Watchfires (27 page)

"I think he might be an adequate caretaker until we have had the opportunity to nominate and elect President Grant," Dexter observed tactfully.

"We mustn't let the rebels win in the White House the war they lost in the field!" cried Charley, echoing what he had heard Dexter say so many times in the office.

Dexter frowned at the violence of his cousin's tone. There was no doubt that Charley was beginning to drink again. It had taken a war to cure him once. What cataclysm would be needed to stop him a second time?

"These are
solemn
times, Mr. Handy," Evarts now affirmed. "But I am not convinced that they justify so drastic a remedy as impeachment."

"What is our alternative?" Dexter asked him. "It seems to me that we must strike while our iron is still hot. Proper Republican sentiment is slackening everywhere. People are getting sick and tired of Southern problems. If Johnson has his way for the rest of this year, we may never be able to make the rebel states accept negro suffrage. They claim the negro is illiterate. Well, whose fault is that? Let them educate him!"

"With an army on their back?"

It was David Ullman who had asked this. There was a gasp of indignation in the group at so brazen a note of dissent, and from a Jew, too! Ullman stood, his hand folded on his chest, erect, superior, supercilious, addressing his glance solely to his venerable host, for all the world as if he had been the guest of honor and not one who had just recently been admitted to the privileged gathering at Number 417. "I suggest," he continued in the same bold fashion, "that we are still under—and never have been out from under—a constitution that forbids any combination of states to impose military rule on the others. And what is more, I am rash enough to believe that this is the practical as well as the constitutional answer to our problem. A confederacy that had the determination and the guts to hold off opponents twice as populous and many times as rich, will yield more easily to persuasion than to bayonets."

Dexter, glancing from face to face in the listening group, had the distinct impression that if a joint response could have have been articulated, it would have been, "If you don't like this country, Ullman, why don't you go back to Hamburg?" The only exception was Evarts, who now struck Dexter as tending to reconsider just how much Republican loyalties might require of him.

"I wonder if you, as a lawyer, Dexter," Evarts remarked, ignoring the incendiary tendency of Ullman's speech, "won't agree with me that what is going on in Washington is a rather dangerous bid by one branch of our government to dominate the other two."

"But if Congress is simply filling the vacuum created by the refusal of the chief executive to carry out its mandate?" Dexter protested. He was beginning to feel that dangerous tingle in the back of his neck. He bit his lip in the effort to remind himself that he must not lose his temper in an argument with a man who never lost his. "Just as Mr. Lincoln had to suspend habeas corpus, so we may have to suspend states' rights. And to rid ourselves of a President who refuses to do so!"

There were murmurs of "Hear, hear," but Evarts glacially shrugged. "It seems to me that you are begging my question," he retorted.

"Well, I guess Evarts isn't going to join in our toast to President Wade," Mr. Handy remarked with a snort. "Nor you, either, Ullman. But what about the rest of you fellows? I'd rather drink to a new President than to an impeachment. Somehow the latter doesn't seem quite the right note for New Year's Day, no matter how much we may be for it. So no, I shall
not
propose that we drink to the impeachment of poor Mr. Lincoln."

Embarrassed glances were exchanged.

"My father-in-law meant to say Mr. Johnson," Dexter observed quietly.

"What's that?" Mr. Handy asked testily. "I think I know who the President of the United States is. Even if he's a rail-splitter or a tailor."

"You meant to say Andrew Johnson, sir," Dexter insisted politely. "Not Abraham Lincoln."

"Johnson, of course. Didn't I say Johnson?"

"A mere slip of the tongue, sir."

"I wonder if it was," volunteered the ever-objectionable Ullman. "I wonder if a great deal of the sentiment against Johnson isn't simply a hangover from what people felt about Lincoln. And never dared express."

"I bow to nobody, sir, in my reverence for our martyred President," Mr. Handy said severely, and David Ullman, with an impudent little bow, moved across the room to join his wife.

Mr. Handy took his son-in-law by the elbow and propelled him down the gallery to where Jo was standing by the punch bowl, indulging as he went in a series of
ad hominem
arguments.

"The trouble with Evarts is that he can never stop being a lawyer. He's not like you, dear boy. He doesn't know that there is a time to be disputatious and a time to be sincere. I daresay that Evarts is at heart a good Republican and basically on the side of the angels, but he can't resist taking the opposite side of an argument, just to show the room how smart he is. One of these days that habit of his will get him into serious trouble—mark my words. He doesn't even mind siding against his friends with a man like Ullman. Now, of course, I know Ullman is your brother-in-law, but you and I can still agree, I hope, that he isn't even a poor pretense of a gentleman. I only asked him here today because he's married to your sister."

Dexter did not bother to point out that his relationship with David Ullman had lasted for twenty-five years and that the latter's recent profitable deals with Mr. Handy's bank were much more likely the cause for his belated invitation to Number 417. He turned to Jo Handy as the old man stepped away to greet his mother. Mrs. Fairchild, in black beads and black sequins, small and tense, had been watching her host eagerly for a chance to pounce.

"Here is Rosalie's 'list,' whatever it is," Dexter said to Jo, placing an envelope in her hand. "I hope you two are not plotting a revolution."

"It's a list of people we can count on at the meeting at Mr. Cranberry's."

"Count on?"

Jo glanced at her father to be sure he was out of hearing. "You'll see," she said mysteriously. "You're coming, aren't you?"

Dexter felt a sudden depression at his sense of female conspiracy. Could nothing be as it used to be? "Your father seems in fine fettle," he observed, with a touch of belligerence.

"Oh, he gets on very well. Only he forgets things. I have to write everything down. And it's becoming a bit difficult for me to secure all the invitations he expects. He can't believe he's not as popular as he was ten years ago. But there does come a point when people are less keen to invite an old gentleman to dinner who forgets his hostess' name and dribbles soup down his shirt front."

Dexter was distressed by the candor of this evaluation. Jo was beyond praise as her father's companion and household manager, but hadn't it been a finer, more "old Roman" day when the vestals had worshipped at the shrine to which they ministered?

Mr. Handy turned now to include Dexter and Jo in his talk with Mrs. Fairchild. "I was just telling your mother, Dexter, that my spies inform me that Fred's courting old Vanderbilt's niece. You needn't look so startled. If I waited for you and Rosalie to tell me the family gossip! Of course, some years back..." here the old man lowered his voice and winked slyly at Mrs. Fairchild—"such a connection would not have been considered very advantageous. Except, of course, to the Vanderbilts. But we must keep up with the times. Oh, yes! Do you know that story about the daughter of Madame de Sévigné who found herself obliged to replenish the family coffers by marrying her son to the heiress of a wealthy farmer? She went about the court telling people that old fields need manuring!" Even Mr. Handy seemed now to recognize that this was going rather far. "Not, of course, that I mean to bring the Bristows or Vanderbilts into so odious a comparison. But you see what I mean."

"Perfectly." Mrs. Fairchild sounded grim. She placed a small, black-gloved hand on her son's arm. "Dexter, I want to talk to you."

He followed his mother to the ottoman in the center of the room. Clasping her hands together and thumping them against her knees, she made no effort to pretend to anyone watching that they were having a party conversation.

"Then it's true what I've heard about the Bristow girl! She won't do at all. She's not the thing."

"I understand she's charming."

"They always are. But the mother's vulgar and the father's a charlatan. And don't count on the great-uncle. Vanderbilt has a dozen children of his own without worrying about grand-nieces. They say it'll all go to the eldest son, anyway. He wants to establish a dynasty."

"Maybe Fred doesn't care about the money."

"I thought that was exactly what he
did
care about!"

"Let us at least give him the benefit of a doubt. He cares about making it, not marrying it."

His mother shrugged, half scornfully. "Those are male distinctions. Money is money to us women. All I can do is warn you. It's bad enough to marry a parvenue when you get a bundle of greenbacks. But to marry one with nothing ... well, what are we coming to?"

"Don't you think Fred can look after himself?"

"Of course not! No man understands how society operates. A man expects rules, and there are no rules. But there are partialities and prejudices, and Fred had better learn about them."

"All I can say, then, is you'd better tell him yourself. He won't listen to me."

"Will Rosalie listen to you?"

"On the subject of Fred?"

"No, on the subject of
herself.
For that's my second little New Year's offering, dear."

Dexter sighed. "All right, Mother. Let's get it over with."

"Rosalie is going entirely too far with her women's rights. There may be some of us who support a betterment of the condition of women in factories. And there are even those who would like to see a few women in the professions. After all, there's no reason why
all
the old maids should have to look after aged parents, like poor Joanna. But this business of votes is going too far. Rosalie is counting on the general letting down of standards in the war. She thinks a woman can get away with anything today. But she's wrong! Things are beginning to swing back. I've heard considerable talk that Rosalie's going too far!"

The mere idea of people being down on Rosalie took Dexter back at once to his old vision of her, as somehow vulnerable, sitting at the breakfast table in that pink dressing gown with her hair undone. His heart ached with all his old need to protect her. But then he recalled her sharpness of that morning, not unlike his mother's sharpness of this afternoon. Did the women in one's family have nothing better to do than cut one down to size? What did it profit a man if he gained the whole world and lost his domestic peace? And what was left
now
of the matutinal glow of being Dexter Fairchild, citizen of note?

"Maybe it won't be so bad if things do swing back a bit," he muttered. "Maybe it would be the best thing for Rosalie herself."

R
OSALIE AND
J
O
were riding down to Lafayette Street in Mr. Handy's landau to attend a meeting of the New York Committee of the American Equal Rights Association at Silas Cranberry's marble Corinthian-columned mansion.

"I hate going there," Rosalie observed bleakly. "I hate the man, and I hate his vulgar house."

"Is Dexter coming?" Jo ignored, as usual, her sister's intense reaction.

"He says he will."

"And will he support us?"

"It's asking quite a lot. Mr. Cranberry became a client of his after that matter of the rest homes for soldiers. A very important client."

"But surely Dexter is in a position not to have to kowtow to clients."

"All lawyers seem to have to kowtow to clients," Rosalie responded with a sigh. "Sometimes I think the more successful a man is, the more he has to kowtow. We have nothing in New York like the indomitable British peer. Or the proud old Southern planter, for that matter."

"You know, Rosalie, you strike me as almost sympathetic to Southerners these days. Must you always be swimming against the current?"

"I guess I have a weakness for lost causes. I hated Southerners when they had slaves. But now ... well, they strike me as showing a rather forlorn dignity. It's more attractive than what I see in Papa's friends. And Dexter's." But she pulled herself up at this. "No, I mustn't be down on Dexter. It's very good of him to come today. I'm just afraid he'll be horrified."

"If Cranberry is intractable?"

"If the meeting is intractable."

"Will you really walk out?"

"Yes! And hope and pray that every woman in the room will follow!"

Jo considered this a moment. "Well, I will, anyway."

"Oh, I count on
you.
"

"And maybe enough others will. To form a women's movement. If that's what we really want."

"It's the only way we'll ever get anything done."

"It doesn't scare you a bit?"

"Do you know something, Jo? Do you remember what you told me that day on the
Pierce
when we heard the cannon fire of the two ironclads? You said you weren't afraid. That you actually liked it! Well, that's the way I feel now. When I think of the frustrations of my life! The things I've started and never finished. The underground railway and the nursing and now this." She stopped suddenly as she realized that Jo, too, had been involved in these things, without even the cloudy satisfaction of a home and two sons, and that Jo bore her lot with patience and equanimity. "Oh, my dear, look who I'm talking to! But maybe you have the same feeling. That it would be exhilarating to be out in the open, to spit in the eye of the world! There isn't that much time left, after all. We've passed fifty..."

"But that was only a week ago for you."

"Still, I'm there, and what a marker it is! I'd like to feel there's time for one good job really well done. Would you join me?"

"I don't think I can leave Papa. It would hardly do to walk out of one job just to do another, would it? But you're not going to emancipate women in a day. And Papa won't live forever."