He was far too wise, however, to discuss his criteria for selecting a mate with others, even with his mother. He knew how quickly a young man could get the reputation of being calculating. Society expected its youth to be romantic, even if it deplored their acting romantically. The thing to do was to keep one's own counsel and look Byronic. Dexter rather fancied that he had a touch of the corsair in his brow and chin and fixed stare. If that made him an ass, well, what did it matter so long as he shut up about it? New York, no doubt, was full of asinine young men who considered themselves Byronic.
As marriage was to make him whole, it seemed logical to start his quest by filling the gap left in his life by his father, and what New York gentleman would make a better father-in-law than Charles Handy? Certainly few men were as much admired. Large, affable, venerable, he constituted a sort of unofficial host for distinguished visitors to the town. He encouraged the arts; he encouraged religion; he encouraged new business; he seemed to be always waving benevolent arms over the urban commotion below him. Without any elected position or published work, without even very great wealth, he yet wielded an astonishing influence. Dexter's mother used to say that Charles Handy was living proof that any man could be accepted at his own valuation.
Handy, a widower in his late fifties, had four daughters, one of whom, Rosalie, was of the appropriate age, even perhaps slightly over it. She was twenty-four. To Dexter, however, after careful observation, she seemed just right. If she was a trifle on the large side, there yet radiated from her creamy skin and china-blue eyes an air of health and vigor that promised to make her a good mother and a responsive sexual partner. If she was reputed to have a touch more than her share of temper and will power, would not love and children soften this? Many men had been fooled by this argument, no doubt, but many had not. A man had to take some chances.
He knew, moreover, that he would have more than a fair chance of acceptance. It was common gossip that Rosalie had lost her heart to a handsome and penniless adventurer who had ditched her at the last moment to make a richer marriage in England. She was supposed to have recovered from this misfortune, but it was still evident that she was restless at home, where her older sister Joanna presided over her father's rather stately household, and it might be presumed that even a Miss Handy, at her age, was beginning to worry about becoming an old maid. Look at Joanna, after all! But what gave Dexter his strongest encouragement was Rosalie's partiality for himself. She used to josh him about being conventional and stuffy, as girls of conventional and stuffy backgrounds always did, but he was nonetheless sure that she was attracted to him, and this, in his category of points, was the greatest of all in her favor.
For Dexter, despite all his calculations, was perfectly aware that he yearned for love. Everything in his heart was ready to beat with excitement the moment the choice should be made, and in the spring of 1843, just six months after his twenty-fifth birthday, he made it, and opened his campaign. He made his first move at one of Miss Joanna Handy's Sunday afternoon "at homes" at her father's Italianate brown box of a house on the corner of Great Jones Street and Broadway. After greeting his hostess and her distinguished sire he proceeded, with unconcealed directness of purpose, to take his place in the little group gathered around Rosalie in the conservatory. But instead of joining in the conversation he simply watched her intently. After some ten minutes of this she got up and asked him to follow her. In a corner, under a palm in a massive jardinière, she turned.
"Why do you stare at me like that, Mr. Fairchild?"
"Because I admire what I see before me, Miss Handy."
"Are you making love to me?"
"If you will allow it."
"Then you must do so in such a way that others will not notice. I do not like to be embarrassed in public."
"I promise that my conduct shall be exemplary. On one condition."
"Condition? You presume to set conditions?"
"One prayer, then."
"Let me hear it."
"That you agree to see me alone sometimes."
"Alone! Mr. Fairchild! You forget yourself."
"Oh, I mean only like this. Where we can talk without others hearing."
"But I should grant so simple a privilege to any gentleman on my father's visiting list!"
"Then that is all I ask."
Dexter, walking home that evening, felt elated. He knew that he had made a good start, although he perfectly understood that Rosalie did not consider him any sort of hero. Like so many of her contemporaries, nurtured in sentimentality, she was looking for Lancelot in every young lawyer or banker who made his appearance in her father's parlor. It was only to be expected that she should resist the fate that would fashion her future out of the materials of her past. She would find soon enough that there were no Lancelots. Not for Rosalie Handys anyway!
He even debated the wisdom of skipping his visit the following Sunday, to make her miss him, perhaps even to make her jealous. But on a careful review of his situation, he decided that he needed no such tricks. And, as soon as he next entered Mr. Handy's parlor, he saw he had done the right thing. Rosalie came across the room to greet him and led him to the potted palm in the conservatory where two chairs, placed conveniently for conversation, invited a tête-à-tête.
"Jo tells me that you teach a Sunday school for poor boys!" she began enthusiastically. "I had no idea you did that kind of thing."
"Yes, I've been teaching for six or seven years now."
"But that's wonderful!"
"Why wonderful?"
"Oh, because I was afraid you were concerned only with Wall Street and making money. Like so many of our men friends. With no concern for the less privileged."
"My boys are certainly among the less privileged. I've learned to take nothing for granted with them. I don't even assume they know about Adam and Eve. Or Noah's Ark."
"Is that what you teach them? The Bible?"
"Well, I figure they might as well get something out of the school. Even if they turn out to be atheists, there's always a value in knowing your Bible. Think of all the references..."
"So you hedge your bets with God!" she interrupted in a sudden change of mood. "If he doesn't exist, there may still be an advantage in knowing his myths? Oh, yes, let's not waste a thing!"
"What would you teach them?"
"Something about ethics. Whether it's ever justified to tell a lie. Or to steal. How you reconcile the commandment against killing with war. If you can. And slavery. What about slavery? Isn't that the great moral issue of our time?"
"I don't want to get into controversies with them. Who was allowed in the Ark and who wasn't is about as far as I care to go."
"You're like Pontius Pilate. You ask for a basin and wash your hands!"
Dexter burst into a cheerful laugh. "Don't you think, Miss Handy, that you're being just a bit rough on the poor Sunday school teacher? Blaming him for the Crucifixion because he teaches the Bible?"
She became angry with him then, and again on other visits, but it was always evident that she enjoyed being angry with him. Their discussions were vivid, even heated. They argued about the position of women, the return of fugitive slaves, the wisdom of capital punishment, and invariably disagreed. But he was careful not to strike again the sentimental note for which he was reasonably sure she was waiting. There would have to be a concession, however slight, on her part first. Soon enough it came.
"I want to come to your law office," she told him one afternoon. "I want to consult you as a client. It will be all perfectly formal. I shall expect, of course, to pay your fee."
Without demurring in the least to her stated expectation, he made an appointment for the following day. When she appeared in his office, punctually on the hour, he enjoyed a novel sense of superiority. From her quick, shy glances at his sets of law reporters and at the sober lithographs of English judges, he took in that she was suddenly ill at ease. She was no longer Miss Handy in her father's formal parlor. She was a girl in a man's off
ice, a seeker of advice, an amateur before a professional. She related her little problem diffidently, almost apologetically; she was embarrassed, she said, to take up his time with so small a matter.
It was indeed not a great one. She had recently received in the mail a copy of the will of a deceased cousin who had left her a legacy of five hundred dollars. But the estate had turned out to be much smaller than the decedent could possibly have expected. Should she renounce the bequest?
"What does your father think?"
"Oh, Father can't abide the widow. He says she's a hopeless spendthrift. He thinks I'd be an idiot not to take the money. But I am here because I want your advice, not his."
"Have you a copy of the will?" He took the document that she handed him and glanced quickly through it. "I see the widow takes the residue. If you renounce the legacy, she'll get it. Is that what you want? There appears to be a daughter."
"Exactly. And she's my friend. But she's only the widow's stepdaughter. The widow would do nothing for her."
"Then take the legacy and give it to the daughter."
"But she wouldn't take it! She's too proud!"
"Then give it to me. I'll write the daughter and tell her I represent a client whom her father helped out, years ago, and who wants to make restitution to a blood relative. We can make it a slightly different sum from your legacy, an odd one like $521, so you'll never be suspected."
She clapped her hands in surprise. "What a perfectly brilliant idea! Thank you! We'll do it."
Leaving his office she asked him what she owed him. He proposed instead that they go riding together on the morrow.
"If after what I shall then ask you, you still want to pay me, I'll name you a sum."
Their eyes met in what became a rather solemn stare. Then she simply nodded and left.
On their ride the next day along the East River bridle path, as far north as Hell Gate, he asked her to be his wife. She did not accept him, but neither did she say no. It was finally agreed that he should visit her that summer in Newport, so she might get to know him better.
***
Dexter was perfectly happy in his room at the Ocean House where he was staying, over an extended Fourth of July weekend, in deference to Rosalie's suggestion that it might be better if he were not her house guest. The traditional unease of the lover during the period in which his proposal was under consideration sprang from uncertainty as to the answer. As Dexter entertained no such doubts, he saw no reason that the periods when he was absent from his beloved should not be as pleasant as when he was with her. This equanimity was not due to any failure of his ardor. It was due to the failure of Rosalie's nerves. She, at least, was finding the period of decision a trying one.
He discovered that he loved everything in this new environment: the bright blue sky, the shiny green lawns, the mild sea breezes, the squawk of the gulls, the gaily painted, freshly preserved, fantastic summer villas. He loved the rocky coves and the vast, deserted, brown marshlands over which he could trudge for miles in the early morning without encountering a soul. He loved the cordial hospitality of his prospective father-in-law, who took him on tours of his new estate, Oaklawn, which occupied twelve fine acres at the beginning of Bellevue Avenue.
Mr. Handy was immensely proud of this new domain and relished personally supervising its continuing embellishment. A long, winding drive of soft red dirt made its picturesque way through noble lawns shaded by elm and beech, under a brown Gothic arch (a "folly"), past greenhouses and crenelated smaller buildings to the climax of the main residence. This was an asymmetrical structure of glazed chocolate-brown wood, with tiny bracketed windows in its mansard roof, two small round towers and a long, wandering wing. From every angle it presented a different countenance, almost a different style, which made it impossible to determine how large it was.
"Upjohn, of course, is primarily a man of churches," Mr. Handy informed his mutely gazing prospective son-in-law. "One can see in the upper windows a touch of the Gothic. But only a touch, mind you. I told him I wasn't going in for derivative architecture. No, sir. I want a truly American house!"
Dexter thought, indeed, that the building was not unlike its truly American owner. Its massed strength had a way of dissolving unexpectedly into fine if rather fussy detail, as Mr. Handy's sturdy build and square chin seemed to be mitigated by his mellifluous, almost honeyed tone and in the charming politeness of his gestures. It was a relief to Rosalie's lover, anyway, that her father remained so impersonal in his discourse. Mr. Handy purported to mark out a broad area where men could talk as men, and from which women, with their petulance and perennial discontent, were firmly barred.
Dexter had little doubt as to the source of Rosalie's tension. She could not yet bring herself to accept the fact that she had fallen in love with a man who believed that the New York and Newport of the Handys and Fairchilds was a world in which a man could happily and high-mindedly live—and who was not ashamed to say so. The only difference between youth and age in their society, as Dexter made it out, was that youth was supposed to profess discontent with the existing state of society and only to talk of change and social betterment. Age, on the other hand, was supposed to have learned to appreciate the status quo, so why not skip the pose of youth? In any case, Dexter was convinced that the way to win Rosalie was not to pretend to be something he wasn't—that would be the way of a weak man—but to oblige her to take him as he was.
What did, however, finally begin to irritate him was Rosalie's resentment of his enjoying any pleasure offered by Newport that was not directly attributable to herself. She regarded with a jealous eye, for example, his long talkative strolls with her father, his mock gallantries to the giggling Joanna, his serious concentration on the inane gossip of visiting old aunts. But what she more particularly objected to was his relish of Newport social life. He allowed himself to be almost openly discountenanced when he discovered that Rosalie had excluded him from what promised to be a delightful Sunday picnic on the beach because she wanted him to dine alone with her at the little guest cottage at Oaklawn.
But how could a true lover refuse? He had to mutter something that at least sounded like gratification. In the cottage with the tall, narrow, spire-like dormer their dinner was ready at three o'clock. Dexter was surprised to note that the best silver and china had been brought out and that a bottle of champagne protruded its neck from the cooler. Rosalie picked up the cover of one of the hot dishes and sniffed.
"It's duck," she said with a note of defiance. Although he had said nothing, he was still under strong suspicion of pining for the picnic. "I remembered that you liked it. And I thought it would be more fun if we served ourselves."
He saw now that he might enjoy being mollified. She had done all this, after all, to give him pleasure. "It smells fine," he admitted.
She seemed for the moment disposed to accept his gesture and busied herself serving the dishes. She even insisted on uncorking the champagne and laughed heartily when it fizzed over her blouse.
"You're not going to tell me that you cooked all this?" he asked with a wink.
"I supervised it, anyway. I stayed in the kitchen all the while it was being done. And I could have cooked it myself. I don't want to be one of those women who are the slaves of their servants."
"But you'll always have servants."
"Why do you say that?" The suspicion was back in her tone already.
"I thought girls who married successful lawyers didn't have to worry about such things."
"But I don't know that I'm going to marry a successful lawyer. I don't even know that I'm going to marry a lawyer."
He laughed at her earnestness. "Well, even if you don't marry anyone, I guess you'll still be all right."
"What makes you guess that?"
"Look, Rosalie," he retorted, with mild exasperation. "A man doesn't live like your father unless he has some kind of fortune. And who's he going to leave it to but his children?"
"Are you interested in my fathe
r's fortune?"
"Oh, for Pete's sake!"
"Are you, Dexter? I'd like to know."
"No! Not in the way you're thinking, anyway."
"In what way, then?"
Dexter felt, miserably, that he was making a mess of it. But why did she have to be so damned prickly? "I try to take an interest in the life of my city. What people do, how they live, what they talk about. I'm interested in their families, their houses, their politics, their parties. Even their fortunes. So there! I may write a book about New York some day."
"You mean about New York society?"
"Well, I'm not going to write a book about beggars and bums, if that's what you mean."
"You don't care about poor people, do you?" She stared at him intently. "I'm not criticizing you. Really. I'm interested, that's all."
"Of course you're criticizing me! You're trying to make me out a snob and a fortune hunter."
"I am not!" Tears suddenly filled her eyes. "You shouldn't say things like that, Dexter! I'm only trying to understand you. I want to know what sort of a man I'm thinking of marrying! I want to know the things you care about."
"I care about you."
"But what does that mean?"
"Oh, Rosalie, dearest, must you take everything so hard?" But she gave him no answer, and he sat in stupid silence, watching her lowered head, her shoulders shaking now in sobs. He knew that he ought to go over and put his arms around her to console her. Then the tears might subside, and everything would be all right. And yet he couldn't. He couldn't give in to her unfairness. If he did, wouldn't it be admitting that he was a different sort of man from what he was? And wouldn't that be a kind of suicide?
"All right, I'm being absurd," she confessed at last, wiping her eyes. "Let's not ruin our dinner. I'll pour you some more champagne."
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