“Drawn to him? I detest him.”
“Is he aware of that?”
“Oh, he misses nothing. But he’s not afraid I’ll do anything to harm him. He’s smart enough to know that people like me, who have no reserves in their thinking, are the opposite in their acting. They don’t care to rock boats. Perhaps because truth is enough for them without always seeking to establish it. Or is it because they see how often action is futile? If they know that thought at all, they also know how little it’s worth.”
“So if everything’s pretty much the same today as it was yesterday the only difference is that now there may be less hypocrisy?”
“There’s certainly less of it. Indeed, I wonder at times if there’s any of it left. And I must admit I miss it. Justice Holmes said once that the sight of heroism bred a faith in heroism. And I don’t see much heroism in the world about me.”
“Are you losing your faith in it? Harry used to proclaim that he believed in no absolute moral rules. That there was only taste, and that good taste was what kept people from sordid crimes like murder and robbery.”
“I had the good taste, anyway, to see little good in Harry. And I prefer the old Rod Jessup to the new.”
“And what was the old Rod Jessup?”
“A proud, stiff, idealistic puritan right out of the pages of Nathaniel Hawthorne!”
“And an anachronism.”
“But such a pretty one. Leave me to my memories. They’re all I’ve got.” And she turned to the menu.
“Let’s have a drink first, Hetty. To some kind of synthesis between the old and the new Rod. I’ll make it up with Harry. And of course I’ll call Jane.” He signaled to a waiter. “And there’s something else. Something that came over me last night when I was debating what I’d do with myself if the firm really broke up. I decided that if I went on with the takeover business I’d only represent defendants! How does that strike you as a move forward in legal ethics?”
Hetty decided not to reply to this until their cocktails arrived, and after she had drunk hers, not to reply at all except in a gracious affirmative. She had learned enough about his practice to know that the defense used just as many dirty tricks as the offense, but she was warned by something (a good angel appearing in her customarily unwelcoming sky?) to hold her tongue. She was in the healthful process of saving her beloved ex-son-in-law, and she could hardly expect to take more than one or two steps at a time. As it was, she had averted Armageddon.
The Scarlet Letters Page 17
