Watchfires (29 page)

Selby, who knew that his grandfather had unexpected liberalities and was within the social reach of the Bristows, was also aware that his aunt Lily would not go to their house to ransom the life of a kidnapped child. But it was not kind to acknowledge such things, even by implication.

"I can't imagine why any member of my family wouldn't be tickled pink to be asked to a lovely party like this."

"Really? But Mrs. Van Rensselaer is supposed to be so exclusive!"

Selby's pleasant smile concealed his wince. How could the woman be so vulgar? And yet, though totally devoid of imagination or humor, she had a brain; she was not Vanderbilt's niece for nothing. Selby was sure that she could have drawn an inventory of every piece of tangible personal property in that house and given him the exact market value of each. Why had fate subjected her to the ignominy of playing the one game at which she could never succeed? And the one game her failure at which she would never comprehend?

"Well, I guess everybody likes to think of himself as exclusive," he observed mildly. "But it's only a kind of coyness, don't you think? Aunt Lily's probably wondering what she can have done not to be invited by the Bristows."

"If I believed
that
" exclaimed his literal-minded hostess, but then even she penetrated his game. "Oh, you young men! There's no getting you to take things seriously."

He took advantage of the amiability of her tone to turn his attention to her husband. Seth Bristow, sixty and bald, was much older than his wife. He had small, watery blue eyes, a crooked nose, thick, pale lips that seemed to be always parted, a soft, hollow voice and bad breath.

"We want you to go on the Erie sleeper to Buffalo," he told Selby, moving at once and without the least apology, to business. "I hear they're taking a substantial overload. And that they missed two stops on the Petauket run. Weren't you on that?"

Selby explained that he was not. Mr. Bristow never praised and never condemned; he simply pointed out deficiencies as he found them. He was the dryest man Selby had ever encountered; he seemed to regard the faintest intrusion of a non-business-related subject, at any time of the day or night, or in any place, as a lapse of taste, almost like a breaking of wind. Selby, intrigued, had tried to see if there were not one other subject on which Bristow could be drawn, but he had found none. Man to him existed only to buy, sell and make a profit. Seth Bristow was like a character in a restoration comedy who had no qualities beyond those suggested by his name; he might have been a "Mr. Shortsale" or a "Mr. Put-call." And yet, for all of this, he was supposed to be financially shaky, and it was rumored that Vanderbilt knew that he sometimes traded against him. It was only on the tenuous relationship of marriage to a disliked niece, and possibly because treason amused the Commodore, that the broker was tolerated at all.

Selby, who cared little for his job and less for his host, moved away to the buffet, where he was disgusted to find neither wine nor spirits, but only a pale lemon punch. He reflected how tough a religious prejudice must be when a social ambition as strong as Mrs. Bristow's had to be thwarted by it. Old Seth let his Presbyterian god slumber all week, but he awakened him on Sunday, in time to mar his wife's festivities. Even the Commodore would not be able to get a drink!

And the Commodore had now arrived. The forty or more guests in the chamber made no secret of what was almost their obeisance when the great man, tall, broad-shouldered, white-haired, imposing, appeared in the parlor doorway, wearing what seemed to be the same frock coat whose marble replica adorned his famous statue by de Groot over the portal to the Hudson River freight dock in St. John's Park. All general conversation ceased as the hostess nervously led her uncle among the guests, half of whom, Selby guessed, were directly or indirectly his employees. The gossip at Bristow & Mayer had been that Vanderbilt would go to Mrs. Bristow's and to half a dozen other houses on Sunday afternoon, to demonstrate his imperturbability in the midst of the Erie crisis. Erie had hit 81 the day before, and the city was close to panic.

What a tribe, Selby reflected, and what a prophet! These be thy gods, O Israel! What could he do with this world in which he found himself? He could not love it, like Fred. He could not despise it, like his mother. He had made up his mind he could not paint it. Could he write about it, satirize it? Dickens had torn such a world apart in
Our Mutual Friend.
But Dickens had hated the Veneerings, and Selby could not find it in his heart to hate even the Bristows. He thought that he might want, in some vague sentimental fashion, to "save" them, and it was perfectly manifest that they had no desire to be saved.

Putting his hands in his pockets, he reviewed his situation. He enjoyed his job well enough; he liked racketing about the state, and he found time, as always, to talk to people in bars. But the job was temporary. One could not spy on Erie forever. Indeed, if the Commodore won his stock battle, the spy would be idle again. He supposed that he could always sell stocks and bonds, like Fred, but he was sure he would hate it. There was also his mother's suffrage work, or the political reform movement starting up in Boston, but Selby inclined to the opinion that the times were premature for both. It seemed futile even to try to make a start until the public mind, now sick of idealism and avid for industrial expansion, should swing around a bit. Oh, a swing would come; it was bound to come. But what could one do while two-thirds of the nation seemed concentrated on hounding out of office a President who was guilty of nothing but trying to perform his constitutional duties?

"Do you remember this young man, Uncle Corneel?" Mrs. Bristow was saying. The honored guest, to whose arm his hostess was clinging, had paused before Selby. "He's Fred Fairchild's brother."

Vanderbilt grunted and gave Selby an appraising stare. "You work for Bristow, too, young fella?"

"More or less, sir."

"I reckon that ain't quite enough."

"Or else too much. I was just thinking, Mr. Vanderbilt. What can a young man do to become quickly rich?"

"Really, Mr. Fairchild," Mrs. Bristow gasped. "I can't have my uncle bothered with such..."

"Oh, be quiet, Rosalinda. I like a young man to speak his mind. Tell me, sonny. You got any money?"

"A little, sir."

"Well, buy all the Central stock you can git your hands on. You can't go wrong."

"But isn't the profit pretty well out of that, sir? After all,
you
got there first."

Vanderbilt chuckled. "You're like all the young men. You ask for advice, and then you give it."

"No, sir, I'm sincerely humble. Do you mean the little guy can't do better than follow the great one?"

"Well, I'll tell you this, my friend. Half the fortunes in this world were made in businesses after the so-called smart investors thought it was too late to buy in. The big men don't take chances. It's the pioneer who goes broke. I didn't go into steam until I knew it was safe. Same thing in rails."

"But I suppose if one rides a great man's shoulders, one must know when to get off." Selby had deduced that Vanderbilt was the better type of bully, the kind that savored boldness.

"Yes, you must have a nose for Waterloo," the Commodore replied with another chuckle. "A lot of people thought mine had come yesterday. A lot of people were wrong."

"I'll buy Central tomorrow, sir."

"Never tell anyone what you're going to do. Just go ahead and do it. Come and see me any time, young man. You're a grandson of old Handy, ain't you? We'll try not to hold that against you!"

And with a high cackle the lord of Central moved on. Selby crossed the room now to join a young lady, some twenty years of age, who had been watching their colloquy. She had long, smooth dark hair, parted in the middle, and black, bright eyes in a pale face of almost too regular features. She was dressed in a sober dark red, like the room. It might have been protective coloration. But anyone could see that Elmira Bristow was a very determined young lady. What did she need to be protected against?

"I like your great-uncle, Ellie," Selby observed, when he was beside her. "And what's more, I think he liked me."

"What an honor!"

"You don't consider it one?"

"Should I?"

"You don't like your Uncle Corneel?"

"I hate him."

Selby, who always amused himself with Fred's passionate little goddess, was gratified to see that his afternoon was not going to be lost, in spite of the lemonade punch. "How can you say such a thing? Let alone mean it? Think how scandalized the people here would be if they could hear you. Pure sacrilege!"

"Oh, it's not
his
fault," she said impatiently. "It's not because of anything he's done. It's because they all fawn on him so disgustingly. And he despises them for it! Particularly my parents."

"But can you blame him for despising toadies?"

Ellie made no move to except her parents from his unflattering classification. Her quick nod even approved it. "I don't blame him. He's quite right. But I don't like being lumped in the despised group. So I despise him right back!"

"Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that you envy him?"

"No! I don't envy him in the least. I care nothing for his noisy steamboats or his rattling trains. Rushing people faster and faster over land and water so they can make more money. I find the whole business unutterably vulgar. Uncle Corneel may charm you with his rough-and-tumble way, but it's all just pose. He's much more literate than he lets on. And, basically, he's cold as ice. He never respected his son, Cousin Will, until the latter bested him in a contract over a sale of manure!" Ellie looked even prettier as she wrinkled her nose in distaste. "And that's what all these people worship!"

"What do you worship, Ellie?"

"Me? I don't worship anything."

"What do you admire, then?"

"What do you think I might admire?"

"Art? Music? Beautiful things?"

She laughed in surprise. "What makes you think that?"

"Because you're such a thing of beauty yourself."

She gave him a narrow glance. Was he overstepping the role of younger brother? He looked her straight in the eye to reassure her of his loyalty to Fred.

"Do beautiful things usually admire other beautiful things?" she asked.

"In heaven don't the seraphim enjoy chanting to each other?"

Ellie's laugh brushed this off. "Some seraph here! No, Selby, a girl should never admit it, but I don't care that much for art. Oh, I have eye enough to see that everything in
this
house is bad, but that doesn't take much. And what's even worse is that the things don't go with Ma and Pa, the way your grandfather's bad pictures somehow go with him."

Selby smiled. "What about Daddy's pictures?"

"Oh, that's different again. They're good. But they're too good for
him,
don't you see? I shouldn't like that in my house. I shall want my house to set me off perfectly."

"You still haven't told me what you admire. Or even what you like."

"And yet I'm quite definite about it." Ellie turned and walked to a corner as she saw there was danger of their being joined by another couple. She did not even pretend to be helping her mother with the party. Selby followed her. "I like things to be secure and neat," she said, as she faced him again. He began to smile, but he stopped when he saw that she was serious. "I want to know just where I am. I want to have friends I can count on. I don't want to look up, and I don't want to look down. I want to live on a level. I want a stable place."

"But is that attainable?"

"Perhaps not. But some people come closer to it than others. Your family, for instance."

"Daddy and Mummie?"

"Well, your father, anyway."

"Not poor Mummie?"

"No. She had it, of course, but she seems bent on throwing it away. I detest agitating in public. Almost as much as I detest railroads."

"You're not for women's rights?"

"Heavens no! What's it all for? So we can vote for a President who can be impeached if the Republicans don't like him? Or for state senators who are all in Uncle Corneel's pay? You should hear
him
on that subject. No, Selby, I see the future differently. In New York everything is left to the women but business and politics. I can make my peace with that. Particularly as I've told you what I think of business and politics."

"I see. You want to rule from the home."

"Oh, rule. You're going to be as vulgar as Uncle Corneel if you don't watch out. I simply want to live ... well, decently, that's all."

"Like whom, for instance?"

She hesitated, as if doubtful as to how far she could go. "You'd really like to know?"

"Very much."

"Well, like your aunt. Like Miss Handy."

Had they been alone he would have whistled. "Like Aunt Jo! Well, I adore her, of course, but people have always felt sorry for her."

"
I
don't feel sorry for her at all. She knows just what she is and where she stands. She knows what she is going to do each day, to what houses she will go and who will come to her when she bids them. She is free to express herself on any topic. She has learned to dress quietly but perfectly. Her servants do her bidding exactly. Everyone respects her. To me she simply represents all that is best in old New York!"

Selby, listening to this strange outpouring, began to have an uneasy feeling that Ellie might one day resent him for being the recipient of such confidences.

"Are you sure you want to tell me all this?"

"You think I'm a fool to do it? I am! But there's something compelling about you. And then I have nobody else to talk to. You see what my parents are. And the girls I know are all idiots. They can talk of nothing but men."

"What about Fred?"

"Ah, Fred." Her dark eyes were lit now with something like alarm. "There's no talking to Fred about such things." She laughed enigmatically. "One listens to Fred."

"I think he'd listen to you."

"Because he admires my mind?" she asked sarcastically.