False Gods (7 page)

Horace seemed very pleased at Dorothy's reception by his family. I believe that he accepted as praise from the heart the perfunctory approval of the evening that she may have conceded to him in the cab when he took her home. The sainted Dorothy could speak nothing but the truth, could she? At any rate when he came back and after we had retired to his bedroom, which we shared, he kept me up half the night singing the praises of his "wonderful girl." He also professed great gratification at the impression I had apparently made on her.

"She said she was glad I at last had an interesting friend and not just another New England church school type."

Horace had charm, but he could be a bore. I suppose most people in love can be.

I returned to New Haven that Sunday morning, as I had a paper to prepare for a Monday class, but Horace stayed on to lunch at the Stonors' and escort Dorothy in the afternoon to an exhibit of miniatures at the Metropolitan Museum. He would take a late afternoon train back and said he would drop by my room in the evening. But nothing in his plan prepared me for the pale face and reddened eyes that confronted me when I answered a late knock on my door.

"It's all over!" he exclaimed dramatically and stumbled past me to slump on my sofa.

"What's all over?"

"Me and Dorothy. Or rather me."

He sat up suddenly straight now, holding himself very still, as if the least movement might cause a twinge of pain.

"I take it then she's sent you packing."

"Well, not quite. She says we can still be friends."

"That's the usual way, isn't it?"

At this he began actually to sob, and I turned away in embarrassment.

"I'm sorry, Maury." He wiped his eyes. "I'll try not to be such an ass. She sprang it on me in the museum, right in front of that Sargent painting of the three sisters in white. She's going abroad with her father for three months."

"Is that against the law?"

"But they're going to meet that oily protégé of her father's, Guy Thorp, in Marseille! He's going to join them for a Mediterranean cruise on a yacht Mr. Stonor has chartered. I told her she'd meet all kinds of dukes and princes and never give another thought to Horace Aspinwall!"

He looked more fourteen than twenty as he said this.

"And what did she say to
that?
" I asked roughly. "That she never would? If she did, you deserved it."

"No! She said she'd always value my friendship. But she got furious when I told her she'd probably come back engaged to Thorp."

"I don't wonder. It'll be your own fault if she does."

He looked aghast. "How will I have done that?"

"By whimpering. By playing the little boy who doesn't dare so much as touch his goddess's fingertips. What woman wants to be treated that way? Except perhaps some frigid old maid, which your Dorothy is very far from being."

"Just as far as she is from being
my
Dorothy. No, Maury, it won't do. I'm not in her league, any way you look at it. I've given her up, and I've written her so. And don't try to talk me out of it, because I know it's the best thing for both of us."

Well, of course, I wasn't going to let that pass, and we sat up a large part of the night arguing. By early morning I had induced him at least to reconsider, and I sent him off to bed with the assurance that we would discuss a plan of action the following afternoon.

But that next morning, when I had returned to my room from a nine o'clock class, I received my first visit there from Horace's cousin. Gurdon entered when I answered his knock with his usual twinkling condescension.

"I trust I'm not intruding?" When I assured him he was not, he came in and looked around at his ease. "But you have made yourself very comfortable, I see. Much more elegant than anything we have at poor old Vanderbilt. What nice things you've got! May I inquire who is the lovely young lady? A very particular friend, I hope?"

"It's a pencil sketch of my mother as a girl. By MiLlais."

"Oh, I see. Very fine indeed." He continued to allow his appraising eye to roam. At last he took a seat and cleared his throat. But still no word.

"Gurdon, is there something on your mind?"

"In fact there is. You won't object if I'm frank?"

"Not if you really are."

"You don't trust me, do you, Maury? You haven't from the beginning."

"I simply like to know where I stand."

"Then here it is. Horace told me this morning that he had made up his mind to give up his romance with Dorothy Stonor—if that's the right word for an affair so one-sided—but that you, it appears, have persuaded him to go on with it."

"Is that so wrong?"

"We are a proud family, Maurice. You come of one yourself, so you know whereof I speak. It has never been our way to push in where we are not wanted."

"Not wanted by whom? By Dorothy or her father?"

"By both, I'm afraid. Mr. Stonor's candidate for his daughter's hand is obviously Guy Thorp. Do you know about Guy Thorp?"

"Horace has mentioned him."

"He's worth more than a mention. He's a very courtly diplomat, currently attached to our embassy in London. Considered brilliant. Some thirty years of age, of no particular fortune, but backed by the mighty Stonor, who presumably intends to make an ambassador of him. Or maybe even one day a secretary of state. Who knows, in these days of fat campaign funds?"

"And how does Dorothy feel about this paragon?"

"I think the best way to put that might be that she feels he's inevitable."

"You mean she
has
to have him? But why, in God's name?"

"Because he's so damned appropriate. Because he's what Doctor Daddy has ordered. Because she feels that a dutiful daughter should have a very good reason indeed before turning down so fine and upstanding a suitor. And I very much doubt whether she will see our Horace as such a reason."

I saw, of course, that Gurdon, in Mr. Stonor's place, would have behaved in just the same way. I understood perfectly that Gurdon was the prototype of the grinning imp who would always be poor Horace's worst enemy.

"Let us suppose, Gurdon, that everything you say is true. What does Horace have to lose by fighting for something he so desperately wants?"

"His self-respect. Horace is a very delicate instrument, more so than you can probably imagine. He is very good at concealing his vulnerability. But in the family, we know. He is subject to dangerous spells of depression. In our sixth-form year at Groton, for example, when he failed to make the varsity football team his spirits were so low that I had to write Aunt Lydia and Uncle John to take him out of school. He was gone for two whole months."

"I see." Horace had told me something about this, but not of the length of the absence. "But if Horace is going to duck every challenge in life because it may bring on a depression, where is he going to get?"

"I never said he should duck
every
challenge. You may not trust me, Maurice, but even you will have to ask, where Horace is concerned, what motive could possibly guide me but his welfare."

I knew well enough how I
could
have answered his question: "The desire to keep someone whom you have always sought to dominate from becoming a bigger and richer man than yourself!"

But of course I said no such thing. How would that have helped Horace? I simply suggested that we should have to agree to disagree and regretted that I had to leave him to finish my term paper in the library.

Horace's resolution not to relinquish his pursuit of Dorothy could be implemented only by correspondence in the next three months. His particular concern was with Thorp.

"What chance do I have against a guy who's already on the spot?" he asked me gloomily.

"The chance of being able to show only your best side in your letters. Thorp may make an ass of himself, who knows? Anything can happen on that boat. And if she chances to feel a bit pushed around by Daddy and a bit taken for granted by his too-obvious candidate, a breezy cheerful letter from you may hit just the right note. The great thing is not to be mawkish. Make her wonder whether you may not be turning into a bigger person without her. "

What is rarer than a friend who takes one's advice? Horace went back to his room and wrote out a long letter, which he then asked me to read. But I declined.

"You must get out of the habit of seeking people's approval." I was thinking of Gurdon. "You don't need it."

He became thoughtful at this, and after a minute he asked, "If I should propose to do something nice for you, Maury, would you put it down to my seeking your approval?"

"Not if it was nice enough. What are you proposing? I warn you in advance that I'll accept it."

"Don't be too hasty. I want you to think it over first. I'd like to put you up for Psi U."

I whistled. Then I tried to pass it off with a pun. "The first Jew in Psi U? It even rhymes."

"There's got to be a first time for everything."

"Horry, whom are you trying to kid? You know you'd never get me in."

"Don't be too sure. You're giving me a new confidence in myself. Well, let's see how it goes."

As I studied his countenance I thought I could indeed make out a new confidence. At the same time it occurred to me that perhaps I should let him do what he proposed, as much for his sake as for my own. More, really, for a fraternity as "chic" as his would be socially a seven-league-boot stride that could hurt me as much as it helped in the antagonisms it might create.

At any rate, after some days' rumination, I agreed to be put up, and Horace at once went to work. He arranged to have me seconded by the member of his Groton group whom I most liked, Ethan Barlow, and this did much to reconcile me to the tussle that was bound to follow. Barlow was, like me, a robust fellow with thick curly black hair, but unlike me he had a distinctly patrician air. He was a first-class athlete with a first-class (though not original) mind, and a natural leader in our Yale class, softening the impression of his sometimes exhausting energy with the warmth of his natural charm. When he grabbed you by the elbow and suggested a Saturday excursion to New York following a six-mile morning run to take in a matinée of Nazimova in Ibsen and an evening on the town, you threw down your books and went along. It might go without saying that he worshipped Theodore Roosevelt and lamented that he had been born too late to have been a Rough Rider.

I knew that my father would disapprove of the fraternity business, as indeed he did, answering my letter with three sentences: "I should never have abandoned one chaining tradition to be shackled to another. But who knows?
You
may find it at least amusing." What I did find amusing, or at least interesting, was that Horace, in promoting me, showed a good deal more political shrewdness than I had imagined him to possess. He played skillfully on his friends' desire not to appear stuffy and went so far as to suggest that the fraternity would get the credit for admitting a Jew who wasn't really a Jew at all, thus having and eating its cake of broad-mindedness. When I learned of this from the candid Ethan Barlow, I put it to him that my honor might require me to withdraw my name.

"But you can't do that to Horry after all his work! It wouldn't be like you, Maury. I thought you were out to conquer the world."

"Only if it's worth conquering."

"And I've been thinking of you as a kind of Genghis Khan!"

"Would he have joined Psi U?"

"If only to turn it into a pile of skulls."

Well, of course, he was right: I couldn't do that to Horace, and I accepted my hard-earned election. Looking back, I must admit that the fraternity afforded me much pleasure. My memory of the old campus with its frame of dark, homely buildings is permeated with an atmosphere of noisy enthusiasm, of amiable brainlessness, of ingenuous idealism. There were members of Psi U it was impossible not to like, and I thought I preferred one Eli to a dozen Harvard "gentlemen." But at the time I had another reservation, which I also put to Ethan.

"I don't mind owing an election to you and Horace. But I must admit I'd hate to owe it to Gurdon."

Ethan looked at me sharply. "Why so?"

"Because he doesn't like me. Oh, it's not that he's not pleasant enough. But I get the distinct feeling that he thinks his cousin stepped rather far off the reservation in making such a pal of me."

Ethan considered his answer to this for a few moments. "I may be out of order, but if thinking you owe Gurdon anything is going to spoil the idea of Psi U for you, I'd better speak out. Gurdon hasn't helped your candidacy a bit. In fact, he opposed it. When Horry wasn't around to hear him, he actually talked you down."

I think this information did more than anything else to make me appreciate my election. If the issue was important enough to make Gurdon disloyal to his cousin and roommate, the fraternity might have more than a mere undergraduate importance in life.

"Do me a favor, Ethan. Promise me you'll never tell Gurdon that you've told me."

"But I had every intention of doing so! I'd feel like a sneak otherwise."

"Feel like a sneak then. Please. How could I ever feel easy in his and Horace's rooms if he knew that I knew?"

Ethan agreed to be silent, though he may have suspected that I had not given him my real reason. I suspected even then that Gurdon was destined to cut a bigger figure in the world than his cousin, and I had no wish to throw away any potential asset, certainly not for the petty satisfaction of showing a mean man that I knew of his meanness.

My election to Psi U, however, resulted also in a pleasanter discovery: the charmingly tactful side of Horace's nature. I wanted to acknowledge his sponsorship with an appropriate gesture, and I ordered from Tiffany's a gold tie pin with a sapphire over our intertwined initials. He showed an enthusiastic gratitude, wore it once on a New York weekend and then put it away, saying it was too fine for any but the grandest occasions. Of course I never saw it again, and it did not take me long to realize that this florid piece with its sentimental expression of friendship had been in the worst possible taste. I winced as I imagined Gurdon drawling, "They just never learn, do they?" But then I recognized that Horace would never have shown it to Gurdon. He would have understood how quickly one as observant as I
would
learn, and he was much too considerate to assail me with a lecture on breeding that could not have seemed anything but condescending. Which is one reason that Horace has been one of the few people in my life I have loved.