The Golden Vanity (13 page)

"These big estates are rather uncanny, like a conjuring trick," said Thea.

"How?" Mysie asked obligingly.

"There are so many of them," Thea explained. "Thousands. All over Long Island and Connecticut and Westchester. Thousands and thousands, sprung from nothing. When you see the great houses and castles of Europe, you can see the social foundations, how they came to be. The land supported them. Of course they ate up all the profit from the tenants of the land, but they could go on eating through good times and bad; and they needed the house-room in their business, for patriarchal families and stewards and men-at-arms and chaplains and visitors and all the servants to cook and brew and spin and weave. They were centers of an organic way of life, rooted to the spot. These are orchidaceous. No visible means of support. Big empty houses and foreign servants, nothing local. If you reversed the conjure, you know, said one wrong word, or got it backward, they'd vanish. This is a queer country. It's a state of mind. It usen't to be like that, even when I was young. Sometimes I think all my life since I was a child has been a dream. The Woolworth Building was the beginning of the dream. I remember going to look at it the first time, a white magic tower. And it's still the most magical of them all." Thea seldom spoke at such length.

"Whereabouts are we anyhow, and where exactly is that abandoned barn you're buying?" Mysie sat up suddenly and took notice.

"It isn't a barn," Thea replied rather crossly. "It's the other side of Glen Cove, and we must be somewhere near it." The aged motor was emitting ominous noises, which worried her.

"I thought so," Mysie exclaimed. "Oh, my goodness, I didn't pay any attention when you told me before; but I believe I know this stone wall. In a minute we'll come to another big gate and a driveway—it's the Siddall estate. If your barn is near by, we'll be right in Gina's backyard. Lookit, there's the entrance, between those blue Norway spruces. That's another thing the rich have got to have, whether they like it or not, Norway spruces. Let us flee."

Thea looked, and the diversion caused her to make some fatal error with the gear shifts. The car stopped. It declined to start again. "It would," said Mysie. Neither of them had any understanding of motor trouble. They climbed out in the August sun, which smote upon the backs of their necks like a blunt weapon. "Where did we pass a garage?" Mysie tried to remember. "I don't suppose the damn family are here now, do you? They'd be abroad or north."

"The garage family?" Thea enquired blankly.

"The Siddalls—Gina," Mysie said. "And how do I get back to town for that rehearsal this afternoon? Blast! I wish I knew where to hit these internal works with a monkey wrench so's to do the most harm." She peered under the hood.

A shining maroon limousine slid smoothly out of the driveway. Thea and Mysie automatically removed themselves to the curb side of their derelict vehicle, to let the other pass. It slowed instead. A man's voice said: "Do you need help? Hello, Mysie, I hope you were coming to call." Arthur Siddall emerged from the limousine.

Mysie regarded his blond immaculateness with a good deal of class hatred. He wore a light grey suit, and not even the edge of his collar was wilted. "We were en route to our own country seat," she replied, and then burst into insane mirth. She explained: "I was trying to reply coldly —this weather! Why doesn't a car cross a road?"

"Let's see." Arthur did know something about cars. Mysie forgave him his appearance when he began a brisk investigation, to the immediate detriment of his cuffs. His chauffeur also took a hand. Presently they agreed on a verdict. "Yeah, that sleeve valve, she's bust," the chauffeur affirmed. He was a stocky, swarthy youth with a Sicilian accent and the expression of morose amiability peculiar to his type.

"So what?" Thea asked. Arthur said: "We'll take you wherever you were going, and send a garageman for your car. Get in—can you give the directions?" Thea endeavored to do so, and the chauffeur nodded. "Yeah, I know." They proceeded luxuriously.

Mysie murmured to Arthur: "What's your chauffeur's name?"

"His name?" Arthur reflected. "I think it's Dominic."

"Does he answer to Hi or to any loud cry such as fry me or fritter my wig? I suppose he's the seventeenth assistant chauffeur and you only take a census occasionally."

Arthur elucidated apologetically: "There are only four; the head chauffeur employs them. This man is rather new; I usually have Raymond but he drove Grandmother and Gina up to Bar Harbor." They had gone the day before; Arthur had found occasion for a day's delay on his own part. He was not quite aware that he had practically manufactured the reason. It was an inner necessity growing upon him lately, to be by himself occasionally.

"Dominic?—Doesn't mean anything in my life. Only I think I've seen him somewhere," Mysie said. "Isn't Gina here? Of course not, you just said so."

Dominic brought the car to a halt, and Arthur enquired: "What is it?" Dominic said: "Yessir, da house."

"What is it, is right," Mysie commented. The house was the last on a village street, in a shabby neighborhood. Nondescript in the beginning, the small box-like structure had become disreputable from want of care. The windows were boarded; and last year's dead leaves still lay on the paintless porch. Thea had a key to the kitchen door. They all got out of the car and walked around to the backyard, where an apple tree and several locust trees mitigated the neglected fence and ragged grass.

Arthur followed where he was led, with his disarming expression of wishing to be helpful. Mysie wondered what to do with him, but decided to wait and see. In the dismal, empty kitchen a tap yielded cold water. Arthur waited outside while Mysie washed her face recklessly. "There wouldn't be a towel," she said unreasonably to Thea. Arthur heard her. He said diffidently at the door: "Will this do?" and offered a large and very fine linen handkerchief of pristine freshness.

"There are four rooms beside the kitchen," said Thea, with honest pride.

"I'll take your word for it," Mysie declined to explore further, and escaped to the open air.

"What do you think of it?" Thea asked.

"Oh, it's just like home," said Mysie, with the bitterness of truth. It did remind her of the graceless and poverty-stricken house in which she was born. Her mother owned it, or her stepfather would probably have sold it long ago and moved on to something worse.

"It needs fixing up a little," Thea remarked, too rapt with creative vision to detect Mysie's sarcasm. "Paint, and new floors, and a bathroom, and the garden. That's a guelder rose by the fence." She pointed to a straggling bush unrecognized by Mysie because it was smothered under a stray vine. "And sweet William here." Thea had found a rusted table fork, and kneeled by what might once have been a flower border, loosening the earth carefully. Mysie smiled and sat down on the kitchen steps. Arthur sat beside her and presented cigarettes in a lordly case.

"You'd be the ten best people to take to a desert island," Mysie said gratefully. In the shade, the heat became tolerable, and the long grass was spangled with dandelions. There was rising ground beyond the house, on the clear side, giving the lift of a skyline, which is a lovely thing. Clouds rested upon it, beginning to form thunderheads; there might be rain before the day was out. The three of them experienced the pure and disinterested pleasure of being with people one likes. Mysie recognized that she didn't have to do anything with Arthur. He had that quality of acceptance which makes for ease far more effectively than any conscious effort. And Mysie reflected that Thea could and would conjure the forlorn little house into a home. With nothing but a broken table fork for a tool. That was all humanity ever had to work with. That and determination and goodwill, were enough.

Mysie said: "When the swimming pool and the pergola and the rock garden are laid out, you won't know the old place. But I can't figure where you'll put the tennis court." She observed Arthur's immediate bewilderment lighten to amusement. The suggested improvements sounded quite reasonable to his ear, against the testimony of his eyes. He had no scale of possessions.

Thea remained unruffled, sitting on her heels meditatively. "The soil is good," she crumbled a bit of it in her fingers. "I'll have to pick up an odd job man."

"You wanna man? I get you one." Dominic had returned to announce that the disabled car was taken care of. Thea consulted with him, until Mysie interrupted.

"Listen, Thea, I must be moving along. I suppose there is a station and a train somewhere?" A protracted colloquy, of that peculiar domestic kind in which the participants proceed along parallel lines, the statements of each having not the remotest bearing upon those of the other, resulted mysteriously in a practical arrangement. Thea decided to remain for the afternoon, interviewing the real estate agent and the odd job man. Arthur, since he was on his way to town, would take Mysie in.

It wasn't so bad going back; the big car made a difference. There is a great deal to be said for having money, Mysie thought; at least, for having it oneself. It doesn't seem to do other people so much good. She reflected childishly that she didn't want a million dollars, but just enough money. Ten years ago her present earnings would have seemed ample to her, but there were no reasonable values in New York, in money or anything else. And if you had enough money you wouldn't live in New York. It was baffling to find that the best she and Thea could do, both of them making good incomes, was to buy a house like this. By years of effort, she had apparently got back to where she started. And it would take over an hour of miserable tedium and discomfort to get to the place; and they wouldn't be able to manage that more than once a week.

After starting, Arthur observed that it was nearly one o'clock; they might stop somewhere for lunch.

"I can't," said Mysie. "The rehearsal is at half past two."

"Don't you ever eat?" Arthur enquired. "You hadn't had any dinner the other time."

"Hardly ever," said Mysie gloomily, "If we pass a hot dog stand—but I suppose one couldn't eat hot dogs in this car?"

"Why not?" A hot dog stand came into view as if ordered; Arthur commanded a halt and personally purchased two of those delicacies, one for himself. He supplied another handkerchief for Mysie to wipe her fingers. "Do you like hot dogs?" he enquired.

"I hate them," said Mysie, still more morosely, having consumed hers. "I hate Bohemianism, and bath tub gin, and sitting on the floor, and kitchenettes, and speakeasies, and riding in subways. I like bourgeois comfort, only not the suburbs. I hate Broadway too."

"Do you like acting?" Arthur ventured cautiously.

"I would if there was any."

She had never been stagestruck; the limited, vivid, self-engrossed world of the theater was too narrow. It was specifically acting which had interested her, as a mode of communication. Speech is the distinguishing mark of human beings; and every word we use is charged with the whole burden of experience. For this reason, apprehending a poetic truth too literally, men have believed in times past in words of power, secret incantations which even the blind inimical forces of nature must obey.

"I saw you last winter in
Marrying Susan,"
Arthur said. "You were charming."

"It was just one of those things. All on the surface." She hadn't had a part since. But she was specially pleased by his adjective. Charming. She wished she were charming.

"What are you rehearsing now?"

"Didn't you know?" She had supposed he must, on the strength of Jake's connection with Arthur's magazine. "It's Jake Van Buren's play,
Third String.
He found an angel in Wall Street."

"I'll get a box for the first night," Arthur said. "I hope it's an enormous success."

"I hope so too," Mysie said truthfully. "Look, it's beginning to rain. I believe we're in for thunder and lightning, cats and dogs and pitchforks. It's all black ahead."

12

L
ARGE
warm drops of rain splashed languidly in the dust, bringing the fresh smell of washed air. Presently the rain came faster, streaming straight down, with a look of weight; the windshield was sheeted with water and the road gleamed wetly black. Mysie took off her hat to feel the moisture on her face and hair.

"I suppose I ought to shut the window," she said.

"Do you want it shut?" Arthur leaned over to attend to it.

"No, but the cushions will get wet."

"That doesn't matter," he assured her.

Well, he can buy another car, Mysie thought. "I like rain," she said.

"I'm glad," Arthur replied.

"You mean you're glad I like something?" Mysie caught him, and he looked guilty and laughed. "I like lots of things," she affirmed. "How can you really like anything if you don't know the difference? Those simpering sweet people who gush over everything and everybody indiscriminately don't care for anybody."

Arthur had a moment of disquiet, on the verge of a thought he must not admit; if he did life would become intolerable. Mysie went on, unaware: "Out where I come from it rains all winter, and the grass is always green; only sometimes there is a rime of frost, and when you walk across it, you leave green plush tracks. New York is a tropical climate. Excessive and violent. It's rather exciting. The rain is coming down in solid chunks."

"You're not violent, are you?"

"Only within reason. You needn't be alarmed. I shriek and tear my hair, that's all."

They had crossed the bridge and were driving slowly down town. The streets flowed ankle deep, and people stood in doorways, shrinking back from the spray. A girl ran through the deluge; her light dress was soaked and clung to her shoulders, fluttered about her knees, nymphlike. She was a pretty girl, and her face expressed mirth and dismay. That's fun, Mysie thought; that's the way we ought to take what happens, only we have to worry about hats and shoes; we can't afford adventure. Happiness must be unthinking. You mustn't stop to measure it by either the cost or use; the actual object one strives for is always subtly disappointing when achieved. Fame, fortune, perhaps even love—we stand awkwardly with our hands filled—now what?