The Embezzler

by Louis Auchincloss

  “You must have taken leave of your senses. I should have thought it was purgatory for a man.”

  “Alix,” I exclaimed with sudden gravity, leaning forward, “do you ever feel moods of wild, senseless, violent happiness?”

  She studied my face curiously, and when she smiled, it was as if she had taken my hand on a beach, before a cold green ocean, and said: “I’ll try it if you will.” “I don’t know that I do,” was what she actually said. “I’m not even absolutely sure that I would want to. Are you feeling one now?”

  “Yes! At this very moment! I love this street and this motorcar and that silly little black muff of yours.”

  “And is it fun to love such things?”

  “Well, of course it’s more fun to love people.”

  “People? How can one love ‘people’?”

  “Not people, then. You.”

  Alix drew quickly back. “Now you’re going to be what Mamma calls ‘silly.’”

  “Silly? I’ve never made such sense in my life! Do you want me to sing it? Then it might be like one of your operas, where things happen. Do you remember?” I raised my voice to a chant. “Alix Prime, I love you!”

  “Oh, good heavens, do you want the whole street to hear you?” She leaned hastily forward to place her fingers on my lips. “Please, Rex. Things happen in opera, but you forget what I told you. People die in opera.”

  “But they live first!”

  “I suppose that’s only fair. But hush. Here comes Mamma.”

  “Mrs. Prime,” I exclaimed, as we drove off, in a loud, clear and I fear rather pompous tone, “I want to persuade you that I love your daughter and that I seek the honor of becoming her husband!”

  “Alix, is the man out of his mind? We hardly know him!”

  “I’m afraid he is, Mamma.”

  I was so exhilarated that I could only laugh again. Mrs. Prime, red and flustered, looked in bewilderment from me to Alix, and then picked up the voice tube and told her chauffeur to drive around the park.

  “I don’t know what to say to you, young man. If I had the brains I was born with I suppose I’d stop the car and put you out. Or even call a policeman. Imagine proposing to a young lady while she and her mother are dropping cards!”

  “I’ll do it any other time you say!”

  “Well, at least you’re open. Not all the young men who come to the house are. Indeed, some of them are very devious…”

  “Mamma!”

  “I know, I know, everyone thinks I’m much too frank, but I’m simply trying to help you, my dear, that’s all. Of course, your father mustn’t hear a word of this. It’s much too early. We must keep it strictly between the three of us.”

  “Keep what, Mamma?”

  “Well, your engagement or whatever you call it.”

  “Mamma!” Alix cried in dismay for the third time and then covered her face with her hands. “Really, this is all too mortifying.”

  “Let me straighten things out, Mrs. Prime,” I intervened. “There is no engagement, of course, secret or otherwise. Alix has not admitted any preference for me at all. She probably can’t abide me.”

  “Oh, Rex, I like you very much!”

  This threw us all into greater confusion. “I mean any special preference,” I insisted. “All I want is for your mother to know how I feel.” I turned resolutely again to Mrs. Prime. “I cannot come to your house any longer under false pretenses. I want Alix’s family to know that my intention is to urge her to become Mrs. Reginald Geer. And I want to make it perfectly clear that I’m not a fortune hunter. It may take me years before I can properly support Alix, but I’d rather wait those years than live off a single penny of her money.”

  “Please!” Alix cried with a despairing voice. “Must we talk about money already?”

  “It might be best,” I continued, “if I went back to the house now and had an interview with Mr. Prime.”

  “No!” both ladies cried in unison.

  And then I discovered that for all Alix’s seeming vagueness and for all her mother’s bustling confusion, they could be very efficient when they acted together. There was no irresolution in their joint attitude that whatever problem I might present, it was one to be solved by the distaff side of the family. The female of the species is much less snobbish than the male. Mrs Prime and Alix did not really care a rap about the Prime social standards, but, with the innate conservatism of their sex, they were perfectly willing to dress me up to look like something of which their old rooster would approve. They were even willing to regard the dressing process as a sacred duty. It was agreed before I got out of the car that afternoon that I was committed to Alix, that Alix was in no way committed to me, and that none of us should tell Papa anything. It served me jolly well right for putting myself in their hands.

  Now I am sure it will have struck the reader, as it vividly strikes me in recalling these ancient events, that it was a very odd thing that I should not have told Guy of my love affair. After all, he was my landlord, my business associate, my closest friend and the cousin of my beloved. Insofar as I had a home in the city, he had provided it. Yet it is nonetheless certainly the case that not only did I tell him nothing, but that I took the utmost pains to conceal from him what was going on. I remember not being sure myself why I was so determined about this. It might have been the unconscious flowering of the seed of doubt that Mr. de Grasse had planted. It might have been my reluctance, being Guy’s debtor for all my New York life, to owe him my romance as well. Or it might have been, more simply still, an old New England feeling that love was a weakness better kept to oneself. But whatever that instinct, it served me well. It was a pity that it should have ever been betrayed.

  4.

  NOW COMMENCED a curious, unreal phase of my life that lasted only a few months but that was unlike anything that I had experienced before or was to experience after. I continued for the rest of the spring to call faithfully at the Louis XIII hôotel. Sometimes I went driving with Mrs. Prime and Alix up Riverside Drive to Grant’s Tomb and back; sometimes Alix and I would walk in Central Park; sometimes we would simply sit in two chairs looking over the empty gilded ballroom and talk. Alix was alternately friendly and agitated, and she continued to forbid me to make love to her. It was horribly frustrating. I could not even kiss her.

  “You keep saying that you have to establish yourself in business and that it may take years,” she would protest in tears. “Then what is the hurry? Why can’t we go on like this, being good friends? Why not, Rex?”

  “Is that all you want?”

  “It’s all I want now.”

  “Why don’t you come right out with it and tell me you don’t give a damn about me?”

  “Because it’s not true! I like you very much, Rex. You know that.”

  “But do you think you can ever love me, Alix? That’s the point.”

  “Yes, I think I might leam to love you, in my own way. Maybe I do now. But how can I be sure it’s your way?”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “But don’t you see, that’s just what I don’t know!” she wailed. “And if I don’t know, how is it fair to you?”

  “Why not let me be the judge of that? Kiss me, Alix.”

  “Oh, Rex, there you go again. And you told me you wouldn’t!”

  “For God’s sake, Alix! Have you no heart?”

  It was about this time that Guy discovered my romance, much in the manner that he describes, except that the language which he used about Alix, and for which I knocked him down, was almost obscene. It is perfectly true, however, that he took up my cause after that and that the little houseparty at his parents’ in Bar Harbor was of his own engineering. I had not seen my own poor family in a year’s time, but I did not hesitate to chuck my plans for a vacation with them and hurry instead to the enchanted island of Mt. Desert to await the arrival of Alix and her mother. I felt a bit guilty about using Guy’s hospitality solely to promote my courtship, but I swallowed these feelings as best I
could. I was beyond such luxuries. I tried to make it up to him by doing all the things he liked: by playing tennis and climbing his favorite mountains and accompanying him without a murmur on his social calls. But all this broke up with the arrival of his aunt and cousins.

  Mrs. Chauncey Prime was, to say the least, a discombobulating houseguest to her less affluent in-laws. She came with a motorcar, three daughters, a chauffeur and a maid, and another maid followed by rail with the trunks. She brought presents for all, which simply filled the Percy Primes’ modest villa with tissue paper, and, as Guy put it, her very apologies seemed to contain further strains on his mother’s limited household. But poor Guy’s greatest disgust must have been having our strenuous tennis singles turned into a giggley foursome and our mountain hikes into chattering strolls before tea. I will have to admit that he behaved like a brick.

  He was even nice to his sister Bertha, then a large, easily perspiring girl with the shrill temper of the sensitive adolescent. She had developed an unfortunate crush on me and was inclined to be grabby about my company when the four of us did things together. On our walks Guy would lead her ahead so that I might be alone with Alix, and in tennis doubles he always picked his sister for a partner. He even made the supreme sacrifice of looking after Bertha at dances so that I might be free to devote myself to Alix. I could appreciate the extent of his unselfishness in that he had once told me that to be seen dancing with a plain woman was a disgrace amounting to torment.

  Yet nothing seemed to work with Alix. From the very beginning of her visit, which coincided with a spell of foggy weather, her spirits wilted. With each day she lost more of the chirping gaiety that had characterized her in New York. If I asked her what was wrong, she would only respond with a feverish cheerfulness that nothing was. And worse, despite all Guy’s valiant efforts, I could never seem now to be alone with her. When he took Bertha ahead on a walk, Alix hurried to catch up with them. When we danced together she affected to be too intently following the music to pay attention to what I said. One evening I got her away from the others after supper and took her for a stroll in the small neat garden where Guy’s mother occasionally puttered. When we were quite out of sight and earshot of the house I turned on her. “Would you rather I went away?”

  The look of immediate distress in those bulging blue eyes would have silenced anyone but a lover. “Oh, Rex, how can you say that?”

  “Because I’m obviously making you miserable.”

  “No!”

  “What is it then? We were happy in New York. Why can’t we be happy up here?”

  “Oh, we were happy in New York, weren’t we?” Alix clasped her hands, as if begging me to confirm something that she no longer quite dared to believe. “I wish New York could have gone on forever!”

  “Well, we can always go back there. But what is it about Maine that changes things?” I seized her hands, and she was so troubled that she allowed it, but when I moved closer to kiss her, she jumped back. “What is it, dearest?” I implored. “What is it up here that changes everything?”

  Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Guy.”

  “Guy!” Mine rose to a shout. “Has Guy been bothering you?”

  “Oh, no, he’s been kind, terribly kind. He’s been darling, actually. That’s the trouble.”

  A hideous suspicion lit up my darkness. “You don’t mean he’s been making love to you?”

  Alix seemed even more distressed at this. “Oh, Rex, silly, please stop imagining things, or I shan’t be able to talk to you at all. Guy has been perfect with me. But he never was before, don’t you see? He was always the jolly cousin who pulled my pigtails and made fun of me as a stupid little girl. And I adored that! We all adored Guy. And now he’s so different, so serious, so respectful. I hate it!”

  “Shall I tell him to leave you alone?”

  “In his own house? How can you?”

  “Oh, I can.”

  “But don’t you see, Rex, he’s right. He’s absolutely right!”

  I shook my head in confusion. “Right to be respectful?”

  “No, no, no. Right to be serious. He thinks it’s not fair for you to be engaged to me without my being engaged to you. And it’s not!”

  I breathed in relief. “Well, there’s a very simple way out of that one.”

  “No!” Alix’s tone was near panic. “That’s what he says, don’t you see? That’s what I don’t want! To be engaged!” In her fear she actually caught my arm. “I don’t see how I can tell you this, but I don’t want to be all those things that Guy says I ought to be. A woman and a wife and so on. Oh, Rex, help me! Rex, be my one friend!”

  It was not the lowest moment of my life, but I think it was probably the lowest moment up until then. At last I began to have a suspicion of how ill the poor girl was. But I was young and in love, and it followed that I was hopeful. Could not Alix be led gently out of her shadowland by a man who loved her enough? Patience was what was needed, and I had plenty of time. Had I not promised myself that I would not marry until I could afford a bride? And even now, decades later, I do not know that a psychiatrist would say that my optimism was unreasonable. Alix and I, given time, might have found happiness. I am convinced that Guy’s later supposition that she was in love with him was the merest fatuity. Even if she told him to stop playing John Alden, I see no reason to infer that she meant anything but that Miles Standish should speak for himself. I doubt that she had even read Longfellow. As a matter of fact, I doubt that she had ever read anything but Gustav Kobbé‘s The Complete Opera Book.

  I assured her now, as gently as I knew how, that she did not have to become engaged before she wanted to, that she was perfectly free, if such was her choice, to live and die in single bliss. When she seemed calm again we went back to the house, and later that night, in our shared bedroom, I tried to persuade Guy to alter his behavior towards her without telling him of her psychic disturbance. I was not very successful.

  “You mean I’m to pull her pigtails?” he asked in understandable bewilderment. “But she doesn’t have them any more.”

  “All I mean is that she liked being treated the way you used to treat her.”

  “Being kicked around?”

  “If you want to put it that way.”

  “Look, pal, I don’t want to put it any way. I only meant to oil the wheels for you, and I seem to have been using glue. You say Alix finds me too respectful?”

  “Well, too courteous, perhaps.”

  “And she wants to turn back the clock to the days when I used to pie her bed and drop ice down her neck?”

  “Maybe not quite that far back.”

  “If you’ll let me offer a word of advice, my friend, I think you’re going about it the wrong way. This idea of having to be able to support Alix before you marry her is tommyrot. By the time you’re able to pay for a girl like that, she’ll be an old maid. And what’s the point? Money isn’t what she needs; she’s up to her neck in it. It’s a husband she wants!”

  “I wish you wouldn’t talk about Alix’s money,” I protested.

  “How can I help it? Can you think of a palm tree without palms? Let’s face it, old boy. You’ve got to supply the imagination that Uncle Chauncey lacks. He can’t understand that you’re just the son-in-law he wants, and he never will, until you are that son-in-law. He’ll be tickled pink some day to see Alix married to the senior partner of de Grasse Brothers. But you have to put the cart before the horse.”

  “Really, Guy, you’re too absurd.”

  “I tell you I know what I’m talking about! Alix’s castle must be taken by storm.”

  “I think you’d better let me do things my own way.”

  “Very well then.” Guy shrugged without the least show of bad temper. “You’re on your own, boy. From now on I shall leave you and Alix strictly to your own devices.”

  Which I accepted. It seemed to me, all in all, probably the best course of action. In the days that followed, Guy abandoned our foursome and resumed his place a
s the shining center of the glittering youth at the Swimming Club. Bertha hung on to Alix and myself, but, as three could not play tennis, she had sullenly to spend some of her time on the big dark veranda where her mother and aunt knitted and chatted most of the day. When Guy came home he hardly spoke to Alix, beyond a few civil words. Indeed, he played his new role so well that his father criticized him for neglecting his houseguests.

  Yet Alix’s humor did not improve. Left more alone with me, she became even more uncommunicative. She must have understood that I had spoken to Guy, and this, I supposed, had made her wretchedly self-conscious. It reached the point in three days’ time when she could not tolerate the least personal remark. She would raise her hands to her ears and repeat over and over again: “Let us please, please talk about the weather!” I finally welcomed Bertha’s company. At least, Alix relaxed when she was with us.

  I began at last to make out dimly what it was that she feared. It was not so much what Guy said or did as what she conceived him to be expecting of her. So long as he had treated her, however mockingly, as a child, it helped her to think of herself as a child. But now, whether he talked to her or not, he still constituted an audience, and presumably an impatient one, sitting out in front before the closed curtains. And what was the play but the oldest of romances, the princess and the swineherd? When the curtains parted, should the audience not see her, in a golden robe and a golden coronet, ready to play her part in a golden plot that led to a golden destiny? What was next to happen must have come to Alix like the clapping and stamping of that audience out front as she shivered behind the still-lowered curtain, knowing that she had no lines.

  We were sitting late one afternoon on the porch, I reading (yes, I could always read) while Alix, with her remarkable talent for doing nothing, was simply looking at the view, when Guy joined us. For a few moments I was only vaguely conscious of his sitting there, staring from one of us to the other.

  “You two take the cake!” he exclaimed at last.

  “What cake?” I asked.

  “Here you are on a beautiful day in a beautiful place, young, healthy and without a care in the world, and what do you make of your opportunities? Sit here and mope! Tempus fugit, I tell you.”