As a matter of fact, I was dazzled enough by Bittern’s Bay without the extra effulgence of Daphne Winters. Being a country doctor of modest pretensions, I wasn’t accustomed to the socially elite or the celebrated, and I still felt rather surprised to find myself living in the luxurious mansion of the richest inhabitants of Massachusetts’ most exclusive shore resort.
It had all happened by accident. Don Lockwood and I had been friends in our youthful medical-school days. Although we had lost touch during The War, we had met again by chance that spring at a doctors’ convention. In a burst of old acquaintance, Don had asked me to spend August with him and his wife. I had been in an equally mellow mood and, knowing that my young daughter Dawn would be at a camp all that month, I had accepted the invitation. Later I had felt certain misgivings because I knew, as did everyone who read the papers, that Don had married the wealthiest and most publicized debutante of the postwar crop. In prospect, Tansy Hoppner Lockwood, with her huge Hoppner estate and her Hoppner millions, had seemed a formidable proposition.
As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. Instead of being intimidated by Don’s wife, I had fallen quite platonically in love with her. She looked like an elegant line drawing in a fashion magazine; she was intelligent; she was gay; she was also nice—an almost impossible achievement for a fabulously rich twenty-two-year-old who had lived from childhood in a blare of publicity, most of which had been rather sordid.
To cap it all, the Lockwoods were very much in love, and there were none of the tensions which so often developed when a wife is far richer than her husband.
It was nice to be around a successful marriage.
As we passed through the gate into the consecrated ground of Rosmersholm, Tansy gave me a few more pointers on protocol, ending with:
“And whatever you do, don’t breathe the name of Lucy Milliken. You know that anyway, don’t you?”
I did. I had not been in Bittern’s Bay more than a few hours before I had heard of The Incident which was responsible for the depth of Daphne’s retirement. Some of Daphne’s neighbors, who were summering in Europe, had committed an unpardonable breach of etiquette. Not only had they rented their house without consulting Daphne, they had rented it to Miss Lucy Milliken, “America’s Most Beloved Actress, the most tender, the most luminous, possibly the most appealing personality the English-speaking Stage has produced since Maude Adams.” (Sydney Cobblestone: Stage Monthly, September 1933.)
Ever since this appalling news had circulated and Daphne had rung down her iron curtain, Bittern’s Bay had been daily expecting a declaration of war between The Two Rival Queens. As yet hostilities had not begun, but Tansy, who adored the potential drama of the situation, was hoping that lunch might be the moment for Daphne to throw down the gauntlet.
The gardens of Rosmersholm looked much the same as Tansy’s, on a smaller but still stately scale. From where we had entered, the house was invisible, but formal lawns, adorned with clipped evergreens and gray stone statuary, sloped downward to a blue glimpse of the Massachusetts sea. Somewhere at a distance the sigh of a lawn mower indicated that one of the Five Sweet Symphonies was getting tuition. Otherwise there was silence on Parnassus.
We passed an English-style summerhouse, made of trelliswork and smothered in rambler roses, and moved through the clear summer sunlight to a path shaded by a white vine-covered pergola and up it until the wide façade of a Victorian-French château came into view.
“Her grandfather built it,” said Tansy. “The Winterses were in hardware in Cleveland. Frightfully, frightfully social hardware, of course. Daphne went to all the right schools and was finished in Switzerland.”
“It used to be called Sleepy Hollow,” remarked Don. “Daphne, the Great Ibsenite, changed the name to Rosmersholm in honor of The Master.”
A short flight of stone steps led onto a broad terrace strewn with urns and iron reclining chairs upholstered in subdued pastels. I was the first to reach it, and as I did so a girl in a dirndl and bare feet shot from nowhere, it seemed, and gave me a horrified look. She was pretty, around twenty-five, with a firm chin and a tumble of auburn hair.
“Who ees …” she began with a marked foreign accent.
Then she saw Don and Tansy behind me and flushed. “Oh, good morning, Dr. Lockwood, Mrs. Lockwood…. Yes, Miss Winters expects. I—I get someone …”
She hurried through one of the open french windows into the house.
“A Sweet Symphony?” I asked.
Tansy nodded and, dropping onto a chaise longue, lit a cigarette. “Yes, Gretchen. She’s an Austrian or something. She seems to be the only one with a name.”
We waited and waited. After about five minutes Don started to pace up and down through the urns. “Really, all this respectful hanging around. Why do we put up with the woman?”
“Don’t be silly, dear,” said Tansy. “She’s your best patient and she’s wonderful. A little preposterous, perhaps, but what’s the point of living if you don’t have at least some preposterous friends?”
I said: “Is this the build-up to her entrance?”
Don said: “Heavens, no. Evelyn has to have an entrance first and then—” He broke off as a woman came out of the french windows. “Hello, Evelyn.”
I was introduced to The Divine Daphne’s Egeria. Tansy had warned me that Evelyn Evans was one of the homeliest women on the Eastern seaboard and I had been expecting some kind of a monster. I was surprised to find that, to me at least, she had a certain charm. She was indeed homely, almost ugly, in her fifties, with a plump little face, pince-nez, and the sharp, anxious movements of a chipmunk. She was terribly dowdy, too, with sneakers and a vague Bostonian ensemble. But she had a definite air and a sudden sweet smile.
“This is very nice, Dr. Westlake. Daphne’s so pleased you could come.”
Tansy asked: “How’s Daphne?”
The harassed-chipmunk look came to Evelyn Evans’ face.
“Well, she did feel a little down earlier this morning. A slight headache. Things tire her so easily and she’s been reading so much.” She shook her head dubiously. “But I think she will be all right. I do think so.”
I had heard enough about Evelyn Evans to know she was a legend in theatrical circles. A thousand and one stories were told about her relationship with The Divine Daphne. Some said she was a very rich woman who had spent a fortune in launching Daphne’s impressive careers; others that she was a sinister parasite who had clutched onto a rising actress and risen with her. Most, if not all, of these stories were probably false. The only established fact was that ever since Daphne Winters had become a nationwide personality there had always been Evelyn Evans in the background as producer, adviser, secretary, nursemaid, and watchdog.
“Do sit down, you men. I’ll see whether I can find some sherry.”
Evelyn’s method of “finding sherry” was to clank an ancient metal bell which stood on an iron stand at the corner of the balustrade. The sound of the lawn mower stopped at once. Very soon youthful footsteps came pattering and a group of five girls hurried out of a side door onto the terrace. Gretchen, the redhead in the dirndl, led the phalanx with a bottle of sherry on a tray. The girl behind her had a tray of glasses. The other three each carried a wooden Mexican plate of canapés.
They were all barefoot and all either in dirndls or brief play-suits. They weaved, flushed and silent, from one to the other of us, dispensing sherry and cheese canapés and making the terrace a flutter of femininity. When they had finished they set their burdens on a glass-topped iron table and withdrew to a corner where they seated themselves, subdued and sherryless, on the stone paving.
The scene could have been lifted from a performance of Medea with a chorus of maidens and Evelyn Evans as the nurse. We waited again, eternally, it seemed. And then at last a faint footfall sounded inside the house.
Evelyn alerted. The Five Sweet Symphonies rustled like harps whose strings had been struck by a breeze. A slender white hand caught the lintel of the ope
n french window.
The Divine Daphne stepped across the threshold.
She was wearing a simple white dress, no stockings, and white sneakers. I had heard that in private life Daphne Winters espoused the cult of simplicity, but it was a shock to see so famous a beauty so spartanly unadorned. She was wearing no make-up and, under the shiny black hair, the celebrated gardenia skin looked almost shockingly white. She was larger than I had expected. Quite a big woman, although she somehow seemed fragile and much younger than the forty odd which the world knew her to be.
In spite of the complete underplaying of her entrance, her impact was terrific. Nothing could tone down the great Polynesian eyes, the hibiscus curve of the mouth, and the languid sensuality of her body. It was extraordinary that something so exotic could have come from Cleveland hardware. She looked like a Tahitian princess masquerading on a regal whim as an English missionary’s wife.
She moved first to Tansy and kissed her forehead, murmuring: “Dear child.” After this she acknowledged Don with a faint smile which gained in candle power as she turned it to me.
“How nice to see you, Dr. Westlake. An exquisite day. I have been doing a little gardening.” Her voice was deeper than I had remembered it on the stage and very clear. “The girls helped me, of course. Didn’t you, girls?”
The smile moved over the frieze of maidens, who rippled an inaudible reply. Visions slipped through my mind of The Divine Daphne in gardening gloves caressing a rose while lawn mowers hurtled back and forth around her.
She seated herself next to me. “I have some Westlake cousins in Cleveland. I wonder …”
For some time we tried unsuccessfully to get her Westlakes and mine together. In spite of her remarkable beauty, which should have been voluptuous, her aura was as sexless and her talk as extravagantly prosaic as that of any social dowager, twenty years older than she, who had never so much as attended a theater. Remembering my meek role, I didn’t try to enliven things, and the whole party became muffled in that museum quality which pervades so many of the homes of the sheltered and elderly rich.
The five girls were soon dismissed and a conventional butler summoned us to a conventionally elegant dining room where small talk dribbled over beautiful china, beautiful glass, and beautiful food. That day, at least, The Divine Daphne was playing her Social Role to the hilt, and by the time we had drifted out to the terrace, where the girls, taking over again from the butler, circulated coffee, I was ready to get back to Tansy’s house where, from afar, The Divine Daphne seemed so much more entertaining.
But I had given up too soon. As we finished our coffee, Gretchen, who had not come from the house with the others, erupted from the french windows with the awed announcement:
“Miss Winters, ees Lucy Milliken. She ees on the phone.”
The other four student-actresses tensed. Evelyn Evans, her pouchy cheeks turning a deep pink, jumped to her feet. Only The Divine Daphne failed to offer a dramatic reaction. She cupped her chin in her hand and, with the faintest wrinkling of her forehead, gazed questioningly but kindlily at the Austrian girl.
“Lucy Milliken?” The furrow deepened, as if she were trying to remember. “Oh yes, of course, dear. That little actress who does so much on the radio.”
Evelyn exclaimed: “Don’t worry, Daphne. I’ll go.”
She started toward the french windows, but Gretchen blurted:
“I’m sorry, Miss Winters. She says she must talk to you personally.”
The atmosphere of Rosmersholm terrace was electric now. Evelyn snorted. The girls craned. Tansy exchanged a delighted glance with me and leaned forward. All eyes were on The Divine Daphne. This was obviously the tossed gauntlet at last, and Daphne would have to declare herself.
For a moment she remained lounged in her chair, her hip making a languorous curve. Then slowly she rose.
Evelyn twittered: “Daphne, I’ll—”
But The Divine Daphne laid a smooth, tapered hand on the other woman’s sleeve. “No, dear. The poor little thing asks for me. She is obviously in trouble. It would be a shame not to be neighborly.”
She moved into the house, leaving a hush behind her. Evelyn Evans tried to gloss over the tension with a barrage of words.
“You know, this is a dark, dark secret, but it’s so exciting that I must tell you.” She paused portentously. “Daphne has reread The Lady from the Sea.”
Tansy looked polite. “Oh, has she? That’s Ibsen, isn’t it?”
“And what’s more,” continued Evelyn, her pince-nez emphasizing her words with a wabble, “she has decided that the part is just right for her current mood. I’ve already started plans for a fall production, and this morning I cabled John Holcombe in England for the husband.” She laughed. “That’s an even darker secret, but there’s a very good chance of getting him. Such a sweet boy and such a great admirer of Daphne’s!”
Whatever “oohs” and “aahs” might have greeted this news were checked by the reappearance of The Divine Daphne. Tossing her silky black hair, she gave us her white smile.
“The telephone—always so tiresome!”
Evelyn, unable to control herself, cried: “But what did she want?”
Daphne blinked. “Lucy Milliken? The funny little thing! You know, she must be quite lonely in a community like this where she wouldn’t know a soul. She wanted us to come to tea today—”
Evelyn snapped: “You refused, of course.”
“Refused, dear, why?” Daphne’s great eyes peered dubiously at Evelyn. “It would be rather heartless, wouldn’t it? After all, she was my understudy once.” She turned to me. “Do you know the name? Milliken? She has had quite a little commercial success in the theater.”
Put directly on the spot, I gulped: “Yes, I do know the name.”
“So charming. With a charming father and a charming daughter. Both of them dote on her. I believe there is a new husband too. He probably dotes on her as well.” She turned to Evelyn. “Evelyn, you will come.” Her glance moved over the girls. “And Gretchen and Sybil too. I think it would be nice for Lucy to see some new faces. The rest of you girls had better remain here and study your Shaw.”
The condescension behind Daphne’s honeyed attitude toward Lucy Milliken was withering, and her face had some of the heightened brilliance associated with so many Ibsen heroines as they prepare for their great leap toward self-expression. There was no doubt that Daphne had snatched up the gauntlet or that the duel would be fought that afternoon.
But since none of us were supposed to know that any situation existed between the two houses, we slipped back into stodgy social backchat and stayed there until Daphne, trailing a hand across her forehead, complained of a headache.
Without waiting for instructions, one of the girls scurried to pick up a plain white handbag which lay on an iron table and brought it to Daphne. Another girl ran into the house for a glass of water. While Evelyn hovered, Daphne took a small vial from her bag, tilted a couple of capsules into her hand and swallowed them. She gave us a rueful smile.
“A little rest and it will go away.”
That was our dismissal. Formal good-bys and thanks were exchanged, and Daphne, accompanied by Gretchen and another Symphony, possibly Sybil, retired into the house. Evelyn begged us to stay longer, but this was obviously a conventional politeness.
Soon we were strolling back through the gardens toward Tansy’s house. Tansy linked her hand through my arm.
“Daphne was at her stuffiest today, Hugh. But she was rather wonderful about Lucy, wasn’t she?”
She sighed.
“I’d give my eyeteeth—whatever they are—to be at that tea party this afternoon.”
Chapter 2
Tansy did not have to give her eyeteeth because, when we reached home, the butler informed her that Miss Milliken had called and wanted her to call back. Tansy ran to the phone and returned enthralled with the news that we also had been invited to tea at five. While Don attended to a phone call from a patient, Tansy and I s
trolled down to the beach and lay in the sun. Soon Don joined us, lean and dark in Hawaiian swimming trunks, but after a few minutes he ran off into the surf and started to swim tirelessly back and forth in the blue summer sea. Tansy watched his brown arms flashing.
Suddenly she said: “It still seems so odd to be happy. When I was little, you know, I never dreamed it would be possible. I was a dreadful morbid girl. I can’t imagine how Don managed to change all that.” She reached over me for a cigarette and lit it. “You know he cured me when I had my breakdown in California, don’t you?”
I had known that. So had almost everyone else. The papers had been full of the nervous breakdown that had caught up with her after a miserable, orphaned childhood in which two aunts had struggled bitterly for the control of her and the Hoppner millions. The papers had been even fuller when the news broke that. Tansy Hoppner had married the psychiatrist who had treated her. But Tansy didn’t normally talk about herself and I wondered why she was doing it now.
I said: “What’s the matter, Tansy?”
“The matter?” She blinked and then smiled. “Nothing’s the matter. I was just thinking how lucky I am. Daphne sits up there surrounded by admirers, but the Sweet Symphonies don’t love her. They’re probably terrified of her, and sometimes I think even Evelyn hates her. And Lucy Milliken …”
“She has a charming father and a charming daughter and a charming husband who dote on her.”
Tansy snorted. “Wait till you see the charming father and the charming daughter before you’re sure of that. I don’t know the charming husband. He’s a new acquisition. Maybe he does dote. But … Oh well”—she tossed her cigarette away and got up—“enough of these dreary introspections. Bet I can beat you to Don.”
She ran into the ocean. I followed her.
At a quarter to five the three of us started for the Millikens’. The quickest route was across the dune from our swimming beach to that of the rented house next door. As we scrambled down the warm sand to the neighboring beach we saw a girl in a white swimming suit lounging under a blue umbrella. She got up and came toward us. She had a slight figure and brown hair hanging down her back like Alice in Wonderland. She looked about fifteen, with a thin, pointed face and gray, rather frantic eyes.
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