I Come as a Theif Page 13

  “Should I be ashamed of that?”

  “Oh, no, believe me, sir, no. But let me go on. Or are you hungry?”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, realizing that I had condemned myself to live in such a world, with such people, was … well, as I say, it was hell. There was no longer any goal worth attaining. What was the use of money or political success in such a world? What was the point of bringing up children to five in such a world? How could one love in such a world? Love anyone, even Lee? For hadn’t she, too, become a part of it?”

  “You were speaking … you were speaking of Jesus.” Pieter looked about to be sure again they could not be overheard. “Did you go to church? Did you try prayer?”

  “I did. I prayed. Then I sought comfort in atheism and in ideas of personal extinction. Nothing did any good. It was not until I gave up trying to escape that I escaped at all. Not until I decided that there was no hope for me of any kind, that I was doomed to go on as I was going and that that was that. And then, one night when I had been working late, I came home and found that Lee had already gone to bed and was asleep. Poor Lee, what hell she’s been through, too. But I couldn’t help her. Anyhow, I went into the dining room and poured myself a drink. But as I was sitting at the table, after only one swallow, I had a sudden sense of silence around me. A special silence. The kind of silence I used to love on fishing trips in the Canadian woods. The balm, the relief, was sublime. I sat there in a trance of surprise and delight. I didn’t even have any more of my drink. I was too afraid of breaking the spell. For the first time in days there was no pain in my heart. And then, all of a sudden, I was filled with a sense of inexpressible well-being. Of love, you might call it.”

  “Did you see anything?” Pieter was curious in spite of himself.

  “A presence? A ghost? No. Nor did I hear anything. I simply had the oddest feeling that all around me were layers and layers of reassurance. It was quite fantastic. Really, I knew that my guilt would be expiated. How, I didn’t know or even much care. All I had to do was be patient and in time I would see.”

  “Which is what you do now?”

  “Which is what I do now.”

  “You see that you must confess?”

  “Just SO.”

  “And why, pray, do you tell me?”

  “Because you’re Lee’s father. Because you’ll have to help her and the children when I go to jail.”

  “Thanks! Have you told her?”

  “No. But I will tonight.”

  Pieter knew that he would have to control his pounding indignation so long as there was the smallest chance of dissuading this lunatic. “Has it occurred to you that this impulse may be self-pity? That it may be a need to dramatize yourself?”

  “I don’t care. All I know is that I’m going to obey it. When I tell you, Mr. Bogardus, that the distress to my family, the humiliation of public disgrace and the misery of going to jail are as nothing compared to the hell I was in, will you realize the force of what has happened to me?”

  Pieter viewed the distracted man now with eyes of unconcealed detestation. “Of course, you attribute your impulse not to your bowels or to your psyche but to the intercession of Christ.”

  “Or Jupiter. Or Osiris. I don’t know. I don’t care. I attribute it to whatever you want to call it.”

  “I don’t think you’d care to know what I want to call it!” Pieter allowed some of his outrage to escape in the near shout that he now addressed to the hovering headwaiter: “Could you bring us menus, please? We’ve been waiting long enough, I guess.”

  6

  Lee sat with Mrs. Catlin at the long table of the board room of the Turtle Bay Settlement House. One end of the table, unoccupied except by them, was covered with neatly stacked copies of lists and prospectuses. Mrs. Catlin’s bright little secretary with her mane of black hair and those wide eyes under big glasses, that might have been mocking or might have been simply bored, sat at a desk, sucking a pencil tip, listening to them.

  “You will see on this list that I have projected not only the anticipated gifts of the people whom you will approach, but what I estimate their ‘outreach’ to be: that is, what they might be expected to get from the people whom they approach.”

  Mrs. Catlin’s tone was soft, warm, dream-like, suited to her faded, melancholy, aristocratic appearance. She might have been an old infanta, long living in exile. Her patience, like her research, knew no bounds. She gave to her profession of money-raising a kind of tattered dignity, like old lace on a wedding gown.

  “You will notice that I have placed a number of ‘old’ New Yorkers on your list. They tend to be overlooked these days with all the emphasis on new money. But plenty of them are still very well off. Their trouble is that they think traditionally in terms of small gifts. They are apt not to take in what the tax deduction really means to them.”

  “I see you have Daddy on the list. What on earth gave you that idea? He never gives anything except to Mummie’s hospital. It’s a matter of principle.”

  “My dear, there’s always a first time for everybody. If I’d given up with the first person I’d been told was hopeless, I’d have gone out of business years ago. Your father is very proud of you and Tony…”

  Lee closed her eyes and smiled as she tried to imagine what her future “outreach” would be, once Tony had confessed. “Mrs. Anthony Lowder? Lowder? Didn’t he go to jail or something? Wasn’t it that bribery case?” Oh, Tony, beloved Tony, how I love you! How I bless you for telling me what you told me last night. It was absurd—it was obscene—to be so happy with ruin staring one in the eyes. But what did it all prove but that love, poor, battered, knocked-about love, love, the false premise of suburban America, the only point of pointless lives, the indispensable guest at the cocktail party, the bridge party, the cookout—indispensable but never appearing, the ghost of Banquo that never came, that this very love, in short, was true? She hardly heard Mrs. Catlin’s voice.

  “Are you all right, dear?”

  “Oh, I’m fine. I was just thinking of my outreach.” She glanced again at her list, and her eye fell on the Cs. “You want me to approach Joan Conway?”

  It would have been more natural, she reflected, if Mrs. Catlin had exchanged glances with Miss Paul. She felt the falsity of their not doing so.

  “You think Tony would be better? Mrs. Conway is supposed to prefer the gentlemen.”

  Really, Belle Catlin was too perfect. It was just the right answer. She knew everything about Joan and Tony, of course. Everything and nothing. For she had no inkling of the wonderful scene between Lee and Tony of the night before. And even when she should learn of it, or of its consequences, she would still know nothing. For she would never understand that out of the gray walls and bars of public misery would spring a Kundry’s garden of hope and rebirth. It was to Lee as if she and Tony had died and survived their own deaths. Now she inhabited the old body of Lee Lowder, and the old Lee Lowder gave the appearance of continuing to communicate with the world, but she, the real she, was existing on a different level of reality, and she and Tony would make forays out of the impregnable citadel of their new happiness to smile sadly at this darkened old world. Had Belle Catlin ever known love? The faded gleam in her melancholy eyes suggested that she had. But it must have been long ago.

  “Tony won’t talk to her about money,” Lee said. “She’s sick, you know.”

  “I hear she’s dying,” Mrs. Catlin said softly.

  “We all are,” Lee retorted. “At least, we all were.”

  “Maybe it’s better to wait for the will. But I doubt if there’s anything in it. Mrs. Conway has never really cared for settlement houses. She only does what she does because of Tony. Museums are more her line. I think you’d better talk to her, Lee. Unless, of course, you can persuade Tony to change his mind.”

  Lee looked up in surprise. It suddenly seemed as if Belle Catlin were far away, as if the table surface between them had multiplied by several leaves. “He’s not having
an affair with her, you know,” she heard herself say.

  “Who?”

  “My husband. With Joan. That’s all over now.”

  This time Mrs. Catlin did look at Miss Paul. “Leave us a minute, will you, Rhoda?”

  Miss Paul left the room without a word.

  “What’s wrong, dear?” Mrs. Catlin asked, in the same soft tone.

  “Nothing. It’s as I say, that’s all. It wasn’t because of the affair that he wouldn’t approach her. It was because he wanted her to have one relationship that wasn’t connected with her money. I wonder if you can understand that, Belle?”

  “Of course, I can understand it.”

  “You say that, and you believe it. You’re perfectly sincere. You’re always sincere. But your philosophy has a flaw in it.” Lee felt detached, almost numb, as she proceeded. “You believe it’s all right to cultivate people for their money if the purpose is charity. But actually it’s more contaminating than if the purpose is personal. Because your illusion of safety puts you at the mercy of the microbe. The microbe of evil. You and I and Tony are mendicants, Belle, pure and simple. We fawn. We smile. We dine out in rich houses like Joan Conway’s. If we did for ourselves what we do for charity, the whole world would revile us.”

  Mrs. Catlin did not smile or frown. She simply nodded. “Go ahead, dear. Get it off your chest. We all feel that way from time to time. And what’s more, there’s a good deal of truth in it.”

  “Forgive me, Belle. I’ve made a bloody ass of myself.”

  “Something’s happened to you, Lee. I won’t ask you because I know you won’t tell me. But let me say this. I like you. I respect you. And I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, Belle.” In contrition she rose and went over to kiss her. “Why do you always have to be so right even when you’re so wrong?”

  “Anyway, we’ll drop the subject of your list. For now, anyway. Why don’t you go over this membership brochure while I check the mailing? I’d love to get it out this afternoon.”

  Lee knew that the brochure would be perfect, but she seized it, as if to cover her nakedness. She took it away to an armchair in the corner to escape Belle’s immediate scrutiny and, with a quick sigh of relief, let her mind fill up again with the strange bliss of the night before. Tony’s face, large and lined, grave as she had never seen it, yet with an odd kind of new confidence, almost of cockiness, seemed to cover over the whole proscenium of her imagination, like a giant poster at a political rally. He had talked, and at first she had only half listened, about a complicated office matter. When at last she had begun to understand, she had listened passionately. And then it had all come clear: his abstraction, his seeming indifference, his bottomless misery, his amazing decision.

  “Your father was naturally first concerned about you and the children,” he had told her. “Of course, it’s going to be ghastly for all of you. Isabel may get through by dramatizing it. Eric will have a much harder time. I can hardly bear to think of Eric. But I’m banking on his intellect. I’m hoping that he’ll be able to rationalize it.”

  “And me? How do I face it?”

  “By loving me.”

  “Oh, Tony,” she had whispered.

  “I’ve thought and thought about it. At first I wondered if I shouldn’t give you a chance to change your and the children’s name, to leave me and go to another part of the country. Your father suggested that.”

  “Daddy did?”

  “Oh, yes, he hates me now, poor man. I can’t blame him. If he could wish me dead, I’m sure he would.”

  “No, Tony!”

  “Yes, darling. See it his way. He thought his daughter was off his hands and permanently looked after. He was even beginning to see a prospect of something like success in his unlikely son-in-law’s future career. At long last. So he and your mother could look forward in peace to the uninterrupted bliss of totting up Gristede bills and trying to catch the bank in error in its monthly statements. And then what happens? For a crazy scruple the idiot Lowder blows the works and throws his family, disgraced, back on the old man’s payroll!”

  And then, incredibly, they had both laughed. The hope that he had kindled so many years before at the dull little brownstone garden cocktail party of their first meeting, the hope that a Bogardus world of downtown grays and military browns might blur and dissolve into a turbulent riot of shrieking colors, of imperial abstracts, the hope that romance had a validity outside of good nineteenth-century fiction and bad twentieth-century movies, the hope that everything within her that she had ever tried to repress or of which she might have felt ashamed could erupt instead into orgasm, physical, mental, spiritual, the hope in every daughter that she was real and her parents bogus, was alive again.

  “Oh, darling,” she gasped, “I see it all. If you only knew how I see it all. There’s nothing, absolutely nothing, that you and I can’t work out if we work it out together. Of course, it’s going to be terrible for Isabel and Eric.” She closed her eyes in a spasm of horror as she thought indeed how terrible it would be for Eric. Yet it passed, the dreadful moment. It actually passed. She took a breath and went on. “But in the long run they’ll realize what an incredibly brave thing you’ve done, and they’ll admire you for it. Oh, they will, Tony. Who else would give up what you’ll be giving up? Freely? Without the least pressure? Without any danger of discovery? Oh, the time will come when they’ll boast about you. For what is there really to be ashamed of? You performed an experiment in human psychology. You wanted to create yourself, and you did. You wanted to become a bribed man, and that is just what you did become. And having become one, you faced the consequences. I’ve always loved you, but I’ve never admired you more.”

  But when they had gone to bed that night, making love had seemed more real than what he had told her.

  “What do you think of it?” Belle Catlin asked.

  “What do I think of what?”

  “The brochure, darling. The brochure. Not whatever it was you were dreaming about. I wouldn’t think of intruding there.”

  “The brochure is perfect.”

  “Nonsense. You haven’t read a word of it.”

  “That doesn’t mean it’s not perfect.”

  “Why don’t you go home, Lee? You’re obviously not going to get any work done today.”

  “I’m going to read the brochure!” Lee cried passionately, and she turned abruptly away from Belle.

  She had slept heavily the night before, dreamlessly, a kind of love death. She must have dreaded her awakening, for when she had opened her eyes in the harsh light she had given a little cry of alarm.

  “Darling, I’m right here.” Tony was standing by the bed with a shaving brush in his hand.

  “Oh, Tony, hold me!” she cried in panic. “Hold me, and tell me it’s all right. That it’s going to be all right.”

  He sat down on the edge of the bed and held her close.

  “Thank you,” she breathed. “When are you going to do it? Confess, I mean?”

  “I have to speak to Max first.”

  “Max? Why Max?” She was wide awake now and throbbing with immediate jealousy. “What has Max to do with it?”

  Tony looked at her in surprise. “Well, I guess he thinks he has something to do with it. I’ve got to work it out so as not to involve him. Of course, I won’t give his name, but once the thing’s out, the U.S. Attorney’s office can be expected to run him down. I’ll try to make a deal for him, but he may find it advisable to arrange a business trip to Brazil. Until it all blows over.”

  “A deal for MaxI What about a deal for you?”

  “Well, I don’t say that’s impossible. It has been known for first offenders who turn themselves in to get suspended sentences. I’m not going to beg them to send me to jail. But with Max it’s different. There’s no reason that Max should suffer for my conscience when he’s lucky enough to have none of his own.”

  “Well, I think there is.” Lee could not abide the intrusion of Max into their strange new purgatory
, just halfway between heaven and hell. “Max was responsible for the whole wretched business. He tempted you. He wheedled you into it. No, worse, he made you feel so sorry for him that you went into it to save him! Oh, how I loathe Max!” The golden canvas of Tony’s heroism seemed to be crumpling at the corners, as if it were on fire. She put a hand to her mouth to keep from screaming. If she had to go through this hideous trial on Max’s moral level, it would be more than a soul could bear. “All right, go to Max,” she argued with controlled vehemence. “Tell him you’ve decided to go to the U.S. Attorney’s office. Give him the chance to go with you. That’s fair enough, isn’t it? And if he won’t, to hell with him!”

  “Lee.” Tony put his hands on her bare shoulders and held her firmly. “Let me do this my way, will you? I promise you, it will be the honorable way. Trust me.”

  She had shuddered and then clung to him for a desperate embrace. She was still thinking of that embrace, trying to get back into it, to cover herself over with it as if it were some great dark hood, while she sat with Belle’s brochure in her lap. She jumped up, startled, when Belle lightly touched her shoulder.

  “Please go home, Lee. Your nerves are so tight. It makes me jumpy just to watch you.”

  Lee threw her arms about her and sobbed. “Oh, Belle, would you still speak to me if I went to jail?”

  Belle was never at a loss. She patted Lee gently on the back and let her continue to hug her. “I think I would.”

  “Not matter what I’d done?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t dream of knowing.”

  “But if you did?”

  “I’d be sure you’d had a very compelling reason.”

  Lee closed her eyes as she visualized Eric’s pained, bewildered face. Was anything worth that? Anything that had to be shared with Max Leonard? And would they ever be through with it, even after the jail was over? What about those criminals who had bribed Tony? Wouldn’t they follow him? Wouldn’t they try to get him? Or the children? Hadn’t she read horrors?

  “Oh, Belle, you must think I’m mad! Perhaps I am, a bit. No, I’m not going to jail. Nobody is. I was just thinking of the part of your brochure that deals with the program for ex-convicts. It’s very well put. Very moving. I was thinking what a hard time they must have and how important it is for us to help them.”