The Dark Lady

by Louis Auchincloss

  "Try the wine, dear. It's better for you."

  Elesina's eyes slightly widened. "But what a remarkable thing to expect of wine: to be good for you. Very well. I'll try it."

  Ivy proceeded to talk about her life on Tone, but she guessed correctly that she would not hold this young woman's interest for long without striking a more personal note, and her instinct prompted her to shift to the story of herself and Edouardo as the origin of her magazine career. Elesina heard it to the end without saying a word. She seemed moved.

  "But my poor Miss Trask..."

  "Do call me Ivy."

  "Ivy. You should have got off that train and gone to him! You should have saved him from his atrocious family. You could have, too. You have the force. I feel it!"

  "I know I could have. But would it have been worth it? He didn't really want me. For such men the status quo is always best. Edouardo would have hated what I had cost him. Whatever I could have given him wouldn't have been worth the family row."

  "You're wise. Too wise for your own good."

  Ivy asked Elesina to dinner in the week following. It was at this dinner that the mishap occurred which precipitated their intimacy. Elesina arrived in poor condition and was very silent during the meal. The evening was not a success, and the other guests left early. Ivy suggested that her new friend, now frankly drunk, should spend the night in her bed while she slept on a couch in the living room. At one in the morning she saw the light go on under her bedroom door and went in to find Elesina, quite sober again, shaking pills in what seemed an undue profusion out of a bottle. Ivy hurried in to snatch the bottle.

  "Elesina! Don't be a fool!"

  "Oh, Ivy, it's not what you think—it's not that at all. I'm simply tired, and I can't get to sleep. All right, then, I won't. But you'll have to give me a drink."

  "Just one. A small one. With a cup of hot milk."

  "Very well. But you'll have to sit up and talk to me."

  When Ivy had brought her a small bourbon and a large milk, Elesina seemed to take heart again. She came into the living room and reclined on the chaise longue, puffing a cigarette.

  "No, Ivy, I wasn't trying to do myself in. I don't say the time won't come when I will, but it's not here yet. And when I do— if I do, that is—I'll be too much of a lady to do it in the home of a friend. How could you think I'd leave you with a mess like that to cope with? Think of the janitor and the police. Ugh!"

  "Oh, my dear, do you think I could think of anything but you?" Ivy's instant tears made her image of Elesina blurred and wobbly. "How could you even contemplate doing such a thing? With all you have to live for? If you only knew how much less I started with!"

  "Perhaps that's just it. I detest compromise. You see, Ivy, I was very greedy once. I wanted the whole world. Oh, I don't suppose there's anything wrong with that, any more than there's anything wrong with failing to get it. But it somehow seems ignoble to hang around indefinitely after one has failed."

  "You can't talk about failure at your age."

  "You can talk about failure at any age."

  "Look at me. I was born a failure."

  "That's why you're a success today."

  "Some success." Ivy sniffed. "But if I'm not altogether a failure, it's because I don't admit it. Because I don't drink and take pills and carry on!"

  Elesina took this in very good part. She laughed almost cheerfully. "Well, I shan't carry on, at any rate. As to the drinks and pills I make no promises. Not yet anyway." She sighed. "Oh, Ivy, I had it all! I had the looks and the ambition, perhaps even the talent. And what did I do with it? I threw it all away." Elesina described a long arc with her arm and shrugged at the futility of her own self-dramatization.

  "How did you throw it away?"

  "By not being satisfied. I once played Hedda Gabler. That should have been happiness for a lifetime. How much more can a woman ask than to play Hedda, Nora, Candida? Small wonder actresses have so little left over for their private lives. They've had enough—more than their share. There is no joy like theirs. Oh, yes, I've been near enough to it to know. Love—it can't compare. It's not in the running. But I had to have love, too. Yes, and motherhood. And parties and popularity. And money to scatter about. And drinks to drink. And things to pep me up and things to calm me down. God!"

  "We live in a greedy world. That doesn't mean we can't learn not to be greedy."

  "Oh, Ivy, how wise you are! Perhaps you can help me, after all. Can you take away my inner mirror so that I am not always seeing myself?"

  "Seeing yourself how?"

  "Seeing myself acting. Seeing myself making love. I could see my own Hedda, and it wasn't good enough. I could see the men who made love to me, and they weren't good enough. I could see my little girl, Ruth, and why she bored me. And I could see myself looking down on everybody, and I hated my own condescension. So I drank, but I saw myself drinking. I saw myself slipping—to the level of Sam Gorman's parties..."

  "And Ivy Trask."

  "Oh, Ivy. I'm sorry."

  "Don't be. I was wondering if you did realize that you had slipped. If you do, you're all right. You can get back."

  "Presuming I want to."

  "Of course you want to! And you can get anywhere you want. I'll see to that. If you'll just let me be your coach. I think that's the word."

  Elesina looked into her emptied glass for a long moment, but it was clear that Ivy was not going to refill it. At last she seemed to accept this, for she placed the glass carefully on the table. "Why do you care?" she asked.

  "Will you really listen if I tell you?"

  The two women stared at each other. Elesina, surprised, was the first who turned away. She lit another cigarette.

  "We must be very frank if we are to work together," Ivy continued. "Have you ever seen a great star, one who has come up from the bottom, and thought how wonderful it would have been to help her—before she made the grade? Well, I won't be one who waits until it's too late."

  "Great stars can be notoriously ungrateful."

  "I'm not looking for gratitude."

  "I see. You're Pygmalion. Must I go back to the stage?"

  "When I say you'll be a star, I don't limit it to the stage."

  "What then?"

  "Anything!"

  "A society leader? A millionaire's wife? A congresswoman?"

  "Anything!"

  Elesina got up. "Ivy, you're an old fool. But you're a nice old fool. I think I'll go home now."

  "You'll stay right here. I won't have you going back to that nasty hotel of yours at this time of night. And I think you'd better get your things in the morning and move in here. I'll take the maid's room. It's where I sleep in summer anyway, because it's cooler. And you needn't think I'm an old lesbian, either. I have nothing to do with sex. I'm neuter!" Elesina shrugged, as if questions of sex were irrelevant, boring. "And if I take you in hand, Elesina Dart, and help you make something of yourself, you will owe me nothing. I shall have done it all for the fun of it and nothing else!"

  As Elesina turned to go back to the bedroom Ivy sensed that she was accustomed to having people sacrifice themselves for her. Good! It was the only way to start.

  4

  On a weekday after the weekend at Broadlawns which had witnessed the unhappy events of the Schurman dinner, Clara Stein sent Ivy a little pink note asking if she would come to 68th Street to discuss a "delicate matter." It was like Clara to consider the telephone too public for private converse and to assume that a working woman should always be able to find the time in a busy day to call on a lady of leisure. Had she not bought the services of Ivy Trask with a hundred dinners? The services? Had she not bought her soul?

  "Mark my words," Ivy told Elesina. "She'll find some way to hang Irving's ugly outburst to Mrs. Schurman around my neck."

  When she called on Clara, as early as she dared, on the excuse that it was on her way to work, she found the latter still in bed, reading a book in the great gilded Venetian shell that almost filled the room.
Frescoes of angels and cupids against a blue sky and white clouds surrounded and covered her. On the half columns, in rococo style, sculptured cupids, who seemed to have flown out of the canvases, blew their horns.

  "Ah, my dear Ivy, how good of you to come." Clara closed her volume slowly, as if she were doing her visitor a precious favor.

  "I've only got a minute, I'm afraid, Clara. I have to get to the office."

  "Of course. What I have to say won't take a minute. I simply wanted to make this observation. I'm dreadfully afraid that Miss Dart is not going to prove a true member of our little group. I didn't get the feeling that she liked us."

  Ivy stared. "Maybe she can learn."

  "Well, I don't know if that's necessary. It's not as if we were reduced to going into the highways and byways to compel guests to come in. Miss Dart is hardly indispensable."

  "We must keep growing in this life, or we shrink."

  "Dear me. You make me feel like a bad laundry. Perhaps we must agree to disagree. I think I should tell you that I have decided not to invite Miss Dart to our musicale on the thirteenth."

  "But I've already asked her!"

  Clara's expression became at once inscrutable. Faced with insurrection, she retired behind the silently closed doors of her impassivity. At the sound of the alarm small, dark heads would appear on the top of marble walls. Boiling water. Molten lead.

  "You told me I might!" Ivy pursued hotly.

  "I think your memory is at fault, dear. I told you I might. It did not occur to me that you would act as my delegate. I'm afraid that you will have to décommander Miss Dart."

  "What has she done to you?"

  "Nothing whatever to me. But Irving was most upset last Saturday night."

  "That was hardly Elesina's fault."

  "Your friend struck me as having an unsettling influence on the party. Maybe I'm being unfair, but even you will have to admit that she's a controversial character. She's been twice divorced, under decidedly unsavory circumstances. She abandoned her child. She is partial to stimulating drinks..."

  "You've been investigating her!"

  "The facts were not hard to come by."

  "And I suppose nobody with those faults has ever been numbered among the guests at Broadlawns!"

  "I don't think I like your tone, Ivy."

  "How do you think I like yours?"

  There was a moment of silence as they took each other in. The dark heads were lined up along the walls, the buckets poised. Then the drawbridge fell. The trumpet called for a parley.

  "I suppose it's best to be candid," Clara said with a sigh. "Evidently you and I have been developing resentments against each other. I have imagined, for example, that you have been growing more worldly. More cynical. Indeed, it has struck me quite frequently in the past year."

  "Worldly! This from the mistress of Broadlawns?"

  "I don't judge worldliness by possessions. I judge it by character."

  "And I'm too cynical for your parties? I and poor Elesina?" Ivy laughed. It was a hard, braying, mocking laugh. The empress-commander paused, perhaps nonplused. What would they say on the ramparts? Would that laugh find an echo?

  "At any rate, I shall expect neither of you at the musicale. I am sorry you will not be there, but the decision, you must admit, has not been mine."

  It took Ivy until lunchtime to recognize that she had broken definitively with Clara Stein. All morning she half expected to pick up her telephone and hear Clara's voice assuring her that what had passed was simple madness. But that would not have been Clara's way. It would always be possible for Ivy to throw herself on Clara's mercy and beg forgiveness, after which she might expect to be reinstated in the Stein circle on a guarded provisional basis. But the first move would have to come from her. Clara did not need her. Clara did not need anyone. She expected to be surrounded by a tapestry of approving human faces, but whose they were at any particular time made little matter. In the month that followed no invitation came from 68th Street to the Althorpe. The break seemed final.

  When Ivy heard from Fred Pemberton that Clara had gone to Florida for her annual visit to her old mother, she sent a note to Irving:

  "I hear you're a bachelor. Could I break in on your busy liberty and claim you for one night—Wednesday dinner? I shall try to have some amusing people. Elesina Dart will be so happy to see you again. You made an immense impression there!"

  She had assumed that Clara would not have mentioned the cause of the dispute to her husband. He accepted immediately, by telephone, stating gallantly that he was breaking an engagement to do so.

  "I think I'll ask Sam Gorman," Ivy told Elesina. "He irritates Irving, it's true, but if he gets too fresh, you can slap him down, and Irving will be enchanted."

  "Ivy, you old schemer! What makes you think I'd take the Judge's side against Sam?"

  "Well, don't you want to help me get back into Clara's favor? It was you who lost it for me. If I can persuade Irving to intervene..."

  "What must I do? Vamp the old boy?"

  "Just be yourself. That should do nicely. He admires you so much. Besides, if you want an angel for your new comedy..."

  "Ah, so that's it! Trust me!"

  That was not it at all, but that would do for the moment. Ivy was pleased with her friend's progress in the past month. Elesina had moved into her apartment and had accepted her ministrations quite as if they were her due. She kept insisting that she would stay only a few days, but her departure was continually put off. She drank less now and went regularly to see her agent. She was even learning a part in a comedy by a young unproduced playwright.

  "I shan't let Irving talk to you at cocktails," Ivy continued thoughtfully. "I shan't even put him next to you at dinner. By the time he gets you to himself, he'll be so frustrated he'll be ready to do anything you ask."

  When Irving Stein arrived at the little party of eight the other guests were already assembled and Ivy was able to devote herself to him exclusively. She led him to a corner.

  "I had a terrible tussle getting Elesina to let me ask you tonight," she confided in him.

  "But why?" Irving's great bushy eyebrows were arcs of astonishment and sudden hurt. "Am I so objectionable?"

  "Quite the contrary." Ivy permitted herself a smirk. "But you must know how actresses are. She's interested in a play, and she was afraid you'd think that she was looking for a backer."

  Irving examined his hostess severely. Obviously he knew that he was dealing with a very clever woman. "And why should Miss Dart not regard me in that capacity? I have frequently put money into plays."

  "That's just it. She has a horror of appearing to want anything from people. From people she likes, that is. You know how families like the Darts are. They can't bear to owe money to friends."

  "You mean she considers me a friend?"

  Ivy laughed roguishly. "There's no accounting for tastes, is there?"

  "I suppose she sees me as a kind of avuncular figure."

  Ivy pretended to give it up. "Yes, that must be it."

  "Or even a father?"

  "More like a grandfather."

  Irving's look of disappointment was comic. "I must expect that sort of attitude at my age!"

  She slapped his wrist. "Oh, Irving, don't be such an ass. I said she liked you. That means she's attracted to you. Do I have to cross all the t's in 'attracted'?"

  "You mean she's the type that likes older men?"

  "Well, I don't say she likes you because you're an older man. Both her husbands were rather callow youths. Perhaps they taught her to appreciate judgment and maturity. And you're still very good looking, Irving. Don't pretend you don't know it. I used to have a bit of a thing about you myself!"

  She watched the Judge narrowly. But his vanity was proof against all suspicions. The lull in their argument was now interrupted by a livelier one between Sam Gorman and Fred Pemberton. It was, of course, Shakespeare again.

  "It is one of the rare situations in which the bard seems dated," Pe
mberton was explaining. "He shared the morbid Elizabethan belief that a woman should never give herself to more than one man. How they loved to rant about this! Their faith in God would be lost, their sun and moon eclipsed, their universe degraded to an unweeded garden, if some poor female chose to exercise the simple human prerogative of sleeping around."

  "But surely a man's compulsion to keep a woman to himself is not restricted to the Elizabethans," Irving interposed. "What about the Arab world? What about those harems guarded by eunuchs?"

  Ivy looked about the pleasant little green-paneled room where the eight were assembled so cozily. Pemberton was doing just what she had wanted. His chatter was creating the same pedantic-erotic atmosphere of the disastrous night at Broadlawns. A fire crackled in the small grate under the marble Victorian mantel; Tiffany lampshades sparkled with iridescent hues. Elesina in black velvet looked creamy and elegant, as in a Sargent portrait. The other two women, magazine editors, were decorative without being competitive, and Irving, large, leonine, gravel-voiced, made a splendid guest of honor.

  "Trust the Judge to assert the rights of the great proprietors," Sam Gorman chuckled. "I can just see you, Irving, as the master of a harem, striding through it, like Rembrandt's Grand Turk."

  "And I can see you, too, Gorman. Perhaps in a different capacity."

  "That should teach you to cross swords with Irving, Sam!"

  "But, Elesina, if he's a Grand Turk and I'm a eunuch, what do you think that makes you?" Sam retorted. He appealed to the others. "Don't you think Elesina's an odalisque? I find her decidedly an odalisque!"

  "Then look after your charges," Elesina told him, handing him her glass. "Get me a drink. I want to hear Fred's reply to Irving's interesting observation."

  "Orientals are not relevant to the issue," Pemberton responded dogmatically. "The pashas simply strangled naughty wives; they did not become suicidal over them. They were realists. The stout walls of the harem indicated a healthy awareness that the weaker sex might be expected to bolt at the first opportunity. But somewhere along the line Christian society went off the tracks. It may have had to do with the deification of the Virgin. A man raised to believe that there was something holy in virginity could only forgive the woman who surrendered hers to himself. But I admit that the aberration produced some of the most beautiful poetry in the world. Art often flourishes on a denial of nature."