Letty Fox

by Christina Stead

  When we got there, it was ten-thirty in the morning. Mother was asleep, having been put to bed by Pauline; Jacky was home from school, but Andrea, my little sister, had been packed off to Grandmother Morgan’s with Dora Morgan, till the scandal should have been mopped up.

  Pauline was delighted to see us; “So you spent the night with him, naughty girl! You thought you would pull a fast one, wicked child! Well, darling, I am really your friend, and you must rely on me. But Mother, naturally, is horribly upset. You cannot understand that, you are only a naughty child. But he is the one to blame,” and so on.

  Pauline’s remains of a French accent made all this sound quaint and cheering.

  At the noise, my mother rose and lumbered out of her room, in her amazing way, bringing a thundery atmosphere with her. As she stood in the doorway and surveyed the scene, I felt once more her grand stage power. As soon as she was with us, her bad temper poured into all of us. We stood dumb before her.

  “Well,” faltered Pauline, “go on, Mathilde; you said you would be nice to them. Besides, frankly, it makes little difference what you are to them. It is all over.”

  “Come here,” said Mathilde to me, taking no notice of the other two; “you can’t expect me to be very pleased to see you! I suppose you knew I should be very worried all night? And I suppose you know you should have asked my permission to do so crazy a stunt, before going off? Instead, you notified me this morning that it is a fait accompli; and, of course, I can do nothing about it. And then, you’re here without giving me any of the information that I, as a mother, or even as a guardian—for the name of mother doesn’t seem to have any more influence with you than the name of wife with your father—”

  My mother lost her way for a moment and stared at me with her lustrous, morbid eyes. Then she recollected her role, which must have been rehearsed in her mind in the long hours of the night; or long before, perhaps.

  She continued with so much talent that it merely had seemed a dramatic pause, “It has not been an easy or pleasant time for me, all this folly of yours, Letty; and I have had no comfort from you at any time, for you are quite selfish! And, knowing what you do about my troubles, it does seem to me that you should have made some kind of an effort, even if it cost you a little discomfort, to keep me as free from outside worry as I can be. By that, I don’t mean that you should have done this thing secretly, but you should have taken me into your full confidence before doing anything so unexpected, unusual, and—irreparable. You have subjected yourself, you will subject yourself, I know quite well—to all kinds of inconveniences and perhaps dangers, which you cannot possibly foresee; and which he, no doubt, did not trouble to point out to you, though he has been a married man, and knows all about it. I do not like you to marry a man of this experience and way of life. He cannot give you any kind of comfort; he cannot even marry you!”

  My mother turned her eyes to Clays, for I was standing my ground, though consulting my boot tops more than my mother, with my eyes. I felt myself a very little, guilty girl. My mother’s echoing voice continued harshly, “You have given up school for the week; that, I presume, is unimportant from your point of view?”

  “I am going back to school. Clays said I must study and graduate.”

  “Oh! Clays will allow you to continue school. That’s very pleasant to know.”

  “Ah, mon Dieu!” I cried passionately, in French, so that Pauline would be all for my side: “Elle me dit ceci; c’est tout ce qu’elle a à dire; et toute la nuit l’autre murmurait, Je t’aime a la folie, je bois ton corps, j’aurai tout de toi, je t’avalerai jusqu’au sang; des mots fous, voltigeants; de la passion, toute la nuit. He loves me and she does not love me, that is all. What else am I to think?”

  “Yes, you are both suffering now,” said Pauline, rapidly, in French.

  “It’s a fine day in my life, and she brings rain, cold, dust,” I cried. But Clays and Pauline intervened and brought us together, somewhat. Also, even I knew that Mother was weak and helpless; that this dramatic scene which she had gradually evolved had nothing behind it. All her strength went into these strange characterizations or impersonations. She had nothing left for life. She could not stand up to anyone; and, as she gloomily said at the end of the discussion, “What does it matter what I say? I wonder you came back here. You always get away with everything, Letty!”

  Clays and I now found it proper to vanish. It was not till I got outside the house that I suddenly heard Grandmother Fox’s voice ghostly whispering in my ears, “Much ado about nothing, as Shakespeare the great dramatist said.”

  I mentioned this to Clays, to tease. I felt injured; but really, his failure was a thing I would not have told for the world.

  “You are lucky,” said Clays; “you can still turn me down if you like.”

  “My goodness! That’s not the kind of thing you can explain to your mother. I am sunk, just as I am.”

  I went back to the Bleecker Street flat to read, listen to the radio, until Clays should come back with our dinner. I could not bear to touch the flat: the bed lay in disorder.

  Clays came in with what was required for the occasion: cold fowl, wine, fruit and flowers.

  “I am no poet,” he said, “but I thought up something for you and I present you with the sole poetry of my life:

  “I, the thirst, thou the wine!”

  “Is that all?” I burst out, laughing.

  “Well, I could enlarge on it; I could say:

  “I, the thirst and the cup;

  You, the wine and the riot.”

  “It would be better if I said that to you; the cup, that’s Letty.”

  “Well, at times like this, we think for each other.”

  Well, I thought, this is really my wedding. But it was not so. We were just in bed, and he had just begun to fulfill some of his promises to me when the telephone gave one of those long, signal rings and he was obliged to answer it, being not only a journalist, an electric spark jumping when the line was vitalized, but also A.W.O.L.

  “My darling,” he said tearfully, signaling to me from the telephone.

  I heard his abrupt tone change. He became interested, he agreed. He laughed, “It’s damn inconvenient; but I’ll be there, if it will really be only half an hour.” Then a laugh; “I was not sleeping alone. You hit it. See what I do for you.”

  With this, he turned from the phone and began a fraudulent lament, “My darling little Letty, I know it’s simply preposterous, but will it be all right if I leave you here for half an hour? Well, it will take an hour, all told, and I’ll race back, but I’ve got a chance to see this particular chap—it’s Blank, of all people. He’s leaving town for Paris, and he’ll hardly see anyone. It’s been arranged for me by a frightfully good pal. They found out I was away and he managed this, to screen me; and it is a scoop anyhow. Not only this chap, but the paper would be frightfully miffed if I let them down.”

  I lay still, choking with rage.

  “That’s right,” said he, kissing me, “now take a little snooze, while Papa nips out. I’ll be back before you know it. There’s my darling darling—Gracious, I must fly!”

  He nipped out, after dressing rapidly, with a good many winks, nods, and blown kisses, all of which I received with eyes of rage and scorn. I lay still in bed, thinking everything over. Was a young girl ever treated like this, I said. Spasms of fear and pain tortured me. Was he fooling me? Was he a pervert of some sort? Was I really ugly? Perhaps I did not attract anyone! What should I do? Dress and go home, tell the humiliating story, and be received back as an unfortunate? Cut my throat? Run away? Pretend I had quarreled with Clays? But—“my reputation”! I said to myself. If I had been a stray of the streets, he would have treated me differently. The business would be over long ago. Does he doubt my virtue? Is he afraid? What is it?

  This lasted a long time apparently, for when I got up it was near morning and Clays had not yet come back. He would never come back, I now fancied. Perhaps he was a lunatic. I suppose I was
not the only woman who wondered this on her wedding day, or just before it. Who knows? He is a stranger!

  But Clays returned, apparently as fresh as a daisy, about seven in the morning. He had dropped in at a Turkish bath for a couple of hours, for a pick-me-up. “So far I’ve cheated you of your rights,” he said, nonchalantly. “I thought of you all the time. Blank was quite talkative; gave me three hours, not one; and even made jokes and laughed at mine. I’d never heard that he was amusing. He takes himself very seriously. He doesn’t know the world—at least the newspapermen—look upon him as a mountebank and a crook. Isn’t it the truth? All great men! Even embezzlers and cutthroats.”

  He lay down while talking to me, stretched his arms out, then round his head. His face was merry, drawn, dark, his eyes bright. He yawned, shut his eyes and was suddenly asleep. I threw myself into a chair, but in a few minutes went out into the long room. “Was ever woman in this manner wooed? Was ever woman in this manner won?” I asked myself, as I stumped up and down. No, I am sure not. This outrage was for me alone. Yes, I must be uncommonly unattractive, repulsive even. I smelled of dull girlhood, simply. But to attract him, must I get first another man? And to get the other man, another man before him; and so on, ad infinitum?

  With a thousand different starts and pieces of luck such as I had assuredly had in my life, I had got myself into a thousand jams and traps quite unique. Yes, there are women who look for trouble—that’s called, taking a chance; and there are the children of the poor; and there is the suicide squad to which my mother belonged, hellbent for misery; but I was a happy-go-lucky, confident, credulous, and even magnificent girl in my own way. I could not work the whole thing out. What was wrong? Fate threw everything at me—I had a better time than Mother, Jacky, or Andrea. The separation of my parents had turned out to be a Christmas tree for me, so that I had twice the chances most girls of my sort have; and now? Why, I even hooked a man like Clays Manning—and now look! Asleep on my non-nuptial couch, dead to the world, and—don’t mention the rest!

  Well, I thought, perhaps it’s all a warning. I am still quite young and can learn. It was pitiable.

  Another telephone call summoned him from his sleep back to Washington; this might have been foreseen. He had only just time to dress, catch the train, and hug me crushingly, kissing me all over the neck and face, telling me I must never breathe a word of our accident (he called it) to anyone; he would grab a holiday in a few days, and we would go away somewhere. He promised it to me if it was the last thing he did on this earth. He promised also to cable his father in England to try to get some money, so that he could, perhaps, expedite divorce matters.

  “For we are going to be married soon, and it’s forever and ever,” said he; “you’re a wonderful girl, the best in the world.”

  With a lot more of this, which I wanted to hear, and which gratified me somewhat, he jumped into the train. He had given me some money, which I took, of course, and I took a taxi home. But in the taxi I burst into tears. I was sobbing when I got out, when I came into the hall, and could not stop for an hour.

  I just threw myself on my old bed and lay face downwards crying. My mother came softly behind me, and said: “What is it? What can I do? Letty, I’m your mother. Tell me everything, poor child. You’re my daughter. You can trust me. I’ll help you.”

  But I could only tell her that Clays was coming to take me on a honeymoon, and she could not see anything to cry at in that. At last I could see by her remarks that she supposed the experience with Clays had unnerved me, and I left it at that.

  28

  I was low and Mother utterly depressed, on account of my past with Clays. She chewed it over at the table; her friends came to view me. I went after school, therefore, when I had no dates or meetings, to my father’s. He had, by now, gathered round him a large crowd of new friends. He was a gay, ribald, talented man, who was not very sure of himself; exactly like myself. If a mean wit sneered at him, he was cast down; if some flimflam praised him, out of boredom or vanity, Solander was delighted. He embraced people; he laughed with his wide mouth, showing all his funny cream teeth, and tears of joy flowed out of his eyes; exactly like myself. Some people thought he was a genius. I was not averse to this opinion, for if those were the signs of genius, I had them too. I could not be a cynic. I preferred to believe in people. A good many of the people round my father came to get ideas from him, or to have a free entertainment; for, say what you will about radio and the movies, the theater and vaudeville, with their movement, color, and real life, and their full-length living portraits, are sky-high above them for pleasure and inspiration. There were few real wits or original raconteurs round my father, not because there are so few, New York being the chief bazaar in the U.S.A. for such talents, but because each one (like Solander) needs his own audience and his own addicts; and those addicts crowd out other entertainers.

  I heard from Clays every few days. He was making preparations for going away and expected to spend a couple of days in New York, but could no longer think of the country honeymoon. He seemed wild about me. He told me the place he had picked out for us, if we had a week end, was a charming place in a woodland, near a lake. In the lake was an island, and on the island two cabins which could be rented by guests, at a slightly higher rate. There was boating, golf, riding; for it was mostly used by busy young couples on real or weekend honeymoons. “To hasten on The Night,” said my lover, “I send you a poem, my first, and it is simply called —To Eve, which means both Evening and Woman, but woman means you.” The beginning of To Eve went—

  Copper goblet Hebe bear

  Thrice-filled, to the thirsty stars;

  Mesopotamian scimitars

  Sulky seraphs flash in air.

  Simoons drink the fishless lakes

  The grass devoured in sand remains,

  Old cities die in shifting plains

  The sun to him the ocean takes.

  Clubfoot stems and hairy leaves

  Flowers, seeds, gemmae, thalli, plants,

  Leopards, lambs, all celebrants

  Of innocent love, ye now by Eve’s

  First curiousness must bear and die

  As she; the kingly cockatrice

  His hissing mail hath unwound twice

  And startles the phalanstery.

  Ruby tree like blood doth shine

  In jus-primae-noctis murk;

  In all the shriveled bowers lurk

  Carnivorous eyes that wait to dine.

  And sexless sentinels shake the night

  With sapphire bayonets fixed in guns

  Their bores like our star-shooting lenses,

  Hand mortars large as God’s best suns

  All throwing diamonds in cadenzas.

  (But he has taken the best gift, Adam,

  Walking softly with his madam.)

  Fast shut now, the delicious gate—

  With trembling hair, our mother white

  Leads breath-filled Adam by the hand

  On sticks, shards, stones, till weary quite

  He falls, all spent, upon the sand

  But thinks not Eve to reprimand.

  The angry God one thing knew not

  This thing thought not to take away;

  He knew not youth and age as they,

  He could not really curse the spot.

  Self-willed world-owner, all things lent

  To all-obedient idiocy;

  But gives for stealing from his tree,

  The hangman, cops, war, death and rent.

  He tries to interest take, in pain;

  The loans retaken, he’s bereft;

  He fears the one who did the theft,

  He re-creates them, Abel, Cain.

  And the very day I received this, Clays left, with only twelve hours to spare, for Spain; he gave me a seal ring but I was not his bride. Mother was quite impatient with this or anything that was not a-b-c. Nevertheless, with pride, I showed my ring and my poem, not only at school, but ran with them to my fathe
r’s ribald company, filled, usually, not with aesthetes but with those drifters of the big city, publishers, readers, and other idle wits who fortunately have time for drinking, eating, witting and whoring. They are not a moral lot to throw a young girl with, nor are they really vicious, but are a sounding-board of the city, as is Wall Street. As I was meeting publishers, or publishers’ salesmen and publishers’ readers, my thoughts turned more and more toward literature. I thought that I should get used to good society, Clays and I might cut a good figure here or in England or in France—or even in any country, say Italy or Turkey, in which we might live—if Clays really turned out to be an attaché. I thought a great deal about the expediency of our friendship for the Soviet Union; for the fact is that, with all his education, his birth in a foreign embassy, and his traveling, Magdalen College, and the rest of it, Clays would have to pant for his attaché-ship a bit if he remained a friend of Russia; the British Empire was still operating at the old stand. But Clays was young and so was I; we had not the sordid preoccupations of the adults. We did not want things to remain in statu quo for our lifetime, like the septuagenarian senators and congressmen and the heads of the Elks; because, actually, things had been changing since we were born, and we were enthusiastically used to it. Although our parents (my mother, I should say) worried about my sense of security (a cant phrase of the time), none of us had ever had that; and it was rather the struggle that made us strong. Some reporter (Clays told me) asked Karl Marx to define life in one word—well, a dopey question if ever there was one; but trust a reporter, said Clays, to think up the most vapid stunts in the world, anything for a byline—and K. M. said, “Struggle.” And what else indeed relates me, Letty-Marmalade-always-in-a-jam, to the plant in my window box (not put there by me, but by my Italian superintendent) if not this Darwinian word?

  To proceed. I was always in such good form at my father’s, and always so soggy at my mother’s, that I preferred one to the other. Having told Father this, I heard him say, “And why not? Doesn’t everyone prefer Life to Death?” This was his view of his own life, and he had reduced it to very simple terms. Mathilde was death; Persia was life. This was uncommon simplicity in the big city.