The Friend of Women and Other Stories Page 6

  The first thing that struck her as she analyzed her reaction, with all the care and clarity of one who had devoted a quiet lifetime to the goals of objectivity and detachment, was that jealousy played the smallest part. She didn’t give a damn about the woman who had written the letter—whom she easily identified as a researcher on the family foundation. She was quite able to recognize that her love for Eliot—if it really was love, and if not, what else was it?—was compatible with his taking an occasional roll in the hay. Suppose, for example, she had come into his bedroom and caught him masturbating? Ugh! But wasn’t it basically the same thing? Didn’t she share all that was best in Eliot: his brain, his ambition, his daughters, his everyday life? Or did she? Why should she feel that this letter in a jacket pocket was a long delayed challenge to the position she had so proudly taken as his partner? His equal partner. Ah, was that it?

  So she did nothing, but she watched him much more closely than she had before. And in only a few weeks’ time, she was startled to find that she was beginning to observe slight changes in his appearance of which she had to have been previously aware but which she had presumably brushed aside as irrelevant to herself and to her welfare. His waistline was filling out, and his hair was faintly but noticeably receding. He was still a fine-looking man, but he was not the apollo she had once deemed him. All that, of course, was nothing, but mightn’t it somehow correlate with the increasingly autocratic tone he was now taking at editorial meetings of the magazine and the sharper note of his reproval at any defective service by their household staff?

  She became even more acutely conscious of this at a meeting of the foundation to discuss a grant to a small and struggling new art museum. Letty had wanted to make the gift conditional on the widening of the extremely limited hours of public admission that the donee, too intent, in her opinion, on access to scholars, was proposing.

  “What is art if it’s not seen?” she asked of her board. “This business of restricting it to scholars obsessed with the concept of ‘influence’ can be overdone. We’re always reading about the influence of X on Y, of Monet on Manet, or money on Monet, as if no great artist could ever think for himself! And if it’s not that, they’re fixed on reattribution. I don’t really give a damn if some kid in Rembrandt’s studio painted the Polish Rider. It’s still a great picture. And all I want is to look at it!”

  “Letty, you’re showing yourself a perfect philistine,” Eliot retorted testily. “How can you compare all those bleary-eyed tourists who drag protesting children past masterpieces because they’re told it’s the thing to do with students willing to give their very lives to the cause of art? What does the public learn by shuffling past great paintings? Can they tell the difference between a sentimental daub by Bouguereau and a Madonna by Raphael? They might secretly prefer the former, but they’re too awed by the critics to say so. Hang an old straw hat full of holes on the wall at the modern art museum and they’ll respectfully gape!”

  Letty had learned to be patient at such outbursts, which seemed to be increasing. “It’s all very well for you to be snobbish, my dear,” she replied. “But a foundation shouldn’t be, and I’m afraid I’m not going to change my mind.”

  Eliot looked at her now with an expression she had never seen, at least as directed at her. She sensed something ominous in it. Where had she noticed it before? Was it when one of the editors of the magazine had effectively criticized a too violent column of his?

  “Does that mean the grant will be disallowed if your condition is not met?” he demanded.

  “I thought if either of us disagreed, that was enough to disallow it.”

  “You mean, darling, if you disagreed.”

  “Well, if it comes to that, we can recuse ourselves and leave the decision to the rest of the board.”

  “Knowing they will never go against the expressed opinion of the founder’s heir and daughter!”

  “You might dissuade them.”

  “Dream on. You know the board is your rubber stamp. I’m only sorry that you make it so clear.”

  “You will find, I think, Eliot, that your art scholars will do just as well with a larger public admitted to the galleries.”

  “You will always find what you want to find, my dear Letty. It’s a way with heiresses.”

  The next time that Letty found an incriminating note in a pocket of one of Eliot’s jackets, she was sure that he had placed it there for her. She took it as his declaration of independence. For two years they had had separate bedrooms, as Eliot, an insomniac, had declined to bow to her objection to the reading light that he kept on till the early morning, but now he abandoned his occasional nocturnal visits to her chamber, and his demeanor, at meals and business meetings, was increasingly cool and distant.

  At last they came to a decisive clash, and in the presence of the entire editorial board of the magazine. Eliot had requested that they hire a columnist who would chronicle the social side of life in Gotham: the big charity balls, the private lives of the politically and socially great, the rumors of coming events, even the scandals of notable folk.

  “The little due de Saint-Simon who was considered a minor snob and tattletale in his own day,” he explained to the group, “is now revered as the primary source of our knowledge of the age of Louis XIV What I am proposing is that we not wait a few centuries before drawing on the wealth of such a commentator but take advantage of it today. Great events often have their seed in matters that seemed trivial when they occurred. I see no reason why we should not sharpen our perceptions to avoid such misvaluations.”

  Letty had not come to the meeting unprepared. She had studied the work of the proposed columnist in another periodical and been appalled at what she had read. Her voice trembled slightly, but she was perfectly clear.

  “The man is intelligent, undoubtedly,” she conceded. “And he may be sincere in thinking that he is seeking the truth in his reports. But his glee in discovering scandal, his joy in dirt, betray a mind that is bent on dramatizing every bit of filth he can sniff out. That, to me, anyway, is not a voice we need to hear in the New Orange.”

  “Pardon me, Letitia. I had thought the New Orange was interested in facts. That a man takes pleasure in digging them out had not struck me as a disqualification. Perhaps my voice is the one that should not be heard in your chaste periodical.”

  Letty saw in the strained expressions of the four listening editors their concern over the bite in his tone. They all knew, as she did, that the issue was now joined, not only between owner and editor in chief, but between husband and wife. But it made her tone firmer.

  “We need writers who would be just as glad to find the rumor of a scandal baseless as to find it authenticated. That is not true of your man.”

  “My man!”

  “Your candidate, then.”

  “You mean that we should take a vote, the six of us?”

  “We could start that way.”

  “And if the vote goes against you, you will exercise your veto?”

  “If I see no other way to safeguard the integrity of the magazine.”

  “The magazine? You mean your magazine.”

  “If you must put it that way, yes.”

  “Is there any other way to put it?” Eliot rose now from his chair. “Gentlemen, I hereby resign my editorship. I leave you to your boss.” And he strode quickly from the room.

  “Let us call it a day, my friends,” Letty said to the others. “Obviously, I have a lot to think over.”

  In the days that followed, Eliot refused even to speak to Letty. He hung about the apartment, pale, tense, and moody. And then one morning after breakfasting alone, he departed, leaving a note instructing their housekeeper to send his clothes to his club. His two little daughters said nothing about all this. They were accustomed to their father’s mood changes and frequent departures.

  Letty had no idea as to what he would do next. She had long been used to his periodic depressions. It would not be wholly surprising if he suddenl
y returned, without a word of apology or explanation, and took up their life together as if nothing had happened. Or if, returning, he simply for a month or so remained sulkily in the apartment, silent, restless, unable to work, occasionally engaging in some mindless manual activity like polishing his leather-bound books with a special oil. But as his absence became prolonged without a word from him, she had to prepare herself for a graver course of conduct.

  And then one morning a dreadful letter was hand delivered to her doorman.

  “Like your father before you, you are a dangerous predator. You’re like the desert wasp who devours the unconscious spider she has paralyzed with her sting. She can feed herself only with living flesh. I had the wit, the imagination, the genius you needed for your enterprises. I had to be caught, but I had to be caught alive. And now that I’ve begun to awaken, you have to sting me again. But you may not be able to catch me again. And watch out. The spider, now alert, may prove more than the equal of the wasp.”

  Letty wondered if he might not be suffering from a sort of dementia. There had been moments when she had been afraid that his depression might have pushed him temporarily over the edges of sanity. But before consulting a doctor, she decided to appeal to her old friend and mentor for guidance.

  ***

  It was over a long lunch that Letty told me the sad story of Eliot’s deterioration. She was fearsome that in one of his increasingly violent fits of manic depression he might actually do himself in. It seemed to me more likely that he would blurt out to the world—or to anyone who would listen—the sorry tale of how he had mistreated my three dear girls. Of course, there was always the hope that if he waxed mad enough, no one would believe him. But I could not persuade myself that Letty wouldn’t believe him when he boasted what he had done with her two friends. There had to be some way to stop him.

  After an afternoon of silent and solitary brooding on a Central Park bench, I decided to approach Eliot directly. He and I were both members of the Patroons Club, where I knew he was now staying, and at six o’clock I went to its bar, suspecting that he might be an early visitor. And indeed he came, before its usual customers, and, spotting me, he invited me—surprisingly—to join him at an unoccupied corner table. I could only surmise that he wanted to abuse poor Letty to me.

  I was wrong. Sallow and yellow-looking, he seemed in the throes of a mood of neurotic self-reproach.

  “You think I’m a cad, Hazelton, don’t you? Of course you do. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? That I’m a stinking cad. And that I’ve always been one.”

  “I don’t know about always,” I responded dryly. “But you’re certainly one now.”

  “And you despise me.”

  “I surely don’t like you. You’ve been showered with every blessing a man could ask for. A loving wife, fine children, wealth, and even a bit of fame. And how have you thanked the gods who have so favored you? By spitting on their altars.”

  “Unlike you, is that right? Don’t you call yourself l’ami des femmes?”

  “Better than being their enemy.”

  “Is that what you’re implying I am?”

  “How else should I put it? Haven’t you employed every resource of a twisted mind to ease their journey through life by removing every one of their cherished illusions?”

  “Twisted mind?” His voice was suddenly grating. “Say what you will about my character, man, but leave my mind out of it.”

  “I believe my term is exact.”

  “Somebody’s twisted, but is it me?” he sneered. “You call yourself women’s friend, but why? Because you’re incapable of being anything else. You haven’t even the will to be the fag nature cut you out for. You’re a friend of women because you’re an old woman yourself.”

  “I’m glad you got that off your chest. I’ve always known it was there. We old bachelors have to live with that kind of aspersion. But now that you’ve cleared the air, would you like to hear what your relationship with women has been?”

  “Very much. I’d like to hear it very much.”

  “Let us go back then to your premarital days. I well recall what a cheerful young apollo you were. Oh, so bright and shining! But there was something just a bit off—a wee bit off. You smiled too much. The late Mr. Bernard himself once pointed that out. You wanted the whole world, but you were not convinced that you had all the means and talent needed to get it. You had a lot, to be sure, but the world was a big thing. So your smile would be your excuse if you failed. So long as you smiled people wouldn’t think you took yourself too seriously. And if you didn’t take yourself too seriously, could it be said that you had really failed? Could it even be said that you had really tried? Your face would have been saved, and a very handsome face it was.”

  I paused, but he simply said, “Go on.”

  “At last, you looked about to see who could supply you with what you lacked. Who was more obvious than Mr. Bernard? He had everything you wanted, everything you needed, plus a rather plain daughter to whom he would leave it all and whom Apollo could easily captivate. It was ABC, the old American story, and it worked like the proverbial charm. Everything fell plumb into your lap. But there was a catch. Letty not only had the material things with which you had not been endowed; she had all the brains and the guts that you lacked. Where you were all show and glitter, she was the solid rock beneath. It was she who was the real voice on the magazine, the ranch, and the foundation. You thought you had acquired her. She had acquired you! You were the tinsel she had needed for her Yuletide tree!”

  Amory gave vent to a snotty laugh. “Now I see why fags make such good novelists! Proust and James. You should have written fiction, Hazelton. You’ve wasted your silly life.”

  But I could read the real anger in his narrowed eyes. I had struck home.

  “Your story wouldn’t make a novel, Amory,” I retorted. “No one would believe it. It’s interesting only because it’s true, and truth is not the staple of fiction, which, unlike life, must have probability.”

  “Go on, anyway, with your crazy tale. I want to hear how it comes out.”

  “You will, Amory. You will. Well, the next thing that you find is that Letty always gets her own way, not yours. You very much wanted a son to bolster you against your dominating spouse, and what did she produce but two females, before having to give up any further idea of childbirth? Siegfried would find himself surrounded by the Valkyries that his Wotan father-in-law had engendered. What next? You had been Alfreda Newbold’s confidant in her plan to have what she was oddly confident would be a son. You would sire a male child on the body of your wife’s best friend! What finer triumph could a frustrated husband have?”

  Eliot’s anger was almost smothered in his obvious astonishment. “So you knew about me and Alfreda?”

  “Of course I knew. My girls tell me everything. And I made her feel thoroughly ashamed of what she had done and promise that she would never let on to anybody how the child was conceived. I knew that would keep you silent, too, for how would you look boasting about a thing that Alfreda would surely deny? Your only further revenge on the women in your wife’s life who had given her the affection that you hadn’t would now be to debauch the second of Letty’s two friends, Cora, taking advantage of the poor woman’s unhappy marriage. What a stud! Are congratulations in order?” And I mockingly raised my glass.

  But Amory made no answering gesture or retort. He simply lapsed into a moody silence, as I sat there, watching him. Finally he signaled a waiter and ordered a double brandy. When it came, he drank it off in a few gulps, still without a word. When he spoke, it was in an untypically subdued tone.

  “I suppose you are, in your own mad way, a friend of women. What will you do for your sacred trio now?”

  “Nothing at present. But I can tell you what you can do for them.”

  “Supposing that I want to?”

  “Well, yes, supposing that. Not that you do. But, anyway, you might take yourself to the top of a high building and jump o
ff.”

  Amory threw back his head and laughed, almost raucously. “Hubert, I love you!” he cried. “They broke the mold when they made you.” He rose. “Good night.”

  The next morning the chambermaid who came to make up his bed found him dead in it. He had swallowed a lethal dose of sleeping pills. Nobody has ever learned or even suspected the gist of our final conversation, though one member of the club, who had observed us in our corner, asked me if I had any clue as to why he had taken his life. I told him I hadn’t. So what I said to Amory that evening stands alone and stark before myself as both judge and jury.

  Was I guilty of manslaughter or even murder in having so excoriated a man locked in the dark prison of mental aberration? Morally, perhaps so. But I am unrepentant. I am convinced that he would have got better only to get worse, and that he would have brought even more misery than he desired to my girls. Letty without him has gone on to become one of the nation’s leading editors. Cora is now a popular columnist on a big daily paper. And Alfreda has raised a splendid son who is the apple of her husband’s eye. I think I can almost justify my self-imposed title of l’ami des femmes.

  2

  The Devil and Rufus Lockwood

  BEFORE I WAS ORDAINED a priest of the Episcopal Church and while I was still in divinity school, I became something of a specialist in the early history of Christianity, and it seems now appropriate, or perhaps even essential, in this year of our Lord 1937, and in the wasteland that my life has already become at the age of only thirty, to adopt some form of confession, as did many of the early desert fathers in their wrestling with God. I pray that it may bring me back to Him, from whom I appear to have been alienated. Since my resignation of the chaplaincy of Averhill School last year, I have done little but mope and worry in our tiny Boston flat until poor Hilda, my much put-upon wife, has besought me to seek enough financial aid from the church to send me for a time at least to a sanitarium. But let me try confession first.