Edith Wharton - SSC 09

by Human Nature (v2. 1)

  Mrs. Brown, I may as well confess, bored me acutely. She was a perfect specimen of the middle-aged flapper, with layers and layers of hard-headed feminine craft under her romping ways. All this I suffered from chiefly because I knew it was making Mrs. Glenn suffer. But after all it was thanks to Mrs. Brown that she had found her son; Mrs. Brown had brought up Stephen, had made him (one was obliged to suppose) the whimsical dreamy charming creature he was; and again and again, when Mrs. Brown outdid herself in girlish archness or middle-aged craft, Mrs. Glenn’s wounded eyes said to mine: “Look at Stephen; isn’t that enough?”

  Certainly it was enough; enough even to excuse Mr. Brown’s jocular allusions and arid anecdotes, his boredom at Les Calanques, and the too-liberal potations in which he drowned it. Mr. Brown, I may add, was not half as trying as his wife. For the first two or three days I was mildly diverted by his contempt for the quiet watering-place in which his women had confined him, and his lordly conception of the life of pleasure, as exemplified by intimacy with the head-waiters of gilt-edged restaurants and the lavishing of large sums on horse-racing and cards. “Damn it, Norcutt, I’m not used to being mewed up in this kind of place. Perhaps it’s different with you—all depends on a man’s standards, don’t it? Now before I lost my money—” and so on. The odd thing was that, though this loss of fortune played a large part in the conversation of both husband and wife, I never somehow believed in it—I mean in the existence of the fortune. I hinted as much one day to Mrs. Glenn, but she only opened her noble eyes reproachfully, as if I had implied that it discredited the Browns to dream of a fortune they had never had. “They tell me Stephen was brought up with every luxury. And besides—their own tastes seem rather expensive, don’t they?” she argued gently.

  “That’s the very reason.”

  “The reason—?”

  “The only people I know who are totally without expensive tastes are the overwhelmingly wealthy. You see it when you visit palaces. They sleep on camp-beds and live on boiled potatoes.”

  Mrs. Glenn smiled. “Stevie wouldn’t have liked that.”

  Stephen smiled also when I alluded to these past splendours. “It must have been before I cut my first teeth. I know Boy’s always talking about it; but I’ve got to take it on faith, just as you have.”

  “Boy—?”

  “Didn’t you know? He’s always called ‘Boy.’ Boydon Brown—abbreviated by friends and family to ‘Boy.’ The Boy Browns. Suits them, doesn’t it?”

  It did; but I was not sure that it suited him to say so.

  “And you’ve always addressed your adopted father in that informal style?”

  “Lord, yes; nobody’s formal with Boy except head-waiters. They bow down to him; I don’t know why. He’s got the manner. I haven’t. When I go to a restaurant they always give me the worst table and the stupidest waiter.” He leaned back against the sand-bank and blinked contentedly seaward. “Got a cigarette?”

  “You know you oughtn’t to smoke,” I protested.

  “I know; but I do.” He held out a lean hand with prominent knuckles. “As long as Kit’s not about.” He called the marble angel, his mother, “Kit”! And yet I was not offended—I let him do it, just as I let him have one of my cigarettes. If “Boy” had a way with head-waiters his adopted son undoubtedly had one with lesser beings; his smile, his faint hoarse laugh would have made me do his will even if his talk had not conquered me. We sat for hours on the sands, discussing and dreaming; not always undisturbed, for Mrs. Brown had a tiresome way of hovering and “listening in,” as she archly called it-—(“I don’t want Stevie to depreciate his poor ex-mamma to you,” she explained one day); and whenever Mrs. Brown (who, even at Les Calanques, had contrived to create a social round for herself) was bathing, dancing, playing bridge, or being waved, massaged or manicured, the other mother, assuring herself from an upper window that the coast was clear, would descend in her gentle majesty and turn our sand-bank into a throne by sitting on it. But now and then Stephen and I had a half-hour to ourselves; and then I tried to lead his talk to the past.

  He seemed willing enough that I should, but uninterested, and unable to recover many details. “I never can remember things that don’t matter—and so far nothing about me has mattered,” he said with a humorous melancholy. “I mean, not till I struck mother Kit.”

  He had vague recollections of continental travels as a little boy; had afterward been at a private school in Switzerland; had tried to pass himself off as a Canadian volunteer in 1915, and in 1917 to enlist in the American army, but had failed in each case—one had only to look at him to see why. The war over, he had worked for a time at Julian’s, and then broken down; and after that it had been a hard row to hoe till mother Kit came along. By George, but he’d never forget what she’d done for him—never!

  “Well, it’s a way mothers have with their sons,” I remarked.

  He flushed under his bronze tanning, and said simply: “Yes—only you see I didn’t know.”

  His view of the Browns, while not unkindly, was so detached that I suspected him of regarding his own mother with the same objectivity; but when we spoke of her there was a different note in his voice. “I didn’t know”—it was a new experience to him to be really mothered. As a type, however, she clearly puzzled him. He was too sensitive to class her (as the Browns obviously did) as a simple-minded woman to whom nothing had ever happened; but he could not conceive what sort of things could happen to a woman of her kind. I gathered that she had explained the strange episode of his adoption by telling him that at the time of his birth she had been “secretly married”—poor Catherine!—to his father, but that “family circumstances” had made it needful to conceal his existence till the marriage could be announced; by which time he had vanished with his adopted parents. I guessed how it must have puzzled Stephen to adapt his interpretation of this ingenuous tale to what, in the light of Mrs. Glenn’s character, he could make out of her past. Of obvious explanations there were plenty; but evidently none fitted into his vision of her. For a moment (I could see) he had suspected a sentimental tie, a tender past, between Mrs. Glenn and myself; but this his quick perceptions soon discarded, and he apparently resigned himself to regarding her as inscrutably proud and incorrigibly perfect. “I’d like to paint her some day—if ever I’m fit to,” he said; and I wondered whether his scruples applied to his moral or artistic inadequacy.

  At the doctor’s orders he had dropped his painting altogether since his last breakdown; but it was manifestly the one thing he cared for, and perhaps the only reason he had for wanting to get well. “When you’ve dropped to a certain level, it’s so damnably easy to keep on till you’re altogether down and out. So much easier than dragging up hill again. But I do want to get well enough to paint mother Kit. She’s a subject.”

  One day it rained, and he was confined to the house. I went up to sit with him, and he got out some of his sketches and studies. Instantly he was transformed from an amiably mocking dilettante into an absorbed and passionate professional. “This is the only life I’ve ever had. All the rest—!” He made a grimace that turned his thin face into a death’s-head. “Cinders!”

  The studies were brilliant—there was no doubt of that. The question was—the eternal question—what would they turn into when he was well enough to finish them? For the moment the problem did not present itself, and I could praise and encourage him in all sincerity. My words brought a glow into his face, but also, as it turned out, sent up his temperature. Mrs. Glenn reproached me mildly; she begged me not to let him get excited about his pictures. I promised not to, and reassured on that point she asked if I didn’t think he had talent—real talent? “Very great talent, yes,” I assured her; and she burst into tears—not of grief or agitation, but of a deep upwelling joy. “Oh, what have I done to deserve it all—to deserve such happiness? Yet I always knew if I could find him he’d make me happy!” She caught both my hands, and pressed her wet cheek on mine. That was one of her unclouded hours
.

  There were others not so radiant. I could see that the Browns were straining at the leash. With the seductions of Juan-les-Pins and Antibes in the offing, why, their frequent allusions implied, must they remain marooned at Les Calanques? Of course, for one thing, Mrs. Brown admitted, she hadn’t the clothes to show herself on a smart plage. Though so few were worn they had to come from the big dressmakers; and the latter’s charges, everybody knew, were in inverse rado to the amount of material used. “So that to be really naked is ruinous,” she concluded, laughing; and I saw the narrowing of Catherine’s lips. As for Mr. Brown, he added morosely that if a man couldn’t take a hand at baccarat, or offer his friends something decent to eat and drink, it was better to vegetate at Les Calanques, and be done with it. Only, when a fellow’d been used to having plenty of money …

  I saw at once what had happened. Mrs. Glenn, whose material wants did not extend beyond the best plumbing and expensive clothes (and the latter were made to do for three seasons), did not fully understand the Browns’ aspirations. Her fortune, though adequate, was not large, and she had settled on Stephen’s adoptive parents an allowance which, converted into francs, made a generous showing. It was obvious, however, that what they hoped was to get more money. There had been debts in the background, perhaps; who knew but the handsome Stephen had had his share in them? One day I suggested discreetly to Mrs. Glenn that if she wished to be alone with her son she might offer the Browns a trip to Juan-les-Pins, or some such centre of gaiety. But I pointed out that the precedent might be dangerous, and advised her first to consult Stephen. “I suspect he’s as anxious to have them go as you are,” I said recklessly; and her flush of pleasure rewarded me. “Oh, you mustn’t say that,” she reproved me, laughing; and added that she would think over my advice. I am not sure if she did consult Stephen; but she offered the Browns a holiday, and they accepted it without false pride.

  

  VI.

  After my departure from Les Calanques I had no news of Mrs. Glenn till she returned to Paris in October. Then she begged me to call at the hotel where I had previously seen her, and where she was now staying with Stephen—and the Browns.

  She suggested, rather mysteriously, my dining with her on a particular evening, when, as she put it, “everybody” would be out; and when I arrived she explained that Stephen had gone to the country for the week-end, with some old comrades from Julian’s, and that the Browns were dining at a smart night-club in Montmartre. “So we’ll have a quiet time all by ourselves.” She added that Steve was so much better that he was trying his best to persuade her to spend the winter in Paris, and let him get back to his painting; but in spite of the good news I thought she looked worn and dissatisfied.

  I was surprised to find the Browns still with her, and told her so.

  “Well, you see, it’s difficult,” she returned with a troubled frown. “They love Stephen so much that they won’t give him up; and how can I blame them? What are my rights, compared with theirs?”

  Finding this hard to answer, I put another question. “Did you enjoy your quiet time with Stephen while they were at Juan-les-Pins?”

  “Oh, they didn’t go; at least Mrs. Brown didn’t—Chrissy she likes me to call her,” Mrs. Glenn corrected herself hurriedly. “She couldn’t bear to leave Stephen.”

  “So she sacrificed Juan-les-Pins, and that handsome cheque?”

  “Not the cheque; she kept that. Boy went,” Mrs. Glenn added apologetically. Boy and Chrissy—it had come to that! I looked away from my old friend’s troubled face before putting my next question. “And Stephen—?”

  “Well, I can’t exactly tell how he feels. But I sometimes think he’d like to be alone with me.” A passing radiance smoothed away her frown. “He’s hinted that, if we decide to stay here, they might be tempted by winter sports, and go to the Engadine later.”

  “So that they would have the benefit of the high air instead of Stephen?” She coloured a little, looked down, and then smiled at me. “What can I do?”

  I resolved to sound Stephen on his adopted parents. The present situation would have to be put an end to somehow; but it had puzzling elements. Why had Mrs. Brown refused to go to Juan-les-Pins? Was it, as I had suspected, because there were debts, and more pressing uses for the money? Or was it that she was so much attached to her adopted son as to be jealous of his mother’s influence? This was far more to be feared; but it did not seem to fit in with what I knew of Mrs. Brown. The trouble was that what I knew was so little. Mrs. Brown, though in one way so intelligible, was in another as cryptic to me as Catherine Glenn was to Stephen. The surface was transparent enough; but what did the blur beneath conceal? Troubled waters, or just a mud-flat? My only hope was to try to get Stephen to tell me.

  Stephen had hired a studio—against his doctor’s advice, I gathered—and spent most of his hours there, in the company of his old group of painting friends. Mrs. Glenn had been there once or twice, but in spite of his being so sweet and dear to her she had felt herself in the way—as she undoubtedly was. “I can’t keep up with their talk, you know,” she explained. With whose talk could she, poor angel?

  I suggested that, for the few weeks of their Paris sojourn, it would be kinder to let Stephen have his fling; and she agreed. Afterward, in the mountains, he could recuperate; youth had such powers of self-healing. But I urged her to insist on his spending another winter in the Engadine; not at one of the big fashionable places—

  She interrupted me. “I’m afraid Boy and Chrissy wouldn’t like—”

  “Oh, for God’s sake; can’t you give Boy and Chrissy another cheque, and send them off to Egypt, or to Monte Carlo?”

  She hesitated. “I could try; but I don’t believe she’d go. Not without Stevie.”

  “And what does Stevie say?”

  “What can he say? She brought him up. She was there—all the years when I’d failed him.”

  It was unanswerable, and I felt the uselessness of any advice I could give. The situation could be changed only by some internal readjustment. Still, out of pity for the poor mother, I determined to try a word with Stephen. She gave me the address of his studio, and the next day I went there.

  It was in a smart-looking modern building in the Montparnasse quarter; lofty, well-lit and well-warmed. What a contrast to his earlier environment! I climbed to his door, rang the bell and waited. There were sounds of moving about within, but as no one came I rang again; and finally Stephen opened the door. His face lit up pleasantly when he saw me. “Oh, it’s you, my dear fellow!” But I caught a hint of constraint in his voice.

  “I’m not in the way? Don’t mind throwing me out if I am.

  “I’ve got a sitter—” he began, visibly hesitating.

  “Oh, in that case—”

  “No, no; it’s only—the fact is, it’s Chrissy. I was trying to do a study of her—”

  He led me across the passage and into the studio. It was large and flooded with light. Divans against the walls; big oak tables; shaded lamps, a couple of tall screens. From behind one of them emerged Mrs. Brown, hatless and slim, in a pale summer-like frock, her chestnut hair becomingly tossed about her eyes. “Dear Mr. Norcutt. So glad you turned up! I was getting such a stiff neck—Stephen’s merciless.”

  “May I see the result?” I asked; and “Oh, no,” she protested in mock terror, “it’s too frightful—it really is. I think he thought he was doing a nature morte—lemons and a bottle of beer, or something!”

  “It’s not fit for inspection,” Stephen agreed.

  The room was spacious, and not over-crowded. Glancing about, I could see only one easel with a painting on it. Stephen went up and turned the canvas face inward, with the familiar gesture of the artist who does not wish to challenge attention. But before he did so I had remarked that the painting was neither a portrait of Mrs. Brown nor a still-life. It was a rather brilliant three-quarter sketch of a woman’s naked back and hips. A model, no doubt—but why did he wish to conceal it?

/>   “I’m so glad you came,” Mrs. Brown repeated, smiling intensely. I stood still, hoping she was about to go; but she dropped down on one of the divans, tossing back her tumbled curls. “He works too hard, you know; I wish you’d tell him so. Steve, come here and stretch out,” she commanded, indicating the other end of the divan. “You ought to take a good nap.”

  The hint was so obvious that I said: “In that case I’d better come another time.”

  “No, no; wait till I give you a cock-tail. We all need cocktails. Where’s the shaker, darling?” Mrs. Brown was on her feet again, alert and gay. She dived behind the screen which had previously concealed her, and reappeared with the necessary appliances. “Bring up that little table, Mr. Norcutt, please. Oh, I know—dear Kit doesn’t approve of cock-tails; and she’s right. But look at him—dead beat! If he will slave at his painting, what’s he to do? I was scolding him about it when you came in.”

  The shaker danced in her flashing hands, and in a trice she was holding a glass out to me, and another to Stephen, who had obediently flung himself down on the divan. As he took the glass she bent and laid her lips on his damp hair. “You bad boy, you!”

  I looked at Stephen. “You ought to get out of this, and start straight off for Switzerland,” I admonished him.