The Friend of Women and Other Stories by Louis Auchincloss Read Free Book Online Page A

you already someone in mind?”
    â€œNo,” she said firmly, though her denial was preceded by a distinct pause.
    â€œThen give up the idea. If you deceive Tommy in a matter so grave, there’s bound to be a dire consequence. For him, for you, for the man you select, maybe for the child. I can’t tell. All I know is that you won’t get away with it. That something always happens to people who believe that the effective concealment of a crime will wash away their guilt.”
    Alfreda subjected me to a long evaluating stare. “So in your opinion it would be a crime?”
    â€œIt would.”
    She nodded, and then suddenly smiled. “Then it will be I who goes to the lab and not what you call the stud.”
    â€œBless you, my child.”
    We discussed the subject no further, which is often the best way to handle a delicate problem. Alfreda never referred to it again, but her husband did. Unlike the husbands of Cora and Letty, he had always totally accepted and even encouraged my intimate friendship with his wife and actually chose to share it. “You give her things I can’t, Bertie,” he would tell me cheerfully. “All those books and poems you and she talk over. It’s great.” And he invited me to lunch at his downtown club to discuss, in Alfreda’s absence, an idea he had about the product of her artificial insemination.
    â€œThe big question is whether to let it be known that Alfreda has undergone this process. Our family and friends all know that I
could
sire a child. It’s just that it’s unlikely. So we could take the position that the near miracle has happened, and who would there be to deny it?”
    â€œThe imps of comedy,” I answered gravely. “They’re always on the lookout for someone trying to get away with something. People are bound to pry when they’re suspicious, and with enough prying they’re apt to come up with something. Once you’ve made an open statement about a matter like this, they’ll lose all interest in it. Believe me.”
    And Tommy did. But when, at a later date, I asked him how Alfreda had fared under the process, for I knew that in some cases it was accompanied by acute discomfort, he assured me that she had had none. But he also told me something disturbing. Alfreda had refused to tell him anything about what she had had to go through, or allow him to be with her on visits to the hospital, saying that the whole thing was a woman’s private matter and that a husband had no role but one of possible humiliation. Recalling what Alfreda had suggested to me as a very different solution to her problem, I could hardly resist the ugly suspicion that she might have implemented it.
    At any rate, she gave birth to a fine healthy boy. Everyone knew the supposed circumstances of his birth, and nobody cared, except his wise old grandmother, Mrs. Belknap, who observed to me, in her dry way, “They don’t care so long as the child turns out well. But if he doesn’t, they moan, ‘Why the dickens did I have to get into this?’ It’s easier when you can lay the blame on your own inheritance. After all, there is nothing you can do about that!”
    I did my best to smother my unpleasant suspicions, but two years later they received an unexpected gloss from Letty Bernard, who, to my distress, had been having some rather sharp differences with her husband over their joint management of some of the interests bequeathed to her by her father.
    â€œEliot seems never to tire of surprising one,” she told me on one of our Central Park walks that, lacking her father, she now sometimes took with me. “Who do you think his new best friend is? Tommy Newbold!”
    â€œWell, what’s wrong with Tommy?”
    â€œNothing! He has a heart of gold, and we all love him. But you know as well as I, Hubert, that outside of the law, the dear man has very little to offer. Face it,