Watchfires (16 page)

David burst into a rough laugh. "My dear Dexter, do you think even an international banker can read a lady's mind?"

Dexter left him, fuming at his own indiscretion. Did all New York know about him and Annie? The idea made him suddenly reckless, and he approached the group where Annie was standing. It was during an intermission between dances.

"May I have a word with you?" he asked loudly.

Nobody looked surprised. It was a brother-in-law's prerogative. Or
was
that the reason? Annie raised her eyebrows slightly and moved with him to a less crowded part of the dance floor. "You're not very discreet."

"Discretion be damned! I came to tell you that if you dance with Bleeker I shall strike him in the face!"

Her eyes glittered. "You wouldn't dare!"

"You'll see."

"You're going to be sorry about this."

"That's my affair."

"I warned you that I should not tolerate any interference with my social life!"

"You are absolutely free. Except with that bounder!"

"Some freedom! Very well. I shall go home. Not, let me make it entirely clear, for
your
sake. But for Juley's. I want to spare him the embarrassment of having to knock you down!"

She turned and walked in rapid short steps to the doorway and disappeared. He simply stood staring stupidly after her until he felt his sister's presence at his side.

"You're making an absolute spectacle of yourself!" she hissed. "I'll thank you not to use my house as a
maison de passe!
"

***

Annie did not appear in South Vesey Street at their next appointment, but this came as little surprise to Dexter. He waited until five and then went uptown to pay his weekly "business call" on his mother.

"Please put away those papers, Dexter. I have something much more important to discuss with you today. You know I've never been one to beat about the bush. How long is this shocking business between you and Annie Fairchild going to continue?"

Dexter seemed to be seeing the incensed little woman before him with the drowsy, half-curious eyes of a man who is being shaken out of a deep and absorbing dream.

"I suppose Jane made a great thing about that little scene at her house."

"Jane is not my only source of information!"

"Well, you know how people gossip."

"Does that mean you're going to deny it?"

"I don't see why I should dignify such an accusation with a denial. You lay a grave charge at my door. What is your evidence? Have I been seen with Annie in some place we shouldn't have been? Have we been spotted slipping in and out of doorways in shady parts of town?"

"Do you presume to act like a defense lawyer with your own mother?"

"Certainly. When she acts like a prosecutor."

Mrs. Fairchild's fingers worked furiously with her needlepoint. Her brow was puckered, and she kept her snapping eyes directed at her work. His attitude, so different from his customary deference, had evidently taken her aback. "I simply say that your intimacy with your wife's sister—not to mention that she's the wife of your own first cousin and law partner—is on its way to making you the talk of the town. I don't presume even to suggest how far this intimacy may have carried you. In these things the appearance is quite as good as the fact. You're sitting on a barrel of dynamite, my son. Be warned!"

Dexter reflected that if his mother had had wind of the house in South Vesey Street she would certainly have mentioned it. She had never been one to hoard her trumps. But it was also more than possible that Annie had been indiscreet. Could she have resisted hinting of her affair to some of her girl friends? It would have been too humiliating to have them believe that she was without consolation while Charley made love to a bottle.

"Have any of my in-laws been complaining?"

"No, I'll say that for them. The Handys have been perfect. But then what else could they do? The scandal of a thing like this would be more than any family could bear, even one of their station. No, they must sit on their tempers and smile at the world. Trust old Charles Handy to keep them in line!"

"In that case, what is there to worry about?"

"Dexter Fairchild, I can't believe it's you talking!" She stared at him in total exasperation. "One can sit on a thing like this just so long! When it blows up, my boy, it will blow away your marriage and your whole life! It will be your poor father all over again, except worse. Much worse!"

"I admit to nothing, Mother. Nothing whatever. In a matter so serious I must insist on a little hard evidence. But I will tell you one thing, for whatever slight consolation it may afford you. I am not engaged in any activity the consequences of which, should it become generally known, I am not entirely prepared to face."

"And what consolation is there in
that?
" There were tears, rare tears, in his mother's pleading eyes. "What consolation is it to me that you're willing to destroy yourself?"

But his only reaction to her tears was astonishment at his own lack of feeling. Never had he dreamed that such a demonstration, which would have shattered him as a boy, could leave him so unmoved. Was he a monster? Or was he, at long last, simply a man? He rose to walk to the window and stood, looking down at the street, with his back to her.

"Suppose, Mother—just suppose, mind you—that what you suggest is true. And suppose further that everyone concerned—Charley, Rosalie, Mr. Handy, the other daughters—had their reasons for not wishing to be involved. Not just to avoid scandal, but for some ... some deeper indifference. Where would be the harm? Who would be hurt?"

"Society would be hurt! Do you think you can flout the most sacred rules of Christian ethics and get away with it? Do you think you can pull away the foundation stone of our whole civilization and not hurt people? Why, why..." She paused before this yawning nadir of infamy. "Why, God himself is hurt!"

They faced each other in their common surprise that she should have introduced the deity. It was not only unlike her; it rang a note that was utterly false. Between them seemed to lie the ruins of a culture somehow betrayed. But betrayed by which of them? By both? What would be the fun for his mother of living in her intensely personal world, a world of gossip elevated and of gossip murky, of an endless murmuring over the teacups and against the gentle clash of silver, if there were no accepted moral judgments to tag to every recounted misfeasance?

"Oh, Dexter, you don't know what you're doing to me! All your life you have stood for the good, right things. More so than the child of anyone I knew. There were even times when you seemed to go too far. Jane used to say you were a bit of a prig. But I see now how much we both depended on you. Oh, yes, from the very beginning! It was you who got me through your father's terrible desertion. It was you who gave me the strength to go forward and make a go of my life. Because I believed in you! And because I believed that you believed in the right things: goodness and kindness and decency and keeping one's word and being true. And that was what made those things real to me again. You see, I gave up God when your father left me!"

"Oh, poor Mother." He went over to the sofa to take her hands in his. "I'm so sorry. But I can't be other people's religion. Even yours."

She pushed him away angrily at this. Then she took a handkerchief from her workbag and vigorously wiped her eyes.

"You came to discuss the renewal of the lease on this house. I suggest we get on with it."

R
OSALIE
found her reaction to her husband's affair confusing. There were times, usually in the morning after he left for the office, when she was seized with spasms of anger. How dared he presume, after years of sanctimoniousness, to turn his back on all the sacred lares and penates that he had so long and proudly displayed on his family mantel, and embrace, without the least apparent qualm, the twin sins of adultery and incest? Did he care nothing for the scandal that hung over the heads of her old father, whom he had always so tiresomely professed to revere, and of his sons, whose future he had sworn to keep unstained from the very crime that had reduced his own youth to dust and ashes?

And then, by the time she made ready to go to her work at Saint Jude's parish house, she would be calmer, more judicious. Was it not, after all, a bit her own fault that he had waited so long for a truly reciprocated passion? Had not her initial doubts about him created doubts in himself about his love? Was he not simply enjoying what every man basically wanted? Was it not possible for her to rise above smallness and jealousy and try to see him for once as he really was? And as she too—ah, there was the rub!—had always, deep down, wanted him to be? A Dexter dedicated to the passions of the flesh, a seeming contradiction in terms!

Besides, had she not been bought? Had she not sold her neutrality for five thousand dollars? With the assurance of more to come? And had she not found peace and a sense of mission? Was not that worth a little humiliation?

"If I were you, I shouldn't care what Annie was up to!" Joanna told her hotly. "You and I are engaged in work that makes her little flirtations seem simply vile!"

"Please, Jo! I don't want to talk about Annie."

It was true that Rosalie found her work at the parish house engrossing. At times she nursed the ill; at times she played games with the children; at times she simply listened to the fugitives' tales of their lives and escapes. She was struck by how little bitterness the victims of slavery seemed to show; they tended to accept what went on in the South as something decreed and inevitable that they had simply been blessed enough to get away from. They were more interested in the future than in the past and asked eager questions about life in Canada. It did not occur to them that the slave states would ever submit to emancipation; on the contrary, they appeared to view the might of their old masters as so great that no one in any part of the United States was safe. When Rosalie suggested that the day might come when the Northern states would be able to enforce emancipation by statute, they simply gazed at her in polite silence.

Frank Halsted fascinated her as much as his refugees. He seemed never to tire, never to falter, never to show the smallest sign of impatience or frustration. To her he glowed, like the figure of Christ in a Rembrandt etching, in a world of shadows. And he had time for everybody. No matter what his schedule he could pause to talk with her, giving her what seemed the very core of his attention. And yet she saw him do exactly the same thing with others.

"Do you know what I was able to do with that wonderful gift of five thousand dollars?" he asked her. "It supplied the down payment and first two trips of a vessel I've chartered to make a regular run between here and Montreal. And all thanks to you, dear Rosalie!"

"I'll get more!" she exclaimed. "I
know
I can get you more."

"You mean your husband has become a sympathizer? I hadn't dared to hope for that."

"Not exactly. Let's just put it that he owes me something."

One Sunday morning after church Mr. Handy walked up Fifth Avenue with Rosalie to his house, while Dexter and Joanna strolled on ahead of them. Directing a level stare at his son-in-law's back, Mr. Handy remarked that he felt as if they were all living above a cellar packed with dynamite. Rosalie was surprised, not only at what he took for granted, but at what he assumed that she did.

"What makes you so sure that Dexter is misbehaving?"

"What makes
you
? Do you think your loving father can't tell when there's that sort of trouble in his family?"

"I don't know what I think. I have no facts."

"What facts do you need? Haven't you and Dexter talked about this thing?"

"Not a word."

"Unimaginable!"

"Well, what could I
say,
Father?"

"You could tell him to behave himself or you'd go with the boys to my house. You know how much I have cared for Dexter. But if he were my own son and you my daughter-in-law, I'd take
your
side in a case like this!"

"And supposing I threatened to leave him? Supposing he took me at my word? Supposing he and Annie flung their intrigue in the face of New York?"

Mr. Handy pursed his lips in a silent whistle. "He has us there, I suppose."

"Of course, he does! You must leave it to me, Father. You must trust me to work it out."

Her father squeezed the hand under his arm. "My own dear girl. Do you know you're a heroine?"

"No, I'm not. But I know what a heroine is. And I didn't always."

"And what is she?"

"Every female slave who flees her master!"

"Good heavens!" Her father threw up his hands in disgust. "You sound just like Joanna!"

But there was another reason that Rosalie wanted to leave her husband alone, and one that she was not going to impart to anyone. An ambivalence had crept into her feelings for Frank Halsted. He was not only the leader of the parish house; he was becoming for her a romantic figure.

A romantic figure to a plain, otherwise sensible woman of forty-one, the mother of two schoolboys? Of course! Was not such a woman just the sort to be moved to folly, or at least to the dream of folly? She knew that what she had to fight was less the emotion than the shame. Her first reaction to libidinous thoughts was always shame of it. But she had learned through the years that such fantasies were basically harmless and the shame quite unnecessary. Was it not, after all, partly Halsted's fault? He was always talking of "love." He called the volunteers, including herself, by their Christian names, usually preceded by a "dear" or "dearest."

"We really have done very little for the poor slaves," he told her. "It is ourselves whom we've benefited. For we have learned to love. Before, we lived in a loveless city. But now we have been brought closer together. I love you, dear Rosalie, and I am not ashamed to tell you so. I love Joanna, and I am not ashamed to tell her so."

"I think, if I may make a suggestion, Frank, that it would be wise not to overstress that tone. My sister is, after all, something of an old maid, and it might excite her unduly to be so warmly approached by a handsome young clergyman."