The Golden Vanity

by Isabel Paterson

  Gina thought, how do you know? does she get anything out of you? . . . She wronged Polly. . . . But her main idea was that Julius Dickerson might some day enable her to even herself with Polly Brant. Julius didn't ignore Gina; he foresaw that Gina might have a good deal of influence if Mrs. Siddall died. And even Mrs. Siddall couldn't live forever. . . .

  "I suppose so," Gina agreed. "I just couldn't imagine. . . ." She remained unresponsive in the circle of Arthur's arm. Arthur said hesitantly: "You looked marvelous to-night, Gina. But you always do. I like your cousins. Mysie is jolly, isn't she? Easy to talk to." Gina stared at him blankly. She had never found Mysie easy to talk to. And she used to try ... Arthur had no suspicion of the obscure, inverse connotation of his remark, nor had Gina. After five years of marriage, he found Gina less easy to talk to than at first. Gina did not wish to depreciate her own family, so she remained silent. But she hated Polly so much that she hated Mysie too. Yes, she had always hated Mysie.

  "I expect you're tired," Arthur said, and kissed her shoulder. He wanted to rest his head there, not say good night. . . . Gina started, she didn't know why. She was still facing the mirror, and it gave her a shiver—seeing herself and Arthur. He had on a dark blue dressing gown. It couldn't be the same one! Not after five years . . . She put up her hand, pulling her rose-colored negligee together at the neck. Arthur said involuntarily: "I'm sorry."

  And he didn't know why. There were a great many things both of them shied off from in their minds.

  Gina turned to him with her company smile. "Oh, I didn't mean—" She kissed him dutifully. "No, I'm not really tired."

  He stayed. But afterward, he was ashamed. ... It must be his fault, his lack, if she was no more than acquiescent. Cold. He had to think that. She hadn't always been . . . Or had she? He felt very queer, almost sick, lying awake beside her, not sure if she were asleep, not moving for fear he might discover she wasn't. He couldn't let himself think what that reminded him of, because he loved Gina. All he knew of love.

  11

  THEA and Mysie were driving out to Long Island to look at a cottage Thea had discovered. They intended to buy it. Mysie hadn't yet seen it, but she agreed in advance. They had to have some place for week-ends and holidays. They had been saying so for five years, and now suddenly it became imperative. Impossible to put it off another day, another hour. Mysie didn't much like Long Island, but she knew she would never find a place herself. She wouldn't know how or where to look. There was a peculiarity in the Eastern landscape. You couldn't somehow see any distance, or get any idea of what was beyond, except more of the same thing. It was all low hills and short turns. Even the flat stretches of Long Island had no perspective, no horizon.

  Thea was driving. She enjoyed it, and Mysie willingly ceded her the privilege. Thea drove like unto Jehu the son of Nimshi, furiously, but skillfully too. She was accustomed to thinking through her hands, being a musician. And driving fast on a clear road released her from nervous tension. Her life had stopped when her husband died. That was ten years ago, when she was turned forty. She might, even then, have formed other ties; with her wit and energy and worldly knowledge, she could be attractive when she chose. But she had deliberately accepted the conclusion, fully aware of the cost. You cannot, in effect, stop living suddenly without desperate pain. As much as possible, she cut herself off from reminders of the past. She had a married daughter living in Boston, who bored her; and she preferred sharing a flat with Mysie to living with any of her old friends, women of her own age, simply because Mysie was twenty years younger and thus belonged to another era and came from the West and had never seen Charles Ludlow nor had any connection with Thea's married life. Their casual and cordial detachment suited them both. They needn't feel absolutely alone, but each respected the other's privacy. Thea never pried nor gave advice. The arrangement had begun fortuitously; Thea had been Jake Van Buren's music teacher twenty-five years ago, and Mysie met her at tea with Jake's mother, when Thea happened to be going abroad and wished to sublet her flat. Mysie took it, and afterward stayed on. Thea had a durable impersonal affection for Jake. She said he had always been unusual, to say the least. An uncannily polite infant, with an air of docility, though in the long run he did exactly as he pleased and gave no offense. When he was eight or nine, she had once remarked to him that he was intelligent. He replied in a grave treble: Yes, all our family are bright.

  "Is this place of yours anywhere near Jake's shack?" Mysie enquired. Thea said no; Jake was at least an hour away. Jake lived on the edge of some godforgotten village on the beach, which had no railway connection convenient, so it had never grown beyond a dozen or so of summer cottages; it wasn't even any good for boats because of sandbars and shoal water; and that was why Jake clung to it. Every summer Jake invited Mysie to come out some Sunday, secure in the knowledge that she never would.

  "That's lucky," said Mysie vaguely. "Oh, it's so hot. What's the use of being poor if you've got to live on Long Island anyhow?"

  Thea turned her benevolent eagle profile for a moment toward Mysie. "Would you mind repeating that?"

  "Don't pay any attention to me," Mysie said in a feeble voice. "All I mean is that I've always thought the worst thing about being rich is that you have to live on Long Island, and go through this every day. But they get so insensible they don't even object to Palm Beach. ... If I see one more gasoline pump I'll die." She rubbed a handkerchief across her parboiled countenance. It came away streaked with grime. She had been over this dismal region often enough, the stretch beyond the Queensboro Bridge; but she didn't know the name of it because she didn't want to; it was too horrible. Mysie could drive competently; she was a careful driver, and that meant she couldn't think of anything else while driving, so it bored her. She felt with her hands instead of thinking with them, as Thea did; so Mysie liked riding or digging in a garden better than driving. But on that particular area she could not think anyhow. It stupefied her with its mean ugliness; it affected her with incipient nausea and hysteria.

  "There is something the matter with this country," she muttered, more to herself than to Thea. "It's the extremes of human nature, turned loose for the first time, to do its best and its worst. The best has been better than anything that ever was, a great splendor and pride of taking all the odds alone; but the worst is unbearable; and it's why people stun themselves with raw alcohol, to keep from facing it. We'll all burst like a chameleon on a plaid . . ." There were ten million fiery red gasoline pumps extending to infinity, along a white hot ribbon of concrete, leading only to more gasoline pumps and garbage dumps. With one-story glass-fronted buildings swimming in heat beside the way.

  "The awful thing about New York is that you can't get out of it," she concluded, aware that she had said the same thing to Thea a hundred times. It was also part of the nightmare quality of New York that it stultified you into repetition. The aspect of magnificence, that enchantment it sometimes took on, was indescribable; one who had never seen it couldn't imagine it, even approximately. It was an inhuman achievement. In absence, it became utterly unreal; you didn't quite believe it. Perhaps that was why you couldn't stay away. The spell was irrevocable. Like those old stories of mortals trepanned into fairyland, not the small ethereal winged fantasy of childhood, but the ancient fairyland, the illusory sunless shadowless Hollow Hill; and when it seemed a week had passed and they were restored to Middle Earth seven years was gone and their youth with it, and they could never resume the kindly life they had left.

  "Tell me when there is a tree," Mysie begged, and shut her eyes. After awhile Thea assured her there was a tree. They turned into a rather pleasant lane and got lost; and Thea drove on and on with serene determination, asking directions at intervals from other motorists who replied they were strangers themselves. One inviting road proved to be semi-private, intersecting two estate parks, landscaped and trimmed and empty of living creatures. The house was not in view from the road; an ample red-roofed building immediately within a stone-pillared, impor
ted wrought iron gate was obviously the lodge and garage. Thea backed out and tried another turning.

  "These big estates are rather uncanny, like a conjuring trick," said Thea.

  "How?" Mysie asked obligingly.

  "There are so many of them," Thea explained. "Thousands. All over Long Island and Connecticut and Westchester. Thousands and thousands, sprung from nothing. When you see the great houses and castles of Europe, you can see the social foundations, how they came to be. The land supported them. Of course they ate up all the profit from the tenants of the land, but they could go on eating through good times and bad; and they needed the house-room in their business, for patriarchal families and stewards and men-at-arms and chaplains and visitors and all the servants to cook and brew and spin and weave. They were centers of an organic way of life, rooted to the spot. These are orchidaceous. No visible means of support. Big empty houses and foreign servants, nothing local. If you reversed the conjure, you know, said one wrong word, or got it backward, they'd vanish. This is a queer country. It's a state of mind. It usen't to be like that, even when I was young. Sometimes I think all my life since I was a child has been a dream. The Woolworth Building was the beginning of the dream. I remember going to look at it the first time, a white magic tower. And it's still the most magical of them all." Thea seldom spoke at such length.

  "Whereabouts are we anyhow, and where exactly is that abandoned barn you're buying?" Mysie sat up suddenly and took notice.

  "It isn't a barn," Thea replied rather crossly. "It's the other side of Glen Cove, and we must be somewhere near it." The aged motor was emitting ominous noises, which worried her.

  "I thought so," Mysie exclaimed. "Oh, my goodness, I didn't pay any attention when you told me before; but I believe I know this stone wall. In a minute we'll come to another big gate and a driveway—it's the Siddall estate. If your barn is near by, we'll be right in Gina's backyard. Lookit, there's the entrance, between those blue Norway spruces. That's another thing the rich have got to have, whether they like it or not, Norway spruces. Let us flee."

  Thea looked, and the diversion caused her to make some fatal error with the gear shifts. The car stopped. It declined to start again. "It would," said Mysie. Neither of them had any understanding of motor trouble. They climbed out in the August sun, which smote upon the backs of their necks like a blunt weapon. "Where did we pass a garage?" Mysie tried to remember. "I don't suppose the damn family are here now, do you? They'd be abroad or north."

  "The garage family?" Thea enquired blankly.

  "The Siddalls—Gina," Mysie said. "And how do I get back to town for that rehearsal this afternoon? Blast! I wish I knew where to hit these internal works with a monkey wrench so's to do the most harm." She peered under the hood.

  A shining maroon limousine slid smoothly out of the driveway. Thea and Mysie automatically removed themselves to the curb side of their derelict vehicle, to let the other pass. It slowed instead. A man's voice said: "Do you need help? Hello, Mysie, I hope you were coming to call." Arthur Siddall emerged from the limousine.

  Mysie regarded his blond immaculateness with a good deal of class hatred. He wore a light grey suit, and not even the edge of his collar was wilted. "We were en route to our own country seat," she replied, and then burst into insane mirth. She explained: "I was trying to reply coldly —this weather! Why doesn't a car cross a road?"

  "Let's see." Arthur did know something about cars. Mysie forgave him his appearance when he began a brisk investigation, to the immediate detriment of his cuffs. His chauffeur also took a hand. Presently they agreed on a verdict. "Yeah, that sleeve valve, she's bust," the chauffeur affirmed. He was a stocky, swarthy youth with a Sicilian accent and the expression of morose amiability peculiar to his type.

  "So what?" Thea asked. Arthur said: "We'll take you wherever you were going, and send a garageman for your car. Get in—can you give the directions?" Thea endeavored to do so, and the chauffeur nodded. "Yeah, I know." They proceeded luxuriously.

  Mysie murmured to Arthur: "What's your chauffeur's name?"

  "His name?" Arthur reflected. "I think it's Dominic."

  "Does he answer to Hi or to any loud cry such as fry me or fritter my wig? I suppose he's the seventeenth assistant chauffeur and you only take a census occasionally."

  Arthur elucidated apologetically: "There are only four; the head chauffeur employs them. This man is rather new; I usually have Raymond but he drove Grandmother and Gina up to Bar Harbor." They had gone the day before; Arthur had found occasion for a day's delay on his own part. He was not quite aware that he had practically manufactured the reason. It was an inner necessity growing upon him lately, to be by himself occasionally.

  "Dominic?—Doesn't mean anything in my life. Only I think I've seen him somewhere," Mysie said. "Isn't Gina here? Of course not, you just said so."

  Dominic brought the car to a halt, and Arthur enquired: "What is it?" Dominic said: "Yessir, da house."

  "What is it, is right," Mysie commented. The house was the last on a village street, in a shabby neighborhood. Nondescript in the beginning, the small box-like structure had become disreputable from want of care. The windows were boarded; and last year's dead leaves still lay on the paintless porch. Thea had a key to the kitchen door. They all got out of the car and walked around to the backyard, where an apple tree and several locust trees mitigated the neglected fence and ragged grass.

  Arthur followed where he was led, with his disarming expression of wishing to be helpful. Mysie wondered what to do with him, but decided to wait and see. In the dismal, empty kitchen a tap yielded cold water. Arthur waited outside while Mysie washed her face recklessly. "There wouldn't be a towel," she said unreasonably to Thea. Arthur heard her. He said diffidently at the door: "Will this do?" and offered a large and very fine linen handkerchief of pristine freshness.

  "There are four rooms beside the kitchen," said Thea, with honest pride.

  "I'll take your word for it," Mysie declined to explore further, and escaped to the open air.

  "What do you think of it?" Thea asked.

  "Oh, it's just like home," said Mysie, with the bitterness of truth. It did remind her of the graceless and poverty-stricken house in which she was born. Her mother owned it, or her stepfather would probably have sold it long ago and moved on to something worse.

  "It needs fixing up a little," Thea remarked, too rapt with creative vision to detect Mysie's sarcasm. "Paint, and new floors, and a bathroom, and the garden. That's a guelder rose by the fence." She pointed to a straggling bush unrecognized by Mysie because it was smothered under a stray vine. "And sweet William here." Thea had found a rusted table fork, and kneeled by what might once have been a flower border, loosening the earth carefully. Mysie smiled and sat down on the kitchen steps. Arthur sat beside her and presented cigarettes in a lordly case.

  "You'd be the ten best people to take to a desert island," Mysie said gratefully. In the shade, the heat became tolerable, and the long grass was spangled with dandelions. There was rising ground beyond the house, on the clear side, giving the lift of a skyline, which is a lovely thing. Clouds rested upon it, beginning to form thunderheads; there might be rain before the day was out. The three of them experienced the pure and disinterested pleasure of being with people one likes. Mysie recognized that she didn't have to do anything with Arthur. He had that quality of acceptance which makes for ease far more effectively than any conscious effort. And Mysie reflected that Thea could and would conjure the forlorn little house into a home. With nothing but a broken table fork for a tool. That was all humanity ever had to work with. That and determination and goodwill, were enough.

  Mysie said: "When the swimming pool and the pergola and the rock garden are laid out, you won't know the old place. But I can't figure where you'll put the tennis court." She observed Arthur's immediate bewilderment lighten to amusement. The suggested improvements sounded quite reasonable to his ear, against the testimony of his eyes. He had no scale of possess
ions.

  Thea remained unruffled, sitting on her heels meditatively. "The soil is good," she crumbled a bit of it in her fingers. "I'll have to pick up an odd job man."

  "You wanna man? I get you one." Dominic had returned to announce that the disabled car was taken care of. Thea consulted with him, until Mysie interrupted.

  "Listen, Thea, I must be moving along. I suppose there is a station and a train somewhere?" A protracted colloquy, of that peculiar domestic kind in which the participants proceed along parallel lines, the statements of each having not the remotest bearing upon those of the other, resulted mysteriously in a practical arrangement. Thea decided to remain for the afternoon, interviewing the real estate agent and the odd job man. Arthur, since he was on his way to town, would take Mysie in.

  It wasn't so bad going back; the big car made a difference. There is a great deal to be said for having money, Mysie thought; at least, for having it oneself. It doesn't seem to do other people so much good. She reflected childishly that she didn't want a million dollars, but just enough money. Ten years ago her present earnings would have seemed ample to her, but there were no reasonable values in New York, in money or anything else. And if you had enough money you wouldn't live in New York. It was baffling to find that the best she and Thea could do, both of them making good incomes, was to buy a house like this. By years of effort, she had apparently got back to where she started. And it would take over an hour of miserable tedium and discomfort to get to the place; and they wouldn't be able to manage that more than once a week.