The Embezzler

by Louis Auchincloss

  My rancor, indeed, disappeared with the convalescence that followed my miscarriage. During the slow, dull days, lying in bed too listless to read, I did a lot of thinking. The most important result of it was that I forgave Rex. I comprehended at last the torture that adultery had been to him, and I even suffered at my new understanding of his suffering. Months later, when I met him by chance at Mother’s, I was able to be jocose, if a bit metallic. He was relieved, and he was hurt. That was as it should have been. My life was under my own control again. I went back to my hunting and Guy to his deals and his girls, each a bit more reckless, each a bit more frantic, and so we remained until the final debacle.

  5.

  I ASSOCIATE THE disastrous summer of 1936 with beaches, at the Cape and on Long Island. Whenever I left my adored Meadowview, I used to seek out surroundings that were as opposite to it as possible. Guy had told me that he would not be able to get away that summer, occupied as he ostensibly was in liquidating his firm, in accordance with his promise to Rex, so I took a cottage at Cape Cod where Evadne and I would be able to sit on the sand and look at the sea and enjoy the long talks that mothers and about-to-be-married daughters were traditionally supposed to enjoy.

  Evadne, however, was just as self-contained engaged as she had been free, and I found that I had all the time I should have needed to plan how Guy and I would live when he retired. I would walk miles down the beach and sit by myself, a lone speck of humanity under wheeling gulls, and speculate idly on where we would go if we had to give up Meadowview. And then my thoughts would drift into a sun-beaten, sleepy incoherence, and I would abandon myself to the negative delights of passivity. I might have been a clam on that seashore for all that I accomplished. But the real reason that I could not think about this particular future was that I did not believe it would happen. And it didn’t.

  George Geer used to come up on the weekends, and one Saturday morning, when I was sitting under my usual dune, I made out, way down the beach, his white-trousered figure approaching. It was not like him to leave Evadne to seek me out, and I had a vague feeling of apprehension. He greeted me cheerfully enough, but his eyes avoided me. George, happily for one of Evadne’s strong character, was less formidable than his father, but he was no better an actor. He sat down in front of me and scooped sand with both hands.

  “Have you and Vad had a quarrel?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Where is she, then?”

  “Back at the house. No, it’s not Vad that’s bothering me. I’m terribly sorry to say this, Mrs. Prime, but I’m afraid your husband’s not sincere about retiring. Instead of going out of business, he seems to be going a great deal further in. He’s borrowing again.”

  I could see why Evadne loved this boy. He was so earnest and good that one wanted at such moments to hug him. Those sad brown eyes betrayed a heart that, unlike most hearts, really suffered at the prospect of others suffering. I was touched that he should assume that I cared as much as he did about what Guy was up to. Of course, I cared, but it did not surprise me that Guy should double-cross a friend.

  “Can’t my husband change his mind about retiring?” I asked.

  “He gave Dad his word of honor.”

  “Did your father tell you why?”

  Now, at last, those eyes, like Rex’s, confronted me. “He told me everything, Mrs. Prime. My father trusts me. And he told me that you would see that the agreement was carried out.”

  “Did you tell Evadne?”

  “Oh, Mrs. Prime, what do you think of me? How could you imagine that I’d destroy Evadne’s faith in her father? This whole business has driven me almost frantic. If it ever becomes public, I think it will kill Evadne!”

  I looked at him musingly. “It won’t kill Evadne,” I said, with a touch of grimness. “But I’m beginning to wonder what it will do to you. I suppose I’d better go and see Guy.”

  “But he’s all the way down in Westhampton with Miss Prime!”

  I rose now to my feet and smiled at him. “Then I suppose I’ll have to go all the way down to Westhampton to Miss Prime’s!”

  It was eleven the next day, a Sunday, when a taxi from the station set me down at my sister-in-law’s old shingle beach house. Bertha was standing on the front steps, as I drove up, peering down in her cross way to see who her uninvited visitor might be.

  “Why, Angelica! Is anything wrong?”

  “Perhaps I should ask that of you. Have I come too unexpectedly? Has Guy got one of his girls here?”

  Bertha became crimson. “What do you think I keep here? A disorderly house?”

  At this point her little group of guests, except for Guy, came out of the house, all dressed for church. What a crew! Guy has described them, and I will not repeat him, except to say that he was charitable. I was told that he was walking on the dunes, and I went to the porch in back to wait. As I sat there, once again looking at the sea, I tried to imagine wherein lay the charm for such a man in Bertha and her collection of lame ducks. It was certainly a side of him I had not seen before.

  “So you couldn’t stay away from me, is that it?”

  I had slept badly on the train the night before, and I must have dozed off, for I awoke with a start to find Guy standing over me, smiling broadly but somehow impersonally. He was dressed in white, wearing a Panama hat and smoking a cigar. With his bull neck and big shoulders, his thick curly hair and wide girth, he might have been a magnificent overseer, stopping by, whip in hand, to look over a new slave. The impression, anyway, was enough to put me on the offensive.

  “I hear you’ve been borrowing again.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “George.”

  “When the old watchdog’s away, he leaves the puppy to guard me, is that it?”

  “The boy’s only doing his duty.”

  “Boy!” He snorted loudly. “I suppose Rex told him the whole pretty story. He would.” Then he seemed abruptly to weary of George. He walked over to a wicker chair and sat heavily down. “Very well, Angelica, I’ve been borrowing. What’s it to you?”

  “Do you forget that you and I promised Rex that you would close the firm? Is borrowing necessary for that?”

  “It could be. It so happens that it’s not.”

  “Then you admit you’re breaking your promise?”

  “A promise given under duress is not valid.”

  “Duress? After what Rex did for us?”

  “Rex never did anything except for himself.”

  “Oh, Guy!”

  “Oh, Angelica!” His tone mocked me.

  “You give me no alternative,” I said angrily. “I shall have to cable him.”

  “What can he do about it?”

  “You’re not so grand, my dear, that a word from Rex can’t shut off your credit!”

  “But what would he gain by saying that word? Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars is a pretty stiff sum to lose, even for the pleasure of seeing me in a bankruptcy court!”

  “The money means nothing to Rex. It’s a matter of honor.”

  “Oh, honor.” Guy shrugged and took a deep pull at his cigar. Then he turned away to contemplate the sea. “Well, you honorable people had better do what your honor dictates. But don’t talk to me about it. I have nothing to do with such things.”

  He sat absolutely still now except for the mechanical gesture of lifting his cigar to his lips. For several minutes I watched him watching the sea. I had a curious feeling that he was no longer conscious that I was there. There was an extraordinary power of rejection in that stocky white motionless figure.

  As we contined to sit, watcher and watched, on the big veranda of that crazy old shingle house, I wondered again why he was there. There was nothing in the house or in its weather-beaten furniture, or in its mild, sweet, faintly nutty occupants that had anything in common with Guy. Nothing except Bertha, and she, I suppose, represented childhood. Was Guy trying to return to his childhood? Was he rejecting all that had happened since?

 
I felt a thickening in my throat as I pictured, behind that humped, seated figure, my beautiful bridegroom of a quarter century before. How he had seemed to bound at life! How he had grasped at all its good things: friendship, romance, success! It struck me that they had all rejected him, that they had sent him back to Bertha. And now he was through. Now, a sullen child, he was signing off.

  “Guy,” I pleaded, “we’re not all against you, you know.”

  “Which of you is not?”

  “I’m not.”

  “Yet you’re about to cable Rex. You’re about to let your former lover put your husband out of business.”

  His tone was extraordinary. It was devoid of the least anger or bitterness. It was detached, remote, factual, bored.

  “But I’m not!”

  “You mean George will do it for you?”

  “No, because I’ll tell George … oh, I don’t know what I’ll tell George!” I got to my feet in astonishment at my own commitment. But I knew now that I could not join the pack against this broken man. “Tell me what to tell George, Guy!”

  He eyed me curiously, I suppose to assess the staying power of my reaction. “Tell him I’ve been borrowing to pay off an old debt.” His voice was level, but I thought I could nonetheless detect a throb of eagerness in it. “Tell him I’ll be out of business by Labor Day.”

  “And if everything goes to rack and ruin, it will all be my fault?”

  Guy actually chuckled. “That’s it, my girl. If everything goes to rack and ruin, it will be your fault.” He rose and crossed the porch to put his hands on my shoulders. “But stick by the old man, and he won’t let you down.” I stared into the blue expressionlessness of his eyes and wondered if anyone had ever known this man.

  “Suppose you call me a taxi,” I proposed.

  “Are you going back to the Cape?”

  “No, I’m going to Southampton. I’m going to my brother Lionel’s. I think I’ll stay there awhile. Then I won’t have to face George. I can be more convincing by letter, don’t you think?”

  Guy nodded as he considered this. “Let me write it out for you,” he suggested. “That will be best. You can copy it when you get to Lionel’s.”

  Together we went into the library, and the letter to George was drafted. It was my first intrusion into Guy’s business life, but I admitted a very large steer into that porcelain cabinet. I have never been properly ashamed of this, as no doubt I should have been. Had Rex been home, I might have consulted him. But I could not side with young George against my poor old husband. There are loyalties that may be senseless, but there they are.

  Reading Guy’s trial in the newspaper, I learned that it was after my visit to Westhampton that he plundered the family trust. Had I cabled Rex as I had threatened and had he put a stop to Guy’s activities, I might have saved him from jail. But I do not believe that Guy would have thanked me. He was perfectly content with the progress of the events that he had set in motion.

  If I had had any doubts about this, they would have been dispelled by his behavior on the fatal day when his firm was suspended from trading. Rex had telephoned me in the morning and told me the whole story. I was obviously not too surprised, but I was dazed. Typically, I went out for a long ride and returned to find the house full of friends calling to offer their sympathy. Of course, they had heard only of the failure of the firm, not of the reason for it. Then Guy himself strode in and made the speech in which he announced his pending indictment.

  What most struck me about that little oration was how carefully rehearsed it must have been. No man could have been at once so concise and so effectively dramatic had he not planned it that way. The same eerie conviction came over me that I had experienced at Bertha’s in Westhampton: Guy was delivering a long-planned valediction.

  The offer that I made him, when the friends had gone, to share disaster as we had never shared prosperity, was perfectly sincere. Not only did I feel a responsibility in not having acted to interrupt his downward course, but I did not see that I was any use to anybody else. Lucy Geer was right when she told Rex that this was the challenge I had waited for. I never had a moment’s doubt as to where my duty lay. This sick man, this sinner, this compulsive escapist was my husband. Where else did I belong but at his side?

  His rejection of me was calculated and complete. He told me how I should live until Lucy Prime should die. I remember falling on the living room sofa, sobbing with uncontrollable anger and humiliation, and when I got up, he was gone. I never laid eyes on him again. In prison he refused to see me, although he saw Percy, and when he came out he hired a lawyer who wrote to tell me that his client was seeking a divorce. By then, however, I was ready for it, and our marriage was dissolved very simply and without undue publicity by a Reno decree. I had learned the futility of trying to stand between Guy and his imagined liberty. Nothing was going to keep him from the particular suicide that he had planned so long.

  6.

  NOT EVEN PERCY could break through the barrier that Guy erected. He visited his father once a month during the whole of his prison term and reported that he found him affable and friendly, but that it was like talking to a stranger. Guy would listen to Percy’s account of his problems and enthusiasms as a law student and make polite answers. Poor Percy was upset by his inability to narrow the gap.

  “I’m sure that Dad’s convinced himself that he is only a liability to us and that the sooner we forget him the better,” he told me. “If only I could make him see that it would help me to be close to him!”

  Percy never succeeded in this, but I was proud of him for trying. Of all of us, he came out of our tragedy the best. He seemed to mature overnight, and having started Harvard Law School as a playboy, he ended as an editor of the Review.

  Evadne’s problem was harder. She married George, when he at last convinced her that she would not disgrace him, and they are very happy together, but neither he nor I were ever able to persuade her to see her father. She was altogether inexorable in her condemnation.

  “It is not the embezzlement,” she kept repeating to us. “If he were ten times a thief, he would still be Daddy. But when George’s father stuck out his neck for him, and Daddy broke his word, that, to me, was unforgivable. Mr. Geer has suffered far more in all of this than anyone else. Daddy told me to be a Roman and adopt my husband’s family. Very well, I’m doing so. I’m all Geer now.”

  There was a point in Evadne’s argument that I could not entirely deny. Certainly, George and his father had been badly treated. But I do not for a minute believe what Rex believed: that Guy deliberately embroiled him in his disgrace. That was not the way Guy’s mind worked. I am sure that he had no conception of how great the scandal of his trial would be. He intended to bow quietly out of society as simply another of the numberless embezzlers of financial history and start a new life for himself. He intended to leave all of us better off by his departure, even Rex, who, if he lost the money that he had put up, was to be compensated with me. Guy was a testator who planned to survive the probate of his own will and to watch from afar his legatees enjoying their bequests. But what he was going to enjoy most of all was his own liberation into a new life: a life that would be just like the old with one all-important exception. He would not disappoint anybody in it, including himself, because nobody in it would have expected anything else of him, including himself. This life he was to find in Panama.

  In support of my supposition that Guy was seeking extinction and not revenge, I submit here the letters that he wrote to our children on that last night at Meadowview, before he was placed under arrest. The first is to Evadne.

  “My own darling daughter: from your face today and from your paucity of words, I see you are all Geer and no longer Prime. That is as it should be. In ancient Rome a wife was adopted by her husband’s family and ceased to be a member of her own, even for purposes of inheritance. This was a wise system and avoided many complications. Your mother would never become a Prime. Profit by her error and cease to be one
.

  “You told me that you were ashamed now to marry George. Forgive me, dearest, if I say this is drivel. The scandal of my conviction will be blown away in five years’ time. And if the sins of the fathers are visited on the sons, I never heard that they were visited on the daughters. Because I have made George suffer, must you? Surely you will see that it is rather your duty to make up to him for my misdeeds by becoming a good wife.

  “And now I am going to give you a piece of advice that will not be agreeable. Do not desert me too openly. People will be very critical if you do. Come to visit me in the pentitentiary. I will make it very easy—you will not even have to see me. But you will win golden opinions from the multitude. I would suggest further, if it doesn’t sound too cynical, that you take, for a couple of months anyway, a job as a secretary or receptionist. By the time you become Mrs. George Geer you will be so admired for your fortitude in adversity that you will bring more luster to old Rex than you would have in the greatest days of Meadowview!

  “That is how to play the hand I have dealt you. That is what I expect of my girl. Farewell.”

  But Evadne was not to be persuaded by any such arguments as these. She refused to take the smallest advantage of her situation to win the approval of a sentimental public. It was her idea of integrity to fling in the face of our world her repudiation of her father, and our world made her suffer for it. People said terrible things about Evadne. They said that she was ashamed of her father. They said that she had made a rich marriage to get rid of her old name and her new poverty. It was a great pity that her engagement to George had not been announced in the newspapers before Guy’s disgrace. But Evadne was able to stand up to sneers. The only thing I worried about was the possibility of her subsequent remorse, a worry that has now been to some extent justified. As for Guy, I knew that Evadne’s scorn would not reach him. He had immunized himself from more than his family.