Watchfires (15 page)

"And what about my Kate, who's only five?"

"Well, why wait till we're discovered? Why not go off now? Then we could take Kate with us!"

Annie rose and firmly took his glass away from him. "I think we'll go on as we're going, thank you very much. I have never heard a better argument for a clandestine affair!"

Deflated, he managed nonetheless to continue their talk on a joking level. But he was aware that he had been bitterly hurt. It was a distinct shock to have to recognize that just as he was making, however tentatively, the emotional preparations to build their affair into an independent universe, she was making hers for keeping it well within its original bounds. If he had begun to be ashamed of treating her as something private, something secret, something "owned," it was a dubious solace to his conscience to discover that she was perfectly content to go on treating him the same way!

When she had gone he chose to walk all the way home, although the day was overcast and drizzling. It gave him the opportunity to assemble and analyze his impressions of himself. The strange new heaviness at the bottom of his heart, as he now began to make it out, was the result of his recognition that his asylum from the world was no asylum at all. In the very violence of his physical satisfaction he had been professing, paradoxical as it might have seemed, to perceive a kind of spiritual rebirth, at least in the sense that it had created a new Dexter Fairchild, who existed apart from the tensions and frustrations that had beset the old. And Annie had seemed a kind of goddess, embraced by a mortal, having no existence, at least for him, outside of South Vesey Street. The love between them had been an entity complete in itself, existing, so to speak, in a void, a love that knew neither jealousy, nor falling off, nor bickering, nor even simple ennui. But now the doors of his foolishness, his stubborn, deliberate foolishness, had been thrust apart, and he was back again with all the misery of a merely human relationship.

On Monday, the day of their next appointment, Annie did not come at all. In an agony of jealousy and resentment he broke one of their primary rules and called at her house in Union Square. Word was brought to him that Mrs. Fairchild was resting in her room, but when he insisted on seeing her, she came down to the drawing room, irate, in a dressing gown.

"Will you kindly tell me why you have taken leave of your senses?"

"You didn't come!"

"I had a headache. There was no way of sending you word."

"You could have had a nap in our house. I wouldn't have disturbed you. As it is, I've been half-crazed, wondering if anything was wrong!"

"But that's perfectly ridiculous. You've got to get hold of yourself. And now you must go. I'm going out to dinner tonight, and I have to rest."

"Where are you going?"

"I don't know why that's any affair of yours. But, as it happens, I don't mind telling you. I'm going to the Fearing.'"

"The Henry Fearings?"

"Yes."

"That ... that
ogler!
Is Charley going?"

"As a matter of fact, he's not. He'll be at the Patroons'. Charley and I have been rather going our separate ways these days. As you, of all people, should know."

"Well, I suppose it's all right. Mrs. Fearing will be there, of course."

"No, she won't. She's with a sick aunt in Trenton. Henry has asked me to be a good friend and act as his hostess."

"But that's not decent!"

"Dexter, you're being absolutely idiotic. Henry and I are second cousins. One does that sort of thing for cousins."

"Not for second cousins. I can't allow it."

"
You
can't allow it! Go home!"

She turned away abruptly and hurried upstairs. To have followed her would have been to create a scandal, and Dexter had no alternative but to leave.

He was horribly afraid that she would not appear at their next appointment, but she did. She made no reference to their argument until after they had made love and he was pouring their wine.

"We have to get something straight, my dear. Outside this house you are to have no say whatever over my actions. It's bad enough to have one husband. I have no idea of being saddled with two."

She smiled as she said this, but her tone had a touch of frost.

"How can you expect me to turn my love on and off?"

"That's your business. All I'm telling you is that if we are to continue meeting, we are each to have complete freedom of action, except under this roof."

"You don't love me!" he cried in anguish.

"Did I ever say I did? What I feel for you you should know by now. There is no point in giving it a name. I don't think I could ever feel anything for a man at the cost of being his slave. That was one of my troubles with Charley. I shall certainly not make the same mistake with another. Particularly not with another Fairchild!"

"You want to go to parties! You want to flirt with men!"

"Certainly. If I choose."

"You want to make love with them!"

"No, you are quite enough for that. Almost too much, if anything. You may rest assured that you will be my only lover."

He reeled under the unexpected shock of this reassurance. "Always?"

"Always? What rational human being could promise that?"

"Well, for how long, then?"

"Until I tell you. I shan't deceive you. So you see? There's nothing to be jealous about. Nothing even to worry about. And you, of course, will have the same freedom."

The more that Dexter thought about this, the less he was able reasonably to object to it. The only trouble was that it had nothing whatever to do with passion. And now he discovered that he had a new dread: not that Annie would tell him a lie but that she would tell him the truth. Every time that she appeared, or failed to appear, in South Vesey Street, he would wonder if she was about to greet him, or send him a note, with the news that she had found another lover. It began to seem to him that his whole existence had come to depend on silence: Annie's, Rosalie's, Charley's, the world's. Words had become thunderbolts, and speakers avenging gods. He made love to Annie with a fierceness that seemed almost a revenge that he was only a fantasy to her.

He knew that she was bound to tire of her fantasy, because she was bound to tire of the few little facts that constituted its base. But he had never really fooled himself that his dream was going to last forever. Everything in Annie's nature from the beginning had bespoken her essential fickleness, and some of the drive with which he thrust himself into her arose from his need to make her a more lasting part of himself. Yet he knew that this could never be done, just as he knew that the very transiency of her passion was part of its appeal. There was even a kind of horrible relief in his knowing that this madness had its own finale built into it, and some of the violence of his passion went into a kind of cold storage to be used for consoling memories on the day that the affair should end. He lived on two levels: one where everything yielded to his senses and another where he measured those senses with the eye of an observer who knew that never again would such heights or such depths be achieved. He was like a Faust who had sold his soul to the devil, but who would carry with him to hell a diary of his days of bliss.

T
HERE WAS NO WAY
that Dexter could get himself invited without Rosalie to the parties that Annie was attending, and it was too much, even for a man as disturbed as himself, to expect Rosalie to go with him to spy on her sister. But when Annie let fall at one of their meetings that she was going to a ball to be given that night by his own sister, he privately determined that he would present himself there.

Jane Ullman did not ask her brother and sister-in-law to all her parties, or even to all of her larger ones; a coolness had long existed between her and Rosalie. The latter had made it a bit too clear that she had no wish to be used as a knight or bishop, or even as a pawn, in the Ullmans' social game. She was perfectly happy, she had told too many persons, to accept everything about David Ullman but his aspirations, and Jane, like many of those married to social climbers, having had to accept her share of snubs, was all the more sensitive to even a fancied one in a relative. So the two families met mainly on family occasions.

David Ullman had purchased a large corner brownstone at Twentieth Street and Fifth Avenue, and had encased it in white marble and added a ballroom in the rear. It was universally known as the "marble brownstone." Jane had packed the long hallway to the ballroom with potted plants and banks of flowers so that when Dexter saw her, tall, blond, straight and very thin, standing under the arched doorway in white satin and diamonds, she might have been a fairy princess. Only on closer approach, as he recognized the middle-aged squareness of the Fairchild chin, was the image blurred.

"I thought you might need an extra man for your dance," he said, as she presented, rather gingerly, a cheek for his fraternal kiss. "Rosalie's away somewhere, and I was lonely sitting home."

"I'm delighted, my dear." Jane's tone a bit reflected the marble of her mansion's exterior. "You shall be my partner in the cotillion. David never dances."

"That's very kind of you, but I'm sure somebody more important should be so honored. Don't you think I ought to ask my sister-in-law? Charley's not here, is he?"

"No. Charley is not here."

"Then shouldn't I keep an eye on Annie?"

"Is she inclined to misbehave?"

"Not at all. But a girl so young and lively, going about without her husband ... well, some young blade might get the wrong idea, mightn't he?"

"Might he? When she's chaperoned by her sister's husband—unaccompanied by her sister?"

Dexter ignored her irony. "Well, that's just it. She needs a chaperon. Rosalie's been worried about her."

"So Rosalie sent you tonight, did she?"

Really, she was as spiteful as when they were children! "It's not Annie's fault. She has a hard time with Charley, you know."

"No, I don't know, Dexter."

"Well, he drinks."

"Dear me!" exclaimed Jane, who was perfectly aware of Charley's habits. "What a pity she didn't marry a Jew. That's so rarely a problem with them."

Dexter left her at this and moved into the ballroom where a waltz was in progress. Annie, in a golden dress, was dancing with great animation with his eighteen-year-old nephew, David, Jr., who was obviously entranced with his vivacious and sophisticated "older woman" partner. She evinced no surprise when she spotted Dexter, giving him only a brief "family" smile. But its very briefness seemed to indicate that she had no intention of confusing South Vesey Street with Fifth Avenue. Determined to dance with no one but her, he walked past the mirrored doors crowned with ivy to the table where champagne was being served to the gentlemen. As he sipped from his glass and gazed about the room, he suddenly froze at the vision of a large, hulking figure in black bowing to their hostess.

It was Jules Bleeker.

What was almost as unsettling as the hated sight of his former rival was the latter's behavior. Recognizing Dexter across the room, he simply raised a heavy arm in casual greeting and turned back to the group with whom he had come.

Dexter, beside himself, hurried off in search of his brother-in-law. He found the latter standing alone in an alcove, smoking a cigar and watching the dancers with a rather supercilious air. David, who had been anxious enough in the earlier days to have people come to his parties, had now, at sixty, achieved a sufficient social security to permit him to condescend to such frivolities as dancing. His concentration was more on the inner world of power. He would, for example, have given much to belong to the gentlemen's discussion group known as the Hone Club that met at its members' houses for monthly dinners. But Mr. Handy, the chairman, still drew the line at Jews.

"Good evening, Dexter. I'm surprised to see you here. I thought you were too serious a man for these affairs. Your sister seems to take a perverse pride in assembling under one roof the heaviest jewels and the lightest heads of the city. But perhaps you view it all as a student of manners, eh? Good! These idiots should be put to some use."

David was a fine-looking man for his age, with a good strong figure and smart, if slightly too elegant clothes, a noble brow and jaw and dark, receding hair, but he was just a bit too cocky, just a bit too sure that the sharpness of his intellect and the power of his money would awe his fellow burghers. Dexter, who liked to think that he had no prejudices, was yet troubled by the fact that he was most conscious of David's Jewishness when he dwelt on David's defects. He wondered if even Mr. Handy was not basically more tolerant than he. The latter was frankly anti-Semitic until it was to his smallest interest to cultivate a Jew, and then he would drop his animus as easily as a ship captain might dispose of surplus cargo in a storm.

"I certainly share your opinion as to
one
of your guests," Dexter replied. "Only that if he's an idiot, he's a rather dangerous one. I had thought that every decent door in New York had been closed to Mr. Bleeker."

David's eyebrows were arched. "My dear fellow, where haVe you been? All that is quite forgotten. Jules Bleeker is the chairman of a committee of Richmond businessmen who have come to New York to explore the ways and means of preserving the union. There's a meeting next week at your own father-in-law's."

Dexter gaped. "At Number 417?"

"Yes, sir! At the sacred 417. I'm going there myself. You weren't asked?"

"Perhaps it's because I told him I was for Lincoln."

"Or perhaps because Mr. Handy thought it might be a bit embarrassing for you and Bleeker to meet! After all, you did make the town rather hot for him."

"But I still can't understand it. Mr. Handy knows all about Bleeker!"

"You mean about that business with Rosalie's sister?" David, however lofty, liked it to be known that he was abreast of every piece of scandal in society. "Evidently he regards Annie as being in no further danger."

"Did she know Bleeker would be here tonight?"