“Oh, I think Damon’s natural inertia will need more than that. But don’t worry; I’ll be tactful.”
Leila looked not so sure of this, but she turned to another aspect of the match. “If it should really happen, it might be the making of him. For to be known as the idle mate of an heiress, who has contributed only his good looks and charm to the union, will be galling to Damon. It may convince him to get off his ass and make something of himself!”
Leila had always been a frank talker, but I now thought that she was too frank. “I agree that it may give him a new sense of direction,” I retorted, somewhat dryly.
“At any rate, there’s nothing to lose, for he couldn’t do less than he’s doing now.”
“You’re hard on him, Leila.”
“Because I love him, Aunt Kate!”
This reassured me. Would she have used the word if she loved him in a romantic way?
But there was still a hitch. The remarkable thing about the Gleason children was that they all drank. Oh, they were handsome and healthy and happy and fun-loving and rich, but they still drank. Why? Was it just high spirits? And would it pass away when they married and settled down?
It so happened that this very question was put to me by their mother, Florence Gleason herself, in the first conversation I had with her after my resolution to open a campaign in favor of a Damon-Marjorie marriage. Needless to say, it was not I who introduced the subject. I was not so unsubtle. My plan was first of all to clear my son of any suspicion of mercenary motives—the perennial bugbear of both old and new rich—and to do so before mention was made of his marriage to anyone. But Florence forced me to alter my plan of attack. Fortunately, I am quick-witted.
We met that day in the center of Bar Harbor’s social life: the umbrella tables on the lawn of the swimming club, looking down on the long blue pool filled with brown youthful bodies. But these did not belong to the rulers of the scene. The rulers were their mothers and grandmothers, much less brown and certainly not youthful but splendidly and colorfully attired, who gathered at noon at the umbrella tables to signal to the red-coated waiters to bring them the first cocktail of the day. A brilliant sky, a sparkling sea, dotted with white sails, and a range beyond the encompassing village of great green hills aspiring to be mountains formed the backdrop to these ladies’ spirited analyses of the doings and undoings of yesterday. I used to claim that it was impossible to read the newspaper in Bar Harbor. The big cities, with their angry headlines and toiling husbands, were out of sight and out of mind; we lived in a Utopia of smiles and thoughtlessness.
Coming down the steps of the clubhouse that morning to the lawn, I spied Florence Gleason not at her usual table but sitting alone at a corner one, as ladies did when expecting a guest who was not of their regular circle. She beckoned to me, however, and I crossed the lawn to join her.
Florence was tall and gaunt, with great sad eyes and a lined, melancholy countenance. She was dressed in perpetual mourning for a long-dead husband—a spotless white dress with a few black trimmings. She always gave me the curious impression of one who constituted a kind of detached audience to the drama of her life and that of her different and rambunctious offspring. It was not that she wasn’t interested in such dramas; she was touched, even moved, but you felt that she had seen the play before and had no control over its outcome. She took her perquisites for granted—the huge stone villa, the yacht and all the shining cars—seeming mildly to protest that she had never sought them.
“I have something to ask you, Kate,” she began. “But first let me order you a drink.” She beckoned to a waiter.
“Is the sun over the yardarm? Not yet, I see. It must be a serious question.”
“Well, as it’s about drinking, a drink may be in order. As you are doubtless aware, my children all imbibe. And rather too freely, I fear.”
“Oh well, they’re young and full of spirits.”
“That is indeed what they’re full of.”
“I didn’t mean a pun, Florence.”
“And if you did, there’s no harm in it. But here’s the point. Marjorie, who’s the oldest and should set an example to the others, is the worst of all. And I’m afraid she’s getting worse. She has a very hard head and carries it well, but think what it must be doing to her liver! I was wondering if your Damon could help her.”
This certainly startled me. I had to play for time. “How do you mean?”
“All my children love Damon. He has a wonderful gift with people. And he strikes me as that rare sort of man who is capable of real friendship with a woman.”
“A platonic one? That’s not always considered a compliment, you know. To the man or the woman.”
“Oh, Kate, you know I mean nothing like that. Your Damon is as manly as anyone. And for that matter, isn’t he taken up with that lovely niece of yours? Forgive me, dear, but one can’t help hearing what people say.”
I began to feel the fates were against me. “There’s nothing in that! They’re like brother and sister!”
“Anyway, he’s much more sympathique than Marjorie’s other men friends. He could talk to her about her drinking without arousing her resentment. Which I have certainly been unable to do.”
I thought now that I could see my way. “Well, I can certainly talk to him about it.” And then I smiled, as if to end on a lighter note. “And in case you have any worry about such an increase in their intimacy affecting the platonic nature of their friendship, I can tell you that Damon has always sworn he’d die the loneliest old bachelor in the world rather than marry an heiress.”
“Oh?” There was a distinct chill in Florence’s tone.
“He says that the man who marries money earns it. Of course, that has nothing to do with your Marjorie, who is adorable and could marry any boy on the island she wished.”
“Except, I gather, your Damon. Well, it’s just as well, I guess. I’d have a hard time selling him to the Gleason trustees.”
It was my turn to feel a chill. “Why would you have a hard time?”
“Well, you know how those people are. Damon is a fine young man—there’s not a spot on him, I’m sure—but he doesn’t have the things trustees expect. A steady job or a future or, apparently, the desire for one.”
I exploded. “The day Damon settles down to something—and he will, mind you—he will surprise you. He has a first-class mind and a golden character. And the girl who marries him will have a first-class husband, one who will love her and support her and guide her and cherish her all the days of her life! A fat lot your trustees know about that!”
My temper had accomplished what my scheming had not. Florence sat silent, like one transfixed. And I had suddenly a picture, crystal clear, of what was going through her mind. She was having a vision of what such a husband, with time on his hands, time to devote to a bibulous spouse, might do for her wayward daughter. And what did she care about the Gleason trustees, anyway? Could she not bend them to her wishes?
“Is Damon really so averse to an heiress?” she asked at last.
“Who knows? Love conquers all, they say.”
“Do you know what else they say, Kate? They say that you are the real cause that Damon stays single. That you make him much too comfortable at home for him to think of leaving.”
“Do they say so?”
“My dear, the best thing in the world for that young man might be for you to kick him out of the nest!”
“And if I do that, Florence, what will you do for me?”
“What would you like me to do?”
“Give the Gleason trustees a good kick in the pants!”
She stared at me for a moment and then laughed. At which point I suggested that we join our usual group, who were gathering at the center table. I had accomplished a miracle, and I knew that I must avoid the danger of going too far.
***
That same day after dinner I had a long and serious talk with Damon. Perhaps it would be more accurate to call it a monologue, for I certainly
spoke twenty words to his one. I outlined our grim financial situation and, should I die, the fix that he would be in without my capable hands to manage his father and sister, and with the income of his little trust at the mercy of his own generosity, which bordered on weakness. I expounded on the virtues of Marjorie Gleason and the joys of paternity and family life, and I took it upon myself to predict that, satisfied with a loving spouse, the heiress would turn from the pleasures of the bottle to those of the domestic hearth.
“You’re taking a lot for granted, Mumsy,” was his first dry rejoinder, when I had paused to take a breath. “What makes you so sure that I’d be such an ideal husband, particularly for a girl who can pick and choose among the many aspirants who dog her steps?”
“You’ve been the best of sons,” I affirmed stoutly. “And the best of friends to many. Why shouldn’t you be the best of husbands?”
“I noticed you never mentioned love.”
I hesitated. But wouldn’t that long, calm, clear gaze with which he now fixed me win any woman’s heart? “Kindness—and your heart is full of that, my boy—can be as good as love.”
“And would Marjorie’s kindness—assuming she has as much as you say I have—be enough for me?”
“Marjorie has more than kindness for you, and you know it! Haven’t I seen you together? The girl is dippy about you. Maybe it’s your failure to respond that’s making her drink more.”
I could see he didn’t like this. He didn’t like it at all. “More? How do you know she’s drinking more?”
“Her mother told me.”
“You mean I should marry her to get her off the booze?”
“Well, it would be a Christian reason. To add to all the other good ones.”
“And am I such a good Christian?”
“Ethically, yes. And Marjorie’s not the only person you’d be doing it for.”
“Oh, I see that. I’d be doing it for you, too.”
“Oh, it would make me so happy, my dear! It would make up for everything else that’s gone wrong in my life!”
A sudden light of pain in his eyes flashed on me. “Oh, Ma, you make things very hard.”
With which he rose and abruptly left me. I knew better than to follow him or to allude to the subject again. I had planted the seed; I could let it grow on its own.
For a couple of weeks I noticed no alteration in his conduct. He continued to frequent the Gleasons’ villa, where some kind of social gathering was almost always taking place, but, then, he had long been a regular guest there. However, as the season advanced and autumn approached, I was glad to note that he was starting to see Marjorie apart from her family, taking her to the movies or to hikes on our “mountains,” as we called them, and on three occasions to meals at our house. On one such day, at noon before lunch, she and I were sitting on the veranda watching my husband and Damon playing croquet on the lawn below. Annie, my old waitress-cook, had earlier brought her a cocktail, and now Marjorie held up the empty glass to indicate to my obviously disapproving servitor that she wanted another.
“You don’t really want it, do you, dear?” I asked in my mildest tone. “I always think twice before I have a second. Particularly so early in the day.”
Marjorie looked at me with frank surprise, and then shook her head to indicate to Annie a change of mind. She settled her long thin brown body, so much of which was exposed by her scanty white tennis dress, in her chair with the clear intention of taking me up on my cautioning. Her face was oddly attractive, despite being flat and round, her eyes small but piercing. And her self-assurance was supreme, backed by an intelligence too sharp to countenance idle resentment.
“You think I drink too much, Mrs. Scott.” It was the simplest statement of fact.
“I think we all do. We should keep an eye on one another.”
“Of course, you don’t expect me to keep an eye on you. Nor should I think of doing so. But I take your interest as showing that you regard me in a different light from Damon’s other girlfriends.”
“If you mean that I’m particularly fond of you, you’re quite right.”
“Thank you. And let me in turn reassure you. The day that I decide to give up my drinking, I will do so. Completely.”
“And you will have a very happy life.”
“And I am fully aware that you expect that happy life to be shared with your son. It’s all right; I find that perfectly natural on a mother’s part.”
I decided quickly to reply in the same frank note. “May I hope that you share that expectation?”
“You may hope what you please, Mrs. Scott. But let me advise you not to push your son. Whatever he may decide to do, he’ll do it better on his own. Let’s face the hard fact that you’ve hardly made much of a success of him so far.”
“But he’s only thirty!” I cried, stung to the quick.
“Think what Napoleon had done at thirty!”
“You want a Napoleon?”
“No, but I don’t want a mother’s boy.”
The men had finished their match and were about to join us for lunch, and Marjorie and I, as it was to turn out, had had our first and last discussion of alcoholism and marriage. I was on the whole pleased with what she had said. She obviously disliked me, but I wasn’t the person I wanted her to marry, and it was quite clear that she would be a strong wife for Damon and that he had only to shape up a bit before putting the question.
***
It seemed fitting to the unreal quality of the air and sea of our magic isle that the bad news, when it came, should come from one whom I had never known to supply any but the least consequential information: from my impassive and unimaginative daughter, Elfrida. It came one morning when she and I were sitting idly on the veranda, she with a novel and I with my needlepoint, and I chanced to observe, almost half to myself, “Doesn’t it show what determined gossips some people are that they have been so fixed in their idea that something was going on between Leila and Damon?”
To my surprise, Elfrida, usually so placid, closed her book smartly. “What on earth makes you say that?”
“Well, isn’t it obvious that Leila’s pushing Damon as hard as she can into Marjorie’s arms?”
“Oh, yes, she’s doing that, all right.”
“Well, how could she be doing that if she’s in love with him herself?”
“It’s simple. She wants what’s best for him.”
“Elfrida, are you implying…?”
“That they’re lovers? Of course I am! And have been for years. As you would know yourself, if you hadn’t always worn blinkers about the doings of your favorite child!”
In my shock at this double thunderbolt, I had no time to reflect on its revelation of the bitter sibling rivalry that may have, unknownst to me, dominated the life of my neglected daughter. I had to concentrate desperately on what I was learning about my son. “But no woman could be so selfless as to give up the man she loved to another woman because she thought it best for him!”
“Who says she’s giving him up?”
“Elfrida, what are you saying?”
“They’ll never give each other up. They’ll go right on as they always have.”
I gasped. “And Marjorie?”
“Oh, they’ll think they can keep it from her; they’ve kept it from plenty of people. They’d have kept it from me, except Leila had to have one confidante, and she trusted me. You should hear her! She thinks she’s like Cathy in Wuthering Heights. ‘I am Damon!’ she told me once. What rot!”
So there it was, in the waves dashing on the gray rocks of the coastline, in the golden sunlight, in the deep green of the pine trees, in the gayly colored dresses and painted faces under the umbrella tables at the club and on my own veranda, facing the blue expanse of Frenchman’s Bay—the sparkle of evil.
I have always spoken of my quick wits. They had got me into this jam; now they would have to get me out. There would be no use, I knew at once, in challenging Damon with my awareness of his proposed breach of
faith. He would deny it to me, to everyone, even to himself. He had the habit, perhaps derived in part from his mental laziness, of seeing each chapter of his deliberately uneventful life as an independent entity, unrelated to any other. Thus, he would have been quite capable of seeing his duty to his mother and his duty to Marjorie and his duty to Leila as things not connected but each to be defined in its own terms. What he did with Leila, therefore, need not have anything to do with Marjorie. Oh, it had to be hidden, of course, but only because other people had strange notions. Did this excuse him or make him worse? I neither knew nor cared. It was up to me to stand between him and the devil or whatever this fetid thing was. He may have been, as Elfrida said, my favorite child; he may indeed have been my favorite person in all the world; but my love for him was far from blind.
I waited up that night until he came home, very late, and insisted that he mix me a nightcap. He was tired but, as always, compliant. I then asked him directly whether he and Marjorie were engaged. Surprised, he said no. Then I asked him whether he had given her any reason to expect a proposal of marriage.
“What’s all this about, Ma? Are you trying to hurry me up?”
“Quite the contrary. Please answer my question.”
“Well, no, I don’t think I have.”
“Thank God! I’ve been making inquiries, as any conscientious mother should. Darling boy, try to forgive me, but I’ve put you on the wrong track. The general opinion is that Marjorie’s drinking problem is not one that she’s apt to get over. If you marry her, you’ll be taking on a lifetime job.”
Damon rose, as was his way when a subject became distasteful, and walked to the foot of the stairs. “I think I’ll say good night now. And, Mother, will you please give up your matchmaking? It doesn’t do either of us much good.”
And with this he left me.
***
I don’t know how he settled things with Marjorie, but if he was true to his usual form, he did nothing. Soon, it became apparent that she and Damon were not going to alter their friendship in any significant way, and a year later she became engaged to a young man with a fortune not larger than the Gleason fortune but equal to Marjorie’s fractional interest in it. As Elfrida remarked to me bleakly, she could be sure that she was not being married for her money.
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