The Embezzler (31 page)

So I went that night to his cabin, and the scene occurred that he has quite sufficiently related. I shall not attempt to embellish his lush paragraphs, but I will admit that he is correct in concluding that I had not realized how completely the act of love would deliver me into his power. After that night there was no further question of my not marrying Guy. Had he bade me apply a match to a fuse that would blow up "The Loon" and escape with him on a lifeboat I would have done so. In those last days of our cruise, if Teddy or Lionel dared to make a single joke about Guy, I was on them at once like a spitting cat. They soon learned to let me alone. I even tried to trap Mother into some remark that I could construe as derogatory to the Prime family so that I could jump on her, too, but she was too clever for me. She was entirely consistent in her attitude that Guy's family were all one could hope for as in-laws.

"None of the Primes were ever fat," she observed in her unexpected way. "That always seemed to me the worst thing about New York social life: the stoutness of the men and women. It may come from too little conversation and too long meals. But the Primes are civilized folk. They talk while they eat."

What could you do with a mother like that? Yet there was apt to be an uncanny relevance to everything she said. Some years later, when Guy started putting on weight, I remembered it.

Until we arrived in Paris Guy showed only his lover's side, and I lived in a state of drugged euphoria. With the announcement of our engagement, however, and preparations for the wedding, I saw a very different man emerge. Had I seen this Guy on our first meeting, he might not have exercised so strong an attraction. But it was far too late for any such considerations. Had he turned out to be the devil himself, Angelica Hyde would have been stuck.

Of course, I would have preferred the devil. I think the hardest thing that a healthy American girl can face is the discovery in her beloved of a rigid sense of the importance of social observances. Guy in Paris decided that it was time to bring me down from my cloud and to teach me to face what he considered the realities of life. What realities! The first thing I had to learn was the Prime family tree, on which he gave me, in all seriousness, a detailed lecture. The picture of such a silly topic on the lips of such a beautiful young man struck me as too ridiculous, and I interrupted him with shrieks of laughter. There was no answering mirth.

"I know it's fashionable to laugh at these things, dearest, and of course one has to in company. Nobody wants to seem stuffy. But all these social attitudes are only conventions, you know. Your friend Giulio bows to the rule that 'smart' Italian aristocrats must laugh at their ancestry, but if you ask him privately to explain his relationship to Catherine de Medici, he'll talk for an hour. Your trouble, sweetheart, is that your mother is so sincerely above these things, so genuinely intellectual, that you don't realize that underneath all the chatter most people know their family trees, if they have one, to the last twig."

This attitude was decidedly repellent to me. Not only did I reject his concept of the preoccupations of the "real" world, but I passionately rejected his concept of Mother. I told him angrily that I wasn't marrying his family tree and that I would be delighted to discover that he had been a foundling.

"Very well, I see you're in no mood for this today," he said in a mild enough tone, but with a sudden flicker of bronze in his blue stare that chilled me. "I'll come again when you are."

We had met in the sitting room of Mother's hotel suite, and now he rose. "Guy!" I exclaimed. "You don't mean you're leaving because I won't let you bore me with all those silly old Primes who are dead and buried?"

"No. I only care that you should learn about the living ones. For the most practical of reasons. When we get back to New York I expect to set up my own brokerage firm, and until I get my head above water I must depend on family business."

"You mean you want me to be a retriever!" I cried indignantly. "You want me to fawn on all your rich relations so we can get their business. I never heard anything so contemptible!"

For the first time I saw Guy really angry. His voice became deep and resonant. "You're nothing but a spoiled brat," he shouted at me. "You've taken for granted all your life that money comes out of taps. Just the way you take for granted that someone will make your bed and clean your bathroom. Well, I'm not marrying any little Miss Muffet, thank you very much. When you've made up your mind that you want to be Mrs. Guy Prime—a very different thing, I can assure you, from being Miss Angelica Hyde—you can send a note to my hotel. Only I wouldn't wait too long if I were you."

And he walked out. He really walked out.

The next day I waited for him to send me a letter of apology, but I knew in my heart that it wouldn't come. Whatever else it might have been that I had hooked myself to, there was no question that it was a man. By evening I had worked myself into such a panic that I even appealed to Mother. As I might have known, she took Guy's side.

"There's always been a lot of that kind of back scratching in financial life," she told me. "Your father and I have been able to avoid it and see only the people we like because your father's mother had the good sense to be born a Bartelet in Brooklyn in the days when it meant something to be a Bartelet in Brooklyn. But I'm afraid your father has made rather a dent in his share of the Bartelet money. Your generation will have to go back to caring whom they ask for dinner. It's too bad, but it's the way most of the world lives."

"But, Mother," I protested, "you never could abide people who mixed business with social life! Don't you remember that man in Tuxedo who was always asking you and Daddy to dinner because he wanted Daddy to invest in his sugar company?"

"Yes, and it's a great pity we didn't," Mother said feelingly. "You and Guy could retire to Biarritz if we had. But he was such a vulgar man! I'm sure the relatives whom Guy wants you to be nice to can't be
that
bad."

"But is there no question of principle involved?"

"I should think none. The greatest luxury money can buy is choosing your own friends and snubbing the people you want to snub. Yet it's curious how few even of the old rich avail themselves of these privileges. Most of them are as cautious as the worst parvenus."

I thought Mother quite shockingly cynical, and I continued to believe that there was something dishonorable about cultivating frumps for business reasons. As a matter of fact, I continued to feel this way right up to the time when, as an elderly woman, I married Rex. Then I discovered that the saintly Lucy, right through her lifetime, had entertained exclusively for the benefit of de Grasse Brothers. Because her dinners had been dull and stately, I had assumed that they had been disinterested. I was quite wrong.

But for all my disapproval, I still surrendered. There was never any real question about this. My little principles and prejudices were swept aside like crisp, disintegrating autumn leaves before the stiff stern broom of my aching need. Before the second day I had gone to Guy's hotel. It was true, to continue and no doubt to strain my metaphor, that those leaves were to form a compost heap that nurtured later dissensions, but at the time the issue was clear. I humbly begged his pardon.

He took it for granted, but he was still magnanimous. He took me out for a superb dinner, and we were very gay and jovial. No more was said about the Primes or even about our wedding preparations. But the very next day my lessons were resumed.

I had to write a letter to each of his aunts, and although he did not say so, it was perfectly evident that the length of each letter was governed by the size of the aunt's fortune. Grimly I determined, like a good little girl, to swallow without question whatever was placed on his inexorably extended spoon, and, after the first few gulps, I was rewarded by the taste of some sweeter elements in the ingredients of my medicine. Guy, I was relieved to discover, had more things in his mind than simple opportunism. Rich or poor, healthy or sick, weak or mighty, he never forgot a human being who had once entered his life.

Old servants of the family, old-maid cousins of his late mother living in shabby genteel retirement, old masters of St. Andrew's School, old tutors and nurses, all these had to be written to, as well. Guy could never let any part of his past go. Whether it was affection, or generosity, or simply the natural desire to strut, in the role of the young heir, before devoted retainers who tugged their forelocks as they called down blessings upon his golden head, I did not know or care. I was only too happy to make the most of each good point that I could find in my new master.

My worst blow was the arrival of his father. I took an immediate dislike to this sporty old fraud that I was never able to overcome in all the years that elapsed before his demise. Not that I really ever tried. But I did have to try to keep my feelings to myself. It was obvious even to a callow girl that Guy's passionate devotion and admiration for his progenitor were unbreakable. One had only to see them strolling down the Champs Elysée together, arm in arm, with matching gray trousers, gray coats and spats, lifting their tall hats in a uniform gesture of gallantry to a passing lady, to be convinced that one would never succeed in breaking through the clichés of a daddy who was "more of a pal than a parent" and a son who had no secrets, even of the boudoir, from his beloved mentor. Even Mother finally conceded that I had a problem with Mr. Prime.

"The thing to remember, my dear, is that men like that are never really a threat. As long as they're listened to, they won't interfere, and it's easy enough to listen. In time you can learn to think your own thoughts while they're talking."

In time I did, but in the meanwhile I had to listen to exhortations from the grandfather of my future children, of which the following may be a fair sample:

"Two attractive young people like you and Guy, my dear, should have all New York at your feet. Between you, you're related or connected to practically every family that counts, both old and new. For I am not one to neglect the new, Angelica. Some old fogies used even to suggest that we Primes had let down the bars a bit too much, but I don't think many people think that any more. To be young, to be healthy, to be handsome—ah, my dear, what a gentle prospect for you and Guy! It may be a positive advantage for you both to have little money for a while. I won't conceal from you that I had always visualized Guy as marrying more of an heiress than yourself, but that was simply because the heiresses were always after him. Now I see it's even better this way. A Guy and an Angelica who had a fortune on top of everything else—perhaps it would be too much. People might be glutted by it and envious. This way, everyone will be able to
do
things for the young Primes. You'll find you're the pet couple of all the older people. Don't let it go to your head!"

As if I was apt to!

It was the arrival of Rex Geer, in the midst of all this, that helped save my day. He is gallant enough to write in his memoir that he was attracted to me from the beginning. I, too, found him attractive, but not in the same sense. I could see no man but Guy, and that was to remain the case, as I have already said, for a long time. What helped me in Rex's presence was to see that a man of obviously high character and ability, a man who was not in the least social, should be Guy's best friend and best man. One had only to talk to Rex for a very little while to realize that he was not in the least impressed by wealth or social pretension, that, on the contrary, he was very easily put off by these things. If he had picked Guy as a friend across the sea of snobbery in which Guy's father had sought to drown him, it must have been because he had seen that in his heart Guy was sound. And was it not equally to Guy's credit that he had picked out Rex? Did it not prove that he could substitute his own judgment for his father's when he saw fit?

And so we were married. Looking back at those first years of our shared life, I am struck at how they have run together and blurred in my mind. I was at once very happy and acutely, even agonizingly, apprehensive. To dull the latter feeling I tried blindly in everything to adopt Guy's standards. I went so far as to quarrel with my brothers when they sneered at our "perfect little house" and "perfect little parties." I made it entirely clear that I did not care to see anyone who would not accept Guy on his own terms. But if I presented a loyal face to the world, I often found that I could present none at all at home, and I would turn away from Guy lest he perceive to what extent I was not with him.

Passivity was my answer for that decade. All the people asked to our house were Guy's friends; all the parties we attended were given by people cultivated by him. It was Guy, the gourmet and amateur chef, who planned the meals; it was Guy, with his flair for color, who decided on the decoration of the living room; it was Guy who chose the places we went in summer, the schools for the children, my very clothes. The more vacuums that I left the more speedily he filled them. Nor did he seem to object to my listlessness. He adored running things. Our relationship was that of a strong, indulgent father and a pampered child. I did as I was told and tried not to wonder too much where, if anywhere, we were headed.

My readers may say that such a life is incredible, that I must have "repressed," to use a psychological term, my memories of our fights and arguments. But I do not think so. I even think that my docility in those years was characteristic of many young matrons of the period. It must be remembered that Guy and I had a glorious sex life, that the birth of two children was an absorbing experience and that there was nothing in my premarital existence that I missed. Furthermore, Guy in those days had great charm and gaiety and could be extremely amusing when he chose. And, finally, with his passion for company, we were rarely alone. Many of my contemporaries thought I had everything a woman could want. Many of them would think so today. I stilled my doubts as best I could by reminding myself that I was what Guy had called me in Paris when he had first lost his temper: a "spoiled brat." And who could have denied the truth of that?