The Sea Star

by Nash, Jean

  “Dallas,” she uttered, her mind reeling.

  “I kept losing more and more,” he went on rapidly, still unable to face her. “I kept thinking if I could just have one good night I’d win it all back. I increased my bets, but my luck didn’t change. Last night...” He paused and looked up at his sister’s stricken face. “Early last night, the game broke up. I owed a total of five thousand dollars to six different men. They took my markers. I couldn’t believe it. Afterwards, one of the men—Jay Grainger—took me aside and made me a proposition. He said he’d pay off all the markers and tear up his own if I signed over the hotel to him.”

  “What?” Susanna cried. “For a debt of five thousand dollars you gave away your half of the hotel? That’s only a fraction of what your share is worth.”

  “I know it. But, Sunny, where was I going to get the money to pay them off? I just didn’t know what to do. Grainger’s a hotel man, too. He knows the Sea Star. He said he’s had his eye on it for a while, and—”

  “I know he has,” she said, furious.

  “You’ve met him?” Dallas said in an odd tone that escaped her notice.

  “No, I haven’t. But he sent his attorney here with an offer for the hotel which I flatly refused. He must have planned this whole thing. I wouldn’t doubt that the cards you played with were marked— Wait!” she said as a hopeful thought struck her. “You say you signed away your half? On what? A paper he drew up?” And when Dallas nodded, she said excitedly, “But don’t you see? That can’t possibly be legal. And if Grainger tries to press the issue by taking it to court, you could say you were drunk or coerced.”

  “No,” he said, “I couldn’t.”

  “But why not, Dallas?”

  “Sunny, first of all, I wasn’t drunk. And the reason Grainger’s in Atlantic City is because he’s planning to build a hotel on the Boardwalk.”

  “What has that got to do with anything?”

  “Well, his attorney is in town with him,” Dallas explained. “He was playing cards with us. I heard him tell Grainger that as long as the document was witnessed, which it was, and provided I am the legal owner, it’s an ironclad contract.”

  All the breath left Susanna’s lungs. She stared at him, silenced. It couldn’t be true. Dallas couldn’t have lost his half of the hotel. The Sea Star was the Sterling legacy. It had been built by their grandfather Jonas Sterling in 1854, the same year a Camden & Atlantic train first thundered across the New Jersey flatland bearing dignitaries and journalists who were anxious to behold the beauty of the new resort on Absecon Island. For forty years thereafter, as the vacation spot grew and prospered, the Sea Star remained one of the most popular hotels in the city.

  It was the prettiest building on the island, three stories high with a white gingerbread facade, enchanting turrets and towers, and a latticework sun porch where congenial guests passed the time of day with one another. “Your Comfort is Our First Consideration” was the hotel’s watchword. A sampler bearing that thought, worked by Susanna’s grandmother, still hung over the four-poster bed in the presidential suite on the top floor.

  “Dallas, how could you have done such a thing?” she asked, sick at heart. “Couldn’t you have talked to me first? I’d have gotten the money somehow. I could have mortgaged the hotel—”

  “I doubt that,” he interrupted her. “Sometimes I think you love this moldering monstrosity more than you love anyone or anything on Earth.”

  “How can you say that?” Susanna said hotly. “Do you honestly think I’d let you rot in debtors’ prison for fear of losing the Sea Star?”

  He shrugged and shook his head. “I don’t know, Sunny. I suppose I did think that last night, otherwise I’d have come to you first.”

  His quiet words cut her as deeply as a knife. Tears stung Susanna’s eyes. She turned away from him to hide the hurt. She did love the Sea Star. It was her treasure, her very heritage. But Dallas was her flesh and blood. She would sooner lose the Sea Star a hundred times over before causing him even an iota of distress.

  She rose and went to the wardrobe, keeping her face averted from his. “We’ll talk about this later.” Her voice was scratchy. Surreptitiously, she brushed away a tear. “There’s a party of twelve due this morning. I have to arrange a tour of the island for them.”

  Dallas got to his feet. “You have a concierge who should be doing that,” he said. “Why can’t you delegate your responsibilities? Why do you insist on doing everything yourself?”

  “Because if I don’t do it, it usually doesn’t get done properly.”

  “That’s claptrap,” he said, provoked. “Do you know what your trouble is, Sunny? You’re married to this bloody hotel. Why don’t you begin a life of your own instead of carrying on in the ‘sacred Sterling tradition’?”

  “This is my life!”

  “No it’s not!” he shot back. “It was Papa’s and Grandfather’s life. It doesn’t have to be yours.”

  “Dallas, I want it to be mine. Can’t you understand that?”

  “No,” he said. “I can’t understand why you bury yourself in this place. You have no social life at all. You’re twenty-four years old, and you’ve never even had a beau. When are you going to start thinking about marriage and a family?”

  His question embarrassed her, but more than that, it angered her. Didn’t he know she was too busy for beaux or a social life, too deluged with responsibility to even think of getting married?

  “When I find a man like Papa,” she said shortly. “Now if you please, Dallas, I’d like to get dressed.”

  He gave her a look that was half irritated, half pitying, then started to leave. At the door, his hand on the latch, he stopped and turned back to her. “Sunny, I forgot to mention...” He paused, then went on. “I asked Grainger to dine with us tonight. He said he wants to meet you.”

  Susanna roughly pulled a shirtwaist from the wardrobe. “He does, does he? I’d like to meet him, too.”

  “Sunny, listen to me. Don’t say anything to him about the— Don’t mention how he got the hotel from me. It’s humiliating enough that I....”

  He trailed off, said nothing more. Susanna turned slowly to face him. In the misty morning light her eyes looked the color of a turbulent sea.

  “Don’t worry,” she said grimly. “I won’t mention his thievery. But I promise you, Dallas, he’s going to regret what he did to you for the rest of his life.”

  Two

  She kept busy most of the day, partly from necessity and partly to divert her mind from Dallas’s news. Thanks to her father’s training, she was able to ignore the Damoclean sword that hung over her head, to focus her thoughts exclusively on her work, supervising a staff of chambermaids, laundresses, barbers and bootblacks, checking wine stock and foodstuffs, approving the weekly menu which was prepared by Mrs. Robards, the cook, and her staff. No chef de cuisine for the Sea Star’s practical patrons! They liked simple fare: hearty stews, succulent roasts, steaming vegetable, flaky pies for dessert—which was exactly what the hotel had been providing for the past forty-five years.

  Susanna’s father had often said to her, “Don’t tamper with success, my dear. Times may change, but people seldom do. What they expect from a hotel is a good meal, a comfortable bed, and impeccable service, and that is what we will continue to give them, no matter what faddish inducements are offered by the newer hotels.”

  But after Matthew Sterling’s untimely death, as more and more luxurious hotels sprang up in Atlantic City and the Sea Star began to suffer a decline, Susanna wondered about the wisdom of her father’s words. Some of the newer hotels were veritable palaces, with marble-pillared lobbies, crystal chandeliers, carpets so thick that to walk on them was like walking on clouds. Added to this magnificence were innovations such as hot and cold running seawater, elevators, fully equipped gymnasiums, and private baths in every room.

  Against such formidable competition the Sea Star no longer attracted its clientele of old. With a half-empty hotel, with an inco
me that barely covered operating expenses, every day became a struggle for Susanna just to keep her head above water. And now, with one of those slick, profit-conscious, New York City hotel magnates having bilked Dallas out of his half of the Sea Star, Susanna feared that it was only a matter of time before she was forced to sell hers.

  As the hour drew nearer for Jay Grainger’s arrival, Susanna found it difficult to concentrate on her work. What should she say to him tonight? How should she behave? More than anything, she wanted to tell him exactly what she thought of him, that he was a deceitful, underhanded, conniving scoundrel, and that he must have no conscience at all to have robbed a mere boy of his inheritance.

  Naturally, she could do no such thing. A man as powerful as Jay Grainger could do considerable harm to anyone who angered him. Susanna had read about those unscrupulous men from New York—Robber Barons they were called—who crushed any obstacle that dared to cross their paths. She had seen photographs of them, too. They all looked alike: middle-aged, gray-haired, double-chinned and paunchy. Grainger, no doubt, was no different from the rest. And yet, when Susanna tried to picture him, all she could see was a greedy grinning spider spinning intricate black webs in which to entrap innocent victims.

  Finally, at six o’clock, after scolding a hapless chambermaid for dropping a pile of clean linen, Susanna decided it would be better if she absented herself from the hotel premises. Reluctantly, she climbed the stairs to her quarters on the third floor and began to prepare for her ordeal.

  The three rooms in the south tower had been used by her father until his death. After the funeral, Susanna had moved her things into the tower and, often, when she worked at Matthew’s desk or sat in his leather armchair or slept in his carved oak bed, she felt closer to him, less bereaved, more resigned to having lost him.

  Susanna had been closer to her father than most daughters. She had worked alongside him in the hotel from when she was fourteen years old. Matthew Sterling had been the epitome of a successful hotelier—intelligent, solicitous, instinctively sensitive to the needs of the public. He had treated all his guests, regardless of social standing, in the same way, with the charming but aloof dignity of a Caesar.

  Though he had been fifty-five years old when he died of pneumonia, he never lost his regal good looks. Not a strand of gray had marred his dark brown hair. His commanding green eyes served to enhance his imperious aspect. He had been a favorite of the widows and older maidens of his acquaintance, but the chance of any woman ensnaring him had been nil. Matthew’s experience with his errant wife had soured him forever toward marriage. Unfortunately, he had instilled this prejudice in his daughter at an early age.

  “Stay unattached as long as you can,” he used to say to her. “Marriage is for fools and romantics. In the long run it brings nothing but unhappiness.”

  Attentive but troubled, a young Susanna asked him, “But weren’t you ever happy with Mama? Didn’t you love her when you married her?”

  “Love!” Matthew snorted. “Is love what made her run off with that ragtag of an actor? If it is, then I want no part of it.”

  “But, Papa, I want to get married,” Susanna persisted. “I want to love someone, to have his children. I don’t want to be alone all my life.”

  “My dear child,” Matthew said bitterly, “you won’t know what being alone means until your husband runs off with another woman. If you have an army of children, it will never make up for the heartache you’ll feel then.”

  Because she loved him so much, she accepted all he told her. And because she, too, had been deeply wounded by her mother’s abandonment, she subconsciously feared the further hurt that marriage might bring. Susanna never thought about her mother now—that is, she willed herself not to think about her. It hurt too much to think about Augusta. It pained Susanna to remember her mother’s dramatic beauty, the gypsy tangle of her auburn hair, the dark fire in her eyes, the proud curve of her mouth, the vibrant sound of her voice.

  But the memories were too strong sometimes to quell. For years after Augusta had abandoned the family, Susanna would remember warm summer nights when she was a little girl. She remembered Augusta holding her, softly crooning a lullaby to the daughter in her arms and the son in his cradle. Susanna remembered Augusta’s hands, graceful yet strong, and the lovely aching sweetness of her voice as she sang. But whenever she envisioned that scene, she would think of her father’s pain and blot the memory from her mind. Mama had left them. Papa had stayed. It was unfair to Papa to even think of Augusta. And if Papa said that marriage was an institution that should be avoided, then Susanna as a loyal daughter ought certainly to heed him.

  While Matthew lived, her decision had been easy to abide by. She had her work, she had Dallas, and best of all, she had her father. There were so many ways in which Susanna had depended on Matthew. No problem had ever been so great that he couldn’t solve it. No day had ever ended without their discussing the hundred and one details that constituted running a hotel. But after he died, everything changed. Dallas, with a new sense of freedom and independence, spent more and more time away from the hotel. At the monthly meetings of the Hotel Owners Association, which Susanna had always attended with Matthew, no one took her suggestions seriously—she was, after all, only a woman. Slowly and painfully, Susanna came to realize that while Matthew lived, she had had a status that no longer existed. She’d been his daughter and his equal, his child and helpmate. The void his death had left in her life seemed impossible to fill.

  She took great care dressing for dinner that evening. Jay Grainger must know at once that he wasn’t dealing with a country bumpkin from the hinterlands of New Jersey. He might own a dozen hotels, but he was no better than Susanna. And tonight when she met him, she would make very sure he knew that.

  Her dress was new, a shimmering symphony of silver-threaded white silk. The bodice was low, accentuating the curve of her youthful breast, and the skirt was straight and narrow, drawn up in the back into a modest bustle from which a cascade of silver ribbons fell gracefully to the floor. In her ears and at her throat she wore lustrous opals, a birthday gift from her father. As she looked into the pier mirror, inspecting her attire, she touched the opal at her breast as if it were a talisman. “Papa,” she said softly, “he’ll never get the hotel from me. Never.”

  Beneath her fingers, the cool gem warmed, infusing her with strength and with dauntless resolve.

  When she entered the restaurant at half past eight, the string quartet was playing a selection by Mozart. The room looked lovely. White linen tablecloths, softly flickering candles, centerpieces of peonies and primroses all lent a mellow gracious air to the formally dressed diners.

  As Susanna surveyed the familiar scene, a sudden wave of fear swept over her. Despite her resolve, was she going to lose this life she loved? And if she did, what would she do? What could she do? She neither knew nor wanted any other life than the one to which she had been bred.

  Dallas was waiting for her at their favorite table near the open French doors that looked out on the garden. He rose as she approached him.

  “You’re late,” he said with a frown.

  “As is our esteemed guest,” she countered, taking the chair he held out for her. “Punctuality, I see, is not one of his virtues.”

  “Sunny, I beg you. Don’t greet him with that attitude.”

  A flush of color scorched her cheeks. Her green eyes blazed. “What attitude should I adopt?” she snapped back. “Should I get down on my knees and humbly thank him for his larceny?”

  “It wasn’t larceny,” Dallas said tightly. “It was simply a business transaction. Had you been in his place, you would have done the same thing. If you want to know the truth, Sunny, you two are very much alike.”

  “Heaven forbid!” she said with a shudder. “If that were true, I would—”

  “Hush!” Dallas said. “Here he comes now.”

  Susanna swung around in her chair. A jolt of surprise displaced her angry resentment.

/>   The gentleman who approached was neither middle-aged nor paunchy. He was tall and slender, with the lithe muscularity of a Clodion bronze, and his hair was raven dark with not a single strand of gray. His high brow and straight nose bespoke aristocratic breeding. His casual stride was as unconsciously beautiful as the fluid motion of the sea Susanna so loved.

  Could this be the unscrupulous New Yorker who owned a string of hotels up and down the Eastern Seaboard? In his finely tailored evening clothes he seemed more a blasé socialite than the powerful self-made man Susanna knew him to be. But as he drew nearer and she observed his features at close hand, she caught a glimpse of hard ruthlessness in his unsmiling sun-browned face.

  “Good evening, Sterling,” he said, shaking the hand that Dallas held out to him. “I’m sorry I’m late. I met with some city officials this afternoon and our talk lasted longer than expected. Atlantic City has even more stringent building codes than New York!”

  His voice was low but expressive, with the unmistakable accent of the cultured New Yorker. He turned to Susanna. When his gaze met hers, he smiled then, a smile so warm, so unexpected in that hard handsome face, that her heart gave a sudden sharp thump.

  “Mr. Grainger,” Dallas said expansively, having noted Susanna’s reaction, “may I present my sister, Susanna Sterling? I was just telling her” —he gave her a wry glance— “that you and she have much in common.”

  “No doubt we do,” Jay agreed while Susanna stared at him openly. “I’ve only to look around me, Miss Sterling, to know that you take as much care and pride in your hotel as I do in mine.”

  His praise, apparently genuine, left Susanna at a loss for words. She had been prepared to despise him, to openly scorn him, but the emotions she now felt had little to do with loathing. He was exceptionally attractive, but it wasn’t his good looks that unsettled her. He had the same regal bearing as her father had had, the same natural air of command about him. For the first time in her life Susanna felt womanly, vulnerable, and—oddly—protected. She lowered her eyes in a welter of confusion.