The Lady of Situations

by Louis Auchincloss

  Natica had to laugh. “Well, you can certainly send me those reports. I promise to read them, anyway.”

  “Do that. And let me give you a tip. Don’t let Edith waste too much of your time. She’s the laziest white woman east of Central Park.”

  “Woman! I thought you didn’t look below the waist.”

  “Where brains are concerned, that is. With Edith there’s no other place to look.”

  ***

  Tyler did send her the reports, some dozen of them, by hand delivery directly to the apartment, and she spent several mornings reading them with care. She found that with the aid of a dictionary of commercial terms she could understand them readily enough, and she began to think that Stephen’s cousin might not be wholly wrong in envisaging a role in his business for her. For the first time since she had worked for Rufus Lockwood she was using her brain, and she found an exhilaration in it that made an afternoon discussing “Should America remain neutral?” with her sisters’-in-law Current Events Club seem singularly fruitless. Perhaps she could develop a flair for the stock market. Had she not been almost a school administrator under Lockwood? But she thought it politic not to tell her husband of her new interest. It would be time enough if she decided to take the job.

  One morning she determined to fulfill her honeymoon resolution of visiting the entrance hall of the Standard Oil Building, and she took the subway down to Bowling Green. She roamed pensively through the gray foyer, avoiding the people hustling to and from the elevators, and gazing up at the large carved names in the medallions, pausing as long as she comfortably could under the “Ezra Hill.”

  “And here I stand,” she whispered to herself, “his granddaughter-in-law. I wonder what he would have thought of me.”

  She went from there to the Wall Street offices of Bennett & Son, which she had never seen, on the chance that she might find Stephen free to take her to lunch.

  The Bennett space had consisted initially of a series of large paneled rooms in which the three sons and son-in-law of Ezra Hill could get away from their wives and daughters, cut their coupons and contemplate prudent charitable enterprises, but when son-in-law Bennett in more recent years, aided by his energetic son Tyler, had formed a corporation for investment purposes, he had kept leasing additional space until the original suite had been isolated like an ancient Romanesque chapel in a Gothic cathedral. Natica, conducted by a secretary to her husband’s small office in the new part, noted as she passed, through open doors, two of his uncles secluded in dusky interiors reading newspapers at their desks. The Bennett area had more bustle; there was a large room with bare white walls cluttered with metal desks for telephoning men and a ticker tape machine in the middle. Her glancing eye recognized that Tyler wasted little of the family money in decoration. Other than a statue of a bull and bear fighting and a pompous portrait of Ezra Hill in the foyer there was hardly a picture in the place.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Hill, Stephen must have gone out,” the young woman informed her. “Perhaps he went for a cup of coffee.”

  “Then he can’t be far. I’ll wait for him in his office if I may.”

  “Farther than you think, Natica,” came a strangely familiar voice, and she turned to find Grant DeVoe standing in the doorway of the adjoining office. “He’ll have to go down to Sloppy Joe’s on Water Street. My brother-in-law permits no such levities as a coffee wagon in these august precincts. It might for as much as five minutes distract the mind from the chase of the dollar.”

  The secretary, seeing her charge taken care of, departed.

  “I’m so glad to see you, Grant!” And indeed she was. The pleasure of finding herself on equal terms with the children of her family’s old landlord had not yet worn off. Grant had hardly changed at all. His somehow tentative stance, his restrained smile, his cautious friendliness, seemed of a piece with an attitude of not committing himself until assured of a favorable reception. “I had no idea you were working here. I thought you were representing your father’s bank somewhere on Long Island.”

  “I was. But Daddy decided I’d better learn the market with Tyler. He thinks the world of his brilliant son-in-law.”

  “Everyone seems to.”

  “Exactly. So here I am.”

  “It’s the same with Stephen. I was hoping he’d take me to lunch.”

  Grant looked at his watch. “I doubt he comes back in time. Sometimes he doesn’t come back at all.”

  “You mean he has an appointment outside the office?”

  “Or an appointment with the Marx Brothers. He’s become quite a movie fan.”

  She looked at him suspiciously. Had he decided that she was an old friend with whom candor was safe? Or was his sarcasm the evidence of his resentment of her too sudden rise to fame and fortune? Or did he simply want to tell her that her husband, like himself, was only the reluctant tool of Tyler Bennett?

  “You imply that Stephen’s heart is not in his work?”

  “Well, I don’t believe he was cut out to be a money man. Why should he be? If I had a fraction of what he has, you wouldn’t find me in this joint.”

  “I thought the DeVoes were very well off!”

  “My old man may be. But he doesn’t believe in sharing the wealth.”

  “What would you do then if he died and left you your share?”

  He studied her as if to determine how serious she was. “Would you really like to know? I think I’d like to keep kennels. I’ve always been very fond of dogs.”

  And she suddenly remembered that he had been. The day he had taken her sailing in Smithport there had been a chow with him, too big and restless to be taken on the small boat, which had been tied up at the dock while they were out and pathetically joyous in greeting Grant on their return. It now struck her that all of his snobbishness might have been a fear of people, a fear of committing himself beyond any of his immediate circle.

  “Why don’t you tell your father? He might just blow you to it.”

  “He? Never.” He paused. “You don’t think it’s a silly thing to want to do?”

  “Not at all. Why isn’t a dog as good as a bull or a bear?”

  He laughed. “So long as Stephen has pooped out, how about my taking you to lunch?”

  “How nice. I’d love it.”

  But on the way out of the office Grant’s plan was frustrated. They met Tyler in the corridor and stopped to greet him. Good manners required Grant to ask him to join them, as good manners should have required Tyler to decline. But that was not what happened.

  “As a matter of fact, Grant, I’m expecting a call from your old man a little before one. It’s about the Marston deal, which is really more your matter than mine. He wants someone to read him the tax covenant, which you’ll find on top of the pile on my desk. Only a paragraph—Marcie will show it to you. And I’ll take Natica to lunch. She won’t mind, will she? It’s all in the family.”

  Grant turned to Natica with a sour little smile. “As you see, I’ve been outranked. Another time, maybe.”

  When he had gone, Natica was left staring at her substituted host. “Well, I must say, that was pretty cool.”

  “Oh, come on, he won’t die over it. I wanted to talk to you, anyway. We can go to my club. It’s just across the street.”

  Amid green walls covered with Audubon prints Natica gazed from the window by their table over the panorama of the harbor. She had found it was idle to protest his treatment of Grant; Tyler simply wouldn’t listen. He wanted to know if she had read his reports, and when he learned that she had, he delivered a short lecture on four textile mills in Massachusetts acquired by the Hills three decades before and now considered a poor investment which should be liquidated. He discoursed in his dry but lucid fashion on costs of production, declining sales and bitter labor agitation. She followed him with close attention.

  “So what do you do?” she asked at last. “Dump the whole thing and swallow the loss? Grin and bear it? I suppose it’s some comfort it’s so small a part of the emp
ire.”

  “But I hate to lose any part of it! My job is to make it grow.”

  “You’re like a Roman Caesar. No matter how wide your domain you keep your ears tuned for the tiniest barbarian rumble on the remotest frontier.”

  “Well, look what happened when they stopped.”

  “It’s true.” She thought for a moment. “I suppose there is an alternative.”

  He leaned forward. “And what is that?”

  “It was in those papers. You know it, of course.”

  “Tell me.”

  “It was in the report of the man who pointed out the advantages of moving that business south. Everything is cheaper there, particularly Negro labor, and there wouldn’t be any union trouble, at least for a while. Most of the machinery could be transported and all the expert personnel. The expense could be made up in four years of a profitable operation.”

  Tyler nodded in approval. “And with a spreading war and the need for uniforms we could do it in two. But how would our gracious aunts and some of our bleeding-heart cousins take to the idea of an antilabor policy vigorously enforced? Which would be the only way to make it work.”

  She smiled. “You’re testing me, aren’t you? You want to find out how well I read all that stuff?”

  “I don’t deny it.”

  “Well, it’s all there in the proposal. If you keep out labor organizers by paying your workers more than organized labor gets in a southern state, why should even liberal-minded shareholders object? And anyway, our ‘gracious aunts’ would never interfere in a labor question. They leave those things entirely to the men. And as for the bleeding-heart cousins, I can’t think of any but Bill, Uncle Fred’s son, who voted for Roosevelt because he’s a fellow philatelist.”

  “What about Stephen?”

  “Stephen isn’t interested in politics.”

  “Look, Natica. Of course, I gave you those reports as a test. There were five proposals as to what to do with those mills, and you picked the only feasible one right off. Come on down and work with us here. I’ll give you an office and a girl. You can have a salary if you like, but I don’t take one myself. Who needs income, to give it to Uncle Sam? Capital gains are the thing, and those you will have, my friend. We’re bound to get into this war, and the industrial boom that will follow is going to blow away the last traces of the depression the son-of-a-bitch New Dealers have been making such hay out of. How about it?”

  “Stephen would hate it,” she said pensively.

  “Stephen is going to hate your doing anything better than he does, I’m afraid, Natica. I’m going to have to be brutally frank with you for your own good. Do you mind?”

  “Go ahead. I can take it.”

  “Then here it is. You’ve married a born loser. I’ve known my cousin considerably longer than you have, and I’ve observed him. If you see things his way, you’re going to lose along with him. Now you may say, what the hell, I’m rich, aren’t I? I’ll always have the good things of life. But that’s where you’re wrong. Everything Stephen has is in an iron-bound trust that will go to his children when he dies, and if he has none, back to the Hills, in equal shares, as the lawyers say, per stirpes. Not a bloody cent to the widow! That’s how the Hills do things.”

  “But that’s not true of my mother-in-law,” Natica protested, appalled. “She has money of her own. I know, because she bought us our apartment. And she’s always telling me how poor the Kips were.”

  “In Aunt Angelica’s day they still made marriage settlements. But if one was made for you, my dear, Tyler Bennett is ignorant of it, and Tyler Bennett is ignorant of precious few things that go on in this office.”

  “No, I’m sure none was made. They couldn’t have done it without my knowing, could they?”

  “And wouldn’t, believe me. Of course, Uncle Angus, who owns what he has outright, could make any disposition of it he wants. But what will he want where you’re concerned? I’m not telling any secrets out of court when I tell you how bitter he was about the whole Barnes divorce business. And he has pretty much the same opinion of his son, Stephen, that I have. He’s never going to leave him anything out of trust. No, Natica, you’d be wrong to count on a fortune or even a decent maintenance, if you survive Stephen. The only way you’d ever see a penny of Uncle Angus’s dough is through your children. So if you don’t come to work with me and make your own fortune, you’d better start filling that nursery!”

  “Well, that’s certainly putting it straight on the line.”

  “Which is where I like to put things.”

  Natica put Tyler’s offer—without, of course, his warning—to Stephen that very night. It went even worse than she had anticipated. She had waited until he had finished his first cocktail before outlining the proposal. She had considerably softened the edges of it, implying that most of her work could be done at home and that she would really be acting as a kind of supplement to himself. But Stephen’s face had at once contracted into the white stare she had first seen in the restaurant the night of her miscarriage.

  “So Tyler’s taken you over, too.”

  “Too?”

  “First Mother, then he. Between the two of them, they ought to be able to turn you into the Hill they’ve despaired of making › me.

  “Would you mind telling me what you’re talking about?”

  “Oh, they’re smart, the pair of them. One’s all rosily female and the other all dryly male. But they know just what they’re about, and what a crushing team they are! They’d just about given me up. A dreamer, an idler, a half-man who babbled about books and pictures. And who finally went into teaching, the ultimate refuge of those who can’t ‘do.’ And then, to top it all off, he gets himself involved in a stinking scandal and is fired from a school of which his own father is a trustee! It’s the end, isn’t it? But wait a moment. Hold your horses. Isn’t it just possible that something can be salvaged from the bloody mess? Hills don’t lightly give up anything. Witness those textile factories you were talking about. So let’s have a look. Just who is this scarlet woman who seduced our weakling? Could there be anything to her? Well, for heaven’s sake, if she doesn’t have a brain! And some force of character, to boot. Considerable force of character, wouldn’t you say? Maybe the Angus Hills have a man in their branch of the family after all.”

  Natica felt her throat beginning to constrict with an ominous wrath. “Keep it up, Prince Hamlet. It’s a fine monologue.”

  “Is that all you can say? Well, riddle me this. When you start working for Tyler, is there any point my continuing to go to the office? Or shall I stay home and play bridge with Janine and Susan?”

  “It’s better than going to the movies.”

  He stared. “The movies?”

  “Isn’t that where you were today? Grant said you might be.”

  “You were down in the office?”

  “Of course I was. That’s where I had my talk with Tyler. I came down to see the lobby of the Standard Oil Building. To see the names of the original partners carved up there in all their glory. With Ezra Hill among them. I was so proud! And then I came over to see if his grandson, my beloved husband, could spare an hour to take me to lunch. And where was he? Off to the Marx Brothers. If it had been to read Karl, that might at least have been worthy of Ezra. The pioneer of one generation can be the rebel of the next. But to chuckle at Groucho!”

  Stephen had covered his face. Behind his hands he seemed to be stifling a sob. “Oh, Natica, don’t! I didn’t know you could be so cruel. Poor Tommy!”

  She gasped. “You call me cruel! Why, I never…” And then she knew she had to stop. Her world was teetering. She had the will and the fury to say irreparable things. She might even have the power to destroy him. She clenched her fists and took several deep breaths. “Look, Stephen. Let’s quit this. I’m not going to work for Tyler. We’re going on the way we’ve been going.”

  “Go ahead,” he moaned. “Go ahead and work for him. You might just as well, now.”

 
“Never. The discussion is over.”

  And she meant it. She refused to say another word on the subject. They ate their dinner in silence, and afterwards, as he sat moodily on the sofa drinking scotch after scotch, she pretended to read a novel as she contemplated their future.

  ***

  The next day at noon she lunched with Aunt Ruth in a corner of the Clinton school cafeteria, as far away as they could get from the chattering girls.

  “I thought you should hear the last scene in the melodrama to which I have so long treated you,” she concluded to her soberly listening relative. “But it’s not just for your entertainment, if indeed, poor Auntie, you find any in it. I’ve got to have another point of view. I can’t afford another mess in my life. At least not yet. I’m only twenty-four. Almost the age when Keats died, already among the English poets.’”

  “Let’s leave Keats out of this. Has this really changed your feelings about Stephen?”

  “I don’t know. I have an awful sense that those feelings may be somewhere between anger and contempt. How dare he be so unhappy with all he’s got?”

  Aunt Ruth’s smile was a bit grim. “Meaning yourself, dear?”

  “No! I mean his money, damn it all, his social position, his serried family, his good looks, his opportunities. Think of those things, Aunt Ruth. And he has the nerve to mope!”

  “God sends manna to those who have no teeth. Maybe it’s his way of hinting what those things are really worth.”

  “Oh, of course I know there’s no point in berating him for not having my tastes. The real point is that somehow I’ve got to pull him through. It’s not just a question of moral obligation, though I suppose that may exist.”