False Gods Read Free Page B

should fall in with all of Roger's schemes. "Look after Castledale and Kitty and the boy. If I don't starve, I'll send for them when I can provide them with a home there. Explain this to Kitty tactfully after I've gone."
    A cousin of his mother's had married a well-to-do New York landlord, Basil Tremont, a generous victor, who had answered Roger's letter of inquiry with the assurance that he would help him at least to a modest start.
    Roger's cousin had a small office on Canal Street, where he and one old clerk and an even older female secretary handled the Tremont family affairs, largely the collection of tenement rents, and he accorded his Southern relative a narrow cubicle, used for file storage, as his "chambers." But it was free, and although there was no question of Roger's getting his hands on the family law business, he did receive an occasional crumb from that ample table in the form of a small eviction or lease renewal. Furthermore, Basil Tremont was good enough to tout these services to the guests at the Sunday night suppers in Union Square to which Roger was occasionally invited, and he thus picked up some modest retainers, enough, anyway, to pay for his bedroom in Houston Street and his simple meals.
    He used his plentiful spare time, both day and night, in studying New York cases and statutes in the library of the Manhattan Law Institute. He had no interest in the social scene or in public amusements. He heartily despised the whole dirty brown noisy city with its Yankee twangs and its Yankee familiarities. He had come north for one purpose only, the recoupment of his fortune, and his eye was rarely averted from that goal. But he perfectly realized that this could not be accomplished by law alone, and he was careful to cultivate the few important men he met at the Tremont Sunday gatherings.
    The talk there, however, was dominated by the women, whose importance Roger recognized but did not exaggerate. Mrs. Tremont, a vast cheerful bundle of flesh and red velvet, could get anything she wanted from her pale bald spouse, but she wanted things only for herself and her offspring. She and her fellow matrons had not the smallest interest in business or politics; the power they sought and achieved was purely domestic. They had, of course, the power to ruin a man with their tongues, but any such danger was easily averted by a routine exhibition of Southern gallantry. They were rather titillated at meeting a handsome and impoverished rebel officer; they enjoyed the idea of exercising a beneficent open-mindedness in their affable condescension to a safely defeated enemy. If Roger had been free, he might even, with a skillful play of his few trumps, have secured the hand of one of their well-endowed daughters. As it was, he had to direct his principal attention to the men.
    The City Club, a large pink-and-white building on Madison Square with a membership of lawyers, judges and politicians, was more useful to him. The ever-generous Basil had treated him to a year's guest membership, and it was an easy enough matter for a former Confederate officer, dropping into the big bar with the oak-paneled walls and potted palms, to fall into friendly converse with those members who had served in the Union Army and evoke the bond between fighting men that never quite includes even the bravest noncombatant. Roger, in postmortems of battles, was always careful to avoid any criticism of Union strategy. His cool good manners, unaffected by the few drinks he permitted himself, made him popular, and after his year's free membership was up, he found it renewed for another without dues. When he went to the treasurer's office to inquire about this, he was politely shown a minute from a meeting of the board of directors stating that Colonel Carstairs could pay dues "when his ship came in."
    Roger decided to accept this. He would not have done so in Richmond, but then Richmond was reality, a quality he was not willing to accord New York.
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