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.