"Oh, of course, I know that," she conceded gloomily. "He can build a hospital while I'm nursing one soldier. But I still can't see why I'm that indispensable. Must Dexter be made to do two jobs? Can't you, really and truly, hold the office together? I'm sure, dear Charley, you underestimate yourself!"
"Don't forget I have a problem. I'm on top of it now, but you know what they say about alcoholics..."
"Oh, hush up!" she cried in dismay, hastily putting her fingers over his lips. "You're going to be just fine! But, all right—I'll think about it."
"Poor Rosalie." He shook his head sadly. "I see how much you want to go back."
"Oh, run along now, please!" she exclaimed sharply, afraid that she was going to weep. "You've done your job. Enough for one day, anyway!"
But as soon as Charley had gone, she remembered her own trust fund. Surely, that would always be hers, no matter what her father lost. And couldn't she live on it? Well, of course, she could live on it, and so could Dexter and the boys! It wasn't much, but at least they would be housed and clothed and fed. How absurd were the expectations of New York society! If you couldn't keep a carriage and leave town in the summer, people thought you might as well turn your face to the wall.
All that night she kept dreaming of the Pierce and waking up. Why was she really needed at home? The boys were exuberantly healthy and totally occupied with school and sports. Mrs. Lindley had the household under perfect control. Dexter was in poor spirits, true, but there was nothing physically wrong with him. And the agreement of his three big donors to go along with Silas Cranberry's outrageous condition had been a great feather in his cap. He was the hero of the Sanitary Commission! How could that not cheer him up in time? Was it not even possible—just barely possible, that he was putting his gloominess on a bit? To hold her back? Might he not even be jealous of the Pierce?
The next morning, when Dexter's mother made her daily call on the patient, Rosalie was struck with a brilliant idea. Following Mrs. Fairchild on her way out to the front hall, she asked if she might have a word with her.
"Of course, my dear. You may have two. What are the old for but to listen?"
"I was wondering, when I go back to the Pierce, if it would be possible for you to move in here and keep an eye on Dexter. I know that's a great imposition, but Mrs. Lindley would do everything for you. She would make you thoroughly comfortable. And it would be so nice for Fred and Selby, having their grandmother here when they come home!"
Mrs. Fairchild searched her daughter-in-law's eyes carefully, as if looking for hidden traps or motives. "Don't you think Mrs. Lindley would resent having someone look over her shoulder? For that's what I'd be doing. You can't trust that breezy type. Always so enthusiastic and busy, busy. But when they catch colds—and they always do (maybe it's from their own breezes!) they tend to go to pieces."
"Well, I should tell her, of course, that you had complete authority."
Her mother-in-law grunted. "That never works. No, dear, I think I can do better for you by just checking in every day, as I have been."
Rosalie reflected bitterly that it was probably her own fault that Mrs. Fairchild was not more obliging. Her relationship with her mother-in-law had never been warm. Her appreciation of the latter's rule of never interfering with her or the children had been tempered by her suspicion that it had as much the taint of indifference as the merit of policy. And she had never been able to bridge what she deemed the gulf between their values: Dexter's mother, to her view, was worldly to the marrow of her being. Living all her life on the fringes of wealth, she had been obliged to cultivate its possessors, with the inevitable result that she had become more conservative than they.
Rosalie supposed now that Mrs. Fairchild's reluctance to move into her house sprang from a desire not to appear to condone the "folly" of her marine nursing, and she prepared herself for a lecture on her own domestic duties. But it was not forthcoming.
"How soon do you think you'll be going back?" she asked instead.
"Well, how soon do you think I can safely leave Dexter?"
Mrs. Fairchild grunted again. "So long as you ask me, I think it's better to take the bull by the horns."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning that if you're going, you'd better go."
"And just leave him? 111?" Rosalie contemplated with surprise the restless little woman before her. Mrs. Fairchild had a way of fiercely shaking her head and shoulders when she had a point to make. She would continue these gesticulations even after she had made it.
"Dexter's not going to die," his mother observed bleakly.
"But I assume that a wife's duties are more than merely mortuary!"
"He'll get along."
"You have more confidence in him than Charley does." Rosalie found it odd to be taking sides against herself. "He thinks he'll work himself into a crack-up and ruin his law practice if I'm not around to direct him."
"Charley just wants to be free to go back to his bottle."
"Oh, Mrs. Fairchild! What a terrible thing to say!"
"It sounds terrible, but don't forget my long experience with the male members of the Fairchild family. You know how my husband treated me. And how Dexter has treated you!"
Rosalie was startled by a novel, vindictive gleam in those small glittering eyes.
"But that is all over, Mrs. Fairchild!"
"Over! A man does that to you, and you can call it over? When it happened to me, I had to slave to make ends meet to bring up my children. There were no hospital ships for me! But I tell you this, Rosalie. If I'd been off on a boat with a life of my own, I'd have never come back! Never!"
"Of course, you would have! For the children's sake."
"Maybe I'd have taken them with me. I don't know. The times were different, then. But of one thing I'm certain. If I'd had what you have, I wouldn't have given it up for any man under the sun!"
"If Dexter could hear you!"
"Would you like me to go upstairs and tell him to his face? I'd be glad to!"
"No, no, in the name of God, please!"
All she wanted now was to get the terrible little old lady out of her house. How was it possible that, from all the cards and card parties, from all the gossip over the needlepoint, from all the evenings on gilt chairs watching the young fry dancing, from all the murmured condolences and festive congratulations of a New York social life, should have sprung this maenad! Was the war going to tear every mask from every living countenance?
But Mrs. Fairchild was leaving now; she was assuring her, in her old, brisk tone, that she would call regularly to be sure that Mrs. Lindley wasn't getting sloppy.
"I know she's started well. But don't forget they get colds!"
Rosalie accompanied her to the stoop, nodding dumbly at her injunctions. But when she had closed the door behind her mother-in-law, she stretched her back up against it tightly and searched the ceiling with wild eyes, as if seeking a remedy there for her desperation. Even Dexter's mother had never loved him! The boy must have been included in the abounding wrath against his sex aroused by his father's desertion. And how could she now leave a man whom nobody loved and when she alone had promised to? How could she leave a man who, with her help and support, and a semblance, maybe, of love, might build hospitals for the wounded and a great law practice for her sons? While she indulged her silly fantasy of being Florence Nightingale? "O God, I have no choice!" she cried harshly aloud. "None at all!"
***
Joanna came for dinner that night; Mr. Handy had gone to a party. Dexter retired early; Charley Fairchild took the boys to a dramatic version of Uncle Tom's Cabin, and the sisters passed the evening in the parlor together. Rosalie told Joanna of her present resolution to quit the Pierce, and they heatedly argued the merits of her decision for an hour. When Joanna at last appeared to have accepted it, she then told Rosalie that she had made the same decision for herself.
"Oh, Jo! No!"
"I'm perfectly calm about it. You needn't worry about me. I've had my
cry, and it was a good one. I've faced the fact that so long as I'm doing this of my own free will, so long as nobody is making me do it, I can live with the fact."
"But it's too absurd! You're not in my fix. Father's perfectly all right. Look where he is tonight! And, anyway, I'll be here to keep an eye on him."
"You'll have your hands full with Dexter and the boys. And Father is not perfectly all right. He is rapidly losing the sight in one eye. He fell on the stairs yesterday and only by a miracle didn't break anything. Doctor Strong tells me he thinks he's had a small stroke and that we must expect more. He may become totally incapacitated at any time. Of course, he could live for years, but he is definitely going to need someone to look after him and run the house. The place is a mess. I'm going to have to fire three of the maids, as it is. No, Rosalie, I must do it, that's all. R's hard on me, and it's hard on you. The war's hard on everyone."
"But, my dear, we could get a housekeeper and a nurse, if need be..."
"No, Rosey." She had never seen Joanna so calm, so firm. "He needs a daughter, and I'm going to be that daughter. I shall go back now. I don't want to talk about it anymore. And, of course, there will be hospitals where I can work here. Father won't require all my time. Not yet, anyway."
"And I'll work with you!"
"Yes. I shall like that." Joanna peered out the hall window and saw that her father's carriage was there. Rosalie helped her into her coat and tied the strings of her bonnet under her chin. Joanna kissed her. "Good night, dear."
"I wish to God we were back at Fortress Monroe!"
"Listening to the, gunfire? How bloodthirsty you are, Rosey! But so am I. Is this our penance?"
Rosalie, watching her sister lift her black satin skirt as she descended the stoop to take the proffered hand of the coachman and step into the landau, wondered if it could be the same woman who had cleaned the deck of the Pierces galley on her hands and knees and had helped the male nurses with the chamber pots.
PART III
In the Beauty of the Lilies
26
ON NEW YEAR'S DAY of 1868 the sky was white and clear, and the long icicles that hung down the windowpanes outside the dining room on Union Square made Dexter think of the diamond pendants that his brother-in-law, David Ullman, had bought for Jane to celebrate his firm's purchase of a million acres of phosphate mines in Georgia. After reading Horace Greeley's passionate call for the impeachment of the President, he glanced up at the impassive brown countenance of his son Fred bent over the financial page.
At last those slaty gray eyes were lifted to meet his.
"Something in your mind, Dad?"
"Just that everything seems to point to a rather exciting new year."
"Well, it should be one for me. If the old Commodore makes good his threat to grab Erie."
Fred worked for Bristow & Mayer, one of the brokerage firms associated with the "Vanderbilt crowd." Bristow had married the old man's niece. Fred was totally absorbed in his work.
"Oh, I wasn't referring to anything as earthshaking as that" his father retorted with rather labored sarcasm. "I was thinking of this proposed impeachment."
"Do you suppose they'll really go through with it?"
"I'm betting they will."
"And you think it a good thing? You want to see Ben Wade President of the United States?"
"It's not that," Dexter retorted with a grimace. He paused to consider his words. He knew that he tended to become highly agitated at what he considered the outrage of the South's regaining in peace what it had lost in war, and nothing irritated his son more than what Fred called "waving the bloody shirt." Fred was still, at least to his father's eyes, the lean bronzed hero of the Wilderness Campaign, the youngest aide on Grant's staff, whom a year of horror had changed from a meticulous, almost prissy youth into a cynical and hardened veteran. After three years of peace, during which he had rather grudgingly lived at home, Dexter was still afraid of him. "Let me put it this way. I do not believe that Andrew Johnson has so purged his heart of Southern sympathies as to be able properly to administer a reconstruction program to which he has been overtly hostile."
"He doesn't have to administer it. The army does that."
"But he's working against it, Fred. He's undermining it!" Again Dexter paused, aware of his now more tensely beating heart. He could not seem to subdue his indignation. Were four years of holocaust to have been in vain?
"By firing Stanton?" Fred demanded. "Isn't it going a bit far to impeach a President for removing a contumacious member of his own cabinet?"
"That is only the legal reason."
"Is it even legal? Isn't there a serious constitutional question there?"
"Undoubtedly." Dexter snatched at the temporary calm of legal analysis. "Johnson may have power under the Constitution to rid himself of his secretary of war. The true question is whether he is unconstitutionally opposing the reorganization of the rebel states. That is how the article of impeachment should be drafted. Do you believe, Fred, you, who have put your life on the line for our union, that those states should be readmitted before they have genuinely accepted the principle of negro suffrage?"
"But is military occupation going to make that acceptance any more genuine?"
"General Grant seems to think so. Isn't he your hero?"
"He was my hero. I'm not sure one should have heroes in peacetime. Anyway, I'm glad I have nothing to do with the occupation. It's always a shabby business, and brings out the rats."
"But if it's necessary, Fred?"
"Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't."
"If it's shabby, it's because all the right young men, like yourself, have left it to the regulars."
"Well, what are we supposed to do? Stay in uniform forever? I did my stint, Dad. As you have said, often enough."
Fred went back to his newspaper, and Dexter tried to do the same, but he found he could not read. Fred was always so prickly about anything concerning the war. Sometimes it seemed impossible for his family either to speak about it or be silent. Dexter would never forget the terrible time, in '64, when Fred had been hospitalized with a head wound in Alexandria, and he had taken advantage of a business trip to the capital to make a flying visit to his son's bedside. He had been struck by the remarkable alteration in Fred's looks. Pallor and emaciation had brought out the fine, strong lines of his bone structure. The shining gray eyes, the rich chestnut curls of his hair seemed to give life to a beautiful marble mask. Dexter had allowed himself to go overboard in an editorial for the Sanitary Commission Gazette. He had ventured the opinion that the phoenix of American youth would arise triumphant from the ashes of war, that young men like his wounded son would be better citizens for the stress they had undergone. Fred, unfortunately, had seen the article and had bitterly resented what he had termed his father's "capitalization" of a minor discomfort.
"I guess you're not really out of uniform when you're working for old Vanderbilt," Dexter ventured now, hoping that he was moving to a safer subject. "Is Harlem-Central really going to make a grab for Erie?"
"Everything points to it, Dad." Fred again put down his paper. "Central needs a line to Buffalo. Look at a railway map. It fits like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle."
"Dan Drew is going to be a hard man to take over. And I hear those youngsters, Gould and Fisk, are the trickiest things in town."
"True. But Vanderbilt knows all about them. They're out for money and nothing else. They've been milking Erie dry. They're too greedy for their own good, that's the point. I'm sure we can take Erie, if we go about it right."
"You really admire men like the Commodore, don't you?"
"There aren't any men like the Commodore! He's unique. You should watch him in action, Dad. For seventy-four, he's astounding. You talk about heroes. Well, he's the Ulysses S. Grant of 1868!"
"Who's the Ulysses S. Grant of 1868?"
Rosalie had just come in to take her place at the end of the breakfast table. She no longer appeared in the dressing gown to which Dext
er had privately objected some years before, but he sometimes now missed it. For if she had then seemed inclined to linger too long in the house, to dally overmuch in facing the demands of her day, she now had the air of being ready to sally forth too early, to leave behind the domestic hearth too cheerfully, even too ruthlessly, in order to offer her brisk attention and alert presence to friends—or opponents—who might assail her on her very stoop. This morning she was arrayed in sober gray and had on a box hat that seemed to deny every principle of femininity. But the large troubled eyes, the brief, deprecating smile, were all of the old Rosalie.
Fred explained his reference.
"That old pirate! Really, Fred, I don't know where your values have gone. Isn't it bad enough to have you working for him without singing his praises under our roof?"
Her words were wormwood to Dexter, though of a wormwood that now seemed to be part of a daily diet. If he stood too much in awe of their oldest son—and he admitted such a tendency—surely Rosalie erred in the opposite extreme. She loved Fred, certainly, but on her own terms. She had worried about him desperately in the last year of the war, but now that he was home safe she seemed to have put that behind her. She knew as well as Dexter that Fred was paying marked attention to his boss's daughter, Elmira Bristow, a great-niece of Commodore Vanderbilt, but did that induce her to moderate in the least her strenuous language about the tycoon of Central? And the extraordinary part of it all was that Fred, however openly resentful of his mother, seemed to care for her approval more than that of anyone else, including Elmira Bristow.
"I have noticed, Ma, that people who are concerned with civil rights tend to assume omniscience in all political and financial matters. You might find it helpful to face the fact that you know nothing whatever about the business world."
"I know it's dog eat dog, and that's enough for me."
Dexter could never seem to stand apart in these mother-son confrontations. He suffered from an uneasy compulsion to run between the bristling opponents, for all the world like some silly Sabine woman, a babe in arms, thrusting herself between the pikes of her embattled kinsmen. "I suggest, my dear, that Fred views these things in a somewhat different light," he observed mildly. "He sees Mr. Vanderbilt, if I take him correctly, as a creative force—perhaps a rough one, but still creative. When the Commodore marshals his millions to some vast acquisitive end—as, say, purchasing control of the Erie line—it is with the purpose of imposing order on chaos."
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