The Golden Vanity (35 page)

I'll bet she won't, Mysie thought. "How do you feel now? What you need is to go straight home and rest. I'd take you myself, but if I don't show up after telephoning Thea two hours ago that I'd be along soon, she'll be worried. Can you manage it?" "Of course I can," Gina said angrily. Jake was lurking in the kitchen; Mysie summoned him: "Gina's ready; she's going home; please drive carefully. Where's your hat, idjit?"

Jake whispered imploringly: "Couldn't you?"

Mysie whispered back: "I could not. It will be a lesson to you." She went with Gina to the car and said good night in a casual tone, as if nothing had happened. Well, it hadn't. She could tell. . . .

Gina sat back in the corner of the car rigidly withdrawn—She thought: Arthur can't leave me now. He can't. . . .

When they were out of sight, Mysie walked down the path to her own car, where Dick Chisholm waited patiently.

"Will you drive?" she said. "I'll get on the road first." She backed the car; there was a short cut at the last turning. After ten minutes she found it, and drew over to one side, stopping so they could change. It was a byway; no other cars were in sight.

"You can't imagine what I was doing," she said.

"No."

"I was stopping an elopement."

"Did you succeed?"

She nodded. They could see each other plainly. The yellow glow of the headlights picked out a clump of grass and fern by the roadside, drawn in sepia and gold. The moon too was pale gold, large and warm.

"But it really seems too bad," she said. "On such a night. Someone ought to."

"I've always been in love with you," he said.

"No, you haven't," she said. She had represented the unattainable to him. Most men have an element of snobbery in their attitude toward women; there was that in his long remembrance of her. He would make a fortune, and then he would be as good a man as Michael Busch. But Mike hadn't been like that; he backed his own choice. Dick Chisholm wasn't a bad sort, but the fault, the shortcoming, was in himself. He wouldn't take the odds. It takes generosity to love, to be happy. . . . She didn't want Dick to be in love with her. But he would do for a barrier. She wouldn't mind having someone to talk to, at two o'clock in the morning, so she couldn't think of anyone else. And why shouldn't Dick have his desire? He could then go away and maybe find some woman for himself. "It doesn't matter," she said, "let's go."

"Straight ahead?" he asked, spinning the wheel. The sound of the motor almost muffled her reply.

"Whichever way you like. I've got two days."

27

"I
WISH
," said Thea, "that you two would agree on a selection before you begin. It's rather distracting to have you singing and playing two different songs at once."

Jake was on the piano bench and Mysie leaning over his shoulder turning the music. Thea was adding up her accounts methodically and grimly. The livingroom of the cottage had to serve as study and music-room also. Even for week-ends in the country Thea could not dispense with a piano, though for lack of space it had to be an upright. Thea said that the installation of a cozy corner would make the room a complete period exhibit, American middle class of 1900. There was a Morris chair, occupied at the moment by Geraldine reading the Saturday Evening Post. Geraldine and Leonard were week-end guests, which meant that Mysie had to sleep on the convertible davenport sofa. Jake was there only for the day. If necessary, they could have made him up a cot in the diningroom. The accommodation of a large house is fixed, but a small house will shelter almost any number of people.

"What bothers you," said Mysie, "is not merely that Jake is determined to soothe his savage breast with the strains of the Bird in a Gilded Cage while I prefer the works of Thomas Haynes Bailey; but if Jake had a voice it would be a tenor and if I had one it would be a contralto; and no song is written for exactly that arrangement. Did you ever notice, Thea, that all songs are in the wrong key for whoever is asked to sing them?"

"I've noticed something of the sort," said Thea. "It is a great comfort to me that I have lost practically all my savings on the very best advice." The abrupt change of subject did not disconcert her auditors. It was their customary mode of conversation, each resolutely following his or her own line, with amiable acknowledgments of the separate interests of the others. The transitions were made as by the quantum theory, with no intermediate process.

Mysie said: "It's no use worrying; they've got us whip-sawed. I tried to figure out lately what I should have done to hold onto my miserable savings. There wasn't any way. New York real estate, or mortgages, or stocks, or bonds; I'd have had to leap from one to another like Eliza crossing the ice. And if I'd got across, there would be the tax-eaters waiting with open jaws; besides, nobody knows how much a bank account will be worth to-morrow in German marks. Maybe it doesn't matter; God didn't mean people like us to have incomes. You know Mr. Gates McGarrah said we weren't to be trusted with real money. Never give a sucker an even break. We were born to earn our livings from day to day. We can't be anything but what we are."

Nobody was observing Geraldine. There was no reason to do so. She merely sat very still, conscious of her own heartbeats, hearing the echo of a voice she'd never hear again.... For two months after her return from Havana, she had not known whether Matt was living or dead. Then one morning she answered the telephone . . . Mrs. Wiekes? The warm deep note vibrated through the insensate wire—Yes, she said ... It's you? Matt said. You know who this is?... Yes, she said again .. . You alone? he asked . . . No, she said, the children are here ... He said: I get you. I suppose I couldn't see you? ... She said: I can't ... He said: I've thought of you a good deal . . . She repeated: I just can't. How are you? . . . He said: Oh, I'm O. K. I guess my number wasn't up yet.... They were both silent for a moment, still aware of each other by some mysterious mode of communication of which the telephone was only a materialized form. That which divided them was equally imponderable and immeasurable, not steel or stone or space. She felt that her respectability was as dangerous to him as his outlawry was to her. Respectable people were bad medicine to him. All the presumptions were on their side. ... He said: I guess you can't. Well, good-by, girlie—good luck—She said: Good-by. . . .

She had to face it cold. It is much nicer if you are able to supply a pretty phrase for what you've done. Elective affinities, Goethe called it. But you really can't call a rumrunner an elective affinity. Goethe didn't make any phrases either about settling down with his kitchen maid. The less said the better. We can't be anything but what we are. With a husband and children and a living to earn, there certainly isn't much time to be anything but what you are. She had sold two stories recently, and moved to a three room apartment—the landlord had to let her break her old lease since she simply couldn't pay him—and Leonard still had his twenty dollar a week job, though one couldn't be sure how long it would last. In sum, they were back where they began. That didn't matter in itself; only she did not dare look ahead; what kind of a world would the children grow up into? She had to be cheerful, for Leonard; she would, literally, rather die than hurt Leonard. She didn't care how much Matt might suffer; anyhow, he wouldn't. He could pick up plenty of women; he couldn't be anything but what he was either. And she didn't care about the other women; the thought caused her no pang; only she was puzzled by the—the unrelatedness of life. That nothing should come of an emotion so powerful and complete; that they should have it for each other, being what they were. . . . Already it seemed to her that it had happened a long time ago.

"Maybe we can't be anything but what we are," said Thea, "but circumstances may cramp our style. In my opinion, there are a lot of men at present miscast as financiers and politicians. They ought to be pimps."

"Such language!" said Mysie.

"I'm old-fashioned," said Thea. "Yesterday I got two letters by the same mail. One was a statement of what happened to a bond I bought; it was highly recommended by all sorts of prominent names. I may get ten per cent out of the wreck; but the lawyers get ten thousand dollars for foreclosure proceedings and the trustees get a management fee just the same. For what, I ask you? The other letter was from my sister-in-law, burbling about how she had turned in her gold teeth to save the country. Of course if she didn't a lot of able-bodied men would fine her as a hoarder. I could stand it if they didn't talk such drivel, but it wears on me."

"Young men must live," said Mysie.

"I do not perceive the necessity," said Thea. Neither did Charles, she thought. ... He shouldn't have done it, but she could not blame him now. Fifteen years ago, her husband, Charles Ludlow, shot himself, after losing his last cent in the stock market. He left a note asking her to forgive him. His health was broken, and his insurance would provide for her. No, he shouldn't have left her; she could have supported both of them; but that was what he feared. He had always been reckless, but till then he had been lucky. They used to quarrel wildly and make it up laughing. She had no heart to patch up the broken bits of the life she had had with him. Nothing could give her back her youth, when she had been brilliant and happy—and Charles thought her beautiful. She wouldn't touch the insurance money; how could he imagine such a thing? Her daughter Drusie accepted it gladly. When she heard Drusie say it was fortunate father was insured, Thea knew she was really alone. Let Drusie have it then; it enabled her to marry a prudent young man who might otherwise have jilted her. But Thea never wanted to see either her daughter or her son-in-law again. No doubt that was unjust; Thea did maintain indifferent conventional relations with them; Drusie never knew what her mother felt. What was the use of talking? . . . Charles had gambled and lost and taken the consequences. Thea forgave him.

My love he built a bonny ship and set it on the sea, And the name of the ship was the Golden Vanitie; And he sailed it to the Lowlands low. . . .
Jake and Mysie had compromised on a book of old ballads unearthed from an immense miscellaneous stack of music which belonged to Thea. Years ago she had made a general collection, partly a joke, ranging from the best to the worst. Charles had shocking bad taste in music; he went to sleep at concerts, Thea thought, and dragged me to musical comedies, and made me play the most terrible popular trash to him —and I did! I was flattered, because my talent meant nothing to him; he loved me as a woman—whatever that means. Perhaps he'd even have loved me now, as I am— but I wouldn't be like this if he had lived. I'd have loved him still. I do. Dear Charles. He's dead, but he must be somewhere. It was wrong of him, so I have to pay for both, by waiting. It doesn't hurt any more, it's only watching the clock.

"Aren't you going to the Siddalls this afternoon?" she asked Mysie.

"We are not. We did our duty last Sunday. Now there's what I mean; your odd-job man says Arthur has lost all his money, but they are living in that awful marble mausoleum the same as before, and they're going abroad in a few days. And Gina is going to have a baby."

"Did the odd-job man tell you that too?" Geraldine asked, roused to professional curiosity.

"No, the grocery boy did. He knows that Wop chauffeur, and the chauffeur probably heard it from Gina's maid. You can't have any private life if you have servants," Mysie said. "We're learning all about how the other half lives. How the Stukeleys are letting their thirty servants stay and work for their board; and the Averys have moved into their gate lodge and make the gardener's wife do their laundry for nothing; and the Van Eycks filled up their wine cellar with canned spinach and stuff a year ago in case of revolution; and young Jelliffe Pearson goes around in person to collect his rents in New York; he's one of the stingy kind. At first I thought we were hearing mythology in the making, but it's all true. And after last Sunday I can believe anything. Dean Hervey told me that none of his parishioners come to him with spiritual problems any more; they bring him their financial problems. Asking for the miracle of the loaves and fishes. But when I said so he was shocked. And I had a long conversation with Bill Brant; he told me how disappointed he was over having to give up an expedition to Greenland. Apparently his idea of the good life is to sleep in a furlined sack on a pile of rocks and ice; he showed me a snapshot of himself in that blissful situation. But it's beyond his means at present; fate has condemned him to spring mattresses and steam-heated houses. It's pretty sad. They say those things and nobody finds anything funny about it. I don't know what Jake and I were doing in that galley, but I'll be darned if I'll put in another day off with our best people."

Of course she did know what they were doing there; but that was strictly private. They were doing their duty. It was an act of oblivion. Arthur had asked them, and Gina could give no reason for objecting. Mysie would have evaded the invitation, when it occurred to her that Gina might be easier in her mind if she met Jake once more. Jake was absolutely inadaptable to ordinary human relations; but he had a genius for the impossible. How else had he shared the same roof with his aunts for forty years, and contrived to build an indestructible friendship out of the wreck of a marriage and a divorce? . . . Mysie had watched Gina's terror at the meeting change, within the space of fifteen minutes, to simple bewilderment and then to condescension. Nobody but Jake could have turned the trick. By assuming the rôle of a humble, discreet and rejected adorer, he convinced Gina that she was a kind but inflexible goddess. Mysie thought, Gina has to have her lines and cues. It was perfectly silly of her to run off with a man. None of the conventions will cover such a situation in actuality; you have to improvise; and that's where she's lost. I can imagine what Jake's shack looked like to her; it looked exactly as it is. Perhaps that's what's extraordinary about Gina. She sees everything literally. As if the world were an immense department store—