Watchfires by Louis Auchincloss Read Free Book Online Page B

again!"
    "Not see Juley alone?" Annie's pout would have been an appropriate response to the request that she give up a night at the opera. "I couldn't promise you any such thing. Is a girl to have
no
fun after she's married?"
    "Do you have any conception of the danger you're in?" Dexter demanded, exasperated by her lightness. "Charley was in an absolute frenzy of jealousy when he came to the house this morning. It was all I could do to get him to listen to reason. If he blows up again, I won't be able to contain him. This thing will be all over town, and you'll be ruined."
    "Ruined?"
    "Your reputation, I mean. And how do you expect to live in a city like New York without a reputation?"
    "I was beginning to wonder how I could live in it
with
one. Have you any conception what it's like for a young woman with any spirit to live with a man as moody and thirsty as your cousin? Not to speak of the remorseless supervision of all the Handys and Fairchilds? With an aunt behind every tree and a sister behind every bush? And a brother-in-law to play the arch-snoop? What does poor little Annie have to live for?"
    "You have your child."
    "There are women, I suppose, who can live for their children. Rosalie, I dare say, is one. I am not."
    Dexter paused to consider the threat in her tone. "What are you trying to tell me, Annie?"
    She jumped to her feet in a sudden flare of temper. "Just this! That if you push me too far you'll wake up one morning to discover that Juley and I have decamped! That we've run off to..." She paused, and then flung her arms up as a destination came to her. "To Venice!"
    Dexter was beside himself. "You'd do that!" he almost shouted. "You'd go off with that cad? That greasy bounder? You care
that
much for that scribbling climber? That pompous show-off? That ... poetaster?"
    "It would be you who had driven me to find out how much I cared!"
    He saw that he would have to interrupt her game. She was having much too good a time provoking him.
    "Let's sit down and discuss this," he said in a more reasonable tone, and they both sat, or rather perched, on the edge of the ottoman. "Let me draw you a picture of what your life would be like in Venice."
    "Oh, I haven't settled on Venice."
    "Venice, Florence, Paris, it doesn't matter. To begin with, you wouldn't be received by any respectable people."
    "How dreadful!"
    "You say that now, because you take dull, respectable people for granted. You can afford to despise them. But dull respectable people can assume a very different look when they slam their doors in your face."
    "We'd see the real people. The artists and writers."
    "You mean the would-be artists and writers. The hacks. The failures. The good ones are just as anxious to get into society as anyone else. But pass that for the moment. What would you live on?"
    "Why, just what I mostly live on now, thank you very much. My own trust fund."
    "Your father has the discretion to withhold the income. How much do you think he'd pay to support you in that kind of menage? And what about little Kate? Do you think for a moment that Charley would allow his daughter to be brought up abroad by you and your ... your..."
    "My paramour!" Annie clasped her hands exultantly.
    "I can't even utter the word. And how will Bleeker react when he finds out that his ticket to society, his greatest asset, has turned herself into his greatest liability? How long do you think he'll stick?"
    "Longer than you think. You underestimate my charms."
    "I have never underestimated your charms! But the combined charms of Cleopatra and Helen of Troy couldn't hold a man like Bleeker under those circumstances!"
    "Ah, there you're wrong." Annie shook her head now with something like gravity. "Poor Juley. I think he really loves me. No, it would not be he who would be the first to crack." For several moments she contemplated her hands, folded in her lap. "You paint a dismal picture."
    "I am only trying to spare you the cruelty of such an experience."
    Suddenly,