Honorable Men (10 page)

“No, Ma. I'm not going to write another column. I've stated my position, and that's that.”

Chip saw his mother try to catch his father's eye. She made no attempt to conceal what she was doing, but his father, always subtler, avoided the appeal. It was obvious that both were relieved by Chip's answer, believing, as they must have, that a single column, in an era of widening latitudes, would not disqualify him from the ritual tap.

“Well, I think that's about all we should expect of a young man, isn't it, Mother?”

When Elihu called his wife “Mother,” it was to hint that the matter was closed. But today Matilda seemed not to be taking hints.

“I still think it would be nice if Chip and Lars wrote a column on the other side. That would show their impartiality—their concern, above all, for the good of Yale.”

“But we're not impartial, are we, Lars? And how can we be sure what's good for Yale? We're plugging for the abolition of the senior societies.”

“Lars, tell me it's not true!” Matilda cried in distress. “Tell me you're not going that far.”

“Oh, I guess Chip's exaggerating a bit,” Lars conceded. “I think that basically all we want is for people to feel more at liberty to reject their bids. The whole thing has become too much of a fetish.”

“And fetishes should go!” Chip insisted.

“You know how sons are with mothers,” Lars said to Matilda, with a conciliatory smile. “They always exaggerate. I do the same thing with my ma.”

Chip looked darkly from his mother to his roommate. He knew that Lars could never be counted on, not because he was weak or unfaithful by nature, but because his sunny acceptance of the world of privilege was bound to predominate over his occasional, genuine moods of rebellion. Rebellion with Lars was all in the intellect; conformity, in the heart. And Matilda, sensing this, was using him against her son just as hard as she could.

Elihu, seeing that the discussion was heading into trouble, intervened.

“I think all we can ask of Chip is that he keep an open mind—right up to Tap Day itself.”

“Do you mean, Dad, an open mind about the societies or an open mind about joining one?”

“Both.”

“In other words, you expect me to stand in the Branford Court with the others?”

“If it's not asking too much of you. How do we know that you won't have a sudden conversion?”

“Like Saul on the road to Damascus!” Lars exclaimed, with his loud laugh. Elihu smiled, but Matilda did not.

“Why do you care so, Dad?”

“Because he was a member of Bulldog himself!” Matilda answered impulsively for her husband. “And because he knows all the fine things it stands for! Because he doesn't want his son to repudiate all of his values and spit at an institution that represents a spark of idealism in a dangerously cynical world!”

“Oh, Ma, can't you let anyone make up his own mind? Must you always butt into everything?”

“Chip! I must ask you not to take that tone with your mother. It is unkind to her, offensive to me and embarrassing to your friend and guest.”

Only Elihu could say such things without in the least raising his voice.

“I'm sorry, Dad.”

“Really, Chip,” Lars intervened, “is it asking so much of you to stand in the courtyard? It isn't as if you were committing yourself to anything.”

There was a considerable silence before Chip replied.

“Very well, I agree to stand in the courtyard. If you, Dad, and you, Ma, agree to say nothing more about it. And do nothing more about it!”

Elihu now gave his wife his steeliest look. It was brief but effective, and a silent compact was reached. The conversation was turned to Hitler and the Rhineland, and after lunch Chip and Lars drove back to New Haven.

***

Only two weeks later, however, Lars reported a new development to his roommate. The society that was flirting with Lars wanted Chip as well, and Lars had been put on notice, with the greatest discretion, that Elihu Benedict had been in touch with some of his old Bulldog friends to reassure them about Chip. Elihu was evidently endeavoring to convince them that the column in the
News
had been no more than “a violet in the youth of primy nature, forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting,” and that Chip, as his name implied, was something off the old block.

“That does it then,” Chip said grimly. “I shall not stand in Branford Court on Tap Day.”

“Shall I stay away with you?”

“You know you want Keys. Don't be an ass.”

It took him some time to persuade Lars that he was not irretrievably committed to his roommate's cause. And why was Chip so committed? Why did he regard the matter as concerning only him and not Lars, nor indeed any other of his classmates?

He went to West Seventieth Street in New York that night, but, in an uncharacteristic visit to the bar, he drank so much that he lost the capacity to do anything more. Flora, his favorite of the girls, who was in love with him, sat by him most of the night and listened uncomprehendingly to his rambling.

“I'm not what they think I am,” he told her, again and again. “I never have been. I never will be. But I can't convince them. ‘Look at him!' they cry. ‘Can't you see he's an angel?' Even you, Flora, my love. Even you.”

In the end she put him to bed and lay quietly beside him. The next morning he departed while she was still asleep. He did not even have a hangover.

Two days later there was a knock at their study door in Berkeley, and Lars opened it and let out a little bark of surprise.

“Why, Mrs. Benedict! What a happy surprise!”

“Be a good boy, Lars, and leave me alone with Chip.”

“Mother, it's his room, too!”

But Lars was already out the door, and Chip stood up stiffly when he saw that his mother was looking graver than he had ever remembered her. He saw, too, that it was more than gravity. He could sense the full extent of her desperation in the length of her preparatory pause. It was not like her, indignant, to delay the flood tide of her reproaches. Chip had been deep in Shakespearean tragedy that whole term, and he likened her now to Volumnia, preparing her warrior-son for battle.

“I think you must have found out that your father went to Chicago to attend his annual Bulldog dinner especially on your account.”

“I certainly never asked him to. And I believe he committed himself to do nothing for me in the matter.”

“Anyway, he went. Nothing else matters to him where your future and happiness are concerned.”

“My happiness? Am I not to judge that for myself? It is my life, isn't it P Or is it?”

“I was waiting for you to say that. Of course it's your life. And I can perfectly understand that your father may have gone too far. It may be that the whole matter should have been left to you. But what I believe is not debatable—what I believe even you would not argue—is that your father was motivated by anything but his great love for you.”

Chip saw at once how the issue had been drawn. If he let this pass...! “Unless I were to argue that a son may be part of a father. And in that respect a paternal love may be tinted with ego. That even..."

“Do you dare to argue that?” his mother interrupted in a harsh tone. “Do you dare to argue that you have not been the very apple of his eye? Oh, take it out on me as much as you like. Call me a monster of selfishness, of possessiveness. Say that I don't mind using every murderous weapon in a mother's arsenal! I don't care! It's true, if you like. But at least admit that your father has adored you unselfishly from the moment you were born. Why, your sisters and I don't even exist for him on the same plane that you occupy.”

Chip quailed, fearing that he was already lost. He made no answer, and she pounced on his silence.

“Very well. Then let that be settled. And now let us come to what you propose to do. You propose to reject a bid from Bulldog that is entirely your due and that your father has simply tried to make doubly sure would come your way. Why? Out of some kind of moral principle? What principle? You can hardly seriously argue that Bulldog is immoral or pernicious. Is it to be consistent? But you have said yourself that you need not be ruled by a single article in the
News.
So what is it?”

Chip stared at that frozen face, fascinated by its unusual rigidity. She hardly seemed his mother now; she was more like a jealous and abandoned mistress. “What is it?” he repeated, half in a whisper.

“It's your desire to wound your father!” she almost shouted. “Your desire to hurt him as deeply as you can. To humiliate him, debase him, roll him in the mire!”

“Mother! What are you saying? When have I been anything in my life but his son?”

“I don't know, I don't know.” She was moaning now, closing her eyes and shaking her head back and forth as if to repel some horrible supposition. “I've never understood you. Ever since you were a little boy you seem to have been watching us as if we were—I don't know—freaks. My father used to say the same thing. That you were judging us. For what? For loving you so much? For loving you more than your sisters? For we did, God help us! Why could you never tell us what was wrong? It isn't as if we wouldn't have listened! All we ever wanted was for you to be happy and well!”

At this, appallingly, she cracked. Like some great galleon in a violent storm, she swayed to and fro and then half-fell to the couch, as under the crashing wreck of masts and sails, to give way to a fury of sobbing. When she seemed to be losing her breath in gasps, he hurried to her side and tried to clasp her in his arms. But even in his anxiety, even as she attempted vehemently to push him away from her, a part of his mind was still able to see that this was the Volumnia who forced Coriolanus to spare Rome at the cost of his life and soul.

“I'll take Bulldog if I'm tapped!” he cried in desperation. “I promise!”

Her only answer was to stop sobbing and sit up on the couch to repair some of the damage of her emotion with the aid of a handkerchief and a bit of powder, clumsily applied.

“I don't care what you do,” she said shortly. “I'm going home. You needn't come down. The car is right below.”

Chip took her at her word; one always did. When she had left the room, he went to the window and saw that, sure enough, her chauffeur, an ex-forger, had parked the old green Cadillac directly by the Berkeley gate. He saw his mother emerge on the street accompanied by Lars, who must have been lurking in the corridor. And who must have been the one who had warned her of his resolution not to be tapped! They were engaged in a conversation that continued for a few minutes after she had got into the car, Lars leaning in the window.
Then she drove off, and Lars, waving up to Chip, re-entered the college.

“Your mother wants me to be sure to remind you of your promise. I gather her arguments have prevailed. A good thing, too. You've been making a mountain out of a molehill.”

Chip was rent between the impulse to laugh wildly and a bitterness that threatened hot tears. So it had all been a scene, after all! And he had worried about having thoughts of Shakespeare while she suffered! She, who was no longer Volumnia, magnificent in her obsession, but Hamlet's mother, Gertrude, doing her vulgar maternal duty as she vulgarly conceived it. When he spoke at last to his roommate, his voice, very cool, was yet tremulous.

“You may take the same message to my dear mother, Lars-Osric, that Hamlet sent to the King. ‘Sir, I will walk here in the hall; if it please his majesty, it is the breathing time of day with me; let the foils be brought, the gentleman willing, and the king hold his purpose, I will win for him if I can; if not, I will gain nothing but my shame and the odd hits.' ”

“Which means, I take it, that you will walk in Branford Court on Tap Day and win at the odds?”

“I fear I shall gain my shame even so.”

Lars's smile gave way to an expression of guarded concern. “I'm afraid you're still taking it all a bit tragically, my friend. Consider, like Dr. Johnson, how insignificant this will appear a twelvemonth hence.”

“Osrics are not expected to know when they are acting in tragedies.”

Lars let out one of his whoops of laughter. “Are you trying to insult me, Chip? I verily believe you are!”

***

Chip was the last man tapped for Bulldog, and he jogged off obediently to his room, where he was duly initiated into the rites of that arcane institution. But later that night, when he and Lars, who had accepted his bid from Scroll and Key, were sitting up over a brandy, they discussed an unexpected development of the day.

Chessy Bogart had also been tapped for Bulldog! The seniors had evidently felt that it was time to give recognition to the new editor-in-chief of the
Lit.
Of course, Lars knew the story of his expulsion from Saint Luke's and the attempted implication of Chip. He was concerned that Bogart's election might ruin his roommate's pleasure in his own. But Chip did not think so.

“In a way I'm almost glad. I like to have him where I can keep an eye on him. I've always been conscious of him skulking in the background.”

“Now what on earth do you mean by that? Or must I go back to Hamlet to find out?”

“It's hard to explain. Have you never felt that a person has been endowed with the special mission of punishing you?”

Lars stared. “Is there something about you and Bogart that I don't know?”

“Nothing that would strike you as having any importance. It's only a question of what happened to whom when.”

“Do you enjoy trying to baffle me?”

“Isn't it obvious that I don't want to talk about it? Don't worry, my friend. I have it all under control. When I told my ma I would do as she asked, a change came in my life.”

The term was almost over; a premature summer seemed to be crowding into the last days of Academe. Chip invited Chessy to go to New York with him for a night. He took his old Saint Luke's acquaintance to the finest of French restaurants, and the two young men got fairly high on cocktails and wine.