The Golden Vanity (2 page)

"I have never been to the Pacific Coast," said Mrs. Siddall, her manner allowing its existence nevertheless. "Senator Siddall used to say— Arthur!"

The image in the mirror had moved out of Gina's view. Caught escaping, the young man came forward. As a small boy he would have been called a towhead. An aspect of candor goes with that flaxen fairness, an effect of always facing the light. Blue eyes, inevitably. There was distinction in the shape of his head, the sincerity of his diffident bow. "My grandson, Miss Fuller . . . Are you going out, Arthur?"

"Lunching at the Caxton Club. If you don't mind."

"Shall I see you at dinner?"

"Yes, grandmother." He showed no resentment at the catechism, and took his dismissal from her approving expression.

Mrs. Siddall resumed to Gina: "You might run over the news." She became slightly pathetic, staring about for the paper; a white film already clouded the iris of her eyes. "The president's message, and the leading editorial, or if there is anything new in the Stillman case." After fifteen minutes, she broke into the reading: "The Caxton Club! I must say, young men have changed—however, old books are a harmless hobby." She rang and the butler appeared. "Arkright, show Miss Fuller to her room."

Her room ... Gina said tentatively: "I came without— I'd have to go and pack."

By all means, Mrs. Siddall agreed benevolently; one could not depend upon maids.

Especially if there were no maids, Gina reflected, as Dominic drove her uptown again. Her cousin, Geraldine Wiekes, lived in a featureless slab of an apartment house on Morningside Heights. Geraldine's husband, Leonard Wiekes, was an instructor at the University. By abstruse juggling with a budget that never came out quite even, Geraldine contrived to pay for a cleaning woman once a week.

As Gina let herself in, Geraldine sat at an inconvenient little desk, writing steadily. There was something touching in the rapid obedient motion of her lovely feminine hands. Her hair, of an unusual pale red, was cut to a straight bob; she had a dimple in her chin, and a splash of coppery freckles across the bridge of her pointed nose. A little girl, about four years old, played with blocks on a cotton rug in a patch of sunshine. Geraldine paused, biting her pencil. It's getting away from me, she thought helplessly. There must be a happy ending. If I could only sell one story. Then Leonard needn't take that job with the drug company; he could go on with his chemistry research—The little girl gravely said hello to Gina, and Geraldine turned her head. In spite of the difference in coloring and features, there was an indefinable family resemblance to Gina.

"Oh, Gina—is anything wrong?" Geraldine rose; she was heavy with child, a fact which her unbecoming blue linen overall had concealed until she stood up. How could she, Gina thought, on eighteen hundred a year and an instructor's prospects.

Gina explained hurriedly what had brought her home in the middle of the day.

Geraldine exclaimed: "Mrs.
Siddall!
You don't mean—" She paused, her mouth slightly open, as if overcome by awe. Gina knew Geraldine to be incapable of that emotion, and said shortly: "Yes." Geraldine recovered from the impact: "The last of the dowagers! I saw her, when I was at the Thompsons', but I don't believe it. She actually did wear point lace and diamonds."

Gina flushed with a familiar annoyance. Incomprehensible that Geraldine should care to recall an interlude as a nursery governess, her employment with the Thompsons.

Geraldine pursued: "Isn't there a son and heir?"

"A grandson," Gina said. "I mean, I don't know if there are any more. . . ."

"That's right," said Geraldine, "there aren't any more —his father and mother, I've forgotten what but I mean they both died. He used to be in the Sunday papers, with dollar marks. Like The Interests. The Millionaire Kid. Is he married?"

"No." Gina corrected herself again. "I don't know. My trunk is in the basement, isn't it? Please don't bother; I'll find the janitor." She couldn't get away quickly enough. Poverty was contagious.... And the way Geraldine talked baffled her. Mysie was even worse. You couldn't get hold of anything they said. As if you reached for something, and it wasn't there, or it was something else . . .

When Gina was gone, Geraldine returned to her desk. But the thread of the story was broken. She said aloud: "Why did I ask if he was married?" And burst out laughing. The little girl laughed too; Geraldine stooped and kissed her. "Time for your nap, Judy darling." . . . She thought, a man needs to believe that he could make as much money as other men if he chose. . . .

2

M
RS
. S
IDDALL
emerged briskly from her bedroom, snapping on a pair of inch-wide diamond manacles, and followed by a yard of plum-colored velvet and her German maid, like a tugboat with a tow. A diamond collar indicated her neck; a tiara perched upon her sausage-roll coiffure. The state
parure
was in honor of Arthur's birthday. Her increasing infirmity of vision restricted her to a small dinner, only thirty people; about a hundred would come in after for dancing, not enough to make it a ball. "Where is the table plan, Janet?" Her secretary, Janet Kirkland, advanced with flatfooted alertness. Gina remained discreetly in the background. A tall sheaf of daisies, porcelain white, made a ruinous contrast to Miss Kirkland's swarthy cheek. She was younger than Gina, but with that complexion and two chins, what chance had she? Gina could afford to pity her. After six weeks, she no longer feared Miss Kirkland's veiled hostility. "Have the florist's men finished? My gloves, Trudi— thank you." Mrs. Siddall liked giving numerous orders at once; a tide of activity could be felt all through the house, setting toward her. This was what she enjoyed about a party; so did the servants. It gave them a sense of importance. They did not resent her brusquerie; it was personal, like a box on the ear. Mrs. Siddall assumed that they were devoted to her; that was what she paid them for. And in fact her service was not difficult, since the commands she gave were practical and definite. "What did you say, Janet?"

Miss Kirkland said it again nervously: "A message from Mrs. Dabney—she's so sorry but she's got a black eye— I mean, she had an accident motoring, and can't come."

Mrs. Siddall made an unconscious gesture of annoyance. "Not serious? Remind me to enquire to-morrow." Too late to invite a substitute. "Go down and tell Arkright to remove—no, wait. Wasn't the Dean to take in Mrs. Dabney?" They studied the table plan with intense gravity. Mrs. Siddall said: "Gina, would you mind filling in?"

Would she mind? ... It was the first time Mrs. Siddall had called her Gina. Miss Kirkland's features took on a bluish tinge, the effect of strong suppressed emotion. Mrs. Siddall added: "I'm sure the Dean will be delighted."

He was. His gentle burblings helped Gina to composure, twenty minutes later. At first, the agitation of her nerves communicated itself to her surroundings; the lights and colors, the processional movement and hum of banalities between drawing-room and dining-room, blended into one indescribable general sensation. Like being waked suddenly, by a shaft of sunlight, in a strange room: a bright blankness. Then the scene resolved itself decorously: Gina stole a glance around the table.

The little man with the bulging shirt-front, on Mrs. Siddall's right, was an ex-ambassador. The man on her left, Julius Dickerson, was an international banker; he had a soft, bleached, greyish face, suggestive of a smalltown preacher. Next him was Mrs. Avery, a survivor of the Four Hundred, exhibiting like Mrs. Siddall the rigid chin and glazed stare which were the hallmarks of their period. Her Roman nose and robust arms made her gold-sequined bodice into a coat of mail. The thin woman in black satin with dry henna hair, a rope of pearls, and her face obviously "lifted," was Mrs. Martin. Divorced, with enormous alimony, she represented the next generation from Mrs. Siddall. Except Arthur, Gina saw that she herself was the youngest person present. The thought daunted her; looking down, she found herself eating from a golden plate. The knife scratches on the dull yellow disk startled her again. She hadn't done that! No, how silly; they
used
such things! Yellow orchids in gold and crystal vases dotted the Venice lace cloth.

At the foot of the table, Arthur looked stranded. He had been talking to Polly Brant; when she turned to the man on her other side, he sat smiling shyly at nothing, and caught Gina's glance. All he saw was a young face, a contemporary; his sympathy went out to her unconsciously. Of course he had met all the others, knew who they were, in detail; but not much more. Except Polly.

Polly was his second cousin, a gypsy beauty, black-browed and red-lipped, immensely smart in the simplest of black frocks with a red flower on her shoulder. He had fallen in love with her when he was six and she sixteen; he could have recalled the exact occasion. She had swung him up to the saddle before her for a ride. When he was sixteen and she twenty-six he fell in love with her again. Unfortunately, it was her wedding day. He had never ventured to acknowledge to her, in the seven years since, that he was in love with her; he would have been shocked to learn that she was aware of it. She was still in love with her husband, but she felt possessively protective toward Arthur. She turned to him suddenly, intercepting his glance toward Gina. "Who is she?"

Arthur answered: "Miss F-fuller. She—she reads to grandmother."

"Reads what? Oh, I forgot. Though it's fairly obvious that Aunt Charlotte's sight is failing. Very pretty girl." Arthur's obvious lack of understanding of her meaning convicted her of vulgarity. Polly was no more of a snob than circumstances had made her. She amended: "I daresay Miss Fuller is quite charming."

Arthur muttered: "I suppose so; I've never talked to her."

"How long has she been here?"

Arthur reflected. "Must be a couple of months."

Polly laughed. Arthur really was a lamb. . . . Later, to placate her conscience, she went out of her way to "be nice to little Miss Fuller." The diminutive was an unconscious patronizing note; Gina was as tall as Polly.

The dinner had begun late and lasted long; Mrs. Siddall kept old-fashioned hours for large occasions. After dinner, Gina lingered unobtrusively, intending to slip away when the dance began. Nobody would notice her.

She attached herself to Mrs. Perry, who was grateful for a listener.

The house was enormous, with a ballroom occupying one side of the ground floor. An old-fashioned conservatory projected from it, a blob of glass. Potted palms had sprung up in tropical luxuriance all over the place, and masses of flowers. Gina watched Mrs. Siddall receiving, before a lattice of red roses, with Arthur beside her. The dancing contingent arrived by eights and tens and dozens from other dinner parties; the young men mostly rather weedy but nonchalant or nothing; the girls in straight scanty frocks, their shingled heads neat and sweet. . . . Arthur was slightly, unmistakably different. He had a rather engaging formality, the anxious hospitality of a child, as if he did not know the young people very well either. In fact, he didn't. ... He wasn't dancing yet. The others drifted onto the floor. A girl stopped near Gina and used her lipstick with the unconcern of a cat washing its face. Her partner said: "Come on, beautiful" . . . Those girls had the glamor of an intimate group as seen by an outsider; the dance translated it into physical terms; they seemed to move lightly through another medium than common air. To be one of them would be happiness. Gina had never belonged to any group; her ambition had reached toward this always, even before she had seen it. She could not yet know that when an objective is attained, the illusion vanishes, to renew itself at a further distance. But only to the limit of one's vision.

Mrs. Perry was talking about Arthur. A faded widow of fifty, with crumpled eyelids and a band of black velvet around her neck, Mrs. Perry was a poor relation, a visitor in the house for indeterminate periods, not quite the same status as a guest. Aware that Mrs. Perry was negligible in her own right, nevertheless Gina cultivated her, acquiring bits of information which might help her to find her bearings. Mrs. Perry had a rule of never speaking ill of anyone, which produced in more realistic minds an extraordinary counteraction of blasphemy and uncharitableness. But not from Gina, who, in pursuit of her ends, was incapable of boredom. She had already learned from Mrs. Perry the story of Arthur's parents. They were drowned by the sinking of a great ocean liner. Twenty years ago. One of those senseless, sensational tragedies, which seem to have no other purpose than to furnish front page headlines.

"He looks like his mother," Mrs. Perry said mournfully of Arthur. "She was the belle of the season. In Washington—it was very gay that winter. An old Southern family, no money of course. John, that was Arthur's father, fell in love with her at first sight. They were married at a country parsonage; most romantic." The implication stirred Gina with some other emotion below her astonishment. An elopement! And with a poor girl... She'd never heard that . . . Mrs. Perry rambled on: "Dear Charlotte forgave them at once, insisted they should live with her. That was how it happened Arthur was left in her care when they sailed. Lucia, Arthur's mother, was to be presented at Court. Dear Charlotte has never been abroad since. Such a frightful shock. She sold her yacht. She has devoted herself to Arthur." Mrs. Perry's total lack of a sense of proportion sometimes made her narrative difficult to follow. "Of course, Arthur was too young to understand—"

"What is Arthur too young to understand?" Polly interrupted gaily. "Please introduce me, Aunt Annabel." She smiled graciously at Gina.

"Me too," Sam Reynolds put in. He actually resembled a hard-boiled egg, being bald and smooth-featured and curvilinear, with barely perceptible eyebrows and a slightly malicious grin. He was Mrs. Perry's brother-in-law. "Is Arthur up to anything, the young hellion? Then why isn't he? Ought to be ashamed of himself, mooching over a lot of old books, and the world full of women."

"I'm sure," Mrs. Perry exclaimed, "Arthur never thinks of women."