The Collected Stories of Louis Auchincloss

by Louis Auchincloss

  “My dear friend, I promise you my diary is simply to keep track of dentist appointments and cleaning women.” Aurelia had stopped laughing and was serious again. “I’m in no way a writer. I like to talk. And, like a mirror, to reflect.”

  “What do you reflect?”

  “Well, at the moment, you. Or perhaps your diary. I’m not always quite sure which. I’m like a confidant in a French tragedy. I may not exist when the hero’s offstage, but he tells me his thoughts. Or maybe just the ones that aren’t worthy of his diary. I wouldn’t have the presumption to compete with yours.”

  She was very elusive, but she was equally charming. Their dinner was repeated the next week and then the following and soon became a Friday night habit. It was agreed that neither would accept another invitation, no matter how exalted, for that evening. Madison had never enjoyed the regular companionship of a sympathetic woman, and he was beginning to understand what he had missed. They discussed other things besides the diary, yet it continued to have significance in their relationship as a starting point, a link, as the leitmotif that symbolized their rare intimacy. Aurelia always raised her first cocktail of the evening with a little nod across the table that meant she was drinking to it.

  At times he would think back ruefully over the crowded years in which he had lived so constantly with people, so rarely with friends, and wonder if he had not wasted his life by being so private. But then it would strike him that he could never have met another Aurelia, for Aurelia was unique. She seemed to have no self at all. She listened; she laughed; she sympathized, and when she talked it was always about the subject that he had raised. He had never imagined that another human could be so intuitively understanding.

  “You realize, of course, that you’re spoiling me horribly,” he pointed out. “Shouldn’t we ever talk about your life?”

  “I don’t have one. Or rather, this is it.”

  “But you make me feel such a fatuous ass!”

  “Do I? I’m sorry.”

  “Not really, of course. Only when I stop to think what an egotist I’m becoming.”

  “Don’t.” She was very clear about this. “My theory has nothing to do with egotism. I simply believe that communication can only exist between a man and a woman and then only when the man takes the lead. Don’t worry about me. I think I’m doing rather nicely.”

  One result of their friendship was that his diary entries were becoming shorter and more matter-of-fact. He knew now that Aurelia would ultimately consent to read it, and his words no longer flowed when subject to her imagined scrutiny. It was like writing with her looking over his shoulder. This was not because he thought of her as necessarily critical; it was more that he could not imagine, well as he now knew here, just what her reaction would be. Once he went so far as to insert a flowery compliment to her in his description of one of their dinners, but he then ripped out the page. Perhaps as a diarist he needed a vacation. Perhaps he needed to do less observing and more thinking. For the first time in twenty-five years he let a week go by without a single entry. He was conscious at night of that neglected cedar closet from which he could imagine a mist of reproach emanating, but he resolutely turned over in his bed, saying aloud: “You’ve had the best years of my life. It’s time you let me do a little living.”

  Matters came logically to a head one early spring afternoon on a bench under the rustling trees of Bryant Park after a matinee of Tristan und Isolde. When Aurelia told him it was her favorite opera, he accused her jokingly of harboring a secret death wish.

  “It’s better than being dead, anyway,” she retorted. “You, my dear, are dead and living in a downy heaven where you see your published diary having the greatest success imaginable.”

  For once she had gone too far. “It seems to me that I live very much in the world,” he said gruffly.

  “Yes. As a spy.”

  “You say that because you know I keep a diary,” he protested. “People always assume that whatever a man does, he does at the expense of something else. I guess there’s only one way a diarist can persuade a beautiful woman that he’s more than that.”

  She looked up quickly. “Oh, Morris,” she warned him.

  “Only one,” he reiterated, firmly, his eyes fixed upon her.

  “Be careful.”

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “That you’re going to propose to me!”

  Madison was so startled that for a moment he could do nothing but shout with laughter. “But that’s exactly what everyone thinks you want!” he cried. “The world is always wrong, Aurelia.”

  “The world is always libelous,” she said, flushing.

  “Oh, my dear, forgive me. Forgive me and marry me!”

  Her face immediately puckered up into what struck him as a curious blend of gratification and near panic. She looked like a child who wanted to cry and couldn’t.

  “Do you mean it?”

  “Of course I mean it.”

  “Do you swear?”

  “I swear! By . . . by my diary!”

  Aurelia’s countenance cleared at this; already she resumed her mask. “My goodness, as serious as that? Then you must give me time.”

  “Time for what?”

  “Well, for one thing, to read the diary.”

  “All of it?”

  “That won’t be necessary. Give me one early volume and one in the middle and . . . the current one.”

  Madison looked at her suspiciously. “You want to read where you come in?”

  “What woman wouldn’t?”

  “You’ll be disappointed. There’s very little about you.”

  “Ah, but that’s just what I want to see!”

  ***

  That night, perched on a high stool in the big cedar closet, Madison pulled volume after volume from the shelves and skimmed their pages. The mild pique occasioned by Aurelia’s failure to accept him right away vanished with the exuberance of choosing the volumes for her inspection. There was no longer any real question of the outcome; he could trust his faithful diary to plead his cause. And the thrill of thinking of her reading his choicest pages! It made for a giddy night. As a sample of his early work he picked the volume that covered the winter months of 1936. He had been working night after night on a big tax case, which gave to his entries a wonderful unity of mood. Madison liked to conceive of his diary pictorially, and this volume seemed to him a Whistler nocturne, with its dull gray foggy atmosphere of exhausting work, streaked here and there with the golden flashes of ambition. For the middle period he chose a little gem of a divorce story in high circles with which he had been professionally involved. And for the last . . . well, of course, he had to be honest and submit the latest volume, though he hated to have Aurelia end on a flat note. He dated the blank page following the final entry and wrote: “My diary is to have its first reader. May she and it be friends!”

  The next Friday night they were to meet as usual at their restaurant, and Madison, who arrived first, ordered a cocktail to dull the edge of his now almost unbearable excitement. As he was raising the glass to his lips, however, he saw Aurelia crossing the room towards their table, carrying the three red volumes which he had sent to her. He noted with instant dismay that she looked pale and haggard, as if she had not slept in two nights, and her eyes avoided his as she slipped into his seat. She pushed the books towards him, without a word, and he placed them carefully on the bench beside him.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “Oh, Morris, my friend, I don’t know how to tell you. Please order me a drink. No, let me have yours.” She took his glass and drank from it quickly. “I can’t stay for dinner. I’m all done in. I’m going to bed. I only came to return the books. I know how precious they are.”

  “Are you ill?”

  “No, just tired.”

  “Was my poor diary so tedious?” he asked, with death in his heart.

  She took another sip of his cocktail. “I tell you what,” she said abruptly. “I’ll have my litt
le say, and then I’ll be off.” She paused, and when she spoke again there was a tremble of deep feeling in her voice. “Dear Morris, I hope that you and I will always be the best of friends. But I cannot marry you.”

  “Because of the diary?”

  “Because of the diary.”

  “Is it so terrible?”

  She seemed to consider this. “It’s a monster,” she said in a hushed, low tone. Again she paused and then relented a bit. “Though I suppose there’s nothing wrong with a monster if you don’t happen to be on its bill of fare.”

  “And you are?”

  “Oh, my dear, you should know that. Don’t you send a tribute of men and maidens each year to the labyrinth? No, I’m serious, Morris,” she exclaimed when he smiled. “You’ve created a robot! He’s grown and grown until you can no longer control him, and now he’s rampaging the countryside. I dared to face him. I tried to give you time to get away. I was even able to stand him off a while. But now my stones are gone, and Goliath is stalking towards me!”

  “How fantastical you are. Really, Aurelia, I wouldn’t have thought it of you. You’ve seen for yourself that the entries stop with our friendship. If anyone’s won, it’s you.”

  “But I tell you I’m out of ammunition!” she exclaimed shrilly. “I have to take my heels while I can. For don’t think Goliath wouldn’t get his revenge for all those missing entries. I should be made his slave, like you. I should be harnessed and put to work. After all, he has missed the woman’s touch, hasn’t he? The woman’s point of view? Isn’t that the one thing he needs? Didn’t Pepys have a wife? Wasn’t there a Mrs. Saint-Simon?”

  “There was a duchess,” Madison said dryly.

  “Exactly. And your diary wants a Mrs. Madison. But it won’t be me. And if you’re wise, Morris, it won’t be anyone. You and your diary can be happy together. But, I beg of you, don’t listen to it when it points its long, inky finger at another human being!”

  Madison was beginning to wonder if she was sober. “You must think me demented.”

  “Well, I don’t suppose you’d burn down New York to make a page for your diary.” She laughed a bit wildly. “After all, you might burn the diary with it. But, no, you have copies in a vault, don’t you?” Here she seemed at last to remember herself, and she placed a rueful hand on his. “Forgive me, my dear, for being so overwrought. Let me slip away now and get a good night’s sleep. I’ll take a pill. And next week we’ll talk on the telephone and see if we can’t put things back on the nice old friendly basis.”

  “Aurelia—”

  But she was gone. She was hurrying across the room, between the tables, and he had actually to run to catch up with her, clutching his three volumes.

  “Aurelia!” he cried in a tone that made her turn and stare. “Wait!”

  “What is it, Morris? What more is there to say?”

  “You haven’t told me what you think of the diary.”

  She seemed not to comprehend. “I haven’t?”

  “I mean what you think of it as a diary.”

  “Oh.” She treated this almost as an irrelevance. “But it’s magnificent, of course. You know that.”

  “It’s just what I don’t know! It’s just what I’ve spent the past several months trying to find out!”

  “Oh, my dear,” she murmured, shaking her head sadly, “you have nothing to worry about there. It’s luminous. It’s pulsating. It’s unbelievable, really. I doubt if there’s ever been anything like it. Poor old Saint-Simon, his nose will be out of joint. Oh, yes, Morris. Your diary is peerless.”

  She turned again to go out the door, and he let her go. For a moment he stood there, dazed, stock-still by the checkroom, until the headwaiter asked him if he wished to dine alone. He shook his head quickly and went out to the street to hail a taxi. It was only seven-thirty; he had still time to dine at the Century Club. When he got there, he hurried to the third floor and glanced, as he always did, through the oval window to see who was sitting at the members’ table. There was an empty seat between Raymond Massey and Ed Murrow. Opposite he noted the great square noble face and shaggy head of Learned Hand. He must have just finished one of his famous anecdotes, for Madison heard the sputter of laughter around his end of the table. It would be a good night. As he glided forward to take that empty seat he knew that he was a perfectly happy man again.

  BILLY AND THE GARGOYLES

  1952

  SHIRLEY SCHOOL in appearance was gloomy enough to look at, but it was only when we returned there in later years that it seemed so to us. As boys, we took its looks for granted. The buildings were grouped in orderly lines around a square campus; they were of gray stone and had tall, Gothic windows. The ceilings inside were high, making large wall spaces which were covered with faded lithographs of Renaissance paintings. There was a chapel, a gymnasium, a schoolhouse, several dormitories and, scattered about at a little distance from the campus, the cottages of the married masters. No fence separated the school from the surrounding New England countryside, but none was needed. Shirley was a community unto itself; its very atmosphere prohibited escape or intrusion. The runaway boy would know that he was only running from his own future, and a trespasser would immediately feel that he was intruding on futures never intended for him. For Shirley, even through the shabby stone of its lamentable architecture, exuded the atmosphere of a hundred years of accumulated idealism. You were made as a boy to feel that great things would be expected of you after graduation; you would rise in steady ascent on the escalator of success as inevitably as you rose from one form to another in the school. Life was a pyramid, except that there was more room at the top, and anyone who had been through the dark years of hazing and athletic competitions, who had prayed and washed and conformed at Shirley, should and would get there. It was good to be ambitious because, being educated and Godfearing, you would raise the general level as you yourself rose to power, to riches, to a bishopric or to the presidency of a large university. At the end there was death, it was true, but with it even greater rewards, and old age, unlike Macbeth’s, would be sweetened by a respectful lull broken only by the rattle of applause at testimonial dinners. I find that I can still look at life and feel that it ought to be this way, that I can still vaguely wonder why one year has not put me farther ahead than its predecessor. There were no such doubts at Shirley, unless they were felt by Billy Prentiss.

  Billy was my cousin and the only other boy at school whom I knew when I went there first at the age of thirteen. The contrast between us, however, was not one to make me presume on the relationship. Billy came of a large and prosperous family, and I was an only child whose mother gave bridge lessons at summer hotels to help with my Shirley tuition. Billy, though thin and far from strong, was tall and fair and had an easygoing, outgiving personality; I was short, dark and of a truculent disposition. But these contrasts were as nothing before the overriding distinction between the “old kid” and the “new kid.” Billy and I may have been in the same form, but he had completed a year at the school before my arrival, which gave him great social prerogatives. By Shirley’s rigid code there should have been only the most formal relations between us.

  Billy, however, did not recognize the code. That is what I mean when I say that he had doubts at Shirley. He greeted me from the first in a friendly manner that was entirely improper, as if we had been at home and not at school. He helped me to unpack and showed me my gymnasium locker and supplied me with white stiff collars for Sunday wear. He talked in an easy, chatty manner about how my mother had taught him bridge and what he had seen during the summer with his family in Europe, as if he believed that such things could be balanced against the things that were happening at Shirley, the real things. He was certainly an odd figure for an old kid; I think of him now as he looked during my first months at school, stalking through the corridors of the Lower Forms Building on his way to or from the library, running the long fingers of his left hand through his blond hair and whistling “Mean to Me.” He lived in
a world of his own, and, with all my gratitude, I was sufficiently conservative to wonder if it wasn’t Utopian. It embarrassed me, for example, when he was openly nice to me in the presence of other older kids.

  “How are you getting on, Peter?” he asked me one morning after chapel as we walked to the schoolhouse. Nobody else called me by my Christian name. “Have you got everything you need? Can I lend you any books or clothes?”

  “No, I’m fine, thank you.”

  “You’re a cousin, you know,” he said, looking at me seriously. “Cousins ought to help each other out. Even second cousins.”

  I didn’t really believe that anyone could help me. Homesickness was like cutting teeth or having one’s tonsils out. I nodded, but said nothing.

  “If you have any trouble with the old kids, let me know,” he continued. “I could speak to them. It might help.”

  “Oh, no please!” I exclaimed. Nothing could have more impressed me with his otherworldliness than a suggestion so unorthodox. “You mustn’t do that! It wouldn’t be the thing at all!”

  We were interrupted by voices from behind us, loud, sneering voices. It was what I had been afraid of.

  “Is that Prentiss I see talking to a new kid? Can he so demean himself?”

  “Do you pal around with new kids, Billy?”

  “What’s come over you, Prentiss?”

  The last voice was stern; it was George Neale’s.

  “Peter Westcott happens to be my cousin,” Billy answered with dignity, turning around to face them. “And there’s nothing in the world wrong with him. Is there a law that I may not talk to my own cousin?”

  He turned again to me, but I hurried ahead to join a group of new kids. I’m afraid I was shocked that he should speak in this fashion to a boy like George Neale. George, after all, was one of the undisputed leaders of the form. He was a small, fat, clumsy boy who commanded by the sheer deadliness of his tongue and the intensity of his animosities. He also enjoyed an immunity from physical retaliation through the reputation of a bad heart, the aftereffect, it was generally said, of a childhood attack of rheumatic fever. He had chosen for his mission in school the persecution of those who failed to meet exactly the rigid standards of social behavior that our formmates, represented by himself, laid down. I sometimes wonder, in trying to recollect how George first appeared to me, if he derived the fierce satisfaction from his activities that I believed at the time. It seems more probable, as I bring back the straight, rather rigid features of his round face and his tone of dry impatience, that he looked at nonconformists as Spanish Inquisitors looked at heretics who were brought before them, as part of the day’s work, something that had to be done, boring and arduous though it might be. Why George should have been chosen as the avenging agent of the gods it was not for him to ask; what mattered only was that they required, for dim but cogent reasons of their own, a division of the world into the oppressed and their oppressors. He and his victims were the instruments of these gods, caught in the ruthless pattern of what was and what was not “Shirley,” a pattern more fundamental and significant in the lives of all of us than the weak and distant humanitarianism of the faculty, who brooded above us, benevolent but powerless to help, like the twentieth-century Protestant God whom we worshiped in the Gothic chapel.