Free New Yorkers by Hortense Calisher

counted back how many administrations that must have been, which President—never doubting that Olney spoke the truth. Vanity wasn’t in that hooded eye. Perspective was. Even perhaps a surely inapposite—paternity.
    “I turned it down.”
    “You…but in God’s name, why?”
    “I thought my…private arrangements—might not bear scrutiny.”
    “But—surely they already had borne—”
    “I did not wish to bring them into full view.”
    He was stunned most of all, he thought, by the conversational difference between the two centuries—and by what the preceding one’s mannerism could conceal, even from its successor’s eye. Few in public life now would openly have dared such a ménage as must have been here, or made such a serene go of its “arrangement”—and this despite all the rapines of passion, and perversion too, nowadays so common on the cocktail tongue.
    “That doesn’t sound like you, Chauncey,” he said, stern as a son who had expected better of his father.
    “It wasn’t,” he answered. “You see…Mary convinced me. Yes, she was the one who persuaded me—that it couldn’t be done. But not even the President knew that.” Olney held out his hand. “Good night, Simon, and thank you. Confidences are tiring—you may find that out one of these days. And I have to take care of myself.” He did look tired now, with dangerous hollows in his face that might not refill. But surely there was a glint in his expression still. “You see—that sudden bout of TB I had? Came on me as a middle-aged man. At just about that time.”
    While the Judge was taking this in, Chauncey pressed the buzzer on the wall. The man Proctor shortly appeared, wearing spectacles which gave him a clerkly look well suited to the house.
    “Proctor’ll drive you.”
    “Oh no, please. I’m looking forward to the walk. No, I really am, Chauncey.”
    “Grown bitter out.” Olney went to the window, peering at an outside thermometer. “What do you know, down to twenty above. But no wind.”
    “I’ll be warm enough. I need the walk.”
    Proctor helped him into his fur-lined coat and handed him the thick French-gray suede gloves which were his sisters’ half-yearly gift, doing it with a measured approval as silent-footed as his service, and as much in evidence. Proctor and his kind held this world up, or what was left of it—which was a lot. He gave Proctor a nod of approval fully exchangeable.
    “Proctor, give the Judge a pair of my earmuffs. Simon, you know that more than half the bodily heat loss is from the head?”
    He submitted, even putting them on. “Almost forgot to tell you,” he said. “Anna’s bringing round some soup, in the morning.”
    “Anna’s soup is always welcome. Not sure you can afford it though, Simon. Last time Anna brought round what she called a little meal, Proctor and I dined happily for three days.”
    So at last they came to the handshake, the good-bye, always at Chauncey’s age to be thought of as perhaps eternal. Mannix took off the earmuffs, which made his own voice sound hollow to him, but dangled them ready, like the obedient child he felt himself to be. Soup, earmuffs and the like, fathers and mothers, aunts or sisters and the like—and always this silent, ceremonious third—how many hundreds of times he seemed to have undergone this ritual departure to the raw, unaffiliated outdoors! It was part of a background Chauncey and he shared in spite of race or against it, one of a sort that the Borkans, no matter how many bets they made with the Olneys, or how many Park Avenue wives they acquired, would never have—and it was more of a human sharing than the Spanish Mendes bunch, in their pose of non-assimilation, would ever admit. Chauncey too, looking down from his height, had a gratified expression.
    Mannix turned to look long at the room, conscious that he didn’t want to leave even now. And he was owed—one question. “ Is that he on the piano? Your