The Dark Lady

by Louis Auchincloss

  "Look, Eliot. You've got to accept me for what I am. Because I'm going to continue that way. I want to enjoy my life!"

  "But you're too young to know what you are! You're too young even to be sure that you're homosexual. You may be off on the wrong track altogether. Nature may have intended you for an intellectual, a lawyer..."

  "And a wife and three darling children in a white cottage with a green lawn in Plandome. No, Eliot, I know what I am."

  Giles spoke with greater assurance now that he knew about Eliot's own past. He had learned all about his passionate friendship for David Stein and his absurd marriage to an alcoholic. He saw in the seventeen years that separated their birthdays the division between the old-fashioned and the modern homosexual. Eliot was ridden with guilt and doubt. There was always a part of him that agreed with the contemners of pederasty. He saw his life as an obscene tragedy and himself as a kind of Hamlet in drag. Giles was very clear that he wanted no part of such dramatics in his own life. He was perfectly willing to take advice in many things, but not in the question of sex. That had been answered once and for all in Pennsylvania.

  Most of the young men he knew would have abandoned Eliot without a qualm, but Giles had a kinder heart. He had no wish to drive his friend to desperation. It was Sam who intervened at last.

  "I've got an apartment for you, Giles. It's on top of a brownstone, a sort of studio. You can move in right away, and I suggest you do. Don't worry about Eliot. I'll take it on myself to break the news. He will be upset, but he will get over it. It's not the first time it's happened. I appreciate your wanting to let him down easily, but there's no easy way of doing these things."

  Giles moved out, and everything occurred as Sam had predicted. Eliot wrote Giles a long, bitter letter and then accepted the situation. What else could he do? He was not a man to commit murder. Giles, who immediately before the separation had thought that he would have everything that his heart could desire if he could simply be free of Eliot with a good conscience, now discovered how quickly one could adapt oneself to good fortune. It even seemed a bit flat to be having no further arguments with the sardonic professor.

  Sam, however, had another "patron" in mind. Giles met Julius Schell at one of the "respectable" Gorman parties. Schell was a rich, elegant bachelor of fifty, the grandson and namesake of a famous but unscrupulous manipulator of railroad securities. Everything, according to Sam, that Schell undertook he did well. He was an astute manager of family investments, a conscientious fiduciary of charitable and cultural institutions, an excellent bridge player and equestrian, and he had recently completed a successful term in the Assembly in Albany. His diminutive figure, plump but muscular, was always enveloped in the finest tweeds. His face was round, his skin smooth, his thick curly hair a rich chestnut. His lips were thin, his eyes bland, searching, suspicious, reproachful.

  In the following month Schell came to two other gatherings at Sam's at which he talked only to Giles.

  "Julius obviously likes you," Sam told Giles. "If he takes a real fancy to you, there's nothing he won't do. But remember: be careful. Julius is a public figure. He's planning to run for Congress. There can never be a whiff of scandal to his name."

  "And why should I cause scandal?"

  "I wonder. But the question shouldn't come up. You won't have to do anything with Julius. And just so long as you keep anything you do with anyone else concealed, all will be well and good. Julius may ask for little else, but he does ask for total devotion. Or the appearance of it."

  "But what, my dear Sam, is there in it for me?"

  "Don't be naive, darling. Julius is a very important man. He knows all the great people. And like his wealth, his ambition has no limit. His 'secretary,' shall we put it, might be a young man to be reckoned with."

  "Would I have to leave Tone to become his secretary?"

  "I like to think that nobody ever leaves Tone. Our alumni move onward and upward, but they always remember us. Look at Ivy Trask."

  Giles laughed. "So we rule the world?"

  "We set the tone, anyway. It may be the same thing."

  Julius Schell, indeed, seemed to require very little in return for the handsome gifts which he now lavished on Giles. There was a gratifying succession of jeweled cuff links, old master drawings, tricky gold gadgets and the finest ties and shirts. When Giles dined at Julius' handsome Georgian town house on East 80th Street, the chauffeur called for him and took him home, as was also the case when he went for the weekend at the Gothic castle in Rye which Julius inhabited with a widowed sister. All that Julius required was a first refusal on Giles's evenings. If he wished to take Giles to the opera or to the theater or to dinner with friends, he expected Giles to be free. If Giles were not, there would be no reproach, only the slightest arch of those silky eyebrows.

  For Julius never showed temper. He was always cool, always dapper, always seemingly on top of things. His voice was a mild monotone of mild sarcasm. He played the role of the kindly martinet, the down-to-earth aesthete, the poet who yet knew how to live in a world of prose. He never humiliated Giles by a public correction, but he sometimes lectured him when they were alone.

  "I was concerned, dear boy, when you told that dirty story to Babs Reardon. Not that Babs, of course, is unaccustomed to such revelations. And not that I object on grounds of morality. To me it is a question of aesthetics, pure and simple. It so happens that your looks are angelic. That story did not go with them. Angelic looks create an air of innocence which is quite charming and which is a distinct social asset. Let me reassure you at once that people will not take them as any indication of your true character. The very fact that they know you not to be angelic only intrigues them the more. But you must never, in social circles, do or say anything too obviously inconsistent with your principal aspect. It is like wearing a discordant tie and shirt."

  Giles understood this lecture in a double sense. Not only was talk about sex to be disguised, action was, also. If Giles had affairs, they were to be kept not only from Julius' sight, but from the sight of Julius' world. Julius might have had the wisdom, for social and political reasons, not to appear homosexual, but he had also the vanity to wish not to appear betrayed. It was one of his solutions to the problem of his personality to pose before his audience as a continual enigma, a kind of Elizabeth Tudor, a creature not quite human, a superior sexless being, an awesome mixture of mortal power and divine clemency. Giles suspected, for all his friend's harsh comments on the financial antics of his grandfather and namesake, that Julius deeply revered his memory, that he yearned in his own way to be a tycoon.

  "It's hard to know, isn't it?" Giles responded with a sigh. "Sometimes New York seems like Liberty Hall. And at others it's as rigid as the Spanish court."

  "Heed my words, dear boy, and you will get by. The most difficult eras to live in are those of supposed tolerance and informality. Ours is a real bitch."

  2

  Giles's apartment consisted of a single room at the top of an East Side brownstone, but it was a spacious, airy room, the former studio of an affluent amateur painter, and it was vividly decorated in the high fashion of what Sam Gorman, who had supplied many of the objects, called the "febrile fifties." There was a big black and white canvas, school of Franz Kline, an L-shaped sofa in beige that ran across two of the walls, a Calder mobile, two ebony-carved African figures flanking the marble Victorian mantel and a smell of incense. But the particular glory of the chamber was the chinchilla cover to the bed, a gift from Julius Schell. Giles had always wanted a chinchilla bedcover and had never dreamed (or had always dreamed) that he would have one.

  On the night of Mrs. Mortimer Blake's party he had two hours to dress. Julius had told him to be there at ten. By that time dinner would be over and the late guests would be arriving for the music. Julius, of course, was dining there, but Giles did not expect that kind of invitation yet. A scant two years before who would have dreamed that a college dropout from Waverly Hills would be an assistant feature editor
of Tone magazine, an intimate friend of Julius Schell's and an about-to-be guest at the triplex apartment of Mrs. Mortimer Blake, the best-dressed woman in the world? Giles smiled at his image in the eagle-topped mirror as he answered aloud what Sam Gorman's response would have been: "Any smart observer!"

  The lavender telephone purred.

  "I call to remind you that ten o'clock means ten o'clock and not ten-thirty or even a quarter to eleven."

  Giles made a little pout into the mirror. "Of course, Julius. I'll be on the dot."

  "And be sure you don't have too much to drink. A glass of white wine while you're dressing. Maybe a second if you're having anything to eat. That should be ample. Bear in mind that you will be making your debut in the highest society. Intemperance is never tolerated in newcomers. After you've made the grade, je ne dis pas." The sarcastic voice was kind. Julius was always kind. "Are you there?"

  "I'm here, Julius. I shall do just as you say. Two glasses, no more."

  "Good boy. Till ten, then."

  Giles could not suppress a sigh as he hung up. Now that Julius was actively seeking the Republican nomination for Congress, he was more than ever the martinet. If only people did not have to be quite such big brothers! Julius was a big brother; Sam Gorman was a big brother, or big sister; Eliot—poor Eliot—had been the worst of all. They were nice big brothers, it was true, unlike Giles's own, real-life big brother who had beaten him up when he had caught him rouging his lips in the bathroom, but Giles was beginning to wonder if the time were not coming when he would be able to do without such condescension. After all, he might want to be a big brother himself.

  He searched regretfully through his wardrobe. Julius had said that "black tie" at Mrs. Blake's meant just that, even for the younger guests—black tie, white stiff shirt, dinner jacket. No blue velvet jacket, no ruffled shirt, no red pants, no ... The telephone rang again.

  "I hear my little protégé is stepping into society," came Sam Gorman's grating voice. "Who would have thought, when you were walking dogs for Park Avenue matrons, that one day you would enter their sanctuary? You've gone from little bitches to big ones, my dear."

  "It's natural for you to be dazzled, Sam. Where you come from, they don't even wear shoes."

  "You told me that when you walked barefoot into Tone. But ta-ta, lovey. I just wanted you to know that if you're late tomorrow, old Sammy won't mind. Live it up!"

  Giles decided to pour himself a glass of wine. He got the bottle from the icebox. Peering into the yellow depths of the tall thin glass, he considered Sam's reminder of how far he had climbed. But had he climbed? Had he not simply been yanked up? At the end of a leash? He had hated the dogs, big ones, little ones, snarlers, snappers, barkers, biters, sometimes as many as a dozen at one time, enmeshing him like a maypole in their leashes, defecating and pissing on every last patch of green left in the beleaguered city. But even that had been better than Waverly Hills. Let Sam jeer. All he had done was accept life.

  Mrs. Blake's great, high-ceilinged chambers were filled with tapestries, consoles and people. Giles knew nobody, but he was happy to walk about and stare. Suddenly he had to pause to avoid colliding with a small woman hurrying across the room in an aggressive stride, her shoulders jerking, her shiny gold hair bobbing.

  "Miss Trask!"

  She paused to squint at Giles. Then she grunted. "Hello, baby. How did you struggle to this exalted rung? Oh, Julius, I suppose."

  Ivy Trask appeared infrequently at Tone, but all the staff knew and revered her.

  "You promised once to introduce me to the great Mrs. Stein. Is she here?"

  "She is." Ivy looked at him as if his request had reminded her of something. "Follow me."

  They found Mrs. Stein in the next room. By what was surely a rare piece of luck she was alone and walking toward them. She was in black, tall, regal, moving to rustling skirts. When she paused to clutch an earring, perhaps loose, she seemed to smile, though it might have been an involuntary twist of the lips as she bent her head. Her skin was white, very clear, the skin of a much younger woman. Her eyes were amused, friendly, as if she were thinking of something that pleased her. She saw Ivy and handed her both earrings.

  "I told you they were loose."

  Ivy put them in her evening bag. "This is the young man I spoke to you about. Does he remind you of someone?"

  Mrs. Stein regarded Giles for a moment. "Not really. But I see what you mean."

  "Talk to him. I'll get you some champagne."

  Mrs. Stein struck Giles immediately as the type of woman that he would like to have been, had he been born one. For wasn't she a chameleon, all feminine one minute, all despot the next? As he followed her across the room to an empty sofa he pictured her as a czarina who at a snap of the fingers could summon her guard. Except that she was not going to summon her guard. She was going to be nice. With a certain air of greatness she seated herself on the sofa and patted the cushion beside her to bid him do likewise. When she turned her large dark eyes upon him, he seemed at once the only other person in the room. They might have been strangers on a park bench. The rest of the party were so many pigeons and sparrows.

  "Would it be untactful of me to ask whom I remind Ivy of?" he asked.

  "Not in the least. There's something about your eyes that recalls a young man who died in the war. His name was David Stein. You needn't worry. He was very handsome."

  "You mean the David Stein of Eliot Clarkson's book?"

  "Oh, you've read it?"

  "But he was a hero!"

  "Not really. Just another brave young man who happened to get himself killed. There were far too many of them."

  "Was he related to you?"

  "He was my husband's son."

  This seemed, somehow, to conclude the discussion. Yet Mrs. Stein continued to look at him silently, with her curious half smile.

  "Ivy tells me you're a friend of Julius'," she said at last.

  "Yes! Are you?"

  "Well, if I was, I wonder if I will be. I'm thinking of opposing him for the Republican nomination for Congress in Westchester."

  "We heard that. Will you really? Poor Julius. He won't have a chance."

  "I wouldn't say that."

  "Anyway, why should it matter? Can't you run against people in politics and still be friends? I thought all that name calling was only play-acting to fool the peasants."

  "Some of it. Not all of it."

  "But you like Julius?"

  "Why on earth do you assume that?"

  He was pleased by her candor. "I thought everyone did. What have you against him?"

  "He's a fraud. He uses charities the way his wicked old grandfather used railroads: to serve his ambition. But the grandfather at least wasn't a hypocrite. He made no pretense of philanthropy. I like my robber barons to be robbers."

  "Aren't you afraid I'll repeat this to him?"

  "Why should I be? I'll probably say it in public."

  "That should be fun! Anyway, I shouldn't dream of telling him. I take no sides in politics."

  "You mean you won't be helping Julius in his campaign?"

  "Me? What on earth could he use me for?"

  "You seem very perceptive to me. And Ivy tells me you're doing well on Tone."

  "Oh, that." Giles made a little face, as if to indicate how far from Mrs. Stein's great world they had now strayed. "I guess I've done all right. But it all depends on what Sam Gorman's had for breakfast."

  "On the contrary, it depends on what I've had for breakfast." Seeing him stare, she explained. "I bought Tone some years back. During the war, when people had stopped reading it. Ivy persuaded me, and it turned out to be a very good thing."

  "You bought it!" He clapped his hands. "Just like that?"

  "Just like that."

  He marveled at her power and at the ease with which she seemed to wield it. "Maybe I should work on your campaign."

  "You'd be quite welcome. But Julius would think me a seducing witch."

  "Oh, Julius!"
Somewhat to his surprise Giles found himself shrugging at the picture of Julius' interfering. "Julius could never afford to let anyone think he took me that seriously."

  "Why not?"

  He glanced at her shyly. "Don't you know?"

  "Perhaps."

  "He's terrified of whispering campaigns. Because of his not being married and my being so much younger."

  "Not so much younger, I suppose, as to be quite without a past?"

  He looked at her more seriously now, but she was still smiling. "No, not so young as that."

  "Well, you can assure Julius that he has no reason to fear any such whispering in my campaign."

  "Really? You'd never use anything like that?"

  "Never."

  "Even if it were..."

  "True?" she answered for him. "Certainly not. I think sex has no place in politics."

  "I think that's admirable. But then you're obviously an admirable woman."

  "No. But it's not impossible that I may become one. Or something not too unlike it." She seemed amused by her own candor and conceit. "I believe that people can change. Don't you?"

  "No. But, anyway, you don't need to."

  This seemed to please Mrs. Stein, but she did not have a chance to answer. Ivy Trask returned in her usual flurry.

  "Elesina! The mayor's come in. He's asking for you."

  Mrs. Stein's glance at Giles seemed to include him in the privileged circle of those who found mayors faintly comic. "Would you like to meet the mayor, Giles? Come with me."

  Giles reflected that it was almost too easy a way to make him her slave for life. Then he excused himself and went back to join Julius. The latter, for once, was very dry of tone.

  "I saw you charming my opponent. I trust you did not forget your old loyalties."