Watchfires (32 page)

"She doesn't ask my advice, Papa."

"And if she did, what would it be?"

"I might tell her that I think she goes a bit far at times."

"A bit! That little Mrs. Astor is going to be ruling the roost one of these days. She's not somebody Rosalie can afford to offend."

"But Mrs. Astor
likes
Dexter. Rosalie's defection gave her a chance to do him honor. What's so bad about that?"

"Jo, I sometimes wonder if, deep down, you're not as radical as your sister."

"Oh, Papa, can't you try to accept people as they are?" Jo was at last showing signs of exasperation. "Rosalie's not going to change her ways for anything you or I can say to her."

Handy lapsed into a grumpy silence and gazed fretfully out the window. Jo never got really angry with him anymore; she treated him, he suspected darkly, like a stubborn child. But now the buildings to the west abruptly disappeared; they were passing Central Park. Who the devil did he know who lived this far north? Had he died, and were they headed towards eternity? And then, with a snort of indignation, he recalled a further outrage : the rape by the City of the park from the private commissioners. Well, the poor voters would see what they got for it! In ten years' time the lovely alleys, the rolling greenswards, the shady bosks, the silent, silvery ponds would be torn up and polluted by a rabble of Irish and Italian immigrants. Serve the public right for trusting its politicians!

They turned down a side street and stopped before a building on the south side. Handy could not at first make out its appearance in the darkness, but when he descended from the carriage he recognized, with a little stab of disappointment, the abbreviated French Renaissance façade that his daughter Lily had arbitrarily clapped on her new brownstone. It was rather a sell to be going only to a family party, but he tried to console himself with the reminder that Rutgers Van Rensselaer bought only the best champagne.

Lily's dinner party sat down promptly at eight in the Gothic dining room. Charley Fairchild was talking across the table, and Handy now realized that he was being addressed.

"I think everyone here will be interested to know, sir, of an appeal that your son-in-law received this morning at our office. It was nothing less than a communication from William Maxwell Evarts asking him to come down to Washington and assist him in defending the President!"

There was an immediate burst of comment around the table.

"Dexter act for Johnson!"

"Dexter join up with rebels!"

"Does Evarts think the whole world's gone crazy just because he has?"

"This doesn't mean that Dexter would be acting directly for the President," Charley explained. "He would be working for Evarts."

"But the disgrace is in the cause, not the retainer!" Handy exclaimed roughly. "I am sure that my son-in-law will reject the proposition out of hand."

"I doubt that."

"How do you mean, sir, you doubt it? Do you presume to know my son-in-law better than I?"

"No, but perhaps as well, Mr. Handy." Charley had been fortified by the wine; he was grinning provokingly. "After all, he is not only my law partner. He is my brother-in-law and first cousin."

"He is also a loyal Republican, I'll thank you to remember, Charles Fairchild! And he has been as loud as any of us in his denunciations of Johnson's criminal policies."

"True. But Dexter is a hard man to pin down. There is something elusive about him, a kind of inner doubt. Just after he has banged his fist on the table, you see that little glint in his eye that seems to say, 'Could I be wrong?' Like Bishop Cauchon, he is always afraid he may have just burned a saint."

"Johnson a saint?" muttered Rutgers Van Rensselaer. "I never expected to hear that opinion expressed under my roof!"

"Nobody expressed it, Rutgers," Charley replied. "And nobody here, I trust, even thinks it. I was only observing that Dexter was a lawyer before anything else."

"Damn lawyers," his host muttered in a half whisper that everyone heard.

"And that you must always be prepared," Charley continued imperturbably, "to find him tomorrow regretting the thing he did yesterday."

"As you of all people should know, Charles!"

Handy was startled to realize, from the shocked silence around the table that followed this remark, that it was he who had made it. His words had obviously been taken as a direct reference to the old affair between Dexter and Annie.

"Has anyone heard any news about Erie?" Lily asked in a high, nervous quaver.

There was an instant, relieved spatter of comment.

"Oh, don't you know, Lily? The thieves have made it up."

"They're dividing the swag."

"Did anyone hear what Fisk said? That nothing is lost but honor!"

"I'm afraid I can't laugh at that. It's simply too shocking."

After dinner, when the gentlemen had joined the ladies in the parlor following their brandies and cigars, Lily rose at once to lead her father to two armchairs in a corner. As he had sat by her at dinner, her claiming him now made it perfectly evident that she did not trust him with anyone else.

"I'm getting old and waspish," he muttered apologetically. "It's probably high time I gave up going out to dinner parties."

"Stuff and nonsense! You're still the life of the party. And it was all Charley's fault, anyway. If he hadn't been such a toper, Annie might still be with him."

"I suppose Annie's nothing but a whore now. A fashionable French whore."

"Please, Papa! Be quiet! And you're quite wrong about Annie. She goes everywhere in Paris. She is even received by the Empress."

"Is that a guarantee of respectability? What was Eugenie but a little Spanish nobody that the old goat of an Emperor had to marry because her mother was smart enough to keep him out of her bed?"

"Papa! The Empress is supposed to be a saint!"

Lily was obviously relieved when Jo crossed the room to take him home.

That night Charles Handy slept only fitfully. He dreamed that he was in the White House with the Union Defense Committee and that President Lincoln, fixing his large, reproachful eyes upon him, kept saying over and over, "What is wrong, Mr. Handy? Not a single regiment has reached the capital! Yet each time that he went to Willard's Hotel to check his sources, he was told that three New York regiments had already arrived. He would keep waking up, bathed in sweat, but when he slept again the same dream would be repeated, with the martyred President sounding each time more anguished and more impatient.

The last time he awakened, it was after dawn, and he became aware of somebody sitting by his bed. It was Jo. She looked drawn and pale.

"Are you awake, Papa?"

"I am now," he grumbled. "What do you want?"

"I'm afraid I have some very bad news. There's been a terrible wreck on the Erie. The Buffalo Express. At Port Jervis." For a moment she seemed unable to go on. "It was a bad curve. Three sleepers went off the track. Selby was in one. They think he must have been killed instantly."

He stared at her stupidly. "Selby?"

"Selby Fairchild. Rosalie's boy." She paused again, and he could see now that she was weeping. "Your grandson, Papa."

"Do you think I'm an idiot? Do you think I don't know my own grandsons?"

"Of course you do, Papa. I'm sorry."

"It's a perfect scandal the way these railroads are run! I've said so again and again. It's murder, that's what it is. Men like Gould and Fisk should be strung up in public."

"I'm sure they're bad men. But that won't bring Selby back, will it?"

"Hmm." He stared, almost in embarrassment, at her bent head and shaking shoulders. "Has Rosalie been told?"

"Oh, yes, Papa."

"Will you send word to her and Dexter that I shall stand by to help them in every way I can?"

"Of course, Papa."

"And will you remind me after breakfast to write a letter to the
Tribune
protesting the shocking mismanagement of our railroads?"

"I'll try to remember."

"And now perhaps you will let me have my room, so I can dress?"

"I'll send Sam in."

While he was dressing, aided by the silent Sam, Handy tried to assemble his agitated thoughts. Selby's death was like an oversized domino that would not fit in the case with the others. He recalled Selby, of course, with absolute clarity. He remembered the bright chubby face, the high, infectious laugh. And he took in perfectly the fact that this unfortunate young man was now presumably a mangled corpse. It was a bad thing. A very bad thing. Number 417 would become a house of mourning. There would be weeping and lamentation. The women would be particularly noisy. The Irish maids would be impossible. And there would be no more dinner parties that season. It was horrid of him, he supposed, to be thinking of dinner parties at such a time, but the years were precious at his age, and even the shortest period of mourning could be ill afforded.

Could he perhaps take the position that he didn't believe in mourning? That those with the deepest grief might be above the outward display? Might people not actually admire an old man who insisted on fulfilling his social obligations, even with dust and ashes in his heart? But he could not fool himself about Jo. It would certainly be difficult to induce
her
to accompany him on any renewed social round, and had he not reached the point where he was almost afraid to go out without her?

He had shaved and donned his underwear and shirt, and was preparing, laboriously, to step into his trousers when Sam murmured something in his ear.

"What, what? Speak up, man!"

"Your tailor is outside, sir, with your new tweed suit. Might it not be easier to try it on now before you're fully dressed?"

"A good point, boy. Show him in."

Handy was almost cheered up, a few minutes later, as he contemplated his figure in the tall mirror, resplendent in fine Scottish tweed, while the tailor busily jotted down his fitting notes. There was nothing like new clothing to clear the mind. It was fortunate that gentlemen did not, like ladies, have to adopt total black. An armband would satisfy the strictest requirements of mourning, an armband and a black knitted tie, quite becoming, really...

"Who is it? Is that you, Jo? Can't you see I'm busy? I'll be right down."

"It's me, Rosalie, Papa. May I come in?"

"Oh, my dear, of course!"

And Rosalie came in, with her quick stride, pausing briefly to take in the scene.

"Oh, but I'm interrupting!"

"Not at all, not at all." Her father coughed in embarrassment and motioned abruptly to Sam to take the tailor away. Alone with Rosalie, he was shocked by her haggard look. "I was distressed beyond expression by your tragic news. My heart goes out to you and Dexter."

"We know it does, Papa."

"I told Jo that I should write the
Tribune
this very morning about the scandalous mismanagement of Erie. It is part and parcel of the unprincipled times we live in. And if I may say so,
my
dear, I hope this tragedy may have the effect of toning down some of your own public agitations."

As he heard himself say this, his eyes were fixed directly upon Rosalie's, and he made out, with a cutting clarity, that the pity in hers was not for herself, or even for poor dead Selby. And then the scene about him seemed to fall apart. There was no tweed suit, no Empire mirror, no four-poster bed, no portrait of Lafayette, no family mementos. There was only Rosalie, brokenhearted, battered, shattered Rosalie, who had lost her darling son. And there was nothing left of Charles Handy but the desperate need to reach out, to hug, to console ... to cling to a remnant of heart.

"Oh, my girl, my poor little girl, what has happened to you? Come to me, Rosalie, poor little Rosalie."

She seemed to stagger into his outstretched arms, and they clasped each other in an embrace that lasted until Jo, wondering at the silence within, timidly opened the door.

I
N THE FORTNIGHT
following Selby's death Elmira Bristow saw Fred Fairchild only twice. Of course, she recognized that his time was necessarily taken up by his grief-stricken family, but she was also very keenly aware that this was not the real cause of his defection. Fred had been devastated by the catastrophe. He had moved out of Union Square to a boarding house in Rector Street, and he was spending his evenings mostly at Broadway bars. He refused to call at the Bristows', where he felt, correctly, that he would not be welcome to her parents, and he and she had had to meet, on those two occasions, in Central Park, where they had walked dismally past mounds of melting snow under a slaty sky, watching the pigeons peck for the crumbs that Fred languidly produced from his pocket.

He could really talk of nothing but his guilt. He had sent Selby to his death, he would morosely insist, as surely as if he had put a pistol to his head and pulled the trigger. His younger brother had been the innocent victim of his own perverse need to elevate a sordid scrap among bandits to the status of a crusade for a better America. He, Fred, was worse than a thief; he was a fool. He had no present, and he had no future. It would have been far better had he perished in the Wilderness Campaign. Selby would now be alive and proud of a dead soldier brother. Elmira must learn to forget him.

She had known that she had never understood him well; now she began to wonder if she had understood him at all. How could a man who had been a hero under hardships unimaginable to her go to pieces under difficulties so perfectly plausible? Of course it must have been horrid to feel even the smallest responsibility for a brother's death, but did it take an abnormally level head to recognize an accident? What made her, at last, after much inward fretting, decide that she must learn to tolerate her own sympathy for his self-pity, was her ultimate recognition that the intensification of her own passion for him in misfortune and despair was equally irrational.

She had had her own guilt feelings, too, about Selby. There had been a nasty little corner in her heart, a dusky spot where she had harbored something like relief at the elimination of Fred's brother from her scene. He had viewed her too clearly. He had comprehended too thoroughly that she was not the demure, conventional society virgin that his brother supposed—and that his brother wanted. Not that she was troubled about deceiving Fred or in the least concerned with the disillusionment that would inevitably follow their union. That, she was sure, would be a minor matter; Fred would be essentially content with his bargain—
after
he had made it. But it would not have been politic to thrust in so squeamish a bachelor's face such prickly facts as that she despised her father and thought Fred a fool for ever believing in him, or that she valued in Fred's family background all the things that he himself found most trivial. Selby might never have given her away—but now he surely couldn't.