A Legacy (19 page)

At times, rather wistfully, Julius talked to Sarah of remarriage. He still saw himself as tragically widowed, and had come to look upon the married state as a haven of liberty and safety. He had got it into his head that if only he produced a mother he would be allowed to take his child abroad and live with her there forever after; and one year some such project actually came up. He told Sarah he had decided to get married to a Frenchwoman of his own age with a child of her own. Madame Dupont her name was, or so Sarah believed she had heard him say; he conveyed that he had known her for some time, and said that with her he would be comfortable. Sarah took this to mean money.

The old Merzes pounced on the fact to their advantage, the existence of another child. Julius told Sarah that this was most awkward as Madame Dupont—was it Dupont?—

for whom life no longer quite held all it used to hold, was looking forward precisely to making a home for her own girl.

This had puzzled Sarah with her sense of house property. "She cannot be looking to you for one, Jules? Did I hear you say she had an hotel Avenue du Bois? and a place at Cannes?"

"You see," Julius said, "it hasn't been convenient for her so far to have the child with her."

"Oh the convent system," said Sarah. "Clara Felden once explained to me about that."

"En nourrice —" said Julius.

"Those Catholics," said Sarah, dismissing it from her mind.

The step-sister alarm at Voss Strasse put a quick end to Julius's plan. For a long time afterwards, however, he remained insistent and quite sad, telling Sarah how comfortable they would all have been. Grandpapa, betraying an awareness of money passing, increased the amount of it that was finding its way into Julius's bank.

"You know what?" Edu said to his wife, "it's now up to what it was before Melanie's second christening, and he's only one now."

"Your words," said Sarah, "are food for thought."

When Julius and Sarah both were fifty, Voss Strasse staged a joint celebration. The idea was thought to have originated with Gottlieb.

Their birthdays fell within a few months of each other. Sarah had believed Jules to be about a year or two older than herself, a view that was not generally shared; Julius had not envisaged the question of her age at all, though if asked would readily have given her a decade more. Voss Strasse had kept count.

"Perhaps the Eumenides were rather like the Merzes," said Sarah.

Julius looked at her with distaste. "Must we?" he said, "do we have to?"

"Attain to this noticeable age? We must. And we have." "Not I," said Julius. "Not until July." "It's in the Kreuz-Zeitung/' said Edu. "Milestones." "This fete —" said Julius.

"You will be hard put to cling to your conviction, Jules dear," Sarah said.

As they came up the stairs the number ^J \J large and round greeted them from everywhere. Festooned with paper garlands, framed by leaves of extraordinary deadness, gloss and durability, in icing, in marzipan, in electric candles, in candied fruit; 5 and o cut out in tin foil and wired between the antlers of the nineteen-ender stag sent, not shot, by Max from his Silesian estate, a trophy that reclined on the carpet in the antechamber at the foot of an altar of offerings, attentions to Merz from Merz connections—poultry in their feathers, hares in fur, strings of partridge, a dozen brace of this and a dozen brace of that, crayfish clambering weakly through damp seaweed, Westphalia hams, snake-lengths of smoked eel, great glistening lumps of sheer boned goose flesh sewn into its own faultless skin, five-pound tins of caviar afloat in silver coolers, Strasbourg terrines large as bandboxes, hothouse asparagus thick as pillars, fifty plover's eggs in a nest of bronze twigs, and rising Pelion upon Ossa, tier on tier, crested at the apex by the plumes of massed heads of pineapple, corbeille upon box on box on case on satined case, Port and Havanas, Arabian Mocha, Smyrna figs, grapes in cotton wool, Turkish delight, marrons glaces, Sacher cake and Karlsbad plums. The presents proper were laid out in the ballroom; and through the salons to the dining room there stretched a buffet displaying the substances of the antechamber at a stage nearer to, indeed already surpassing, the customary degrees of comestibility. Supremes and Fondants, Velours and Claires, Masques and Glazes, en Bellevue, en Chartreuse, en Savarin, en Bouquetiere, Sure-leves and Richelieus, Figaros and Maintenons, Niagaras and

Metternichs and Miroites—en Grenadin; en Favorite; en Chambertin; en Financiere; en Chasse, en Croise, en Frappe, en Triple-Eau, en Glissade, en Diademe; en Sainte-Alliance, en Belvedere, en Ballonne, en Demi-Deuil and Demidoff: Gramonts, Chimays, Souvaroffs, Albufera and Tivoli.

"There's a corner of France for you, Baron," said a guest.

"By way of the Eastern Empire," said Sarah.

"I beg your pardon?"

Henrietta, dressed as Hermes, recited some verse in honour of the celebrees; Grandpapa made a speech that began with nel mezzo del cammin and ended in safe harbour. Both were almost word perfect. Their efforts had been composed for them by the Poet Jubilate, a literary gentleman, now of advanced age himself, who had officiated at such functions in certain Berlin circles as long as anybody present could remember. This status was nonpro, that is he did not publish (although some of his vers de circon-stances occasionally found their way into the social columns) but was rewarded in the manner of some eminent consultants at the door by an enveloped honorarium changing hands between him and the master of the house. At the end of the day another well-known face appeared, and presents, food and buffet were cumbersomely photographed from under a black veil.

It was at the end of that year that Sarah set about to pay her husband's debts for the last time. During the same winter their youngest girl was caught having tea in a public place alone with a young man, a trotting-horse trainer from a nearby course. The girl, not yet fifteen, was alive to the enormity of her conduct and relieved rather than anything else by being packed back to school in mid-holiday, but Sarah who had wished to meet the man—a near-gentleman found to have been dismissed for laziness and betting—felt she had seen a ghost.

Once she had completed her arrangements, she settled down to waiting for what she knew was bound to come. She foresaw the mechanics; saw that her course would not be popular, was convinced of its justice and necessity, and a little concerned about the fascination it revealed itself to hold for her. Months, a year, another year, passed in the expectation of this full-dressed shape, this half-conjured future, and as she waited it was not always with composure. Once or twice she believed it to be imminent; often, she hoped so; but when one morning in May Edu came home from the club having left behind him that enormous IOU, when he came through the door into her room to tell her, she realized she had been certain it would not be for that summer. The temptation came to her that she could still leave everything unhappened—quickly take out the cheque-book, write the figure, bid Edu to be gone, see him streak out—and she in her light room with her pictures and the tray, the tea hardly less warm than before. . . . What she said was, "Will you please go away now, I want to get dressed; I shall be ready to speak to you in half an hour."

Everything thereafter took place much as she had envisaged it. But that long rehearsal did not spare her the emotions of the performance, step by step, and the stale-ness, the sense of deja-couru, did not lessen the indignity of the stings. One or two points surprised her; the length of the unrolling—there was so much more of everything: conferences, talk, paperwork, waiting, waiting for the courts; and it was spread over more time. And she was baffled also by the tenacity of hope; she had believed to have discounted Edu, yet when Edu showed himself without a shred of either grit, grasp or change, she felt desolate.

When all was over they went abroad as she had also known they would. Beyond that point she had not looked, and she became alarmed at once by the sudden and utter flatness that encompassed her. Edu moping at the villa was offensive; when he was gone, she cast about for a way of keeping herself running sensibly, and decided to pro-

vide the necessary astringents for her life. Two facts came to her aid—her recent dealings had left her with a taste for the workings of finance; it was now the 1900s, and the prices of the Impressionists were going up. Sarah was still a very rich woman; a share of Kastell Aniline profits came to her annually; her sources of information were excellent; she trusted her own skill. She left the South for Paris with no expectations and two resolutions, to make a certain sum that winter in the stock market and to buy a Monet, a large garden scene, already negotiated for by the Musee du Luxembourg.

Late love has this in common with first love, it is again involuntary. In the event, Sarah did make a large sum of money by playing the French Rente; she did not get the Monet, but she bought another, and she also bought a Seurat, yet these achievements hardly weighed with her at all: if she had chosen them to keep herself employed, diverted and absorbed; employed, diverted and absorbed she was that winter—rapt in discovery, borne on laughter, freshly, involuntarily, magically absorbed. She was also something else, she was happy.

"Do you know anyone who can help one to get a telephone?"

"Telephone?"

"T-e-1-e-p-h-o-n-e."

"A most disagreeable instrument, I hear," said Julius.

"Obviously you're no help."

"A friend of mine has one. Somebody put it in for her as a surprise. It is used for ordering oysters when it's too late for sending a petit bleu, But the petit bleu is quicker."

"Extraordinary housekeeping. Your friend could hardly be willing to wrench it off her wall and give it to me? We must get our benighted Embassy to do something. You must speak to them."

"I?"

"The brother-in-law of the Foreign Minister."

"Oh, poor Conrad; I don't think of him in that way."

"It's the way that best bears thinking about. They say it takes three weeks normally. I want it now."

"The telephone?"

"Yes, Jules."

"Whatever for?"

"To talk. To talk to one's friends in the morning."

"Sarah?" said Julius. "You are not expecting me to talk to you on the telephone?"

"No," Sarah said. "Not you."

A few days later on she said, "I've got it. By my bed. It's heaven. Though when they cut you off, it's not. I don't know what I ever did without it."

"That invention—?"

"Among other things."

"I've come to say good-bye," said Julius.

"Where are you off to?"

"Berlin of course."

"Haven't you just been?"

"Not since the New Year."

"I've hardly seen you."

"No," said Julius.

"When will you be back?"

"In February. I hope."

"Oh yes," said Sarah.

"You see, I didn't go the last time Henrietta had a cold. And now there's Edu's being away too."

"Edu is doing very well on Corfu," she said quickly.

"Yes," said Julius.

"I may ask you to do one or two things for me up there."

"You are not going?"

"You know I've shut the house, Jules."

"You could stay at Voss Strasse. I do."

"I have no intention of going away," said Sarah.

Most of the men stood. Talk hung fire. Sarah's dinners usually went at a certain clip, but this one was not under way. Of course there were no cocktails. Julius pulled his watch. "Sarah," he said taking an intimate's privilege, "who are we waiting for?"

"Someone you don't know. She is often late."

"A fault," said Julius.

Sarah smiled absently.

Presently the butler came in and spoke to her. "Not at all," she said, "it doesn't matter in the least."

A rustle went through her guests, most of whom were French.

Julius pulled his watch again.

"Well what time is it?" said Sarah.

There was a flurry by the door, the swish of thrown-off furs, and there came forward into this overlighted room a young woman in her early beauty. Her dress was the colour of night-deep violets, her face was a clear oval, veiled and alight with an expression of untouchable serenity, and there was snow in her hair.

"Caroline—" said Sarah, and rose.

"Darling—monstrous." Her look, like her voice, was quick, warm, yet it was withdrawn; the regard was unseeing. "How can you ever forgive me? That endless Brahms—you know the way that never stops. And then of course no cabs, there's a blizzard—" She faced the company with easy, absent animation.

They closed on her in a general converging twitter. "And what did you make of the Debussy?" "Do you suppose we'll all soon be used to it?" "I must confess it hurts my ears." "Ne preferiez-vous done pas une vraie melodie?" "Cependant le Naturalisme —" "Une salle de concert n'est pourtant pas un bord de merl" "Peut-etre Madame est Wagnerienne?" "Have you seen the Ballet?" "Which night are you at the Opera?" "Do you skate?"

Dinner was announced two times.

Julius quickly went up to her. "I believe I am taking

you in," he said. "My table," Sarah tried to say but Julius had already borne her off.

From her end, through the conversation of her neighbours, Sarah again and again looked at where they sat in a closed circle. She saw the neck and shoulders glow like fruit and marble; the shining auburn hair a little damp now though still light as feathers above the narrow band of sapphires; the still, transported face. Julius was chattering without stopping and ate nothing. She sat hugging silence, sometimes bubbling to the surface in a splash of talk. Once she picked up a truffle peel from Julius's plate and ate it.

"Dinner parties," Julius told her, "so unnecessary. Large ones. So many people eating together. The after-dinner faces—it is so unbecoming to the women."

"How like Lord Byron."

"The poet?" said Julius with the recklessness of someone trying a very long shot.

She smiled at him, all on the surface now. "Lord Byron, the poet."

When the voice behind them said, Mouton '64, she gathered herself like someone who hears the Anthem struck for an instant of respectfulness.