The Scarlet Letters (12 page)

Yet some of it, miraculously, had. There were still those, if a diminishing number, who stood by the "charming Hammerslys." And Harry was smart enough to perceive that if everybody knew about his parents, his parents still
knew
everybody. And they could still do something for him.

And he loved them, too, in his own way. He even helped them out financially from time to time, but only when things were really desperate. He knew there was no changing their ways.

"And how is dear Vinnie taking this?" his mother had asked. Her tone was so solicitous that one might have thought she really cared. Vinnie had seen Gwendolyn Hammersly on many occasions with Harry, and, as Harry well knew, thoroughly disliked her, but Gwendolyn was little concerned with likes and dislikes. The world was a stage, and people acted their little parts. "Is it true there's going to be a divorce, right here in New York?"

"Why ask me, Ma? Haven't you checked out all the facts?"

"And it's so, then, that you're handling the case?"

"Better watch your step, my boy." This came from Pierre Hammersly, nursing a dark drink by the window from which he gazed vacantly over Harry's yard. "Representing a lovely lady in distress may lead to deeper commitments. Otis Sterne married Mrs. Hoops after getting her divorce from Jim. Same thing happened with the Ulricks."

"Was that such a bad thing?" Harry inquired.

"Well, it's true that the lawyer in each case got his ass in a tub of butter."

"Pierre, your language!"

"Oh, come off it, Gwen. I've heard you use that expression."

"But not before our dear boy here." She turned to Harry. "Your father does have a point, anyway. When such a good friend of yours as Vinnie becomes free, there's bound to be speculation as to what you two will do about it. Now don't interrupt, darling, I'm just speculating. You will, of course, do just what you want. You always have, and it's stood you, on the whole, in good stead. All I'm doing is trying to make the picture clear to you. And I think I can supply a few facts that will interest you. All right?"

Harry had nodded. He knew what a gossip she was, but he also knew that she rarely spoke without a basis of fact. Her chatter on occasion could rise to the level of military intelligence.

"We have to give some thought as to what Vinnie's expectations are," his mother began. "I know she has something of her own that her parents have settled on her."

"Oh yes. But it's no fortune." Harry laughed. "Dr. Johnson said of a dinner that it was well enough but not one to ask a man to. Vinnie's fortune is hardly one to marry for."

"And I suppose her father will leave her something."

"Don't count too much on that." Pierre now came from the window to add his bit to the discussion. "It's not like the old days when lawyers like William Nelson Cromwell and Francis Stetson were paid in clients' stock and made fortunes. But I daresay Mrs. Vollard will cut up well. Those Bostonians always have more than you think."

"But she has too many children, Pierre. Now listen to me, both of you. There's something you don't know, either of you. I learned about it today, from Lily Cole. Have you heard about the Waldo trust?" Her listeners shook their heads. "Well, it was set up by a crazy old bachelor great-uncle of Mrs. Vollard's who hated everybody in his family but had hopes for their posterity. He measured it by the two youngest lives among his nephews and nieces and provided that the income should be accumulated. It has been invested and reinvested for decades and has apparently reached a fabulous figure. When it breaks, which can't be too far off now, it gets divided among a host of relatives, but it's still so big that Vinnie's share should be a couple of million!"

Harry had listened to her carefully. He knew that such a trust was quite possible under Massachusetts law, and the eccentricity of the scheme fitted well with many Boston legends.

"Thank you, Ma. And now maybe you'd better be getting on to your party."

He didn't have to tell her how interested he was. She was only too well aware of that. They were indeed birds of a feather. The next day he had telephoned a friend in a Boston firm and asked him about the Waldo trust. The friend did not know all the details but he confirmed its existence and the general knowledge that many Waldos and Shattucks and Lowells expected to be one day enriched by it. That was all Harry needed to know. To seek to know more might seem too calculating—even to himself.

For he was genuinely fond of Vinnie. How could he not be? She had made him an amusing, compliant and sexually satisfying mistress. Why should she not make him an equally good wife? Would it hurt that she should also provide wealth and social advantage? Wasn't it in everybody's best interest? Wasn't it in
hers
? Was she, an abandoned wife and perhaps herself the subject of detrimental anecdotes, in any position to expect a better match than himself, the amusing, the popular, the brilliant Harry Hammersly? For that, laugh who may, was what he was!

M
ISS PELTZ CALLED AGAIN
; Jack Owens was there, a very grave and dedicated young lawyer, the youngest indeed of the partners, and chosen by Harry for this case as the one who knew Rod the least.

"I've been to see Jessup at his club," he told Harry. "And very cooperative I found him. He insists that he will represent himself in any proceedings we take, and that he will offer no defense to a charge of adultery. He, of course, wishes to know what property demands we will make of him."

"Did he say anything about his job prospects?"

"Only that he's had a couple of offers already."

"I don't doubt that."

"And that he hopes to be able to contribute substantially to the support of his two daughters."

"He will have every opportunity."

"And he hopes to have the usual visitation rights with the children."

"No trouble about that. We have no complaints about him as a father."

Owens looked faintly surprised. "Even considering the company he's keeping?"

"We understand he's not keeping any company."

"Does that mean we should work for a reconciliation?"

"In no way."

"Then there's only left the question of alimony."

"Mrs. Jessup will take no alimony."

Owens frowned and paused a moment before asking, "Shouldn't we be a bit afraid of that?"

"Afraid? Why?"

"That will look ... some people might say anyway ... that she gave him cause for what he did?"

Harry tightened his lips. How much did Owens know? Did the whole office know? Miss Peltz, he knew, was a great gossip, and she might well have smelled him out. And then there was always his dear Mama! But he reminded himself that what people heard or thought they heard didn't really matter, for they always made up their own minds on what they chose to believe, and one could do little to alter their conclusions, true or false. One just had to keep going on what at least
looked
like a consistent track.

"I don't think Mrs. Jessup gives a damn how it may look or what people will say," Harry retorted at last. "She won't take anything for herself. So draft me up something about the children, the usual weekend and summer provisions—take the Bennett agreement for a model—and leave blank the spaces for child support payments, and I'll go over it with her."

When Owens had left, Miss Peltz called him to tell him that Mrs. Jessup herself had arrived and was waiting to see him. As soon as Vinnie was seated at his desk before him, and the door reclosed, he told her of Owens's objection.

"It's just what I warned you about, Vinnie. It won't look well for you to skip the alimony. If you don't want it yourself, why not take it and put it in trust for the children?"

"Never!" she exclaimed, in a spurt of sudden temper. "Take money from poor Rod? After what you and I have been doing! Why, it would be shameless!"

"But, Vinnie—"

"No, Harry, no! I'm speaking to my lawyer now, not my lover, and I expect to be obeyed. Unless you want me to get another. Lawyer, I mean."

There was something distinctly different about Vinnie that morning. Or perhaps something reminiscent of how she had been before their intimate relations. As his mistress she had appeared to entertain for him an almost cowering devotion, totally unlike the rather mocking friendliness that had preceded it. He had privately relished the supposition that he had given her the thrill and satisfaction that she had not found with her less imaginative spouse. Whatever it was, however, it was now in eclipse. The old Lavinia was more than apparent in her tone.

She took his silence as assent to her alimony decision, and went on: "There's something else it behooves you to know, Harry. Certainly as my lawyer, anyway. Something I've just found out myself."

Harry eyed her intently. Was she going to tell him she didn't love him? "Something about yourself?"

"Oh, very much about myself. I'm pregnant."

"Vinnie!" He jumped to his feet. Then, as quickly, he reseated himself. "But that's wonderful news!"

Her stare was blank. "Why wonderful?"

His brain seemed to whirl. One of his doubts about marriage was whether she could have a child; none had followed the birth of her younger daughter. He hadn't been sure how much he really wanted one, but now he
knew
! He wanted one very much! "Because it will be our child, darling, yours and mine. We'll marry and love it and bring it up together ... Oh, it will all be fine!"

"Aren't you taking a lot of things for granted? Me, to begin with. And secondly, the 'ourness' of the child?"

"You mean it's not ours?"

"Oh, it's mine, all right. But there may be a question if it's yours. I had not discontinued sexual relations with Rod. And what he and I did together was rather more child producing than
some
of the things you and I did."

Could a fetus in a womb make two women out of one? Harry felt chilled before this new Vinnie. But not jealous. Not, oddly enough, the least jealous.

"You never told me you were still sleeping with Rod."

"Why should I have? It was my business, and my business alone, how best to handle a husband in such a situation. I didn't want to deny him anything that might arouse his suspicions. And we didn't take any precautions, any more than you and I did, believing, as I did, what the doctor told me after my second daughter was born. Well, he was wrong. Obviously, I
could
have another child."

Harry was almost surprised himself at his now impetuous offer. "But Rod's child or mine, I'll be his father if you'll marry me!"

"His? You assume it will be a boy?"

"I do."

"Why, for God's sake?"

"Because you're like Lady Macbeth today. 'Bring forth men children only!'"

"But she hadn't already produced two daughters."

"By Rod!"

"I see. And not by you." She nodded slowly. "Well, the news seems to have done strange things to you. And I will admit I think you're behaving rather well. So how about this. We'll go ahead with the divorce as planned. Rod seems bent on that. And as for you and me, we'll wait until the child is born. If it's yours I'll marry you."

He gaped. "But how will you know?"

"Oh, I'll know. Mothers always do."

"That's an old wives' tale, Vinnie!"

"Well, then, I'm an old wife."

W
HEN JACK OWENS
reported to Rod Jessup, as Harry supposed they had to, that Vinnie was pregnant, Rod at once waived all rights to the unborn infant. This amounted to a voucher that the child was none of his, and Harry impressed upon Owens the importance of not revealing it to anyone in the firm, particularly to Ambrose Vollard. He sought, unsuccessfully he could only suppose, to convince the young man that Jessup's attitude betrayed an hysterical jealousy by the need to excuse his own infidelity.

Five months later Vinnie gave birth to a fine healthy son.

Almost at the same time, the Boston great-aunt died, and the Waldo trust should have terminated. But it didn't. Harry had the mortification of reading in a Boston journal that Waldo had used as a measure the old common-law maximum limitation of two lives in being plus twenty-one years. The two lives were no longer in being, but the period in gross of a legal majority was just beginning! For all his bitterness Harry still found occasion for an ironic guffaw at his own incapacity. How could he have forgotten a limitation that he had learned in his first year at law school?

The first evening that he was allowed to call upon Vinnie, now Mrs. Vollard Jessup as her divorce caused her to be named, she led him into the baby's room and asked the nurse to leave them. Together they looked down at the bawling child.

"You see he wants a father," Vinnie announced with a smile. "And I have every intention of giving him one."

"But whom?"

"You're the lucky man."

"How do you know?"

"Look at him, silly."

Indeed, the cleft chin and the slight hook of the nose were models of Harry's own. But, even more than that, he felt a sudden conviction that she was right, and he was seized by a totally novel exaltation.

"He's mine!" he cried.

She laughed. "And mine, too, I hope."

"Yes, you'll have to marry me now!"

"Just for his sake?"

"Isn't that enough?"

She looked away with a slight shrug. "I guess it will have to be."

He did not turn to her. His eyes were fixed on the child, who had stopped crying and seemed to be staring at him. "It's all right, sonny," his lips silently articulated. "I'll give you the world." It even crossed his mind that the boy would have just attained his majority when his mother would come into her share of the Waldo trust. The child's father would see to it that she made a proper settlement on the young man.

T
HE NEXT FIVE YEARS
marked the rise to local glory of Harry Hammersly. Married to Lavinia and son-in-law of the senior partner, he took over Rod Jessup's old position of heir apparent, at least in the eyes of the younger partners, now a majority. Heir presumptive, in Harry's own private opinion, might have been the more accurate term. For Ambrose bore nothing like the same affection for this second son-in-law that he had borne for the first. It was true that he respected Harry's undoubted legal abilities, and found him particularly valuable in taking off his burdened shoulders some of the trickier problems of management. But he could never feel that Harry was really with him in what he deemed the most vital function of his own professional life: the tight welding together of a group of profound and idealistic legal minds in a unit of mutual respect and affection. He more than suspected that Harry's eye was fastened, perhaps to the exclusion of other considerations, on the annual figure of the firm's net profits.