The Dark Lady (21 page)

In time they began to talk before parting. She would put on a kimono and make herself a drink or nibble at a piece of fruit. David, at her request, remained naked. He would puff at a cigarette, unusual for him. He would never drink or eat.

"How can you come here so regularly?" she asked him. "I thought law firms were so demanding of their clerks."

"They are."

"Doesn't Mr. Schurman sometimes ask for you at this time?"

"He does."

"And what do you say?"

"I tell him I have an engagement which can't be broken. Which is no more than the truth."

"Does he accept that?"

"What can he do? I am perfectly willing to work at night or all weekend, and I frequently do. I even like it. Social life no longer interests me, and writing briefs keeps me from daydreaming about you."

"Darling. That's all I do at Broadlawns now. Daydream. But what would you do if Mr. Schurman absolutely insisted that you had to lunch with him and the firm's most important client next Friday?"

"I'd refuse."

"Even if he threatened to fire you?"

"Absolutely."

"But then he'd know you had a girl!"

"He wouldn't know who."

It was agreed that she should always be the first to go. Sometimes when she was dressed, combed, made up and ready to leave, he would embrace her, still naked, and then undress her, all over again, to make love once more. She began to sense that she was losing her dominance in the relationship. She also began to realize how far from satisfied he was with the status quo.

At last he started to discuss the future, a subject which she detested and feared.

"But how long can we go on this way?" he demanded. "How long can you stand it? How long can I?"

"But I want it to go on forever!"

"This deception? What will it do to us? I sometimes think there must be a portrait of me somewhere, like Dorian Gray's—perhaps the one Mother has of me in the velvet suit—that gets uglier every day."

"Oh, darling, what rot! And how like a man to have to spoil things. What we're doing isn't hurting anybody."

"Except us."

"Anyway, your poor father isn't going to last forever..."

She stopped, realizing his immediate horror. He had turned quite white, and he rose quickly to put a towel around his loins.

"It seems so dishonorable," he said in a tight voice. "To wait. To make love and wait."

"But, David, what else can we do?"

"We could tell him."

"Do you want to kill him?"

"Dad is a kind of great man in his way. He might take it all better than you think. And it would be so honest. Oh, Elesina! To think what it would be like to have you all to myself, all the time! Oh, of course, there would be shrieks and screams and horrors. It would be the worst scandal anyone had heard of in years. But it would die down eventually. People get used to anything in time. And we wouldn't stay here. We'd go away, far away, until it all blew over. Mother might go back to Dad, and everything would be basically the same as if I had proposed to you that Saturday night I met you at Broadlawns. Why the hell didn't I?"

Elesina felt giddy. In the car going back to Rye, sitting silently by Ivy, her mind tore backward and forward, peeking into this possibility, tearing lids off others. Was it not perfectly possible? Why should
she
mind scandal? Had she minded Ted Everett's divorcing her and naming Max Allerton as corespondent? And as for David ... well, hadn't he proposed it? He had money, some money anyway. They could live in Paris or Rome until things quieted down. They could have a baby. David wanted one, she knew. It might make up to him for having to leave his job and go abroad.

"I think you'd better tell me," Ivy said at last, reaching forward to run her finger up the glass between them and the chauffeur to be sure that it was closed.

"Tell you what?"

"What's on your mind. Whatever it is you're hatching. I think I can guess. You and a certain party are finding life too restricted. You want to go off on a weekend together. I've been expecting that. I don't say it's impossible. But give me time. It'll take some working out."

"I guess he wants more than that, Ivy." And she told her of David's plan.

"What do you think you'd live on?" Ivy demanded at once.

"Me? It's not my idea."

"You wouldn't have told me if you weren't flirting with it. I suppose you'll tell me David has money of his own. But I'm sure it's peanuts compared to the expectations he'd be ruining. Not to speak of
yours!
Of course, neither of you would ever see another penny of Irving's money. And what would your life be? Do you think he could stay in New York, the boy who'd run off with his own stepmother? With all those shrieking Steins and Clarksons?"

"New York's not the whole world."

"The place where you can't live is always the whole world! At least it is for a man. But all right. So David will be gallant. So you'll live in some European watering place, where nobody will care. But David will be bored. Read
Anna Karenina!
And he's one of those boyish types who won't lose his youth until he's sixty. It'll be a long time to watch over him, Elesina!"

"Oh, Ivy, don't be vile."

"I'm being practical, dearest, and you know it. You have done pretty well under my guidance. Admit it. You have a fine husband, a great fortune, a social position and a pretty blue-eyed lover. But you could lose it all with one slip."

"What do I do, Ivy? David's the one who's rocking the boat, not I."

"If you can't induce David to keep his shirt on—no, I won't say that, for I suppose you like him to take it off!" Here Ivy indulged in one of her outrageous high cackles. "Well, then, you're not the siren I took you for. Have you no tears? Can you make no scenes?"

"I've always detested that sort of woman so."

"Well, borrow a leaf from their notebook just this once. Or skip one or two rendezvous at the Althorpe. I watched him coming in the other day. If ever I saw an eager young man..."

"Oh, Ivy, shut up!"

They were turning in the gates of Broadlawns. Elesina had always loved the gliding sound of the big car as it moved over the smooth blue gravel. Now she rested back in her seat and shivered. Was it greedy to take everything that life offered, even when life seemed to press it on one? She had not yet gone wrong following Ivy. Was it not simple good sense to keep on with a winning streak? Then she thought of the pain in David's eyes, and her own became moist.

Irving Stein had now accepted the fact that he was not going to recover. He was suffering multiple small heart attacks, coming at the rate of two a week, and it was fairly certain that a larger and more decisive one could not be far away. He rarely left his wheelchair except to go to his bed, and he found himself in a state of mild, but permanent exhaustion. Yet he was surprised at his own passivity. "This was bound to come one day," a small voice kept telling him. "Now it has come. That's all."

"Isn't it sad?" he would say aloud at times, even when his nurse was in the room. "But I've had a good life," he would always add. It was a longer life, too, he never failed to remind himself, than most human beings had enjoyed—certainly a better one. A good life and a not too uncomfortable death—how much more could one ask?

Elesina was wonderful. She had given up asking people to Broadlawns and hardly left his side now except for the trips to New York to attend her course. She would read aloud to him and listen to his reminiscences; she used Ivy Trask to collect all the gossip from the big city that might amuse him. Only once, when she brushed aside a reference to his own impending demise with some banality about his "living to bury us all," did he reproach her.

"My dear girl, let it be understood once and for all that I
want
to discuss it. Death is an interesting topic, and, besides, we have much to prepare for. I had thought I was going to have time to set up our foundation, but I may have to leave that to you. My idea is that it be arranged so that you may occupy Broadlawns and keep the collection for your lifetime. Jacob Schurman will tell you just how to do it. You must consult Jacob in everything."

When Jacob Schurman came out to discuss a new will, however, Irving asked Elesina to leave them alone.

The lawyer was a small man, potbellied, with a round bald head, large snapping black eyes and an aquiline nose. His good humor, his quick wit, even his merriment were fragile guards of a temper always ready to erupt over the hissing bubbles of his impatience. He was very nervous and always had to be handling something. In his office he would move objects of gold and glass to and fro over the broad surface of his desk. Sitting now in the armchair by Irving's couch, he yanked at his watchchain and placed and replaced the pince-nez on the thin ridge of his nose.

What Irving now had to say did not contribute to his calm. "I'm going to shock you, Jacob. I propose to leave my entire estate to Elesina."

"In trust, of course."

"No, outright. To deal properly with the collection she must have full control."

"And Clara, the children, the grandchildren? We'll just forget about them? Poof? Like that?"

"Now listen to me, Jacob. You know what I've done for Clara and the boys. Together they have as much as I have."

"I question that!"

"Leaving out the collection, they have."

"And why should we leave out the collection?"

"Because I don't regard it as money. If I die before it's set up in a foundation, I want Elesina to take care of it. So she's the one who's going to need my money. Peter and Lionel have large earned income in addition to their capital, and David's going to be a successful lawyer. As for Clara, she can't spend her income now."

The throb in Jacob's voice showed the depth of his outrage. "And what guarantee will you have that Elesina will carry out your wishes? That she won't cart the whole collection, lock, stock and barrel, down to Parke-Bernet and put it on the block?"

"I trust her. Obviously, you don't. But I'm the client."

"Even trusting her, suppose she dies right after you? What becomes of the collection then? It all goes to her daughter, I suppose."

"I've thought of that. I shall ask Elesina to sign a new will when I sign mine, leaving three quarters of what I've left her to my sons. But so long as she lives, I want her to feel at liberty to dispose of the property as she sees fit."

"And to tear up her will?"

"And to tear up her will. My confidence in Elesina is complete."

Jacob seemed about to say something and then to restrain himself, but only with the greatest difficulty. When he spoke at last, it was in a dryer tone. "Then you're determined to leave the boys nothing?"

"I tell you, Jacob, they're rich!"

"The term is a relative one."

"And they'll have Clara's trust when she dies."

"It's still bitter tea to be cut off by a father."

"Well, suppose I leave them each a painting? How's that? To Lionel the Holbein of Mary Tudor. To Peter the Botticelli. To David the big Tiepolo. Plus fifty thousand apiece?"

"Has it occurred to you that they may try to upset the will?"

"Of course it's occurred to me. And Clara, too, may have a good claim. She may even be able to establish that she's my widow."

"I'm glad you're aware of that."

"But that's the very beauty of my plan, don't you see, Jacob? Whatever I do for Elesina is bound to be attacked. Lionel and Peter will go after her like tigers the moment I'm under the sod. I'm not blaming them. I know how they are. My brother, Isadore, sued my father's estate. And they'll make their mother go along with them, too. Elesina will have to come to some kind of terms in the suit. Very well. Let's see that she has a strong hand to play. I want to give her as many trumps as I can."

Jacob shook his head somberly. "I don't know that in good conscience I can draft such a document."

Irving's tone now became brusque. "You will do what your client wishes! There is nothing unconscionable about a man's leaving his estate to his widow when he has already provided for his children. You know that, Jacob! The only thing that could properly deter you would be a doubt as to my testamentary capacity. Let me submit that to a doctor's examination. Furthermore, let us have two lawyers from your office come out here as witnesses to the will. And let them spend a whole day with me—or more if they need—to satisfy themselves, by asking me every kind of question, no matter how personal, that I am perfectly sane!"

Jacob sighed. "Oh, you're sane enough, Irving. I have no doubt about that. Your only trouble is that you're in love. And you're too old to be such an ass."

"That must be a matter of opinion. Now then. Will you do the will as I say?"

"I'll think about it."

"And will you defend it? Will you act as my executor? Will you help Elesina in the battle she faces?"

Jacob's brow was puckered at this, but he seemed moved. "Would you really trust me, Irving? After what I've said?"

"Perfectly. You're a true lawyer, Jacob. Once you've taken a case, you'll give it all you've got. And now tell me something else. I expected you to make more of a plea for David. How is he doing in your office?"

"Very well indeed."

"How does he get on with you?"

Jacob paused. "Well, I like to keep a certain distance with a client's son."

"Do you think he'll make a good lawyer?"

"Oh, yes."

Irving wondered what was being withheld. "Do you like him?"

"I don't feel I really know him yet, Irving. No doubt, I shall like him when I do."

"No doubt?"

"None."

"David charms so many people. I wonder that he hasn't charmed you."

"Perhaps I don't charm that easily."

"No, you sullen dog, that's so. But has he done anything to offend you?"

"Of course not. It's just that he seems ... well, preoccupied. Impersonal, you might say. He'll never go out to lunch with any of us."

"Even you?"

"Even me. I've asked him two or three times. He's always tied up, which seems odd for a young man."