The Dark Lady

by Louis Auchincloss

  "I don't. It isn't David to me." Ivy shrugged as she saw the look of proprietary surprise in the eyes of the subject's mother. "I know. You think you own him. But nobody owns the dead. The sculptor who did it never saw him, you know. He worked from photographs. But what he did was the bust of a hero. He saw, quite correctly, that that was what Elesina wanted."

  "But David was a hero!"

  "Heroes are banal. To me, anyway. That was what you all wanted out of poor David, a blond, blue-eyed hero to convince you there was something in life worth living for besides your tawdry selves. Take Irving. David was going to justify his mishmash of compromises. And yourself. David was going to prove that your marriage had not been entirely futile. And for Elesina—he was the love she could never feel. And for Eliot—he was a man. There it is, all in that pretty bust, the young Apollo, ready to fly into the wild blue yonder!"

  "You're very articulate."

  "I've lived with that piece of statuary for five years now."

  "And what was my son to you, Ivy Trask?"

  "Oh, to me he was a cute little Jewish boy with an infectious laugh. But at least for me he lived, the poor darling. For the rest of you he just died."

  Clara surveyed Ivy now with something like curiosity mingled with her disdain. "You take a very high tone to someone whose life you ruined."

  "I didn't ruin your life, Clara. You were half dead, and I awakened you. You could still have lived. There was time."

  "Lived? Like you, I suppose."

  "No, not like me. I've failed."

  "How have you failed? Aren't you mistress here, where I was? Haven't you got precisely what you were willing to rob and murder for?"

  "Those are strong terms."

  "I don't think so." There was a faint tremor in Clara's serenity now. "You've been very frank with me. I should be the same with you. If you had never come to Broadlawns neither Irving nor David would have died when they did. I repeat: how have you failed?"

  "I've lost Elesina."

  "Perhaps there is a God, then, after all."

  Ivy threw back her head and cackled. "Oh, Clara, you can believe it! Your God is going to have some very good news for you!"

  Ivy left her abruptly now and strode to the front hall. Alfred was already there. Instead of sitting in front with him and picking up useful bits of gossip about the help, as she usually did when traveling alone, she sat in the back of the limousine and closed the glass partition. Alfred made no comment about this, for nobody in Broadlawns ever questioned the actions of Ivy Trask. All the way to New York she looked out the window and wondered at the vividness of the landscape. She might have been seeing it for the first time.

  At the Althorpe she told Alfred to return to Broadlawns.

  "And, Alfred..."

  "Yes, Madam?"

  "Goodbye. I shan't be coming back."

  She turned away from his astonished face and entered the building. The old elevator seemed slower than usual. In her apartment, which was hot and musty, she went to the big window and threw it open. Immediately the room was filled with a cold wind. Ivy felt her heart beating very fast, and she stood motionless until it had calmed down. Then she began to talk aloud to herself:

  "There is nothing to be excited about. You've always promised yourself you wouldn't live to be a useless old woman. Well, now you won't! You're being logical, sensible, realistic, just as you've always been. Ever since that terrible day in Florence when Edouardo's sister told you to go away. Yes, you've been fine ever since, almost without a deviation. So don't let yourself down now. A little brandy may help."

  She went to her liquor closet and drank quick gulps from a bottle of brandy until she felt her flesh hot and tingling. Then, with a sudden dullness of heart and mind she climbed onto the window seat and sat on the edge of the open windowsill, facing into the room, her legs on the cushion. She sat there for a minute and then, with a sudden cry, kicked up her heels and fell backward.

  7

  Ivy was buried at Broadlawns in the rose garden beside Irving Stein. Elesina felt that their common interest in the place nullified any lack of sympathy that might have existed between them at death. Linda Dart was not sure that she agreed with her daughter's reasoning, but it was not her business, and she said nothing. Besides, she was too much concerned with the effect of Ivy's suicide on Elesina's already overcharged nerves. After the interment they walked together on the lawn and in the gardens. Elesina from time to time shook her shoulders as if she were trying to rid herself of a troublesome insect.

  "If she'd only given me a chance, of course, I'd have done something," she moaned, speaking more to herself than to Linda. "Why should she think me such a fiend? I could have found her a place in Washington."

  "Darling, you can't be sure that was why she did it."

  "Oh, it was the Washington job, Mother. I know it was!"

  "Well, if it was that, do you think that just finding her a place would have been enough? Didn't she have to be your right hand?"

  "Well, that she couldn't be!" Elesina exclaimed, almost in anger. "That was impossible!"

  "Exactly. And she wouldn't play second fiddle. So she had to die. That's the way she was."

  "You think I should have given her the first place!"

  "My dear, I'm not blaming you."

  "Oh, Mother, you're always blaming me!"

  "No, Elesina, that's not fair. I do not think you were responsible for Ivy's death. Ivy was. She knew exactly what conditions had to obtain to make life worthwhile. When these conditions ceased to obtain, she chose not to go on. She did not fuss or recriminate. She simply ceased to exist. There's a certain style to it, you must admit." Linda paused because she saw that Elesina was now sobbing. "My poor child, it's very hard. Believe me, you did nothing wrong. And, anyway, you gave Ivy all the joy she had in her life."

  "Why do people want to own me?" Elesina wailed in anguish. "I never asked them to. Irving did, and so did David. And Ivy most of all! It wasn't right to expect all they expected of me. And I told them so! I was always frank. I told Irving about David..."

  "You did!"

  "And I told David that I wouldn't give up my inheritance. And I warned Ivy that she'd have to give up her dirty tricks. I was always willing to risk the truth!"

  "I know that."

  "And now she does this to me! She turns my victory to ashes. She knew it was the one way to destroy any satisfaction that I might feel at what I've accomplished." Elesina stopped walking and turned to her mother, her eyes glittering. "Well, she won't succeed. I shall continue to enjoy my life. In spite of Ivy!"

  "I am sure that is what she wanted, my dear."

  Elesina stamped her foot. "Oh, damn Ivy! She always has to have the last word. Anyway, I'm glad I'm a public figure. I'm glad that I've ceased to belong to greedy individuals! You watch me, Mother. I'll be great!"

  Linda stared at her remarkable daughter. Elesina for the moment anyway seemed to have transcended the ordinary limitations of fatuity or complacency. Had she escaped herself? It would be interesting to see—a good enough occupation for an old woman. Linda wondered if she might not herself move to Washington.

  "I had such confidence in Ivy's judgment," Linda said, "that I cannot really question her acts, even her final one. It sounds brutal to say it, but at my age one can afford to be brutal. What Ivy did was probably for the best."

  Meals are a great help when there is grief in the house, and Linda was relieved when lunch was announced. Giles Bennett joined them and provided a welcome distraction. Linda supposed that Elesina would appoint him Ivy's successor at Broadlawns. Certainly she seemed very fond of him. Linda even wondered at times if it were something more than fondness.

  "Do you know what poor old Ivy's last project was?" Giles asked them at table. "She wanted someone to write a history of Broadlawns—how Judge Stein put together his collection and how the place was converted to what it is now. She even thought I might write it."

  "Well, why not?" Linda asked politely.<
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  "Do you really think I could?" Giles seemed elated even by perfunctory approval. "What about you, Elesina darling? Do you think someone like me, without any real background in art or literature, could do the job?"

  "Yes, because it's essentially the story of a man with a dream, rather than a piece of art history," Elesina replied. "You might be just the person to do it, if you can write the way you talk. Would you really like to try?"

  "I've been reading some of the files Ivy gave me. Judge Stein might have had something of the same sort in mind, for he left notes. Then there are all the thank-you letters of the famous people who stayed here, with references to the discussions they had. It must have been a fascinating time. And I found a guest book, full of poems and drawings and funny stories."

  "Was it really such a salon?" Linda inquired of Elesina. "I thought you and Ivy used to rather laugh at Irving's little gatherings."

  "Laugh?" Giles protested. "What was there to laugh at? Imagine having been present when Frederic Pemberton delivered his theory of the ghost in Hamlet. Or when Erna Cranberry read aloud from Paradise to Come!"

  Elesina smiled. Linda thought her smile proud, proprietary, almost maternal. "You certainly have been doing your homework, dear boy," Elesina said.

  "Would you help me with it, darling? Would you tell me about those weekends? Oh, we might do a wonderful book together! And you know you really ought to. It's terrible for all those things to be forgotten. Or do you believe, as some people do, that no sounds are ever lost, that all our words are somehow preserved in the air around us? Think what this room must have heard!"

  Giles glanced up at the arched roof of the big dining room as if to imagine the golden discussions accumulated under its vault. Linda smiled at his naivete, but she noted that her daughter's expression was penetrated with an air of great interest. Elesina, following Giles's gaze, seemed to be recognizing the discovery of a treasure long lost.

  "I suppose you may be right, Giles," she said. "There were extraordinary conversations in this room. It is always true, I imagine, that most of those who are present when great men talk are more conscious of their personal idiosyncrasies than of their ideas. Think of all those eighteenth-century aristocrats who sneered at Dr. Johnson for his bad table manners! Yet Boswell, writing everything down, made it immortal. Maybe you and I can do something like that on a small scale. I recall, for example, that the first time I dined in this room, there was a discussion of Shakespeare's sonnets..."

  Linda listened in astonishment as her daughter proceeded to take over the past. Of course, it was all that was left to her. She had already taken over the present.