The Golden Vanity (12 page)

And yet if he hadn't been like that he would never have married her.

She was baffled; he wouldn't help her. What she wanted was before her eyes, just out of reach. From earliest childhood she had felt shut out and bitterly resentful. Especially when she heard her grandfather talk about old times. . .. Grandfather Brennan should have made a fortune, before she was born. Other men did, men he had known in the early days. The same opportunities had been open to him, in that new wild country. There were half a dozen millionaires on the Northwest coast whose names moved Grandfather Brennan to reminiscence. He had known them when they were poor; one had been a ship's carpenter come ashore with barely enough money to buy the tools of his trade and set up as a builder; one had borrowed five hundred dollars to start in business with a little grocery shop; another had begun with a fishing boat and ended with a big salmon cannery. Some had made their first stakes by less reputable means, which Grandfather Brennan did not fail to recall. And some had made and lost and made several fortunes, going broke in the Nineties and winning again in the golden years of the Yukon. Middle-aged men when the gold rush began, but seasoned to hardship and familiar with the wilderness, they had done better than younger and rasher adventurers; they knew the hazards. They brought back the gold and built their city. And their wives and daughters and granddaughters formed Society. In his last years, Grandfather Brennan went down to Seattle occasionally, and the other old-timers still remembered him. But Gina had never met their granddaughters. She used to read about them, in the society pages of the newspapers. When she went to the State University it was with a vague hope of meeting them. She didn't know till then that the girls she wished to join went East to finishing schools, or to Europe. And if she had by chance met them, they wouldn't have known or cared about Grandfather Brennan. All that was a long time ago, picturesque but boring, old men's talk. . . .

None of the Brennans had made any money. They had grown poorer, drifted out to the edge of things, turned to farming or taken to the sea. Mysie's father had worked in the sawmill—uncle Joe, mother's brother, worked for newcomers like Michael Busch, who were making new fortunes. . . . Gina had been glad, finally, that her own name wasn't Brennan; she liked to think her father would have grown rich, if he hadn't died young. Her mother was the beauty of the Brennan girls. Even that bounty of nature had been spent without profit in widowhood and ill-health, so that she had to go back to Sequitlam and live on Grandfather Brennan and five hundred dollars a year insurance money. Never another chance—

And now, after all. ... It was like encountering a wall of glass. It was too fantastic; she had married the greatest catch, one of the richest men, in an enormously rich country, good fortune beyond her wildest dreams; and still she was shut out. She hadn't realized it immediately. On their prolonged honeymoon, she and Arthur had been entertained abroad by Mrs. Siddall's old friends. Mostly very old, late Victorian, great names, but no longer smart. On their return to New York, Gina had been included in all Mrs. Siddall's social activities. And though Mrs. Siddall had remained happily unaware, nothing had come of it. Gina had been anxious first to strengthen her alliance with the old lady. In that she succeeded; Mrs. Siddall repaid Gina's attentive deference with confidence and affection. Between them a tacit understanding was established; they managed Arthur. For three years Gina had been beset with anxiety because she had no child. That too was sufficiently ironic, considering the alternate apprehensions and resolutions of the months before her marriage. She was healthy and young; it was her obligation to provide an heir. When at last she knew she was with child, the expectation occupied her mind sufficiently to banish lesser discontents; and her luck held, with a son. If she had loved Arthur, she might have been slightly jealous of his doting fondness for the baby. Instead she was glad of the assurance; it was a permanent title.

But she perceived at the same time that she had got nothing of what he had represented to her imagination. The younger women she envied wouldn't let her in. She didn't see that she was no worse off than if she had been a plain and awkward débutante, ignored by the smart cliques. But she felt desperately that Mrs. Siddall's contemporaries were as remote from the present as Grandfather Brennan's old-timers. Their world was dead. . . .

There was no need for her to think this in words now, after the party. She had known it long enough before. .. . Gina set down the trinket and picked up another. She said abruptly: "What does Bill Brant do, what is his position with Helder & Dickerson?"

Arthur answered out of his own preoccupation: "Something in the investment trust department."

"But he's away half the time, hunting or exploring. Besides, has he any financial ability?"

"Oh, well, I believe his connections bring in estate funds, discretionary accounts, that sort of thing." Customer's man, Arthur might have said, but didn't; the arrangement seemed obvious and proper to him. "And—I don't know—" Arthur checked himself. There was a historic rumor that Bill's elder sister Elena had been the mistress of Wyman Helder, twenty years ago. The old man had a dozen mistresses in succession, and was very liberal with them; he picked them wherever they caught his fancy, carried it off with a high hand, introduced them to his daughters. Some of them married well, and he always made handsome settlements. Some were from his own social environment; the Brants considered themselves distinctly superior, though they hadn't much money, they traced back to Colonial ancestry. Elena Brant had married an English honorary title; she was now Lady Richard Devenish. Arthur concluded: "The Brants and the Helders have been chummy for a long time. Bill went to college with Wyman junior, you know; Wy is practically head of the firm since the old man has been more or less retired for ten years, had a stroke or something, doesn't go to the office any more." Arthur had a fastidious tendency to disbelieve scandal. "I suppose Bill's contacts bring in enough to cover his salary; it isn't huge. Polly is always hard up."

Gina thought, how do you know? does she get anything out of you? . . . She wronged Polly. . . . But her main idea was that Julius Dickerson might some day enable her to even herself with Polly Brant. Julius didn't ignore Gina; he foresaw that Gina might have a good deal of influence if Mrs. Siddall died. And even Mrs. Siddall couldn't live forever. . . .

"I suppose so," Gina agreed. "I just couldn't imagine. . . ." She remained unresponsive in the circle of Arthur's arm. Arthur said hesitantly: "You looked marvelous to-night, Gina. But you always do. I like your cousins. Mysie is jolly, isn't she? Easy to talk to." Gina stared at him blankly. She had never found Mysie easy to talk to. And she used to try ... Arthur had no suspicion of the obscure, inverse connotation of his remark, nor had Gina. After five years of marriage, he found Gina less easy to talk to than at first. Gina did not wish to depreciate her own family, so she remained silent. But she hated Polly so much that she hated Mysie too. Yes, she had always hated Mysie.

"I expect you're tired," Arthur said, and kissed her shoulder. He wanted to rest his head there, not say good night. . . . Gina started, she didn't know why. She was still facing the mirror, and it gave her a shiver—seeing herself and Arthur. He had on a dark blue dressing gown. It couldn't be the same one! Not after five years . . . She put up her hand, pulling her rose-colored negligee together at the neck. Arthur said involuntarily: "I'm sorry."

And he didn't know why. There were a great many things both of them shied off from in their minds.

Gina turned to him with her company smile. "Oh, I didn't mean—" She kissed him dutifully. "No, I'm not really tired."

He stayed. But afterward, he was ashamed. ... It must be his fault, his lack, if she was no more than acquiescent. Cold. He had to think that. She hadn't always been . . . Or had she? He felt very queer, almost sick, lying awake beside her, not sure if she were asleep, not moving for fear he might discover she wasn't. He couldn't let himself think what that reminded him of, because he loved Gina. All he knew of love.

11

T
HEA
and Mysie were driving out to Long Island to look at a cottage Thea had discovered. They intended to buy it. Mysie hadn't yet seen it, but she agreed in advance. They had to have some place for week-ends and holidays. They had been saying so for five years, and now suddenly it became imperative. Impossible to put it off another day, another hour. Mysie didn't much like Long Island, but she knew she would never find a place herself. She wouldn't know how or where to look. There was a peculiarity in the Eastern landscape. You couldn't somehow see any distance, or get any idea of what was beyond, except more of the same thing. It was all low hills and short turns. Even the flat stretches of Long Island had no perspective, no horizon.

Thea was driving. She enjoyed it, and Mysie willingly ceded her the privilege. Thea drove like unto Jehu the son of Nimshi, furiously, but skillfully too. She was accustomed to thinking through her hands, being a musician. And driving fast on a clear road released her from nervous tension. Her life had stopped when her husband died. That was ten years ago, when she was turned forty. She might, even then, have formed other ties; with her wit and energy and worldly knowledge, she could be attractive when she chose. But she had deliberately accepted the conclusion, fully aware of the cost. You cannot, in effect, stop living suddenly without desperate pain. As much as possible, she cut herself off from reminders of the past. She had a married daughter living in Boston, who bored her; and she preferred sharing a flat with Mysie to living with any of her old friends, women of her own age, simply because Mysie was twenty years younger and thus belonged to another era and came from the West and had never seen Charles Ludlow nor had any connection with Thea's married life. Their casual and cordial detachment suited them both. They needn't feel absolutely alone, but each respected the other's privacy. Thea never pried nor gave advice. The arrangement had begun fortuitously; Thea had been Jake Van Buren's music teacher twenty-five years ago, and Mysie met her at tea with Jake's mother, when Thea happened to be going abroad and wished to sublet her flat. Mysie took it, and afterward stayed on. Thea had a durable impersonal affection for Jake. She said he had always been unusual, to say the least. An uncannily polite infant, with an air of docility, though in the long run he did exactly as he pleased and gave no offense. When he was eight or nine, she had once remarked to him that he was intelligent. He replied in a grave treble: Yes, all our family are bright.

"Is this place of yours anywhere near Jake's shack?" Mysie enquired. Thea said no; Jake was at least an hour away. Jake lived on the edge of some godforgotten village on the beach, which had no railway connection convenient, so it had never grown beyond a dozen or so of summer cottages; it wasn't even any good for boats because of sandbars and shoal water; and that was why Jake clung to it. Every summer Jake invited Mysie to come out some Sunday, secure in the knowledge that she never would.

"That's lucky," said Mysie vaguely. "Oh, it's so
hot.
What's the use of being poor if you've got to live on Long Island anyhow?"

Thea turned her benevolent eagle profile for a moment toward Mysie. "Would you mind repeating that?"

"Don't pay any attention to me," Mysie said in a feeble voice. "All I mean is that I've always thought the worst thing about being rich is that you
have
to live on Long Island, and go through this every day. But they get so insensible they don't even object to Palm Beach. ... If I see one more gasoline pump I'll die." She rubbed a handkerchief across her parboiled countenance. It came away streaked with grime. She had been over this dismal region often enough, the stretch beyond the Queensboro Bridge; but she didn't know the name of it because she didn't want to; it was too horrible. Mysie could drive competently; she was a careful driver, and that meant she couldn't think of anything else while driving, so it bored her. She felt with her hands instead of thinking with them, as Thea did; so Mysie liked riding or digging in a garden better than driving. But on that particular area she could not think anyhow. It stupefied her with its mean ugliness; it affected her with incipient nausea and hysteria.

"There
is
something the matter with this country," she muttered, more to herself than to Thea. "It's the extremes of human nature, turned loose for the first time, to do its best and its worst. The best has been better than anything that ever was, a great splendor and pride of taking all the odds alone; but the worst is unbearable; and it's why people stun themselves with raw alcohol, to keep from facing it. We'll all burst like a chameleon on a plaid . . ." There were ten million fiery red gasoline pumps extending to infinity, along a white hot ribbon of concrete, leading only to more gasoline pumps and garbage dumps. With one-story glass-fronted buildings swimming in heat beside the way.

"The awful thing about New York is that you can't get out of it," she concluded, aware that she had said the same thing to Thea a hundred times. It was also part of the nightmare quality of New York that it stultified you into repetition. The aspect of magnificence, that enchantment it sometimes took on, was indescribable; one who had never seen it couldn't imagine it, even approximately. It was an inhuman achievement. In absence, it became utterly unreal; you didn't quite believe it. Perhaps that was why you couldn't stay away. The spell was irrevocable. Like those old stories of mortals trepanned into fairyland, not the small ethereal winged fantasy of childhood, but the ancient fairyland, the illusory sunless shadowless Hollow Hill; and when it seemed a week had passed and they were restored to Middle Earth seven years was gone and their youth with it, and they could never resume the kindly life they had left.

"Tell me when there is a tree," Mysie begged, and shut her eyes. After awhile Thea assured her there was a tree. They turned into a rather pleasant lane and got lost; and Thea drove on and on with serene determination, asking directions at intervals from other motorists who replied they were strangers themselves. One inviting road proved to be semi-private, intersecting two estate parks, landscaped and trimmed and empty of living creatures. The house was not in view from the road; an ample red-roofed building immediately within a stone-pillared, imported wrought iron gate was obviously the lodge and garage. Thea backed out and tried another turning.