Honorable Men (12 page)

“Alida, please!” And he went down on his knees just as Mummie appeared in the doorway. It was a thoroughly ridiculous scene.

C
HIP WAS GOOD
to his word; I did not hear again from him or from Chessy during the short balance of the Bar Harbor season, or even for two weeks after our return to town. I began to wonder whether the whole episode, dreamlike from its beginning, might not have been indeed a dream. And yet, for some deep and probably neurotic reason, I did not suffer from as much emotional turmoil as I anticipated. I was aware of an unringing telephone and a fruitless mail delivery, yet I was not constantly hovering by the machine or rushing down to the front hall at the postman's ring. The contrast between my new friend and my betrothed was so vivid that they could not, it seemed to me, very well exist in the same world, let alone in the same restless female heart. I had created in myself a dichotomy between the reality of my proposed marriage and the reality of Chip Benedict.

Lady Lennox had returned to England, and Jonathan had opened up his father's old town house on East Eighty-ninth Street, a gloomy French Renaissance mansion, full of dusty bad paintings and nicked gilded furniture, in which he dwelled sulkily with an old family butler, very deaf, and two crones of maids. He had still not recovered from his jealous fit in Maine, but as I refused to discuss it, he had no alternative but to follow my bright, artificial conversational leads into other subjects, any other subjects. We went out together two or three times a week and went over the details of the large spring wedding that my parents had agreed to give us—entirely at Jonathan's expense, as I later found out.

It may sound heartless that I should have gone into such detail with him over a wedding the reality of which I no longer believed in. All I can say in my defense is that I seemed to be living increasingly in illusions and was terrified of what might happen if I emerged from them.

Chip broke his silence in late September with a letter suggesting that I meet him at a restaurant in the upper West Side. He did not ask me to respond; he simply wrote that he would be there on a particular night. And so, of course, was I. It was certainly not a place where anyone would have expected to see the fiancee of Jonathan Askew. It was dark and leathery and had large reproductions of Remington paintings of cowboys and Indians. The booths were private and the food good. Only much later did I discover why Chip was so familiar with the area.

We were soon meeting weekly. Chip seemed to have no difficulty leaving New Haven. He did not even mind missing a meeting of his senior society, which I did not then understand was a serious matter. We would talk with great animation and congeniality about the obtuseness of our families and the ineptitude of our friends. I was fascinated by his picture of the family rule at Benedict, and he, for some reason, by mine of my crazy home. We never mentioned Jonathan or my engagement. After dinner and many brandies he would take a taxi to Grand Central, dropping me home on the way. In the taxi we would neck violently. He handled me in a way that left me sleepless, frustrated and aching with desire for the rest of the night. Little did I then know that his own nocturnal hours were bothered by no such restlessness. The taxi would take him on, actually not to Grand Central, but to a lush private brothel that this blue-eyed angel had been frequenting for years.

I have said we both talked a lot at dinner, and we did, but Chip talked the most. He was very serious about both of us, but he was particularly serious about himself. He was a great admirer of Thorstein Veblen, and what he most deplored in his family was their efforts to negate in their own lives the principle of “conspicuous consumption.”

“It's perfectly possible for a man to free himself of material concerns,” Chip argued. “I don't deny such saints as Francis of Assisi. But what I abominate is people who live for the world and yet make a religion of denying it. My parents' whole life is dedicated to the making and preservation of wealth. Yet in their false simplicity, their splendid isolation up there in Connecticut, they would have you think they're as pure as the early desert fathers!”

“What about your grandfather? The headmaster, I mean, not the tycoon. Didn't you consider him a saint?”

“And perhaps he was, poor dear man. He may have dimly suspected that his school was only a front for the most rabid form of economic laissez-faire, but what could he do about it? Basically, he was a canary warbling in a gilded cage. Oh, yes, the Benedicts like canaries.”

“But surely you don't imagine that my family are any less worldly? Even though they don't have much to be worldly about.” I coughed at the very idea. “To put it mildly!”

“But that's just the point. There's no nauseous hypocrisy about them. They're straight out of Veblen. Bar Harbor could be a footnote to illustrate his thesis. Your ma under the umbrella table at the Swimming Club corresponds to an Indian squaw decked out in beads to show the prowess of her chief.”

I tried to imagine Daddy with a feathered headdress doing a war dance. “Is it so great a thing to be frank about being worldly?” I asked dubiously. “Suppose one is really poor? Isn't it rather a fraud?”

I doubt that he got the point. “So long as people are what they seem, I can deal with them,” he emphasized. “With you, for example, I know that I'm living in the real world. You made no bones about trying to be the most famous debutante in order to catch the richest stag.”

“Merci du compliment^

“Seriously, it puts you way ahead of the Benedicts and all their gang. Because if you can deal with the world as it is, you can handle truth, and if you can handle truth, you're free!”

I stared into those shining blue eyes and marveled at what he believed. For a minute I debated the pros and cons of seeing whether
he
could handle the truth. Should I try to persuade him that his parents were a dozen times superior to my poor shabby progenitors? For I perfectly understood that he was making an Alp out of the molehill of Mr. and Mrs. Benedict's merely human fatuity. They were probably an admirable couple, suffering only from the common need to dress up their underlying motivations. But what was there and then to change my life was that I suddenly saw—in a flash of mental illuminaÂ
tion—that to point this out would be to dish myself forever with this fanatic. Truth had been fascinating to Jonathan; with Chip it would have cost me all my glamour. And I wanted Chip—oh, yes, I wanted him as a desert monk wanted salvation!

“Are you richer than Jonathan?” I asked boldly.

“Very likely.”

That was the night, when I came home, that I found Jonathan waiting up with my parents. He had finally put a detective on me and knew all about my dinners with Chip. There was a very noisy scene, which I witnessed as coolly as if I had been at a play. Mummie screamed at me as violently as Jonathan, and even Daddy made throaty noises of protest. I did not know at the time how deeply they were both financially in Jonathan's debt. At last I went up to my bedroom and locked the door. The last words I heard were Daddy's as he tried to persuade Jonathan to go home, promising him that he would talk me around in the “cold, clear light” of morning.

When I came down to breakfast in that cold, clear light after a heavy sleep induced by three Seconals, I found Deborah in the dining room. Mummie was still in her room, and Daddy had gone to his club, as one might, in despair, go to church.

“I think you're behaving very badly,” Deborah said, and I knew at once that her averted eyes and controlled tone masked the deepest resentment.

I have not written much about my younger sister. I am afraid she has never really interested me. She was always just making it; that is, her grades at school were just respectable, her looks, bland and suggestive of future puffiness (alas, now confirmed) were just short of pretty, and her temper just missed being amiable. If Deborah (to use a current term) had been a jogger, she would have been one of those wide-bottomed wad-dlers you see panting slowly and painfully around the reservoir in Central Park. Everything came hard to her, but she tried to make up for this in the smugness of her assurance that in any race with her older sister the tortoise was bound to come out ahead. She may yet.

“If engagements can't be broken,” I retorted to her implication, “what on earth is the point of them?”

“The point is to find out if two people really love each other. But that wasn't the point of
your
engagement. You never had any idea of loving Jonathan. You've just found somebody richer, that's all.”

“That's not true!” I cried, stung.

“That he's not richer?”

“No, that I'm being mercenary. I didn't love Jonathan, and I do love Chip. Do you still think I ought to marry Jonathan?”

“Yes! Because you led him on. You owe it to him. You made a bargain in cold blood. Now you're welching. I think it's vile!”

“Deborah! Your tone!”

“I mean it, Alida. All your life things have come easily to you, so you sneer at them. You sneer at all the things I haven't had. And now you sneer at Jonathan and kick him over because something prettier has caught your fancy. What do you care if he's broken-hearted? What do you care about the scandal and what it may do to
my
chances of ever getting married?”

“Scandal? What scandal? Why should it be a scandal for a girl to break her engagement?”

“Because Jonathan wants money back from Daddy he can't repay! You should have heard what went on after you went to bed. They woke me up with their shouting. Oh, why do I waste my breath? What do you care?” And Deborah, bursting into angry tears, rushed from the room.

When I had swallowed two cups of black coffee, I took a taxi to the Metropolitan Club and sent my name up to Gus Leighton. He met me in the visitors' lounge, which at that early hour was empty. Typically, he showed no reaction as I related what had happened; he simply waited, expressionless, until I had finished.

“And just what is it that you expect me to do?”

“I hoped you would take care of breaking it to the press.”

“There will be no need of that. By noon everyone will know.”

“Shouldn't I have a statement ready?”

“What for? To try to explain it to the Benedicts?”

“Oh, you know their name.” I had not mentioned it, simply referring to Chip as a new friend.

“Do you think I don't know that you met Charles Benedict last summer and went sailing with him? There are no secrets on our northern island.”

“Or on this one either, apparently.”

“Let me ask you just one thing. I believe that our former association justifies it.”

“Certainly.”

“Has Benedict committed himself?”

“To marrying me? In no way.”

“That's what I was afraid of. Do you know that he is the heir of the Benedict Company and the very apple of his parents' eyes?"

“I have surmised it.”

“And have you any idea what Mr. and Mrs. Benedict are like?”

“I understand they are virtuous folk. Very high-minded. No doubt they will disapprove of me.”

“Alida, they will fight you tooth and nail!” Gus was very grave now. “They will use every weapon in their arsenal, and they have plenty. For God's sake, don't give up Jonathan before you're sure of Benedict. You may have been a famous debutante, but think of your family and the fragility of your position. One false step, and the world will have it in for you!”

“But don't you see, Gus, that this may be my one chance for decency? To do it this way?
Before
anyone's committed?”

Gus gave me a long look. Then he nodded.

“I'll see what I can do about the press. I'm afraid it won't be much.”

It wasn't. The publicity that accompanied my “broken troth,” as the headlines called it, exceeded my worst expectations. But on the whole I was not displeased. It was a kind of punishment, perhaps a merited one. The papers did not pick up Chip's trail, for even in his fury Jonathan did not wish to be shamed by such an exposure, but they picked up everything else, including the ugly fact that Mummie and Daddy had received large loans from Jonathan, which they now refused to pay back, claiming that they had been gifts. It appeared that there might be litigation. I could imagine the long faces at the Benedict breakfast table when they learned that this was their darling's new girl!

But would he continue to be interested? Would the sordid row be Veblenesque enough for him? If I loved Chip before, it may be imagined how I adored him when I heard his firm, calm voice on the telephone.

“I want you to come to Benedict for lunch on Sunday, Alida.” It was not until we were engaged that he used even such mild terms as “my dear” or “dearest.” “It's high time you met my parents.”

“What must they think of all this!”

“I guess that's got to be their problem. I know what I think.
I don't give a damn about the papers! There's a train that gets in at 12:05. If you can make it, I'll meet you.”

Oh, that lunch! In that expensive, antiseptic dining room with the blue walls, the primitives, the Duncan Phyfe chairs! We were eight; I suppose the Benedicts couldn't face me alone. The others, I believe, were neighbors. Chip's only ally, unless he was a parental spy, was his former roommate, Lars Alversen. I gathered that the family disapproved of Chessy. Why not? Look at the trouble he had caused!

Mr. Benedict, on whose right I was placed, was very gentle, very polite. He couldn't have been rude to Lady Macbeth; it wasn't in his nature. But his homely wife, with whom I had exchanged a few remarks about the weather—or, rather, to whom I had addressed a few such remarks before the meal—could hardly bring herself to speak to me or to anyone else. She kept glancing at me with eyes full of apprehension and almost undisguised dismay. She could no more have pretended that she was giving a pleasant lunch party than had she just been told that her son was stricken with a fatal disease. I almost felt sorry for her.