The Embezzler (9 page)

"A pink-faced boob out of a Turkish bath at the Racquet Club!" Here she stretched her arms mockingly towards me. "Marry me, Guy!"

It was this gesture that gave her away, that made me suspect that she might, after all, care a little bit for Rex. Love him?
Could
she? I was not sure. But I knew that this bolder humor, this stretching out of her arms, was not characteristic of the old Alix. Someone had given her a confidence that she had quite lacked before, and I began to wonder if Rex might not, after all, make something of her. It was not promising material, to be sure, but in the hands of a man who cared—well, who knew?

I examined Rex about it that night and elicited the fact that he and Alix had already met twice alone for walks in Central Park. This, in a girl so cautious and so protected, was evidence of a considerable involvement. Rex also admitted that he had proposed to her and that she had accepted his commitment without in the least committing herself. I could not help laughing.

"She's as sly as her father," I said. "I don't suppose you've spoken to him?"

"Spoken to him! He's hardly aware that I exist. How could I speak to him when I'm not in a position to support a wife? Not a wife like Alix, anyway."

"Oh, I suppose Alix has her own money."

"I wouldn't touch a penny of it!" Rex exclaimed excitedly. "All I want her to do is to wait until I've got on my feet. I'll get there. You'll see!"

"My dear fellow, I have no doubt I'll see it. My only question is how long Alix will be allowed to wait. Particularly if Uncle Chauncey finds some duke for her."

"Her mother's on my side."

"Aunt Amy's a cipher. As an ally, she's more of a liability than an asset. I'll have to sleep on this."

But instead of doing that, I lay awake much of the night. Why, really, should it not be a match? Alix was a goose, but so long as Rex did not mind, why should I? He had more than enough brains for two. And if I had had faith in the power of a poor Rex to move mountains, what ranges might not a rich one move?

Their only hope, I concluded, was in elopement. It would be pointless even to ask Uncle Chauncey. The American rich of his generation were too unsophisticated in their worldliness. A French or English father might have scented Rex's future; Uncle Chauncey would have seen no further than his present bank balance. But what would Uncle Chauncey be able to do with a
fait accompli?
The fortune, after all, was Aunt Amy's, and would go in time through trusts to her daughters.

Summer was upon us; my parents had already left for Bar Harbor. Aunt Amy was to pay them a visit early in July, taking her three daughters, while Uncle Chauncey was to go cruising with his bachelor brother-in-law, Commodore Thompson, on the latter's steam yacht, "The Wandering Albatross." In the morning I suggested to Rex that we take our vacations simultaneously and go to my family's in Bar Harbor during Aunt Amy's visit. The poor fellow was pathetically grateful. There was no talk now of any lacking of the right clothes or any deficiency in the social graces. Alix's prospective visit to Mt. Desert Island had endowed the despised summer colony with the aura of a shrine. Of course, I did not tell him my scheme. I hoped that events in Bar Harbor might take care of themselves.

W
E WERE
tightly packed in the little shingle villa halfway up Mr. de Grasse's hill, but Aunt Amy's enthusiasm made it a cheery houseparty. It was touching to see how eagerly she shed the grandeur in which Uncle Chauncey kept her so sternly invested. She had her bed pulled out on the sleeping porch and put her younger daughters in her room; Alix shared a room with my sister Bertha; Rex doubled up with me. Father was perfectly content so long as none of our arrangements interfered with his own room and dressing room. The era of "children first" had not yet arrived.

The natural foursome, as I had planned it, was Rex and Alix, on one side, and my sister Bertha and myself on the other. Four young people for tennis, for walks, for swimming parties, what could have been more natural or more innocuous? It was no fun for me, for Bertha, at a stout, solid nineteen, had still much of the explosive self-pity that had marred her maturing years, and it was hard on my male vanity to be seen constantly in the company of such a wallflower, but I was resolved that for two weeks at least I could bear it.

Yet it was Bertha who upset my plans. She proved not to be content to linger behind with me on a tour of Jordan's Pond while Alix and Rex sauntered ahead. She was as bored with my company as I with hers and had none of my motives for concealing it. On the contrary, she had developed a violent crush on Rex and was always trying to edge her way between him and Alix. And to make matters worse, whether it was from maidenly timidity, lack of imagination or simply innate good manners, Alix appeared to tolerate her intrusions.

Alix was indeed an enigma. She accepted our house and household, not with the disarming enthusiasm of her mother, but more daintily, as if she were being very gracious on some annual organization outing, some special anniversary picnic, where the servants, once a year, sat down with the princess. I wondered if she did not enjoy her visit to the Percy Primes in some of the same way that she seemed to enjoy her flirtation with Rex, as things that were pleasant, titillating, perhaps even exciting, but not, in the last analysis, quite real, things that belonged to summer and to a sea resort and to brightly colored umbrellas on a beach, things that one had, by implication, to put away in the crisp days of early autumn when one took up city things, social things,
real
things. Where did reality go in summer? Ah, that was just it, reality was off cruising up the Maine coast aboard "The Wandering Albatross." Rex would not have had even the little that he did have if Uncle Chauncey had been there.

He did not think, certainly, that he was getting much, and he became progressively gloomier as the visit wore on.

"I sometimes think Alix cares more for her clothes than she does for me," he grumbled one night after we had gone to bed. "Do you realize we've been here nine days, and she hasn't worn the same dress twice?"

"You must really be in love," I muttered. "I never knew you to notice a dress before."

"Is it possible, do you think," he persisted, "to break through the barrier girls like her put up? It's like a wall of pink and yellow ice cream, with spun sugar for barbed wire, on top. But don't let that fool you! It's as impenetrable as steel."

"Love seems to have given the banker's language a colorful turn."

"But you know what I mean, Guy," the anxious voice came to me through the darkness. "After all, you're a Prime. You know the society attitude that identifies the unfamiliar with the comic. All I have to do to make Alix smile is to mention East Putnam or the public school that I went to there or the fact that my father's a Congregationalist minister. She doesn't mean in the least to be unkind. But middle-class things are supposed to be funny, like hay fever or hives."

"And lower-class things?"

"Oh, they're different. They're sad—when they're not dangerous. We shake our heads over the poor." He snorted in derision. "Of course, it's simply childishness at bottom. I remember the first time I discovered that every boy's father wasn't a minister. It struck me as very funny. But I've grown up since. Alix still feels that to mention any denomination but Episcopalianism is to say something, well if not exactly crude, certainly embarrassing."

"Ah, my poor fellow, I can see you've learned the ways of society! And to think what a simple unspoiled creature you were a year ago! Maybe you should give her up."

"Give her up? How can I give her up? Or give up the part of me that's bound to her? He sprang out of bed and paced angrily about the room. "It's easy enough for you to say that. You're not in love with Alix, and, besides, it's incredible to you that I should be. Oh yes, I know how that is. I never really believe in my sisters' beaux. And then you don't appreciate Alix. You don't recognize her enormous potentialities..."

"But, Rex, you know I've changed my mind about all that!"

"You say you have, perhaps you think you have, but have you really? I'll never forget what you said about her before you knew how I felt!"

The unfairness of this got me, too, out of bed. "You might at least have the decency to admit that I've been on your side in this thing!" I exclaimed angrily. "I've come up here on my vacation when I could have gone salmon fishing. I've spent all my days in the company of my dear sister which could hardly be deemed anything but a sacrifice. I've left you and Alix together; I've kept my father's attention distracted; I've played court jester to the whole damn family houseparty. And all for what? To be told that I lack sympathy. All right, Romeo, from now on you can paddle your own canoe! I'm going back to New York."

In a moment he had bounded to my side and gripped both my shoulders. "Please, Guy, forgive me. Make allowances for my insanity. You've been a brick. I know it's not your fault that the more you do, the worse things get. It's mine! No, honest to God, I'm not being sarcastic, I mean that!"

I stared into the darkness, but could make out no expression in the thicker gloom that was Rex's head. Then I decided that I wanted no further speculations that night. I was tired, upset, perhaps a tiny bit scared. "Go to bed," I said gruffly. "Maybe things will be better tomorrow."

"They could hardly be worse," was his only rejoinder.

I reviewed my conduct painstakingly as I lay in bed. Had I in any way, consciously or unconsciously, betrayed Rex's cause? I had certainly changed my habitual demeanor to Alix. Instead of treating her with the semi-contemptuous familiarity of an older male cousin, rubbing the nose of her pride in the dirt of my insinuations, mocking her, exposing her foibles, I had behaved to her with the seriousness due to my best friend's Egeria. I had asked her advice about my parents, my money troubles, my career, even my girls. Alix's advice on all these matters was, needless to say, quite worthless, and like most worthless things it had come in abundance. She had obviously been flattered to be asked. Had I in any way distracted her attention from Rex?

I was determined to find out the answer, and the very next morning, before breakfast, while Rex was off on a solitary early walk, I asked Alix to come out and talk with me on the veranda. It was one of those rare brilliant Maine July days, and Alix, in blue, looked for the first time almost like a woman.
"I want to tell you something. If you're playing with Rex, I don't know how much more he can take."

"Playing with him!" A faint pink of indignation appeared even under Alix's high pallor. "If a game is being played up here, why am
I
the person accused of playing it?"

"I suggest that you have given my poor friend, who's head over heels in love with you, reason to believe that you reciprocate his feeling. If you don't, you are most certainly playing with him."

"
I've
given him reason! I like
that,
Guy Prime. Who brought him up here? Who's always leaving us alone together?"

"But you were seeing him alone in New York, Alix!"

"Why should I not see him alone in New York? What business is it of yours whom I see or don't see in New York?"

I was certainly taken aback by this. "But if you were glad to see him in New York, why shouldn't you be glad to see him in Maine?"

"That's my affair! The point is, you have no business making plans for me.
Or
for Rex!"

This was very spirited for Alix, and I looked with sudden mistrust into those popping blue eyes. "You mean you have no idea of marrying him? That you never had?"

"I mean that I have no intention of telling you my marital plans!" she cried with a petulant little stamp of her foot. "When I have any, I shall tell them to my father. Can you give me any better advice, dear cousin?"

"Yes," I retorted, surly now. "I suggest that we go and have breakfast."

As I started away, I heard my name called in a sharp, tense voice, and I turned back in surprise, to find her apparently overcome with embarrassment.

"Yes, Alix?"

"Stop playing John Alden!"

Saying which she giggled, shrilly and foolishly, and hurried past me into the dining room, where Father was already seated.

Holy stars! What could she have meant but that I should plead for myself? I will never know, for I never asked her. All my wits had to be summoned for the emergency of soldering up this rapidly deteriorating situation. My grandsons may be surprised that it never occurred to me to be flattered by the possibility of such a passion in my heiress cousin. Yet it never did, not for an instant. I was too absorbed in helping poor Rex, and, besides, the idea of love between Alix and myself seemed incestuous. We had been raised together, more like siblings than cousins. Furthermore, Alix had no attractions for me, even objectively viewed. I was still a romantic, for all my gift of common sense, and I had the greatest dreams of what my wife should be: beautiful, brilliant, sultry, voluptuous. When I was looking for Cleopatra, could I stoop to the consanguineous fondlings of Victorian fiction?

But Rex, alas, poor Rex! How was I to detach him from his beloved without destroying our friendship? It was lucky for me, and I hope for him, that the same hour which brought the realization of my problem brought also its solution. Father, who had been silent and pensive all during breakfast, asked me now to go with him to his study.

"Close the door, Guy. I have something disagreeable to discuss with you. It concerns your friend Geer. Has anything been going on between him and Alix?"

"Going on, sir?"

"Well, I've noticed, of course, the usual dalliance that one expects of young persons on a houseparty. But this morning, as I was coming downstairs, I saw them below me in the hallway. She jumped away from him suddenly, as if they had been kissing or as if he had been trying to kiss her. I couldn't be sure which."

"Is that so terribly shocking?"

"It depends on the circumstances. When the young man is Mr. Nobody and the girl is not only my niece but a considerable heiress, I think it is. At least when it happens under my roof."