Watchfires (36 page)

"You're younger than many of the women engaged in this struggle," Dexter continued inexorably. "Whatever you decide to do or not do, I don't want it to be for my sake."

"It's really rather unkind of you not to give me an excuse, Dexter! I'm tired. And I miss Selby!"

But he knew that the issue was too important to be settled on a sentimental basis. "What do you think Selby would say?"

At this she shrugged and turned back towards the Capitol. "Don't you know? Selby would have agreed with both of us."

T
HE SUMMER
of 1895 had been particularly brilliant, but no day had been lovelier than the one in August on which the governor's visit to Newport was celebrated by a garden party at Marble House. When Dexter arrived at four to hear the concert on the terrace under the Corinthian capitals, the neat rows of gilt chairs were almost filled. A young lady jumped up to offer him her seat.

"Oh, please, Mr. Fairchild, I was just going in, anyway," she whispered as he demurred. "I want to join my father on the porch."

He nodded, smiling, and seated himself in the vacated chair. One had to learn to accept the deference paid old age. It was better, after all, than if it had not been offered. The strains of a Saint-Saens concerto came to his ear, and he proceeded to arrange his reflections along comfortably irrelevant lines, as was his lifelong habit in listening to music.

The scene before him was relaxed and charming: the shimmering, quiet sea, the emerald lawn, the gently swaying elms, the box hedge, the large ladies in Irish lace, the broad-brimmed white hats. All Newport was there, as seemed to be the rule now at Vanderbilt parties. Mrs. "Willy K.," his hostess, her square, toadlike countenance and small black eyes directed from a kind of dais at the audience below, might have been a head mistress surveying her assembled school. And now she was nodding to him. He was much honored!

The Vanderbilts had certainly come a long way. Even Mr. Handy, who in the old days had always been one to favor bringing the new people along, had drawn the line at the Commodore. And now the wives of the latter's grandsons, Corneel and Willy, were practically running the summer community from the two most splendid palaces in Newport. And did not his own daughter-in-law, Ellie, a distant and unendowed cousin, owe more to this connection, carefully cultivated, than to all the Handys and Fairchilds of old New York? Such was social history. It did not even matter anymore that the owners of Marble House were about to be divorced, or that the great "Alva" was notoriously interested in women's suffrage.

But it was also true, Dexter reflected, that notoriety sometimes actually slowed a social ascent. There were families far less rich than the Vanderbilts, and even more newly so, who had come along even faster because, as they were more obscure, people did not remember the briefness of their pedigrees. Look at Dexter's own great-nephew, David Ullman, who had quietly changed his name to Fairchild, and who now, with the reddest cheeks, the curliest hair and the snowiest flannels in all Newport, was perched behind his hostess on her dais, the accepted court jester and
arbiter elegantiarum
of the summer community!

Dexter made out the stiff back of his son Fred seated beside Ellie in the front row. Fred had little ear for music; his rigid posture probably concealed an intense inner world of planning for the administration of Fairchild, Stone, Dana and LeRoy, the great corporation law firm of fifty attorneys into which Fred's organizational genius had developed the old family partnership. Fred and his wife now occupied Oaklawn, left by Mr. Handy to Rosalie and by her (at Dexter's request) to their sole surviving son. Dexter had asked only for the life use of the Gothic cottage in which he and Rosalie had had their supper
a deux
half a century before. But he was quite comfortable there with his old housekeeper to cook and clean, and he was invited to the "big house" every Sunday for lunch and to their larger dinner parties. Of course, he had had to learn that Ellie did not relish his coming without an invitation, even to see the grandchildren. The latter were sent, very punctiliously, to call on
him
at the cottage. Ellie as a daughter-in-law was just as correct as she was as a wife and mother. He had learned not to look for a warmth that she did not possess.

The piece was over now; people rose to stroll and chat. Art in Newport was only the servant of social intercourse. Dexter got to his feet as he saw Lily Van Rensselaer approach. His sister-in-law, at eighty-four, had come almost comically to resemble her late father. Mr. Handy with a parasol, in Irish lace.

"You're looking very fit, Dexter." Her tone rumbled, with a mild condescension. Though she was seven years his senior, everything about her proclaimed her faith in the physical superiority of the aging female. "I missed you yesterday when I called at Oaklawn. You were out driving."

"I didn't know you were coming."

"Oh, I just popped in to see Ellie. The place looks as beautiful as ever. Papa would have been so pleased."

"I'm afraid it's rather old-fashioned compared to all this." He waved a hand towards the gleaming facade of Marble House. "If your father were alive today, he'd probably be building a French château."

Lily's sniff was a sign that she, at least, was not yet prostrate before the new people. "Oh, I prefer the good old ways. People are getting altogether too fancy now. Too big for their boots, as my poor Rutgers used to say. But at least we have one of the real old guard coming today. Julia Ward Howe. Ah, there she is now." They turned to watch a little wisp of an old woman in gray, quaintly pretty in an old-fashioned closely tied bonnet, being greeted demonstratively by Mrs. Willy K. "I hear that Miss King is going to sing the 'Battle Hymn' in her honor."

"Will we be allowed to join in the stirring chorus?"

Lily ignored his sarcasm. "I should imagine so. It will make me think of poor Rosalie and her hospital ship. I never cease feeling proud of her."

"I don't think of her as poor Rosalie,'" he retorted, perfectly indifferent to the poor taste of taking her up on the use of an accepted adjective to describe the dead. "I think of her as having had a very happy and successful life."

"Well, of course, she did," Lily agreed hastily. "I was only referring to the tragedy of our losing her so early."

"She packed more into her fifty-four years than I have into my seventy-seven. And the last four were the best of all. Even after we lost Selby, and I thought her happiness gone forever. Not a bit of it! She had all those wonderful years organizing the Manhattan Nursing School."

"Really, dear Dexter, I never meant to imply anything to the contrary!"

But he was now rather enjoying his aggressiveness. "And perhaps the greatest of her accomplishments was making her husband the happiest man in New York!"

"I quite agree."

He noted her tone of complacent reservation. To Lily's generation a single adultery stamped the marriage as a failure. All that "poor dear Rosalie" could do after that business with Annie had been to pick up the pieces. But to imply that such a patched-up marriage could ever be described as happy was simply ridiculous.

"Have you heard from Annie lately?" he asked bluntly.

"I had a letter from Paris last week." She looked taken aback by the crudeness of his showing that he had read her thoughts. "She's pretty well, considering her arthritis."

"Still running her salon?"

"Oh, she'll never give that up! Laura Garvan was there last spring and said she met some very strange people indeed. Of course, they're all artists and writers and that sort of thing."

"Yes. I don't suppose they get together to sing the 'Battle Hymn of the Republic.'"

"You seem to be in a rather critical mood today, my dear. I think I shall leave you to Fred."

She glided away, a galleon of white sail, as Fred Fairchild stepped up to take his father's elbow.

"How about a turn across the lawn, Pater? There's something I'd like to ask you."

Fred, at fifty, seemed older than his years, mostly because of his gray hair and walrus mustache. Like many leaders of the bar, he enjoyed and even affected the appearance of age. It had nothing to do with his perfect health and iron nerves. Everything had gone Fred's way. Having converted the family firm from a comfortable practice in trusts and estates to the lucrative service of mighty corporations, he was well on his way to making a fortune. Fred was gruff and practical and businesslike; he was always talking about the titans of oil and steel and the "natural destiny" of American industrial enterprise. But Dexter knew that he was afraid of his wife and secretly ashamed of the stiff way in which she treated her father-in-law.

"What can I do for you, my boy?" Something awkward was involved, for Fred was obviously constrained.

"At the partners' lunch last week the old question of the corner office came up again. It was felt that it should be occupied by someone who was more regularly there. That our principal clients shouldn't be led past the swellest room to do business in a smaller one."

Dexter, who went to Wall Street now only to open his mail, manage a few trusts and write his articles for The New-York Historical Society
Bulletin
(they were as near as he had ever come to that book on New York he had once planned) did occupy the corner office, but only at Fred's insistence. He strongly suspected that it was Ellie, and not the partners, who fumed at this special treatment of a fossil at her husband's expense.

"But haven't I always said so?" he protested. "Haven't I always insisted that you take that office? Let's make the change at once. Any room will do for me."

"Well, I thought we might put you in Tom Slater's old office. It's really very nice and has a window overlooking Trinity Church. That should inspire you in your articles!"

Dexter had to blush for his son. The late Tom Slater had not even been a partner! What was it that old King Lear had cried: "I gave you all!" True, but what had been the answer? "And in good time you gave it." Perhaps Goneril and Regan had been right. The only thing that was really sad about the whole silly business was that Fred had not initiated it of his own accord. Even if he became president of the Bar Association, even if he made as many millions as a minor Vanderbilt, he would still be Ellie's slave.

"Don't you know, my boy, that you're all I have left? What do I exist for but to do as you want?"

It wasn't true. It had never been true. Neither he nor Rosalie had ever loved Fred as they had loved Selby. But Fred, for all his timidity with his spouse, loved his old father and wanted to be loved in return. King Lear? Dexter reproached himself now for thinking only of the pathetic Lear, the driven, crazed old man. What about the awe-inspiring, the vituperatively cursing Lear? Was not the bath of blood in which his tragedy ended a tribute to the retributive power in even the oldest, feeblest parent? A power that Dexter Fairchild was certainly not going to make a fool of himself by using now.

"Actually, I prefer a smaller office," he told the still silent Fred. "I won't feel people are saying, 'What's that old fart doing with all that space?'"

As they turned back now to the reassembled musicians Dexter felt his hand suddenly gripped.

"You know how I care about you, Pater!"

"Yes, my son, yes. Of course, I do. And the Slater office will suit me to perfection. I've been embarrassed, occupying so grand a room when I'm really not practicing any law at all." He saw the next sentence in the wings of his mind about to rush in to ruin everything: "Ellie is quite right about that." Rut he repressed it. Oh, yes, he still had the strength for that!

"Dad!" Fred's voice changed as he reverted to the old address.

"Yes, Fred."

"You're going to keep your old office! I've just made up my mind."

"But, Fred, I don't want it. I really..."

"Then keep it for my sake!"

"This is ridiculous. I don't want the office. I don't want any office. I have my library in Union Square. That's more than enough for me."

"Dad, you've
got
to keep your old office! It is suddenly very important. To me. You must do it for me/"

Dexter decided that it would be ungracious, even unkind, to pretend that he didn't understand.

"I shall occupy any office you tell me to, Fred. Shall we resume our seats?"

Alva Vanderbilt was standing on the podium.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are honored today not only by the presence of our governor but by that of a great patriot and a great artist, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe. You all know the story of how she composed her noble hymn after watching a review of the Grand Army of the Potomac. The words are as thrilling today as they were when Mrs. Howe penned them in an hour of inspiration, thirty-three years ago. I am going to ask Miss Gertrude King to sing the verses and invite you all to join her in the ringing chorus."

The high, reedy voice of a mature, demure damsel in white, who took her smiling stand by her hostess, was now raised in the hymn:

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming
of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes
of wrath are stored;
He has loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible
swift sword;
His truth is marching on.

The whole assembly rose with Mrs. Howe, who was overcome and in tears, to join loudly in the "Glory, Glory, Hallelujah." Dexter felt himself almost uncontrollably moved. The tears jumped to his eyes too; his mind was a vision of boys in blue marching to the sea. He heard, with a pounding heart, the trumpet that should never call retreat. All the old feelings had returned in an ecstasy of exhilaration.

I have seen Him in the watchfires of a hundred
circling camps;
They have builded Him an altar in the evening
dews and damps;
I have read His righteous sentence by the dim and
flaring lamps;
His day is marching on.

And then he suddenly recalled what Mrs. Vanderbilt had said about the conception of the poem. In a carriage riding back to Washington, had it not been? He thought now, less comfortably, of his own ride to the capital after the disaster at Bull Run. Looking around him, in altered mood, at the splendor of the house and its gardens, at all the fine clothes and shiny baubles, he had an eerie sense of that old retreat somehow turned into a victory march, a rush over a prostrated enemy, a stampede from Atlanta to the sea, with the parasols, the floppy hats, the Irish lace, the cutaways, the gray waistcoats, the gleaming canes, the pearls and the diamonds, no longer abandoned by the wayside, but brandished in triumphant, upstretched hands like the banners of conquering legions. Christ might have died to make men holy, but had not Mrs. Vanderbilt and God won the war?