The Golden Vanity (6 page)

"But grandmother will be pleased," he said ingenuously. "She wants me to get married." It didn't occur to him that most wishes are stultified by the terms of fulfillment.

Gina thought: It's real. He's sitting here on the edge of my bed; asking me to marry him. . .. She felt that she was within her rights, superior to other women. Her virtue consisted in fortitude and intelligence, justified by success.

"Is it very late?" she whispered. "If anyone should . . ."

Parting reluctantly, he kissed her hands. His flaxen hair dropped on his forehead in a fringe. "Good night— I'd rather say good morning," he turned at the door, came back and kissed her again. She stood listening, with a faint fear, after he was gone.

Sleep came on her as complete oblivion. She woke as suddenly to daylight. The housemaid was drawing the blind. For a moment Gina's mind was empty; she gazed at the maid's impassive back. Bessie. An angular middle-aged Scotchwoman. Bessie placed the matutinal tea-tray conveniently, and said: "Guid morning, ma'am" ... An echo in Gina's brain said: Good morning—in Arthur's voice.

Fantastic. Like being invisible, with the cap of darkness, the shoes of swiftness, the sword of sharpness.

5

"R
EALLY
, Sam, at your age—" Mrs. Siddall smiled in spite of herself, and patted her hair with an unconscious reversion to long disused habit. Nobody in the world but Sam Reynolds would have the temerity to take her by the waist, or as much of it as his arm could compass, and imprint a mock-gallant kiss on her unyielding cheek.

"Hell, Charlotte, you didn't send for me to remind me of my age, did you? Have you no sentiment? Don't you remember the first time I bussed you?"

"The first—I should think you would prefer to forget it. In the kitchen garden, after I'd caught you pursuing the laundress!"

"Well, I had to square myself somehow. Fine figure of a gal, that laundress; I remember her distinctly, one of those outstanding Norwegians that look their best in the open air. And you handed me a haymaker that sent me through the ropes. Simply ruined the most promising young vegetable marrow on the lot; and I haven't been right in my head since."

"Nor before," Mrs. Siddall retorted. She tolerated Sam as a sort of court jester, a prerogative of her position. The exuberance of youth was his excuse in her eyes; he was twenty years her junior, and though not of her own blood, he belonged to the clan by marriage. Mrs. Siddall was the more indulgent because her father had been a jovial, blunt-spoken man; she rejected the legend that he had acquired his manner as a Yankee peddler. The Cranes were a fine old New England family. Perhaps she preferred even Sam's effrontery to her husband's suave deference, which always put him out of her reach. Since the money was hers, she had had her own way; yet after twenty years of conjugal courtesy, when he died she was left baffled, with the resentful feeling that he had not told her where he was going!

Besides her feudal attitude toward Sam Reynolds, she had a shrewder motive in condoning his disrespect. When necessary, she could get the truth from him. Her wealth created about her a maze of polite suppressions, diplomatic silences, and arrangements of disagreeable facts in a more favorable light. On the whole, she wished it so; it made for ease and consideration. But sometimes, she needed the truth.

"You have intelligence enough, Sam," she retracted, "but no ambition. I sent for you—" She paused, uncertain how to begin, or how not to be too explicit.

"To nick me for five dollars?" On principle, Sam would not allow her to play the patroness. "That's all the rich ever want of the poor—money." He had often told her it wasn't ambition but stamina he lacked. The main thing required of a great financier was the ability to exist for indefinite periods during important negotiations in a mental vacuum, listening to platitudes. Like Julius Dickerson, the sanctimonious s. o. b. . . . Sam knew he was labeled irresponsible. Charlotte gave him odd jobs; she never let him touch the big money. He had to extract some entertainment from the connection, or it was a dead loss. He was a lawyer, but had never got much corporation work. If Myrtle, his wife, had let him disport in his natural element—he often told her that he was born to be a Tammany politician, but Myrtle had set him polishing the doorknobs of respectability—if she had let him alone, he could have picked up enough honest graft to enable his family to relegate him to the background. His own social talent was best adapted to wearing a tall hat in a parade or at the funeral of a lamented district leader. Eminent Republicans, he affirmed, were not buried, but stuffed and placed in the windows of the Union League Club. When Sam was dragged to Charlotte's heavy dinners by his nervously aspiring wife, he avenged himself by breaking the china, the fragile proprieties. His wife and his sister-in-law, Mrs. Perry, were obliged to regard him in public as a humorist, though it was a severe strain upon their histrionic powers. In fact, there was a latent streak of vindictive envy in his clowning.

"Please listen, Sam, this is serious," Mrs. Siddall said, and stopped again. Even in her most private cogitations, she arrived at conclusions roundabout; and Sam had an embarrassing way of translating her phrases before he answered her. Being rich is a state of mind as well as a material condition. In order to derive the full benefit from wealth, the rich person whose natural talents are only mediocre or less must be convinced that he possesses some esoteric merit which has been rightly rewarded by divine justice. A blind spot in the mental retina must be maintained, to block out any object or idea that refuses to support such an assumption. Very few people are rude enough to the rich to drag inconvenient facts into the foreground and stress their significance. Sam would, and did. Mrs. Siddall considered that he had no sense of proportion. She didn't bother to adjust this view of his character with her recourse to him for direct, dependable information when she wanted it.

She had a strong aversion from morbid topics; that is, from the thought of death; hitherto she had not been afraid of dying because she simply did not believe it could happen to her. So she had suffered a profound mental shock, through her illness. She had very nearly died; she saw the truth in the expression of the doctor when consciousness returned to her. Though it was six weeks ago, she could not put it out of her mind. She was not disturbed solely on her own account. How could she leave Arthur with that vast fortune? It was the extension of her own ego, a double death to her if he could not hold it, or failed to carry on the line, leaving it to be scattered among distant relatives, sunk in the impersonal oblivion of corporate philanthropies, or dissipated in litigation.

"Sam, do you know anything about Arthur?"

"Know what? He's a good lad, that's all I know."

She fumbled with her lorgnette, watching Sam's expression.

"That is just why. . . . You're a bad hat, Sam, so I'm asking you. Arthur is twenty-three and—and—"

"And a virgin?" Sam supplied.

"There is no need to be coarse. But he ought to marry."

"Well, what can I do about it?" Sam inquired. If she wanted it straight— "You'd better hire some able-bodied wench to rape him."

"Don't be so revolting." She was not discomposed; one had to set a limit with Sam, and call him to order when he exceeded. "Do you suppose there is anything—queer about him?"

"Not if he got a break. You've overlaid the boy."

"What do you mean?"

"Smothered him, with battalions of German nurses and French governesses and English tutors and Swiss cheeses. Might as well have put him in a convent— a damn sight better. Don't you know a man can't marry his grandmother? You haven't even got a housemaid under forty, and plain at that. When you did let him go to college, didn't you send him with a bodyguard? That Oxford what-is-it. And I'll bet his valet reported to you once a week. If a live one had tried to pick him up, your flatties would have called the police. It's enough to make him queer, but he's all right. He wouldn't get so fussed when a skirt goes by, if he wasn't interested. Watch him piping that little Fuller gal."

"Gina Fuller!"

"Or Polly Brant," Sam amended hastily. Why should he crab the girl? She needed her job. And she was entitled to a shot at the prize. None of his business. "Fact is, Arthur's been mooning after Polly since he was knee high, but she's too square to encourage him. Big sister stuff. Anyhow, it's only because she's the nearest good-looker. All you've got to do is turn him loose."

"What an expression! As if he were not quite independent—ridiculous. He comes and goes as he chooses."

"Comes in every night and goes to bed at ten o'clock. You know where he is every hour out of the twenty-four, don't you?"

"Surely you don't imply that I should take no interest in him whatever?"

Sam said: "I don't imply anything. You asked me." He was annoyed at himself; wouldn't he ever learn to yes them? But there was no gain in taking back what he had already said. "All I can say is, you've got him in training for a bachelor. And if you want him to be queer, just put on a little more pressure." Compunction seized him; the old girl looked rather yellow about the gills. Perhaps he had hit too hard. "Oh, hell, Charlotte, I didn't mean that exactly; there's nothing the matter with Arthur except common decency. Get Polly to give you a hand. She'll marry him off before he knows what the shooting's about —and may God have mercy on his soul."

Mrs. Siddall's double chin quivered as if she were literally swallowing her pride. If she must, she would accept help—even from another woman. "Think it over," Sam repeated placably.

"Very well," Mrs. Siddall resumed her lofty tone; and Sam did not miss it.

"And of course," he said, "you'll never forgive me."

She could do the handsome thing. "No," she said, "I won't. I never forgave you for kissing the laundress first." They laughed together.

She thought it over, while Gina was reading to her next morning. Altogether the reading was wasted, for Mrs. Siddall paid no attention; and Gina read mechanically. Gina couldn't stand much more. She must chance it, let Arthur tell Mrs. Siddall, very soon. It would be so much worse if the knowledge came any other way. To meet one of the maids in the upper hall made Gina's heart turn over sickeningly—the way they were about at all hours. . . . And for a day she had experienced primitive terror. Afterward she recognized that what she feared might be the last resort necessary to hold Arthur, though it would be next to failure. She could almost have hated him for his unshared pleasure, bought with her unshared tears.

Mrs. Siddall's solid figure, in her winged chair, suggested the immovable body of the philosophical riddle. She too had had a bad night. She had dreamed that she lay swathed in some gauzy inescapable web, fold upon fold, all grey, over her face, wound about her limbs, till she could neither stir nor cry out, while she knew that something was happening, somewhere, which concerned her, though she was helpless to prevent or direct or even to discover its nature. A wretched dream; it must be the memory of going into the ether for the operation. Things came back like that occasionally; at long intervals she dreamed of her husband, dead these twenty years. In that dream, she was explaining some important matter to him, and he did not answer. She detested dreams.

"Eh?" Though she had been looking straight at Gina, she recognized her again suddenly when the end of an article was marked by silence. "Thank you," Mrs. Siddall said. "Yes, Janet?" Gina repressed a start; Miss Kirkland was standing in the door tentatively, and the least unexpected trifle now startled Gina. Miss Kirkland's sallow plainness was aggravated by a dress of the most unbecoming shade of brown, two inches longer than the current fashion. "Please telephone to Mrs. Brant," Mrs. Siddall requested, "and ask her when she can spare me an hour. If she could come to tea to-day ... Go on, Gina; you might pick out the main points of the news from Washington."

Miss Kirkland reported almost immediately that Mrs. Brant was out for the day. "You left a message? Very well," Mrs. Siddall relapsed into her meditation. What light came into the room fell on Gina's demure figure. No make-up, Mrs. Siddall observed favorably. Modern girls were so hard, flippant and self-engrossed, painting their vacuous faces in public and bringing the manners of the demi-monde into the drawing-room. The things they talked about, under pretense of being honester than their grandmothers, who had borne ten children apiece and said nothing about it. Mrs. Siddall forgot that she herself had considered her duty done when she produced one healthy son. But they didn't talk about that either in her time; it was assumed to be the will of God. "Thank you," she indicated to Gina that the reading was over. "By the way, your parents are living, are they not?"

"My mother is," Gina had grown accustomed to Mrs. Siddall's mannerism of royalty, asking questions suddenly and dropping the subject with the same abruptness.

"And your brothers and sisters?"

"I have none." That seemed to be satisfactory; Mrs. Siddall nodded and indicated that Gina might go. Janet came in with the morning's mail and letters to sign. Poor Janet, Mrs. Siddall thought irrelevantly—a faithful creature, hardworking and capable. . . . Usually, when Mrs. Siddall laid down the last letter and said with a rising inflection: "That is all, I think?" Miss Kirkland indicated zeal by hastening away. This morning, she lingered; and Mrs. Siddall asked ritually: "Yes, Janet?"

"There is something I must—" Miss Kirkland began nervously.

Some complaint of the servants, no doubt, Mrs. Siddall thought. Vexatious but unavoidable. If those empty-headed radicals who displayed their ignorance by talking about the idle rich had any idea of the task it was to manage a great household. . . . Mrs. Siddall was sincere in her conviction that "maintaining her social position" was her duty. Even the best of servants grew slack without the immediate supervision of the mistress; she supposed hers had become slightly disorganized during her illness. Mrs. Enderby, the housekeeper, was growing old; it might be best to pension her off, but then the other old servants would resent the orders of a newcomer. Really, they were very trying, with their spites and sulks. Most difficult with secretaries and governesses; Mrs. Siddall couldn't stoop to personal cognizance of minor incidents, but she could enforce her will when necessary, and listen when it seemed advisable.