The Golden Vanity

by Isabel Paterson

  If Jake ever finished his next play, and if Corrigan took it, and if he didn't have some star under contract needing a production, he might give Mysie the lead. Success in the theater depended on an endless series of contingencies.

  She said to Michael: "Has the depression hit you here as hard as it has New York?"

  Michael shrugged. "I can just about meet my taxes and grocery bills. You can't give lumber away, unless you pay the freight. Maybe business will come back; I don't know. I guess the war sent us all crazy, with the idea that you can borrow yourself out of debt. My father fought all through the Civil War, with Grant's command; he was wounded twice, and he was in the guard of honor at Lincoln's funeral—"

  "Was he?" Mysie tried to seize a fleeting clue to a larger pattern; the Civil War was only one lifetime distant.

  "Yes; he was a German, you know; grandfather came over when my father was about knee-high; the joke is that he came so his boys wouldn't have to do military service. Well, what I was going to tell you was, in Ninety-eight I got a notion to join up, go down and fight in Cuba."

  "You did?" said Mysie. "What for?"

  "Damned if I know now. I guess it was mostly to see New York on the way, and come back a hero, of course. Hot time in the old town. My mother was born in New York; her folks were Irish, and she was a cashier in Stewart's department store. Not many women had jobs then. She was smart, like you; she could do anything. When she and father were married, Horace Greeley was advising young men to go West. Father got as far as Minnesota and homesteaded and made up his mind never to move again. I ran away from home when I was eleven; not that there was anything wrong with home, Father wasn't hard on us; but I'd saved up two dollars and forty cents and decided to travel. I hid in a box car, with two other boys. At the next siding a hobo got in the same car, and he took my money. So we went back home. The other boys got a licking, but my father just chuckled and gave me a dollar. I couldn't quit on him again; I stuck at home till I was grown up. Father wasn't much of a talker, hardly ever mentioned the Civil War, and didn't ask for a pension, though he could have had one. When the Spanish-American war started, I told him I was going to enlist. He said: Ach, so? Wait, I will show you something. He dug into his wallet and brought out a dirty piece of paper, creased and frayed; he had it in an old envelope. Paper money. He said that after Petersburg— that was pretty near the end—he was sent out with a scouting detail, and they captured a Confederate soldier who had straggled off foraging. The reb was ragged and hungry; and my father gave him some grub, bacon and coffee. The reb said he'd pay for it. Father said no; he was kind of slow on a joke. The reb said: Keep your hair on, Dutchy; this is the most expensive cup of coffee I ever expect to drink, and you're welcome to the change. And he handed Father that bill. A thousand dollar bill, Confederate money. Father said: Nah, I got a chunk of shrapnel and maybe a bullet on account already. . . . When he had told me the yarn, Father said: That's what you get from a war, bübchen. You keep this to remember by. . . . I did keep it; I've got it yet. I went to the Yukon instead."

  When Michael quoted his father he lapsed into a faint German accent, as if it were a buried part of his personality brought to the surface. There was no trace of it in his ordinary speech. "Ja, I used to speak German with my father," he said, "and it always made Mother kind of mad, put her Irish up. You know, two of my nephews, my brother's boys, went over in the war, and one of them was killed."

  "What became of your brother that was a gambler?" Mysie asked, at a tangent.

  Michael gave her a quick look. "How did you hear about him?"

  "From you," said Mysie.

  "He went down to Tia Juana ten years ago, and died there. I guess he was in the right business for these times. I was just thinking, while the Civil War was going on, they didn't know how it would end."

  "No, of course not," said Mysie. "Oh—I see what you mean. I never thought of that."

  "That's what I mean," said Michael. "We knew how it came out, and it seemed as if it couldn't have been any other way. But they didn't know till they fought it through. It seemed to us as if everything was settled."

  Mysie said: "I suppose we did feel that. So the future was nothing to be afraid of. We had only to go ahead and take care of ourselves. But wasn't it like this in the hard times of the Nineties?"

  "The times were just as hard," said Michael. "But people weren't so scared. They'd never had it easy. I don't know why everyone shouldn't have things easy; only it does something to them. I got my first job when I was seventeen, at twelve dollars a month. My sons-in-law— oh, well, they play a first-rate game of golf. And they figured this was like the panic of 1907—that nice little hand-made panic that was called off the same as it was called on. . . . Shall we split what's left—I guess you're ready for your dinner?"

  He held her coat and kissed her cheek again, and she made a friendly gesture, brushing her face against his shoulder like a cat. He thought again, she hasn't changed at all. ... Mysie thought, Mike is a good man. She meant that he had the masculine virtues, a constant mind, a fidelity not exclusive but enduring.

  They dined at a hotel. It was new. Mysie asked about others she remembered. They were torn down or run down, Michael said. And the Klondike Club?—she had dined with him there in the old days. He said it had been moved to another building over ten years ago, and he didn't use it much now; most of the original members, the real sourdoughs, were dead or broke. Nearly all the Alaska fortunes had vanished.

  The dinner was excellent. But the hotel might have been in any other city; it was simply a big, new, expensive hotel—running at a loss. Not many guests. A man passing their table spoke to Michael, not quite looking at Mysie. "Good evening, Mr. Busch; ah, by the way, I phoned your office to-day, missed you. Perhaps tomorrow?"

  "I'm afraid not," Michael said; "sit down and have coffee with us—waiter, bring another coffee. Miss Brennan, Mr. Hambley. Take a chair, Hambley; glad to have you."

  Mysie maintained her gravity carefully. Mike was showing off his girl again; he was proud of her. "I expect to be driving Miss Brennan up to Sequitlam to-morrow," Michael said. "What did you want to see me about?"

  Mr. Hambley explained: "Mr. Mackentire is back from Washington; it was thought the Committee should meet as soon as possible...."

  A relief committee, Mysie gleaned. She didn't listen closely; it was difficult to listen to Mr. Hambley. There are people who make listening practically impossible, she thought idly. They present a collocation of words squeezed of vital content. It couldn't be wholly accident; there must be a psychological reason, the opposite of her own when she was studying or playing, when she was intent upon charging her lines with significance and emotion. That was hard enough if the lines were thin. Therefore it was certainly an accomplishment to desiccate one's entire vocabulary, deprive a rich language of the values accumulated by centuries of purposeful use. . . . Michael dragged her into the conversation several times; Mr. Hambley asked her about "conditions" in New York. "Terrible," she said. Hambley was middle-aged, bloodless, with thin, flaccid lips and nothing behind his eyes. He reminded her of somebody—Julius Dickerson! An abridged edition. At Gina's party, Mysie had tried to listen to Julius.

  Men didn't use to talk like that. Not even the stuffed shirts, the pompous orators; their large phrases had some original reference which gave them consistency. What baffled Mysie was that no two of Hambley's sentences held together. After ten minutes he made a formal excuse and departed. As soon as he was out of earshot Mysie exclaimed:

  "I don't understand anything any more. He said he had confidence in the leadership of our big bankers because they haven't speculated. Is he an imbecile?"

  "Well, he's one of our prominent citizens," Michael replied noncommittally.

  Mysie said: "But then he said he had made a turn in the market himself last week. And he's on a committee getting money for local relief from Washington. I can't say why, but the men now, since the panic, remind me of the women while the war was on. Espec
ially the fat middle-aged women puffing around in uniforms, very broad in the beam. And giving their male relatives to the country. They seem to have given the wrong ones. They were awful—the women, I mean. Made you sort of seasick. I wonder if history tells us the really important events—the things people finally can't stand. Perhaps nobody cared a snap who Nero murdered, but they wouldn't put up with a torch singer. I felt something give way like the last suspender button when J. P. Morgan unloaded five million dollars' worth of bankrupt Missouri Pacific railroad bonds through the Reconstruction Fund and then made an appeal over the radio for unemployment relief, with the microphone brought to his private library because he couldn't be expected to go to a broadcasting station; and he hadn't paid any income tax since 1929. Historians tell us lately that it doesn't matter how dumb anyone or everyone is, the result would work out the same; but it seems to me it might make a difference. . . . Listen, I'll register for a room and leave my trunk check." She would have to go back with Michael to his apartment to pick up her hand baggage.

  She walked through the lobby while Michael paid the check; she would find him outside with the car. Turning away from the registry desk, she wasn't sure if a man standing near tipped his hat to her or to another woman, but she gave him a slight nod and an indeterminate smile, passing quickly. Yes, his face was dimly familiar; possibly he was an acquaintance; was it in Sequitlam? No matter; she did not wish to meet people if she could help it; she hadn't time, only she must call up Clara Carson at least, in the morning, before starting to drive out with Michael; and see her on the way back. Clara had been her chum in school. Married now, and not very well off; she'd be hurt if Mysie overlooked her.

  19

  IN MICHAEL'S apartment again, Mysie took off her wrap and sat down; it was early and they had so much to talk about. "Oh, do you want to drive up to Sequitlam tomorrow?" she asked. "It's all right if you were only giving Mr. Whoozis an alibi; I can take the boat."

  "I have to be there this week anyhow," Michael said. "And there's a good road. . . . Unless you'd rather not. Will your mother think—"

  "She'll think it's very nice of you," said Mysie. "Mother thinks whatever I do is all right. You know, Mother is really good. And she's had it pretty hard, with no money and six kids, besides two babies that died; she's always felt she let us in for it, marrying my stepfather. Moral men are so damned moral, always making laws and preaching sermons about bathing suits or lipsticks and peering through keyholes with their eyes bulging; I hate to think what they're thinking. But really good women have no time for such performances. They have eight children and make them wash behind their ears and get up in time for school in the morning and stop squabbling and not bolt their food; and they hope the boys won't turn out loafers and that the girls won't marry loafers and have eight children. They want the kids to amount to something, so it will have have been worth while."

  "Aren't you ever going to marry?" Michael asked.

  "I don't know," said Mysie; "it doesn't look like it. Maybe my father dying, and Mother marrying again, stopped me—I can just remember my father. I don't mean that Mother shouldn't have, even if she did make a mistake; you can make mistakes about everything, and you have to try just the same, but you see most girls grow up counting on getting married and living happy ever after. Oh, I guess it's me; I'm not domestic. The truth is, Mike, women aren't domestic; men are. A man has to own things, a house and stuff piled up around him, to be sure of himself. He wants something to tie him down, because he—he's centrifugal. A girl marries for the opposite reason, and she finds she's taken on a job, she's got to stick to it; the same as a man has to earn a living for his family, he can't run out on it. But look at all the elderly widows, traveling around the world. It's too late, but at least they want to see what else there is, outside their experience. You wouldn't believe what my mother would like to do—the one thing—she's always wanted to go to South America and see an eclipse of the sun. It happens there regularly, doesn't it? and astronomers go down to observe it. Mother got that in her head as an impossible dream. Because it's the furthest thing imaginable from her own life."

  "I guess I don't understand women," Michael said. If he had been sufficiently subtle and articulate, he would have perceived that a man is bound to be disconcerted by feminine intellectual processes, since he regards a woman either emotionally or not at all. He cannot separate her from his own impulses toward her; he is disconcerted to find ideas wrapped in rose-colored taffeta, tied with bows, shod with insubstantial scraps of satin.

  Mysie rested her chin on her hand and turned her round brown velvet eyes on him; the curve of her eyebrows imparted an expression of sympathetic enquiry. Michael said abruptly: "You know my wife was—the last few years— part of the time she wasn't quite herself."

  "No, I didn't know," said Mysie. She knew nothing about his wife.

  "She'd been out of sorts for awhile; she wouldn't speak to me for a day or two; or else ... All of a sudden she went to a lawyer and had him file suit for divorce. No warning; I got the notice one day in my office, the surprise of my life. I went home and asked her if she really wanted a divorce. She said she'd never give me a divorce; talked as if I'd been trying to put it over on her. The doctor said it was a nervous breakdown; and sometimes she was all right, and sometimes she said pretty hard things to me. Then she came down with appendicitis; the doctor said perhaps that had been causing the trouble, toxemia I think he called it. She wasn't expected to recover from the operation."

  "Yes," said Mysie. She knew that. She remembered with exactitude, Michael was aware that she knew it. He had told her at the time, but only the bare fact, in the fewest possible words. Eight years ago, during the summer she had spent here on her own affairs—she didn't know yet if he had ever learned the reason for her six months' sojourn, but the question he had asked her this evening indicated that he had not. During that summer they had seen each other, but not often and not as lovers. Michael accepted the situation without reproaches. He knew when she had planned to leave for the East. The last evening, he telephoned; she was staying with Clara Carson, and didn't want him to call at Clara's, but he had an apartment at a hotel and she went up. He had left the door unlocked, for her to walk in.

  For a moment she had thought the room was empty, though the light was on. Michael was sitting in a big chair, with a newspaper dropped on the floor, where it had slipped from his hand. He was asleep. He woke with a start, and apologized.

  You're going back to New York to-morrow? he said. As if she might have changed her mind. She said: I've got to get back to work. He asked: How are you fixed? She said: all right. She'd had a temporary job, enough to pay her way. He said: Well, let me know how you're getting on. I suppose you won't be here next summer? She said: I don't suppose so. It's too far.

  He dropped a cigarette while lighting it. He said: I was up all last night. At the hospital. My wife is sick. Not expected to live. ... He looked at Mysie, straight.

  She was stunned into stillness. His absolute honesty was slightly terrifying. She had never known another human being with courage to face his own actions. He was hard, but hard enough to sustain full responsibility.

  There was nothing to say. She was deserting him; but she couldn't marry him; it would be a repetition of her original mistake. Perhaps he understood her silence.

  Michael said: Is it raining? ... She had come afoot, and her hair was meshed with infinitesimal crystal beads of moisture. They could hear the sirens in the harbor at intervals. She said: Not rain, a little mist . . . Michael picked up the newspaper, and they remarked on the headlines, nothing of importance. . . . She said: You must be tired. She thought she had better go. He said: I have to wait here in case of a telephone call. Will you be sure to take a cab—it's not very safe, in the fog. She said: Yes, I will; good night.

  Mysie took the train early in the morning, without hearing from him. Now, after eight years, Michael was telling her the rest.

  "She did recover from the operation,
but not the nervous trouble. We had to keep a nurse, never the same one for long; she'd take a dislike to one after another. She was restless; used to roam around the house. She managed the housekeeping just the same; of course the servants had to be paid extra. . . . She accused me of all sorts of things. The doctor suggested a sanatorium, but I couldn't do that. It was her home."

  Mysie thought, there is that about Mike; he'll stand the gaff ... He had stood it to the end. After five years, his wife died of pneumonia, which had nothing to do with her mental condition.

  Michael said: "But if women do—maybe she hated the house?" Certainly she had said often enough that she hated him. He supposed he had it coming to him. None of her accusations was specifically true; she named women he had never thought of, scarcely known. And the possibility of divorce had never entered his mind. But he had been unfaithful. He hardly knew why. Before his marriage, he had gone on the loose occasionally, various affairs more casual than mercenary—which meant that he paid somewhat more. With women who knew what they were about. He had a queer kind of reasonableness and no remorse whatever. He married at twenty-six, soon after he had got his start in business. A man was better off married. She was a fine girl, handsome, capable, energetic. He considered himself lucky; she pulled with him, never ran him in debt, had a sound business head. And the children were a credit to her; three girls, of course the third ought to have been a boy. She said that was enough; he had a notion that she resented his hope of a son, as if it implied a slight upon herself and the girls. She said: Yes, if you had to go through with it— After that, he couldn't mention it again. And he was unable to pretend that she gave him cause for straying. She had a temper, but he didn't mind it much; that was a woman's privilege. He watched his step for four or five years. Then— well, there was no special reason. He hadn't, in fact, quite intended anything of the kind; but he had to be away from home occasionally. Not very often. Not with anyone she might meet. No, he had no excuse; only it was like a vacation, or taking a drink, not to get drunk but for the kick. An extra. Women were interesting. The way they could put it over on a man. But he knew his wife hadn't paid him in his own coin. He had cheated. And she knew it somehow.