The Golden Vanity (29 page)

"You did not know the man?"

"No," Matthews said. "Will you all get out—do you want the whole damned hotel in?" His ruddy color had faded to a grey pallor.

The manager saw the point. Geraldine backed toward the door, her gaze fixed on Matthews. His eyes told her to go.

In her own room, Geraldine stood stupefied. It was impossible. The material event could find no lodgment in her mind, had not yet occurred there, for lack of preparation. There was no sequence. . . . He might be dying.

She heard a knock presently, but ignored it. She watched the door opening. It was the manager. He isn't a Cuban, she thought. Probably Swiss. I don't suppose a Cuban could run a hotel. Or would want to.

"Excuse me, madam; this is your room?"

"Yes." She thought, words are absurd.

"With your permission, may I enquire—did you see the shooting? Or the man escaping?"

"No. I heard the shots, and something falling; I ran out. Only the waiter was there, and the other waiter came immediately afterward."

He looked at the unmade bed. She was beyond feeling for the moment. She thought, he knows well enough. Matt's bed wasn't slept in. At least the breakfast tray had been taken away before. . . .

"It will be necessary to notify the police," he said.

She said: "It puts you to a good deal of trouble."

"Trouble?" he echoed, his guttural accent stressed by exasperation. His whole person indicated grotesquely that a hotel is compact of trouble. He had grown fat, his garments were baggy and wrinkled, his hair stood on end, with trouble. He glared at her vindictively; he would have been glad to turn her into the street if he had dared. Did
he
want the police? He asked no questions of his guests; he did not interfere with their business or their pleasure; the least they could do in return was not to involve him in their troubles. Not to get caught, get shot, bring in the police . . . Geraldine appreciated his point of view disinterestedly. The knowledge steadied her. She understood Matthews' prompt lie, his denial that he knew who shot him. It was no punctilio of honor among thieves.

Even if he were in the article of death, he could not take his injuries into court, risk the inquisition of the law into his affairs. Why, none of us can, she thought; nobody is innocent enough. And the wild satiric conclusion followed—perhaps the police would be equally reluctant.

She may have been right. For in fact she simply walked out of the situation, and nobody stopped her . . . The manager muttered darkly: "Yes, well, but what can I do?" and left the room. What can anyone do, she thought. It's done . . . She locked the door, packed methodically, dressed. It was almost nine o'clock. The shipping office would be open. She went downstairs. It was like fulfilling the terms of a game of forfeits; if she did not look around, nobody would look at her; if she did not think or feel, nothing would happen. A tall dim mirror on the wall of the hotel lounge was half obscured by a dusty potted palm; she had an irrelevant impression that it was an artificial palm—here, in Havana! She saw her own reflection cross the surface of the mirror and disappear as she went beyond its range. A woman in a neat blue tailored suit and a little blue hat pulled down on one side, walking across the room and vanishing.

The clerk in the shipping office was an American, professionally civil. He couldn't possibly have heard, she told herself. Obviously he had not. There was a boat next day; he would have to enquire if her ticket could be transferred. He consulted someone beyond a glass partition. His matter-of-fact air enabled her to wait, leaning upon the counter, studying a map under glass. The steamer route was a black line through the blue. . . . The clerk returned, filled out a new ticket, handed it to her. . . . Sailing to-morrow at noon . . .

Now there was only that gulf of time to bridge safely. Twenty-four hours. She thought of removing to a different hotel, without leaving an address; no, it would be more unpleasant if the police had to search for her, follow her up to question her.

She had never before had such an exact consciousness of the pace of time itself, time merely passing, not to be either hastened or delayed. She would have gone sightseeing, but feared to risk fatigue. Leaving the shipping office, she lost herself after a few turnings of the street. A confectioner's shop offered an excuse to rest. It was empty, and she loitered over a cup of chocolate for an hour. Common sense, brutal in its restored authority, informed her that since she must return to the hotel sooner or later, there was no advantage in a temporary absence. She took a taxi back.

Her room was a refuge, with its large airiness, and a bolt on the door, and the shutters filtering the noises of leisurely traffic going along the street below, and she out of sight.. . No one came. During the afternoon she slept, and forgot about dinner. . . .

The changes of the hours of the night proceeded by such fine shades that only silence and solitude made them perceptible: by the varying density of the atmosphere, the spaciousness after midnight, the coolness that runs ahead of dawn. Geraldine sat propped against the pillows, reading by a small dim light: Hakluyt's Voyages
. . .
Columbus himself had neither seen America nor any other of the Islands about it, neither understood he of them by the report of any other that had seen them, but only comforted himself with this hope, that the land had a beginning where the Sea had an ending .
. . What endurance men had then; how feeble to assert now out of self-pity that yesterday possessed certitudes we have lost, an established heaven and earth and everyone safe within marked boundaries.

It was dawn ... it was daylight ... it was nine, then ten o'clock. Now she could go to the boat. She went down, paid her bill; a boy carried her luggage out. She followed him; the image moved across the mirror and was gone . ..

She was clean away. On the dock, her resolution faltered. She did not know if Matt would live or die, if he were dead already. She might have contrived to learn. Even yet, she could try, enquire in the dock office about hospitals, telephone at a venture. No. She went aboard.

Lying face downward in her berth, she was aware, by a tremor in her nerves, when the gangplank was raised. The propellers began to beat steadily . . . She thought, what women want in men is courage. That they shouldn't be afraid of life. But even the best of them fail us in the dark cycles of history. They used to go into cloisters, ask God to save them. Maybe they had to, to gain time to think their way through. And the reckless ones turned to fighting; getting killed was a way out. They've tried fighting now, and they are too much afraid to think; they are retreating to a horrible imitation of childhood, submission and dependence and anonymity; grown-up boy scouts in black and brown shirts, marching to catchwords with no goal. Turn over the women and children to the state . .. When men cloistered themselves, they did know they weren't men any more; they became celibate; that was the condition . . .

Matt has a kind of courage, she thought, even if it's the lowest common denominator. He is bad; those creatures, Eddie and Spud, are sinister, they give you the creeps; and they are a part of his life. He has shuffled off responsibility too, by turning outlaw. But at his own risk. So he seems like a man, by comparison.

23

T
HE
second footman informed Gina that Mrs. Siddall was having tea in the garden. Gina laid down her gloves and handbag in the hall and went through the library to the terrace, without delaying to go to her room or take off her hat. Under the same roof with Mrs. Siddall, Gina unconsciously observed an approximation of court etiquette. She was more at ease with Mrs. Siddall than with Arthur, more naturally fitted to the duties of her position as dauphiness than to the intimate personal relationship.

Mrs. Siddall's Long Island house antedated the consciously rambling style and the Colonial revival. It was built when the hallmark of value was that everything should be imported; Caen stone, English oak, Italian marble. Especially marble. The hall floor was tessellated black and white marble; there were enormous carved white marble mantels; the white marble balustrade of the terrace sustained alabaster urns filled with pink geraniums. The house itself was ponderously rectangular, and of high visibility from all sides. Its sole connection with the landscape was established by force of gravity. Trees and shrubbery stood apart, affording no hope of seclusion. Marble benches invited a maximum of publicity. Everything seemed to be in full view from everywhere: the sunken garden, the lily-pool, the rose-garden, now over-bloomed, at the end of July. Three thousand rose bushes were set in circles and rows and trellis arbors; possibly the head gardener knew the names of all the varieties, but no one else; they blossomed and faded in mass. Roses to be cut for the house were grown specially under glass, and the gardener delivered them every morning to the housekeeper. The establishment was not only palatial; it
was
a palace, enforcing a ritual of living unchangeable by the idiosyncrasies of the inhabitants.

The nearest shade was at some distance from the house, under a pair of cedars. Gina walked slowly across the lawn, checking up the guests as she approached. Mrs. Siddall sat in a peacock-backed rattan chair; the others endured the picturesque discomfort of more modern garden furniture. Mrs. Perry, Sam Reynolds, Mrs. Reynolds, Katryn Wiggins, Marion Townley, Polly Brant, and two men brought by Polly and Katryn.

Beyond the cedars, a high wall of smooth masonry separated the stables and kitchen gardens and greenhouses from the formal grounds. A grass-walk led through a circular opening in the wall, the grey curve clear against the green. Benjy and Arthur came through it, followed by Benjy's nurse and an unnoticeable youngish man, who might have been a guest but wasn't. Benjy's abbreviated blue linen suit, his socks and sandals, showed most of his straight brown legs. As he saw Gina, he ran ahead to meet her. "Oh, mother-r," he called, "I rode my pony by myself." He slid his hand into hers happily.

"Did you?

that's splendid. Have you hurt your foot, Benjy?" He swung his weight on her arm, keeping his right heel from the ground. "Yes," he agreed. "I rode all around." Gina picked him up in her arms and carried him the rest of the way, her tall slender figure swaying gracefully. When she set him down he shook hands gravely with the guests, with sidelong ingratiating glances; he had already Arthur's charming deference of manner. A baby is royally ignorant of dependence; its necessities are imperative commands. At five, the child has begun to look up, to admire, to wish to please. Mrs. Siddall beamed at him, and he climbed onto her lap. "How did you hurt your foot, dear?" The nurse came forward anxiously, and knelt to take off his sandals. "Which foot, ma'am? I don't know how he could have hurt it; does it hurt, Benjy?" "No, thank you," Benjy replied. "There isn't any mark," the nurse said. "He must have been just hopping on one foot, for fun."

The butler and a footman, arriving processionally, set out trays and glasses. "You may have one of those little cakes, Benjy," Mrs. Siddall said. Benjy took it and thanked her, but after one bite he held it in his hand uneaten. The nurse murmured: "I think he's sleepy, ma'am; he missed his nap, he was so excited about the new pony." "Very well, you'd better take him," Mrs. Siddall relinquished him to the routine. Benjy bobbed his head inclusively: "Good-by." He stood with his right foot eased. The un-noticeable youngish man said: "Let me carry him." He was Benjy's guard, taken for granted by the child. Even Mrs. Siddall, Arthur and Gina had grown forgetfully accustomed to the reminder of constant peril. "Good-by, daddy," Benjy called to Arthur.

Everyone looked after him, smiling. "Fine little chap," Polly's escort volunteered. "Regular sportsman." Silence ensued, and the momentary sentimental accord dissolved. . . . Arthur, acutely conscious of Gina as he always was now in her presence, thought elliptically: No, I can't. . . . Nothing...

Polly's eyes, dark and discontented under her stormy brows, rested on the man she had brought. Guy Fletcher. Tall, thin and carefully weatherbeaten, his mouth slightly open, his hand clasping a glass. No occupation. He belonged to her set; he hunted; he had an income of ten thousand a year—if anyone had an income now. Subject to the same reservation, he would presumably inherit fifty thousand a year from his mother in the course of nature. He had suggested to Polly that she should get a divorce and marry him, if he could gain his mother's consent. Ten thousand a year was hardly enough. He had been following Polly around for five years. . . . My God, she thought, what's the use? He's just like Bill, but there's more to Bill, if it's only bone and muscle. Solid ivory. I used to be crazy about Bill. I'm fond of him yet. He drinks a little too much, and snores. Getting too heavy for his fences. Some day he'll come a cropper, or he'll just drop in his tracks, probably after dinner. And my life will be over. There isn't time to make another. Might as well stay the course. If I did chuck Bill, and married Guy, and Bill died afterward, me not there, I'd feel worse— it would finish me just the same. Greenland! It's lucky he can't raise the cash; if he strolled off for six months, Julius Dickerson would have him out of his job. So I've got to go back to the yacht to-night, keep in with Wy Helder; but the sight of the old man gives me the creeps; he's gaga—Marion Townley's had three husbands, and look at her—hungry as a hawk. . ..

Gina was looking at Marion Townley. Marion asked Arthur for a light, and took his wrist in her fingers to steady the briquet. A platinum blonde, with perfect make-up, and smooth curls gathered at the back of her neck. Arthur disliked her. Nobody could have guessed it from his extra shade of attentiveness. The two fair heads bent together were striking.

Gina thought: Impossible. Arthur doesn't. . . . But he might. They all do. Arthur is different. But it's months, I can't remember how long, since he asked me; they say a man has to have somebody. He cares most about Benjy. But if some woman got hold of him . . . Mrs. Siddall would be on Arthur's side if it came to a choice. ... I haven't a cent of my own. How could a trust fund stop paying? It was a trust fund. I'll have to make it up to mother out of my allowance. Mrs. Siddall said we must economize; how can we? unless we shut our house— I don't want to go back and live with her now, she'd notice about us. .. .