Watchfires (23 page)

"But you didn't resign, did you?"

"No." Dexter moistened his lips as he prepared himself for the ultimate concession. "I can't propose you again unless I'm a member, can I? I'm afraid there was a bit of old-time prejudice against storekeepers in your case. But that sort of thing is rapidly disappearing. A year or two more and we shouldn't have any trouble."

Cranberry broke into a jeering laugh. "You must be planning to ask me for something awfully big, Fairchild!"

"I care for our wounded, sir."

"Of course, of course. But will you assure me that Colonel Edgeworth was not the man who blackballed me?"

Again Dexter hesitated. He was perfectly willing to give the assurance, but it was unwise, in soliciting, to seem too great a toady. "I'm afraid that would be violating the confidence of the club. You might in that way go through the whole membership, one by one, until I was obliged to be silent about a name."

"Well, I guess that's the right answer," Cranberry said in a more relaxed tone. "I wouldn't really care to have you betray a confidence. What's on your mind, Fairchild? Shoot."

Dexter told him that the commission wanted to establish four such convalescent homes and that he had sites in Putnam, Suffolk and Westchester counties under option for the remaining three. Would Cranberry consider buying the Suffolk site and endowing it with $100,000?

"I'd consider it, yes."

"Would you more than consider it?"

"Let me see the papers and the plan, Fairchild. I'm not a man to waste your time. If I agree to study something, I'm serious about it."

Dexter, fatigued but elated, rose. "I'll be back in the morning with all the documents."

"Wait just a minute. What do you propose to name this convalescent home? The one in Suffolk.
My
home."

Dexter reseated himself. "How about the Silas P. Cranberry Refuge for Soldiers and Sailors?"

Cranberry grunted. "I don't know about the wording. But the idea of putting my name on it is all right. I think the man who puts up the cash should get the credit. What's Edgeworth's place going to be called?"

"Well, the Colonel happens to be a great admirer of General McClellan, so we're naming it for him."

"I hope it cures more soldiers than he wins battles! And the other two, what will they be called?"

"Well, one hasn't a donor as yet, and the other will almost certainly be given a saint's name. The probable benefactor is a very devout Catholic."

"I see. And how will that make
me
look, when your announcement is made—the only one of the four with the egotism to insist on the use of his own moniker!"

"I don't think anyone would give it a thought. We needn't make simultaneous announcements of the four grants."

"But people will be bound to associate them!"

Dexter was nonplused by this wholly unexpected objection. "I'll be glad to do anything you suggest to avoid it."

"I don't suggest, Fairchild. I stipulate! Here are my
terms.
My funding of the Suffolk home will be subject to this double condition: not only must it be given
my
name; the other three homes must be given the names of
their
donors!"

"But, my dear Cranberry, that may cost us the Colonel's grant! I had already suggested that his home be named for him, and he said it was against his principles."

"Then you'll have to persuade him to change his principles."

"And if I fail?"

"Then you'll have one less home, that's all."

"But, really, I cannot see how the others will affect you. I beg you to consider..."

"You have heard my terms, Fairchild. Good morning. If I see you back here tomorrow, I shall assume they have been met."

Dexter felt dazed as he made his way out of the store. He could hardly believe that he was actually going to have to go to the other donors with so unbecoming a proposition. And would they be big enough to make such a sacrifice? Did he even
want
them to? The counters that he passed seemed to be overflowing with luxuries; the well-dressed female customers pushed past each other to be the first to buy. He thought again of Rosalie's letter about the Vermont boy. What
right
did they have to ask mere boys to pour out their young blood on the red dirt of Virginia while these sharp-toothed old harpies jostled each other in the hunt for silks and satins? He felt his fingers tighten on the handle of his cane. If he didn't get out of there soon, there might be a scene like Christ with the money changers in the temple.

He decided to call at 417 Fifth Avenue and ask Mr. Handy's advice. He had not seen the old gentleman for a week. Perhaps
he
would be able to persuade the Colonel to allow his name to be used. But Mr. Handy, when met, was not in a mood to talk about anything but his remarkable experience over the preceding weekend. He had been just going out when Dexter rang the doorbell, but he immediately turned back into the house, guiding his son-in-law by the elbow to the billiard room, where he made him sit down and listen.

"So delighted you called, dear boy! I came up from New
Jersey
this morning after the most fantastic weekend I've ever had in my life. I've been dying to tell someone about it. You know my cousin Rusty Hatch. Well, only last Sunday he made Ward McAllister a bet of twenty-five hundred dollars that he couldn't take a deserted country house in Bernardsville and fix it up in five days' time so that he could entertain a house party of twelve for the weekend. And it had to be a weekend, too, with all the trimmings: service, horses, food, wines, music, the works. The loser would pay all expenses, in addition to the bet. Well, Rusty should have known Ward better. McAllister went to work, and, by Jove, a magic castle materialized! I was lucky enough to be one of the favored guests. Lily and Rutgers were there, too. You should have seen it, Dexter! On Saturday afternoon there was a drag hunt for the younger fry, and that night a dinner of eight courses and six wines followed by a string quartet and then dancing! Rusty didn't even wait for Sunday before conceding. At midnight, as we all cheered, he raised his champagne glass to toast Ward and write him his check."

Dexter gazed at the old man as if seeing him for the first time. "I must write Rosalie about it," he said in a flat tone. "I'm sure she'll be amused."

Mr. Handy coughed. "Of course, it might not seem as amusing to someone on a hospital ship," he cautioned. "One tends to lose one's perspective in the face of so much suffering."

"You don't think, sir, that Mr. McAllister may have lost some of his?"

"And your father-in-law's?" Mr. Handy's temper had immediately exploded. "I assume his is gone, too! Well, let me tell you, young man, that you don't win wars by pulling long faces. I've done my share in this conflict, and if I choose to relax over a weekend I think I'm entitled to do so without being made to feel a heartless old fool by my own family!"

"Mr. Handy!" Dexter exclaimed, jumping to his feet. "Let me apologize, sir. Please! I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm tired. Perhaps I've been working too hard."

Mr. Handy, immediately mollified, rose to place a pardoning hand on his shoulder. "I think you have, dear boy. Now I really look at you, you
do
seem a bit peaked. Go home and get some rest. Go to a music hall. Remember what makes Jack a dull boy. It must be lonely for you at home without Rosalie."

"The
Pierce
is due here tomorrow."

"That's fine! We'll have a party! Do you meet her at the dock?"

"No. She likes me to wait till all the patients are disembarked."

"Very well. Give her all my love. And bring her to dinner here tomorrow, will you?"

Dexter returned to his office, where he had supper at his desk, working late. By the time he got home, both boys were already in bed, so he retired, but could not sleep. Lying awake in the dark he could make no sense out of an image that kept coming back and back to him. It was of himself, alone, standing on top of one of those strange pyramids discovered in Yucatan. He seemed to be arrayed in a robe of some stiff outlandish cloth and to be waving his arms to a multitude below. He shook his head repeatedly to dispel the crazy vision.

And then, suddenly, sitting up in bed with a start, he recalled the talk with Rosalie in which she had likened him to a high priest. So that was the image! Of himself, at the top of the steps of the pyramid, swaying in a sort of crazy dance, brandishing a knife, calling for human victims. But none would come. He saw that as he lay back on his pillow. The people below were united now. They would creep slowly up the pyramid stairway, step by step. And when they had reached the top, they would throw him down, so that his body, like a big floppy doll, would turn over and over, bouncing from step to step, his skull crushed, the poor rag piled at last in a little heap at the bottom, to the squeals and laughter of all.

Exhausted, he fell asleep.

T
HE
Franklin Pierce,
white with tall black funnels and the red sign "
U.S. HOSPITAL
" painted on her fender, lay lashed to a narrow pier, like the carcass of a leviathan. Dexter could discern no sign of life on board except for a sailor on guard at the gangway, and he deduced that the sick and the dead had already been removed.

"Oh, yes, Mrs. Fairchild's aboard," the sailor answered him. "Miss Handy went ashore an hour ago, but your wife says she can never get her paperwork done until the ship's cleared. May I say that we're all great admirers of Mrs. Fairchild, sir?"

"No more than I!"

He was directed to a passageway at the end of which he found a small office and Rosalie, dressed in gray, working at her desk. She turned around without starting when she heard him, but as she took in his pallor she jumped up with a little cry.

"Dexter, you look done in! Are you ill?"

At this he felt at last the full impact of his fatigue. "I guess I'd better sit down." He seemed to drop into the chair by her desk. She scanned his countenance anxiously.

"Can I get you something? What's wrong?"

"No, no." He held up a hand to stay her ministrations. "I'll be fine. I'm a bit tired, that's all. I think it's the shock of this business about your father's weekend."

"Father's weekend? What on earth are you talking about? Don't tell me the old boy's been kicking up his heels!"

Dexter, frowning at her lightness, proceeded gravely to relate the story of the McAllister-Hatch bet and how it was won. He thought that she looked at him rather strangely as she listened.

"And that's what's upset you?" she asked.

"Well, doesn't it
you?
"

"Oh, I'm used to Father. You should be too, by now."

"But in wartime, Rosalie!"

She shrugged. "What can you do about it? He's a pretty old dog to learn new tricks."

He thought he detected a totally new tone in her voice in so referring to her parent. "I suppose you're right. But it seems to have knocked the stuffing out of me. Last night I kept dreaming about it. Waking up and then dreaming about it again. I saw myself somehow stretching my arms out, and reaching and reaching, and I seemed always just about to snatch the laurel of victory from the hand of a kind of marble effigy—the statue of a woman, I think—a Mrs. Stowe or a Mrs. Howe perhaps—and then suddenly there was a jerk at my jacket, and there was your father, with vine leaves in his hair and holding a jug, a veritable old Bacchus, pulling me back and crying, 'You'll be late for the party, my boy!' And then I'd snarl at him, like an angry dog, but he'd just cackle with laughter and make me feel a fool. Oh, such a fool! The last time I actually woke up sobbing!"

"Poor Dexter. Imagine! Mrs. Howe holding the laurel. What a picture! But you shouldn't have made such an idol of Father. You forget, he's an old man."

"So was Cato."

"Yes, so was Cato. Well?"

"But don't you
care
if the war is lost?"

"Will that be the result of Papa's weekends?"

"I suppose I must seem half-crazy to you," he said, with a deep sigh. "But then you never believed in the war."

"I didn't, in the beginning. But I think I've changed."

"You have?"

She seemed to be considering how to put it. "I guess I don't know just what people mean by believing in it. I believe we had better win it."

"What has changed you?"

"The cost of it. The ghastly cost. I can't bear to have it all in vain. I had thought, if we could only avoid bloodshed, the Southerners themselves might ultimately see that slavery wasn't going to work. But now, with all the bitterness of the war, who knows? And when I think of the thousands of young men butchered and worse than butchered..." For a moment she closed her eyes. "No, we can't go back to slavery after all that. We
have
to go on." Her voice rose to something like a wail. "Even if Fred has one day to be part of it!"

He gazed at her admiringly. "Well, nobody can say
you've
lost your nerve." And then, suddenly the room seemed to spin. "What's going on? Are we ... are we under way?"

"Dexter! You
are
ill!"

When he recovered consciousness he was lying in a bunk in a semidarkened cabin, aware of being clad in pajamas. Next, he became conscious of a small porthole just above his head. Then he heard Rosalie's voice at his side.

"You're going to be perfectly all right, dear. You're in one of the
Pierces
cabins. You fainted, and we put you to bed. You may have a mild case of pneumonia. You're going to stay right here where I can look after you."

He turned his head to look at her. "Won't the ship sail? Won't I be using a bunk needed for a soldier?"

"She won't sail for at least a week. By then you'll be ready to go home."

"But won't I be interfering with your work?"

"A husband comes first. Even in wartime."

He closed his eyes, with a feeling of blessed relief, and slept again.

The next day passed in a kind of euphoria. Being on a vessel gave him a sense of utter remoteness. He was detached from work, from war, from friends and family, from everything and everyone but Rosalie. And she was a different Rosalie, stronger, firmer, more solicitous, kinder. He basked in rest and coolness. He would lie happily alone, when she was busy elsewhere, and listen to the slap of water against the ship's sides and the cry of the gulls. He almost felt that he did not want to get well.