Honorable Men

by Louis Auchincloss

  “What made you join the Department? It can’t have been, at your age, an impassioned belief in the war.”

  “No, although I’m certainly not opposed. What do I really know about it? I leave those things to the Special Assistant.”

  “That’s more than his children do.”

  “Ah, but I feel sorry for them! They’re going to regret having been so disagreeable to you. I read an interview with your daughter at the time you took the post. It wasn’t really a bit nice. But she’ll grow out of it.”

  “She’s the same age as you, Violet.”

  “I guess I feel older because I didn’t have a father. At least one who was available. Someday your daughter will know how blessed she’s been.”

  There was a candor in her tone that barred any suspicion of insincerity. Yet he couldn’t help asking, “You’re not just being nice to the boss?”

  “Why shouldn’t I be nice to him? He’s a very good boss.”

  When he stopped his car by her apartment house, she behaved perfectly. She didn’t hurry to get out to avoid the possibility of his seeking to come up; she appeared not even to envisage the possibility of a vulgar finale to their evening. She sat for a moment, straight upright, like a little girl in pink satin about to leave dancing school. Then she turned and said, with a quaintly natural formality, “Thank you, Mr. Benedict, for my pleasant evening. I much enjoyed it.”

  “Am I too old to be called Chip?”

  She considered this, her head to one side. “Certainly not too old. That’s ridiculous. But I think it had better be Mr. Benedict in the office. Good night, Chip.”

  It was a warm spring, and Alida had been in New York for three weeks running. When he asked Violet for dinner in his garden by the pool, she accepted, again without embarrassment, but when she arrived and discovered there was no Mrs. Benedict, she seemed for a moment nonplused. And then, taking in the little oval pool and the small garden of rhododendrons, she suddenly clapped her hands.

  “How lovely it all is!”

  “Alida is in New York. Let me say at once, Violet, that Alida is usually in New York. That’s beginning to be the way things are.”

  “What a shame!”

  “I suppose so. But it needn’t keep us from having a pleasant dinner together, need it?”

  “Why on earth should it?”

  There had been an idea that they would do some work after dinner, but with the second Martini Chip dismissed it. He was having too good a time. Violet, it was true, was less at ease than she had been at the restaurant, for his invitation on that night could have been attributed to simple friendliness, whereas a dinner at home without his wife had all the aspects of a proposed affair. But she too was obviously enjoying herself, and she seemed determined not to spoil any minute of their evening by a fussy or prudish concern over how it might end. She talked with animation and humor about herself and her life, but only in answer to his questions.

  “You’re like Alida,” he commented. “Old New York.”

  “Not really. I’m Hungarian and not even very old Hungar ian. My real name is Belik. My father was some sort of a count, or at least he claimed he was. He came to New York in the early years of the depression and thought he’d found a permanent meal ticket in Mummie. And he might have, too, if he hadn’t mistreated her so.”

  “What did he do? Beat her?”

  “I don’t know. She never talks about it. She simply shivers if you mention his name. I guess he was pretty bad, but then she’s pretty timid. It must have been a hopeless match from the beginning. Sometimes, when Mummie’s being a bit too ‘old New York,’ as you put it, I feel a sneaking sympathy for him.”

  He thought he could make out the hint of a muscular male Hungarian parent in her strong, well-shaped limbs. But anything mean or brutal in Count Belik had certainly circumvented her.

  “So she divorced him?”

  “Well, her family did that for her. She hid away with me and my brother until a settlement was made. Father was willing enough to sell us for a good slice of her tiny fortune.”

  “He didn’t mind your giving up his name?”

  “Why should he have? It probably wasn’t his real one. So we took Mother’s and never saw him more. But surely all this can’t interest you.”

  “It does, Violet. I want to hear your whole story.”

  “Really? You mean, the boss should know? What more can I tell you?”

  “How you were brought up.”

  “In an old-fashioned apartment hotel. They weren’t so dear in those days. I shared the bedroom with Mummie, and Brian had a maid’s room. It was on Central Park West, not fashionable, of course, but we went to fashionable schools, Brian to Buckley, for a while anyway, and I to Brearley. And all the summers we spent with Granny Crane in her little cottage on Washington Street in Newport. Oh, yes, we were always genteel! Only it took a good deal of effort to keep up with the richer cousins. Well, not keep up with them—that was impossible—but keep enough in sight so that we wouldn’t be forgotten and might sometimes be asked to parties.”

  “But you went to college?”

  “Yes, an aunt sent me to Vassar. Oh, I have nothing to complain about. I enjoyed my youth. If only Mummie had been a bit stronger! But she was always such a white scared little thing, huddled over her bric-a-brac, dreaming how different her life might have been if she’d never met Father.”

  “Couldn’t she have married again?”

  “You don’t know her! She felt that a lifetime of expiation would hardly make up for the trouble she had caused her parents. And for just one misstep! How could it have happened? she must have always asked herself. How could she not have married a nice bunny rabbit like herself? What fiend had placed that Hungarian in her path?”

  Chip, leaning back on the settee, sipping his drink, felt a pleasant calm slipping about him, like a silk kimono draped by competent hands over his shoulders and back.

  “What about your brother? Did he turn out all right?”

  “Alas, no. It may have been the trauma of the divorce. Or maybe there was some terrible scene; I don’t know. Father had ghastly standards of how masculine a boy should be. He may even have beat him. Anyway, Brian was a nervous wreck. He never could get through any school or college, and he’s been in the Stauffer Psychiatric Clinic in Worcester for five years now. I sometimes wonder if he’ll ever get out.”

  “That must cost your mother a pretty penny.”

  “It takes every one she’s got! Each year we have to sell something new, the Kensett, the Copley. Soon there won’t be anything left. Thank God there’s a small Crane trust that Mummie can’t touch. But what am I saying?” She put a hand to her lips in dismay. “You’ll think I’m looking for a handout!”

  “Violet, please, don’t be gross. What I don’t see, with all this sadness, is how you ever got away.”

  “To Washington? It was that same aunt. She’s Mummie’s sister and a perfect darling, not at all like Mummie, ever so much stronger. She told me to give up my job at Scribner’s and get out of town. She said it was my only chance.”

  “She was quite right.”

  “When I told her I couldn’t leave Mummie, she insisted. She promised me she’d look in on her every day. And so I finally decided to come down here.”

  At dinner he told her about the Benedicts and about Alida, Eleanor and Dana. He told her that his marriage was really over, which he had not acknowledged to himself until then. They drank a bottle of wine and then a good deal of brandy, but he noted with approval, when he drove her home, that she was sober. They said good night in the same way that they had done before, but he knew, and he was passably sure that she knew, that it would not be so on the next evening they spent together.

  Nor was it. He had sent the couple off for the weekend, and he and Violet had the house to themselves for two days and nights. She gave herself to love with a freedom and a gaiety that he found delightful. She was not totally inexperienced in the art—she told him that she had had
one other affair, three years earlier, with a married literary agent that had lasted a year—but Chip suspected that her partner had been clumsy, for she seemed amazed and exhilarated at what he aroused in her. The only thing that disturbed him was that she was obviously very much in love, but she seemed at the same time to sense that this would disturb him, that it might spoil their “idyll,” like a whiff of bad breath or some revelation of coarseness. She gave the appearance of making light of their lovemaking—or of trying to—by keeping her terms of affection moderate and half-humorous. It was as if she were watching him out of the corner of her eye to be sure that her remarks were in tune with his.

  “You needn’t take me home,” she announced on Sunday night. It had been agreed that she would leave before the couple returned. “I’ll get a cab, and if not, I can walk. It’s a lovely night.”

  “But my car’s right outside. It’ll take me only ten minutes.”

  “Please, Chip!” There was a sudden note of near panic in her tone.

  “But, Violet, my dear, what’s wrong?”

  “Because I know you want to work! And because if I’m an importunate bitch, you’ll give me up. And I don’t want you to give me up. Not just yet, anyway. Oh, of course, you’ll have to, in time. You have a whole other life—I know that. But I do want a little more of you first. Oh, yes, I do!”

  And she almost ran out the door.

  At the office her conduct was perfect. Never by anything so vulgar as even a private wink did she suggest that their relationship had changed. She was as pleasant as ever, possibly a touch more businesslike, and she seemed determined to work even harder than before. Only when it was time to quit did she, by her instant acquiescence with any plan he offered, betray the fact that she had placed her every minute at his disposal. He was convinced that if he did not take her out, she would spend the evening alone in her room. The completeness with which he had all at once filled her life was disconcerting. But what could he do about it if she never complained?

  One Saturday night, when they were having a drink at Chip’s before going out to dinner, Alida called from New York to inform him that she had just been talking to Dana on the trans Atlantic telephone. Had Chip sent him any money?

  “None,” he retorted, amused by Violet’s intently listening countenance. “Nor will I until he comes home and signs up for the draft.”

  “How typical of you! Of course I’ll have to give it to him.”

  “Do as you see fit. I don’t begrudge him the money. But as a government officer I must decline to support a draft dodger.”

  “He’s not dodging anything, Chip. He’s taking a moral stand against an illegal war.”

  “It’s a question of terminology.”

  “Eleanor’s in San Francisco. She addressed a rally on Monday of three thousand people.”

  “I always thought she’d make her mark.”

  There was a silence, after which Alida’s voice rose almost to a scream. “You snotty bastard, I’m leaving you! I meant to, months ago—I was going to write you a note—and then I lost my nerve. Well, I shan’t lose it again. I’m leaving you, I tell you!”

  “You’d better talk to Lars about that.”

  “I shan’t talk to Lars! I’m going to retain Chessy Bogart.”

  Chip felt his throat clotted with instant rage. “If you do that, you’ll regret it for the rest of your life.”

  “You’re afraid of him because he knows what you’re up to. Well, you’ll see!”

  “Alida, you’ve been drinking. Call me in the morning when you’re sober.”

  “I’ll never call you again as long as I live!”

  Chip hung up and turned to Violet. “She says she’s leaving me.”

  “You mean she knows?”

  “Knows what?”

  “Oh, Chip, what} About you and me? Or have you been such a philanderer that it no longer matters to her?”

  “I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your mouth, young lady. No, she doesn’t know a thing about you and me.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because she’d have flung it in my face if she had. Alida’s a very direct woman.”

  “Well, I’m glad anyway I’m not the cause! Do you think she’ll divorce you?”

  “Do you hope she will?”

  “Of course I hope she will!”

  “So that I’ll be free to marry you?”

  “Oh, my God! Would you?”

  “Don’t you think twenty-two years is rather a gap in our ages”

  “Oh, that doesn’t matter when the man’s as rich as you are.”

  Chip laughed in delighted surprise. How could she so consistently hit the right note? “So that’s what you’ve been all along? A gold digger?”

  “Well, you can hardly blame a girl who’s never even seen a gold piece. Anyway, I put my cards on the table.”

  “Oh, that was just your subtlety.”

  But poor Violet couldn’t keep up the game, after all, even though she could see how much he enjoyed it. There were sudden tears in her eyes. “I couldn’t fool you if I tried, and you know it. I’m too much your woman. It’s obscene! You should have seen Mummie’s face when I told her about it.”

  “You told her? My God, when?”

  “Last Sunday, when I went up there. She must have sensed that something was going on, because she was nosy, which isn’t like her. So I told her, yes, I was living with a married man, old enough to be my father, who had no intention of ever marrying me, and that I planned to go right on that way! I was going to be like Irene Dunne in Bac Street, following John Boles discreetly when he went abroad on important missions, always in the background, always hidden from the public and family. And when he died at last, and his scornful children came to pay me off, they’d be appalled to find me a broken old hag, dying of grief!”

  “I remember that movie. Margaret Sullavan did a remake of it.”

  “With Charles Boyer. I must have seen it four times. I always imagined it would be my life, and I didn’t care!”

  “Your mother must have been horrified.”

  “Oh, she was. She said I’d made myself cheap, that you’d never respect me. She said that if you ever did get your freedom, you wouldn’t marry me. And maybe you won’t. Why should you? But I’m warning you, Charles Benedict, if you ask me, I’ll accept. I’ll be your mistress or your wife. Or neither. It’s all up to you!”

  “I can’t figure you out, Violet. You may be the frankest, most honest woman who ever breathed…”

  “Or else a ‘super subtle Venetian’!” she finished for him with a shout of laughter. “You see, I even know when you’re going to quote Shakespeare!”

  21. CHIP

  WHEN IT BECAME KNOWN that Alida would not return to Washington and that a separation, and possibly a divorce, between her and Chip was imminent, Matilda Benedict, to the astonishment of her offspring, made a great decision. She announced that she was leasing a house in Georgetown for a year.

  “It seems to me that everyone is deserting Chip,” she told her protesting daughters. “I intend to hoist my flag at his very doorstep!”

  But when Chip telephoned to convince her that he was perfectly all right alone and that he worked so hard as to leave little time for family visitations, she was less embattled.

  “Don’t think your old ma is coming down to try to muscle in on your life,” she assured him. “Nothing could be further from my purpose. I’m bored with myself and bored with Benedict. I need a change of air and maybe one or two new friends, and if you can drop in for a drink once or twice a month, that is quite all that I shall require.”

  And indeed she seemed determined to be good to her word. She redecorated the living room of the charming little Greek Revival house that she had rented and renewed her friendships with some retired diplomatic couples living in the neighborhood. She never called Chip, but waited for him to call her, and when he dined with her, which he found himself doing, quite of his own accord, at least once
a week, her conversation was cheerful and interesting. He found her particularly sympathetic about the war, which she regarded as a tangled mess but one from which the nation could not retreat with honor.

  One night she asked him: “Why don’t you bring your secretary here for dinner? I hear she’s a wonderful girl.”

  “Who’s been gossiping about me?”

  “Nobody’s been gossiping about you. Alma Rand mentioned Miss Crane. She said her son-in-law described her as your girl Friday and one of the best workers in the Department.”

  “Well, he ought to know. Jim and I work together daily. Sure, I’ll ask Violet to dinner. Only don’t get any ideas.”

  “What ideas should I have? Surely Alida doesn’t expect the handsome husband she’s left to live like a monk!”

  Chip looked at his parent with astonishment. “Don’t tell me the sexual revolution has hit your generation, Ma! I hadn’t thought it had reached mine yet.”

  “Yours! You’re a mere child.”

  “A child of fifty-one.”

  Amused by his mother’s new liberality, he invited Violet to dine there on Saturday. But she seemed terrified.

  “Oh, Chip, did you make her?”

  “It was entirely her idea, not mine.”

  “What do you suppose she wants of me?”

  “She knows that you and I work together. She’d like to meet you; that’s all.”

  Matilda handled her guest with the greatest ease and kindness, and the evening passed agreeably for all three, except for a somber discussion at the end of a reported massacre of Vietnamese peasants by trigger-happy Americans seeking out the Vietcong.

  “I’m sure it will turn out to be much exaggerated,” Matilda said.

  “I’m afraid not, Ma. I’ve seen the reports. I don’t know what devil gets into our boys.”

  “Do you suppose it’s drugs?”

  “One would almost like to think so. Anything rather than they could do it in cold blood.”

  When he took Violet home later, she wouldn’t let him come up. “I’m sorry, darling, but it doesn’t seem right. After dining with your mother.”

  “I never heard anything so prudish! You’ll make me sorry I took you there.”