Watchfires

by Louis Auchincloss

  Without a word he turned from Bleeker and strode to the door. He was already in the corridor at the head of the dark stairwell when he heard his name called. It was Mr. Handy, who had followed him out to the landing.

  "What's come over you, my boy?"

  "I'm sorry, sir, I couldn't take it any longer. David and that man Bleeker and all their damnable Southern sympathies. I can't wait to vote for Lincoln!"

  "The South will secede."

  "Let them try!"

  Mr. Handy pursed his lips. "You would force them into it?"

  "If they insist on being forced, yes!"

  "You seem under a strain, dear boy. You've been working too hard. Go home and rest."

  Dexter clutched the old man's hand in silence and bounded down the stairway. He had walked all the way from Thirty-seventh Street to Union Square before he realized that he had left his hat. Running up Annie's stoop he pressed the bell hard. She was in the hall, dressed to go out, and opened the door herself. She at once took in his discomposure.

  "Don't talk here," she murmured. There was a maid standing in the hall. Annie brushed quickly by him and went down the stoop. He followed her out into the square.

  "You were Bleeker's mistress!" he cried as they faced each other.

  Even in his excitement he could wonder at her coolness. She hardly blushed. "You ought to know. You took me from him."

  "But you told me he was nothing to you!"

  "It was true. He meant very little to me." Her eyes narrowed; she was actually angry! "But you're teaching me to appreciate him. Charging into my house without a hat and shouting all over the square!"

  "You're a brazen ... a brazen ... hussy!"

  "And you're an ass. What earthly business is it of yours what lovers I had before you? How could it possibly hurt you?"

  For one wild moment in the tumbling red of his thoughts he remembered his own argument to his mother. Then he brushed it aside. "Because it does. You know it does!" When she simply shrugged and turned to walk a few paces away, he cried, "You came to me already contaminated by his lewd embracements!"

  "They were no more lewd than yours!"

  "Annie!"

  "Oh, let's stop this foolishness, Dexter," she said in a drier tone, turning back to him. "I think we both realize that things have been cooling down in the last weeks. Let's not spoil what we had. I've made love to nobody but you since Vesey Street. Not even Charley. That was all you were entitled to. Indeed, it was more."

  "I loved you, Annie!"

  "Not really. I was a habit, and a lady should never let herself become that."

  Dexter collapsed on a bench, his head in his hands. "How can you say I didn't love you? You didn't love me."

  "I fancied you. Which is just as good. And now let us try to end this decently. I was planning to do so, anyway, before I went to Newport. These things shouldn't be dragged out. It's a good idea to make a clean cut. Particularly when we have to pick up an old relationship. For don't forget, my dear. We have to go back to being proper in-laws. You won't be able to glare at me that way at Daddy's! You can't afford to behave like an ex-lover."

  "The ex-lover will soon be replaced, no doubt," Dexter said bitterly.

  "I hope so!"

  He rose and stared at her as if he were seeing her the first time.

  "Don't look at me like that, Dexter. I hope you will find somebody, too."

  "Never!" he cried hoarsely. "Never!"

  She simply shrugged and turned back to her house where her landau was waiting. Dexter watched her drive away and then walked numbly to his own abode.

  Rosalie was not home; Bridget said she would not be in until late. The boys had gone to a birthday party in Brooklyn Heights and were spending the night. He ate a cold supper and spent the evening in the library brooding over a bottle of brandy.

  If the shock of the day's events had brought him abruptly back to his old reality, dull and dreary and sickeningly familiar, the image of Annie, in reverse fashion, seemed to be retreating into the realm of fantasy, like some disembodied siren, some enchantress of legend, someone swathed in veils, with large dark eyes peering at him lewdly, her hips moving in a slow, circular, oriental dance, Circe, Medea, Salome. Could one love a phantom in Union Square? Could one love anything but a phantom in Union Square?

  As his lonely evening wore on, and he meditated on the folly of this infatuation, it occurred to him that he had not only forsaken his duty to his wife and to his family, but to the sacred union of the states. Had not his inertia, his passivity to moral issues, already plunged him into a nest of incipient rebels? Had he not even exchanged words with the abominable Bleeker? Clenching his fists he leaped to his feet and declaimed aloud to a wall of books against the horror of the slave-owning aristocracy.

  When he went at last upstairs, his heart was still beating rapidly, despite all the brandy that he had consumed. Lying in bed in the dark he stared up towards the ceiling and prayed aloud.

  "Dear God, I know we should allow our Southern states to live in peace. But if in your infinite wisdom, and through the mediation of your servant, Abraham Lincoln, you should see fit to permit them to strike the first blow, if you should turn your eyes away from them in their unholiness and allow them the sin of secession, will it be wrong if we leap to arms with joy and jubilation? If we bring the devastation of your anger to their fair land? If we burn their plantations with cleansing fire and chastise their rebel people with the sword? Or even worse? Will you blame us if their women are raped by the very slaves we have freed, if..."

  He must have fallen asleep because he awakened to Rosalie's voice from the door of his dressing room:

  "What is it, Dexter? You're making the most terrible racket. Are you having a nightmare?"

  18

  MR. HANDY looked grave. He moved the heavy little statues of dogs and wolves that he used for paperweights about the surface of his desk. He pursed his lips into a kind of ball so that hollows appeared in his cheeks. He stared up at the rows of leather-bound sets on the wall. Yet Dexter had the distinct impression that the scene had been prepared.

  "Would it be appropriate for me to make a confession to the assembled family?" Dexter asked.

  "What do you think that would accomplish? Are you under the illusion that they don't know?"

  "No, I've been appalled at what they all know. Why did nobody warn me, sir?"

  "We were waiting for you to come to your senses. We were afraid that if we so much as murmured a word of reproof, you and Annie might take off to foreign parts."

  "Indeed, we might have!"

  "So you see."

  Dexter rose to pace the room nervously. "Why are you so merciful? I've violated the most sacred laws of human society. How can you sit there and tolerate my presence? Why don't you kick me out into the street?"

  "You almost want me to, don't you?"

  "I deserve it!"

  "You will be punished enough, my boy. Don't worry about that. We can leave that business entirely to you. I am sure that your standards of penitence are strict. All I ask is that you keep your remorse to yourself. It can create almost as much scandal as sin."

  "You mean I should just go on, as if nothing had happened? Practicing law with Charley? Sitting down at your dinner table with him and Annie? Making small talk with Lily and Joanna?"

  "That is precisely what I mean. You are not to betray, by so much as a sigh, that you have the smallest feeling of having been guilty of any impropriety."

  "Even to Rosalie?"

  "Ah, as to Rosalie, I give you no counsel. That is a matter between man and wife. My advice goes only to your conduct with the rest of us. So there! We need say no more about it."

  But Dexter could not bear to close the subject just yet. "You may think me greedy," he pursued, "and no doubt I am. But can you give me some little assurance that if I do as you say..."

  "You mean if you don't do as I tell you not to!"

  "Very well. If I refrain from any reference to the past, if I m
easure up to every last one of your requirements ... is there any hope that I might regain some part of your esteem ... even..." Agonized at the void that dipped around him, he had to risk it. "Even some part of your affection?"

  "You have never lost it, my boy. I always wanted a son, and you have been it. I understand the difficulties you suffered with your own father. Perhaps your ideals, your standards, were a bit too high. Very well; you slipped. Now you have steadied your step. Go forward, my boy. My son!"

  As the old man rose, Dexter leaped up impulsively to embrace him. When he stepped again into Fifth Avenue, he knew that he was the slave of Charles Handy for life.

  ***

  At breakfast in Union Square the next morning he faced his two sons and Rosalie after a sleepless night. For once he was glad she was wearing her pink dressing gown. It seemed appropriate that she should not be dressed as he wished her to be. It underscored the propriety of his repentance.

  "I want you boys to know that I have changed my political principles. I am now a member of the Republican party! I have decided to work for the election of Mr. Lincoln. I believe with him that our country must one day be all slave or all free. I have determined that it must be all free."

  "You'll be driving the South out of the Union, Dad," Fred warned him.

  "Then we must fight to retain them."

  "And blow them to bits!" Selby cried enthusiastically. "While their soldiers are fighting ours, their slaves will rise up behind them. Miss Nesbitt at school says they will!"

  "Don't bet on that, Selby," Fred snapped. "The slaves have no arms and no training. They have no leaders. They'd be slaughtered to the last man."

  "You're all so bloodthirsty," Rosalie said with a shudder. "Can't we just let the South go? Why keep people in a union they hate?"

  "But you're always talking about freeing the slaves, Mum!" Selby exclaimed. "How are you going to free them by letting the South go?"

  "And creating a huge slave state?" Dexter interposed.

  "Because I don't think it would last. I think it would fall of its own weight. Who in the civilized world would care to be allied to a slave state? Spain and Dahomey and Turkey!"

  "I'm afraid you're dreaming, my dear," Dexter warned her. "The Southern belligerents want to take over Mexico. They talk of a vast and powerful slave state that will dominate two continents! They..."

  "Boys, it's time for school," Rosalie interrupted impatiently. When they had gone, Dexter announced solemnly that he had another confession to make. Her opaque glance seemed to indicate that she might even prefer to go on with his discussion of the slave state.

  "I saw that fellow Bleeker at your father's yesterday."

  "That must have been a disagreeable surprise."

  "But one that may have helped to bring me to my senses. The swine is acting as a kind of lobby for slaveholders." He paused, but as she gave him not the slightest lead, he had to blurt out, "It's all over between Annie and me!"

  Rosalie's expression was very cold. "And why should Mr. Bleeker have that effect on your intrigue?"

  He winced at her term. "Perhaps he made me realize how far I'd strayed from where I ought to be."

  "Or perhaps you didn't like the idea of standing in his shoes?"

  "I suppose that's one way of putting it."

  "You felt that having taken his girl friend, you might be exposed to taking his political views?"

  "Oh, no. But put it that I felt ... well ... contaminated."

  "I fail to see why."

  "He's pro-slavery, damn it all, Rosalie!"

  "You needn't swear at me."

  "I'm sorry. But I should think you might be glad that I'm coming over to your views."

  "I'm not sure that you are. Why do you have to be against everything that Bleeker is for? Isn't he as much entitled to his opinion as any other gentleman?"

  "Bleeker? A gentleman! Rosalie!"

  "Well, he is. More than you, anyway. He didn't hound you out of your job because he wanted your girl, did he?"

  "But I didn't do that because I wanted Annie!" he cried in dismay.

  "Didn't you? Perhaps you didn't know you did."

  "I had hoped you might forgive me. I was a fool, of course."

  "I might forgive you the intrigue. I'm not so sure I can forgive you the exultation."

  "Over what?"

  "Over your own redemption! Oh, don't think I'm being superior, Dexter." Her tone changed suddenly from exasperation with him to impatience with herself. "I can face the fact that I haven't been the wife you need. The wife, I might even say, you deserve. In many ways you're a very good man. You're kind and patient and dutiful. You're an excellent son and father. It's not your fault that our values are so different. It's not really even your fault that you irritate me so. And, believe it or not, there have been moments, during your affair with Annie, when I've admired you more than ever before. When you've seemed ... well, more of a man."

  "But not more of a gentleman," he added bitterly.

  "Oh, I don't think you really go in for being a gentleman. I don't think many people in New York do. It's not our kind of thing."

  Dexter remembered the days when Rosalie's tears, like his mother's, had been very terrible to him. But now her tear-lessness was something worse. Was it possible that she could no longer be reached by a genuine remorse, a renewed exclusive devotion? She who, however stiff and critical and standoffish, had always struck him as basically, almost pathetically, needing and wanting his love? Hadn't he, even in the wildest moments at South Vesey Street, had in the back of his mind the sense of a refuge, an oasis, when all the madness should be over, in the rescuing arms of Rosalie? But now, bleak and gray, a world spread out before him in flat squares, where there was neither passion nor love—only a mild tolerance that scarcely veiled contempt. And what man had ever deserved it more richly?

  "I hoped that it might help me to retrieve myself in your estimate if I could share your beliefs."

  "It might, if I thought you had changed your opinions for humane reasons. But you're like so many abolitionists. You don't love the slave. You hate the slaveholder. There's only death and destruction in your heart."

  "We have to be ready for death and destruction."

  "But it makes me shudder when people like it!"

  "I don't like it. I try to face it. And when the time comes I shall be willing to do my part. In any way I can be of most service. With a rifle or bearing a stretcher or whatever they ask of me!"

  "Oh, I'm sure." Her shrug deprecated his patriotism. "It's not your courage I question. You'd kill for the love of Annie, and you'd kill for the hate of her." She rose to shut off his protest. "I'm sorry. I don't want to discuss this anymore. I find it too agitating. Let us go on with our lives as we have been. I'm glad it's over with Annie. For all our sakes. Not that I think it will save her marriage. That I fear is rotted to the core. As to our own ... well, let us see."

  "You will find me humble, Rosalie! You will find me ready to help you in any way you want!" He paused, disheartened by her continued impassivity. "I love you! But I shall understand if you can never forgive me!"

  "Forgiving is not my problem. Or even forgetting. I am going to see Bridey now about the order. Talk doesn't really help. As I say, let's just go on."

  "That's what your father told me. Only he gave me hope."

  "Of what?"

  "Of the return of his affection."

  "Oh, but it's easy for him," Rosalie retorted with something that sounded almost like a sneer. "He owns you."

  "I guess he owns us all."

  "He doesn't own me" Rosalie asserted with emphasis, and then at last she left the room.

  PART II

  His Terrible Swift Sword

  19

  THE RUSH OF EVENTS that followed the election of Lincoln was like a clattering new train on the New York Central tracks. Dexter found himself suddenly alive and awake as he had not been in the moments of greatest ecstasy in South Vesey Street. The secession of South Ca
rolina, the assault on Sumter, the calling up of volunteers, seemed once more to match the public excitement with his own pre-Annie internal commotion. Leaning out the window of Union Square to watch the enlisted soldiers parade past, mingling with the crowds on Broadway that applauded the return of Major Anderson, standing with his father-in-law on the dais in Washington Square while a Tiffany stand of colors was presented to the commanding officers of the Sixteenth Regiment, he felt himself at one with the whole big, shouting, hustling, flag-waving city. The God of Hosts had called forth his troops at last!

  Purpose came back into life like a spring flood; direction filled up the summer void. Rosalie, already qualified as a nurse, was kept from rushing to the aid of the still nonexistent wounded only by the more urgent demand for her administrative talents in the organization of the Sanitary Commission. Dexter knew that she would have been embarrassed to admit that war had brought her cheer, but her heightened color and the warmer note in her voice as she hurried to and fro to her meetings betrayed her. Fred and Selby were at last united in patriotic fervor, and the little household in Union Square seemed to glow with a fine new harmony.

  Dexter, at excited family gatherings at Number 417, noted Annie's obvious boredom with the national crisis and could not help reflecting that it made her less alluring. There was something petty, almost mean, in such a resolute separation of self from the popular enthusiasm. It made a sorry contrast to Rosalie's emulation of the great gray lady of the Crimean War.

  But the most dramatic change of all was in Mr. Handy. No sooner had word come of the first shell fired at Sumter than all his doubts and hesitations had vanished. There was no longer any question about business interests or the market value of peace. In one bound he went further than Joanna or even Rosalie. He would pound his dining room table now and proclaim that the rebel states should no longer have the option of re-entering the Union at the simple price of abandoning the principle of secession. No, sir! They should be readmitted only when their slaves had been emancipated! And for no compensation! They had had their chance for that. Now they would have to fight, not only for their enchained blacks, but for their cotton, for their plantations, for their very lives!