The Golden Vanity

by Isabel Paterson

  Jake had not written any letter of condolence; he thought they were ghastly. Since Benjy's death, two months ago, Jake had refrained from calling, out of delicacy; she wouldn't want to see outsiders. He came now to express a genuine sympathy.

  Strict mourning enhanced Gina's beauty, gave it a classic elegance; she resembled a lady on a cameo, under a willow tree. Her hand was cold; as she listened to him she put out her other hand instinctively. "Why," she said, "you really are sorry for me!"

  "Of course I am."

  "Nobody else is." Tears welled out of her eyes; she made a pathetic effort to stop, puckering her face like a child. "I don't cry," she said wildly. "I haven't—this is—"

  Jake really was sorry for her. He was perhaps the only man since the world began who was touched, not terrified, by a weeping woman. And he knew what to do about it. "Cry all you want to," he said. Six hours later he was wondering what he had let himself in for. On such occasions, one said things intended only for the emergency. He didn't suppose Gina would take them seriously; but he considered it obligatory to afford her full opportunities for a graceful repudiation. He'd have to telephone her in the morning, call again in the afternoon if she gave permission, and so on diminuendo, until they resumed by imperceptible degrees their former footing. The episode would be closed with affirmations on his part of unalterable devotion, of his readiness to hasten from the Antipodes if she should summon him at any time during the remainder of his natural life. The least a woman could do, in acknowledgment of such an offer, was to let it go at that. Oh, the very least, Jake reflected ruefully; usually they insisted on doing ever so much more. But surely not Gina, in her position. Ten to one she'd be "out" when he telephoned, transmitting polite regrets through the butler. She would be glad to let time obliterate an hour of pardonable hysteria. Jake really couldn't quite remember all they had said—The usual things. . . . He had it on his mind while he waited to take Mysie to supper. It was her last week with a show that was going on the road. She had only a secondary rôle; but she was lucky to have got anything that summer. After many postponements, Jake's play was to go into rehearsal in two weeks. Corrigan had promised her the lead. Meantime she would have a few days' rest. She was tired and cross. "Well, that's that. Where do we eat?" "Anywhere that suits you." Jake had brought some pages of his play, bits he had rewritten and wanted to talk over with her.

  "The nearest quiet place," she said. "I'll scream if there's an orchestra." "Julio's?" It was an ex-speakeasy, only a block away. "I don't care. Weren't they awful—speakeasies?" Mysie commented. "Dingy basements and gratings. The sight of a corner bar makes me ill. I'm so tired."

  "Now don't you start," Jake said incautiously.

  "Start what?" Mysie scrutinized him. "Uhuh, I see what you mean." They had alarming moments of insight with each other. Some woman had been putting Jake over the jumps. "All right," she said. "This is a delightful joint, and we're going to have a gay party. . . . Oh, my gosh, we are too," she lowered her voice. "Look who's here!"

  Arthur Siddall and Roger Dickerson occupied a corner table. As there were only half a dozen other people in the room, an encounter was unavoidable. Arthur rose and welcomed them eagerly, with an urgent invitation to join forces. Mysie accepted, since it was advisable for Jake to keep on terms with his editors. They needn't stay long;

  and Jake could stop in at the apartment for an hour, to talk about the play, when he saw her home. She ordered a club sandwich and slumped with her elbows on the table. She was too tired to eat.

  The combination was wrong; they didn't click. She certainly wasn't in any sparkling mood; Jake obviously had something on his mind besides the damn play; Arthur was distrait. Roger Dickerson was a pain in the ear anyhow. Mysie couldn't guess that Jake's principles, such as they were, squirmed at the bad taste of accepting hospitality from the unsuspecting husband. Even though it wasn't serious, they shouldn't meet. Not until Jake had been definitely rejected.

  Mysie ignored Roger Dickerson, also on principle. She was unable to decide whether a millionaire's son going Communist on father's money was a more obscene spectacle than college youths on allowances, who had never done a lick of work in their lives, volunteering as strikebreakers. It was a nice point. I know what's so queer about the rich in this country, Mysie thought suddenly; they're aliens. They have no function. The men who actually make money have a function, of course; but not the wives and sons, the heirs. All they can inherit is the money itself, just a lump of something. The job doesn't go with it, except once in a hundred times, where the son is a born moneymaker too. Because there's no technique, it can't be taught. So the heirs are encysted objects. If they'd keep quiet nobody would mind; they used to, they petrified unseen at Newport and places. But when they go around pestering busy people it's almost more than one can bear.

  Roger resumed, with forensic earnestness, an argument he had been conducting with Arthur, concerning the policy of the magazine. It was very boring, and Jake suffered visibly.

  "One must belong to the future," Roger asserted. Mysie thought: Such instructive ardor filled him, Clarence would have further gone, Had not someone kindly killed him, With a handy paving stone.

  She had been gnawing her sandwich in an unladylike manner; she discarded a clammy slab of tomato, and said: "Why must one? Maybe you ought to be liquidated, but that's a local issue, like the tariff."

  Yes, you're doing Jake a lot of good with his editors, she told herself. She couldn't help it. She had restrained herself when Roger remarked previously, with a distinct trace of the paternal unction, that Russia was the only country in which he would bring up his children. She thought it was a splendid idea. And he could take father along too.

  Arthur upset the salt, and was extremely embarrassed. "If you pour ink over that, it will remove the stain," said Jake, with abysmal gravity. "Ink?" Arthur excogitated the suggestion for a moment, before he laughed. He reached again, more successfully, for the glass which had been his original objective.

  Good heavens, Mysie thought, how dumb I am; the poor darling is soused. Probably it didn't take much to make him tipsy; Mysie had noticed other times how little he drank. She couldn't know what had kept him abstinent; it was the memory of those drunken girls.

  Someone ought to stand by, Mysie thought. Roger Dickerson was distinctly spiflicated too; but she didn't care if a caterpillar tractor ran over him.

  "I positively must go," she came to a sudden decision, and rose with sufficient emphasis to bring them all up standing. Arthur was at the suggestible stage; it was easy to lead him to the door. She said: "Arthur, will you take me home? Jake is going in the opposite direction." "Certainly," Arthur agreed. Jake looked astonished, but she gave him a warning nudge, and whispered: "Call me up."

  She meant to see Arthur home, but he retained sufficient control of himself to ask for her address and repeat it to the taxi driver. Well, then she would take charge of him until it was safe to send him on.

  In the taxi, he gazed at her with hazy intensity. He was bareheaded, holding his hat in his hand. She thought he was a dear, drunk or sober.

  He said: "Mysie?"

  "Yes?"

  "You're not like Gina, are you? You said so."

  He couldn't have known what I meant, she thought. "No two people are much alike," she said.

  "And when you find out, it's too late," he said.

  Mysie answered at random: "I suppose so; experience isn't much use, because the same thing doesn't happen twice—not exactly the same. And if it did, maybe we'd have to act just the same, being ourselves."

  "But I've never done anything," Arthur said.

  "You don't need an assistant, do you?" Mysie enquired. "I'd like to do nothing, for ever and ever."

  Arthur said: "You're always busy—I never see you." She did not guess he was remembering her excuses for not coming to dinner two or three times Gina had asked her.

  The taxi stopped; as she paused on the pavement, fumbling for her key, she glanced up, wondering if
Thea was at home. The windows were dark, but the moon, almost full, rode overhead, thin and pale, spoiled by the garish lights of the city. "There's the moon," she said.

  Arthur shrugged and shuddered. "I hate the moon."

  My God, she thought, does everyone feel that? I thought it was only me. It pulls your heart out, and you're all alone.

  She was afraid Arthur might stumble on the stairs, but he was steady enough. The blinds were up in the living-room, so she could see her way dimly to the lamp. Arthur said again: "Mysie, where are you?" As the light came on, he rubbed his hand across his eyes. The warm enclosed air of the room made him dizzy. "I'm sorry to be like this," he muttered.

  "Sit down," Mysie said, "you'll be all right in a minute." She didn't dare understand what he had been saying.

  He said: "I haven't anything to offer you."

  It wasn't fair to let him talk. Mysie said: "Never mind; it's all right." She fussed about purposely, taking off her hat, moving a small table, straightening a cushion. "Wait till I—" She went into the kitchen and found herself staring at a row of saucepans. What had she come for? The coffee-pot—she filled it and plugged in the cord. Then she returned to the living room. Arthur was asleep, with his head on his arm, against the arm of the sofa.

  She thought: You haven't a chance, my girl. You could get him the same way Gina got him, and what good would that do you?

  The light was in his eyes; she swung the lamp about, and he sighed and relaxed. He was as unprotected as a child. . . . That was his extraordinary quality; he was precisely what his training was supposed to make of him. Like Don Quixote, who was not only the last true knight, but the first; there had never been another. ... In theory, if you give people security and leisure and means, free them from the pressure of toil and the narrowing anxiety of breadwinning, they ought to be gentle, generous, considerate, sensitive and cultured. In fact, they are usually greedy, snobbish, undisciplined, and equipped with a vocabulary of about eight hundred words. Spoiled children. Arthur was a good child. He had even the heart-breaking charm of a good child. What else could he be? For after all, those are the conditions of childhood. The qualities of maturity are fortitude, enterprise and forethought; they are formed by adversity.

  She heard the coffee bubbling; after awhile she turned it off, set two cups on a tray, and waited again. An hour ought to be long enough. ... It is not quite fair either to watch anyone asleep. Even in the shadow, his features were modeled in light; a summer's tan was only a glaze over his fairness, as if the sun had glanced off. He was frowning slightly; his head was bent forward and his face pressed into the cushion. When you are unhappy, Mysie thought, you sleep like that, face downward.

  The hour was almost past when the telephone rang. She answered quickly. Jake's voice said: "You got company?" "Yes." "Need any help?" "No, but where will you be?" "At my dilatory domicile." "I'll call you back."

  Arthur woke and sat upright. "I'm awfully sorry," he said. "I'm afraid I've been—"

  Mysie said: "I went to make some coffee and you took a nap. Great presence of mind. Do you want sugar in yours?"

  He drank it black. "How long was I asleep?"

  "Oh, maybe ten minutes," she lied. "I often go to sleep while Thea is playing."

  "Was I talking nonsense?"

  "No; do you talk in your sleep? Thea says I do. One morning I had asked her to call me; she came into my room and said: It's eight o'clock. I replied severely: You should have told me sooner. She had absolutely no comeback to that."

  "It must be very late."

  "Not for theater folks." But she did not try to detain him. At the door, he paused, looking about the room curiously.

  "You know, you've never asked me to your house," he said.

  "Goodness, do you have to be asked?" Yes, she thought, I suppose you do. Well, I'll never ask you.

  She listened to him going downstairs; then she went to her bedroom window and leaned out. There was a taxi at the corner; she saw Arthur get in. She was very tired. But she had to telephone to Jake.

  "Hello; how's the boy friend?" Jake greeted her over the wire.

  "Oh, he snapped out of it with a cup of coffee. He's gone home. Came over in the morning as early as you choose, and we'll talk over the play."

  "You left me with that Dickerson homunculus," said Jake bitterly.

  "What did you do with him?"

  "He wanted to make a speech, but I headed him off. I explained everything to him, and had got as far as the Middle Ages when he sort of sagged across the table. So I put him in a taxi and told the driver to deposit him at his club."

  "What club?"

  "That's what the taxi driver wanted to know. I left them to argue it out. They didn't seem to be getting anywhere, but I didn't want to get mixed up in the class struggle. Anyhow, he stuck me for the drinks."

  Mysie went on talking to Jake purposely. The world was entirely comic while one talked to Jake. When she rang off she read for some time; it was three o'clock before she went to bed. She turned restlessly half a dozen times, but at last she lay quiet, face downward, with her head on her arm.

  26

  MYSIE was not thinking of anything when Dick Chisholm telephoned; especially not about Arthur; that was no use. Her empty mind refused to attach any significance to Chisholm's name; she had to pretend she couldn't hear, asking him to repeat it. Dick Chisholm—of course, she hadn't seen him since she left Sequitlam; why did people expect to be remembered forever for no reason? Someone she had danced with fifteen years ago. She hadn't the energy to snub him off, but she moaned at his suggestion of going out, to a theater or night club. "Oh, no—I can't; but if you want to drop in. . . . It's the top floor."

  Thea was at the little house on Long Island. Mysie intended to drive out. She had been in town all day, shopping; and seeing Neale Corrigan. He always managed to extort overtime. He was darkly pessimistic about the play, rather a good sign. . . . When she got to the flat after snatching an unsatisfactory dinner at a restaurant, she sank on the sofa and lapsed into a vacuum. And then this. . . . She remained inert until Chisholm arrived.

  Mike had had an idea she might marry Dick; she couldn't imagine why. In fact, Dick had never proposed. Nor even made love to her. A big, silent, shy young man.

  She hadn't paid much attention to him. He must be about forty now.

  The doorbell—she let him in. While they exchanged the inevitable desultory reminiscences, she pondered, studying him. He was not much changed, allowing for the imprint of middle age, and something else, some detail she couldn't pick out. He was the same person. Then what is the past? If they could be suddenly transported to Sequitlam, the town was still there, the mill and wharf and houses and streets, and the eternal sea, all the material forms, including herself and Chisholm; yet they would not make up the total she remembered. Other girls were now living in the time which for Mysie was irrecoverable. We have each a personal clock and calendar, so that it is simultaneously morning for one and noon for another. Pursuing this melancholy conclusion, she lost the thread of the conversation, and bethought herself tardily of the rites of hospitality. "Will you have a drink?" He declined, and she exclaimed: "Oh, you don't drink!" He had no bad habits.

  "You'd forgotten even my name, hadn't you?" he said.

  "Not exactly. But I went back last year—you know how it is. Everything is gone; you aren't there yourself."

  He missed her meaning. "I left the winter after you did." To her astonishment, for she had regarded him as a settled type of man, he had been half over the world. Mostly in Central and South America, selling and installing machinery, mill equipment, motors, in outlandish places. That was the change she couldn't define, the brown of the tropics, emphasized by a streak of white in the crease of his eyelids, and again across his forehead, where it was protected by the band of his hat.

  "How did you know I was in New York?" she asked idly.

  "I've always kept track of you," he said. "Five years ago I was here, and I tried to find you, but
you were out of town. And I saw you last summer, out West."

  "Where?"

  "In the hotel. You were walking across the lobby and you didn't recognize me. Next morning you had checked out."

  "Was that you?" He had touched his hat to her, and she had nodded. "But how could you keep track of me?"

  "Clara Carson writes to me sometimes. When I was back, she read me one of your letters. Of course I've seen your picture too. Once I was in Caracas, and I found a New York Sunday paper in the Consul's office, with your photograph in it."

  How can you manage your life, Mysie thought, when you can't possibly guess who is thinking of you in Caracas or sailing from China maybe to crash in on you in New Orleans? At a loss for a comment, she reached for a match. Leaning back, she encountered his arm and avoided it. He said: "I beg your pardon." Mysie laughed. "It was a reflex action," she said. "I was afraid of injuring your fragile arm."

  "That's how you used to be," he said. "You never knew I was alive. Maybe I wasn't."

  "How not?" He had at last secured her attention.

  He said: "You used to look at me with those big brown eyes and never really see me. I knew I wasn't in the running."

  "Why weren't you, as much as anyone?"

  He hesitated before saying: "I thought you were Michael Busch's girl."

  "Then why did you keep track of me?"

  "Oh, I was going to make a million dollars."

  "Did you?" she asked, mildly malicious. If he thought that. . . .

  "No. Nor likely to, the way business has gone."

  She regretted the jeer. "But aren't you married?" she asked.

  "No. Clara told me about your divorce."

  Mysie started. "Clara?—she broke her promise."

  "So did I," he said. "I shouldn't have mentioned it."

  "Did you think that would make a difference?"

  "No. But I thought I'd see you once more. You have got lovely eyes."

  "And are you satisfied?"