The Scarlet Letters Page 5

  Ambrose rubbed his eyelids and sighed. “You’re not suggesting, are you, Rodney, that any of the gentlemen with whom I have just been in conference are planning—or even contemplating—any such felonies as you have described?”

  “Of course not. Their need for that is over. Now they can do everything according to Hoyle.”

  Ambrose ignored his qualification. “And, to your knowledge, do any of these gentlemen engage today in any business practices that are unlawful? Let me put it more strongly. Do they engage in any business activity that is even improper?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “You give them the benefit of a doubt, then?”

  “If I must.”

  “Very handsome of you. Well, let me tell you, my friend, what you ought to know without my having to tell you: that the ethics of the bar do not require me to turn my back on a prospective client for sins he may have committed in the past. This goes even more strongly for unproven sins of the very distant past. My only duty is to assure myself of the legality of his present operations. Under any other criterion a host of men might find themselves unable to find counsel. The world is full of closets and closets full of skeletons!”

  “But surely, sir, when you know what this man did and got away with! Can you doubt he’d do it again if he thought his business required it?”

  “I don’t know anything, Rodman. And I’m not going to speculate what goes on in Mr. Foot’s mind.”

  “But if I could convince you, sir! I’ve still got my old college notes—”

  “I’m not interested.”

  “Then you close your eyes to murder and mayhem! Sir, I would never have believed it of you!”

  “Now you’re being impertinent. I must ask you to leave my office before you say anything further that you may regret.”

  Rod was livid now. “I’ll not only leave this room, sir. I’ll leave the firm!” And he turned abruptly to the door.

  “Rod!” Ambrose cried, rising from his seat. “Rod, you can’t mean it!”

  “Oh, but I do, sir. I cannot remain a member of a firm that represents Stanley Foot!”

  And he departed.

  Ambrose spent the afternoon in his office, the door shut, refusing to see anyone or to take any calls. It was like a two-hour drowning, and his life crossed and recrossed his mind several times. In the end he called in his secretary and dictated a memorandum to Rodman authorizing him to inform the new Canadian client that they regretted very much that they could not accept their retainer because of a conflict of interest.

  THE THREATENED RESIGNATION that Rod, the too strict interpreter of legal ethics, now no longer had to offer to his senior was soon followed by the actual resignation of Rod, the adulterer. Ambrose couldn’t recall a crisis in his life where he had been so hard put to bring the diverse elements to his wrath and consternation into any kind of coherent order. Why could he not seem to get to the root of the fury that Rod’s betrayal aroused in him? Or was the answer that he could get to its root? His anger, he had to reluctantly concede, was not really on behalf of his daughter or of her two little daughters, or even, as he wanted to think, on behalf of the firm. It was on behalf of himself alone.

  Now what did this mean? Of course, he knew what it would mean to a slyly smirking, lewdly winking world. It would mean that his feeling for Rod was a homosexual obsession, and that his private image of himself as Hadrian and Rod as the beloved Antinoüs was only too exact. Yet he had never been conscious of a desire of any kind of physical intimacy with the younger man; he had hardly ever so much as patted him on the back. Of course, he had read too much not to be aware of the powers of repression that can drive such impulses from the conscious mind, but if they are that deeply hidden, can they really be said to exist? He had preferred to see himself as an ancient Greek of the highest Socratic type whose sensual needs were satisfied by women but whose spiritual ones craved the company of idealistic younger men. He had even rather fancied himself in that role.

  He found some consolation in talking over the problem of how to handle Rod with the only person in the office who seemed to have all the threats in hand. Harry Hammersly was almost Rod’s equal in brilliance, a seemingly confirmed bachelor and the intimate friend of both Rod and Vinnie. His tall straight figure, square brow and shiny black hair might have suggested a formidable virility had his air not been mitigated by a kind of self-deprecating smile, too much hearty laughter at the mildest jokes of others and a conversational habit of self-mockery.

  Ambrose had consulted Harry before accepting Rod’s resignation from the firm. He felt that the value of his son-in-law’s legal services was too great to be dispensed with on his say-so alone. But Harry had seen no alternative.

  “You know what pals Rod and I have always been, so you can imagine, sir, what pain it gives me to say what I have to say. Rodney will be regarded by many, perhaps most, of our partners as one who has offended you, and consequently themselves, beyond the scope of any real forgiveness. The spirit of unity which has been one of your greatest contributions to the firm would be fatally shattered if you kept him on. And you needn’t be concerned about Rod’s future. He will find another good post soon enough. No doubt with one of our rivals.”

  Ambrose nodded slowly as he took this in. “And how do you think I should advise my afflicted daughter? I know she has a loyal friend in you, Harry.”

  “I am proud to hear you say it, sir. Of course, a divorce is necessary. Your pride and hers could hardly consider a reconciliation under the circumstances, even if one were offered, which seems most unlikely.”

  “I have to agree with that.”

  “And in choosing the jurisdiction in which to sue, I see no reason to look beyond the borders of the state in which the wrong occurred and which happens to be the true domicile of both parties.”

  “You mean here in New York? On the grounds of adultery? Do you want a scandal greater than the one we already have? What are you talking about, Harry?”

  “I’m talking about what we can do for Rod, sir. Something that may help to thrust him back into the senses he seems temporarily to have lost. What the psychiatrists call shock treatment, except we needn’t use electricity. Let him see in the newspapers his spades called spades, his paramour named, his sin defined. Why should we smooth it all over for him in a Reno fantasy where we ask for a decree because he trumped his partner’s ace at the bridge table? We owe it to Rod, as a man we have loved and respected, to show him just how low he has sunk. And maybe that will help him get back on his feet.”

  Ambrose could hardly swallow. His throat was choked, until he coughed several times and then wiped his eyes. Had he allowed the image of Rod as the man he himself had always yearned to be—direct, straightforward, devoid of dark doubts and intrusive conceits—so to seize his mind and soul that Rod’s apostasy seemed the suicide of Ambrose Vollard?

  “Well, Harry, there may be justice in what you say.”

  He knew he would have to discuss the matter with his wife, and he did so that night after dinner, when they were having their coffee in the library. She clearly knew something of the sort was coming as she sat, impassive, enigmatic, on the other side of the fireplace.

  “You seem unusually Zeus-like tonight, my dear,” she offered at last. “When may I expect the first thunderbolt?”

  Ambrose used to tell his friends, only half jocularly, that Hetty exceeded Browning’s last duchess in that her smiles, or rather her cackling laughs, went everywhere, but particularly in his direction, so that, had he been a Renaissance despot, he might have given “commands” to muffle her.

  Somewhat gruffly now he summarized his discussion with Hammersly.

  “Harry recommends a New York divorce?” she queried in dismay. “And we thought he and Rodman were such pals!”

  “He’s thinking of Vinnie. Why should the poor child have to take herself to some godless western state and swear falsely that she resides there, when our own legislature in Albany has provided the just
and effective remedy for the wrong she has suffered?”

  “Why? To avoid a stinking scandal, that’s why.”

  “The scandal is already here. Our son-in-law has taken care of that.”

  “But you’d make it worse. And don’t talk to me about false swearing. Your firm has sent plenty of clients to Reno, including your niece, Stuffy’s child, who had the same grounds of complaint as Vinnie.”

  “That was different.”

  “It was different in that you had no particular resentment against her husband. You just wanted to get rid of him, that was all. And she had another fool ready to marry her.”

  “Which is hardly Vinnie’s case.”

  “What do you really know about Vinnie’s case? Rod is what’s got you so worked up. I’ve never seen you so violent.”

  “And what about you?” he demanded, raising his voice to take the offensive. “Wouldn’t a little violence become a mother whose daughter has been so foully treated? But no, you can never lose your cool. I daresay you think Rod is only behaving as most men would, given half a chance. Isn’t that part of your creed of cynicism?”

  Hetty cut through his reproaches to make a single point. “I don’t think Rod is behaving at all like other men. He’s basically a puritan. Maybe it takes a Bostonian to see that.”

  “Well, he’s certainly not acting like a puritan.”

  “But maybe he’s reacting like one. A puritan turned inside out.”

  “A puritan gone to the devil, you mean?”

  “That could be it. Maybe he hasn’t learned that if God is dead, the devil must be, too.”

  “Which is taking us a long way from choosing the forum for the divorce.”

  “Oh, if you’re determined to get one, I don’t really care where. And I suppose a divorce is inevitable. You don’t hear much these days of reconciliations. The first thing that goes wrong in a marriage and, bang, call the lawyer. And after that it’s hopeless.”

  “The bar has always enjoyed your good opinion, my dear.”

  It had been easy to predict that Hetty’s reaction to the proposed jurisdiction of the divorce would irritate him, but Vinnie’s came as a surprise. She seemed upset and fidgety during their conference in his office the next day, and twice rose to walk to the window and contemplate the view. He thought she looked a bit haggard, certainly less pretty than usual, which he hated, for her looks were important to him. The big blond girl with the laughing blue eyes and radiant smile had become plumper with the years, not in the least to make her unattractive but enough to take her out of the category of beauties in which he had once so proudly placed her. He couldn’t understand why his motherly old secretary, Mrs. Peck, insisted that Vinnie’s increased avoirdupois had made her rounder and “sexier.”

  Vinnie uttered a little cry when he came to the point about the New York divorce.

  “You side with Harry, then?”

  “I most certainly do.”

  “Well, if you both agree, I suppose I must go along. I know Mummy’s against it, but then Mummy’s always basically neutral, and she doesn’t really care. I’ve been brought up all my life to think of Vollard Kaye as something that could never be wrong. As a kind of holy tribunal. Like King Arthur’s round table. Where all the knights were perfect gentlemen and invincible fighters. And Rod as Lancelot. And now look what’s happening. Lancelot’s being thrown out of Camelot!”

  “Not for an affair with King Arthur’s wife, anyway,” Ambrose couldn’t help interjecting.

  “Not with Mummy, hardly!” Here Vinnie broke into a kind of gasping laugh that shocked him. Had she been drinking? At ten o’clock in the morning? “No, he’s more like Satan than Lancelot, isn’t he? So he must be cast out of heaven, down, down, down…” She leaned over and stared at the floor.

  “So there we are, my dear,” Ambrose murmured in a softer tone, beginning to be alarmed at her uncharacteristic mood.

  “Well, I guess I must do as I’m told, Daddy. One rebellion in Vollard Kaye is surely enough for one year.”

  “Vinnie! You’re beginning to sound like your mother.”

  4

  VINNIE AT VASSAR in the late nineteen thirties had been a happy and lucky young woman, and happier and luckier in that she knew she was both. A beauty—or near beauty—she enjoyed radiant health, a handsome allowance, and the college courses in literature and creative writing that had captured her imagination. She lived in a world where women were coming into their own and contemplating full-time careers, though those of her generation, at least in the eastern seaboard upper strata, were still largely of a mind that raising a family came first. The country had come through a dark Depression, and the economic sun was again rising, and shrill dictators in Rome, Berlin and Moscow, however tiresome, were not yet overclouding the European horizon. Between us and them still bristled the royal navy and France’s standing army.

  And, as her father’s all but acknowledged favorite, Vinnie ruled the roost at home. It was her mother’s option to remain on the sidelines, content to criticize rather than lead, supplying a role not unlike that of the Roman sage who stood directly behind the general in the chariot leading a triumph to remind him that he was still a mortal. Vinnie thought she more than made up for this by extolling her father as a god, her god. She reveled in their intimate companionship, in sharing his problems in the leadership of his firm, in the turmoil of his visiting doubts, even in his relationship with her mother, confident that he loved her not only more than anyone else in his life but in a way that was different from any in which he had loved before. She sensed the emptiness that his own mother’s indifference had left in him, and fancied that she could fill it, not only for his but for her own advantage. For what was the benefit of having a great father if some of that greatness did not rub off on her? Could such a supposition be called egotistical when it was just what he wanted himself?

  Hetty Vollard tended to regard her eldest daughter’s idolization of her father, and his of her, as something of a relief, as if it reduced her maternal responsibilities from three to two. She could turn her attention to making up to the younger daughters for any deficiencies in the paternal concern, which was not difficult as Ambrose’s general amiability and kindness with all his progeny cloaked much of his preference for Vinnie. This did not deter Hetty, however, from being sarcastic among her lady friends over such a preference, describing it as a Victorian pastel of the benevolent aging sire stroking the golden hair of the lovely child who knows just how to get around him. Couldn’t one see it, she would ask laughingly, as the idealized union of the sexes, with the male providing strength and protection, and the female fidelity and love? Wasn’t that the bargain that assured the female of an unproclaimed but necessary dominion? Union of the sexes? No, abolition of sex! Wasn’t that what a true civilization required?

  Vinnie had never quite understood her mother, but she welcomed her detachment as she feared her tongue. She saw how other girls controlled their mothers by turning down or even off the daily show of affection the latter seemed to need, but her mother did not appear to have any such necessity. Her father, of course, was just the opposite, at least where she was concerned, and she did not hesitate to draw heavily on the large balance of love that he kept in store for her. She had, indeed, love to return to him, but her love went hand in hand with a shrewd assessment of his character and motives. She understood and went along with his habit of dramatizing himself to himself. But she also appreciated the large scope of his mind and its outreaches—she deemed him to know everything from the earliest Saxon law to dadaism—and she conceived of it as a sacred duty—made more sacred by her mother’s patent neglect of it—to be an acolyte at his altar. An acolyte, of course, could rise in the world, could be a cardinal or an eminence grise to a king, couldn’t he?

  The question of her debutante party offered the perfect opportunity for filial maneuvering. Vinnie knew that a hotel ballroom had to be reserved long in advance, and it was necessary to remind her father of this. She bro
ught up the subject at the breakfast table. For a minute he seemed disinclined even to answer her, engrossed in his Times editorial.

  “Are you sure you really want this party?” he growled at last. “To me it’s like throwing the money in the East River.”

  “Isn’t it expected of me?”

  “Expected of you? What do you want to be, the slave of fashion? And an idiot fashion, at that. How about setting an example to bust the inane custom of spending a small fortune on a single night’s revel to introduce one’s daughter to a list of idle young men, provided by a professional party giver, among whom one devoutly hopes she will not select a husband! Why, the other day, at my lunch club, they were talking about a family who actually allowed their son to quit college so they could pay for his sister’s ball!”

  Vinnie paused coolly to assemble arguments that she knew would dispose of his objections. “Of course, I don’t want any-party if you think you can’t afford it, Pa. Or even if you’re going to worry about the cost. You’ve done enough for me already. More than enough.”

  This had its effect. “It’s not so much the cost, my dear. I can handle that. And I haven’t done a thing for you that you haven’t well deserved. It’s just the idea of the thing that bothers me. Doesn’t it sometimes bother a bright girl like you?”

  “Of course it does. I’d be horrified if I had a brother who gave up college for my party. But that boy’s family must have been a very silly one. I don’t see much point worrying about people like that.”

  “You have a point there.”

  “And if people who can afford it, give their daughter a coming-out party, is there really so much harm in it? Look at all the other crazy ways they spend their money!”