Skinny Island

by Louis Auchincloss

  “My dear Horace,” a voice boomed in his ear, “may I have the honor of your company? May I share your pot of coffee?”

  Horace looked up helplessly. Simon Regner got on the train at Mount Kisco on the rare days when he was not driven to town in his yellow Hispano-Suiza.

  “Of course, Simon, please do.”

  When Horace had first joined the club car, back in 1921, there had been no question of Jewish members, but with the many resignations caused by the depression, the club had become more liberal. Regner, the investment banker, a rather magnificent, if stout, gentleman with flowing gray hair, a pince-nez and velvet lapels on his black suits, had been the first Jew elected.

  “You can dispense with your newspaper, Horace. I can tell you the news is all bad. I had a call from Washington while I was shaving. The price of gold is down again.”

  Horace had no feeling against Jews, but he had been brought up to believe that they were not desirable company, and he hesitated to assume that the older generation had been entirely wrong. But what particularly embarrassed him about Regner was the latter’s habit of inviting him to his grand musical evenings, which Amelia would not even consider attending. “No, darling, you go if you like. Leave me out of it. I can’t abide the man.” And Regner would always accept Horace’s stammering excuses in good faith, waving a hand airily and saying: “Another time, another time.”

  “We had the pleasure of your son Douglas last night with his charming wife,” Simon continued now. “They were brought to our Wagner evening by the Hulls. Oh, what you missed, Horace! Flagstad at her most sublime! And when it was over the young Devoes stayed on, and I had a real chat with your son and heir.”

  “Oh? And what did that young good-for-nothing have to say for himself?” Horace adopted the bantering tone deemed proper in speaking of an adult child. Why the devil should Simon Regner be interested in Douglas Devoe?

  “My dear Horace, I hope you won’t mind if I talk to you candidly. I assure you I have only your boy’s best interests in mind.”

  “That boy, as you call him, is thirty-one.”

  “Precisely. Isn’t it time he was doing something he really wants to do?”

  Horace stared. “You suggest he doesn’t like being a lawyer in Curtis and Day?”

  “Be honest with me, Horace. Wasn’t that your doing?”

  “You mean his getting the job there? Well, I suppose my being a client didn’t exactly hurt. Douglas’s record at law school left something to be desired. But I’ve never interfered since.”

  “Would you interfere to have him made a partner?”

  “Certainly not!” Horace exclaimed indignantly. “We don’t do things that way.” Then he reflected that his pronoun might imply that only Jews did things that way. “I mean I don’t,” he added lamely.

  But Simon seemed unrebukable. He fixed his pince-nez carefully to the thin bridge of a nose that swelled out over his nostrils, and looked glitteringly at Horace. “And do you think he’ll be made a partner without your assistance? Or, frankly, Horace, even with it?”

  “I haven’t the least idea.” Horace now found the discussion positively offensive.

  “Suppose I were to tell you that your son doesn’t believe he ever will be made a partner?”

  Horace was trapped now. If Regner had actually received Douglas’s confidence, he could not ignore it. “I suppose there are other firms,” he said impatiently.

  Regner shook his head. “I’m afraid your son is bored with the law. And that will be fatal to his advance in any firm. But is there any reason he should practice the law at all if he doesn’t like it?”

  “No reason,” Horace replied coolly. “Let him get another job if he wants. And if he can.”

  “He tells me he’d like to be a writer. That he used to write plays when he was at Harvard. Did you not approve?”

  “I didn’t approve or disapprove,” Horace retorted testily. “But there didn’t seem to be much future in it. Don’t forget that since that time he’s acquired a family. Five little Devoes can’t be fed on one-act plays produced by avant-garde theatre groups.”

  Anyone else in the club car would have dropped the subject at this. The duty of self-support in a Christian adult male, no matter what the family circumstances, was never questioned. But Regner was shameless.

  “Let me tell you something, Horace, that may surprise you. I gave each of my children a million dollars when they came of age.”

  Horace was scandalized at such lack of reticence. “I have no wish to intrude into your family finances!”

  “Of course you haven’t. I’m volunteering the information. And I’m volunteering more. Each one of the five has increased that sum.”

  “Ah, well, but they’re all—” Horace stopped in time. “No doubt your children have inherited your financial acumen. Of course, I would help Douglas if he were in trouble. I give him something on his birthday and at Christmas, and big enough to be invested, too, not spent. But as for anything remotely like what you’re talking about, I’m afraid he’ll have to wait till I’m gone.”

  “But don’t you see what a premium that puts on your death? You’re making him look forward to it!”

  “I hardly think Douglas is that sort of person. And I suggest this discussion is leading us nowhere. I happen to have very strong principles about not spoiling young people by showering them with money.”

  “But you came into yours when you were young.”

  Really, the man was impossible! “That was because I had the misfortune to lose my father early.” Misfortune! Even Horace blushed at this. Would Regner have the gall to cackle with laughter? But he didn’t. “And even that hardly proved a good thing for my poor brother, as no doubt you know.” The club car seemed for a moment to rattle like the dice at Monte Carlo. “Perhaps our young people are not brought up to handle money like—”

  “Like ours? Yes, we Jews are more realistic with our young. We trust them, for we teach them to be trustworthy. But I miss my guess if you’d be taking much of a chance with Douglas. And you’d have the joy of making an investment in his happiness. Don’t make him wait to be a writer till you’re dead, Horace. It may be too late by then!”

  Horace eyed Regner now with a half-fascinated disgust. “What exactly are you proposing?”

  “That you give Douglas a million dollars. This very morning!”

  Horace decided that the only thing to do now was to treat the whole matter as a joke, so he purported to chuckle and then noisily opened up his Herald Tribune between himself and his importunate acquaintance.

  He was not, however, able to make sense out of a single sentence. He could not even read the captions under the photographs! At Grand Central he left the car without another word to Regner and hurried through the crowd to Vanderbilt Avenue and the now yearned-for security of his small office.

  “Good morning, Mr. Devoe.” Mrs. Sprit, gray, bland, plump, clad in reassuring black, beamed at him.

  “Morning,” he grunted as he passed her and almost fell into the big chair by his desk. He knew she would not disturb him till he had read his mail.

  The reason, he was well aware, that he was so deeply disturbed was not that he had never considered Regner’s idea, but that his determination to make Douglas earn his own living was part and parcel of a code that he had accepted as gospel from his earliest years. Indeed, the code had always seemed to him the only thing between himself and chaos. He had put his life together, piece by piece, like a mosaic. He had built a routine slowly but surely, blocking out anxiety with the water-tight compartments of his day-and night-filling schedule. He rose at the same hour, ate the same breakfast, greeted Amelia, who had hers in bed; spent the morning with Mrs. Sprit, the afternoon at one of his boards, the evening at the opera or a small dinner party. When it all worked in close sequence he was sometimes almost happy, particularly in the back of the opera box imagining himself as the tenor belting out “Celeste Aida.” His life was like one of those palaces in Florence, al
l rusticated rocks and steel gates on the façade and ail safety within. But when someone without a ticket barged in, someone like the wretched Regner, the whole place was turned to rubble, and in a flash!

  His father, of course, had been just the opposite. The most hated trader in Wall Street had not given a damn for anyone’s opinion; he had called the world a hypocrite and told it to go hang. Horace had not disapproved of his father or even resented him; he had simply envied him. But he had always known that he lacked the smallest spark of his father’s fire and genius.

  How else but by convention could he have faced the hate that his terrible sire had scorned? Hadn’t he always known that he lacked the paternal armor, the paternal shell, and that to avoid the shrilled obscenities, the hurled brickbats, he had to conform himself to just what the world thought was an acceptable rich man, a dutiful trustee, an admirer of the best things, a faithful husband (though that was easy, with the lovely Amelia) and a father who did not spoil a child?

  Had he ever really thought of Douglas?

  Had he ever really thought of Douglas as a person, not a son?

  Hell’s bells, it was too much!

  “Mrs. Sprit!” he cried.

  “Sir?” The pale face loomed in the doorway.

  “Get me Mr. Curtis.” He leaned over his desk and clenched his fists until he heard his buzzer. “Oh, Albert? Good morning. There’s a matter I’d like you to take care of today. Yes, today. I want to settle a million dollars on Douglas.”

  A year later Horace was seated once again with the great investment banker in the club car. He had not seen Simon Regner in the interim because the latter, to Horace’s considerable relief, had taken his wife and a large family party on a grand tour in a yacht around the globe. But now, alas, he was back, and just as big and glossy and brassy as ever.

  “Well, well, my dear Horace, how are things with you? And how in particular is our budding playwright? I heard he’s gone to Paris. Is that so?”

  “That’s where people go to write, I’m told.”

  “They do other things there, too, I’m told!”

  Horace averted his eyes from the other’s grinning countenance. “Douglas’s wife and children are with him,” he retorted dryly.

  “Of course I didn’t mean a thing by that remark. Not a thing. I’m sure we’ll soon be reading of a new Eugene O’Neill. And how is your lovely wife? You should take her on a cruise such as the one we’ve been on.”

  Horace could hardly repress a shudder at the prospect of further expenses. “Amelia and I are quite happy at home, thank you.”

  “Are you? May I be so bold as to remind you that I had a hand in the rehabilitation of Douglas Devoe? Why should I confine myself to the young? Should my benefactions not be showered alike on the older generation?”

  It seemed to Horace that there was something almost Mephistophelean in the large confident figure in the adjacent Pullman chair. He could almost imagine the ho-ho-hos and ha-ha-has of the devil in Gounod’s opera.

  “I don’t know that Amelia and I are in particular need of your benefactions. Of course, it’s very kind of you—”

  “You? I wasn’t thinking of you, my friend. You seem as snug as that carpeted insect. No, it’s Mrs. Devoe to whom I have the presumption to raise my sights. Has it never occurred to you that you’re a bit of an ogre? To keep the reigning beauty of Park Avenue and Westchester County so immured? Oh, you may immure her in palaces, but may palaces not be prisons?”

  Horace, once again transfixed by this monster, found himself unable to be silent. “Prisons?”

  “Everyone knows that you and Mrs. Devoe limit yourselves to a small, select circle. I am sure it is very agreeable. Certainly for you. It contains the friends you have known all your life. But your wife, my dear Horace, was born to reign! Both town and country yearn for her. She should be the chairman of the Westchester Ball for the disabled; she should be the one to greet the governor when he comes to the music festival; she should open the new arts center at—”

  “Amelia doesn’t want any of that!” Horace interrupted sharply.

  “My dear fellow, how do you know? How can any of us read a woman’s heart?”

  When Horace reached for his paper and tremblingly opened it, it was as if he were shutting out the rays of a malignant force.

  All that day his thoughts were in a tumult. He had never doubted that Amelia was the idol of his life. She had been so beautiful, in spirit as in flesh, that there had been no idea in his mind of his money acting as any sort of attraction to her; she was so far above him and above it that her love had been a miracle. No fortune, no kingdom would have been too great to lay at her feet. It was true, of course, that he had rescued her father, a poor but dishonest broker, from disaster; it was true that she had been twenty-eight when they married and that foolish persons had spoken of his being a great match. But all that he had been able to give her—the Palladian houses that so well set off her tall, cool, American beauty, the great garden in which she so tirelessly worked, the opera box from which, in intermissions, she was the cynosure of all eyes—was as nothing to the joy and pride that it had given him to devote his major energy to being an acolyte at the altar he was fortunate enough to have been able to build for her.

  And it was almost more wonderful that Amelia, who had never seemed conscious of her beauty, who never gave herself any airs or sought to attract the attention of other men, should have been so serenely content with just what he offered: the unvarying routine of their households, the small dinner parties of old acquaintances, the opera and symphony. Amelia had a nature of remarkable equanimity; she never seemed to tire of her gardening, of her poodles, of her light romantic novels or of her husband. Sometimes Horace thought that she was like a wife in a dream. On the rare occasions in their married life when she had been subjected to the too emphatic admiration of some perhaps intoxicated male friend, her reaction had been first disgust and then pity. “I think Bill should really see a doctor,” she would conclude.

  The day of his talk with Regner was a Monday, and the Devoes were to be in town that week. Amelia came in in the afternoon in time for the opera, and Horace was plunged again in his nervous thoughts as he sat in the back of their box at Norma, his eyes on the straight back and beautiful shoulders of Amelia, erect and still in her corner seat in the front row.

  “Casta Diva,” he murmured to himself as Rosa Ponselle, before the altar on stage, delivered herself of the great aria. Had he kept the chaste goddess too greedily to himself?

  When they came back to the house on Park Avenue, and the butler had taken their wraps, Horace told him to go to bed.

  “I’ll lock up, Johnson,” he said. Amelia already had one foot on the staircase. “Oh, darling,” he said, “don’t go up quite yet. Could we chat for a minute?”

  “Certainly, dear. What’s on your mind?”

  “Nothing much. I’d just like to talk.”

  She was already walking to the little reception hall on the ground floor where they never sat. Perhaps she was tired and did not want him to be too long. “How is this?”

  They were both seated on stiff chairs that they had probably not sat on in twenty years, if ever. It seemed very odd.

  “Amelia, do you ever think that our social life is too restricted?”

  “No. How?”

  “Well, we live in such a big city and see so few people.”

  “We can always add to the list. Whom would you like?”

  “Oh, no one in particular. I was thinking more in terms of groups. Wouldn’t you like to see some politicians? Or musicians? Or writers?”

  Those serene gray eyes gazed at him the least bit more critically. “You mean you would?”

  “No, no, I’ve been quite content, really.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure.”

  “Then that’s all I care about.” She made a motion to rise. “Can we go up now?”

  “No, no, just another minute, please, deares
t. I’ve been wondering about something. Haven’t I perhaps been keeping you too much to myself all these years? It seems almost oriental, when you stop to think of it, your being walled away like this, except for one dull little group.”

  “So you do find them dull?”

  “No, no, no. How could the likes of Horace Devoe have the gall to find anyone dull? But you, Amelia. You were born to be a queen. To shine! And I’m beginning to wonder if I haven’t committed a great wrong in keeping you so back.”

  “And does having committed this great wrong, as you call it, make you unhappy?”

  “Well, shouldn’t it?”

  “Has it in the past?”

  “I suppose it couldn’t have, if I wasn’t aware of it.” He paused, perplexed, and then took another tack. “But maybe yes, it has. Maybe what I’ve all along been basically suffering from is a hidden sense of the injustice I’ve done you. It could be a kind of subconscious thing.”

  He was thinking so hard of this that in the silence that followed he did not at first notice that what was brightening her eyes was tears.

  “Darling, what is it?” he cried in alarm. “I didn’t deserve to be happy, did I?”

  “I thought you did.” Her voice was very sad and low. She had turned her head away from him. “You saved my father from suicide.”

  “But, Amelia, angel, that was all done with a check! And I got my money back, anyway. What man wouldn’t have done that for the girl he wanted to marry?”

  “I vowed I would make you happy,” she went on in the same tone, shaking her head slowly. “I was determined, beyond everything, that I was going to make you happy. And I thought I’d had some success, too. That we’d had a good life. But now you tell me I’ve wasted all those years! That I should have been a society queen. That that was what you wanted all along!”

  “Not what I wanted,” he interrupted, horrified. “What I wanted for you. Or should have wanted for you.”

  “What’s the difference? I didn’t do what you wanted. I haven’t been the woman you wanted. I’ve wasted my life. I’ve been ridiculous!”