Free The Scarlet Letters by Louis Auchincloss Page B

without telling her family. He was visibly shocked. She should have had the child, he argued.
    "But it would have been her social ruin," Vinnie protested. "She wanted to go on with her life as before, the way her ex-lover was doing. Of course, no one would have blamed him, even if it had become known."
    "
I
would have blamed him. Just as much as I blame her. Even more, perhaps, because as a man he should have been stronger against temptation."
    Vinnie debated for a moment in her mind. Was this naïveté or something finer? Had this near naked sleek animal been reserved for her alone? Her giddiness returned. "You hold that a man should keep himself as pure as a woman?"
    "If he expects it of her, yes. Why should he have any lesser obligation?"
    "And that he should be a virgin until he marries?"
    "As much as his wife, anyway."
    "But what about the old theory that he should have enough experience to initiate his bride in the rites of love?"
    "Does it take so much experience? The birds and the bees don't seem to think so."
    "They haven't been petrified by civilization. They haven't had to wear clothes."
    "You think Adam and Eve had an easier time? Of course, they had no alternative to each other. Anyway, I don't think you'll find me lacking in that respect if you marry me."
    "Heavens!" she gasped. "Is this a proposal?"
    "It would be, if there were any chance of its being accepted."
    "Too soon, too soon," she murmured, almost breathless at his precipitation. When he wasn't looking serious, he was almost too light. But there was
no
mistaking the yank at her heart. She had brought this man into her life, and she was going to have to cope with him. "I need more time, my friend. Only don't think I'm letting you off the hook. I shall remember that you have made a formal proposal."
    "It's not binding, of course, until accepted. And it must be accepted or rejected within a reasonable time. How long shall we give it?"
    "Say a year?"
    But it only took months. They were married after his graduation from law school, during the first year that he worked at Vollard Kaye. Her father, delighted at the match, supplemented Rodman's slender salary, and they were soon settled very comfortably in a charming small flat in town. Rod, as a lover, proved indeed that he had no need of earlier amatory lessons, and there seemed no cloud on their wedding bliss.
    Except a seemingly tiny one. Vinnie came to reflect that too much good luck and family approval might prove to have a faintly cloying side. One of her Vassar classmates had married a handsome Jewish boy who had helped her to her feet after a bad tumble on the Central Park skating rink. Her family shared the routine anti-Semitism of the then New York society, and his was stoutly Orthodox. Spurned by all four parents, the young couple had eloped in a frenzy of romantic delight and were promptly forgiven by both families on the birth of the first baby. Vinnie rather ruefully contrasted their Romeo and Juliet story with the heavy blanket of family congratulation that had almost stifled the pleasure of her engagement.
    And in time there was something else. Rod from the beginning of their marriage had become more like a son than a son-in-law to her father. Wasn't this exactly what she had wanted? Oh, those gift-bearing Greeks! Had she immolated herself, a latter-day Iphigenia, on the altar of her father's frustrated paternity? In bringing him the son he craved, had she lost her own position in his heart?
    Yet her marriage in every other way proved to be just what she had wanted. Rod worked joyfully and serenely in the firm and achieved not only an early partnership but the undisputed position of right hand to the man whom everyone referred to as the "chief." The year and a half that he spent in the Pacific on a destroyer only added to his glamour, and she loved reading his vivid letters aloud to her avidly listening (yes, even her mother!) family. Two little girls, in perfect health, were born to them,