Edith Wharton - SSC 09

by Human Nature (v2. 1)

  Though some months had since gone by I was fairly sure of finding her still at Nice, for in the newspapers I had bought on landing I had lit on several allusions to Mr. and Mrs. Boydon Brown. Apparently the couple had an active press-agent, for an attentive world was daily supplied with a minute description of Mrs. “Boy” Brown’s casino toilets, the value of the golf or pigeon-shooting cups offered by Mr. “Boy” Brown to various fashionable sporting clubs, and the names of the titled guests whom they entertained at the local “Lidos” and “Jardins Fleuris.” I wondered how much the chronicling of these events was costing Mrs. Glenn, but reminded myself that it was part of the price she had to pay for the hours of communion over Stephen’s little socks. At any rate it proved that my old friend was still in the neighbourhood; and the next day I set out to find her.

  I waited till the afternoon, on the chance of her being alone at the hour when mundane affairs were most likely to engage the Browns; but when my taxi-driver had brought me to the address I had given him I found a locked garden-gate and a shuttered house. The sudden fear of some new calamity seized me. My first thought was that Mrs. Glenn must have died; yet if her death had occurred before my sailing I could hardly have failed to hear of it, and if it was more recent I must have seen it announced in the papers I had read since landing. Besides, if the Browns had so lately lost their benefactress they would hardly have played such a part in the social chronicles I had been studying. There was no particular reason why a change of address should portend tragedy; and when at length a reluctant portress appeared in answer to my ringing she said, yes, if it was the Americans I was after, I was right: they had moved away a week ago. Moved—and where to? She shrugged and declared she didn’t know; but probably not far, she thought, with the old white-haired lady so ill and helpless.

  “Ill and helpless—then why did they move?”

  She shrugged again. “When people don’t pay their rent, they have to move, don’t they? When they don’t even settle with the butcher and baker before they go, or with the laundress who was fool enough to do their washing—and it’s I who speak to you, Monsieur!”

  This was worse than I had imagined. I produced a banknote, and in return the victimized concierges admitted that she had secured the fugitives’ new address—though they were naturally not anxious to have it known. As I had surmised, they had taken refuge within the kindly bounds of the principality of Monaco; and the taxi carried me to a small shabby hotel in one of the steep streets above the Casino. I could imagine nothing less in harmony with Catherine Glenn or her condition than to be ill and unhappy in such a place. My only consolation was that now perhaps there might be an end to the disastrous adventure. “After all,” I thought, as I looked up at the cheerless front of the hotel, “if the catastrophe has come the Browns can’t have any reason for hanging on to her.”

  A red-faced lady with a false front and false teeth emerged from the back-office to receive me.

  Madame Glenn—Madame Brown? Oh, yes; they were staying at the hotel—they were both upstairs now, she believed. Perhaps Monsieur was the gentleman that Madame Brown was expecting? She had left word that if he came he was to go up without being announced.

  I was inspired to say that I was that gentleman; at which the landlady rejoined that she was sorry the lift was out of order, but that I would find the ladies at number 5 on the third floor. Before she had finished I was half way up.

  A few steps down an unventilated corridor brought me to number 5; but I did not have to knock, for the door was ajar—perhaps in expectation of the other gentleman. I pushed it open, and entered a small plushy sitting-room, with faded mimosa in ornate vases, newspapers and cigarette-ends scattered on the dirty carpet, and a bronzed-over plaster Bayadere posturing before the mantelpiece mirror. If my first glance took such sharp note of these details it is because they seemed almost as much out of keeping with Catherine Glenn as the table laden with gin and bitters, empty cock-tail glasses and disks of sodden lemon.

  It was not the first time it had occurred to me that I was partly responsible for Mrs. Glenn’s unhappy situation. The growing sense of that responsibility had been one of my reasons for trying to keep an eye on her, for wanting her to feel that in case of need she could count on me. But on the whole my conscience had not been oppressed. The impulse which had made me exact from Stephen the promise never to undeceive her had necessarily governed my own conduct. I had only to recall Catherine Glenn as I had first known her to feel sure that, after all, her life had been richer and deeper than if she had spent it, childless and purposeless, in the solemn upholstery of her New York house. I had had nothing to do with her starting on her strange quest; but I was certain that in what had followed she had so far found more happiness than sorrow.

  But now? As I stood in that wretched tawdry room I wondered if I had not laid too heavy a burden on my conscience in keeping the truth from her. Suddenly I said to myself: “The time has come—whatever happens I must get her away from these people.” But then I remembered how Stephen’s death had drawn the two ill-assorted women together, and wondered if to destroy that tie would not now be the crowning cruelty.

  I was still uneasily deliberating when I heard a voice behind the door opposite the one by which I had entered. The room beyond must have been darkened, for I had not noticed before that this door was also partly open. “Well, have you had your nap?” a woman’s voice said irritably. “Is there anything you want before I go out? I told you that the man who’s going to arrange for the loan is coming for me. He’ll be here in a minute.” The voice was Mrs. Brown’s, but so sharpened and altered that at first I had not known it. “This is how she speaks when she thinks there’s no one listening,” I thought.

  I caught an indistinct murmur in reply; then the rattle of drawn-back curtain-rings; then Mrs. Brown continuing: “Well, you may as well sign the letter now. Here it is—-you’ve only got to write your name … Your glasses? I don’t know where your glasses are—you’re always dropping your things about. I’m sorry I can’t keep a maid to wait on you—but there’s nothing in this letter you need be afraid of. I’ve told you before that it’s only a formality. Boy’s told you so too, hasn’t he? I don’t suppose you mean to suggest that we’re trying to do you out of your money, do you? We’ve got to have enough to keep going. Here, let me hold your hand while you sign. My hand’s shaky too … it’s all this beastly worry … Don’t you imagine you’re the only person who’s had a bad time of it … Why, what’s the matter? Why are you pushing me away—?”

  Till now I had stood motionless, unabashed by the fact that I was eaves-dropping. I was ready enough to stoop to that if there was no other way of getting at the truth. But at the question: “Why are you pushing me away?” I knocked hurriedly at the door of the inner room.

  There was a silence after my knock. “There he is! You’ll have to sign now,” I heard Mrs. Brown exclaim; and I opened the door and went in. The room was a bedroom; like the other, it was untidy and shabby. I noticed a stack of canvases, framed and unframed, piled up against the wall. In an armchair near the window Mrs. Glenn was seated. She was wrapped in some sort of dark dressing-gown, and a lace cap covered her white hair. The face that looked out from it had still the same carven beauty; but its texture had dwindled from marble to worn ivory. Her body too had shrunk, so that, low in her chair, under her loose garments, she seemed to have turned into a little broken doll. Mrs. Brown, on the contrary, perhaps by contrast, appeared large and almost towering. At first glance I was more startled by the change in her appearance than in Mrs. Glenn’s. The latter had merely followed, more quickly than I had hoped she would, the natural decline of the years; whereas Mrs. Brown seemed like another woman. It was not only that she had grown stout and heavy, or that her complexion had coarsened so noticeably under the skilful make-up. In spite of her good clothes and studied coiffure there was something haphazard and untidy in her appearance. Her hat, I noticed, had slipped a little side-ways on her smartly waved head
, her bright shallow eyes looked blurred and red, and she held herself with a sort of vacillating erectness. Gradually the incredible fact was borne in on me; Mrs. Brown had been drinking.

  “Why, where on earth—?” she broke out, bewildered, as my identity dawned on her. She put up a hand to straighten her hat, and in doing so dragged it over too far on the other side.

  “I beg your pardon. I was told to come to number 5, and as there was no one in the sitting-room I knocked on this door.”

  “Oh, you knocked? I didn’t hear you knock,” said Mrs. Brown suspiciously; but I had no ears for her, for my old friend had also recognised me, and was holding out her trembling hands. “I knew you’d come—I said you’d come!” she cried out to me.

  Mrs. Brown laughed. “Well, you’ve said he would often enough. But it’s taken some time for it to come true.”

  “I knew you’d come,” Mrs. Glenn repeated, and I felt her hand pass tremblingly over my hair as I stooped to kiss her.

  “Lovers’ meeting!” Mrs. Brown tossed at us with an unsteady gaiety; then she leaned against the door, and stood looking on ironically. “You didn’t expect to find us in this palatial abode, did you?”

  “No. I went to the villa first.”

  Mrs. Glenn’s eyes dwelt on me softly. I sat down beside her, and she put her hand in mine. Her withered fingers trembled incessantly.

  “Perhaps,” Mrs. Brown went on, “if you’d come sooner you might have arranged things so that we could have stayed there. I’m powerless—I can’t do anything with her. The fact that for years I looked after the child she deserted weighs nothing with her. She doesn’t seem to think she owes us anything.”

  Mrs. Glenn listened in silence, without looking at her accuser. She kept her large sunken eyes fixed on mine. “There’s no money left,” she said when the other ended.

  “No money! No money! That’s always the tune nowadays. There was always plenty of money for her precious—money for all his whims and fancies, for journeys, for motors, for doctors, for—well, what’s the use of going on? But now that there’s nobody left but Boy and me, who slaved for her darling for years, who spent our last penny on him when his mother’d forgotten his existence—now there’s nothing left! Now she can’t afford anything; now she won’t even pay her own bills; now she’d sooner starve herself to death than let us have what she owes us …”

  “My dear—my dear,” Mrs. Glenn murmured, her eyes still on mine.

  “Oh, don’t ‘my dear’ me,” Mrs. Brown retorted passionately. “What you mean is: ‘How can you talk like that before him?’ I suppose you think I wish he hadn’t come. Well, you never were more mistaken. I’m glad he’s here; I’m glad he’s found out where you’re living, and how you’re living. Only this time I mean him to hear our side of the story instead of only yours.”

  Mrs. Glenn pressed my hand in her twitching fingers. “She wants me to sign a paper. I don’t understand.”

  “You don’t understand? Didn’t Boy explain it to you? You said you understood then.” Mrs. Brown turned to me with a shrug. “These whims and capers … all I want is money enough to pay the bills … so that we’re not turned out of this hole too …”

  “There is no money,” Mrs. Glenn softly reiterated.

  My heart stood still. The scene must at all costs be ended, yet I could think of no way of silencing the angry woman. At length I said: “If you’ll leave me for a little while with Mrs. Glenn perhaps she’ll be able to tell me—”

  “How’s she to tell you what she says she doesn’t understand herself? If I leave her with you all she’ll tell you is lies about us—I found that out long ago.” Mrs. Brown took a few steps in my direction, and then, catching at the window-curtain, looked at me with a foolish laugh. “Not that I’m pining for her society. I have a good deal of it in the long run. But you’ll excuse me for saying that, as far as this matter is concerned, it’s entirely between Mrs. Glenn and me.

  I tightened my hold on Mrs. Glenn’s hand, and sat looking at Mrs. Brown in the hope that a silent exchange of glances might lead farther than the vain bandying of arguments. For a moment she seemed dominated; I began to think she had read in my eyes the warning I had tried to put there. If there was any money left I might be able to get it from Catherine after her own attempts had failed; that was what I was trying to remind her of, and what she understood my looks were saying. Once before I had done the trick; supposing she were to trust me to try again? I saw that she wavered; but her brain was not alert, as it had been on that other occasion. She continued to stare at me through a blur of drink and anger; I could see her thoughts clutching uneasily at my suggestion and then losing their hold on it. “Oh, we all know you think you’re God Almighty!” she broke out with a contemptuous toss.

  “I think I could help you if I could have a quiet talk with Mrs. Glenn.”

  “Well, you can have your quiet talk.” She looked about her, and pulling up a chair plumped down into it heavily. “I’d love to hear what you’ve got to say to each other,” she declared.

  Mrs. Glenn’s hand began to shake again. She turned her head toward Mrs. Brown. “My dear, I should like to see my friend alone.”

  “‘I should like! I should like!’ I daresay you would. It’s always been what you’d like—but now it’s going to be what I choose. And I choose to assist at the conversation between Mrs. Glenn and Mr. Norcutt, instead of letting them quietly say horrors about me behind my back.”

  “Oh, Chrissy—” my old friend murmured; then she turned to me and said: “You’d better come back another day.”

  Mrs. Brown looked at me with a sort of feeble cunning. “Oh, you needn’t send him away. I’ve told you my friend’s coming—he’ll be here in a minute. If you’ll sign that letter I’ll take it to the bank with him, and Mr. Norcutt can stay here and tell you all the news. Now wouldn’t that be nice and cosy?” she concluded coaxingly.

  Looking into Mrs. Glenn’s pale frightened face I was on the point of saying: “Well, sign it then, whatever it is—anything to get her to go.” But Mrs. Glenn straightened her drooping shoulders and repeated softly: “I can’t sign it.”

  A flush rose to Mrs. Brown’s forehead. “You can’t? That’s final, is it?” She turned to me. “It’s all money she owed us, mind you—money we’ve advanced to her—in one way or another. Every penny of it. And now she sits there and says she won’t pay us!”

  Mrs. Glenn, twisting her fingers into mine, gave a barely audible laugh. “Now he’s here I’m safe,” she said.

  The crimson of Mrs. Brown’s face darkened to purple. Her lower lip trembled and I saw she was struggling for words that her dimmed brain could not supply. “God Almighty—you think he’s God Almighty!” She evidently felt the inadequacy of this, for she stood up suddenly, and coming close to Mrs. Glenn’s armchair, stood looking down on her in impotent anger. “Well, I’ll show you—” She turned to me, moved by another impulse. “You know well enough you could make her sign if you chose to.”

  My eyes and Mrs. Brown’s met again. Hers were saying: “It’s your last chance—it’s her last chance. I warn you—” and mine replying: “Nonsense, you can’t frighten us; you can’t even frighten her while I’m here. And if she doesn’t want to sign you shan’t force her to. I have something up my sleeve that would shut you up in five seconds if you knew.”

  She kept her thick stare on mine till I felt as if my silent signal must have penetrated it. But she said nothing, and at last I exclaimed: “You know well enough the risk you’re running—”

  Perhaps I had better not have spoken. But that dumb dialogue was getting on my nerves. If she wouldn’t see, it was time to make her—Ah, she saw now—she saw fast enough! My words seemed to have cleared the last fumes from her brain. She gave me back my look with one almost as steady; then she laughed.

  “The risk I’m running? Oh, that’s it, is it? That’s the pull you thought you had over me? Well, I’m glad to know—and I’m glad to tell you that I’ve known all along
that you knew. I’m sick and tired of all the humbug—if she won’t sign I’m going to tell her everything myself. So now the cards are on the table, and you can take your choice. It’s up to you. The risk’s on your side now!”

  The unaccountable woman—drunkenly incoherent a moment ago, and now hitting the nail on the head with such fiendish precision! I sat silent, meditating her hideous challenge without knowing how to meet it. And then I became aware that a quiver had passed over Mrs. Glenn’s face, which had become smaller and more ivory-yellow than before. She leaned toward me as if Mrs. Brown, who stood close above us, could not hear what we were saying.

  “What is it she means to tell me? I don’t care unless it’s something bad about Stevie. And it couldn’t be that, could it? How does she know? No one can come between a son and his mother.”

  Mrs. Brown gave one of her sudden laughs. “A son and his mother? I daresay not! Only I’m just about fed up with having you think you’re his mother.”

  It was the one thing I had not foreseen—that she would possess herself of my threat and turn it against me. The risk was too deadly; and so no doubt she would have felt if she had been in a state to measure it. She was not; and there lay the peril.

  Mrs. Glenn sat quite still after the other’s outcry, and I hoped it had blown past her like some mere rag of rhetoric. Then I saw that the meaning of the words had reached her, but without carrying conviction. She glanced at me with the flicker of a smile. “Now she says I’m not his mother—!” It’s her last round of ammunition; but don’t be afraid—it won’t make me sign, the smile seemed to whisper to me.