False Gods Read online

  “Mrs. Aspinwall’s father didn’t have much else to choose from in the Newport of that day. Still, it was nice of her to say so. Little Lydia Beekman—I remember her well. Pretty as a picture. She was a friend of my younger sister’s. But she threw herself away on John Aspinwall.”

  “They seemed compatible enough to me.”

  “Then he must have brought her down to his level. Men like that do.”

  And then we returned to our fishing. That evening before dinner Horace came to my room, where I was reading. There were actual tears in his eyes. “It’s all over. The engagement will be announced on Thursday night.”

  “Can’t you get her at least to put it off? A day’s ride is hardly giving you a fair chance.”

  “Why should she give me any sort of chance?”

  “Why has she been writing to you? Why has she been stringing you along? Why did her father have to take her abroad to get her away from you? Hell’s bells, man, you don’t know your own power.”

  “But, Maury, it’s just what I do know. And I suspect you do, too. It isn’t decent for a man to hang on after he’s been definitely rejected. I’m leaving the camp tonight. The little train is taking me out at six. Are you coming with me?”

  I eyed him defiantly. “No!”

  “What do you expect to accomplish here?”

  “I don’t know!”

  He sighed. “There are times, Maury, when I can’t help wondering if it was a good idea we ever met.”

  He left by the train as planned, and Dorothy seemed surprised, but not wholly displeased, that I did not accompany him.

  Gurdon, I had later to admit, had been right about his cousin’s nervous state of mind. Horace underwent a severe depression and had to leave Yale for six months while he retreated to a sanatorium, postponing his graduation by a year. His family always believed that I had been the cause of his breakdown and that I had sacrificed him to my own social advantage in cultivating the Stonors. They, of course, never blamed the pressures they had put on him, however unconsciously, to remain a charming boy, protected from the menacing world of adulthood. Dorothy’s rejection had left him feeling less a boy than a failed man.

  But at the time, left by myself in the Stonor camp, I gave little thought to the emotional consequences to my friend of the amorous course I had induced him to pursue. I was concentrating my attentions on Guy Thorp.

  He was certainly a handsome man. Even I had to admit that. His nose was large and strong and aquiline, and his wavy blond hair came down in a triangle over a noble forehead as if to point proudly to the beauty below. His large blue eyes had a welcoming twinkle, and the robustness of his cheerful laugh seemed purposed to put an end to any suggestion that he was too polished, too smooth, to be quite sincere. It did not, however, put an end to it for me. As I watched the way, at dinner on the night he arrived, he deferred to his host and then, just at the point when the table might begin to infer that he was a toady, the way he would suddenly and effectively rebut Mr. Stonor’s thesis (albeit courteously noting the latter’s “well-known openness to all sides of any question”), I was put in mind of Decius Brutus’s comment on Caesar: “But when I tell him he hates flatterers, he says he does, being then most flattered.”

  The discussion fell naturally on the subject of England, where Thorp was stationed, and this led to a debate on the continued expansion of the British Empire. Thorp stoutly defended it, maintaining that Britain with her dominions and colonies constituted the greatest force for peace in the world.

  “I suppose then,” Mr. Stonor observed dryly, “that if the British should extend their empire over the entire globe, our peace would be assured forever.”

  “I was only speaking for myself, sir. Actually, I think the British are more than satisfied with what they already rule. I get the distinct impression from my friends in Whitehall that the addition of even one more colony, the very smallest isle or isthmus, would be regarded as too much of a good thing. Their whole magnificent administrative system is overworked as it is.”

  “That may well be so,” his host replied. “But I’m afraid the growth or shrinkage of empires is a difficult thing to control. The moment they cease to expand, they start to decline. It’s strange, but there doesn’t seem to be any alternative.”

  I decided it was now my time, if ever, to barge in. What had I to lose? “If the British would like to start shrinking, there’s one little emerald isle they might do well to cast off.”

  The table looked at me in some surprise. My tone, I suppose, had been sufficiently antagonistic.

  “Unhappily, it’s too close to their shore,” Guy responded coolly. “An independent Ireland, able to offer naval bases to Kaiser Wilhelm, would be an unacceptable risk.”

  His tone was civil enough, but it had a note of experience admonishing naïveté that aroused my ire.

  “Ireland could agree not to cede bases. And Britain could easily occupy her if she did. The point is that Whitehall, as you call it, never gives anyone a chance. Look how India was squeezed for the last drop of profit the Raj could get out of her!”

  “Surely you go too far there, Leonard. Most trained observers concede that the Raj, as you call it, has spared India a religious war. And I’m sure I don’t need to tell anyone here that those wars are the bloodiest.”

  “Maybe the Indians would rather massacre one another than kiss the British boot!”

  “You speak for the killers, I assume. Hardly for the victims.” Guy glanced smilingly down the table for the approval he took for granted.

  “Whom do you speak for, Thorp?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, to me you sound more like the spokesman for His Imperial British Majesty than for President Taft.”

  Thorp reddened. “I happen to be a member of the legation that represents the government of the United States at the Court of Saint James’s. Does it offend you that I should try to understand and appreciate the great nation to which I have been sent?”

  “Not at all. But didn’t Bismarck say it was undesirable for his ambassadors to become too fond of the nations to which they were accredited? That’s a mistake your friends the British never make.”

  In the shocked silence that followed this Guy again beamed down the table. “I do believe I’ve just been insulted!” he exclaimed cheerfully.

  Mr. Stonor, who had been watching our little debate with the malice of a man who can enjoy even a protege’s discomfort, now decided I had gone far enough.

  “I think we’ll have coffee outside,” he announced to the hovering butler, for he took even a butler to the wilderness. Dorothy, her face pale with anger, hissed at me to remain when the others went out, and we faced each other under the biggest of the mooseheads.

  “Why are you so offensive to Guy? What has he ever done to you?”

  “I was trying to show you what a prig he is. You don’t know the man.”

  She gasped. “Look who’s talking! Did you ever lay eyes on him before today?”

  “Maybe I’m just perspicacious. Maybe I can simply see that you have too much life force to be matched with a man like that. Oh, I don’t mean to be too hard on him. I have no doubt he’s as brilliant as everyone says. And I’m sure he’d make a perfectly adequate husband for some little woman who’d be content to clap her hands and admire him all her life. But you! You don’t want to stand at the top of a marble stairway covered with diamonds and be called Mrs. Ambassadress, do you? Your business is living, not strutting.”

  She stared at me now with something like awe. In the centre of each dark eye was a tiny yellow beam of fascination. I almost laughed aloud. Horace was right! She was beautiful. Or might have been, with the right kind of love. Or maybe just with love.

  “And on what, pray, do you base this fantastic evaluation of me?”

  “On two or three meetings, why not? I have eyes and ears. Enough, anyway, to know that Thorp isn’t the man for you.”

  “And do you have one in mind?”


  It was really only then that it struck me, idiot that I was, that Maury Leonard himself might be a candidate for the heiress’s hand. Why not? What did her free soul (free, that is, except for the ball and chain that tied her so firmly to the paternal yard) care for money or lineage? No, no, she was honest through and through. But was I? Or was I enough of a sneak to see myself in the role of John Alden?

  “Horry, of course.”

  “Oh, Horry.” She turned abruptly away. “Horry and I have reached an understanding about that. And if you can’t be civil to Guy, I think you’d better leave.”

  “I’ll do my best!” I called after her retreating back.

  My tone had been joking, but my mind was seething with excitement. If I could aspire to such a woman as Dorothy Stonor, I would be in love with her! The heroes of legend who rescued princesses from dragons didn’t have to have known them for more than a minute to be in love. The nobility of the deed and the rank of the rescued victim were quite enough in themselves to guarantee a true romance. Chivalry was dead only if one thought so. A transit magnate could be a perfectly adequate dragon, and a Yale senior, even a Jewish one, a “par-fit gentil knight.” Or was I simply disguising my disloyalty to Horace? Had the unreality of Mr. Stonor’s palace-cabin in the wilderness converted Dorothy’s house party into a masquerade in which all moral rules were suspended?

  The following morning, Mr. Stonor, very much to my surprise, invited me to go fishing again. This time he allowed the guide, who was deaf, to do all the casting and pulling in while he simply gazed at the scenery. He had a pair of binoculars and said he was looking for a moose. But this did not long detain him from the serious topic he obviously wished to discuss.

  “You have made it very clear, Leonard, that you don’t approve of my choice of a son-in-law. I don’t of course admit that it’s any of your business, but I’m still interested in your reasons.”

  “My only question is whether he’s your daughter’s choice.”

  Having invited my confidence, he was in no position to resent it, nor did he in the least appear to. “She’s perfectly free to reject Thorp if she doesn’t fancy him. I can influence my Dorothy, but I should never try to force her. What have you against Thorp?”

  I hesitated. “You don’t think yourself, sir, that he’s a bit of an ass?”

  Mr. Stonor was imperturbable. “Because he finds the British Empire a force for world peace? But so it is, for the moment. Thorp is perfectly capable of visualizing that empire in tatters. You’re taken in by his polished manners. He knows how quickly things can change. He has a first-class mind and the temperament to take him anywhere he wants to go. It might interest you to know that he worked for me for ten years before going into the Foreign Service. He could run my business today.”

  “Is that what you want him for?”

  “Not entirely, no. But I need him to know how. I was the one who pushed him into the State Department. I want a son-in-law who’ll make a name for himself in public affairs and at the same time be able to keep an eye on the business. If he marries Dorothy, I’ll see to it that she inherits the controlling shares.”

  “How will your sons feel about that?”

  He didn’t bother to express his indifference to this except by a shrug that implied that his male heirs had no one to blame but themselves. “Most rich men are scared their daughters will be married for their money. But it’s the man who counts in a son-in-law, not the motive. Naturally a man as ambitious as Guy Thorp is not indifferent to the advantages of becoming my son-in-law. He shouldn’t be. I want Dorothy to marry a great man, and I think he has at least a chance of becoming that.”

  “What about her happiness?”

  “I think I can count on Guy for that. He knows that Dorothy is tense and high-strung and that she’ll need a lot of affection from her husband and absolute fidelity. It will always be to his interest to give her these, both for the comfort of his own household and for the use of her fortune, over which I shall leave her in complete control. Naturally it’s a gamble. What isn’t? But I have studied Guy with the greatest care and I believe him to be the sort of man who waxes generous with success. There are such.”

  “And with failure?”

  “He can always be shed. Marriage is no longer a life sentence.”

  I could not but be impressed at how closely he had worked it all out. I doubted, however, that Dorothy would ever shed a failure, however morose he became.

  “You say you’re willing to gamble, sir. But with Horace Aspinwall there’d be no gamble. He’d always love her and always be true.”

  “I’m willing to admit that. I like Horace. He’s a fine and amiable young man. But he will never achieve a first position. He will pick a specialty and be good at it. In the law, for example, he will become a respected partner of his firm, in charge of a minor department. He will never be the senior partner, never a judge or leader of the bar.”

  “How can you be so sure of that?”

  “Aren’t you?”

  I decided that his candor deserved mine. “Yes. But that can be a good life. Does Dorothy need so much more?”

  “Well, you see, I think she does.”

  “Mightn’t she one day, in the grandeur you plan for her, regret Horace Aspinwall and his simpler devotion?”

  “Are you really such a sentimentalist, Leonard? You surprise me. Yes, I think she may have occasional regrets. We all do when we waste time thinking about our past choices. But it would be better to regret the simple life, married to Guy, than the glittering one, married to Horace.”

  Really, the man was a fiend! “I see I’d better give this up,” I conceded, reaching for my rod.

  “One minute, Leonard. I’m not through with you yet.” His voice was sterner now. “I suspect you of flattering yourself that you have made your own impression on my daughter.”

  “Doesn’t every man make his own impression?”

  “Don’t fence with me, young man. You know just what I mean. And to some extent your self-flattery is justified. Dorothy likes you. Or at least she did until you took that cheap shot at Guy. But even that, in its way, impressed her, or she wouldn’t have got so angry.”

  “You surely don’t think I would betray my friend?”

  “Would it be a betrayal if his cause was already lost?”

  “Anyway, what chance would the likes of me have with a girl like Dorothy?”

  “You might have a chance if you could win my approval. But you can’t. It’s not that I don’t suspect that you’re going to make your way in this life. And a good way, too. But I don’t want a Jewish husband for Dorothy. That has nothing to do with prejudice, of which I am devoid. But socially, being a Jew is still a handicap, and I’m not looking for handicaps in the life I plan for Dorothy. You don’t stand a chance with me against you, and I think you know that. But I like you, and if you will go away today and stay away from Dorothy, I’ll give a boost to your career when the right time comes.”

  I stared. I was almost surprised when I heard my own question. “How?”

  “Do well in law school, and I’ll get you a job with my lawyers.”

  “In an all-Gentile firm?”

  “No, no, they have half a dozen Jewish partners. They have an international practice. That’s why it’s just the right place for you. An all-Jewish firm wouldn’t be broad enough, and an all-Gentile one might never make you a partner. Now of course you’re thinking: What if this old geezer dies while I’m still in law school? But I shall exact a moral commitment from my lawyers now. Don’t worry. I know I can count on them.”

  How could a man so intelligent really want his daughter to marry Guy Thorp? But who knew? Maybe he was right there too. I picked up my rod and cast.

  “What time does that little train leave, sir?”

  2

  My story, like The Winter’s Tale, seems to span two generations, though it is not one of crabbed jealousy redeemed in the lush springtime of a new youth. But if jealousy is not in it, envy is, or
at least the resentment that is cousin-german to envy. The very considerable worldly success that I enjoyed in the quarter century that followed my signing up with Hadley & Jerome (now Hadley, Jerome & Leonard) was only grudgingly recognized by Dorothy, by Gurdon, by (I’m sorry to say) the older partners of the firm and even by the usually generous-minded Horace. I have certainly never been a popular man. It is just as well that I have never trusted anyone but myself to forge my own way. I would have been a total failure in the ballot box.

  The years from 1911 to 1938 can be summarized. They represented my growth. What I am basically trying to understand is what seeds were planted in my college days and what they finally matured into three decades later. Like Chateaubriand in his memoirs beyond the tomb, I choose to speed up certain eras of my life and devote whole chapters to others. Sublime egotist though he was, he recognized that Napoleon was the principal actor in his own life story. Is it because I am a greater egotist that I allow no one to dislodge myself from that position, or only because there has been no Napoleon in my century?

  Horace and Gurdon both became clerks in Gurdon’s father’s small but distinguished law firm on Wall Street. On the death, shortly afterwards, in a single year of three of the senior partners, the firm was reorganized under the leadership of a great lawyer-statesman, enlisted largely through Gurdon’s shrewd politicizing, and became the nationally known institution it still is today. There was a fine place for Gurdon in the new partnership and a secure but far less brilliant one for Horace, who was encouraged to develop his own little specialty in a restricted field of corporate bonds where the reasonable hours and lack of tension seemed to accord with the needs of his nervous temperament.

  I made every effort to overcome Horace’s continuing resentment of me, but had it not been for Gurdon’s ugly explosion of temper when his cousin told him he was considering taking a fishing trip with me and his calling Horace the “Jew boy’s valet,” I doubt I should have succeeded. As it was, Horace and I had a good laugh when he related the details of this little spat, and our old friendship was renewed. And I think we would have enjoyed it to this day had not Dorothy come between us again.