False Gods Read online

  “But you’re paid as much as a junior partner now!” Gleason protested. “I thought you were too great a Virginia gentleman to care about our Yankee partnerships.”

  “Why I care should be obvious to a lawyer as smart as yourself, Mr. Gleason. An associate can always be dumped. I do not wish to be dumpable.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “And if I go to the Commodore?”

  Commodore Vanderbilt was then busily engaged in trying to corner Ontario stock. A former clerk of Ontario’s counsel, particularly one who had handled “delicate matters,” would find rapid employment with the old pirate.

  “Are you trying to blackmail me, Carstairs?”

  “The definition is yours. All I ask is fair treatment. We sink or swim together.”

  “Jeff Davis shouldn’t have wasted you in the cavalry. If he’d had you in his cabinet, treason might have prospered.”

  Roger stiffened. “In the old days I’d have called you out for that. But now may I simply remind you that secession was not treason until established by force majeure. And that President Davis, as we referred to our chief executive, would never have stooped to your ways of doing business.”

  “My ways!” Even the hardened Gleason gaped at this. “Well, of all the nerve!” But he was not a man to make an issue out of inevitable things; he even managed a grin. “You’ll never believe it, Carstairs, but I was planning all along to make you a partner.”

  “Of course I don’t believe it. But shall we agree that I’m to be a member of the firm as of the first of the month? We can discuss my percentage later.”

  Gleason threw up his hands. “I agree.”

  3

  Roger not only became a partner. Ten years later, when Gleason died of a stroke, he succeeded to his position as chief of the department with a higher percentage of the firm’s profits than the nominal senior partner, Charles Pratt. The older and more distinguished members of the bar may have been disturbed by rumors of his methods of convincing the judiciary, but the tolerant and cynical laymen of the day took for granted that he was probably little worse than his fellow attorneys.

  Roger neither made nor sought to make friends in New York. His manners were polite but formal; he asked nothing of his partners or clients beyond completion of the particular business at hand. Kitty, on the other hand, was strikingly successful. She bloomed in Manhattan society and charmed everybody with her revived Southern belle manners. She was as open and witty as he was silent and grave; she dressed and talked well and entertained delightfully in the brownstone mansion of her dreams that Roger had built for her on Murray Hill on condition that he would not have to preside at her parties. For that he summoned north her bachelor brother Lemuel, even more of a dilettante than in his Paris days, and bought a literary gazette for him to edit when he was not escorting Kitty about the town. Society much preferred the genial Lemuel to the austere Roger, and the brother and sister were soon among the most popular couples in Gotham. Much as Roger scorned Kitty’s social success, he was too just not to recognize that it ill became a husband who had brought his wife to a strange city to begrudge her her adaptability to its ways.

  He gave Kitty what she wanted, but he gave even more to the re-embellishment of Castledale. His brother Ned, too self-effacing to occupy the main house and contenting himself with the old overseer’s lodge, lovingly supervised the restorations ordered by his senior: the cleaning and stretching of family portraits, the affixing of new panels to interior walls and new bricks to the outer ones, the installation of plumbing and central heating, the replanting of the gardens and box, and, most important of all, the arrangement, against appropriate settings of new curtains and carpets, of the beautiful Colonial and early Federal furniture and porcelains purchased by Roger at auction sales of the grand old mansions of the South. For if he thus seemed to join the plunderers of the Confederacy, it was only to bring together the finest of its treasures in a museum to be devoted to its memory and to be paid for with Yankee dollars.

  This, of course, had to be the justification of everything he had done since Appomattox. His only happy times were the occasional weekends he spent at Castledale, roaming the rooms and corridors and riding over the grounds. Kitty never accompanied him, claiming with undeniable truth that he would rather be alone with his “true love,” but in the first years of the restoration he had sometimes taken Osgood. The poor boy, however, was not only plain and stout; he was hopelessly dull. He had at an early age given up trying to curry favor with the stern father of whom he stood in helpless awe; he seemed to divine that it was not within his limited range to gain paternal affection or even approval. Yet Roger sometimes reluctantly suspected that his son would have given anything to be loved a little. Kitty was a demonstrative but easily distracted mother, and the smallest amount of warmth from a taciturn and preoccupied male parent might have made all the difference to the lad. But every time Roger resolved to pay him a little more attention, the boy would irritate him with some odious Yankee expression or demonstration of his ignorance of Southern history and tradition, and at last he resolved to take him south no longer, justifying the decision with the reminder that, after all, he intended to convert Castledale to a museum and sanctuary where Osgood would never have to live.

  Ned Carstairs did not approve at all of what he dared to call his brother’s demeaning of his nephew, and he stepped out of his usually subservient role to argue roundly that Osgood was the rightful heir to Castledale and should be trained to be a good proprietor. But Roger was not accustomed to taking advice, and least of all from Ned, and he simply shrugged in answer. And so it was that Osgood played little part in his father’s life until the night when, aged twenty-four, a bank clerk still living at home, he penetrated the usually forbidden-to-all area of the paternal study to announce that he was engaged to be married. Roger, surprised for once, looked up at the round serious eyes in the round pale face of his only child and felt a pang of remorse that he should not have the least idea of who the young lady might be. In his confusion he took refuge in sarcasm.

  “I trust, anyway, not to a Miss Gould or a Miss Fisk.”

  “Oh, no, Father. To someone you will really approve of.”

  “Heavens! Do you mean a Virginia girl? I didn’t know you knew any.”

  “Well, no, but perhaps the next best thing. She’s the daughter of one of your partners.”

  Roger was on his feet before he was even aware he had moved. “Good God, not to one of Gleason’s girls!”

  Osgood looked bewildered by such violence. “Oh, no, sir, I don’t even know them. It’s Felicia Pratt.”

  Roger stared. He seemed to recollect a large placid goose of a maiden. “Charles Pratt’s daughter?”

  “Of course. Isn’t that all right?”

  “What does he say?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to him yet. I wanted to get your approval first.”

  Roger rubbed his brow, wondering how much more there was that he didn’t know about this young man he had found so dull. He turned away now from Osgood’s anxious expression. He could hardly face the idea of the vexation that a belated regret for his paternal indifference might cost him. It was simply too late, much too late, to establish any real relationship. “Well, if Charles doesn’t mind, why should I? You must bring Felicia to the house so that your mother and I may meet her.”

  “Oh, Mummie knows her and likes her ever so much!”

  “Then there you are.” Roger contrived a smile. “She must be all right.”

  4

  Kitty Carstairs on a dark snowy evening in the winter of 1882 was seated before the dressing table in her pink-and-yellow Louis XV boudoir on Murray Hill, dressed already, as she liked to put it, en grand gala du soir and attaching to her lobes the ruby earrings that went with her scarlet crêpe de chine. On a chaise longue by the window lounged her brother Lemuel, languid and splendid in white tie and tails, whom her maid had just summoned up from the parlor.

  “Charle
s and Jane Pratt will be at the Mortimers’ tonight. I’ve asked Clara Mortimer to seat you next to Jane.”

  Lemuel threw up his arms in disgust. “Just because I couldn’t take you to the Sykeses’ on Friday? Really, Kitty, how vindictive can a sister be?”

  “Bore Insurance should pay you three hundred for her.”

  Kitty and her brother paid dues to a small private group which listed the biggest bores in Gotham and paid off at so much a head to any member who found himself stuck beside one at a dinner party.

  “But it’s cheating if you arrange it with the hostess! I’m surprised at you, Kitty.”

  “I’ll pay you the three hundred then.”

  “Happily, I have no prejudice against taking money from a woman.”

  “It’s a comfort that I can always depend on your being devoid of senseless male inhibitions.”

  “I’m not such an ass, anyway, as to take that for a compliment. But tell me what you want me to do with the sublime Jane Pratt. Not make love to her, I trust?”

  “Could one? No, I simply want you to convince her that Osgood is in no way like his father. Charles Pratt is actually objecting to the match. He doesn’t fancy his beloved Felicia as Roger’s daughter-in-law.”

  Osgood sat up. “His own law partner?”

  Kitty shrugged as if the vagaries of the male sex were beyond her. “It seems he objects to Roger’s ethics.”

  “Well, I certainly can’t blame him for that But what about his own?”

  “That’s what Osgood asked. The poor boy is in a terrible state. He had no idea that Roger wasn’t like any other lawyer.”

  “That’s the trouble with New York. He is.”

  “Now, Lem, don’t be pompous. I haven’t asked you to hold forth on the evils of modern society. Pratt apparently told Osgood that he had stayed with the firm after Roger became a partner only to counteract his ‘bad influence.’”

  “And to make a very good living as he did so!” Lemuel clapped his hands and hooted. “I’m only sorry the great Dickens is not alive to put Pratt in a novel. He would excel Mr. Pecksniff as the archetype of hypocrisy. Has Roger heard of this yet?”

  “No! And he mustn’t or he’ll blow us all to Kingdom Come! That’s where you come in. I have almost persuaded Jane Pratt to talk her husband out of his silly attitude. I count on you to put in the finishing touches.”

  “Is it really worth it? I’m not at all sure that Osgood couldn’t do better than the Pratts. I was hoping he might catch a real heiress from one of the families that are still climbing. A Vanderbilt, for example.”

  “No, no, I know where we are socially, my dear. The Pratts are just right for us. It’s all very well for you, a bachelor, to talk about our doing better. It’s easy enough for you to go anywhere you like. But for a woman it’s different. There are plenty of dowagers in this town who are ready to do me in if given half a chance. My success has aroused envy, and don’t fool yourself that that war has been forgotten yet. And even if it had been, Roger’s snooty attitude about Yankees would revive it. If we had a real showdown with a couple as respected as the Pratts, it might upset my applecart!”

  Lemuel appeared to be weighing this. “Well, I suppose there may be something in what you say. Jane Pratt is a descendant of Peter Stuyvesant, though I doubt if half the new families even know who he was. How do you want me to approach her?”

  “What I really need is to get her to make Charles drop his condition.”

  “A condition to his consent to the wedding?”

  “Yes. It’s a very stiff one, I’m afraid.”

  “What is Charles’s condition?” came a voice from the doorway, and they both turned to face Roger. Kitty’s self-possession rarely deserted her. “Oh, a silly condition,” she replied casually, as if relieved that his arrival had saved her the trouble of sending for him. “You know what a stickler Jane is in matters of etiquette. Apparently they’re in mourning and don’t want to have a wedding reception.”

  Roger’s expression was dangerously impassive as he advanced into the room. “For whom are the Pratts in mourning?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Some old cousin three or four times removed. I told Jane that we didn’t care about a reception. That we’d give a party for the bride and groom after the honeymoon.”

  “Just a minute, Kitty. One doesn’t forgo a wedding reception for one’s only daughter because of the death of a distant cousin. Even for a close relation, one would simply postpone the wedding for a month or so.”

  “Oh, Roger, you know these old New Yorkers. They mourn for years for the remotest kin!”

  “Do they? I saw Charles in the office this morning, and he was certainly not wearing a black tie or even a mourning band. In fact, I particularly noticed his very red cravat.” And then his features suddenly hardened. “They’re not in mourning at all, are they, Kitty? Not even for a cousin twice removed?”

  “Well, maybe they just don’t like wedding receptions!” Kitty exclaimed with finely affected exasperation. “You should be glad anyway. You hate the damn things and probably wouldn’t even go to it. And as for me, the only thing I’d like about it is it would probably bust our Bore Insurance Society!”

  But Roger was inexorable. “The reason Charles doesn’t want to give a reception is that he doesn’t wish to introduce his friends and relations to me. Isn’t that it?”

  “Oh, Roger, what if it is? What do we care? We don’t have to marry him, do we?”

  “But I care very much. And I shall look forward to having a general clarification with Charles Pratt no later than tomorrow. It will be my pleasure to inform him that if he feels ashamed of this alliance, I feel degraded. I shall further inform him that he has been paid by his partners through the years, not for his legal aptitude or his roster of clients, both of which are, to say the least, exiguous, but for his constituting the formal façade of piety which all good Yankee enterprises require.”

  “Oh, that’s just fine!” Kitty rose and faced him with clenched fists. “What fun you’re going to have! You’ll smash poor Osgood’s wedding and maybe even break up your law firm. You’ll have all New York society shouting for your head. And best of all, you’ll bring me down in the general wreck! That’s what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it? Well, go ahead and try! I dissociate myself from you. Osgood and I will make it alone.”

  “I shall always support you, Kitty.”

  “I don’t want your Yankee money!” she almost shrieked.

  But this was too much for Lemuel, who now rose and glanced at his watch. “If you don’t mind my interrupting this little scene, Roger, Kitty and I must be off to the Mortimers’. I believe we shall meet the Pratts there.”

  “Tell Charles I shall come to his office in the morning” was all that his brother-in-law grimly replied.

  5

  The two years following Roger’s rupture with his firm, which resulted from the irate Pratt’s demand that their partners choose between the two of them, he spent alone in Castledale. Kitty remained in the New York house, which he supposed she would be able to maintain for a few years on the half of his savings that he had turned over to her. After that he had little interest in what happened. He no longer had any earned income, and the remainder of his capital was destined for the endowment of his museum. It was not a great sum, at least by the standards of the new rich, but costs in Virginia were still low, and, his foundation once legally established, he could move into the old overseer’s lodge with Ned. But for the time being he was occupying the big house, a moody hermit amid the splendors of his continued restorations.

  He saw almost nobody but his ever-sympathetic brother. The local gentry would have been glad enough to welcome him had he taken the trouble to ingratiate himself, but his aloofness was repelling, and in time the rumors of the bad reputation that he enjoyed even in a city as wicked as New York began to tarnish his image. When, in addition, the respectable neighbors learned that he had deserted a blameless wife and was planning to disinherit a dutif
ul son, they dug up the old legend of his duel with Drayton and converted it to something more like a cold-blooded murder. It was even claimed that he had known ahead of time that his victim intended to fire into the air.

  Roger cared little for their prattle, some of which the more troubled Ned related to him in the vain hope that an ameliorated attitude might appease the countryside.

  “But don’t you see, Ned, that what they’re saying about me is basically fact? Oh, they’ve added a lot of nasty and false details, it’s true. People wouldn’t be people if they didn’t do that. But I can’t quarrel with the main outline of their image of me. I am a bit of a monster, you know.”

  The only criticism that he did mind came from within the walls of Castledale, not from humans, for nobody lived there at night but himself and only the cook and parlor maid by day. It came from ghosts. The pale wooden faces of the Colonial Carstairses over coats and dresses as unwrinkled as planks, looked not at him but past him. The Revolutionary general, whose big nose and alarming sabre dominated the dining room, saw him but did not recognize him. And his mother, looking sad and subdued even as a debutante in the day of Andrew Jackson, seemed to be conveying the timid message that she couldn’t talk to him now, before the others, but could she have a word with him later, alone? Yet the note the family appeared to be striking was not one of hostility, or even, really, of disapproval. It was more that he didn’t belong there. He had called at a house where he wasn’t expected. What did he hope to gain by prolonging the error?

  “They want me out of Castledale,” he told Ned one day at lunchtime, waving towards the portraits on the wall. “They treat me like a stranger. Even an intruder.”

  “How ungrateful of them! After all you’ve done.”

  “Oh, they don’t care about that. They’d rather be shabby. They feel about me the way the Stewarts down the road feel about the rich Yankee who bought High Farm.”