Edith Wharton - SSC 09 (5 page)

 
          
She
suggested, rather mysteriously, my dining with her on a particular evening,
when, as she put it, “everybody” would be out; and when I arrived she explained
that Stephen had gone to the country for the week-end, with some old comrades
from Julian’s, and that the Browns were dining at a smart night-club in
Montmartre. “So we’ll have a quiet time all by ourselves.” She added that Steve
was so much better that he was trying his best to persuade her to spend the
winter in Paris, and let him get back to his painting; but in spite of the good
news I thought she looked worn and dissatisfied.

 
          
I
was surprised to find the Browns still with her, and told her so.

 
          
“Well,
you see, it’s difficult,” she returned with a troubled frown. “They love
Stephen so much that they won’t give him up; and how can I blame them? What are
my rights, compared with theirs?”

 
          
Finding
this hard to answer, I put another question. “Did you enjoy your quiet time
with Stephen while they were at Juan-les-Pins?”

 
          
“Oh,
they didn’t go; at least Mrs. Brown didn’t—Chrissy she likes me to call her,”
Mrs. Glenn corrected herself hurriedly. “She couldn’t bear to leave Stephen.”

 
          
“So
she sacrificed Juan-les-Pins, and that handsome cheque?”

 
          
“Not
the cheque; she kept that. Boy went,” Mrs. Glenn added apologetically. Boy and
Chrissy—it had come to that! I looked away from my old friend’s troubled face
before putting my next question.
“And Stephen—?”

 
          
“Well,
I can’t exactly tell how he feels. But I sometimes think he’d like to be alone
with me.” A passing radiance smoothed away her frown. “He’s hinted that, if we
decide to stay here, they might be tempted by winter
sports,
and go to the Engadine later.”

 
          
“So that they would have the benefit of the high air instead of
Stephen?”
She coloured a little, looked down, and then smiled at me.
“What can I do?”

 
          
I
resolved to sound Stephen on his adopted parents. The present situation would
have to be put an end to somehow; but it had puzzling elements. Why had Mrs.
Brown refused to go to Juan-les-Pins? Was it, as I had suspected, because there
were
debts,
and more pressing uses for the money? Or
was it that she was so much attached to her adopted son as to be jealous of his
mother’s influence? This was far more to be feared; but it did not seem to fit
in with what I knew of Mrs. Brown. The trouble was that what I knew was so
little. Mrs. Brown, though in one way so intelligible, was in another as
cryptic to me as Catherine Glenn was to Stephen. The surface was transparent
enough; but what did the blur beneath conceal? Troubled
waters,
or just a mud-flat? My only hope was to try to get Stephen to tell me.

 
          
Stephen
had hired a studio—against his doctor’s advice, I gathered—and spent most of
his hours there, in the company of his old group of painting friends. Mrs. Glenn
had been there once or twice, but in spite of his being so sweet and dear to
her she had felt herself in the way—as she undoubtedly was. “I can’t keep up
with their talk, you know,” she explained. With whose talk could she, poor
angel?

 
          
I
suggested that, for the few weeks of their Paris sojourn, it would be kinder to
let Stephen have his fling; and she agreed. Afterward, in the mountains, he
could recuperate; youth had such powers of self-healing. But I urged her to
insist on his spending another winter in the Engadine; not at one of the big
fashionable places—

 
          
She
interrupted me. “I’m
afraid
Boy and Chrissy wouldn’t
like—”

 
          
“Oh,
for God’s sake; can’t you give Boy and Chrissy another cheque, and send them
off to Egypt, or to Monte Carlo?”

 
          
She
hesitated. “I could try; but I don’t believe she’d go. Not without Stevie.”

 
          
“And
what does Stevie say?”

 
          
“What
can he say? She brought him up. She was there—all the years when I’d failed
him.”

 
          
It
was unanswerable, and I felt the uselessness of any advice I could give. The
situation could be changed only by some internal readjustment. Still, out of
pity for the poor mother, I determined to try a word with Stephen. She gave me
the address of his studio, and the next day I went there.

 
          
It
was in a smart-looking modern building in the Montparnasse quarter; lofty,
well-lit and well-warmed. What a contrast to his earlier environment! I climbed
to his door, rang the bell and waited. There were sounds of moving about
within, but as no one came I rang again; and finally Stephen opened the door.
His face lit up pleasantly when he saw me. “Oh, it’s you, my dear fellow!” But
I caught a hint of constraint in his voice.

 
          
“I’m
not in the way? Don’t mind throwing me out if I am.

 
          
“I’ve
got a sitter—” he began, visibly hesitating.

 
          
“Oh,
in that case—”

 
          
“No,
no; it’s only—the fact is
,
it’s Chrissy. I was trying
to do a study of her—”

 
          
He
led me across the passage and into the studio. It was large and flooded with
light.
Divans against the walls; big oak tables; shaded lamps,
a couple of tall screens.
From behind one of them emerged Mrs. Brown,
hatless and slim, in a pale summer-like frock, her chestnut hair becomingly
tossed about her eyes. “Dear Mr. Norcutt. So glad you turned up! I was getting
such a stiff neck—Stephen’s merciless.”

 
          
“May
I see the result?” I asked; and “Oh, no,” she protested in mock terror, “it’s
too frightful—it really is. I think he thought he was doing a
nature morte
—lemons and a bottle of
beer, or something!”

 
          
“It’s
not fit for inspection,” Stephen agreed.

 
          
The
room was spacious, and not over-crowded. Glancing about, I could see only one
easel with a painting on it. Stephen went up and turned the canvas face inward,
with the familiar gesture of the artist who does not wish to challenge
attention. But before he did so I had remarked that the painting was neither a
portrait of Mrs. Brown nor a still-life. It was a rather brilliant
three-quarter sketch of a woman’s naked back and hips. A model, no doubt—but
why did he wish to conceal it?

 
          
“I’m
so glad you came,” Mrs. Brown repeated, smiling intensely. I stood still,
hoping she was about to go; but she dropped down on one of the divans, tossing
back her tumbled curls. “He works too hard, you know; I wish you’d tell him so.
Steve, come here and stretch out,” she commanded, indicating the other end of
the divan. “You ought to take a good nap.”

 
          
The
hint was so obvious that I said: “In that case I’d better come another time.”

 
          
“No,
no; wait till I give you a cock-tail. We all need cocktails. Where’s the shaker,
darling?” Mrs. Brown was on her feet again, alert and gay. She dived behind the
screen which had previously concealed her, and reappeared with the necessary
appliances. “Bring up that little table, Mr. Norcutt, please. Oh, I know—dear
Kit doesn’t approve of cock-tails; and she’s right. But look at him—dead beat!
If he will slave at his painting, what’s he to do? I was scolding him about it
when you came in.”

 
          
The
shaker danced in her flashing hands, and in a trice she was holding a glass out
to me, and another to Stephen, who had obediently flung
himself
down on the divan. As he took the glass she bent and laid her lips on his damp
hair.
“You bad boy, you!”

 
          
I
looked at Stephen. “You ought to get out of this, and start straight off for
Switzerland,” I admonished him.

 
          
“Oh,
hell,” he groaned. “Can’t you get Kit to drop all that?”

 
          
Mrs.
Brown made an impatient gesture. “Isn’t he too foolish? Of course he ought to
go away. He looks like nothing on earth. But his only idea of Switzerland is
one of those awful places we used to have to go to because they were cheap,
where there’s nothing to do in the evening but to sit with clergymen’s wives
looking at stereopticon views of glaciers. I tell him he’ll love St. Moritz.
There’s a thrill there every minute.”

 
          
Stephen
closed his eyes and sank his head back in the cushions without speaking. His
face was drawn and weary; I was startled at the change in him since we had
parted at Les Calanques.

 
          
Mrs.
Brown, following my glance, met it with warning brows and a finger on her
painted lips. It was like a parody of Mrs. Glenn’s maternal gesture, and I
perceived that it meant: “Can’t you see that he’s falling asleep? Do be tactful
and slip out without disturbing him.”

 
          
What
could I do but obey? A moment later the studio door had closed on me, and I was
going down the long flights of stairs. The worst of it was that I was not at
all sure that Stephen was really asleep.

 
          
  

 
          
The
next morning I received a telephone call from Stephen asking me to lunch. We met
at a quiet restaurant near his studio, and when, after an admirably chosen
meal, we settled down to coffee and cigars, he said carelessly: “Sorry you got
thrown out that way yesterday.”

 
          
“Oh,
well—I saw you were tired, and I didn’t want to interfere with your nap.”

 
          
He
looked down moodily at his plate. “Tired—yes, I’m rued. But I didn’t want a
nap. I merely simulated slumber to try and make Chrissy shut up.”

 
          
“Ah—”
I said.

 
          
He
shot a quick glance at me, almost resentfully, I thought. Then he went on: “There
are times when aimless talk nearly kills me. I wonder,” he broke out suddenly,
“if you can realize what it feels like for a man who’s never—I mean for an
orphan—suddenly to find himself with two mothers?”

 
          
I
said I could see it might be arduous.

 
          
“Arduous!
It’s literally asphyxiating.” He frowned, and then smiled whimsically. “When I
need all the fresh air I can get!”

 
          
“My
dear fellow—what you need first of all is to get away from cities and studios.”

 
          
His
frown deepened. “I know; I know all that. Only, you see—well, to begin with,
before I turn up my toes I want to do something for mother Kit.”

 
          
“Do
something?”

 
          
“Something
to show her that I was—was worth all this fuss.” He paused, and turned his
coffee-spoon absently between his long twitching fingers.

 
          
I
shrugged. “Whatever you do, she’ll always think that. Mothers do.”

 
          
He
murmured after me slowly: “Mothers—”

 
          
“What
she wants you to do now is to get well,” I insisted.

 
          
“Yes;
I know; I’m pledged to get well. But somehow that bargain doesn’t satisfy me.
If I don’t get well I want to leave something behind me that’ll make her think:
‘If he’d lived a little longer he’d have pulled it off.”

 
          
“If
you left a gallery of masterpieces it wouldn’t help her much.”

 
          
His
face clouded, and he looked at me wistfully. “What the devil else can I do?”