The Collected Stories of Louis Auchincloss

by Louis Auchincloss

  “What are we waiting for? Let’s go!”

  In the restaurant Doris drank a martini rapidly and then, to his surprise, ordered another. She seemed very agitated, as if she were finding it cruelly difficult to bring out whatever was on her mind. He watched her closely.

  “You’d just better spit it out, Doris. Try to pretend I’m not here.”

  She turned to him with a sudden defiance as if he had merged with his whole sex into a single enemy. “Very well, I’m pregnant,” she declared. “I’m having a baby, and I’ve got to get rid of it. It’s very early, so it shouldn’t be too hard.” She seemed to sense now from his gaping face that he, at least, was without responsibility for her plight. “I’ve come to you, Ozey,” she continued in a humbler tone, the tears starting to her eyes, “because I don’t know where else to turn. They all say you can do anything. I thought you might be able to get me a decent doctor.”

  Pregnant! Ozey was transfixed. For a few moments he could not swallow, so thick was his throat, so wild and overwhelming his mental pictures. So that was what his tall, cool tax girl had been up to while he was blushing for the fantasies of what he had wanted to do with her! At first this new idea of her moral abandonment made her even more desirable, and he felt himself swooped up by the dizzy thought that he could have been the father of her child. But then the truth and jealousy, like a team of plowhorses, came crashing into the fragile barn of his illusions.

  “Who is the man? Do I know him?”

  Ozey’s aggressive tone took her by surprise. “What does that matter?”

  “A lot. If he’s in the office, I don’t want the risk of speaking to him. Much less of shaking his filthy paw!”

  “But, Ozey, he doesn’t even know!”

  “Then he is in the office?”

  Doris seemed helpless before this new complication. “All right, he is. But what good will a quarrel between you and him do me? Please, Ozey, can’t you help me?”

  “Of course I can help you. I can get you the best doctor in the business this afternoon. It won’t be cheap, but what’s that when your life might be at stake? And if you can’t raise the money, I’ll lend it to you.”

  “Oh, Ozey.” Her tears fell freely now. “What a friend you are. What a kind, true friend. What a man. What a real man.”

  “You needn’t worry,” he said with a swelling heart. “I shan’t make a scene with your friend. I shall go to him quiedy and firmly and see that he pays your doctor, if nothing else.”

  Doris looked at him with murky eyes. “I’m in your hands, Ozey. I must do as you say. I must trust to your discretion. It was Harry Reilley.”

  “Harry Reilley!”

  Reilley was the associate whom Ozey most admired in the office. He was not only large and blond and easily sure of himself, qualities notably lacking in Ozey, but he was somehow above, or at least aside from, the petty rivalries of the hierarchy. There was absolutely no difference in the way Reilley spoke to Ozey and in the way he spoke to Clitus Tilney. Ozey had been pleased, rather than soured, by the current office rumor that Reilley was taking out the senior partner’s daughter. But now!

  “I thought he was after the Tilney girl,” he said in a flat voice.

  “No doubt he is,” Doris said bitterly. “Dear Harry makes a brave show of being one of the people when all he really wants is to marry the boss’s daughter. I was just a rung in his ladder. And a fool not to have known it.”

  Ozey wondered from what level to what Doris’s “rung” had conducted her ruthless lover, but she was obviously in no mood for analytic inquiry. Besides, the maddening idea that Harry’s open, candid front had all along been only the mask of a mercenary ambition made him want to believe her. What did Reilley really think of Ozey? As a poor sap, grateful for a smile and a clap on the shoulder, who would still be managing clerk (if he was lucky) when the firm was known as Tower, Tilney & Reilley?

  “I guess we’ve both been rungs in Mr. Reilley’s ladder,” he said bitterly. “But Mr. Reilley hasn’t reached the top of that ladder yet. And rungs can break, you know. And send him toppling down.”

  “He’s a cheap, lying Irishman! And if that’s what Miss Tilney wants, with all her advantages, all I can say is that I congratulate her on a splendid match!”

  For the rest of their lunch they tore Harry to pieces, but over the coffee they turned to the matter in hand. It was agreed that Doris, who had still a week of vacation due her, would take it starting the following Monday and that Ozey would get hold of his doctor that afternoon.

  Everything proceeded as smoothly as matters ordinarily did in Ozey’s department. It took him only two discreet telephone calls to secure the doctor, and on Monday the abortion was successfully performed. Ozey had visited the doctor on Sunday and paid him a thousand dollars in cash. It had contributed not a little to his excitement that he had obviously been regarded as the father. When he called on Doris at her apartment on his way home from work, three days after the operation, he found her in a dressing gown, a bit pale and teary, but very grateful and glad to see him. She threw her arms around him and gave him a hug.

  “Oh, Ozey, you old darling, how good of you to come. Do you know I haven’t even told Madge?” Madge was the girl with whom she shared the apartment. “She thinks I’ve just got some woman’s trouble. Which God knows I have! But what a friend you’ve been, Ozey. Sometimes I think my only friend!”

  She insisted on moving about the room to mix him a drink, to get him an ashtray, although he begged her to sit still, and when they were settled at last, she kept staring at him with eyes of poignant humility. Ozey was pleased with the change from the easy, assured professional woman, and it somehow seemed, because he had produced the money and the doctor, because he was sitting there in the full armor of a business suit while she was vulnerably attired in an old blue dressing gown and a pair of soiled pink slippers, that it was he and not Reilley who had brought her to this sorry pass. He shuddered with excitement at the idea that one good tug at that dressing gown could transform her into his Christian slave.

  “I want to be your friend, Doris,” he muttered. “You can’t imagine how much I’ve always wanted to be your friend.”

  ***

  The next morning, at half past nine, Ozey went to Harry Reilley’s office and demanded in a barking tone the price of the abortion. Harry’s face hardened as he listened.

  “Assuming that all you say is true and that I was responsible, why should I deal with you?”

  “Because I’m acting for Doris. And because I paid the money.”

  “Why don’t you get it from her, then?”

  “Do you mean to tell me, Reilley, that you’d put all the expense on her?” Ozey’s voice became high and shrill. “Is that the kind of guy you are?”

  “Now wait a minute, wait a minute,” Harry said angrily, “before we start the name-calling. Since you seem to know so much about it, you may as well get it all straight. Doris and I spent a weekend together. She was just as keen on the idea as I was. But a girl her age who’s been smart enough to be admitted to the bar ought to be smart enough to take precautions. I don’t see why I should be stuck with the whole cost of that weekend—always assuming, of course, that it was that weekend . . .”

  “You cad!” Ozey cried, jumping to his feet.

  Harry was on his feet at the same moment, and with a heavy hand on Ozey’s shoulder, he pushed him roughly back into his chair. “Now let’s take it easy, shall we? Let’s not get ourselves hurt. I don’t know why you’re involved in this, and I’m not going to ask. But in return for my tact, I insist that you appreciate my position. I do not know that I’m the guy who knocked Doris up. But I admit I might be. And considering all the factors in the situation—and a few that you don’t know about—I think I’m doing a hell of a lot more than most men would do in offering you five hundred bucks.”

  Ozey debated the beautiful gesture of spurning this, but when he left Harry’s office he had the check in his billfold, postdated to
give Harry time to raise the money. As he passed Mr. Tilney’s office on his way back to his own, he felt that the dragging weight of his hatred for Reilley was what brought him to a halt. He took a quick step past Miss Clinger’s desk and pushed his head boldly in the open doorway.

  “May I see you a minute, Mr. Tilney?”

  Tilney looked up in surprise. His dealings with the managing clerk were infrequent and usually handled through Miss Clinger. “What can I do for you, Mr. Ozite?”

  Even with his present preoccupation, Ozey had a sour moment to reflect that Tilney made a point of calling the other associates by their first names. “It’s a personal matter, sir. May I close the door?”

  Tilney stared. “Oh, I hardly think that will be necessary.”

  “I mean personal to you, sir,” Ozey explained. “It’s about your daughter.”

  Tilney’s eyes flashed forbiddingly, but he rose, walked quickly to close his door and then turned to face Ozey with his fall height and presence. “Now, Mr. Ozite,” he said softly, “will you be good enough to tell me what’s on your mind?”

  “It’s about Mr. Reilley, sir. Harry Reilley.”

  “You said it was about my daughter.”

  “I mean that it concerns your daughter, sir. I doubt if you will wish her to have any more dates with Mr. Reilley when you hear what I have to say.”

  “Hearing about my daughter in one thing,” Tilney said irately. “Hearing tales by one associate about another is a different matter. You may go, Mr. Ozite.”

  Ozey, dazed with anger and humiliation, almost ran to the door. To his surprise, Tilney continued to bar his way.

  “Pray excuse me, sir.”

  But Tilney remained there, motionless. Then he suddenly rubbed a hand over his broad brow. “I’m sorry, Mr. Ozite,” he said, blinking. He walked slowly back to his desk. “I spoke too rapidly. Please be good enough to forgive me and tell me what you know about Mr. Reilley.”

  He resumed his seat and bent his shaggy gray head over his desk as Ozey, standing in the middle of the room, told him in a high, clear, excited tone of the iniquities of Harry Reilley.

  “I see,” Tilney said gravely when he had finished. “Thank you very much. Of course, we don’t know what degree of enticement Miss Marsh may have exercised.”

  “Miss Marsh is a lady, sir!” Ozey exclaimed. “As much of a lady as any member of your own family.”

  Tilney looked up and regarded Ozey with a quizzical expression. “Did she behave as ladies behave?”

  “When they’re seduced, sir, yes!”

  Tilney looked back down at his desk, and Ozey had the uneasy suspicion that he might be hiding a smile. “If you have Miss Marsh’s interests so much at heart, Mr. Ozite, it occurs to me that you might have considered the damage to her position in the firm of such a revelation to me.”

  “I have considered it, sir!” Ozey exclaimed in triumph. “Miss Marsh will no longer have a position in the firm. She is planning to resign at the end of the year.”

  Tilney glanced up again quickly. “Oh, see here, I don’t say anything like that is going to be necessary.”

  “It’s not for the reason you think, sir.”

  “Oh? Has she been offered a better job?”

  “Yes. As Mrs. Lee Ozite!”

  As Tilney, after a rather blank stare, smiled and rose to congratulate him, Ozey felt with pride that the senior partner was for once overwhelmed. He, Ozey, had taken the lead in their short interview and had held it to the end. It was only much later that it occurred to him that Mr. Tilney’s predominant reaction might have been simple embarrassment.

  3

  Clitus Tilney was sick at heart. He was sure that he would never again be able to think of Harry Reilley except in reference to the shabby tale told him by his smirking managing clerk. Harry’s assets and liabilities had barely balanced before this splashing entry had dyed his statement in irredeemable red. Tilney had liked the young man well enough and had admired his forthright manner and seeming straightness, but when Fran had taken him up, in her own determined way, he had reflected ruefully on the Irish Catholic background and the criminal parent which, for all his sincere efforts to overcome his upstate, small-town prejudices, seemed still to have a natural connection. And now Miss Marsh! To have seduced a bespectacled, pathetic old-maid tax lawyer! For Tilney irritably brushed aside the memory of flitting moments, passing her in the corridor and greeted by her low, pleasant “Good morning, sir,” when he had thought of her as something else. And, for Reilley to have come from the sweaty pleasures of Miss Marsh’s couch to flirt with his own daughter at the dinner table! And then to chisel on the cost of the abortion and send poor Miss Marsh to the arms of such a one as Ozite. No, the man was obviously a lecher of the coarsest sort who was after Fran for whatever promotion he could get out of her father.

  How far had things gone with Fran? Alas, Tilney was almost sure that she was in love with him. He knew that she had been out with him half a dozen times at least, and she was perfectly frank now about her interest in him. Only that morning at breakfast she had begged him to try Harry in green goods, and her face had been radiant when he had said he would consider it. Of course Reilley had put her up to it. And then Ada, too, had been all for Reilley, and had lectured him roundly when he had muttered his doubts about the Reilley background. Ada, whose instinct about people he had always considered so flawless! He groaned aloud as he thought of his Fran, his youngest and favorite child, as pure and fine and good as God had ever made a woman, with a power of sympathy and love to raise a man to greatness, wasted on such a cynical wretch. And a Catholic to boot. Even if she woke up to what he was, he would probably refuse her a divorce!

  After a miserable hour of these considerations he summoned Harry to his office and, turning his chair away to the window, he dryly reported the facts that he had learned from Ozite, ending with the terse question: “I suppose it’s all so?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s so.”

  Tilney whirled around in his chair to face the stiff, truculent young man whose hands, he at once noticed, were clenched. “If you have anything to add to that statement,” he snapped, “I’d be glad to hear it.”

  “I have nothing to add.”

  “In these matters I like to think I’m not a complete Victorian,” Tilney grumbled, but in a more reasonable tone. “I realize a young man can be inveigled into situations.”

  “I’m not that young a man, sir.”

  Tilney surveyed him critically. He liked the fact that Harry sought no excuses. “What pains me most about the whole wretched business is how recent it was.”

  “I’ll say only this, sir. It was all over before I met your daughter.”

  “Yet it can’t have been more than a matter of days.” Harry was silent. “Well, Fran’s not a child,” Tilney continued with a sigh. “She can make up her own mind about it. You realize, of course, I’ll have to tell her?”

  Some of the obstinacy faded from Harry’s eyes. “Would you have to tell her if I didn’t see her anymore?”

  “No, I don’t suppose I would,” Tilney said slowly, surprised. “Of course, I don’t know how things are between you. Or how much of a shock it would be to her.”

  “That’s not for me to say, sir. But I’m sure it’s not anything she won’t get over. There’s been no engagement between us.” Harry flushed as he added: “Or anything else you need worry about.”

  “Thank you, Harry,” Tilney responded in a kinder tone than he had ever expected to use again to the young man. “Well, suppose we try it that way? And see what happens?”

  “As you wish, sir.”

  Tilney felt worse when Reilley had left than before he had come. He tried to interpret Reilley’s willingness to give up Fran first as indifference and then as simple sullenness, but he was not successful. He had an uncomfortable suspicion that the young man’s feelings for his daughter were of a very different variety from those (if any) that he had entertained for Miss Marsh. And the very fact tha
t the latter had so rapidly consoled herself with such a man as Ozite was evidence that she had not been too deeply involved with Reilley. But where Tilney remained adamant was in his conviction that he would still be acting in his daughter’s best interests to get Reilley out of her life.

  He did not dare tell Ada, for he was afraid that she would disagree, and he wondered how he was to bear alone Fran’s silent unhappiness—for he knew it would be silent—in the terrible breakfasts that were bound to follow. The next morning and the one after were without incident, but on the third Fran asked him: “Daddy, tell me. Did you ever move Harry to green goods?”

  “Not yet, dear. But I have it in mind.”

  “Do you happen to know if he’s working particularly hard at the moment?”

  “Well, most of the boys are pretty busy. I don’t happen to know about him. Why?”

  “Oh, nothing. I just thought he might have called me about something. It doesn’t matter.”

  When she had left for school, Ada turned to him.

  “You don’t suppose Harry’s lost interest, do you?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea,” Tilney retorted irritably. “And I’m not at all sure I care if he has. Fran can do a lot better than Harry Reilley.”

  “But she cares, Clitus. I’m warning you. She cares!”

  “I’ll be seeing him tonight at the firm dinner. If he comes,” he added, remembering Harry’s truculent face. “I’ll find out if he’s been working nights.”

  “Why don’t you bring him home for a drink afterwards?”

  “Because I shall be tired and want to go to bed,” he said snappishly, and raised his paper between them to run his eye down the obituary column.

  The firm had a semiannual men’s dinner at the University Club where it was customary for certain of the partners to speak on the highlights of the season’s practice. Tilney sat in the middle of the principal table, between Chambers Todd and Waldron Webb, and was grateful that he did not have to speak that night, for he could think only of Fran. The image of her pale face and of the glimmer of pain in her eyes had ejected every other from his mind. He noticed Harry Reilley at a far table and heard the sound of his loud laugh. It was too loud, that laugh, too defiant. Tilney wondered if he was drinking too much and regretted the custom of having bottles of whiskey on the table.