The Scarlet Letters

by Louis Auchincloss

  “The girls will be down in a minute,” she assured him. “But I wanted a word with you first. I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Why should I mind?”

  “Good. Shall we sit? It’s just this. Harry wants to talk to you on a business matter. But he wasn’t sure you’d be willing to see him. So he asked me to feel out the ground.”

  Rod frowned. Could it be about money? Was anything wrong between her and Harry? “Tell me about your life. Things are going well in your marriage?”

  “I guess you’re entitled to ask that.” Her short affirmative nod expressed a willingness to return to the candor of their earlier relationship. “Well enough, anyway. The bloom is off the rose, but that was to be expected. We live like two civilized beings. Harry, as I’m sure you always knew, is a bit of a shit, but there are two kinds of that breed: the ones who are perfectly agreeable when they get what they want and the ones who continue to be disagreeable even then. Harry is the first kind. He’s an easy man to live with. I only hope it stays that way.”

  “I suppose there’s no reason it shouldn’t. What does he want of me?”

  “I don’t know, but you can be sure it will be something to your advantage. Whatever Harry is, he’s no fool.”

  “Tell him to call me. Any time.”

  Harry’s manner, when he met Rod for lunch, was as easy as ever. He didn’t manifest any of the embarrassment that even such a sophisticate as he must have felt. Rod was gratified to note that even when he recalled the acts that Harry and Vinnie had performed together, as recorded in her infamous journal, he experienced no anger and little disgust. He had moved decisively into a different world.

  Harry did not beat around the bush any more than Newbold Armstrong had two years earlier. He wanted Rod to come back to Vollard Kaye at double the pay he was receiving from the Armstrong firm. As to his position in the partnership he could pretty well write his own ticket. Harry made it clear that they needed him badly, not only to set up an acquisitions branch in the corporate department but to assist Harry in further modernizing the administration of the firm. Rod was impressed by Harry’s cleverness in realizing that a blunt statement of the difficulties of the firm was the best way to handle the man who had once been expelled from it. Harry was smart enough to see that Rod wanted more than anything else to triumph over the world that Rod himself had maneuvered into excluding him.

  “But how about Ambrose?” Rod wanted to know. “How will he feel about taking back an ex-son-in-law?”

  “Ambrose will not be a problem. Ambrose is not the man he was. You probably know about the stroke he had a month ago, and though he’s recovered his speech and pretty much the use of his arms and legs, he’s a shadow of his old self. I’ve discussed you with him, and he’s taken it all like a lamb, just nodding his head.”

  “He still comes to the office?”

  “Yes, but only from habit and to look at his mail. He does no work of any significance. Glances over his trustees’ accountings. That sort of thing. I even showed him that nasty cartoon of you in that rag The Unconfidential Clerk, and he only smiled.”

  “Why did you show him that?” The periodical in question, hated by the big law firms, purported to show the clerks exactly how their employers operated. The cartoon had depicted Rod on his knees by an overturned garbage pail, ransacking its contents for dirt on some company a client of his was seeking to harass into submission.

  “Because if that rag has it in for you, it means you’re the hottest thing in proxy fights!”

  As little as a year later Rod was installed in the largest office of the firm, now renamed Vollard, Hammersly & Jessup, at the end of a corridor containing the adjoining offices of the two partners and four associates, all corporate experts, whom he had induced to sever their ties with Armstrong and join him in his new affiliation. His old friend and former partner, Newbold, had wildly threatened to sue him, but everyone knew it was an idle threat, and Rod had thrown back at him his own words about keeping up with the times.

  Ambrose, poor broken old man, had greeted him joyously, as if no cloud had ever darkened their covering sky. Though confined to a wheelchair, he loved to come to the office and lunch with any of the partners whom Harry Hammersly could induce to spare the time. He took to wheeling himself into Rod’s office to chat about the past, and the latter’s time so wasted became a bit of a problem, but Rod was still determined that this was not one of the times that had to be kept up with. His love of his former father-in-law was a surviving remnant of his old faith.

  Harry showed no sign of jealousy at Rod’s immediate success in the firm: had it not been his own idea? Even Rod was now becoming convinced that Harry would even accept his surpassing him as managing partner, provided that the net profits of all were substantially increased. Rod had learned in the Armstrong firm to bow to the principle that the question of compensation took precedence over everything else, and he no longer even wanted to interfere with Harry’s rigid rule requiring every lawyer in the firm to live up to the number of profitable hours per week assigned to him, nor did he complain when Harry hired partners and clerks from the outside and placed them ahead of workers already in the vineyard. Was Rod himself not the prime example of the practice?

  He and Harry lunched together regularly twice a week, and he found himself once again succumbing to Harry’s charm. He even agreed, at Harry’s urging, to take a case out of his usual field.

  “Face it, Rod,” Harry had insisted, over his second martini at their lunch club, “the firm is now fairly well under your and my control. And we’re certainly equipped to handle it, except, if you will allow one small suggestion, that you need a bit more experience in the area of individual clients. I’d like you to try your hand at a different sort of case. In our trust and estates department. A big society divorce.”

  “Oh, Harry, no. You know how I hate that. Two cats using, or abusing, the law to scratch each other’s eyes out.”

  “And that’s so different from what you do?”

  “Completely. What I wage is war. Not vendetta.”

  “Well, I don’t make your fine distinctions. To me law is law. And this case will help to make your name known in the social circles that still haven’t lost all their glitter in this changing town. I suppose even a hick like you has heard of the Farquars.”

  The family was a remnant of Mrs. Astor’s famed Four Hundred, which had not lost its grip on acres of precious Manhattan soil. “Of course. Paul is the present heir, is he not?”

  “He is. And old Paul wants his freedom to marry some little tramp. And his beautiful and charming consort, the toast of the crème de la crème, has been persuaded by yours truly that she needs more aggressive counsel.”

  “Really, Harry. Aren’t you afraid of the ethics committee?”

  “Don’t worry, my pal. I do those things with a subtlety that would stand up before the saintliest martinet. I guarantee that you will find Jane Farquar a fascinating client. And I think she will appreciate a lawyer who’s not only as sharp as she is, but a good-looking fellow to boot.”

  “Must I make love to her? Isn’t there something in the canons about that?”

  “There’s nothing in the canons about marrying her.”

  “Oh, Harry! Is there no length to which we must not go to hang on to a client?” But he decided to let it pass as a joke. “All right, brief me. What are the rights and wrongs in Farquar versus Farquar?”

  Harry briefed him. And the very next day the two of them called on Jane Farquar at her splendid Fifth Avenue duplex. Rod had tried to persuade Harry that it was undignified for them not to request her to come to their office, but Harry had insisted that it was a question of the exception proving the rule.

  The long noble rectangular chamber overlooking Central Park in which they awaited Mrs. Farquar was an ample introduction to the eclectic good taste of their new client. The dark paneling and carved white ceiling were Jacobean, the giant teakwood commode and chairs were Chinese, the carpet a magnifi
cent Turk and on one wall a Turner seascape harmonized with a Gauguin of a Tahiti beach. It was more the collection of a woman with a perfectly trained eye than an art lover. One felt it might all be changed the next season.

  Rod’s first impression when the lady came briskly in, flashing on them a friendly yet formal smile, was, appropriately enough, a golden one. Her neatly brushed hair, whose color could have been natural, as she was still just under forty, was a fine golden blond, and she relieved the raven blackness of her dress with heavy gold jewelry: a bracelet, a necklace and globular earrings. Her features were almost too regular for her reputed beauty, but her eyes argued a mitigation of the severity of her perfection: they were an enchanting sky blue and seemed to make a case for her essential humanity. Her manner was cordial, but it was still evident that the two men to whom such cordiality was offered were on probation. Her lawyer, of course, was expected to be among the first in his profession.

  The three now discussed the best approach to the problem of a settlement. Rod had learned the salient fact that Mrs. Farquar had signed a prénuptial agreement, approved by her then eminent counsel, in which she had agreed to accept three million dollars in the event of a divorce, regardless of the alleged fault of either party. There was always the danger, he had now to point out, that if the matter went to court, a judge or jury might limit her to that amount.

  “Which means, of course, Mr. Jessup,” Jane countered coolly, “that we must prevail out of court. I have no objection to freeing my husband to marry the little slut who’s got hold of him, but I fully expect to be left just as well off without him as I was with him. And three million isn’t going to begin to do the trick. In addition to what he has already settled on me, I shall need at least another ten.”

  Rod noted that they were not even to discuss the question of her being morally bound to honor a contract into which she had freely entered. Litigation was to be the same with individuals as it was with corporations.

  “Then the only thing we have to fear is his establishing a valid residence in an easy divorce state and obtaining a decree there without your appearance or consent. Then, if you sued him in New York, you might be held to the damages stipulated in the prenuptial agreement, although of course we’d claim fraud and misrepresentation of assets and everything else under the sun. But he would have to really live in that state—no phony Reno six-week stay. Is there any danger that he might really quit New York?”

  “I doubt it. The family estate up the Hudson is sacred to him. And he’s always had a crazy idea that he might run for the state senate from up there.”

  “Then I think we can really make him pay. I take it he has no grounds for divorce in New York?”

  “None whatever. My record is white as snow.”

  “Then he’s blocked. And if he remarries after an out-of-state divorce we’ll have him for bigamy. I take it you’ll give me a free hand in the matter?”

  “Throw the book at him, Mr. Jessup. And the harder you hit, the better. And now, gentlemen, can I offer you a drink?”

  Rod, in his accustomed fashion, gave the job his all. Detectives were hired to uncover every bit of dirt in Paul Farquar’s rather shabby past. The smell of such items was even more important than their truth; as missiles they could be used to humiliate his family as well as himself, and, in particular, the children of his first two marriages. Happily, none had been born to Jane. The inventory of Paul’s wealth submitted to Jane’s counsel before their marriage, however detailed, was subject to minute scrutiny and attack, and Rod even put aside, as a desperate last remedy, an indication that Paul had once suffered from a venereal disease. Could he threaten that it had been communicated to his client? he asked her.

  “Only if all else fails,” she replied with a laugh.

  Rod was enjoying himself. He relished his interviews with this always amusing and charming woman. It had become an item of the first importance to him to win her case for her, not only for the glory of his practice, but to prove that he was just as sharp and ruthless a fighter as she obviously expected a man —her type of man, anyway—to be.

  The intimate nature of their discussions—such, for example, as the imputed gonorrhea, though each knew it had not been transmitted—inevitably led to a closer, a more congenial, relationship, and Rod soon found himself invited to one of Jane’s large dinner parties and happily accepting. Her friends, many of whose names were familiar to readers of society news, were an amalgam of the world of arts, decoration, haute couture and moneymaking. The gentleman Rod found himself talking to at cocktails might turn out to be a playwright, psychiatrist or investment banker; the lady a perfume queen, actress or fashion magazine editor. All were successful, smartly clad, well mannered and thoroughly at ease with each other.

  And Rod noticed something else about them, as he came to be more and more included in Jane’s lively social life. They did not indulge in the habit of detrimental anecdote so often attributed to social circles. On the contrary, admission to Jane’s brilliant group seemed to require a constant round of mutual admiration. “Isn’t Mike wonderful?” or “Have you ever seen Helenka in better form?” was the kind of remark he heard as he passed through the room. This, he noted, was even truer when the individual commented upon had little to his credit but a larger fortune or famous name, in which case the company endowed him with a virtue, not immediately apparent to a neutral eye, which was the “real” cause of his inclusion. Only a rude observer would have speculated on the rapacity that might have marked the earlier years of some of them or suggested that the state of their souls might be less elegant than their manners or looks.

  Jane took to asking him to stay on for a nightcap after her other guests had left, and nobody, of course, appeared to take the least notice of this. She also invited him on occasion to accompany her to dinners given by her friends. Her husband, under Rod’s relentless pressure, was beginning to show signs of weakening resistance to his wife’s exorbitant demands, and Rod and Jane were now more relaxed in conversations which no longer had to focus on her case.

  Less intent now on demonstrating to her his skill as a lawyer, Rod could concentrate more on impressing her as a man. If her wealth and social position had promoted a rather vulgar desire in him to show her that he was her equal, her charm and beauty had turned this into the equally crude wish to be her master. But now something much more benign seemed to be happening to him. It was simply that he was falling in love.

  For too long a time now he had lived in a kind of proud and resentful chastity. It was as if he had come to deem himself superior to the demands and preoccupations of sex. But it was certainly intensely agreeable to feel that this immensely sympathetic and widely popular woman was frankly interested in him.

  He quite understood that what most intrigued her about himself was the aura of masculine ruthlessness that she imagined him to emit. By instinct as well as by will, he had taken to making the most of this.

  “Practicing law, as I do it, seems to satisfy something basic in my nature,” he told her on one of their late nights. “It’s a kind of zest for combat that some unlucky men seem unable to get out of their systems.”

  “And women.”

  “Do you feel it too? It doesn’t really surprise me. You strike me as having a touch of Semiramis or Boadicea in you.”

  “Is that a compliment?”

  “From me it is. I don’t mind that in a woman. And I wonder if a certain native combativeness in a man isn’t more attractive than its total absence.”

  “Oh, I agree with you! I can’t stand wishy washies. We seem to be forgetting these days that a man’s not a real man unless there’s a bit of a brute in him. And you needn’t look at me that way. I’m perfectly aware that I’m politically incorrect. I share all the old Wasp values, and I glory in it!”

  Rod thought she was going a bit far, even for him, but he didn’t dislike it. He wondered if she wouldn’t make love like a lioness, snarling at and scratching her mate. He became graver. “Brooks
Adams maintained in his Law of Civilization and Decay that the warrior class is bound eventually to be replaced by the usurer. The crusaders were noble but futile; they had to fall before the moneylender. We must bow to history, I suppose, and accept the world as it is. But I like to think I can find in the battle of the corporate takeover some faint remnant of the warrior spirit. It’s a way of playing the old game of kill or be killed without breaking any law. Harmless, isn’t it? Or is it?”

  “I like that!” she exclaimed with enthusiasm. “And I don’t give a damn if it’s not harmless!”

  The way she looked at him now made him wonder if Harry had not been right in the first place. Was Harry going to take over his life again?

  “I haven’t told you, Jane,” he now informed her, “because it’s still not definite. But I think we can expect your husband’s total surrender in a matter of days.”

  She leaned forward to kiss him on the cheek. “My hero! My Vercingetorix.” And then she broke into a hearty laugh. “But will there be anything left of my settlement when I’ve paid your fee?”

  He smiled. “There’ll be me.”

  11

  WHAT JANE HAD BEGUN to realize, in the year following her debutante party in 1937, was that if she didn’t somehow break away from the appalling normalcy of her family, she would be condemned to become appallingly normal herself. She was under no misapprehension that her parents were as expertly adapted to cope with their environment as polar bears to the Arctic or camels to the desert. The Seatons lived in a standard Manhattan brownstone, furnished tastefully but unsurprisingly by W. & J. Sloane, and a small shingle villa on the dunes in the Hamptons. Daddy, a stockbroker who had made some money in the roaring twenties but had put just enough into treasuries to survive the Depression, even in a much depleted fashion, was a kind if undemonstrative parent, moderately content with the golfing weekends he could just still afford, with his easy if poorly remunerated office routine and his long downtown martini-laced lunches. Mummy, whose smiles and sympathy almost made up for her voids in humor and imagination, divided her time innocuously between her family and the bridge table. Jane had “leaked out” at a modest tea dance at home and was now taking courses in art appreciation while waiting for “Mr. Right” to come along. The usual noisy and impudent kid brother was at Groton.