“Married or single?”
“No, not married. Single.”
He indicated the doll. “But I see you have a child, madame.”
Unwilling to disinherit it, she took it to her heart and thought quickly: “Yes, I’ve been married, but I’m not married now. My husband is dead.”
He went on quickly, “And the child’s name?”
“Simone. That’s after my best friend at school.”
“I’m very pleased that you’re doing so well at school.”
“I’m third this month,” she boasted. “Elsie”—that was her cousin—“is only about eighteenth, and Richard is about at the bottom.”
“You like Richard and Elsie, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes. I like Richard quite well and I like her all right.”
Cautiously and casually he asked: “And Aunt Marion and Uncle Lincoln—which do you like best?”
“Oh, Uncle Lincoln, I guess.”
He was increasingly aware of her presence. As they came in, a murmur of “… adorable” followed them, and now the people at the next table bent all their silences upon her, staring as if she were something no more conscious than a flower.
“Why don’t I live with you?” she asked suddenly. “Because mamma’s dead?”
“You must stay here and learn more French. It would have been hard for daddy to take care of you so well.”
“I don’t really need much taking care of any more. I do everything for myself.”
Going out of the restaurant, a man and a woman unexpectedly hailed him.
“Well, the old Wales!”
“Hello there, Lorraine…. Dunc.”
Sudden ghosts out of the past: Duncan Schaeffer, a friend from college. Lorraine Quarries, a lovely, pale blonde of thirty; one of a crowd who had helped them make months into days in the lavish times of three years ago.
“My husband couldn’t come this year,” she said, in answer to his question. “We’re poor as hell. So he gave me two hundred a month and told me I could do my worst on that…. This your little girl?”
“What about coming back and sitting down?” Duncan asked.
“Can’t do it.” He was glad for an excuse. As always, he felt Lorraine’s passionate, provocative attraction, but his own rhythm was different now.
“Well, how about dinner?” she asked.
“I’m not free. Give me your address and let me call you.”
“Charlie, I believe you’re sober,” she said judicially. “I honestly believe he’s sober, Dunc. Pinch him and see if he’s sober.”
Charlie indicated Honoria with his head. They both laughed.
“What’s your address?” said Duncan skeptically.
He hesitated, unwilling to give the name of his hotel.
“I’m not settled yet. I’d better call you. We’re going to see the vaudeville at the Empire.”
“There! That’s what I want to do,” Lorraine said. “I want to see some clowns and acrobats and jugglers. That’s just what we’ll do, Dunc.”
“We’ve got to do an errand first,” said Charlie. “Perhaps we’ll see you there.”
“All right, you snob…. Good-by, beautiful little girl.”
“Good-by.”
Honoria bobbed politely.
Somehow, an unwelcome encounter. They liked him because he was functioning, because he was serious; they wanted to see him, because he was stronger than they were now, because they wanted to draw a certain sustenance from his strength.
At the Empire, Honoria proudly refused to sit upon her father’s folded coat. She was already an individual with a code of her own, and Charlie was more and more absorbed by the desire of putting a little of himself into her before she crystallized utterly. It was hopeless to try to know her in so short a time.
Between the acts they came upon Duncan and Lorraine in the lobby where the band was playing.
“Have a drink?”
“All right, but not up at the bar. We’ll take a table.”
“The perfect father.”
Listening abstractedly to Lorraine, Charlie watched Honoria’s eyes leave their table, and he followed them wistfully about the room, wondering what they saw. He met her glance and she smiled.
“I liked that lemonade,” she said.
What had she said? What had he expected? Going home in a taxi afterward, he pulled her over until her head rested against his chest.
“Darling, do you ever think about your mother?”
“Yes, sometimes,” she answered vaguely.
“I don’t want you to forget her. Have you got a picture of her?”
“Yes, I think so. Anyhow, Aunt Marion has. Why don’t you want me to forget her?”
“She loved you very much.”
“I loved her too.”
They were silent for a moment.
“Daddy, I want to come and live with you,” she said suddenly.
His heart leaped; he had wanted it to come like this.
“Aren’t you perfectly happy?”
“Yes, but I love you better than anybody. And you love me better than anybody, don’t you, now that mummy’s dead?”
“Of course I do. But you won’t always like me best, honey. You’ll grow up and meet somebody your own age and go marry him and forget you ever had a daddy.”
“Yes, that’s true,” she agreed tranquilly.
He didn’t go in. He was coming back at nine o’clock and he wanted to keep himself fresh and new for the thing he must say then.
“When you’re safe inside, just show yourself in that window.”
“All right. Good-by, dads, dads, dads, dads.”
He waited in the dark street until she appeared, all warm and glowing, in the window above and kissed her fingers out into the night.
They were waiting. Marion sat behind the coffee service in a dignified black dinner dress that just faintly suggested mourning. Lincoln was walking up and down with the animation of one who had already been talking. They were as anxious as he was to get into the question. He opened it almost immediately:
“I suppose you know what I want to see you about—why I really came to Paris.”
Marion played with the black stars on her necklace and frowned.
“I’m awfully anxious to have a home,” he continued. “And I’m awfully anxious to have Honoria in it. I appreciate your taking in Honoria for her mother’s sake, but things have changed now”—he hesitated and then continued more forcibly—“changed radically with me, and I want to ask you to reconsider the matter. It would be silly for me to deny that about three years ago I was acting badly—”
Marion looked up at him with hard eyes.
“—but all that’s over. As I told you, I haven’t had more than a drink a day for over a year, and I take that drink deliberately, so that the idea of alcohol won’t get too big in my imagination. You see the idea?”
“No,” said Marion succinctly.
“It’s a sort of stunt I set myself. It keeps the matter in proportion.”
“I get you,” said Lincoln. “You don’t want to admit it’s got any attraction for you.”
“Something like that. Sometimes I forget and don’t take it. But I try to take it. Anyhow, I couldn’t afford to drink in my position. The people I represent are more than satisfied with what I’ve done, and I’m bringing my sister over from Burlington to keep house for me, and I want awfully to have Honoria too. You know that even when her mother and I weren’t getting along well we never let any thing that happened touch Honoria. I know she’s fond of me and I know I’m able to take care of her and—well, there you are. How do you feel about it?”
He knew that now he would have to take a beating. It would last an hour or two hours, and it would be difficult, but if he modulated his inevitable resentment to the chastened attitude of the reformed sinner, he might win his point in the end.
Keep your temper, he told himself. You don’t want to be justified. You want Honoria.
Lincoln s
poke first: “We’ve been talking it over ever since we got your letter last month. We’re happy to have Honoria here. She’s a dear little thing, and we’re glad to be able to help her, but of course that isn’t the question——”
Marion interrupted suddenly. “How long are you going to stay sober, Charlie?” she asked.
“Permanently, I hope.”
“How can anybody count on that?”
“You know I never did drink heavily until I gave up business and came over here with nothing to do. Then Helen and I began to run around with——”
“Please leave Helen out of it. I can’t bear to hear you talk about her like that.”
He stared at her grimly; he had never been certain how fond of each other the sisters were in life.
“My drinking only lasted about a year and a half—from the time we came over until I—collapsed.”
“It was time enough.
“It was time enough,” he agreed.
“My duty is entirely to Helen,” she said. “I try to think what she would have wanted me to do. Frankly, from the night you did that terrible thing you haven’t really existed for me. I can’t help that. She was my sister.”
“Yes.”
“When she was dying she asked me to look out for Honoria. If you hadn’t been in a sanitarium then, it might have helped matters.”
He had no answer.
“I’ll never in my life be able to forget the morning when Helen knocked at my door, soaked to the skin and shivering, and said you’d locked her out.”
Charlie gripped the sides of the chair. This was more difficult than he expected; he wanted to launch out into a long expostulation and explanation, but he only said: “The night I locked her out—” and she interrupted, “I don’t feel up to going over that again.”
After a moment’s silence Lincoln said: “We’re getting off the subject. You want Marion to set aside her legal guardianship and give you Honoria. I think the main point for her is whether she has confidence in you or not.”
“I don’t blame Marion,” Charlie said slowly, “but I think she can have entire confidence in me. I had a good record up to three years ago. Of course, it’s within human possibilities I might go wrong any time. But if we wait much longer I’ll lose Honoria’s childhood and my chance for a home.” He shook his head. “I’ll simply lose her, don’t you see?”
“Yes, I see,” said Lincoln.
“Why didn’t you think of all this before?” Marion asked.
“I suppose I did, from time to time, but Helen and I were getting along badly. When I consented to the guardianship, I was flat on my back in a sanitarium and the market had cleaned me out. I knew I’d acted badly, and I thought if it would bring any peace to Helen, I’d agree to anything. But now it’s different. I’m functioning, I’m behaving damn well, so far as——”
“Please don’t swear at me,” Marion said.
He looked at her, startled. With each remark the force of her dislike became more and more apparent. She had built up all her fear of life into one wall and faced it toward him. This trivial reproof was possibly the result of some trouble with the cook several hours before. Charlie became increasingly alarmed at leaving Honoria in this atmosphere of hostility against himself; sooner or later it would come out, in a word here, a shake of the head there, and some of that distrust would be irrevocably implanted in Honoria. But he pulled his temper down out of his face and shut it up inside him; he had won a point, for Lincoln realized the absurdity of Marion’s remark and asked her lightly since when she had objected to the word “damn.”
“Another thing,” Charlie said: “I’m able to give her certain advantages now. I’m going to take a French governess to Prague with me. I’ve got a lease on a new apartment—”
He stopped, realizing that he was blundering. They couldn’t be expected to accept with equanimity the fact that his income was again twice as large as their own.
“I suppose you can give her more luxuries than we can,” said Marion. “When you were throwing away money we were living along watching every ten francs…. I suppose you’ll start doing it again.”
“Oh, no,” he said. “I’ve learned. I worked hard for ten years, you know—until I got lucky in the market, like so many people. Terribly lucky. It didn’t seem any use working any more, so I quit.”
There was a long silence. All of them felt their nerves straining, and for the first time in a year Charlie wanted a drink. He was sure now that Lincoln Peters wanted him to have his child.
Marion shuddered suddenly; part of her saw that Charlie’s feet were planted on the earth now, and her own maternal feeling recognized the naturalness of his desire; but she had lived for a long time with a prejudice—a prejudice founded on a curious disbelief in her sister’s happiness, and which, in the shock of one terrible night, had turned to hatred for him. It had all happened at a point in her life where the discouragement of ill health and adverse circumstances made it necessary for her to believe in tangible villainy and a tangible villain.
“I can’t help what I think!” she cried out suddenly. “How much you were responsible for Helen’s death, I don’t know. It’s something you’ll have to square with your own conscience.”
An electric current of agony surged through him; for a moment he was almost on his feet, an unuttered sound echoing in his throat. He hung on to himself for a moment, another moment.
“Hold on there,” said Lincoln uncomfortably. “I never thought you were responsible for that.”
“Helen died of heart trouble,” Charlie said dully.
“Yes, heart trouble.” Marion spoke as if the phrase had another meaning for her.
Then, in the flatness that followed her outburst, she saw him plainly and she knew he had somehow arrived at control over the situation. Glancing at her husband, she found no help from him, and as abruptly as if it were a matter of no importance, she threw up the sponge.
“Do what you like!” she cried, springing up from her chair. “She’s your child. I’m not the person to stand in your way. I think if it were my child I’d rather see her—” She managed to check herself. “You two decide it. I can’t stand this. I’m sick. I’m going to bed.”
She hurried from the room; after a moment Lincoln said:
“This has been a hard day for her. You know how strongly she feels—” His voice was almost apologetic: “When a woman gets an idea in her head.”
“Of course.”
“It’s going to be all right. I think she sees now that you—can provide for the child, and so we can’t very well stand in your way or Honoria’s way.”
“Thank you, Lincoln.”
“I’d better go along and see how she is.”
“I’m going.”
He was still trembling when he reached the street, but a walk down the Rue Bonaparte to the quais set him up, and as he crossed the Seine, fresh and new by the quai lamps, he felt exultant. But back in his room he couldn’t sleep. The image of Helen haunted him. Helen whom he had loved so until they had senselessly begun to abuse each other’s love, tear it into shreds. On that terrible February night that Marion remembered so vividly, a slow quarrel had gone on for hours. There was a scene at the Florida, and then he attempted to take her home, and then she kissed young Webb at a table; after that there was what she had hysterically said. When he arrived home alone he turned the key in the lock in wild anger. How could he know she would arrive an hour later alone, that there would be a snowstorm in which she wandered about in slippers, too confused to find a taxi? Then the aftermath, her escaping pneumonia by a miracle, and all the attendant horror. They were “reconciled,” but that was the beginning of the end, and Marion, who had seen with her own eyes and who imagined it to be one of many scenes from her sister’s martyrdom, never forgot.
Going over it again brought Helen nearer, and in the white, soft light that steals upon half sleep near morning he found himself talking to her again. She said that he was perfectly right about Hono
ria and that she wanted Honoria to be with him. She said she was glad he was being good and doing better. She said a lot of other things—very friendly things—but she was in a swing in a white dress, and swinging faster and faster all the time, so that at the end he could not hear clearly all that she said.
He woke up feeling happy. The door of the world was open again. He made plans, vistas, futures for Honoria and himself, but suddenly he grew sad, remembering all the plans he and Helen had made. She had not planned to die. The present was the thing—work to do and someone to love. But not to love too much, for he knew the injury that a father can do to a daughter or a mother to a son by attaching them too closely: afterward, out in the world, the child would seek in the marriage partner the same blind tenderness and, failing probably to find it, turn against love and life.
It was another bright, crisp day. He called Lincoln Peters at the bank where he worked and asked if he could count on taking Honoria when he left for Prague. Lincoln agreed that there was no reason for delay. One thing—the legal guardianship. Marion wanted to retain that a while longer. She was upset by the whole matter, and it would oil things if she felt that the situation was still in her control for another year. Charlie agreed, wanting only the tangible, visible child.
Then the question of a governess. Charles sat in a gloomy agency and talked to a cross Béarnaise and to a buxom Breton peasant, neither of whom he could have endured. There were others whom he would see tomorrow.
He lunched with Lincoln Peters at Griffons, trying to keep down his exultation.
“There’s nothing quite like your own child,” Lincoln said. “But you understand how Marion feels too.”
“She’s forgotten how hard I worked for seven years there,” Charlie said. “She just remembers one night.”
“There’s another thing.” Lincoln hesitated. “While you and Helen were tearing around Europe throwing money away, we were just getting along. I didn’t touch any of the prosperity because I never got ahead enough to carry anything but my insurance. I think Marion felt there was some kind of injustice in it—you not even working toward the end, and getting richer and richer.”
Babylon Revisited Page 26