Джон Апдайк - Memories of the Ford Administration

“I am a diligent lad from the Tuscaroras, Miss Hubley, and claim to be no more than that. In the glitter of this gracious city, I cast a dull but faithful gleam.” Yet he seated himself — in an armless oval-seated side chair with tapered curved legs whose neo-Grecian fluting was echoed in the rails of the back, which had a lyre-shaped splat — near the end of the damask-covered pink Chippendale sofa where Grace Hubley shimmeringly perched. An iridescent silk shawl of Persian pattern, such Oriental fabrics being fashionable in Europe ever since Napoleon’s Egyptian foray, permitted glimpses in the warm candlelight of her plump shoulders’ ivory skin and of the powdered embonpoint the décolletage of her high-waisted gown of well-set silks revealed. He bent low, placing his beaver hat, with its own fashionable iridescence, between his boots, his Philadelphia boots, of a thinner black leather than his Lancaster boots, their tops cut diagonally in the hussar style.

“You disclaim, to elicit flattery,” his new companion gaily accused him. “You have lost your mountain manners, if ever you had them.”

“My dear mother is a woman of some graces, who loved the old poets as well as the Bible, and my father a man of sufficient means to send me to college, though he missed my strong back on his farm. He began on the road to prosperity as the sack-handler in a frontier trading post; in his youth in County Donegal, his own father had deserted him, and when the dust of our Revolution settled he quit his dependency on his dead mother’s brother, and sailed.” Lest this self-description which he impulsively confided seem boastful, he added, “But the simple Christian virtues remain my standard of success, and when my second term in the Assembly ended three years ago last June, I with great pleasure surrendered all political ambition.”

Mary Jenkins loyally protested, “Yet the Judge Franklin case has kept you in the public eye, and there is talk,” she explained to her sister, giving their guest the dignity of the third person, “of the Federalists putting up Mr. Buchanan for the national Congress in next year’s election. And just the other day he and Mr. Jenkins and James Hopkins were appointed to form a committee to advise our Congressman on the question of slavery in Missouri.”

Buchanan hastened to disclaim, “Lancaster is a small city, Miss Hubley, and a few dogs must bark on many street corners.”

“I assume you will advise to vote against extending slavery; I think it wicked, wicked , the way those planters want to spread their devilish institution over all of God’s terrain!”

Such fire of opinion, the tongue and heart outracing reason, attracted Buchanan, and alarmed him. “We do so advise, Miss Hubley, though in terms less fervently couched than your own. Myself, since the Constitution undeniably sanctions slavery, I see no recourse but accommodation with it pro tempore . A geographical compromise, such as rumor suggests Senator Clay will soon propose, to maintain the balance of power within the Senate, would, I am convinced, allay the sectional competition that has heavily contributed to the present panic of selling and suing. For unless the spirit of compromise and mediation prevail, this young nation may divide in three, New England pulling one way and the South the other, and the states of middling disposition shall be left as ports without a nation to supply their commerce. Disunited, our fair States may become each as trivial as Bavarian princedoms!”

Grace said, theatrically addressing her sister, “Oh, I do adore men, the sensible way they put one thing against another. Myself, Mr. Buchanan, I cannot calmly think on the fate of those poor enslaved darkies, the manner in which not only the men in the fields are abused but the colored ladies also — I can not , it is a weakness of my nature, I cannot contemplate such wrongs without my heart rising up and yearning to smite those monstrous slavedrivers into the Hades that will be their everlasting abode!”

Buchanan tut-tutted, “Come now, the peculiar institution presents more sides than that. You speak as a soldier’s daughter, Miss Hubley, but here in peaceable Pennsylvania we take a less absolute view. The slavedrivers, for one, are themselves driven, by circumstances they did not create. Chattel slavery, though I, too, deplore its abuses, is as old as warfare, and to be preferred to massacre. In some societies, such as that of ancient Greece, the contract between master and slave allowed the latter considerable advantages, and our Southern brethren maintain that without the institution’s paternal guidance the negro would perish of his natural sloth and inability. At present, our friends in the South see their share of the national fortune dwindling; much of the urgency would be removed from the territorial question, it is my belief, if new territories — to the south of the South, so to speak — were to be mercifully removed”—he made a nimble snatching gesture, startling both members of his little audience — “from the crumbling dominions of the moribund Spanish crown. Cuba, Texas, Chihuahua, California — all begging to be plucked.”

He settled back, pleasantly conscious of the breast-fluttering impression his masculine aggressiveness had made. Now he directed his attention, with a characteristic twist of his head, specifically toward Mrs. Jenkins, who had remained standing, held upright by the strands of hostessly duty. “But I mustn’t tarry, delightful though tarrying be,” he said. “Inform Mr. Jenkins, if you will, that the Columbia Bridge Company matter took some hopeful turns under my prodding, and if he wishes to be apprised of their nature, and of the distance I estimate we have left to travel, he will find me in my chambers tomorrow all day.”

“I will indeed inform him,” the excellent wife agreed. “But please, Mr. Buchanan, you shame me by not letting me offer you a beverage, and then a spot of supper. My sister and I were to sit down to a simple meal — salt-pork roast, fried potatoes, dried succotash, and peach-and-raisin pie. It would brighten our dull fare if you could join us, and would keep you out of the taverns for an evening.”

“People exaggerate my tavern attendance, even in my unattached days,” Buchanan said, in mock rebuke, and with a jerk of his head rested his vision on Miss Hubley’s alabaster upper chest, bare of any locket or sign of affection pledged. His attachment to Ann nagged at him awkwardly; he should be speeding from this house and presenting at the Colemans’ door live evidence of his safe return from Philadelphia.

“Oh, do stay with us,” Grace Hubley chimed. “It would be a kindness even after you are gone, for sisters continually need something to gossip about.”

Between folded wings of peacock-shimmery Persian silk, the woman’s powdered skin glowed in his imperfect vision, which needed for focus constant small adjustments of his head. “I would be honored to serve as helpless fodder for your sororal interchange,” he pronounced, “but there can be no question of imposing my presence for the length of a meal. I will, Mrs. Jenkins,” he announced, relaxing into conviviality, “upon your kind urging have tea to keep Miss Hubley company, and a thimbleful of port to keep company with the tea.”

When Mrs. Jenkins, to arrange these new provisions, left the room, its glittering glow seemed to intensify; the purring blaze in the fireplace — its mantel in the form of a Grecian temple carved with fluted pillars and classic entablature of which the frieze was decorated with acanthus garlands in bas-relief — added its flickers and flares to the eddying web of candlelight. Cocking her head in unconscious imitation of Buchanan’s own, Miss Hubley said prettily, since he had referred to his attached state, “I have heard the most wonderful things concerning Miss Coleman. She is as original as she is beautiful, and her family of an unchallenged prominence.”