Chapter VIII: Part 8

Larry wondered in what decade the social circles in American life began to crystallize. Way back, he guessed. When some of the early statesmen wrote of equality, they really meant an exchange among those who already were social equals. They described a uniform society of landowners, with non-agrarian whites and Negroes excluded. The distinction persisted and had intensified with each generation. Davis Shore of Oyster Bay didn’t sit down to dinner with Larry Frank of Second Avenue if he could help it. Nor with Arthur Bemrose divorced from the impressive Judge Haynes connection. It wasn’t a pleasant realization, but Larry had come to accept it, and Arthur should have known better than to try and cross the line.

On the way back to his desk down the corridor, Larry recalled a letter of introduction which Haynes had given a prominent American jurist to Didier. “See that he meets some of the legal brains of France,” Haynes had written. “You needn’t bother to entertain him socially. I don’t think he’s interested in society.... I will be careful in the future, my old one, not to abuse your hospitality and will refer only very special people to you.”

Larry reflected on Judge Haynes’s honesty with Didier. “I will be careful to refer only very special people.... You needn’t bother to introduce him to society.” A man might be an eminent jurist, and still not an acceptable dinner companion. Haynes, with his worldly shrewdness, had accepted that narrow and unpleasant reality. Arthur had accepted it while Haynes was alive.

Since the War, since Janice, since his illness, Bemrose had begun to construct a world without those barriers, a cellophane overlay he superimposed on the old social map. Bemrose had perhaps started with the wrong two men--Shore and himself--but Larry realized that if he were not part of the experiment and had not smarted under Shore’s patronizing scrutiny, he’d be cheering for Bemrose. As it was, he cheered with his emotions but not with his common sense instincts.

Larry occupied an office next to a large room which housed the secretarial staff. Miss Thompson, who kept the girls quiet while she was at her desk, did it unconsciously with the cold set of her masculine features. As Larry turned into his room, he saw that her office chair was vacant. The girls buzzed in a happy release of spirits.

“I swear it’s the truth,” said the assistant who came to work in open-toed shoes and no stockings. “He said I could quit any time Joe got a furlough.” She giggled nervously. “He used to hit the ceiling when I threatened to quit. That’s how I got my last three raises.”

“’Ja hear what he did with Mr. Osterlink?” The file clerk crossed her feet and fluttered some papers she was putting into a folder. “He called in Mr. Osterlink and gave him a raise before he even asted, and if there’s a father’s draff, Mr. Osterlink will have to go.” She jerked her thumb toward the door. “He didn’t even ast for the raise. Canyuh imagine?”

The other girl sighed. “A big change has come over Mr. Bemrose. It must be because he’s sick.”

“He’s just learnin’ to appreciate. You wait ’til some more of ’em are drafted. They’ll all start appreciatin’.”

“He’s sadder since he came back from the Army.” The older girl mooned in her chair. “Even when he’s nice and talks to you, it makes you feel like bawling.”

“Doesn’t make me--” The girl clicked the file drawer shut.

Miss Thompson’s rubber heels, tapping the linoleum, silenced them, and Larry tried to concentrate on the proof of a brief.

A shriek roused him, and he saw Miss Thompson rush to her window. He hurried to his own. A man in shirtsleeves, balanced precariously, walked the narrow ledge of the penthouse next door, swaying as he placed one cautious foot in front of another, his arms waving in the wind.

“Quick, Mr. Frank! He’s trying to commit suicide,” Miss Thompson called. She dashed over to his door. “I’ll phone the police.”

The man had turned the corner, and his left foot slipped off the ledge. Larry gripped the windowsill, as if to maintain the man’s balance for him.

“The police are there now!” Miss Thompson reported in an uncontrolled staccato. “They say he won’t come back in. They’re talking to him, and he doesn’t pay any attention.”

Larry watched the man’s back and could sense his muscles twist beneath the flimsy white cloth of his shirt. His arms balanced like feathers, light and graceful as a ballet dancer’s. No one should try to prevent a man from picking his own method of committing suicide, Larry decided. He should be able, if he liked, to fling himself forty stories to the pavement with as great a display of eccentricity or exhibitionism as he pleased.

“Oh, stop him, Mr. Frank!” Miss Thompson pushed her hands against the window, as the man teetered again.

The next minute it was over. The figure had walked West toward the river, into the pure unsooted air. Windows opened and an ambulance wailed urgently.

Miss Thompson crawled back to the chair behind her desk, blanched and shaking. The other girls covered their eyes, too sensitive to want to decipher the undignified pulp of blood and flesh below. Larry could skip it, too, and decided that he needed a cup of coffee.

He glanced at Miss Thompson on his way out, reflecting that her sex life occurred vicariously behind an office desk. She continued to tremble in an orgasm of terror.

When Larry returned, he found a message to see Mr. Bemrose at once.

Arthur was slumped in his chair, looking blitzed. The mounting mishaps of the afternoon had culminated in the desperation written on Bemrose’s face.

“I knew there was something wrong when he didn’t show up for the appointment the other morning,” Arthur said.

“The morning we came in at eight o’clock? You mean he didn’t keep the appointment?”

“When he called me at home the afternoon before I knew----”

“But why did he get you down here at eight o’clock?” Larry insisted. “You’re too sick a man----”

“He knows that,” Arthur pointed out. “He’s using my health as an excuse to get outside trial counsel.”

“Who?”

“Jorgennsen.”

Larry sat down thoughtfully. “Jorgennsen will do all right. He’s the only man----”

“I’m washed up.”

“Just because that pompous----?”

“Five years of preparation,” Bemrose said. “I put five years into that case.” He rocked angrily in his chair. “I’ll be damned if I tell Jorgennsen how to try it.”

“Why does he insist on Jorgennsen? You’ve lived with the case. If Jorgennsen were John Marshall, he couldn’t prepare it in six months. I’ll tell you, have someone talk to Shore. Can’t Tom Newton, or Harrison, or----”

“They’ve already retained him,” Bemrose reported. “He says I can’t manage the physical hurdles of the courtroom. He doesn’t see how I can stand on my feet, examine witnesses, manipulate the reference volumes, or turn the pages of the briefs. Oh, Shore hasn’t overlooked a detail,” he said harshly. “What do they expect me to do?” His hand jerked toward an inkwell cover lying on the desk. “Do they expect me to give up trial work because my legs aren’t steady?”

“You _can’t_ give it up.”

“I’d be throwing away three-quarters of my practice. I belong on my feet in court. The Judge drilled me in the idea that a lawyer should take his own cases to court. I might as well stop practicing.”

“You’re not going to stop, and you’re not going to give up trial work,” Larry insisted. “_Let_ him have Jorgennsen. He’ll come running to you on the next case.”

“He won’t have another like this in twenty years.” Bemrose shoved his crutches viciously across the room. “I’ll be damned if I’m the kind of lawyer who sits behind a desk and settles cases.”

“How about that appeal of Cy’s?” Larry asked. “He’ll go broke if the City makes him pay back what his family collected in the condemnation fifteen years ago. Cy hasn’t any reserves----”

“I never took a condemnation case, and I don’t want to start now,” Bemrose protested. “Not if all the O’Malleys in New York starve. It’s one kind of law I don’t want to practice.”

“But the case involves an interesting question of law.”

“What’s the question?” Arthur looked up.

“The City claims that one of the provisions in the original state grant to the O’Malleys was concealed from the court, a covenant saying that the City could recapture the property any time by repaying what the State had charged the O’Malleys for it. Peanuts, of course. The City ignored the covenant and handed Cy’s family healthy money for the land fifteen years ago. Now it wants to get back the difference.”

“Why didn’t the City think of that fifteen years ago when they condemned Cy’s property?” Arthur asked.

“The City says it was handled crookedly at that time. No one mentioned the trick covenant when the case was being tried.”

“And Cy’s supposed to go broke in order to correct the City’s mistake? That’s lovely.” He leaned back in his chair. “How far has the case gone?”

“Affirmed in the Appellate Division, one judge dissenting,” Larry reported.

“So he could take it to Albany?” Arthur swung around toward the window and looked out thoughtfully.

Suddenly Larry thought of the suicide dance on the ledge. “Cy couldn’t, but _you_ could,” he said. “He’s had a lousy deal from the City. You’d be helping out a pal----”

“I suppose the documents go way back.”

“You’d have a good time with the case,” Larry predicted. “You could dig around in the historical material. There are fascinating old maps of the waterways. It’s just the kind of case you like. Take it, Arthur.”

Bemrose pointed to his crutches. “What’s the use? I’d never be able to argue it in Albany. Cy would have to hire appeal counsel.”

“That’s tripe. You’ll argue it yourself if we have to take you up there in a wheelchair.” Larry rubbed his knees in anticipation. “We’ll show that stuffed penguin whether you’re finished.”

“Who’s going to pay to have briefs printed?”

“Cy. It’ll be easier for him to raise money for the briefs than to try and pay the City.”

“I wouldn’t have to charge him a fee,” Bemrose said. “The case must have cost him plenty already.”

Not charging fees again. The old pattern. But if Bemrose won this appeal in Albany, he’d come out all right. It would prove that he was still a good courtroom lawyer, in spite of Davis Shore. The boost to his morale would be tremendous.

“The case has cost him plenty, and if he loses and has to pay the City, he’ll be in hock the rest of his life,” Larry said. “I wouldn’t mind if it happened to some fellows, but Cy--well, you know Cy.”

“Needs a nursery school,” Bemrose agreed. “I never expected to have the dubious privilege of representing him. I’ll bone up on abuse before we start. It’s the only way to get along with Cy. You have to insult him louder than he insults you.”

“He’s scared of you, Arthur. He’ll behave.”

“Cy scared?” Bemrose’s head jerked backward, and he laughed. It was the first time today that he had let go.

“You’ll have a helluva lot of fun working with him. Shall I give him a ring?” Larry moved toward the door.

“Not yet,” Bemrose decided. “Get hold of the briefs and let me study them. I want to find out about this concealed covenant.”

When Larry turned around he saw Miss Thompson at the door looking like a shock case.

She covered her face. “Did you see him, Mr. Bemrose?”

Larry shrugged at Bemrose and maneuvered Miss Thompson down the hall. “Come on, the Boss wants us to locate some papers for him,” he explained.

It wasn’t the day for Bemrose to hear about the fellow who had walked off the ledge.

_Chapter 20_

The headwaiter indicated a table at the far side of the room, across the floor from the orchestra, and Larry and Bess felt their way in the purplish light around the small, slick floor. The orchestra was playing _June Night_. Larry had made love to his first girl by it, and could hear it now flowing singsongy and nasal through her thinly etched nostrils.

They blinked their way through the murky room where cigarette smoke banked like fog, and Arthur half rose when he saw them, tabling his hands for support, while Bess rushed over to steady the fragile cane chair under him.

“Hello.” Arthur’s eyes challenged Bessie, and he motioned to the empty seats at the table.

A brocade evening bag lay on the table in front of an empty place. It must belong to Lucy.

Larry slid into the far chair and let Bess and Bemrose get comfortable. They seldom saw each other, and needed time to become acquainted. Larry knew that it wouldn’t take long. Bess would relate some irrelevant and trivial incident, and soon Bemrose would be swept along with her sure narrative skill.

Among the dancers Larry located Lucy’s gray-blonde head brushing the dark sleekness of Philip Kenyon’s. He was the Green network salesman whom Larry remembered from the first night at the Daughertys’ when he had called on Lucy about the lawsuit. Her arm relaxed on his collar, and Larry saw that they danced easily and well, her high, flat breasts conforming to his dark blue concavity. The music trickled to a close, and Kenyon must have said something which flushed her amber skin. As the band started, nostalgically sobbing _As Time Goes By_, she returned, smiling, to his arms.

Bemrose motioned Larry to move closer. “They make a nice couple. They used to go dancing before we were married,” he said.

“Are you trying to fix her up?”

“Sometimes I feel as if she were my daughter,” Bemrose confessed. “She must have missed going dancing after she married me. She was a little young to settle down. I realize it now.”

Lucy fluttered a hand at him from the floor, and he smiled back at her.

“You’re not in mothballs yet. For Chris’ sake----”

“I’m glad Kenyon is around. He’s a nice fellow to take her dancing. Especially now that I can’t.” Bemrose rearranged his legs.

“What are you going to do, hand her all the fun while you play papa?” Larry laughed. “Whose idea is this anyway? Lucy’s?”

But Bessie motioned him to be quiet. Lucy and Kenyon, knit in quiet conversation, were on their way to the table.

Lucy drew up a chair close to Arthur, freshened his highball with some soda, picked up his napkin from the floor, and solicitously asked whether he were tired. Her cool beauty reassured Larry. She never looked lovelier than in the sheer black dress she was wearing. It furnished solemn contrast to her light eyes and gave the gray-blonde hair a dreamlike quality.

Kenyon, chatting happily with Bessie, took on her tone as he pitched his amiability to hers. He was an adaptable man who reflected the personality of others and unconsciously imitated their speech and gestures. When a principal figure walked off the scene, Kenyon became neutral as a photographer’s background.

Lucy, noting Arthur’s hand shake on his highball glass, asked the waiter to give him a straw. While she was ordering drinks for the rest of them, Larry saw the carefully tailored sleeve of a man at the next table slip around the bosom of the girl who was with him. He reached greedily for her left breast, and when she tore his hand away, looked pained and helpless.

“Why do you always have to drink too much?” she asked peevishly.

“Don’t sound like your mother,” he complained. “Unpleasant bitch!”

His daughter shoved her napkin toward him as if pushing away something loathsome. She was kodachrome pretty, with red hair.

He grabbed her arm, clearing a set of heavy silver bracelets. “You’re grown up now. You might as well know that men--” He clawed her breast, clutching the gold cloth of her dress. “They’ll want to sleep with you, Baby.”

Frantically she called to the waiter. “He’ll pay the check. I have to catch a train back to school.” She took time to daub her nose while he fumbled in a confusion of bills and silver.

Larry used the whiskey in front of him to purify his palate. He saw Arthur’s glance follow Lucy’s dark dress as it threaded the tables. She was going out to phone Marge Daugherty, who had been sick again. Bessie left to dance with Phil Kenyon, and Bemrose and Larry were alone.

He stirred uneasily and addressed Bemrose, “I don’t know whether this is the time to bring it up----”

Arthur encouraged him to go on.

“You and Lucy seem to be making a go of it, and I don’t want to do anything to upset it,” Larry continued.

Silently Arthur waited for him to finish, refusing to help. His hand shook as he reached for an ash tray.

“I don’t want to interfere, you understand, not if things are going better with you and Lucy----”

Arthur shrugged. “That depends on what you mean by better.”

“I can’t stall Janice any longer,” Larry complained. “She’s been after me for weeks. She phones, she wires, she writes--” Larry’s palms felt warm. “I don’t want her to bother you, fellow, not if you’re all set with Lucy.”

“We go to bed together. In spite of these.” He kicked his crutches. “I’m not precisely an acrobat, but-- So far she hasn’t complained.”

Bemrose’s shoulder twitched, and his lip began to jerk. He covered his face. After three or four minutes he said bitterly, “What does Janice want of me?”

“Forget it, Arthur. I’ll tell her you’re in no condition----”

“What good does she think I would do her? I suppose she’d like to wheel me around Central Park on Sunday mornings.”

“She’d like to come up and see you some weekend, that’s all. She doesn’t expect you to take her to night clubs.”

“What did you write her?” Arthur asked sharply. “Did you tell her the truth, that Lucy bathes and dresses me every morning and undresses me at night, that she waits on me hand and foot?”

“I spared her the part about Lucy undressing you. No use torturing the girl. No, I wrote her you had changed.”

“I’ll say so. She ought to see me try to walk from here to the door. She’d get a shock all right.”

“I didn’t mean your sickness. I meant really changed inside, the way she’d like. No devil driving you. Not pushing to be Number One. Easy and nice. I figured the way you are now-- Well, she ought to know about it.”

Arthur shook his head. “What kind of deal would it be for her? Figure it out for yourself. She’s waited a long time. She deserves a decent break from some guy. I had something good to offer her once, but I was too dumb and self-absorbed to see it. What can I give her now except a brokendown nervous system?” He felt uncertainly for his coat pocket, and Larry knew the speech had been hard for him.

“I figured Janice hasn’t found the going easy lately, and it might cheer her up to come to New York.”

“Anything wrong?”

“Yes, her brother’s been sick.”

“I’m sorry. She’s crazy about her brother.”

“Her letters sound as if she’s broken up. I thought if she came up some weekend and got her mind on something else----”

“Not just now, Larry. Neither of us could take it. Wait a little while. What I’ve got with Lucy is working pretty well right now. She’s given up the idea of any high romance with me, and as long as I treat her considerately, she’s willing to put up with my needs. That’s quite a good deal. I’m not easy to live with these days.”

“Is it enough? Do you want to settle for it?” Larry asked.

“I know it’s not the big thing, but when you have the big thing at home, you’re exposed. I’ve been ducking that kind of exposure most of my life. I don’t want to go around with my thalamus aching. I’d rather save the emotional turmoil for trial work. I’d rather pour it out in a courtroom where it has more of a chance of repaying me.”

Lucy was back, and Larry rose to pull out her chair. “I’ll write Washington on that matter,” he promised Arthur. “They’ll be disappointed not to see you over the weekend, but I’ll try to present your views.”

“Are you two talking business?” Lucy asked absentmindedly.

Phil Kenyon was back, leaning over her. “Save the next dance for me, Sug.”

The band played a rhumba, and they left the table, while Arthur devoted himself to Bessie with diplomatic smoothness. He made Bess feel as if his entire friendship with Larry depended on her, and from now on it was going to be the three of them, not the two of them any longer. Under Bemrose’s suave handling, her old antagonisms melted and her dark lips played delightedly over the flawless teeth. The curls on her forehead bobbed in quick, excited shakes as she agreed with Arthur about Larry quitting Tammany and hooking up with the A.L.P. Things were fine and easy between Bess and Arthur. She sipped at his charm, lingering over its bouquet, and rewarded him with an animation she usually kept from strangers.

Together they eulogized Elizabeth Brett and her good, female earthiness. Even when he and Liz fought the hardest, he enjoyed her, Bemrose maintained. He liked women with conviction and taste. His manner left no doubt that he bracketed Bessie with this chosen group.

Flushed with the subtle flattery Bemrose had lavished on her, Bess asked Larry to dance, although she knew he didn’t care much about it. On the floor she complimented the one-step he had learned twenty years ago, and pressed her soft warmth against him, circling his neck. Spelled by Bemrose she seemed to mesmerize herself into thinking of Larry as a romantic figure.

“They’re happy.” She sighed. “I think he’s charming to her. And she’s nice. Before he asks for anything, she hands it to him. It’s wonderful how she understands.”

A pocket of traffic pinned them to their spot on the floor, and Larry overheard a man say, “Just like old times, isn’t it, Sug? I used to get mighty lonesome.”

The voice continued, “I always liked you best in black, Sug.”

Larry wondered about Lucy. He wondered how long she’d be content to cushion Arthur’s disability, nursing him with every gentle comfort she had, sacrificing her own desires to make him feel more secure. It was hard to penetrate Lucy’s fortress of reserve. Larry wasn’t at all sure how strong her desires were. Kenyon’s might be a different matter, but whether or not Lucy complied with them----

“I think it’s sweet the way he invites a friend along to dance with her,” Bessie said. “I think it’s nice that he wants her to have a good time. Some men would be sensitive--” She nudged him. “Look at that hair-do, Larry. The pink feathers!”

But Larry was indifferent to the fashion this season of killing and stuffing love birds for decorative use in the hair. He was conscious of Bemrose alone at the edge of the dance floor, his shoulder twitching and his lip moving in sudden jerks. At this moment Arthur strained to find Lucy among the dancers as he twisted and knotted the napkin she had picked up from the floor for him during the last intermission. Every nerve worked overtime while he waited, tensely, for her to come back and sit next to him.

Larry wondered how much guts it had taken for Bemrose to turn down the chance of seeing Janice. He was glad to have given him the chance. No matter how much conflict the decision cost, it must have been flattering to feel wanted, even for a little while, strongly and passionately desired by a woman. It must be good to know that Janice was still around waiting for word from him.

“Fun to go dancing, isn’t it, Larry?” Bess’s plump fingers wooed the back of his neck. “I’m glad you’re my husband, Larry.”

He felt the roll of flesh above her waist as he drew her closely toward him. “A little too much of you here maybe,” he said, pinching her, “but as wives go, not bad. Not at all bad.”

_Chapter 21_

It was December 7, the day that Cy O’Malley’s case was to be argued in the Court of Appeals. Larry walked from his hotel, which was located across from the Capitol, to the Court of Appeals Hall on Eagle Street. Glancing across at the Capitol building, he wondered how many times Bemrose, as a kid, must have looked up those steep stone steps and thought of walking in someday to see the Governor or the Legislature on official business. Larry detoured into the park and stopped before a stern bronze statue of Philip Schuyler. The formidable likeness might have frightened a small boy who was standing in the snow all day Saturdays to drum up shoeshines.

The Courthouse itself was a hundred years old, according to the cornerstone dated 1842, and was fronted by six weathered Greek columns.

Larry remembered the first time he came up to hear an argument when he was just out of law school and the Court had seemed remote and sacred. He always meant to have a look around the historic building. This morning ought to be a good time. He would have to wait anyway until the clerk asked the Chief Judge if Arthur might deliver his argument seated.

A girl at the information desk inside the bronze entrance doors told Larry the clerk wouldn’t be available for fifteen or twenty minutes. Larry walked into the rotunda with its gold Star of David in the floor, and looked up past overhanging balconies to the white frosted dome. Shut into the circular space by eight massive columns, he had a moment’s claustrophobia. The sensation eased as he emerged into the high arched ceilings of the entrance hall. Near the telephone booth, a painting of David Dudley Field, his hand thrust into a Prince Albert coat, was flanked by Florentine chairs embossed with the New York State shield.

Larry wandered into the library and glanced at a copy of the _Law Journal_ on a table neatly blottered in green. He took down a volume of _Hopkins Chancery Reports_ in the tan binding with red title panel, and leafed through it aimlessly.

From a corner of the room glared a marble bust of Ambrose Spencer, former Mayor of Albany. Larry wondered if Spencer were responsible for cobblestoning the steep inclines of Albany, a city that had ice on the streets five months a year. The ground now was lightly covered with snow, and green patches of grass showed restfully through the white cover. Larry had realized on the trip up, riding along the Hudson, how building-weary his eyes must have become the past months, and how much he needed this chance away from New York to look at water, sky and earth.

He stepped across to the lawyers’ waiting-room with its oversized leather chairs and picked up a copy of the daily calendar. The O’Malley case was second on the list. That ought to give Bemrose plenty of chance to finish his argument this afternoon. A timetable lay beside the calendar. If they were out by six o’clock, and Arthur decided not to stay over with his family, they could have dinner, catch an evening train, and be back in New York tonight.

Larry walked through the hall to Room 119, and reverently opened the door. He seldom walked into the courtroom without feeling as if he were blaspheming. Oil portraits of former judges circled the room in two rows, the full-length figures above and head-and-shoulder portraits below, framed by carved golden oak panels.

Larry remembered sitting as a spectator behind a rail in the back of the high-ceilinged room, intimidated by the giant fireplace of yellow marble, sunk in the left wall, with its giant claw-footed andirons of bronze. Intricate baskets of carved golden oak above the fireplace symbolized another generation’s concept of rich decoration. The sheer, stupendous hand labor involved in carving every oak wall panel, fashioning a rosette in the arm of every oak chair, decorating the legs and stretchers of the seven counsel tables, whittling gargoyles and cathedral doors of golden oak into each panel of the semi-circular bench at which the judges sat, and hewing from raw wood the elaborate fifteen foot cabinet of the grandfather’s clock which told the day of the week and month as well as the time, this human effort of fashioning, designing, perfecting, molding, and veneering the walls, ceilings, and furnishings of a space fifty feet wide by one hundred feet long overwhelmed Larry. In the chill December light that speared through three towering windows on the right, the artifice of the woodcarvers whose strong fingers must have grown knotted and stained in this work seemed an obsolete craft. It had little affinity with the contemporary feeling about wood, the desire to bring out and emphasize the simple, natural beauty of the grain. This older art treated wood like filigree, working it into forms that might more delicately have been executed in platinum, and hiding its character under shiny layers of varnish. A modern designer like Elizabeth Brett would call it unfunctional, Larry knew. As if to prove the truth of this modern view, he saw that the fireplace had never been used, the clock had stopped, and the weighty bronze crowns, suspended by chains from the ceiling, obstructed the light from the electric globes they decorated.

Observing the same lack of forthrightness in some of the portraits, Larry studied a full figure of Judge Haynes. The artist had made him pink-and-white pretty with an unlined face. Larry found in it little resemblance to the austerely lived-in countenance he remembered. The stocks, the whiskers, and the colored flowing robes of some of the older judges mellowed their portraits, as did the tarnished nameplates below, but the empty emotion of the more recent paintings showed as raw as their color in the winter morning light.

There was a commercial calendar next to the silent clock, a chromium-trimmed lamp on the desk of the case clerk, and a functional water cooler near the window, showing that the room couldn’t get along without the modern. Ample radiator boxes at the windows, working wall thermometers and metal ventilators also indicated that no expense had been spared to circulate fresh air among members of the Court.

Larry walked to the counsel table a few feet in front of the bench where Arthur would present his argument. A lawyer speaking from behind the lectern stood at eye level with the Judges. It was a pleasantly informal arrangement, and today Larry felt particularly grateful for this closeness between Court and counsel. Although Bemrose would be arguing seated from behind the table, the Judges should have no trouble seeing or hearing him. Larry decided he would sit at Arthur’s left where he could hand him papers and reference volumes with ease.

The case clerk greeted Larry by name. He had been with the Court for more than twenty-five years and was as much a part of the scene as the marble based statue of Robert Livingston inside the entrance.

“This room used to be in the State Capitol,” he volunteered. “They moved it over here piece by piece. All the panels are hand carved.”

“It’s impressive,” Larry agreed. “Where good lawyers dream of coming when they die.”

Larry told him about Arthur having to argue seated, and the clerk promised to take it up with Judge Lehman. He came back in a few minutes to say that Judge Lehman had been happy to grant Mr. Bemrose’s request.

“How is his health?” the clerk inquired. “I heard----”

“His legs aren’t steady, but that’s the only thing about him that isn’t a hundred percent.” Larry fastidiously pulled his pocket handkerchief out a quarter of an inch. He had on a new blue herringbone. Arthur’s tailor had made it for him from a pre-War length of English woolen. The suit fitted him right. He felt sure enough of himself to be arguing a case of his own today. “This will be the first time he’s been in court since the Army,” Larry explained.

“You mean the first time since his troubles?” The clerk ran a hand along his legs.

Larry nodded.

“It must be pretty important,” the clerk said. “Not the case. But important for him. I remember the first time I saw him. Fresh out of law school and smart as paint. Judge Haynes was crazy about him.”

“Today’s important, all right,” Larry agreed. “You’ll see. He’ll come through okay.”

“I remember the time he was up here on that insurance case. He made a beautiful argument. When you listen to Mr. Bemrose, you always forget about oratory. Not like with some of the big ones who carry you away. You get interested in what he’s saying, and don’t want to miss a word.”

“He’ll show some of them who’ve been going around saying he’s finished--” He will if his speech doesn’t throw him, Larry thought. “The Old Man will pull him through,” he added, pointing to Judge Haynes’s portrait.

“Today’s a big day,” the clerk said. “Judge Erving has a case on the calendar, and so has A. Atherton Clark. And I hear the Attorney-General is up from Washington.”

“Tom Newton?”

“He’s interested in the case of that German--” the clerk explained.

With that kind of audience today was going to be a real test for Bemrose.

“Einstein dropped in yesterday and may come back this afternoon. He’s been visiting Judge Lehman.”

“You mean Albert Einstein?” Larry asked.

The clerk nodded.

“Quite a gallery for Mr. Bemrose.” Larry picked up his coat from a chair and took another look around. “Well, he can’t complain. He has the right setting.”

The yellow window shades hung unevenly. Their disorderly cords supplied the only note of rakishness in the oaken formality.

Outside Larry shook hands with the clerk, and the rotunda seemed open and friendly.

* * * * *

A. Atherton Clark’s argument lasted until four o’clock. Tom Newton, who had come up specially for it, made no attempt to leave when it was finished, and Larry wondered if he were waiting over specially to see Arthur.

Bemrose entered the courtroom during the last fifteen minutes of Clark’s argument. He had trouble manipulating his crutches through the back gate, and as he swung down the center aisle over the faded gold carpet, Newton, who was seated at one of the counsel tables in back, started to reach out as if to steady him. Old Ambrose Dane nervously rubbed the top of his nose until Bemrose was seated, and Larry saw two or three other lawyers follow every step he made.

Arthur’s case was called, and Chief Judge Lehman moved the box of his hearing aid forward. Lawyers arguing before the Court superstitiously watched the black box, believing that if it were switched off, an argument was lost.

Judge Lehman gave Bemrose his attention, and smiling, said, “This is the first occasion on which the Court will hear an argument by a member of the bar back from the service. We welcome you on your return.”

The remark was in keeping with the Court’s tradition for courtesy.

Arthur laid aside his papers to thank the Judge and was directed to proceed.

Quietly he reported the facts of the old condemnation case and the award to the O’Malleys. He reviewed the City’s successful move to reopen the matter after fifteen years. His voice ran smooth and confidently, as if he had been in court every day for six months. Reassured and able to relax, Larry scanned the row of chairs behind the back railing for Cy O’Malley. Cy’s face was dough white, and he pulled at the blond strand of hair that fell over his eye.

Judge Lehman’s voice interrupted the smooth cadence of Arthur’s phrases, and Larry abruptly turned around. The first hurdle. Every case argued here was two-way. The Court questioned sharply. No lawyer was allowed to present his appeal precisely as it had been planned.

“Mr. Bemrose, have you considered the rule that limits us to questions of law?” Judge Lehman incisively asked. “You know, of course, that orders granting new trials are usually in the discretion of the Supreme Court. We do not ordinarily decide such questions.”

Larry waited confidently, knowing that Arthur had foreseen this objection.

“There is a well-recognized exception in cases where the error the new trial has been granted to correct is an error of law,” he pointed out. “I shall attempt to demonstrate that the decision below was based on the power of the Court to grant a new trial, a question of law.”

Judge Lehman nodded. “You may attempt to satisfy the Court on that issue.”

Three of the Judges moved forward attentively in their chairs. A fourth poured a spoonful of medicine, swallowed it, and killed the taste with a square of chocolate he kept in his drawer.

In preparation for this appeal Bemrose had studied original historic sources--the old City Charter, the ancient proceedings of the Land Office commissioners, and long-forgotten cases on the construction of water grants. In a few weeks he had made himself an expert on commerce and navigation history in the State and knew by heart the reports that the commissioners had made to the legislature in 1811, the old diaries and letters of barge captains as well as the more recent technical reports by waterway engineers. Steeped in the history of the State’s canals, waterways, and harbors, Arthur had concluded that the clause providing for recapture by the State of Cy’s waterfront property meant something quite different from what it said. The State, or its agent, the City, did have the right to recapture such property for the price originally paid the owner. _But only if such property were used by the State for navigation and commerce._ That was the implied principle which he now brought to the attention of the Court. That was what the elder statesmen who had drawn the old City Charter clearly stated and what the land commissioners had relied upon for their authority when they drew the clause used in the O’Malley grant, he explained.

Bemrose clarified for the Judges the reasoning behind this principle. Before railroads and concrete highways had been developed, the plodding canal boat was the only reliable carrier of goods and produce between the Atlantic seaboard and the West. The Erie Canal, opened in 1825, not only peopled the Middle West, but made New York City, which was then a second- or third-rate port, the leading harbor of the world. The Canal provided the only highway between the Atlantic and the Great Lakes that did not necessitate crossing mountains. Commerce, life blood of the new nation, depended on navigation, and the lawmakers had recognized this, Bemrose pointed out.

He explained to the Court that as early as 1769, Benjamin Franklin, recognizing that the Canal was a more efficient carrier of freight than any road then existing, urged more canal building, and George Washington carried on the fight. Early decisions of the Federal Supreme Court gave the public interest in commerce and navigation precedence over the old and respected principle of _eminent domain_. The only time the State could take property without just compensation and the only time that waterfront owners could be deprived of their property rights was in order to promote commerce and navigation, Bemrose emphasized. This had been decided early in the country’s history, and draftsmen of the old City Charter, steeped in that thinking, had limited the recapture of waterfront land to property that was necessary for navigation and commerce. The State could destroy riparian rights without compensation only on one condition, Bemrose maintained, and only when the recapture of the land benefited navigation and commerce.

Citing historic sources and documenting his argument with early law, Bemrose made this point again and again.

Judge Lehman rubbed his palm along the smooth surface of the table and said, “Having inserted the recapture clause in the O’Malley grant according to the provision of the Old Charter, the language of the grant will be limited to the purpose in the Charter even though that language is not repeated in the grant. Is that your point, Mr. Bemrose?”

The Court understood. Arthur had clarified with exceptional lucidity the complex issue. There would be no misstatement or confusion as to his premise.

“That is my point, your Honor.” Satisfied, he settled behind his mustache. “Since the condemnation was for a street improvement and not for a harbor or waterway, it was not a taking for commerce and navigation.” It was his clinching argument, and he paused. “The clause in the O’Malley grant could not, as a matter of law, have been applied to cut down the award to my client.”

Judge Lehman nodded. His hearing box remained before him undisturbed while the lawyer for the other side, agitated, hurried through the pages of his brief.

Larry turned around and saw Cy O’Malley nudge his neighbor.

At the end of the row reserved for visitors in back Larry spotted Janice Baldwin. She sat forward tensely, her gloved hands clasping the railing. Larry tried to stare her into awareness across the vast room, but her solemn wide eyes were riveted on Bemrose. With the brown fur of her coat gathered around her shoulders, she blended into the oak of the room, another fine ornament in the expanse of golden carving.

Suddenly Judge Lehman’s voice, questioning Arthur, acquired a new, hard tone: “... how the question was not argued in the old case?” Larry had missed the beginning, but it was obvious that Judge Lehman suspected that the old case might have been dishonestly tried. In the days when Cy’s father had received the award, Tammany was corrupt. Maybe the O’Malleys’ lawyer had made a deal with the unscrupulous City lawyers to forget the recapture clause.

“Why didn’t anyone argue the point?” Judge Lehman demanded. “From what you’ve said so far, it evidently takes considerable arguing. If your point is well taken, which of course is undecided----”

The tic started in Arthur’s lip. Larry knew that unless he could explain why the point had not previously been argued the Court would affirm without opinion, reasoning that a new trial might be a good thing if the old one had been fixed.

“If the Court please, I cannot speak from personal knowledge,” Bemrose’s voice flowed on unobstructed. “When this case was tried, I was not a member of the bar. Our trial counsel and opposing counsel in the old case are both dead. My client was a child, and his father, who received the award, died ten years ago.” His clear, assured tone denied the hopelessness of what he was saying.

“When this case was tried, the law consisted in what the lower court had decided in the Upper New York Bay case,” he pointed out. “In that case the recapture clause was declared null and void regardless of the purpose of taking. The reasons are given on page thirty-four of my brief. Both sides in this case apparently had agreed that the recapture clause was worthless, and saw no point in arguing it. Have I--” Arthur’s speech played the old trick, and a quiet rocked the room. “Have I answered your Honor’s question?” he continued confidently.

“You have at least been logical.” Judge Lehman smiled.

He had saved his case. From the back row Cy wordlessly cheered. Old Ambrose Dane shelfed his lower lip in approval, and whispered to Tom Newton behind his hand.

“If I were standing--” Bemrose gestured expressively. “I must ask your Honor to recognize the Respondent’s counsel.” The Judges stirred amiably in their chairs.

Larry asked Bemrose to excuse him as the Assistant Corporation Counsel set about to refute the appeal. Hurrying to the back of the room, he slipped into an empty chair next to Janice.

The blue puffs showed under her eyes. She had been crying. Larry took her hand in wordless comfort.

“It went fine,” he reassured her. “He got over the two big hurdles. I think they’ll reverse.”

The tears started again, and her hand shook in his.

“He proved that he can do it,” Larry said.

She sobbed out loud, and the man next to her looked around.

“You saw him come in?”

She nodded dumbly.

“It looks worse than it is,” Larry said. “He gets around all right. You’ll see. Wait for us outside.”

She motioned Larry to follow her out of the courtroom and in the waiting room explained to him that she couldn’t stay until Arthur was through. She was making the five o’clock train back to the city. She had to get to Washington that night, and had a plane reservation from New York at nine.

“But he’ll want to see you, Janice. When I tell him you were here----”

She held up the stiff, sharp hands.

“He’ll be so happy you were.”

Her smooth dark head fell forward over the thick arm of the chair, and she pressed her eyes into the leather. Larry put his arm around her shoulder. “I hate to see you go back alone.”

She bravely rearranged her features.

“He’ll be wondering what has happened to you,” Janice said. “You’d better go back in there.”

“You’re sure you don’t want him to know?” Larry smoothed the dark straight strands of hair along her cheek.

Janice shook her head. “I’ll be in New York next week. I’ll call you.”

Larry followed her through the marble rotunda to the door. She looked small and lost among the massive columns.

“How did you know about today?” he asked.

“Tom Newton. I met him on the train coming up from Washington.” She reached up and clung to Larry’s lapels. “I was a fool to make the trip. I should have known when you told me not to come to New York----”

He kissed her. “He’ll feel fine if the Court decides for him. It’s going to set him up. Today isn’t a bad day to hang around----”

Miserably she shook her head, and her eyes were soft and damp. Larry figured she wasn’t crying for the wounded she may have left behind her in China, but for her own private casualty here at home.

* * * * *

During the remainder of the Corporation Counsel’s argument, Larry sat in the back of the courtroom with Cy O’Malley. Cy’s baby face had lost its roundness, and his blue eyes were mute, as the City’s small, blond lawyer, whose irregular features looked as if they had been torn out of paper, replied to Bemrose’s argument. The lawyer’s response lacked conviction. The more he argued, the more cumbersome and unnecessary it seemed to rouse the gray-bearded O’Malley judgment from its fifteen year slumber. It appeared impractical to indulge the City in its “second guess,” as Bemrose had called it, and reopen litigation that long had been considered final. Apparently Arthur felt no threat in his opponent’s argument. When the other lawyer finished, Arthur waived a reply, although it was only ten minutes of six, and the Court did not adjourn until six o’clock. Confident that the Judges had grasped his point, he shrewdly decided to rest the case. Larry saw Cy’s relief when it was over and they went up front to help Arthur collect his papers.

“Nice going,” Cy said. “I think you nailed them.”

Arthur greeted them looking rested and content. “Help me out of here, will you, Larry?” He bent over to pick up his crutches which lay on the carved stretcher of the table. “I’d like to see Tom Newton before he gets away.”

Newton was waiting outside with John Elias, the Assistant Corporation Counsel, and A. Atherton Clark and Ambrose Dane, both of whom were prominent trial lawyers.

Clark, cold as the black and white tile of the entrance hall, held out his hand. “Beautiful legal questions. A very satisfying case,” he said, congratulating Bemrose.

Ambrose Dane, hearty and bearlike, hovered over him. “I kept thinking of the Old Man. He would have enjoyed that argument. Too bad he couldn’t have been up there on the bench.”

The Assistant Corporation Counsel knifed his way into the group. “You did a fine job. I think I’m licked.”

Tom Newton, who fringed the gathering and was waiting for Bemrose, eyed the young lawyer tolerantly. He came in and put his arm around Arthur’s shoulder. “You didn’t forget how in the Army. That was--” He circled his thumb and finger. “But on the nose.”

He motioned to an empty corner across the hall, and Arthur hobbled after him.

A few minutes later Larry heard Arthur say, “Next week, Tom. Not later than Wednesday. And thanks.”

A white-haired woman with a familiar smile embraced Arthur. Larry hadn’t seen Mrs. Bemrose for twenty years, but there was no mistaking the inclusive smile. He left them alone and when he returned, the other lawyers had gone.

“I came early and heard the whole thing,” Mrs. Bemrose reported.

Larry responded to her ample, outgoing spirit. “It was a tough case. He did a fine job.”

“You’ve been good to him. You’ve helped him--” She pressed Larry’s arm by way of thanks.

“His father would like to see him. He didn’t want to come to Court.” Her tired eyes lifted to the glass dome of the rotunda. “Come to supper. You’ll only have to stay a little while.”

Larry wondered whether the day had been too much for Bemrose. The trip up, the strain of the argument, the hand-shaking and standing afterward, and now the family.

But Arthur’s voice was crisp and reassuring. “Tom has a swell job for me in Washington. A war job. He wants me to come down and see him about it next week.”

So that’s why Newton had hung around. To see whether Arthur could handle whatever work he had lined up for him.

“How about letting us take _you_ out to dinner?” Larry asked Mrs. Bemrose. “I haven’t been out with a good-looking girl for years.”

Laughing, she stood aside and let Arthur through the bronze doors. Her big head swept back proudly.

“I hope they’ll take him in Washington,” she told Larry. “I hope they’ll find some interesting war work for him.”

Larry noted that she seemed composed when Arthur fumbled for the rung of his crutches. If she were crying inside, Larry never knew. Apparently Mrs. Bemrose kept her tears where they didn’t show.

_Chapter 22_

Larry took Bemrose to Washington the next week to hear about the job that Tom Newton had in mind for him. They entered one of the newest and most dazzling of the government tombs, rode to the floor of Tom’s office, and started down the endless corridor. Larry felt as if he were walking into his own burial place, with the white hall a collapsible telescope, and the exit of the corridor a side road into the hereafter. It was a future world requiring neither ascent nor descent but approached on the same level at which one had lived. Elations and frustrations rotated unhappily in the tube of white stone, until they seemed more important than when first they had been laughed or ached over. Larry thought of how an acorn dropping on an awning sometimes detonates like a bullet.

The rubber tips of Arthur’s crutches grabbed the stone floor. Obsessed with memories of his first trip to the Capitol under Judge Haynes’ tutelage, Arthur kept quoting the Old Man. Either Bemrose was aging, Larry decided, and reached into the past for gifts the present withheld from him, or the Old Man’s restless spirit demanded a hearing.

“Whenever we walked through the Capitol, he’d never let me stop to read the inscriptions on the statues. I think he envied them,” Arthur said. “Do you know the one of Marshall on the west terrace of the Capitol? I used to feel like taking off my hat when I saw it, but he’d rush me past. I don’t know why he should have felt that way about Marshall.”

“Competition, maybe.”

“We used to drop into the old Supreme Court. When it was still in the Capitol,” Arthur added. “I think he hated those staring marble busts of the Justices. He never had much use for tradition, you know. He said the past was something we couldn’t help. His theory was that you didn’t have to like the past. You only had to put up with it.

“Now he’s the past.” Bemrose sighed. “I can never get it through my thick head. Some mornings when I walk into the office, or when I’m on a trip to Washington like this, I expect to see him coming at me, his black robes billowing around that skinny frame of his.”

“As long as his ideas are still good, he’s really not the past,” Larry said.

“They weren’t always good. That’s the trouble. He was often stinking anti-social.” The rubber thumped the stone dully as Arthur beat out his re-evaluation of Haynes. “He smothered his reactionary views in charm, and people forgot to take offense.”