The Scarlet Letters (21 page)

"For you to enjoy watching. Shame on you, Ambrose. I never heard anything so selfish. Maybe I'd better speak to Rod myself."

"Stay out of it, Hetty. It's no longer really your or my affair."

"And it wouldn't do any good, either, I suppose. When Rod gets his teeth into something there's no letting go."

"You and I belong to the past, my dear. And I like to think a glorious one. Even if that's only fancy. Shall I take you out for a very good lunch?"

But she knew how much he craved the table reserved daily for any Vollard partners who cared to join it at his lunch club and firmly took her departure.

In the reception hall a man hurried after her and caught her by the elbow. It was a very distraught-looking Rod.

"Hetty, where are you going?"

"Home, dear boy."

"Not till you've lunched with me!"

"Rod, I'm sorry. I can't."

"Please!"

"No!"

"For God's sake, Hetty!"

To her horror he dropped to his knees. Right there, in the august reception area, before the astonished girl at the main desk and the gaping office boys.

"Rod, get up! All right. Let's get out of here!"

He jumped to his feet and guided her to the elevator. After a five-minute walk, in which a severe silence was maintained, they faced each other over a booth table in the nearest restaurant.

"I'm sure Ambrose has told you our problem," he began.

"He has told me
your
problem."

"You don't see it as ours? As yours and mine? As the firm's?"

"Well, I see it as more particularly yours. Because you're making it so. Perhaps because you even want to make it so."

"You sound like Jane." Rod's eyes seemed desperately to plead his cause. "She's even threatening to leave me!"

"Do you want her to?"

"Oh, Hetty! How can you say that? You, of all people."

"Because, as I see it, everything is entirely in your control. If you don't put things back in order, it must be because you wish the mess to remain."

"Oh, you mean let Harry fix it all up."

"Just so."

"Or cover it all up. Abet a crime, is that it?"

"Not at all. Rectify an error."

"Which he may repeat at will in the future?"

"He won't. Don't worry. He may lack scruples but he's no fool. Besides, you'll have old Tilley to keep an eye on him. You can live with Harry, Rod. We all have."

"And with the kind of firm he's turned Ambrose's old one into?"

"You have so far. And is it really so different from what it was?"

"Oh, Hetty!" he exclaimed again.

"You forget, my dear, that I grew up in a time when insider trading was a coveted privilege and not a crime. When the maneuvering of stock prices for the benefit of a favored few was considered good business and not a fraud on the public. And where monopoly was God and the Morgan partners his apostles. I learned that morals change with the weather. You may not like Harry, but at least he knows how to find happiness."

"Spare me his way!"

"It has indeed been spared you, poor boy. You are a genius at cultivating your own misfortune." She reached a hand over to pat his. "Don't lose Jane, whatever you do."

Tears sprang up in his eyes. "Hetty, what's wrong with me?"

"Well, perhaps I should start by telling you that I always knew why you started that business with Mrs. Fisk. You knew all about Vinnie and Harry, didn't you?"

"How in God's name did you know that?"

"It was the only thing that made it all add up."

"And did you tell them? Did you tell Ambrose?"

"I didn't tell a soul. I didn't see it was any of their business. They had their own principles or life styles or whatever you want to call it. They could work it out for themselves."

"And have they? Vinnie and Harry?"

"I think so. In their own way. Vinnie finally faced—what she must have always suspected—that she had been thoroughly used. Now she's much less subservient. She knows that if Harry doesn't give her everything she wants, she can do him a lot of damage. And Harry knows that. As I say, he's no fool. Besides, he still has something of a physical hold over Vinnie. She's a passionate woman, that child of mine, and she hasn't got any prettier with increased avoirdupois. If she had to get another man today, she'd have to buy one."

Rod looked as shocked as he undoubtedly was. "I take it you're not much drawn to your son-in-law."

"Drawn to him? I detest him."

"Is he aware of that?"

"Oh, he misses nothing. But he's not afraid I'll do anything to harm him. He's smart enough to know that people like me, who have no reserves in their thinking, are the opposite in their acting. They don't care to rock boats. Perhaps because truth is enough for them without always seeking to establish it. Or is it because they see how often action is futile? If they know that thought at all, they also know how little it's worth."

"So if everything's pretty much the same today as it was yesterday the only difference is that now there may be less hypocrisy?"

"There's certainly less of it. Indeed, I wonder at times if there's any of it left. And I must admit I miss it. Justice Holmes said once that the sight of heroism bred a faith in heroism. And I don't see much heroism in the world about me."

"Are you losing your faith in it? Harry used to proclaim that he believed in no absolute moral rules. That there was only taste, and that good taste was what kept people from sordid crimes like murder and robbery."

"I had the good taste, anyway, to see little good in Harry. And I prefer the old Rod Jessup to the new."

"And what was the old Rod Jessup?"

"A proud, stiff, idealistic puritan right out of the pages of Nathaniel Hawthorne!"

"And an anachronism."

"But such a pretty one. Leave me to my memories. They're all I've got." And she turned to the menu.

"Let's have a drink first, Hetty. To some kind of synthesis between the old and the new Rod. I'll make it up with Harry. And of course I'll call Jane." He signaled to a waiter. "And there's something else. Something that came over me last night when I was debating what I'd do with myself if the firm really broke up. I decided that if I went on with the takeover business I'd only represent defendants! How does that strike you as a move forward in legal ethics?"

Hetty decided not to reply to this until their cocktails arrived, and after she had drunk hers, not to reply at all except in a gracious affirmative. She had learned enough about his practice to know that the defense used just as many dirty tricks as the offense, but she was warned by something (a good angel appearing in her customarily unwelcoming sky?) to hold her tongue. She was in the healthful process of saving her beloved ex-son-in-law, and she could hardly expect to take more than one or two steps at a time. As it was, she had averted Armageddon.