The Collected Stories of Louis Auchincloss (16 page)

“It's about Mr. Reilley, sir. Harry Reilley.”

“You said it was about my daughter.”

“I mean that it concerns your daughter, sir. I doubt if you will wish her to have any more dates with Mr. Reilley when you hear what I have to say.”

“Hearing about my daughter in one thing,” Tilney said irately. “Hearing tales by one associate about another is a different matter. You may go, Mr. Ozite.”

Ozey, dazed with anger and humiliation, almost ran to the door. To his surprise, Tilney continued to bar his way.

“Pray excuse me, sir.”

But Tilney remained there, motionless. Then he suddenly rubbed a hand over his broad brow. “I'm sorry, Mr. Ozite,” he said, blinking. He walked slowly back to his desk. “I spoke too rapidly. Please be good enough to forgive me and tell me what you know about Mr. Reilley.”

He resumed his seat and bent his shaggy gray head over his desk as Ozey, standing in the middle of the room, told him in a high, clear, excited tone of the iniquities of Harry Reilley.

“I see,” Tilney said gravely when he had finished. “Thank you very much. Of course, we don't know what degree of enticement Miss Marsh may have exercised.”

“Miss Marsh is a lady, sir!” Ozey exclaimed. “As much of a lady as any member of your own family.”

Tilney looked up and regarded Ozey with a quizzical expression. “Did she behave as ladies behave?”

“When they're seduced, sir, yes!”

Tilney looked back down at his desk, and Ozey had the uneasy suspicion that he might be hiding a smile. “If you have Miss Marsh's interests so much at heart, Mr. Ozite, it occurs to me that you might have considered the damage to her position in the firm of such a revelation to me.”

“I
have
considered it, sir!” Ozey exclaimed in triumph. “Miss Marsh will no longer have a position in the firm. She is planning to resign at the end of the year.”

Tilney glanced up again quickly. “Oh, see here, I don't say anything like that is going to be necessary.”

“It's not for the reason you think, sir.”

“Oh? Has she been offered a better job?”

“Yes. As Mrs. Lee Ozite!”

As Tilney, after a rather blank stare, smiled and rose to congratulate him, Ozey felt with pride that the senior partner was for once overwhelmed. He, Ozey, had taken the lead in their short interview and had held it to the end. It was only much later that it occurred to him that Mr. Tilney's predominant reaction might have been simple embarrassment.

Clitus Tilney was sick at heart. He was sure that he would never again be able to think of Harry Reilley except in reference to the shabby tale told him by his smirking managing clerk. Harry's assets and liabilities had barely balanced before this splashing entry had dyed his statement in irredeemable red. Tilney had liked the young man well enough and had admired his forthright manner and seeming straightness, but when Fran had taken him up, in her own determined way, he had reflected ruefully on the Irish Catholic background and the criminal parent which, for all his sincere efforts to overcome his upstate, small-town prejudices, seemed still to have a natural connection. And now Miss Marsh! To have seduced a bespectacled, pathetic old-maid tax lawyer! For Tilney irritably brushed aside the memory of flitting moments, passing her in the corridor and greeted by her low, pleasant “Good morning, sir,” when he had thought of her as something else. And, for Reilley to have come from the sweaty pleasures of Miss Marsh's couch to flirt with his own daughter at the dinner table! And then to chisel on the cost of the abortion and send poor Miss Marsh to the arms of such a one as Ozite. No, the man was obviously a lecher of the coarsest sort who was after Fran for whatever promotion he could get out of her father.

How far had things gone with Fran? Alas, Tilney was almost sure that she was in love with him. He knew that she had been out with him half a dozen times at least, and she was perfectly frank now about her interest in him. Only that morning at breakfast she had begged him to try Harry in green goods, and her face had been radiant when he had said he would consider it. Of course Reilley had put her up to it. And then Ada, too, had been all for Reilley, and had lectured him roundly when he had muttered his doubts about the Reilley background. Ada, whose instinct about people he had always considered so flawless! He groaned aloud as he thought of his Fran, his youngest and favorite child, as pure and fine and good as God had ever made a woman, with a power of sympathy and love to raise a man to greatness, wasted on such a cynical wretch. And a Catholic to boot. Even if she woke up to what he was, he would probably refuse her a divorce!

After a miserable hour of these considerations he summoned Harry to his office and, turning his chair away to the window, he dryly reported the facts that he had learned from Ozite, ending with the terse question: “I suppose it's all so?”

“Yes, sir. It's so.”

Tilney whirled around in his chair to face the stiff, truculent young man whose hands, he at once noticed, were clenched. “If you have anything to add to that statement,” he snapped, “I'd be glad to hear it.”

“I have nothing to add.”

“In these matters I like to think I'm not a complete Victorian,” Tilney grumbled, but in a more reasonable tone. “I realize a young man can be inveigled into situations.”

“I'm not that young a man, sir.”

Tilney surveyed him critically. He liked the fact that Harry sought no excuses. “What pains me most about the whole wretched business is how recent it was.”

“I'll say only this, sir. It was all over
before
I met your daughter.”

“Yet it can't have been more than a matter of days.” Harry was silent. “Well, Fran's not a child,” Tilney continued with a sigh. “She can make up her own mind about it. You realize, of course, I'll have to tell her?”

Some of the obstinacy faded from Harry's eyes. “Would you have to tell her if I didn't see her anymore?”

“No, I don't suppose I would,” Tilney said slowly, surprised. “Of course, I don't know how things are between you. Or how much of a shock it would be to her.”

“That's not for me to say, sir. But I'm sure it's not anything she won't get over. There's been no engagement between us.” Harry flushed as he added: “Or anything else you need worry about.”

“Thank you, Harry,” Tilney responded in a kinder tone than he had ever expected to use again to the young man. “Well, suppose we try it that way? And see what happens?”

“As you wish, sir.”

Tilney felt worse when Reilley had left than before he had come. He tried to interpret Reilley's willingness to give up Fran first as indifference and then as simple sullenness, but he was not successful. He had an uncomfortable suspicion that the young man's feelings for his daughter were of a very different variety from those (if any) that he had entertained for Miss Marsh. And the very fact that the latter had so rapidly consoled herself with such a man as Ozite was evidence that she had not been too deeply involved with Reilley. But where Tilney remained adamant was in his conviction that he would still be acting in his daughter's best interests to get Reilley out of her life.

He did not dare tell Ada, for he was afraid that she would disagree, and he wondered how he was to bear alone Fran's silent unhappiness—for he knew it would be silent—in the terrible breakfasts that were bound to follow. The next morning and the one after were without incident, but on the third Fran asked him: “Daddy, tell me. Did you ever move Harry to green goods?”

“Not yet, dear. But I have it in mind.”

“Do you happen to know if he's working particularly hard at the moment?”

“Well, most of the boys
are
pretty busy. I don't happen to know about him. Why?”

“Oh, nothing. I just thought he might have called me about something. It doesn't matter.”

When she had left for school, Ada turned to him.

“You don't suppose Harry's lost interest, do you?”

“I haven't the faintest idea,” Tilney retorted irritably. “And I'm not at all sure I care if he has. Fran can do a lot better than Harry Reilley.”

“But she
cares
, Clitus. I'm warning you. She cares!”

“I'll be seeing him tonight at the firm dinner.
If
he comes,” he added, remembering Harry's truculent face. “I'll find out if he's been working nights.”

“Why don't you bring him home for a drink afterwards?”

“Because I shall be tired and want to go to bed,” he said snappishly, and raised his paper between them to run his eye down the obituary column.

The firm had a semiannual men's dinner at the University Club where it was customary for certain of the partners to speak on the highlights of the season's practice. Tilney sat in the middle of the principal table, between Chambers Todd and Waldron Webb, and was grateful that he did not have to speak that night, for he could think only of Fran. The image of her pale face and of the glimmer of pain in her eyes had ejected every other from his mind. He noticed Harry Reilley at a far table and heard the sound of his loud laugh. It was too loud, that laugh, too defiant. Tilney wondered if he was drinking too much and regretted the custom of having bottles of whiskey on the table.

Chambers Todd was the last speaker and discussed a committee of the City Bar Association of which he was chairman and whose other members he was trying to persuade to recommend to the State Legislature the abolition of an excise tax that was particularly onerous to a trucking client. There was nothing in the subject to distract Tilney from his speculations on the effect of Harry's defection. Would it kill Fran, as sometimes happened in Victorian novels? Would she droop and pine away? Or would she master her sorrow and never show it, but remain for the rest of her days a bright, brittle, useful, dryly smiling old maid, a sacrifice to her father's prejudice? Tilney suddenly leaned forward and put both hands over his face, and Waldron Webb whispered in his ear: “Are you all right, Clitus?”

“Oh, yes, yes.”

The speeches were over, and he rose to indicate that the meeting was adjourned. As he lingered to light a cigar and to let the firm file out of the doorway, he saw Harry Reilley walk over to Todd. What followed he could not help but overhear as both men had carrying voices.

“May I ask you a question, Mr. Todd?”

“Go right ahead, my dear fellow.” Todd was mellow with the evening's whiskey and the sense of a successful address.

“In your speech tonight you spoke of using your position on a bar association committee in favor of a client. Isn't it the duty of committee members to render unbiased opinions on behalf of the association?”

Todd's heavy features congealed as he took in the unexpected attack. “You speak like a first-year law student,” he said curtly. “If you ever have the good fortune to secure a big company as a client, you will learn that the word ‘unbiased' has no further meaning for you. A good lawyer doesn't forget his clients when he closes his shop. A good lawyer eats, lives and breathes for his clients. A good lawyer represents his clients even in his sleep!”

Harry laughed unpleasantly. “I had been wondering what the difference was between your kind of lawyer and a lobbyist. Now I see there's none!”

Tilney stepped forward to touch the young man on the arm. “I want to talk to you, Harry.” He turned abruptly and walked to a corner to get away from the now livid Todd. “I can't let you commit suicide like that,” he continued. “Come back to my house and have a drink with me.”

“Won't Fran be there?”

“I don't know. It doesn't matter.”

Harry stared. “You mean the ban's off?”

“Must you tie me down? I mean
I
won't fight you anymore.”

The glitter in the young man's eyes went far to convince Tilney that he had done the right thing. “She'll be sore as hell I haven't called her.”

“Tell her you were out of town. Invent a business trip. I'll back you up. That's easy. The guy who has the really tough job is the guy who's going to have to save your neck from Chambers Todd. And that guy is me!”

In the taxi Tilney tried to reduce some of the constraint between them by reverting to Harry's interchange with Todd. “Actually, I agree with what you said. I wish we could return to the old days of greater integrity. When a lawyer could argue one interpretation of a statute in the morning and its opposite in the afternoon. Before we were captured by the corporations. Before we became simple mouthpieces.”

“It doesn't worry me as much as I made it appear,” Harry replied with a candid laugh. “I'm used to politicians in my family. My old man knew so many. What I can't stand is sanctimoniousness. And your partner, Mr. Todd, is sanctimonious.”

Tilney wondered if he shouldn't object to such familiarity. “You don't like Mr. Todd?”

“I don't like any of them, to tell the truth, Mr. Tilney. Except yourself. I've just about decided that your firm is not the place for me.”

“Well, don't let's make the decision tonight,” Tilney said hastily. “If you and I get along, it's always possible to work something out. The partners aren't all Chambers Todds. Wait till you know them better.”

“It's up to you, sir. If you say stay, I'll stay.” He laughed again. “I guess it's pretty clear that I want to see Fran.”

Tilney had figured out that Ada would wait up for him on the chance that he might have learned something about Harry, and he was correct. Yet with her usual control she did not manifest the least surprise at seeing his companion. When Fran came in from the library, where she had been correcting homework, she was equally impassive.

“Good evening, Mr. Reilley.”

Harry got up and took her by the hands. “I'm sorry, Fran. I was sent up to Boston on a rush closing. I haven't had a minute.”