Powers of Attorney

by Louis Auchincloss

  “I thought you were the indispensable man around here.”

  “Oh, come off it, Chambers. You know what I am. Nobody better. You know everything I do, every client I see. You know that you could do it all yourself. Just as well. As a matter of fact, if I did take the Barnes job, you’d damn well have to take over mine. You’re aware of that, I suppose?”

  “Somebody’d have to step into the breach,” Todd replied, looking at his senior with steady, expressionless eyes. “And I guess I’m about the only one who could do it. Administrators are hard to come by. But I certainly don’t relish the prospect. I know how lucky we’ve been to have you taking care of the office headaches while the rest of us practiced law.”

  “Does that mean I have to do it forever?”

  “That’s up to you.”

  Tilney was exasperated by the other’s impassivity. “How is it up to me,” he grumbled, “if everyone thinks it’s my duty to stay on here?”

  “Your duty?” Todd frowned and shook his head. “When did anyone say anything about duty? Your duty is to yourself, man. What do you want to do?”

  Tilney stared. “I never imagined you were such an epicurean, Chambers. I though you believed it was a man’s duty to get ahead and stay ahead.”

  “I believe in getting ahead for myself because that happens to be what I want. But if I wanted to be a beachcomber, I’d damn well be a beachcomber!”

  “Is that what you equate with the presidency of Barnes?”

  “Don’t be so prickly,” Todd retorted. “I respect Barnes as much as you do. All I’m trying to say is that if Barnes wanted me and I wanted Barnes, I wouldn’t let anything in Wall Street stand in my way.”

  Tilney rubbed his chin as he thought. “Suppose you’d taken on a case? A big case? One that you felt committed to?”

  “Like your anti-trust matter? I’d turn it over to Waldron. You may be a genius, Clitus, but it’s not going to take a genius to win that case.”

  Tilney’s cocktail now arrived, and he drank half of it at a swallow. His sudden joy was pricking painfully against his ribs. “Do you know what, Chambers? I’ve done you a great injustice. There have been moments when I’ve thought your eye was just a bit too glued on the main chance. It shows that we should never oversimplify. Why, man, you’re a great natural philosopher!”

  He felt as if his joy could not help but elicit some show of enthusiasm from Todd, but the latter was very sparing with enthusiasm. “I think a man does less damage to others in the long run if he sticks pretty close to his own interests,” he said gruffly, eying the lowered level of Tilney’s drink. “At least, he has a rough idea of what they are. But when it comes to other people’s, he’s all over the place. The only person who knows what’s best for Clitus Tilney is Clitus Tilney himself. And if he doesn’t know—” Here Todd shrugged. “Well, if he doesn’t know, he’s probably going to make a mistake whatever he does. So he may as well try to be happy.”

  Euphoria ended with his talk that night to Ada. On evenings when they were alone they always sat before dinner in his study in the rear of their old brownstone, surrounded by his sets of reporters and framed court certificates. Over the white marble Victorian mantelpiece was a portrait of Tilney in tweeds, a pipe in mouth, against a background of more reporters, giving to the picture some of the effect of a mirror. As he now gave a slow and careful account of Berringer’s proposal he watched Ada as cautiously as if she had been a jury. But she never once blinked or smiled. Her only sign of reaction was a tiny crease down the middle of her high, pale forehead, a seeming extension of the straight part which divided her straight brown hair. When he had finished and paused, she still said nothing.

  “You don’t seem very dazzled by the prospect,” he said with a touch of sourness. “Obviously, it has not been your dream to be first lady of Barnes.”

  She looked faintly surprised, and he realized that she had not even considered the proposal in the light of how it would affect herself. How typical! And yet for once he could have wished for the smallest portion of a Chambers Todd in her make-up. “Isn’t it a rather curious climax to a brilliant legal career?” she asked. “Isn’t it even a bit of an anticlimax?”

  “You think I’m too big for the job. Of course. Everyone does. Obviously, I’m a giant.”

  “Now, don’t be testy, dear. It’s too important for that. I don’t think you’re too big for the job. Barnes should have the best. I was simply wondering if you’re the right man for it. And if it’s the right job for you. Have you worked all these years in one profession to give it up for another? Now that you’ve reached the top?”

  “After thirty-one years of marriage I discover that my wife has worldly ambitions!”

  “I’ve always been ambitious for you.”

  “Can’t I be the judge of what’s best for my own ambition?”

  “Certainly.” She shrugged. “Only I thought you wanted my opinion.”

  “Oh, don’t be so damn reasonable!” Tilney got up and strode to the back window to stare out at their little bit of garden. “Can’t you see I want you to agree with me?”

  “If I only could!” Ada’s voice trembled with sincerity. “It hurts me terribly to oppose you. But there are times when I simply must. Do you remember when you wanted to take that year off to raise money for missions? It would have cost you your place in the firm.”

  “And maybe I’d be a happier man today!” he retorted. “The firm isn’t everything. Neither is the law. There’s such a thing as doing one’s duty to the community.”

  “Exactly. And I think you’d do more for the community staying where you are, looking after your employees and clients and charities, than jumping into a brand new career at almost sixty.”

  “But don’t you see, Ada? That’s just the challenge!”

  “Of course that’s the way you would see it,” she said with another shrug. “If it’s a challenge, it’s quite all right to give everything up for it.”

  Tilney now lost his temper. “I suppose you mind about the money.”

  It was so unfair that Ada smiled for the first time that evening. They both knew that she spent no more on her clothes than when he had been a law clerk. In fact, their few quarrels had been over her parsimony. “You must want the job very much to say that. Darling, you know that if I thought it was the right thing for you, I’d follow you to the North Pole and live in an igloo. But what can I do about my conscience? You should sympathize with that. You have one too.”

  “Forgive me, Ada,” he muttered, flushing. “I didn’t mean that you’d want the money for yourself, but for the girls. Anyway, they have their own trusts now. And the loss of my legal income would make surprisingly little difference with taxes what they are.”

  “I don’t care about the money!” she cried indignantly. “Or about the taxes. That’s not the point!”

  “I know, I know,” he said with renewed bitterness, turning from the window as the maid came in to announce dinner. “You only care about me. Please don’t say it again. Let’s agree to drop the subject for now. Only I do have to add one thing. I’d never have believed my ears this morning if somebody had told me that before the day was out I’d be offered the presidency of Barnes and that Chambers Todd would be for it and my own wife against!”

  But Ada, taking him at his word in the irritating way of a woman, passed before him into the dining room without replying.

  Tilney was surprised and exasperated to discover in the morning that the news of the Barnes offer had already spread over the office. Miss Gibbon, the file clerk, stopped him in the corridor to congratulate him, and in his own room he found Miss Clinger in tears. No sooner had he reassured her that no decision had been made when Jake Platt, with a stricken look, came in to beg him to deny it. He called Todd, when he had sent Jake away, and asked him angrily why he couldn’t hold his tongue. Todd, however, insisted that he had said nothing.

  “You know Al Berringer, Clitus. He’s the greatest old gabber in the world. He’s
been talking to everybody he can think of for a week. He wants them all to work on you.”

  “Well, he’s been going about it the wrong way,” Tilney muttered.

  It was all very annoying, but worse was to come. In the middle of the afternoon, he received a visit from Shelby Gage of Gage & Dunne, investment bankers and principal defendants in Tilney’s anti-trust suit. Gage was a recent trustee of Barnes, having consented to go on the board at Tilney’s urging and despite the fact that he was not an alumnus of that or any college. It was clear from the moment that Gage seated himself that his visit would be concerned with the offer.

  “Have you decided?”

  He had all the looks of an aristocrat; it was hard to believe that he had started his business life as an elevator boy in Wall Street. At fifty-five, Gage had kept his trim figure and his thick brown hair, and he played with the platinum cigar cutter at the end of his watch chain with the tapering, indolent fingers of a duke’s son. He took it magnificently for granted that the man who could predict the rise and fall of the market was the man to rule other men. Lawyers, accountants, inventors, engineers—they had all their uses, and no one appreciated such uses more than he—but in the last analysis what were they but the handmaidens of the financier?

  “I haven’t decided a thing.”

  “Then it’s actually still possible you may accept?”

  “Why not?”

  “Don’t give me question for question, Clitus,” Gage enjoined him, in a cool, firm tone. “I’m here ‘in double trust,’ as Macbeth said of Duncan. First as your client and then as your fellow trustee. I think I’m entitled to a definite answer.”

  “I can’t give you one.”

  “But you’re thinking of taking the job?”

  Tilney’s eyes narrowed as his anger mounted. “I’m thinking of it, of course,” he said defiantly.

  “In that case, my dear fellow, I’m afraid I have a bitter pill for you to swallow.” Gage sat up straighter in his chair and put his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets. He was evidently accustomed to the dispensation of pills. “I consulted last night with the other defendants in Uncle Sam versus Gage et al. I’m sorry to relate that we are of the unanimous opinion that you are bound to complete the case before undertaking other responsibilities.”

  “Bound?” Tilney queried softly. “Bound, did you say?”

  “Morally bound, of course. We don’t propose to go to court about it.”

  “You mean you would ask me to give up a position I’ve wanted all my life to finish a case that one of my partners could do as well?” Tilney’s voice had risen at the end to a note of near shrillness.

  “Now try not to get excited, Clitus. It happens that we don’t consider that one of your partners could do as well.”

  “What about Chambers Todd? What about Waldron Webb?”

  “Both excellent men, no doubt, but not Clitus Tilneys.” Gage shook his head imperturbably. “You have only yourself to blame, my friend, for making us believe in you. Rightly or wrongly, we’re all of the opinion that you’re the man to win our case. We know you won’t let us down.”

  “Of course, if you put it that way, I can’t,” Tilney said suddenly. “But I hope you won’t mind my saying that I think it’s most unfair. I’ve been one of the principal architects of this firm. I’ve always tried to build it into an entity that was greater than the sum of its individual partners. When Tower, Tilney & Webb takes on a job, Tower, Tilney & Webb finishes it. But that shouldn’t mean that the particular partner who starts has to finish!”

  “In your case, it’s precisely what it does mean. We paid our money for Clitus Tilney, and I hope I’m not being vulgar in reminding you that we paid a pretty sum. Perhaps we could induce Al Berringer to stay at Barnes another year, until the case is over.”

  “No, no, no,” Tilney said impatiently. “You know yourself that’s impossible, Shelby. Al’s had one bad heart attack and has got to take it easy. No, we must have a man by autumn, and that’s that.”

  “I’m sorry, Clitus. I really am, old man. You don’t believe that, but it’s true.” Gage rose now, put his cigar cutter back in his waistcoat pocket, buttoned his jacket and gave the front a little tap. “This interview has been extremely painful to both of us. I suggest that it’s wise to conclude it at the earliest possible moment.”

  Tilney had been staring in deep discouragement at the blotter on his desk. Without looking up he called after Gage’s retreating figure. “Just a minute, Shelby. There’s one thing I don’t understand. Why didn’t you, as a trustee, tell Berringer, when he proposed my name, that you wouldn’t release me? Wouldn’t it have been kinder to spare me this disappointment?”

  Gage paused, but he did not turn. “I didn’t think I had the right,” he replied. “I hadn’t had a chance to discuss the matter with the other defendants. They might have felt that Todd or Webb would do.”

  “I see,” Tilney said slowly, weighing the plausibility of this. “Well, I suppose that’s that.” He rose and walked to the door to open it for his visitor. “There’s one member of my family who will thank you for this. Ada couldn’t bear the idea of my leaving the firm.”

  Gage turned quickly and placed a hand on his arm. “Ada thinks only of you, Clitus. She’d go to the North Pole for you.”

  Tilney stared for a tense moment at his friend’s inscrutable face. “I’m sure she would, Shelby,” he said grimly. “I’m sure she’d live in an igloo there. Isn’t that what she told you?”

  He left the office early that afternoon, took a subway to Columbus Circle and walked home through the park. The bitterness that had overcome him at the end of his interview with Gage was not something that he could afford to have seen. It was only in the park that he could properly let himself go, the park of New York’s dirty spring, the long, green, oblong escape valve for the city’s frustrations, the ambling and sitting space for the bereaved, the abandoned, the idle, the lonely, who exhale to cloudy and sunlit skies alike the endless sighs of their self-pity. Tilney thought of himself as one who despised self-pity, but that afternoon he wanted to wallow in it. For he saw it all now, the whole shabby plot. Ada had gone to Shelby Gage, or telephoned to him, and begged him to prevent her husband from accepting the Barnes’ offer, and Gage had obliged her with his customary smooth efficiency. Yet even in his anger Tilney did not again accuse his wife of worldly motives. She was simply afraid that they were too old for change and challenge. Unconsciously, of course, she had been influenced by her desire to remain close to the girls and to have ready cash to meet their every need. For who did not have a hand in Clitus Tilney’s pocket or a rope around his neck?

  “Suppose I were dead?” he demanded irately of himself. “Suppose I dropped dead tomorrow? Then what would they all do?”

  But that was just it. If he were dead, they would all adjust to it, and in two days’ time. They would not eat carrion; they had to tear with their beaks the flesh off a living thing. While Clitus Tilney lived, he must supply his daughters with Frigidaires, his clients with consolation, his partners with sanity, his associates with hope, his trusts with capital increases and his charities with new contributors. There was to be no end of it. If he asked, for his later years, after most men had retired, for a little while to himself—and not really that, either, for it was only another chance to serve—what did he get in answer but a shrill, angry clamor of negatives?

  Something familiar about the seated female figure a hundred yards ahead and the old Airedale at last impressed itself upon his vacantly staring eyes, and with a snort of irate satisfaction he recognized his wife. Ada had the gift of never seeming surprised. She rose, as he hurried forward, as if she had been waiting for him.

  “I hope I haven’t surprised you on your way to a rendezvous,” she said. “Argos and I keep looking for a new walk. Perhaps it’s indiscreet.”

  “Shall we head home?” he asked briefly, and for a few moments they proceeded together in silence. “Ada,” he said at last, in a voice that tre
mbled. “I think you might have appealed to me before Shelby Gage. If you felt that strongly about the Barnes job, you had only to tell me. I wouldn’t have taken it.”

  “Oh, why did Shelby have to tell you?” Her voice was taut with sudden anguish, and she pulled up short and took a deep breath. Then she walked straight to the nearest bench. Seated, she threw her head back, her eyes closed, as if she were fighting off a spasm. Tilney stood before her in dismay.

  “He didn’t tell me. I guessed.”

  “Why was he so stupid as to let you?” Her eyes were open again and vivid with indignation. “I thought he was supposed to be so much of a diplomat. And now, of course, you’ve been thinking all sorts of horrible things about me. You’ve been thinking I wanted to keep you in harness, like an old horse, for the girls’ sake. Oh, dear God, what a bungler I’ve been!”

  Tilney was startled to discover now, in his instant relief, that the worst part of his day had been distrusting Ada. “Don’t be unhappy about it, Ada. It’s not worth being unhappy about.”

  “Haven’t you been unhappy about it?” She looked at him and shook her head sadly. “Of course you have. You and I are much too close to be able to fool ourselves about these things. And now I must tell you all. I had prayed that I’d never have to. I had so longed for you to believe that Barnes wanted you for yourself!”

  Tilney found that he could actually laugh. “What did they want me for?”

  “They wanted a fund raiser!” she exclaimed scornfully. “They wanted you to raise ten million dollars. They figured that by the time you’d done that, you’d be ready to retire and then they could get a real president. A pedant or a general or maybe even an ex-governor!”

  Tilney’s laughter increased with her ire. “Wait a second! How do you know all this?”

  “Shelby Gage came to see me. Oh, weeks ago. Don’t ever think he’s not your friend. He told me that Chambers Todd had started a campaign to persuade the Barnes trustees that you were secretly longing to be president.”

  “The son of a gun!” Tilney whistled. “How did he know?”