Honorable Men (14 page)

Gus Leighton had known Chip's mother since his schooldays at Saint Luke's. He had been a passionate admirer of Mr. B, then only the chaplain, and had met Mrs. Benedict on one of her weekend visits to her father. Gus as a boy had apparently bubbled over with Christian fervor, a not unusual first chapter to a maturity of polished worldliness, and in his youthful enthusiasm for the chaplain he had won the friendship of the latter's formidable but very filial daughter. I could understand how even the severe Mrs. Benedict might have yielded to Gus's sincere gushing. As a matter of fact, it is not uncommon for doughty, moralistic older women to be pushovers for younger, glibber, effervescent males. It may be the attraction of opposites.

“Matilda has a great heart,” Gus explained to me. “She piles boulders around it in the constant fear of assault. But in those days a concern for her wonderful little father was her vulnerable point. I think she always felt a bit guilty about marrying and leaving his humble abode for the splendors of Benedict. So when she discovered a boy who appreciated her old man for the saint he was, she warmed to him at once. And when Matilda comes over to you, it's for life. I might have been one of those delinquents she hires as houseboys.”

We were sitting on the terrace after breakfast, drinking coffee. Chip had gone to school, and Gus and I had nothing to do on that fine October morning but breathe in the golden air and gaze across the rolling greens and reds to the glory of the Blue Ridge. It was delightful enough, to be sure, yet something in Gus's presence made me apprehensive. So large and soft, black haired and black garbed, with those big eyes that saw too much, he might have been an envoy from the great metropolis in the north sent to convince me that my little paradise was the illusion I had all the while suspected it was.

“Was it common for boys in Saint Luke's in your day to be so religious?” I asked.

“It was not uncommon. There was always a little group of the ‘inspired.' Chip's grandfather had a great effect on us. We used to think of him as an early apostle. The kind of simple person who had learned from Christ directly and was not bothered by the theology of later Christians.”

“A Saint Francis?”

“Or a Saint Luke. I wanted to be a missionary then.”

“Why didn't you?”

Gus's shrug was mildly regretful. “I lost my faith. Sophomore year at Harvard.”

“And the others?”

“Some did. Some didn't. A few became ardent Catholics, oddly enough, for Mr. B was not in the least doctrinal. One even became a Trappist monk.”

“Was it like that in Chip's day?”

“Much less so. Mr. B, you see, had become headmaster by then. He was more absorbed in administrative details. Saint John, if you like, had become Saint Paul.”

“Chip is full of Christian rules,” I observed pensively. “But if he has any faith, he keeps it to himself.”

“Then he probably doesn't have any. That's something that worries me about the Saint Luke's boys of Chip's time. The serious ones, I mean. They seem to have the rules without the faith.”

“What's the harm in that?”

“There's nothing to moderate the rigidity of their logic.”

“But surely the real danger comes from people with too much faith!” I protested, disliking the direction of our talk. “Fanatics and bigots. People who want to burn Jews and heretics.”

“Well, of course, too much faith may be as bad as too little. What I suppose I'm trying to say is that if you scrap Christ, you'd better scrap the whole business of religion and take your chances with reason.”

I stared. “I think Chip is perfectly reasonable. Don't you?”

“Is he reasonable with his mother? Is it reasonable to let the poor woman languish in his neglect and disesteem? Surely, if Chip were governed by his reason he would see that it is wanton cruelty to treat his mother as he does.”

“Couldn't Mrs. Benedict make the first move? After all, it was she who started it.”

“She doesn't dare! I've seen the poor woman. She's eating her heart out over Chip, and she hasn't the least idea what to do about it. Why don't you go up there and see what you can do?”

“But Chip would be furious!”

“Are you going to spend the rest of your life being scared of that young man? Where's the girl who gave Jonathan Askew his walking papers?”

“But I don't want to be that kind of girl! I'm perfectly happy being the kind of girl Chip wants.”

“And how do you know he's always going to want such a milk toast?”

“I knew you were going to make trouble! I knew things were too good to last.”

“Well, is he going to kill you for making peace in his family?” Gus demanded. “Do you want
me
to speak to him?”

“Oh, no, no.”

“Then let me tell you something. A lot of the so-called ethics of the
jeunesse dorée
is simple snobbery. When God goes, Emily Post takes His place. It's bad form to lie or cheat. I suggest you convince your husband that it's lower middle class to be unkind to one's old ma.”

“You don't know him, Gus,” I said with a shiver.

“Maybe not, but do you?”

The more I thought about what Gus had said, the more I began to think he was right. Was there not perhaps in the very persistence of Chip's silence about his parents a concealed guilt? Might he not actually be relieved to admit it? And little by little the idea of playing the role of dove of peace began to appeal to me. Two weeks later, when I went to New York for the announcement of Deborah's engagement to Tom Ayers (Chip could not leave his Law Review work), I telephoned Mrs. Benedict to ask whether I could drive out for lunch. After a distinct pause of surprise she responded in a firm voice : “Of course, my dear. I'll be glad to see you. I'm sorry your father-in-law is away.”

When I arrived at the house, an hour before lunch time, I was told that Mrs. Benedict was in the greenhouse, and I joined her there. I saw at once that talk would be easier for me if she was doing something with her hands, and I sat on an iron bench while she repotted her begonias.

“You're wondering why I came up.”

She was standing with her back to me, but she now stopped handling the flowers. “Isn't it natural for a son's wife to call on his mother?”

“Not in our case. But does it have to go on this way? Can't we ever be friends?”

That long back, garbed in a gardening smock, was still unturned. “Do you really want us to be?”

“Very much.”

“Why?”

This almost daunted me, but I pressed on. “Because I need you.

Mrs. Benedict turned at this, and there was at last a hint of sympathy in her haggard, watery eyes. She sat down abruptly on the bench beside me. “Tell me why you need me, Alida.”

“Because I'm married to the most wonderful man in the world. So wonderful that
he
doesn't need me!”

“Does he need anyone?”

“Oh, he must! Deep down. You, maybe. His father. I'm so worried!” I hadn't realized until that moment how much I was.

“But haven't you got just about everything you wanted?”

“Oh, I know you think I went after Chip. It's not true. He chased me wildly!”

Mrs. Benedict was at once severe again. “But that is a thing young men do. You were engaged. You had no business seeing him.”

I saw now that my only chance lay in tears. And when they came, they were not artificial. Far from it. I wanted to be loved by this gaunt, implacable creature! It was as if she were some grim guardian about to close forever the golden gate of salvation. “Please, Mrs. Benedict,” I gasped with a sob, “can't you help me? I love Chip so, and I want to help him, and I don't see how I can do it without you and your husband!” Well, that did it. Those long bony arms were around me, and I was clasped to the Roman matron's breast. I was aware of her faintly malodorous breath. But I didn't care. I hugged her as I had never dreamed of hugging my own mother!

“Bless you, my child, you and I are going to turn over a clean new page! And we're going to write wonderful things on it, too. You see if we don't. I think for a long time I've been wanting to love you. And that's not just a way of getting back into Chip's heart, either.” Then she released me and sat back to contemplate me with a small sad smile. “If Chip has a heart, that is.”

“Oh, Mrs. Benedict, don't even think that he hasn't!”

“Very well, dear, I shan't.”

When I departed, after a long emotional lunch in which I learned a hundred things about Chip's boyhood that I hadn't known before, it was agreed that she and Mr. Benedict would come to Charlottesville for Thanksgiving.

But it was small thanks that I received from their son. I did not tell him about my talk with his mother until our cocktail time of six o'clock and then only after he had finished his drink. But he reverted at once to his soberest demeanor.

“Now what induced you to get into that?” he demanded in a sharp tone. “Didn't you know I had that situation under control?”

“I guess I didn't know it was that much of a ‘situation.' ”

“Of course you did! And you knew I didn't want you in their camp. Isn't that true?”

“I don't understand you!” I exclaimed, flushing. “I don't see why there have to be camps. Why can't I get on with your mother? Why can't we all be a happy family together?”

“Because I've broken away from them. And they're not going to get me back. And I don't want you mixed up with them. Is that understood, Alida? Is that clear?”

I almost rebelled then and there. But I checked myself at the last minute. I was still too afraid of him, afraid of what might happen to our marriage if I really crossed him.

“Very well. I'll tell them not to come on Thanksgiving.”

“No, no!” he retorted impatiently. “That would be making too much of it. Let them come, but be sure you're on my side.” What was his side, and how could I not be on it? At any rate, the Benedicts came for Thanksgiving and stayed, not in the Farmington Country Club, but with us, and everything went off smoothly enough, thanks to my father-in-law's wonderful talent for appearing to take for granted that nothing was in the least way out of the ordinary. Mrs. Benedict wisely made no effort to communicate with me privately; she seemed to sense that any observed understanding between herself and me would be resented by Chip. But when she left, she gave me a warm embrace and murmured in my ear, “Don't worry, darling. We're getting there.”

But were we? And where was “there”?

***

A greater crisis for Chip and me came shortly after this, just before Christmas in his last year at law school.

I have not spoken of Chessy Bogart, though he continued to play a considerable role in our lives. He had come to Virginia Law School with Chip, and he was very much a part of the weekend group that met every Saturday night for dinner and bridge or poker, sometimes at our house, sometimes at the house of one of the other law school couples who lived in the Farmington area. He had received a settlement from his uncle's supposedly bankrupt estate, and he had just enough, as a single man, to keep up with his richer friends, but at the end of our second year in Charlottesville, to everybody's surprise, he had married a New York girl, Suzanne Derby, whom I had known in my turbulent debutante year and who was sweet and pretty but had no money. Somehow it was not the match that we had expected of Chessy, but we thought the more of him for it.

“I know what you all were thinking,” he told me, when he and I first discussed his engagement. “You thought I was going to marry some girl for her money. Now look what's happened. Some girl's marrying me for mine!”

“I'm sure that's not true. I remember Suzy. She's a darling.”

“You mean she's dumb.”

“I mean no such thing!”

“It's all right. I have no wish to marry a bright girl.
You're
bright. You're brighter than Chip, for that matter, but much good that may do him, once you've ceased to be his odalisque and become his consort.”

“And just what do you mean by that?”

“I'm not going to tell you, because you know perfectly well what I mean. Anyway, we're talking about me and my engagement. All I expect of Suzy is that she be a good bedmate, have an amiable disposition and not let me down at the bridge table. And I have every reason to be assured of all three.”

“Even the first?” I asked. It was long before the sexual revolution.

“Do I shock you?”

Chessy and Suzy found a tiny house right by the university and furnished it largely with wedding presents. Suzy seemed to adapt herself easily to her husband and his friends, and although she was uninteresting, she made a pleasant addition to our group. How they made ends meet, I don't know; I suspect that Chessy borrowed money, and probably from Chip. But Chip never talked to me about his finances. He gave me all the money I needed, though I never knew how much of his income it represented. When I asked him once, he simply replied, “Do you really want to get into that?” And I decided that I didn't.

Chessy, anyway, seemed assured of a good future. He was too much of a party-goer, even by Virginia standards, and he did the minimum homework, but he listened to the lectures, and his remarkable memory taped, as it were, every spoken word of his professors.

“They're all peacocks,” he explained to me, “in love with their own tails. Spell it
t-a-l-e-s.
So long as you have the wit to toss back their own garbage on an exam, you have it made. Actually, you don't have to crack a book, except just enough to be able to answer occasionally in class.”

His brilliance won him an editorship in the contest for the Law Review, but it proved a poor substitute for industry in the writing of articles, and his failure to pull his oar soon became a bone of bitter contention between him and Chip. When the final rift between them came, however, it was over something much graver than Chessy's omissions. It was not nonfeasance but actual malfeasance that now confronted us. You see, I had picked up some legal terms from Chip.