The Immigrants

by Howard Fast

  It was nine-fifteen when Dan arrived at the Seldon house. Dr. Lamont, the family physician, was there, and he informed Dan that he had given a sedative to Mrs. Carter, Seldon’s sister, who had lived with him and been his housekeeper since his own wife died. She had been quite hysterical, but now she was resting comfortably. Hemmings told Dan that he would have tried to reach Mrs. Lavette, but he had no idea where she was. Dan called his secretary at the office and told her to cable Jean in the south of France immediately. Then it occurred to him to place a telephone call. It was a half-hour before the call got through, and then he spoke to Wendy Jones, who informed him, as well as he could gather through a very bad connection, that Mrs. Lavette was away for the next three days on Mr. Horn’s yacht–whoever Mr. Horn was.

  “Is there no way to reach her?” Dan asked.

  “Not for three days. She’ll be back then.”

  “Well, try. Tell her that Mr. Seldon died peacefully. I’m taking care of all the arrangements. See if you can’t reach her by radio. If there’s a harbor there, there must be a harbormaster. Tell him what the situation is.” He remembered to ask after his children, and he was informed that they were well. He didn’t ask to speak with them.

  By now, reporters from the Examiner and the Chronicle had arrived, and Dan gave them whatever facts he had. The news had spread quickly, and already there was a small crowd of the curious in the street outside. A few minutes later, Martin Clancy, the vice president of the bank, and Rustin Jones entered the house.

  They went to pay their respects to Mrs. Carter and then returned to ask Dan what arrangements he would be making.

  “The trouble is I can’t reach Jean. She’s out on a yacht somewhere in the Mediterranean and won’t be back in Nice for three days.”

  “Terrible, terrible,” Clancy muttered. “Poor child. Terrible loss. We’ll miss Tom.”

  “The old-timers are going,” Jones said. “Terrible loss–for all of us.”

  Father Templeton, an old friend of the Seldons’ who was attached to the Grace Episcopal Cathedral, which was still in construction within sight of the Seldon house, arrived while they were talking. He, too, talked to Mrs. Carter, and then he asked Dan where the body was.

  “Upstairs in the bedroom. Dr. Lamont was here, but he left.”

  Father Templeton shook his head. “A pity I couldn’t be here, but Hemmings tells me there was no time. I’ll have a prayer said in church. Where is Jean?”

  “Right now on a yacht in the Mediterranean. The children are in the house at Nice. I’m afraid we can’t reach her for three days.”

  “What a shame! Poor child. Then how long would it take her to get here?”

  “If she gets a ship on the same day–well, seven days on the ship and three and a half days on the train. A fast ship cuts a day off that, but then she would have to make connections in Cherbourg or perhaps in Southampton. The one ship we have in the North Atlantic is coming into New York right mow. The truth is, Father–I don’t know what to do.”

  “And the other relatives?”

  “Well, his sister, Mrs. Seldon’s family–I think there’s some family in Boston, not very close. I’ll have my office take care of it.”

  “Tom was only the second generation out here. Didn’t give him much time to create family, did it? Well, what do you think we should do, Mr. Lavette?”

  “Damned if I know. I’m not an Episcopalian, Father. What do you suggest?”

  “You’re sure Jean and the children can’t get here in less than two weeks?”

  “If they make all the connections. If they don’t, it might be fifteen or sixteen days.”

  “Well, there’s nothing in the canon that forbids us to wait, but I disapprove of such things. The body is dead. The soul lives, and we don’t foster any worship of the body. If you ask me, two weeks is too long. I would suggest that you make arrangements to have the funeral four days from today. That will give you a chance to speak to Jean and explain my feelings. Then when she and the children return, we can have a memorial service.”

  However, when Jean finally called from Nice, Dan was neither at home nor in his office; and without waiting, Jean and her children and Miss Jones left for Cherbourg. They had a day’s wait there for the ship, and when she finally reached Hemmings from Cherbourg, she learned that the funeral was already in progress. She became furious and insisted that her father not be buried until she was home, but there was nothing Hemmings, himself late for the proceedings, could do about it. It was, nevertheless, an impressive ceremony as hundreds of the dignitaries of San Francisco turned out to watch one of the last nabobs of Nob Hill laid to rest. Dan sat with Anthony Cassala and Mark Levy, pashas in their own right, millionaires among millionaires, thinking as he rarely did of the awful finality of death, where a man goes naked and alone, his flesh already putrefying. What was Thomas Seldon that made him any different from Dan’s own mother and father? His life was the same lost wisp of a dream, eddying fragments of memories half lodged in the minds of others; and soon that too would be gone, and his great mansion would go the way of the other great mansions on Nob Hill, replaced by a hotel or an apartment house; and already here at the funeral service in the crypt of Grace Cathedral, his own mind wandered, not hearing Templeton’s eulogy, not truly caring now that the initial shock was over, but seeking for his own salvation in memories of May Ling. Was it only six months since he had seen her and held her in his arms? Why had he made no attempt to telephone her, to speak to her? Had he decided? Could he live the rest of his life without her, without knowing her or seeing her or seeing his son again? There was overtaking him now a gray and awful grief, a turning of his whole being into ashes, a sorrow so profound that had he been capable of it, he would have burst into tears; yet the sorrow was entirely for himself. Inwardly, he wept for his own death without ever knowing that he was dying.

  When Jean returned, eleven days later, she had done with her grief, for what it was, and only a cold, dismal anger remained. She had left Thomas with friends in the East, and the first moment she was alone with Dan, she said to him, “You bastard! You buried my father without me. What a cheap, dirty revenge!”

  “That’s crazy,” Dan said. “That’s the last thing I ever thought about. We had the funeral because Father Templeton thought it was best. Why don’t you ask him?”

  They never spoke about the funeral again, and the day after Jean returned, Dan went to Chicago to meet with Al Smith. He brought with him over one hundred thousand dollars for the campaign fund. He had intended to go on to Detroit, but a call from Sam Goldberg brought him back.

  “Foster Thorndyke called me,” Goldberg said. “They were going to read the will tomorrow, but I persuaded him to postpone it until you returned. Can you get back here by Saturday?”

  “I’ll be there,” Dan promised.

  Thorndyke, a stout little man, bald, with a dry voice and gold pince-nez clipped onto a thin, small nose, sat facing Dan, Jean, and Virginia Carter in the somber living room of the Seldon house. Both Jean and Mrs. Carter wore black, in Jean’s case a trim suit of black wool, black stockings, and black pumps. She rarely wore black, yet the costume was becoming; and even now Dam found himself reacting to her beauty. She had lost weight; her cheeks had fallen slightly; yet the strong bone structure of her face preserved her good looks. Her hair was piled under a small black hat, which she did not take off. She had hardly spoken to Dan–aside from the single outburst–since she had returned from Europe. Mrs. Carter kept dabbing at her eyes; she was frightened, having little money of her own, at what the reading of the will might portend for her.

  Clearing his throat, Thorndyke pointed out that as Seldon’s lawyer, having drawn the will himself under Seldon’s instruction, he knew what it contained. “It is an eminently fair and sensible will,” he said. “Mr. Seldon had no animosity toward anyone. It must be understood that he loved his daughter Jean without reservation, yet he had to take into consideration that she was already a very wealthy woman married t
o a wealthy man. He had a strong sense of family, and that too must be understood. I shall now break the seals and read the will.” He opened the document he held and read it: “I, Thomas Seldon, being of sound mind, do make this my last will and testament–”

  There was the sound of Mrs. Carter sobbing.

  “To Fannie Jenson, my cook, who has served me so long and faithfully, I leave five thousand dollars. To Sadie Thornson, my housemaid, two thousand dollars. To Albert Hemmings, I leave ten thousand dollars. This house and property wherein I have lived these many years, I leave to the Grace Cathedral to aid in the building of that great structure, to keep or to dispose of as they see fit; except that all the furnishings and paintings and artifacts it contains, I leave to my daughter, Jean. To my dear daughter, Jean, I also leave what jewels and possessions of her dead mother remain to me. To my sister, Virginia Carter, I leave my Rolls-Royce limousine, so that she may have the comfort of it, and also ten thousand shares of American Telephone and Telegraph stock, to be held in trust for her by Foster Thorndyke, the dividends of said stock to be paid to her monthly, and also a cash bequest of ten thousand dollars. The remaining part of my estate, three hundred and eighty-two thousand shares of stock in the Seldon Bank, constituting the majority of such stock, I leave to my beloved grandchildren, Thomas Lavette and Barbara Lavette, to be held in trust for them by their mother, Jean Seldon Lavette, until the year nineteen forty, when it shall be divided equally between them. Until that day, my daughter, Jean Seldon Lavette, shall act as trustee of the income from said stock, with full power to dispose of said income as she deems right and proper with no restrictions placed upon said disposal of income. I do this, not because I practice a preference between child and grandchild, but to preserve the institution I have created and to preserve my family.”

  This was followed by a series of small charitable bequests. Mrs. Carter now sobbed openly. Jean did not look at Dan. She stared straight ahead at Thorndyke, her face placid and revealing nothing.

  The following day, Sunday, a memorial service was held for Thomas Seldon in the crypt of Grace Cathedral, where Father Templeton announced his large and gracious gift, and the day after that, a meeting of the board of directors was held at the Seldon Bank. Martin Clancy invited Jean to be present. She appeared in a simple but striking suit of black linen that she had purchased in New York on her way back from Europe; and the various members of the board, all of whom she had known for years, wondered why they had not noticed before what an impressive and commanding woman this was.

  Alvin Sommers, the second vice president of the Seldon Bank, now in his middle sixties, stout, and pompous, delivered the formal sentiments of the board. He stressed the many virtues of Thomas Seldon, the care with which he had fostered the bank, once a small frontier institution, now among the dozen largest banks in America, his sense of civic responsibility, his love for his family. “No one knows better than you, dear lady,” he said to Jean, “in what honor and esteem we held your father. That is why we have invited you here today–so that in this board room”–he might well have said temple–“where your father spent so many of his hours, we, his closest associates might each in turn convey our feelings, the full depth of our sympathy.”

  “Hear, hear!” said Grant Whittier.

  “How thoughtful of you,” Jean said. “I’m such a foolish woman. I thought perhaps it had to do with my father’s will.”

  “Your father’s will?” Clancy asked.

  “I’m sure you’ve spoken to Mr. Thorndyke. The will was read to the family on Saturday, only the day before yesterday. So perhaps you haven’t had a chance to discuss it with Mr. Thorndyke?”

  “Of course we have discussed it, Jean,” Whittier said. “And we are gratified–immensely gratified that your father, in his wisdom, made provision to keep the bank in the family.”

  “Then naturally you must have considered my own relationship to this board.”

  “By all means,” Clancy agreed.

  “And what will that relationship be?” Jean asked quietly.

  “Very close, very close indeed,” Clancy said.

  “Let me be more specific,” Sommers said. “Not only will you receive quarterly reports of the bank’s condition, but we shall see to it that the minutes of each and every meeting of the board of directors are conveyed to you. Of course, this does not mean that you must read every report or trouble yourself over the statements. We have a very well-managed bank, Mrs. Lavette, and I don’t think you need lose a minute of sleep over its condition and progress.”

  “That is to say,” said Clancy, “that we are well aware of your interest in the arts and in civic affairs. We applaud them, Mrs. Lavette, and we have no intentions of burdening you with the complexities of this institution.”

  “You all appear to have missed the point,” Jean said.

  “The point?”

  “The point being that for the next twelve years, I am the trustee for the majority of the stock in this bank. I have discussed the matter very carefully with Mr. Thorndyke, gentlemen, and I am under no illusions. I vote that stock, gentlemen. In so many words, for the next twelve years, I own the Seldon Bank.”

  “Yes, in a manner of speaking,” Sommers agreed. “We are well aware of that.”

  “Not in a manner of speaking,” Jean said, quietly but firmly. “In a legal sense. There are no qualifications. For the next twelve years, I have control of the Seldon Bank.”

  “But no one denies that,” Whittier said. “My dear Jean, you can’t for a moment imagine that we do not respect your position?”

  “Well, there does appear to be a contradiction.”

  “How is that?”

  “As I understand it–and you may correct me if I am wrong–it is the board of directors that constitutes the highest authority of this bank and has the decision-making responsibility.”

  “Quite right.”

  “And the board members are elected by the voting stock, which in this case is merely a euphemism. My father appointed this board of directors.”

  “Are you saying that you are dissatisfied with us?” Clancy asked worriedly.

  “No indeed,” Jean replied. “I have no reason to be dissatisfied.”

  “I think,” Sommers said slowly, “that Mrs. Lavette is making a point. I think she would like formally to approve our position. I see no reason why she should not.”

  “No,” Jean said. “No, gentlemen. When I came here today, I expected you to take it for granted that I would take my place on this board.”

  There was a long silence. Then Clancy said, “But, Mrs. Lavette, we have never had a woman on our board. Indeed, unless I am greatly mistaken, there has never been a woman on the board of any major bank in this country.”

  “I’m sure you are correct.”

  “It would seem,” Clancy said uncertainly, “to be a matter of some impropriety.”

  “Oh, don’t be an ass, Mr. Clancy,” Jean said, losing patience. “I don’t give a tinker’s damn what has been or what is propriety or impropriety. This is nineteen twenty-eight. Women exist. They vote. They are in most respects admitted members of the human race. Now I not only intend to sit on the board of directors, I intend to chair it. I am not denigrating your wisdom or management. I have a great deal of respect for the way the affairs of this bank have been conducted. But the plain fact of the matter is that for the next twelve years, I vote the majority stock of this bank, and I intend to exercise my affairs with knowledge and involvement. And you needn’t worry about the time or energy that will be required. I have both. Now there is my position, stated as plainly as I can. If any of you gentlemen have any serious objections to the role I have chosen for myself, I would like to hear them right now.” She had lost her patience only for a moment; then her voice was quite calm and matter-of-fact, and when she finished speaking, she looked from face to face.

  Again, there was a long moment of silence. They waited for Clancy, who said finally, “You are quite within your rights, Mr
s. Lavette. I think I can speak for all the members of the board when I say that we will render you whatever good advice and aid that is within our powers. And simply to formalize it for the record, I will move that the chairmanship of this board be offered to Mrs. Jean Seldon Lavette.”

  “I will second the motion,” Grant Whittier said weakly.

  Two weeks after he had seen her in Los Angeles, Stephan Cassala telephoned Martha and told her that he would be in Los Angeles the following day. Could she see him and have dinner with him? She tried to dissuade him at first, but when he pressed her, she agreed. He was so easily hurt, and he always gave her the feeling that to reject him would hurt him beyond his tolerance for the pain. She wondered why he appeared so defenseless to her. Surely, he was not defenseless. She knew, from what she had heard at home, that he was the moving force in the Sonoma Bank, that it was he who had built it from a tiny bank that served Italian fishermen and laborers for the most part into a substantial institution; yet she always felt that he approached her with the assurance that she could destroy him, pleading with her not to. She wondered why he could not realize that all the men she was attracted to were almost his opposite in their character.

  He was a serious man. Martha’s depression lurked under a gaiety that she wore like a favorite dress. The New York School of Acting, for what it was, had closed, and Martha had fallen upon long, endless days of boredom and inactivity. Her mother and father begged her to come to Sausalito for the summer, but she felt that to leave the scene she had chosen would be an admission of defeat. Having enough money to survive without a job, she looked for a role instead, always cushioning her defeats with Martin Spizer’s promises. When Stephan arrived at her apartment, he noticed the change in her. Odd corners of her despair had begun to show.