Answer as a Man

by Taylor Caldwell

  Patrick was annoyed. “You never did like my girl,” he said. “Not even when she was a toddler and you were fourteen years old.”

  Daniel came suddenly back to his present situation. “Oh, after all, could you expect a young boy to notice a baby? No. I am trying to tell you that there is a lot to admire in Patricia. She’ll make an excellent wife, watching out always for her husband’s interests, which she’ll make her own. I know you think of Patricia as a soft little girl, but she isn’t, Uncle Pat. There’s granite in her, somewhere, believe me.” He had a sudden thought, and was surprised. “And I’ll tell you something else about Patricia. If she ever falls in love, it’ll be for life. No flightiness about her, except superficially.”

  Patrick was appeased. Yet, he felt some uneasiness. Patricia had become very absentminded of late. She often smiled to herself, and her smile was excited. And as Daniel had said, she had taken on a sudden and noticeable bloom. She had become softer in speech, and her eyes sparkled. Patrick had heard her sing early in the morning, when she usually was the most irritable.

  Daniel said, “Yes, she’ll make a very loving, if very practical, wife. I hardly knew her this time. She looks like a woman in love.”

  Patrick laughed. “I hope it’s Jason. Even if it isn’t, I’ll make it so. It can’t be some bucko in Philadelphia. She’d mention it fast enough if it was. And she never gets any letters, except from her aunts. And she doesn’t go out with any young fella in Belleville, at least not often. She doesn’t like the fellas she knows here. They send her flowers and candy and she never even looks at them. She knows I want her to get married; she’s old enough. And she’d tell me if there was anyone. No. I think she is just thinking of a wedding. We’ll put Jason there as the groom.”

  Well, thought Daniel. Perhaps. He was amused at himself when he thought: I hope for Jason’s sake that Uncle Pat doesn’t succeed.

  There was a knock on the door, and Molly entered. “May I come in?” she said.

  “Seems like you’re already in, Molly, love,” said Patrick, and his kind face beamed brightly. “Now, love, will you get me out the Schultz folder? I want to discuss some things here with Mr. Dugan.”

  Molly passed Daniel on the way to the files. She moved lithely, he noticed, like her brother. And she had a lovely rear, like a young Psyche, full of innocent seductiveness. The movement of her thighs under the poor brown skirt was supple and enticing. It was most evident she did not know this. She had no voluptuousness that was overt, but it was there just the same, for all her slenderness. Daniel was charmed. He was more than charmed. And he was interested by his own emotions. Not a beautiful girl by any standards, but there was something alluring about her, something strong yet pliant. When she came to the desk to lay the folder before Patrick, Daniel noticed her hands again. And he wanted to take them and hold them against his cheek.

  That she was unaware of him, and did not look at his virile handsomeness as all other women did, and had never once smiled at him, stirred him. He thought of the girl in Philadelphia to whom he was tentatively engaged, and she was suddenly vapid and without form. He could hardly remember her features now. She was dissolving in his memory.

  Patricia, fulfilling Lionel’s expectation, had “made the first move.” She appeared in the dining room with her father on Sunday, almost two months before her father arranged the meeting with Daniel in his study, meticulously arrayed in a blue lace dress draped enticingly about her narrow hips and over her bosom, which had acquired extra padding. This enhanced her waist. She wore blue silk shoes and silk stockings. Her pompadour was really enormous, and shining, and upheld by tortoiseshell combs studded with blue stones. One tubelike curl was permitted to lie on her shoulder, and her lavaliere, very dainty, was of gold inlaid with diamonds and aquamarines, as was her bracelet. She, indeed, had style and taste, and her nondescript face had a pretty glow in the light of the chandeliers. Lionel was impressed, and pleased, and for the first time felt a quick desire for the girl, which made him inwardly laugh at himself.

  She pretended to be haughtily unaware of Lionel as he bowed and presented her with the menu. She looked about the dining room with pretended ennui. It was too early—Patrick had planned this—for the Sunday-evening guests, who were in the rear bars or upstairs in the private dining rooms drinking and discreetly roistering. The diners were still few, and rather elderly and very decorous.

  “The duck with brandy and oranges is very special today,” Lionel murmured to her. Patricia gave her father a quick glance; then, seeing he was bowing and smiling to some guests, she whispered to Lionel, “In the glade? Later?”

  Lionel also glanced at Patrick. He whispered in a very fast tone, “This is my day. I will be here late. Next Sunday? I will be off then.”

  Patricia had not known of the Sunday arrangements. Her bright color faded a little with disappointment. Then she nodded. Patrick turned to his daughter. “We have a grand chef, young and with ideas. Try the duck, love. And the burgandy. My special vintage.” He said to Lionel, “Jason left yet?”

  “Yes, sir. An hour ago.”

  Patrick felt his own disappointment. He said with unusual irritation, “I don’t know you young fellas. Always running off.” But Patricia was relieved. She simply could not bear that lout, so big and stupidly silent and always staring at her. She knew her father wanted her to look on him kindly as a possible husband, and this outraged her. Her father just didn’t have any sense, to think that his daughter would even consider such an oaf. Why, she had been courted in Philadelphia by young men of the very best society! She had not encouraged them, of course. Patricia, like almost all of humanity, had the human capacity to deceive and flatter herself.

  Patrick, always perceptive, noticed that his daughter’s glow had faded somewhat. He said, with solicitude, “Not feeling well, love? If so, we’ll leave. There’s a good dinner at home.”

  Patricia was jolted. Leave Lionel? Even if he were only in the room as the headwaiter, his presence, however directed to others than herself, was a source of contentment and tenderness. At least she could watch him. She said, almost sweetly, “No, Dada. It is just the heat. I feel … rosy.” Ladies did not sweat. Gentlemen perspired. Ladies became “rosy.” She glanced up at the slowly rotating fans on the ceiling. Patrick had lately installed electricity even in the chandeliers, which now had too hard a light. The fans created a hot breeze. Patricia’s neck became wet. She wiped it daintily with a perfumed handkerchief; then, as she consulted Lionel again, she discreetly permitted him to have a waft of the carnation perfume. Lionel thought of death; for some reason carnations were always at funerals, pungent and overpowering. He wrinkled his pointed nose, but smiled.

  “I think, Dada,” she said, “that I’ll have the chicken broth and the broiled bass.” A lady always pretended she had little interest in food; her physical necessities were never gross. Patricia had a great appetite, but never revealed it. “And only a little lettuce, with lemon juice and oil.” Her mouth watered. She would have dearly loved the luscious duck and mashed potatoes and dressing. But Lionel would be offended by such plebeian taste. Later, at home, she would have cold beef sandwiches and would pilfer one of the servants’ bottles of beer, and some pickles and vinegar-flavored onions and cucumbers, and a slab of huckleberry pie and a lot of coffee. Later would come tea itself, with attendant pastries. Patrick, of course, would be at the Inn-Tavern, and she could eat in peace and savor every morsel. Patricia was really a hearty girl. But she could never gain weight, as was the fashion, and her legs were long and slender and not fleshy as other girls’ legs were. She craved fat. She lingered over newspaper drawings of Lillian Russell, so enticing with her white double chin and portly little arms. Patricia hated her own height and thinness. She had noticed that gentlemen were attracted to obese girls, especially if they were short. “No higher than my heart!” as the song went. She hated her eyes: “Five-foot-two, eyes of blue”—again the popular song. She envied her father for his bright blue eyes. Why cou
ld she not have inherited them? Why did she look like her dead mother, who had been so unfashionable. That her mother had been soignée, she did not know.

  Patricia’s face became discontented as she surveyed the chicken broth put before her. She drank it, her little finger stiffly thrust out. She did not know it was a vulgar affectation. Patrick said, with concern, “You’re not hungry, love? Do you feel unwell?”

  “Oh, Dada,” she said with impatience, “you know I have no appetite.”

  Patrick sighed. “You should fill up, Patricia. You look like a girl of thirteen.” Patricia flushed with vexation. She knew that only too well.

  Lionel, with great ceremony, came back with two small slivers of broiled bass with a slice of lemon. Patricia closed her eyes for a moment. She kept swallowing water. Then Lionel presented her with a dish of hot buttered mashed potatoes, and her stomach lurched. She took a small spoonful. There were fresh peas. Another austere spoonful. There was scrapple. She shook her head, and her stomach protested and grumbled. She loved rich cream on lettuce. She poured a little oil on it, and squeezed a drop of lemon on the green leaves. Her hunger grew. But when she looked at Lionel, she was overwhelmed with sweetness and innocent desire and her eyes became wet with love and longing. She almost forgot her hunger. Her father, of course, had an immense slab of hot red beef and gravy, and he heaped his plate with a mountainous serving of mashed potatoes and peas, and he was also devouring cornbread muffins with melting, dripping butter and taking vast drafts of wine to wash it all down. Patricia felt faint. When he had a side dish of scrapple, she became fainter. It was one of her favorite dishes, especially with maple syrup.

  For dessert she had a few scarlet strawberries dusted with fine sugar. Patrick had a truly gigantic slab of hot apple pie surmounted with ice cream, a dish newly fashionable. Pie à la mode, it was called. Patricia adored it.

  But she was certain Lionel admired her for her ladylike lack of appetite. She did not know he was thinking: That girl has no bowels. Maybe she hasn’t anything else, either. The thought made him smile. Perhaps, soon, he would find out for himself. He wondered if her bones would bruise him. But … there was Patrick. Lionel knew how to be careful. He would use the girl for his own purposes, but Patrick must never know. That would result in his instant dismissal, the end of his dream.

  Patricia was torn between two desires—to rush home and gorge, or linger to look at Lionel. It was a measure of her yearning love that she preferred to see Lionel and suppressed her urge to run to the kitchen at home, while the servants dozed in their third-floor hot rooms sleeping off their own heavy dinner. Later, later. She was sick with hunger—and love. It was true that Lionel was only a glorified waiter, but she had begun to delude herself that he was really a prince in disguise. He did not even look Irish, she would think with happiness. He looked like an Englishman. He was so elegant; he had such graceful gestures. He spoke like a gentleman. She remembered her father’s stories that most Irishmen—except Dada, of course—were convinced they were descended from Irish kings. She believed it. Dada was only a peasant. As for that clodhopper Jason Garrity, he, too, was a peasant, with such big hands and feet and gloomy, craggy face. But Lionel, to Patricia, looked like a thoroughbred horse.

  Patrick looked at his watch. “Time to go, love,” he said, as he patted his lips. He wanted to get back to his guests in the lounge.

  Patricia rose. Now her hunger was impelling. Lionel materialized from the front of the room and slowly helped her put her white feather boa over her shoulders. She looked at him from under her lashes. Her heart trembled with bliss. As if he knew, he pressed her upper arm as he arranged the boa. Patricia closed her eyes for a moment, swimming in ecstasy and with what she did not know was healthy lust. Her face was luminous under the wide blue silk hat with the pink silk roses on it.

  Driving home in the new Oldsmobile, which snorted and exploded and belched out smoke, she sat in a dream, smiling, and her thin lips became lustrous. Once there, and Patrick gone back to the Inn-Tavern, she rushed to the kitchen and devoured quantities of food, standing by the icebox in an ecstasy of voraciousness. She drank two bottles of beer; then, unusually sleepy, she went upstairs to her huge ornate bedroom and fell on the bed, to dream of Lionel.

  Daniel Dugan sat in the narrow Mulligan garden and smoked, and thought about the new hotel. Nothing moved there. The whole damned country had come to a stricken standstill. He thought of the hunger riots in the streets. He thought of the foreclosed houses and frantic people selling their goods, or finding their claptrap furniture on the street. He was not a man of compassion, but he did think of the starving faces of women and children, encountered everywhere.

  He knew the causes, and he felt a deep hatred and anger. He knew what was in the air. The Panic had been contrived. It had been arranged several years ago, and Daniel knew why. War. Or slavery. Perhaps both. He himself would profit, but he was not old enough as yet for this to give him full satisfaction. That would come later.

  From somewhere in the neighborhood came a doleful wailing of a gramophone that delivered a popular song, a negro spiritual:

  O Lord, remember the rich and remember the poor,

  Remember the bond an’ the free.

  And when you done rememberin’ all ’round,

  Then, O Lord, remember me!

  Yes, indeed, thought Daniel Patrick Dugan sourly. Yes, indeed.

  A soft wind suddenly swept the warm garden and the street outside, and Daniel heard the startled jingling of the Chinese wind crystals that hung on every porch. Then there was silence again except for the distant clatter of wheels, a drowsy clatter. Everything was so still, so warm, so shimmering with yellow sun, so peaceful.

  What an innocent country we still are, in spite of the politicians, thought Daniel. Regrettably, it won’t last much longer. Regrettable?

  Not for people like me! thought Daniel Patrick Dugan.

  12

  To Patricia, the long days crawled to the next Sunday. She counted each hour. What if it rained? She prayed ardently for the first time in her life that it would not rain. She even visited the Blessed Sacrament on Friday to make that naive petition. She amused herself by considering what clothes she would wear. As she did so, she hummed:

  Sad news; bad news;

  Anything but glad news!

  What de you suppose they’re saying

  At the fashion show?

  They declare the shirtwaist girl

  Must pack her trunk and go!

  But even in Philadelphia and New York they were still wearing shirtwaists, according to the Bazaar and Mode. Really, she mused, she couldn’t go on her bicycle in a plain frock, and certainly not in an afternoon dress. She pondered if she should take her buggy. Then there would have to be an explanation to the stableboy, who reported to Patrick whenever Patricia used her vehicle. Patrick was under the happy delusion that as females were so weak, they could not go far on a bicycle; they had not the strength for it. But a buggy was a different matter. For the first time Patricia was faced with a dilemma common to other girls: how to hoodwink a guarding father, how to go to a rendezvous furtively. She had heard of rendezvous; very romantic. The lovelorn damsel rushing into her lover’s arms. Beyond the “rushing,” she knew nothing. The lover’s arms were all that mattered, and Patricia tingled, then shivered with a nameless anticipation.

  She decided on her best silk shirtwaist, green, with puffed sleeves and a high ruched collar and much tucking over the bosom, and lace at the wrists. With it she would wear her white duck skirt, daringly cut to the ankles, and a silver belt, and white slippers. The shirtwaist had cost, said Patrick, a fortune—twenty-five dollars—and had been imported from New York. But it was all handmade, all hand-tucked. Even the lace at the wrists was “real” and was not the cheap machine-made kind. The garment was crepe de chine of a very superior kind. “A man could buy the finest overcoat for winter, for that,” Patrick had said ruefully, remembering the Panic now devastating the country. Patricia
had shrugged.

  With the outfit finally determined, Patricia looked over her jewelry. Mama’s large cameo for the throat, with a rim of tiny diamonds and emeralds. And her pearl earrings. She had a new watch, too, to be pinned on the shirtwaist. Patrick had given it to her on her recent birthday, and it was very small, though heavy, and the pin was an enameled butterfly with ruby eyes. Gloves? That was a serious question. Gloves it was, then. A lady did not go to a rendezvous gloveless.

  All week long Patricia had expanded like a rosebud. Her cheeks glowed with new color; her lips became ardently pink, thin and tight though they were. Her brown hair took on a gloss, and her eyes widened, showing golden specks in their agate depths. Daniel, who lived with the Mulligans while he looked for a house for himself, regarded her with amusement. Miss Prim was beginning to look very naughty; she had an exalted appearance, as if preparing herself for bed. An unknown lover? That, of course, was impossible in this dreadful little town, impossible for a protected girl like Patricia, who probably had not the slightest idea about sexual congress. She wouldn’t even know the words, thought Daniel. He would watch his cousin covertly. She had begun to move like a woman suddenly conscious of her thighs for the first time. His disillusioned eye had perceived that the newly swelling bosom was not entirely natural. Well, he would think, good for the poor homely little thing, so long as she doesn’t bring a bundle home. By Friday he no longer believed that it was impossible that Patricia had a lover unknown to her father. I hope it’s no one disreputable, for Uncle Pat’s sake, he said to himself. But girls did not sneak off with respectable and approved young men. So it was most likely an unacceptable scoundrel, and for a moment or two Daniel felt uneasy. Should he hint something to Uncle Pat? No, he finally decided. Let the girl have her fun—provided she had the sense not to go too far. Daniel was somewhat afraid that Patricia did not have this sense. Well, it was no business of his. He was a selfish young man who prudently minded his own affairs.