevelt, but I supposed his mind had been largely and shrewdly focused on using a charming personality to its best advantage. Mr. Dunbar, who was plain to the edge of ugliness, had notoriously converted his envy of good-looking males to a desire to be surrounded by them; it was a distinct tribute to my own intelligence that I had become his intimate without a stalwart build.

When my weekend host offered me golf or tennis and learned that I played neither, he turned me over to his daughter with a pleasant grin that effectively masked any scorn the athlete must have felt. If a protégé of Lees Dunbar could play only tiddledywinks, then tiddledywinks it would be.

Marion, tall, broad of shoulder, with the fine paternal nose and high clear brow, but with moppy rich auburn hair, made no effort to conceal her disgruntlement at my paucity of athletic choice. I soon learned that she made no effort to conceal any of her reactions. The good things of life had been plumped into her lap, where she obviously felt they belonged.

“Well, shall we put on our bathing suits and sit by the pool?” she asked. “We can lend you a suit if you don't have one.”

But I had no wish to expose my etiolated figure to the contrast of her brothers' brown muscles. If she was to be won, it would not be that way.

“Why don't you take me for a walk? I'd love to make a tour of this beautiful place.”

“Oh, all right.” She brightened a bit. “We've got a thousand acres, you know.” She glanced at my polished shoes. “Can we provide you with sneakers?”

“No, I have a pair, thank you.”

And off we went across the meadows, pausing to watch grazing horses and Black Angus, into the woods to the marshland abutting Long Island Sound. Her enthusiasm waxed when she saw I didn't mind a good pace or getting my sneakers muddy when she put a finger to her lips and beckoned me to follow her for a closer look at a perched hawk. On the way back she became more conversational.

“I suppose you don't have much time for sports. Daddy says you work too hard. But that you're one of the real up-and-comers at the office.”

“He flatters me. But it's true about the work. I never seem to have concentrated on games.”

“You're not like most of the young men I know. You're more serious. I guess that's a good thing. But haven't you missed them? The sports, I mean.”

“I don't think so.”

“You don't think they're important?”

“Well, they're not to me. They're important to the wealthy, I suppose. They help kill time. You pointed out yourself that one needed time for them.”

“Yes, but not just to
kill
it. I never heard such a strange idea. What
do
you find important?”

“Finance.”

“You mean making money?”

“Well, that's certainly a part of it. After all, this lovely place, the horses, the cattle, the opportunities for sport, your whole life here, what does it depend on but money?”

Her nose indicated her distaste. “Mother's always taught us it's vulgar to talk about money.”

“That's because our families like to think of themselves as aristocrats. They want to feel they owe their position to birth and not just dough. But they're wrong. As mine found out when they lost theirs.”

Marion paused. She had not decided whether or not to take offense at any line of argument.

“You sound like a radical.”

“Because I talk about money? I should have thought it was just the opposite.”

“But you don't think like other people.”

“Maybe that's because I think.”

“You're pretty sure of yourself, aren't you?”

I decided it was time to pull up. I had made a sufficient gesture of independence. “Forgive me for being such an ass. I'm not used to talking to attractive and intelligent young women. I'm just not socially experienced, I guess.”

Marion smiled. “Oh, you're not doing so badly. We may make something out of you yet.”

At dinner that night were just the family and 1.1 had the feeling it was a rare occasion that induced Marion's two handsome brothers, on leave from London, muscular, thin and bony, one dark and one light, like black and spotted jaguars, to sup at home without female guests. But why? Did Mr. Dunbar's arm reach even into his partners' domestic arrangements?

If so, it had failed to touch Mrs. Leslie. Her attitude towards me had none of the friendly accord of her husband and sons. She was a plain, silent, rather grim little woman who seemed to have nothing in common with her good-looking and cheerful family. She had been an heiress herself, I knew, but surely John Leslie could have made his fortune without the help of hers. Or was there, in his very shining air of assurance, the hint of a nature that would have taken
no
chances? Anyhow, the way she reduced the required acknowledgment of my presence to the briefest of nods showed what use she had for the “likes of me.” I supposed she saw me as the son of a kept woman, probably as a kind of
fils complaisant
.

But the “boys,” Jack and Bob, my own age, more or less, were another matter. They, like their old man, were charming. They might not have been intellectual, but they had plenty of wit for amiable small talk, and they made pleasant fun of their father and sister (never of Mama!) as they exchanged smiles and knowing glances. They were politely complimentary to me in their questions about my work, perhaps overly so. Were they laughing at me? Very likely. But there might have been another compliment to my perspicacity in their letting me see that they saw I saw it, that they counted on me to appreciate their innate good will in a world where one thing, after all, was pretty much as inconsequential as another: a game of tennis, a bond issue, a polo match, a mortgage foreclosure. It was my first glimpse of the aristocratic point of view.