The Scarlet Letters Read online

  No, that had to be avoided at all cost.

  He rose, walked a hundred paces and returned to his bench. There was a way out. What Harry and Vinnie had done together and what they would presumably continue to do, could only be made right by one thing: their marriage. Their sin would be successfully encapsulated by a union sanctioned by law. It would even be legitimized, as were babes born before wedlock by the nuptials of their parents. That Vinnie would be more than willing to wed her paramour he had no doubt from the ecstasies of her journal. And that Harry would consent to become the son-in-law of the senior partner…! Rod’s cynical shrug expressed his new opinion of his erstwhile friend. Ambrose Vollard need never know to what depths his beloved daughter had sunk. He would only have to face the fact, common enough among his acquaintance, that she had married twice.

  So he had only to dispose of himself to save both Ambrose and his firm. Suicide? Hardly. A search for his motive might follow, and heaven only knew what clues would be picked up. No, Rodman Jessup had to be removed from the picture by a method that would cast no shadow on any but himself. And there was really only one way to accomplish that.

  He left the park and called his secretary from a booth to tell her to inform his wife that he had been called suddenly out of town on business. And the secretary was to go to his apartment and pack a suitcase of his clothes and bring it to his club. All-efficient, she would do this well. Then he called a friend of Harry’s who was also a somewhat lesser one of his and Vinnie’s: Lila Fisk. Was she free by any chance to dine with him at the Colony Restaurant? She was a bit surprised, but yes, she was free, and a few hours later he faced her across a corner table at the costliest eatery in town, raising his cocktail glass to click it against hers in a silent toast.

  Raven-haired, alabaster pale, with a conspiratorial smile, rich and richly attired in black satin with large pearls, Lila Fisk was a plump but still radiant forty. She was also a hearty and genial divorcée who had been wed three times and had apparently retired from the matrimonial market to live entirely for pleasure. She was a great pal of Harry Hammersly’s, through whom she had come to know the Jessups. Vinnie, who was not usually partial to epicurean types, had recently taken to her. It was not hard now for Rod to understand why. Were they not sisters under the skin? He was also sufficiently aware that Lila found him physically attractive. He was not so unsophisticated as to be ignorant of the fact that a virtuous man was apt to act as a challenge to a woman like her.

  “Are you having a row with Vinnie?” she demanded.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “You’re not a man to ask a lady out without your wife unless you have a point to make. You want to get back at her for something.”

  “It couldn’t be because the man finds himself greatly attracted to the lady?”

  “Oh, it could be. But then he’d take her to a less conspicuous spot. That’s Arlina, the gossip columnist, over there. And don’t think she hasn’t already taken us in.”

  “Do you care?”

  “I don’t give a damn. But I want you to know what I know. And now let’s not spoil our evening with too many questions.”

  They talked, merrily enough, on other topics—she was an omnivorous reader, an avid theater goer and a baseball fan—and after dinner they went to her handsome Park Avenue apartment, where, after several drinks, they made what is sometimes called love. He was surprised how simple she made it and that it was not followed, in his case, by the least feeling of guilt. Yet she wouldn’t let him spend the night; she kicked him out at midnight, with the injunction, “If you want to make it up with Vinnie now, you’ll find it easier. Revenge will have cooled your anger.”

  But the last thing he was going to do was make anything up with Vinnie. He dressed and went to his club. How much, he wondered, did Lila know about Harry and Vinnie? He didn’t care enough, anyway, to ask her. She agreed to dine out with him twice more, including a visit to a nightclub where they were photographed together, but when he suggested that he move from his club into her apartment, she was profoundly shocked.

  “Are you out of your mind? Nobody today objects to an affair, if it’s carried on with some discretion, but women my age don’t live with men. Not in society, anyway. Not yet. Are you trying to ruin what shred of reputation I have left?”

  “What’s wrong with our living together?”

  “What’s wrong? What’s right! Do you want to drive Vinnie into divorcing you for adultery? Oh, my God, maybe that’s just what you do want! You’re a lunatic, Rodman Jessup! Go home to your club, or wherever you hang out, and don’t come near me again until you’ve learned to act like a gentleman!”

  The unusual thing about the next three months was that not once, even through the divorce proceedings and the negotiations following his resignation from the firm, did Rod have a word of direct communication with his wife or her father or Harry Hammersly. It took firmness on his part, but he arranged it. Vollard Kaye always sent a neutral partner to deal with him.

  8

  SOME WEEKS AFTER Harry Hammersly’s interview with Ambrose Vollard and their decision to sue Rodney in New York, Harry sat in his office, the door closed, contrary to the usual Vollard Kaye policy, having told his pretty secretary, Miss Peltz, that he would take no calls before his meeting with Jack Owens, the young partner who would be doing the legwork in the Jessup case. He had spent a good part of such little spare time as he had, musing about the matter. What the devil had brought about such a revolution in the conduct, and apparently in the character, of Vinnie’s husband? Could he have discovered her affair? But in that case why would he ape her and not denounce her? And jettison his whole law career into the bargain? And alienate her father, whom he had always professed to adore? It couldn’t be passion, for no man, not even one as naive as Rod, could feel passion for so easy a lay as Lila Fisk. And besides, Owens had reported that he wasn’t seeing her now.

  Harry’s eyes roamed restlessly over the vivid decorations of his chamber: the Toulouse-Lautrec poster of Yvette Guilbert, the Mucha one of Sarah Bernhardt as Lorenzaccio, the varnished mahogany bookcase with its gleamingly new law reports, the Persian carpet and the marble-topped Renaissance table-desk with its silver appointments in parallel rows, devoid of papers or other clutter, his way of presenting a client with the stripped cleanness of his total attention. How different from the mess of files and printed drafts that covered Rod’s desk, stacked around large photographs of his daughters hugging spaniels!

  Had he always resented Rod? Was it because he had once liked him too much? But surely one could overemphasize such things. Yes, he had such a thing about Rod at age fourteen—wasn’t that a typical stage in a boy’s sexual development? Look at the English public schools, for Pete’s sake! When those Brits grew up they married and conquered the world. And hadn’t he and Rod become the best of friends after his own tastes had turned to the other sex? Yes, but. But what? Why was he always cursed with this habit of being honest with himself? Yet there it was, his jealousy of Rod’s looks, Rod’s boasted ethics, Rod’s so-called knight-errantry and his easy success with everything and everybody. Was all that the real reason behind his delight in being sucked off by Rod’s wife?

  But that would only be if he had wanted Rod to know. And he hadn’t; he had taken the greatest precautions that Rod shouldn’t know. And he wasn’t the sort of man who would seduce a woman solely to satisfy an injured ego; he cared about Vinnie and giving her a fuller life. He might have been a bit of a shit, but he was also the good guy that many people liked and esteemed. He hadn’t wanted to break up a marriage. On the contrary, he had been all for the status quo. He had wanted everyone to go on as they were.

  No, it was Rod who had broken things up. It was Rod who had left the firm. And if he had left a vacancy both in the firm and in the senior partner’s family that Harry Hammersly could properly and legitimately fill, would it not be folly and arrant sentimentality for Harry Hammersly not to step forward and play his hand in every way that hi
s trumps and honors could win? Wasn’t Rod, for that matter, as much of a shit himself? He and his Lila Fisk! Ugh!

  His telephone purred. “I’m sorry, Mr. Hammersly, but your mother’s on the phone. She says it’s important.”

  “Yes, Ma?” he barked into the instrument.

  “Darling, you know that Boston trust I told you about? The one where the income is just piled up and might make your friend Vinnie rich one day? Well, I’ve just heard, from an impeccable Boston source, my cousin Lily Cole, that the second and final measuring life—if that’s what you call it—old Mrs. Foxy Harrison, has just had another bad stroke.”

  “Ma! I hope you didn’t bring me into your discussion. In anyway!”

  “Of course not. You can trust your old mater.”

  Which he was not about to do, though Gwendolyn Hammersly could be a valuable informant. She had long been anxious to see her only child and son married, but well married, and she had first regarded Vinnie, of whose affair with him she was cognizant, as an impediment. But with the prospect of Vinnie’s being freed from wedlock she had turned her realistic attention to the latter’s qualifications as a bride for what seemed a fatally attracted son, and she was coming to the conclusion that they were not so bad.

  SHE AND PIERRE, Harry’s father, had burst in on Harry on the very evening of the day when the news broke about Rod’s escapade. They had been dressed as usual in all their finery for one of their ceaseless evening engagements, but had made time to stop by his apartment for a cocktail, which in the paternal case was always more than one.

  “I was never so surprised in my life!” his mother had exclaimed. “I thought that shoe was on the other foot, if you know what I mean.”

  “Mother, hush up! Please!”

  “What’s wrong?” She glanced towards the bedroom door. “Have you got someone hidden in there, you naughty boy?”

  There was nothing Harry could do about his parents. There never had been. Not young when they had married and produced him, they were still possessed of outstanding looks, he, gray and straight and slick, she, blond and slim and willowy, both attired as only the rich should be. As was often said about them, “The one thing you can’t believe is that they have no money.” Of old but impoverished families, it had been assumed by the New York society of 1915 that they would trade their beauty and lineage at the altar for fortunes, but when instead they joined their poverties and he became a war hero in the Lafayette Escadrille, they were for a time a romantic legend. Alas, this had hardly survived the ensuing decades of gambling, borrowing and drinking, in his case, and in hers the dubious chaperonage of indiscreet debutantes, the cadging of weekend invitations and the sponsorship of inferior beauty aids.

  Yet some of it, miraculously, had. There were still those, if a diminishing number, who stood by the “charming Hammerslys.” And Harry was smart enough to perceive that if everybody knew about his parents, his parents still knew everybody. And they could still do something for him.

  And he loved them, too, in his own way. He even helped them out financially from time to time, but only when things were really desperate. He knew there was no changing their ways.

  “And how is dear Vinnie taking this?” his mother had asked. Her tone was so solicitous that one might have thought she really cared. Vinnie had seen Gwendolyn Hammersly on many occasions with Harry, and, as Harry well knew, thoroughly disliked her, but Gwendolyn was little concerned with likes and dislikes. The world was a stage, and people acted their little parts. “Is it true there’s going to be a divorce, right here in New York?”

  “Why ask me, Ma? Haven’t you checked out all the facts?”

  “And it’s so, then, that you’re handling the case?”

  “Better watch your step, my boy.” This came from Pierre Hammersly, nursing a dark drink by the window from which he gazed vacantly over Harry’s yard. “Representing a lovely lady in distress may lead to deeper commitments. Otis Sterne married Mrs. Hoops after getting her divorce from Jim. Same thing happened with the Ulricks.”

  “Was that such a bad thing?” Harry inquired.

  “Well, it’s true that the lawyer in each case got his ass in a tub of butter.”

  “Pierre, your language!”

  “Oh, come off it, Gwen. I’ve heard you use that expression.”

  “But not before our dear boy here.” She turned to Harry. “Your father does have a point, anyway. When such a good friend of yours as Vinnie becomes free, there’s bound to be speculation as to what you two will do about it. Now don’t interrupt, darling, I’m just speculating. You will, of course, do just what you want. You always have, and it’s stood you, on the whole, in good stead. All I’m doing is trying to make the picture clear to you. And I think I can supply a few facts that will interest you. All right?”

  Harry had nodded. He knew what a gossip she was, but he also knew that she rarely spoke without a basis of fact. Her chatter on occasion could rise to the level of military intelligence.

  “We have to give some thought as to what Vinnie’s expectations are,” his mother began. “I know she has something of her own that her parents have settled on her.”

  “Oh yes. But it’s no fortune.” Harry laughed. “Dr. Johnson said of a dinner that it was well enough but not one to ask a man to. Vinnie’s fortune is hardly one to marry for.”

  “And I suppose her father will leave her something.”

  “Don’t count too much on that.” Pierre now came from the window to add his bit to the discussion. “It’s not like the old days when lawyers like William Nelson Cromwell and Francis Stetson were paid in clients’ stock and made fortunes. But I daresay Mrs. Vollard will cut up well. Those Bostonians always have more than you think.”

  “But she has too many children, Pierre. Now listen to me, both of you. There’s something you don’t know, either of you. I learned about it today, from Lily Cole. Have you heard about the Waldo trust?” Her listeners shook their heads. “Well, it was set up by a crazy old bachelor great-uncle of Mrs. Vollard’s who hated everybody in his family but had hopes for their posterity. He measured it by the two youngest lives among his nephews and nieces and provided that the income should be accumulated. It has been invested and reinvested for decades and has apparently reached a fabulous figure. When it breaks, which can’t be too far off now, it gets divided among a host of relatives, but it’s still so big that Vinnie’s share should be a couple of million!”

  Harry had listened to her carefully. He knew that such a trust was quite possible under Massachusetts law, and the eccentricity of the scheme fitted well with many Boston legends.

  “Thank you, Ma. And now maybe you’d better be getting on to your party.”

  He didn’t have to tell her how interested he was. She was only too well aware of that. They were indeed birds of a feather. The next day he had telephoned a friend in a Boston firm and asked him about the Waldo trust. The friend did not know all the details but he confirmed its existence and the general knowledge that many Waldos and Shattucks and Lowells expected to be one day enriched by it. That was all Harry needed to know. To seek to know more might seem too calculating—even to himself.

  For he was genuinely fond of Vinnie. How could he not be? She had made him an amusing, compliant and sexually satisfying mistress. Why should she not make him an equally good wife? Would it hurt that she should also provide wealth and social advantage? Wasn’t it in everybody’s best interest? Wasn’t it in hers? Was she, an abandoned wife and perhaps herself the subject of detrimental anecdotes, in any position to expect a better match than himself, the amusing, the popular, the brilliant Harry Hammersly? For that, laugh who may, was what he was!

  MISS PELTZ CALLED AGAIN; Jack Owens was there, a very grave and dedicated young lawyer, the youngest indeed of the partners, and chosen by Harry for this case as the one who knew Rod the least.

  “I’ve been to see Jessup at his club,” he told Harry. “And very cooperative I found him. He insists that he will represent himself i
n any proceedings we take, and that he will offer no defense to a charge of adultery. He, of course, wishes to know what property demands we will make of him.”

  “Did he say anything about his job prospects?”

  “Only that he’s had a couple of offers already.”

  “I don’t doubt that.”

  “And that he hopes to be able to contribute substantially to the support of his two daughters.”

  “He will have every opportunity.”

  “And he hopes to have the usual visitation rights with the children.”

  “No trouble about that. We have no complaints about him as a father.”

  Owens looked faintly surprised. “Even considering the company he’s keeping?”

  “We understand he’s not keeping any company.”

  “Does that mean we should work for a reconciliation?”

  “In no way.”

  “Then there’s only left the question of alimony.”

  “Mrs. Jessup will take no alimony.”

  Owens frowned and paused a moment before asking, “Shouldn’t we be a bit afraid of that?”

  “Afraid? Why?”

  “That will look … some people might say anyway … that she gave him cause for what he did?”

  Harry tightened his lips. How much did Owens know? Did the whole office know? Miss Peltz, he knew, was a great gossip, and she might well have smelled him out. And then there was always his dear Mama! But he reminded himself that what people heard or thought they heard didn’t really matter, for they always made up their own minds on what they chose to believe, and one could do little to alter their conclusions, true or false. One just had to keep going on what at least looked like a consistent track.