Honorable Men (24 page)

“But we're not fighting just for the money!” Alida exclaimed indignantly.

“That does complicate matters, doesn't it?” Karen, sensing the embroilment of Chip and Alida, tried tactfully to withdraw. “Well, aren't you glad I'm not on your board?”

“No, I don't think I am, Karen,” Chip responded gravely. “I like your directness. It clears the air. You're not devious, like Lars.”

“Or sentimental, like me.” Alida retorted. “Go ahead, say it! I don't know what gets into you, Chip, but you always have to go against everybody. Isn't it perfectly obvious that we're fighting for our very lives against a gang of pirates?”

“If it were obvious,” Chip replied, “I shouldn't have said what I did.”

Alida became silent at this, as she always did when she was frightened—he hated doing this to her, but how could he help it?—and the always diplomatic Lars changed the subject to that of his own golf score.

Chip was uncomfortably aware in the next days of the persistence of the hollow feeling inside of him. It was as if his substance were dripping away, oozing out of a leak; as if it could be only a matter of time before the Chip Benedict who attended so efficiently to his daily tasks became a finely wrought simulacrum of the business executive and community leader. And then there would come to him the image of a dummy that was no longer even a dummy but simply something that existed in the eye of the would-be beholder, like the clothes of the naked emperor. There were moments now when his heart would seem to pump sudden wrath. Was it nothing to have doubled the gross revenues of the company and brought prosperity to the town? Was it really nothing to have made Benedict more famous than his grandfather had? “Why can I get nowhere with life?” he asked Lars at lunch.

“In life or with life?”

“With life. I suppose I've got somewhere in life. But it keeps turning back and slugging me. I tried to be my own boss at Yale and at law school, and it almost killed my parents. I tried to be a good soldier in the war, and I turned into a bloodhound. Then I decided, what the hell, I'd start all over again. I was going to be a good son, a good manager. And what have I become? A crook!”

“A crook!” Lars glanced about in mock alarm. “Lower your voice, please. Have your fingers strayed into the company till?”

“You know what I mean. You agreed we were shysters.”

“A shyster is not necessarily a crook.”

“He's a moral crook.”

“Remember what Holmes said: the life of the law is not logic but experience. We have to keep up with the times. The word ‘shyster' must be redefined each generation to keep it from taking in the most distinguished practitioners at the bar.”

“But it's all downhill. Morally.”

“Well, morals, too, my dear Chip, are hardly fixed things. They go up as well as down. We may no longer believe that a son is morally bound to pay his father's debts, but neither do we think a woman taken in adultery should be stoned.”

“Are you telling me, Lars, that everything we're doing to save our management of Benedict is morally justified?”

“Well, perhaps you went a bit far in investigating the private lives of some of the officers of Barnheim. But we can cut that off.”

Chip wondered whether he did not envy Lars. Wasn't it enviable to be able to see the foibles of the world so clearly and to accept so easily, even so gracefully, one's own helplessness to do anything much about it? Lars kept his moral fingernails as clean as he could; it would hardly help to plunge them into the mud. Nor would it clean the mud. But it was all right for Lars, because Lars had always been that way.

“Karen sees it more clearly,” Chip said bluntly.

“Karen lives in a world of her own.”

“But I'm wondering if that isn't the world I want to live in, too.

“Karen doesn't have to manage and defend large businesses. She can afford delicate scruples.”

“Lars, all you're saying is that there are two codes: one for the active and one for the passive. I can't buy that.”

Lars said nothing for a minute. Then he sighed. “You've been in such a funny mood lately that I've been wondering how to tell you something. We received another offer from Barnheim this morning.”

“You're afraid I'll take it?”

“It's surely a hard one to turn down. The name Benedict to be retained. Something like Barnheim-Benedict, to be worked out. All officers, including yourself, to be given five-year contracts. And a stock offer that would almost double your wealth.”

Chip laughed harshly. “It's as if God had bribed Saul on the road to Damascus!”

“You mean you're tempted?”

“It might be my one chance to live!”

“You are tempted.”

“Wouldn't you be?”

“Perhaps. If Elihu Benedict weren't my old man.”

Chip's brief elation collapsed under the fall of this black curtain. “Let's have a look at those terms,” he said curtly.

E
LIHU
B
ENEDICT
was still only in his early seventies, but he was gaunt and gray, and there were long periods when he neither moved nor spoke. He liked to be taken every morning to his office directly below Chip's, hung with his beautiful collection of Fitzhugh Lane seascapes. Chip had prepared him for the interview with a memorandum on the Barnheim offer and the arguments in favor of its acceptance.

When Chip came in, his father told him calmly to close the door. The two sat in silence before the old man spoke.

“Let me see whether I understand you correctly, my son. You say that this offer will considerably enrich the Benedicts. You say that further resistance to the takeover might not only fail, but could leave us worse off than we now are. And then—and this is what interests me particularly—you say that the techniques of resistance are morally offensive to you.”

“That's it, Dad. Is there any reason people should not be free to purchase stock as they wish?”

“Even if what they really wish is to dismember an old family business?”

“Well, that's a matter of opinion, isn't it? They're in business. We're in business. They think they can run Benedict more cheaply and profitably.”

“And do you think they can?”

“Perhaps.”

“Because our management in recent years has diminished the quality of the product to a point where it can be as readily produced by others as by ourselves?”

Chip stared into the impenetrable paternal eyes. He was not accustomed to this dry wind of detachment. “I suppose so, yes.”

“And in order to enable us to enter the broad market of popular glassware, we had to go public. And once we had gone public, we had to anticipate that we might be bought out. So what have we accomplished?”

“We'll have made a lot of money.”

“But we had a lot of money. And we had the pleasure of manufacturing beautiful things.”

“All that is true, sir.”

“And now we'll be rich. Period.” Elihu looked away from his son. His voice was still devoid of any emotion. “I don't understand you, Chip. I don't know what motivates you. I never have. You build things up only to tear them down. Maybe you're a true man of your times. Maybe the idea of a small, family-run company that does one thing proudly and does it well is hopelessly old-fashioned. I have given you full rein and gone along with your ideas. You have turned your five talents into ten. You are a success. It's your world. You can live in it. My time is almost over. I'm just as glad.”

Chip, looking at that long, immobile profile, knew that there was nothing to say. His heart ached with frustration. Was the lifetime of love that this man had given him to end on this note of desolation? Could he not throw his arms around the old man and cry, “Dad, I love you, I love you!” No. Because Elihu was too good for that. Elihu wanted more than that. He wanted a son who would run Benedict as he had run it. He knew that this would never be and probably never could have been. He accepted it. But it was bitter tea, and no amount of demonstration, no matter how sincere, no matter how heartfelt, was going to make it any sweeter.

“You know, Dad, that I'll do as you say. If you tell me to reject the offer and go on with the fight, I'll do it. I might even be relieved!”

“But I shall not tell you to do that, my son. I have no idea of resuming the duties and prerogatives of an office that I resigned of my own free will. You have assumed those duties, and you must discharge them as you see best.”

“But you think me a callous opportunist,” Chip replied bitterly. “Say it!”

His father turned back to him with eyes that contained no reproach, but rather a look of unexpected sympathy. “No, my boy, you're wrong. You belong to your time, I to mine. I am only sorry that you do not get the kick out of your time that I did out of mine. You're not happy, Chip.”

“I'm certainly not happy about this.”

“No, but you should be. By your own lights. If you believe in them.”

“I don't know what I believe in, Dad.”

“I wish I could help you, dear boy. But I can't. It's too late. I'm too old. But then I've never really understood you. Talk to your mother. Talk to Alida. But I think I need to rest now. This has been a trying experience. Don't worry. I'll get over it. Call Timmy, will you?”

Chip opened the door to call his father's orderly, and while they waited Elihu asked him about his future. “Will you work for the new syndicate?”

“No, I couldn't. Nor will I live in Benedict. It would be too hard, after being top dog here. I'll probably move to New York.” He tried to laugh, but the laugh would not come. “I'll do good works to make up for my sins!”

But his father did not smile back. “Alida will like that. She's got New York in her blood. Though she has done a wonderful job here in Benedict.”

Alone, Chip wondered how his father could be so wrong about Alida. He knew that the scene with her was going to be almost as difficult as the one with Elihu. He went directly home now from the office to get it over with. He found Alida in her garden and led her into the living room, where he told her of his decision. She listened, gaping, and then to his dismay she dropped into the sofa and started to sob.

“What are you doing to me?” she cried. “You can't just take a girl's life and snap it in two like that!”

“I didn't think you'd take it quite so hard. Perhaps I should have prepared you more for it. I know you feel that there hasn't been a proper communication between us. I've always found it difficult to be frank about myself. But now I'm trying. It's going to mean everything to me to get away from Benedict once this deal has gone through. I'm pretty sure I'll want to live in New York. There are all kinds of things I might go into there—hospital work, libraries, zoos. I know you've made a great life for yourself here. No one appreciates that more than I do. But you can do it again in New York.” He hesitated. “I don't think I've ever asked a real sacrifice of you before now.”

He could see that this gave her pause. She reached one hand doubtfully out to him, but then pulled it back.

“You say you've never asked a sacrifice of me. I guess that's true. Except for my silence, my not intruding. It's not easy for a woman to be silent, not to intrude. But now you're asking me to give up the only life I've ever loved and go back to one that I know I'm going to hate and despise!”

“How can you possibly know any such thing?”

“Because I do! Why can't we stay in Benedict? Even if we lose the company. You say we'll be richer. Why can't we stay and run the charities and the other things in town that nobody's going to kick us out of?”

“Live in Benedict after we've lost the company?” He marveled that even she could not see this. “Think of it, Alida! Have you no pride?”

“Not like yours, that's for sure.”

“You can't seriously ask it of me!”

“Look what you're asking of me.”

“But that's different. A man has to make certain basic decisions for himself. I want to go to New York where my law firm is. It's a bigger life than here. You can't expect me to stay in this backwater just because you feel cozier here!”

“Oh, so that's what it is after the Benedicts cease to rule. A backwater!”

“Exactly!” He was immediately convinced that she had stumbled upon a truth. “That's just what it is without the Benedicts. And the Benedicts would be nothing here without the company.”

“So it's all a matter of pride and vanity,” she retorted bitterly. “You didn't consult me when you surrendered the company to those pirates. Why consult me about moving to New York? Why not just tell me when it's time to go?”

He was silent, if only by an act of will. He moved to the window as he tried to control his temper. But he found that he was trembling all over. How dared she put her sentimental attachment to a few easily duplicatable activities in a small town against his whole future? Had he not given her everything? Oh, of course, he recognized with an angry shake of his head, she would argue no, that he hadn't given her happiness, that she had had to find that for herself in Benedict. But wasn't it her duty—yes, her wifely duty, or did that concept no longer exist?—to assist him with some show of cheerfulness in his resolution to move where he could be most useful, most fulfilled? It wasn't as if he were not providing her with every luxury, every opportunity for a braver, bigger life. It wasn't as if he were asking her to give up a serious profession, such as medicine or law.

The telephone rang, and he reached automatically to pick it up. He heard his mother's voice, flat, toneless.

“Chip? Come over, please. Your father's had another stroke. I think it's the end.”

“It's Dad!” he almost shouted at Alida. “He's dying!”