The Scarlet Letters (4 page)

"But if the shoe fits...?"

"Exactly! Then wear it!"

"Have you any advice as to which daughter I should start on?"

"You'll want me to propose for you next!" Uncle Charley retorted with a gruff laugh. "But seriously, Ambrose, and coming down to individualities, it's time you thought of settling down. I've always said that an associate is less valuable to us both in the year that he's courting and in the one following his marriage, so let's get that period behind us as soon as we can. For I don't have to tell such a smart aleck as you that you have a future in this firm!"

Ambrose smiled to himself at the idea obviously in his uncle's mind that he had to be got away from the pretty client before she jeopardized his career, but he knew it would do him no harm to be considered something of a philanderer provided he did not carry it too far. He lightheartedly adapted himself to his new role and journeyed north to visit the Shattucks.

The house was as impressively strong as its famous architect, Henry H. Richardson, could make it; its stout red brick appearance and heavy Romanesque arches suggested that the zealous faith which it enshrined was ready to be militantly defended against any heresies that managed to flourish, even in the frosty New England air. The Reverend Philemon Shattuck, a hearty man of God, made Ambrose robustly welcome in a female household ruled but by no means cowed by its ebullient head, and he found himself almost at once congenial with the middle one of the five daughters. Harriet, or "Hetty," was a pert, pale-faced and somewhat diminutive young lady, with unwaved auburn hair and darting, shrewdly observing black eyes, not indeed particularly pretty but alive, alert and voluble. He also noted the perfect family unity and good will: the other four, having noted her immediate interest in the newcomer and his seemingly equal response, at once left the field to her. Boston was certainly not like New York.

On the first Sunday of his visit he went with the family to divine services and to hear Dr. Shattuck preach in that other, even more awesome structure of Mr. Richardson's, Trinity Church, whose vast auditorium was filled to capacity. Ambrose listened, impressed but unpersuaded, to the sometimes mellifluous, sometimes thundering oration of the great cleric. His theme was happiness, the glorious happiness that should attend a true faith, even in the midst of grievous tribulations, a faith mighty enough to have inspired early Christian martyrs to sing joyful anthems at the very moment that famished lions approached them in the arena. Ambrose could not but marvel that so much polished and splendid oratory should be expended on so fatuous a theme.

It was a beautiful day of early spring, and he suggested to Hetty, who had sat beside him in the family pew, that they walk back to the house. Crossing the square he paused to look back at the bold and rugged magnificence of the somber temple they had just quit.

"It's really, isn't it, to our century, at least up here in Boston, what Chartres was to France in the thirteenth? It expresses the hardy faith of the pilgrim fathers."

"Not quite," she cautioned him. "Aren't you forgetting it's an Episcopal house of worship, a limb, if you like, of the Church of England, and that's precisely what they came over here to get away from?"

"I guess what the British can't conquer they reconquer."

She turned to walk on. "At least in Boston whatever a church stands for, we let it stand clear. We don't bury it under skyscrapers, the way you do in New York."

"Not yet," he said grimly.

"You mean we'll come to it? I suppose we must. New York, like Britain, can be counted on to win in the end."

"Omnia vincit vulgarity!"

"That's what Mr. Henry James seems to think. Have you read his
American Scene
?"

"No. I find life too short for his late style." He spoke sincerely. He was no Jacobite, but it impressed him that she was.

"That's your loss. He cites the example of Trinity Church on lower Broadway being dwarfed by its colossal neighbor, an office building erected by its very trustees!"

"You see that as a symbol of our era? That business dominates the cross? That business
is
the cross?"

"I'm not so keen on drawing conclusions, Mr. Vollard. But I like to face facts."

"For what purpose? For your own diversion?"

"Isn't that enough? Facts are really all we have to go on. But we have to be sure first that they
are
facts. Trinity Church is put out of face by an adjacent skyscraper. That seems plain enough. It gives me something to start with."

"But the very way you state it leads inevitably to a hostile conclusion. You're a cynic, Miss Shattuck, though you may try to conceal it."

"The way you conceal what you think about my father?"

"How do you know what I think of your father?"

"By the way your eyes roamed around our dining room the first night you stayed with us. You were thinking, Isn't this pretty posh for a man of the cloth? Is it the Gospel according to Saint Matthew or
Barchester Towers
?"

"Miss Shattuck, I'm beginning to be afraid of you."

"You mean because I spied a fact?"

"More because I dread the conclusion."

"And what would that be?"

"That I'm an ungrateful and ungracious guest."

"But I've come to no such conclusion! As to gratitude I see no call for it—you've come here to help us—and as to manners, yours have been above reproach."

"And manners are what count?"

"Well, certainly as much as unuttered thoughts, over which we have no power."

"Then I needn't be afraid of you?"

"I don't think you need be in the least afraid of me, Mr. Vollard."

They were soon on first-name terms, and in the ensuing fortnight became good friends indeed. His duties in following the Shattuck case consisted largely in attending the court sessions; his evenings were free to dine with the Shattucks or take Hetty and one of her sisters to a concert or play. And sometimes they would sit apart from the others in a corner of the long dark-paneled parlor, glinting with old silver pieces, and talk. Nobody interrupted them. He was marked as Hetty's beau.

Perhaps it was a bit premature. He found her provocative but reserved, challenging in her inquiries but moderate in her tone, tending to be at once sarcastic and commonsensical. She never said or did anything that would be classified as flirting, yet he was convinced that he had made a definite dent in her affections. Had he wanted to? He wasn't sure. He certainly hadn't wanted not to. Still, there was no question in his mind that she was the very opposite of the florid type of beauty that had thus far stirred his senses. He had no particular hankering to sleep with her, but he was sufficiently aware of the cruder side of his nature—as revealed in sundry episodes—to know that he was quite capable of mating with any passably attractive female.

One evening he amused himself by probing into the question of her attitude towards her famous father and his hearty evangelicalism. He scented dissent behind the bland wall of her apparently total loyalty.

"I can't help wondering what sort of a Christian you are, Hetty. You're certainly not strictly orthodox. I mean you don't strike me as one who swallows the story of Jonah's being swallowed by the whale."

"Can't there be different ways of interpreting scripture?"

"You mean you can twist it to mean anything you please?"

"No. To mean what a serious and impartial mind can deduce."

"And that will be God's truth?"

"One hopes it will be truth."

"You're elusive, Hetty. I can never pin you down."

"Why should you want to?"

"Oh, to know where I stand with you, I suppose. Or even if I want to stand with you. I don't really think I'm a Christian at all. I certainly don't have any truck with the idea that Jesus was divine. I guess I fit into the school that holds he was a simple and rather harmless fanatic about whom a monstrous legend was created by a clever priesthood. My family's religious attitude has always struck me as the quintessence of hollow gentility."

Hetty smiled. She was not in the least shocked. "In Boston we might call you a transcendentalist."

"That would clean me up, would it?"

"Well, enough so we could ask you to dinner. Or at least to come in afterwards."

He was suddenly almost angry. "Can you never take anything seriously?"

Her face became blank at this. "Oh, I'm serious enough. Isn't it you who are being rather reckless? Isn't it you who's rocking the boat?"

"Don't boats sometimes need rocking?"

"It's better to wait till we're a little closer to shore."

"You'd die, wouldn't you, Hetty, to maintain the status quo? To keep intact the little world that meekly worships your father and his God?"

Something almost like a frown for a moment clouded her brow. "My father does no harm to anyone. And he makes hundreds of people happier than they otherwise might be."

"By stuffing their heads with fairy tales!" Of course, he knew that he had gone too far. He didn't care. The unruffled pallor of her attention stifled him.

"What would you offer them instead?" was her cool inquiry.

"Oh, maybe something that you just called truth."

"I can only respond with Pilate's question."

At this he threw what last discretion he had to the winds. The others had already retired for the night, and they were now alone in the parlor, having assured Dr. Shattuck that they would turn off the lights. Ambrose had even started to do so, and the increased darkness suited his blackening mood. He turned back to her.

"You have no concept of what sort of man I am!" he exclaimed. "You'd despise me if you did!"

"Don't be too sure of that."

"How would you feel if I told you that one of your attractions to me was your money?"

She had remained quietly seated while he busied himself about the room. "I should probably wonder if you'd find it enough. I daresay you've heard greatly exaggerated amounts. Pa says people always think one is poorer or richer than one is."

He gaped. "You wouldn't
mind
being married for your money?"

"I certainly would if that were my suitor's only consideration. But if it were merely another item in the inventory of my charms, I would have to accept it in almost any man who wanted to marry me. At least here in Boston. And from what I've heard about New York, it's not a city devoid of material concerns. Even a millionaire might covet my dowry. He might see it as a guarantee that
he
wasn't being married for his money."

"You are certainly a very practical woman," he muttered.

"But that doesn't mean that I wouldn't want virtues to balance the material factor. As Macduff says of Malcolm's asserted vices: 'All these are portable, with other graces weighed.'"

Ambrose picked up the quotation with a fierce delight. '"But I have none!'" he cried. "'Nay, had I power I should pour the sweet milk of concord into hell, uproar the universal peace, confound all unity on earth!'"

"Well, we're both Shakespeare lovers anyway," she said, rising to help him turn off the last lamps. "And that in itself might be almost enough. But I warn you, Ambrose. If you think you can turn me off with the list of your imagined faults, I'm not taken in. Like Hamlet, I know a hawk from a handsaw."

The next days were deeply troubling ones for Ambrose. It was perfectly clear now that Hetty was ready to receive and willing to accept his proposal of marriage, that she had carefully weighed him in a mind not liable to deception and had come to the conclusion that he was worthy of the strong affection he had aroused. It was also clear to him that she did not regard him as in any way obligated to make such a proposal and that she deemed his conduct, far from seductive, to have been strictly that of a gentleman, a guest in her father's house and an agreeable friend. If he chose to leave their relationship at that, there would be no recriminations, no tears or fuss, no unseemly expressions of disappointment. The little woman was a lady, and a great lady at that.

A signal point in her favor was that she would require no false or hypocritical avowals of eternal passion. She would take him just as he was, a man who wanted a wife because a wife and children were what every sensible male should want, and a wife whose grace, decorum, social position and, yes, even money would smooth his progress to the success to which he naturally aspired and which he certainly deserved. To the world she would be the perfect spouse, and in private the perfect mate for a man of his doubts, depressions and soaring ambition. And he for her? Well, wasn't that
her
lookout? And wasn't she admirably equipped to look out for herself? Was knowing that love was more on one side than the other really taking advantage of her? Wasn't it almost always the case?

S
OMEWHAT TO HIS SURPRISE
Hetty went along with her parents' desire for a large wedding reception in their big shingle beach house in Nahant. Some three hundred of Boston's best gathered in the big tent erected on the lawn; it was a dressy and festive occasion. Ambrose's parents were delighted with the whole affair; they certainly thought that their younger son had done a great deal better than anyone could have expected from his youth. And Ambrose finally decided that they were right.

W
HEN A YOUNG MAN
is furnished with the right job to fit his talents and ambition and the right wife for his social and domestic needs, his advance in the world, barring the absence of Lady Luck, should be smooth and steady, and such was the case with Ambrose. Even America's entry into the war in 1917 favored him, for as an army first lieutenant he was not sent to the trenches, as he had requested, but assigned instead to the war secretary's office in Washington, where his business experience enabled him to serve importantly in the field of arms production and brought him in close touch with several magnates who were later to join the swelling ranks of his clients.

Even the Grim Reaper proved his ally. The year 1923 marked the death of Uncle Charley, followed quickly by that of two other senior partners, and in the sudden void of the firm leadership Ambrose, still in his thirties, found himself catapulted into its head management. Nothing could stop him now. He was able at last to implement all his plans for the organization of a "perfect" law firm, and in the due course of time the newly named Vollard, Kaye & Duer came to be deemed by many the first in Wall Street for its expertise, its industry, its interior discipline and high esprit de corps. And Ambrose's fame, as he moved comfortably into his fifth decade, not only as the wisest and shrewdest of counselors but as a witty and hearty companion, made him everywhere in demand as a speaker, a toastmaster, a cornerstone layer, and an adviser to political sachems in trying times. It was widely thought that he should enter public life, and some tempting offers were made to him, even by the New Deal administration in Washington, but at the last moment he always found himself too engrossed in guiding his beloved firm to be able to tear himself away.