Watchfires

by Louis Auchincloss

  "No, sir, it's not as bad as that. Mr. and Mrs. Bristow are perfectly willing to accept me as a son-in-law. I've had my differences with Ellie's father, but they've been made up. The reason they can't give Ellie anything is that they haven't got it to give. Mr. Bristow, it turns out, has been financially shaky for some time."

  "Ah, haven't I said so often enough!" Mr. Handy exclaimed, nodding vigorously. "These new people lack substance. It's façade, half the time, nothing but façade."

  "And now, on top of some earlier investments that have gone sour, he's stuck with a pile of invalidly issued Erie stock."

  "But I thought the Commodore had bailed out his brokers. I know he did Frank Work. You're not going to tell me that Bristow played the gentleman and turned him down the way you did!"

  Fred chuckled. "Quite the contrary. He pressed the Commodore as hard as he dared. But after I'd refused payment at the expense of the Erie shareholders, Mr. Vanderbilt decided to look a bit more closely into the propriety of what he was doing. There was still a number of brokers to be paid, including Bristow, and some of them panicked when they heard he was talking to the lawyers. One of Bristow's partners thought to ingratiate himself with the Commodore by informing him that Bristow was a double dealer. He'd been selling Erie one day and buying it the next!"

  "Those people are all crooks," Mr. Handy muttered in disgust. "They even rob each other."

  "Well, the Commodore wrote Bristow one of his famous notes: 'Dear Seth, I have found you a cheat. Because you married my niece, I shan't ruin you. I'll just leave you to starve!'"

  Mr. Handy cackled. "And is he bust?" He seemed to have forgotten the consequent depreciation of his granddaughter-in-law's dowry.

  "Not quite that bad. But he's selling the house on Madison Square. And he won't be able to do anything for Ellie. Which is just fine by me!"

  "You're right, my boy. It's the best way. Your grandmother didn't bring me a penny when I married her."

  Fred could have retorted; "But she brought you a small fortune when her father died a few years later!" Instead he rose to take his leave, embracing the old man with a warmth that was not feigned.

  The weather had cleared when they left, and Fred walked with Ellie down to Madison Square. She tucked her arm snugly under his.

  "Oh, Fred! I'm so happy I'm scared."

  "Scared of what?"

  "Scared of having so much. Why should we have all this and Selby so little?"

  "He had more than the boys who died in the Wilderness. There's no fairness, sweetheart. We just have to enjoy what we get."

  As he felt her grip on his arm he wondered, with a tightening in his throat, if they had time to go back to Rector Street before supper with her family.

  "And of course it didn't just come to us," she said more soberly. "We took our gambles."

  "What gambles did you take?"

  "The greatest of all!" she exclaimed. "When I came to your room."

  "Nonsense. You simply tossed your hook in the stream and I gobbled it."

  "On the contrary. You might have thought me an abandoned woman. You might have used me and flung me away!"

  "As if anyone could fling you away! You're an addiction, my love. And you know it."

  "I didn't know it at all." She threw back her head and laughed. "But I gambled that I might be!"

  "Darling! Shall we take a hansom cab to Rector Street? Have we time before dinner?"

  "Really, Fred, you're insatiable! You're a beast!"

  "Isn't that what you want me to be?"

  "Not tonight, anyway. Not on Sunday night. Not after a visit to Number 417. I warn you that I greatly admire Aunt Jo. I want to be just like her."

  "Isn't it a bit too late for you to start being like Aunt Jo?" he asked insinuatingly.

  "What do you mean?"

  "What do you think I mean?"

  She burst into another laugh and then became suddenly grave. "You're very crude. And what is worse, you don't respect me anymore."

  "Ellie!"

  "You don't. All you want is ... that."

  "And you don't?"

  "I want it in its time and place. As I want a great many other things. In their times and places. And right now I want to go home. And have you be as polite as possible to my parents." Her expression softened when she saw his dismay. "Don't worry, dearest. You will find that the things I want are perfectly nice things. You will find that you're going to want them, too."

  She walked on more briskly now, and he followed, a half-step behind. For the first time since his enlistment in '63 he felt that the war was really over. The battle smoke had floated off the fields; the corpses had been removed; uniforms were for sale in old clothing shops, and peace, in shiny high heels, with a swish of satin skirts, was walking up Fifth Avenue. He sighed, but it was a sigh of considerable content.

  34

  DEXTER sat in the gallery of the Senate Chamber, which was somber despite its many gas jets, as he looked down on that hushed and expectant body. Chief Justice Chase, black-robed, presiding over the legislators sitting as a court, shiny bald, portly and splendid, was taking the verdict, senator by senator, on the eleventh article. It seemed to be generally agreed that if the Managing Committee of the House, as the prosecution, failed to obtain a conviction on this article of impeachment, it would fail on all the others. Nineteen votes of not guilty were needed to make up the third necessary for acquittal, and eighteen had been already obtained, but all the President's partisans, including the seven Republican "renegades" (or "heroes," depending on one's point of view) had now voted, and the tally was almost complete. Unless one waverer could be brought into the fold that morning, Ben Wade would be President of the United States. The heavy air of the chamber seemed fairly to throb with apprehension.

  "Mr. Senator, how say you? Is the respondent, Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, guilty or not guilty of a high misdemeanor as charged in this article?"

  "Guilty."

  Dexter was not privileged to sit with the five official attorneys for the defendant at the table facing the Chief Justice and flanked by the House Managers. He could make out the handsome, aristocratic, attentive profile of Evarts, a model of controlled concern. At the Managers' table, his opposite number, terrible old Thaddeus Stevens, ashen, moribund, in a grotesque black wig, who had had to be carried into the chamber in a chair borne by two negro boys, seemed to be hanging on to life only to witness the final humiliation of his mortal enemy. At the response "Guilty," Dexter saw him turn to dart a sharp glance of satisfaction at Senator Sumner, seated directly behind him. But the latter seemed to regard the proceedings with the disdain of a Marcus Aurelius. Bread and circuses were for the mob. Johnson had already received the verdict of his inverted thumb.

  Dexter, amid the general tension, felt curiously serene. His work was done; there would be no appeal from this court. He had prepared some half dozen memoranda for the presidential counselors on jurisdictional questions that might have arisen in the trial. He had been asked to concentrate on the role of the Chief Justice, which triggered the larger problem of whether the Senate was sitting as a legislative body or as a court. As it had turned out, the Senate had acted as little as possible like a court. There had been scant opportunity for Dexter's questions to be asked, much less answered. But all this had been anticipatable, and he had had the diversion of a ringside seat for the only spectacle in the nation that could have filled any part of the large area in his mind now devoted to the memory of Selby.

  He had reached for the distraction of this job with an almost desperate clutch. Selby's death had made him ashamed to have fussed so much over the political problems of the defeated South. When Evarts had said to him that no political objective could justify the impeachment of any federal officer, much less the chief executive, on so trumped-up a charge, it was as if the scales had fallen from his eyes. Evarts and Selby had been agreed. The President would have to be acquitted, and then, but not until then, could it be decided whether Congress o
r the White House should reconstruct the rebel states. If an acquittal should operate against the orderly return of those states to the union, even if it should result in the delay of universal suffrage and the continuance of some degree of racial injustice ... well, that was unfortunate, nay, tragic. But the federal system had to be preserved. If that wasn't what the war had been about, what had it been about?

  "Mr. Senator, how say you? Is the respondent, Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, guilty or not guilty of a high misdemeanor as charged in this article?"

  "Guilty!"

  Dexter had a sudden sense that Selby was there, somewhere close to him. The feeling was so strong that for a moment he actually looked around for him. Then he shook himself impatiently. Was he going to end up like old Vanderbilt, consulting mediums to get in touch with another world? Selby was there only because his memory of Selby was so vibrant. So as long as that was left to him, he would have a part of his son. Rosalie had said that Selby might have been destined for an unhappy life, lacking Fred's strength, in the world that was coming. But Dexter was less sure. Fred was not so strong as Rosalie supposed. His violent faith in battles bred disillusionment. Selby had lacked such faith, but he might have found his way without it.

  In the suddenly intensified hush about him, Dexter sensed a crisis. A slight, pale-faced man of some forty years had just risen from his seat. It was Edward Ross, from Kansas, an undecided neophyte to the chamber over whose vote both factions had been struggling for weeks. Even his girl friend, it was rumored, had been besieged by distinguished callers.

  "Mr. Senator, how say you? Is the respondent, Andrew Johnson...?"

  Dexter's heart bounded. It was going to be all right!

  "Not guilty."

  There were no cries, no calls, no sobs, only a vast low sibilant exhalation. Dexter rose and walked up the stairs in the aisle to the exit door. Only when he was outside in the corridor did he realize that he was being followed by a lady in black.

  "It's all over?" Rosalie asked, as he paused to let her catch up.

  "All over. I'm glad you didn't miss it." He tucked her arm under his and led her through the rotunda and out to the steps of the Capitol. "When did you come?"

  "Last night. I got my ticket from Mr. Evarts."

  "Would you like to walk a bit? It's a lovely day. As well as an historical one."

  They strolled towards the greensward that swept away from the base of the Capitol.

  "I hope you know, Dexter, that I'm very proud."

  "Of the victory?"

  "Of your part in the victory."

  "It was nothing. Most of my memos were not even read. But that's all right. They dealt with contingencies that didn't arise."

  "But that might have arisen."

  "Oh, yes. Any good defense team would have had someone doing what I did."

  "So you're part of the victory," Rosalie insisted.

  "Like a man with a fire hose when there isn't a fire. Sure. But you won't be reading about me in the histories of the great impeachment."

  "I don't care!"

  "Nor do I. For that matter, I don't think the acquittal was really the accomplishment of any of the President's counsel. Not that they didn't do a great job. They did. But I have a hunch that Mr. Johnson would have been acquitted even without a lawyer. The Managers made such a bloody mess of it! Anyone not blinded with hate could see the whole process was nothing but an attempted lynch."

  "And even at that he got off by only one vote," Rosalie mused. "Two-thirds of our noble Senate—two-thirds less one—wanted to lynch him. Think of it!"

  "Or think of it this way. That one vote may be our hope for the future. The Dutch boy's finger in the dike."

  Rosalie paused to gaze up at the wheeling gulls that must have flown in from the Chesapeake. "Maybe it's not going to be so bad a world, after all. The world our Selby will miss."

  "Do you want to hear a confession, dear? When I was looking down from the gallery at the men who had conspired to unseat Andrew Johnson: Stevens, emaciated, dying, eaten alive with hate; Sumner, smug, prissy, a megalomaniac; Ben Butler, vulgar, flippant, cynical, it suddenly struck me that a congress of women would have been incapable of such behavior."

  Rosalie shook her head impatiently, as if embarrassed by his compunction. "You don't have to say that."

  "But I do! I owe it to you. I don't say that women aren't as capable of evil as men, but I wonder if they're as capable of self-delusion. Of sheer folly."

  "You can test that when you get to know Ellie's mother better."

  "That horrible creature! Maybe she's the exception that proves my new rule. You're not going to talk me out of my apology, Rosalie. I've been wholly wrong about your work.

  "Have you?" They were strolling now on the lawn by the Capitol. Rosalie unloosed the cords of her wide-brimmed hat and turned to face the mild breeze from the river. She seemed disheartened. "I wonder if it isn't all a waste of time. If I'm not up against the same old contrast between what you accomplish and what I do. In the war you could supply a whole regiment with medical equipment while I was changing a bed. And now, in peace, you can save a President's skin while I orate in some dingy hall to five snorers and one heckler. It sometimes seems to me the only way I can serve my fellow man—and woman—is to stay at home and make you comfortable."

  "But don't you see the only reason I'm in a position to accomplish more than you is that men have had things their own way so long?"

  She gave him a quick glance at this. "Oh, you're there, are you? You have come a way."

  "I've done a lot of thinking on my lonely nights in Washington."

  "Well, don't misunderstand me. I haven't changed my position about the rights of women. Not a bit. I've simply begun to wonder if the time is ripe. So few people seem to care. And so few women! Is it really worthwhile for me to make a public spectacle of myself and upset you and Fred? And now Ellie? For she's a very conventional creature, you know."

  "Is she? I guess I've seen too little of her as yet. But the beginning of every great cause must be full of discouragements. Think of the martyrs in the arena. Think of our early abolitionists."

  "And think of the inquisition! Think of the war! Maybe violence only produces more violence. I've always been suspicious about the motives behind martyrs, and now I'm becoming suspicious about my own. How much is for women, and how much is resentment against you? For all your success..."

  "That I owe to you," he interrupted firmly.

  "Nonsense, Dexter! I'm trying to be serious. Any girl you'd married in our world could have given you what I've given you. What I'm attempting to say is there may be as much anger as idealism in my stand. Anger at Papa, at you, at that horrible Mr. Cranberry—maybe even at Fred, poor fellow. I want to break up your smug male world, smash the windows, pull down the curtains, make a mess of things! They say there are two kinds of revolutionaries: the wreckers and the builders. Maybe I'm just another wrecker."

  "But you're not trying to wreck things," Dexter protested stubbornly. He was excited now with the idea that he might be breaking into a new plane in their marriage. "You're trying to bring women into a political system in which they presently have no place. To do that you have to preserve the system, not destroy it. I want you to go on just as you've been going, spreading the word, from street corner to street corner if need be. I don't want you to give it all up, just so I can be as cozy and stuffy as Rutgers Van Rensselaer. I've accepted enough sacrifices from you! I don't wish to accept any more."

  Rosalie sighed. She might almost have been disappointed in him. "Well, I suppose you're basically right. Crusaders must expect slow starts. But I'm not as young as I was, and the light at the end of that tunnel seems very far away. I think I'm not going to embarrass my family for such small gains. I'll continue to write and organize, and raise money, but I'll leave the barricades to the younger generation."

  "You're younger than many of the women engaged in this struggle," Dexter continued inexorably. "Whateve
r you decide to do or not do, I don't want it to be for my sake."

  "It's really rather unkind of you not to give me an excuse, Dexter! I'm tired. And I miss Selby!"

  But he knew that the issue was too important to be settled on a sentimental basis. "What do you think Selby would say?"

  At this she shrugged and turned back towards the Capitol. "Don't you know? Selby would have agreed with both of us."

  Epilogue

  THE SUMMER of 1895 had been particularly brilliant, but no day had been lovelier than the one in August on which the governor's visit to Newport was celebrated by a garden party at Marble House. When Dexter arrived at four to hear the concert on the terrace under the Corinthian capitals, the neat rows of gilt chairs were almost filled. A young lady jumped up to offer him her seat.

  "Oh, please, Mr. Fairchild, I was just going in, anyway," she whispered as he demurred. "I want to join my father on the porch."

  He nodded, smiling, and seated himself in the vacated chair. One had to learn to accept the deference paid old age. It was better, after all, than if it had not been offered. The strains of a Saint-Saens concerto came to his ear, and he proceeded to arrange his reflections along comfortably irrelevant lines, as was his lifelong habit in listening to music.

  The scene before him was relaxed and charming: the shimmering, quiet sea, the emerald lawn, the gently swaying elms, the box hedge, the large ladies in Irish lace, the broad-brimmed white hats. All Newport was there, as seemed to be the rule now at Vanderbilt parties. Mrs. "Willy K.," his hostess, her square, toadlike countenance and small black eyes directed from a kind of dais at the audience below, might have been a head mistress surveying her assembled school. And now she was nodding to him. He was much honored!

  The Vanderbilts had certainly come a long way. Even Mr. Handy, who in the old days had always been one to favor bringing the new people along, had drawn the line at the Commodore. And now the wives of the latter's grandsons, Corneel and Willy, were practically running the summer community from the two most splendid palaces in Newport. And did not his own daughter-in-law, Ellie, a distant and unendowed cousin, owe more to this connection, carefully cultivated, than to all the Handys and Fairchilds of old New York? Such was social history. It did not even matter anymore that the owners of Marble House were about to be divorced, or that the great "Alva" was notoriously interested in women's suffrage.